Most of the problems of this country are not nearly as bad as the “solutions” - especially the solutions that politicians come up with during election years.
Here's another…
One way to reduce illegal immigration might be to translate some of our far left publications into Spanish and give everyone in Mexico subscriptions. After they read how terrible this country is, many may want to stay away.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
7:02 pm
Daniel J. Summers
I know, the day after I post that I won't be here, I find this (strong language warning) over at Rachel Lucas's blog. This was simply too funny to not reblog.
This is a scene from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the faux-news show on Comedy Central. They took a patronizing look at the protesters in Berkeley, California, who are trying to shut down the Marine recruiting center. My favorite exchange comes starting at 3:12…
Code Pink Feather Boa'd Protester (CPFBP) - It is our responsibility, as the public, to shut this station down, to shut this recruiting station down. Another Code Pink Protester - Code Pink stands for free speech. CPFBP - It's very important to protect free speech, and so we clearly have the right to be here. Rob Riggle, Reporter - If only there was an organization that was sworn to defend that free speech! CPFBP - Wouldn't that be great? Rob - That would be outstanding, right?
(Update: the embedded video has been removed at the source; glad I wrote the transcript!)
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
2:39 am
Daniel J. Summers
Continuing the tradition started last year, I'm writing a three-part series “2007 Year in Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous.” And, as I did last year, I'll post them in reverse order so they're in the right order when they're done. Without further ado…
Global Glow-Bull Warming
During 2007, the global warming movement was exposed for the political, not scientific, issue that it is. As with any movement which sees its power diminished, its adherents ramped up their rhetoric; and, in many ways, the movement has become a parody of itself. In April, Sheryl Crow suggested limiting how much toilet paper we use at each sitting, and suggested we wear “dining sleeves” - devices on which we can wipe our mouths, then remove them and replace them with a clean one. (I'm not sure if the extra water for that laundry offsets the lack of a paper napkin - and wouldn't cloth napkins do the same thing?)
Carbon offsets were also shown to be next to useless. Carbon offsets, for the uninitiated, are fees one pays to a company which claims to do something “environmentally friendly” to offset one's carbon emissions. (If that sounds familiar, it should - I believe this technique was pioneered by the Roman Catholic church under the name “indulgences.” Can't stop sinning? Just get forgiveness beforehand!) A group of three environmentally-conscious people (not right-wing fanatics) created a site called CheatNeutral. It aspires to create a network of fidelity to offset those who cheat on their significant others. It illustrates the point beautifully - ten faithful people mean nothing if you're the one being cheated on.
In October, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming, including his film An Inconvenient Truth. Inconveniently, though, many of the claims made in his film have been debunked. Also, a site called Surface Stations shows some of these temperature monitoring stations - these are the stations whose readings have been used to claim that temperatures are increasing. However, many stations are by air conditioning exhausts and other heat-producing structures. Finally, in December, at a UN conference in Bali on global warming, the man leading the negotiations broke down and cried. It must be rough to see all that power slipping away.
Never-Ending Political Cycle
I won't talk much about this, because I'm pretty much tired of it just when it becomes time for it to actually happen. Do we really need a 2-year period of time to pick our next President?
Celebrity Culture
This could probably be a ridiculous item every year, but this year seemed especially ridiculous. Earlier in the year, after Anna Nicole Smith passed away, a circus erupted over the paternity of her young daughter. I don't even know where to start - if every one who claimed that they were the father had a relationship with her that would result in a child in the timeframe where it would be believable… Sheesh.
Train wrecks all over - Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears… Even Britney's sister got into the fray. The biggest problem I have with all this is the amount of press they get, distracting people from other important issues. But, I don't know whether to be more exasperated with the media for putting out the information, or the people who give it such good ratings that they keep pumping it out.
That's enough ridiculousness for one year - up next, the bad…
Friday, December 21, 2007
4:59 pm
Daniel J. Summers
There has been a ton of news and evidence about glow-bull warming that has come out in the last few weeks. But, alas, other pulls on my time are keeping me from chronicling them here. I did want to share this comic, though, that I found today in an e-mail.
The artist is Lisa Benson, whose work can be found on TownHall.com.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
8:51 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Today's Albuquerque Journal (website) had a couple of front-page stories that caught my eye. First, the one full of good news was titled "Others' Message to Illegal Immigrants: Leave!" The Journal doesn't put their stories online to link to, so I'll quote enough of it to give you the idea…
States surrounding New Mexico have recently passed laws aimed at cutting off illegal immigrants from social services and jobs.
The goal? To drive them away.
In Oklahoma, where a set of laws known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act took effect Nov. 1, Latino churches have reported losing up to 20 percent of their members and Tulsa County alone estimates a population exodus of 25,000 people, mostly foreign born.
Sounds like that's a law that has actually done what it set out to do! And kudos to the Journal reporter, Leslie Linthicum, for including that oft-excluded qualifier illegal when describing the people being targeted by the legislation. (That wasn't the case through the entire article, but it was refreshing to see it.)
The instructive article was the one beside it entitled “Fast Track: Critics Say Rising Rail Runner Tab Slows Road Work.” The Rail Runner is pretty cool - I've ridden it with our Cub Scout pack. It's a light rail passenger train that goes from about 20 miles south of Albuquerque to about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, but will eventually extend to Santa Fe. It's been in operation just over a year.
The article had a lot of information about how it (and lots of highway improvements) came about, through legislation passed in 2003 called Governor Richardson's Investment Partnership (GRIP). The initial estimates for the Rail Runner was $90.2 million, but the current expected total cost is $420 million (plus $50 million in escrow, to address “issues” that may arise). This in and of itself has some folks upset. However, the way the GRIP legislation was written, funding can be shifted amongst the several projects - and, because the Rail Runner has such high visibility, money has been diverted from highway improvements to the Rail Runner.
The instructive part, to me, is the cost balloon. Whether the Richardson administration willfully underestimated the cost, or whether it has simply grown due to unanticipated costs, I don't know. It's probably some of both, and it's not really important to the lesson I think we can learn. As an example - New Mexico did not even apply for federal funding of the Santa Fe leg of the Rail Runner. Why?
Rail Runner officials last summer cited problems with grant program rules and the limited federal funds available as reasons for not applying for the money.
And the state was working on a fast track.
A legislative analysis from 2005 stated that the process of applying for federal funds could have delayed the second phase for up to several years - beyond the December 2008 deadline the Richardson administration had set.
“The project needs to be proposed and there are a lot of requirements necessary,” [Federal Transit Administration spokesman Paul] Grasso said. “There's an environmental review that has to be done; there's a cost effectiveness standard that has to be met. There are all kinds of things that have to be worked out in advance.”
Any government entitlement program costs more than originally estimated - every single one. It will take longer and cost more than the original estimate every time. So, when you hear politicians (especially now during campaign season) pitching their programs, remember that. $400 million today is probably $3 billion once implemented.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
11:08 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Through this post on a blog called “Grouchy's Liberaltopia” (which I found through a blog-of-a-blog-of-a-blog), we get an insight into the left-wing hate machine. Here's the third paragraph (numbers are mine, for further dissection)…
In just the past few weeks, the true derangement of the Bush Christopublican neocons has shown its raving, wild-eyed, insane flap-jawed moron face with (1) Anal Cyst Draft Reject Rush Limbaugh slapping any member of the military, including combat vets, as “phony soldiers” if they don't agree with his chickenhawk war scat; (2) Der Leader-hosen's Loyal Bunker Honey Ann “Mannish Boy” Coulter flashing her anti-Semitic roots by generously threatening to ‘perfect Jews’ by overhauling them into Godless uber-Christians like herself; (3) Ailes' Fox News Brain Trust Billo discovering them mother-effin' darkies up in Harlem can run a restaurant just as well as drunken Irish O'Fays; (4) Corporate Roach Motel Desk Clerk Laura Ingraham unironically and hilariously titling her new colostomy bag of political bile “Power to the People”; (5) various Rightie Jock-Sniffers trying to make their bones by attacking 12-year-old accident victim Graeme Frost and, not satisfied with that wincing scuminess, even going after a 2-year-old girl with heart problems cured by the S-CHIP funds that Boy Bush just vetoed.
Wow - sounds a like a rough few weeks! Let's see what really happened…
First up is Rush Limbaugh. He used the term “phony soldiers” to refer to the people who claimed they were in the military, but were not. There have been at least two of these folks who have been thoroughly discredited. The Senate even decided to get in on the fun, writing Rush's syndication company a letter asking them to censure him. Rush decided to auction the letter on eBay, with the proceeds going to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and he promised that he would match the winning bid, and challenged the 41 signers of the letter to make the same pledge. (At this time, none have.) The auction ended this past Friday, with the letter going for $2.1 million, for a total donation to MC-LEF of $4.2 million!
Second is Ann Coulter. I already linked to Dennis Prager's article about Ann. Since when do liberals care about anti-Semitism - aren't they the ones who are constantly demanding that a sovereign nation give up more and more of its territory to a group who has no claim to any of the land anyway? Saying that Jews would be perfected by converting to Christianity is anti-Semitic no more than someone telling me I'd be better if I grew some hair and lost 20 pounds is anti-Daniel.
Third is Bill O'Reilly. A good summary of the whole flap is up over on the ABC News website. I can't help but feel for Bill in all this. The first two we've discussed are a result of statements taken out of context, so I can't help but believe that this is the same thing. In fact, that's what Bill was saying. He has been at the center of racial issues before - people cried racism when his reporting led to Pepsi ditching Ludacris as a spokeman. One defense given of this horrid, offensive rap music is that its purveyors are “keeping it real”. If you're offended, you're a racist, because it's just reality. How was Bill to know that he wouldn't hear that kind of language in a predominantly black restaurant in Harlem?
Fourth is Laura Ingraham. Her new book Power to the People has done pretty well. In fact, after a quick 7-minute interview on Rush's program, the book went from 61st to 2nd on Amazon.com. I think this one is borne out of envy, but let's see what Publisher's Weekly (via Amazon.com) had to say about it.
Taking an approach that makes mutually exclusive groups out of those “working and taking care of their families” and the “protest culture,” Ingraham's message is loud and clear: “they're coming for you.” Specifically, “they” means the Lifetime network (brainwashing women to “swear off men and family”), the growing ranks of “Team Atheist” (including Dan Brown), “family deconstructivists,” illegal immigrants and Islamic jihadists, among others.
Yep - sounds like something a liberal wouldn't like.
Finally, we have Graeme Frost. The Democrats got this 12-year-old boy to read their address about S-CHIP, and held him up as the example of the people the expanded programs was supposed to help. However, his family is not as needy as they would have us believe. Mark Steyn has some details, and Michelle Malkin has a big round-up. This is yet another issue with symbolism over substance (we're not supposed to look at the details, because it would benefit this poor, pitiful kid), but it had the benefit of exposing the problems with the program - the Frost family, it turns out, doesn't need S-CHIP as much as they sounded.
So, we've got a pretty good week for Republicans, and embarrassment and failure for Democrats. I could see why the liberals would be upset with that. Here's to many more weeks like that! I'll tell you what else we're seeing. Republicans have done everything the other side has asked, and all it gets them is a great big bunch of nowhere. They're no longer worried about apologizing, or who they offend. Get used to it…
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
8:34 pm
Daniel J. Summers
There just isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. Sadly, one of the casualties is original content for my blog (although I am working on something that I hope to have ready in a few days). Until then, here's another round-up of interesting things I found scattered around the web.
First up, from the American Thinker, we have Randall Hoven with “Media Dishonesty Matters.” In this tome, he details 101 incidents of plagiarism, failure to disclose conflicts of interest, and instances of journalists creating news out of thin air. This should probably count as three or four links, but we'll keep pressing on.
Next up, LaShawn Barber asks Barack Obama this pointed question - “What Faith Is This?” He has claimed that his faith guides his public life, yet he voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion. That's a good question.
Moving on, Dennis Prager of TownHall.com (among other places) asks another, somewhat rhetorical question - “So What?” In it, he, a devout Jew, explains why he is not offended in the least over Ann Coulter's latest statement that Jews need to be “perfected” by accepting Christ. He also explains why labeling her statements as anti-Semitism does a disservice to the efforts to eliminate anti-Semitism.
Finally, I usually wrap up with some humor - but this one will inspire a different emotion. I may be the last person in the world to find out about this song, but I've got to share it. Tim McGraw's “If You're Reading This” is a tribute to men and women in uniform, and is a tear-jerking classic.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
1:00 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Another busy time, another installment of “Plagiarism Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery”. See, when we re-blog here, we're honest and up-front. :)
First up is an article about the cost of illegal immigration for Los Angeles County for one month, from radio talk show host and author Neal Boortz. The numbers are staggering.
Next up, a link to a pundit I never thought I'd link to, except as a set up to refute. However, Susan Estrich and I agree on this issue, which she details in "A Weak Moment for Women in Banning Larry Summers". (I don't agree that what he originally said was wrong - but the rest of it is spot-on.)
Via Morgan Freeberg, we have reports that "A Quiet Triumph May Be Brewing". Could it be that we've come up with a way to get most remaining al-Qaeda in the same place, then send them to their 72 virgins (or raisins, depending on the translation)?
And finally, we wrap up with some humor. Rachel Lucas learned to make thought and speech bubbles in PhotoShop, and produced a masterpiece she calls "Three Men and a Hillary". (Language warning in effect for the comments on that post…)
