Posted 12/29/2011 03:08:00 PM by Douglas

You have no choice but to give police officers evidence with which to convict you. The fifth amendment surrenders:

State, county and local officials are for the first time implementing a joint effort to crack down on alcohol- related accidents, authorities said.

The effort, known as No Refusal, allows law enforcement officials to obtain a blood search warrant for drivers who do not agree to give a breath sample. The warrants will help officers test intoxication levels to see if they are above the 0.08 blood- alcohol concentration limit.

Running over someone is already illegal, but forcing a needle in someone's arm because they do not wish to self incriminate themselves seems a bit out of hand. It's not like there's ever been any problems with the way the police administer the test to manipulate the results. I have heard on good authority that no warrant for blood will be issued unless you've already failed a field sobriety test. So if you see red and blue lights in your rear view mirror after you've consumed more than three ethanol molecules, just accept the fact that you're going to lose your license for six months.

Posted 12/29/2011 02:57:00 PM by Douglas

Ever wondered what Wikipedia would look like on your book shelf? Yeah, me neither, but someone did.

Posted 12/29/2011 02:55:00 PM by Douglas

Monks fight over who gets to clean church in Bethlehem:

Brooms and fists flew inside the church marking the birthplace of Jesus as some 100 priests and monks of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches brawled.

Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church's low "door of humility," rushed in with batons flailing to restore order.

"It was a trivial problem that ... occurs every year," said police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi. "Everything is all right and things have returned to normal," he said. "No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God."

Administration of the 6th century Bethlehem church, the oldest in the Holy Land, is shared by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics.

Any perceived encroachment of jurisdictional boundaries within the church can set off a row, especially during the annual cleaning for Orthodox Christmas celebrations, which will be held next week.

Aren't you a little embarrassed, Christians, that you start a fight in Israel and the Palestinians are the ones that have to break it up?

Posted 12/29/2011 02:33:00 PM by Douglas

Eagle vs. Cat: Cat wins!



I love the swat as the eagle is flying off. Made me think of this and how wrong it is.

Posted 12/14/2011 06:08:00 PM by Douglas

I've ranted on this topic before, but every year that goes by where seemingly everyone is aware of the sheer lunacy of creating ethanol as fuel while we're still subsidizing it with billions of public dollars, well, that tends to wonder why everyone hasn't, as I have, completely lost faith in the system. We've already established, by their own reports that ethanol is a thermodynamic loss, meaning it takes more energy to create it than you can get by burning it. Hell, even Al Gore has come out against it for being unfeasible. Yet the money keeps flowing. Now it's coming from oil companies for not buying enough of the stuff. Nevermind the fact that it doesn't exist.

To launch this wonder-fuel industry, the feds under Mr. Bush and President Obama have pumped at least $1.5 billion of grants and loan subsidies to fledgling producers. Mr. Bush signed an energy bill in 2007 that established a tax credit of $1.01 per gallon produced.

Most important, the Nancy Pelosi Congress passed and Mr. Bush signed a law imposing mandates on oil companies to blend cellulosic fuel into conventional gasoline. This guaranteed producers a market. In 2010 the mandate was 100 million barrels, rising to 250 million in 2011 and 500 million in 2012. By the end of this decade the requirements leap to 10.5 billion gallons a year.

When these mandates were established, no companies produced commercially viable cellulosic fuel. But the dream was: If you mandate and subsidize it, someone will build it.

Guess what? Nobody has.

It gets worse. Because there was no cellulosic fuel available, oil companies have had to purchase "waiver credits"—for failing to comply with a mandate to buy a product that doesn't exist. In 2010 and this year, the EPA has forced oil companies to pay about $10 million for these credits. Since these costs are eventually passed on to consumers, the biofuels mandate is an invisible tax paid at the gas pump.

So, yay? Billions get paid out to snake-oil selling start ups under both the Bush and Obama administrations, and the taxpayers have to pay for it? Where have I heard this before?

To recap: Congress subsidized a product that didn't exist, mandated its purchase though it still didn't exist, is punishing oil companies for not buying the product that doesn't exist, and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist. We'd call this the march of folly, but that's unfair to fools.

Sleep tight America, the government is in control and going to solve all your problems. Just remember, it's Ron Paul that's the "crazy one" when he says that the federal government has no business doing this stupid shit. All the rest of them think they can "fix" this.

Labels: ethanol

Posted 12/13/2011 05:05:00 PM by Douglas

Tis the season for Christmas wonderment, and that can only mean one thing: At least one radio station within range of your 87 Tercel's coathanger plays nothing but Christmas songs. Well, generally State Farm commercials, but then some Christmas songs. . . some really bad Christmas songs. They're not all bad. I know few people can agree on this, but in secret, I don't think most people have a problem with Bing Crosby singing Mele Kalikimaka, Dean Martin singing White Christmas or even Elvis growling through Blue Christmas. But it's the other stuff. You know what I'm talking about. . the Christmas music that makes you want to kill yourself, or others. So here's my abridged list of the absolute worst soul sucking Christmas music that continues to be played for some reason. So here it is, in no particular order:

• Do They Know It's Christmas? A song about raising awareness of the size of Bob Geldof's ego, this song made "We are the world" possible the following year. Besides sounding like cat vomiting on a dying squirrel, this continues to remind us of the troubles of famine in the third world, and why, oh dear lord why, won't Hollywood keep their damn noses out of it.
• Home for Christmas ('N Sync album) I had the misfortune of hearing one song off this wretched mess, and it made me think of only one thing: If 'N Sync has a Christmas album, it may be time to try fundamentalist Islam for a while to see what they have to offer. It can't be worse.
• I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus This is just horrible. There are only two possible outcomes to this song, and both of them are bad. Either his daddy is Santa Claus, or his mother is a whore. Take your pick, and Merry Christmas!
• Anything by Mannhein Steamroller I know they've sold almost 30 million albums in the United States alone, but that doesn't mean it's not crap. They sound like what would happen if Depeche Mode had unprotected gay sex with a speak-and-spell and then gave birth to a drum machine. I believe that listening to their version of "Carole of the Bells" has been a successful defense for murder in seven states.
• Little Drummer Boy (Bing Crosby/David Bowie version) Aren't ironic juxtapositions fun? Let's put Bing with Ziggie Stardust sans eyeliner, that'll be awesome, won't it? No, it won't. Just like Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails songs, or Betty White making dick jokes, sometimes you need to leave the kids alone. Keep your dignity, old people, and let the kids be kids; they don't know they're horrible yet. Pa rum-pum-pum, pum.
• The Christmas Shoes This one is so horrible it defies description. If you don't know it, don't google it, whatever you do. A poor kid scams some schmuck for shoe money for his dying mother. It's not just incredibly sappy, it's horrible, just horrible. People that pretend to take this one seriously on an emotional level probably get misty-eyed when their milk expires.
• Trans-Siberian Orchestra I don't know what part of this orchestra came from Siberia, but I wish they'd go back. They sound like they heard the mediocratic crap churned out by Mannheimer Steamroller and said "me too." They just weren't as talented. And yeah, that's saying a lot.
• Step in to Christmas Sir Elton, you're gay. We get it. But this song is so ridiculously over the top that not even a Daffy Duck suit would be enough gay apparel to don to track this song on even Lady Gaga's gaydar. Dial it back every once in a while, sister.
• Same Old Lang Syne Dan Fogelberg, you may have been the leader of the band, but if I wanted to hear about some guy grabbing some beer and finger-banging his old girlfriend in the back seat of his car, I'd go back to high school.

Posted 12/12/2011 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

First off, as someone who has ever had trouble paying their bills, it sucks. I don't revel in anyone's misfortune when they can't provide for themselves. I'm not opposed to a bit of assistance from Uncle Sucker, but when that assistance becomes an entitlement, you get into trouble. Enter the increased cost of heating oil in New England.

Thousands of poor people across the Northeast are bracing for a difficult winter with substantially less home heating aid coming from the federal government.

Imagine that?!? It's going to get cold in New England?!? And this time of year! Who could have ever seen this one coming? But it gets better:

"They're playing Russian roulette with people's lives," said John Drew, who heads Action for Boston Community Development, Inc., which provides aid to low-income residents in Massachusetts.

Right. A game of chance where you bet your life is exactly the same thing as reducing government subsidies for utilities. Exactly. The same. Go on:

Families in New England, where the winters are long and cold and people rely heavily on costly oil heat, are expected to be especially hard hit. Many poor and elderly people on fixed incomes struggle with rising heating bills that can run into thousands of dollars. That can force them to cut back on other necessities like food or medicine.

Wow, it took quite a long time for this hack to trot out the "fixed income" rant. Guess who else is on a "fixed income" besides the elderly and poor? Everyone that works. And again, New England has winters that are long and cold? I'm sure that's the Republican's fault, right? But let's get to the meat of this:

Families can expect to pay, on average, about $3,300 to heat a home with oil this winter in New England, Wolfe said. That's about $500 more than last winter. About half of the region's homes use oil heat.

Holy shit, that's a lot of oil! Here's what I don't get:

I've heard the rant, first hand, I might add, from do-gooding liberals from Manhattan to Portland how the Southern United States is essentially uninhabitable, and no one would live there if there wasn't cheap energy to drive the air conditioners. The South existed before A/C, so it's not a perfect argument, but I can certainly concede that the explosive growth of the sun belt is a result in no small part of the near uniform coverage of pleasantly conditioned indoor space. So here's the rub:

If bubba running his A/C in South Texas is ruining the planet by wasting fossil fuels and causing global warming, how do the yankees get a walk on this one when they get hit by this long, cold, New England winter? They burn $3,300 worth of oil each and every year in their homes, so it would seem that their location choice would be equally, if not more, untenable from a carbon emission standpoint than the South. Yet I've never seen an article like this one where stupid yankees should move to some mythical land where there's a perfect climate and people don't have to expend any energy on climate control.

Why is that? Is global warming only caused by burning fossil fuels in the South? Apparently burning fossil fuels in liberal enclaves, Al Gore's limo and in bussing school children across town for some sociological experiment do not contribute to global warming in the slightest.

Posted 12/11/2011 02:08:00 PM by Douglas

Fascinating photo log of what crazy people brought with them to the nut-house 100 years ago. I think this is why people obsess on packing; what if everyone was forever remembered by the things in their suitcase that time they weekend to Tampa for the weekend?

Posted 12/11/2011 02:04:00 PM by Douglas

I had the misfortune of watching 10 minutes of the 987th Republican debate, and I just happened to catch the part where Mitt bet Rick Perry $10k whether or not RomneyCare required participation.

Mitt Romney challenged Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s claims that the former Massachusetts governor backed a requirement that individuals purchase health care coverage.

“I’m just saying, you’re for individual mandates, my friend,” Perry told Romney during Saturday evening’s debate, returning to a criticism that has dogged Romney’s campaign.

“You’ve raised that before, Rick, and you’re simply wrong,” Romney responded, extending his hand toward Perry. “Rick, I’ll tell you what, 10,000 bucks?”

So was it too much money that shows how Mitt is out of touch with the middle class? What about when middle class people say "I'll be you a million dollars . . . " If anything, for someone whose personal net worth is pushing a quarter billion dollars, $10,000 sounds a little low for an exaggerated wager. Unless, of course, he had it on him. In cash. Which he probably did.

But coming from a religion that doesn't allow drinking alcohol or even caffeine, why is Mit gambling, anyway? I'm sure that's not cool.

Posted 12/10/2011 01:11:00 PM by Douglas

This one's making the rounds, and I guess I can see why. Anyone that would think this building doesn't look like the World Trade Center on 9/11 clearly doesn't own a TV, nor has seen a newspaper, magazine, or website in the last decade.

The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.

Yeah, it really, really does. But so? The absolute last group of people that would venerate the senseless destruction of any building is architects. I think Althouse nails this manufactured (constructed?) controversy:

The point would need to be something more like: We defy the terrorists of the world. We stand for building skyscrapers in defiance of the nihilists.

Negative images can be adopted and re-purposed in a positive way. To cite an obvious example: the crucifixion of Christ. A crucifix is not displayed celebrate the torture and execution of Jesus. We invariably and easily understand it as a symbol of resurrection and eternal life.

So the building, if it indeed intentionally refers to the WTC, should be interpreted as a reaffirmation of the greatness of modern civilization.

I think she's on to something. . but it certainly not be the first piece of architecture that the public didn't "get."

Posted 12/08/2011 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

I love it when life imitates SNL. Here's an investment banker with some problems.

Former New Jersey senator and governor Jon Corzine insisted Thursday that he has no idea what happened to an estimated $1.2 billion in missing client funds from failed investment firm MF Global, describing the firm's final days as a "chaotic" frenzy of transactions.

"There were many, many, many more transactions than typically occur," Corzine said, in rare testimony before Congress that marked his first public remarks on the firm's bankruptcy since he resigned as CEO on Nov. 3.

"I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date," Corzine's said.

Silly banker, don't you know, you're supposed to take your client's money, then write down how much he gave you on a list. Be sure and keep that list in a safe place:



Also, here. I bet his wife found out about him shagging his secretary, too, which was bad. But not as bad as losing the list.

Posted 12/02/2011 08:00:00 PM by Douglas

A few centuries ago, it was admirable for a man to take out a loan for more than he could imagine. . . and then do the unimaginable: PAY IT BACK. Well I know it's unpopular, but it's still happening. Witness the following:

That's my mortgage statement. Why is this showing up here? To borrow a punchline, because I'm telling everyone!