On Fire Extinguishers

I have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I have another in the basement, about halfway between the washer/dryer and the furnace. A third in the garage. And I keep meaning to get around to bolting a fair size one into the trunk, along with re-building my preferred roadside "oh crap" kit (flares, basic repair tools, some spare clothes, 1st aid kit, a few other items).

Why?

It's not that I expect to spontaneously self-immolate at any given moment. It's not that I had a bad experience with heat sources as a child. It's not even that I have some weird hero/rescuer fantasy. It's not even freudian (sorry, all!).

It's simply doing what I can to reasonably hedge my bet against some of life's more common hazards in the places that they occur most often (near heat sources, in kitchens, and in/around cars) and then getting on with life having made what preparation I reasonably can against the possibility misfortune should strike.

If a fire breaks out in my kitchen, I don't expect I have time to pop over to Home Depot to pick up a good ABC fire extinguisher, and throwing water on it has a fair chance of just making it worse. A car fire seldom waits for one to go shopping, either.

Oddly enough, self-defense firearms (aka "serious social tools") strike me as tools of pretty much the same nature. If on some particularly unfortunate day some anti-social critter kicks in my door, it's unlikely that he or she will indulge my sudden acquisitive needs - and it seems similarly unlikely that the mugger or gay-basher one may encounter on the streets will go along when one cries out "pardon me, give me just a moment whilst I rush off and acquire a reasonable means of self-defense!".

In all of these cases, when the badness comes down, it's pretty much "ya got what ya brung to the party", whether it's a fire incident or a seriously bad social encounter.

In the same spirit I keep fire extinguishers strewn about, as did my father, and I carry a handgun (by preference, in a caliber beginning with .4 if discretion allows) for pretty much the same reason I keep those fire extinguishers about - I devoutly hope never to need either a handgun or a fire extinguisher at a critical level, but I recognize that if I do happen to need one at a critical level, there will absolutely not be time to be shopping around, going through a waiting period, unhooking a gun lock, or cranking open a gun safe.

I don't think folks should be criminally charged for failure to take such elementary precautions, but I would hold that they should pay higher insurance rates for their negligence rather than driving up mine.

Strange Horror

The Chinese are doing WHAT?

I like cats. I happen to think the 27lb monster in the house is rather charming, if amazingly...productive.

Perhaps I'm over-reacting. Perhaps I'm just unreasonably cranky.

But a regime that first takes up the mass extermination (not of strays or ferals, but largely of pets) of dogs, and now of cats, as a hobby simply offends me.

Particularly when these aren't abandoned animals, but beloved pets against whom, at least according to the article, a propaganda war is being waged claiming they are disease carrying hazards to human health, who frightened owners are then turning over to authorities for destruction - when panicked ninnies are doing them in themselves.

This, to me, just makes me question yet again whether China under it's current pseudo-communist regime is a fit host for the Olympics...

Again, it could just be that I'm a wee tad cranky from other events in my odd little world. Read the article yourself and see.

And yes, I recognize that the nutjobs of Beijing have done much worse, and to people not pets, over the years and continue their nasty ways only somewhat abated today. But that is a rant for another day.

Appropos of...

Florida plays a little rough...

"Hrmf. So you don't like when we held our primary, and won't seat our delegates unless we hold a new primary? Fine - YOU pay for it."

I have a wee suggestion for Florida, to *help* facilitate the train wreck process. Perhaps Gov. Crist and his friendly GOP legislative band could issue something along the lines of:

Dear Howard Dean,

Thank you for the laugh regarding your suggestion we pay 20 million dollars from the pockets of Florida taxpayers to accommodate your petty rules. Not going to happen.

In the spirit of fun, to promote respect of Florida voters, and similarly the respect of the sovereignty of the State of Florida, unless by 15 April we receive confirmation that the delegates lawfully elected in our January primaries will be seated at the Democratic National Convention or that the DNC will pay all expenses to hold a "re-do" primary to satisfy their pettiness we propose to make a somewhat different use of 20 million taxpayer dollars.

We propose to spend twenty million dollars on a Voter Education Program broadcast on local television, focusing on how a national party chose to disenfranchise Florida voters out of sheer pettiness in the belief that party rules trumped the right of states to set the dates and times of their own elections. We anticipate very thorough media coverage.

Best Wishes,

Bill & Co.

Blips & Bleeps

Denver Boneheads censor Vanity Fair
In an unsurprising, but yet depressing, move Denver Airport officials offer wifi at the airport - but censor Vanity Fair and tech websites in an effort to create a "family-friendly" environment. Silly me, I thought that keeping an eye on the websites kids visits was parents jobs - not the job of a unelected official to determine what laptop owning adults may or may not access.

Does Obama "Dance a little sidestep"?
Gay Patriot brings an oddly appropriate viewpoint to the table regarding B. Hussein Obama...

A Clarion Call?
I'm not sure I'm 110% on board, but in general I tend to agree that gathering large herds of sheep and neutered wolves and hanging largish signs about announcing "defenseless victims here!" is a less than good idea. Adding sheepdogs, armed licensed citizens, to the mix seems prudent as both a deterrent and a prophylactic - after all, who better to stop a loon on a killing spree than the proposed victims that are already present, providing zero response time.

What lesson are we teaching?
An employer generally owns our mind andefforts for eight hours a day, and after that, so long as we refrain from criminal activity and from disclosing proprietary matters (and perhaps from engaging in activities that would bring disrepute upon our employer, though that is more debatable) - our time, our mind, and our thoughts are our own.

In this case of student freedom of speech we see a court affirming a revolutionary new theory - that schools may not only regulate student speech in school and at student activities, but may penalize speech the school finds offensive on the internet, posted from the students home computer outside of school hours.


Air Force blocks blogs Wholesale...
Of course, no Air Force enlisted or officer personnel will EVER go home and actually use a computer, nor will they utilize proxy relays to view the "forbidden blogosphere". Exercise in futility...

Odds and Sods
Dan Savage, the famed sex columnist, welcomes Nader to the Presidential Race...

Spending Public Dollars to Make Folks Feel Unwelcome
A lovely example of tax dollars wasted to develop a fun new form of bigotry, and yet another example of liberal tolerance and acceptance in the responses in the comments, with more than a bit of tackiness thrown in from the other side of the aisle as well.

For a mere $36,000.00, live gas-free (within 30 miles)


That's it for now folks.....

The Big Three

The stench wafting across the swamp is a trio of festering pustules of authoritarian fantasy masquerading as Presidential candidates.

This is a hint. (And a warning, Adult language may follow.)

I do not like any of them, I do not.
Not a little, not a lot.

Empty words, meaning free
From big-eared man on demagogic spree.

Elitist witch, from swamps most dire
Coasts on coat tails of quite large liar.

Fogy Warrior, RINO named
By own petard hoisted, and freedom gamed.

Aside from my amateurish attempts at poetry, I dislike (as should certainly be obvious by now) all three major candidates and regret the unlikelihood of some kind of divine intervention providing us even a single candidate worth a damn. I'm not that terribly much more thrilled with either the Democratic Party or the GOP in general, and in particular for gracing us with this bi-partisan trio of festering boils upon the buttocks of humanity. I anticipate extended crankiness.

That said, I've been reading other bloggers, talking to friends, and holding my tongue since Thompson bowed out, and contemplating what the best response for the country might be to this trio of walking turds.

Others have said it, but I concur. We are well and truly screwed, as a nation, with this selection of swamp fauna - our only real choice at this point is how badly and how frequently we want to be screwed without talent, affection, or lubricants.

I'm not remotely happy about it, but I'm voting for damage control. The suggestions that McCain might well sabotage the GOP (the necessary counterbalance for the Democratic Party as long as we're stuck in bipartisan mode) irretrievably if he gets anything less than total support, that our best hope is ensure that for the next four years that the deadlock of a President of the party opposite to that holding the reigns in Congress keeps the loons from either side from significantly advancing their agendas, and the certainty that while McCain is bad (little better than ClObama Lite) that the real ClObama is even worse drive my choice.

Tempting as it is, I can't see walking away from this clusterfuck this time around to "teach a lesson". I can't bring myself to support a doomed libertarian presidential candidate beyond a purely theoretical level, only because the notion of a ClObama term is so utterly unpleasant to contemplate.

What little pleasure I will be able to take from this election will, with any luck at all, be the eviction of Bush from office, dimmed by the fact that regardless of who wins, they are likely to bugger things up even worse than he has.

The best hope is to push for libertarians (yay!) and GOP folk of the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" bent to not only run for congressional but state/local positions in hopes of developing candidates worth a damn for the 2012 elections. Until then, to quote another blog, as a nation we must learn to "embrace the suckage".

Glumly...

Housekeeping

Note some added blogs to my list of infamy celebrating variously political incorrectness, fine writing (in my opinion), and dark humor. I commend to you:

Random Nuclear Strikes, a frequent purveyor of inconvenient truths and little tales neglected by the depressingly biased main stream media. It's kind of nice to see a fellow writer from Western Washington, as well.

Kaboom, an exceptionally well-written soldiers tale shared by a stunningly handsome 1st Lt. Ladies, I do believe he plays on your side of the fence, and he shows sufficient wit and character in his writing that odds seem good he's quite a catch (he's taken!). Remember, support your local soldiers!

Crusader Rabbit, an Aussie blogger of considerable wit (I like wit, sue me) and writing talent capable of pointing out the inconvenient and politically incorrect truths with a special talent for recognizing and deflating self-destructive islamophilia.

Free New Hampshire, a libertarian hunting'n'politics journal from the home of the Free State Project - a good read, providing both insights and hints as to what sort of whackiness the control freaks of the left (we'll deal with the ones on the right another time) are getting up to back East.

Atomic Nerds, stumbled across courtesy of Matt G. over at Better & Better with some of the worlds best cat stories and tales of deeply misguided cruise lines best quantified as floating excuses for mutiny.

DeathChic, the famed mortician wannabe that some may recognize from prior bloggarific efforts long ago and far away.

TheBethZone, a celebration of libertarian lesbian thought with a delightfully snarky twist.

The Gun Toting Liberal, a study in cognitive dissonance. Like cod liver oil, he's good for us.

I think that covers the new blogroll roundup. The blogroll, originally, was by order what was convenient for me - I wanted the blog I usually wanted to read first in the morning up at the top, and to progress through to blogs I enjoyed but were less certain to reduce me to helpless evil giggles over coffee, awed admiration at writing skill and classic verbiage, or wise insights on a daily basis.

At some point a much more sophisticated of blog roll organization was achieved, known as complete chaos. They're all good reads, though some (who shall remain nameless) I rather wish would post more frequently. You know who you are, but even in my selfish desire for a steady supply of fun(note, my definition of fun may not be a 1:1 match with yours) reading material, I recognize folks have lives to lead beyond writing insightful, amusing, and often wise blog entries. :)

MWHAHAHAHAHAH

Oh, I really, really, really shouldn't.

But.

I can't help myself.


MWHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAAHAHAH!

As I sit here, the odds of Hillary staying in the Dem Race right through the bitter end, savaging B. Hussein Obama right till the final moment in ever more vicious and vitriolic attacks, become better and better by the moment. The vision of two rabid cats locked in mortal combat, held together by their forepaws, their hind paws buzz saws of gory death as they rip each others guts out comes to mind in a gleefully twisted fashion.

I am mightily pleased, as nothing political would make me happier than the implosion of the Democratic Party amidst vast enveloping splashes of semi-liquid chicken manure, rancid pork, and super-glue adhering to the leadership of that vast experiment in patronizing elitism and professional victimhood. Even better, from my point of view, would be what I anticipate as the splintering of that vast collection of mutually opposed factions held together only by their distaste for the democrats, the GOP.

I can't help it. The dark glee is bubbling back to the surface.

MWHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHA.....

A pox upon BOTH the DEM and the GOP, and this looks rather like the best chance for that to occur simultaneously that I can recall seeing.

You'll have to forgive me, but I must go bake cookies in celebration of this tentatively joyous moment.

Funding our Opponents

Every dollar we spend on imported oil seems to go directly into the coffers of those that would destroy us. This might, perhaps, be considered a bad and counterproductive thing.

Co-erced mass transit ("forcing people out of their cars") and ending the grand experiment in personal mobility is not the answer.

Domesticating and reducing our oil consumption, both by opening ANWR/potential West Coast oil fields to exploration and drilling (and building some new and, ideally, more efficient refineries domestically after a quarter-century of neglect) and at the same time clearing the path for private development, production, and distribution of alternative energy (WVO, Electric, LNG, hydrogent, etc) vehicles and electrical generation stations offers promise.

Towards that end I offer a relatively simple program, just off the top of my head...

1) By Federal Legislation open the ANWR and potential oil fields off California and Oregon for full exploration and exploitation by the highest domestic bidder.

2) Permit and perhaps subsidize domestic refinery renovation, replacement, and construction.

3) Cap oil imports at 2009 levels and step down the importable amount by 5% each year until oil independence is achieved. Make it a priority to cut off imports from Venezuela and the Middle East first.

4) Bar fuel taxes, emissions taxes, sales taxes, and safety or emissions requirements on any non-petroleum burning vehicle for the next twenty years.

5) Begin the urgent (and private) construction of multiple nuclear power plants to replace oil, coal, and gas-burning power plants as a stop gap measure.

6) Clear the path for large private wind, water (rebuild those breached dams, and put up some new ones), and solar installations with limits not on NIMBY and/or green whinging (heaven forfend), but on the effectiveness thereof.

7) Allow import of any vehicle from abroad the size of a Mini or below, regardless of age.

Bitching and kvetching is all well and good, but seems a bit limited in the absence of at least tossing out a notion or two on how things could be improved...

Let's cut off the bastards $$ :)

That's not Global Warming shooting at you...

And just because you're called paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't really out to get you.

Global warming is presently the scientific equivalent of orthodoxy as enforced by the Inquisition - while we've yet to turn up any torture chambers or executions for those of insufficient orthodoxy, we do see skeptics of global warming targeted for de-funding, calls for criminal prosecution for scientific heresy, and general attempts to discredit skeptics in lieu of refuting their data.

Add this to the common gross exaggeration of what little evidence for climate change exists by a media both desperate for ratings (often most easily acquired by sensationalism, as Hearst showed us so many years ago) and eager to "dumb down" complex scientific issues to the level of the lowest common denominator in the pack.

In general, from what I've read in history, that constitutes a "Galileo Effect" - i.e. when the relatively ignorant media pundits and their unquestioning intellectual peons screech forth some new orthodoxy from which all who blaspheme must be punished - it's usually a fairly good indicator that the orthodoxy in question is a crock of shit, or is at least based on insufficient data and exaggeration.

Thus it is with Global Warming/Climate Change. Was this winter noticeably warmer than the last? (Um, gee, no...it surely wasn't). Similarly, and more fundamentally, given that climactic change significantly predates the appearance of humanity on the scene and seems to have cycled repeatedly, is there any valid indicator that humanities present activities (far cleaner than during the industrial revolution) are bringing about some sort of disastrous climactic change?

I've not seen anything to indicate to me that all the shrill squeaking is anything but the co-conspiracy, conscious or otherwise, of fiscally driven pseudo-scientists and semi-journalists in conjunction with the "true believers" of the environmentalist movement and their liberal co-conspirators in perpetual search for a red herring with which to flail at the ankles of progress and distract from the real issues of the day.

Namely, there are bad folks out there, and they are blowing up our stuff and shooting at our people - and are mightily displeased that they have not had more success on our home shores in similar projects. Further complicating this is the desire of these bad folks to convert all of us pagans to their holy faith, be it islamo-babble or socialist pseudo-thought.

Venezuela's socialist-in-chief Chavez and his cronies in Ecuador have mobilized their troops and sent them to the borders of Columbia, a nation with sufficient troubles of its' own for the horrible crime of bagging a band of terrorists...that coincidentally have been using the territories of both nations as "time out zones" for years, with the active collusion of those governments. All this, funded by more oil money than you can shake a stick at. U.S. intervention seems likely, and I frankly hope a couple of carrier groups are someplace sufficiently convenient to nail everything airworthy in Ecuador and Venezuela to the ground within minutes of the first shot being fired.

Similarly, we have the oil-funded nut-jobs of the Middle East eager to drag us back to medieval understandings of human rights to cope with, and that with a bonus round of a potentially nuclear-armed Iran...all while we have troops on the ground in Iraq in a situation closely approximating post-WWII Germany before the lightning brigades were rooted out (yes, if we go away, we WILL get to fight another day...and probably at much greater human and material expense).

In Iraq we are committed - we must either win, and leave a stable situation behind us we are likely to have to subsidize for decades, or we will end up returning in Gulf War III with the odds against us. Afghanistan, loudly proclaimed to be one of the worlds worst places to fight and the less publicized of our current military efforts, seems largely under control at the moment, but we seem to be locked into a role of shoring up the Afghani government (in a situation oddly similar to the USSR in the 80's) into the foreseeable future with vindictive barbarians lurking under various rocks and in the hillsides, calling themselves Taliban. Again, victory is the only option.

The only upshot of this is that the various conflicts are occurring someplace else and that there is a less than infinite supply of "foreign jihaddi" eager to rush out and get themselves shot up. Sadly, they attack not the Purple Dinosaur and its Minions, but rather ourselves, our allies, and our core values.

Global warming (or what after this last frigid winter winter the dribblers now call "Climate Change", after sufficient ridicule) is not the enemy. Dependence on foreign oil, the empty-headed variant of multi-culturalism (if they say they want to kill you and destroy your way of life - take them seriously!), socialist dogma, and religious nut jobs are...

Especially when the socialist and/or islamic nutjobs are busy shooting at us, and our allies.

In other news of General Treachery

We see various individuals, in living color yet, trashing the DC recruiting office...why aren't these folks in jail? And, for that matter, when is the Berkeley Marine Encampment scheduled?

Code Pink: Egregious in Berkeley

From the folks over at LGF we have the winner of the Code Pink Vileness Competition, awarded to the vilest participant at a Code Pink sponsored/instigated event...

Of course, Code Pink has a contact page, but they obfuscate their e-mail addresses, making it hard for the non-tech savvy to send their regards and respects to those fine individuals.

Purely in the spirit of helpfulness, please find their non-obfuscated information here:

Address: 2010 Linden Ave, Venice, CA 90291
Phone: 310-827-4320 Fax: 310-827-4547
Email: info@codepinkalert.org
Website: www.codepinkla.org

San Francisco
Address: 2017 Mission Street, #200 - San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: 415-575-5555
Email: info@bayareacodepink.org
Website: www.bayareacodepink.org

Washington, D.C.
Address: 712 5th Street NE, Washington, DC, 20002 (5 blocks from Union Station)
Phone: 202-290-1301 (DC House #)
Email: dc@codepinkalert.org
Website: www.codepinkdc.org

New York City
Address: 630 9th Ave, Suite 216 NY, NY 10036
Phone: 646-723-1781 Fax: 646-723-0996
Email: codepinknyc@gmail.com
Website: www.codepinknyc.org

It's important that activist groups get the vital information that's only available through direct feedback, though to avoid being inundated with spam, it's often best in communicating with such groups to use a one-time "throw-away" address such as hotmail or yahoo (carefully anonymizing the information they request w/ pseudonyms and such for privacy) to contact them.

At the same time, given the uncertainties of the world, you can ensure your important views and analysis of Code Pink actions are communicated by also sending a helpful fax to them to ensure they get your message - and remember, brevity is not always clarity, and in dealing with the more liberal sorts one must state each of ones point at least four times, phrased somewhat differently each time, to penetrate the pink fog often interposed between your correspondent and reality.

Remember, it's important that groups like Code Pink get the full range of feedback on their activities and positions so they may better understand the response they generate, and it's fundamentally unfair to fail to assist in lowering the technical barriers to this process so that the less tech-adept may share their views as well.

In that spirit, I suggest posting the non-obfuscated Code Pink contact information wherever you can, along with the photo above, so that they may benefit from the public response they so obviously desire.

Gun's in Parks

Les Blumenthal of the (Tacoma) News Tribune reports that Representative Norm Dicks (D-Tac) is up to his usual tricks and generally weaselly and liberal ways in this article.

Dicks, in conjunction with Washington's Senators and his Senate counterpart, Diane Feinstein, have vowed to derail any effort to repeal the ban on loaded firearms in National Parks - making claims in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that:

• “Permitting loaded firearms to be carried or used within our
  national parks or wildlife refuges would be a radical, unprecedented
  change that would likely upset the delicate balance that exists
  between wildlife and park visitors in these areas,” Dicks and
  Feinstein said in a letter to Kempthorne.
  
  
• "More importantly, allowing loaded and accessible weapons in national
  parks would create a dangerous environment for millions of American families who annually visit ournational parks expecting a safe and enjoyable experience – not
  loaded firearms and stray bullets.”
  

Read the article for the full list of lies and fantasies, including the old "if we allow guns, it'll be the Wild West" allusion. Happily, this controversy has, at least, derailed the proposed Wildlife area north of Seattle temporarily.

The original logic of the Parks Firearms Ban was to limit opportunistic poaching, a concern that can be managed by vastly less intrusive means. Observably, there is no invisible magic wall surrounding the parks that prevents "bad persons" from entering and preying upon both two-legged and four-legged victims.

Maintaining another large "victim disarmament zone" is at best counterproductive, and at worst begging for trouble.

And now for something a bit lighter

And now for something a bit lighter - an artist that never fails to cheer, recommended to me by a good friend, Mika - his bouncy, mostly upbeat style, is a joy. Sort of the love child of Elton John and Freddie Mercury with an incredible vocal range. He does some more serious stuff, but.....here's a couple of his more poppy, silly, pieces...