The Square Wheel

Imagine, if you will, the charismatic man who has never invented anything, never sold anything tangible, but claims to have come up with the perfect wheel.

The square wheel.

Yeah, I know...nothing wrong with the shape of a wheel as we know it. The tire on the wheel wears over time, but it can be replaced, even recycled. One can purchase recycled tires, even, but they remain circular. If properly aired up and balanced, a tire will serve well, especially if kept in sets or at least pairs. I remember enough from my days working at a genuine service station to know that much, and I wouldn't think much has changed in that regard. With that established...

Here's this man who announces that he's invented 'the square wheel'. It will work better than the round wheel, and it will increase your fuel economy-indeed, it will cost you far less than the round wheel we all use now, and it'll even help save the environment by reducing CO2 emissions.

But he can't explain his design; he doesn't have one of his own. It will be up to others to design it and bring it to market.

He certainly can't explain how 'his' square wheel could defy physics and be better than a round one.

But he stakes his reputation on it; if it flops like an Edsel (wish I owned one now!) he goes down in flames, end of story, in just a few years.

However, he has politically powerful allies who have skin in the game and don't want that to happen, and they're inventing his square wheel for him. There are different factions among those allies and hence different versions of the design, but there is a lot of skepticism out in the local populace. A lot. What to do, then?

Ignore the public skepticism and get the government to FORCE them to buy their square tires by decree-buy them and get rid of those stupid round tires or face fines and/or imprisonment!

Huh? Are you high?! Have you forgotten who you work for, you jerks?

They have.

Long ago.

Square Deal

New Deal

Fair Deal

Raw Deal

If the Little Creep aka President Barack Hussein Obama (MMM-MMM-MMM!) gets his way, get ready for the square WHEEL.

I for one have had it with the wheeling and dealing.

It comes down to this health care thing, whatever the hell it is-if it goes down, the Little Creep is definitely toast; he's already lost Congress, I think, whether it goes down or not. He will care ONLY if it goes down.

"A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully"

The title is in quotes because it is the title of the source article.

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity.

The Atlantic has the bill in PDF form here, and here are a couple of snips:

To provide for the interrogation and detention of enemy belligerents who
commit hostile acts against the United States, to establish certain limitations
on the prosecution of such belligerents for such acts, and for
other purposes.

Further on (in case you thought McCain and Lieberman just forgot to exclude US citizens, native-born or naturalized):

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.

An individual, including a citizen of the United
States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent
under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article
5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of
Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal
charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities
against the United States or its coalition partners in which
the individual has engaged, or which the individual has
purposely and materially supported, consistent with the
law of war and any authorization for the use of military
force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

I know I'm not the only one who has a problem with this idea. Giving the feds any power is an automatic invitation for abuse, and never more so than now.

This has the imprimatur of the emotionally if not mentally unstable man the national GOP establishment wanted to be their nominee in '08. And they got him, with some help from crossover Democrats in 'blue' states and a few dirty tricks elsewhere courtesy of others.

So why is this happening? No telling what Lieberman's motives are-because he's Jewish and assumes anyone who's a terrorist hates Israel and/or is probably a Muslim? The reason that he became a pariah with the Democrats, I believe, is that he's pro-Israel and anti-islamonazi; even as an Independent he's otherwise a socialist.

As for McCain, someone who commented on Free Republic suggested that he's trying to juice up his tough-on-terrorism bona fides because he has a genuine conservative primary challenger in JD Hayworth; that it's a gesture he knows is going nowhere. Maybe. (The source of that FR post is here, by the way.) What I do know is that anything with McCain's name as lead sponsor or co-sponsor can't be good. Especially in combination with Lieberman, Feingold, or Kennedy.

It would take me far too long to go through what McCain (or McLame, as Mark Levin refers to him) did wrong once he secured the nomination in '08, but if he did one thing right, it was choosing Sarah Palin as his running-mate. I have a buddy in Anchorage, AK who would disagree with me on that, but she's at least a hundred times smarter than her counterpart in '08 was. We had Joe the Plumber, and then we had Joe the Dumber (Biden).

I like Gov. Palin, and I suspect that she's learned tremendously since August of '08. After all the smears she's endured since...in light of what I posted above, I find it regrettable that she endorsed and campaigned with McCain in his primary, but as Rush pointed out a while back, there was a debt to be paid; she wouldn't be where she is now but for McCain. Whether he wins or loses, the debt is cleared.

I do have to wonder if she would've reneged on that debt had she known about the Senate bill I highlighted above. I like to think so.

Seems to me that in '08 we had two Manchurian candidates, so to speak, and the worse but far brighter one prevailed.

"Conservatism is the future of America"

The title is in quotes so that there's no mistake-this is meant to highlight a newspaper commentary. Depending on your news-gathering habits (dead-tree, online) you may not have seen this. If not, you're probably not a Briton. That is, a citizen of the UK/Great Britain or whatever you want to call it. The British press is, if nothing else, more open and honest than the leftist toadies in the so-called mainstream media here in the 'colonies'. And more interested in and dogged about what we little people think of as noteworthy facts than our so-called domestic media, generally speaking. They're leftists for the most part, but they're not bashful about it, and they're generally realistic. Even they acknowledge the damage Climategate has done to their beloved global warming (America-destroying) swindle.

The title article is here, and here is one standout snip (I had a couple others in mind, but for some reason I couldn't get them to take):

Just this week, the White House was stunned by a CNN poll that showed that 52 percent of Americans believe Barack Obama should not be reelected in 2012, a powerful vote of no confidence in a president who’s (sic-gotta point it out to be fair) big government agenda has been overwhelmingly rejected.

Yeah, and that's a CNN poll. DNCNN, as I think of it. Rasmussen is more reliable if you like polls, and I'm wary of all of them, even Rasmussen.

Well, if they're playing censorship games on Facebook, why not here? I try to paste something, I can do it only by wiping out everything I've already written.

Cute, google punks. What goes around comes around...Trotsky could've told you that nobody stays in favor forever. In other words, there's no end to kissing these Marxists' asses once you start down that road. Guess I'll start drafting my posts in Writer mode from here on.

Fleet Street gets it, US-based media. Ignoring it won't alter the salient facts...true conservatism is on the ascendancy. That ascendancy gains momentum with each passing day and each word/lie that passes the Little Creep's lips.

Tea Party Piracy

Please read this before proceeding, if you haven't already seen it. It's a good and instructive article-bottom line, has-beens and wannabes are trying to hijack the Tea Party movement. In the former category I would place Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, a pair who have devolved into Beltway guys-they've gone native. Conventional wisdom, you know-they're just full of that, among other things. Kind of like the NY Slimes' token white 'conservative' guy David Brooks, and speaking of Davids...does anyone know what's become of Mr. New Majority, David Frum? Not that I care...just kinda curious.

If you actually read the piece, you will see that there is no centralization involved here, which is a good thing, it seems to me-leaderless indeed. The Tea Party movement wouldn't be what it is if there was a single person/leader to fire an arrow at, but the media pukes are trying to find one. Even they are bright enough to know that that person isn't Sarah Palin, or Glenn Beck. It does annoy me that "(s)ome accused Skoda and convention organizer Judson Phillips of trying to use the convention to elevate themselves as leaders of the movement." I don't know Mr. Skoda, but I have chatted with Judson over the past several months and never got a sense that he wants that target painted on him, beyond what he's already done; I've gotten no sense that he's anything but a true believer in the cause. Let's overlook the fact that he's a lawyer. But seriously...

Unless you're a Beltway establishmentarian like Newt or Armey (who would, either of them, undoubtedly modify the entire purpose of the movement to suit themselves), you wouldn't want those arrows being shot at you...would you?

We don't need centralization, and we sure as hell don't need a third party. We don't need distractions such as this 'birther' crap-we need focus. If we can maintain that-and much can and no doubt will happen between now and November-it might be possible to stall and even begin to undo what the Little Creep has wrought. Because he's not done yet.

Update: I was definitely remiss in neglecting to mention the Ron Paul movement in this context. This is precisely the sort of thing we need to beware of:

We can't continue to let the neo-Cons try to elbow their way in. It's ironic how all the old neo-Cons that were big government spenders (Romney, Gingrich, etc.) have suddenly found religion with the Tea Party movement. Even Glenn Beck was telling us we needed the bank bailouts!

This RuPaul supporter has a point about Gingrich, to be sure, but I must point out that in his time as House Speaker Newt actually was a good conservative. Remember those surpluses? And the slur 'neo-con' is code for 'Jew' and/or 'pro-Israel', and interestingly enough, it's something these tin-foil hat 'real conservatives' have in common with the Marxist left. I could've done an entire post on Ron Paul to correct my oversight, but why waste the time and space on some guy who's gonna be 77 come the 2012 general election? Does anyone seriously believe that at that age he would have a prayer of winning even if nominated? Not I. And yet they're crowing about this meaningless CPAC straw-poll that they undoubtedly spammed. Too bad there weren't a few black helicopters flying around there while that was going on; they'd have probably scattered to the hills. These people are so tiresome.

Trying Again...

I've been holding off posting for some time, in part (but not in toto) because my computer and connection aren't/haven't been especially reliable. My connection is a little better, and (PLEASE?!?) I should be getting my new CPU this coming weekend.

It's a helluva good deal for 5 c-notes; a TB hard-drive (compared with this old 40 GB fossil) and at least triple the processing power and RAM I have now, and this guy is building it for me and will deliver it to me from 200 miles away, give or take. Beat that deal! I was hoping last weekend, but have since learned that he had a nasty accident. He didn't elaborate, but maybe he stepped outside and slipped on some of Al Gore's global warming; he said he spent a week in the hospital. Ouch...in more ways than one. Especially if he's entirely self-employed...I've been told by a mutual friend that he has a shop in northern Indiana, but not whether or not that's just a side-thing. If not and he doesn't have a health care plan...and no telling if our beloved messiah would deem him worthy of coverage under his divinely-inspired plan.

Which-well, nothing at all divine about Nancy Pelosi, an alleged Catholic; she'd probably be like the witch in the Wizard of Oz if she stepped into a church and/or got splashed with holy water. (Does the Catholic Conference endorse the over-use of botox, just by the way?) The ONE has presented no actual plan of his own, and doesn't have a particular clue about the plans that have been and are yet in play; he merely wants a shell bill to build on, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he'll get it...not if the aforementioned witch gets her way.

Speaking of witches, it seems that Hillary has seen the light-no matter how nice you try to be to that little nutcase in Iran, he/it isn't gonna quit being a nutcase.

Meanwhile, there's a surge in Afghanistan...and the troops have one hand tied behind their backs. Don't shoot-even if you know they're the enemy-if they're not armed. And if they're shooting at you and there's a possibility that a civilian might be in the vicinity, don't shoot. Oh yes, Dear Leader, o wise one! Yeah...he'll blame GW Bush and/or General McCrystal if it breaks really bad, and take credit if we catch a break. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think this RINO wimp Tim Johnson we have here in IL-15 was right in a way. Fight the damn war or get the hell out of it! I'm pleased to see this nosedive Obama and his Chicago thugs pals are in, and I hope it continues and accelerates-but I don't want my brothers and sisters out there to suffer the consequences.* I fear that some will, however, and it's...there's no word for it; no adjective I can think of that adequately defines how I feel about that. I'll leave it at that.

But I'm trying again here...dipping my toe in the water, as it were. It's a start.

*My ETS (Expiration of Term of Service) was over 18 years ago. The oath I took (to preserve, protect, and defend, etc.) will NEVER expire. God bless and keep you, my brothers and sisters!

A New Something

A new Commander-in-Chief. Clown-in-Chief, really. Are we there yet? Are we tired of this pretender? This guy's from my own home state, and I sure as hell didn't vote for him-not in '04 for Senate, and not last year.

We've all been swindled. Some of us saw it coming once the nominees were pretty much decided a year ago; some have come to this conclusion in the mere two months since the Anointed One took the oath to preserve, protect, and defend-and promptly went to work violating it. Some people will never get it, absent some event I don't want to contemplate.

I started working on this post 4 1/2 months ago; got knocked offline again for a while. What I said above hasn't changed; things have gotten even worse yet.

Obama's 'health care czar'...

Obama's 'snitch central'...

Obama internment camps for dissenters?

Obama's personal army of thugs-at our expense?!

Obama owns your computer!



If you're so naive as to trust this stalinist pretender for even a moment, as far as that last bit. A lot of people are 'snitching' on themselves, regarding the second one. The first...mm, well I won't mention Mengele; might be a clear violation of Godwin's Law, so how about Zawahiri? Not much difference, granted.

Rush said it well, over a year ago...we are SO screwed...

But it ain't over yet. This republic has survived through it all, and will survive this. How difficult and bloody it may be depends very much upon whether or not we focus on what Obama's up to rather than whether or not he has a genuine birth certificate! As if it's relevant-what if he didn't? Huh? It's a waste of time and energy and makes us all look kooky! Let's stick to the real issues here, shall we?

Another New Year

Good God...it's March already. Daylight Saving Time already. How does one save daylight?! If I could figure that out, I'd be a gazillionaire. I will at least concede that I don't have the intellectual firepower to do so. I especially like this bit:

In the United States, Daylight Saving Time commences at 2:00 a.m. to minimize disruption. However, many states restrict bars from serving alcohol between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. At 2:00 a.m. in the fall, however, the time switches back one hour. So, can bars serve alcohol for that additional hour? Some states claim that bars actually stop serving liquor at 1:59 a.m., so they have already stopped serving when the time reverts to Standard Time. Other states get solve the problem by saying that liquor can be served until "two hours after midnight." In practice, however, many establishments stay open an extra hour in the fall.

I'm a beer guy, and I've been in a bar exactly twice since I last posted. Which has been a lot of temporal miles ago. I've been offline for the better part of a year, having moved to a place where internet access is problematic in more ways than one.

As much as I've missed my online friends, I'm not all that sorry I missed the goings-on the past ten months. I couldn't miss the newspapers, as it's all I had to go on. Heh...well, there were a couple of months where I avoided the news in favor of the crossword and sudoku. And I'm good at both.

I don't imagine that I could add much to what the great talkers say, but I'm disgusted enough by what's going on that I'm in the right frame of mind to give it a shot. Give me a week or so-I'm still decompressing.