Mustn't...Read...Lew...Rockwell...

Okay, first my standard disclaimer: I'm sure that Ron Paul is a very fine fellow, for a politician. If held on my knees with an RPG to my head and forced to cast a vote, I'd vote for Ron Paul without hesitation.

If that sounds like I'm saying I'd prefer to be infested with mosquitoes than with ringworm, you caught me. To me, a parasite is a parasite but some are worse than others. Ron Paul is clearly not as bad as politicians come. I'm even not entirely displeased with Paul's surprising prominence in the primaries. I've been wrong before. I was wrong about the inevitable triumph of "gun control," and I could be wrong about the unstoppable downward trajectory of freedom in this country - though I've seen little evidence of it so far. I could be wrong about the effect of a Ron Paul presidency. Maybe it would be a good thing.

But For God's Sake!

Then I remind myself that my grandchildren won't know who Gingrich was. Or Romney, Santorum, or most other flash-in-the-pan men and women who for the lust of power thought themselves a centerpiece of history, only to be relegated to the dustbins of history only weeks, months, or maybe even a few years later. But when the name Ron Paul is mentioned to my grandchildren, a smile will creep across their faces, and they will recall, and speak with excited tones about a time where an idea was born, a message was spread, and a revolution took hold that shook the world. That's the time I'm living in right now. I will treasure every moment. Thanks for all you do."

This would embarrass me, if I were him. It's not "Yes, Virginia, There is a Ron Paul," but it is pretty lame.

Surely there must be some golden mean, in which a person can be credulous enough to still have faith in the political process, without going completely moonbat in the veneration of an individual.

I keep telling myself that. Still waiting for the evidence.

Could somebody tell me?

I'm reading this article about a "domestic terrorism" meeting at President Obama's Art Museum, Impregnable Fortress and Snack Shop. And the article contains the following sentence:

It's a delicate balance, as the violent extremism that has erupted across the U.S. in the past few years has been motivated by an ideology, whether a violent interpretation of Islam or white supremacist beliefs.

And I got to wondering - where's all this violent extremism going on? Are you people sneaking out and committing acts of violent extremism after I've gone to bed, or what? Because, seriously, I'm trying to think of stories I've read lately, y'know, of mayhem and bloodshed spread by Muslims and "white supremacists", and while I can think of a few it's not exactly what I'd call an "eruption." Or even much of a trickle. So wherefore all the official panic?

Or is this just a new "hobgoblin?"

Kind of a silly question, that last...

Meh.

This has just turned into a "meh" day. Mid-morning the sun went away behind thick clouds. The wind came up, though it never turned into a real howler. The boys drove me crazy all morning, barking and carrying on as if scaring off Mongol hordes.

And the problem with that is, sometimes they're really barking at something I want to know about. Like the three riders who showed up in the wash.

Now, the washes have a sort of ambiguous status in our spread-out neighborhood. Technically, every square inch is private property and so should not be trespassed upon. In practice, though, a convention has arisen that makes them a sort of informal commons. Almost nobody finds them of use for anything except ATV/horse transport or as a source of sand, and so almost nobody minds when trespass occurs. I only know of one place where there's a fence across it, and ironically you have to cross that person's property before you encounter it.

I don't mind either...really. But as with the wash that passes through Landlady's property, the boys are an issue I wish more people would keep in mind. On their own territory, they will chase ATVs and hassle horses, and every time it happens I fear somebody's gonna get hurt. It's easier for everybody when people give them a wide berth.

So when three riders slowly made their way up the wash toward the Lair this morning, I was in for an extended period of barking. LB is loudest, but has proven so irresponsible that he spends most of his outdoor time cabled up and so wasn't going to be a problem. But Ghost took to the brush: He wasn't going to mess with three horses (which proves he has matured, because once he wouldn't have hesitated to cause all sorts of havoc) but he could still let the newcomers know they were trespassing. And so they prudently turned around as soon as they came in sight of the Lair, and though I think I know who they were (casually-known friendly neighbors) I never got close enough to identify them.

Having chased off the invading hordes, Ghost found himself a good vantage to keep watch.

I spent the time cutting wood and cleaning up around my increasingly-cluttered yard. Burned a bunch of firewood-related trash, moved some building materials from here to there, and organized my new chainsaw bin.

But all in all it's just a cloudy, windy, "meh" day - though the temperature is certainly nice. So mostly, except for taking the time to make a pot of killer spaghetti sauce, I'm just sitting around and letting Barbara Tuchman do my thinking for me.

I laughed out loud, though on reflection it's not that funny.

Courtesy of Tam.

Grumble. Also, Whine.

Busy day yesterday. Before shit-shoveling I thought I'd see what ravages our near-nonexistent winter hath wrought upon Gulchendiggensmoothen, whose fate is to stand out in all weathers.

He started right up and ran beautifully, as though just released from the amorous clutches of a squad of nubile Thai concubines trained in the art of massage. So I ran him up to J&H's place, where the manure pile was spreading out of control and needed to be whipped into a proper heap. While I was adding to it, J said he was going to town and wanted to know if I'd like to come along. I needed to pick up my sharpened chains and to buy some kerosene, so I happily signed on.

Now, in the little town nearest my desert lair the only place to buy kerosene is the airport, where they have mis-named it "jet fuel." This little town has a civil airport with an incongruously huge pair of runways, easily adequate for jets. And some fancy ones land here: For all that it's a small poor town in a large poor county, there's money out there somewhere.

Problem is, it's been years since I needed to buy kerosene there and the rules have changed. The fellow who ran the pumps couldn't or wouldn't say why with any coherence, but he seemed genuinely apologetic when he refused to fill my can. I was pretty clearly not the first ragged mendicant he'd turned away with money still clutched in his grubby fist.

Ew. That's a problem, and it blighted what would otherwise have been a pleasant and successful trip. NOBODY in this town sells kerosene! I know it isn't commonly used for heating fuel around here, since propane is much cheaper in the long run. But you'd think there'd be some market for it. I know for a damn fact that there are people out here whose infrastructures make my pathetic electrical system look like a gift from the gods of technology by comparison. They have to be lighting their hovels somehow. Unfortunately I'm not friends with any of those people, and to establish relations would involve unwise levels of social reciprocity. There are better ways - I hope - to find sources of kerosene.

J had a bunch of errands to run, I had a few, and we didn't get back into the desert until after four which is why blogging was so light yesterday.

QoD: "The irony gets a little thick" Edition...

Main Street USA will be closed for the duration of the president’s time there.

I'm not complaining, you understand...

...but this is almost ridiculous.

I mounted the outdoor sensor on the north side of the Lair, which never sees sun in the winter. Here it is late-mid-January, and in the sun it's almost unpleasantly warm.

Sheesh. I finally move into a place that can be heated in the winter, and Uncle Murphy rewards me with the mildest winter, by far, I've seen since I got here.

Not complaining! No! I just think it's ironic.

Wow.

Just wow.

This guy's gonna (briefly) push Lee Paige off the internets. He needs to put an oar on his shoulder right now and start walking inland until somebody asks him what the funny-looking stick is for. Then - maybe - he'll find a place where he's not unemployable.

Wow.

QoD: "Speaking Truth to Power" Edition...

Pro Libertate:

Although Rick Santorum’s politics are detestable, he is a robustly decent husband and father. That certainly isn't true of the human pustule called Newt Gingrich. Although sharply different in terms of their personal deportment, Santorum and Gingrich share a totalitarian worldview: They assume that while nobody is virtuous enough to govern himself, they belong to a consecrated caste that is holy enough to rule over others.

When regulation jumps the shark...

Put down the coffee and feast your eyes on this. Read carefully.

Again from Balko:

But if a vending machine is in violation of the notice requirement, there’s no notice to notify the consumer that the machine is in violation. And there’s no number posted for the consumer to call. The only way this serves any purpose whatsoever is if you have a consumer who sees the notice on a compliant machine, then goes to the effort of writing it down and keeping it on his person at all times, in case he happens upon a non-compliant machine. But then to report it, the consumer would have to find some way of identifying the non-compliant machine. Location, I guess. A serial number. Then what? Does the state then send out an inspector to verify?

And assuming all that happens, you then have a vending machine owner fined for nothing more than not complying with a law requiring the owner to post a notice about the requirement to post a notice. And “teacher, you forgot to collect the homework” guy gets a cash reward.

Your tax dollars at work. Or something.

This is interesting. I though SOPA hadn't passed yet?

Balko offered a link with the commentary,

# Also, the fact that Chris Dodd was recently a powerful politician is a pretty damned good argument against giving politicians more power.

I clicked the link, and got the following:

Sorry, 75.106.2.166 has been banned.

A sign of the times, law or no law.

"Abuse of power?" Are you out of your frickin' ...

Chris Dodd, former senatevermin and current prez of the shitheels who wrote SOPA and PIPA in the first place, belches forth his opinion on those who blacked out their sites in protest yesterday...

"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [these sites] for information and use their services," Dodd wrote. "It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."

Well, when you want a matter put in perspective you should go to a master of that matter. If he calls it an abuse of power, I guess he'd know one when he sees one.

The would-be solons of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America have been abusing power so long and so ham-handedly that I have no sympathy for their cause at all, even though I happen to be in strong favor of the concept of intellectual property and think piracy is theft. (Though - full disclosure - I'm hypocritical enough on the subject that my music playlist wouldn't bear a lot of open scrutiny.) They've dealt with the matter so very badly that my attitude is "Screw'em." Give them the power to actually shut down sites? You've got to be kidding. Even though it wouldn't work, and the smack-down from hackers would be very entertaining, that way lies madness.

Truth is, when I wrote yesterday's related screed I didn't know how widespread the blackout protest was, or how much attention it got. Had I done even a tiny bit of due diligence before opening my yap, I'd probably have had sense enough to keep it shut.

H/T to Claire, who got me re-thinking this and who has more and better to say about it. And many thanks to Senator Dodd, for being such a useful asshat.

Maybe you should offer him the use of your wife and daughters, too.

This was just a typical wrong-address puppycide story, until the second-to-last paragraph. Maybe a bit more over the top than usual, but not hard to fit in the matrix of my pre-existing beliefs.

The cop is at the wrong address. Maybe that's his fault, maybe not. I don't know. He shoots a dog that's chained in the garage. Okay, it's a recently rescued dog, which means it's probably screwed up in the head, and Shepherds can be excitable. He didn't have to shoot it, of course, but I can believe it did lunge at him and provide an excuse. It's not a "three cops on a Chihuahua" story so far.

Then the cop goes overboard, as they so commonly do...

“I said, ‘Why [did] you shoot my dog?’ And he said, ‘Well, I'll blow your brains out.’ I said, ‘Hold on a minute, you just killed my dog. Why you want to blow my brains out? My hands are up.’ I said, ‘I don't have no gun,’” Anthony Currie said.

This is getting serious, well above and beyond puppycide, which is serious enough for most days. I'm certainly not going to criticize the homeowner for not going all Molon Labe on the cop, because I wouldn't have, either.

But for crying out loud!

“Now that I know what he was dealing with and there's human error, I can understand why it happened.”

Wha? That's...very understanding of you. The poor guy was just having a bad day, after all. No need to get all vindictive and stuff. Can't we all just get along?

This is why the problem gets worse. As a very, very wise man once said, the equation is so damned lopsided. The result of resisting power is destruction; the result of using it is gratification without consequence. So of course it gets used - over and over, more and more.

And of course! Of course!

The first officer faces no disciplinary action, but he will have to go before the shooting review board and face an internal investigation.

After all, he was just having a bad day. A nice paid vacation will chill him right out. I'm sure they'd do the same for you or me.

On the SOPA-protest blackout...

Six or seven years ago, a bunch of Aztlan types held a fairly successful strike, in which they urged all the Chicano day laborers to stay home for one day. They figured that'd show us Anglos how important they were.

It was successful, that is, in that lots of day laborers did stay home that day. Otherwise, not so much. The only noticeable effect was a slightly lighter traffic situation on I-5. Nobody complained.

If a bunch of bloggers I enjoy reading black out their blogs, it seems to me they're really only hurting themselves and the people who agree with them. I mean, think about it. If Joan Peterson decided to show us all by shutting down "commongunsense" for a day, would you care? Would you notice?

Maybe I'm missing the point. If so, please set me straight.

Hm. I see your point, but guess I'm just old-fashioned.

I haven't been following the story about that Italian cruise ship. In this story, it seems it spawned the usual tales of heroism...

'He shouted: "Jump, jump, jump". I can't swim so he gave me his life jacket.

'I froze and couldn’t jump, but he jumped off the ship and shouted upwards 'Come on, don't worry.

'I jumped off and the last thing I heard him say was that I would be fine. Then I never saw him again.'

And...not so much...

‘There was no “women and children first” policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.’

And I'm sure it was.

Over at Vox Popoli, the writer attempts to turn this into a point about the unintended consequences of feminism, as it has been commonly practiced...

This was not so much predictable as predicted. Women have methodically attacked the concept of male duty and honor through every possible means for the past ninety years, and now they are whining that they don't get special treatment simply because a ship happens to be sinking. Why, exactly, should any man "prioritise women, expectant mothers and children"? On what grounds can they be reasonably expected to do so, those outdated traditional grounds that the schools teach is hateful, sexist, and bigoted?

Those big, burly crewmen shoving aside women as they prioritized their own escape should have been wearing t-shirts that said "this is what a feminist looks like". Enjoy the crash.

Okay. I, too, love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. But the foolishness of others never, ever becomes an acceptable excuse for your own bad behavior.

Robert Heinlein, that most quotable of authors, wasn't right about everything but his batting average is better than 50% and I have to go with him on this:

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function.

His emphasis is on "society," about which I don't really give a damn. But I do care about the one guy I have to live with, 24/7. I care what he thinks about me, and I HATE it when he wakes me up abruptly with some vivid memory of a hateful, dishonorable, or simply embarrassing thing I've done. If I'd ever pushed a woman out of the way to get myself on a lifeboat, I'm pretty sure I'd find it difficult to live with the memory. And that's coming from a guy who really doesn't care too much for feminism the way it was commonly practiced, y'know?

Guess I'm just old-fashioned. The wages of feminism be damned, a man does the right thing because that's the way he proves to himself that he's a proper man. It's a proof that needs to be renewed regularly, and never more than when he's terrified and there's a part of him that would trample his own mother to get himself out of danger. If he can later live with his own actions during those moments, then he knows he's okay and needs not be too concerned about smaller imperfections in his character, which all men have.

If he can't, then he carries the consequences with him always. That's a very high price to pay. It's not heroism. It's self interest.

Individual life is very important. My individual life is extremely important. But musings about "society" notwithstanding, every life - even mine - brings moments when it's not the most important thing. So get the hell out of the way and let the women and children on the boats.

Afterward, if you live, you can find and kill the guy who didn't supply enough damn boats.

I'm pretty sure I've met this lady.

QoD, from The Adaptive Curmudgeon...

I don’t care if you’re the goddamn genius wonderkind cancer curing God-king of all you survey. You are not “overqualified” at making coffee until you’re good… indeed excellent… at making coffee. The mistaken idea that you are is either hubris or just plain stupidity. Until you can snatch that pebble from the hand of the coffee slinging master…you are a novice. A student. A beginner. A work in progress. No human being is EVER rendered “overqualified” for a job which they can’t yet do well. An overpriced degree doesn’t make you overqualified to serve coffee unless you got a PhD in serving [redacted] coffee. Part of being a fully aware individual is understanding that.

Met her? I may have been married to her at one point. Certainly she's been in my classes.

"Overqualified," my ass. Shut up and quit whining.

Oh, Mr. Paige. You are truly the gift that keeps on giving.

In his endless quest to keep his privacy or something, this guy just can't keep his name (and video) out of the news.

Seriously, I want to bear this guy's children. He's a hoot that never gets old.



The search term "Agent loses appeal over accidental shooting video" gets 11,861 hits on Startingpage, and all from less than 24 hours ago. Way to let it die down, there, Mr. Only-One-Professional-Enough.

H/T to Weer'd.

Gad, I'm a moron...

Two days a week I go shit-shoveling. And when the weather's cool I COULD take the boys with me, but they have to stay in the Jeep because they're not civilized around horses - and H's horses would feel no obligation to be civilized around them. Alas, leave Little Bear in the Jeep for too long and he gets bored. And he chews things. Like the Jeep. Important parts, like the gear shift knob, which doesn't work so well without that button that lets you take it out of Park.

So, when I go shit-shoveling I still take the boys to Gitmo. They don't like it, but they don't give me any problem about it. They do like treats, and they always get one. This morning I dropped them off, went to J&H's, and didn't think a thing about it.

When I was done, I needed to stop at the Lair to pick up the trailer. I figured I'd just step in and check my email before the sun got too low and I had to make a choice between the 'pooter and the lights.

I wasn't inside five minutes when I heard something heavy hit the front stairs. Ghost started whining to get in. He wanted the water bowl real bad.

At last, I thought. He finally dug his way out. He's never done it before, but there's a first time for everything.

Second thought: WHERE'S LITTLE BEAR? MY BABY! HE'S WANDERING THE DESERT ALONE!

I got in a big rush to get my ass back to Gitmo. Grabbed my hat, headed out to the Jeep ... and there was LB, in the back of the Jeep whose door I'd helpfully left open.

It suddenly occurred to me that I'd forgotten a crucial step in the "drop the boys off at Gitmo" procedure. Sunday morning M and I moved LL's generator out of Gitmo to his dome. I forgot to check to see if the back gate was closed.

It wasn't.

So the boys had themselves a nice cavort while I was working, and when they heard the Jeep headed for the Lair they just followed me home. And now they're happy. And I feel stupid.

Normally, the best way to get me to ignore something...

...is to connect it with anything "Miss America"-related.

I believe the last time - possibly the only time - I watched a Miss America pageant was in 1972. I remember it because I'd recently been released from the hospital and couldn't get out of my chair to leave the room. It's not that I knock it, it's just that I don't care.

But it seems things have changed so much, that even the "aspirations" have. Remember "I want to work for world peace?"

Well...

The New Miss America's Cause: Children of the Incarcerated

Yes, it's come to this. Either we've turned into a nation of really vile people, or it's too damned easy to be declared a criminal and locked up in this country. So much so, that it's ceasing to be considered shameful.

Another example? Here's a lady facing twenty years for watching whales eat. Wow, keep your kids away from her.

H/T to Balko.

How to tell when somebody's not getting it. Or ever going to get it.

“Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?”
- Unnamed congressional staffer

As Claire said, "That should go down in history along with 'Let them eat cake.'”

Or as Mel Brooks said,



Yeah, Louis was that clueless, too. Poor fellow.