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.

Why the culture loses

On the telly, was watching the 4pm news on KATU in PDX.

The newsbabe is Natalie Marmion, who has been around a loooooooong time.

The story was a vid from St. Maartens in the far-off Carrib, and the videographer was on the beach road where the main airport runway comes very close to the edge of the water. Basically, there is room for a narrow beach, a stubby seawall, the narrow roadway, then a fence and then the runway.

The adrenaline junkies gather there to get their adrenaline fix by having landing aircraft pass over their heads maybe 20 feet up. Since it's the only runway there, departing jets also use it, and that was the subject of today's vid.

Several people were standing at the perimeter fence, hanging on for dear life whilst a large jet ran up it's engines to takeoff power, preparing to depart. This generates jet blast of tornadic force. First the guy lost his grip and got blown away, then the gal, who landed, noggin first against the seawall. Both idiots were injured.

OK, sic semper ignorati, right? Game over?

Not quite. Natalie Marmion was the ignoramus of the day. She tut-tutted, "why don't they close that runway, people are getting hurt there?"

OK, for Natalie, because I usually do not teach kindergarten kids, I'll have to work at this.

• Look at the airport, Natalie. There is no room for another runway.
• Look at the huge warning sign in several languages, Natalie. FYI, it was in the field of view of that video.
• Do we bulldoze mountain cliffs because BASE jumpers jump off and occasionally die?
• Do we drain oceans because SCUBA divers drown in them?

Stick to the script, Natalie. That's why the producer gave you one.

For the rest of youse, this is why we lose!

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.

The FL "stand your ground" case

After hesitating some (and they should have hesitated more), all the anti-gunners have jumped on Race Pimp Sharpton's "Hoodie Hoopdie" and are in full cry.

Problem is, all the facts aren't in, so they are all jumping the gun, so to speak. Jumping the shark, too.

I have gleaned one important trend from this case, since it's not dependent on understanding the entire chain of facts.

When your opponent's hoodie goes up, you pull your pistol.

This entire hoodie thing bears some looking into.

The hoodie, or hooded sweatshirt, is a piece of casual athletic attire. The hood is meant to ward off the chill of a cold breeze on your flushed head after exertion, since more body heat gets radiated by the head and neck than any other body part.

That's the science of the hoodie. Everything else is custom and emotion.

The hoodie was adopted years ago by the hip-hop generation as their symbol of rebellion from the preceding generations. From there, it was adopted by the gangsta-rap pukes as their symbol (when they weren't wearing formal pimp attire).

So, the idiot race pimp Sharpton does us all an unintentional favor, by highlighting the hoodie thing with his "million hoodie march".

Get this straight, people: the hoodie is meant to intimidate.

OK, if it is meant to intimidate, be properly intimidated.

What do you mean, 'Dog, "properly intimidated"?

What I mean, is that in every defensive shooting situation, or even in cases where you just pull your pistol and don't have to use it, there has to be a justifying factor. The hoodie is that factor. Your opponent wears a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up for only two possible reasons: he has just exerted himself and wants to keep from chilling down too fast, or he is trying to intimidate those around him. If he's been exerting himself, you'll likely see sweat, or heavy breathing, or some other sign that he has. If you don't see those signs, and especially if it's warm out, he's wearing the hood up to try to intimidate. Your state of mind now turns to stronger defenses, if you are thinking tactically.

Now, consider aggravating factors: your opponent, who has been walking away from you, turns towards you, advances on you AND pulls up his hood. Pilgrim, if you DON'T take that as immediate aggression on his part, you are about to be a victim yourself. No race involved. In my part of town, there are few blacks, but all the pukes of all races wear hoodies or hooded parkas in their gang colors.

So, thanks very much, Sharpton. You're not smart enough to avoid these pitfalls, so now you've brought the whole hoodie thing out into the open. If there ever WAS a "cool" factor in wearing hoodies, and I don't believe there ever was, it was a rebel factor, there isn't now. You, "Reverend" Sharpton, have just helped to remove the "cool" factor of that garment.

The hoodie is about intimidation, that is all. Take that to the bank AND the Grand Jury.

Besides, the hoodie makes your opponent more closely resemble that silhouette target you practice and qualify with at the range. Three shots, two to center of mass and one to the head.

Bang-bang, beak. practice it.

****************************************************************************

IMMEDIATE UPDATE: After posting this blog, I note that Geraldo Rivera is thinking along the same lines.

Is Impeachment enough justice for this asswipe Judge?

Story here. A State Judge in PA tossed out an assault case against a Muslim, opining that the Muslim was "obligated" to assault the victim in the case, a person who acted as a "zombie" Prophet Muhammad, and thereby insulted the Muslim faith.

The Judge is Muslim, and should have recused himself when the case got to his docket.

The Judge invoked Sharia law, which is NOT the law of the land in PA or anywhere else in the USA.

The Judge is an idiot, because he had a perfectly good reason to toss the assault case, the "fighting words" Doctrine, and instead, chose to cite Sharia law.

Impeachment is too good (and too slow) for this Judge. He needs to be arrested and charged with Official Misconduct, in that he invoked a code of Law which is not recognized, and thereby broke his Oath to support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of PA, and therefor committed some grade of Treason. I'll be willing to bet that PA has a law or judical rule that a Judge charged with Official Misconduct may not sit on the bench while such a case is pending.That would get him off the bench the moment he is arrested and charged.

Get him off the bench. What's next for this asswipe? Will he dismiss Murder charges against a Muslim who committs an "honor killing"? Will he permit polygamy? Will he permit divorce without judical review, simply by the Muslim husband uttering "I divorce thee" three times?

This asswipe Judge has officially condoned Anarchy and denied the Constitutional Rule of Law. If there WERE any justice, he would be put on trial for his life for doing so.

The GOP sucks

Losers, just losers. They've got nothing to counter twiddledick Obama, and no, tweedledick Romney ain't the one.

While the world snoozed yesterday, we had an election here in Oregon, a by-election in the First Congressional District to replace the (D) whack-job David Wu (tiger-suit man) with another pol for the rest of Wu's unfinished term.

In that election, which rated only a 30-second blurb on Fox (Fox News, part of the problem) on Monday, the TEA-Party guy Rob Cornilles ran against a seasoned liberal Suzanne Bonamici (cut from the same cloth as Pelosi) and the liberal took the seat by 15%. The district is a gerry-mandered one, stretching across 4 counties, only one of which has any money (Washington County, a soccer-mom liberal suburb of Portland). Never behind in the polling, the DNC nevertheless funded Bonamici to the max.

The GOP? Glad you asked. They didn't raise a finger to help the struggling Cornilles (or see that a better candidate ran, Cornilles had some issues with his claim of "creating 500 jobs" - the figure was more like 6). Cornilles was outspent maybe 4-to-1. I'm not sure that he would have won even if the GOP had showered him with cash, since the seat has been good for the (D)onks for 40 years, but the Stupid Party didn't even try to win it!

Now we hear that this is the same RNC that is sitting on it's hands while Col. Alan West's FL district gets gerrymandered out of existence and he will go away.

See the trend? Want it in neon lights? How about Gingrich and HIS super-PAC thrashings going down while the RNC whistles Dixie (no, belay that, the RNC does not know how to whistle Dixie).

What we have here is a liberal GOP, at the National level.

Twiddledick and tweedledick, can you tell the difference between Obama and Romney? I can't.

It makes no nevermind, as they say in some rural areas. No nevermind. No difference. The Constitution died somewhere short of it's 200th birthday, for sure. We ain't defending it now, it's dead, and the liberals are even changing the history books so future 'Murcans can't even find out what the Constitution said, let alone meant.

You want a Constitution? Better buy a paper copy or 500 and squirrel them away, like you ought to be squirreling away arms and ammunition. You see, guns are the only things that Liberals are afraid of. Guns and the folks who can use them. As long as there are guns, there is a chance to restore the Constitution. BTW, in case you just got off the slow shuttle from the Planet Zargon, Romney is anti-gun. You still going to vote for him? I'm not. If you hold your nose and vote, then you only smell your own stink, and that is the stink of fear, of resignation. Go out with a bang. If enough do, it will make the difference. If all the Conservatives (and you know who you are, Romnoids need not apply) stay home in November, Obama gets four more (he will anyway, Romney would never beat him), but if we all go to the rifle ranges on Election Day, he gets the message. If, the day after the election, the Conservative Party establishment papers are filed in 50 States, he gets another message, and so does the GOP, which ceases to exist as of that moment.

So, RNC, if you can read this humble blog, consider the gauntlet that just hit you across the face: it just came off the right hand of a rifleman who is tired of your crap. Keep it, I shoot better with the glove off, anyway.

 

"Payola" 2

Most folks are not old enough to remember the original "payola" scandal. The word Payola came from "pay to play" + the maker of the-then most popular jukebox, "Rockola". Aside from home vinyl records (45 and 33 rpm, with still quite a few 78s left over), you listened on (non-stereo) radio, played records (only stereo if you were a rich kid), or dumped quarters into Rockolas to hear music. That was the music I grew up with. In that era, a pay-for-play system (Payola) first started with the jukeboxes (every cafe, restaurant and bar which wanted the under 25-crowd's money had to have a Rockola), then spread to the radio stations. If you were a new musical group starting out and you wanted to actually rise up the charts and sell vinyl, you paid to have your music played. The scandal around the pay-to-play system grew until Congress held hearings, and banned the practice.

Payola tried to make a comeback amongst the gangsta rappers of the '90s, but when they started shooting at each other, it got too visible and that practice stopped.

Now it's back, and in the worst knock of the late Steve Jobs' Apple, Inc, it's all about an I-phone and I-pad app. While you are watching the TeeVee, you have your smartass Apple gadget sitting nearby, with the Viggle app running. It listens to the sound from your speakers, and determines what you are watching, then keeps track of how many minutes you've watched. You are "rewarded" for installing the app and using it, at the rate of two reward "points" for each minute watched. After you have watched 62 hours of TeeVee and used the app to monitor it, you are sent a $5 Burger King certificate.

OK, I promised I won't go all health-nut on you, suffice it to say that those who would get excited about being rewarded with free fast fatfood will be indirectly deciding what the rest of us will watch, and that's a bad, culture-busting (waistline-busting and pall-bearer busting) idea. Just how many Ruben Studdards does the entertainment industry need?

An even worse idea is that the entertainment moguls would allow this system to install itself in their empires. I don't give a fig about "American Idol", because, despite the fact that the yearly winners have mostly had good voices, none of them sing the kind of music I like to hear. None of them.

This new system is Payola all over again, pure and simple, this time a bit different, putting the keys to music success in the hands of the fast fatfood generation, and that's a BAD thing.

In and out

I haven't blogged much of late, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge, so to speak. Lots especially around here where we've had 6"+ of rain in the past 4 days or so, with melted snow to add to the total. The High Cascades show 14"+ in spots, mostly rain below 4000 feet of late...The below photo shows the Doppler Storm Total. It's an estimate, but in my experience, it works well, probably accurate to within 10-15% of measured. Close enough for Government work. The whites on the cropped image are 14"+ of precipitation.

If you're really into this, here's the interpretation key:

 

Here's a shot of Willamette Falls at Oregon City, the falls that was the head of heavy navigation until the Willamette Falls Locks were built before the Civil War. There is usually a 50-foot falls and cataract where the water is flowing across almost level now. No white-water kayaker would even think about trying the Falls normally, but yesterday, you could have take a canoe over the submerged cataract with only medium experience under your belt. Photo by Samsung Galaxy S-2, cropped and edited in MS Paint.

Yep, THAT'S a La Nina! We've got more of this downpour coming in the next few days, and the Bible said it was to be a fire, not flood, that ended it all next time...

Politics: The GOP, the Get Organized Please party, has had three different candy-dates win the three different primaries so far. Two out of three have been conservative candidates, and yet we're still  getting this sweet smoke of "Romney's inevitable" blown up our butts by the RNC and pushed along by the MSM who REALLY want to see a contest of libtards, Romnoid versus Obamanoid.

The GOP is fixing to LOSE the election, and when they do, they will have deserved it. No one deserves to win any contest which they have farged up so badly, so many times in.

How the Stupid Party got it's name

No, there isn't enough Internet bandwidth to list all the reasons the Stupid Party got it's nickname, but let's start with the current, most obvious one: the Iowa Caucuses.

Read this, a libtard report, but accurate enough for our purposes.

We call this process the Tail Wagging the Dog where I come from.

What do YOU call it?

If you called it Stupid, give yourself the 2012 Christmas Bonus 12 months early. Now go out and spend the money on something frivolous, because with this much Stupid floating around loose, it's unlikely that the Stupid Party will elect a dogcatcher this year, let alone the President and Senate they need to effect the Un-Do.

Oh, you want a solution? How about a national Primary Day? Make it in May. Maybe, just maybe, that might put off the start of the Silly Season until the actual Election Year.

Some have suggested four Regional primaries. That idea only has interest if you like to measure political pandering, if you like to check to see how much the election promises change from Seattle to Atlanta, for example. Not a worthy enough cause to keep more than one primary day, methinks.

"Pox Parties"....WTF?

Local evening nuze last night did a story on parents who fear vaccinations for their children, but somehow went their children to have immunity from common childhood diseases, so they're throwing "pox parties".

At the pox party, a child with active Chicken Pox is introduced to the kids who don't have it, and they play together such that there is sure to be body-fluid exchange (kiss or touch or share food). Another form of the Pox Party is for the parent of the kid with chicken pox to go out and buy a box of lollipops, open each one, and have the infected kid lick them all, then wrap them back up and send them (in this case, via the US Mail, which was a felony) to the parents who wanted their kids to get the chicken pox.

Here's the problem with this sort of "folk doctoring".

First of all, it's completely medically unsupervised. The child who is passing along the pox might have a secondary infection of a horrible kind, and pass that along, as well as the pox.

Second of all, the parents who expose their kids to the (unknown and probably undiagnosed) disease of another kid have no clue what the problems might be when their kid develops the disease. Their kid might be immuno-compromised, and the pox might kill their kid (or maybe the secondary infection will).

Third, the dosage of the agent is completely uncontrolled, and it's medically and morally wrong to give any drug to a patient if you can't control the drug or the dosage. To be fair, I should point out that the use of smoked Medical Marijuana also disregards this rule (to the utter stupidity of the medical Establishment, some of which supports it).

OK,'Dawg, what's YOUR remedy for parents who far vaccinations but want their kid naturally exposed to these kiddy-diseases?

I'm glad you asked, Mister Muse, but I would have told you anyway.

Suck it up, parents, control your irrational fears, and take that kid in for it's shots.

End of story.

Oh wait, not quite the end. The government ought to prosecute those who have violated actual LAWS by deliberately spreading this disease. Yes, send some of those "No vaccinations" mommies to the hoosegow. Especially the ones who work up the Pox Parties, but every parent involved in this cockamamie scheme gets a negative file on them in the Children's Services Division for phsically abusing their kid(s).

This isn't about politics. It's about having the smarts to properly raise kids, and not threaten their very existance with your idiot scheming. If you aren't smart enough to raise a kid without jeopardizing it's existance, you shouldn't be a parent. In THAT respect, the State DOES have an interest in your parenting, a moral interest as well as a legal interest.