E!!

Yes, yes, I have been sporadic and/or just plain absent of late.  I have no excuse.  (I hate excuses.)

Please enjoy the following bit, a favorite of mine.  If you are any kind of political junkie – Left, Middle, or Right – I dare you not to laugh.

Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk
Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbours. You and your neighbours bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
Militarism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.
Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to take the cows and kill you.
Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
American-style Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

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Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government gives you harmonica lessons.

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Have I gone mad?

Perhaps.  Politics and all its egos are enough to drive anyone to Madville, fast.

(We’re all mad here…)

Politico or no, you may want to join the Surrealist Party (click that “here…” link back there) if you have a penchant for, or appreciation of, absurdity, absurdness, nonsensicalness, nonsensicality, ridiculousness, ridiculosity, ludicriousness, meaninglessness, contradiction, incongruity, incongruousness, illogic, illogicality, illogicalness, craziness, twaddle, flummery, malarkey, jabber, Jabberwocky, shenanigans, jocularity, waggery, drollery, levity, frivolity, silliness, inanity, and the Like.

For the wonks, Wonkas, classicists and literalists amongst us, do consider reading:

The First Surrealist Manifesto (Breton, 1924).

(Yes, it’s really The Surrealist Party’s platform. Yes, there really is such a thing.  No, we haven’t read it.  The Dem and GOP Committeepersons and Candidates don’t read theirs, either, so why pick on us?)

In closing:

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. – Willy Wonka

(Did you know that nearly all the best quotes in the film Willy Wonka are lifted from works of literature? You can review many of them here.)

If you have questions about this post, any of its references, or the Surrealist Party in general, please drop a Comment.

Just ran across this old gem from The Gipper:

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.  Government programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

What could be “therapeutic” about 5 days of playing poker with total strangers in Vegas?  Check out this blog post by Charles Murray re: his annual trip to Sin City.

I occasionally blog on more obscure things because I am naturally curious and like to learn.  So:

From The Corner today:

Your Tax Dollars at Work   [Veronique de Rugy]

According to FoxNews.com:

Commercial fishermen struggling from catch restrictions and high fuel prices are getting $700,000 in federal stimulus money to retrieve lost crab pots now littering the ocean bottom, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.

The money will be used to hire 48 people — including 31 fishermen — and to charter 10 vessels to retrieve an estimated 4,000 derelict crab pots, which pose a hazard to whales, seal lions and fishing boats, Jane Lubchenco said.

 

That’s $14,583 per person/job or $175 per retrieved crab pot.  Hard to gauge those numbers not knowing if this is a salary or commision job, or how long it will take to gather them all up.

I was curious to know if this ”hazard” is BS, so I searched out this article on the environmental impact of derelict gill nets and crab pots.  The crab pot problem is described thusly:

Commercial and sport crabbers are required to use a biodegradable cotton rot cord (also known as escape cord) on their pots so that if pots are lost, the cord will degrade and crabs can escape. Our research shows that only about a third of crab pots are properly equipped with escape cord and many derelict pots are found to continue fishing for months and even years. On average, a derelict crab pot will catch about 72 crabs a year. Primarily, crab pots become derelict when their buoy line is clipped by a passing vessel. Pots are frequently found in vessel traffic lanes and boaters out after dark have a challenging time seeing crab pot buoys.

So, 72 crabs times an estimated 4,000 derelict cord-lacking crab pots is 288,000 crabs that are caught and die, uneaten and unenjoyed, each year.  That, in itself, does seem like a terrible thing.  And at $1.60 per pound on average (that’s off the boat, not wholesale or retail), assuming a per crab weight of 1 pound, it’s also $460,800 goes uncollected by fishermen.  Or, at retail prices of $10 per pound, $2.88 million.

Anyhoo, apparently there is not much data on the hazard to whales, sea lions, and fishing boats due to derelict crab pots.  I assume this means not a lot of whales and boats are being taken out by stray crab cages, despite all the hullabaloo.  There was some data on the danger of the stray gill nets, though:

In 2008, the Northwest Straits Initiative removed a gill net with 162 seabirds, 14 salmon, 42 dogfish, 1,400 Dungeness crab and 1 harbor seal. Factoring in decomposition rates, it is estimated that this single net in 23 weeks time killed 1,800 birds, 450 salmon, 1,300 spiny dogfish, 16,900 crab, and 11 harbor seals. In an ecologically rich area like Port Susan bay, derelict gear can be a tremendous stress on the ecosystem and source of mortality.

That does seem bad.  This organization seems to have done their homework and to be doing decent work, and I was interested to read about their “no fault” non-legislative approach to the problem of reporting stray gear:

Central to the success of the derelict gear program has been its grassroots nature and partnerships with commercial and recreational fishermen to locate and remove gear. The Commission takes a no-fault approach to derelict gear removal. Rather than assigning blame for the derelict gear in the marine environment, the Commission focuses on removing existing gear and preventing new gear from entering the water through non-regulatory means. This approach is based on the following assumptions:

•    That the majority of the derelict fishing gear in Washington state waters is local or regional in origin;
•    That the majority of fishermen are operating legally in Washington state waters;
•    That fishermen do not want to lose expensive gear;
•    That if they do lose gear it is for reasons outside of their control;
•    That fishermen have a stake in recovery of lost gear that might otherwise impact the sustainability of their industry.

[Conclusion]:  The no-fault approach encourages fishermen to report lost nets so that they can be removed quickly.

I wonder what improvement could be made to crab pot and gill net technology to reduce the loss ratio?  Ideas?

In closing, here’s some trivia for all you crab pot geeks:

Derelict pots remove an estimated 74 Dungeness crab from Puget Sound each year. Dungeness crab larvae are a critical component of juvenile salmon diets.

It was bad form not to announce my absence, I know.  Humble apologies to all who visited E!! and found me absent.

I decided to buy a MacBook and iPhone the morning before the night before my 3-day trip to L.A. for the Heritage Resource Bank Conference, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) New Media Workshop, and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) Blogger Reception & Meet-up. (Great and fun and very worthwhile, all. More about them in another post, along with my after thoughts.)

Right after I made the purchase decision, I decided to unplug my home PC/tower and take it to the Apple store so the nice Apple people could magically transfer all my data to my new MacBook while I was out of town.  Which meant I had access to Gmail and the Internet on my iPhone but was otherwise offline from Thursday morning until now, when I got my MacBook plugged in and configured and my iPhone synched up.  (If I had been thinking ahead, I would have set up an iTunes account when I was still plugged in so I could have downloaded WordPress in advance of my iPhone purchase…but I wasn’t.)

Now that I have all this fabulous mobile/wireless technology, I will never again be separated from my blog, Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts.

Joy!!

This is a test of the E!!mergency blogcast system. This is only a test. If this were an actual blog emergency, you would receive instructions…

Write-ups of and photos from The Sammies will prob’ly start to surface today; I’ll post links here as I find them.

Here’s a nice piece and a couple of photos from Illinois Review (that’s me on the far left, next to Mary Katherine Ham).

And here’s Warner Todd Huston’s write-up.  (How on earth did I miss talking to WTH?!  Darn it!!)

Here’s Bob Weeks’ blurbs at Kansas Meadowlark.  Including mention that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher presented me with my award.

Major catch-up to do and neglecting you, dear readers!  Will post tomorrow…

In the meantime, check out my sidebar and blogroll links; there’s plenty of good reading.

A few stories and blurbs about “what happened” at Culture11 – at which I blogged for the short while it lasted – have shown up this week:  at The Corner and Washington Monthly (that piece is quite long) and The American Conservative and Right Wing News.

In the days after its official shut-down, in what became a Long Good-bye on The Confabulum blog, managing editor Joe Carter wrote a detailed personal accounting and lovely farewell titled ”A Beautiful Mess.”  The piece was aptly named.  What made it messy (and interesting) was a delightful diversity of belief, thought, and style among the editors and writers.

I was fond of the site, and was sad to see it run out of money.  There is talk that it may be resurrected.  We’ll see.

A blogger (or is blogging?) acquaintance, Patrick O’Hannigan of the Paragraph Farmer, has a good piece on the male vs. female wages myth and Obama’s new “White House Council on Women and Girls”  in The American Spectator.  Includes cameo appearances by Shakespeare, Foghorn Leghorn, J.R.R. Tolkien, Cinderella, and George Orwell.

Patrick also gets brownie points for pointing us to P.J. O’Rourke’s latest brilliance in the WS (and he, in turn, gives thanks to The Anchoress, from whence he got it).  P.J. – who is still hilarious even while battling cancer – shreds Obama on stem cells; you simply must read it.

Take a gander at the photo in this piece by – and read some of the comments to – Andrew Malcom at the L.A. Times.

Andrew wrote about Michelle Obama’s recent PR stunt volunteerism in a D.C. soup kitchen and dared ask how a homeless person in need of a meal owns a cell phone (with which he took the First Lady’s picture).

From the close of Andrew’s piece:

If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?

And if he is homeless, where do they send the cell phone bills?

I chuckled and then scrolled down to read the comments, most of which are dripping with outrage at poor Andrew’s cruel-mindedness.  How DARE him?!

Said they:  The cell phone could be pre-paid; he needs it so he can receive calls from potential employers; maybe a friend or family member is paying for it; etc.

Could be.  But Andrew’s questions were still funny, and the photo of Michelle Obama hamming it up for the guy’s camera is great.

After the article made its way around the office, a co-worker asked:  “nevermind how he got it and who pays for it; where does he charge the battery?”

A gold star goes to the best smart-alec answer (leave in Comments).

this painting by Andy Thomas.  And it’s new caption.

Thanks to the Paragraph Farmer for posting.

Here’s an amusing anecdote from my friend E.M.:

So I’ve been visiting friends in Louisiana for the last few days; partly to catch up because I haven’t seen them in forever, and partly because I love Mardi Gras – and thanks to a special surprise, I was actually able to go this year and enjoy it.

I love everything about the South: the food, the pace of life, the fact that my skin doesn’t get dry and that people walk around with funny hats on for no reason and don’t get self-conscious. But most of all, I love it because of interactions like this:

We were sitting around the kitchen table after Bacchus, when a two year old child came running in brandishing a toy shotgun (with real cocking and smoking action!), aiming and firing at nothing, shortly followed by his mother.

Mother: “Give me that gun!”

Child: “No!”

Mother: “Give ME THAT GUN!”

Child: “No!”

Mother takes the gun.

Child cries.

Father (from Kitchen Table): “Give him back that gun, Nancy Pelosi!”

Another child (also from Kitchen Table) bursts into tears: “Don’t call mama that, Daddy!!!”

Here’s a little two minute ditty I think you’ll all enjoy.  My complements to singer and song writer Kathleen Stewart and lyricist Steve Jones.

From the Tennessee GOP:

Hat Tip:  Jonah Goldberg

A reader has brought this interesting Alaskan annual creative event to my attention.

The current contest is still underway, so here are some photos from last year.  (Click on the numbers at the top of the page to view each one.)  This one is my favorite.

Human creativity and ingenuity is one of our best qualities, don’t you think? 

I believe it points to what it means to be created “in God’s image,” the Almighty being the First, greatest creative force in the universe.

I wouldn’t normally congratulate myself, but “40″ is a milestone and invites comment.  Or so I rationalize…

In the tradition of self-indulgent celebration, a few of my favorite quotes by some of my favorite thinkers:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

— Samuel Adams

“I will not cede more power to the state.  I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”

— William F. Buckley, Up from Liberalism (1959)

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

— C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), p. 292

“Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”

— James Madison

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

 — Thomas Jefferson

“Gentlemen may cry, “Peace, Peace” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

— Patrick Henry

“I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.”

— David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. VII, p. 372

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all the rest.”

— Winston Churchill

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children (America), the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

— Ronald Reagan

Blessings to all…

E!!

Check out this short video promo on the biggest prizes (and the most cash!!) for doing good stuff in the political activist blogsophere.

Nominate someone (or yourself) today!!

**Nic:  That was the most awesome Sam Adams impression EVER!!

A reader sent the following true account from his small rural town.  Names have been changed and some details have been edited out to protect privacy.  Here’s the story:

Several years ago, Marvin and Veronica moved here from a nearby state and told everyone they met that they were “so excited” to live in “such a beautiful place” full of “such wonderful, friendly, caring people.”  Marvin soon got a job with the County and began “working to improve things” using government monies and volunteer help and contributions.

So today he tells me, “I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

Why?  Because the town is now full of obstinate, backward, stupid people who don’t know anything about government and who obstruct his agenda at every turn.

A liberal?  You betcha.

I always laugh to read his articles in the paper, extolling this project or the other.  A perfect example is a new “tree barrier” along a roadside adjacent to one of our municipal facilities.  The trees were intended to block the unsightly row of cars and trucks parked between the road and the buildings.  To read about it in the articles he has put into the local newspaper extolling “community efforts,” you’d expect to find a verdant forest.   When you drive by, however, you find a row of very small, withered trees, spaced too far apart, which, if anything, make the site look even more run down and neglected.  In 25 years, should they survive, they might partially filter the view.  A fence would have made more sense.  Why didn’t they do a privacy fence?  Because it would “block the distant view.”  Of course, the large facility buildings already do that.

Currently he is involved in a fight with the City over a maintenance issue that damaged one of his properties.  The City says it isn’t responsible because there is no ordinance covering such maintenance, and for that reason, the government agency that insures the City denied his claim.

What would a conservative (i.e., native) do?

Pay for the damage, do the due diligence on the maintenance himself, and write a letter to the Editor letting others know of this issue so that those who wished to do so could pressure the City to update its ordinances.  And attend City Council meetings, keeping the issue alive until resolved.

A liberal?

He moves away in disgust.

Because, ultimately, it was always “all about him” and had nothing to do with us.

You may have heard that the phones are off the hook in many Congressional offices in D.C.? Apparently some of your representatives and their staffers are tired of hearing how much you don’t like the Porkulus bill.

So now Erick Erickson @ RedState is offering this little gift to concerned citizens:

RedState is launching CapWiz today in partnership with Human Events.

If you go here: http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/02/12/call-congress-redstate-human-events-make-it-easy/

you can follow the link, plug in your zip code, and it will take you to your member of Congress’s local office phone number. (Bypass the busy signal in Washington.)

CapWiz makes it very easy to send emails, faxes, letters, and make phone calls to members of Congress from the web.

It is offered at no charge to right of center activists.

Jonah is especially funny today.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for Star Trek references:

Moreover, many actually believed Obama’s own hype. This was the moment for this, that and the other thing. This was the time when we, as Americans, were going to have our cake and eat it too. Future generations were going to look back and remember how Republicans and Democrats, cats and dogs, Klingons and Romulans came together and marched to the sunny uplands of history, where shopping carts have no wobbly wheels; airplane food is free, delicious, and filling; and we get all of our energy from 100 percent renewable Loch Ness Monster poop.

Erick Erickson @ RedState wrote an inspiring piece the other day.  If you follow politics and you’re a little (or a lot) discouraged, take a few minutes to read it and cheer yourself up.

Guess not.

On a happier note, baseball season starts in just 8 and 1/2 weeks.

And Varitek IS staying with the Red Sox!

They are up by 3 with two minutes to go.  I am very excited right now.  (I’m a Patriots fan, but I always root against the Steelers.  And the Cowboys.)

I was rooting for Steele.

Here’s a good 2005 piece on Steele’s journey (and courage) by NR’s Jay Nordlinger.  If you don’t know much about Steele, you should read it.

Every House Republican plus eleven Democrats voted no.

The $953.3. billion (plus interest) bill passed 244 – 188.

And it’s not gonna stimulate squat because it’s pork-full of handouts to Democratic political-interest groups. And massive social spending.

(Obama supporters and voters: Here is your Thank You, tied up in big red trillion dollar bow.)

Notably, the infrastructure bailout part of the plan – the big “job creation” portion – is vastly smaller than was advertised. There’s just $30 billion in highway-related projects, plus another $40 billion for (future) broadband and electric-grid projects.

My apologies to all those who dropped by over the last few days and found Nothingness.

“FYI” I am trying out this new template/theme while my other/original theme is improved. (Or maybe I’ll like this one and will stay with it.)(What do you think?)

I’ll have some new posts up at lunch.

.

A loyal reader sent this interesting little story tidbit along.  She searched it out because her “eagle eye” husband spotted Beau Biden in some camera shots of THE Obama-Biden Express (train ride) the other day.

No two ways about it, this is pretty special treatment.

The aforementioned reader writes:

“The only person I know who’s gotten to come home early from a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan is a friend from church:  his wife (also Air Force) was diagnosed with breast cancer a month or so before he was due to come back and they brought him home early.

Soldiers are missing the birth of their kids and Beau Biden gets to come home for a “special assignment” at the Pentagon?”

I agree with every word of this post called “Why I Hate Inaugurations” by the always thoughtful Joe Carter. Here’s most of it:

I cannot bear to watch the religious fervor, the tears and chants and beaming visages, for the promotion of a man or woman to a secular office. We do not live in a monarchy; we do not crown queens and kings in American.

Lest we forget, the President of the United States is the servant of the American people. (Despite what actors like Ashton Kutcher think, we do not serve him.) There is something unseemly, and dare I say, almost un-American, about making such a spectacle about a public servant taking office.

Transition ceremonies should be dignified, graceful, and modest – the exact opposite of all that Inauguration ceremonies have become. For this one, President Bush even declared a state of emergency for the entire city of DC so that taxpayer money could be diverted from the FEMA budget for this spectacle. This disgraceful action by our outgoing President barely raised a shrug from the populace. We no longer question our kings.

Many of our fellow citizens have lost all sense of decorum and perspective about this event. The transition of Presidential power from one man to another does not mark a significant transition in the culture of America. Our worries, fears, and concerns do not abate because there is a different man in the White House. Our dreams, hopes, and happiness do not increase because of who occupies the Oval Office. This change in government does not portend a change in human nature or the hearts of our fellow citizens. America — all that is good and bad about us — remains the same.

Fortunately, the unseemly pageantry of the Inauguration will be over by tomorrow, allowing us to move on to what truly matters in our country. Perhaps then all of us, even those of us in DC, can move beyond the deification of the political to focus once again on what truly matters.

Garden State Patriot helps us remember Reagan’s first inaugural address.

Take away quote: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”