B1042-3 No-Drill Obama

    Consider this: Obama kills oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico (and elsewhere) for pretend safety reasons, but mostly for ideological reasons.  The ideology drives a policy of non-use of petroleum products because, at some intuitive level of understanding, America sucked dry of oil becomes just another impoverished third-world nation.  Some would guess that making the United States a third-world nation is Obama’s ultimate goal.  I’m not so sure.  But other nations (Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, China, and others) will sweep into the Gulf to explore, extract and burn oil products.  So, the net-net on this policy changes only the location of the carbon dioxide producer.  The USA stops burning oil and somebody else picks up the slack elsewhere.  How does that, pray tell, help with “safety,” “global warming,” or “climate change?”  Oh, you say this has nothing to do with “safety,” “global warming,” or “climate change?”  Hmmm...that’s what I thought.

B1042-2 NIMBY

The walk-away escape that is available to the well-connected is not available to ordinary folk:  Five-Dollar-A-Gallon gasoline means absolutely nothing to billionaire environmental idealists.  It means the difference between eating and not eating for the less privileged, however.  To make the relative pain more meaningful for Upper East Side Manhattanites, perhaps they could be charged $1,000 per gallon for gas, in the same way that some Nordic countries impose traffic fines based on the net worth of the violator.  You have the big bucks; you pay much more.  And incidentally, $5 per gallon gas for the average schlub is equal to $1,000 per gallon gas for privileged.  Work the numbers.  Don’t own a car?  Well, that $25 cross-town cab fare for Mister Everyman works out to a cool $5,000 ride for Mister Big Bucks.  Get your wallet out.  It’s about time you started paying for your idealism.  Everyone else is.

B1042-1 Moron Science: Kepler Ten-Bee

    The recent discovery of a rocky planet (designated Kepler 10b) outside our solar system has excited some astrophysicists.  It’s always been their contention that a universe filled to the gizzards with stars must include some with orbiting planets.  Billions and billions of stars, they say, means millions and millions of planets.  Fair enough.  But understand that I’ve just made a logical inference here: it would stand to reason that billions and billions of stars must produce many millions of planets.  The evidence found, however, is otherwise: Stars are found in the billions.  But we have discovered just a handful of planets beyond our own, none of which is particularly suited to the forms of life as we know it.  The ratio: billions of stars to, what, five or six planets?

    Then, of course, those millions and millions of planets - that haven’t been discovered to exist yet - must include a finite number of ‘Goldilocks’ planets with intelligent life that we might be able to recognize as such.  Again, no evidence exists to make such a statement.  But logically - reasonably - such a huge number of planets must include some that bear some faint resemblance to earth.  Why they would produce ‘intelligent life,’ as some assert, remains an unexplained phenomenon.

    As humans we are inclined to make preposterous statements like this: “To date, it appears that we are the only ‘intelligent life’ in the universe based on the non-response we get from space aliens.”  If space aliens exist out there, they are being very quiet and reticent about their existence.  But the fact that no one answers the phone probably means that no one’s home.  And until we have evidence otherwise, we cannot make wild statements about probabilities of life- much less ‘intelligent life’ - existing out there.

B4027-2 So Smart She's Dumb

I noticed a chirpy 22-year-old talking about her new car.  She is a recent graduate of a prominent U.S. Midwestern university with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing.  Her tuition, room-and-board, and incidental fees for the four year program was a cool $40,000 per year (give or take a bit).  I’m not sure exactly, but I suspect that this bright girl went to school on a full ride scholarship - that is, someone else paid her freight for her schooling.

Well, now she’s graduated and employed at a nearby hospital making the big bucks.  So she bought a brand new Japanese car, or to be more accurate, she entered into a long term financing agreement to take part of her salary each month and to send it (ultimately) to Japan.

I’m sure in her old age, Japan will pay for her pension and retirement costs.  Her problem - the same one facing countless Americans who throw good money after bad at China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc.  - is that of staying employed until it is time to retire.

Oh, did I mention that she’s a bright girl?

B4027-1 The "Progressive Program"

Watch the Chameleon at work in the next few months:

1.    Begin by citing some quasi-legitimate environmental concern, i.e., the massive ‘BP Oil spill” in the Gulf of Mexico.

2.    React to that concern by, say, banning all off-shore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, on the East Coast, on the West Coast, in Alaska, etc.  Even where oil spills are minimal or non-existent (say in South Dakota), slow down the permitting process to prevent crude oil from coming to the market.

3.    Wait until drill rig operators tow their rigs to West Africa or other profitable locations around the world.  Pretend to be “very concerned about environmental spills.”  Direct Federal agencies to “study the problem.”

4.    As the “economy” recovers a bit and gasoline prices begin to rise, keep a very firm choke hold on domestic crude oil supplies.  Continue to purchase foreign crude from nations that actively hate the United States, i.e., Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.  Make sure that U.S. treasure is transferred to nations actively seeking to harm the U.S.  Give them the funds to make that destruction happen.

5.    Then when the prices go north of $3.00 per gallon (12-27-10: on this date average U.S. gasoline prices are $3.05 per gallon), begin demonizing the oil industry as greedy and rapacious.  Call for congressional investigations of “windfall profits,” etc.  Pretend to be concerned that “the oil industry is destroying the economic recovery.”

6.    Give endless - doltish -  left-right, left-right, left-right Teleprompter speeches decrying the fact that the United States of America is being held hostage by the oil industry.  Tell everyone that you “are very concerned.”  Pretend that the United States should “invest in affordable alternative energy,” such as, wind turbines (manufactured in China), or photovoltaic solar cells (manufactured in China).  Did I mention that  China is another country that hates the USA?  When pertinent criticisms are offered, dismiss them all as “failed Republican policies of the past."

7.    Begin a Federal take-over of the oil industry in the United States.

8.    Wait for the USA to become a Third World nation.  It will not take long.

9.    Just in case you weren’t counting, folks, we are on Step #5 right now.

C3001-62 Thankfulness: Contentment & Joy

 I am thankful for every cheerful person who crosses my path and touches me with her contentment and joy.  And like a melody stuck in the mind, those notes of contentment and joy play throughout the rest of the day.

B0637-1 Drinking in Wisconsin

Recently my sainted son-in-law sent me the following piece by comedian Lewis Black:

    “I love Wisconsin. I love coming here. I perform here a lot, because I've discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. It's - you're insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere in the country. Nobody pays less for liquor than you! What'd you, wh- ho- HOW? I don't know if you're using that farm subsidy money, or if you're just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is insane. (from the audience) "It's volume, Lewis!" Is it volume? It's unbelievable. It's staggering! I come here 'cause basically if I spend four days here drinking, even with the plane ticket it's cheaper than drinkin' in New York! How do you know when it's New Year's? That's the big mystery to me! What's the difference? I've been in bars here, and it's like New Year's every night! Oh, New Year's, that's when w-w-we drink with hats on. Now I've been drunker here than anyplace else I've been in my life. And remember this: you are not, you are not alcoholics. You, and my hat is off, are professionals.”

     I’m really surprised that someone could still write about Wisconsin’s drinking culture.  I was almost certain that the binging had ended there some 30 to 40 years ago.  If it still exists today, that’s amazing in light of the Nanny State’s efforts to ban anything and everything that some dyspeptic drudge thinks is harmful in any way, shape or form.
     I told my friend a few Sundays ago about the drinking culture in Wisconsin that I remembered from my younger days.  He laughed and told me that his Virginia teen and young adult years were filled with the same wild insobriety.  But then he added that things had changed there because of drunk driving laws.  On balance, he thought that the DUI laws were beneficial because they had saved lives.  When I told him that I didn’t agree with him, he was shocked.  “I don’t believe you,"  he said.
     You see, my high school years were filled with trips to Olsen’s Gas Station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to look at wrecked cars.  Back then, the word would spread quickly that someone had “totaled his car,” and everyone would flock to Olsen’s to review the remains.  In some eerily Darwinian manner, the inept drunk drivers had rolled their cars - six times bumper to bumper was always a very good number - and took themselves out of the gene pool.  And that only made things more secure for the better adapted drinkers.  Our comedian friend is so right about Wisconsin drinkers not being alcoholics: little by little, many there learned to function adequately with a belly full of beer and to display a behavior that would be considered woefully beyond the pale in almost any other state.
     It was a cultural thing.  I'm told that Wisconsin drinkers consumed 10 million cases of brandy per year back then.  Understand that: it was one quarter of the total annual production of brandy in the United States.  And it was consumed in just one state!
     I remember going to Connecticut on a field service trip for a machine tool company I worked for, and like any good Cheesehead, I found myself in the Holiday Inn bar late at night.  One of my co-workers was a big beer-gut Wisconsin farmer and he had ordered “a shot of brandy.”  The bartender didn’t have any shot glasses and, after looking at his display of liquor bottles, he told him that he didn’t have any brandy as well.  The farmer pointed to his bottle of Courvoisier.  He told him that Courvoisier was brandy.  “Just give me a shot of that,” he said.
     The bartender didn’t have any suitable glasses and he finally settled for one of those double old-fashion glasses.  The farmer told him to “dump a couple of shots” into the glass.  He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and poured the contents down his throat.  “Do it again,” he said.  The bartender stood there, shocked, with his mouth open.  He poured again.  The farmer tossed that down as quickly as the first glass.  The bartender called out to another man sitting at the bar and said, “Hey, Charlie, check this guy out.”  He poured another double and told the farmer to show Charlie how he drank.  The farmer pounded that one down as well - just like it was an everyday thing.  Those folks in Connecticut had never seen anything like it in their lives.  People there drank mixed drinks one after another.  But nobody ever drank anything straight.  Pretty soon different patrons were vying to buy the farmer glasses of brandy just to see him drink them.  He had become a circus act.  When he had knocked off half a fifth of booze, the farmer stood up and told everybody he was going to “hit the hay,” and sauntered out of the bar as if he hadn’t had a single drop to drink in a fortnight.  Yeah.  A true professional who had survived Olsen’s wrecked car collection.
     I suspect that the Wisconsin drinking culture has now changed.  Perhaps it still exists today as it once was in a slightly edited form in remote and isolated areas.  But it cannot be the same as it was when I was tending bar for my father in the 1960s.  All of the “regulars” then were functional alcoholics, and it never occurred to me that there was anything the least dysfunctional about those people at all.  It’s what you did: you stayed mellow pretty much throughout the day.
     Now, it’s all changed.  The nannies have taken our cigarettes away.  The cops are chasing drunk drivers.  The lawyers want a piece of McDonald’s keister, or at least the fat that fills it out.  Oh, yeah.  No asbestos, no leaded paint, no smoky chimneys on those electrical generating plants - the list goes on.  Always some shushing librarian-type telling the rest of us to shut up and to sit down, or to eat our vegetables and to jog five hundred miles a day.  They really don’t care just what you might happen to think about all that.  And that is the real problem: their concept of a healthy lifestyle is being crammed down your craw without so much as a by-your-leave at all.  Does any one of those nannies ever ask you if you mind?  Do you really think your bacon is safe in the sequestered darkness of your refrigerator?  It’s just a matter of time before those health-nut nannies break into your house to nab your sugar-cured, apple-and-hickory smoked bacon.  Check out the movie, Demolition Man, if you want to see how nannyism is building our aseptic future one silly law after another.
     But sometimes I wonder if all that shushing and hand slapping is really getting to the point.  Recently an Ohio State Highway Patrolman picked up another patrolman and the two of them went speeding down the highway with sirens whining and lights flashing.  They were responding to a call.  A woman ahead of the cops pulled to her right to let them pass and the Highway Patrolman driving the cruiser rear-ended the lady.  All three people were killed in a fiery crash.  Subsequent investigation revealed that the driver of the cop car had a 0.8 percent alcohol content in his bloodstream - legally drunk here in Ohio - while he was on duty!  Yeah.  While he was on duty.
     So, what’s the point of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) when cops booze it up on the job?  The point is not drinking per se.  Hundreds, even thousands, drink every day in Wisconsin and drive without hurting a single person.  And the point is not driving per se, either, because thousands die each year dead sober, like the lady who pulled over to let the speeding cops pass by.  The real point is responsibility in drinking (or driving) that is consistent with human freedom.  Right now the MADD-inspired laws are draconian in the extreme because they do not allow that responsible discretion in drinking.  Have one drink and the cops will arrest you on a DUI charge.  It’s insane.
     So I say, here’s to those Wisconsin drinkers.  Keep your freedom and have one on me.  And while you’re at it, pass me those donuts, will ya?