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Fire Up The Grill!

And that's precisely what's wrong with Memorial Day: in the eyes of many, it's just another three-day weekend - albeit one that kicks off the start of summer. Don't forget the big Memorial Day "sales" at the mall!

That's all there is to it?

Memorial Day was, for many years, observed on May 30, which made it a truly special day. A growing number of people are coming to the conclusion that the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 was a mistake. That Act set official observances of a number of holidays, including Memorial Day, on a Monday - in effect, creating extended weekends. That's all well and good for Presidents Day, but it demeans the entire purpose of a Memorial Day

Some holidays simply shouldn't be tampered with, and are deserving of recognition on their own. Just as Veterans Day is November 11 and Thanksgiving Day is the fourth Thursday of that same month, so Memorial day should properly be returned to its May 30 observance. It shouldn't be "hurry on into Mattress Planet" day.

 

Why People Hate Vegans

News flash: it doesn't make you look better, though your cheeks will turn rosy red after somebody thwaps you upside the head with a frozen salmon.

There Are Way Too Many Planners In This State

The time has come to start kicking them to the curb, because the state just isn't big enough for the planners and the rest of us. Case in point:

A Marion County planner once attempted to halt Willamette Valley Vineyards’ event business and close its catered kitchen, Bernau said. 

Idiocy. Wine tourism employs a lot of people, and the guests pump big bucks into Oregon's economy. Wine and food not only go together, they belong together. For one thing, pairing different foods with different wines provides guests a basis for comparison and for discovery otherwise unavailable to them. It also enhances safety - driving around on winding country roads with a few tastes of wine, absent a food component, seems like a recipe for trouble.

Moreover, vistors to winery events often drop significant amounts of cash into other local businesses, contributing to the local economy. Planners are an impediment to economic recovery.

Those Ignorant Deniers

For a long time, now, skeptics of the Religion of Man-Made Global Warming have been derided by the acolytes as scientifically illiterate. However, it turns out that according to a new study, if anybody needs to bone up on science, it's the alarmists.

A study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that people who are not that worried about the effects of global warming tend to have a slightly higher level of scientific knowledge than those who are worried. 

Where is your Gore now?

Alternative Energy

Out at the southern junction of I-5 and I-205 near Tualatin, Oregon sits a small solar array, from which politicians reaped political hay. It just helps to power a few of the lights and signs around the interchange, but of course was hailed as bold and innovative and green and sustainable and doubtless some additional political buzzwords were tossed around at its ceremonial opening.

But if these clowns were truly serious about innovation and boldness and all of that, an opportunity to prove it sits only a few yards from the pitiful little array: if they're serious about solar, where better to place it than in the freeways themselves? Imagine miles of solar cells, embedded in many of the freeways and streets in the Portland metropolitan area, powering EV charging stations, businesses, and homes. Power from other sources could be reduced - except of course at night - and actual, significant, "green power" generated. The problem with career politicians is that they always think small.

Solar Roadways has built a 12-foot-by-12-foot prototype. Not only does the panel generate energy, it also lights up, creating a safer nighttime driving experience. 

It's The Same Everywhere

Lest you think that ignoring news, like the largest lawsuit ever brought in the USA, or simply making news up is unique to American media, here's a "report" on a sandstorm in Romania:

The reporter, from the Realitatea news channel, was attempting to recreate the earlier stormy conditions for his live weather report from the country's Black Sea coast. Before being found out, the presenter had told viewers: 'The wind blows with incredible power, there are moments when it is impossible to stand up here. 'The wind blows the sand at over 60km per hour. It blew away the beach umbrellas and the tourists had to leave in a hurry.'

Campaign Barky's Out Of Ideas

He's really into recycling, apparently, as this is at least the fourth iteration of his soviet-style intimidation campaign - the only thing he changes about it is the name, which this time around is "Obama Truth Team". As usual, he wants folks to rat out their co-workers, neighbors, or anybody else that isn't parroting back the official line of his wonder and his glory. In view of the fact that neither Barky nor anybody in his administration appears capable of telling the truth, the name of the latest site seems a bit disconcerting; it just doesn't have the resonance that his previous efforts, Attack Watch, Fight the Smears, and Flag.gov. commanded.

Oh, and his 2012 campaign poster's out:

Countdown Underway, Dems Abort

It's coming down to the wire in the $18 million Wisconsin Recall (that's just how much it's costing taxpayers to finance the Democrats' tantrum), and DNC chair Dummie Debbie Wassername-Schlitz was on the Sunday morning talk shows, making excuses up and trying to minimize the effect that a loss would have in regard to the general election.

“I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Wasserman Schultz said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program. “It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin.”

Honestly? That's an oxymoron; Democrats don't do honesty. The only thing at which they excel involves finding ways to waste tax dollars.

So, where's the media on all of this? Oh, right:

One sign that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is likely to win the election on June 5 is the sudden disappearance of national media attention to the race. The networks and newspapers that gave wall-to-wall coverage to protests in the streets of Madison in the spring of 2011 and excitedly reported on the drive to collect signatures to force a recall have gone relatively quiet as a succession of polls show Walker leading by 5 points or more.

As one commenter observed:

BIL and sister, organic farmers who identify mostly with the Green Party, are pissed as heck at the Democrats for throwing a temper tantrum and causing this expensive recall election in Wisconsin. My family is a little nuts but they are good people who work hard and are very frugal with their money. When you lose the Green Party’s sympathy in Wisconsin… well.

Five Years Of Change

Las Vegas provides an excellent nutshell of what happened to housing in America as a result of the machinations of Barney Frank and his pals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

In 2000, the city was on a path of robust growth. But in 2003, the age of “the 80-20” dawned, a scheme that allowed buyers to sign on for 80 per cent mortgages and get the other 20 wherever they could — banks didn’t care where. It was effectively a 100 per cent mortgage with zero down.

That changed everything.

Suddenly it became a right, not a privilege, for anyone to buy a house, says Fahrny’s business partner Suzie Marquardt — “whether they could pay back the loan or not.”

By 2004, people in Vegas were standing in line for days to put their name on a list to make an offer on a new house.

“Investors were buying up new houses and builders didn’t care who bought them. They just couldn’t build them fast enough,” Fahrny recalls.

Bidding wars broke out, people were offering tens of thousands of dollars over list prices, and agents were bringing “flowers and candy” trying to get sellers to take their offers.

Locals were getting daily mass mail-outs from banks. Flyers coaxed customers to refinance, take money out of their homes and buy a car, go on vacation, buy another house.

When the bust came, starting in 2008 - a mere five years after Barney and his buddies had ignited the firestorm, panicked banks went into foreclosure overdrive, desperately trying to recoup some of their bad loans. Even the largest stooped to tactics such as faking titles to speed the foreclosure process along, and with understandable - if not necessarily good - reason: 

“They basically had Excel spreadsheets of mortgages, and then started trading among themselves and there was no real record of where each mortgage went. So now we’re in this predicament. Who really owns what? We don’t really know.”

American anger was directed toward the banks, and while not entirely unjustified, it was certainly misplaced; the banks were merely following orders, and writing loans that prior to 2003 they would have declined. The anger, by rights, should have been largely directed at Democrats, who peddled the idea that, rather than being the American Dream, home ownership was a fundamental right.

It's surprising that so many fail to recognize that about Democrats: they're forever peddling non-existent "rights" even as they systematically seek to remove our liberty.

 

World Class

No, not Barky. The chicken.

Blacks Flee Blues

Although they've been voting for progressives, liberals, or whatever the Democrats are calling themselves these days, the data are inarguable: blacks in America are voting with their feet, these days, and they're leaving "blue states" in droves. Are they racist? How can they leave the Progressive environments that their betters have established for them?

When whites leave failing blue cities and states, the pundits call this racism: all those white Californians fleeing Nancy Pelosi’s utopia for less ambitious jurisdictions where ordinary people can do things like get jobs and buy homes are clearly pathetic trailer trash hicks too dumb, too selfish and above all too racist to understand the gloriously multicultural blue beauty of California today.