Short Post Day.

Saw this today and thought it worth sharing. You might have seen it but it is new to me.

Political Correctness: The doctrine that implies it’s possible to pick up a piece of shit from the clean end.

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Warmer… warmer… warmer…

Ferd Limpy turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Pocket Pool on weekends, he’s also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The Hellhole Palms, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change — the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013 and provide immunity from potential punishments for “Senior Skip Day” at HP High.

“I think a lot of young people realize that this is an urgent time, and that we’re not going to solve this problem just by riding our bikes more,” Limpy said between deep swallows from his mother’s breast.

Limpy drifted off to sleep in his mother’s lap, punctuating the moment with a loud fart and a deceptively small burp.  For lack of anything relevant to say, Mrs. Limpy stated that he and she needed some more “bonding time” because her baby was so stressed out by his concern over daily temperature swings.

The interview was cut short when Mrs. Limpy was engrossed in changing Ferd’s Depends™, saying “This is SO much harder to do when he’s got wood.”   A follow-up interview was hastily not arranged.

Ok, seriously though… Nearly the same damn thing really did happen.  Only the nursing and diaper changing likely only happens emotionally.   The kid and his little friends really do care about the environment and are totally committed to it, which is kind of sad since they haven’t got enough real-life experience to even feel passionate about anything for real yet.  These kids are going to have an interesting time when they see the schism between college (basically “high school” extended by four more years at a much higher cost) and the real world, which isn’t going to really give a rat’s ass about the self-centered little brat and his frivolous lawsuits.

Apologies if that seemed a lot cynical.  I’m in a mood.

But this is serious stuff, really.

This Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Wilkins, an Obama appointee, will hear arguments on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint.

[ The court is the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in case they didn’t see that important enough to mention, which they didn’t.  – LK ]

While skeptics may view the case as little more than a publicity stunt, its implications have been serious enough to attract the time and resources of major industry leaders. Last month, Judge. Wilkins granted a motion to intervene in the case by the National Association of Manufacturers, joined by Delta Construction Company, Dalton Trucking Inc., Southern California Contractors Association, and the California Dump Truck Owners Association.

“At issue is whether a small group of individuals and environmental organizations can dictate through private tort litigation the economic, energy, and environmental policies of the entire nation,” wrote National Association of Manufacturers spokesman Jeff Ostermeyer in an email. Granting the plaintiffs’ demands, he added, “would carry serious and immediate consequences for industrial and economic productivity — increasing manufacturing and transportation costs and decreasing global competitiveness.” The manufacturers’ legal brief says the restrictions being sought “could substantially eliminate the use of conventional energy in this country.” It also argues that the plaintiffs haven’t proved they have a legal right to sue.

Cruel Wife wondered if someone was *gasp* … using… these kids for their agenda.  Well, that just doesn’t seem right.  Let’s see here…  oh.  Oh.  Oh, ok.  Remember how I said the kids don’t really have enough life experience yet?  Well, apparently some see that as great, because it makes for tools that earnestly believe what they are saying, even if it is bullshit, and that really sells well.

While teenagers serve as the public face of the lawsuit, the idea itself came from Julia Olson, an attorney based in Eugene, Oregon. Olson founded an organization called Our Children’s Trust after watching the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth while she was seven months pregnant.

[snip]

Olson and other supporters of the suit believe that having kids as plaintiffs makes a particularly visceral appeal to adults to take action. Indeed, many of the adults involved said that their own children and grandchildren had inspired them. “Becoming a grandfather motivated me to speak out,” said climate scientist James Hansen, the director of the U.S. NASA Goddard Space Institute and the man who first brought Loorz and Olson together. Hansen, in his free time, is a conscientious objector to U.S. energy policy who has been arrested three times at peaceful protests.

In support of the children’s suit, Hansen has drawn up recommendations as to how the U.S. government can meet the greenhouse-gas reduction goals, through cuts in fossil-fuel-powered electricity and reforestation. “My talents are mainly in the sciences,” he said, “but it just became so clear that no one is doing anything to prevent what is becoming scientifically a very clear picture. I didn’t want my grandchildren to say that “Opa” (Dutch for “grandpa”) knew what was happening but didn’t do anything about it.”

There, SOYLENT GREEN, if you haven’t run with that tidbit (Hansen using kids to do his dirty work), would you, please?

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Being born-again linked to more brain atrophy.

Whoa.  Say that again?

Being born-again linked to more brain atrophy.

According to the study, people who said they were a “born-again” Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or “atrophy”) compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again.

The study is published online in PLoS ONE.

Oh, well, then.  We all know PLoS ONE is a fine upstanding… newspaper?  Magazine?  Proceeding?  Flyer?  Writing on a bathroom wall?

Well it must be valid research because after all, they published it, right?

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Temporary Post

This was to be a placeholder post until tonight when I posted something real.  But it’ll have to be real enough.  Suddenly a huge storm blew up and is headed for us and I’m shutting my computer down very soon, so have a good evening…

 

As congress-critters sit and bitch to their bosses (us) about how the other side is causing all the trouble it becomes ever more obvious that even still none of them are interested in fixing the problem.

They are all still far more interested in who maintains power as of the next election than they are about enacting something that is binding and rooted in reality.

How do we know this?

Because they are again talking about “compromise”.  Which is a load of BS.  When a patient is dying of a gangrenous limb you do not compromise and cut right through the middle of the infection – you cut off the limb, and you take enough to be sure you got it all.   There are some issues where two viable sides don’t exist, and any decision made that doesn’t include drastic binding cuts is completely non-viable.

When you have spent yourself into a huge debt you do NOTHING to incur more.  And you cut and cut and cut until you can’t cut any more, then you cut again for good measure because the first time you probably pulled the punch.  And then you are man enough to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We’ve been waiting for decades for elected officials to address the entitlements issue, which is what is going to strangle us.  I’m seeing precious little evidence that they believe this is the critical moment it really is.

Their behavior is similar to what you could imagine if an ENTIRE chapter of the local AA fell off the wagon at the same time.  All of them hopelessly addicted to the power and money, all of them in partial-to-total denial, and all of them on some level simultaneously pointing fingers and covering up for each other.

And I’m bothered by the press releases, too.  Both sides.

A perfect example of the unprofessional non-serious behavior is Jay Carney trying to be hip.   This isn’t NFL where you get to use lots of euphemisms and metaphors.  Americans are sick to DEATH of speech that isn’t just pure hard facts devoid of fluff and rhetoric.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney rejected charges that Obama hadn’t revealed an actual plan to solve the debt crisis.

“We have shown a lot of leg on what we were proposing,” Carney said.

Shown a lot of leg?  Carney is essentially the president’s top communications guy and he cannot use proper english to make his point?

Time to grow up, Congress.  Stop being righteously indignant (it is the taxpayer’s turn for that) and get your sh*t together – do whatever you have to do but do it, do it responsibly (for once), and damn well do it now.

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Happy Freakin’ New Year!

A new year has come and an old one gone.

All in all it was a pretty darned good year.    Here’s to the next one being better – starting with the new congressional mixup makinig Obama’s life hell.

But before that, I want to win a million-dollar lottery.

Please God, let me prove to you that winning the lottery won’t spoil me…

I’ll try to get back into the posting and art and/or writing this year.  I’ve been awfully slack lately.

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Can it get any stupider, this liberal understanding of the Constitution?  Source:  The Spokane Conservative…

Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein mocked Republicans for wanting to start the 112th Congress with a reading of the Constitution.

Klein told Norah O’Donnell, “The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.”

So, in Klein’s view, the Constitution is old and therefore confusing and apparently should be ignored, or translated in a way that supports liberal policy.

Klein also took issue with new rules requiring legislation be supported by the Constitution.  He told O’Donnell, “the new rules require every bill name its constitutional authority in the bill’s text and what I want to point out about that is that bills don’t normally do that now.”

But that is precisely the point, and it is partly why Republicans – many backed by the Tea Party – destroyed the Democrats in November’s election.

I’m sorry but I just don’t see November as having been a mandate or a slam-dunk.  A lot of things are still being taken for granted by the Republicans, who still seem a bit dazed and confused.  It’s like the Republicans keep showing up to a gun fight with a spoon.

Thank you, Joe Newby for your article…

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Jolly Rancheros.

Jolly Ranchers are a gateway drug. It’s straight from there to black tar heroin. Is that what you want Mr. Lemur King? A bunch of school kids strung out on smack? Obviously they had to make an example out of this little degenerate. The ‘No Tolerance’ policy works! – Mr. E. Yorl

Crystals of pure JR Fire Stix.

Proving that the universe is not without a strange sense of humor, Nancy Reagan came out with the expression “Just say no” in the year 1982, the year of my downfall.

My alternative to Nancy’s refrain? Just say Maybe.

It started out innocently enough. I had a dollar or so left in my allowance and rode my bicycle over to the mom-n-pop store across the valley.

It was one of those places where the first thing you see as you come in is the chest-style freezer full of ice-cream treats, tempting children and adults alike with promises of vanilla-flavored sweetened cholesterol. To the right, like in every other store of this type was the beer cooler and loggers and millworkers came in continually, making beelines for their Ranier Pounders or their Bud.  (Well you gotta do something for lunch at the mill and dinner will not buy itself.  I always thought of six-packs as The Millworker’s Union Cookbook in Six Easy Steps.)

The store had worn wood floors and smelled like an armpit lacquered in old beer.  You know the place I’m talking about.  Every now and then it was good to step into the men’s room for some fresh air and then you could stand to go back into the store once your stomach stopped doing flips.

On entry to the store, one could turn to the left instead of right and leave behind the beer coolers and their “SCHWOOOO-CLUMP” sound as they opened and closed and come face-to-face with the candy aisle, which ran the length of the store and led even into the “adult section” in back.

Men and women alike, but generally more women, would come out from behind that rough curtain with something half-hidden behind their back.  They’d usually be wearing dark glasses and plain clothing and quickly sidle up to the cashier.  Then with twitches and single-syllable words designed to stave off any attempt at conversation they’d throw a wad of money at the cashier and scurry out of the store.  I’d seen more than one adult walk out of the back room with nothing but a handful of Dove Bar wrappers and chocolate all around their face.  It was never pretty.

That warm April day found me walking into the store, turning left, and surveying the treasures before me.  I had been in a sour-candy mood for weeks but for some reason I plunked down $0.60 and bought not only three Sour Apples but three Fire Sticks.

I got in line to buy my stuff.  I stood behind a lady with an obvious Snickers habit but that day it looked like she needed a little something extra to take the edge off – she looked strung-out and desperate – and I watched her leave with a bag full of empty wrappers, king-sized candy bars, and a giant monkey on her back.

I took my stuff to school the next day, fully intending that it was to stay in my locker and I would only eat what I wanted – and when I had my fill I would put whatever was left back in the bag.  No problem, right?  Easy-peasy, right?

A classmate saw my stash and asked for one.  I said no, that it was what was left of my allowance and had to last.  He said “I’ll pay you for it.”

That is when the Jolly Ranchers showed their true colors and whispered to me “Surely you could part with us for more than you paid and buy more of us later…?”

By word of mouth only, I had sold all of my product in less than five minutes.  It didn’t take long to realize that I was onto something.  I had something no one else was going to provide, and people needed it.  If not me, then eventually it would be someone else, I reasoned.

I would purchase jolly rancher sticks for $0.10 each and sell them for a 100% markup and turn around and re-invest 60-75% of my net back into building up stocks so I could keep up with growth in sales.  I had it all – grape, watermelon, sour apple, cinnamon – you name it, I moved it.

Then one day I was called out of 4th period science class – no great loss, that, except that I missed part of the film and to this day I have no idea how sea urchins procreate.  Snidely Whiplash (my pet name for that particular teacher) led me down the hall to the main office in silence , right on up to the principal’s office.  For some reason she had this thing for the medieval look – sconces with torches, pincers, glowing brazier, rings and chains embedded in the wall.  I think she truly intended it to feel cozy, but it really just scared the crap out of anyone who had to visit her.

She pulled out my file (already loaded onto the dolly for easy handling) and started talking.

I don’t care how tough you are, you can only handle just so much of the female-principal-who-looks-like-a-guy-dressed-up-like-Barry-Manilow-with-a-mustache before you start to think of ways to get out of the trap you are in.   You’d chew off a leg – if it were only that easy.  Death by buzz saw sounded attractive but the nearest mill was 4 miles away and I couldn’t run far without my inhaler.  I started to long for an old-fashioned pack of ravenous wolves but none were in sight.   Then I concocted elaborate fantasies of a biker gang swooping down on the school and setting it on fire and beating me to death – better them doing it physically than her doing it by droning on in her nasally voice.  Still no luck.  It appeared that I might actually have to listen to her in order to get out of my predicament.

Finally it dawned on me – they weren’t asking for a confession – they’d gone straight to “he’s guilty” because at least three kids narc’ed on me.  I was selling 50+ sticks a day for a while until I got caught and my  product confiscated.  They knew right where to find it – a bag full of Jolly Ranchers in my locker under my gym shorts and just over $20 in loose change in another bag.

Some life lesson there, huh? Not a “Hey Lemur King, great job on budding capitalism and economic principles” but “You aren’t getting this back and if you do it again we’ll suspend your sorry little ass.”

Perhaps the lack of leniency was because their patience was worn thin by that point… since January I had put vaseline on all the toilet seats and as many doorknobs as I could before I ran out of goop, put the science teacher’s desk up on top of two other desks in the classroom, and rubbed graphite from the drafting class pencil sharpener on my arm and said I was abused.

Note:  Once you say “hey guys watch this”, rub graphite on your arm, and even jokingly open up the “that bruise is there because my parents beat me” can of worms, nothing you say is going to head off a nice little visit with your now-very-angry parents, a principle that looks like Barry Manilow with a mustache and five-o’clock shadow, your counselor, and two additional teachers beyond the one that brought the whole thing up (Snidely again).  I am not making that up.  Didn’t make up much of the Jolly Rancher story either.  Or the vaseline and desk part either.

I switched to selling beer and wine coolers to classmates off-campus to pay for my Jolly Rancher habit.  All I can say is that once you have hit bottom, the Betty Ford clinic has a program for Ranchers, too.

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And He Walks On Water, Too!!

UPDATE:  Mayors of Philly, Phoenix, and Atlanta seek a chunk of the bailout money citing tough times.  Would you believe that every single one of them is a democrat?  You bet you would.  It seems a democrat will 9 times out of 10 have this little blind spot about the size of an eighteen-wheeler that prevents them from seeing that when you get a bailout the money actually has to come from somewhere, and if everyone is having rough times and you expect a handout, you’re just being a whiny bitch.

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Investors Business Daily has a nice compilation (not vetted by me, sorry) that shows just why he should be the new Messiah (O’bamessiah).  He’s going to do better than water to wine, he’d going to turn financial collapse into a cornucopia of riches – spending manifold more than what we spend now but w/o raising taxes on most all of us.  I think they did a good job laying stuff out in neat orderly categories.

A Checklist Of Obama’s Many Promises

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Few presidential candidates have made more specific promises to American voters than Barack Obama. They came so fast and furious in the latter part of the campaign, you’d be excused for not keeping up. So as a public service, we’ve put together a handy checklist of some of the biggest Obama promises — culled from his “Blueprint for Change,” his campaign speeches and advertisements. Clip it. Save it. And see how he did in four years.

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Read More: Election 2008

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Taxes

• Give a tax break to 95% of Americans.

• Restore Clinton-era tax rates on top income earners.

• “If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime. Not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing.”

• Dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes.

• Give American businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create in the U.S.

• Eliminate capital gains taxes for small business and startup companies.

• Eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000.

• Expand the child and dependent care tax credit.

• Expand the earned income tax credit.

• Create a universal mortgage credit.

• Create a small business health tax credit.

• Provide a $500 “make work pay” tax credit to small businesses.

• Provide a $1,000 emergency energy rebate to families.

Energy

• Spend $15 billion a year on renewable sources of energy.

• Eliminate oil imports from the Middle East in 10 years.

• Increase fuel economy standards by 4% a year.

• Weatherize 1 million homes annually.

• Ensure that 10% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012.

Environment

• Create 5 million green jobs.

• Implement a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

• Get 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.

Labor

• Sign a fair pay restoration act, which would overturn the Supreme Court’s pay discrimination ruling.

• Sign into law an employee free choice act — aka card check — to make it easier for unions to organize.

• Make employers offer seven paid sick days per year.

• Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2009.

National security

• Remove troops from Iraq by the summer of 2010.

• Cut spending on unproven missile defense systems.

• No more homeless veterans.

• Stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq.

• Finish the fight against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorists.

Social Security

• Work in a “bipartisan way to preserve Social Security for future generations.”

• Impose a Social Security payroll tax on incomes above $250,000.

• Match 50% of retirement savings up to $1,000 for families earning less than $75,000.

Education

• Demand higher standards and more accountability from our teachers.

Spending

• Go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don’t need and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.

• Slash earmarks.

Health care

• Lower health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year.

• Let the uninsured get the same kind of health insurance that members of Congress get.

• Stop insurance companies from discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

• Spend $10 billion over five years on health care information technology.

(Source:  IBD)

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Global Warming is Such a Crock of Poo.

Great new news on the damage estimate. The tab will run to 45 Trillion dollars. For the record, that is:

$45,000,000,000,000 (28.86 Trillion Euros)

Luckily, it is rumored that the UN already backs this assessment but is insisting that the US pay no more than 83% of the tab. This is a 7% reduction from anything else the US has chipped in for in the past. Great news folks! It means your taxes will only go up by 37% compounded quarterly.

I’m going to post this link from yesterday again, just because it’s valid. Kudos to my boss who passed it on to me.

[Yesterday’s Link]

Maybe NASA should put up another satellite and cherry pick some more data to prove that it is bad?

Wow, if global warming doesn’t kill us (even though the SLC swears we deserve it), then it looks like water will kill us by dint of it’s absence. Let’s put this in a cynical kind of perspective: We are all going to die. Now, doesn’t that help keep you from hyperventilating until you barf on your Gucci loafers?

And now, on to the article that should give us all hope. It’s just an excerpt, and will take you just to the point of violent nausea but will not push you over the edge. Maybe.

$45 trillion needed to combat warming

TOKYO – The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday. The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth. “Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said. A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels. Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans. Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July. The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century. The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy. Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, the report said. That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_iea_climate_change

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