Don’t get me wrong.  I have nothing against being wealthy.  In fact, all I really want is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.

But maybe it’s because I grew up one generation removed from the Dust Bowl in a place where wealth was something people kinda kept to themselves.  Perhaps it’s all the baggage of my obsessively-modest Scandinavian anscestory.  It might be that family life on a single middle-class income doesn’t allow for much in the way of excess.

But I’ve never much cared for conspicuous consumption.  And I suspect that even if Premiere Radio hired me to replace Limbaugh in 2016 (which would be a swell idea, if any Premiere execs are reading this!), I wouldn’t change a whole lot.

And by the opposite token, while I do like the environment (especially on weekends like thsi past one in the Twin Cities), the environmental movement is pretty much out of control in this country; the Global Warming scam is only the latest of the con games they’ve played to try to wrest control of society from  the democratic process (for a detailed chronology of the various scams, just look up Paul Ehrlich’s bibliography).   I believe mankind would have to work very hard indeed to destroy the environment.

But that doesn’t mean he should try.

In recent years, conservatives have found some wry ways to stick fingers in the eyes of their liberal nemeses.  I participate (enthusiastically) in things like National Ammo Day, the Tea Parties, and of course Talk Radio (which proves every day that liberals only care about the First Amendment when it comes to saying naughty things and waving ones’ privates in public).

And so I get the spirit behind things like “Carbon Belch Day“, and groups like “Minnesotans For Global Warming” – with a nudge and a wink.

But I get the impression that there are more than a few conservatives who miss the “nudge and a wink” bit.

Look – wealth is good.  Indeed, in the long run wealth, spread over the world, is the only thing mankind can do that will positively affect the environment.  Remember forty years ago, when the same crowd of people who are ramming “Global Warming” down everyone’s throat were doing the same thing with “overpopulation”  (I do.  It gave me nightmares when I was seven years old), and demanded the same sort of response (global government action)?  And yet the only thing that actually slows population growth is prosperity; when people don’t need to have kids to ensure their own survival, they have fewer of them.  Likewise – even if we assume that mankind does have an effect on global temperature, it is only generalized prosperity that will prompt the parts of the world that are doing the actual polluting (China and India) to worry more about smog and less about feeding their populations.

Still – and I’m going to take a moment to enforce my theocratic constructs on you – God does ask us all to be good stewards of His creation.  When you’re out hunting, not only should one not slaughter wantonly (state fish and game rules notwithstanding), but one should dispose of their beer cans and jerky wrappers properly.  Likewise, just because one can wreck something, doesn’t mean one should wreck something (a lesson that’s hard to get across to teenagers, but should be quite this hard for adults).

I talked with one “conservative” a few years ago who said it was every conservative’s duty to buy a Hummer, keep their homes at a constant 68 degrees, and create as much trash as possible.

I demurred – not so much because any of them “cause global warming” as…:

It’s expensive as hell, and when it comes to money, I put the “Conserve” into “Conservative”; Hummers are a lot of money that I’d much rather spend on other things. I don’t even have AC; at any rate,the free market has a way of moderating this sort of behavior, at least for me; it’s expensive as hell.

And excuse me but, um, why?  I mean, if spending money and time for the hell of it brings you joy, then knock yourself out, I guess, but I never quite got it.  I’m not going to tell you not  to do it, but it really has less to do with politics than with finding a high-sounding justification for “gluttony”, in the “seven deadly sins” sense of the term.  And naturally, since we have free will, you have every right to be a glutton.  Just tread carefully when trying to ennoble it with some higher purpose it doesn’t deserve.

After 9/11, as the US got ready to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq,the left launched any number of deeply stupid symbolic protests; “Naked Unicyclists for Peace” and the like.  As if unicycling naked – by any definition more of a narcissistic attention-getting exercise than an actual political act of any use – was somehow raised to a form of high political purpose by tacking “…for Peace” onto the end of it.  In other words, it falsely ennobled narcissism and self-centeredness (with, usually, hilarious-yet-nauseating results).

So in all honesty, what makes gluttony-dressed-up-as-politics any better (other than “not having ageing ex-hippies riding unicycles in the nude, of course)?

Again – it’s super-di-duper early.  But as we saw in the last electoral go-’round, there’s really less and less such thing as “too early”; the ’08 race pretty much started at 8AM on November 3, 2004.

So who should be nominated to run for President next time around?  I’m going to hazard a guess that you Democrats have found your Obamessiah, and will be sitting this particular straw poll out, but feel free to nominate a challenger if you’re so inclined (or if Obama’s economic policy has swallowed your job, unlikely as that is in a party that’s mostly government employees, the unemployable, and plutocrats.  Oh, I kid.  I kid.  I left out lobbyists, soft-skills consultants and the young and solipsistic).

Anyway – same rule as the Governor poll.  And I’ll be running the Prez straw poll on Thursday.

UPDATE:  By the way – I’m keeping things on subject here.  Just saying.

It’s waaay early – which is what makes it fun.

It’s time for the first=ever SITD “Straw Poll In The Dark”, where we attempt put a finger on the pulse of that portion of America – smarter-than-average, better-informed and more generous than most – that reads Shot In The Dark.

So let’s take nominations for our first ever, way too early Minnesota Govenor straw poll.  List your nominations; one nomination per person, please.  We’ll poll mostly for Republicans, but we’ll take nominations (and do the straw poll) for all parties (that get more than one nomination, anyway).

I’ll run the voting Wednesday.

Start the nominations!

Over at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project (a group blog that actively solicits defamatory fabrications), Grace Kelly, noted 9/11 truther, thinks  she’s onto something:

One of the strongest differences between progressives and conservations is the reaction to the suggestion of recent movies the Jesus might be just a guy, outstanding by his life and by his teachings. Another variation is that Jesus is the son of God, in the same sense that all humans are children of God.

{{facepalm}}

That’s right, Grace Kelly, 9/11 truther and habitual liar.  Theological debate about the nature, humanity and divinity of Christ started with George McGovern’s nomination.  And it’s purely an American debate.  Why, it’s not as if debates about the nature and divinity of Christ (to say nothing of Mary, the Saints and the Pope) haven’t led the church to divide, fragment, schism, lather rince and repeat for the past 1,600 years or anything.

And I’d very, very, very much like to see you take that “Christ was a guy” bit into a good black southern baptist church sometime.  They might vote “progressive” (I’m puking in my mouth a little as I write that), but you’ll look long and hard for a sympathetic theology, I suspect.

But why?

For progressives, the idea if Jesus might just a guy was interesting and not at all challenging to faith. In fact if Jesus – as an ordinary guy – could do such great things, then it meant that all of us could do more in what we do.

It’s the reverse of that idea – that a divine Christ would threaten their faith – that interests me.  I wonder if some left-leaning Christians don’t chafe at the idea of a 2,000 year old religious figure competing with their current religious icons, Wellstone and Obama?

I think that “power” is the essence of the conservative’s beliefs. So the important essence of believing in Jesus requires the deity power, not how Jesus lived or what Jesus taught.

Which is, indeed, perhaps the most incredibly stupid generalization I’ve ever read about conservatives, ever.

Indeed as I asked questions at “Jesus” stands in conservative gatherings, they did not engage in discussions of key passages of the bible

To be fair to the unnamed “Jesus stand” operators, I’ve met Grace Kelly, and I wouldn’t engage in a serious discussion with her, either.

“Jesus” was a marketing tool, where one simply invoked the name and was saved. The essence of this religion seems to be “what the religion can do for me!” It is not a do-it-yourself kind of religion.

No – correction:  THAT was the most stupid generalization!

But if one has faith, one will eventually find a nugget of truth in even the most (intellectually) desiccated environment:

So what I am seeing is that religion is a projection of what people already believe or want to believe.

Um, yeah.  And so Jesus was just a guy, like Wellstone and Franken and Larry Pogemiller.

Theologians and philosophers will debate the nature of divinity until one day we all find out for ourselves.

But the real question that is beating those theologians and thinkers about the face:  Would a truly loving God really put writing like this in front of His people?

Barack Obama’s liberal ideology, lack of economic acumen coupled with a growing gap between what he thinks America wants (or should want) and what it actually wants, puts him on a Highway to Heckfire^®.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

California offers us a glimpse. Obama calls it Hope^® and Change^®.

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results.

Oops. Too late. We’ve arrived. Obama and Company is on pace to do it in months and months.

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.

Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.

Teleprompters don’t do math.

D’ya suppose Colin Powell’s career as every Democrat’s favorite Republican might be coming to a close?

Colin Powell worries that President Barack Obama is trying to tackle too many big issues at one time and he offers this advice: take a hard look at costs and consider the additional red tape that will be created.

“The right answer is, ‘Give me a government that works,'” the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday. “Keep it as small as possible,” added Powell, who said he has spoken recently with Obama and stays in touch with him. Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year over the GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

If Powell keeps this up, derogatory jokes about black soldiers will suddenly be just as politically correct as jokes about middle-class working mothers and pregnant teenagers are.

(Via KB)

In Steve Van Zandt’s classic 1985 “We Are The World”-era group protest ditty “Sun City”, Eddie Ruffin, joining a group of other singers promising not to play South Africa’s “Sun City” entertainment complex and lamenting the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” (which either property recognized national sovereignty or was prima facie evidence that the US was a racist nation, depending on who you asked), plaintively asked “…someone tell me why are we always on the wrong side?”

I’m starting to know the feeling.

The term “military coup” has gotten a bad reputation in the United States.  Justifiably so; the US was founded at least party with a sense of institutionalized paranoia about the military usurping power from the democratically-elected government.  And most military coups in our lifetimes have been dismal, miserable things, the stuff of banana republics and tinpot dictators.

But some military coups have their values. The Turkish constitution provides for military coups to prevent theocratic takeovers of Islam’s first secular republic.   And two of history’s worst dictators – Hitler and Stalin – rightfully feared military coups against them; Stalin purged his officer corps so ruthlessly it nearly destroyed the Red Army as a fighting force on the eve of World War II; Hitler spent endless time, effort and occasional brutality to bring the aristocratic Prussian Junker officer class to heel, and still came within a whisker of being toppled (in the Von Stauffenberg plot dramatized in the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie). In societies plagued by violent, ruthless homicidal left-wings, the miltiary is sometimes a beacon of sanity; Franco’s Spain was nobody’s paradise, but career soldier Franco’s goal in the ruthless liquidation of the left was to leave Spain ready for democracy.  He was a brutal man, but he, like a lot of soldiers, put his country first.
And, it would seem, if you believe in the rule of law rather than the rule of men (especially currently-fashionably-left-of-center men), the coup in Honduras would seem to be a candidate for “good”, or at least “lesser of two evils”, status.

Pam Geller at AmThink breaks down how very, very wrong the Obama Administration’s response in Honduras has been:

What just happened in Honduras? A military coup, destroying democratic rule? No. What just happened in Honduras was an example of how democracy works – and yet more confirmation that Barack Obama is not on the side of freedom, but of tyranny. The United Nations, the leftopaths in the mainstream media, and the radical U.S. President are trying to paint what happened in Honduras as a coup. It was not. It was a democracy at work, saving itself from a Hugo Chávez-backed takeover.
The real story behind the chaos in Honduras is a huge story that needs to be exposed to the world. And the bottom line is that Obama got it wrong, again.

You have to write real slow to explain some of this stuff to the “Government Uber Alles” lefty community in this country.  Fortunately, Geller breaks it down  well:

Take this hypothetical: imagine that Barack Obama announced that he was going to hold a referendum on legalizing a third term for himself. Imagine that even his attorney general, Eric Holder, advised him that it was illegal. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that holding the referendum was unconstitutional. In spite of that, let’s imagine that Obama coerced the FEC into holding the referendum anyway. Then – let’s further imagine — we found out that Venezuelan strongman Chávez (who has pulled off a similar power grab in his own country) was financing the referendum. What should the Joint Chiefs do in such a case? And if they removed Obama from office, would they be destroying the Constitution or preserving it?

This is exactly what has occurred in Honduras, to a tee. The Honduras Attorney General and their Supreme Court did exactly that – ruled that President Manuel Zelaya’s referendum was unconstitutional. The Honduran Generals did what they had to do. But then Chávez, Zelaya’s friend and ally, announced: “I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert.” And at that point Barack Obama spoke out – to side with Zelaya, Chávez and dictatorship. Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about what was happening in Honduras and called upon that nation to “respect democratic norms.”

What we have here, of course, is a clash of cultures.  Obama is defending “democratic norms”.  Chicago-style.

Obama is on the same side as Chávez, Ortega and the Castro brothers.

If you look carefully, I think you will find many of us were warning you about that before the election.

And the irony is thick. In a press conference on June 23, Obama said: “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs.” He never called upon the Iranian mullahs to “respect democratic norms.” On the contrary, he ostentatiously refuses to “meddle” in Iran, where individuals are courageously risking life and limb for the idea of free elections. Brutal Islamic nazis are crushing dissent, and Obama talks about “lively debate.” Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami spoke out Thursday against what he called a “velvet coup against the people and democracy.” Obama has sided with that coup, while in Honduras, Obama and the whores at the United Nations have no qualms about interfering to back a Chávez proxy. On Tuesday, U.N. General Assembly piled on, condemning the “coup” in Honduras and demanding that Zelaya be returned to office. It passed – by acclamation – a resolution calling upon all member states not to recognize the new government.

For all the left’s barbering about Bush’s alleged plans to abuse Democracy, Obama has done more damage in six months than Bush was accused of trying in eight years.

Color me surprised, but as of this posting, the clear initial winner was “The Senator from New York”

After recounting and recounting however, I was able to arrive at a result more in keeping with the end I had in mind. I will hereby refer to The Senator from New York as Stuart Smalley, and in limited engagements Big Fat Idiot.

Thank you for your participation. I apologize for your disenfranchisement*.

*Yes, that’s a word.

It’s my dad’s birthday today.  I wish I could have made it to ND to celebrate – but for the third year in a row, things just didn’t stack up.

I’ve written about my dad a fair amount over the years; he was a public school teacher for the better part of four decades, back when that meant something; he was just about the best teacher a kid – not just his children, mind you – could hope to have (how good a teacher was he? Try this story in particular on for size)  I’ll hope to write a lot more!

Anyway – Happy Birthday, Dad!

In 2008, 34 Million passengers traveled via Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

Faced with complaints that an estimated 20,000 people show up at the wrong terminal each year, MAC has been considering proposals to change the terminal names on the signs and list the airlines that fly out of each terminal.

In 2008, 34 Million passengers traveled via Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

If 20,000 people can’t make it to the right terminal, that’s 0.059%; less than six in ten thousand people.

The price tag to make sure people get to the right terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has soared to $2.2 million, more than twice the original estimate.

When the revised proposal goes before the committee, Hogan predicted that the new cost estimate will be a consideration in how the vote goes. “But in the big scheme of things, we just spent $3 billion to improve the airport, and if there are still people having trouble getting to the right terminal, that’s a small price to pay.”

The last sentence of that paragraph is rather demonstrative as to why government shouldn’t be in business, health care – or running airports for that matter.

In 2008, 34 Million passengers traveled via Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

Over 90,000 people travel through our airport per day. 20,000 per year can’t discern the difference between “Lindberg” and “Humphrey.”

34,000,000

vs.

20,000

Managing to the exception needlessly costs taxpayers and travelers.

There will always be percentage of people who can’t figure out where they’re going and as the percentages get smaller, the resources to required to remedy the CRISIS(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) increase exponentially. Spending $2.2M of OPM is easy when there is no accountability; no career repercussions for spending resources foolishly.

An expenditure judged to be a waste in a well-run corporation is deemed an “investment” by government.

President BHO enlisted the support of our forefathers against their will in his 4th of July radio address.

He said the same “unyielding spirit” that drove the pioneers and Depression-era workers was needed now to push for a national health care overhaul, make major energy policy changes, and deal with a struggling economy, he said in his weekly address.

“We are not a people who fear the future. We are a people who make it,” he said. “And on this July 4th, we need to summon that spirit once more. We need to summon the same spirit that inhabited Independence Hall two hundred and thirty-three years ago today.”

Yeah, I am pretty sure our forefathers, having fled tyranny, taxation without representation, and the plundering and ravaging of Great Britain were thinking big government, a huge national debt, unfair and burdensome tax codes, an administration seeking to usurp “checks and balances,” post-modern moral relativity, and “dialogue” with the enemies of freedom and human rights. That’s not what drove them to endure the hardships of an oceanic voyage and a revolutionary war.

That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil.

Meeting these extraordinary challenges will require an extraordinary effort on the part of every American. And that is an effort we cannot defer any longer.

…so let’s borrow 800 Billion Dollars. If that’s not a deferral, I don’t know what is. Oh, and not every American. Just the 40% or so that actually pay taxes. True to form, there is no mention of the federal government’s part in our current malaise.

Now is the time to reform an unsustainable health care system that is imposing crushing costs on families, businesses, large and small, and state and federal budgets. We need to protect what works, fix what’s broken, and bring down costs for all Americans. No more talk. (No more talk? Then what do we need Obama for?-JR) No more delay. Health care reform must happen this year.

…because dagnabbit, only 80% of Americans are satisfied with the current system.

One can imagine the disgust John F. Kennedy (“Ask not…”) would have, let alone our forefathers, if they could see rugged individualism replaced by a nanny state, the enabling of bad personal decisions, the welfare rolls both individually and coporate, IOU’s issued by states, the US Federal Government  becoming one of the largest employers in the world, the interpretation or utter disregard for our Constitution by our courts; and more recently what the Obama administration and our liberal congress have proposed in the name of “Progress” in America.

They might have stayed home.

…it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Just remember – Anderson Cooper would have called all of the people above “teabaggers” too.

I was enjoying a rare day off when I flipped on the Hannity show and heard Ann Coulter talking about Sarah Palin’s resignation from the Alaska governor gig.

Her spokesman wouldn’t say why Palin decided to step down, but the announcement stirred speculation that she would focus on a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination for president.

Spokesman Dave Murrow says Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the governor’s picnic in Fairbanks at the end of the month.

Speculation is running amok, of course; some say she’s just taking political life and shoving it (but there are less auspicious weekends for that than the Fourth of July.  Who could blame her?

Others, of course, say she’s clearing the decks for a run in 2012.

As for me?  I don’t think that a run will hurt her one bit – but I’m going to cross my fingers and hope she runs for the Alaska Senate seat open next year.   As we saw this past election, having two years in the Senate no longer disqualifies one for a Presidential run (even with someone with as mediocre a resume as Obama); two to six years learning the Washington ropes would be good additions to her political rap sheet.

Coulter brought up a great point – she noted that Margaret Thatcher grew up as the daughter of a grocer, and had the accent to show for it.  She didn’t talk in the Eton/Harrow/Cambridge accents that the UK’s ruling class learned or affected.  She had to learn to talk that way; it didn’t come naturally.  Likewise, in America while we might be governed by someone with a Texas accent, or one of those Harvard/Boston brogues (described by PJ O’Rourke as sounding like the speaker put the PoliGrip on the wrong side of the dentures), it’s a stretch to see us governed by someone who sounds like Frances McDormand in Fargo.

Palin has a better resume than Obama had this time a year ago; a hitch in the Senate would make her darn near a fantastic candidate.  She just needs to stop droppin’ her “G’s” and try to sound as white and middle-class as Obama does.

…stop by the Minnesota State Capitol grounds for the July 4th Taxpayers Tea Party!  It runs from three-ish until six-ish, I think – plenty of time to fit around cookouts and fireworks!
I’ll be there – I’m speaking, in fact; I’m fairly early in the lineup, which means it goes way uphill fast!

Hope to see you – and lots and lots of your friends – there!

Seems pretty accurate to me.

It’s on the internet, so it must be true.

UPDATE:  By jinkies, I think they’ve seen my comment section!

This isn’t exactly news; it’s almost three years old in fact.  But I just heard about it the other day, as a couple of guys from Kansas (who knew they were still together?) talked about it on the KQ Morning Show; Billie Joe Armstrong has an endorsement deal with Gibson for the reissued Les Paul Junior.

Well, the big news in signature guitars last week [in 2006] was Gibson’s announcement of their new Billie Joe Armstrong Signature Les Paul Junior – an apparently accurate reproduction of the Green Day front-man’s original 1956 LP Junior affectionately known as “Floyd.” (Hehe, you can’t make this stuff up!)

Now, I have nothing against Green Day; truth be told, I like some of their stuff.  Dookie is a great rock ‘n roll record; Nimrod was that plus all sorts of signs that the band wasn’t just a bunch of nutslap punks without a brain; American Idiot proved that they were smart-ish nutslap punks with delusions of intellectual grandeur but who gave us the everlasting gift of the most indelible mental map of the 2000’s liberal, via the spectacle of a bunch of pot-addled barflies yammering about how stupid everyone between the Sierra Madre and the Hudson were; watching bass player Mike Dirndt trying to explain his higher state of awareness through his chiba-monkey’s stammer was one of the better bits of found comedy back in 2006, in those days before Minnesota Progressive Project.  Politics aside, they have an undeniable way with a hook.

But one thing they’re not – with the arguable exception of drummer Frank “Tre Cool” Wright – is really, really great musicians.

Billie Joe Armstrong is a serviceable guitar player at best.  There’s nothing wrong with that; in a power trio (a guitar/bass/drums band, like Green Day), holding down the rhythm is the most important part of the job.  Not only is not everyone an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai or a Richard Thompson – it wouldn’t be a good thing if everyone were.  There’ve been many excellent guitar players who don’t set the fretboard on fire with solo pyrotechnics; Tom Petty, Joey Ramone, Joe Grushecky, John Lennon, Tom Fogerty, Neil Finn, Colin Hay, Paul Stanley, Chrissy Hynde, Joe Strummer – all were perfectly capable guitar players who held down an important place in their various bands, playing rhythm.  All of them are perfectly respectable guitarists.  None of them are renowned as great guitarists, although all of them are good musicians in the same way a second violinist in a string quartet might not get the virtuoso solo nod, but still has to hold down a vital part in the ensemble.

But it used to be that getting a guitar named after you took years of diligent practice and a level of technical accomplishment well above the merely capable.  Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend – they got guitars named after them.

As to the Les Paul Junior?  It’s a single-pickup solid-body single-cutaway; the necks always struck me as hopelessly thick and clunky, and the inflexibility of the one-pickup electronics – one volulme pot, one tone pot, and that’s it – always drove me nuts (although I suppose if you were playing through a modeling amp, like a LineSix, it wouldn’t be such a problem).  Punk rockers loved ’em; Paul Westerberg (a much better guitar player than Armstrong_) played ’em, among many others.

As you know, Johnny Roosh likes to employ fitting nick names for political objects of disregard here at Shot In The Dark and I would once again like to enlist your input.

Posted by Johnny Roosh in HUMOR, Senator Franken| 16 Comments »