No link, because it was a video on FOX.
You know the Greens. These are the nut cases screaming for “renewable energy” Sun, wind, geothermal and all that. They say it will solve Americas energy crisis.
But when it comes right down to it, the Greens don’t want these alternative energy sources either. They complain that the rotors on the wind turbines kill birds. They whine about how the desert solar and geothermal collection sites “damages the environment.” And on, and on, and on, ad nauseum.
Which provides the strongest evidence that we should tell the Greens to shut the hell up and just go away. You’re not happy when we’re not green, and when we go green, you’re still not happy.
Don’t go away mad, just go away.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: 3 Percent Fee On Cell Phones Started 107 Years Ago
For those of you who’ve been through public schools, back in 1898, the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in February 1898, and the United States used it as a reason to go to war with Spain. The only mention you might have heard about it was Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan hill. Of course, the why and everything else about it was obscured.
But I digress. In order to help pay for the Spanish-American War, the United States levied a “temporary” luxury tax on telephones to help pay for the war. But of course, we are still paying for it today.
Which just goes to prove there is no such thing as a “temporary tax.” And you wonder why I like the tax cuts. It puts more of my money back in my pocket.

I should have talked about this earlier, but I didn’t feel good. I’m talking about how the State of Maryland has passed a Labor-backed law that requires certain employers to do certain things. Namely, any company that has over 10,000 employees and doesn’t spend at least 8% of their payroll on health care. Only one company fills that criteria: Wal-Mart.
My advice is to cut their payroll to 9,999, forcing 7,000 employees out of work. Let’s see what Labor does then. Will they force a new bill lowering the number? Or maybe Wal-Mart should just close all of its stores in Maryland, but I wouldn’t suggest that. Labor wants Wal-Mart out of business, and closing stores in 30 states (the number of states that are also considering similar legislation) would domino into Wal-Mart going out of business.
Wal-Mart stores have refused to organize, meaning Labor has come in and tried to Unionize the store, and the employees have kicked them out.
Good for them. Where workers are Unionized, most of the time you get minimum work for maximum pay. It’s impossible to fire an Unionized employee, except for gross violations and even then it’s damn near impossible.
Labor is on its way out. The percentage of Unionized workers is shrinking every year.

It seems that Liberals have this problem about double standards. They can do anything, but not Conservatives. White House Accuses Gore of Hypocrisy.
From the article:

Gore, in a speech Monday, called for an independent investigation of the administration program that he says broke the law by listening in _ without warrants _ on Americans suspected of talking with terrorists abroad.
Gore called the program, authorized by President Bush, “a threat to the very structure of our government” and charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a “direct assault” on a federal court set up to authorize requests to eavesdrop on Americans.

While I do not agree 100% with what is going on, I am reaching an understanding of the situation.
But when Al starts screaming about the Bush Administration doing things that are almost exactly what the Clinton Administration did, well that’s that old Liberal double standard.
I think Al needs to start defending what Bill did, not attacking what W has done.

I am not surprised by this: At the Globes, ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Takes Top Awards.
All of these awards shows are the entertainment industry telling each other how wonderful they are. They have very little to do with reality. And this just proves it.
‘Brokeback Mountain’ is the story of two gay cowboys. While this is a hit in Hollywood, it has flown like a lead balloon in the rest of the country. It’s only picked up something like $30 million, a pittance as far as major films go. If it wasn’t filmed on a shoestring budget, it would have lost money. As such, it is one of the few profitable movies.
I am one of the vast majority of people who will never see this movie. I am not against Gays, but I have no interest in their lifestyle either. It does not interest me seeing two men in a physical love affair.

I just found this on Say Uncle. Blagojevich, Daley press for statewide ban on assault weapons.
This is what they want to do:

The law would prohibit the manufacture, possession and delivery of semiautomatic weapons, assault weapon attachments and the 50-caliber assault rifle.

Now, let’s get this straight. Chicago has such strict gun laws that retired police officers cannot carry their old service weapons. And Chicago is neck-and-neck with Washington D.C. (with similar gun laws) for the murder capitol of the nation.
And it made the local news yesterday that there is a bill in the Mississippi Legislature that says residents can shoot-to-kill someone on their property and not be liable to lawsuits by the criminal or their family. I promise you that there will be a dip in home invasion robberies in Mississippi when that law passes.
Let me spell out the corollary: Where the citizens are armed and have the power to dispatch criminals that are threatening themselves, their family or their property, then there isn’t much crime. When the citizens are disarmed and must rely on the police for protection, the criminals operate with impunity.
Where would you rather live?

Walter Cronkite, “The most trusted man in America,” has shown his Liberal stripes again. Cronkite: U.S. Should Cut-And-Run in Iraq.

“It’s my belief that we should get out now,” Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters.
[...]
“We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States,” he said. “Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home.”
Iraqis should have been told that “our hearts are with you” and that the United States would do all it could to rebuild their country, he said.
“I think we could have been able to retire with honor,” he said. “In fact, I think we can retire with honor anyway.”

We are there for an extended period of time, until the Administration is sure that Iraq can stand on it’s on and not degenerate into a civil war. Terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda can easily move into stateless countries, such as Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq if we let them. Iraq needs to stand as a shining beacon of light to the Islamic world, as the United States shines as a beacon to every country in the world.
Then you have defeatist Liberal idiots like Cronkite. Who want us to fail, who think we have no right to win, who want terrorism to spread throughout the world. It’s not what they say they want, but their actions reveal their true intentions more than their words.

I watched 24 last night, and all I can say is WOW. Two major characters killed, another seriously wounded in the first 10 minutes. Jack is definitely back, and this season already promises to kick the other four seasons ass!
I need to start buying the other seasons of 24 so I can enjoy them again. And along with Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, my off-line TV watching is taking up way too much time.
If you have never heard of 24 before, it’s a season wrapped up in 24 one hour increments. All events occur in “real time,” which means that you are frequently switching back and forth between characters and sets as things happen. Each show contains one hour of the day, and you need to be up to speed with each prior episode in order to understand what is going on. You can’t watch this as independent episodes, you’ll get confused.
FOX has an excellent franchise here, and you don’t know how you can top the prior years. You’ve had the attempted assassination of a Presidential candidate, a nuclear weapon exploded on US soil, a bioweapon attack, a coordinated terrorist attack that did a nuclear reactor meltdown and almost nuked Los Angeles, and now bringing Jack back from the dead. Even the writers don’t know where these story arcs go, they write the episodes as they go along. This method has painted the writers into a corner on more than one occasion.
Watch it tonight. I command it.

For those of you living in a cave, FOX is bringing Jack Bauer back for another season of 24. It starts this weekend with two hours on Sunday, Two hours on Monday, and 20 continuous weeks of episodes. Do not miss this.

Am I glad I don’t live in Ohio anymore. New Ohio Law Allows Cops to Request ID.
This new law allows the police to ask for your name without probable cause. They say it’s for Security and Safety. Remember Franklin’s words on the subject.
‘Nuff said.

I have just been informed that Hillary Clinton will be showing up at The Children’s Defense Fund’s 2006 Winter Benefit awards luncheon. Also scheduled to appear is none other than good old Harry “W is a tyrant and a terrorist” Belafonte. I wonder if they will go for some pictures together? I can’t say either way. She is straddling the fence and getting skewered. She wants to appease the Left and say what Harry said, but she is also trying very hard to court the middle and Right, who support Bush. It’s a clear case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Good. I like her skewered and squirming like a worm on a hook.

Friends,
I might well be going on hiatus for a while. At least as far as political and Conservative blogging goes. I am waking up later, I am less enthusiastic, etc. Call it my depression acting up, Seasonal Affective Disorder, whatever, but I can’t get excited about politics right now.
This does not mean that I won’t stop blogging about my wargaming, or about my struggles with mental illness, of which this does seem to be about.
I have several projects on my work bench, all of which need to be worked on. I have eight stands of Ork Nobz for Epic that need to be painted, as well as a 40k Dreadnought that I haven’t even removed from the sprue yet. I like to do all of my painting on the sprue, before assembly, so I can get all of the nooks and crannies that you can’t get a brush into after assembly. Nothing bothers me more than a spot that I can see, but not paint on a model.
I am also slowly getting into Battle Fleet Gothic, another Fanatic (subsidiary of Games Workshop) game. It’s Space Navy for the 40k and Epic universe.
Don’t worry about me, I’m still here and will continue to be.

There used to be several gaming shops in Memphis. Midtown Toys, Gamemasters, Kevin’s Attic, plus a couple more that have all, for one reason or another, closed their doors. Which leaves us with one gaming store in town: Games Workshop, down on Holmes road.
This store, one of about 150 GW stores and one of about 6 “Battle Bunkers,” sell exclusively GW products. It is paired with the US manufacturing and distribution facility here in Memphis. Which is why the store is located in the middle of the industrial district. I have taken the factory tour and seen that every sprue of GW product sold in the US is manufactured here, along with all of the metal figures and bitz (individual parts of a completed model).
I bring this up because there are a lot more games and game systems out there than just GW. but you can’t get them here in Memphis because there is no independent store to sell them. The closest game store that I know of is a hour away in Jackson, TN.
So if anybody wants to donate about $110,000 so I can start a game store, just punch the Paypal button over there on the right .
Seriously, GW is the 800 pound gorilla of the gaming industry. Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and Lord of the Rings are their “core games,” which means what they concentrate on. There is a subsidiary company called Specialist Games, which manufactures games like Epic, Blood Bowl, Mordeihm and Necumunda. But these games are considered “step-children” and don’t get the coverage that they should.
But there are a lot of other games out there, that aren’t getting any coverage here in Memphis. I am really sorry about that, but unless someone hits that donate button, I can’t do anything about it.
So, While I’m not exactly complaining, but there is nothing but GW here.

Harry Belafonte has proven himself to be a hard core Leftist: Belafonte Says Bush Is ‘Greatest Terrorist in the World,’ Praises Venezuelan Dictator.
This just boggles my mind. I am just so floored by this, I can’t think straight. Trying to understand the methodology (I won’t call it logic) of Belafonte’s thinking is beyond my ken. To have such a distorted view of the world denotes madness. I won’t call Bush perfect by a long shot, but he is nowhere near the “Tyrant and Terrorist” that Harry claims him to be.
I’ve got to go and do something else, this is making my head hurt.

As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
Well, if they act like Republicans, are they really Democrats? Democrats, Stung in 2004, Tap Anti-Abortion, Pro-Gun Candidates.
The article starts out thusly:

Brad Ellsworth likes to hunt, opposes abortion and says he’ll put his “family values up against anybody.” He may be the Democrats’ new dream candidate.
The 47-year-old Ellsworth, a county sheriff in Indiana, is one of a number of Democrats running for the U.S. Congress next year whose positions on social issues deviate from the national party’s. His candidacy follows a presidential election the Democrats lost in part because they failed to win over “values voters,” according to polls and party strategists.

That is true. The Dems failed to win over “values voters” because it is perceived that Democrats have very little values in common with middle America. So they are trying to run Democrat candidates with Republican values.
But the question is, when it comes down to party line votes on such issues, which side will these candidates vote on? With their values, or with their party? If they were elected because of their values, and they vote with their values, then the Republicans win. If they vote with the party, come next election cycle, they will be thrown out of office by the People, and elect a Republican. Again, the Republicans win. I don’t see a down side of this.
But I don’t think these “conservative” Democrats will get elected. Why? Because the People know that even if the candidate has views opposite of the Party, they will have to vote the party line, making their votes to elect him irrelevant. And on the national stage, these candidates will be forced to subvert their views to conform to the national party.
Just look at John Kerry. He (was) a pro-life person, but a pro-choice candidate. He had to give up his personal beliefs to try and get elected. It will be no different with these candidates.
Personally, I doubt any (or very few) of these candidates will make it to office. The People will realize the truth and not elect them. All because the Party is controlled by the shrill far-Leftists in the Party.