Pointman’s Page

With our 20th approaching I’m preparing for a trip to the Tail of the Dragon and came across this excellent video….

Following my BFF through the Dragon from killboy on Vimeo.

Having known Bob & Deb for 20 years I am very much looking forward to their getting their new gun club off the ground and open. Though I don’t need to go to a range, having my own, I would be very likely to pickup a membership, if they’re offered reasonable.

I guess they found a way to keep Stevens from taking his seat back after all. In case everyone has forgotten it was Stevens who the Democrat prosecutors brought up on corruption charges which were dismissed after the election.

Oh where to begin… I mean besides the obvious fact that you’re suppose to clean your cat before marinating…. If you marinate them when they’re still alive it just makes the fur clumpy.

So these days you murder your child and that’s “choice” - but marinate your cat? Evil doer…

Welcome to America.

Sophie will eat almost anything and she reinforced that tonight by cleaning up a 1/2 dozen broccoli florets the Missus accidentally dropped on the floor making dinner.

Ginger has a bit more discriminating tastes than Sophie and decided she’d pass on the Broccoli. Which was fine with Sophie who proceeded to pilfer Ginger’s piece.

Which in turn prompted Ginger to go find another piece. She sat there and worked on it all the while making funny faces. I could almost see her mind churning… “Sophie likes this then I’m suppose to like this too… but it’s just not all that.. but I’ll going to choke it down before I let that pig bull have it!” while Sophie finished cleaning the tile..

Only after the floor was cleaned did the Missus mention something I’d not considered…. broccoli farts… the girls may spend the rest of the evening outside…

Stark has obviously been caught flat footed to which a politician’s normal reaction seems to be to stick their flat feet straight into their mouths.

Stark’s slip may be of ignorance or more likely Freudian but how much of this do we lay at his or the party’s feet? More likely Stark’s ignorance and Big Government Nanny State views are supported by his constituents… or at least the majority of them that bother to show up at the polls on election day.

So who is really to blame here? As much as we’d like to lambaste Stark and the Party - the problem is us.

We seem to have a problem with the ongoing gulf clean up.. they can’t find the oil or at least not nearly as much as they should be finding.

Now that the greatest eco disaster of all time is failing to marterialize there is scrambling to explain why. One of the more interesting theories got others roundly lambasted just a couple weeks ago. Essentially oil is a natural substance the leaks out of cracks all over the globe including in the region of the blown well so why is anyone surprised nature has at least part of the solution?

The lesson from past spills is that the lion’s share of the cleanup work is done by nature in the form of oil-eating bacteria and fungi. The microbes break down the hydrocarbons in oil to use as fuel to grow and reproduce. A bit of oil in the water is like a feeding frenzy, causing microbial populations to grow exponentially.

Typically, there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two, says Howarth. Such microbes have been found in every ocean of the world sampled, from the Arctic to Antarctica. But there are reasons to think that the process may occur more quickly in the Gulf than in other oceans.

Even more telling is when Time mag acknowledges Rush may have been right… What I like in Time’s piece is they seem to be trying to get back to serious journalism. Hopefully its not superficial…

So if, now that the leak is plugged, the environmental issues are quickly righting themselves why is the Administration still trying to keep a moratorium in place at the cost of thousands of workers?

More likely they are simply taking advantage of the opportunity to push their anti-oil, anti-carbon, anti-cheap-energy agendas.

I’ve repeated until I’m blue in the face that CO2 is plant food and have pointed to articles showing increasing C02 makes plants grow better/faster not once but twice as far back as 4+ years ago.

And these were largely articles meant to sweep the whole C02-is-plant-food under the rug by focusing on poison ivy -

a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050

And we are the fear mongers??

Anyway, I do have a point, or actually a new website link that is founded on the principle that more CO2 results in a greener earth…

Nothing a few Marines can’t fix….

The SCOTUS has just voted 5-4 that the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution applies to the states effectively ruling the ban on firearms in Chicago unconstitutional. Hopefully this will trickle down through the entire IL FOID system but I am not holding my breath.

What is also significant here is the 5-4 split - that is 4 judges do not believe the Bill of Rights restrains the states. That is surely something to be concerned about! Especially if President Obama has the opportunity to name another judge to the court where the retiree is one of the 5 that voted correctly.

Not that we needed another reason to make sure President Obama is a one-term engagement - but here it is anyway.

Adobe makes some great products but to say they lack customer service and treat their customers poorly is an understatement.

Case in point. I have purchased 8 copies of Adobe Acrobat Standard for my user. But when my desktop tech went to install an unused copy for someone today it wouldn’t activate, said it was already activated. Since the machine it had been activated no longer existed he called Adobe who simply told him that its our fault we didn’t deactivate the copy before reloading the machine, told us they can’t help us and we’d have to buy another copy.

So if you have Acrobat installed on a computer and the drive fails, guess what…

If you need to insert pages or disassemble and reassemble multiple PDF documents Acrobat is still about the only way. But this isn’t 1998 anymore and if you needed to create PDF’s there are alternatives especially for those with only casual needs.

With Adobe having told us to pound sand you can bet I’m going to return the favor.

“[A] wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson

Well what do you know…. it’s working…..

I considered making light of this honey of a wreck but as there was a fatality I shall refrain so as to avoid any stinging rebukes….

As someone who spends a lot of time in the sun I will occasionally use sunscreen but usually don’t bother. I’ll frequently wear a long sleeve cotton dress shirt to keep the sun off my arms but only if I’m already looking like a lobster face will I apply any to my face and then its something that looks like an over sized chapstik. Overall I’m simply not that worried about it as long as I’m not burned. I mean as a guy I’m not worried about looking like a leather wallet when I’m old… there are worse things.

Some might be surprised that a recent study may link vitamin A in sunscreen lotions to accelerated spread of skin cancer but I’m not one of them. Maybe surprised its vitamin A but not surprised to find that about half of all sunscreen lotions don’t offer the protections people buy them for.

I’m not really sure what my point is here other than what ever they’re selling be assured you’re buying not only hype, but unintended consequences that may be 180 degrees to the intended purpose. (statins anyone?)

Thar be Cougars here…. the big kitty cat variety that is, so don’t forget your big kitty boom-stick…

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

John Adams, An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 1763

Now I’ve seen some stupid statements in my life but some stand above the rest:

“Experience shows that putting firearms and grizzly bears in the same place ends up with dead grizzly bears,” said Steve Cain, senior biologist for Grand Teton National Park.

As opposed to what, dead tourists?

“Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace.”

Thomas Jefferson

People are just so agonizingly stupid I’m at a loss for words to describe how stupid…

A baby may be disfigured for life and two dogs will lose their lives because of one woman’s stupid act… doubly so if she realized the diaper was dirty to begin with and still left the baby unattended with the dogs. As gross as it is most forms of poo are doggy manna and I suspect the parts of the child damaged in the process were collateral damage in the feeding frenzy. That doesn’t make anything right but certainly better explains the motivation of the so-called “attack”.

The owner isn’t necessarily absolved either but I’d like to know more about how the child ended up alone and for how long….

Of course had these dogs been anything but a bully breed it’d been much less likely to make the paper beyond the police blotter. Dachshunds just don’t conjure the same menace. More illustrative, compare the reader comments between the 2 tragic episodes….

And not to pick on Dachshunds but…..

According to a Hernando County Sheriff’s report, the unnamed child was walking her friends two pit bulls when three dachshunds escaped from their home and charged the big dogs. The sheriff’s report says, “The one dachshund nipped (the girl’s)right leg in the back right above the ankle. (The girl) stated that the pit bulls did nothing but look at the three dachshunds.”

(emphasis mine)

I’m sorry but that there is funny….

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

James Madison

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Margaret Thatcher

“It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”

James Madison

With a month to go for the primaries only today was I clued in to Bucshon for Congress who is seeking to be my Representative in place of Brad Ellsworth, the Democrat looking to win Evan Bayh’s Senate seat.

Getting past the first thing that popped into my head I read through his site and found that he is indeed a Republican. Bouncing over to Open Secrets was an interesting read. The good doctor has the most campaign cash thus far, mostly from local medical and finance but also from the likes of AIG.

But there are more candidates for the 8th than Dr Bucshon. A debate announcement introduces 7 of the 8 but only by name. More digging turned up an overview of the mixed bag of candidates and a sort of activist status board over on Reistance Net.

But the short of it is that there are a 8 primary candidates for the Republican slot and many of them truly live up to the vision the Founders had of those who would serve in our Congress.

John Lee Smith is a financial advisor for Edward Jones, a former party chairman and devotee of Ronald Reagan.

Kristi Risk is another grass roots candidate: mother of 4, hunter and shooter and even attended the Daytona rally - sort of a Hoosier Sarah Palin who hasn’t been Governor….

John K Snyder is a retiree going on 90 years old concerned for the futures of his 30 grand and great grand children.

Bud Bernitt is a Realtor from Ellettsville

Steve Westell, a former Conservation Officer and spokesman for an alternative energy company, is likely the youngest at 37 and was inspired by the tea party movement.

Dan Stockton, from my own town of Bainbridge, is a fellow motorcyclist, blogger for a local paper and a columnist for ABATE’s The Hoosier Motorcyclist magazine.

What is any political race without the oddball candidate and in the 8th that seems to be Billy Mahoney who seems to have ongoing problems with hackers invading his system. Add to that Mr. Mahoney seems confused about which house he’s running for with a “for Congress” in his graphic and “for Senate” in is Facebook URL… anyway, he has a blog blog as well as a presence on Resistance Net.

Almost across the board these candidates espouse “Christianity”, small government, lower taxes, reform not take-over in health insurance. Those that say are pro-Life, a few self proclaimed Constitutional originalists including pro- second amendment… some are more corporate and some are more down home grass-roots. Some with blue collar trades, law enforcement experience and some white collar professionals… Some with political experience and some with none. Certainly a good mix of seemingly good people to choose from. There is even at least one Fair Tax advocate and one who’s discussed policies with Ronald Reagan….

Truly this will be a difficult choice for me and I suspect many conservatives Republicans and I hope that such candidates are swelling the primaries of every districted in the country. This is a golden opportunity to return the Republican party to its conservative path…. but if not…

The Libertarian candidate is John Wayne Cunningham but I cannot find anything about him online except for that empty template and his name on the Open Secrets website. But, as the Libertarians aren’t worried about the primaries I’m sure more will surface toward summer when their campaign monies are better spent and not drowned out by 8 Republicans hopefuls.

Which ever of these survive the May primaries will likely face Trent (D). Trent’s candidacy is another perk of Evan Bayh’s retirement coming too late for anyone to register to run in the Democrat primaries. Not only do Hoosier Democrats not get to choose their Senate candidate but the Democrats in the 8th don’t get a say either. Instead they will get who the Indiana Democratic party committee selects… And from what I’m reading in the Indiana Blogosphere it seems Trent isn’t even a blue dog such as Ellsworth claimed to be so the the 8th’s Democrats are moving to the Left - like it or not.

From a conservative perspective in an open primary state I have to admit to being concerned that, without a Democrat to vote for in the primaries many 8th Democrats who do not like their choices will heavily influence the Republican choice and try to draw out the most centrist candidate to face Trent and Ellsworth in November. Bayh’s late announcement is just the gift that keeps on giving for the DNC…

Hoosiers tend to be rather smug about claiming to vote for the person and not the party even though separation is impossible and no one has proven this better than Brad Ellsworth. We’ll see if the current political sentiment can carry the conservative-libertarian momentum of the tea party movement until November.

In the meantime I’m going to have my work cut out for me deciding which of these candidates will get my vote. You should all do the same.