3 Beers, two idiots and an Irish cop…
A joke? Not hardly. I wish that it was. Unfortunately, today the President will be hosting a “Concilliatory Happy Hour” for his buddy the professor of “African American Studies” and the Policeman involved in his arrest. Now, I have a couple BIG problems with this:
1. Since when does the president have any reason to get involved in the purview of a local Massachusetts police matter?
2. Why is the president elevating the complaint of this loud-mouth liberal professor to the level of legitimacy by inviting him to the White house to bury the hatchet with the arresting officer?
3. Why is ANYBODY taking the charge of racism seriously when all the evidence that has been presented points to an officer who was doing his duty according to the information that he was given?
4. Why does a citizen (who is being served by his local police jurisdiction in the protection of his property and safety) belligerently refuse to show ID that proves he is the owner of the house in question?
This whole episode is a prime example of the LACK of presidential restraint that is living in the White House these days. The president decides to chime in after having JUST said “I don’t have all the facts but… the police acted stupidly.” WHAT??
How about, ” I don’t have all the facts, and I believe that this is a matter best left to the police jurisdiction involved.”
or perhaps “I don’t feel that a local police matter falls into the purview of the President of the United States.”
Oh well. I guess that would have taken some knowledge of the ACTUAL duties of the office and an ability to NOT take advantage of a news item to boost your flagging poll numbers. So that will not be happening any time soon.
Early morning “eco-grab-bag”
Well folks, today’s installment of truth for the masses is a smattering of small, but collectively annoying pieces of liberal thought. I hope you enjoy them.
First out of the box is the label on my Deer Park water bottle. How, you might ask could that possibly qualify? Today, it’s the “Be Green’ label on the back. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of all this “green” thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good chance to protect some nature and promote healthy ecosystems, but the things that people are doing now to “be green’ has become ridiculous to the point of embarrassment. Deer Park decided that they would reduce the size of the label on their plastic water bottles to use less paper. Good for them. How the heck do you need a lot of paper anyway? Could it be the extensive ingredient list that is contained in your standard bottle of spring water? Perhaps a legal disclaimer stating the dangers of drowning in half a liter of your product? Nah, just easier to see on the shelf, probably. So Deer Park has made a decision that will undoubtedly save it a pile of money in paper and they want to spin it as a ‘green decision’…
Horsecrap.
The bottle says that the smaller labels save the equivalent of 30,000 trees in a year. Ok, but what does that mean? Are we to believe that these smaller labels will result in lower numbers of evil, axe-wielding, backhoe-driving maniacs riding around in the pristine, old-growth forests of the world? (By the way, nobody cuts down old growth hardwood for paper pulp. They grow entire plantations of PINE TREES to use for paper.) Pine trees are one of the fastest growing trees in the Southeast (where I live) and are an ideal renewable resource for use in the making of paper. So are we actually ‘saving a tree’ with these smaller labels? No, not really. The trees that would be saved have already been planted and will require harvesting whether they are used or not. It may affect the future planting of trees (by preventing the planting of the same number of trees). In fact, a reduction in the consumption of paper will really have the net effect of ‘unsaving’ somebody’s job. Less demand for paper means less sales on the retail and wholesale levels therefore, less manufacturing, less harvesting and less planting. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that part… these chainsaw toting demons RE-PLANT the trees.
So, really the effect of using less paper is to have an overall negative effect on the economy. Now, I toodled around the internet and found a few websites that make claims of massive global tree destruction because of the global paper industry, but most of the information seemed a little on the vague or useless side.
For instance:
Industrialized nations, with 20 percent of the world’s population, consume 87 percent of the world’s printing and writing papers. (Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme, Keynote Address UNEP’s 7th International High Level Seminar on Cleaner Production, 29-30 April 2002)
This quote was taken from Green America (Formerly Co-opAmerica)’s website. So, the people with the technology and the economies that drive the entire globe use more than their fair share of paper? SO WHAT? Why is this even a noteworthy fact? Of COURSE industrialized nations use more paper. There isn’t much use for a ream of neon yellow astrobright paper when you live in the Serengeti…unless you can find a way to stick it on the lions that might otherwise eat you for lunch.
Here’s another winner:
Global production in the pulp, paper and publishing sector is expected to increase by 77% from 1995 to 2020 (OECD Environmental Outlook, 2001, p.215)
Now, before I even tackle the substance of the quote, let’s look at the source. OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The tagline at the top of the page is “For a stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy”. Oh geez… there’s that word again. Fair.
That combined with the fact that the owners of the site and the server are both French is enough to make me second guess the validity of the statement. But, we will parse it anyway. 77% eh? Why the hell is publishing in this category? Doesn’t publishing mean the distribution of information? Books? Education? Commerce? Why, yes it does. Are we double-counting the pulp used to publish these various pieces of info? The whole idea of categorizing an end product use with a raw material statistic is a little misleading and innacurate, don’t you think? Would they categorize corn, maize and Fritos in the same way? How about Rice, Soy and General Tso’s Chicken? I think you get my point. The world can expect to become more knowledgeable in the future as information is distributed and shared with new groups of people that have to this point not been able to collect or absorb such knowledge. That’s good, isn’t it? At the same time, how much paper DOESN’T get used any more by the industrialized nations of the world because of email?
So you see, the end user and the reason for that paper use aren’t considered, just the gross number.
So, don’t worry about the trees, save the people. After you read this, print it and hand it to a friend. Tell them to copy it a couple times and hand it to a couple of their friends. It’s all for the good of the economy!
The dangers of working on TV…
I’m sure that some of you have heard about the little kerfuffle going on about Brian Kilmeade\’s \”pure genes\” comment on Fox & Friends recently. It came up in a discussion about genetic predisposition to various ailments (heart disease, cancer etc.) All the libs that heard it are shouting “racist” (as they typically do in situations like this) – some are making fun of the fact that he kinda stuttered or hesitated while making his statement and calling him a moron and a nazi (again, as liberals typically do in situations like this). This episode however is extremely useful as an instructional tool on the dangers of working for the media, especially on a network that has conservative leanings. What Brian said was effectively the following: Swedes generally marry other Swedes, whereas Americans (read “white americans”) are more likely to marry someone from a different genetic background. As a result, the Swedes are more likely to have “pure genes”, and therefore are less likely to carry genetic predisposition to a wide variety of ailments. Now, on the surface (which is where most liberals usually hang out in the knowledge pool) that might appear to have some inherently racist overtones. If you delve a little deeper though, you start to see the logic behind the statement. To explore this further, I would like to visit the historic and present racial makeup of both the USA and say, Sweden, Norway or perhaps Iceland.
In the 1600′s and 1700′s the United States played host to an abysmal episode in the history of mankind, the slave trade. This however introduced to this country yet another variation to the ever expanding gene pool that was North America. At that point, there were already persons from just about every area of Europe, and the indigenous American tribes from different areas of the continent. As the US advanced through history, all of those bloodlines mingled (even as many of them were persecuted and driven out of their homelands). Today, the US is one of the most diverse countries in the world as far as genetic makeup. I would wager that there are genes from just about every human population on the planet floating around somewhere between Atlantic and Pacific.
Now, if we look at the historical background of Norway, we don’t find that same level of genetic mixing. Norway didn’t grow labor intensive crops that encouraged the importation of a low cost, slave-based workforce. Not only that, but Norway doesn’t share a land border with a country, much less a continent that has a significantly different genetic makeup from that of the typical Norwegian. For example, how many Mexican immigrants (legal or illegal) do you think enter Norway in a given year? Are there any reservations or pockets of tribal societies left in Norway? Has Norway ever experienced a large scale wave of immigrants from Asia to it’s West Coast? On all counts, no. So, relatively speaking, Norway would be a homogeneous collection of individuals. Sure, there are variations of hair color, height, etc., but in terms of visible ethnic differences, virtually nothing.
Ok, before I go any further, let me stop before any libs reading this get really wound up to say the following: The recent history of the human race has shown an ever increasing tendency of groups to intermingle in a global sense. In the last hundred years, travel has become cheap, easy, and much more rapid. Not only that, but the economy is global in reach now, and people are routinely transferred to offices located in different parts of the world. I am aware of this. Yes, there ARE people that live in Norway that aren’t decended of blonde-haired, blue eyed Scandinavian stock. But, before you call me a bigot or racist, see if you can give me a recommendation for a restaurant in the “Little Havana” section of Oslo. If you can, I’ll stand down. In the mean time I’m gonna go look for a good Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Reykjavik. I’ll probably need to order a pizza though, it could take a while to find one.
The point is this:
There are plenty of idiots out there that love to watch people that they disagree with and then “shoot off” at the mouth without considering what is ACTUALLY being said (the two that come to mind most readily are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson). Most of them probably also thought that “Change you can Believe In” was a slogan to get behind. Note, none of them asked “Change to what?” Those of us that actually look a little further into the background of any situation, usually have a better view on the realities of present and future. If I worked on TV, I might stutter a little too if I was about to say something that most people were too ignorant to understand.
“to uphold and defend”….
Undoubtedly, you the informed reader of this blog, have heard about the uneasy situation in Honduras. I’m sure you have also heard the media crowd duly reporting that it is a “military coup”. Horsefeathers. It is very clearly (and undeniably) a constitutional response to a power-hungry president. I, however would rather look at a few surrounding circumstances just for the sake of my own amusement.
1. Hugo Chavez doesn’t like what’s going on. Well, that’s my first indication that this is probably a GREAT thing in the making. “Mr. I Own Venezuela” is a tin-pot dictator who himself has decided (at the point of a gun) to be El Presidente for life. Anything he doesn’t like is most probably a big step in the right direction. This of course doesn’t even take into account the fact that Mr. Chavez is complicit in this attempt at usurpation of power by willfully and knowingly printing and providing ballots for the unconstitutional referendum that Former President Zelaya had planned to carry out.
2. The United Nations has condemned the actions of the Honduran Congress (i.e. the forcible deportation of the dictator-to-be Mel Zelaya). Does this surprise anyone? Hmmm… the UN on the wrong side of an issue, where have we heard that before? Oh, right, it was every other day since June 26, 1945. If the Honduran Congress is acting on the letter of the Honduran Constitution, the UN can shove off. Isn’t this the same crowd who were griping about the US invasion of a sovreign nation (Saddam’s Iraq)? What happened to all that ‘sovreign nation’ sentiment? Eh, who cares what they think… they all believe in man-made global warming too.
3. The President of the United States has made statements supporting Zelaya (the ousted power grabber in chief). Now THAT bothers me. What does it say about the present administration’s oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of our nation when they clearly don’t care whether or not the Constitution of any other nation is followed or respected? Notice I didn’t say that it surprised me… anyone with an ounce of Constitutional knowledge in their skull knows that nationalization of private entities would make the founding fathers vomit. I’ll tell you one thing, if Barack tries this whole “re-elected till I get tired of it” trick, I sincerely hope that our military leadership follows the example of their Honduran counterparts.
What really chaps me is that this whole thing is being played off my the media as “just another military takeover” in Central America, when it is the exact antithesis of that very situation. You had an elected executive attempting an ‘end-around’ on the Constitution of his nation. When he tried to use the military to complete the task, the military leadership told him to drop dead. Yup, sure sounds like a coup d’etat to me. This is the very spirit of constitutionally-bound Patriotism. A heartly congratulations and well desereved “‘atta boy” to the Military leadership of Honduras from Hellfire & Brainstorm. Apparently, they have ‘a few good men’ in their ranks as well.