Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Whacko Politics

Earth Hour Gone Sour

Times SquarePlanet Gore posted this picture of Times Square in New York City showing the effect of ‘Earth Hour.’ The top panel is Times Square before Earth Hour. The bottom panel is Times Square during Earth Hour. Damsel and I notice that only a couple displays are off. (Snark!) This is virtually, a fart in a windstorm.

Now, don’t get us wrong. We are fastidious recyclers, composters and rarely run more lights in the house than are barely needed. However, we’re also extremely skeptical of the motivations of the Greenbat crowd when they insist man-made energy consumption to be the cause global warming. They only need to look skyward at high noon to see the ‘Glow Ball‘ responsible for climate warming (and cooling).

As for our household, we celebrated ‘Earth Hour’ by watching ‘Cops’ and ‘America’s Most Wanted’ on the 42-inch plasma HiDef big screen with the full-on surround sound and each using a laptop to look at John Walsh’s AMW.com website.

UPDATE: More Sour Hour: Al Gore Mansion snubs Earth Hour.

29 Mar 2009 by Greenbats Whacko Politics

Paranoia to the Right of Me, Paranoia to the Left

Jonah Goldberg, author of “Liberal Fascism” and regular author at NRO’s “The Corner,” responds to an earlier post on the topic of paranoia at both extremes of the political spectrum:

Re: Paranoia for Thee But Not For Me

paranoia.gifMan, a lot of liberal readers didn’t like my earlier post about liberalism and the paranoid style. Most aren’t being jerks about it, but they simply have a really hard time coming to grips with the fact that the paranoid style isn’t necessarily a right-wing phenomenon. Among the complaints: They nitpick my examples, as if I was trying to be exhaustive. They say Republicans have conspiracy theorists as public officials while my examples of liberals are simply activists and celebrities. They say that conservative conspiracy-nuts are embraced by Republican officials, but no Democrat embraces paranoid style types of the Left.

It’s all a bit exhausting. But here’s the problem. I conceded up front that conservatives can be conspiracy theorists and paranoid. So about 85% of this tu quoque stuff is gratuitous. The point wasn’t that the Right is immune to this stuff, it was that liberals are blind from similar — and often more prevalent — stuff on their own side. So they end up, like Packer, thumbsucking about the supposedly scary paranoia of the Right while ignoring the paranoia of their own side.

But if it’s examples you people want, I was barely scratching the surface. Cynthia McKinney? Does no one remember her? It’s worth noting that she recently said — as a matter of fact — that the National Guard rounded up blacks in New Orleans and massacred them in the woods. In fairness, she’s not in office anymore, but she wasn’t much less of a whackjob when she was in Congress. Meanwhile, Maxine Waters is still in Congress and she’s hardly immune to the paranoid style. If my interlocutors do not want to stipulate this point, I could have a grand time entering exhibits AAA through ZZZ to buttress the assertion. Michael Moore? He thought OJ was innocent and that George Bush was keeping Osama Bin Laden on ice for an October surprise or something. He sat in Jimmy Carter‘s box at the 2004 Democratic Convention and was wildly embraced by the Democratic leadership when his Fahrenheit 9/11 movie came out. Jim Moran? I suppose his blame-the-Jews stuff would have been just as quickly forgiven from a Republican. Don’t even get me started on Walt and Meersheimer. Charles Rangel and Major Owens routinely said Newt Gingrich was “worse than Hitler” (Owens’s words) and that the Contract with America was part of a “genocidal” campaign.

Meanwhile, a huge swath of economic liberalism for decades has been dedicated to the idea that a coalition of cartoonish big businessmen — Mr. Monopoly, Mr. Peanut, Thurston Howell III, Col. Sanders and the rest of the Pentavirate, Joe the Camel — conspire to ruin the environment, poison food, and exploit the downtrodden. Then there’s the whole phrase “the vast right-wing conspiracy” which was not coined with a sense of playful irony. Al Gore‘s “people vs. the powerful” spiel crossed the line more than once into populist nonsense, if you ask me. And are people really going to make me look up every nutcase theory about Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, and the rest? I mean do I really have to keep going? Because I can. I mean we can rev-up the Way Back machine and start talking about what the Kennedy Assassination did to liberalism, for starters.

The point is that when liberals and leftists spout conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions — as they have for generations now — it’s written off by the liberal establishment as either an isolated incident, or an understandable exaggeration or, simply, the truth and therefore not a conspiracy theory. And: It Is Annoying.

My emphasis added. Goldberg is an excellent writer – and an excellent ‘talking head.’ I plan to get his book and read it one of these days. I think it might be entertaining.

26 Mar 2009 by Whacko Politics

Putting a Trillion Dollars in Perspective

bill.jpg

A unique graphic approach to visualizing a trillion bucks can be seen here.

More amusing visualizations:

A stack of 100 dollar bills totaling a trillion dollars would stand 740 miles high.

A stack of one dollar bills totaling a trillion dollars would stand 74,000 miles high, or 30% of the distance to the Moon.

If you string a trillion $1 bills end-to-end, you would get a belt of bills about 90 million miles long. That would reach past Mars’s orbit in one direction and in the other direction, would almost reach the Sun.

Hat tip to National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg.

UPDATE: Thanks to Robb Allen for the link.

05 Mar 2009 by Money and Business Whacko Politics

Rush Limbaugh’s Talking Points

debate.jpgSo, for the last several weeks, it has been the plan of the Democrats to call out Rush Limbaugh as the ‘de facto’ head of the Republican party. Today, Limbaugh responded by inviting President Obama to come on his program “without staffers, without a teleprompter, without note cards — to debate me on the issues.”

Basically, Rush figures that Obama needs to clear the air with regard to the following talking points:

  • Let’s talk about free markets versus government control.
  • Let’s talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business.
  • Let’s talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics.
  • Let’s talk about closing Guantanamo Bay.
  • Let’s talk about sending $900 million to Hamas.
  • Let’s talk about illegal immigration and the lawlessness on the borders.
  • Let’s talk about massive deficits and the destroying of opportunities of future generations.
  • Let’s talk about ACORN, community agitators, and the unions that represent the government employees which pour millions of dollars into your campaign, President Obama.
  • Let’s talk about your elimination of school choice for minority students in the District of Columbia.
  • Let’s talk about your efforts to further reduce domestic drilling and refining of oil.
  • Let’s talk about your stock market.

To which I would add,

Let’s talk about the true meaning of the Second Amendment and the right of the people to own and carry arms.

Of course, Obama and his ilk would never agree to talking about these things, since they are the cowards that Attorney General Eric Holder spoke of last week.

04 Mar 2009 by Second Amendment Whacko Politics

California – Worst Anti Gun Laws in the Country

This nice piece of eye-candy is illegal in California UNLESS OWNED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT.

para-large-rifle.gif

This morning I read a post over at Ballseye’s Boomers where Glenn asks the question, “Is It Something In The Water?” He quotes a soft-headed Californian who wonders “why gun locks couldn’t be enforced in the city – forcing gang members to lock their guns in order to transport them“. My reaction is basically in agreement with Glenn’s observation that people in California are getting more indoctrination than education in the terrible school system here.

That, and the worst (and most ridiculous) gun laws in the USA, none of which make Californians safer. Consider the following generic restrictions on arms in this state; you will probably find most of them laughable:

The Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, its subsequent augmentation in 1999, and the .50 Caliber BMG Regulation Act of 2004 has led to many restrictions on semi-automatic firearms. In addition to a lengthy list of specific firearms that are banned by name, the following firearms are banned by characteristic:

  1. A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any one of the following:
    • A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon.
    • A thumbhole stock.
    • A folding or telescoping stock.
    • A grenade launcher or flare launcher.
    • A flash suppressor.
    • A forward pistol grip.
  2. A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
  3. A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches [762 mm].
  4. A semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any one of the following:
    • A threaded barrel, capable of accepting a flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer.
    • A second handgrip
    • A shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel that allows the bearer to fire the weapon without burning his or her hand, except a slide that encloses the barrel.
    • The capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside of the pistol grip.
  5. A semiautomatic pistol with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
  6. A semiautomatic shotgun that has both of the following:
    • A folding or telescoping stock.
    • A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon, thumbhole stock, or vertical handgrip.
  7. A semiautomatic shotgun that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine.
  8. Any shotgun with a revolving cylinder.
23 Feb 2009 by California Degenerates Firearms Second Amendment Whacko Politics

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