The Koran in flames . . .

Yeah, I can see why Iran would want to have the United Nations condemn a U.S. church for burning a Koran.

Wonder how many Christian Bibles there are, left, in Iran. For that matter, I wonder how many Christians or Jews are left in Iran. Not that long ago, within my lifetime, Iran was actually fairly multi-cultural. Not any more.

I figure that the United Nations ought to condemn all ceremonial book burning. Also execution of homosexuals, female genital mutilation, stoning rape victims to death, honor killings, child brides, slavery, violent jihad, the jiz-yah, and public employee unions.

I threw the union thing at the last minute, Kinda adds a final completion to the rhythm of the sentence, doesn't it?

We need something to attract people to our attractive attraction, which isn't all that attractive enough, evidently, all by itself . . .

I read in a recent Portland Mercury that some of our city rulers are considering, once again, building a hotel in or near the Rose Quarter. I don't know how believable or serious this is or if the local politicians thinking about this are officials of the city, or the county, or metro. Or all of them; they're pretty much in cahoots anyhow.

The idea is to attract more action to the Convention Center. Of course, the politicos who like this idea plan to be using our money, whether or not we think it's a dumb idea. Used to be, if a bunch of people agreed that constructing a building would be a good idea, they themselves would invest in it, to earn the benefits of their investment. Or not. Just as they pleased.

If they asked me, I'd say if you guys have extra money of ours to build a hotel I'd just as soon you use it to repair local roads. We are about at the point where many of the roads are more suited to ox carts and burros, than to cars. Even if the cars are hybrids. Roads deteriorate with use, and you can't patch up deteriorating roads by simply painting bicycle lane stripes and green boxes on the roads, or erecting signs announcing that Oregon is being put back to work.

When government wants to do a project, it isn't as if we citizens have much say in it. If they decide to go ahead, there's no way for the "non-interested" investers to pass on that particular investment so as to save their capital for the next idea that percolates up. Oh, we can vote for somebody else next time, but meanwhile we are still invested in whatever it was. Like light rail. Whose bright idea was it, anyhow, to use a 19th century response to transportation problems, applying 20th century technology, to meet the needs of the 21st. century? Doesn't matter; we've got us some light rail and are going to get more.

And as for the proposed Rose Quarter hotel, it doesn't matter what independent investors might decide. To politicans, a hotel in this area would be -- an Attraction. An Attraction can be named after a local dignitary and can provide income opportunities for cronies. And since the Attraction would bring outsiders into the city and they would leave some of their money behind, benefitting us all, it should be okay with us. Right?

Hey, waitaminit. Wasn't the Convention Center, itself, supposed to be an Attraction to bring action to the city? What does it say about our civic investments when you have to build another Attraction to attract people to your Attraction? Oh, and notice that the first Attraction is nicely located next to a light rail stop so that people can easily come to the Attraction from wherever they might be, without being required to seek out lodging close by.

Gah!

Just another oppressed Palestinian . . . . . .

When they learned that a Palestinian person had snuck around in the dark of night, crept into a Jewish home, and stabbed the sleeping father, mother, children, and an infant to death, five in all, people in Gaza celebrated and passed out sweets.

What a fine culture.

Let's give them a country all their very own, and support it with lots of aid from American taxpayers.

I gotta get out of here . . .

Jeez, what if being in Portland kind of wears off on you? I hope I don't catch any Portland -- I've been here so long.

Here's what I mean.

A man broke into somebody's house in Portland. The Portland owner came home and heard somebody showering and she knew there shouldn't be anybody showering, so she called 911. At the same time, the trespasser heard the homeowner come in, got scared, and he called 911 at the same time. He said he just broke into somebody's house and they came home on him, and he was scared the homeowner might have a gun.

I mentioned this is the kind of thing that has to happen only in Portland, didn't I?

Maybe she should have turned off the hot water at the tank. Right after she hollered "Chill out, Dude. I have a gun but I won't shoot if you stay in there 'til the cops come."

If they're so progressive, how come they keep trying to drag us all back into the dark ages?

See this. Electricity when they want to give it to you. Only.

A Last Word on Obamacare.

Here it is.

Like the man says. What could go wrong?

Curly bulbs, once again . . .

Don't like curlybulbs. You know, compact florescents. Bad light. Expensive, unreliable. Supposed to last for years but don't. (I've already had four of 'em die in the last eleven months.)

Mostly I don't like outlawing the standard incandescent bulbs to force the curlies on us. Somebody is going to make a lot of money on this, and a big chunk of the Big Green Weenie Movement in politics is really about generating gobs of profits without being hampered by the lack of a market. (Vid Big Al and the Carbon Credit industry.)

So. This is fun. Be vewwy, vewwy afwaid?

I see my fate before me . . .

I just looked over the last few posts here. Lately I've wanted to step up the blogging, so I wanted to see how I was doing. I noticed that I have been all about government lately, and I see my future.

I'm not going to be a greeter at a discount store after all. I'm going to become one of those smelly old geezers hanging around a McDonald's every morning, who's mission it is to tell everybody how screwed we are.

Hey, I'll follow you out to your car if I have to.

Washington's budget...

This will fix things. A college student illustrates the contemplated budget cuts in a way that shows just how seriously the administration is taking budget worries.

Break out the tinfoil beanies . . .

Here ya go! The commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the gummint the legal authority to regulate based on what you are thinking, according to Judge Kessler:

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress's power . . . However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forego health insurance is not "acting," especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that action. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.

Can't write any more. Have to quick change into my red gym shorts and hurry off for the mandatory morning mass calesthenic exercises. Healthy mind in a healthy body, you know. See, I'm gettin' my head right, boss.

She says Marx is dead . . .

Once in a while I run into a person who asks, with their bare face hanging out all naked and innocent, why I'm against socialism. What's wrong with wanting to take care of everybody?

My short answer is that it has never worked any place it's been tried and it pretty much increases the sum total of misery wherever it's tried, except for a blessed few, and that the poor under socialism are poorer than the poor under capitalism. I don't bother with a long answer because I figure that if people won't accept my short answer, they are impervious to the logic of a long answer.

But that may be uncharitable of me. So if you want a long answer -- not too long, you can read it in less than three minutes, easy, even if you have to use your finger and mouth the words silently -- go here. The interesting thing is that you can see how Marxist thinking has infected our own body politic, to the point where people who should know better don't even realize that they are echoing Karl Marx.

Met any new friends online lately?

This isn't funny.

Looks like the government wants to spread its message -- propaganda -- and figures you might not be all that trusting. Or gullible. So the government wants to pretend that it's just some guy. The government is soliciting for a contract to create fake people to be managed with "persona management" software. Through these persona, the government agents will be interacting with us on social networks. It can spread messages that appear to be part of a groundswell, and gather information about its "friends" -- that means us -- on the social nets.

This is repulsive and is certainly not what I thought they meant when they said government was going to be transparent.

I guessby the time they know all about us from being one of our "friends," they would already have advance information about who is most efffectively opposing government programs. They would then know whose house to go to first, when the "disappearancings" start.

Not that this is the intent of this program now, I don't think. But what would prevent it?

Today, I shut down 84,000 websites to keep the world safe from pornography and aren't you proud of me, Mommy?

So, to shut down ten child pornography websites, our government shut down thousands of non pornographers, and called them pornographers? (See here.) These other eighty-three thousand nine hundred ninety were people were doing nothing illegal, presumably, but they were shut down and slapped with a badge of child pornography. It's defamatory. It's impairment of contract. It's also a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech -- it's government doing it.

Why do these people still have a job?

I think that the responsible individual or individuals in the vast government intellectual swamp (growing as we speak) should be publically identified, vilified, and fired in some suitable ceremony, all as a means of encouraging other bureaucrats to pay-effing-attention-to-what-you-are-doing! Make 'em wear a dunce cap while appearing on television.

Because this event is simply bright, shiny evidence that some our government employees are inept on a grand scale, and they are not accountable for the damage they do.

And we are going to look to this government to do something to increase employment, or literacy, or public health, or reduce obesity, drug-abuse, or homelessness, or shield us from an international politico-religious blood cult buried in a culture that accepts honor killings and female genital mutilation? No. We shouldn't expect good results. We should expect what we've been getting. Ineptitude. The government we have now? It's evidently not the same sort of people who planned the Normandy invation, or strung telephone cable across ocean floors, or put a man on the moon, or electrified a nation with four time zones in a generation or wiped out smallpox and polio. This is now a government that outlaws plastic bags and tobacco.

We are paying for a helluva lot better government then that which we are getting, and there should be some adjustments made.

Smothering anti-government demonstrations . . .

shouldn't be all that tough. They always try to fill up a large square in the capitol city, right? Get rid of the large squares so there's no good place to assemble for more than about 20 people. Why do you need a square where thousands of people can gather anyhow? Yep. No doubt about it. Capitol squares are cause of the downfall of dictatorships, sooner or later.

I don't know how that got there. It's not mine, really. It must be my cousin's . . .

Story here.

U.S. approves Russian state-controlled company's taking over two uranium mines in Wyoming . . .

It's okay if a Russian company takes control of an existing and a proposed uranium mine in Wyoming, according to our government.

I have a couple of questions, beyond the obvious question of - -

What the hell are you thinking?

First, has anybody explained Obamacare and what it is going to cost to do business in the U.S. with all of the expensive social programs built in? Oh, wait a minute. They probably experienced that sort of thing as unwilling members of the Soviet. Nevermind.

But second, isn't this just another example of foreigners being willing to do jobs that Americans won't do?

If you want peace . . .

make them scared of you. One good act of belligerence could go a long way towards gentling things down, internationally, I'm thinking.

Iranium . . .

Got an hour or so? You can watch Iranium, here, for free. At least for a while. This shows what we are facing, and how it came to be.

No surprises in Egypt . . .

We want the kind of democracy where everybody bows down to the mullahs.

Snow and ice . . .

Take a look at this. Most of the entire northern hemisphere is covered by ice and snow. But not Portland.

Must be some slackers aren't doing their part to assure global warming.

Time to start reading up about glaciation, I think. I have read that the earth has been pretty much completely ice free at times, and at other times pretty much covered in permanent ice, and that major glaciation kind of scours the earth clean of the records of previous glaciations. I know that about two thirds of the earth is ocean, where people don't live, and I know that much of the land surface is relatively unpopulated, so that if the activities of people are contributing to climate change, it's probably only on a small fraction of the surface of the earth and consequently is probably only a small percentage of the cause of climate change.

So, are we entering a glacial age? Or leaving one?