Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Tuesday trespass...

...wherein we show some more examples of how the Left tramples on traditional American values.

Example One: Nanny Medicine. Watching the noon news on Channel eight here in Stumptown, I heard the newsbabe try to explain a new definition of "obese", which, BTW, USED to have the meaning of more than 30 pounds over ideal weight. The "new" definition of "obese" apparently means flabby-looking, because the reporter explained that one can be "obese" AT one's ideal weight. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to use scare tactics to scare people into being underweight, or becoming gym rats, or both. I reject it.

Example Two: Qualification of Presidents: Obama does not meet the qualification listed in the Constitution because he is NOT a "natural born citizen" as required, then defined in the SCOTUS case Minor v. Happersett. In that case, a "natural born citizen" was defined as, "all children born in a country of parents who were it's citizens". There is no argument that Barack Hussein Obama was not born of parents who were both citizens. There is argument that he was born here. US District Court Judge Anderson of TN  has cited Minor v. Happersett as being on point. Sheriff Arpaio thinks that this is important enough to let superior courts decide whether Obama should even be on ballots across the country. Read about this new angle on the "birther" controversy here. I support Sheriff Joe in his quest to have the truth come out. This Nation could stand the minor constitutional crisis caused by discovering that Obama was never qualified to hold office, at this point, but if Obama wins another term of office, and THEN a court tells him he is not qualified, there is a high potential for a MAJOR Constitutional crisis. A gun sort of crisis, if you know what I mean, Verne.

Example Three: The Fourth Estate as Obama shills. It seems to me that there are rules about this. At what point do the rules get enforced? When is someone going to start accumulating all the minutes and hours of TeeVee time used strictly to re-elect Obama, and the column-miles of newsprint used for the same reason, and decree that said media either have to give equal time to the Romnizer or be classed for tax purposes and purposes of license renewals as political shills?

Example Four: We're not Los Angeles, and don't need their air pollution rules in Oregon. It seems that City of Portland garbage rates are about to rise by almost 10% just so the garbage collectors can buy new trucks that meet the most stringent emissions rules. Those would be Kalifornica's rules, which are written for the extreme example of the Los Angeles Basin airshed, arguably the worst place a large city has been built, on the entire planet. The topography and local micro-climate makes it impossible to get rid of man OR nature-generated air pollution, and rules for emissions were written to consider those facts, but then, those rules have been foisted off on the entire rest of the Nation, which does not need them because the rest of the Nation does not have the airshed problems that Los Angeles has. No matter, the insane Portland City Council, led by the Gay Pedophile Mayor, Sam Adams, brought in the CA rules, and so all the trucks have to be changed out. No matter that the current trucks still have life left, the haulers must buy new ones, and oh, while you're at it, City Council, did you remember to mandate that those trucks use "bio-diesel" fuel at $7.00+ per gallon? That stupid rule, which the City Fleet is, itself, saddled with, would make the perfect capper for this insane additional expense in an already insanely-expensive city.

Example Five: When the history books tell us that Liquor Prohibition failed as a social-control experiment, let's try it all over again! The self-same insane City of Portland, which has forced foodcart entrepreneurs into what used to be called by the Nazis, "lagers" or concentrations, smarted recently when the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, acting on their legal counsel's advice that such establishments, once forced to tie themselves down, had to be treated, for purposes of liquor licensing, as brick-and-mortar restaurants. They issued a liquor license (beer and wine only) to one food cart, in the lager known locally as "Cartlandia", no doubt, after the TV series "Portlandia". So the city is mightily cheese(burgered)ed off, and has filed suit against the State liquor agency. The Rivrdog blog, no real friend of the OLCC, nevertheless sides with them on this one, and hopes their legal beagles turn into legal pitbulls and rip the City a new one.

That's enuff for today. Suffice it to say I do NOT forgive these trespasses.

Thursday Potpourri

Item: The Right comes up on the wrong side of this idea, that all OTC (Over The Counter) drugs are a better deal than prescription (R/X) drugs of the identical formulation. Example: Omeprazole, aka, Prilosec. It's been out for decades, and it's been OTC for at least a decade, but the price is still on the order of a dollar per pill, when by now, it ought to be down to a dime or less. There are other examples. What is going to happen with this FDA ruling is that some widely-prescribed drugs that are losing their patents (patents timing out) and would have become very inexpensive for sufferers to use, will now NOT get cheap, and their OTC prices will be maintained at artificially high levels. So, just moving a drug out of the R/X class and into the OTC class is not a guarantee of saving anyone any money, and in fact, some of these patent-expired drugs will show steep price rises when they hit the OTC counters. Mostly, the drug companies benefit from this, not the patients. Oh, and that thing in the article about having to go to see the doc every time a R/X is adjusted? BullTweet! You CALL your doctor's charge nurse, and the nurse handles that. I do that all the time and there is never a bill for it.

Item: The case against Roger Clemens. If you know baseball, and I'm a fan, you know that there was a sea change in top-line pitchers about 10-15 years ago. The very best pitchers, like Clemens, USED to be "location" pitchers. They could consistently put the ball within a couple of inches of where they wanted it, and scouting told them where they wanted it. Now, the best pitchers are "power" pitchers, who have the ability to throw 95 mph fastballs and sliders, at ordinary accuracy, for 6 innings or better. "Location" pitchers are now closers, who only have to throw for two innings at most, never more than 35-40 pitches total. That just the evolution of the game, but Clemens was caught up in it. As the best "location" pitcher on the mound, the game passed him by because he couldn't toss the screamers time after time. He tried to pump himself into better shape via chemicals, so as to prolong his career at the top of the heap. I can't blame him for that, and the idiotic doping trial is just that, idiotic.

Item: Afghanistan. I had occasion, night before last, to listen to a local college Professor expound on the 'Stan. Very knowledgeable guy, Prof. Grant Farr of Portland State University, spent a lot of time over there, including through the Soviet occupation. His take, in a nutshell, is that Obama's Grand Plan won't work. Why it won't work is that Obama doesn't understand the nature of the country. First of all, Afghanistan is NOT a "country" in any real understanding of the term. It's a region of three main tribal groups, each having major problems with the other, and each being unlikely to ever cede ANY authority to the others within it's own tribal influence area. If that wasn't bad enough, our whole "nation building" exercise in the 'Stan is based on building a modern national Army which can hold it's own, and hold the Nation together. The major problem is that there is 70% total illiteracy in the 'Stan, and of the Army recruits, maybe one in ten can read and write, but probably not. You simply can't raise a modern Army from recruits who can't read or write, and expecially from those who not only can't read or write, but don't want to learn to do so, lest they be labeled as blasphemous by their local imams, who DO read and write, and want to hold that over their parishoners' heads. It all adds up to FAIL, just as it added up to FAIL for every major nation which has tried in the past century (we are the third world power in the past 100 years to try to "civilize" the 'Stan).

Item: STFU, Christie. Yep, others look at Tubby and see the same potential horror story I've seen.

Final Item: I realize that Zoos are places where humans may learn about other animal species, but you have to have just a LITTLE smarts before you go. Consider NOT dressing your little tyke to look like a baby zebra (prey animal) and parking him in front of the lion's den...

Earth Day, 2012

There's some history behind Earth Day, you need to go to the Wiki and read it. You actually only need to read the first paragraph, because it will tell you (between the lines, I'm sure it wasn't written that way on purpose or the Wiki would have been deleted by now). Note in the Wiki that the original Earth Day was all about stewardship of the planet and it's natural environment, which is what it should be about today, but isn't.

Note also, in the Wiki, that the United Nations hijacked Earth Day three years ago. It is now just another tool of that anti-national-sovereignty body, which uses and recommends socialism as it's mechanism to destroy sovereign capitalist governments.

When the UN hijacked Earth Day, they brought in the "Mother Earth" thing. Back when the original Earth Day was proclaimed, the Mother Earth or Mother Nature thing was a joke, as in the margarine commercial. Now it is a religion, and as such, is the only religion the United Nations recognizes (overtly, they recognize Islam under the table).

So, we have had a progression here, a progressive change. It's just another one of the progressive changes that wound up as a socialist tool, but environmentalism went from "conservation", as advanced one hundred years ago by Teddy Roosevelt, to Earth Day (let's ALL save the Planet) in 1970, to today's version (we're acolytes of Gaia, the Earth Goddess).

The only true version is the original. We can use the bounty of nature, but we must conserve it, so there will always be some.

That's what your Rivrdog follows as his outdoor creed. I recycle, too, in fact, devoted yesterday morning to getting the non-curbside recyclables together to take to City Hall, where, once a year, their huge parking lot is used for actual GOOD, and becomes a massive recycling center for the hard-to-recycle items.

If you conserve nature, you've done your duty to the planet. Socialism does not count as doing your duty to the planet, nor does prostrating yourself before the false idol of Gaia.

I might not be a power grid engineer...

...but I know a SERIOUS lack of engineering when I see it.

For once, the daily fishwrapper did itself proud, and provided a concise, useful look at the alternative-power mess in Oregon, my Oregon. RTWT, then come back, I'll be waiting.

I might not be a fish biologist, but...

Here's a new meme re-branded meme.

"I might not be..." presents the common-sense approach to issues that have "gone all technical" and now ordinary folks get disparaged and laughed down for trying to expound on them.

Curse those technocrats who claim the entire world of knowledge to themselves, anyway.

So, your Rivrdog blog will spend some time with this meme.

In fact, I already have. My recent post on electric cars was an "I might not be an automotive engineer, but I know what I want and should get in an electric car" post.

The "I might not be..." posts also point out something that this blog has become noted for, and that's holding up our poor educational establishment to the light of history, showing what it could be, has been, but isn't now. I might not be an engineer, but I can read engineering articles and become somewhat informed. I might not be a fish biologist, but I can and DO read up on invasive species, and coupling my interest with that of a conservationist having a 1950s-1960s basic science education (much better than today's), I can see why there is huge danger in crossing ecosystem boundaries with different species. In Oregon, we put our money where our mouths are on this subject, and every boater pays a $5/year fee (including the Holy Paddlers, who howl about having to pay the fee, because paddling is supposed to be freeeeeee) to support research into and control of, invasive species.

So, never be afraid to stand up for your basic education. Just because someone else might have degrees in a narrow field which you lack, and maybe even be or have been employed by the Government to use those degrees for Government Planning Bureaus, or perhaps received grants of money to study those narrow subjects, it does not mean that YOUR common-sense approach to that same subject is somehow insufficient for human understanding.

In fact, these narrow fields of academic and scientific concentaration frequently become "in-bred" with their high priests and acolytes forming what is nothing but a belief system, or religion, around that body of knowledge. When those fields of endeavor and study become inbred like that, no good can ever come of the furtherance of those missions.

If you don't believe me, look at how the Endangered Species Act, a good concept involving the basic precepts of conservation of species, became fouled with political ambition and is now used almost exclusively as a tool for furtherance of Government control and seizure of privately-held resources, as well as re-distribution of wealth from the private/successful sector to the public-assistance (unsuccessful) sector.

I could go on, perhaps even write books, and I will, eventually, but for now, I'm just taking notes, and YOU should take note, too.

YOU might not be a historian, but if you can write down your observations, you fill the role of one in a good and useful manner.

I want an electric car

...but none of the apple i-crapple I see offered today meets my specs.

Here are my specs.

• Range: 40-60 miles on battery, HONEST miles, not test-track miles. Hills and all. Heat or A/C on. Freeway miles at 65 mph.
• Fast recharge: with a 50-amp, 240-volt outlet, capable of 30 minute recharge from emergency low-battery warning to 80% (takes a VERY spendy recharge setup). With less current, longer recharge times, but no worse than 5-hour with 120-volt 30-amp service. Emergency recharge capability at far lesser currents, i.e.: a week of daylight with 300 watts of solar or wind power.
• If not fitted, at least wired for input from a high-efficiency diesel generator set of 12KW, and if fitted, that genset capable of reverse output to power a receptacle (i.e., the whole house). This fitted genset would power the car on the level as long as there was diesel juice to burn, at freeway speed. The genset might even be optional, in a light trailer to be towed.
• Seats 4 in comfort, luggage space for 4 two-suiter bags plus smaller duffel.
• AWD, full time. Traction control, re-gen ABS braking.
• 10KBTU air conditioning. 15KBTU heat plant, which could be diesel-fired (lots of those around in marine service), OR, the heat/AC could be a function of running the genset on low-speed/less cylinders if that was an engine option for it.
• Price comes in at $20-25K without genset, $30-35K with one installed.

What I DON'T need in an electric car.

• I don't need 0-100 times in the funny-car category. 12-second 0-60 time, and 75 mph top speed are fine with me.
• I don't need huge range. This car is not going to have to travel out of the City on it's battery. If I want to take a Road Trip, it will have the generator to do that on, or I won't use the car.
• I don't need high style. The car doesn't have to have the coefficient of drag of a stealth bomber, in fact, if it looked like a Checker Marathon, I would probably jump with joy.

Car people, are you listening? Romney, you have car blood in your veins. If you get to be POTUS, are you going to see to it we get these choices?

H/T to Peace or Freedom, fka 4RWWs. Neither one of us are engineers, Dave, but we both know what we want and what we don't want.

Genocide by Malaria?

Fifty years ago, Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring", the book which claimed that the widespread use of DDT was going to eliminate all the songbirds from the Earth (and eagles and all other birds). The world believed her, and followed her suggestion, which was to ban the manufacture and use of the chemical almost everywhere.

The problem was, that with the then-widespread use of DDT and long-range aircraft to spray it with, we had just about eliminated the most deadly pest in the world fifty years ago, the malaria-carrying mosquito. Once the ban went into place, the mosquito rebounded rapidly, and since then, untold millions of tropical-world residents have died of malaria, borne almost exclusively by the mosquito, with most of the victims being babies and children.

Now, if any one person, under any other circumstances at all, could be directly linked to the killing of millions of innocent babies and children, the entire civilized world (and most of the less-civilized world as well) would howl for their head.

To my knowledge, no one ever linked Rachel Carson to this form of intentional genocide.

Why not?

Answer below the fold...

"Green" lies

...but I'm redundant. Sorry.

Just got an item I ordered on the 'Net, a ZTS MBT-1 battery tester. This is an industrial-duty unit which actually runs a programmed test-by-pulse-load on the battery, then calculates how much of it's life is left. It is the only such tester, an expensive item, but vital when you cannot afford to go out into the field with weak batteries (and some are weak right out of the bulk-packs).

I ordered the tester from 1000bulbs.com, an outfit I've used before.

The package arrived from Garland, TX in three days, very fast. It was in a box of about a cubic foot volume. Opening it, the box turned out to be full to the brim with plastic-foam peanuts, an old and discredited packing material. They are the bane of landfills, since they cannot be recycled, and the slightest breeze blows them afar when the garbage truck tips it's load.

The tester, of course, was wrapped in the usual plastic "armor-hide" blister-pack, which is also not recyclable.

So, inside of a cardboard box bragging how green and recycled/recyclable it is, were two products known for being non-recyclable.

Is that a lie?

You bet.

"Green" is a brag, not a fact. Never was, never will be.

Government Motors' business plan

Design junk, build junk, invest in junk car companies overseas.

And, you cannot divest: as a taxpayer, you own 25% of this company.

Buh-bye, Chevy Volt- Updated

Bring this sucker back at HALF it's $46,500 MSRP, and include a kit to power your house with it in case of power outages, and I'll buy one. Meanwhile, GM halted production and laid off the plant.

Not gonna happen, though, so your Rivrdog gives the Volt, it's parent, Government Motors, and it's chief braggart, President Obama, a hearty, "Sic Semper, Mo-Fo".

That is all...

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Update: 030612 0832 PST: Sent by the Coyote Kid: Bill Balsamico, owner of the famouse Casa D'Ice restaurant, noted for it's tell-it-like -it-is signs, blogged (can't find his blog, though), so have to paste it up...

Balsamico notes that in recent history, there have been two notable car model failures, one from GM and one from Ford. At least though, Ford blew his own money on the Edsel, whereas GM has wasted OUR money on the Volt.

Good point, Bill!