MaxRedline

John Allen Muhammad

My bad.  I should never have tried to represent myself at trial.  So please hold off on that whole execution thing.  That whole gig I had going, where I drove around and shot folks while they were putting groceries into their car or filling up their gas tank?  I mean, who knew?  There was locusts, and the sun was in my eyes, and I was abused as a child.  So, y'know, there's no need to get all hasty with this.  Can I get a do-over on the trial thing?

Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection in Virginia's death chamber Nov. 10. Only the high court or Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) can spare him. Muhammad's defense team made an appeal to Kaine on Oct. 22.

Wind Power In Heap Big Trouble

Don't you just hate when it happens?  You try to do a big "green" power project to Save The Planet and all, and then a tribe of indians gets in the way.  Don't they understand the importance of Going Green, of Saving The Planet, of Walking As One With Mother Gaiia?

Oh, wait...that was their thing before AlGore and the bankers and the other guys got involved.

The Wampanoag — the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" — practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

"We, the Wampanoag people, who opened our arms and allowed people to come here for religious freedoms, are now being threatened with our religion being taken away for the profits of one single group of investors," Green said.

The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag claim Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. The tribes say the designation, which would come with new regulations for activity on the sound, is needed to preserve not only their pristine views but ancestors' remains buried on Horseshoe Shoal, where the turbines would be built.

Will the Old Religion trump the New Religion (and the bankers)?

What To Do?

If baseball can't move to Beaverton, then Portland may not get "major league soccer".  This is seen by some as a terrible situation, although as Mike Ditka once noted, "if God had meant for people to play soccer, he wouldn't have given them arms".

If Paulson wants a stadium built for his Beavers to play in, no problem:  let him build it .  The Beavers have been doing okay in a park that was expensively renovated only a decade ago.  Paulson wants to move them out to make way for "major league soccer", which is fine.  He can pay to re-renovate PGE Park, and he can pay for a new Beavers stadium.  The idea of using taxpayer money to build venues so that incredibly wealthy people have a place to put their teams is old and busted.  We've better things to do with our limited cash than to build play-fields for playboys.

They're Called Dimocrats For A Reason

Pew Political IQ Poll: Republicans Consistently More Knowledgeable

When it comes to current political understanding, Pew Research has shown that Republicans consistently outperform Dimocrats, and often by double-digit margins.

A September 2007 quizshowed more Republicans than Democrats could identify even the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

An April 2007 Pew Quizshowed this about partisan difference: "Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high-knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least."

And the latest poll, conducted only days ago, shows Dims continuing their trend of cluelessness.

For Dimocratic politicians, things are getting a little unnerving.  It's starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive.

PERS

Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is once again being given a bit of scrutiny in the Big Zero.  As always, the Zero's way late to the party; most folks who've been paying any attention have seen the issue looming for half a dozen years.  Vallejo, CA has been in bankruptcy proceedings for well over a year, and other cities are waiting in the wings as the drama plays out.

The problems associated with PERS and similar programs don't lie so much with the employees themselves as with the politicians, judges, and other overseers who inserted themselves into the system.  In a proper pension program, the employers would not have any personal financial stake in the program.  Historically, that's been the case in most private-sector programs.  But we're talking about politicians, here.

And they want their cut.

So in Oregon, just about every politician and bureaucrat in every level of government has been enrolled in PERS.  And the benefits paid by PERS are calculated upon the basis of the highest rate of pay received during the course of a career.  Legislators tend to have fairly short careers, but bureaucrats don't.  So when "governor" Kulongoski bumped up the pay of 100 or so of his favorites, he locked them into the higher rates of PERS "compensation".  Hey, it's only money.  It's only Democratic.

One of the interesting features of PERS is that it's a no-lose proposition.  If the people making the bets and running the show happen to lose, it's not a big deal - positive results are guaranteed.  Any shortfalls must be covered by the various governmental agencies.  Sweet!

Ah, but who pays for all of these agencies?  Who ultimately covers the shortfalls of inept administrators?

Who allowed legislators, judges, and others to become part of a pension program in which they have not only a clear interest - but the power to write the rules by which the program operates?

IP Closes Albany

If you held shares in the now-bankrupt entity known as Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, you could have seen this coming a couple of years ago.  The cardboard production industry has gone down the tubes, and it started even before the recession/depression got underway.  It's surprising that IP managed to hold on as long as it did.

But IP was perhaps the backbone of Albany, and so by closing its plant, it is effectively closing the entire town.  Retail, rental, and virtually every other will be hit hard - and in some cases, terminally.  Some are blaming the Republicans, others are blaming the Democratics.  Meanwhile, Oregon's governor is swilling beer in some tavern in Germany.  Hey, it's a paper plant.  It's not as though it had any "green" credentials.

Mystery

A British nuclear energy expert involved in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme died on the spot yesterday after a fall from the 17th floor at Vienna International Centre (VIC), one of the United Nations’ (UN) main headquarters along with New York, Nairobi and Geneva.

A "fall" from the 17th floor?  Yeah, that'd probably do it.  He was probably just checking out the view, and leaned a bit too far....

Burning Down The House

In Stockholm, Sweden, thousands of rabbits are shot each year, and the furry little corpses are sent off to be burned as a source of heating fuel.  Naturally, this has "animal Rights" folks all hot and bothered.  Animal Rights Sweden spokeswoman Lise-Lott Alsenius questioned whether the practice was humane or ethical and suggested neutering the male rabbits as an alternative method of holding down the population.

Ever the source for practical solutions, the AR nuts actually seem to believe that capturing and neutering a few thousand bucks is do-able and worthwhile.  Fine.  When I was a kid, I had an answer for dumb ideas, which I still use to this day with great success.

"You do it first".

The 2nd Amendment Today

The 2nd Amendment is remarkable in its brevity:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Today, however, many in government equate the term, Militia, with kooks such as Ted Kazynski.  In many circles, the term is employed interchangeably with "terrorist".

This past February, the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) issued a report on behalf of the Highway patrol entitled The Modern Militia Movement.  After releasing the report, the agency deleted all records relating to it, in direct contravention of established records requirements.

The report, however, remains in circulation - although the agency claims (1) to have retained no source data regarding the foundations of the report itself, and (2) lack of information regarding the actual author or authors.  These are interesting revelations, in view of the fact that the report has been widely circulated not only among Missouri's top enforcement agencies, but distributed as well to enforcement agencies in other states.

The report advises the profiling as possible terrorists all individuals with concerns or interests in the areas of unemployment, taxes, illegal aliens, gangs, border security, abortion, cost-of-living, gun restrictions, FEMA, the IRS, and/or the Federal Reserve.

The advisory report futher noted that attractants for potential domestic terrorists include gun shows, shortwave radios, action movies, Tom Clancy novels, and "right-wing" candidates such as Ron Paul, among other tell-tale signs.

The problem with MIAC and related centers distributed across the USA is the observable lack of accountability; regarded as "fusion centers" and working closely with DHS and other agencies, they bring together widely-ranging bits of data for "analysis" that may or may not stand up to scrutiny.  By the very nature of these centers, however, scrutiny is precisely disallowed.  By failing to retain source data and records of analysis/authorship, the validity of the reports and advisories generated by the centers cannot be verified.

The potential for negative effects upon the freedoms of Americans is substantial, as is the likelihood for incorporation of fabrication into the reports and advisories released by such centers.

Congratulations Are In Order

While many claim that he's done nothing to deserve it, the fact remains that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Congratulations are in order.