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.

the FeeBees lose track of one of their own

...and they're beating the bushes VERY hard to find him.

Special Agent, hard worker, no disciplinary problems, un-remarkable home life, appears to have a mid-life crisis and goes AWOL. Takes his gun with him.

Nothing further, except the ferocity with which he is being sought.

Hmmmm, says the suspicious mind, wonder why?

Well, for starters, this Special Agent likely knows about every counter-terror plan on the books, at least on the West Coast.

Of course, there are broad hints, appearing to be official hints, that he may have taken off to say goodbye cruel world. That doesn't fool this old cop. That same thing is said EVERY time a spy or sleuth with important info disappears. After they find him alive, if they do, he will likely be hustled to some hush-hush shrinkhouse to be deprogrammed.

Think the Gulag Archipelago can't happen here?

Think again.

Go directly there

...to BorePatch's blog, and read this screed.

Yes, it's come to this pass. History will show that the Second American Revolution actually started before Obama's second term started...

H/T to Uncle

BTW, if you are into conflict management planning as I am, you might consider this date: Wednesday, the Seventh of November, 2012. That is the day after the election, and assuming Obama is re-elected, that is the day his "complete-the-dictatorship" program starts. Assuming you are going to resist that dictatorship, YOU will have to be prepared to begin your resistance on that date. If you are on the other side, and will be joining Obama IN his dictatorship, that is the date, after which you will begin laying your life on the line for Obama, every day until one side or the other wins unconditional victory.

Today, we are on the Seventh Day of the Fifth month of 2012. There are exactly six months, one half a calendar year, left for you to prepare for this conflict, both physical and mental preparations. The world of your comfort, as you presently see it, ends in six months. Six months from now, you will be fighting, for or against Freedom, right here in your United States of America.

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...

Romney kisses Bloomberg's ring: a 2A fail?

According to this, via Uncle, Romney made an unannounced trip to visit Mayors Against the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights prexy, Bloomberg, yesterday.

The subject of gun control reportedly WAS discussed.

So, if the Romnoid was there to kiss the NYC Pope's ring and get an endorsement, what part of gun control did he just agree to follow Bloomberg's lead on?

This blog is now putting Romney in the anti-2A camp, despite his schmooze at the NRA meetings a while back. Unless and until Romney will publish a transcript of the entire discussion, including both his and Bloomberg's words on the subject of gun control, this blog now takes an anti-Romney position.

As I have said, sometimes it's better to have the enemy you know on the field in front of you than the ally you don't know on the field behind you.

Are YOU a "threat" to those in power?

You might be, just by reading this blog, as a grumpy Major explains here.

2A litmus test for Romney

Without further ado, here it is:

Fast & Furious, aka, "Gunwalker"

The House Oversight Committee has USAG Holder in their sights for Contempt of Congress, but according to Brit Hume, senior analyst for Fox News, who opined on this issue tonight on O'Reilly, there will be a behind-the-scenes game played by Issa and Holder, who will give just enough of the 92% of the documents subpoenaed, but not yet delivered, to keep the noose off of his neck.

This situation is ripe for waking up the US of A with, and Romney is the guy to do it. If he bumps up Fast & Furious to near the top of his agenda to hammer on Obama with, he will add some stiffening to the spine of Rep. Issa, and maybe Issa will be less likely to cave or make a "backroom" deal which would let the inventor of Gunwalker walk.

Holder, at least, and probably Obama, conspired to try to weaken the SCOTUS-strengthened Second Amendment by a false-flag operation that was supposed to show how US guns were arming the violent drug cartels in Mexico. With plenty of evidence to show that the cartels didn't need US guns, but had a better supply of (military) arms which they got from Central America and the corrupt military in Mexico, Gunwalker was supposed to smother all that evidence, and, at the very least, "close the gun-show loophole", if not allow an acceptance of AWB Two. When the Border Patrol agent got killed on duty with a "walked" gun, though (just bad luck, really; by the numbers, he should have been killed with a Mexican M16 or Central American M16 or AK), it blew the lid off of Gunwalker, and gave an actionable cause to Issa & Co.

If Brit Hume was right, and he usually is, Holder and Obama will skate on Gunwalker until after the November election.

Romney could change all of that, give Obama a huge black eye, force him to throw Holder under the bus, and forever cement his creds with the gunnies. Heaven only knows those creds need cementing after Romney's anti-gun performance as MA Governor.

So, whichever readers are contemplating sending campaign cash to Romney (I haven't convinced myself to do that yet), consider putting the check in with a letter strongly urging Romney to start using the GOP treasury to highlight Gunwalker, and keep highlighting it.

If the GOP campaign smarties can do that, it will, at least, raise enough of a 2A ruckus that even if Obama wins a second term, he will be likely to have to forgo 2A Executive Orders, which would then be just too hot a topic for him to touch. In the best of scenarios, with Romney harping on Gunwalker, Holder might just be cut out of the herd, the GOP wolves getting their prey, and maybe, just maybe, he might cut a deal with Issa to stay out of the hoosegow. That deal, of course, would involve implicating his boss as having okayed Gunwalker.

Gunwalker could be the issue that brings down Obama, but to attain that status, it will need a boost by Romney. The One Big Question is: does Romney believe strongly enough in the 2A to give Obama the severe test he should get with Gunwalker?

I can't answer that just now, nor can I say that I really want Romney to win.

Only Romney could change that, and Gunwalker is his chance to do exactly that.

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.

Long time no blog - UPDATED!

So, let's catch up:

In the past week of no blogging, I have:

• Just deleted 6 spam comments, from Canada, New Zealand, France and the US of A. I guess I am definitely read all over the world! WhooPee Farge!
• Went to the MOAA Portland dinner last week, met the Professor of Aerospace Studies at Portland University, a Catholic institution which has been responsible, in the past 60 years or so, for introducing eleven hundred new butter-bar officers to the Air Force and Army. Got a briefing on the ROTC Summer Camp, which appears to be not much changed from when I did the OTS version of it, only for 90 days, in 1967, to get MY butter bars. Your blogger was one of the last, true, "90-day wonders".
• Been coming around to the conclusion that we have, at this point in the War On Terror, farged up said War so badly we probably ought to just abandon it and wait for a new Commander in Chief before even thinking of starting it up again. When we first went into the 'Stan a decade ago, we sent in one division, together with some TAC air support, and blew the Taliban and Al-Qaeda off the map in about 3 months. They were unprepared for us, and it wasn't that hard a job, especially for the Tenth Mountain Division, which is built for that combat. Since then, we have installed and tolerated a complete crook of a President Karzai (similar to the crooks we installed and tolerated in MY war, Vietnam), we have saddled our troops with the most outrageous and inane Rules of Engagement ever heard of in any modern conflict, we have made STUPID mistakes, like failing to have a Muslim Imam help with the destruction of defiled Qurans, and now, tolerating certifiable Loonies (how many other of these ticking time bombs are there over there).
• Just a few minutes ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's aircraft was approaching Bagram MOB for a landing, when a stolen base vehicle took to the runway, apparently in an effort to kill the landing aircraft. The pilot aborted landing, and the vehicle's suicide-driver failed in his mission. How bad has our security gotten when we can't do enough OpSec and CommSec to keep the SecDef's ingress into the war zone a secret?

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UPDATE: 031412 2146 PDT: The Patriot Padre notes that US and Brit troops attending Leon Panetta's speech to the troops at Camp Leatherneck were told to disarm in his presence. Hmmmm.

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Our military is screwed up to the max. This security breach tells ME that the solid leaders have already all been replaced or retired, and now the military is led by fools and incompetents both at home and in the war zone. We need to get the HELL out of  'Stan before we waste any more US lives. Yes WASTE those lives. The probability of our actually accomplishing any WOT objective over there is long gone, and anyway, there is a high likelihood that we have encouraged/permitted Karzai to butter both sides of his toast, and he has reached an accomodation with the Taliban by now, which means that our men and women over there are all in great danger from ANY association with the Afganis.

When those troops come home, it is MY job and YOUR job to welcome them back, but never stop reminding them that it was Obama who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The WOT veterans are a powerful force, and if properly advised and reminded, give us the power to maintain our Constitution, since with their help, we could take the field against the government if that became necessary to save the Constitution. Note that this berserker incident will be used to try to get into the heads of all those returning vets, and the Obama Administration will try to convince them that they are ALL crazy, so they should be denied their 2A rights, be subjected to mandatory whacko treatment, etc.

When the first signs of those plans begin to appear (second signs, actually, the first sign appeared after Virginia Tech 5 years ago and the NRA kowtowed to it), we must all raise one very loud voice, at least as loud as the voice we have raised over Fast and Furious.

Yeah, your Rivrdog is still here, still blogging. Now, back to the WillBoat job.