Sometimes...
...Ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
--Dolly
Monday, May 14, 2012
Are You Fucking Serious...
NOW NANCY PELOSI is concerned about constitutionality?
California ought to be ashamed and embarrased that they're sending this lightweight twit to Congress. Just ashamed!
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, May 12, 2012
So Governor Kasich...
HAS BEEN QUOTED AND sound-bitten as being open to the notion of using bridge tolls to finance the replacement of the Brent Spence bridge (where Interstate 75 crosses the Ohio River at Cincinnati). And it occurs to me that the gas tax was supposed to pay for this -- an might have, had politicians not looted the highway trust fund to pay for boondoggles like teapot museums and idiotic boondoggles like a passenger rail line between Sacramento and Modesto. Or worse. What's next, a spa resort by the Salton Sea?
There's a lot of that going on. As commenter pointed out at Q&O, a cooking grease -- scorn quotes -- "crisis" in Arkansas might very well be lessened by proper maintenance of sewer lines. But, of course, infrastructure isn't sexy and doesn't get rent-seeking parasites re-elected to public office, so the money taxed away from more-productive sorts to pay for infrastructure maintenance and improvement get stolen to pay for more popular pet projects. And sewerage "crises" engender afafronts to liberty and common sense, such as is reported in the above-linked post.
Which his how you get potholes. Or the thirty-foot breakers in the right turn lane at Marburg and Erie. You know the ones I mean -- make your SUV buck like a Conestoga running from the Sioux.
And, as regulars here know, I never voice a complaint without offering up a solution, here's mine: Stop politicians from looting any pile of money not nailed down.
And quite a few that are -- witness the highway trust fund.
Good point, Dolly.
Make any incoming legislator post a financial responsibility bond. He can't propose or vote in support of any bill that has financial consequences greater than his bond. And, then, when he leaves office, instead of the golden parachute they have now, they forfeit the bond.
Yeah. That'll work. Until some bright boy figures out how to get around it.
Um. Also a good point. OK. We treat subversion as being a crime on a scale from bad faith intent to treason, depending on the jury's reaction to the perfidy involved. How's that? Think it would discourave people from becoming legislators?
Then who would do the People's business?
That question assumes that "The People" (collectively) HAVE any legitimate business to get up to.
There is that.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
Ohio Republicans Should Take Notes...
AND KEEP THEM for reference down the road. Gov. Kasich is under similar pressure to that exerted on Scott Walker and has yet to perform one tenth as well. And, yet, as so many have observed so often, whenever conserv- -- excuse me, American -- principles are espoused in a clear, bright-line fashion, with no cavils or caveats, they win elections -- HANDS DOWN.
And, shame of shames, John Kasich has been among those voicing this fact the loudest.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
So They Called it Early...
FOR MOURDOCK, and with Lugar's flop sweat still damp on his collar, the spinmeisters are all out in force to tell you what it means.
So let me put it to you here first.
What it means -- and the landslide proportions of the win -- is that when conserv... er, excuse me ... when American ideals are put forth boldly, without fear or caveat, they win. Every. Time.
Remember that. You, as an American, are in the majority in this country. You need not despair that your singleton vote will go unrequited.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
OK, I’ll bite. #AskMichelle:...
WHERE THE HELL DO YOU get off? Seriously. Why don't you mind your own fucking business?
Help out. The FLOTUS wants your questions.
And these kack-handed wannabe tyrants want us to believe they're capable of running a country, let alone the lives of its citizens?
Get. Real.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Not That You Should Need Yet Another Reason...
TO VOTE FOR Josh Mandel for Senate in Ohio this year, but, when it comes to the War on Women, our incumbent Democrat weasel, Sherrod Brown, has apparently opened his own front.
Maybe you should say, "Allegedly."
Yeah. That word. Means, "Somebody said it," but always sounds like "Guilty as sin."
Dunnit just?
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, May 08, 2012
The President Says...
ROMNEY MUST "rebuke extreme voices..."
Right. Like Ayers and Wright and Dohrn and Pfleger and Alinsky and Clinton and Jones and Sunnstein ...
We'll get right on that. Rebuke away, Mittens!
Hell, he could rebuke from now 'til November and never touch a Republican.
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Beggin’ You Hoosiers...
PUH-LEEZE vote ... well, if you can'T bring yourself to vote FOR Mourdock, at least vote AGAINST Lugar.
If the fact that he's not a legal resident of the state he purports to represent doesn't do it, how about the fact that he's making war on the Constitution through his support of the blatantly anti-American War -- er -- Law of the Sea Treaty.
Well, if they try to implement that treaty, there will be a war, so maybe your name is more appropriate.
Sort of like Kellogg-Briand practically guaranteed WWII?
Sort of. Yeah.
Mark Philip Alger
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Monday, May 07, 2012
Not With Those Notions You’re Not...
VANDERLEUN PROPOSES that we in the Right rebrand ourselves in a manner similar to that of the Left when the term "liberal"became no longer operative and "progressive" became the preferred label on the Left for despicable collectivist statists. Which suited us fine. We knew, even if the myrmidons of the Left did and do not, the true nature of the so-called Progressive movement -- that it is singularly responsible for nearly every bad political idea of the Twentieth Century and has more blood on its hands... Let them call themselves that. We'll hang them with it.
So the new brand for the Right -- for those in favor of liberty, of low taxes, smaller government, fiscal responsibility, free markets -- is American. Truth in advertising.
And, of course, those on the Left, when they catch on, will try to claim that they're Americans, too. Which gives us the perfect opening: "Not with those political notions you're not."
Make it go, Rev! Make it go!
Mark Philip Alger
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Monday, May 07, 2012
When Politicians Tell You...
THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND how Washington works -- or, as Dick Lugar has, in effect, said recently, "You need to keep in mind that your principles amount to zero in the real world," it is time and long past time to remind them how things work in the real world: when an employee no longer satisfies, he is let go.
This is how a republic looks in practice. Good bye, Senator. You and Orrin Hatch can toddle off and spend your sunset years double-dipping on K Street.
Mark Philip Alger
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Sunday, May 06, 2012
The Elizabeth Warren Brouhaha...
AMOUNTS TO A WHOLE lot of question-begging.
And not just street-corner "spare change?"-ing. We're talking GIMME A DOLLAR MOTHERFUCKER and following you down the block cursing your ancestry and threatening your descendants in a parade-ground voice.
THAT kind of question-begging. Really beligerant and more than a little dangerous and transgressive.
As Michael Barone observed, Warren grew up in Oklahoma, where Cherokee ancestry is common and no big deal. OK, so she gamed the system to gain personal advantage. That's not, according to the adolescent cri de couer, it's not fair.
It's also beside the point. The real issue about Elizabeth Warren is that she's a despicable human being. She's a collectivist statist with some really toxic views about how the power of the state ought to be used to oppress its citizens. This is not a person you want in elective office.
Bin the Indian nonsense. Don't fall for the sleight of hand. Keep your eye on the ball.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, May 05, 2012
Kris Rusch Hacked...
ACCORDING WHAT GOT posted in comments hither thither and yon, the attack on the Kristine Katherine Rusch site appears to be just random script kiddies rattling doorknobs and found one unlocked.
But for awhile there, it was possible to imagine that somebody was taken umbrage at what Kris has been saying about the odious business practice of "traditional" publishing conglomerates and their myrmidons and other sundry hangers-on.
Which makes the post in question -- to which it appeared the attack was a reaction -- doubly worth the read. It's being mirrored all over the blogosphere. But I read Sarah, which habit I apparently have in common with Glenn Reynolds, so I've linked to her echo of the post.
Of course, all the twitter is about the context of the attack and not the substance of the post. But I suspect that will be up next on the agenda here in a day or so.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, May 05, 2012
You Know What...
YOU GO AHEAD AND sit this one out. If you're right and voting doesn't matter, then your sitting it out doesn't matter.
If you vote for Obama, you are, as the masthead slug says, a moron, and there's no reasoning with you. And your vote probably won't matter anyway. He's going down. The knives are out. The real miracle is whether he survives to the election.
You don't think so? All those Democrats who've made trips to enemy capitals, who've had truck with virulent opponents? For a party that's all about loyalty and solidarity, they're really good at betayal. A lot of Democrats have got to be running really scared -- even if they won't admit it in public -- because, even if Obama does win, a lot of elected Deomcrats beside him are going down.
And it's not as though they wouldn't use extreme measures to remove the threat to their personal fortunes. It's practically in the Left's DNA. While there may be doubts about -- say -- Vince Foster, it's pretty sure that the Soviets wound Oswald up and put him on the table. What he did when they turned him loose was almost foreordained. You don't think Putin or Hu don't already have somebody on a string, ready to go? You're more naive than you look.
No... Clean or dirty, Romney is the next President of the United States. You don't have to like it. I don't. All you can say is he's not Obama. And, this time -- this time -- it has to be enough.
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
Quote of the Day...
Everything will be alright in the end. If everything is not alright, it is not yet the end.
--from the trailer for some art film that actually looks interesting
Gotta translate that into Dollish
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
Obama Lies to His Autobiography...
(I FORGET. IS THAT the one ghosted by noted American terrorist, Bill Ayers? Or is that the other one?)
The hagiographers in the partisan legacy media argue that there was no real intent to deceive. Obama (or Ayers -- whichever) was merely "compressing" women for dramatic effect or something. A -- scorn quotes -- "non-fiction" book, apparently, is not required to hew to the same dictum as fiction that it actually make sense.
Which brings to mind the question: Does not "Not intended to be factual" equal "intended to deceive?"
And isn't compressing women rather dehumanizing. Doesn't it kind of objectify them? Make cardboard cutouts of them, rather than allowing them to be real, flesh-and-blood people?
And, how creepy is the exchange, "I Love You," "Thank you."
Or did he say, "Thank me"?
And then there's poor Julia. Talk about cardboard cutouts!
And a note to the Obama campaign? The whole "tax cuts for the rich" wheeze is getting a bit tired and threadbare. And, frankly, sounds kinda desperate. Can we come up with a new one?
For some clever use of social media, take a cue from Monty Python?
Whatever. You guys do need -- seriously -- some help. How can you run the most powerful country in the world if you can't even -- ever -- get Twitter right. What is it, now, The American People 6 and The White House zip?
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
So the Prez...
PULLS US OUT of Afghanistan and the next day, theTiban get their bowels in an uproar.
To quote Leroy Jethro Gibbs in a semi-Wayne, "I don't believe in coincidences."
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
Software Licenses...
ISN'T THE VERY existence of a shrink-wrap or a sneak-wrap agreement pretty much prima facie evidence of bad faith intent?
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
The Left and the Right Have Widely Divergent...
NOTIONS AS TO WHAT constitutes a hyperpartisan.
To the Left, it is someone who refuses to consider opposing viewpoints -- who has the courage of his convictions and principles. Of course, that desecribes most people in the Right, so, of course, your knee-jerk leftist abhors that. (Which is why they can't stand Rush Limbaugh. And they could fool themselves into believing that Bill Buckley's endless hunt for le mot juste was actually so much chin-pulling, so they lurved him.)
To the right it is someone who will follow the partisan line, regardless of whether it makes sense, who will bring the country down if it will further his partisan goals. Which is why we call George Mitchell, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and just about any random Kennedy you could hit with a swung cat hyper-partisans. Because they would, they do, and they are.
Don't you be those guys.
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, May 04, 2012
Pulling the Trigger ... or ... Don’t Expect a Medal for Doing Your Job...
OBAMA'S RISIBLE AND DESPICABLE claim that Mitt Romney wouldn't have given the order to kill Osama bin Liner reminds me a lot of the left wing contention that Nazism and Fascism are right wing diseases. Only somebody thoroughly anad utterly steeped in communism could possibly think of someone mere millimeters to the right of them as being extreme right wing. Only a left wing hyper-partisan.
As Tolkien put it: to crooked eyes, the truth may wear a wry face.
So now O'Bambi's trying to say that Mittens wouldn't have given the order to kill bin Laden. Me, I think it reveals more about BHO's perspective on the matter than it does anything about Romney. For one, it says that he has the mistaken notion that any american president NOT as traitorous as he is would ever consider NOT giving the order to kill bin Laden. (Forgetting, of course, that Bill Clinton did exactly that.) And that HE (Obama) thinks there is a matter of some doubt as to whether the killing of bin Laden was proper.
What a bloody berk!
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Sorry About the Free Ice Cream...
THING BEING in the shop. Can't be helped. Too many irons in the fire including one of those projects that just sucks it all out of you. And, again with the apologies, but I will NOT be able to talk about it. Ever. Just one of those things.
Update: to quote the Kingston Trio, as you can tell from the speed of our return, that last exit was fraudulent.
Mark Philip Alger
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Monday, April 30, 2012
DRM and Pricing...
SO TOR BOOKS HAS ANNOUNCED that they will stop locking up their ebooks with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the publishing world is all a-twitter. (Pun intended.) And it appears that most of the legacy press is ignoring the fact that some publishers (e.g., Baen Books) have never had DRM at all.
Just for the record, I'm on the anti side. I think DRM stems from the mindset that the customer is out to screw the seller. This is every bit as witless as the seller is always out to screw the customer. Not so by half.
In the case at hand, I've seen a lot of prognostication that this move will enable piracy. Evidence doesn't square with that (q.v., Baen Books above). But more to the point, piracy, like price resistance, is a marketplace signal -- to put it shortly, your prices are too high. That is to say, your product is deemed desirable and yet your prices are not low enough to clear the market with all acquisitions being via paid exchange.
This is especially true with digital media, since the net marginal unit cost is effectively zero. That is, once capital costs to pay for development are met, there is no cost attached to selling the next copy, nor any others thereafter.
Now, since intellectual property -- particularly books -- are a high-value proposition, society sees nothing wrong with remunerating creators far beyond costs. Any level of profit is considered reasonable. Laudatory, even. Thus we admire J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. Still, there ought to be a price at which it is preferable even to truly piratical scofflaws to pay for an ebook as opposed to downloading it from a bit torrent site. And there also ought to be a point of equalibrium where an irreducible minimum of copies are pirated (albeit not zero), and the rest are willingly paid-for.
But that there is sufficient demand, yet also sufficient price resistance, for there to even be a traffic in a particular title ought to be a signal to a market-savvy seller.
Some of this is due to what Dean Wesley Smith refers to as the produce model of selling books -- the assumption that a title only has value during a very small window and that that window must be ruthlessly kept clear of unsold product. Picture crate after crate of still-edible lettuce sitting out back of a grocery store and you get the idea. I don't know how many books and records I have missed because I was broke at the exact moment they hit the market and not even looking for them, but would have enjoyed them immensely had they been available when I was looking.
They pulled it from the shelf because it wasn't selling. But it wasn't selling because it wasn't on the shelf. That makes no sense at all. But it's how the book business looks at things.
And they're wrong. And if they don't face facts soon, they're going to get a rude awakening.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Caturday Post...
GREAT DAY FOR WRITING: cool weather, thunderstorms. No or few disturbances.
Big lightning strike close by, followed by earth-shattering ka-boom. All of a sudden, all of the cats -- who had been piled on the bed in the other room -- were huddled around me in the office.
Things have settled down, now. More work on It's Dolly's Birthday. Dolly gets a hairbrush from Tiko. Sorry: you'll have to read the book to get that, but it's big winnage for me right now.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
To Hell With a Balanced...
BUDGET AMENDMENT, how about a budget amendment. As in: the government may not spend any monies not budgeted. No tickee, no washee. You don't produce a budget, with all line items appropriated and disbursed, or you don't spend One. Thin. Dime.
Yeah. That'll pass.
Ram it down their throats.
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, April 27, 2012
What I Wanna Know...
IS WHY THIS PETTY tyrant hasn't already received a .30 cal lead injection to the brain pan. Not for the sayin', mind, but for the doin'.
I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy with enforcement. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage over the next few years. So you make examples out of people who are, in this case, not complying with the law. Find people who are not complying with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them. It's a deterrent factor.Al Armendariz, EPA Region 6 administrator.
Not that I'm advocating it. I certainly don't welcome the prospect of American political discourse descending into violence, but ... DAY-um! In a pool of his own blood with a silk ribbon strewn across the corpse reading "Sic Semper Tyrannis." Seriously. What else can you say in response to that kind of shit?
What else are you gonna do when they back you into a corner like that? That this guy is still walking around (enough to apologize for his little gaffe) is to me prima facie evidence that EVERY person taking Federal salt -- military, LEO, bureaucrat, elected official and all -- is foresworn of his oath to defend the Constitution. Every. Single. One.
And I don't care if Congress DID vote the law in. This country ain't majority rule -- specifically, explicitly, and on-purpose. And it says right here, you ain't the boss of me and you don't get to waive my rights.
Update: Video pulled.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Hey You!...
ARE YA FUCKIN' mental? Did I not tell you to go watch the video? And did you? Well, then what the fuck are you doing standing around here with your thumb up your ass? Go. Watch. The. Video. (!)
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
HEY!...
DID YOU WATCH the video? Get the fuck out. Just. Go. Away. Don't come back until you watch it. I'm serious. Get out of here!
Go watch the video.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Got a Point for You...
WHO SEEK TO MAKE slaves of your fellow citizens and render them defenseless in the face of predators -- most especially state-sponsored predators: Al Sharpton's mouth has killed more people than George Zimmerman's gun.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
YOU!...
WATCH THIS! Do not approach me again until you have.
Mark Philip Alger
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Previously on BabyTrollBlog...
