High Enough

Sometimes, surprises come from the most unexpected places. On Sunday evening, I was standing in the check-out line at my neighborhood grocery store when the latest issue of Texas Monthly caught my eye. Now before going on, I should point out that I have never had a very high opinion of that magazine. As far as I'm concerned, it is little more than an overrated rag filled with the inane scribblings of Austin-based wannabe-Texan greenhorns. That perception was reinforced some five years ago when a guttersnipe by the name of Gary Cartwright launched an unwarranted personal attack in the pages of that magazine against a personal friend and former colleague of mine.

Now what got my attention about this month's issue of the magazine was the cover story: it is about rock-and-roll icon Ted Nugent, and well worth reading, even if the writer of the article is likely a standard liberal media drone. One of my favorite parts of the story was this, describing Nugent's sixtieth birthday party at his Y.O. Ranch:

The gifts were many and fitting. A giant foam lion for archery practice. A Ted Nugent signature model Byrdland guitar sent down by Gibson. A short video with well-wishes from famous friends who couldn't attend - Gene Simmons, Anthony Bourdain, the guys from Aerosmith. And a bottle of of 1978 Château Lafite Rothschild that was hand-delivered to the onetime teetotaling birthday boy by surprise guest Toby Keith. (Keith, it must be noted, was not as excited as Ted to have a reporter present, and the couple of times our paths crossed, he eyed me as though I might have been the fourth Dixie Chick.)

Well given how most of the media treat right-of-center public figures, I can hardly blame him.

Ted Nugent is always a great interview subject, particularly when dealing with a hostile interviewer, as was the case with this interview he gave to the Phoenix New Times. An excerpt:

UP: You believe that anyone that believes [in gun control] is evil or deranged?

TN: Evil to the core or deranged. If you would force me to be unarmed and helpless I would have to do everything in my power to neutralize you.

UP: Hmmm.

TN: Hmmm. Here's one for you, Martin, you sound like a bright guy, you sound like you think you're a bight guy, went to college and all that that stuff - see, you went to college, I never went to college, I was too busy learning shit - you tell me how being forced in to unarmed helplessness is good, tell me all the good comes from that.

UP: Well...

TN: "Well" is about where it ends.

UP: There are some countries who take away all the guns from everyone, for example the U.K.

TN: Have you been to the UK?

UP: I have been.

TN: Would you like to live like that?

UP: I prefer the United States but I don't think it's too bad over there.

TN: I think it's too bad. I think there are a bunch of guys - in fact, I happen to know for a fact, that there are farmers, right now, who legally own guns who were assaulted in their own homes numerous times, who finally used a legally-owned gun to shoot a home invader. The home invader sued and won, the farmer is in jail for life. Is that where you want to live?

UP: No...

TN: I didn't think so.

I have no doubt that Ted Nugent is probably a difficult and sometimes contradictory person to deal with. But I don't care. Nugent is someone who is firmly dedicated to his conservative beliefs, and for that he is reviled by the left and has been subjected to the usual vile personal attacks that emanate from their swamp.

Not unlike Sarah Palin. And speaking of Sarah Palin, while I'm still not sure that resigning was the wisest move for her to make, I will still support her one hundred percent should she decide to seek the presidency in 2012. I'd imagine that in the wake of her resignation announcement, Palin is feeling a bit like the emotionally wrought person that Lee Greenwood sings about in "It Turns Me Inside Out":



Looking back at the aforementioned Texas Monthly article, I'd say Toby Keith is quite correct to look at any leftist or likely leftist as a fourth Dixie Chick. Leftists are evil, treacherous people to deal with and no good can come of trying to befriend them. If you think a red-blue civil war is coming, you are wrong. It is not coming - it is already here. And while it may be a cold civil war right now, it is a civil war nonetheless.

On Sarah Palin's Resignation

On Friday afternoon, shortly after 3:00pm, I was walking out of a movie theater where I'd just seen the latest Transformers movie. When I turned on my BlackBerry and logged onto the net to see the latest news, I was shocked to see that Sarah Palin had decided to resign as Governor of Alaska, effective July 26.

My initial reaction was not positive. In fact, seeing the news felt like a kick to the gut, and my gut feeling was that the maneuver was very foolish.

Having had several hours to digest the news, I still can't shake the feeling that this move may not be a positive one for her. But despite that, I'm not ready to have a melt-down like Ed Morrissey at Hot Air did and declare that Palin is no longer a serious candidate for president. Rather, I hope that this does end up being a positive move for her. Of all of the major contenders for the Republican nomination in 2012, Palin is the one whose views most closely approximate my own. Furthermore, the relentless, despicable attacks against her by the radical left that have continued unabated since last August strengthen my desire to see her prevail.

But on the other hand, such vile, personal attacks do take their toll and Palin has not been the sole target of such attacks. Her family - from her husband Todd to her infant son Trig - have been attacked as well. And it isn't just the loony left that has been doing it. The mainstream newsmedia and entertainment industries - with very few exceptions - have played along gleefully. As have a number of low-life former McCain staffers and sundry Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINOs).

Looking at this whole matter from a historical perspective - as I am wont to do - here are a couple of items to ponder. First, if you think experience might be a potential problem vis-à-vis a potential Palin candidacy in 2012, consider that in 1912, Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States after having had only two years of elective political experience as the Governor of New Jersey. Also, as noted by Donald Douglas at American Power, this speech may have been Palin's "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" moment (recalling Nixon's speech after losing the race for the California governorship in 1962), setting up a potential return to elective politics at some point down the road. I hope Sarah at Sarah Way Down South is right and all turns out well.

Even so, it still doesn't look good. Moxie thinks likewise.

***

In honor of our country's Independence Day, here's Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA":



Even with all of the nonsense going on, we should still be thankful for living in such a fine nation.

Wine, Women, and Song

Don't know much about wine, but one of my favorite California vintages is Fess Parker's Frontier Red. Any baby-boomers reading this will recall that Fess Parker once portrayed the iconic David Crockett on the silver screen long ago, and he remains a favorite celebrity of many San Antonians to this very day.

On the subject of women, consider Sarah Palin, current Governor of Alaska and future President of the United States:


That picture is one of several appearing in an article posted at Runner's World. Is it any wonder why so many frumpy feminists hate her? Gotta love Rule 5.

And finally, here's Lee Greenwood singing a tune that should be the State Song of California:

The blackness of truth
Needs humor's illumination
To lighten one's life.

- James Day Hodgson, American Senryu

Caligula Has His Horse

However, it is arguable that the Roman Emperor Caligula's horse, named Incitatus, was smarter and easier on the eyes than the pathetic troll that was just appointed to the U.S. Senate by the Supreme Court of Minnesota. And unlike the aforementioned state supreme court and the ignorant Minnesotans who voted for Franken, Caligula was only rumored to have contemplated awarding Incitatus a consulship. Caligula, as insane as he may have been, did not actually do the deed. And had he done so, Caligula's insanity (perhaps brought on by a form of syphilis) might have rendered such a deed forgivable. The Minnesotans who voted for Franken and the corrupt Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party machine that stole the election from Sen. Norm Coleman have no such excuse.

If you want to get an idea of just what a hateful low-life Al Franken is, consider these incidents from the past few years:

• From the October 30, 2006 issue of the New Statesman: “Publicly, Franken says he won't announce until next year; privately, he's said to have decided already to stand against the Republican Norm Coleman... Coleman, says Franken bluntly, is 'one of the administration's leading butt boys.'"
• From the October 21, 2005 episode of The Late Show with David Letterman: "The President’s father...has said that outing a CIA agent is treason....What it looks like is going to happen is that [Lewis] Libby and Karl Rove are going to be executed....I don’t know how I feel about it because I’m basically against the death penalty, but they are going to be executed."
• An exchange with Karl Rove, reported in the March 29, 2004 issue of Newsweek: "At a black-tie dinner in Washington last spring, Franken says, Karl Rove ribbed him for standing when the president entered the room. But Rove remembers it differently. Franken, he says, came over to him and said, 'I'm Al Franken. I hate you and you hate me.' Rove says he was taken aback."

Also, consider that Minnesota has elected politicians of questionable character and competence to high political office before, most infamously the former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura - elected governor in 1998. Ventura was a complete embarrassment to his state while in office and has continued to be so since leaving in 2003. During the past few years, Ventura has even suggested that he thinks the destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001 may have actually been a conspiracy orchestrated by the federal government.

I'm sure Franken will be just as much of an embarrassment, if not more so. Minnesota is no longer the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. They are the Land of Ten Thousand Loons. And now the rest of the country must suffer for their stupidity, as Franken's election to the Senate gives the Democrats a sixty-vote super-majority.

Mirabeau B. Lamar keeps looking smarter all the time.

The Rape of the Red

Though I already wrote about the cap-and-trade bill on Sunday, I feel compelled to briefly address the subject once again after reading this unbelievably stupid article by Paul Krugman of The New York Times (h/t Vox Day). Here's the money quote:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Treason against the planet? Mother of mercy, any reference to "treason" or "betrayal" by anyone at The New York Times is beyond ironic. So what does Mr. Krugman suggest be done to us traitors? Should we be arrested and tried in a court of law, or have our views declared the equivalent of Holocaust denial, as Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel once infamously suggested?

Pace Krugman's furious argument to the contrary, it it widely understood that global temperatures have dropped during the past decade and that historically, Earth has had much warmer weather during the past - something which has actually proven beneficial to human civilization (the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" from 1050 to 1400 being a good example).

But of course, the cap-and-trade bill really has nothing to do with saving the planet. Rather, it is about liberal politicians from the West Coast and the Northeast trying to impose a punitive back-door tax upon the Red States. After all, shouldn't we pay as much for energy as they already do?

Hell no, I say. For in the immortal words of Patrick Henry, "If this be treason, make the most of it."

Think of It as Evolution in Action

The above phrase comes from an old novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle titled Oath of Fealty. I was reminded of it when I came across this unbelievably ridiculous news item about Michael Jackson fans allegedly committing suicide upon news of the legendary pop star's death.

If there's one thing I have never been able to understand, it is people crying over the death of celebrities they never knew. I certainly miss such cultural icons as Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr., David Carradine, and Charles Bronson, but I didn't shed a tear when any of them died. It's not as if they were my friends or family.

Of course, I have a very stoic personality. I didn't even cry when my own brother passed away two years ago, though I miss him dearly. But I've never had much use for feelings or emotions, for giving into them makes one weak. Perhaps James Day Hodgson said it best:

A "disengagement,"
Says one. "Defeat" says another.
Yet acts are precise.

Rule Five

"You should be offended, and often, and by someone who knows how."

- Robert Stacy McCain, paraphrasing Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind

Many of my readers may be wondering why I've been linking Robert Stacy McCain so often as of late. Truth is, I just can't help myself. McCain and his friend Smitty run a damn good blog.

To wit, read this post of McCain's titled "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year." Therein, McCain lays out five rules that, if followed, can result in a massive increase in traffic for one's blog. I especially like this part of Rule Five:

D. Feminism sucks -- You can never go wrong in the blogosphere by having a laugh at the expense of feminists. All sane people hate feminism, and no one hates feminism more than smart, successful, independent women who've made it on their own without all that idiotic "Sisterhood Is Powerful" groupthink crap. And if you are one of those fanatical weirdos who takes that Women's Studies stuff so seriously that you're offended by Stephen Green's sexist objectification of Christina Hendricks and her mighty bosom -- well, sweetheart, to paraphrase Rhett Butler: "You should be offended, and often, and by someone who knows how."

If you've spent any extensive time around feminists, as I have, the above passage cannot help but provoke a guffaw. Yes, I'm well aware that I'm in the wrong profession for hating feminism, but like the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. And nothing breeds contempt like spending the day around those who complain endlessly about being oppressed by "the Man" or "the Patriarchy" while meting out the very type of bigotry they claim to despise. Am I bitter? Just a bit.

But the overall point of Rule Five is that pics of beautiful women on one's blog bring about more traffic, and that has certainly been the case with this post of mine from May of last year, featuring such beauties as Courtney Friel, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and an unnamed World War II-era pin-up girl. That post, which took only minutes to put together, has received more traffic than anything else ever posted at this blog.

So perhaps I should post entries like that more often. We'll see. Whatever my ultimate decision, I will do so in my own way and in my own time, as is the case with anything I do around here. And for any feminists who may be reading, understand this: yes, I like beautiful women. Get over it.

Capping Our Freedom, Trading Our Liberty

This past Friday - June 26, 2009 - the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, more commonly known as the cap-and-trade bill. First introduced last March by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the bill - if passed into law - would seek to limit carbon emissions from so-called "polluters" by allowing them to emit only so much carbon as they pay for in carbon credits, And the number of available carbon credits would decrease steadily year by year. The overall intent being to limit the amount of carbon emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in an attempt to curb the alleged problem of global warming.

So, what we have here is an effective corporate tax increase that will adversely affect a wide array of industries. A tax increase based on pseudo-science. A tax increase that will be paid for not by the targeted corporations, but by the consumers. For that is how all corporate taxes are ultimately paid - by way of higher prices on the products they produce for commercial sale.

This article from The Wall Street Journal, published back on March 9, 2009, explains it quite well:

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's [Peter Orzag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget] former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But wait, there's more! Not only will poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans bear the brunt of this disastrous tax increase, it is mostly Red States that will have to pay up. States the Journal:

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

And here's a handy statistical chart from the Journal to drive the point home:


What cap-and-trade is is an effective highway robbery of Red America by Blue America. And you can rest assured that Congressmen Waxman and Markey are fully aware of that fact and do not give a damn. After all, their side prevailed last November, and to the victor go the spoils.

House Republican leader John Boehner's assessment of the bill is accurate, if earthy. Most Republicans, save eight foolish RINOs (Republicans-In-Name-Only), voted against this travesty, as did over forty sensible Democrats. The eight RINOs were Mary Bono Mack (CA), Michael N. Castle (DE), Mark Kirk (IL), Leonard Lance (NJ), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), John McHugh (NY), Dave Reichert (WA), Christopher Smith (NJ). Robert Stacy McCain has found out the likely reason one of those turncoats, John McHugh, voted for the bill: Barack Obama nominated him to be the new Secretary of the Army. Enjoy your thirty pieces of silver, Johnny.

I recall this verse from American Senryu, written by James Day Hodgson, a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan:

Vagaries of life
Lie well beyond man's control -
Not so its living.

Hodgson explains:

Life's experiences are framed by forces that often lie outside our personal control. Yet by bringing our own raison d'être to living our lives, each of us can avoid entrapment of the human spirit by these forces. Forces that bear on life may inhibit. Living it our own way frees.

But statists like Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Barack Obama, and most members and supporters of the contemporary Democratic Party do not want us to live our lives in our own way. They want us to live our lives their way, while making us pay for the supposed privilege. Well, if they intend to take my money to pay for their fanciful, Utopian scheme, I have a four-word response that echoes across one hundred seventy-four years of Texan history: come and take it.