Say Anything Blog

I just hope that he’s running for something else…

I seriously hope that Jay Nixon is not our next governor.

This guy’s parents didn’t expect the state to punish their son - they took matters into their own hands and gave away his car:

In that episode, a state trooper stopped a sport-utility vehicle about 1:20 a.m. on Interstate 90 in Bellevue after he noticed the vehicle drifting across traffic lanes. When the trooper approached the couple inside, he found they both were naked and trying to stash an empty wine bottle.

King County District Court Judge Linda Jacke ordered 24 months of probation; a 90-day jail term, which was suspended; attendance at a DUI victims’ panel; and fines that totaled $1,718.

His family presented documentation showing that his SUV has been donated to a charity.

And, Jacke was told, the young man’s girlfriend has left him.

“The price he paid at home was far greater than what he paid in court,” said the judge.

“Fully Refundable” get a new meaning:

WASHINGTON (CNN)—President Bush on Friday proposed a temporary, broad-based tax relief package aimed at spurring the nation’s slowing economy.

Right now, President Bush is said to want an income tax rebate that would be generated by eliminating the 10 percent tax bracket, which applies to roughly the first $8,000 of income for single filers and the first $16,000 of income for married couples filing jointly.

Democrats could get on board with an income tax rebate if it’s fully refundable, meaning that everyone with earned income would get the full rebate, even if they didn’t make enough money to owe income tax, said Furman.

This is just like the Earned Income Credit wealth redistrubution which already exists. If it’s not tax relief, why call it as such?

This irritates the heck out of me. Any family with as little as 250 acres risks losing their land after 2010 due to the inheritance tax relief disappearing coupled rising land values (which is worse than the AMT ever dreamed of being) and the Democrats want to expand welfare instead of providing honest tax relief.

Update:
Please ignore the first comment (unrelated to the post) and feel free to contribute if you have something relevant to say. Otherwise make your own posting for your rants.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/livenewsevents

Sky news is reporting that Benazir Bhutto died after being targeted by a gun & suicide bomber attack.

Via Drudge:

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

It’s been easy to understand why Poland, Romania, and other Eastern European countries have been such great allies of the US for the last 15 years - they value their freedom because they still remember what it’s like not to have any.

It’s nice to finally see somebody make this comparison:
1. GW alarmists cry about renewable fuels and other ways to combat GW since, reasoning that, among other things, the poor will starve if Earth’s temperatures rise:

Mounting political panic over carbon emissions has encouraged politicians in European and America to raise targets for the biofuel content in a litre of petrol.

2. World increases ethanol production in response.

“There is a new demand component,” Shayle Shagam, a livestock analyst at USDA, said. “Livestock producers have to bid against the ethanol industry to get supplies of corn.”

3. Food prices rise.

The USDA predicts that food prices will rise by up to 3.5 per cent this year as farmers rein in output in response to feedstock costs.

heh.
Dash for green fuel pushes up price of meat in US

I guess I’ll have to eat more deer this year…

It’s time to consider changes to the 14th amendment:
Pleading to keep families intact

As the government’s crackdown on illegal immigrant workers has intensified in recent months, so have the consequences for a large group of U.S. citizens: American-born children of illegal immigrants.

At least the author was realistic:

“Kids often pay for the bad decisions of their parents. If you do something wrong that sends you to jail, well, your kids suffer for that. If you are careless with your mortgage and lose your house, your kids suffer along with you,” he said. The parents “knew what they were doing when they had kids here, knowing that they were still illegal immigrants.”

I think that the media and lawmakers need to keep in mind who these people are:  criminals and scofflaws.

I’m in favor of encouraging legal immigration and I think that we need to improve the process and increase the numbers of immigrants taken into the US each year, but I also think that we need to treat those who ignore our laws as the criminals they are.

A rare media story appears to support the Bush Administration in two of the US attorney firings:

Area U.S. attorney lauded in gun cases

The [Western MO] office could have been a prosecution model for two who were fired, Justice Department report shows.

At least two of the former U.S. attorneys fired last winter were criticized for their inattention to gun prosecutions, according to documents released recently as part of Congress’ investigation.

A performance review of former U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden of Nevada noted that his staff lawyers “failed to consistently follow (Department of Justice) policies with regard to firearms prosecutions.”

For Carol Lam, former U.S. attorney in Southern California, the criticism was more pointed.

“The president has made clear he expects gun crime to be a significant effort, but (the Southern District of California) has only brought a fraction of the cases of other extra-large districts,” the evaluation read. “Despite its size and population it ranks 91 out of 93 districts in terms of average numbers of firearms cases since (fiscal year) 2000, doing only an average of 18 cases.”

Lam also was criticized for the “modest” quantity of crimes-against-children cases filed in Southern California.

According to U.S. attorney caseload statistics released recently, her district filed four child pornography and abuse cases in 2005, while prosecutors in western Missouri filed 47, the sixth-most out of 93 districts.

It appears to me that these two had ample time to realize that their performance was not sufficient prior to their dismissals.

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

GAAKH!  Now humans are polluting the neighborhood.  This never would have happened if Algore had been elected.

“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.

Abdussamatov’s work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists…

...who compete with him for funding.

“His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion,” said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England’s Oxford University.

no kidding

“And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report.” (Related: “Global Warming ‘Very Likely’ Caused by Humans, World Climate Experts Say” [February 2, 2007].)

why do these lunatics continue to unquestioningly refer to the same politically motivated studies?

Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that “the idea just isn’t supported by the theory or by the observations.”

Theories are just that, theory.  Observations:  gee it’s getting warmer here, so that must be due to human activity. (more...)

This normally uninterestng article shows the value of a steel bumper vs. the fancy plastic crap that you get on cars nowadays:

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that most bumpers on midsize cars do little to prevent costly damage to vehicles ... only three midsize vehicles ... sustained less than $1,500 in repairs from each of the four crash tests.

In one test of the front-end at 6 mph, four vehicles ... had damages of more than $4,000.

By comparison, the Institute conducted similar tests on a 1981 Ford Escort and found the front-end test only caused $86 in damages.

What they don’t mention is that the $86 repair cost makes the Escort a total loss.

I saw this listing of top 10 worst point drops for the Dow and thought it was interesting when compared vs. president.  GW Bush and Clinton are at 5 and 4, respectively, with 2 of Bush’s worst days being a direct result of 9/11:

Fast Facts: Top 10 Worst Point Drops for Dow Jones Industrial Average
The following are the top ten worst day of losses for the Dow Jones industrial average. From left to right are rank, date, points down and percentage down:
1 — 9/17/01: -684.81 points, -7.13 percent Bush 43
2 — 4/14/00: -617.78, -5.66 Clinton
3 — 10/27/97: -554.26, -7.18 Clinton
4 — 8/31/98: -512.61, -6.37 Clinton
5 — 10/19/87: -508.00, -22.61 Reagan
6 — 3/12/01: -436.37, -4.10 Bush 43
7 — 2/27/07: -416.02, -3.30 Bush 43
8 — 7/19/02: -390.23, -4.64 Bush 43
9 — 9/20/01: -382.92, -4.37 Bush 43
10 — 10/12/00: -379.21, -3.63 Clinton

The most interesting thing to me is that Bush 41 “it’s the economy, stupid” had no days in the top 10.  On top of that, the recovering economy that Clinton interited didn’t have any days during his first term in the top 10.  Infact, 3 of the 10 worst days occurred after Y2k, but before 9/11 (the 2000 recession which extended into 2001).

All I’ve got to say is WOW:
11 Dead, Over 100 Hurt at Kite Flying Festival in Pakistan

A 16-year-old girl and a school boy, 12, died after their throats were slashed by metal kite strings in separate incidents. Two people were electrocuted while they tried to recover kites tangled in overhead power cables, Bano said.

A 13-year-old boy fell to his death from the roof of his home as he tried to catch a stray kite, and a 35-year-old woman fell off the roof of her home trying to stop her son from running after a stray kite, Bano said.

You’ve gotta love this headline from the KC Star (McClatchy):

Part 1: Hot fuel for you means cold cash for big oil, retailers

(The heading on their main website left “retailers” off and only blames “Big Oil")

When gasoline gets hot, it expands. But U.S. fuel pumps don’t adjust for the bigger volume, and it’s costing American consumers about $2.3 billion a year.

So when retailers (both small & large, but rarely owned by “Big Oil") overcharge for fuel due to erroneous dispensing systems, then we should blame the large oil companies.

One could also draw the conclusion that, since the Bush administration invited energy companies to provide input regarding US energy policy, any overcharging of gas is Bush’s fault. Afterall, he and Cheney are in bed with “Big Oil”, right?

I figure that if you really care that much about this, quit buying fuel at stations with above ground storage tanks. If you’re smart enough to understand that hot fuel costs more, you should be smart enough to look around to determine if the statin uses above ground or subterranean tanks before buying fuel.

A database of fuel temperatures at 1,000 retail stations compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, obtained by The Star, reveals that fuel in this country is sold at nearly 65 degrees when averaged year-round and across the entire country.

(vs. the 60 degree standard)

Via Drudge:

Humans’ beef with livestock: a warmer planet

It’s not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that’s the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that’s more than the emissions caused by transportation.

Eat more Deer: It’s free, low in fat, and helps reduce auto insurance costs.  (Though I doubt that PETA and other eco-terrorist groups would want that conclusion drawn from this article.)

Here’s another article (this time from McClatchy) about how the military is full of poor, uneducated rubes, is failing miserably at recruiting, and has resorted to filling it’s ranks with old folks, criminals, and by bribing foreigners with citizenship. (You may need to log in to view the article, but it’s free)

Meanwhile the rich shield their children from the horrors of military service.

WASHINGTON | Fighting nearly four years in a two-front war has put unprecedented stress on the Army and the Marine Corps.

In addition to raising questions about whether an all-volunteer force can be maintained over the long term, it also draws attention to how the sacrifice from American society is not being distributed equally.

It then goes on to perpetuate the scare tactics of bringing back the draft…

That means Army recruiters will have to sign up an additional 7,000 men and women every year, when they are already struggling and standards have been dropped to meet current quotas.

What irritates me the most is when these reporters mentions that no one in leadership has advocated bringing back the draft, then spend a great deal of time discussing it and interviewing ‘experts’ who think that the draft should be reinstated. To me, this is dishonest reporting intended to stir up fears among readers. (more...)