Editorial excerpt from IBD.

Jet Fuel-Gate Is Obama’s New Solyndra

Ecofanaticism: SolyndraGate was no isolated case of corrupt government misspending. The U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon.

The massive Obama stimulus was supposed to generate millions of jobs, but the $535 million loan guarantee it gave to solar panel maker Solyndra on the eve of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy illustrated the fundamental incompetence of Obama’s neo-Keynesian economic ideology.

Now we find the Navy partnering with the Agriculture Department to purchase hundreds of thousands of gallons of alternative biofuel in place of standard JP-5 fuel for Navy aircraft — the biggest federal purchase of biofuel ever.

It’s part of the White House’s “we can’t wait for Congress” strategy as the 2012 election year looms. But JP-5 typically costs less than $4 a gallon. If a family on a budget started filling up with $16-a-gallon gas, it might want to adopt the motto, “we can’t wait to go broke.”

. . .

The biofuel will be used next summer by — we’re not making this up — “the Great Green Fleet Carrier Strike Force” in exercises near Hawaii. Mabus painted the picture of America’s great naval force advancing from sails to coal to diesel to nuclear, and now finally to biofuels. But if we keep starving the Navy, it may soon not have enough loose change to repair the sails on Old Ironsides.

Read the entire editorial.

Enjoy this slideshow of Damsel’s photos of flowers taken last spring. The weather here is sort of gloomy with the forecast pointing to more rain today and tonight. I thought a few spring flowers would cheer us up.

When the weather gets gloomy, Beethoven likes to snuggle under his blanket. Click on the image to enlarge.

My long time friend and former colleague, Frank N. sent me this today:

Ted Nugent, rock star and avid bow hunter from Michigan , was being interviewed by a liberal journalist, an animal rights activist. The journalist asked, ‘What do you think is the last thought in the head of a deer before you shoot him? Is it, ‘Are you my friend ?’ or is it ‘Are you the one who killed my brother?

Image - Ted Nugent - NRA Board Member

Nugent replied, ‘Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, what am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next and can I run fast enough to get away.

They are very much like the Democrats in Congress.’

The interview ended.

The Wickenberg Sportsmen’s Club, where we went to practice shooting today, is less than a fifteen minute commute from our little house. It’s a short distance but the route takes us out to the east side of town where there are wide-open desert spaces.

This scene is the view across Constellation Road just outside of the entrance to the club’s shooting facilities. Note the very happy saguaro cactus on the right and the hills and mountains in the desert beyond. It’s just beautiful!

Click on the image to enlarge.

These nice orange-colored roses are in the office this week. Click on the image to enlarge.

Today we honor the men and women who died in the attacks on Hawaii late in 1941. In the photograph below, the Officers and Crew line the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76, as they salute the war memorial at the resting place of the USS Arizona.

We had some rainfall over the weekend (and some hail too). After the weather passed, we have been having beautiful weather. The temperatures during the daytime have been around the low to mid 50’s and the night temperatures are just a hair below freezing.

I took this photo from the ridge just about a quarter mile north of our house. The Bradshaw mountains are in the background with the northeast part of our little town visible below the rim of mountains. We think that there may be a little snow on the north side of the mountains after the weekend precipitation. One of these days, we will take a drive up that way after the next snowfall for some photo ops. Click on the image to enlarge.

There are natural desert shrubs along the road in front of our house. One of those is a small palo verde tree. I took advantage of its green color by hanging red Christmas ornaments on it. I think it looks festive and cute. Click on the image to enlarge.

Today’s unemployment decrease is explained over at The Patriot Post (emphasis added):

November employment numbers are out today and they bring mixed news. Bloomberg reports, “The jobless rate declined to 8.6 percent, the lowest since March 2009, from 9 percent, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Payrolls climbed 120,000, with more than half the hiring coming from retailers and temporary help agencies, after a revised 100,000 rise in October.” Seems like good news. Unfortunately, part of the reason is that 315,000 Americans left the workforce altogether. Another part is that retailers have hired seasonal help.

Bloomberg also notes, “The so-called underemployment rate — which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking — decreased to 15.6 percent from 16.2 percent.” Furthermore, “The jobless rate has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, the longest stretch of such levels of unemployment since monthly records began in 1948.” This long after the recession supposedly ended, things should be looking much brighter than this. Welcome to Obamanomics.