Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Alfred Nobel must be spinning in his grave

As if the rich Texas-style BBQ I had last night didn't put me close to indigestion, this little bit of news put me over the top. Time to hurl. Keep bucket by side, etc.

By all historical notes, as well as his poetry, Alfred Nobel was quite the social liberal. He was a practical man, though, and he WOULD NOT have understood giving the Peace Prize to someone who has done nothing, nada, to promote peace from ANY perspective, left or right.

Let's list Obama's "peace accomplishments" (not a long list):

Israel/Mid-east: Bowed to the Saudi King (a despot). No other President had done that. Jawboned Israel to stop building in the Captured Territories. Ho Hum, all Presidents, left and right, have done that. Said he would talk to Iran's President I'm-a-regular-ding-dong (a despot), then threatened him with Dire Consequences over nukes (which are almost ready, according to IAEA). Ho-hum, all Presidents have made such threats. Bribed Kim Jong Il (a despot) to release a couple of Algore's snoopy reporters. All recent Presidents have bribed Kimmy, no big deal there, either. Is reducing troop strength in Iraq. No big deal, we won that war, it's time to bring them home anyway. Held off of his General's request for more troops to the Afghan war (when he heard that he was being considered for the Peace Prize, I'm sure). Big deal, the man wants to shrink the military to insignificance anyway.

Did I forget anything? MAYBE lying about his birth status to gain the position he "won" the Peace Prize for? MAYBE telling the Committee he would do ANYTHING to get the damn prize to shore up his falling prospects here in the USA?

Well, one thing is for sure. The Peace Prize Committee can REALLY pick 'em. First Jimmah Cahtuh and now Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, and the linked Wiki said that the Committee gave the Prize to Alfred Nobel's lover in 1905, presumably for her convincing of Nobel to fund the Peace Prize, showing the bought-and-paid-for nature of the Prize for the past century.

Carter and Obama, now there's a pair to REALLY draw to, and hope you pull a pair of treys, so you can say you had a winning hand.

Can you imagine the dismay of any ACTUAL peace-bringers who might have been nominated and then passed over for this fool?

I should laugh, but I can't, and the real reason I can't is that this mistake proves that Obama-grade idiocy is present all around the world.

It's not of real consequence, except that Obama-mania will now resurface, just in time for the loudest idiots to claim they won the hearts and minds for the complete conversion to Socialism that the idiot world desires for the USA.

From the Ivory Tower

...comes this little bit of horse-puckey:

"Sure, recession's over; so why not in Oregon?"

I don't know whether the "distinguished" Oregon State University prez was fooling us to get folks to read his screed, or not, but that headline is the stupidest thing I've seen yet. The recession is NOT over, and may just be warming up before we jump into a Depression. Wall Street is, as I write, on a hover, waiting to see what additional deficit-boosting tomfoolery Congress is going to come up with. The day-traders are the only investors out there, and they live in a micro-world, not the real world.

The Perfesser just doesn't get it. As a lot, Oregonians are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and the political libs who run this benighted state just don't get that. They figger that if we are socially liberal (present company excluded), we must also be fiscally liberal.

Doesn't work that way, Perfesser, and the sooner the Halls of Academe understand that, the sooner that they can pass it along to their students, the future leaders of Oregon.

Flame war

You have to be REALLY into the politics of defending the Second Amendment to understand all the references mentioned in this flame war (especially the comments), but I can assure all of you folks involved in it of one thing: your weakness is showing, and that weakness is ego.

Whether you are a "three per-center" ("threeper") or a 2A pragmatist ("prag"), you have something to lose by losing it, if you get my drift. If you are the organizer (that's YOU, B.B.) YOU have something to lose by appointing yourself censor-in-chief, then failing to specifically defend the office you appointed yourself to.

Considering that the "2A blog-bash" at the NRA Convention is being put together at least with the knowledge of the NRA, you would think that said organization would have stepped in by now to end this fiasco of a flame war by promoting the event though their own auspices, and firing the amateur running it at present.

But, that's too much to hope for with the executive of the NRA, which does it's best work on the cocktail circuits of DeeCee, not face-to-face with REAL people who defend gun ownership on a daily basis across America.

A pox on ALL their houses! Just go to the range!

OR Senate Bill 482

...can throw you off your OWN property if you reside in a trumped-up "safe drinking water overlay zone".

They don't have to prove that you are polluting groundwater, YOU HAVE TO PROVE YOU AREN'T!

This, of course, is the latest trend: the government reversing the burden of proof, which for years rested with the government to prove that you were failing to follow regulations.

In the case of Senate Bill 482, the government decides where and when to establish a "safe drinking water overlay zone", then they establish some fairly draconian regulations of things that can't happen inside that zone, but the kicker is that you, as the landowner or tenant, have to be able to prove that you aren't polluting, and if you fail to prove that by failing to get an inspection, say, on your septic system, they can move you off your land for just that "offense".

Well, you say, having great confidence in your government, at least they are telling us about these things so that we CAN comply with them like good little sheeple.

Nazzofast, Guido.

"At a minimum, the local government shall prohibit the following uses in the 'safe drinking water overlay zone'.

(List of five items, then...)

#6. Any other land use that the local government deems harmful to the quality of municipal drinking water." (Italics added)

Aha! Gotcha! Your dog pooped on the ground and you left it overnight and it rained!

Some other examples. You live on a few acres, part of which has been recently declared a "safe drinking water overlay zone". You have a light-duty tractor and a few power machines, so you keep about 30 gallons of assorted fuels for those on hand. In other words, you're a normal rural family.

Not anymore.

Now you have to reduce your storage of fuels below 20 gallons or obtain the services of an environmental company to write you up a "hazardous materials plan", which you have to update every five years, and you have to apply for and receive a "special use permit", at which time you will have to convince some government hearings officer that you really HAVE to have this exception from the law.

Your rural home is far from the nearest sewer line, so you have a septic tank system, like everyone else. Because your land has been designated, even in part, a "safe drinking water overlay zone", you have to apply for a special use permit every five years. Getting this permit is contingent upon you passing an inspection by a state-certified plumbing contractor that your system meets all current requirements. Failing to get that inspection means that the Local Government can force you to vacate your land.

Now, if your area is served by a shallow well or spring water system, the headwaters of which come from your property, some regulation makes sense. However, these types of systems have been illegal for use as municipal drinking water systems for decades now, so there is no need to protect systems that don't exist.

Oh, and the "beautify Oregon" chumps got their foot in the door here, also. If you're in one of these zones, you are forbidden to have more than four non-operational vehicles or more than four non-operational appliances on your property.

Of course, all of this zeal begs the real question that should be discussed: how do we demonstrate scientifically that any particular activity on any particular property is going to put a municipal water supply at any particular risk?

This Bill doesn't care. It simply assumes that the prohibited or by-permit-only activities have to be regulated because there is a possibility (in someone's mind) that they could cause an ill effect on a drinking water supply.

Freedom, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, and as expressed in law and legal precedent up to now, means nothing in the New Era of Government. You will do what they say or they will ship your ass out.

This will end badly, and soon.

Fascinating story, but....

...it sounds like it cost the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more. How many CURRENT death investigations, or active crimes like rape, could have been solved using the same money and the same experts?

This could be worse. It could very well be a case of a network of scientists using government time and facilities to pursue a cold identification case for their own entertainment or aggrandizement, or EVEN WORSE, pure greed (there were rumors of a large quantity of gold involved).

This is a good example of how big government, despite all it's best intentions, can be bad for us.

Two words: no oversight. Where was the person in charge of these scientists who was supposed to review their work? Why hasn't a policy been established that puts a time and dollar limit on these "identifications"?

The grief of families is understandable, but in cases which are a bit fresher than 60 years, for Christ's sake.

Trap a Truther Day

If you think at all like the 'ol Rivrdog, you can't abide the Truthers. Mostly good conservatives, they have all drank the Kool Aid on this topic, and give all of us a bad name by association.

Yesterday was Blue Monday, today is Trap a Truther Tuesday.

Here is a dispassionate (Truthers HATE dispassionate, because passion about their brand of "truth" is all they have) look at the prevalent conspiracy theories about 9-11, and why they are all rubbish.

Bookmark this link, or send it today to your truther budddies. Fortunately, I only know two of them, one has the link already, so there will only be one person sobbing over their spilt milk today around here.

Goracles to the core....

The leftoid AssPress doesn't even try to hide their politics these days.

They're reporting on the Bali Horsepuckey Conference, Global Warming and Beach Blanket Bingo Party Climate Change Conference in Bali. Consider:

"Those gathering on the resort island of Bali were charged with launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. What they decide in the next two years will help determine how much the world warms in the decades to come."

(Emphasis mine)

I guess I could accept that explanation, but ONLY if it means that if they decided to just STFU, as opposed to their penchant for generating heat with billions of words, the Earth would be a cooler place by some amount.

The explanation that AssPress WANTS us to read into that paragraph is that only us can save us from a fate worse than death (when the sky itself falls on us). With ever-increasing evidence that global warming is NOT occurring due to man's activities, it's unlikely that advanced nations of ANY political stripe are going to risk their economies and their position in the world's economic pecking order just to suck up to Pope AlGore.

I'll put Realpolitik up against Gaiapolitik any day, and give you odds that reality will win, because in the end, even the Socialists realize that they aren't going to oversee the tanking of their economies for this cause.

By 2012, when Kyoto sunsets, "Global Warming" will be sooo last decade.

Commie to the core

...Is Bolivian Presidente Evo Morales, the coca-chewing, Marx-spouting leftoid who bullied his way to power a couple of years after Hugo Chavez, his only buddy in the world.

However, you'd never know he was even as left as Hillary Clinton though, by reading Agence France-Presse's article here. It chronicles the fact that the wealthy (read, mining and OIL) provinces are about to break away, and will before Morales taxes them into oblivion to re-distribute their wealth to the poor mountain provinces, which he promised to do during his election campaign, despite there being no Constitutional ability for El Presidente to do so. Just like Hugo Chavez, Morales trumped up a new Constitution which basically tells the four provinces that "what's yours is mine, so STFU"

However, in the AFP article, even the bland political descriptor "socialist" isn't used. It's sort of like the Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta's little game of "Name that party", where, when a (D)onk gets into trouble, the liberl press in Atlanta will NEVER mention the party affiliation of the miscreant lefty, but let a (R)ighty pol step across the line and his party is prominently mentioned several times in the first paragraph, and ad nauseam afterwards.

Hypocrisy, it's your basic bitter breakfast in the Brave New World of leftoid power politics.

"Medicinal" marijuana

Let me get this straight: Libertarians are mostly conservative, and more of them are opposed to assisted (medical) suicide than favor it.

Those same libertarians do favor the legalization of marijuana (and other "recreational" drugs), and almost invariably support "Medical Marijuana" proposals, since it is a definite step in their direction.

Maybe thinking libertarians might reconsider that issue, now that the medical evidence is in on how destructive it is.

Five times more destructive to lung tissue to smoke one joint than one cigarette.

Think about that for a moment, my libertarian friends (and I have quite a few of them).

What part of "therapy" or "delivery of a beneficial substance (marinol) into the body" fits with bronchial destruction of this level?

To me, users of "medical" marijuana are deluding themselves that they are improving ANY aspect of their health. When you consider the fact that the dosage of marinol in smoked marijuana is totally UNcontrolled, and now the new information of the destructiveness of the smoking to lung tissue, there isn't much therapeutic or "medicinal" about the experience at all, is there?

I know what the pot lovers will say: Yeah But...the (fill in your benefit here..................) outweighs the damage.

Think so, eh?

You can apply that same logic to an even better therapy for your headaches, glaucoma, depression or whatever condition you "medicate" yourself for with smoked marijuana.

It's simply putting a loaded handgun to your head and pulling the trigger.

Instant relief of symptoms, same disregard for the health of the whole body.

But, you'd have to change your attitude about assisted suicide, so maybe you won't consider Handgun Therapy.

Good, you've demonstrated that there at least a few brain cells left. Now put those to good use and quit smoking dope "for medicine". If you smoke it, admit you are killing yourself, prepare to meet your Maker, and fire it up!

Hypocrisy is sooooo NOT conservative.

THAT Elizabeth Edwards

Earlier this spring, when John Edwards played the tear-jerk card by announcing his wife had terminal cancer, I wrote a post critical of him for doing so.

Well, Elizabeth may have terminal cancer, but she evidently wants to go full-bore in helping her hypocrit husband out on his campaign.

Here is the latest example of the Edwards' hypocrisy. Don't forget that "I'm for the little guy" John Edwards gets $400 haircuts, flies in a Gulfstream jet to enviromentalist conferences, pulls in a huge salary from an investment firm that uses hedge funds to duck taxes, just built a mega-mansion with a huge "carbon footprint", etc. I could go on, but the hypocrit label isn't going to wash off, no matter how many tears Mrs. Edwards sheds on hubby's shoulder.

Gosh, what do we have here? The Edwards' campaign officially promoting potty-mouth bloggers, just after excoriating Ann Coulter (who doesn't descend to that level)? Mrs. "Pity me, I have cancer" Edwards seems to be up to her eyeballs in the usual (D)onk dirty pool.

Well, all you good people who took me to task for jumping in John Edwards' shit for playing the pity card, what do you think about the pitiable Mr. Edwards now?

H/T to L. Brent Bozell's Media Research Center.