Monthly Archives: February 2010
Why I read Support Your Local Gunfighter
A fine blog, and hey, where else CAN you get serious political commentary, AND gaze at hot French ice skating babes who know more than one use for scarves.
Well, I guess it is time for a second look at French ice skaters huh?
Talk about babe blogging!
Several EXCELLENT lady bloggers have joined together to form a new blog called POTLUCK! Go check it out while I blogroll it!
Bill O’Reilly: A Constitutionally Clueless Tool
At least on gun rights, Bill has no grasp of Constitutional principles The BlogProf posts this video, and then tears into Bloviating Bill.
Jim Hoft intros the segment:Bill O’Reilly interviewed Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oathkeepers, tonight. During their discussion O’Reilly supported gun confiscation during hurricanes. He told the Oathkeeper that his views on the Second Amendment were “extreme.” Bill O’Reilly stated clearly that any mayor – such as in New Orleans after Katrina – had a perfect right to confiscate guns because they had to maintain “control.”Since non-existent man-made global warming is claimed to be an environmental emergency, couldn’t Obama declare it so by executive order and confiscate everyone’s guns? The 2nd Amendment details no such exclusion as bad weather. Glenn Reynolds adds this:That’s funny. O’Reilly calls the opposing position “extreme,” but such gun confiscation is illegal under federal statute, and as a matter of constitutional law; in fact, the city of New Orleans lost a lawsuit over gun confiscation during Katrina. But then, O’Reilly’s no libertarian, to put things mildly. And he’s consistently weak on the law, also to put things mildly. Still, he should have been better briefed for this show, as he came across looking like a fool, and making his “extreme” guest look sober and well-informed by comparison.
…How radically anti-gun is Bill O’Reilly here? Even Barack Obama voted the other way.
Did Lance just say he feels like a woman?
You have to be quick to keep an eye on that TrogloPundit guy!
I know what you’re thinking: what does The TrogloPundit have in common with a bunch of glamorous and sexy supermodels?
Hmmm, here is a song Lance must be singing
Back later, but until then………..
I have some chores/errands/fun to have. A bit of cleaning, a bit of shopping, and a bit of a lunch date. Be back in a while, unless that date goes REALLY well, but until then, check out some stuff some blogger named Michelle has on her site.
Don’t forget to blame the Tea Parties, don’t forget that the Democrats still want to shove their will down our throats, and of course, watch out for that Race Card!
Climate Change IS about green, just not environmental green
So what kind of green is Climate Change Mania about? MONEY baby! Cash! Greed! As Charlie Martin over at Pajamas Media explains.
There is a financial empire being built on top of AGW, one that we’ve already begun to discuss on PJM. The basics are simple. If you accept that CO2 is the problem, then steps need to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions, which many developed countries have attempted using “cap and trade” schemes. In cap and trade, you use the law to require companies in developed countries to reduce their CO2 emissions, or to buy carbon offsets if they can’t.
Where do carbon offsets come from? Simply enough, some authority must certify that someone else has either reduced their CO2 output, or has agreed not to do something that would increase CO2 output they would otherwise have done. For every ton of CO2 you don’t emit, you get a certificate that you can sell on the carbon market to someone who needs permission — an indulgence — allowing them to emit a ton of CO2.
But what about the details? Who has the authority to certify? And how do you measure CO2 not emitted? The opportunities for graft are vast. There isn’t much that is easier than not building a facility that therefore doesn’t emit CO2. Convince an inspector that you really would have built that facility, or simply that you built a modern efficient plant where you might otherwise have built a dirty inefficient one, and you’re entitled to a credit.
Once you have the carbon credit you need to sell it, which means there must be a market — a role filled in part by the Chicago Carbon Exchange (CCX). The CCX, which was started with seed money from both government and private non-profit sources, is most emphatically a for-profit firm that functions like any commodity exchange. If you have a story about the carbon you aren’t emitting and need it certified, the CCX can certify it — for a fee. Then the CCX will help you sell it — for a commission. If you need to buy carbon credits, the CCX will match you up with a buyer — for a fee — and sell you the certificate (and charge you a commission).
All of this is reasonable in theory, because after all what you’re doing is letting the market set a price for the carbon reductions, just as it sets a price for the fuels burned that lead to carbon emissions. In practice, it’s at least utterly opaque — the CCX is a U.S. corporation, but it is wholly owned in England, and draws its ability to act to certify CO2 reductions through a UN-chartered NGO out of Geneva. The principals are people who have banking experience with Goldman Sachs and strong political connections with the Democratic Party, through Chicago and through Al Gore.
It is, of course, purely a coincidence that this market, which simply doesn’t exist without the legal requirement that companies reduce carbon emissions, is closely connected with the politically connected people who are pushing for carbon restrictions by law and treaty.
How very convenient. Odd it is that the Left, which is always damning profits, capitalism, and “greed” is, in the end, all about profits, and greed! Oh, and don’t forget control, because, yes the Left loves to control people. Their liberty, their lives, and oh sure, their money!
Another great thing about Saturday
I like Saturday, it is a day off from my regular job, a day to maybe grab a beer or see a movie, AND I get linky love like this from fellow bloggers.
Now that is a good reach around
Strictly in a blogging sense though. Chris, is reaching out and sharing the linky love! Which is whby he has the honor of being the Blog of the Day.
Guess who the MSM is trying to tie the Tea Parties to
Of course, even though, the nut, who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin, quoted Marx, the spinners at in the media are doing their damnedest to blame the Tea Party folks. Typical! Of course, we are not surprised at this are we? This is par for the course. THis nut’s rambling “suicide letter” showed not apolitical leaning. It instead showed INSANITY! And insanity, is totally non-partisan. The nut that shot three at an Alabama university was a complete nut. A nut who was, apparently obsessed with Obama. Guess what? That is not the president’s fault, it is her insanity that led to her murderous spree, not her infatuation with Obama.
Likewise, anything that the insane man in Austin said that bore any resemblance to anything the Tea Party movement stands for is certainly not their fault, it is HIS fault!
Like I said, crazy is NON-PARTISAN!
Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure – WLWT
Like many people, Terry Hoskins has had troubles with his bank. But his solution to foreclosure might be unique.
Hoskins said he’s been in a struggle with RiverHills Bank over his Clermont County home for nearly a decade, a struggle that was coming to an end as the bank began foreclosure proceedings on his $350,000 home.
“When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they want to take it – no, I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I took it down,” Hoskins said.
Swiss Prostitutes Trained To Use Defibrillators In Brothels To Prevent Clients Dying – The Telegraph
Brothel owners in the Lugano area say electric shock treatment to restart customer’s hearts is needed because so many elderly customers are using their services.
The most recent victim was a pensioner, thought to be having fun with the help of anti-impotence medication.
His death followed a series of other incidents, some fatal, in which heart attacks have claimed brothel customers in the area.
The owner of one sex club said: “Having customers die on us isn’t exactly good publicity”.
There are now 38 sex clubs and brothel in the Lugano area. And more are planned, according to Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, in order to accommodate the thousands of customers who pour over the border from Italy, where brothels are illegal. Around 80 per cent of the men who pay for sex in the area are thought to be Italian.
The sex trade in the pretty, lakeside Swiss town is also being fuelled by prostitutes from South America and Eastern Europe who enter the country via Italy.
Local health experts are said to have backed the plans to stock defibrillators in sex clubs and brothels.
Defibrillators work by delivering a controlled electric shock to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat, after it has stopped.
According to the British Heart Foundation: “Modern defibrillators are becoming increasingly quick and easy for the lay person to use, which can mean the difference between life and death”.
Free Golf Carts! (III) – John Stossel
For my first show, thanks to idiotic “green” tax credits, I was able to get a free golf cart. Totally free. It was because of a bill Charles Rangle sposored, the “Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008″. The credit was so big, it covered the full price of the cart. The free credit expired a few months ago, but when I was on the O’Reilly Factor Tuesday, Bill ordered me (can he order me around? I guess so. He’s got the big show and I want to be on it!) to find out how many people used the credit to get free carts.
Turned out I couldn’t find out. The IRS won’t report on 2009 taxes until well after April 15th, and even then, how much was spent of golf carts vs. other dubious “energy saving” vehicles may never be determined. But O’Reilly’s reporter instincts are good. His request led me to discover several interesting things:
A big cart manufacturer opposes the tax credit. CEO Mike Tomberlin says his company is “steering as far from government subsidies and rebates as possible… We don’t recall the government having to help out Henry Ford.”
He added that:
We were happy to see the credit expire. It would have required us to add a lot of additional employers and industry, which then would make a lot of my company dependent on a government subsidy. And I refuse to do that.
Colin Reilly, the Arizona dealer who sold me my cart after twenty local dealers told us they had sold out, said that he sold 9,500 carts under the credit. Your taxes helped him to the tune of about $60 million in revenue.
He added that Mike Huckabee bought three golf carts from him.
I asked Governor Huckabee about that. He said he bought one cart:
But I had a friend who bought 7… still waiting delivery. I know quite a few people who bought them. The government is making a killing off of me as it is with income taxes – I feel no guilt whatsoever about it – and can’t imagine why the legal tax credit for this is any different than using any other tax credit or deduction. Is it insane for the government to essentially give people golf carts? Of course. But even more insane is taxing our income and productivity in the first place! If they want to have a credible tax system, tax my consumption with a Fair Tax-not my productivity. O’Reilly ought to get one – he can join you and me in being green and environmentally sensitive and at the same time, help put people in the golf cart industry to work and do his patriotic duty to affirm the wisdom of Congress in their energy saving policies… I heard it about from a friend and I thought it was a scam, so I called my accountant and asked him to check it out… he called back and said it is very legitimate; he advised me to get one, and said he was getting one too. I would rather my money go to helping people in private industry build an energy efficient product than giving more than the obscene amount I’m already giving to the Congress!
I’d rather my money go to neither Congress nor golf cart makers, but that’s another story. For the record, buying such electric vehicles does NOT make us “environmentally sensitive.” The National Research Council found that electric cars emit MORE harmful pollutants than gas-powered cars. As they put it: “Although they produce no emissions during operation, they rely on electricity powered largely by fossil fuels for their fuel and energy intensive battery manufacturing.”
African Union Decries Military Coup In Niger – CNN
A top African Union official Friday denounced the military coup in Niger and called for a quick return of “constitutional order,” saying the organization was ready to help facilitate the process.
Jean Ping, the chairman of the 53-nation body, said he was following developments in the nation with “concern” after a Niger military official announced that the constitution has been suspended.
In addition to the suspension, President Mamadou Tandja is said to be detained in a military camp.
“The chairperson of the commission stresses that the relevant A.U. instruments systematically condemn any unconstitutional change and, accordingly, he condemns the seizure of power by force that took place in Niger,” said a statement from Ping’s office.
The violence may have been prompted by a collapse of talks between the government and the opposition over a recent referendum allowing the president to hold power indefinitely, according to the United Nations, which called for a quick resolution.
‘Please Rob Me’: The website That Tells The World When You’re Not At Home – Daily Mail
Sharing your every move with friends and family on social networking sites is an increasingly popular pastime.
But providing minute-by-minute updates on sites such as Twitter has also made it far easier for users to become victims of crime, according to a new website.
With the tongue-in-cheek name of PleaseRobMe, the site aims to show how reckless some people are with the information they freely give out.
Social networking crazes such as Foursquare, in which users post their location online, are a goldmine for potential burglars, the website’s founders said.
The Please Rob Me website says: ‘Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.’
Instead they are trying to alert people to the danger of putting too much information on the world wide web.
The Dutch website channels information from other networking sites like Twitter into one place, listing ‘all those empty homes out there’ and providing a running total of ‘new opportunities’.
The information it provides on people’s movements is searchable by city or by their Twitter username.
‘We’re leaving the lights on when we’re going on a holiday, but we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home,’ said co-founder Frank Groeneveld, 22.
‘The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not – home.
‘We’re not trying to get people robbed, but helping them not to get robbed. We’re just presenting this information in a more obvious way. And that’s our point: Everyone can see this on Twitter.
Taliban ‘Shadow Governor’ Captured In Pakistan – San Francisco Chronicle
The Taliban “shadow governor” of a northern Afghan province, also considered an important figure in the movement’s overall leadership, has been captured in Pakistan, according to Afghan and Pakistani officials.
Word of the arrest of Mullah Abdul Salam and a Taliban associate follows disclosure this week of the recent capture, also in Pakistan, of the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, whose influence has been described as second only to the movement’s spiritual leader and supreme commander, Muhammad Omar.
Intelligence sources in Pakistan on Thursday also reported the arrest of three suspected al Qaeda militants in the port city of Karachi a day earlier. Taken together, the cluster of captures represents a sharp rise in cooperation from Pakistani authorities in pursuing Islamic extremists, particularly Afghan Taliban militants who in the past have used Pakistani soil as a haven.
Salam, the shadow governor of Kunduz province in Afghanistan’s north, was arrested earlier this month, according to the officially appointed governor of Kunduz, Mohammed Omar. That was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence sources, who said the capture took place near the largely Pashtun city of Nowshera, in the Northwest Frontier Province.
“This is a big blow for the Taliban here,” Gov. Omar said.
Bogus Mourner Stole 1,200 Pairs Of Shoes – Ananova
A second hand shoe shop owner stole more than 1,200 pairs of designer shoes by posing as a mourner in South Korea.
His haul has been put on display by police in Seoul in the hope of reuniting as many as possible with their rightful owners, reports The Times.
The 59-year-old thief, named only as Mr Park by police, had literally walked off with his booty from funeral homes and hospitals across the capital.
His victims were the mourners who had slipped off their shoes out of respect, according to the national tradition.
Park would take off his own footwear, pay his ‘respects’, then put on a more expensive pair and walk off.
When police caught up with him after setting up a surveillance operation he led them to a warehouse stacked high with the expensive footwear that he had intended to boost his stock.
Police had watched as he arrived, suitably dressed in black, at one funeral home in southern Seoul’s Suseo district then removed his own cheap shoes – a custom observed by mourners visiting funeral homes in Asia.
Then he made a brief appearance inside before leaving and slipping on a far more expensive pair.
Police said they caught him stealing three pairs of shoes, altogether worth £1,120.
Pilot Crashes Into Texas Building In Apparent Anti-IRS Suicide – Fox News
A pilot furious with the Internal Revenue Service crashed his small plane into an Austin, Texas, office building where nearly 200 federal tax employees work on Thursday, igniting a raging fire that sent massive plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the seven-story structure.
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said the incident was a single act by a sole individual, who appeared to be targeting the federal building. He refused to classify it as terrorism.
“I call it a cowardly, criminal act and there was no excuse for it,” Acevedo said at a news conference.
The FBI identified the pliot as Joseph Stack, a 53-year-old software engineer. Stack was confirmed dead, but his body has not yet been recovered.
At least one person who worked in the building was unaccounted for and two people were hospitalized, thirteen others were treated and released said Austin Fire Department Division Chief Dawn Clopton.
Emergency crews found two bodies in the building late Thursday evening, but wouldn’t identify them.
Runaway Zebra In Atlanta Causes Rush Hour Chaos – The Examiner
Atlanta rush hour traffic was a circus Thursday afternoon– literally. An escaped zebra galloped aimlessly down a Georgia highway as motorists swerved, halted and nearly wrecked to avoid it.
Police say the animal escaped from a circus and pranced through downtown Atlanta before making its way onto a busy freeway. Several drivers stopped while others veered to miss the animal.
Police cruisers were on the scene as emergency dispatchers were flooded with reports of a zebra running wild through the Georgia capital. Officers were able to herd the zebra from the interstate to an entrance ramp where it was contained.
Southbound traffic was backed up for several minutes.
One motorist said she would have likely hit the zebra if her daughter hadn’t alerted her.
“I had just sent a text to my husband,” the woman said. “As I put the phone back into my bag, (my daughter) yelled, ‘Look mommy, a zebra!’ I couldn’t believe it.”
No injuries were reported.
Rearmed Grenade Explodes In Boy’s Hand – WKMG
A 9-year-old boy was severely injured Thursday afternoon when a rearmed World War II grenade exploded in his hand at a Central Florida house, deputies said.
The incident happened at about 5:30 p.m. at a house located on Sunnydale Lane in Lakeland.
“This 9-year-old child, doing what 9-year-old children do, had this grenade in his hand, and he had a small lighter, and he touched the lighter to this grenade and it exploded,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
The child was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition.
Judd said the grenade was used as a paper weight, but somebody rearmed the device.
“It was empty. It was not a live grenade, and some family member stuffed it with a detonating device at some point and time,” Judd said. “The explosion was significant enough that when the explosion went off in the kitchen, that shrapnel went through the kitchen wall into other rooms of the house,” Judd said.
Judd said whoever rearmed the grenade could face charges.
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