Nom de plume: Rivrdog

It takes a worried man...

...To sing a worried song, as the old ballad goes.

I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long (there is something called a state of terror, which is beyond worry, and we'll all be terrified soon).

If Ron Paul is going to show up as the REAL "anti-Romney", we're screwed, blued and tattoed.

• Ron Paul can't beat Romney, but because of the Pauloons, WILL siphon votes, and may generate a write-in campaign which would throw the race clearly to Obama.
• Ron Paul is NOT a Republican of any kind, he is a Big-L Libertarian, and there's a HUGE difference. Republicans are from Earth, Paul is from Zargon-5.
• Ron Paul is not actually a conservative, either, but conservatives are getting so terrified about the liberal Romney that they are swallowing the smooth old guy's line that he IS a Republican.

Bottom line: I don't like Romney, and I firmlyu believe he will not only continue Big Government, he will probably renege on his promise to end ObamaCare, and he's damn sure to approve any new anti-2A laws that might come down the line.

Remember that the US Electorate has an historic tendency to split power in Presidential elections, and having a Democratic Congress and a President Romney is a distinct possibility. If that happens, there will be few changes to the burdensome government which stifles our culture and our economy at present.

Frankly, I don't think the GOP has the starch right now to change the Senate to GOP, keep the House GOP, and elect Romney or Paul, either. I thnk that the best we can hope for is simply dumping Obama, which WILL be an improvement, but if the (D)onks get the Congress back, it will be a small improvement indeed.

Thursday Thuds #10

Numerology! Edition # 10 published on the Tenth!

Thud the First: Is the sound of an occasional Marine hitting a bar-room floor tonight, passing out from the sheer joy of celebrating the birthday (OK, and the effect of the spirits, too!). That's permitted by USMC tradition, since today is the Birthday of the USMC, the 236th.

Thud the Second: Whatever made that thudding sound over at my s.i.l.'s place wasn't him hitting the floor, he doesn't imbibe. Oh, yes, it must have been the nurse-daughter, A USMC Desert Storm veteran...she has TWO reasons to celebrate, the USMC birthday AND her hub's. Happy Birthday, Wally!

Thud the Third: This is actually an "un-thud". Ron Paul, Sr, has hit the floor with many of his strange ideas on past occasions, but he made up for a lot of those past errors with his correct assessment of the Obama Presidency: becoming an "elective dictatorship". Right on, Ron!

Thud the Fourth: Is the sound of riot baton upside Flea Party knees (no head strikes!) a Thud! or just a Squish! Inquiring minds want to know, but it's beginning to look like we won't have to wait much longer to find out here in Stumptown. Two of the City Commishes, Nick Fish (the only one resembling a Law & Order commissioner, and he's not much of one) and Amanda Fritz, once firmly on the Mayor's pro-Flea Party side, have called for an end to the "occupations". The Police Chief has been told to have the eviction plan ready immediately, and he has said that it IS ready. We have a miserable week of cold rain in the forecast for Friday night through the next 5 days, at least, and that will provide some impetus for the departure of the Flea Party. My prediction: Hizzoner will congratulate all the protesters, tell them they did a fine job of awakening the City and Nation to the Evils of Capitalism, and now it's time to leave, then he will set a deadline, heavy on the kudos, and he will barely whisper the deadline at his presser. That deadline will pass, and a new deadline will be set, and sometime after THAT deadline the police will clear out the camp. My prediction, probably not before the end of next week, but definitely before Turkey Day, because the core area will have to be cleaned and sanitized for the Christmas Shopping season (which has really started already). Not taking any bets on how peacefully it will end, remembering that this town is known as "Little Beruit".

Thud the Fifth: Is the sound of Prohibition-era liquor regulation finally hitting the bottom of the dustbin of history in Washington State. Initiative #1183 passed, 60-40%, and now, big grocery stores there may sell booze. This will accelerate the end of Oregon's Prohibition-era system also (and will accelerate me crossing the bridge to buy my hooch, one bottle at a time, of course, I am law-abiding <;~). Both States operate their own Liquor Stores, which are known as Green Fronts here in Ory-gun, because their front windows used to have the lower half painted a bilious seafoam-green so the little kiddies couldn't stand on the sidewalk outside the store and admire the hooch. The curious thing about the expensive campaign to make this change to dump the so-called "liquor socialism" across the Rivah is that it featured the opposition claiming the benefits of Prohibition all over again. Every time I saw one of the opposition's ads (most paid for by Seagrams, which had a fat contract they will now lose), I screamed at the TeeVee, "you Idiots, we got rid of Prohibition 80 years ago in this country, get off my TeeVee". We'll have to go through the whole thing again now in Oregon, with Costco, Inc footing the pro-private sales initiative, and Seagrams opposing it.

Thud the Sixth: Is the sound of Penn State's athletic program, and maybe some of their scholarship foundations as well, hitting the floor and not getting up. As this pundit sees it, Joe Paterno was hired to run a football program, not be detective-in-charge of a sex abuse investigation, even if it did involve one of his staff. He complied with the law, and informed his superior of the NAMBLA-type incident brought to his attention. The PSU Administration dragged their feet in handling the matter, so somehow, POOF!, Joe-Pa is supposed to drop everything and pin a star on his chest to follow up where the PSU Administration and the local authorities just failed? I don't think so, and as a matter of fact, I don't think so enough to suggest that PSU donors with-hold their donations in protest at this scapegoating of Joe-Pa. I think such with-holding is going to happen anyway, but if the reports of the students rioting in support of Joe-Pa last night are any indication, the school will now be in more trouble, financial trouble, than it ever would have been if it just allowed Joe-Pa to quietly retire at the end of the football year three weeks from now. The uber-correct sportz press can just kiss my ass, too. Their coffers were well-lined by the discussion, which they themselves raised to a fever-pitch, so THEIR hands aren't exactly clean, either. Here's an article depicting the events of last night, but note how the holier-than-thou and victims-rule attitudes come through in the writing. I'm ready to puke. The cretin Sandusky just needs to be whipped to death and have his body thown in a pig-sty, that's all. A Grand Jury can examine whether or not the University failed in their legal duties and issue indictments if they did. The press and the culture-killing, victim-sainthood people can butt out or be prepared to be held up to severe scrutiny, as I am doing to them here. Try this on for size, you crap-for-brains airheads: if the parents and family of that lad actually had a handle on parenting skills, why in the Hell would they allow their kid to be messing around in a college athletic facility at close to midnight? Think that maybe there's a little moral and legal failure THERE? I do.

Thursday Thuds - 2

First, a shout-out to Mockingbird, who needs to be informed on what a Rave Dress looks like, on a model:

The rest of the article is here.

OK, who says I can't advise on the kultur?

The Thuds:

That reverberating first thud is the sound of the foreign policy on Libya hitting the dance floor. OK, Washingtoon smarties, now that the rebels have succeeded, how are we going to entice them to actually CONTROL former-dictator Ghaddafi's SERIOUS supply of weapons and keep them from getting to the Jihadists, who have made no bones about wanting them? Got a plan for that? The whole world's asking, Mr. President, so where is your plan? Oh, yes, there was a Thud! That means that there was NO plan. We're going to pay for THAT, and dearly, too.

The second Thud! is local. The Oregon DOT, with some sort of hand-shake tax deal to Portland General Electric, the local power company, is building a 7-acre solar power park to power ONE rest area on Interstate Five. This is Western Oregon, folks, and we get maybe 150-175 days with sunshine every year, the rest are cloudy. Solar is strictly a feel-good proposition in these parts. A wind farm would have made more sense, or, if they HAD to do solar, some solar AND some wind. $10 million down the rathole on this Thud!

The next Thud! is more of a KA-Boing! as Ron Paul pin-balls his way down the campaign highway, campaign careening all over the road. Here's an effusive praise-post, proving once again that the Pauloons are still out there. For me, the operative sentence in the post:

"But the candidate can seem less interested in winning the nomination than winning the ideological battle."

Yep, that is Big-L Libertarianism to a "T": three quarters of it makes you smile, but the loons REFUSE to do anything about the pesky 25% of their program that both makes you puke and tries to get you killed.

The next Thud! is actually the sound of yet another Mitt Romney flip-flop, this time on Anthropogenic Glowbull Warmaking, and related "carbon" regulation. Playing along with the Greens up until now, since Perry came into the race, his RINO status was beginning to look loser-ish, so he just flip-flopped, now says he doesn't know if AGW is real, and wouldn't raise emissions standards for industry if elected prexy. Romney is just an old-fashioned political whore, taking whatever position his next trick wants, and the sound you hear is his bony old whore-ass thudding on the floor.

Time for one more Thud! and this one's made by the sound of your pistol falling out of that Open Carry holster. Good, you didn't try to catch it...that can get you shot. Here's a fence-straddling post by the fairly-famous Walls of the City blog on the subject. Linky-love by Uncle. I like his bottom line, "just CARRY", but he ignores several facts, such as what do we do with the 40-60% of ordinary citizens who are scared spitless to see the Average Joe walking about with a heater strapped openly to his/her hip. O/C people, that is an "elephant in the room", and no, I do NOT think that just strapping on arms to "let them get used to it" is going to work. What will work is Alan Gura's method: find firearms freedom in the courts, and when all the court battles are done and won, THEN carry however you may wish. You can do that in AZ, AK and VT now, thanks to court and legislative actions. The rest of the country has to either play the CHL-game or arm themselves with a good pair of running-away shoes. People, those 40-60% of people are NOT going to be "educated into line" about the Second Amendment. Hell, most of them think the Second Amendment is about freedom to hunt game, that's how doofus the hoi-palloy is on the subject of the 2A. Get your Concealed Handgun License and carry concealed. No, you're not "in your face" about the Second, but you ARE armed, and safer for it.

I'll join the Paulistas on this one...

Strangely enough, Ron Paul Sr stops short of the real objective, which should be axing the TSA entirely.

Want to kill two birds with one stone, Mister President? Give the job of airport security to the National Guard in each state, which is where such security started just after 9-11-01. The Guard would have to expand, all that money stays in those States, and it is an excellent way to do Keynsian "pump-priming", if you must have Keynsian economics at all.

Yep, I support Ron Paul here. I will urge my Representative to co-sponsor Ron Paul's Bill, but I will ONLY vote for a Presidential candidate next year if they promise that their first act, in their first hour in office, will be to stand down the TSA.

Paul-watch two - Updated!

Lessee...open campaign, shoot self and campaign in foot.

That's gotta be right there on Page One in Ron Paul's campaign strategy book.

Seems GOPac has picked up on it, too.

But, true to past form, the Paulistas Pauloons Paul campaign folks seemed to have stiffed a supporter into the news copy room at Fox news, because Megan the Anchoress read a snippet that gave Paul credit for helping to start the TEA Party movement!

Look, ever since Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, politicians have been making these sorts of ridiculous claims, and they have ALWAYS paid the price for it.

Ron Paul didn't have a farging thing to do with starting the TEA Party movement. Your humble blogger, who helped a good friend organize the Gresham, Oregon TEA party movement, has a better claim on that than does Ron Paul, but you won't see it on my resume.

The Pauloons will see to it that it's a lively pre-campaign season. I'll be on Paul-watch here, and will reliably report it, assuming that Paul doesn't employ the same passle of hackers he used last time to take down "enemy" web pages and blogs. That tactic turned into "whack-a-mole" for Paul, as the harder his minions worked to undermine the critics, the more critics turned up on these here Intartubes. I predict a repeat, because one thing that politics a-la Ron Paul teaches us is that the craziness is VERY predictable, and almost guaranteed to be repeatable.

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UPDATE: 051311 1131 PDT: Pauloons detected at the AssPress copy room also. It's all about Cannabis at AssPress, evidently.