Calling Racists out to meet with actual diversity
Monday Book Pick: Island in the Sea of Time
Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling
Mr. Stirling got a lot of mileage out of this book, at least eight other books have been written based on this one, with only two being direct sequels. The story starts off with the island of Nantucket, and a Coast Guard training sailing ship that was just offshore, being transported back to the Bronze Age. That is good for a trilogy right there. What happended to to rest of the planet with Nantucket disappeared is good for at least two more trilogies.
Morning Round Up
Tiger Woods and John Edwards had a better year than the Stimulus bill. — Senator McConnell on FNS 2/11/2010
I’m thinking of writing a book on national health care. It will be 2,000 pages, and you’ll have two hours to read it. — Ann Coulter
People tend to use hockey-stick graphs when they are trying to pull one over on you. Reality usually isn’t so tidy.
Obama’s “Big Lie” about his relationships with ACORN
Raw hate and racism from the left
Friday B-Movie Pick: Love at First Bite
From 1979 comes this comic send up of the Dracula legend with a great comic cast. George Hamilton as the Count, Artie Johnson as Renfield, Richard Benjamin as the decendent of Von Helsing (who changed his name to Rosenberg for “professional reasons”), and Susan St. James as the love interest of both Rosenberg and Dracula. The movie starts out with Dracuala being kicked out of Romania by the Communist government and moving to New York City. It is a period piece (late 1970s, complete with a big dance number at a disco), but the gags are great and the cast really delivers.
Joe Biden: The anti-Dick Cheney
I have to give my brother credit for this one. He came up with the phrase a couple of weeks ago, before the current Sunday talk show shots by the former VP and the twit who currently holds the office.
First off, let us review some history. How did Dick Cheney become Vice-President of the United States of America? Well, while George W. Bush was cleaning up in the GOP primaries for the 2000 Presidential election, his team started thinking about a VP pick. First they looked at the man at the top of the ticket. A popular governor of one the largest and most populous states, a successful business career in the private sector, a former fighter pilot (flying an all weather interceptor, with a reputation for being tricky to fly, in the Gulf of Mexico during the Cold War), and was the son of former Vice-President and President, George H.W. Bush. Given all that, the thought was that he could be stronger in foreign policy, so the decision was made to shore that up with the VP pick. That leads us to Dick Cheney, with a very impressive foreign policy resume, including serving as Secretary of Defense.
Ok, now let us skip ahead about eight years. The democrats are about to turn the conventional wisdom on its ear and nominate, not Hillary Rodham Clinton, but some unknown first term Senator from a fly over state, as their Presidential candidate. Let’s review the resume of Barack Hussein Obama. Harvard Law, pretty good there, but what did he do with it? Well, he never held a private sector job. He was elected to the Illinois state senate after getting his two opponents in the primary removed on a technicality at the last minute. Once in the state senate, his most common vote by far was “present.” Then he was elected to the US Senate after the sealed divorce records of his opponent were “somehow” obtained and leaked to a pro-Obama journalist. Once in the Senate, he immediately started his run for the President’s office, spending less than 200 days actually performing his $175,000 a year job as a US Senator. The democrats had a candidate with a painfully thin resume, and absolutely zero foreign policy experience. So who did they pick for his running mate? Yup, Joey Biden. The Senator who was washed out of the primaries as soon as the first batch of voters got to express their views on the subject. The same Senator Biden whose last run for the President’s office was derailed when his history of plagiarism was exposed. Joe Biden, the one US Senator who only served in the leadership roles he could not be denied because of his time in office.
Joe Biden, who has singular reputation in Washington, D.C. for embarrassing himself, and his party, pretty much every time he opens his mouth (although the teleprompter adlib at the Air Force Academy was pretty good). Joe Biden, who as a long and spectacular career of being flat out wrong on just about anything he opens his mouth about.
So what did Joe Biden add to the ticket? The only thing that makes sense is that Barack Hussein Obama was secure in knowing that Joey Biden would never, ever upstage him. Obama is a more than a bit like the fictional character, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who said,” If there’s anything around here more important than my ego, I want it caught and shot now!” Where Dick Cheney was selected as Vice-President for his experience and gravitas, Joe Biden was selected for his lack of experience and lack of gravitas. He is the Anti-Dick Cheney.
Why does the left have to lie?
Frank Rich has been caught telling an easy to verify lie about Sarah Palin in the pages of the New York Times:
“This is about the people,” as Palin repeatedly put it last weekend while pocketing $100,000 of the Tea Partiers’ money.
Mr. Reynolds points out that if Mr. Rich had spend even the slight effort at “real journalism”, he would have found out that Gov. Palin did exactly what she said she would do with the money, “she donated it back.” So Mr. Rich, writing in the NY Times, is either lying, because the “layers of fact checkers and editors” at the Gray Lady did their jobs, found out the actual truth, and let the lie run, or that same “layers of fact checkers and editors” didn’t bother doing the jobs and let the lie run in the “Newspaper of record.” Either answer doesn’t look very good for the so-called “journalists” at the New York Times.
As I’ve noted before, the left isn’t exactly “rational” in regards to their hatred for Gov. Palin, nor have they let actual facts get in the way of their, ahem, “view of reality.”
Monday Book Pick: A New American Tea Party
Filed under: American History, Monday Book Pick, Politics, Tea Party
A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes by John O’Hara.
This book cover the history of the early Tea Parties in 2009 and provides information on how to “brew your own.” Bonus: Forward by Michelle Malkin!
Is Obama going Nuclear?
Filed under: economy, energy, Environment, Nuclear Power, Our Dear Leader, Politics
It seems that our Dear Leader may actually keep one of his promises. According to Townhall.com:
The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.
President Barack Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.
Obama in the coming week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.
Yup, safe, clean nuclear energy. Plentiful electrical energy completely free of greenhouse gases.
Also good for the economy, as Dr. Pournelle stated:
I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore also thinks it is the ecologically sound thing to do.
I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
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Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
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the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually — the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
Hulu app for the iPad?
By way of Apple Insider, is this TechCrunch post about Hulu getting around the lack of flash support on the iPad/iPhone/iTouch by creating a dedicated app.
One rumor I’ve heard from an industry insider is that Hulu is working on an iPad-friendly version of its site that should be ready by the time the iPad hits the market. Hulu itself is still vague about its plans.
Hulu is a major source of online videos direct from the content providers (i.e. quality streaming videos instead of hacked, malware ridden stuff), so having it on the iPad will provide a lot of added value. I still hold that the apps customized to take advantage of the iPad will be a major factor in driving sales.
Originally published at Urbin Technology.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Walk Hard
Walk Hard – The Dewey Cox Story
This musical bio-pic mockumentary takes on multiple musical bio-pics, but mostly the very well done Johnny Cash story, Walk the Line. John C. Reilly is a great pick, since he does all his own singing and guitar playing, which he actually does quite well! The rest of the cast is quite funny and the music is really good too! Yes, I bought the soundtrack CD.