Nom de plume: Rivrdog

How Bromantic!

The "First Gay President" magazine cover.

H/T to Uncle

Okay then, now the realpolitik: this is a lesson in how not to do politics.

First, take this to the bank: the gay community is not a serious asset for the President. He already had them in his pocket, because, except for the few "Log Cabin" gay rethuglicans, they're already dummycrats. He's not converting anyone with this message. Are there any lazy gays who need energizing? Again, maybe a paltry few, but most I know are VERY politically active for the Left already, so the Obumbler didn't pick up many votes by "energizing" that base, either.

Second, he HAS succeeded in energizing the GOP base with this issue, in a way that the Romnizer could only have had wet dreams about, and there may well be some Christian or Jewish undecided voters who will push the Romnoid button for sure because of this. My guess: far more of those than any pro-gay votes just changed loyalties.

Net loss of votes for Obama? Well, we aren't voting this week (except in the primary in OR, and Obummer is not seriously opposed here), but if the national polls are to be believed, the Wahn just lost 7% to Romniddy. More important, five Democratic Senators runnng for re-election have just spent the weekend distancing themselves from The First Gay President.

Many more gems like that, and Obama will retire 1-20-13. If he does, his first term and his campaign for re-election will become THE textbook case of how NOT to do politics.

Now, which one of his Two Left Feet will Romney trip over this week?

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 knew Ronald Reagan, and you may NOT compare yourself to him, Obama

I knew Ronald Reagan because being stationed in CA during the late 1960s then the late 70s to early 80s, he was the talk of the State. The much-more-respectful MSM reported more accurately on the President then.

Ronald Reagan started out as a union guy, President of the Screen Actor's Guild, but at the time, the "wild-eyed socialists"* in Hollywood were in the minority, not the majority like now. There were a LOT of WW2 veterans calling each other Brother and Sister at Union meetings then, and there was at least SOME respect for the USA amongst the members of SAG.

After his SAG stint, Reagan went on to get elected Lieutenant Governor, then Governor of California, which, at the time really WAS "paradise on earth" (yes, readers, I could easily have been a dope-smoking hippie myself, they were graciously accepted most places then, as somewhat of a side-show, but they were accepted there).

Reagan went on to become President, taking over from Jimmy Carter, who dispite being a Naval Academy graduate, and a small businessman, made a piss-poor President. I had a fellow B52 crew-member who bought a residence in Riverside in '81, and had to pay a 18% mortgage rate (and the rates were FALLING then!), IIRC. I rented, was scared out of the home-buyer's market.

President Reagan's Airborne Command Post used to land at my duty station, March AFB (Now March Air Reserve Base), which was then the headquarters for the Strategic Air Command's Fifteenth Air Force, and it was home to double-Squadron wings of both B52s and KC-135 tankers. The Presidential Airborne Command Post was a brand-new E-4 (Boeing 747), which was outfitted as the President's place to fight a nuke war with the USSR from, even before Air Force One, it was THAT important. I got a VIP tour of the top-secret aircraft, which was later featured (a mock-up of it was featured) in the HBO movie "By Dawn's Early Light".

Gawd, this is digressy, isn't it?

*The point here was supposed to be: I knew Ronald Reagan, I probably knew him better than you do, Presient Obama. He was NOT a "wild-eyed socialist", but YOU ARE. Plus, you're a liar to boot, Obama, and I never knew Reagan to lie. 

Oh, BTW, President Obama, Warren Buffet, who has put up with you to an excessive degree, has just signaled you to quit calling your "tax the producers out of existence" plan the "Buffet Rule". Do the old, sick guy a favor and stop with that nonsense. Don't bother to try to call it the "Reagan Rule", either. Reagan wanted to lower taxes for EVERYONE, not just the dependable sloths who will always vote to get their "free stuff". Oh, and quit smoking that history-revisionist crack-pipe, Mister President. It's not legal yet. If you want it to be, fire Biden from your ticket and put Ron Paul on there.... 

Why we fail

Ever since the "Great Recession" started, my State of Oregon has been two full percentage points behind the national unemployment statistics, which are probably pencil-whipped, add at least 5 percentage points to all such stats you see. Oregonians are in that hole for a variety of reasons, high taxes are probably the one thing keeping most business depressed, but excessive State regulation stacked onto excessive National regulation probably has something to do with it also.

Oregon sucks for business, unless, of course, you are a Hollywood liberal who wants to make a film here, and then the State bends over backward, putting State employees to work in your producer's office to "smooth the way" (BTW, those folks all work for the Governor directly). "Green" also gets huge tax breaks, but if you just want to set up a stamping mill to stamp out a particular piece for say, the auto industry, fuggeddabboudditt.

All of this gives bad impressions to all those Daddy Warbucks types out there, and, like it or not, they have the moolah to actually put business in this state.

What to do.

Well, if you are a liberal like the Governor, you sign up for a class to help you understand the poor business climate.

You go to Portland State U, my alma mater, and there you will find the "Institute for Sustainable Solutions". No, I'm not kidding, they actually TEACH that crap. When I matriculated in 1966, PSU gave a good basic education, more night than day classes to students, many of them Veterans, who wanted to get ahead in life. There were few of these "puff" classes, and certainly no entire Institutes devoted to teaching this sort of puffery. But I digress....

At that prestigious (in Portland, anyway) Institute, they are wondering if those somber measurements of GDP (Gross Domestic Product, the total worth of all good and services sold/consumed in the US) is actually the best way to measure the value of an economy.

Dollars are SOOOOOOO old-fashioned as a measurement, so Twentieth Century, says the Institute.

Let's measure FEEEEEELINGS instead, says the Institute. So, the Institute proposes measuring the GPI ("Genuine Progress Indicator") instead. What is a GPI composed of? 26 things, according to the fishwrap's article on same, but let's examine the name for now.

"Genuine". The word is supposed to mean truthful, real, authentic. What about this measurement gives itself the right to be "genuine"? The article doesn't say. One surmises that they just needed a "G" word to put in front of "Progress" to hide it's association with all things lefty.

"Progress" This one's easy-peasy. PROGRESSive. Get it?

So we have the "Real because we say so, list of progressive things we think indicates satisfaction with life". Yeah, that's a mouthful, but that's what the Institute is trying to cram down our throats as being just as important a measurement as the basic, definable, dollars and cents of the GDP. This GPI is your basic moving target, people. Since there are REAL bean-counters out there who CAN and DO point out when the Feddle Gummint messes with the GDP stats, there is a source of counter-point if those stats get pencil-whipped. This new Indicator has twenty-six indices of what? It comes up with what? The "World Happiness Report" (issued by the Earth Institute, no less). Who gives a flying fark? The followers of Mother Gaia and the cult of Holy Sustainability are those who give a fark. Not we filk who work for a living, or are living off the fruits of working for a living for 46 years like your blogger.

Scary, isn't it?

This is why we fail. This is a "Genuine" guarantee of failure. This is nothing but a way for the Left to claim we all smell like roses when we just stepped into a bucket of crap.

There is truly no hope. There is especially no hope when the Guv'ner sits in this class, lapping up this poison like a kitten lapping up warm milk.

Watch TV, get stupid

Example: Yesterday, the local Evening news I watched, (KATU, the ABC affiliate) had a story on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Oh, the emotion! Oh, now we can have "closure".

Wait a farging minute, boneheads. 100 years have passed since the ill-fated (and poorly-built and operated) liner went down. Who is left to "close"? No survivors of the shipwreck remain, the last one died several years ago, IIRC. Probably few sons or daughters of victims remain, either, since they would have to be at least 99 years old. Maybe a few grandchildren of victims remain, but they'd be at least in their 70's, and those people grew up to be adults before "closure" became the fad it is now, so they probably don't miss their grandpas and grandmas, either, never having seen them.

When someone says "closure" to you, they are probably a mush-for-brains liberal product of the past two generations of our failed educational system. Closure is when you shovel the dirt on the casket, or, at the very last moment, when the insurance company issues the check if you are the beneficiary.

Closure, my ass, but it's not the worst example. In an almost-comical display just last week, a Civil War soldier was re-buried from wherever he had been planted, to the Willamette National Cemetary here in Stumptown. The reason given was that he had not been properly buried when he expired some time after that war. Of course, the rifle squad were Civil War re-enactors (who had a problem doing a speedy reload of their percussion-ignition, muzzle-loading rifles to fire the second volley, (the telly didn't show the third volley). Of course, some shirt-tail family member was there to receive a flag (they didn't say how many stars were on it), and of course the anchorwoman had to gravely intone, "Now the family has "closure". Be still, my retching stomach...

Second example. Afghanistan just suffered though a spate of coordinated attacks in the capital, Kabul. Most were suicide kabooms. There were a bunch of them. This ayem, I am watching Fox News' morning show, and they trot out a retired General, name of Jackson. He immediately reminded me of GEN Wesley Clark, the Clintoon apologist First Class during the Serbian War. This General Jackson opined that the attacks were NOT a military setback for Obama's Afghani policy, since they were not done by the Taliban, but by the Haqqani Network who we are at war with, but won't admit it, in Pakistan.

Oh, REALLY, General? If we have weakened the Taliban but allowed a new group to take their place as the strong terror-mongers, just HOW is that a demonstration of success?

It must be Bonehead Monday.

Are there any bets?

Will anyone bet that if a FOIA was filed on the Florida Special Prosecutor in the Zimmerman case, there would be a lot of message traffic between Eric Holder's office and those justice-denying boneheads in Florida? How about a side bet that the subject of over-charging Zimmerman with the District Attorney's Information of Felony was also discussed, with instructions from USDOJ to charge the max.

Of course, he will never be convicted of Murder Two, which requires a culpable mental state of "extreme spite", just short of planned intent. Manslaughter One would have been the appropriate charge, and it's doubtful that even that would stick.

The failure to use a Grand Jury in this case is VERY telling. The DA knew that she could never get a Grand Jury to indict Zimmerman, so she is going to try to convict him by starting with the Star Chamber method of a DA's Information.

Even the race pimps aren't swallowing this as "justice". They were very skeptical that putting this case in this slick, PeeCee DA's hands would accomplish their ends.

Justice is never supposed to be all about the DA, and when it is, it isn't justice that's being served.

About the only ones to make out well will be the scandal-mongering press (especially Fox News, I can just see Greta Van Whinerin making this her top subject for the next year or so). This is hardly the Crime of the Century, but it will be in the press' eye.

Ruh-roh! IDF cancels all military leave...

Yeah, ruh-roh. The Israeli Defense Force usually lets lots of troops go home for the High Holy Days.

Could be nothing, could be war coming.

You decide, but I'm filling all my jerry jugs...

Question for Mister President

Were you really just taken in by the pathos of it all, or did your peeps actually do any research before having you declare, "If I had a son, he'd be just like Trayvon"?

Info here. If that blog can come up with such info, why couldn't all your advisers? I maintain that they should have, and could have, since the investigation into the kid's death was almost a month along by then.

That leaves us with the un-avoidable conclusion that your "Son just like mine" comment was actually meant to deceive. If it was, you owe us all an apology, Mister President. Even if you WERE caught off-guard by the cover-up of this lad's thuggish background, you owe us a follow-up, and that follow-up had better work to turn off all the "blood-in-the-streets" rhetoric we keep hearing from the race-pimps and their Black Marxist enablers.

If there is race-rioting over this issue, Mister President, you are more at fault for starting it than any who throw the first firebombs or use the first guns.

You have a role here, Mister President. Turn off this race war before it starts. If your people think you can hide a failed economy and a failed foreign policy behind the acrid smokescreen of a race war, you are mistaken. Election Day WILL happen, and you will lose anyway, because you will have been fired by We The People. Your Chicago-stype machine will not be able to stuff enough ballot boxes to prevent your being thrown into the dustbin of history.

The only difference is, that without a race war, you will have been fired for simple incompetence, and we've had a few incompetent Presidents before, several still living, in fact. If there is a race war, you will also have been fired for fomenting it, and you will NEVER live that down. You will be reviled for the most shameful chapter of our history that any President ever wrote, and there have been plenty written before you, such as FDR's WW2 Japanese ancestry internment orders or the many railroadings of the American Indian tribes.

You owe us, Mister President. You were elected to effect positive change in this society, and no matter how you lie, you can't fit either race war OR racial appeasement politics into the category of positive change.

If you want to make positive change, support this Nation, it's economy and it's heritage. It's your duty to suppress the hegemony of racial politics, not support it. We can live in harmony in these United States ONLY if we live as One People, not as a collection of races each with it's own racial heritage celebrated as if it was a positive thing. Racial heritage is nothing, NATIONAL heritage is everything. Support your Nation, sir, or step aside for someone who will.

That is all.

Is lynching OK now?

Some in the race-pimp business (very lucrative business, that) think so.

Item: The MFWIC of the New Black Panther Party put a "reward" on the head of Zimmerman.  USAG Eric Holder gave him a pass. Bad move, this attracted the local cops, who arrested HIM as a felon in possession of a firearm.

Item: Spike Lee today tweeted what he thought was the address Zimmerman was staying at (he was wrong, Zimmerman wasn't there and hadn't been), but Spike Lee apparently thought it was OK that his peeps, numbering 250,000, should respond to the address and fetch Zimmerman (to the nearest oak tree, one surmises). Why hasn't Spike Lee been arrested for criminal conspiracy, across state lines? Seems that Eric Holder gave Spike Lee a pass, too.

Item: A bunch of kids, mostly black as noted by the surveillance cameras, skipped school at their high school to "protest Zimmerman not being arrested", but after skipping out, decided to do a flash-mob invasion of a local store and loot it. Note that that surveillance video showed a lot of hoodies being worn by the looters. Remember my advice? 

Rivrdog's prediction: There is a bad attitude afoot here. It is being exacerbated by the race pimps and the United States Attorney General, and there will be riots over this issue, I'm sure.

People will die in those riots.

Will you die? Not if you're prepared to defend yourself. Prepare your mind now for defense. If you follow the advice in this blog, you already have the appropriate arms.

At some point, when the rioting starts or, hopefully just before that point, I will warn you in these pages. At that point, you adopt your highest level of personal-threat reaction preparedness.

Stand by.