Friday, September 11, 2009

Perhaps there is justice in the world

The news coverage of The One's speech to Congress the other night was dominated by SC Republican Joe Wilson's shout "You lie" in response to the Messiah's claiming the health care bill would not make benefits available to illegal aliens. While Wilson was apparently correct, Democrats and Republicans alike claimed to have been embarrassed by his indecorous outburst of candor. Left unmentioned was the indecorum of Obama's accepting the hospitality of the House, then using it as a forum to lie to the House, the Senate and the American people.

Also left unmentioned was the booing Bush received from the Democrats during his State of the Union address.

Further coverage claimed that Wilson's opponent has now raised $100,000 in 24 hours from outraged supporters.

Now comes the news that Joe Wilson's outburst, indecorous or not, embarrassing or not, has resulted in some donations to his campaign coffers. According to Paul Kane in the Washington Post's Capital Briefing
With a political arms race in full force, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has raised almost $750,000 in less than 48 hours since his shout of "You lie!" to President Obama during the Wednesday address to Congress....

Wilson, by early next week, could equal the total amount of money he raised in the entire two-year-election cycle of 2008, when he raised a little more than $1.1 million.
While Wilson apologised privately to the President, he may still be in trouble with the diversity loving Democrats:
If he continues to refuse to make a public apology on the House floor, Democrats plan to offer a resolution admonishing his comments to Obama.
If Wilson sticks to his guns, getting admonished by the Democrats may just turn out to be as prestigious in some quarters as making Nixon's Enemies List was in others.

The comments to the article make it look that way.

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Joe Friday vs The One

Monday, September 07, 2009

Fire at Waipio, Honolulu

On Saturday Valerie and I helped out with an Eagle Scout project at Alva Scott Elementary School in Aiea, then headed off to CostCo Waipio. Big mistake: a brush fire had broken out on the hillside across the highway, on the Diamond Head side of the Ko Uka Blvd exit to CostCo. As soon as we were irrevocably on the entrance ramp, we knew we had a problem: all the Ewa-bound lanes were stopped. Too late to do anything. That's the problem with highways: no escape until the next exit, and in this case, not even then.

Valerie shot this one from the car with her phone camera while we were stopped in traffic on H1. At this point we didn't know that the cops had shut down the ramps for H2 to Waipio, but did suspect as much as it was pretty much a parking lot. The orange building in the mid-ground is Home Depot, the reddish peaked roofs just beyond that are Pearl Highlands shopping center:

 
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As usual, clik on the pic for a bigger version.

The two lane H2 exit was closed with orange cones and a cop car, massively snarling traffic because one of those lanes, clogged with cars, is an exit only lane and all those vehicles had to merge with the Ewa-bound traffic. We finally escaped at Waikele. We figured that since we had spent so much time in traffic that we might as well finish the expedition. V pulled out the map book and we made our way via surface streets to CostCo. At one point we had a good view of the fire from the road, so stopped to gawk with many others.

I shot this one from the road above the highway, Ewa side, looking toward Diamond Head. One of the two helicopters on the job has just dumped a load of water picked up at a nearby reservoir. I didn't think to time the runs, but they were probably no more than three minutes, so the reservoir must have been extremely close. You can see a yellow fire truck on a dirt road as well. The light standard in the middle is on the highway.

 
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The helicopters frequently sailed over our heads, and since the water buckets have a less than perfect seal on the bottom dump mechanism we occasionally got misted as they passed. There were a couple firemen in yellow suits walking around the hillside below the firetruck, hosing areas from time to time.

Smoke would gather, blotting out our view, than wind would blow it away, fanning the flames and get things roaring again. It looked like a busy day to be a fireman or a helicopter pilot.

We eventually made it to CostCo, where for the first time in my experience there were several open gas pumps: no waiting. The store was pretty much deserted, and staff scrambled when the lights in the back of the back of the building flickered at one point. Don't know what that was about, but perhaps fire related.

While the highway entrance was blocked when we arrived, by the time we finished shopping we were able to get on, passing several cop cars parked on the dirt by the exit, cops drinking water and watching.

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Soapbox Derbies are so passe'

What this country need is a good ol' surge in trebuchet competitions at the Cub Scout, Brownie, Girl Scout, and Boy Scout levels.



Go, Junior!

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Sunday, September 06, 2009

U.S. Representative Davey Crockett

Mr. Crockett allegedly took a verbal licking from one Horatio Bunce for giving public money to survivors of a large fire in Georgetown: ""The people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give." Ooops. Sound familiar?
The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."
What a quaint idea.
"It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people."
Oh, please. What century were those people living in?

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"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil..."

That's from Michael Moore, hero of the Democratic Party, the man who the party seated next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic National Convention.

Hubert Humphrey, no flaming right wing ideologue, helped purge the Democratic Party of the communists, but Hubert Humphrey is long dead.

According to the Reuters account of the release of Moore's latest "documentary", he
launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.

"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes.

"You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.
Perhaps the article misses something, because I wasn't aware that capitalism and democracy are incompatible. Perhaps he meant to write "social democracy."

It must be comforting, now that one communist is out of the White House, to have another so outspokenly available to the President.

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