Category Archives: Scribbles

The windmill fiasco

Posted on December 8, 2008 | Comments Off on The windmill fiasco

wind-plants.jpg

This is an obvious photoshop, but it’s a useful image when talking about what a dubious idea proliferation of these things will be. For one thing, they can be dangerous to people as well as to  migrating birds. For another, the hundreds of gallons of oil they use for lubrication can spill and contaminate the environment, or even start a forest fire. Even their Dem champions don’t want them marring the view in their neighborhood. But the worst thing about them, in addition to their noise, is that they are so darned inefficient. They will never replace oil and gas, not to mention coal.

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Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Ending the drug war

Posted on December 4, 2008 | Comments Off on Ending the drug war

Since a continuation of the culture war (anti-gay marriage, etc.) has been cited as one reason the Reps lost the election, it would seem to be a perfect time to end the drug war, which has failed to do anything but strain government spending, raise the price to the consumer and destablize producing countries like Mexico, Columbia and Afghanistan.

Plus, if you’re going to nationalize health care, anyway, which Barry seems intent on doing, it would be a perfect time to offer "free" drug treatment to all who need it. But pols are such cowards, never doing anything that might cost them re-election. So we stumble along, with cops devoting too much energy to seizing marijuana and cocaine and, increasingly, needing automatic rifles to defend themselves against the foot soldiers of the drug cartels. Can Barry fix it? Yes, he can! If he only has the nerve.

UPDATE:  It’s not a unique idea, of course, but I knew that. On the other hand, it may be a bit much expecting a progressive to end drug prohibition, considering it began on FDR’s watch. Alcohol prohibition, the previous failed effort, was pushed through by "progressives," as well.

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The party of Jackson?

Posted on December 3, 2008 | Comments Off on The party of Jackson?

President Andrew Jackson broke with tradition and invited the common people to the White House reception after his inauguration in 1829 and they tracked in mud and otherwise left him a big cleaning bill. But history has recorded no sniping remarks from him about it. The snark is left to his Democrat party descendents such as (who else?) Harry Reid. Thanks to the air-conditioning (wind or solar-generated, surely, can’t be from oil or coal) in the new Capitol Visitors Center, Reid’s delicate olfactory sensibilities will no longer be troubled by commoner body odor. Term limits, please.

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The real Hoovers

Posted on November 25, 2008 | Comments Off on The real Hoovers

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Reality check from Doug Ross @ Journal.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, the Dems and their state-run media are playing up the stock market jitters (largely over Barry’s ascendency) while national output has declined just one half of one percent. But, hey, it’s a great time to spend tax money in the name of "job creation," mainly for their buds. 

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Good on ya, Dubya

Posted on November 23, 2008 | Comments Off on Good on ya, Dubya

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I could have asked for a lot more communication with us all on the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, etc. George fell on his butt there. Quite inexplicably. Maybe someday we’ll find out why. But, in general, as John Weidner lists so well, the fellow I voted for in 2004 will leave office with a lot more accomplished than the partisan Big Media would have you believe–certainly more than his despicable predecessor Slick Wllie who always has communicated well but delivered little but sleeze. All in all, a very tough act for Barry to follow, which Barry is already dropping the ball on by appointing that lying dimwit Hilarity as his secretary of state. If he doesn’t want to go down in history as merely the first (half) black man in the White House, he’d better get it together. Not that I care. I want him to be a one-termer.

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Of fear and mockery

Posted on November 22, 2008 | Comments Off on Of fear and mockery

You can see in this U.S. News & World Report recent sliming of Sarah just how afraid the Big Media continue to be of her chances in 2012. But it’s worth the read for the fisking mockery John Weidner applies to it. No wonder USNWP has had to terminate their print magazine. Time was when they produced a reasonable alternative to the liberal pablum of their competitors. Now they are no different than the rest–all of them declining in circulation and bound to soon follow USNWP’s lead.

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High school Latin

Posted on November 22, 2008 | Comments Off on High school Latin

Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor, wants high school students to have four years of it:

"…such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos)."

He’s right, of course, though I don’t think I’d want to take four years of it. I only had to take one year, in 1960-61, and I still remember how cool it was to translate text so old yet still recognizable in its human concern. My grandmother taught Latin at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in the 1920s. But that was college. 

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Posted in Blogosphere, Genealogy, Scribbles, Uncategorized