MaxRedline

Interesting Case: Is Incest OK?

Coming out of the EU is the case of a German brother and sister who are suing for their right to continue as husband and wife. 

Patrick Stuebing, 31, and his sister Susan Karolewski, 23, have four children together - two of which have disabilities.

The couple's lawyers claim that the law forbidding incest is an "infringement of the fundamental right to sexual self-determination, and thus unconstitutional".

While the couple claim that they didn't meet until they were adults and subsequently fell in love, the question here should involve the extent to which so-called sexual self-determination affects the greater society.  Their chosen defense, employing a "sexual self-determination" construct, implies that sexuality is self-determined, rather than a pure function of genetic makeup.  Should their standard prevail, homosexual activists stand to lose, because many of their arguments to date have been predicated upon nature, rather than nurture or some combination thereof.

A decision upholding the perspective of self-determination would amount to a crippling blow to the activists - while effectively undermining scientific and social proscriptions involving incest.

This is a lose-lose lawsuit.

Feel The Heat!

Ahh...anthropogenically- caused global warming (AGW).  It's All Your Fault™.

WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.

According to official data, in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that?

At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: "This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic," and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we've seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly, and they have not grown for a long time.

Oddly, growing numbers of scientists are suggesting (despite the fact that such views may cost them funding) that maybe we ought to hold off on that whole cap-and-trade CO2 thing.  Increasingly, it appears as though a global cooling trend has once again surfaced.

This is completely at odds with the AGW religion, which holds that as humans continually spew CO2 into the air, the planet heats up and we're all gonna die.

Imagine that!  Our planet goes through the same cycles as every other planet in the solar system, and humans aren't nearly as important as those Leftists with huge ego issues would have you believe.

Cystic Fibrosis Isn't "Inclusive" Enough

OTTAWA -- The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.

Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it.

You can see how this would be a problem.  After all, it affects mostly white guys.  This is a shot in favor of "diversity".  Who cares?  It's just a bunch of white folks.

Now, cutting off a charity devoted to sickle-cell anemia - well, that'd be different.  That'd be "racist".  Because SCA affects blacks.

Question:  Is this "higher education" - or "higher vegetation"?

Agents Of Change

Obama's been busily packing his inbound administration with Agents Of Change - which, curiously, appear to be mostly Clintonistas.  However, the latest Clintonista under consideration for an Obama administration post seems to be a bit controversial. 

Until now, Lewinsky was one of the few high-profile figures from the Clinton Presidency who had not been recruited for the incoming Obama team.

Some folks are outraged by the very idea, and The Little Missus reportedly isn't at all keen on it.  But New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who broke with the Clintons over his endorsement of Mr. Obama, said that Lewinsky was "a fresh face" with "a lot to offer."

That may be the understatement of the year.

The Real Palin Interview

Okay, you've seen all the hyped up junk that MSNBC tried to pass off as a "story".  You saw the rotating chyrons with derogatory messages and you heard the "reporter" intoning that the footage has been blurred because of its "graphic" nature.

The original interview footage, however, as aired by KTUU tv, didn't have any of that hysteria.  Tellingly, Mrs. Palin states toward the end of the interview that "I'll probably be criticised for this, too, but at least it's fun" or words to that effect.

Must Not Have Got It Right The First Time

Forget all the doom and gloom they keep shoveling at you: Oregon's economy is doing great; the state's positively flush with cash.  Gresham’s urban renewal agency has won a $3 million grant to rebuild a Rockwood MAX station.  Where'd they get this cash?  Why from the state, of course. 

Here's how it works:  teams of highly-compensated "planners" design a light-rail line.  Contractors are hired to build it exactly according to plan.  The plan doesn't pan out.  Get money from the state for a do-over.  See if that plan pans.

The grant will pay for more than half of the $4.95 million project – including new eastbound and westbound platforms, improved lighting, new security cameras, new ticket vending machines, other security measures, public art and track treatments such as cobblestones or bricks to make it look more urban. Tracks now running through Gresham are surrounded by gravel and look more like freight rails, said Rebecca Ocken, urban renewal manager.

A few issues, here:  why are urban renewal funds paying for new ticket machines for TriMet?  In fact, why are such funds being used to pay for any of this?  It's TriMet's light rail line; let them pay for maintenance and upgrades.  Chances are, if they collected a fare from one in ever 15 "passengers", they'd be able to cough up the change on their own.

And why should urban renewal funding be used to pay for "track treatments" and other aesthetic junk?  It's a train track.  Is there some compelling reason why it shouldn't look like a train track?

And just how much are you paying Rebecca to be an "urban renewal manager"?

I Fart In Your General Direction

So said the Metro "planners", the City of Portland "planners", the Multnomah County "planners", and the State of Oregon "planners".

So said the Portland City Council and the director of their department of "sustainability".  So said the Multnomah County Commissioners, and the director of their department of "sustainability".  So said Metro's "leaders", and the director of their department of "sustainability".

And the list goes on and on.  Keep paying.  It's not as though you have any choice.  They're aristocracy.

"The historical rationale for giving government employees better benefits was that they didn't get paid as well," says Jim Edholm, president of Better Benefits Insurance Inc., a benefit-consulting firm based in Andover, Mass. "That has long since lost its validity. Those employed by government agencies tend now to have richer total compensation packages than those in virtually any private industry."

Unintended Consequences

The feds have spent billions of dollars in recent years building a fleet of 112,000 alternative-fuel vehicles to serve as a model for a national movement away from fossil fuels.  Just one teeny little problem with that: it ain't happening.  Over 92% of those vehicles are burning regular gas.  And it gets worse:

The latest generations of alternative vehicles have compounded the problem. Often, the vehicles come only with larger engines than the ones they replaced in the fleet.

The Postal Service illustrates the problem. It estimates that its 37,000 newer alternative-fuel delivery vans, which can run on high-grade ethanol, consumed 1.5 million additional gallons of gasoline last fiscal year because of the larger engines.

The vehicles that would allow the agency to meet federal mandates were available in six- and eight-cylinder models -- not the four-cylinder variety it traditionally purchased. Alternative fuel was used less than 1 percent of the time in 2007-2008.

For years, federal agencies ignored EPAct. They fulfilled the 75 percent purchasing requirement only after 1999, when several environmental groups filed a lawsuit to force the buys.

Let's review:

1. Politicians got involved.  They issued a mandate that 75% of agency vehicles must be able to run on alternative fuels.  They had - if you adhere to the tenets of the Religion of Global Warming™ - the admirable intention of leading the nation away from dependence upon so-called fossil fuels.
2. Being politicians, they didn't know what the heck they were doing.  They just issued the mandate and collected environmeddle brownie points.
3. Unbeknownst to the politicians, four-cylinder models capable of using their mandated fuels were unavailable.

4. Agency bureacrats knew this, and therefore ignored the mandate until

5. Environmeddlists got involved.  They, of course, litigated; demanding that the mandate be implemented.

6. Agencies then complied; purchasing vehicles with larger engines that were capable of handling alternative fuels.  Therein lay the loophole: the vehicles were to be capable of running on alternative fuels - nothing in the mandate stated that they must.  Thus, running on regular gasoline, these larger-bore vehicles proved to be less fuel-efficient than the four-bangers that the agencies had wanted to buy in the first place.  Consequently, the federal program -- known as EPAct -- has sometimes increased gasoline consumption and emission rates, the opposite of what was intended.

Some folks believe that this is how health insurance should be handled in America.

An Upside To The Economic Situation

Mexican emigration has dropped by 42%.  Most such emigrants head north into the USA, then send money earned here back home; a phenomenon known as "remittance".  Remittances have accounted for a considerable amount of Mexico's foreign income - in fact, they are second only to oil exports.  The remittance decline is now beginning to be felt in Mexico's economy.

Moreover, not only has emigration fallen off, it appears that more Mexicans are returning home than are leaving the country.

As a result, Mexico is bracing for a surge of tens of thousands of returnees as decreasing amounts of foreign capital are made available.  This is a significant downside for Mexico, but likely a check in the "plus" column for the American economy.

Of course, the story focuses upon Mexico because the country is home to the vast majority of illegal aliens presently in the USA, but it's reasonable to suspect that similar phenomena are occurring among illegal aliens from other countries in Central and South America, and to a lesser degree, those from Eurasia.

Packin' 'Em In

The gun show at Portland Expo Center was reportedly jammed yesterday with people looking to pack heat.  Standing in line for half an hour just to get in the doors was no deterrent.

Gun owners said they fear President-elect Barack Obama will put tighter restrictions on firearms, making guns one of the hottest tickets in town.

This is a curious phenomenon.  Obviously, a lot of folks voted for Obama and his fellow Democrats - yet now they're scrambling to buy weapons before the Dems do what they've made clear they wish to do?  What a disconnect!