Montana is a Small Town with Long Streets
So now that gas is down to $1.84/gallon here, I got to wondering when the people who blamed oil companies for the high oil prices this summer were going to thank the oil companies for getting those prices back down.
…and thought it worth passing along.
At some point in your life, you will have to come to the conclusion that the common denominator in all your failures is you.
I thought it might have come from Despair, but I couldn’t find it in the list of demotivators.
Some of you would argue that that phrase entails every thought I’ve ever had, but I can go you one better.
I was thinking tonight: Is it more energy-efficient to boil water that came from the hot tap, or just use the cold tap and heat ‘er up.
See, I’m thinking that the hot tap is less efficient, especially if your pipes are poorly insulated. By the time you have a good flow of hot water, you’ve wasted the stuff that has already cooled off, and that volume has to be re-heated.
If you just hit the cold spigot, you are only heating that specific amount of water, so the net energy spent is less.
Just thought I’d share.
A few posts back, I asked my sinestra pals to defend the Orwellian “Employee Free Choice Act.”
The only commenter was my good friend, Chad, who said that he couldn’t defend it.
Matt Singer, bless his soul, steps up to the plate and says, it’s good for the economy.
The mind boggles.
Look at the industries who typically have their hands out for bailouts. (Before the banks.) That would be the auto makers and the airline industry.
And why do they always have their hands out?
I dunno. legacy costs for one?
Not only that, but let’s carry this logic a step further. Let’s have all elections done the same way. After all, what good is the secret ballot.
If you needed any more proof that today’s progressive movement is crypto-fascist, look no further.
This phrase got drilled into my head during my junior and senior years when we had Mr. Cleverley for history and government. He preached that those three elements were key to a successful Republic.
On which count do these folks fail? (Hint: There may be more than one.)
Over at The Last Best Place, Mike has put up a doozy of an essay, entitled, “About Marriage.
Agree or disagree, it’s a thought-provoking essay, and well worth your time to read.
For a project that should reach across party lines, I invite you to take a look at Big Sky Search.
This is a project of the Montana Policy Institute, and is geared toward creating a system to allow citizens to examine state expenditures online.
Transparency is a Good Thing™. On that, I think we can all agree.
I’ve been reading some about the badly misnamed (Orwell nods knowingly) Employee Free Choice Act.
The long and the short of it is that it does away with secret ballots for unionization efforts.
If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a). [Emphasis mine. --Ed.]
I’d just like to hear my sinestra pals defend it as anything but codified union thuggery.
Back In The Day™, I was a frequenter of a few Usenet groups. I’m sure some of you can relate to this story.
Right around the time the Internet was moving out of Academia and into commercial and home use, AOL began to carry Usenet groups. AOL’ers enthusiastically began to partake, and the long-time participants had the same feeling that Mr. Drysdale must have had when the Clampetts arrived in Bev-er-ly.
Most of the antipathy towards AOL’ers was directed by their tendency to answer posts with “Yeah!” and “Me Too!”. You see, back then, bandwidth was precious, and news.admins didn’t really want to clog up their pipes with anything that was basically useless.
So it was with great amusement today that I watched the following (heavily edited and re-worded) exchange occur on a mailing list that I am on:
Poster 1: Hey you guys. Stop sending one line emails.”
Poster 2: Yeah. Knock it off.
Poster 3: Me too.
Poster 4: I agree.
[...]
Which, in the end, gives me an excuse to link to the Flame Warriors gallery. Which, if you are aware of all internet traditions, you probably already know about.
You can feel free to make your apologies in the comments of this post.
Although I suspect some of you are so invested in the idea that you won’t admit it.
Unless you’ve been sleeping, you have probably already seen this piece by WaPo’s Ombudsman, Deborah Howell.
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.
Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.
This election cycle, I think, showed how the MSM was in the bag for Obama from day one. Sarah Palin got torn to shreds, but there was nothing on Biden. Nothing about his ties to Countrywide, nothing about his son’s ethical problems.
One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.
Fortunately, Biden was covered extensively in the blogosphere, as were the less-than-savory aspects of Obama’s political views. Unfortunately, blogs continue to be a niche market; only of interest to people who are inclined to be interested in politics anyway.
We see it on the local level as well. Gregg Smith up in Great Falls has been hounding the city government there for two years, maybe more, about documentation regarding the coal plant that was going to be built there. He’s done the legwork, and uncovered tons of stuff. He gets a paragraph in the local paper, but no one is trying to dig any further, except Gregg.
Part of the problem, though, is the people. We, as politically-inclined bloggers live in sort of a self-selected vacuum where these things are important, but as I was told by a newspaper guy, the most hits come on stories where Britney Spears gets knocked up again. The sad fact is that no one seems to care.
As Walt Kelly observed in his Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Can we place the blame when they’re just giving us what we (apparently) want?
I meandered over to The Office of the President-Elect (whatever happened to “transition teams”? I guess that doesn’t sound important enough) to get my hands on some specific policies to criticize. It seemed like the “Agenda” tab would be a good place to start, and here is what I found:
President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.
Challenging the status quo by hiring insiders like Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta?
The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies. The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.
A comprehensive and detailed agenda? Well, it’s sure not on the agenda page. What I have quoted here is the agenda page in its entirety.
So, I guess that in some respects, our brethren on the sinestra are correct. We shouldn’t criticize just yet.
After all, there appears to be nothing to criticize.
