Modern marvels

Posting this from 30000+ ft

Gun-grabbers

It happens every time.

A tragedy like the massacre of 27 adults and children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, is cause to mourn for most rational people.  For the left-wing gun grabbers, it's a time to act, before strong emotions give way to logic and reason.

Soledad O'Brien goes on about how "a rational person could say that having access to a high-powered semiautomatic rifle is inappropriate. That there's no reason to go deer hunting with that, there's no reason to have access to that. And that is the connection that these killers have access to those weapons."

Ms. O'Brien, do you know what a semi-automatic rifle is?  It fires a single bullet every time the trigger is pulled.

So does a revolver.

But the word "semi-automatic" gets gun-control advocates in a tizzy.  I think they picture a hail of bullets spewing from the barrel and tearing through the flesh of innocents.  Yes, the bullets come out a rate defined by how fast the shooter can squeeze the trigger and for the gun to load the next bullet from the magazine.

What galls me is this attitude of "We know what's best for you."  It's not just limited to guns.  Drive an SUV?  These nosy, ruthless bastards will stop at nothing to force you drive a hybrid or electric vehicle with the relative safety of a gas tank inside a cardboard box.  But you're getting great gas mileage, they'll tell you.  You're saving the planet!

But I can't haul lumber for my home addition, or river rock for my landscaping project.

Well, you don't need that much space to live in, anyway.  And your desire to not live in a cramped shitty apartment in a dense, high-tax, crime-ridden urban center contributes to urban sprawl, and prevents us from controlling all aspects of your life!

But that's the point!

The gun-grabbers then try to tell you that the point of the Second Amendment is for a militia.  Even if that interpretation was accurate (and the learned folks in the black robes in the highest court of the land do not think it is), the militia was made of citizenry who often brought their own weapons to the field of battle.  That's what distinguishes a militia from an army.  As Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia observed, if the Second Amendment is meant to apply to collective rights, it is unique amongst the other rights all reserved to individuals in the Constitution.

Then there's the inconvenient facts in this particular case:

• Adam Lanza, with his history of mental illness, did not legally obtain the firearms used in the shooting.  They were registered to his mother.
• Indications are that Lanza attempted to purchase a "long gun" about a week before the shooting, but was denied because he didn't want to subject to the required background check and 14-day waiting period.  Sounds like someone who either was impatient or knew he would be rejected.  At this time, it's unclear whether Lanza had been diagnosed with mental illness.  If he had, the federal authorities would know, and he could forget about the gun.  By refusing to submit to a background check and thus in effect withdrawing his application for the gun, Lanza may well have avoided showing up on the feds' radar.
• The Bushmaster .223 rifle, reportedly used in the shooting, is a semi-automatic rifle, but it is not an assault rifle.  An assault rifle is a select-fire weapon, capable of burst or automatic fire.

But lets not confuse ourselves with facts.  Our minds are made up!

Can we survive another four?

Albert Einstein is often quoted as describing insanity as performing the same action repeatedly and expecting different results.

Tonight, America's voters have spoken.  And they voted for insanity.

What does it say when I catch a glimpse of CNN covering the election results tonight, and they point out three-quarters of those exit-polled did not agree that the solution to our economic woes lies in raising taxes?  The CNN host was confused by the results, pointing out the same people were telling the pollsters that they voted to re-elect Barack Obama!

As I write this, it's been a little over a week since Hurricane Sandy wreaked untold billions of dollars worth of damage on the states of New England.  Residents of New Jersey and New York still without electricity.  Or heat.  Or with more than a foot of water in their living rooms.  Tone-deaf New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decides to continue as planned with the marathon, then reverses himself when he no doubt realized how heartless it looked to have people from out of town force newly-homeless residents out of hotel rooms and then run in a marathon.

Speaking of heartless, I'm given to wonder if these people still without the basic luxuries of life we take for granted here in the industrialized world wish that Sandy had struck a week earlier, or the election had been a week later.  We're seeing a failure of Big Government.

A Big Government that Mr. Obama espouses.  Government which can violate centuries of established contract law and nullify the pensions of 20,000 non-unionized Delphi workers in favor of UAW workers who reliably helped deliver the election to Obama tonight.  All due respect to Mr. Romney, but it isn't a question of whether Detroit should be allowed to die.  Detroit has already died.  GM has already died.  They can't compete!  They're making a product that consumers don't want (e.g. the Chevy Volt).  The taxpayers still own a sizable share of GM.  Funny, my dividend check hasn't arrived in the mail...

It's just one of many policies I disagree with this president on.  The math just doesn't add up.  But trying to convince the short-term beneficiaries of the long-term cost of these freebies is an exercise in futility.  A recent interview asked S.E. Cupp what her favorite joke was.  Her answer:  "Keynesian Economics".  And she's absolutely right.  You can't prime the pump forever.  Eventually, the bill for this massive debt will come due.  And the near-majority of the country that lives off the fruits of the near-minority's labors will turn to the "wealthy" to pay the bill, only to find the wealthy aren't there anymore.  The smart ones will have relocated themselves and their wealth to a more hospitable climate, if it exists.  The not-so-smart ones will be next to you in the bread lines.

Unlike my colleagues on the opposite side of the political spectrum, I prefer not to wallow in despair because my guy lost the election.  I prefer to see the silver lining.  Four years ago, then-Senator Obama's election ended up resulting in my being laid off after almost twelve years of employment with a defense contractor.  In the three years since finding myself unemployed for a few months, losing a beloved pet at a too-young age, and exiting a loveless relationship, I opted to relocate from Minnesota to Iowa in pursuit of a contract position.  I found a new job with a well-known employer.  I not only enjoy the job immensely and recognize its greater room for growth, but my move resulted in me meeting my future wife.  In adapting to my new circumstances, I found new opportunities and reaped new benefits.  Even tonight, my sour mood has brightened a little as I count my blessings.

I also notice the trend.  Now that Obama has a record (of failures, I might add), his staggering election win in 2008 has been chipped away at a little bit.  Perhaps people who voted for Obama in 2008 realized their mistake?  Perhaps more people will be introspective in these coming four years, and we can slowly pull our country back from the fiscal cliff that stands between us remaining an economic superpower and us becoming a banana republic.

09:20:29

I wrote the following post on 13 September at around 10:00 CDT:

Nine hours, twenty minutes, twenty-nine seconds.

I keep looking at it, thinking about the change it represents. A choice. To live the rest of my life wondering about the what-ifs, or to be brave and be a man. To be like my father. Like my grandfather, his father, and his father, and so forth back to the beginning. I'm grateful for the choice they made, as it enables me to express a wide range of emotions and resolve in this hastily written screed.

A choice. To turn my back on the bizarre romanticism of the loner, or to take the first step of changing that.

What if I can't? What if it's a mistake?

But I know I can, and I know it's not. I just know.

Nine hours, eleven minutes, twenty-one seconds.

I resist the temptation to take it out of the locked cabinet again. To gaze upon it. Part of me is worried that someone will see me moping over such a silly object, and ask me why I have it. Part of me is worried someone won't.

I can't wait to take it with me to the airport. I can't wait to nervously worry about it falling out of my pocket. And I can't wait until I get down on my right knee, take it out of my pocket, take her left hand, and show it to her. And I can't wait until I ask her to be my wife.

Nine hours, five minutes, forty-nine seconds. Maybe I'll sneak another quick look.

She said yes.

Spoiling the memory of a great man by linking him to your political agenda

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120901/OPINION04/309010032/Letter-to-the-editor-Honor-Neil-Armstrong-by-honoring-science?Opinion

That's what Ira Lacher of Des Moines does in this recent letter to the editor:

For those of us fortunate enough to have lived during the 1960s and to have been transfixed by the shadowy images on our black-and-white TVs, the image of Neil Armstrong descending the spindly leg of the lunar module signaled a bright future with unfathomable possibilities.

On Dec. 7, it will have been 40 years since the last human walked on the moon. Forty years!

Where the reaches of space once beckoned, like a gateway to the future itself, those gates now appear padlocked. If my children see another human walking on the moon or another planet, the explorer most likely will not be an American.

This is because in the intervening years, America has been subjected to a war on science, research and education. Some elected officials want our children to be taught that Adam and Eve shared the Earth with dinosaurs 2,000 years ago. Others bring to the policy-making table a profound ignorance about human biology. The indisputable, increasing evidence of global warming is treated as a hoax. And there is a concerted effort to equate unprovable religious belief with observable and verifiable scientific observation.

Progress toward knowledge is not an inexorable line upward. There are dips and troughs. But hasn’t this trough lasted long enough? Wouldn’t it be an appropriate legacy to the memory of Neil Armstrong if America could find its sanity and regain the high ground on the road to science and learning?

Mr. Lacher would be surprised to find that I agree with him that we should teach science in school.  I don't agree with teaching Creationism in schools, but I also don't agree in suppressing the very mention of it.

Mr. Lacher does something common amongst the elitist mindset:  He mocks and belittles a differing opinion. 

Opinion.  Not fact.

Evolution, in spite of supporting data, is still just a theory.

As for the crack about "profound ignorance about human biology", I'll grant Mr. Lacher that Todd Akin is a moron.  Even the GOP wanted him to drop out of the race after his idiotic comments about legitimate rape and the female human body having the ability to shut down and prevent pregnancy.

As for global warming, what indisputable evidence is Mr. Lacher referring to?  The land-based temperature-monitoring stations with their data corrupted by placement by burn barrels, air conditioner exhaust fans, and asphalt?  The refusal by climate scientists to share their climate models's algorithms and raw data with the scientific community and the public, especially when being funded by public funds?  The use of satellite data to measure sea ice coverage in two dimensions instead of a more realistic three?  Or how about models using this imperfect data to dictate economic and national security policies, when the data is at best 50-100 years old, an infinitesimal fraction of the geological estimate of the planet's 4.6 billion year age?  How about e-mails amongst scientists using phrases like "hide the decline"?

Little Ice Age?

Medieval Warming Period?

The Year Without Summer?

Ice cores that show CO2 atmospheric concentrations in Earth's distant past succeeding temperature increases, as opposed to preceding them?

Face it, Mr. Lacher, it's not settled science.  It's not indisputable.

Mr. Lacher may be correct in stating there's a war on science.  But it's been perpetrated by alarmists who seem content to take shortcuts in the scientific method.  Who label people who dispute their findings as "deniers", which I've stated before is more telling about the rigidity of the alarmists' belief in those conclusions than in skeptics inclusion of data that doesn't support the conclusions.  Skeptics who don't accept the explanations for the data's exclusion.

One more thing, Mr. Lacher.  It's not the "anti-science" types whom are the reason why the next explorer who walks on the moon probably won't be an American:  It's Barack Obama.

Stupidity personified

Charles F. Schafer of Pella, IA isn't content to just not mow his lawn, he wants the rest of us to be a slob like him:

Global warming is a scientific reality. We can stop it by stopping something that we’re doing: mowing grass. The mowers burn fossil fuels, which emit gases, which get into our stratosphere and prevent heat from escaping from our atmosphere.

Short grass is boring to look at anyway.

With all the money and time we would save by not mowing we could plant shrubs and trees. They’re able to assuage our nature deprivation disorder, and they give off oxygen, which is an “anti-greenhouse gas.” Methane is another — and a very important — greenhouse gas. Cows are the main methane makers. It’s in their poop, which should be scooped up and not left out in the open to give off methane.

Better yet would be to stop eating cow meat. If we stop eating cows, farmers will stop raising them. Oh, I almost forgot. You’ve also got to quit consuming dairy products. Becoming a vegan would be very good for your health and the health of your favorite planet.

Charles just violated the old saw about how it's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

First of all, what is a scientific reality?  Reality is defined as including "everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible."

So is global warming observable?  Well, if it's occurring, it's not directly observable.  That's pretty much the core of the debate between scientists with differing viewpoints (or as lefties call them, "scientists" versus "climate change deniers").

So, since global warming isn't directly observable, Charles' opening statement is an opinion, not fact.  By the way, according to many climate blogs (such as Grist), even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow (in other words, took a step back into the Stone Age), the climate change is still going to happen.

Strike two, Charles, and we're still in the first paragraph.

Now, on to his attack on lawn mowers.  Charles doesn't seem to acknowledge that all mowers are not gas-powered.  Or powered at all, for that matter.

I have an electric mower.  If it gets charged by electricity derived from wind or solar, I'm not burning fossil fuels, am I?  I also have a manual reel mower, which is 100% human-powered.  The only fossil fuels burned with regards to that mower were in its manufacture!

Then Charles goes after cows.  Follow his thought processes to their logical conclusion, he wants us to stop raising cattle and dairy cows.  The well-intentioned tyrant deep down in Charles' psyche wants to make us all into vegans.

Scary thought:  Charles will probably vote in November.

Then come the comments:

Global warming is one of Rick's oft-commented topics.  Too bad he lacks perspective.  From No Tricks Zone, we learn that the ice melt Rick's so worried about accounts for 0.0006%!

Incidentally, sea ice coverage (which I'll point out is in two dimensions, because satellites can't determine thickness of the ice) has only been measured since 1970.  To put in relative terms, if Earth was 1 year old, we've been collecting data on sea ice for just about 288 milliseconds!

I especially like Whitten's comment about how Florida is at risk because much of the state is an elevation of 10 feet MSL.  News flash to Rick:  Florida used to be underwater.  From Volusia County Heritage:

Florida, the land, having been mostly under water since the Jurassic period, is relatively young by geological standards, rising out of the ocean within the last 25 million years. 

Additionally, Volusia County Heritage has a graphic showing where Florida's coastlines were in the past compared to now:





Hmm, that's interesting.  Florida has been steadily been reclaimed by the ocean over the past 12,000 years.  I forget, when did we first start driving SUVs?  Maybe 20 years ago?

Perspective is everything.

Wind, solar, and perpetuating convenient lies

So, one of the campaign issues of interest to Iowa is Mitt Romney's differing approach to wind energy subsidies, compared with President Obama.

No surprise, the businessman in Romney doesn't understand why we throw good taxpayer dollars after bad into an industry that doesn't seem to support itself.

Here's the uncomfortable truth:  Wind and solar are simply not cost-effective.  You won't see a lot of private companies and individuals rushing to be the first in line to throw money at something that shows no indications of becoming profitable any time soon.

But government doesn't have that problem, because they're always spending someone else's money, and right away the incentive to spend that money wisely is taken away.

Look at solar.  I recall one caller to a talk-radio program years ago that sang his praises of solar.  He'd put the panels on his house, and they'd paid for themselves in energy cost savings after about 10 years.  But, he cautioned, he didn't pay full cost on the panels.  He'd gotten a sizeable tax credit.  He told the talk-radio host he'd run the numbers on if he'd paid full cost:  It would've taken 20 years for him to recoup the money on his investment.  Guess what the life expectancy of the panels are?

If you said "20 years", you get a gold star.

Wind energy is no different.  For the amount of land each windmill takes up, you'd think they produce a fair amount of power.  Not so.  I've heard from sources of questionable veracity that wind energy accounts for 20% of the energy market.  In the windier, wide-open spaces outside of Des Moines, I could see that the windmills, collectively, produce that power in windy conditions.

But what about the cost?  Does wind energy provide a return on investment?

Not exactly.  About 50% of the total cost of energy production through wind is subsidized by taxpayer dollars (citation needed).

 On 17 August, the Des Moines Register carried this letter to the editor:

Yes, wind energy supports employment in Iowa. But there are hidden costs.
We all know about tax credits subsidizing wind energy. But there are costs included in all of our power bills. Wind energy is an unreliable source of power. But the utilities are required to purchase the electricity whenever it is available, whether they need it or not. Of course the predetermined price of wind-energy power exceeds the cost of energy generated by more conventional means.

We have been told by green energy groups that profitability is just around the corner. I am tired of waiting. When is the government going to cease picking winners and losers in the marketplace? If the wind-energy tax credits are abolished I suspect that wind power will be “gone with the wind.”

— Richard L. Powell, Grimes

Amen!  Every time,  I see or hear the ad criticizing Mitt Romney for his refusal to support subsidies for wind energy, I cringe.  The ad cites how the Republican governor and both the Democrat and Republican senators from Iowa support this spending of taxpayer dollars.

Uh, yeah, that's not a surprise.  But tell me how it makes it right, just because Iowa politicians support this particular earmark because it keeps their constituents happy.  I remember when Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) supported continued funding of the Crusader artillery vehicle when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the program on the chopping block, despite Wellstone being a dove his whole political career.  Wellstone, despite the belief that he was some sort of populist, was still a politician.  He acknowledged that a defense contractor in his home state employed a great many of his constituents.  Constituents whose jobs were threatened.

I've never understood this faith some people place in politicians.  When voting, a healthy dose of cynicism and a questioning of the politician's motivations is warranted.  I recall when then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was going to let his closest supporters know of his pick for running mate by text message at 3 a.m.  But the system failed, and many already knew it was to be Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) by 1 a.m.  So the text messages weren't sent.  A Obama-supporting friend of mine complained about the text message business the next day.  I made the following cynical comment:

"Imagine that.  A politician saying one thing and doing another."

Her reaction was priceless:  It was like I'd clocked her on the side of the head with a 2x4.

And yet, my cynicism still doesn't prepare me for how uninformed some of the commenters to Mr. Powell's letter to the editor were.  Of course, somebody had to pull the oil-and-natural gas card, falsely stating that we should do away with oil and natural gas subsidies.

Agreed.  Except....(deep breath)...WE...DON'T...SUBSIDIZE...OIL...OR...NATURAL...GAS.

Where does this misleading talking point come from?  A very good blog explains it well. From Virginia Right!:

A subsidy is a government payment, usually for doing nothing. Like welfare or payments not to grow crops.

Oil companies simply get tax deductions like every other business. Not subsidies.

What these tax deductions do is encourage things like equipment, machinery and vehicles to be replaced faster than it might otherwise be done. When these items are fully depreciated, businesses are incentivised to to replace them rather than hold onto them for a few more years through tax deductions.

So what Obama wants to do is target the oil industry for higher taxes and fewer deductions, not eliminate of subsidies, because none exist.
And we all know the result. Lower profits due to taxes will be replaced at the pumps in higher prices.

And worse, oil companies will slow down purchases of machinery, tools, vehicles and other items. Which will make a pretty large impact on the rest of the economy – in a negative way.
The fact is, the more money oil companies make, the more money they pay in taxes.

 I recommend reading the whole article.  The author does a good job of disarming a favorite lefty talking point.

Better still, just ask the lefties to identify just one of the subsidies the oil and natural gas companies receive, sit back, and watch their heads spin. 

It's cheap entertainment, but it pays to be frugal in this economy.

Chick-Fil-A

Wednesday was National Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.

Lost in the din was the reason why it existed in the first place:  Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel disagreed with the personal views of Dan Cathy, president of Chick-Fil-A.  Rather, they disagreed with the CNN's interpretation of those views.

In his interview with the Baptist Press, Mr. Cathy made the following statement:

Some have opposed the company's support of the traditional family. "Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.

  Wow, controversial stuff, huh?

Here's how CNN interpreted it on their Belief blog (Emphasis on their agenda-based bias in bold):

The fact that Chick-fil-A is a company that espouses Christian values is no secret. The fact that its 1,600 fast-food chicken restaurants across the country are closed on Sundays has long been testament to that.
But the comments of company President Dan Cathy about gay marriage to Baptist Press on Monday have ignited a social media wildfire.

"Guilty as charged,", Cathy said when asked about his company's support of the traditional family unit as opposed to gay marriage.

"We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that," Cathy is quoted as saying.

But he didn't say that!  A more thorough analysis of this is available at the following links:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/07/cnn-lays-an-egg/
http://www.getreligion.org/2012/07/wheres-the-beef-what-the-chick-fil-a-boss-really-said/

As Dr. Goebbels might have said, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  It's hard to not see this as journalistic malpractice, even if it did ultimately backfire:

More than 3,000 people lined up for Chick-fil-A at the food court at Jordan Creek Town Center on Wednesday, joining in a battle of words and demonstrations over same-sex relationships and the fast food restaurant’s president.

Iowans were not alone; hundreds of thousands of people around the country stood in line at Chick-fil-A locations Wednesday to show their support for the restaurant and for marriage only between one man and one woman.

I arrived at the Chick-Fil-A around 7:30 that night.  The lines were still long.

But the Des Moines Register, like most media outlets, doesn't frame the event correctly.  It wasn't about people supporting Chick-Fil-A because of Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (which, as has been pointed out, he never touched on in the interview in question).  It had to do with this:

The mayor of Boston is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the city after the company's president spoke out publicly against gay marriage.

Even though Mr. Cathy didn't even mention gay marriage in the interview, what Boston Mayor Menino vowed to do was unconstitutional.

But Menino wasn't alone:

Chick-fil-A, the national restaurant chain known for its chicken sandwiches and waffle fries, has become a litmus test for gay rights. This development erupted after its CEO Dan Cathy, known for his conservative religious views, said in a radio interview that his company backs "the biblical definition of the family unit," not same-sex marriage.

Outraged, Chicago Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno, 1st, responded that he would not allow a Chick-fil-A to come to his gentrifying Northwest Side ward. Mayor Rahm Emanuel seemed to back him up with, "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago values." He soon was joined by other national politicians eager to dump Chick-fil-A into the fryer.

 Mayor Emanuel's comments about "Chicago values" have prompted many snickers across the blogosphere, as people pointed out how 11 people don't get murdered daily in Chick-Fil-A restaurants, or that Chick-Fil-A's management has some catching up to do if they want to attain the same level of corruption as Chicago's politicians.

Both Boston's and Chicago's newspapers have raked their politicians over the coals for their tone-deafness on First Amendment issues.

So when I went to Chick-Fil-A Wednesday evening, it wasn't because I agree or disagree with Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (and it bears repeating one more time that he didn't say anything about it!).  It was a message.  To Mayor Emanuel.  To Alderman Moreno.  To Mayor Menino.  To all the bullies whom would dare try to use the power of government to interfere with someone's legitimate business.  Whom would use it to intimidate, possibly silence.  The message is this:

Knock it off!  You don't rule us. You serve us!

Every so often, we need to remind our elected representatives of their place.

A bad day

I've been having a bad day recently.  Since about March, actually.

I work in a support role at my company.  I have teammates halfway around the world who also support many of the same people I do.

Recently, however, one of those teams we support has been in fire-fighting mode.  They're placing demands on my time as well as my colleagues off-site.

My off-site colleagues best know the system supporting this customer team.  I have an incomplete working understanding.

The system is located where I am.  So's the customer team.  So when then nighttime and network problems hamper my colleagues' efforts to keep the customer team happy, guess who gets stuck with the problem?

The thing is, I'm supposed to be working something that's also high-priority, but on another project.  So whom do I tell to kiss off?  Politely, of course.

Yes, I know, this sounds like a first-world problem to me too.

Despicable

That's a word I rarely use, but it definitely applies to KayInMaine of White Noise Insanity.

In the wake of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, she posted this crap:

A wingnut kills 14 in a Colorado movie theater…

…and you know what that means! It means Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh are to blame. Yes, that’s right: THEY’RE TO BLAME. Both of those assholes with a national microphone are causing the reich wing armed militias in America to go off the deep end. When will these two be arrested for terrorizing the nation!!!

and then she went on to blame one of the Left's favorite bogeymen:  Michelle Bachmann.

Others on Twitter are not letting an absence of facts get in the way of a narrative:

Hannity beck limbaugh paraphernalia Found at aurora shooters home

Really, jakecovo?  That's interesting.  How would you know, since the police at this time have yet to effect entry into the shooter's home, since it appears he wasn't bluffing about his apartment being booby-trapped with explosives.  Did the police somehow, enter the apartment, find the materials, notice the apartment was booby-trapped, and then leave and have the bomb squad send a robot in?  That's a good trick!

Now I hear news about ABC finding a connection between the shooter, James Holmes, and the Colorado Tea Party.

One problem:  ABC got the wrong James Holmes. 

Jeez, rank amateurism at work.  Laura Ingraham described them best:  Dinosaur Media.

In the meantime, the Left will continue its hate-filled, fact-challenged rants.

It seems to be their M.O.:  React to such news reflexively and emotionally.  Blame people whom you feel are "evil".  When facts come out that dispute your beliefs, change the topic.  Never admit you were wrong, because that would be an indicator of growth.  If you grew and matured, you might learn, like the rest of us, to be patient for the facts to emerge, to "look before you leap", as it were.

But when facts in these situations come out, they rarely if ever support the left-wing arguments.  That's why I think they jump the gun:  Whip people's emotions into a frenzy and get them believing lies before the truth, as Mark Twain put it, has gotten its shoes on.

It's fortunate that I don't know any of these people personally.  I'd have to exercise great restraint to keep from slapping some sense into them.

Minimum wage laws don't work

Minimum wage laws don't work.  Anybody with a calculator and an understanding of economics and logic can comprehend that.  So why do politicians keep pushing it?

Because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Reading Perkins’ essay today reminds us of the potential that minimum wage laws hold for shaping a fair and productive economy.

Which do you want a fair economy or a productive economy?  And by the way, a mandatory minimum wage guarantees neither.

At the time of her writing, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Perkins feared the destructive potential of the growing number of “fly-by-night” sweatshop operators attempting to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors by selling cheaper products made possible by rock-bottom labor costs.
These low-wage sweatshop operators were, in other words, cheaters. They offered cheaper products by taking advantage of workers who, in a period of record unemployment, had no choice but to accept whatever job they could get — in some cases, earning only 3.5 cents per hour.

I'm sorry, what made the advantage "unfair"?  And guess what?  If the market allowed employers to get labor for so cheap, it was because people were willing to work for so cheap.  What was/is a fair wage?  Something arbitrarily set by the government?

The purpose of a minimum wage law was not only to protect workers from abuse by their employers, but to also ensure fair competition by requiring that all businesses play by the same rules

the minimum wage peaked in 1968 and has since trailed behind the rising cost of living. In fact, the minimum wage would be well over $10 today if it had simply kept pace with inflation. Instead, it’s only $7.25 an hour — or just over $15,000 a year.

My god, do these economic illiterates look at what happens whenever the mandatory minimum wage is increased?  Like with most economic meddling by the government, it precipitates inflation.  Everyone's purchasing power is reduced because of an arbitrary floor to labor costs.  Businesses operating on thin profit margins either reduce their workforce, raise their prices, or both.  Since savvy business owners don't employ more people than they need, an increase in per-head labor costs often gets them looking at ways they can reduce the number of heads of labor to restore the product of the labor calculation to some form of equilibrium that allows them to stay in business.  Some businesses will fail because they can't break even, let alone turn a profit. Say a company has 50 employees making $7/hr.  The government bumps the minimum wage up.  Now everybody has to be paid $8/hr.  The company's labor costs have gone from $350/employee-hour, or $14,000 per 40-hour work week, to $400/employee-hour, or $16,000 per 40-hour work week. 

To be sure, the employees are happy.  Briefly.

A second, larger company, with say, 500 employees, has gone from paying $140,000 to $160,000.  Company A saw their labor costs jump $2,000 in one week, but Company B saw their labor costs jump $20,000 in the same week.  Company B decides to internationally out-source the bulk of its labor force to stay competitive.  They lay off 400 employees and find they can hire twice as many foreigners at their new overseas operation which cost them $50,000 to set up.  A week later, Company A is still paying an extra $2,000 per week for the same productivity.  Company B now is paying $20,000 a week, but saw their productivity increase about 55%.  Increases in productivity give company B flexibility in tempering the inevitable spike in its product's price to consumer.

Granted, these are simplistic numbers, but think about Company A.  Maybe it can't compete with Company B at the new labor rates.  Company B can essentially outlast Company A.  So, six months down the road, perhaps all 50 of the employees from Company A join the 400 from Company B in the unemployment line, where they aren't earning taxable income.  And as prices rise, the extra money the surviving employees of both companies receive is worth less.  Does that make sense?

Low-wage industries are now among the economy’s fastest-growing sectors, and some of the lowest paid occupations are expected to create the largest numbers of new jobs over the next several years. For many employers low wages are part and parcel of a robust growth strategy. As of last year, no fewer than 35 of the nation’s 50 largest low-wage businesses had posted profits that exceeded their pre-recession levels.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of businesses in the United States have yet to recover from the recession, particularly small businesses. A Gallup poll earlier this year revealed that fully 85 percent of small businesses still have no intention of hiring or expanding their business because demand remains so weak.

 I refer you to the above paragraphs as to why this is essentially the government's fault.  The labor unions in this country have learned that the old game of "chicken" only works against employers so long before the employers simply move their labor to a more friendly climate.  The unions priced themselves right out of business in many cases.  An in a textbook definition of insanity, the government thinks it can repeat the exercise with minimum-wage employees and then act surprised when the same result occurs.

The American people have noticed. According to a recent poll, more than two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to over $10 per hour. This support is behind a proposal by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., that would raise the minimum wage to $9.80 an hour, significantly raise the minimum wage for tipped workers (currently at $2.13 an hour), and provide for annual cost of living adjustments for both.

Not to disparage my fellow Americans, but the two-thirds of respondents to the poll need to see the world through a macro-economic lens.  Like with low-income people on welfare, you can count on them to vote for a continued supply of funds.  It's clear the author doesn't comprehend the economic impact of annual cost of living adjustments.  An apt analogy would be the dog chasing his tail:  It keeps him busy, but he doesn't achieve his goals.

Thank you, Government.

Only a lawyer could view a mandate as a tax. A tax on living.

ObamaCare upheld. Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, for your idiotic decision. If a law is constitutional & not @ the same time, how can it be upheld?

A dilemma

How do I tell a well-meaning but ill-informed teenage Facebook friend of mine that she and the Washington Post seem to be unaware of the difference between outsourcing and off-shoring?

Sorry, life isn't fair

Hmm

President Obama took executive action removing the fear of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Can we say reportedly, here?  Since they came to the U.S. illegally, we have no means of verifying their story.  Guess we just take the word of somebody who violated the immigration laws of our country, huh?

The policy makes sense. Many of the immigrants impacted by the action are hard-working people who are contributing and will continue to contribute to the strength of our country.

Except they cut in line.  And if they're not being paid under the table, their employer has submitted W-2s with either a bogus or stolen social security number.  If it's the latter, then it's identity theft, meaning some poor slob has just become a victim in what I've heard some argue is a victimless crime.
  

Romney, whose stance on immigration has been evolving since January when he said immigrants should “return home, apply and get in line with everyone else,” now finds it difficult in the general election to oppose the merits of a plan such as the one Obama initiated.

One little word is everything.  Romney was talking about the illegal immigrants getting in line with everybody else.  You know, the ones whom as legally immigrating!

Romney and friends know that winning support from Hispanic voters will dim significantly if Republicans are seen as advocates for the forcible removal of children, college students and young adults who are law-abiding members of the American community.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that's how Hispanic voters feel about it.  If you waited in line like everyone else, would you be so quick to forgive the line-cutter?  Plus, let's not paint all these illegal immigrants with the same brush.  Some are members of violent gangs such as MS-13.  Some, like this guy, may be hard workers, but they are also murderers:

On Wednesday, Carlos Cardenas, 22, with the help of a Spanish interpreter, pleaded guilty to strangling his wife's 15-year-old sister while raping her in his bathroom last year. He later dumped the girl's body in an apple orchard in Orleans County where the illegal alien was once employed.

Or this guy:

A modern-day Jack the Ripper who admitted that he “wanted to kill” a Queens woman he viciously murdered was sentenced yesterday to up to 29 years in prison.
Huang Chen, 49, an illegal immigrant from China, admitted he murdered his former employment agent by tying a plastic rope around her neck and smashing her head with a hammer 30 times.
Chen showed no remorse as he was sentenced for the 2010 killing of Qian Wu.

Sorry, not all of them are hard workers.  And their willingness to cut in line and cheat makes me question their integrity and honesty.

A matter of feelings or a matter of law?

The Des-Moines Register editorials are often long on "fairness" and short on facts.

Today, there's this gem of thought:

The Supreme Court in 2009, to great fanfare and congratulations by civil libertarians, ruled that terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. federal courts. This fundamental right of habeas corpus — that is, the right of prisoners to be able to challenge their confinement before a judge — applies to Guantanamo detainees, too.

The court was not clear on precisely what legal standards apply, however. It left the details to the lower federal courts. That has fallen to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington. The court has yet to approve an appeal from Guantanamo, and the Supreme Court has consistently refused to second-guess the lower court. Last week, for example, the Supreme Court summarily dismissed appeals from six Guantanamo detainees.

That the SCOTUS agreed to hear the case in 2009 baffles me.  These terrorists were foreign nationals captured on a foreign battlefield.  They wore no insignia or uniform declaring them to be soldiers in a military force (I'll get back to why that's significant).  They're not U.S. citizens, so why grant them the same rights?

About the only way you could argue for constitutional protections for these individuals is to refer to treaty law.  Is the foreign national a citizen of a nation with whom we have a treaty?  More importantly, do they declare themselves a citizen of that nation, or have they renounced their citizenship?  Terrorists that dislike the U.S. often don't like governments that would stoop so low as to have a treaty with the U.S.

Closing Guantanamo, which has now operated for more than a decade, will not be a simple task. There is the matter of finding another country that will take those detainees who can be released beyond our borders. There is the matter of prosecuting the remaining terrorist suspects, where the government has evidence not obtained by torture. There is the matter of deciding whether they can be prosecuted in U.S. civil courts or in military tribunals. Then there is the problem of finding a more permanent prison on U.S. soil for those who cannot be deported or tried.

There are two schools of thought on terrorism.  Conservatives by and large see terrorism as an act of war, while liberals see it as a criminal act.  If we're going to prosecute terrorists as criminals, that's great, but first should we let them all go and wait for them to enter our country willingly?  Isn't it a jurisdictional issue to seize them on a foreign battlefield and try them in American courts on American soil?

Then there's that word:  torture.  I can think of few words so overused and loosely re-defined to encompass practices which a great many legally-minded people think do not go too far.  Often, I hear pundits use the word, presumably because it feels like torture to them.  Never mind the legal definitions.

At least the author touches on the obvious elephant in the room, even if the question isn't explicitly asked:  If the Bush administration did indeed torture these individuals with newfound rights, how can we prosecute them with evidence obtained under what was once called "torture".  Legal scholars refer to such evidence as "fruit of the poison tree."

Finally, the last line of the above paragraph stuns me with irony:  The author seems to acknowledge the "need" to stick some of these terrorists in a hole in the ground and provide them free food and medical care for the rest of their lives, even though he or she has been advocating for how wrong it is for Camp X-Ray Delta to exist.  Sorry, which is it?

At the time of this post, there are three comments.  Two are reasoned, factual arguments against the premise of the editorial, but then there's this:

The continued existence of a facility like Guantanamo testifies to how afraid many Americans have become of trusting their own constitution, or of respecting their treaty obligations in the Geneva Conventions. Fear is becoming a fundamental "value."

Like I said, there's a large number of people who like to throw the word "torture" around casually.  About the same number seem to cite the Geneva Conventions without actually knowing what it has to say about enemy combatants that don't distinguish themselves from the civilian populace (such as fighting in civilian clothing, wearing no insignia to identify them as soldiers of a military force, not carrying arms openly, etc).  Scholars accept that such individuals have the right to be shot on sight.

What part of "Do not disturb" do some people not comprehend?

One year since I met a wonderful woman. Happy anniversary, T.

Why are so many meetings scheduled 90 mins beforehand?

It's such a simple concept, putting 4 wheels between 2 lines...

Funny bumper sticker: "Remember! We survived Jimmy Carter!"

"My dad doesn't believe in global warming. He's very conservative..."

That's what one of the dumber lefties in the next cube pod over said.  She's definitely a pod person.