So 2010 is drawing to a close.  As I write this, my colleagues in India are about 90 minutes from 2011.

So what has this year brought?

In January, I started a contract job for a well-known company here in the Midwest.  I moved to the Des Moines, IA metro area.  I lived and worked there for 8 months before being lured back to the Cities to a job I thought I'd like.  It was for more pay, but that didn't offset that it was one of the jobs that I hated.  A month later I was back contracting at my old job in Des Moines, and two months after that, I became a direct employee.

I have spent the year maintaining two residences.  Until November, I was receiving a per diem that helped offset the cost of paying both rent and mortgage.  At one point, I couldn't wait to move back to Minnesota.  Now I can't wait to sell the house and cut one of the last remaining connections I have to the Twin Cities.

What connections are left in Minnesota?  The rabbit volunteers, Tawny, and the house.  That's it.

I'm going to sell the house.  Or rent it if I stand to lose my shirt.

Tawny?  Who am I kidding?  It's over.  Eight years.  In some respects, it feels like they were wasted.  In other ways, I know they weren't.  But the distance did not make the heart grow fonder.  A couple of times that I made the 4-hour journey to the Cities from Des Moines, Tawny's schedule was too busy for her to come see me.  When I returned to the Cities for a month to work the much-hated contract job, I realized distance wasn't the only thing keeping us apart.  Now I refer to her in conversations as the ex-girlfriend, though we haven't officially had that talk yet.  But I sense the infrequent contact is a clear sign that she feels much the same way.  The irony is I was drawn to her because of her independence.  So in hindsight, I shouldn't be surprised that she would want to assert that independence:  She moved out in November '09 because she felt depending on me was making her too complacent in her job search.  She hasn't found the good, well-paying job in her field, and more and more people enter that job market every six months, compounding the problem.  She recently intimated that she was looking to search job markets in Minnesota's neighboring states, including Iowa.

Not sure if I find that appealing.

The rabbit volunteers?  They've managed just fine without me.  Once I sell my house, it's doubtful I'll see them even occasionally.  I'm anxious to get a rabbit agility program started in Iowa, and that plus a Hoppy Hour might lead to bridging the two programs.

Reflections

After hearing We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel this evening, I decided to take stock of historically significant events in my own lifetime.  Just so we're clear, I'm including conception just to round out 1975, not to make a pro-life argument, you godless soulless baby-killer you (J.K.):

1975.  
• Saigon falls
• Apollo-Soyuz
• Where's Jimmy Hoffa?
• The Thrilla in Manilla: Ali beats Frazier
• SNL debuts
• Zionism = Racism?
• Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald
1976.  
• Concorde maiden flight
• Patty Hearst found guilty
• The D.C. Metro opens
• Son of Sam
• Viking 1 & 2
• Livin' it up at the Hotel California
1977.  
• President Jimmy Carter
• Tenerife becomes infamous after two 747s collide on the runway, killing 583 people
• Introducing the Apple II
• Elvis Presley dies
• TCP/IP
1978.  
• Roman Polanksi becomes a fugitive from justice
• Serial killer Ted Bundy captured in Florida
• The Unabomber begins his mailing bombs in a campaign of terror spanning almost twenty years.
• Garfield debuts.
• The 33-day papacy
• Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple commit mass murder-suicide.  Death toll: 918 people, including Congressman Leo J. Ryan.
• The Lufthansa Heist
1979.  
• The Shah of Iran is exiled and the Islamic Republic of Iran is founded.
• Voyager I flies by Jupiter and reveals it has rings
• The Compact Disc debuts.
• Unit 2 experiences a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island.
• President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a swamp rabbit.
• Skylab returns to Earth
• Saddam Hussein assumes the presidency in Iraq.
• Iran hostage crisis begins
• The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1980.  
• The U.S. boycotts the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow
• Mount St. Helens erupts
• Approx 125,000 Cubans travel to the U.S. during the Mariel boatlift
• Voyager I passes by Saturn
• Reagan defeats Carter
• John Lennon murdered.
1981.  
• The first DeLorean DMC-12 rolls off the assembly line
• John Hinckley, Jr. attempts to assasinate Ronald Reagan.  Reagan later remarks to surgeons, "I hope you're all Republicans."
• The Space Shuttle program begins with the launch of Columbia.  I remember seeing the launch from my backyard at age 4.
• Assasination attempt on Pope John Paul II
• The first recognized cases of AIDS are observed after the deaths of 5 homosexual men from a rare form of pneumonia
• Ronald Reagan nominates the first female justice to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), Sandra Day O'Connor.
• MTV debuts
• Reagan fires the air-traffic controllers after they go on strike, in violation of federal law.
• Anwar Sadat is assassinated after brokering peace between Egypt and Israel.
1982.  
• Falklands War
• Lawn Chair Larry flies 16,000 feet above Long Beach, CA in a lawn chair buoyed by weather balloons.
• The Chicago Tylenol murders
1983.  
•  Mount Kilauea begins erupting 
• Final episode of M*A*S*H
• Pioneer 10 leaves the Sol system
• The Australians win the America's Cup
• U.S. invasion of Grenada
• The Soviet Union shoots down Korea Air Lines flight 007, mistaking it for an enemy aircraft after the airliners strays into Soviet airspace.
1984.  
• The Macintosh is introduced
• Vanessa Williams surrenders her crown as Miss America after nude photos of her appear in Penthouse.
• The Soviets boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, CA.
• Union Carbide Bhopal Disaster
• Bernhard Goetz teaches four would-be young robbers a lesson
1985. 
      
• New Coke is a disaster
• Route 66 is decommissioned
• Back to the Future debuts
• French commandos sink the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior
• The R.M.S. Titanic is discovered after over 73 years of resting on the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Mexico City is hit by an 8.1 Richter scale earthquake.  It is made more devastating by the fact that most buildings are built on loose soil instead of bedrock.
• Palestinian terrorists hijack the Achille Lauro and kill Leon Klinghoffer.
1986.  
• Voyager 2 encounters Uranus
• Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after launch.  I observed this in the schoolyard behind my 4th-grade classroom.
• Hailey's Comet swings by.  It'll be back in 2061.  If I'm still alive, I'll be 86.
• The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster kills at least 4056 people and forces the abandonment of the town of Pripyat.
• Captain Midnight hijacks the HBO satellite feed for four-and-a-half minutes.
• Greg LeMond becomes the first American to win the Tour de France.
• Rutan Voyager circumvent the earth by air without refueling.
1987.  
• Reagan challenges Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!"  Twenty-three years after I first heard it, I still get a chill down my spine when I think of the statement's historical significance.
• Robert Bork is the first and to date only nominee to be nominated to and later rejected for the Supreme Court.  The Democrats' behavior will come be known as "Borking".
• The Fairness Doctrine is rescinded, releasing the death-grip that liberals had previously held on the marketplace of ideas.
• Black Monday.
• The Perl programming language is created by Larry Wall.
1988. 
      
• Dan Rather tries to slander Vice President George H.W. Bush on CBS Evening News.  Bush handles himself well, considering the prick Rather was questioning Bush's word.
• Aloha Airlines flight 243 turns into a rag-top mid-flight.
• The Red Army starts withdrawing from Afghanistan.
• Iran Air flight 655 is shot down by the USS Vincennes.
• The Iran-Iraq War ends.
• The "terminal man" begins his residency at De Gaulle Airport in Paris.
• George H.W. Bush defeats Michael Dukasis in the presidential election.
• The B-2 stealth bomber is revealed.
• Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland by the Libyans.
1989. 
      
• Gulf of Sidra incident:  Two Libyan MiG-23s are shot down by 2 US Navy F-14s.
• Emperor Hirohito of Japan dies.
• George H.W. Bush becomes the 41st president of the United States.
• Serial killer Ted Bundy is executed by the State of Florida.
• Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini places a $3 million bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie for his authoring The Satanic Verses.  Remember, it's  Religion of Peace!
• Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil.
• Lincoln Savings & Loans is seized by the U.S. government.
• Turret Two explodes on the U.S.S. Iowa, killing 47 crewmen.
• Ayatollah Khomeini dies in Iran.
• The Sega Genesis is released in North America.  It is called the Mega Drive in Europe and Asia.
• Voyager II passes Neptune and its moon Triton.
• Loma Prieta earthquake strikes the San Francisco Bay Area, magnitude 7.1 on the Ricter Scale.  I remember the image of the pancaked double-decker Bay Bridge.
• The Germans begin tearing the Berlin Wall down.
1990. 
      
• D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for possession of cocaine by the FBI.
• Nelson Mandela released from prison in South Africa after 27 years.
• The Hubble Space Telescope is placed in orbit.
• Microsoft releases Windows 3.0.  I have a copy somewhere on 5.25" disks.
• Iraq invades Kuwait
• West & East Germany formally reunify into a single Germany.
1991. 
      
• Operation Desert Storm begins with air strikes against Iraq.  Iraq retaliates with Scud missiles launched against targets in Israel.  After a month of fighting, Iraq withdraws from Kuwait, setting fire to oil fields as it retreats.
• Four LAPD officers are caught on videotape beating Rodney King after he leads officers on a freeway chase that reaches speeds of 117 mph and later violently resists arrest.  The beating occurs after LAPD officers fail to subdue King with a taser.
• William Kennedy Smith is accused of raping a woman on the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, FL.
• The Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested in Milwaukee, WI.
• The World Wide Web is born.
• Linus Torvalds posts messages about the new operating system kernel he's developing.  This would come to be known as Linux.
• A brief coup by Communist hard-liners is attempted in the USSR.  It fails in 72 hours.
• Leningrad is renamed St. Petersburg.
• Former aide Anita Hill alleges sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas without proof during hearings to confirm him to the SCOTUS.  He is confirmed 52-48.
• L.A. Lakers point guard Magic Johnson announces he is HIV-positive.
• Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union.  The next day, it is formally dissolved by the Supreme Soviet.
1992. 
      
• The European Union is founded.
• New York Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of the murder of mob boss Paul Castellano and of racketeering.
• Microsoft releases Windows 3.1.
• The four officers accused of excessive force in the Rodney King beating are acquitted.  Blacks riot in L.A., even though a black man prosecuted the case.
• The Mall of America is constructed in Bloomington, MN.
• The FBI fucks up at Ruby Ridge, ID.
•  Sinead O'Connor rips up a photo of Pope John Paul II on SNL and tosses the pieces at the camera.  The next week, Joe Pesci holds up the taped-together photo.
1993. 
      
• Czechoslovakia is separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  To date, I've only been to Czechoslovakia and never to the two countries formed from it.
• William Jefferson Clinton is sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States.
• Federal agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX.  Four agents and five cult members die as a 51-day standoff begins.  When it's over, 76 cult members, including leader David Koresh, are killed by a fire.
• Peace-loving Muslims try to bring down the WTC with a van packed with explosives in the sub basement of the North Tower.
• Intel ships the first Pentiums.
•  Tennis pro Monica Seles is stabbed in the back with a 9-inch blade by an obsessed Steffi Graf fan.
• Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned:  Lorena Bobbitt slices John Bobbitt's schlong off while he sleeps.
• Bill Clinton institutes the Don't Ask-Don't Tell policy on gays in the military.
• Oops:  NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer three days before it was to enter Martian orbit.  Nobody knows where it is!
• A Canadian "software specialist" makes the first mention of the Y2K problem.
• The European Union is formally established.
• Doom debuts.
• Nancy Kerrigan gets clubbed.
• Aldrich Ames is charged with spying on the U.S. for the Soviet Union.
• The Rwandan genocide.
• Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman are found murdered at O.J. Simpson's Brentwood home.
• Jupiter is bombarded with 21 large fragments from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
• Kansai International Airport is completed on an artifical island in Osaka Bay.
• Oops again:  NASA loses contact with the Magellan spacecraft as it descends into the thick clouds of Venus.  It is assumed to have burned up on entry.
• The GOP wins mid-term elections and become the majority party in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
• The first passengers travel through the Chunnel.
• Whitewater scandal.
1995. 
      
• The Russians freak out when a rocket is launched from Norway, even though they were given prior notification, and almost trigger World War III.
• Denver International Airport opens.  Consider yourself lucky if your bag and you are ever reunited...
• Tejano superstar Selena is killed by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar
• The Contract with America passes
• Timothy McVeigh kills 168 at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with a Ryder truck filled with ammonia nitrate.
• Superman actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down in a horse-riding accident.
• Windows 95 is released.
• eBay is founded.
• The Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) is introduced.
• Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a radical Jewish student.  I remember the flags at my college being flown at half-staff.
• The federal government shuts down for a few days, and hardly anyone notices.
• The federally-mandated speed limit of 55 mph is repealed.  In Arizona, I remember portions of I-17 and I-10 immediately bumping up to 75 mph.
1996. 
      
• A blizzard socks much of the northeastern U.S. with snow.  Philadelphia, where my parents lived at the time, gets 30" of snow.  I had luckily flown back to where I was going to school the day before.
• Chess computer Deep Blue defeats chess champ Garry Kasparov.
• Got him!  Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in Montana.
• ValuJet flight 592 crashes in Florida Everglades after some nitwit thought that they could store oxygen canisters in a cargo hold with no safeguards.
• Nineteen U.S. servicemen are killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia by adherents to the Religion of Peace.
• Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to be successfully cloned.
• The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta are bombed.
• Little-known Osama bin Laden declares jihad on the U.S. for "occupying" the Muslim holy land.
1997.  
• North Hollywood shoot-out:  Bank robbers armed to the teeth and wearing body armor terrorize North Hollywood for 44 minutes before the LAPD finally stop them.  The incident buffs up the LAPD's recently-tarnished incident.
• Comet Hale-Bopp reaches perigee.  Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide, believing the comet to be followed by a spacecraft that will take their souls to the next plane of existence.  Morons.
• UPS-yours:  Union UPS drivers walk off the job.
• Princess Diana of Wales is killed in an automobile accident in Paris.
1998. d
• Hugo Chavez is elected president of Venezuela, proving that America doesn't have a monopoly on morons.
• Smoking is banned in all California bars and restaurants.  So goes California off the cliff, so goes the country.
• Bill Clinton denies on television that he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.  Later he admits it.
• The first XML specification is released.
• Auckland, New Zealand suffers from a 66-day blackout
• Osama bin Laden declares a fatwa against Jews and Crusaders.  The Religion of Peace strikes again!
• The U.S. D.O.J. files an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
• Google is founded.
• Congress passes the dreaded DMCA.
• American Airlines introduces E-ticketing.
• Former wrestler and Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota
• Bill Clinton is impeached.
1999. d.
• Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela
• Pluto becomes the planet furthest from the Sun, until some astronomer douche-bags say it's not really a planet.
• Avalanches in the Alps kill 41
• Melissa worm strikes the Internet
• Dow Jones hits the 10,000 mark for first time ever
• Two whiny bastards who can't take a little teasing commit the Columbine massacre.  At least they killed themselves and saved the taxpayers money in convicting them.
• Windows 98 Second Edition is released
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace hits theaters.  I went to see this with my friend Andy.
• Napster debuts.
• JFK Jr.crashes his Piper Seneca off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, proving that celebrity does not outweigh being in a hurry, having a lack of focus, and learning to rely on your instruments when flying over water at night.
• NASA loses the Mars Climate Orbiter
• EgyptAir flight 900 is deliberately crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on departure from NYC bound for Cairo, by the co-pilot after the pilot leaves the cockpit.
• Desmond Llewelyn, who played "Q" for most of the James Bond franchise, dies.
2000. d.
• On 1 Jan, after billions of dollars were spent worldwide, nothing happened.  Al Gore would soon find another lucrative opportunity to play on people's fears.
• SCOTUS rules the government can't regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.  Take that, Bill Clinton!
• US v. Microsoft:  Microsoft is found to have violated anti-trust law by leveraging its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser "market".
• Janet Reno sends in federal agents to retrieve Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and give him to his father in Cuba, giving Castro a ton of propaganda capital.
• The ILOVEYOU worm spreads across the Internet, once again illustrating a huge problem with the way Microsoft products regard security.
• The first Internet short film, 405 The Movie is released.  I remember watching this with my co-workers at my first job out of college.
• Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 aboard.
• The USS Cole is bombed in Yemen by some terrorist dirtbags in a zodiac laden with explosives.  Seventeen Navy crewmen are killed.
• George W. Bush defeats Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election.  The outcome is unknown for almost a month because some Florida people don't know how to vote properly.
• The third and final reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power plant is shutdown and the power plant is permanently closed.
2001. d.
• The 3rd millenium officially begins
• Wikipedia is launched.
• The USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime-Maru after performing an emergency surface simulation.
• FBI agent Robert Hanssen is captured after spying for Russia for 15 years.
• Russian space station Mir de-orbits and plunges into the Pacific Ocean near Fiji.
• A Chinese F-8 tries to crowd a U.S. EP-3E surveillance aircraft and bumps into it, forcing an emergency landing Hainan, China.  The crew is detained for 10 days.  The aircraft is ultimately returned to the U.S. in pieces, after Chinese intelligence had a chance to examine it.
• Soyuz TM-32 lifts off with the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito.
• Nepalese Royal Massacre.
• Timothy McVeigh is executed for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, OK.
• Dmiti Sklyarov is arrested by the FBI for violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) for simply telling a Las Vegas convention how to defeat certain copyright protections.
• POTUS George W. Bush announces his limited support of federal funding only for existing lines of embryonic stem cells.  The media will mischaracterize this and many other policy decisions as "anti-science", despite being "nuanced thinkers".
• 9/11
• 2001 Anthrax Attacks
• US-led coalition of nations begins military operations in Afghanistan in an effort to drive out the terrorist-supporting Taliban and capture of kill prominent members of al Qaeda.
• The USA Patriot act is signed into law, again mischaracterized by the media.
• American airlines flight 587 crashes in Queens minutes after takeoff from JFK airport in NYC, killing all 260 aboard.
• Enron files Chapter 11.
• Shoe bomber Richard Reid is subdued by passengers before he can light his feet on a flight from Paris to Miami.
2002. d.
• No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation signed into law.  It's a crazy idea, thinking schools and teachers should be accountable for the federal funds they use!
• Kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl is murdered by jihadists in Pakistan.
• Euro-using countries cease using their pre-EU currencies.  In Germany, however, a large black-market develops for Deutsche Marks.
• Jimmy Carter becomes 1st POTUS, in or out of office to visit Cuba since Castro's 1959 revolution.
• Congress approves the resolution to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq.
  Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, his daughter, and 5 others are killed in a plane crash in Eveleth, MN.  I later speak to moonbats whom believe his plane was shot down for opposing the war in Iraq.  I am more polite to these people than they deserve.
• The Department of Homeland Security is established.
• Abu Nidal, terrorist dirtbag who killed American wheelchair-bound passenger Leon Klinghofer after the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, dies
2003. d.
• NASA receives the last signal from Pioneer 10, some 7.5 billion miles from Earth.
• Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon re-entry after a piece of insulation foam from the external fuel tank had struck the heat tiles on one wing during the initial climb in orbit.
• First documented case of SARS in Hanoi, Vietnam.
• Iraq War begins.
• The Human Genome project is completed with 99% of the human genome mapped by DNA researchers.
• Lawrence v. Texas:  SCOTUS declares sodomy laws unconstitutional.
• Uday & Qusay Hussein, Saddam's thug sons, are killed by coalition forces in Iraq.
• The Great Blackout of 2003:  Power is out across northeastern US and south-central Canada.
• California Gray Davis recalled.  Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds him.
• Saddam Hussein is captured in Tikrit by the US 4th Infantry Division.  To quote Paul Bremer:  "We got him!"
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan dies.  A famous quote:  "You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."
2004. 
      
• Facebook is founded.
• Madrid train bombings.  They prompt the political socialists to sweep to power in Spain.
• UN Oil-For-Food scandal makes news.  No wonder Kofi Annan and the United Nations were opposed to the Iraq War:  It was disrupting business, like Kofi's son's!
• Abuse at Abu Gharaib makes news on 60 Minutes II.
• National WWII Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.  Tawny and I would visit it 3 years later.
• Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States, dies after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.  I am sickened by the sycophantic members of the MSM who compare current President Barack Hussein Obama with Reagan.
• Marlo Brando dies.
• American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins an unprecendented 6th Tour de France.
• The National Guard Memo story appears on 60 Minutes II.  It is almost immediately questioned when bloggers notice how documents allegedly type-written in 1972 look just like documents produced using Microsoft Word!
• Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh is stabbed to death by a member of the much-touted Religion of Peace.
• Terrorist Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat dies.  Burn in Hell, you bastard.
• US forces rout insurgents from Fallujah.
• The first black Secretary of State, former Gen. Colin Powell, resigns and is succeeded by the first black female Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleeza Rice.
• NASA's unmanned hypersonic Scramjet achieves a velocity of Mach 9.6, or about 7,000 mph.
• A Richter 9.3 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra generates a massive tsunami that strikes at least 8 nations and claim approximately 180,000 lives, with another 40,000 reported missing.  It happens the day after Christmas, which is still Christmas Day in the US.
2005. 
      
• The meaningless Kyoto protocol goes into effect, without the official support of the US and Australia, and without the unofficial support of just about every nation that did sign it.
• Pope John Paul II dies.  He is succeeded by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who takes the name Pope Benedict XVI.
• Syria withdraws its troops from Lebanon after 29 years.
• Leftist bomb-thrower MP George Galloway appears before Congress to answer allegations he made money from the UN Oil-For-Food Programme.
• Hurrican Katrina claims about 1800 lives.  It will be fodder for race-baiters, despite about half of the deceased being white, not black, in a city that is 90% black (New Orleans).  Despite examples of leadership failures and downright incompetence by Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, the media is content to heap the blame on POTUS George W. Bush and his direction of the federal response (Couldn't have anything to do with him having an "R" next to his name and Blanco and Nagin having "D" next to theirs, could it?)
• Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten provokes the rage of members of the Religion of Peace by publishing cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed.
2006. 
      
• The first case of Avian Flu is found in a Swan in the UK.
• Israeli troops invade Lebanon after Hezbollah kidnaps 2 IDF soldiers.  Moral:  Don't fuck with the Israelis.
• North Korea claims its first-ever nuclear weapons test.
• Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging by his own people and executed on 30 December.
2007. 
      
• South Korean Ban Ki-Moon succeeds Kofi Annan as General Secretary of the United Nations.
• Anna Nicole Smith dies.
• The IPCC releases its Global Warming report.
• The Iranians commit an act of war by seizing British Royal Navy sailors from international waters.
• Nicolas Sarkozy defeats Jacques Chirac for the French presidency.
• Col. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, dies.
• Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated at an election rally in Pakistan.
2008. 
      
• Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to make a successful ascent and descent of Mount Everest, dies.
• William F. Buckley, widely regard as one of the founders of modern conservatism, dies.
• Fidel Castro resigns as President of Cuba, amidst rumors of failing health.  His brother Raul Castro is unanimously elected by the National Assembly to succeed him.
• Surgeons at London's Moorsfield Eye Hospital perform the first implantation of bionic eyes into two blind patients.
• Charlton Heston, one of the greatest actors (The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Ben-Hur, as well as a bit part in Wayne's World 2 playing a tear-evoking gas station attendant), dies.
• George Carlin, a comic I didn't necessarily agree with, but a funny man nonetheless, dies.
• Don S. Davis, best known as General George S. Hammond from the Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis franchise, dies from a heart attack.  He is honored by the Stargate franchise.
• Another great actor dies:  Paul Newman.  I like him best in The Sting and Fat Man and Little Boy.
• 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China.  A colleague of mine at my workplace attends with her fiance.
• Michael Phelps wins 8 gold medals for swimming at the Olympics, breaking Mark Spitz' record.
• Proton beam is circulated for the first time at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
• Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Thus begins the era of "Too Big to Fail" (or "Too Stupid To Survive", as my father and I say)
• Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines merge, forming the world's largest commercial carrier.
• The QE2 makes her final voyage.
• Michael Crichton, a great author with what I consider prophetic warnings about our increasingly technological society and the arrogance that accompanies it, dies.
• Senators Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden win the general election for POTUS, defeating Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  We have the news media to thank, swaying the independents with their near-worship of Obama and willingness to cast doubts on Republican leadership at every turn (Never mind Palin is the only one of the four with executive-branch experience, and never mind Obama had spent almost all of his first and only term as Illinois' junior senator campaigning for President.  No, move along, nothing to see here.  
• Vote for the black guy because it's time we had a black president and you're racist if you point out the man doesn't have a record to run on).
• Human remains found in 1991 are positively identified thru DNA analysis as belonging deposed autocrat Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
2009. 
      
• Barack Hussein Obama is inaugurated as the 44th POTUS.  He is the first black president, as well as the first president to rely on a teleprompter about as much as a baby relies on a pacifier.
• He also makes me wish that if the U.S. must have a Democratic president, why couldn't the DNC nominate Hillary Clinton?  Better the devil you know...
• Russia turns off all gas supplies to Europe through the Ukraine at the endorsement of Vladmir Putin.  The man is a thug.
• In a testament to Canada's "free" health care system, actress Natasha Richardson dies after being denied proper health care by medics.
• Swine flu is deemed a global pandemic.
• Actor, singer, dancer, and child molester Michael Jackson dies.
• The president of Honduras tries to hold a referendum to stay in power.  The Supreme Court of Honduras upholds the national constitution and arrests and exiles him.  Naturally, the UN, OAS, and other countries (including the U.S.)  Later, the OAS suspends Honduras' membership in that organization (apparently for following their constitution and resisting what was effectively a coup).
• Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, also known as Chappaquiddick Ted Kennedy, dies.  He is regarded as a "liberal lion" and the Democrats push to pass ObamaCare in his memory.  In the special election in Massachusetts following Kennedy's death, members of the media routinely refer to the seat as "Kennedy's seat", GOP candidate Scott Brown points out "it's not Ted Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."
• After one of the worst pitches in Olympics history by Barack and Michelle Obama, the 2016 Olympics go not to Chicago, but to Rio de Janeiro.
2010. 
      
• A volcanic eruption in Iceland disrupts air traffic across northern and central Europe.  Several John Deere employees make their way to Italy and are picked up by the company jet.
• The Deep Water Horizon drilling platform, after receiving a waiver from the Obama administration for not having proper blowout preventers in place, explodes due to a failure of aforementioned blowout preventers.  The resulting spill into the Gulf of Mexico is the largest in history, and bureacracy paralyzes decisive action from being taken until after the oil starts washing up on the Gulf Coast.  Obama has been tested, as Joe Biden predicted.  Guess what?  He failed.
• Greece becomes among the first European nations to fail economically, proving former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's admonition that you eventually run out of other people's money.
• Wikileaks releases tens of thousands of classified United States government documents after it receives them from Pfc. Bradley M. Manning, who violates his oath and betrays the national security of the U.S.  Try him, hopefullly convict him, and execute him.  Traitors deserve nothing less.
• Senator Robert Byrd, the longest-serving U.S. senator in history, dies.  Omitted from his obituary is his membership as a Grand Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan.
• Thirty-nine miners are trapped 700 m underground in Chile for 69 days before being rescued.
  Leslie Nielsen dead?  Surely you can't be serious!  I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley!

 Wow, 35 years.

Ten-Year Old Disputes

I've heard two of them this week.  First, most famously/infamously, is the whole "Selected, not elected" theme from the 2000 election, otherwise known as "Democrats are sore losers."

Once again, a seemingly-intelligent man like Michael Kinsley has to rehash the whole 2000 election arguments that the Supreme Court was wrong to admonish the Florida Supreme Court for not following their own state's constitution, and that it was wrong to impose a consistent method of counting ballots state-wide.

Second was courtesy of the snarky, irreverent Chris Bradshaw.  His radio program advertisements bill him as wanting to "have the discussion" with people who don't think like him.  Not quite:  He wants to mock and belittle those who don't think like him.  There's a word for that:  Jerk.

Bradshaw, like most liberals, are incapable of recognizing a logical argument that draws a different conclusion than their own.  The argument must be corrupted by bigotry, fear, hate, etc.  In other words, the other person is evil.

Bradshaw's target today was Senator John McCain. McCain led the fight against the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell over the weekend.  Rather than give consideration to a man who not only served in the Armed Forces of the United States of America, but was tortured by an immoral enemy for doing so, and give consideration that the man's opinion of DADT's repeal was based on those years of service and experience, Bradshaw chose to ignore the man's informed opinion and characterize him as a bigot.  Bradshaw also lamented what happened to the McCain of 10 years ago.

It is here where I almost burst a cranial blood vessel.

When, for instance, a more conservative candidate is competing against John McCain in a presidential primary campaign, liberals, especially their high priests and priestesses in the media, are going to build up McCain as being the more sensible (i.e. more liberal) candidate.

As we saw in the 2008 primaries, that's exactly what the media did.  Then, almost overnight, they tore down the same man they'd been building up.  Why?  Because he was more conservative than their preferred liberal candidate.

Rather than pit a principled conservative against Obama, the liberals in the media saw their preferred candidate's chances as better if he was running against a RINO with a history of deal-making with the opposition, rather than have Obama pitted a conservative who'd mop the floor with him on policy.

Want further proof?  Hillary Clinton's sudden establishment of residency in NY state was hardly ever questioned when she ran against Guiliani for U.S. Senator from NY.  But she turned into the  Wicked Witch of the West when running against Obama.

But I digress.  Bradshaw couldn't help himself:  By bringing up how he missed the McCain of 10 years ago, he had to rehash the "black baby" story.

I learned a new term today:  Whisper campaign.  It's one that's anonymous.  Anonymous.

Bradshaw reminded listeners of the "most-underreported story of the 2000 election", of how evil genius Karl Rove orchestrated a campaign of misinformation about John McCain allegedly having fathered a black child out of wedlock.  As an afterthought, Bradshaw appended the word "allegedly."

Like I said, it was a whisper campaign, it was anonymous.  Anonymous.  A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S.

So how does Bradshaw know it was Karl Rove?  It could have just as likely been Democrats try to drive a wedge in the opposition party.  Could have been the Jews.  Or the Illuminati.

Two things I'm reminded of.  The first is the quote by Ronald Reagan:  "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so."

The second is the description of the defense mechanism of projection.  People often see their own negative character traits in their enemies.

The sheer hatred some people are capable of...

As evidenced by this blog post:  http://whitenoiseinsanity.com/2010/12/15/quote-of-the-day-2/.

Blogger KayInMaine is, for lack of a better term, a nutbar.  A hate-filled nutbar.  This is her Richard-Dawkins-inspired take on Jehovah in bloody Commie red, with my equally snarky response in calm, rational black:

Only the christian gawd would:

• Tell George Bush to attack Iraq
•  I searched with Google, could only find hearsay of what Bush supposedly said to Mahmoud Abbas.
• Want to kill all gays
• OK, you know that Sodom and Gomorrah were not actual towns, right?  More importantly, their mention occurs in the Old Testament of the Bible.  Kay said "christian gawd", which I will correct for her to "Christian God", since it denotes the name of a group and the name of a deity, and we're supposed to capitalize names, m'kay Kay?  Guess what, Christian teachings focus on the more compassionate and loving God of the New Testament.  I want Kay to show me the biblical passage in either book that says "Kill all gays".  She can't, because it doesn't exist!  What some people have done in a misinterpretation of the Bible is not God's fault.
• Support war over peace
• Eh?  What's she smoking?  Once again, we're talking about the Christian God here.  Jesus wasn't big on the whole war effort, Kay.  He was more of the peace-maker type.
  
• Support the rich over the poor
• "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and give unto God that which is God's."  Must have missed the part of the bible where J.C. hangs out with the preppy Apostles.
  
• Rather spend thousands on new furniture for the church foyer than give a starving child a sandwich
• What's God got to do with the financial decisions of a church?  And it's not like the Church does nothing for the poor.  Check the historical record, Kay:  The Church and its people have done much for the poor.
• Command his underlings to spread falsehoods and lies about President Obama, because he can’t stand the color of his skin
• OK, she should stop hogging the good stuff.  Seriously, did she smoke some weed before pooping out this diatribe?
  
• Refuse to fund the 9/11 responders, but add $900 billion to our nation’s deficit after years of screaming the deficit is too high….all in the name of Jesus (see first bullet on the list)!
• Again, what's God got to do with this?
  
• Support the torture of people who have no evidence against their crime
• Someone smoked too much weed while in English and Civics class.  You see, in this country, people are innocent until proven guilty, so they don't have to have evidence against their crime, as you said.  The burden of proof is with the court.  And torture?  Once again, she confuses a misinterpretation of God's word with what God is supposed to have said.
  
• Support the condemning those that use the words “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” without giving the beings of the earth proof that Jesus was really born on December 25th in the desert in a manger!
• It's called "faith", you moron!  Oh, and it's also called "you wouldn't have a holiday on December 25th without Christians celebrating the birth of their Messiah.  You're more than welcome to celebrate your Messiah's birthday, Kay.  When is Obama's birthday again?
  

What else has gawd done that we should all be ashamed of?  Allowed your birth to occur.

Subtle rude people

Loud, brash rude people are the kinds you verbally assault guilt-free.  In the game of Who's The Bigger Asshole Chess, the louder and more obnoxious they are, the weaker their opening move.  Such people can be verbally or physically assaulted, and the Court of Public Opinion will side with you on the "asshole deserved it" defense.

But then there are the subtle ones. 

Case in point:  Upon entering a sandwich shop I'm fond of, I proceeded to walk past two women who were standing away from the counter, discussing what they would have.  I headed straight for the counter.  One of the women, pretending not to see me, walked parallel and arrived at the counter in front of me.  The fact that I made enough noise in my ski jacket, yet she never turned to acknowledge me, screamed "guilty conscience".  She knew what she had done, and rather than get a angry stare from me, she refused to turn around.

Her companion also feigned being oblivious, joining her friend after her order was completed.  When the sandwich-maker inquired what she wanted, my hopes were raised briefly when she turned and stated that she thought I was next.  I gestured towards her friend, the first bitch, and started to say, "well, if you're buying together..."  The woman turned back to the maker and ordered!

It was at that moment that I thought about bringing my killer rabbit to deal with rude people.  Someone thinks they're better than me because they were born earlier?  Or because they've spent a day bleeding their husbands' bank accounts dry in the pursuit of crass and pointless materialism?  Let's get something straight:  Black Friday is less about finding gifts for great bargains for the ones you love, unless "the ones you love" is a fancy way of saying you're a narcissist.

Anyway, back to the killer rabbit:  Oh, what an adorable bunny, they'd say, followed by Argh, the cute bunny just ripped my eye out of its socket!

Mission accomplished.  Excuse, sandwich-maker, you can just toss those two sandwiches or give them to the homeless or something.  I'm ready to order now.

A close call

So Tawny sent me a link from the Star & Sickle:

Lockheed to close Eagan plant; 1,000 jobs affected
SUSAN FEYDER, Star Tribune


Lockheed Martin said Thursday it will close its Eagan facility that employs about 1,000 by 2013. The plant makes components for P-3 surveillance planes.
The company said the layoffs will be partially offset by the transfer of approximately 650 jobs from Eagan to Owego, N.Y., San Diego, Calif.; and Manassas, Va.
Lockheed said the moves are being done to trim costs and should save it about $150 million over the next 10 years.

Folks, this year I moved from a good job I liked in Iowa back to Minnesota to work for Lockheed-Martin.  When I use the word "hate", I do not use it lightly to describe the job I was doing there.  A month later, I had gone back to the job I loved in Iowa, even though it didn't pay as much.  Even though Iowa is a good distance from my house in the Twin Cities.  A house I'm concerned about selling for a decent price in a soft real estate market.

Guess what?  I'd rather have to pay for a mortgage and rent simultaneously and pinch pennies for a while.  It's preferable to having just the mortgage payment and not having the job to pay for it!

Now the vast horde of the uninformed just had to weigh in on this.  Let the blame game begin!

---

This is great news! The recession is over and this means that maybe we will be cutting the defense budget! Besides, this is happening to an evil suburb that no one cares about. Eagan can move to Wisconsin for all I care.

posted by pdempsey on Nov. 18, 10 at 2:28 PM |

Please tell me this is satire.  Given that Tawny's brother Fernando sometimes "thinks" like this, I fear it's not.

---

Republican change. Conservative change. Voters got what they asked for - job loss.
posted by bradtheissenla on Nov. 18, 10 at 2:50 PM |

That would be the Republicans and Conservatives (not the same thing, bradtheissenla!) whom haven't even taken office yet?  The same Republicans and Conservatives who weren't in power in Minnesota's legislature for...decades?  The same Republicans and Conservatives whom were in a distinct minority in both houses of Congress for the past four years?  Damn those evil Republican and Conservative puppet-masters for making the Democrats, liberals, and socialists double-down on failed economic policies!

---

This Eagan plant closing has been in the works for over a year, and was not dependent on who won or lost in the election. The defense industry is downsizing due to decreased budgets. The Eagan plant was built in the late 1960s when there was nothing but farmland all around. Back then the company was Univac div. of Sperry Rand, then it got rid of the Univac name and became Sperry. Sperry was purchased by Burroughs in about 1987, and the name changed to Unisys. Unisys, which remains a business disaster to this day, renamed their defense business Paramax and peddled it to Loral in 1995. The next year Lockheed bought the plant from Loral. Besides Lockheed, about the only defense businesses left in town are General Dynamics (former Control Data defense biz), BAE Systems (former United Defense - former FMC) and Alliant Tech (former Honeywell?) Any others?
posted by moparfool on Nov. 18, 10 at 3:58 PM |


OK, I can tell moparfool has worked in the defense industry.  He knows what he's talking about, but his info is a little dated.  BAE laid off a good chunk of their Twin Cities workforce last year and are considering closing the plant, and a neighbor of mine tells me Honeywell has a hiring freeze in place and have been in trouble for a while.  Upon finding moparfool's comment, I had to include it as an example of what Star & Sickle commenters should be:  informed, civil, and intelligent.

---

And I just heard that Republicans in Washington nixed the funding for unemployment compensation. Careful who you vote for!
posted by carlbs on Nov. 18, 10 at 5:11 PM |

Facts are such pesky things.  The incoming Republicans are holding the line on extending unemployment benefits past 99 weeks.  Ninety-nine weeks!  That's almost two years.  The well is dry already, folks, but the Left wants to continue priming the pump.  Maybe instead of just printing more money and devaluing the earnings of those fortunate enough to still be employed, we should introduce an environment where businesses are willing to risk investment.  An environment with lower taxes and lower health care costs.  An environment where the President of the United States does not do everything he can to demean certain businesses that are still employing people in the midst of a recession:  Defense, oil, nuclear energy, health care, auto manufacturing, financial services, etc.

---

Defense contracting has been a huge industry in Minnesota and it tends to employ a well-educated technical work force. The problem with defense contracting is that every so often peace breaks out. This happened in the late 1980's and the Minnesota defense industry fell upon hard times. Bill Clinton with a Republican Congress used the "Peace Dividend" to start balancing federal budgets. George W. Bush took over a country that was at peace with balanced budgets and he started two wars and cut taxes. The rest is history. The defense industry tends to be a boom and bust industry so in the long run it is probably better for Minnsota to wean itself off defense contracting. The CIA likes to manufacture threats (not to mention WMD's) so we can expect ongoing requests from DOD for expensive systems we can't afford. That will be good for Lockhead, wherever they are.
posted by theprince on Nov. 19, 10 at 10:05 AM | 

It's patently false that the defense industry got a boost from the two wars that Bush "started":  BAE, then called United Defense, lost the Crusader program within two years of Bush taking office.  Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld slated a number of defense programs for termination.  Reasoning?  Making the Army a swifter, more responsive force.  Crusader was replaced with Future Combat Systems (FCS), which, thanks to Congressional allies, provisioned a cannon leveraging the Crusader technology be among the first vehicles built.  But the budget for the cannon for FCS was smaller than Crusader.  In the wake of the Crusader cancellation, many were laid off.  In the wake of getting the FCS contract, fewer people were hired on.


The rest of theprince's comment leads me to believe he has an ample supply of aluminum foil in his home.  The "Peace Dividend" basically consisted of Clinton doing relatively little to combat the terrorism that impacted U.S. citizens and interests around the world, including in 1993 in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center.  Or did theprince forget about that?

---

Gee, Another Transportation Company is leaving along with Oberstar.
posted by otter5 on Nov. 19, 10 at 10:44 AM |

*facepalm*


Firstly, would that be Jim Oberstar, resident of Maryland?  Whenever he's in Minnesota, he's just visiting.


Second, the bulk of Lockheed's business in Eagan was surveillance equipment for military aircraft.  I know.  I WORKED THERE!  A smaller piece of the Eagan facility works on the ERAM system for the FAA that I believe otter5 is referring to.  But why let facts get in the way of your misguided hero worship?

---

How ironic that we blame Minnesota's high taxes for the closing of a company that relies on high federal taxes for support.
posted by philipp10 on Nov. 19, 10 at 12:18 PM |

And philipp10 doesn't grasp the difference between federal income tax and Minnesota's oppressive structure of sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, etc.

---

There you have it folks.

We told you so...

...as demonstrated by the civilian court trial of Ahmed Ghailani, a dirtbag who was acquitted on all but 1 of the 285 charges against him.

Wait a minute, didn't Obama and his politicial-agenda-driven Attorney General Eric Holder assure us that these trials were necessary to save our Constitution?  Never mind that Mr. Ghailani is not an American citizen.  Never mind he may never have set foot on U.S. soil, save perhaps for the sovereign soil of the U.S. Embassy he was accused of bombing.

Remember when Obama and Holder told not to worry?  That it wasn't like these guys were going to be found "not guilty"?  Now, at the time, implying the trials were going to have a predetermined outcome was rightly criticized by judicial scholars on both sides of the spectrum.  There's a word for that:  Show trials.  OK, two words.  I mean, if they're going to be found guilty, why bother waste court employees' time?

And now?  The dirtbag was almost acquitted!  One editorial for the Star & Sickle characterized it as a perilously close call, but a "success."  A success?  Conviction on only 1 of 285 charges?  Sounds more like dumb luck for the prosecution.  The fact is that the case for the other 284 charges fell apart when the judge refused to allow a key witness because the information was obtained through enchanced interrogation techniques, or what the Left hyperbolically calls torture.  Throw in a judge appointed by Bill Clinton, and you've got a recipe for disaster.  I remember I and conservative commentators observed this logic gap at the time Obama pushed for the civilian trials:  If we're going to try these dirtbags suspects in a criminal court of law, how can we use evidence obtained by the Bush administration using techniques decried almost universally by the Left?  A classic example of the libs wanting to have their cake and eat it too.  And rather than admitting that maybe the actual constitutional scholars were right that civilian trials for suspects who had been previously treated as enemy combatants would produce disastrous results, I predict they'll play the blame game when this blows up in their face:  "We could convict these terrorists militants freedom fighters purveyors of man-caused disasters if only Bush  hadn't tortured them!  Blame Bush!  Blame Bush!

Can't have it both ways, morons.

Election recap

Just some commentary on some of the elections I was following this past campaign.

First, the losers:

• Christine O'Donnell - Too bad this woman didn't win.  From early on, at least on the national stage, it didn't seem like the election was going to be about issues, but about smearing O'Donnell personally.  Ironic that the supposed party of tolerance and acceptance would slam O'Donnell for "dabbling in witchcraft" YEARS ago.  The whole brouhaha about her anti-masturbation stance (which, once again, was on MTV YEARS ago!) was unsurprisingly lampooned by every moron who had the time to attend political rallies or get air time.  Know what masturbation is?  Self-love.  Too much self-love equates to narcissism.  And O'Donnell is spot on about pornography:  It can be destructive to relationships.  Look the statistics up.  To be fair, what O'Donnell doesn't get is it's about everything in moderation.  More than anything, the O'Donnell-Coons campaign exposed rampant misogyny alive and well on the Far Left.  Most prominent was Bill Maher, who vowed to continue releasing embarrassing video clips of O'Donnell from his failed talk show until she came on his current-testament-to-how-much-sleaze-HBO-will-tolerate.  O'Donnell wisely didn't take the bait, relegating Maher to only feel he's important to the national political debate.
• Sharron Angle - Apparently, the voters of Nevada and I disagree about whether Sen. Harry Reid is representing their interests.  Angle rightly hammered Reid over the issue of illegal immigration, but may have spent too much time and money on that.  Joy Behar, clueless twit that she is, nearly torpedoed Reid in the final days with her charges of "racism" against Angle's anti-illegal immigration ads and calling Angle a "bitch" who would "burn in hell".  Angle marvelously took the high road and turned Behar's verbal bile into campaign cash and sent her flowers for helping her campaign.  Joy still wouldn't shut up, so Angle continued to laugh her way to the bank.
• Carly Fiorina - This one was a close one against Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer.  Fiorina might have eked out a win here had it not been for the hairdo comments about her opponent.
• Meg Whitman - Sadly, too few people failed to see through the cheap political stunt pulled by Whitman's former housekeeper and politically-driven attorney Gloria Allred during the California gubernatorial campaign.  Allred essentially used Diaz as a pawn to give Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown an edge.  Greta Van Sustern, hardly a conservative, rightly berated Allred for conduct that definitely wasn't in Diaz's best interest.  Couple this with NOW throwing its support behind Brown, even after he or an aide were caught on tape calling Whitman a whore, and Whitman's campaign was successful at least in exposing the kind of feminism that NOW and Allred really believe in:  Empowering liberal women only.  Or in other words, sometimes promoting liberalism over female empowerment.  Hypocrites.
• Chris Barden - Doing my best to continue following Minnesota politics while living in Iowa, I was impressed with the thoroughness of his case against Lori Swanson.  However, Barden thought he was making a courtroom argument against the populist Swanson who can keep her teflon coating by pursuing companies under the guise of consumer protection.  Lest I fall into the same trap the Left has and accuse the voters of being stupid, I do have to wonder if a majority of them in Minnesota let their passions guide their votes.  After all, it's stylish to hate corporations as evil, faceless tyrannies without once considering their motivations.
• Dan Severson - Not enough visibility.  Incumbent Mark Ritchie won the last election in 2006 with the help of ACORN.  Since then, the Secretary of State position has become a politically-charged position.  The 2008-9 recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken exemplified this.  It worries me when uncounted ballots are "found" in someone's car trunk in a close race. Evidence in a trial is inadmissible unless there is a clear and uncompromised chain of custody.  Why should it be any different for an election?  Sorry, once there's a chance the ballots could have been compromised, the safe strategy is not to count them.  I'm all for everyone's vote counting, but what about when you cease to be sure whether it's really their vote?  Ritchie's shtick has been about not disenfranchising voters.  Except, curiously, absentee voters. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the voting patterns of deployed military personnel.  Just a coincidence.  As Minnesota gears up for a gubernatorial recount, I hope Tom Emmer is more tenacious in challenging the partisan Ritchie.  However, if Minnesota ends up with a Governor Dayton, I'm comforted by two things:
• Both houses of the Minnesota state legislature swung to GOP control for the first time in decades, nullifying some of the damage Dayton could do.
• I'm permanently moving to Iowa, so any economic damage Dayton could do to Minnesota automatically would benefit the "sane" states bordering Minnesota.

Now the winners:

• Chip Cravaack - MN Rep. Jim Oberstar (D) thought he had a seat for life.  However, supporting economically disastrous Cap-And-Trade legislation and referring to some of his constituents as "flat-Earthers" did not endear him in those same voters' eyes.  Oberstar claims permanent residence in Maryland and reportedly only had one political contributor in-state.  That certainly didn't help his case.
• Michelle Bachmann - Representative Bachmann was a lightning rod for Dem efforts to unseat her this election.  Pelosi, Biden, and Obama all lent time to give Taryl Clark the edge in the MN-6 US House race.  Why?  Bachmann isn't part of the GOP leadership.  But she is a successful conservative woman.  Bachmann has long dealt with the naked misogyny that Sarah Palin dealt with as a vice-presidential candidate and later as a private citizen.  Two low points for the attacks on Bachmann:
• Joy Behar saying that Bachmann was anti-children.  Joy, if Michelle was anti-kid, why would she give birth to five of them and foster 23 others?
• Chris "Thrill Up My Leg For Obama" Matthews asking if Bachmann was "in a trance" because she wouldn't give him the answers he was looking for regarding whether a GOP-dominated House would conduct witch-hunts on "un-American" activities.  Bachmann's wouldn't bite and simply returned the serve:  "I imagine that thrill on your leg is not quite so tingly anymore".  Point. Set. Match.
• Dan Webster - Holding his own in a race against the mentally-deranged Alan Grayson, Webster was the victim of perhaps the most fallacious ad I've seen.  Grayson's campaign took Webster's comments before a gathering of Christian men and twisted the words completely around to paint Webster as misogynist who believed women should submit to their husbands.  For this, Grayson and his campaign labeled Webster "Taliban Dan Webster".  Too bad what Webster actually said to the men was that they shouldn't use the quote about "wives submit to your husbands".  The ad was so over the line that MSNBC left-biased "info-babe" Contessa Brewer opined to guest Grayson that the ad had crossed the line.  Grayson just smiled his creepy smile and dismissed her protests.  On election night, Grayson naturally blamed the weather for his 18-point loss.  Did I miss it?  Was Florida hit with a blizzard on election night?  Damn that Global Warming, robbing Grayson of his divine right!
• MSNBC viewers:  Seeing themselves as a foil to the "hyper-partisan" Fox News Channel by ironically, being even more partisan in the opposite direction, the MSNBC dream team has doubled down on stupid.  Keith Olbermann, a frequent critic of Fox News' hosts contributing to political campaigns (though News Corporation's rules permit them to do so as long as it doesn't impact their ability to do their jobs effectively), ended up being put on indefinite suspension after it was revealed he had given the maximum allowable contributions to three Democrats' campaigns without prior permission, in violation of NBC's rules.  Personally, I think Keith should just get a slap on the wrist for this, as his material is pure comedy gold.  Without him, the conservative Newsbusters site might have to layoff some of their bias watchdog!  Most importantly, the show could be worse:  It could be called "Countdown with Alan Grayson" now!
  
  Naturally, Rachel Maddow attacked Fox News instead of hers and Keith's employer, whining about how FNC's employees are not forbidden from these contributions.  Umm, Rachel, every employer makes their own rules.  Don't like it?  Work somewhere else!
  
  So how does this benefit the 12 viewers MSNBC has left?  Well, with the upcoming acquisition of the channel by Comcast, some changes to their business model might be forthcoming.  I doubt Comcast will tolerate MSNBC being a losing business venture like GE's Jeff Immelt did, mainly because Immelt has used MSNBC as a propaganda machine to promote policies that ultimately benefit GE.  Olbermann's departure quite possibly was prearranged, and Phil Griffin just looked for a pretext.
  
  In the end, I am a strict laissez-faire capitalist.  I believe competition among the news companies is good, and a FNC monopoly on cable news would be no better the monopoly CNN held for many years.  Competition keeps 'em honest, and a MSNBC that competes with FNC on actual news reporting  rather than just news commentary benefits everyone.
  
  Yeah, I know.  Keep dreamin'.

This election, I noted that there's one of those universal constants with regards to how lefties handle getting trounced in an election:  Blame the loss on voter stupidity.  I recall being at a Democrat-heavy election party in '08 when the news announced Bachmann's win then.  I recall a lefty at the party saying something to the effect that Bachmann won because the voters in the 6th district were "in-bred morons".

Keep thinking that way, lefties.  Don't take the pounding as a reminder of who the boss is, and adapting yourself to meet the boss' interests and needs.  Just say the boss is wrong.  No wonder you're in the unemployment line...

"Sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

That was the saying that I always heard from my mother as I was growing up.  Nowadays, we are told that "words can hurt."

Uh, no.  Words have no power over you unless you let them.

For example, if some "enlightened" smug Prius-driving liberal calls me a global warming denier, I simply terminate any hopes of having a rational debate with him.  I'm through with the game of spending time defending my character.  It's easier to attack someone's character than their logic.  Hence the negativity of political ads.  The moment I stop to explain why I'm not a denier, the liberal has won:  He/she has moved the argument to their comfort zone-- They attack me, I defend myself.  Some think this is the way to "win' the argument.  It's not.  It's merely a way to stop it.  One of three things happens:

1. The smeared person switches to defense mode and the original discussion ceases.  Score 0-0, smear agent successfully covers up the holes in their argument with fresh coat of tar on the other's character.
2. The smeared person takes the high road and walks away.  Score 0-0
3. The smeared person gives the smear agent the knuckle sandwich he/she so richly deserves.  Score 0-0.

 So with this latest whining from Gays and Lesbians Against Accurate Depictions (GLAAD), I want to throw my support behind Vince Vaughn.  He's absolutely right when he says humor can bring us together.  GLAAD's over-reaction to a line in a movie is what pulls us apart and polarizes us.  Here's the line:

 Ladies and gentlemen, electric cars are gay.  Not homosexual gay.  But my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay.

As Al Capone (played by Robert DeNiro) said in The Untouchables:  "You know, we laugh not only because it's funny, but also because it's true."

And that's the ticket.  Electric cars are gay.  It takes a significant amount of manhood depression to drive something that reminds you that you need to pick up AA's from the store!  Masculinity, in it's purest form, is about men tapping into their primitive sides.  Men are on average physically stronger, larger, and more aggressive.  Don't blame me, blame biology.  Blame the testosterone flowing through me as I hammer out this screed.  Blame thousands of years of history.  The Amazons were the exception, not the rule.  Why is it any surprise that most men would shy away from being too civilized?  That's what an electric car represents:  That you care about your impact on the planet.

Screw that!  What men's names are familiar to us thousands of years after they lived and died? Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Attila the Hun.  Do we remember the men who sought to lessen their impact on the planet?  Will we remember Al Gore in a thousand years?  Or 500?  Or 250?  No, because the man is a hypocrite.  He wants his fellow men to act against their nature, to be more civilized, never mind that poor Al has gotten plenty of press for his own wasteful lifestyle.  If Caesar was apologetic for who he was, accounts of it have certainly not survived the test of time.  Had King Leonidas been more "civilized", he might have found a way to strike a deal with the Persian Empire and dramatically changed the face of civilization 2000 years later.

The promotion of the government-subsidized Chevy Volt demonstrates this affront to masculinity.  It's civilization telling us to stop hunting our food, to stop living how and where we want to live.  And when a movie line taps into our built-in response against being shackled by civilization, another group comes in and tries to shackle our speech and our minds.  GLAAD wants gays and lesbians to be accepted?  Fine, I accept them.  But stop your futile efforts to change the way I speak and think.  You'd have an easier time changing Earth's orbit around the Sun.

Bucking the trend

According to a couple of articles I came across, I do not fit the stereotype of a conservative.  At least not the stereotype that liberals envision when they think of conservatives.

The articles dealt with how choice of vehicle indicates political leanings.  Drive a small, fuel-efficient car, you're probably a tree-hugging liberal living in a cramped studio apartment in an urban center.  Drive an SUV, you obviously don't give a shit about the environment, you hateful urban-sprawl-promoting suburban redneck!

Well, wrong on both counts.

I have two cars.  One is a sports coupe.  The other is an entry-level SUV.

I've had the sports coupe for a few (12) years now.  It suited my purposes when I first got out of college.  I needed something to get me from point A to point B without burning a ton of fuel to get there.  I needed only to move my person back and forth to work.  Don't get me wrong.  I still wanted something a little fun.  Something with enough power and handling to extricate me from a potentially life-threatening situation.  Still, it gets 25/29 city/highway mpg.

A few years later, I decided to spin out on black ice in an intersection and put it into a snowbank.  I extricated it without too much difficulty, but I realized I wanted something a little better suited to traveling on icy roads.  Something will all-weather tires.  Something a little more grown up.

In the midst of high gas prices, I exploited the laws of supply and demand and purchased an SUV.  An entry-level SUV that didn't perform too badly on fuel economy: 21/25 mpg.  I didn't get an SUV because I enjoy burning fossil fuels.  Quite the opposite.  Burning that fuel quicker means I have to replenish it more frequently.  And that costs me money.  But when you can grab a load of lumber for a landscaping project, pick up a new office chair, and stop at the grocery store on the way home, it means you'll use less gas than a similar two or three trips in the sports coupe.

Fuel efficiency is important to me, but cargo capacity has become more important as I've aged.  And during a recent move, towing capacity showed its value as a potential time- and money-saver.  Exactly how heavy a trailer can a Prius tow anyway?

Oh, those clever Dems!

Voting is like driving:  Choose "R" to go backward, "D" to go forward.

Oh my, how clever!

Wait a minute.

I don't have a "D" on my gear shift.

Instead, I have the numbers 1-5 and an "R".  Hmm, guess the analogy falls apart for me.  No offense to automatic drivers, but I prefer to do something besides push the pedals and hang on.  It's the same with voting.  Making a choice and then disengaging from the experience for the rest of the journey seems kind of dumb to me.

Actually, since it's the progressives in the White House now, let's continue the driving analogy.  What does "P" stand for on an automatic shift lever?  Going nowhere fast.

Also, when driving, going forward constantly is impossible.  You have to turn from time to time.  Sometimes you turn left.  Sometimes you turn right.  Do too much of either, and you end right back where you started.

What about that cliff ahead?  Do you go forward, over the cliff?  Or do you turn?  Even better, do you reverse?

Why do liberals always screw up analogies?

Then again, maybe I've over-analyzing a bumper-sticker-sloganeering mentality.

Debate with these people is impossible...

All of the deniers- we refuse to grace them with their chosen name, "skeptics"- are dangerous for they create a false debate around the existence of climate change and divert attention from the real debate: "What are we going to do about climate change?".

-- excerpted from "Hall of shame | Rising Tide UK"

Remember what I've said before about the people who throw around this term "denier"?  They've indicated a cessation in their own critical thinking.  Anthropogenic climate change should not be and should never be something to be believed in.  Nor should it be something that is not believed in.  I will credit the so-called "Separation of Church and State" crowd with the notion that matters of faith and matters of science should not co-mingle.

If I deny ACC, does that mean you believe in it?

On the other hand, if, based upon the evidence I've seen so far, such as:

• The infamous "Hockey Stick" graph that was published in 1998 by Professor Mann, whom refused to share either the raw data or his model upon which he drew his conclusion for years, even though the study was funded with taxpayers dollars.  In 2005, he made available the source code to the model.  When it was released for scientists to peer review, their criticisms of the methodology were reinforced by a third-party panel assembled at the behest of members of Congress. 
• The e-mail scandal that wasn't a scandal, I guess, at the University of East Anglia, with excerpts describing a massaging of the collected data and collusion to suppress a view at odds with the grant recipients' money-maker.
• Thousands of surface temperature monitoring stations across the U.S. with data corrupted by their placement next to A/C exhaust fans, asphalt parking lots, etc.
• The uncomfortable truth that some of the same scientists who tell us with certainty that the globe is warming were telling us, with similar certainty, that the globe was entering into another ice age. Granted, scientists do draw the wrong conclusions from data sometimes, but I've not heard a compelling argument in which the scientist does the following:
• Acknowledge he/she was wrong.
• Do a little bit of introspection as to why he/she arrived at the first conclusion, now regarded as erroneous, and what assumptions were incorrect, and what outlier evidence incorrectly discarded.
• Show how, upon correcting these flaws, the new conclusion is supported

Those are just some examples, but you get my point.  But the ACC proponents have moved from "Here is the evidence to support our hypothesis" to "You must believe!" or "Just trust us, we know we're right!"

Sorry, I'm an engineer.  The just-trust-me explanation only works for that one area where I acknowledge science, logic, and reason are useless to me.

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Women.

I keep trying to read the Huffington Post...

... but to see things from their point of view, I'd have to have my head pretty far up my ass.


You see, I don't live in an ideological/political echo chamber.  I try to watch Keith Olbermann.  I try to read the Huffington Post.  When liberal commenters leave their "home" blog URL as part of their comments on a conservative blog post I read, I visit the site to see if there's an insight, a new, rational viewpoint.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what do I see?  Conservatives are evil.  Republicans are stupid.  Rethuglicans.  Silly Bible-thumpers who reject science.  Global warming deniers who'll look to their imaginary friend in the sky to protect them.  Crooked Wall Street types.  They only care about money!

Seriously?  Do these people live in Fantasy Land?  In my experience, nobody is that one-dimensional.  Except, of course, the conservative Christians whom are often cast as heinous villians or dunder-headed comic relief.  I've concluded that the people who leave such comments are the type who'd say they don't have any conservative friends.

That could be true in the following ways:

• Their conservative friends decline to reveal their political leanings because they do not wish to expend energy defending themselves from juvenile attacks.
• Their conservative friends wish to keep their political leanings secret out of the interest of preserving their friendships.
• These people are living in an environment hostile to the very notion of dissent and non-conformity of thought.  Certain districts of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland spring to mind.
• Some combination of the above.

I know I've kept my religious beliefs and political leanings to myself because of the above.  I've got a friend who's hardly spoken me since he learned I didn't buy into the global warming alarmism.  My friend is a civil engineer who did his grad work at MIT, yet he called me a denier instead of a skeptic.  I blame his chip-on-her-shoulder wife.  I've got another friend who ripped on Catholics just the other night.  She's ripped on Republicans and people with small-town values (often one in the same) in the past, characterizing them as unintelligent, close-minded, etc.  She has since learned I am one of those people she has belittled and continues to belittle.  Curious how she has reconciled the contradiction.

Anonymous slander as a debate tactic

I don't know why I bothered:  Reading a newspaper, is, to me at least, a waste of my time.  The "news" is so often filtered through a columnist, copy writer, editor, executive editor, to the point where it's quite the work-out to go through and pick out facts from the writers' perception of the facts.

Case in point.  Anthropogenic climate change (ACC).  The notion that the global climate is changing, and that we're responsible.  To some degree.  Is it possible there could be debate on how responsible we are, or how much the climate is changing?


Subscribers to the ACC theory (in Sam Kinison mode):  NO!!!!!!!  HERETICS!!!!!!!!  THE DEBATE IS OVER, YOU WORTHLESS BITCH!!!!!!!





So, I browsed the on-line version of the Minneapolis Star & Sickle-- er, Star-Tribune.  It had a story discussing how some people are no longer debating if ACC is significant, but how to adapt to it.

That was what the story was about.  But commentators from both sides of the political spectrum chimed in.

Then I saw what one comment said:

The Joy of Ignorance

The gist of what several commenters to this story have to say so far is: "We don't need no stinkin' science!" Yes, I'm sure that despite the fact that researchers across the globe are taking careful measurements of weather, sea levels, core ice layers, receding glaciers, deep ocean temperatures, and the changing plant and animal ecology--the climate change deniers know better. The deniers probably come from a long line of 'intellectuals' stretching back to the Flat Earthers. Changes to one's life is fearful for many. For the rest of us, it's prudent to study what's happening with the earth's climate and to understand how humans are influencing it. I'm glad that scientists are meeting--both to discuss prevention of climate change late in the game---as well as how to adapt to it.

posted by inlandsea on Sep. 15, 10 at 11:46 PM | 

53 of 83 people liked this comment.

Nothing turns me off to debate like a term like "denier".  My best friend, a very intelligent man whom got his Master's from MIT, referred to me as a denier in the course of what until that point had been a cordial debate.  To me, calling some one a climate-change "denier" is the debate equivalent of calling them a "Nazi".  With such an emotionally-charged label, you've just forfeited the debate.

Calling someone a denier actually shows the inflexibility of your own position.  Very few things in science are actual universal laws.  Most things in science, especially life sciences, are theoretical in some part.  So when someone expresses skepticism over something like ACC because of an incomplete or corrupted set of temperature data, or the tarnished reputations of some of its leading adherents to the theory, and they are labeled a "denier", as opposed to the less-emotional, more factual term "skeptic", it betrays the ACC theory adherents' rigid and uncompromising beliefs.  How many times have they told us The debate is over?

The comment by inlandsea shows what too many on the other side think of dissent.  Deniers, flat-Earthers.  Then ascribe a psychological reason for the dissent.  Disregard things like temperature monitoring stations operating next to an A/C exhaust fan adjacent to an asphalt parking lot in July.  Disregard e-mails speaking of massaging data to get the desired results, or seeking to discredit or silence people with data that does not support your theories.  Disregard scientists who publish an infamous "hockey stick" graph that has become the Gadsen Flag for the ACC advocates and refuse to share their flawed data model for years, even though the research was publically funded.  Sadly, inlandsea is not alone in his/her thinking:  64% were OK with an analysis that demeans and then attempts to psycho-analyze someone who looks at a set of data and just doesn't draw the same conclusion from it.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of Ice Road Truckers that I was watching:  One of the truckers, Hugh Rowland, was trying to climb an icy pass and momentarily went into the opposing lane to get the needed traction, causing an oncoming truck to go into the wrong lane in turn.  The other trucker unleashed a litany of crap at Rowland over the radio.  To be fair, Rowland should have said he was going into the oncoming lane to get traction.  But the other trucker didn't even think this might be a reason.  He just started cursing Rowland out over the radio.  Rowland, of course, is brash and unapologetic, simply saying, "You're a real tough guy on the radio, but meet in the parking lot and I'll knock your teeth in."

Commenters like inlandsea are the same way:  In possession of the courage of lions when safely behind a keyboard and the anonymity of a handle.

I know it's incredibly sexist of me...

...but has Ms. Janeane Garofalo ever considered wearing a dress, getting a pair of contacts, not to mention a shower and a shave?

Methinks that forcing Ms. Garofalo to adhere to such societal norms, including marrying a nice white investment banker, staying home and raising his kids and ironing his shirts would be living Hell on Earth for her.  I could produce a ratings-winner reality-TV program, to boot.

Ah, one can dream.

Then someone share this pic:

Come on folks.  It's only fair that the rest join in me in seeing what we had for dinner last night.

Hooray for engineers

Guess what, folks?  It wasn't government that stopped the oil spill.  It was a team of engineers at BP.  A cap is in place.  For the moment, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief.

For the moment.  Then we've got to get back to cleaning up what leaked out.

So what are we doing?

Bobby Jindal was using barges to collect the oil from the water.  Until the U.S. Coast Guard briefly shut them down for not having proof that they had enough life preservers!

Bureaucrats.  Enough said.

Jindal has also pushed for constructing sand berms to protect the Louisiana coastal wetlands from the oil coming on-shore.  The federal government response?  "Let's conduct an environmental impact study first!"

Like I said, bureaucrats.

Then I saw Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night.  Olbermann and his guest, Len Bahr, criticized Jindal's building of the sand berms.  Bahr was an advisor to Jindal until being asked to retire last year.  Bahr's got a 9-point argument against the berms here.  From what I've seen, the man is a coastal science expert.  But what he's got is a theory, not evidence that the berms will compound the problem.  In the midst of a crisis, we can ill afford to be academic about things.  Jindal knows that, and "trained academics" like Bahr strike me to be much like our current Chief Executive:  Incapable of making imperfect decisions based on limited facts in a limited amount of time.

Contrast Bahr's theory with the experience the Dutch bring:  They've excelled at reclaiming land from the North Sea.  And they've held it back.  If anybody knows how to build berms and levees, it's the Dutch.

Experience vs. academic theory.  If you're a leader and everybody's looking to you to lead, what do you do?  Take action that might be wrong in the long term, or paralyze yourself with fear and do nothing?

Bahr wants us to continue to use straw to soak up the oil from the water instead of building berms.  OK, why can't we do BOTH!  A good leader hedges his bets, especially in the absence of the facts.  Does Bahr not understand this?

Unemployment

You know, I try to see things from different perspectives.  As I've aged, I like to think I've become just a little bit wiser and more willing to accept a different point of view.

That being said, when I read the Huffington Post, I realize that to see things from their authors' point-of-view, I would have to stick my head far up my ass.

Unemployment.  I've been there, and it's not fun.  I count myself lucky that I was effectively out of work for only five months, my job essentially terminated by Mr. Hope and Change.  Still glad I didn't vote for him.

There's a story about the Republican challenger to Harry Reid characterized those collecting unemployment as lazy.

To be fair, in Minnesota, you qualify for unemployment only as long as show that you're actively seeking a job.  So that part of the article is accurate.

Where the author and the chorus of group-thinkers get it wrong is that all of these jobs have disappeared.

The article cites there are 15 million unemployed people, and that only one-third of them are collecting unemployment insurance.  The group-think chorus spouts the "conventional wisdom" that the jobs are gone.

Wait a minute.  I believe there are at least 10 million jobs available for American citizens.  Know where I'm going with this?  Enforce our immigration laws.  Herd the illegal immigrants back across the border and tell the governments of Mexico, the nations of Central America, and various little shit-holes around this world to solve their economic problems themselves.  And if they've got too many people, tell them the solution is not to smuggle them into our country, but to do 2 things:

• Eliminate corruption and foster a business-friendly environment
• Educate their populations to not breed like wild rabbits

And those citizens' original jobs?  They'd come back if the government would get out of the way and let us recover from this recession.  Instead, this litany of stimulus spending has been nothing but digging us into a deeper hole.  We were promised unemployment wouldn't rise above 8%.  Yeah, shame on anybody that bought that line of crap.  Reagan once famously said that you cannot spend your way into prosperity.

And I realize it's anecdotal evidence, but I recall attending a 2008 election party with an unemployed software engineer.  She'd been unemployed for 3 years at that time.  I couldn't comprehend that.  I still can't.  Three years?  She ain't trying hard enough.

During my unpaid "vacation", a former colleague observed that, amongst us engineers, any of us could get a job in a couple of weeks if we looked outside Minnesota.  To many, that's outside a personal comfort zone.  I have some advice for the habitual whiners who can't find work where they live:  Move.  I did.

Whose side are they on?

So now we hear that the Obama administration is going to sue the state of Arizona.  Fine, as some conservative pundits have observed, maybe the administration's legal officials will finally READ THE $@!% law!

Then again, someone might purchase a winning lottery ticket and slip it under my door this evening.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her now-infamous interview in Ecuador that the federal government in the U.S. should be the ones making immigration law.

Sure, no argument from me.  But how about you enforce the existing immigration laws?  Because S.B.1070 is just a state-based version of the federal laws.

I read today about how sections of Organ Pipe National Monument are now off-limits to the American citizens because we have citizens of a foreign country invading our sovereign territory with impunity, bringing violence against anyone who opposes them.  Citizens who pay taxes that support the upkeep of the park cannot enjoy the fruits of their taxpayer dollars.  Why aren't more people enraged?

I am sick of the tear-jerker line about how these people are simply coming here for the economic opportunities we take for granted.  You know what?  After spending the last five months of 2009 out of work and ineligible to receive unemployment, I surely don't take the dwindling economic opportunities for granted.  During my unemployment, I suppose I could have robbed a bank or cheated on my taxes or committed insurance fraud to get out from underneath my mortgage.  But I didn't, because those things are illegal, just like non-citizens working under the table.  Laws, when enforced, are meant to restrain our individual liberties to the point that they do not infringe on another's liberties.

It's interesting to me, in this "post-racial America" as it's been called, that the news media wouldn't side with U.S. citizens in the lower economic classes, especially blacks and hispanics.  To be fair, some illegal immigrants work hard for chump change, but some of them come to this country and leech off public services intended for citizens.  Others join gangs and commit violence, often resulting in the deaths of American citizens.  This year, we've had a rancher murdered on his own property by a invading force.  It doesn't matter that the invading force was a bunch of smugglers as opposed to the Mexican army (which routinely violates the border as well).  A hostile act was still committed by a foreign national against a citizen of the United States.  Has the federal government done anything?  Has it applied pressure on the Mexican government to bring the rancher's killer or killers to justice?  Has it done anything to protect others who live in border states?

And someone please tell these sniveling Latinos and Latinas that the U.S. didn't steal their land.  It won it through armed conflict in many cases.  It also bought land from Mexico!  What are we supposed to do, take worthless desert, build up economic prosperity in it, and then give it back?  Well, then, let's sell it back, accounting for interest and the economic infrastructure created from scratch.  It'll resolve this whole issue, and we'll have some extra cash to pay down that debt the last few presidents and members of Congress have run up.



At the same time, we've got the Gulf oil spill and the criminal incompetence of the federal government.  I'm no expert on oil, but it seems to me that the sooner you clean up a spill, the better.  The sooner you deploy booms, the sooner you separate that oil from the water, the better .  What escapes me is the priority that seems to have been given to identifying who to blame.  Joe Biden's prediction was a little off, since it was  sixteen months into the Obama presidency and not six months, but we are seeing Obama's leadership skills being put to the test.  Guess what?  He failed.  He demonstrated why a community organizer is not the same as a leader.  The community organizer in Obama knows how to get the folks riled up, but a leader is someone who motivates others to get the job done.  Some lefty in the media, who's starting to see the light, recently described Obama as some type of ineffective middle-manager.  No, he's not any kind of manager at all.  I've worked for bosses both good and bad.  The worst of my bosses wanted to be my friend.  The best of them never sought my friendship, but they did earn my respect.  In the past, my last boss told me what needed to be done and when it needed to be done by.  But that was only half his job. The other half was to make sure I had what I needed to complete the job efficiently and correctly:  Adequate time, any tools, and whatever obstacles could be removed from my path.

Let's see:  Could Mr. Obama have removed obstacles such as the Coast Guard requirements of having an adequate number of life preservers on oil-sucking barges?  Or the ban preventing the use of Dutch oil booms?

What's worse, the administration has punished all the other oil drilling platforms that have operated accident-free for about a half-century.

He's not alone in this.  The media villified BP for drying to sell some of the crude they've collected from the Gulf.  Umm, what else is BP supposed to do with it, stick it in some giant holding facility somewhere?  OR could they sell it and use the profits to fund their clean-up?  No. No.  No, that makes too much sense.

Don't get me wrong, BP and Transocean screwed up.  But the administration isn't exactly smelling like roses here, either.