May 31, 2011

(Nor the zombies either, probably)

MSNBC is doing another five minutes of outrage because  the federal government has managed to screw up Arlington cemetery. It is not a funny subject, but it does illustrate Washington's incompetence to properly manage the affairs of either the living or the dead. Even Chris Mathews should get it.

May 30, 2011

Memorial Day, 2011

The United States of America has fought just and necessary wars.  We have also waged stupid and unnecessary wars.

Let responsibility for the latter rest where it belongs, on the shoulders of grasping politicians.

No disgust with self-serving rulers should dilute by a single drop the honor due armed  comrades who executed their oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States.

Their blood spilled on dirt of foreign continents and into oceanic brine is to be memorialized with feelings approaching awe, even as we scorn the political masters whose concept of personal courage begins and ends with a sheet of talking points on the teleprompter.

May 29, 2011

Hey, Officer Krupke...

Flipping off a state cop is stupid. Arresting the guy with the overactive middle finger is stupid and tyrannical, as well as a PR bungle.

Colorado state police high command belatedly figured that out,  and dropped the charge that could have sent our citizen to jail for six months.

The ACLU got into the act with a petition noting again the constitutionally protected speech may sometimes be rude. It's still protected, and cops who disagree should either develop thicker skins or seek other employment, perhaps as aromatherapy trainers.

The flipper's name is Shane Boor. How prescient.
.

May 28, 2011

Gun Gas

Say what you like about Iowa hicks, but at least we're trying to act just like the important folks in San Francisco and Newark and so forth.

Gas station dude in Cedar Rapids is donating $5,000 in gift cards to his station. The cops will help him  trade the cards for guns. The going rate is $100 for a  working long gun, $150 for a pistol. They'll even take that old Sharps with the broken main spring, but they won't pay you for it.

No questions asked, of course.

Nor information given about what will happen to the arms, so you'll forgive me for envisioning the Sharps hanging in some cop's rec room. I'd be angry about that if it weren't for knowing this little public relations gig will add immensely to the safety of the city.

"...he would never really ever be a deer..."

Can you see a deer get hurt and gracefully turn the sad happening into a cogent little essay on the decline of the United States of America?

I don't think i could, but Jinglebob can. So far as I'm concerned it's the Post of the Day.
I see the Egyptians have "permanently" opened the gate to Gaza. This should facilitate delivery of AK47 ammunition and RPGs to Hamas.

A symmetrical quid pro quo would be Hamas assistance to the Muslin Brotherhood in blowing up Coptics.

---

It's getting too cynical around here. We all need to replay President Obama's breathless oratory about pro-democracy freedom fighters.

May 27, 2011

The proper functions of government

The wise-ass who wrote this intended to make fun of state lawmakers. So, I ask, what is wrong with declaring the 1911 by John M. Browning (PBUH) an official state pistol? Or the  dutch oven an official state cook pot?

Me? I am absolutely delighted when elected officials act only within their competence level.

For example, not even the no-carry Wisconsin legislature could damage its polity much by declaring the cream puff the official state dessert.

May 26, 2011

Spend more, you slackards

A glum AP story this morning reports the American economy sluggish again because we private drones aren't pissing away our money fast enough. (The invisible ink warns us to get our hienies and Mastercards to Walmart quickly.)

But government shares the blame.

The GDP revision showed that the government sector is dragging on growth. Government spending fell at an annual rate of 5.1 percent. Federal and state and local governments have cut spending to battle budget deficits.


I have a little trouble wetting my pants about that. The money (assuming for the sake of argument only that it actually existed in the first place) didn't disappear. After all the micro-calculations,  it remains under control of the people who earned it in the first place, giving them a tad more freedom to make that Walmart trip to buy what they think they need. The earners, of course, have to give up tthe privilege of having it spent by Obama and Co. on what the politicians think they need.


In fact, the 5.2 per cent would have been borrowed from the Chinese and others who  think Barry, Ben, and Tim can keep their juggling act going.  



Racist Tea Party B*st*rds

Or maybe not. Herman Cain of Georgia is a black man, and last night he swamped all comers at a western Iowa county GOP fund raiser.

Herm took 55 per cent of the Pottawatomie County straw vote, helped by being there with a give-em-Hell keynote speech. Sarah Palin wasn't, and  she took 38 per cent.

It's not at all meaningful, a strawlet in a big wind. Still, it's pleasant to see that front-limper Mitt Romney and our old old old old pal Newt scored zero per cent with zero votes. It is less fun to report Ron Paul at 1 per cent.

Pottawatomie County is far west, just across the Missouri from the cosmopolitan sin center known as Omaha. Lots of Tea Party types and "values" voters in those parts.

---

Side notes:

--The Washington Post this morning is carrying one of those information-free reports saying Sarah might run.  She has a shadow organization in place here.

--Big-money GOPers from Iowa are going to New Jersey to beg Christie to run.

May 25, 2011

Hell, I've hugged a few trees myself.

Some of my pals aren't going to like this. Off-the-grid. Sustainability. Life without  Starbucks. Etc.

Some of it I probably won't like either. But in essence these three guys -- actually two plus a girl -- represent a healthy portion of me -- or of the me I occasionally wish I was.

Go read The Independent Spirit.  Our old friend Joel is part of it.

May 24, 2011

Thugs getting a little more timid, maybe?

The AP manages to get through it's ~600-word story about the continuing crime-rate decline without a mention of guns. It quotes the experts as being especially surprised   that crime rates continued to fall during the  2009-2010 economic disaster.  It is a statist article of faith that crime rises when the economy tanks.

The unmentioned factor is widespread relief from overbearing gun laws in the same period and the concomitant increase in the number of citizens capable of resisting criminals.

There are exceptions to the more peaceable atmosphere, New York City, for instance, where homicides rose 13 per cent. No one here needs to be reminded that law-abiding New Yorkers are subject to the Sullivan law which restricts effective gun use to criminals.

---

Correlation is not causation, of course, but a reader could  think it worth mentioning that goblins contemplating mayhem could have second thoughts if they knew their victims might whip out  a persuasive deterrent in, preferably, caliber .38  or larger.

On the ground, Citizen, and don't give me any crap about the law.

Jeff  Soyer at Alphecca.com has the word on repeal of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the city of Philadelphia. The process was quite efficient. It did not require the untidy business of lawyers, courts, legislatures, or even rational thought. All it took was a few senior cops deciding to make it difficult to impossible for a  citizen to carry arms openly. Never mind that open carry is legal  those parts.

Philadelphia cops pointed a gun at the citizen's chest, ordered him to his knees, and held him for 45 minutes before reluctantly letting him go on the trivial grounds that he had committed no crime. But in part because they found a small recorder when they searched him, they decided to cite him for disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment, and he's scheduled to go to trial on that charge this summer. None dare call it harassment.

The root of this incident was a set of cops who hadn't the faintest notion about what the law actually said. It isn't  the first time police have decided to enforce what they think the law should be. 

May 23, 2011

Barry O'Bama and Paddy Flynn walk into this bar...

.

May 22, 2011

Well blow me down

On this date in 1819 the  side-wheel Savannah tested her engines at sea and a week later set out to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic. She made it, and in 1933 Congress took a break from making the Great Depression worse and declared May 22 National Maritime Day.

So honor the nation's Shellbacks by thinking a nautical thought or two today. Thank ee kindly, Mate.

Daniels Geronimos -- Iowa Caucuses 2012

Scratch Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. He claims he's out of the GOP nomination  run.  Wants to spend more time with his family, donchaknow.

The GOP smoke-filled rooms liked his Washington experience and on-the-surface economic conservatism, and he would have been one of the better-financed and  promoted candidates.  His bailout suggests he thinks the odds of winning the nomination and then beating HIs Obamaness are too slim to justify his bother.

Also gone from the list is South Dakota Senator John Thune. He said a couple of months ago he wouldn't run, but he used enough weasel words I didn't believe him. He's been quiet and absent from the early caucus skirmishes since then, however, so maybe he meant it.

Your  indispensable guide to the presidential caucuses is down to 14 actives and semi-actives and has been updated.

.

May 21, 2011

Change you can't afford

His Obamaness was so tickled about his cash-for-clunkers scam.

To Hell with you von Misean idiots who counselled that all he and Tim were accomplishing was forcing tax-paying proles to foot the bill for junking a million perfectly serviceable vehicles.

Turns out your insane libertarian rantings cut the X ring. You want a used car? Dig deeper, Comrade.


John Voss, owner/president of Voss Auto Network, said the federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program — the Car Allowance Rebate System — depleted the supply of used cars on the market, driving up prices on the remaining cars.

Maybe we're making it too complicated for Obamaoids. Maybe we need to create one of those issue-oriented comic books to get it through leaden skulls that if you drive down supply without diminishing demand, prices go up.

Naahh. Still too complicated for the likes of them, even with pictures.

You pick your rapture, I'll pick mine

New dog Libby and Cousin Buda from Minnesota  on their very first play date.






Libby, not fully confident of The Master's wing-shooting, practices survival skill known as the manless rundown.

May 19, 2011

Charges of public intoxication, disorderly conduct and simple assault were filed against a Des Moines woman on Wednesday after she allegedly yelled at neighbors and tossed a cat at them from a balcony.

Clearly, this illustrates the need for common-sense cat control. One cat a month. Small, easily concealable cats sold only after background check and waiting period. Assault cats limited to police and the military only.

And certainly Washington should close the cathouse loophole.

Sold!

Marko scores.  The Munchkin Wrangler sells his first work of fiction.

May 18, 2011

That didn't take long

Indiana Sheriff Don Hartman Sr. is delighted. Under Barnes vs. Indiana he can now conduct random house-to-house searches when ever he thinks it necessary.  No warrant needed. Not necessarily even a knock before kicking in your door.

His use of "necessary" marks a third and new standard of what cops must do before putting you on the floor of your living room. We already had probable cause and the weaker  reasonable suspicion. To that we now add the sherf's hunch.

You'll recall the new Indiana Supreme Court decision forbids you to resist if the police decide to invade your home, even the police are doing so illegally.

Sheriff Hartman says he's on firm political ground  because "...people will welcome random searches if it means capturing a criminal." The Hell of it is, he may be as much right as wrong. The Fourth Amendment is not a popular discussion item at your average American lunch counter.

N.B. -- Hoosiers in Hartman's Newton County jurisdiction  who care to comment should disagree with me,  loudly and firmly. Sheriff Hartman may well be one of armed Only Ones who think criticizing NKVD-style jurisprudence is criminally anti-social.  That might move him to pay you a call about 3. a.m. Just on a hunch, y'know.

May 17, 2011

Cab carry

Between Two Rivers is following a Cedar Rapids story about letting taxi drivers  carry weapons. It and the links are worth the read, especially if you like to ponder a city council wondering if it ought to obey state law.

Cedar Rapids uses its power to regulate city cabs to forbid drivers to arm themselves. Never mind the broad state pre-emption law.

One of Stranded's links include this:

(Councilman Justin) Shields suggested that a proposed amendment to the current city taxi ordinance would allow drivers and passengers to carry firearms in cabs if they were legally licensed to carry a firearm. 


Huh? A CCW holder may not enter a cab if he's carrying? This may be a simple slip  by Shields or the reporter. On the other hand, you run across a lot of dimwittery among local pols.  



 

Getting lost with great precision

For several years a GPS-generated  911 map misplaced my home and kingdom about seven miles, plopping it in Mrs. VanFookstra's soybean field.  No big problem. It might have even thrown off a few pests wanting to cold-call me for 20-pay-life or a surefire  way of getting St. Peter to punch my ticket.

It was worse for the Canadian couple who decided to trust their GPS gizmo to get themselves to  Jackpot, Nevada. 

The cops found Rita about seven weeks later, drinking from a creek and wondering how long the last bag of trail mix would last.  They're still looking for Albert.

As a public service TMR renews certain of its motoring suggestions:  Consult a good paper map. When in doubt ask ol' Zeke at the Conoco station. Look out the damn window once in a while.

May 16, 2011

Trump out

The list shrinks to 16 as Donald ducks. It has been updated.

The news

By the time the media get done riding the tale of this sicko IMF clown  we'll be so  exhausted with it that an updated mortality report on Michael Jackson will constitute welcome relief.
'

Why we're broke

Nwamkpa was a good runner in college, got a lot of press. Then he became a teacheroid. Finally he figured out how to earn $1,056 by taking kids to a two-hour movie.

Then the heartless auditors nailed him for Medicaid fraud to the tune of about $140,000 and, in a plea bargain, he got off with probation and a little community service.

But the mean old judge also ordered Nwamkpa to pay restitution of $15,000, about 11 cents on every tax dollar he swiped. Meaning that his movie outing with the troubled youth earned him a mere $940. Hell, for that kind of money I might even go see a Will Smith movie myself.

The told the reporter he was a victim of selective presecution, didn't do anything wrong, and was pleased to learn that he wasn't banned from offering further services to Medicaid eligible youth.

Isn't that a nice public option?
.
Even a fool as great as I knows better than to get involved in friction among people he admires and who, in his opinion, create one of the brightest quarters of libertarian thought on the internet.

But I will comment on a side issue.

A  court made a despicably statist ruling.  Apparently, a raft of email to one of our friends called it a casus belli, real belli. Storm the American Bastille. Blow stuff up.

Frustration followed.

---

Look, if we shouldered our bugout bags, strapped on the custom Baers, and loaded our rifles every time some f-cked-up decision came down from the courts or the congress or the White House, the United States of America would, in short order, find itself a New-World Somalia. Blow-flies on skinny corpses. Swap you an hour with my sister for a pint of figs.

The temptation to go gunning for statists, especially the Checka.  is understandable. But we are a greater people because because we find it in ourselves to take a long breath and use the greater weapons  -- discourse, reason, aggressive political  action, satire, outright ridicule, and even the flawed system itself. Yes, it's slow and uncertain. But also yes, it keeps a lot of four-year-olds from getting shot down in the crossfire between loyalist forces and a hundred thousand rebels whose thought processes begin and end with SHTF movies.

May 14, 2011

Huckabee bails; Iowa Caucuses 2012

The Rev. Mr. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas -- preacher, ex-governor, and Fox teevee star -- says he could probably win the GOP nomination but won't run anyway. His heart says "no," and it is certainly un-Christian of me to suspect that his personal accountant endorsed the decision.

I won't miss him, despite his undeniable personal affability. I find it harmless enough that Arkansas Baptist preachers undertake to give us final, definitive, and absolute truth about God and His universe. It is only when they claim they're smart enough  to administer the American civil system -- in part because they get a daily briefing from God --  that I draw the line.

This reduces to 17 the number of competing geniuses on the TMR broad-form list of caucus pests, which has been updated to reflect Huckabee's prayerful decision to keep getting richer on commercial teevee.

---

Huckabee won the 2008 caucuses with about 34 per cent of the vote. You will see unbelievable huffing and puffing to attract these Iowa "values" voters. Our status as a leading wind-energy producer is safe for at least eight more months.

The other castle doctrine

The Indiana Supreme Court says it's just being hip in wiping out another snippet of the Constitution of the United States. The Hoosier Black Robes shat on several centuries of common law in ruling that cops can kick down your door and wave guns at your wife and kids -- and you have no right to resist. Search warrant? Who needs that kind of niggling paper work?


The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail -- its roof may shake -- the wind may blow through it -- the storm may enter -- the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter! -- all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!


Or is it declasse to remember what some of those old dead white guys said?


If anyone is collecting money to make air space over the Indiana Supreme Court a no-fly zone, put me down for a hundred bucks.


--
H/T Roberta

Dreamland

I should not have stolen the lever-action Winchester hidden under the pair of shorts on the bar stool while I was looking for my trench coat. I was pleased when the girl driving my getaway car flashed a CIA driver's license at the cop who chased us down. I was sad when I lost the rifle at a house party I threw for people I haven't seen since grade school, especially since it had an interesting  action built around a double-barrel S/W Model 25.

Your lesson here is that even a half-rack of the ribs at McKeen's Pub is too much if you intend to retire early.
.

May 11, 2011

Mr. Goodwretch Works Here

Further exciting adventures in automotive technology.

1. The battery charger now charges batteries in the same sense that Harry Reid thinks, that is, slowly and well below advertised specifications. I'm on my way to the city where I hope to find a heavy DPCO switch which might bring it back.

2. The truck stasis is due to a probably bad battery born in 2002 or 03  and a definitely bad alternator.  I'll  pick those up too and try not to dwell on the cost measured as a hefty fraction of another 1911.

I offer a word of thanks to the Sperry folks for making their Snap 6 ammeter (Model OHM-525).  A handy way of discovering that your alternator is gasping out only seven amps at speed is a tool to be cherished, however seldom used.

Why we're broke

I cherish scenic by-ways. I find them all by myself and am hardly ever devastated to learn that they are not official scenic byways.

But I must be in the minority because my leaders in Washington continue to suck money to pretty up scenic by-ways with official signs telling us we're on scenic by-ways.

Of course, it isn't quite that simple. Before you can declare a scenic by-way official and put up signs, you have to study the matter to make sure you don't screw up and put signs on a scenic by-way that maybe ain't.

Read it carefully, translate the gobbledygook, and you may conclude that we've just bought $61,680 worth of paper saying how scenic and by-wayish this chunk of back road really is. Only later do we borrow some more money from the Chinese to actually put up the signs.

Credit the fence, maybe?

My president made me proud  yesterday down there in El Paso where he reported on what a good job he is doing controlling the border. Of course he is right. There has been a drastic reduction of American citizens sneaking into Mexico for the greater opportunities there.

May 10, 2011

Boooooring

Boring to most people, maybe, but not to me. Among my exciting personal goals is  economic survival. That depends largely on a Yankee C-note being worth more than a Snickers wrapper.

The world's biggest bond fund isn't making me feel too good about that.

For those who won't click the link because of limited patience for market and economic jargon, a condensation will cover the main point:

These guys are pretty sure anyone buying U.S. debt (aka the Clinton-Bush-Bernanke-Obama IOU) will lose his or her ass.

May 9, 2011

...and the crick don't rise

Rivers are libertarians. The can be temporarily coerced in relatively small ways, but, in the end,  they will obey no laws but the laws of physics. Even one of the great journals of statist Washington is beginning to recognize that the Corps of Engineers is no match for Mother Nature.

You'll recall the dam and dike builders promising their latest gazillion-dollar projects will protect people from 100 or 200 or 500 year floods. Which they don't do very dependably.

A cynic might suggest what we really need is an continuous flood of common sense, i.e., "Don't build stuff on flood plains, or, if you must, don't come whining for handouts from smarter folk when the river reaches your  BarcaLounger."  

Dog facts

1. A certain new dog named Libby guards the perimeter. She poses like a cartoon pit bull and barks death threats when home and master are threatened by jogging tourists, aggressive rabbits,  or grazing families of invading geese.

2. When thunder and lightning occur, same dog discovers that the hard pine floor of the smallest room in the house, the only one without windows,  is the only acceptable hangout.  Not even the sound of a  refrigerator door opening will lure her out. " I'm really a lot more comfortable here, Boss, than in all those soft chairs and pillows. Thank you just the same."

3. She eats whatever onion slices I manage to let fall on the floor.

May 8, 2011

Mother's Day

Boot Camp at the U.S. Naval Training Center, San Diego,  wasn't bad. I was too busy to be homesick even though I swore my allegiance to the Constitution and Arleigh Burke at the age of 17 years and 22 days. The Boy Scouts and a thousand days of free-lance tramping with rifle and a backpack helped the skills come easily.

A bad attitude toward chickenshit rules gave me some trouble and, eventually, cost me my squad leader spot. Still, I was largely with the program and comfortable with the Cold War patriotism of the era. The godless hordes of Mao and Bulganin would not rape my sisters nor send Dad to die agonizingly in the mines of Siberia, so I accepted the inconvenience of learning to become a sea warrior.

But what boy, in his heart of hearts, doesn't miss Mom? It was good to see her over my post-boot leave which coincided with Christmas. All was pleasant until time to board the train and she was not quite able to prevent tears. I was not quite able to block the guilt of a million missed opportunities to be a better son.

Three days later, just before taps, the haze gray shuttle bus deposited me at the Electronic Class A school barracks on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The quarters petty officer showed me where I lived. I heaved the sea bag on to the bunk and began transferring possessions to the locker. About half-way down, under the dungarees, under the bell-bottomed blues and whites, were my skivvy shirts and shorts. Mom-laundered, Mom-folded, and Mom-ironed.

I stood tall, left the barracks and nonchalantly wandered the halls until I found an absolutely private place, a closet where the Navy stored brooms and swabs. I closed the door. I sat down on a bucket and bawled like a baby.

Happy Mothers Day, Mom.
.

May 7, 2011

Another sighting: Iowa Caucuses 2012

Romantic Rudy Giuliani is glancing at our cleavage. Not staring, yet, but obviously feeling a little glandular itch.

In Politico, he seems to be trying out that '50s-era pickup line of the ducktail set,  "Hey, Baby, I'm no pushover, but I can be made."

Four years ago he graced us with his candidacy and finished with 4 per cent -- six points behind Ron Paul.

Lemme see if I can help you out a little, Rudy. Try to remember that pigs go oink and cows go moo, not the other way around.

EDIT: We'll keep him off the TMR caucus list for now. If becomes a little less commitment phobic, he'll earn his place there.
.

How to stay alive

Making love can kill you, even if you never have to jump out a second-story window.

USNWR can be so depressing early in the morning. Who really needs to know that sex, coffee, and exercise put a guy in mortal peril?

There's even a warning against straining on the throne. In the interest of public health I include that, even though I really hate burdening the blog with scatological crap.

May 6, 2011

For washing blood off the altars?

We're all thinking about Mayans lately. We wonder if it's okay to spend all our savings on alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives since the end is coming only six weeks or so after we re-elect His Obamaness.

But we hardly ever think about Mayan plumbing. Why bother? They probably just used buckets and really long ropes in the cenotes.

Turns out we're wrong. The Mayans had  sophisticated running water, fountains, and maybe even flush toilets, and There, I fixed It  has an entertaining essay on it.

---

Strictly as an aside, a cult is running around these parts putting up billboards warning that the Revelations version of TEOTWAWKI is divinely scheduled for two weeks from tomorrow.  Personally, I find the Mayan logic more persuasive.  

..fish nor fowl nor good red herring; the .22 long

We didn't know anything about ballistics. We just knew .22 longs were a dime a box cheaper than .22 long rifles. Shorts were cheaper yet, but we were led to understand by our elder experts  -- mostly eighth and ninth graders  -- that they would ruin our guns.

So we happily shot longs up and down the wild (really) Des Moines River valley -- squirrels, rabbits, Blatz beer cans, floating debris, and spawning carp.

The .22 long was born in 1871 for S/W revolvers as a supercharged improvement on the short. It held  the same 29 grain lead with  a longer case and a black powder charge upped to 5 grains.  The ballisticians were divided on its actual worth but felt it might offer a small improvement on the  short in handguns. In rifles, the  powder burn pooped out before the bullet left the muzzle.

Re-specked for smokeless, it was routinely available for about 100 years, disappearing from the hardware store shelves when the makers could no longer offer it cheaper than the long rifle.

So it was neat to find this while sorting an auction-sale can of odd nuts and bolts. The head stamp is "U," from the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, later part of Remington. It's a treasure to be placed in my can of oddball cartridges, perhaps never to be examined again. So what?  As the philosopher Travis McGee wrote, the best collectibles are moments of pleasure.



May 5, 2011

Thinning the herd - Iowa Caucuses 2012

Mike Pence is out, leaving 18 known or suspected common scolds to pester Iowans between now and January.

Pence says he'll run for governor of Indiana to replace Mitch Daniels, who remains at least somewhat likely to swing by Camp J and barter for my vote.  I dunno, probably not, Mitch, but if you want to open the bidding  with a 98  per cent, 1918 manufactured Model 1911, I suppose we could talk, assuming it comes with a half-dip magazine and original grips.

Meanwhile, your comprehensive guide to all the men and women of gold studying up  on corn and beans and hogs so they can talk to us like really concerned experts has been updated.

Yvette Vickers

There was some shilly-shallying about posting a shot of Yvette.  She wasn't in the same league with the usual TMR  choices. Besides,  she stripped for Playboy. That's not automatically disqualifying, though it adds demerits for tastelessness and/or unseemly career desperation.  Still, she's cute in the face and was said to be  a nice person.

I suppose the decision tipped toward publication when my friend John of the GMA   remarked that the circumstances of her passing argued strongly against automatic bill-pay schemes.

So, strictly as a public service and in memory of hot July nights at the drive-in:

May 4, 2011

No gory Osama pictures

Obama says he will not release photos of the world's current celebrity corpse. Well decided, Sir. A picture will change no conspiracy-saturated minds (Fake! Photoshopped!), and there's no reason to further inflame the primitive psyches of Osama lovers.

What, you, of all people, defending His Obamaness?


Sure, though I can't imagine doing it often enough to win a night  in Abe Lincoln's bed.

Besides, I'd even defend Harry Reid  and Al Gore if they said something sensible. Fortunately, that pledge is unlikely meet  a practical test.

Tears on Krypton

Superman's birth home falls to the wreckers.

.

May 3, 2011

John Davis, already a winner; Iowa Caucuses 2012

In the TMR tally of candidate cliches, John Davis of Grand Junction,  BackSlope, is the hands-down champion. No other statesman/woman competing for Iowans' attention has a prayer of closing the gap.

Among his revelations: "My family has lived in this town for six generations and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. " (That's also the site of his entry in the cliche contest.)


Which is misleading.  He clearly can imagine moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a long slog from his Colorado lumber yard.


That's how he has earned a place on your newly updated, handy-dandy, list of  GOP luminaries  practicing to say aww shucks and you bet.


He brings the total back to 19, and let it be added that there's no reason to think a lumber yard guy would do a worse job of running the country than a neighborhood organizer.



Obama now unbeatable

You don't have to be listening hard to your electrical teevee to hear that Obama is now "unbeatable" because our spies and our SEALS took out bin Laden.

Uhh-huh.

His Obamaness is enjoying a giddy pop in the polls, but fickle, thy name is the American electorate.

My pal Fred invites our attention to the flighty nature of our voters with this.

By November of next year you might have to interview one Hell of a lot of voters to find one  who remembers why we got so excited about the shootout at the Abbottabad  Corral.

Foreign Policy Advice

You and I know there are only two logical possibilities.

--Pakistan bosses didn't know Osama lived across the street from its version of West Point. That makes them stupid.

--They knew  but didn't tell us, probably because that might reduce Uncle Sam's shower of cash before every Paki  general became a millionaire. That makes them evil.

---

Nevertheless, we shouldn't press those points too hard at the moment. When they tell us they were full partners and rilly, rilly, helped us find and kill bin Laden, we should smile and say sure and thanks-a-lot.  Because until we figure out how to get our kids out of Dodgeghanistan, we need docile Pakistanis on the eastern flank.

We can pop their treacherous asses later if we still feel like it.
.

May 2, 2011

Swiped...

from my man in the MSM:

"Not a good day for virgins in Paradise."
.

Poor Michele

Michele Bachmann, the congresslady who aspires to lead the Free World, lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, on the St.Croix River. The bridge from Stillwater to Houlton, Wisconsin,  is going to seed, and the Washington Post is displaying a little schadenfreude at Michele's failure to get an earmark to fix it.  I mean, if you can't hustle a few million federal taxpayer bucks through your fellow lawmakers, how the Hell can you cut deals with King Abdullah?

It now falls to Rep. Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman who calls Stillwater home, to finally get it done. The bridge will test whether one of the most recognizable elected officials in Washington can fulfill the most basic duty of members of Congress: delivering for the voters in their district.

Which proves the Post is at least as batshit crazy as Michele.

She took an oath to defend the Constitution. That document is strangely silent on the question of traversing the St. Croix, whether by Lexus or by birch bark canoe.

A speedy way of getting out of Minnesota is a most worthy goal, just not a federal one.







I can hear it coming, out of the leftern sky.

Why didn't they just shoot the gun out of his hand?
.

May 1, 2011

Magic politics

I could dig out one of my old press cards, slip it into my fedora, jet off to someplace I've never been. I could spend a couple of days there, talk to a few native chiefs and their subjects and then write the definitive news feature.

I could explain the "mood of the people," their strange way of life, their deepest beliefs,  their aspirations. It would be printed and read worldwide. And like the Washington Post, I could expect you take it seriously, not that you should.

Reporter Michael Leahy drew the assignment and filed a lengthy, graceful, and even witty report on whom we Iowans will permit you to vote for in the joust to wrest world leadership from Barack Obama.

His journalism is not to be faulted if you are willing to accept the Heart of Darkness literary device of truth explored in a microcosm.  Conrad put his his narrator and audience on a becalmed yawl. Leahy puts his in Sioux County, Iowa, and concludes that Tim Pawlenty is leading as we await the big wind. It is all very poetic as he weaves the threads of political lust into the fabric of our declared values -- God, home, hard work, and "Iowa niceness."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we flimflammed another one of them big-city reporters.

---

In  the spring of 2008 a good evangelical state official from a place near Sioux County had been beside himself. Who should he endorse at his GOP caucus?  The whole world was wondering, don't you know.  The whole world got its answer when, one morning, my man sat down at my dining table and grinned, "I just got $1,000 from John McCain."

That's how it's really done.

---

Every  serious aspirant to 1600 Pennsylvania has a rich PAC.  Pawlenty's (Freedom First, ha-ha)  has about $3 million and counting.  Each PAC has a hefty Iowa allocation. Each  PAC's function is to buy support. Pawlenty is a Pacman  who started early, contributing to state candidates for the 2010 elections.; some $7,000 to the guy who is now our House speaker, quite a lot to our secretary of agriculture, and so forth.

---

That's a dreary dose for a bright Sunday morning, so let's return Mr. Leahy's wit as he rides around with State Senator Randy Feenstra of Hull

(Feenstra) pointed at an enormous structure through which hundreds of squatty blurry animals can be seen .... “Hog confinements,” he said brightly. “Produce manure — fantastic manure... 


"Past the magic manure, Feenstra remembered something else ..."


Mr. Leahy, I bet you loved writing "magic manure" just as much as I'm going to love stealing the phrase.