World artist destroys his masterpiece portrait of Barack Obama

gosh!

Repost: Tuesday is election day

Question 1: People’s Veto

An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom
“Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?”


I'm inclined to vote no despite the fact that the legislature and the Governor went against the people of Maine in passing this law. That's right the democratic process has twice rejected same sex marriage. For me it's more of an equality issue than a moral one. At the same time I object to the thought that a same sex couple could use legal means to force a pastor who objects to this to perform the ceremony. There really are more important things to worry about than same sex marriage and until this is fixed in stone it is never going away. 

Still slightly uncertain but leaning towards NO. No matter which way this goes I'm not convinced we'll put this behind us, more's the pity. 

Question 2: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Decrease the Automobile Excise Tax and Promote Energy
“Do you want to cut the rate of the municipal excise tax by an average of 55% on motor vehicles less than six years old and exempt hybrid and other alternative-energy and highly fuel-efficient motor vehicles from sales tax and three years of excise tax?”


The vehicle excise tax is one of the most regressive taxes in Maine. It's brutally expensive for the first several years and the rates were raised by the legislature in yet another round of "not tax increases, but fee increases" that seem to be the primary revenue enhancement method for the legislature these days. This question actually punishes the minor culprit in tax burden, the local town, not the State. Not only that but whatever group of gibbering morons that created the question had to throw in what I considered to be the absolute show stopper, exempting hybrids and highly fuel-efficient motor vehicles from the fees. I'm sick to death of the seemingly endless subsidies for hybrids when hybrids represent a future environmental disaster that we won't realize for 5-10 years, disposal of their highly toxic batteries. I'd also point out to the environmentalists and the rest of you prius class smug hybrid owners that the environmental footprint of making those batteries far exceeds the footprint of a conventional small car like a Civic or Corolla. This bill doesn't promote energy, no one 'saves' energy, at best we just use less, spare me the hyperbole. 

This one gets a resounding NO and someone should kick whoever included the hybrid exemption in the nads for including that provision. Had this rolled back the state portion of the tax AND not included the hybrid exemption I would have been all for it. 

BTW that ad that's been running on TV against this question, the one with the tow truck guy prattling on with typical brain dead class warfare rhetoric is offensive to anyone who can see beyond your 3rd grade emotional tirade. When I pay higher excise taxes on my new truck than you're paying on your piece of crap tow truck I'm covering your baggage you silly tool. Despite this disgusting piece of Marxist theater I'm still going to vote it your way.

No No No No NO!

Question 3: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Repeal the School District Consolidation Laws
“Do you want to repeal the 2007 law on school district consolidation and restore the laws previously in effect?”


I'm leaning towards yes, local control is always better. Of course this doesn't fix the real issue, the fact that the State Legislature still refuses to pay it's share of the cost of running our schools. 

Question 4: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Provide Tax Relief
“Do you want to change the existing formulas that limit state and local government spending and require voter approval by referendum for spending over those limits and for increases in state taxes?”


A resounding YES! Nothing else will get their attention. The State of Maine has one of the highest tax burdens in the US, that has been a major contributor to our State's 3rd world economy. The legislature refuses to address the tax issues, the Governor refuses to address the tax issues and it's been a problem as long as I can remember. Just say yes. Your grammy isn't going to starve, your kids won't be left without an education, the lights will stay on and the roads will get plowed but there's a good chance that the towns and the state will be forced to take a serious look at the crap we're paying for that doesn't do anything but feather someone's bed and it'll start to get cut. Without this there is no incentive for government to do anything but keep digging deeper into our wallets. You can't convince me that there isn't waste to be cut. 

yes yes yes a thousand times yes!

Question 5: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Establish the Maine Medical Marijuana Act
“Do you want to change the medical marijuana laws to allow treatment of more medical conditions and to create a regulated system of distribution?”


Like it or not medical marijuana is here to stay. With the federal government under Obama backing off (which is just about the only thing I agree with that Obama has done) on threats to Doctors and patients this makes sense to me. But I have always believed that locking up non-violent drug offenders was just about the stupidest thing we could do anyway. 

Yes.

Question 6: Bond Issue
(Part A of Ch. 414, Public Laws of 2009)
“Do you favor a $71,250,000 bond issue for improvements to highways and bridges, airports, public transit facilities, ferry and port facilities, including port and harbor structures, as well as funds for the LifeFlight Foundation that will make the State eligible for over $148,000,000 in federal and other matching funds?”


Now for those of you who are wowed by the numbers please take a deep breath. Despite the fact that Maine would receive $2 for every $1 we spend, we still have to spend that $1. That means that a vote for this is a vote to increase your state debt burden and that means you will have to pay that out of your pocket in taxes. These days the coffers in Augusta aren't exactly bursting at the seams and given that the entire US economy, and especially Maine's economy isn't growing that this translates into money that won't be staying in your wallet. If you vote yes, you're voting to pay more taxes. It's really that simple. TANSTAAFL! "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" get it? 

NO

Question 7: Constitutional Amendment
(Ch. 1, Constitutional Resolutions of 2009)
“Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to increase the amount of time that local officials have to certify the signatures on direct initiative petitions?”


Yes. Anything that increases our ability to legislate from the ballot verses trying to get the attention of the two herds of political moonbats in Augusta is a good thing. Allowing more time to certify helps enable valid petitions and helps detect and turn down the cheaters. This is a no brainer, it's all good. 

Now that I've weighed in let me share my gut on what'll happen when the we vote


1. YES
2. NO
3. YES
4. NO
5. NO
6. YES
7. YES

because I'm in a bipartisan mood of intolerance

They win, you lose

There was a good deal of press attention to the case of the 6 Inmans removed from a USAirways flight back in 2006. Since then their case has wound it's way through the court proceedings:

The six imams were detained as they were returning home from a convention of the North American Imams Federation in a suburb of Minneapolis. Three of the six had prayed before the passengers at the airport as they awaited the departure of the flight. A passenger had passed a note to the pilot pointing out suspicious activity:

6 suspicious Arabic men on plane, spaced out in their seats. All were together saying "  .  .  .  Allah  .  .  .  Allah" cursing U.S. involvement w/Saddam before flight--1 in front exit row, another in first row 1st class, another in 8D, another in 22D, two in 25 E&F.

Onboard USAirways personnel called MAC dispatch to advise that the six passengers would be removed and ask for officers to come to the gate. The first MAC officer on the scene was advised by a USAirways manager of the passenger's note. He was also advised that some of the six passengers had checked no luggage, some had asked for seatbelt extensions, some had one-way tickets, and all six were of Middle Eastern descent. A USAirways flight attendant told one of the MAC officers that, in her opinion, the two seatbelt extensions requested by the imams were unnecessary given their sizes.

The court has ruled in favor of the Inmans and against you and me.

We lose.

More Obama radical roots

I keep hearing about how Obama is a centrist yet his roots, his influences are strewn with radicals. But his pastor, the pastor of the church where our President never heard a racist statement, never heard any hate speech is a gift that keeps on giving. Here he is praising marxism for all to see:



Yep nothing radical here.

Wow that RNC sure is smart!

So Newt and all the boys down at the RNC wanted to make sure we supported their latest RINO in the NY special election instead of an actual conservative candidate. Old Newt's great white hope, a liberal who couldn't get out of her own way burned through about a million dollars of RNC money and was loosing big time so she suspended her campaign and to pay back the RNC for their efforts she's endorsed her Democrat opponent.

So you silly RNC jerkwads can you hear us now? You lost in 2006, in 2008 and you'll lose in 2010 unless you nominate conservatives. We've had it with loosers like Dede Scozzafava and John McCain. Newt you know better.

No soup for you dumbass!

Nice mashup for Virgin Galactic

Wonder how long before the price starts to drop to where normal humans can go? Probably not in my lifetime.

sigh.....

I keep saying this is the last trip of the season

Maybe this time it is. I needed to burn a week of vacation so I took this week off. mostly I moped around the house doing odds and ends, pre-winter tasks and general tasking. But I had planned on taking one day and trying my luck at some late season smallmouth. I was joined by my friend Dave and we loaded my truck and drove up to the Androscoggin River. After scouting the walk in we suited up in our waders and walked down to fish by some power lines.

The power lines from upstream.

We were fishing sinking lines with small clouser minnows. I had a few tentative hits but no real good hooks for quite a while. Then I caught a chub. Woot.

A nice shot of Dave intently working the waters.

We were leapfrogging each other working our way up the river. At one point I lost the clouser to a tree and put on this chartreuse and orange thing a local guide had cooked up. I immediately caught another chub. Woot.

Dave is still intent on the water. No fish yet BTW.

Eventually I took a break and Dave caught a small chub. Right after that he caught another only this one looked a bit different.

Dave proudly displaying his brown trout.

I had heard a rumor that trout had been stocked this past year but I had never caught one here, nor had anyone else I ever talked to.

It was a pretty day despite being a bit chilly and overcast. Afterwards we headed back to town and had a nice lunch of fish and chips washed down with some Grittys Halloween Ale. I can't complain.

He nailed it

I think he just nailed everything that I fear about this bill. That said I think that he and the republican party are full of crap when they claim to have a plan. They didn't have a plan other than deficit spending for the 6 years they controlled the congress under Bush and since then they've done nothing that indicates to me that they have a clue, much less a plan. The Democrats are a mob, pushing us into a national healthcare protection racket, the Republicans are lost in denial of why they're sitting on the bench. I don't trust either party to do anything well.

the recession is over! the recession is over!

Or is it?

I usually don't comment on current economic events.

But the numbers today suck.

They show 3.5% annualized GDP growth, which is undeniably in and of itself good.

But the components are not good: while the cash for clunkers shows up with a +22% for consumer durable goods, nondurables are only up 2%; nonresidential investments remain firmly negative, with only residential showing as 23% increase due to the various stimulus plans. In other words, we see the stimulus growth, but it is failing to bring anything else up to speed.

Remove those two and you're firmly back into negative territory.

This means the recession really isn't over: it only looks that way. Exports were up 15%, but imports were up 16%, due to the weak dollar and strong oil prices.

The real key to understanding what is going on is that incomes remain down and tax revenue is up; wages and salaries are down, personal outlays are up, which means that the savings rate went from 5% to just over 3%. This is exactly the opposite direction these numbers should be moving in: this recession isn't over yet.

This recession isn't over. If you look at the numbers from last year, GDP is down 2.3% and investments are down 25%; looking at an index with 2005=100, investments are now at 70% of that level.

This recession won't really be over until investments are back and incomes start climbing. The US economy may have stopped digging itself into a deeper hole, but it still hasn't even taken a look at how to get out of the one it dug.

This is a stimulus-driven recovery quarter that has no stamina.

Ye gods.

I believe a real economist before I'll believe a spin master working for the man...

Theo Spark: Things we don't get in Norfolk...........

Just a coincidence?

Honduras leader's nephew killed

The nephew of the interim President of Honduras Roberto Micheletti has been found dead in what the police are calling an execution-style killing.

Enzo Micheletti's body was discovered on Sunday in woodland near Choloma, 250 km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

Police say his hands were tied behind his back and his body was riddled with bullets. There is no indication that his death is connected to the coup that brought his uncle to power at the end of June. The 24-year-old's body was discovered on Sunday two days after he had been reported missing.

The body of another unidentified man was found nearby.

Mr Micheletti came to power after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in June after trying to hold a vote on whether a constituent assembly should be set up to look at rewriting the constitution.

He wants to be reinstated before 29 November elections, but the interim leaders have resisted his demands. They say Mr Zelaya was legally removed from office as he had violated the Honduran constitution.

It is not thought that the interim leader's nephew was involved in politics, but Honduras has the highest murder rate in Central America - much of it drug related.

Last year more than 7,000 people were killed.

Yeah thanks for that meaningless factoid there BBC....the thugs the White House choose to support have begun to murder. Oh yeah this really promotes the freedom agenda!

Change you can believe in

If this had happened when Bush was President the media would have made this guy a national hero, these days not so much.

When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

It appears that serving his country under teH 0ne's stellar leadership has caused a crisis of confidence. How many more resignations await while Obama hits the links for another 18 holes? Things are starting to unwind; will we watch a replay of the last days of Nixon as the White house and staff become increasingly paranoid as they isolate themselves through incompetence and inaction?  

Democracy on the march!

How's this for action?

If Honduras manages to preserve its democracy despite U.S. pressure to abandon it, the tiny Central American country may wind up thanking Nicaragua's Danny Ortega, of all people.

Last week, President Ortega inadvertently provided the best defense yet of the Honduran decision this summer to remove Manuel Zelaya from the presidency. Nicaragua has a one-term limit for presidents, and Mr. Ortega's term expires in 2011. However, the Nicaraguan doesn't want to leave, and so he asked the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court to overturn the constitutional ban on his re-election.

Last week the court's constitutional panel obliged him. The Nicaraguan press reported that the vote was held before three opposition judges could reach the chamber in time for the session. Three alternative judges, all Sandinistas, took their place and the court gave Mr. Ortega the green light. Mr. Ortega has decreed that the ruling cannot be appealed.

Our current President has sided with Ortega and Chavez against the rule of law in Honduras.  Now that Ortega has begun his coup in Nicaragua I expect that the White house and the State Department will be silent as Ortega becomes President for life.

The press and the Democrats still seem to get riled when we call our President a spineless marxist; if actions speak louder than words what words describe Obama's actions?

Yeah I want these people in charge of my healthcare

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Just imagine how much will get skimmed off the top by criminals when the total bill goes from a few hundred billion to a trillion or more.

Climate Chains

I have nothing to add.


Climate Chains from Climate Chains on Vimeo.

Lying, Liars lying

The Obama administration now claims it did not try to exclude Fox News from Thursday's round of network interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg.   A treasury department spokesperson claimed, "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing".  

Yet the other networks know better and have said so

A Fox News executive told the Huffington Post Saturday that the network "absolutely" did request an interview with Obama administration "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg and that the White House acknowledged a mistake on the part of a Treasury department staffer in failing to initially include Fox News in the round of interviews Feinberg conducted Thursday.

"Of course we requested an interview," Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente told the Huffington Post.

This directly contradicts reports by the Associated Press and Talking Points Memo, both of which reported that the White House had excluded Fox News because it did not request an interview.

Whether Fox News requested an interview was irrelevant in this case, however, as the interview was conducted a pool including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News.

Clemente said that CBS News Washington Bureau Chief and current pool chairman Chris Isham — who did not respond to phone or e-mail requests for comment Saturday — received a call from the Treasury Department Thursday saying that Feinberg would be available to speak to all of the networks in the pool except for Fox News, and that Bloomberg would be included instead.

Clemente said that when Isham presented that scenario on a conference call with the other pool members — including Fox News — "they unanimously said, instantly, no, that's not gonna fly. Either Fox is in or none of us is doing it."

Once Isham relayed that message to Treasury, Treasury cleared it with White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who approved Feinberg's interview with Fox News' Major Garrett.

Clemente said, however, that there was now a catch: every network would get two minutes with Feinberg instead of the previously planned five.

This administration is so messed up they can't keep their lies, err story straight...

Yet another misstep in the vital war against FOX

Words cannot describe how mindnumbingly stupid a move this was on the part of the Whitehouse. Bravo for ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC for refusing to go along with this.

Windows 7 released

Mac fans and perrennial critics of Microsoft may poo poo the latest version of windows but not me. In the past couple of years I've purchased two new desktops. The first and HP Pavillion Elite came with Windows Vista Home Premium and once I removed the HP bloatware and exorcised the symantec dung off the PC it ran like a dream for me. The second a Gateway i7 based screamer also came with Windows Vista Home Premium and it was a gigantic headache. It took me two weeks to clean off most of the bloat. Even so the PC had a problem, every hour, and for 20-30 mins one of the cores went to 100% CPU utilization and it was all kernel time, which meant that the PC slowed to a stagger for the duration of the event. I pounded on google and support sites, I tried all kinds of stuff, I was so desperate I contacted Gateway support multiple times; here's a hint - they couldn't even manage to point me at the proper driver set for my PC. Multiple times they asked me to install BIOS for a different, and much much older, PC model. Gateway support is so clueless they make Dell look like a precision instrument. 'nuff said, back to windows. A buddy of mine suggested that my problems sounded similar to problems he had with Vista that were cured by the Windows 7 release candidate, which was free to download. I bought a second SATA drive and downloaded and installed the final RC kit. I set it up to dual boot Vista. I haven't run vista since. Windows 7 is everything Vista should have been. It's fast, it's smart and it frigging works on the Gateway without issues, without errors and without a hitch for the past couple of months. I love it and can't wait for my free upgrade to arrive. But don't take my word for it

William Stanek, author, Windows 7: The Definitive Guide

Favorite feature: "My favorite Windows 7 feature is not so much a single feature, rather it is a super-set of features called Windows Recovery Environment (aka Windows RE). Windows RE is a safety net that you can use to repair your computer if it fails to start. The single-best thing about Windows RE and the reason I’m such a big fan: a Windows RE partition with all the related tools is created and configured automatically as part of Windows 7 installation. This means every computer running Windows 7 has Windows RE."

Biggest shortcoming: "Asking me to name the biggest shortfall about my favorite release of the Windows desktop OS ever? Ouch, that’s tough and it’d be a let down, not a shortfall, and it’s this: another one of my favorite features is found only in the Professional and higher editions. The feature: Windows XP Mode. Another sticking point for me is that the some of my favorite Vista included-in-the-box applications are now available as download only. You have to get the apps from Windows Live now and they’re very different from the originals."

Michael Cherry, analyst, Directions on Microsoft:

Favorite feature: The ability to run Windows 7 on low-priced netbook computers. "I am now running Windows 7 Professional Edition on a netbook with only 1GB of RAM, and I love its performance. ... If they can improve the performance profile at that end, then I'm going to love it even more on my Dell with a 64-bit processor and 4GB of RAM."

Biggest shortcoming: "I still don't like all of these versions, the different versions," Cherry said. "Too many, and too (difficult) to draw a line between them." He cited the example of BitLocker, a corporate data encryption system available in Windows 7 Enterprise Edition but not in Windows 7 Professional. A better approach, he said, would be for Microsoft to offer one low-priced version that can be configured for different "roles," as the company does with Windows Server, installing only the features needed by a particular type of user.

You can read the rest over there....now lest you tag me as a MS fanboi I work in IT, I use Linux enterprise servers almost exclusively, and much prefer Linux as a server platform for Oracle databases than windows. I was also a UNIX and VMS system admin for decades, I know how a good operating system behaves.

meesah like Windows 7

"Darth" Cheney Speaks

Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.

Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.

You can read it all here

I'd like to think that somewhere in the Whitehouse there is a single adult who will read this and then go talk some sense into teH 0ne but somehow I doubt it. So while President Zip dithers our troops continue to die, under supplied and under supported thanks to the feckless stupidity of Team Hope and Short Change.