I recently tried to post the following to a Space.com forum asking where the candidates stand on the space program: I’m a lifelong space enthusiast. I readily admit that I still get teary-eyed when I see pictures of American bootprints on the moon; the Apollo program remains the greatest engineering achievement in human history. My father worked on the Apollo program at KSC, I went | Read More »
St. Croix county is right across the St. Croix river from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul). Hudson is a bedroom community of St. Paul, and the reason why this is the fastest growing county in the state. Our state rep survived the last recall with double-digits, so I’m pretty sure we’re going to go for Walker. A couple of weekends ago, I was driving | Read More »
One of my favorite movies is “The Princess Bride”, and in one of my favorite scenes, one of the characters says to another (one who is convinced that he’s the smartest man in the world) “you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means”. I find myself flashing on that every time I hear a liberal talk about | Read More »
I’m a Wisconsin tax payer, and pretty disgusted by the 14 Democrat state senators who’ve left town rather than allow a vote they know that the’re going to lose. On the other hand, I’m not particularly surprised. There’s a reason why every socialist government has either started as or degenerated into totalitarinism. It’s because leftism/progressivism (or any system that beleives “the purpose of government is | Read More »
The Tea Party movement is, to say the least, unusual. Historically, it hasn’t been conservatives standing on the soapbox in the town square to defend the principals of limited government, personal freedom, the right of the individual to determine where and how much to give to charity, individual responsibility, rejection of collecitve guilt, and the lower taxes that are a result of these things. This is because in the past, | Read More »
News this morning of a big volcanic eruption in Iceland, grounding transatlantic flights (story here). Volcanos spew large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, but they also throw a lot of dust into the upper atmosphere (which is why flights are grounded). Guess what? The dust is a much stronger “global cooling” element than the CO2. A big volcano erupting in the northern hemisphere is | Read More »
From: “Web forms” <webforms@www2z1.house.gov> Sent: 3/17/2010 10:35:30 PM To: “IMAWI03@mail.house.gov” IMAWI03@mail.house.gov (Congressman Ron Kind) Subject: IMA MAIL ON HEALTH Congressman Kind; I was called by your “electronic town hall meeting” software, and if it wasn’t a complete fraud, it was the most cowardly act I’ve ever seen by a politician. Why not hold a real town hall meeting where you’re not able to control the | Read More »
Many people have asked if our elected officials will sign an agreement to subject themselves and thier familes to the same health care system they want to impose on the rest of us. I would like to posit that this request doesn’t go far enough. We all know that the Soviet countries embraced a strange concept of equality, described by George Orwell in Animal Farm as “all | Read More »
UPDATE 1: I’ve gotten several (5?) comments along the lines of “just toss the whole lot”. That’s what’s known in scientific circles as A Really Bad Idea. Climategate, in and of itself, will not dismantle the AGW industry; there’s way too much money at stake (I understand that Gore himself is in a position to make over a billion). All that’s going to come from | Read More »
My daughter attends a Catholic college, and the campus chapter of the Knights of Columbus raised enough money to put up a monument on campus to the infants that have been murdered aborted. You can read the article about it at http://www.tommiemedia.com/news/knights-place-monument-in-upper-quad/. You would think that a Catholic campus would be a safe place to do this, but you’d be wrong. A female student wrote | Read More »
This is my response to a letter printed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Monday, as the “letter of the day”. There’s a lot more I wanted to say, but I had to keep it under 250 words. Gentlemen/Ladies: The letter of 9/14 titled “Party of no ideas…” demonstrates either severe short-term memory loss or a complete lack of intellectual honesty. There’s no other way to | Read More »
I hope to eventually update this with a link, but in case you missed it, Chris Mathews is now claiming that “‘Socialism’ is code for the ‘N’ word”. I’ve always wondered how it is that people like Mathews know what the “code” is when *I* don’t (maybe he’s intercepting my copy of the super-secret cypher book?), but this puts me in mind of a story | Read More »
OK, I usually follow the guideline that “if you bring the Nazis into the discussion you’ve run out of useful things to say”, but I’m going to be even *more* juvenile and use the defense that “SHE started it!” Accoding to the folks at Real Cler Politics, Nancy Pelosi claims protesters are “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.” link | Read More »
I heard a news report today Attorney General Erick Holter said that the tragic shooting in the Holocost Museum proves the need for hate crimes legislation. Either these people are monumentally stupid, or I’m missing something here. We’re talking about a lifelong bigot deciding to commit suicide-by-cop in the most conspicuous place possible. Do people think that someone in that state of mind is going | Read More »
1) There is no such thing as deserved wealth. Anyone who is rich either stole it or inherited it. Government therefore has a responsibility to ensure that this wealth is taken away in the interest of fairness. This is why we need “progressive” income taxes. This rule does not apply to senators from Massachusetts, since there’s apparently no link between income and wealth in that | Read More »
For those who’ve seen Casablanca, this scene needs no introduction. For those who haven’t go get the DVD and watch it. Repeatedly. Casablanca is the story of a jaded American expatriate in the late 1930′s, a former idealist who’s watched the world descend into fascism and has given up on it. His feelings aren’t muche different from what I’ve been feeling lately, as I watch | Read More »
You would have thought that electing our first Marxist president would have made the Socialist president of Venezuala happy. Guess again. In the last 24 hours, I’ve read two AP articles about Hugo Chavez issuing statements about Obama that, had they been uttered in Venezuala about Chavez, would have landed the speaker in jail (for those who’ve been living in an ice cave for the last few | Read More »
My wife emailed me this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html?emc=eta1 Here’s the summary: “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams. Was this what adulthood promised?” I doubt that there’s a human being on the planet who hasn’t seen this movie, with the possible exception of a few tribal groups deep in the Amazon. The author of this review puts a completely | Read More »
So, lets get this straight: we can’t use coal, we can’t drill for oil, and God knows we can’t build nukes. That leaves solar, wind, and biofuels (that use nearly as much energy to produce as they release). None of the “alternative” fuels (the ones that are going to be mandatory, which in my lexicon is the OPPOSITE of “alternative”) are reliable or cost-effective. So, | Read More »
My politics I recently joined a social networking group centered around an activity that tends to attract a lot of liberals. Someone started a discussion thread on politics, and more than one lefty jumped in with the usual talking points. I haven’t so far seen anything from a conservative. Here’s the entry I’m thinking about submitting.
This ad is being run in MN in the Senate race between Al Franken (D-Bigmouth) and incumbent Norm Coleman: Let me get this straigh – prices are higher at the pump because we didn’t tax the oil companies enough? Or are you saying that taxing them more will bring gas prices down? What kind of business is this “Dan” character in???
So far, government attempts at making alternative enery happen have been uniformly disasterous. They either give direct subsidies or create mandated government markets (such as Governor Rhino of Minnesota passing a law that dictates the amount of green energy that the state utilities will provide). Neither of these approaches result in actual “alternatives” but rather higher costs for everyone. What’s worse, they take money from | Read More »
My wife just sent me this link. Apparently, the Chinese promised the international Olympic committee that the would allow journalists free access to the internet, but have renegged (yes, I used that word!) on thier promise. I don’t have the time to go into much depth, there, but I wanted to make two points: 1) Why should visiting journalists have more access to informatoin than | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}