Ron Paul selling out

Man, you get a lot of house for your money down toward Houston. 

Lots of room, a nice pool, and the sweet smell of liberty pervading all.  Just $325,000.

That kind of dough up here wouldn't buy you much more than a tarted-up three-bedroom ranch on a golf course.

Another one with Heaven on speed-dial; Iowa Caucuses 2012

We're up to 17 GOP contenders now with presence of another stalwart from the Bennie Hinn wing of modern American political philosophy.

He's former Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, two-time loser in governor races there and most notable for (a) refusing to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from his court house and (b) deciding that the most crucial national policy need of the century is worrying about what gays do.

(I hear he thinks both Mr. Standard and Mr. Poor were born in Kenya.)

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(Your handy Iowa candidate master list has been edited to add Judge Moore.)
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The genius of the Heartland

In a hard-luck Iowa burg called Webster City last summer, a couple of sharpshooters decided to tell local officials they would come to town,  set up a business, and fill most of the 850  jobs lost when Electrolux moved to Mexico.

'course, the city would have to do its share -- fork over  some $790,000 in "loans."

"Sure!" said the Webster City fathers.

It was only in the coffee shops where crotchety old farts said, "Wait a minute? Those guys are going to buy car bodies in Romania, ship 'em here, glue electric motors on them,  and make us rich?  Sounds like horse (apples) to me."

Part of the court case ended today. A judge awarded the 46 Dacia Logan (huh?) bodies to one of the warring parties contending ownership. One of the others shrugged it off and said he might buy them at an inevitable bankruptcy sale.

The $790,000 in city loans? Ask the very practical old boys in the coffee shop what chance the taxpayers ever have of seeing their money again.

---

Right. You don't give a damn about Webster City, even if it spawned McKinley Kantor. Neither do I.

However, the lesson is scalable up to the congressional and White House levels. Lesson:

"It's true you can't fix stupid, but you don't need to elect it to public office."

See, I told you the economy sucks.

Somewhere in central Iowa a satisfied diner is picking his teeth and savoring the last taste of good, greasy swan.

Meanwhile, a family mourns.
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S&P reaffirmed its investment-grade credit ratings on the U.S. long- and short-term debt itself. But it said the U.S. government is in danger of losing the top ranking if it doesn't come up with a credible plan for reducing its debt.

The Washington braying we hear is about reducing only the deficit. It is as though all parties have conceded we lack the will, the discipline, the desire to ever pay down the principle.

King of the Wild Frontier

A lad just old enough for Cub Scouts would have loved finding it in the toe of his Christmas stocking,  a gin-yoo-ine Davy Crockett Barlow.  Later in life he scores, proving it's a good idea to rummage through the knife dealer's one-dollar junk box.

"Mary gave him a bran-new "Barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that...."  Mark Twain

Sidney School Buzz Nixed

Go to school in  the state of Victoria? The lessons make you lethargic? Ask Teach for a magic drink to perk you up.  Teach says "Sure, Mate, we'll get right on it; got some grant money,  don't you know?"

Alas for the tykes and compliant bureaucrats,  citizens horse-laughed the idiot idea out of the water.  Sounds like the Aussie masses are still shaking off their English heritage.

Global cooling alert

What worries farmers, traders and meteorologists would be a drought during the early July corn pollination period, combined with temperatures near 100 degrees that have been rare in Iowa in the last decade.



This is just a little sidebar from a series of reports this morning about flimsy currency and expensive commodities. It's here just in case  some climate fraud stumbles across this site.  

Mr. Providence: How have we in the Northern Plains offended You?  We try to be nice, productive souls. And even if we have slightly strayed from righteousness, is not snow and sub-freezing weather in the latter half of April a punishment too extreme?

Your wrath moves us to seek at least an illusion of warmth:

Miss Simmons understands.
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Swiped...

"It is officially "tax day," known at General Electric headquarters as "Friday."

Herding Elephants: Iowa Caucus Clip'n Save

Even dedicated political geeks have a hard time keeping track of all the White House hopefuls trying out their pickup lines in Iowa. For one thing, it is hard to find a complete list of the serious, semi-serious,  and loony  trying on overalls and looking for a comfortable hay-bale perch.  So, here's an alphabetical list of these statesmen as culled from published sources, but I haven't gotten around to ferreting out all of the more obscure dimwaddiedoowops yet.

---------------------

--Michele Bachmann, 55,  congresswoman, Minnesota


--(OUT) Haley Barbour, 64, Mississippi governor (Dropped out April 25)


--John Bolton,  63, former ambassador, Bush II's point man in Iraq


--Herman Cain, 66, Godfather's Pizza


-- (OUT) Mitch Daniels, 62, Indiana governor (dropped May 21)


--John Davis of Grand Junction, Colorado, lumber yard owner, builder (added May 3)


--Newt Gingrich,  68, former U.S. House speaker, Georgia


--(OUT) Mike Huckabee, 56, former Arkansas governor, Fox teevee star (dropped May 15)


--Jon Huntsman, 51, former Utah governor,  ambassador to China


--Gary Johnson, 43, former New Mexico governor (added 4/22/11)


--Judge Roy Moore, 64, disrobed, two-time loser for Alabama governor  (added 4/19/11)


--Sarah Palin,  47, former Alaska governor, VP candidate 2008


--(OUT) Rand Paul, 48, Kentucky U.S. senator (if  his dad opts out).  (Dropped April 26 in anticipation of Ron's formal "in" announcement.)


  
--Ron Paul, 75, Texas congressman, former LP presidential candidate


--Tim Pawlenty,  51, former  Minnesota governor


--(OUT)  Mike Pence, 52, Indiana congressman (dropped May 15)


--Rick Perry, 61, Texas governor, (added June 19)


--Buddy Roemer, 68, former Louisiana governor


--Mitt Romney, 64, former Massachusetts governor


--Rick Santorum,  53, former U.S. senator, Pennsylvania


--( OUT?) John thune, South Dakota senator. (Dropped from list,with reservations, May 21)


--(OUT) Donald Trump, 65, businessman, casino operator, teevee star (dropped May 16) 

-0-

The list will change, and I'll try to keep it more or less up to date.

EDIT: May 5:Red ink identifies those who bailed after having been considered players or possibles.  I thought of just deleting them, but that seems so cold.

EDIT: John Thune was Xed out May 21. He said in February he wouldn't run, but the weasel words (not planning at this time, etc.) suggested he desired begging. No one has  begged yet,  and he hasn't been spotted scouting our hog lots, so TMR crosses him off with the caution that things are silly enough that he might change his mind.)

, 

W.E.B. Griffin

Someone once called him the poet laureate of the American armed forces. I won't argue.

But, Mr. Griffin, I'm afraid you've so far earned an "incomplete" In "The Corps 501."

We need a final volume, Sir, set in Vietnam. Ken McCoy would be a colonel, commanding the 9th of the Third. Fleming Pickering is secretary of defense, and his son, Malcom, has at last learned to keep his pants zipped during office hours.  Ellen Feller, finally released from St.Elizabeth's, operates a high-end brothel in Saigon.

Would it help if we said "Please?"

Now, that's a bang

What happens when you combine a 10-year-old lad with a can of ether, two pounds of Pyrodex, and a new bow with flaming arrows?

Jinglebob tells all in my nomination for the  best read of the morning.

A little gun grab in Iowa

A citizen of Storm Lake suggests that cops get a clue about the laws they're paid to enforce. 

An agitated deputy sheriff is bad enough. It's worse when he's ignorant of the perfect legality of an empty and cased shotgun in a vehicle.

It's a fairly small deal by the usual standards of police misbehavior, but it makes a guy wonder how this deputy would handle a more complex situation.

At least someone in the department had the grace to apologize.

His Obamaness Speaks.

I thought the speech was cute; "cute" in the '50s sense of a well-crafted scam to con  a naif into giving you money.

Yes, restoring U.S. solvency -- if possible at all -- will require new net revenue. It is the the adjective "net" which queers the Obama deal. Is there a soul alive who doesn't understand that the sworn duty of politicians is to keep sucking so they can spend whatever it takes to buy your vote?

It is as though the lawmakers and all their pals view our intelligence as a silly virgin with a self-regenerating hymen.

---

(A Chuck Grassley release after the speech plausibly claims that, over the past few decades, each one dollar of new federal revenue, has been seen as a license for $1.17 in spending. Compound that a few times, Bunkie.)
 

La Belle France

Just when things are going less horribly for the better  (I think) guys, the French foreign minister is telling NATO what a bad job it's doing running the Libya war. He is Alain Juppe. He may be best remembered as the politician convicted of felony theft of taxpayers' money.

NATO General Mark Van Uhm, a Hollander,  told him to bugger off. That counts as a score for the Dutch if you ask me.

---

Meanwhile, France and Britain are bickering about sending aid to alleviate the misery in Misrata. Wouldn't they just.  Five gets you ten the snit is about who tells Uncle Sam that he's expected to foot the bill.

Iowa Caucus Sidebar

The United States of America hasn't had an ugly president since Richard Nixon, and he got elected because his actual 1968 opponent was Abbie Hoffman, even uglier.

We've noticed that most of the GOP contenders infesting Iowa these days -- and all the faves -- are rather attractive people who look really nice on television, even Donald  Trump (Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your comb).

It's hard to be confident that a good result will follow electoral strategies derived from  What Not to Wear and recent advice from the Hair Club for Men and L'Oreal.

What gun for carp?

This is funny. Hoosiers in action.

The fantasy is inevitable.  I'm in the bow with a Mossy 500 and a case of 12 gauge No. 6's.  Hoosiers Tam, Roberta, and Brigid  man the rails for perimeter security, carry pieces at ready.

---

(Courtesy of  former-Hoosier John of the GMA)

The HMS Astute

Only men who sailed with the HMS Astute crew are qualified to say much about why Able Seaman Donovan cracked while in possession of the SR80. However:

You really shouldn't shoot your officers.  Sure, once in a dozen voyages you'll be thrown together with one who needs to be enlightened in a physical manner. You still shouldn't. It's prejudicial to good order and discipline.

I never did, but the tragedy aboard the hard-luck Astute reminds me  of Mr. Klem. I once promised myself that, when we were both civilians again, I would invite him  to  discuss his calling me a son-of-a bitch for correcting his line-of-position plot. Never did, but, Ensign Klem, if you happen to be reading...

(That's not to say I was totally revengeless. For the longest time I let him send his unedited course and speed recommendations to the bridge, hee hee. It is my understanding that this resulted in a number of discussions between the young NROTC officer and our captain.)

The last TMR comment on the shutdown unless I find a line I like better than the one handed me by my nephew before the "deal:"

"If the government shuts down at midnight, countless millions of fuzzy kittens will burst into flames."

Act 2 Coming Up (or) The African Connection

The curtain falls on Act One of the Great April Crisis. The players fade to silhouettes behind the scrim. We greet the intermission with relief tempered by knowing Act Two is on the way. In a few weeks, the drama returns as the cast portrays grownups pretending to understand the wisdom or folly of raising the national debt limit, which we will do.

By then all Americans will be experts on why funding or defunding Planned Parenthood is the ultimate determinant of national survival.  I vote for telling PP to try its hand in the marketplace.

So on to a bigger money pit called "the rest of the world" which we must borrow more money to help. Africa for instance.

Now, Africa is a big country place, and it's a little easier to understand if we use one small place country there to illustrate the point.

I pick Malawi.

You can follow the link or just accept my summary -- a pretty hunk of southeast Africa on the shores of big Lake Malawi. It used to be called Nyasaland, full of tribes with spears and war clubs and cook pots  big enough for speech-capable bipeds. Queen Victoria stole it from the indigenous personnel in 1891.  The Brits   ran things until 1964 before giving it back to the natives who set up one-party state, then decided to go modern. They got a democacy, some corruption tutors, an army, a navy, and aids.

Most important, Malawi got itself on the list of places where Uncle Sam is required to do good. And how.

---

Hillary's State Department is pleased the we forked over a little more than $60 million to Malawi last year for just one program. That was so much fun she's asking nice, compassionate Americans to dig a little deeper this year -- $79 million.

The way that works out is that Malawi gets a 25 per cent pay hike because, eeerrrr, because uuuhhhmmmm, I guess because it is Malawi and things suck there. (If you dare mention that you're not getting a 25 per cent raise,  why, you're an Ugly American and ought to shut up because it's for the children, their children, not yours,  but never mind that.)

---

Okay Jim, once again, as in your bike-trail rant, you're pissing and moaning about pocket change; $79 million could get lost in  Harry Reid's belly button lint. 


---


No, I P/M about one example of a huge con job on Americans who bust their butts to pay their taxes so the congress, Hillary and His Obamaness can parade world capitals, tossing greenbacks from their floats at every tinhorn operation with a sob story.

The 2011 budget for this USAID Global Health and Child Survival program is a tad over $3 billion. Africa's cut of that is about $1.4 billion. Even Russia gets a little.

I have an idea. Let's quit doing it for at least as long as we have to borrow it from  Chinese money lenders.

To prove our hearts are in the right place we can send Madonna back.

Libertarian gun love

I've been to dozens of political conventions, but never one with this in the announcement:

 "If you carry and need to use the restroom, a gun wrangler will be designated."




It makes me think of  shining up the 59 and actually attending this one,  May 7 at the Hilton Garden Inn, just north of Des Moines.  


Last time I hit a convention I decided I even needed to leave the little Buck pocket knife in the hotel room.


Gotta love libertarians, even big-L ones.


Click the link for  more details, and for some recent news of Ron Paul.

STEEEEE-RIKE ONE on Tim Pawlenty

You don't screw around with Hawkeyes. We like our sleep and we have guns.

Iowa proudly claims the honor of hosting the first presidential wannabe staff scandal of the year, thanks to Pawlenty aide Ben Foster who, the reports say,  drank into the wee hours and forgot where he lived. He then wound up 10 miles from home where, at 3 a.m., he banged on the door of a house that must have looked about right. The homeowner held him at gunpoint. The cops were called. They charged Ben with a couple of misdemeanors either before or after he barfed on the deck.

Odd.  Ben hails from Alabama, and I thought those good ol' boys taught their kids to hold their liquor.


(Tim is already on the running TMR list of Iowa caucus hopefuls. You may remember him  from there as the small-government conservative, except for guys who own big-time sports teams and are therefore entitled to free stadiums.)

Wow, deep

I wonder how Lt. Walsh reacts to this after a lifetime of thinking his dip into the  Challenger Deep was a big deal.

(AP reporting on the Japan aftershock):  Officials said the aftershock hit 30 miles (50 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. 

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cc: Multiple layers of fact-checking (etc.) file
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The critic Janet Leigh

This blog is getting too damned heavy, James. Lighten up, man, or I'll...

"Strangest Theology"

That phrase,  used two TMR posts back, requires sturdier support than my neurological innards.

It also needs careful separation from the private religious practices of people who thoughtfully work out their personal relationships with Eternity and who feel no compulsion to force others to adopt their spiritual conclusions. 

Kevin Phillips was far from the first to recognize that pentecostalism and premillenial dispensationalism* --  in their various forms -- drive the political behavior of vast swathes of people. But he was among the first to offer a comprehensive look at how modern vote whores exploit masses who derive their deepest beliefs from unusual and unverifiable interpretation of scriptures, Christian and otherwise.

His book on the subject is "American Theocracy"  (2006). His research data and conclusions are likely to please no political partisans.

To summarize, perhaps dangerously so, Phillips suggests that the behavior of right-wing religio-statists can be explained by their broad constituency of people convinced that we live in  end times, on the Rapture's verge.  Planning for any sort of future other than that detailed by St. John the  Divine therefore becomes unnecessary and perhaps even anti-God.

Phillips refuses to absolve secular statists of the left.

"Conservatives fixate on the provocations (vulgar popular culture, e.g.)  and ignore the excesses visible in in the neo-puritan and rightest countertide, and liberals have reversed the error;  keening over the religious threat while ignoring the secular provocation." (p. 209)

The  excesses of state religiosity could include such things as recriminalizing private sexual behavior, transferring general tax revenues to religious bodies, and  restricting the private spiritual practices of believers unfavored by the state.

The leftist secular excesses would continue the protracted fraud of free everything for all who "need" it, a Long March to the rule of the proletariat, supervised only by the new priesthood of selfless commissars.

---

"American Theocracy" is useful in a number of ways, particularly in the demographic maps and charts relating religious beliefs to voting behavior.  It would be easy to disagree with some Phillips conclusions, but there's no denying that he brought an impressive amount of information to the table.

---

* That mouthful can be explained as the view that God has gone through several periods of relating more or less benignly to His human creatures but that He's now fed up and will, quite soon, implement the horrors and joys of Revelations.

The looming government shutdown

I used "looming" because AP did.  Pretty scary word. Anything  that will loom over you will crap on you, eh?

But not too much. The National Journall adds color to to the notion that "OMG! A Shutdown!"  is mostly hot halitosis designed to scare Hell out of you.

It also offers a tidy affirmation of what we've been saying around here forever:

"Executive agencies must submit lists of essential employees and "plans for an orderly shutdown in the event of the absence of appropriations" to OMB. But the contingency plans are difficult to come by, possibly because of the political implications of classifying government employees as 'nonessential.' "


That should be about all the illustration anyone needs that government as we know it makes sense only as a gigantic jobs program.


I'm not necessarily for a Washington shutdown, but a Washington shut up would be welcome.

Programs! Get your programs here! (con't.)

Chapter Two in the  TMR tome subtitled, "Who Us Iowans Will Allow You to Vote For For President of Us and the Other 56 States."  Chapter  One covered five of the yawners, all nominally male though not necessarily testiculated.

The two girls in the running have wandered in over the past few months. One of them is attractive. The other is interesting.

Sarah Palin: Even in western Iowa, Sarah will probably never recover from claiming foreign policy credentials because of her ability to see Russia from Alaska. The same applies to her identification of Africa as a country. A plurality of Iowans is proud to know better.

Mrs.Palin is lovely, vivacious, and many of us lust for an invitation to help her hunt her moose.  Unfortunately that's not enough to overcome an atavistic fear of turning the country over to someone whose library card is assessed an inactivity fee.

Her other problem is that she seems far more interested in being in the Fortune 500 than in the White House. (Her last Iowa appearance was a book-signing session in a Wal-Mart near me.)

Michelle Bachmann: It is presumptuous  to write her off as "batshit crazy," even though her default mode is loaded with eye-rollers. The one-word descriptive is "ignorant."  If Sarah's library card is dusty, Michelle never had one. If she attended high-school history classes, her teacher was the basketball coach.

But she is dead serious about becoming our president, concentrating on  one of the great natural constituencies around here, the anti-gay, anti-abortion evangelicals. She talks to them all at every opportunity, knowing their power to pack and control the Iowa caucuses as they did in 2008 when we presented you with the Rev. Mr. Huckabee on a platter. If you require further proof of her ambition, she has just hired a guy named Wes Enos, Huckabee's 2008 Iowa political director.

I describe her as interesting because Michelle is a political flowering of some of the strangest theology ever to cross the minds of shamans anywhere, going back to the mystics of ancient history and continuing through moderns such as Tim LaHaye.  I'm sure she doesn't know that,  any more than she knows the location of the shot heard 'round the world. But she understands in the shrewdest possible way its  vote-getting power in an age where our masters are supremely interested in engaging our emotions rather than our logical thought processes.
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Yes, I will get around to Ron Paul before long. He is not being as bluntly snubbed as he was in the last go-round.

Government Shutdown Crisis

If you're a little confused about this, maybe a snippit of personal history will help ease your mind.

I was present in Washington for the great U.S.Government hiatus of 1984.  I personally observed that the White House groundskeepers were not at work and that public access to the Washington Monument was denied. The latter frustrated several Greyhound loads of tourists.

When all the  players had milked the crisis for all the PR it was worth, things went back to normal.  You could climb the monument stairs, and President Reagan once more had the nicest lawn in the neighborhood.

I can't foresee a Great Shutdown of 2011 being much different.

Ms. Normand

If you liked Mabel as the farmer's daughter in that Wiki cite, you you'll love her as an urbane grownup.

Libya: "I thought YOU brought the custard pies."

Reuters characterizes some of the activity this weekend:


Without the backbone of regular forces, the lightly-armed volunteer caravan has spent days dashing back and forth along the coast road on Brega's outskirts, scrambling away in their pick-ups when Gaddafi's forces fire rockets at their positions.


And if that doesn't make a guy think of Mack Sennett I'll kiss your arse on the shores of Tripoli and give you a day to muster an Arab Brotherhood audience.

Serene Sunday Morning

I was Binging all over the place -- trying to make sense of statistics on Mexican gun imports -- when New Dog Libby started fussing. Since I was dressed only from the ankles up, I settled for through-the-window surveillance of whatever threat alerted her.

--One lonesome hen turkey, pecking around the mulch pile,

--A mallard swimming in the canal.

--Three or four very hyper fox squirrels prospecting for buried acorns in the newly thawed earth.

Spring is nice. Screw Mexico.
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Even if you don't like what those people do

There's a certain unease in citing this opinion piece by a recovering homophobe politician who may have finally decided it's catastrophically wrong to screw up our constitutions with limits on individual rights.  Jeff has, perhaps, come to understand that the purpose of a constitution is to limit government power.

Jeff left the Iowa senate and opened a "media relations" operation. He is now somehow connected with One Iowa, part of the national coalition of weepers who, among more noble goals, want to turn the gay-lesbian-transgendered-etc. bunch into another victim group. If he's being paid, he's not the first ex-pol to shoot for riches by hawking his residual clout to the highest bidder, ideas be damned. Within the limits of my Bing patience this morning, I couldn't learn if he is taking One Iowa bucks.

That said, I recommend the piece. Among other things, he makes a point pertinent to "conservatives" interested in freedoms guaranteed by Amendment Two:

When we start allowing constitutional amendments that limit individual control, and give that control over to the government, we open ourselves up to more limitations on our individual freedom. It's easy to feel so passionately about an issue that you don't look at it objectively, but what happens when the individual freedom we're discussing is gun control or universal health care? We need to set aside the rhetoric and look at the slope on which we're starting to slide.

You can't make this stuff up

Just when you thought American politicians had scaled the Mt. Everest of venality, comes along something like this.

A recommendation approved by the Polk County Compensation Board calls for elected officials with at least eight years of service to "receive one week of pay for every year, not to exceed a maximum of $30,000" when they retire from office or lose a re-election bid.


I sympathize with the argument that it's a cheap way to get  some of them out of our hair, but that ignores the reality that they will be replaced.


It's also pertinent that the takers would be the ones too stupid to steal enough in office to make $30k look like lunch money. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or bad.


But still...

Iowa self defense: Run, Rabbit, Run.

Iowa's finest this week decided to kill "stand-your-ground"  legislation.  The old law will continue to govern your legal actions when a thug approaches you on the street. You must try to retreat, giving the goblin a nice broad back to aim at.


It's more complicated than that, of course. The measure would have made it very difficult for a prosecutor to pursue charges when a citizen met force with force. He could nail you for egregious lapses of perception and judgement, but not  because he didn't like you, or guns, or the very concept of a citizen assuming responsibility for his  own survival.  


Even with the duty-to-skedaddle, you retain the right to pay a lawyer to try to talk the county attorney out of  prosecution, and to pay him more to tell your tale to a jury   -- that is, to bankrupt yourself with legal costs because, in a very tough moment, you decided to stay alive. 


---


Also dead are moves to ban cops from confiscating your firearms during a "state of  emergency" and to let professional school security guards carry sidearms. Iowa legislators looked at New Orleans and Columbine and pronounced them good? 


A Constitutional  carry bill is still alive, but that's probably going nowhere. It died in the first "funnel" week but was revived as a  funnel-exempt tax measure when a backer argued that its tinkering with permit fees constituted tax law.


(It is possible that one or more of the dead bills could also resurface as "tax" measures, but with a liberal majority in the senate, chances of passage remain slim.)


---


If you like, you can forgive these poor fellows and girls. They were badly distracted this week. The first new legislative redistricting map surfaced yesterday, and all of what ever mental power exists down there was focused on, "Jayzuss!  Am I losing my seat?"


They know what's important. 
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Mother Jones Weeps. Good.

An appreciative nod to The Associated Press this morning for this lede on the Wisconsin saga:

"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans face a new hurdle in their campaign to curb public sector unions' power."




Reporter Todd Richmond and his editor rate compliments for the final five words.  The construction recognizes that there is more to the debate than the shrieks of public titters frightened at the thought that their grip on your wallet may be slipping, ergo diminishing their "rights."




News guys from the outset wore out the phrase "strip unions of bargaining rights." as though they had never run across the concept of "at will" relationships between the person who writes the paycheck and the one who cashes it.


--


The mass of U.S. labor law is daunting, but anyone interested might start with the Clayton Act.  The union provision, stripped to its essentials,  prohibited a trucking company from obtaining enough power  to shut down American motor transport  but ceded the right to do just that to, for instance, Jimmy Hoffa. 


.

Survival, anyone?

DirtCrashr took a look at Japan and decided to get more serious about a bugout bag, thoughtfully assembled for his most likely threat, earthquake followed by fires. I like the thinking there, in large part because it has none of the romantic claptrap penned by too many pocketa pocketa pocketa preppers.

---

My vehicles usually contain a few essentials (water, tools, something to eat, warm stuff) and there's a little Duluth thwart bag handy which might see me through a couple of nights bivouacking the woods, but I have no SHTF pack as such.  I already bugged out.  I live in a bugout bag.

It is a little more than an acre of trees and grass with two cabins laden with store-bought bugout supplies.  Even without killing mobile protein, there is pretty good eating for a few weeks, adequate nutrition for months,  and wretched fodder for a few more.  The armory is mostly hobby, but it nods to the ancient truth that you can have what you can defend.

Location. Location. Location. By chance, the bookends of my life placed me in kindly geography where food grows  and the dramatic natural threats -- earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes -- are nonexistent.

So where else would I go to celebrate TEOTWAWKI? Medicine Wheel Pass in the Big Horns is more romantic  -- Head fer the hills, boys; we're gonna be mountain men.  --  but unless the hunting gods are feeling very generous, as soon as you run out of granola, Bunkie,  you will starve.

There's no place like home.
---

tbc

Reloading, anyone?

Care to see what a half-million pounds of reloadable brass looks like?  And that is Pounds with a "p" -- not rounds.

I don't know how cartridge cases bulk out at that scale, but by weight  the government is peddling something like 500 pickup loads of the stuff.  I would need a larger tumbler.

And we must add a tribute to to the firearms enthusiasts who stymied another one of the Great Ideas from the mind of His Obamaness. The auction notice clearly states: "Mutilation is not required."

I guess we owe our thanks to Kadhaffi

And so His Obamaness presides over the dawning of a new Age of Pericles. Prosperity is just around the corner because consumer spending was up last month by seven-tenths of a per cent.

Counsellor: "But, Sire, your scriveners of the exchequer also say  most new spending merely covered the extra costs of the peasants' petrol."

HIs Obamaness: "Take him out and shoot him."

---

The same source reports our personal incomes rose by three-tenths of a per cent in February. Aha! The lathes are humming and it's Morning in America.

Sorry, Charlie. We're still flipping burgers and trying to sell one another 20-pay-life.  "Both (spending and income) gains reflected a Social Security tax cut, which boosted take-home pay."


Think of how rich we'll be if HO can get United Nations'  permission to bomb another towel-head country or two. 

Oh, such lovely executions...

(1) -- Any South Halstead Street junkie with a modest wad from his latest liquor store holdup can quickly acquire about any drug he cares to shoot into his veins, often enough in lethal quantities.

(2) -- State governments are in a  bureaucratic tizzy-fit because they can't manage to buy enough sodium thiopentathol to dispatch their evil-doers.

(3) - When the state of Georgia finally managed to outsource enough sleepy juice to kill people, our federal drug police seized it on grounds it might be impure.

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Only the warped can find amusement in any part of the dialog about state-sanctioned killing, but bemusement is not to be considered a lapse of taste.

Some might suggest our inability to procure a rather simple drug developed in the 1930s argues for a Gary Gilmore ("Let' do it.") solution. But I guess that might thwart our desire to make executions a serene experience. Nighty-night, now.

While we're in a nation-building mood

Some 250,000 British citizens have taken to the streets, protesting the Throne's drive to deprive them of their human rights to free stuff.

It is not time, therefore, for the United States to impose a no-fly zone over Cheapside? I mean, Ho Ho Ho, Liz must go. That Cameron chap, too, probably.

Naturally, President Obama should first request permission of the United Nations. Congress and his subjects can learn about it from the newspapers and teevee.
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"...and in 2007 I wrote..."

The Random Patriot includes this in a cogent set of thoughts on Obama's impulsive foray into war.

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. 
--Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007


A recent White House Executive Order forbids use of the term "hypocrite" until further notice.

Flowers, get your flowers here...

Ordinarily I would not spend $20 for a single chrysanthemum, but when it is  attached to most of a Type 99 Arisaka, c. 1944, I make an exception.

Another (sigh) project, and I'm in the market now for a stock with furniture and  a couple of bolt parts.  Or for a Jap collector lusting for an unground mum.

The moral of the story is: Check your friendly village junk shop every time you run into town for coffee.

A bed-sheet boogie

A guy named John Paul Rogers is running for mayor of Lake Wales, Florida. He's a Democrat and a former KKK grand dragon. He says he should get a pass on the latter fact because, "... "Well I resigned years ago, about 30 years ago. Jesus said, 'He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone,' and so far no one's hit me with a rock."


You just ain't met the right feller yet.  Duck, you bastard.

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H/T to Kurt who notes this clown was getting love from the media until some Republican called him out.

Dognitive dissonance

New Dog Libby realizes her crucial role as watchpup, alert for zoning administrators and similar vermin.

She is less adept at understanding scrap lumber as kindling rather than chew toys.

Hillary the Wise

The wires this morning carry in mournful detail  the refusal of our Arab allies to give us a hand in Libya. Also, they inform us, the war continues and our European pals of the "coalition" are still having a great time watching Uncle lifting the heavy end.


But leave it to Mrs.Clinton to point out the clear and shining path to peace and victory:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said order could be resolved quickly — if Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi would just quit.


Is that great geopolitical analysis or what?
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I probably won't go, but...

After more than three decades of emotional controversy  on a scale otherwise reserved for Roe vs. Wade, the Iowa Senate has voted to permit mourning dove hunting.  It will probably become law.

Average wing shots will thus be able to kill and eat this tasty little bird for an estimated  cost of about $13 per ounce of meat-on-the-platter if they reload.

For the antis who learned all they know about wildlife biology from Walt Disney, it is the coo de grace.
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Elizabeth Taylor

I was not a fan, but there is no denying the beauty.

Current Corn Field Crises

1. The Village of Smuglye-on-Lake  is angry with the federal government.  Washington census snoopers report a 2010 population of less than 350 compared to the 2000 figure of more than 450.  This will result in a massive loss of federal dollars which we might be able to use, for instance, to help enforce the new cat law. This statute makes it a criminal act to feed any cat for which the SOL resident cannot prove ownership.

(I am working on a suggested ordinance to require common-sense registration and and regulation of cats, feral and domestic. It's for the children.)


2.  Our largest newspaper mourns the possibility of reduced federal block grant programs. For one thing, cuts would defund rehabilitation slush pots for a neighborhood in Des Moines where "In 2001, 45 percent of the houses in the neighborhood had conditions rated "below normal" or worse...: 

Nine years and $2.7 million later, the neighborhood boasts "... the proportion of properties in "below normal" or worse condition is down to 24 percent. 

Some kind of a Garrison Keillor moment exists here. My reading of Pascal, Pythagoras,  Obama,  and other great number thinkers suggests that normal is that mathematical point  on a continuum at which about half of whateverthefreak you are counting lies above and half below.

I was pretty lame in arithmetic class, so I may be wrong. But if I happen to nail it here, it seems to me that federal grant money disrupts the entire mathematical underpinning of our universe, and we are about to face a drastically altered reality.

Why, in such a parallelish universe we might even have a left-wing American leader -- elected on an anti-war, anti-intervention platform --  lobbing cruise missiles at starving camel drivers and keeping the Gitmo jail open and okaying military tribunals for former starving camel drivers.

Speaking of the CIA and Muslim leaders...

From our Oldies but Goodies file, William F.Buckley in 1957:


The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno.
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