Mixed signals : Winter Spring
Presidents Day is over. And now we have Presidents Day 2 for PWC kids. Brrrrrrrrrr!
127 Thoughts to “Open Thread……………………………………….Tuesday, February 22”
Comments are closed.
Archives
Categories
Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
All contents copyright Moonhowlings.net
Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
Nothing to do with spring, but is this too good to be true?
http://www.comcast.net/video/john-boehner-sex-scandal-2-affairs/1808069707
Saint John Boehner has feet made of clay…He who is without sin among you , let him cast the first stone. John 8:7 Or as Jackie Gleanson would have said, “How sweet it is!!!”\
God I love it when the holier than thou are found out.
To my friends here on the left. I know that things have been rough with what’s going on in Wisconsin so I wanted to throw y’all some red meat.
http://consumerist.com/2011/02/how-this-philly-homeowner-foreclosed-on-wells-fargo.html
Very funny story about how one man took on Wells Fargo and so far is ‘winning’.
I love the part about a Sheriff’s Sale.
As Robert’s said, “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me, … But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy’s going to win.”
@George, open thread is fair game for anything. I just try to decorate the pages.
Thanks Marin. I know it is hard to believe, but most of the ‘left’ people here are not strong union people. I know Elena and I are right to work supporters.
On a unhappy note, Cato wasn’t just woofing about the stock market ‘dip’ today. Holy hell…some folks are taking a beating. It’s brutal. Silver is keeping its head above water but its hardly a windfall.
Map of right to work states:
http://www.nrtw.org/rtws.htm
@Moon-howler
Moon–this is the kind of thing that market run ups cause. Profit takers I suspect.
@George, this is where I revert to childhood and start screaming: Asia started it!!!!!!!
I sure wish it would stop.
The city of Detroit, facing a huge deficit, is now under orders from the Michigan state education department to close half of its public schools and ramp up its high school class size to 60 students. In case anyone wants to say this is just more Republican bad karma, the plan was conceived by the previous Democratic state administration and is being implemented in its first stages by the Democratic appointee who crafted it. The good part: Democrats and Republicans showing signs of recognizing that we all have a common and very dire fiscal problem which needs to be addressed together. The bad part: Detroit, in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, has become an American horror story, economically and educationally. Having been born and raised in Michigan, I never dreamed in my worst nightmare that I would live to see proposals that the once shining light of our state’s industrial power be literally bulldozed into empty terrain because so many of its homes and other buildings are abandoned and delapidated.
Delegate Marshall is at it once again with an attempt to ban insurance companies in the insurance exchange under HCR from proviidng coverage for abortions. How do we keep him and his ilk out of the uteruses of the women of the Commonwealth?
The House of Delegates passed SB 1366, a bill establishing the Virginia Health Benefits exchange as directed under the federal health care reform law, but before doing so added an anti-choice amendment. Del. Bob Marshall’s amendment prohibits all insurance plans sold through the health benefits exchange from covering the cost of abortions. This means that women will be denied benefits that they are currently able to obtain through their private health insurance plans.
The amendment reopens the debate from earlier in the session over bans on abortion coverage in health insurance plans (HB 2147 and SB 1202). HB 2147 passed the House 60-Y, 36-N, but was killed in the Senate Education and Health Committee. The same Senate committee defeated SB 1202.
Take action today: Please urge your senator to oppose the ban on abortion coverage in health insurance by voting against the House amendment to SB 1366!
@Wolverine
Very interesting–what is magic about classroom limits of 30 students? Colleges and universities have classes of a 100 and think nothing of it.
We continue to shift jobs offshore and I would also say that part of the problem in Detroit was brought on by the auto manufacturers themselves with the help of the unions. American automobile manufacturers have been behind the power curve for decades and failed to see just how far behind they were. Rather than build cars that would be sippers they continued to build and are still building guzzlers. We could have had ethanol burning cars 25 years ago–Brazil did–but Detroit wouldn’t hear of it–aided and abetted by the oil companies. In 1985, Brazil was running 60% of its autos on straight ethanol while we were still tied to gasoline. Even today, the best we can some up with is E15. If we had chosen to do so we could have had plenty of biodiesel by now and E100 but sadly that is not the case.
Is Mark Warner the only person in the congress or senate that has the nads to have a real email address? I just wrote that tool Frank Wolf to give him a piece of my mind over defunding Planned Parenthood. I had to use his pony express toy email. It took me a while to even find it.
What a raging jackass he is. If by some miracle that bill passes the Senate and Obama’s veto, it will get stomped on in court.
@George S. Harris
I posted the Detroit story in one of the anti-union threads and I loved where they pointed out that it was mainly because of pro-union forces not giving in on salary, benefits and healthcare. Also some whining on Huffington about LA schools converting to charters.. Fun stuff.
About American cars..
GM sold more cars and trucks in China than it did in the U.S. last year, marking the first time that a foreign market has outpaced the automaker’s domestic sales in its 102-year history.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/25/business/la-fi-autos-gm-20110125
I don’t think it’s a function of enviro friendly cars. Just in THIS market overpriced cars (to pay for the union wages and retiree benefits) that just don’t offer the features you see on other autos. I have a Honda proudly made by American labour in a non-union factory.
I was window shopping for a minivan and the Honda minivan just blows away what little exists in the domestic market.
@George S. Harris
Delegate Marshall is at it once again with an attempt to ban insurance companies in the insurance exchange under HCR from proviidng coverage for abortions. How do we keep him and his ilk out of the uteruses of the women of the Commonwealth?
Easy. When HCR is repealed and/or declared unconstitutional, we won’t have to worry about Marshall’s law. 😉
@George S. Harris
Brazil did–but Detroit wouldn’t hear of it–aided and abetted by the oil companies. In 1985, Brazil was running 60% of its autos on straight ethanol while we were still tied to gasoline. Even today, the best we can some up with is E15. If we had chosen to do so we could have had plenty of biodiesel by now and E100 but sadly that is not the case.
One, Brazil is STILL drilling for oil and using it. Two, they have a source that we don’t. Sugar cane. 3) The number of cars per capita is much smaller.
Its not all about being “addicted” to oil. Some economic environments are conducive to certain types of economies.
I know that you know that its not as simple as you infer.
@marinm
Yep. We bailed out GM so that they could make cars for China.
http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2011/2/15/the-autoextremist.html
+1 on that. When HC is managed or controlled by the governement you’ll see a lot of crazy things that the government can do.
Birth Panels. (patent pending)
Actually SideShow Bob will continue his horse’s-assert regardless of HCR. He never gets any bills though and his consituents keep sending him to the GA. I don’t know why they think things will change. He is an extremist.
Wheeeee doggie Jethro!!
That’s what institutional selling looks like. It sure wasn’t my Aunt Sue in there unloading, that’s for sure. You know where I stand and that’s on the sidelines until we figure out whether or not we’re going to get an actual civil war in Libya.
@Cato the Elder
Don’t buy gold. Buy stock in lead mines, what with all the bullets flying……;)
Cato, please explain how civil war in Libya affects our stock market.
Contagion. Imagine that someone gets the bright idea that what was done in Egypt and Libya could be done in Saudi.
Please for the love of God and all that is holy be wrong about civil war in SA (Saudi).
if the liberals would allow us to drill for our own oil here, we wouldn’t have to worry that much about what happens in the middle east. drill baby drill
George, you’re probably right about classroom size under a lot of circumstances. However, 60 per class looks to me to be a real load for a single teacher in almost any high school setting, especially in subjects like math and science. Moreover, if you have that class size in a place like Detroit where there are far more discipline problems and a much greater need for personal attention to slow learners, I just can’t see it working very well. I am afraid that Detroit may be in for some chaotic classroom time, amplified by the fact that, like any inner city scenario, there is much less parental reinforcement to help out the teachers. I hope the system can find a way to make this work, but I am not very optimistic.
@Moon-howler
One three letter word Moon–O-I-L.
@Cargosquid
In 1985 Brazil did not know it had a large off shore oil deposit. That’s why they went to ethanol. Brazil is still way ahead of us on the use of ethanol despite the oil. Yes the have surgar cane and Brazil and the U.S. are the two largest producers of ethanol. However, Brazil is the only one really utilizing it the way it should be used. If you really want to see what is happening in Brazil, the read this Wikidpedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
I should make you ask yourself, “What the hell happened to us?” If we had started in 1980 as the Brazillians did, we might well be producing ethanol from something other than corn which drives up food prices and costs more to produce ethanol than it is worth. We don’t want to change as long as oil is still reasonably available. When it gets to $200 a barrel, maybe we will wake up after the camel drivers have all our money.
@Wolverine
Sadly I suspect you are correct. I just read somehwere today that 1 in 4 counties is dying–can big former industrial cities be far behind? Maybe “Mad Max Thunderball” is not as far off as we would like to believe.
ethanol is a boondoggle. all that corn is better served feeding human beings, including the teeming masses in egypt and elsewhere who will soon be starving thanks to skyrocketing food prices. there is nothing evil about oil, or nuclear power for that matter
wikipedia: The use of ethanol for fuel has had a damaging impact on food markets, especially in poorer countries. In the United States, ethanol is mostly made from yellow corn, and as the market boomed for alternative fuel, yellow corn went up in price. Many farmers saw the potential to make more money, and switched from white corn to yellow corn. White corn is the main ingredient of tortillas in Mexico, and as the supply dropped, the price doubled, making the base of most Mexican foods unaffordable
marin, what is your icon? Old eyes here.
e – The CIA Factbook says we sit on 1.58% of the world’s oil. The top 6 countries hold nearly 3/4 of all the reserves, and 5 of the 6 aren’t terribly fond of us. And what oil we do have takes a lot more than a tablespoon and a soda straw to tap. If we went at it full tilt we’d still have to depend on countries that don’t like us to survive if we remain tethered to oil. We need a better primary source of energy.
MH, it’s a picture of a man in a SEIU union shirt using a club to beat down a defenseless man on his knees. It’s captioned with WARNING in red print and in black underneath SEIU members attending this meeting.
I partially agree with Mo. We do need to explore alternative energy sources for our civilian infrastructure so that we can divert oil in support of our war machine.
Not that I directly support us going to war but if we’re gonna do it – do it right. No nation building. No peacekeeping. Kill them all. And make sure that the sons and daughters of those serving in Congress are not simply in the rear with the gear.
Marin, are you saying that SEIU members are thugs? You know, I never heard of SEIU until very recently. However, I don’t know my unions.
My guess is, there are bad apples everywhere.
Who was the man who was beaten?
@marinm
I drove Japanese cars for year but switched to VWs–a Jetta TDI diesel and a Passat Wagon-gas. The TDI gets roughly 40 MPH in town and as much as 55 MPH on the highway. I can drive from here to Boston on a single tank of diesel. Not an American care on the market I would own.
But remember–while the American made Hondas do provide jobs–profits go west to Japan. It’s like watching one ofyour in-laws drive over the cliff in your new car!
Oopps–“not an American car”
@George S. Harris
har
@George S. Harris
Does this include surgical abortions in the case of miscarriage?
@Moon-howler
Sieu beat Kenneth Gladney, a man selling small Gadsden flags outside a town hall meeting. Another black man was yelling at him for selling out because Kenneth is black. That man and another stomped Kenneth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXBOgPCh9w
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/08/eye_witness_to_st_louis_scuffl.asp
At another townhall, SIEU thugs roughed up an old man that was trying to get into the meeting, but the Congressman had packed the audience hall with SIEU.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32679571/ns/politics-health_care_reform/
Hit submit too soon.
Sorry, I was half right. The finger biting happened at a counter-protest. It wasn’t SIEU but MoveOn.org.
They all look alike in the dark……
I almost agree with “e” for a change–yes, using corn to produce ethanol is ludicrous–it does drive up food prices, but disagree that oil and nucledar power are not “evil”. Both are terrible pollutants. We still can’t decide what to do with nuclear waste and some day that is going to come home to roost. Mo is correct about American oil–particularly onshore oil. Our oil fields were pumped out many years ago–pressure is now so low and oil is so rockbound that it takes extraordinary efforts to extract it–someday when oil is $200 a barrel, it will again be worth it. Offshore drilling has its own set of unique problems but until we can come up with something better, it will be necessary. As far as liberals being to blame for lack of oil–“e” you are full of male bovine merde. American GREED is the problem and that is non-partisan as it can be.
If we had worked as hard as Brazil did to PROPERLY develop ethanol and biodiesel as alternative fuels 25 years ago, we would be way ahead of the game and a certain bunch of people might be eating oil on their Wheaties. And if we had done s much works as tghe Germans have done to produce a diesel engine that burns cleaner than most gasoline engines, we would have been even further ahead of the game. And why haven’t we produce a diesel-electric car? We have had diesel-electric trains for decades that do an extremely efficient job of moving large loads great distances on comparatively small amounts of fuel. Unlike diesel autos and trucks, trains use diesel engines to generate electricity, which actually drives the train. Ihaveheard rumors that the Chevrolet VOLT which will further tax the already overloaded electrical grid and force us to use more polluting coal to produce electricity for cars like the Volt–dumb, just plain DUMB.
@George S. Harris
We don’t have diesel electric cars because diesel is an evil polluting fuel that destroys the earth, don’t’cha know…..
Why don’t we have Europe’s diesel Jettas and Gulf sold here? 40 – 50 mpg? Woohoo.
I don’t understand why it’s “bad” for employees to organize but that same philosophy doesn’t extend to other interests. Is it “bad” that Virginia’s Automobile Dealer’s associate to represent their interests? They’ve got a chokehold on the General Assembly, DMV, and Transportation. Their members pay dues.
Does it bother the general public that most of the professional and occupational boards (Contractors, Realtors, Lawyers, Doctors) have a majority membership of practitioners of the regulated profession?
How about the AARP? Should pensioners be prohibited from representing their interests?
Having been involved with the Norfolk Ford plant shutdown, I can tell you that anti-union sentiment was, if anything, a minor factor. Labor costs played a part as most of those jobs went to a new plant in Mexico. Is that what Americans should do — underbid labor costs in Mexico, India and China? The more proximate cause of the shutdown was transportation — the choke points in moving goods through tunnels and bridges. Another factor was that the Norfolk plant was old and lacking room for expansion and the company needed to retool.
@Bubberella
The difference is that the public unions are a child of the government. Without the government they can’t exist but the government can’t go broke and it can’t fail. If Acme Corp were to negotiate a bad package with a private union in good faith and Acme Corp were to fail it takes the union on with it. So, the union has an incentive to keep Acme Corp profitable (symbiotic).
Public unions don’t have that same incentive.
As they advocate for their members without regard for the customers (the taxpayers) they’ll ask for government to get larger and raise taxes to support a larger union. In nature we call that a parasite but in this case – because govt can’t die – they can suckle on the teet into perpetually.
AARP, VCDL, Doctors groups, etc are more akin to “special interests”.
George, I hear VWs are nice but pricey to repair. I’m not concerned that profits goto Japan because they are providing me the product I want at the price I’m willing to pay. If GM or Ford can give me something that compares and I get more value out of it I’ll buy American. Outside of that I’m happy to buy a non-union American made Honda at a local dealership owned by a NASCAR racing team that I support.
marin, what is your business’s incentive? Not all business is profit motivated. I would guess there is other criteria in your case. Remember that everyone is a tax payer. Tax payers aren’t unique.
I find it odd that many jobs, especially in this area, have only 1 degree of separation between the work done and the government. Maybe contractors are just sipping through a straw rather than drinking at the public trough.
Bubberella, are you suggesting that the unions have become the whipping boys?
Maybe those bitching about unions need to look other places for the fall guy.
Let’s see, you named outsourcing, transportation, failing infastructure of the job site and choke points. Doesn’t sound like the unions are at fault here at all.
Private unions formed to fight the abuses of Big Business.
Public unions formed to fight the abuses of…..Big Public? Us?
@Cargo, in your argument you assume that public employees work directly for you. They do not. You elect representatives to oversee others to run things in the public sector.
There are as many abuses in the public sector as there are in the private, human beings being what they are. There are also working conditions, benefits, pay, etc.
It appears Gov. Walker got punked by someone who called him pretending to be David Koch. Assuming this is legit, it looks like Walker is a Koch addict. Walker accepts when the pretend Koch says: “once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.” Funny … he’ll talk to Koch but not the Democrats.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/scott-walker-koch-brother-crank-call-wisconsin
It appears Gov. Walker got punked by someone who called him pretending to be David Koch. Assuming this is legit, it looks like Walker is a Koch addict. Walker accepts when the pretend Koch says: “once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.” Funny … he’ll talk to Koch but not the Democrats.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/scott-walker-koch-brother-crank-call-wisconsin
Sorry … I double clicked.
Another gem in the conversation between the pretend David Koch and Gov. Walker (while discussing Walker’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe):
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.
Walker: Oh yeah.
Was that really said? Isn’t David Koch too old to be thinking that?
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/02/23/business/AP-US-Fidelity-Retirement-Savings-Trends-html?hp
Arragh! The market is still dropping after going down 2% yesterday!
WAS feeling OK about 401Ks. Now back to my old retirement plan – win a big Lotto.
@Big Dog,
Keep telling yourself this is a correction. We were supposed to get one anyway. Let’s pretend this is it.
Oil and silver are doing nicely.
gold not so much.