No Surprises

While food stamp participation is up 39%, government limousine use is up 73%.

Think of all the jobs saved or created by the purchase of all those limos.

Politics as Usual

This thing has been all over the web, so if you've already seen is and have stopped laughing/spluttering, just skip over.

As I've mentions about polls this early in the game, the questions tend to run along the lines of "Do you like immigrants, or would you like to see them thrown to the alligators in the moat?

Notice that the word "illegal" doesn't come up except as something the heartless GOP wants to superimpose on the luckless immigrant.

Now I do not endorse throwing immigrants to the alligators. At least not all of them. Certain narrowly defined subsets, maybe. And just to show that I don't believe that line about doing jobs Americans won't do, I would charitably consider including certain narrowly defined subsets of American citizens into the "alligator bait" category.

Let's even be sporting about it. I'd make the moat 50 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and the rule is that if you make it to the other side, you're free to go. Anywhere you like. If you want to come here, feel free to pick up an application, available at any bridge, and fill it out.

Foxes 2

So I carefully placed dollops of bobcat urine around the back yard, trying to simulate how a big hungry cat might mark out territory in hopes the cute little foxies would find a new home.

This morning I discover that one of them came around the house and pooped on my front mat.

You suppose they're on to me?

Followers

All my followers have vanished. I have no idea where they went. I'm pretty sure all of them weren't Raptured, and I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything that would drive them all off at once. This must be something to do with the recent buggering of Blogger. Hopefully they'll be back at some point.

Update: I checked, and it's confirmed. Lots of blogs are having this problem, and Blogger has no idea what's causing it.

Update 2: Magically they are back.

Day At The Range

Nice day at the range. 4 rounds of IDPA-style match, followed by a 3-gun round.

I shoot well, if appallingly slowly.

As an aside, the range area where we did this was under about a foot of water within the last week.

Electioneering - How It's Done

Anyone who thinks the MSM don't have a stake and a position in the upcoming (only 17 more shopping MONTHS left!) elections either isn't paying attention or plans to vote for the Hawaiian Marxist anyway.

Pollsters get paid to find out what people think. They also get paid to influence how people think. Examples of the latter are push polls in which questions are phrased in such a way as to influence the outcome, not only of the poll, but of an impending election as well. Early on, a polling outfit can produce bogus results to please a customer since the results mean nothing but may influence an outcome later. CNN has just released a poll showing Rudi Guliani narrowly edging out Mitt Romney for first place. A bit of looking reveals the poll was of adults, not likely voters, which means it's skewed leftward. In spite of this Palin came in third.

The MSM can be counted on to come down solidly on the side of the most left-leaning candidate in any given election, so the preliminary work is to convince conservatives of the inevitability of the most left-leaning RINO the Republicans have to offer. Note the sterling endorsements the New York Times gave John McCain all the way up to the point that he got the nomination. Then they were all-Obama-all-the-time.

At this point, I believe that Obama could be beaten by an old yellow dog provided that 1) the dog came across as a conservative, say by biting John Kerry, and 2) demonstrated an unwillingness to sell out his principles, say by biting Nancy Pelosi in spite of being offered a steak not to.

Foxes

My neighbor tells me his wife saw 3-5 foxes playing in my back yard this morning. I certainly saw 2 of them, and this evening I find they have left the remains of another squirrel and a black and yellow bird, which I'm thinking I used to be able to identify.

They also seem to have been playing with the dog toys we leave out back for when my daughter brings her dog over.

They are cute, healthy looking, playful, doubtless flea-ridden, and cutting in to my supply of post-apocalyptic munchies (squirrels).

D'wife had me pick up a bottle of bobcat urine, which is flogged as certain to send the redcoats to someone else's pasture. I like the foxes, it's just that having a whole pack dening in your back yard is just a bit much. At $17 for a modest bottle, I would have been willing to go out, have a nice steak and a Guinness, to give the right predator overtones, and take a wiz around the back yard myself.

Unemployment and Inflation

Figuring in todays news is notices of "unexpectedly" increasing unemployment claims, coupled with complaints from the government that people aren't spending enough money to get the economy going again.

A journalist might wonder if there wasn't a connection here. A party hack would issue a clarion call to the peasants to get out there and help make the economy move.

The economists are fretting that you folks are spending too much on food and gas, and not enough on i-pads and Chevy Volts. Any day now I expect to hear a story that in spite of record spending on food, obesity is actually declining, pointing up the positive side of pounding the pavement in search of work.

Second quarter growth is currently being predicted at somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5%. I'm betting that by July 1, the "latest revised figures" will be in the neighborhood of 1.5%.

Springtime In The Rockies

Investigating the wife's complaints of noises and sightings of a fox on the back porch, it now appears I have a family of them denning under the concrete porch slab. I suppose some morning soon I'll be treated to the sight of several little kits frolicking in the back yard.

This would be easier to live with except that they've left the leftovers from dinner (squirrel) lying out in the open, where it no longer smells as fresh as it did when they brought it in.

More on this as it develops.

The Pollitical Circus

At this point, the 2012 election is a breathtaking 18 months out, the press id jonseing for someone to bash, and the Republicans aren't providing them with a target.

The bubbleheads on the View are convinced that following Obama's Rambo-esque actions in Pakistan, he is now unbeatable. Rassmussen begs to differ, but what does he know? The presidents disapproval rating has gone from a low of -22 to the current -10 on the strength of Osamas demise. We will see what telling the Jews to drop dead, siding with the unions against Boeing and South Carolina, and continuing to ignore the border problems does for that.

Mitch Daniels has officially dropped out, fearing that extensive press coverage of his wife's escapades from 10 years ago would be put up as evidence of his own lack of qualification.

Hermann Cain has made it official, he's in. The media is dealing with this by ignoring him.

I was going to comment on the state of things, but Jay Tea over at Wizbang beat me to it, and is doubtless a better wordsmith than I am, but the gist of it is that whomever the Republicans run doesn't have to be better than Jesus Christ, he only has to be better than the incumbent. The media will, of course, take exception:

4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. Alinsky's example is controversial, but effective -- the Christian Church has never lived up to all the rules of Christianity. Saul Alinsky- Domestic Terrorist

By demanding that the Republican be perfect, and harping incessently on his shortcomings, the media draws attention away from the fact that in a truly just society, the Democrat would be doing consecutive life terms, breaking rocks on short rations.

Guns and Money

In this case lots of money.
This matched pair features a bird on the front sight that pops up, flaps, moves its beak, and sings no two songs alike, when the trigger is pulled. Finished in lacquer, with tastefully placed diamonds and gold detailing, Christies expects these two to fetch up to $2.5M for the pair.

Lacking a good tactical IWB holster set, I think you could snap these babies up for as little as $2M. If she didn't already have a Ruger Mk 2 of her own, I'd snag these up in a heartbeat for the little lady. What woman wouldn't love to have these in her gun safe?

H/T WSJ.

Voting Patterns

Here's a couple of maps that I find interesting. The first
shows the voting patterns in the '08 election.

The second, thanks to the WSJ, (subscription may be required)
shows the states that require or ask for some form of ID before letting you vote. Correlation between the Blue states in the first map, and the white ones in the second isn't perfect, but is strikingly close. Some of the state shown in yellow here have instituted this requirement only recently.

Who knows, maybe the Dems protests that requiring I.D. to vote suppresses voter turnout may be true. The obvious solution is to set up more voter registration booths along the southern border and at every graveyard, although it may raise eyebrows outside of Arkansas at how alike so many democrats look.

15 Minutes Of Fame

An outfit in New York that makes video productions for cable channels is planning a series on people who invent and build things. Somehow they got wind of me, via the pedal air gun.

I've ratted out some of my unindited co-conspirators too. I understand this is to go on the Sci-Fi channel when or if it comes to fruition. Watch, and find out why engineers should never be unemployed.

Marshall Mcluhan once suggested, back in the 70's, that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. My experience is that you get your 15 minutes in 10-second installments, and over a rather lengthy span of time.

For Want Of A Tail...

From the WSJ.com, Taranto reports:

Heads or Tails?
"The tail of the disabled Navy chopper left behind in the Usama bin Laden raid in Pakistan will be handed back to the United States sometime Tuesday, U.S. Sen. John Kerry announced Monday during a trip to Islamabad," FoxNews.com reports.

But the story leaves out the crucial detail, namely what the haughty, French-looking former junior senator from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam, had to give up to get the tail.

Does he still have the hat?

The jokes just write themselves, don't they? I mean if we wanted to send someone to Pakistan for a piece of tail, shouldn't it have been Bill Clinton? And yes, we know some men will give a lot for such a prize...

O.K. I'll quit it. For the moment.

Judicial Selection

As the field of presidential wannabes begins to coalesce, we begin to find out things about their pasts. Now admittedly this is more likely to happen with the Republican candidates since the press has no interest in vetting Democrats, just electing them, but the rise of the New Media, in the form of the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, et.al. has changed the rules.

The video I linked to regarding Newt Gingrinch and Nancy Pelosi, for example. And now this: In Indiana, appellate court judge Steven David has ruled that citizens have no right to resist an unlawful entry into their homes by the police. This ruling overturns established law going back to the Magna Carta itself, which was the inspiration for the fourth amendment barring searches or seizures without a warrant.

The peasantry are rightfully up in arms, and are demanding his head on a pike, or at least his removal from office. As a recent appointee, he is up for a retention vote in 2012 so they may well get their way on this one, but who, I hear you ask, appointed such a doofus?

Governor, and presidential wannabe, Mitch Daniels!

Executives sometimes make bad picks for judgeships, Nixon appointed Stevens who turned out to be a bastion of leftie thinking for way too long, and Eisenhower commented that Earl Warren was the worst mistake he ever made, but we are owed at least a good yarn regarding the thinking, if any, that went into this appointment especially by someone who may well get to appoint judges to the Supreme Court.

H/T to Irons In The Fire