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I decided to remove an entry I put up earlier today, but I wanted to thank everyone for the kind responses.

For a Weekend in the Hamptons

I was looking at the Drudge Report this morning, and I saw a photo from the new Batman movie, and I had to ask myself: have gays ruined Batman for everybody?

The photo shows Heath Ledger in his Joker suit, with makeup and a flamboyant hairdo, and behind him stands Batman, who appears to be a pencil-armed, out of shape guy of middling height. And what do they look like? A powerful superhero and an arch villain? No. They look like a couple of gay guys who work in cubicles during the week and dress up for raves on the weekend. What is Batman doing back there? Probably texting another gay guy who has a Riddler costume.

I think Hollywood predestined this when they dressed Burt Ward up like a cocktail waitress in the old TV show. In what was basically a short red silk dress and little green panties. And “Robin”? How is that a man’s name? I mean, sure, in England, maybe. But they tend to be a little ambiguous anyway. Would a professional wrestler call himself Robin?

Okay, bad choice of images. Wrestling is even more homoerotic than comic books. Hell, it’s worse than NFL football. And that is saying a lot.

Before gaydom became so popular, we were not as used to seeing men running around in costumes. Now every Marvel movie looks like footage from Fantasy Fest.

Maybe the problem is me. Sometimes I feel like I’m over movies. Sometimes instead of suspending disbelief, I see a bunch of spoiled rich people with drug habits and multiple STDs, playing make-believe. This is especially true of science fiction. Once you’ve seen video of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford reacting emotionally to big blue things that will later be filled in with monsters and whatnot, it’s hard to take their agitation seriously in the final version. You think to yourself, “What idiots. How can a grown person do that for a living?” Acting seems exciting when you think of John Wayne as a guy who rode around on a horse shooting people, or when you think of Russell Crowe as a Roman general who fights tigers with his bare hands. It’s a little different when you think of actors as they really are. People who sit around in RVs taking drugs and watching DVDs while stagehands prepare for ten-second scenes.

I think Reed Richards may be the gayest superhero. He stretches himself out and wraps bad guys up. Think about this. When Reed Richards wraps sixty feet of himself around you, how much of that amount is crotch?

See what I mean?

Also, how come his clothes stretch along with him? Where can I buy an outfit like that? I could really use one when I’m working on new recipes.

Life is getting weird. These days if you want manly entertainment, you have to watch Rosie O’Donnell or the LPGA.

All is Quiet

Wondering, in view of recent events, why we’re not being treated to a solid two weeks of over-the-top, off-putting, talking-head gushing about Tony Snow?

Me, too.

Here is Moxie’s take on his passing.

People are More Important Than Dirt

From a comment I posted on a news story:

Mother Earth can kiss my ass. The earth only has value because I can exploit it to make my life easier. Humans are important. The earth is not, and it has no rights. My toilets empty into the earth, and the earth should be grateful to receive and process my waste, because it’s helping a human being live a clean and healthy life. Open wide, Gaia. I got another little snack for you.

I guess I got a little cranky. I am just a tiny bit sick of people claiming the earth is a person. The purpose of the earth is to support humanity. Other than that, it might as well be a ball of dog crap as far as I’m concerned.

If it Were a Boat, he Could Get Out and Walk to Safety

Moxie has actually blogged. And she has “connected the dots,” RE Obama’s airplane troubles.

Air America, what are you waiting for? Hire this woman.

Save Toontown from Global Warming

I feel like tempting fate once again.

Here’s a quotation from Jeff Masters’s blog at Weather Underground:

Tropical Storm Bertha has maintained it’s strength overnight, but is having trouble with Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) of 25°C–one degree below the threshold of 26°C considered beneficial for tropical storms.

One overstuffed European degree–almost two REAL AMERICAN degrees–below the threshold! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Weren’t we supposed to have super-hot sea temperatures due to global warming? What’s up with that?

What happened to the worldwide environmental catastrophe we were all expecting? Did it get lost at the UPS hub? Maybe we should have asked for a tracking number.

Tropical Storm Bertha is getting old, and it still can’t break 50 miles per hour. And it’s headed north, toward colder waters. Pardon me if I chortle.

But there’s another, stronger storm building right behind it, right? NO. There is NOTHING going on.

If I understand what I have read correctly, even the greenies generally admit the world is getting colder. And of course, like all intensely religious people, they have an explanation. The world is getting colder…while it’s getting warmer. We’re having a momentary dip during an overall upward trend. And how do they know this? Okay, they haven’t come up with THAT explanation yet. But they will.

Hey, stop thinking about the dropping temperatures! Remember the drowning polar bears in An Inconvenient Truth! I mean, yes, they were computer-generated bears which did not actually exist, and real bears don’t drown, because they’re semi-aquatic mammals. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the plight of CGI wildlife. If we don’t stop global warming, other imaginary animals will suffer, too. How about Tennessee Tuxedo and Chumley? They’re both from frozen polar regions! What’s going to happen to them if the world of fiction keeps heating up? They’ll have to climb into Phineas J. Whoopee’s freezer!

Potential Victims of Global Warming

I know what we need! We need to venture into C.S. Lewis’s closet and go get the Ice Queen, from Narnia! She froze Narnia, didn’t she? Can’t she do the same thing for us? Or we could just ask Hillary Clinton. She’s not busy. And she has already been referred to as “the White Witch.”

One thing is for sure. Whether global warming exists or not, we need to pass ridiculous laws and cripple the world’s economy, just to be on the safe side.

I’m not going to get hit by a hurricane this year. The fun we had a three years ago doesn’t change the basic odds. I may be wrong, and I might also be wrong if I bought a lottery ticket and predicted I would lose. But probability is heavily in my favor. Think I’m mistaken? Bet me a hundred dollars there will be hurricane-force winds in Coral Gables this year. If I had taken bets like that every year since my family moved to South Florida in 1969, I’d be a billionaire, in spite of two bad years.

The threat of global warming is a fantasy, and liberals are willing to drive working people into poverty in order to stave it off. The threat of Muslim terrorism is as real as dirt, and liberals tell us it’s an alarmist scam we ought to ignore. Maybe we need to make them a CGI world in which their wacky claims seem true. Then Phineas J. Whoopee could be President, and socialism would actually work.

Upstream

Haloscan has gone insane again. This is why you are unable to comment.

If You Don’t, the Vultures Will

What a morning.

Over the last ten days, I have been hearing a lot about my great uncle, whom I will call Bill. He’s my grandmother’s brother. He’s 89, and he never married, so he has no kids. The family somehow lost track of him, and recently, his great-nephew contacted my aunt and asked her to pay his nursing home bill.

It looks like the great-nephew and his wife convinced Bill to sell his house, buy another one, and put it in their names. And he has Social Security and a pension from the company he worked for all his life. And he has Medicare. Yet somehow, he owed money to a nursing home. Where is the money going? See if you can guess. Unless my aunt and sister and I are badly misled, these miscreants have been cashing his checks and waiting for him to die. And they apparently thought no one would be alarmed if they showed up and asked for thirteen thousand dollars to pay his bills.

My aunt got into gear and located him, and she got a power of attorney, and now he’s in a nursing home in her town. By all accounts, it’s a decent place. The family is getting him things to make his life more pleasant. And it looks like the great-nephew and his wife are about to face a grand jury.

Honest to God, where does trash like this come from? We should have kept tabs on him, and that is our shame, but what kind of low life would put an old man in a home, take his money, and then ask other relatives to pay his bills?

I don’t know why he turned to these losers instead of us, but that’s water under the bridge now.

Don’t let this happen in your family. If an older relative wanders off and you lose touch, find out what’s going on before it gets this far. When an older person seems strong and capable, it’s easy to think he can take care of himself. Sometimes they can, and sometimes they can’t.

Eastern Kentucky must have unique soil, because the trash that grows there is a wonder to behold.

Coulter, Buchanan…What’s the Difference?

I meant to mention this the other day.

While Fausta was in Miami, we happened to discuss Ann Coulter. And boy, did we turn out to be on the same frequency. Fausta mentioned one of Acidman’s buddies, and I said I feared I had alienated some members of that crew by criticizing Ann Coulter’s slurs. There are a few men on the web who idolize Coulter and feel they have to defend her at all costs, and they are probably too dumb to understand that you can’t do the GOP any good by calling people “total fag,” “faggot,” “camel jockey,” or “tent merchant” in the national media. That is not going to win us converts or votes.

Before I could fully explain my thoughts, Fausta started telling me how she went to CPAC and signed a petition trying to get Coulter’s “official speaker” endorsement revoked. She said she was watching TV with some other bloggers, and they saw Coulter call John Edwards a faggot, and immediately, the petition materialized. I believe that’s what she said. And when Fausta told me her opinion of Coulter, it was like listening to my own words. The basics? All she cares about is selling books; the GOP and the United States can go pound sand. And Coulter raises a hell of a lot of money for Democrat candidates.

Glad to hear I’m not alone, and that a lot of other conservatives have reached exactly the same conclusions I did, with no input from me.

I know what it’s like to say something stupid and over the top, but I also know how to admit it, and that appears to be a lesson Ms. Coulter will never learn. I have never seen her apologize or admit fault in the slightest degree, and I’ll bet I never will. That is one of the most serious character flaws a person can have, and it’s enough to prevent me from taking her seriously, regardless of how good the bulk of her writing is. It puts her in the grey area between “pundit” and “sideshow act.” And that is a waste.

But she’s rich, so Mission Accomplished, I guess.

She’s like Pat Buchanan. Brilliant guy, but he hates Jews, so to hell with his books. I can’t believe they still put him on TV panels.

I guess everyone knows Victor Davis Hanson recently handed Buchanan his own ass, brutally and decisively. More like, Hanson lifted Buchanan’s ass over his head and used it to hammer him into the ground. As Critical Bill might have put it, Hanson:Buchanan as Godzilla:Japan. It just goes to show that brains are worthless if you can’t see past your own biases.

More

I found a blogger who has written up the CPAC story. Even watery old Glenn Reynolds signed the petition. His signature was probably the longest piece of writing he had done in a month.

Here’s the entry.

I did not realize Coulter had used the word “raghead” at CPAC in 2006. I have to revise my opinion of her, downward. The woman is an utter idiot.

CPAC rejected her this year, based on her atrocious past behavior. The toothless mullet-wearers who hate me for criticizing Coulter need to start insulting CPAC, too.

Cyber Squatters Must Hang

Here is some wonderful advice for people who accidentally lose domain names. Do not pay to get them back.

I had a domain name I didn’t care about. It expired. Later on, I thought maybe I should renew it. Godaddy told me to pay some horrendous figure–$89, I think–to get it out of domain name purgatory or whatever. I told them to forget it. The name was auctioned, and some fool bought it. They sent me an email, threatening to build a commercial site on the domain, which would rob all my traffic, and offering to sell it back to me for $500. My response? “Enjoy your new domain.”

That was a week or two ago. I just checked Godaddy. The name is available for ten bucks.

I think I’ll renew the name and send an email to the squatters. I’ll say I made a terrible mistake and that the name is worth ten thousand dollars to me. Then I can laugh while they whois the name and find out it’s taken.

I Give Up

Baldilocks is hollering at me because I passed on a statement, from Ruth Matar of Women in Green, that Barack Obama is 47.5% Arab. I figured Mrs. Matar must have had some clue what she was talking about, but I don’t really know whether her statement is true or not. I am sure of one thing. Baldi is not buying it.

I am posting this in hopes that she will quit hollering at me and go beat on someone more deserving. How about Amanda Marcotte? I think that would be a swell choice. But I can suggest others.

Better

I made myself watch Laura Ingraham today. I can never force myself to watch TV with any kind of regularity, but I wanted to see this show, because I thought maybe Fox was starting to make intelligent decisions again.

I saw maybe half an hour. I thought it was pretty good. For some reason, Miss Ingraham seems to look better and better with time. Of course, one explanation is that my eyes are getting worse and worse. And she’s more entertaining than Gibson and Nauert. One person I respect issued a stinging critique of her jokes, but I didn’t hear any of those, so I can’t comment. Her voice is not the sort of thing that makes for a career in the production of relaxation CDs, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

John Gibson startled me with his horrendous January remarks, much as Ann Coulter did when she put slurs in her column. I was amazed when he made fun of Heath Ledger, right after he died. Where did that come from? Never saw it coming. It made Fox look bad.

My take, when I realized they were offering Laura Ingraham a show, was that they were finally getting over their Michelle Malkin fantasy. Mrs. Malkin is a fine blogger, and her books are okay, but she was pretty bad as a host. She took everything personally and got angry and seemed childish. And she doesn’t think well on her feet. I guess when she issued her weird ultimatum, she did Fox a favor.

Here is my advice: when a woman offers you an ultimatum, take her up on it. Whatever the consequences are, they’re better than being around the type of woman who issues ultimatums.

I recall Miss Ingraham complaining about the mosh pit atmosphere of one of the shows she was on. I think it was Hannity & Colmes. She said it was why she wouldn’t do TV. I guess she got over that. They must have canned her radio show, which I actually enjoyed.

If the jokes stink, she’s probably relying on the hopeless and exclusive Conservative Humor Brigade, i.e. the folks who brought us the Half-Funny News Hour. That was the suspicion of the person who criticized her jokes, and it sounds likely to me. Miss Ingraham, whatever her positive points may be, is part of the clique, and positions in the conservative media (i.e. Fox News and AM radio) are so hard to come by, I doubt she’d risk ostracism by turning down a sheaf of Ned Rice knee-slappers.

I guess we’re stuck with hacks until the creaky old mediocrities (I insult mediocrity) die of old age. There is no way a new conservative humorist with talent will ever get a shot while these guys have air in them. Maybe that’s for the best. Overall, political humor probably has a negative impact on the world, even when it’s good. And when I say “good,” I mean “liberal,” since they’re the only ones doing it right. Except for obscure bloggers. If her jokes are bad, her best move is to quit buying them. O’Reilly and Limbaugh do fine, and nobody expects quality comedy from them.

I think Fox made a good choice. Hope I turn out to be right.

Reject Him for Any Number of Reasons; Just be Sure You Reject Him

I got some interesting emails this week from Women in Green. This is a Jerusalem-based organization of Jewish women, established to support Israel’s interests. Their co-chairwomen are Ruth and Nadia Matar. Ruth Mater provides material for an email list and a blog, which you can find at this link.

The emails I got this week were a little confusing. Evidently, Mrs. Matar has demonstrated concern over Barack Obama’s Muslim background and his repeated admissions that he bears hostility toward white people. She also points out that he lied to a crowd of Jews recently. I’ll show you her proof.

According to Mrs. Matar, on June 4, Obama spoke to 700 AIPAC members. AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. They lobby in the US on behalf of Israel. I don’t know much about them.

Here is what she says Obama told them: “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable… any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized, and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”

Without taking sides with Mrs. Matar (yet), I can tell you as a lawyer that this is classic weasel-wording. “Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” That means almost nothing. If Obama pushes Israel to cede everything to the Palestinians but one acre, and then we help them defend that acre, Obama will be able to say that Israel is secure. It’s obvious to a fellow attorney that he chose these words because they sound wonderful but guarantee nothing.

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized, and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.” Again, he promises nothing. Israel will be a Jewish state? That was never seriously questioned. The borders will be secure, recognized, and defensible, but where will they BE, exactly? He avoids saying. The security of the borders is not the primary issue. Their location is the issue. Obama deliberately leaves wiggle room for the ceding of more Jewish land. “Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel.” That’s not much of a promise. It’s the capital now, even though Muslim squatters are in charge of much of it.

“And it must remain undivided.” This gem deserves its own paragraph, because it differs from the bits of lip service cited above. They were empty, misleading promises. This is worse. This is a deliberate lie. Look at what Obama said one day later:

“Jerusalem might also serve as the capital of a Palestinian state, or there might be Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods…Well, obviously it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be a part of those negotiations… As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute [a policy of the capital remaining undivided.]”

Yada, yada, yada. Don’t lead us up and down rabbit trails, Senator. You lied. Plain and simple. If Jerusalem is the capital of two nations, it’s divided. If Palestinians run certain areas, it’s divided. Nothing ambiguous there.

Ruth Matar is right to bring this to people’s attention. She also brought up the anti-white passages from Obama’s book, which are very disturbing. But she mentions other things that seem less worthy of discussion. For example, it turns out that Obama isn’t really black. He’s 1/16 black and 7/16 Arab, and the rest is good old American Wonder Bread. She is concerned about the wisdom of putting an Arab in the White House at this point in history. While I suppose it’s a factor to be considered, it’s insignificant compared to his indisputable record of snuggling up to communists, racists, and one unrepentant confessed terrorist. And it’s also a minor issue compared to his lack of experience and his abysmal qualifications.

This week IBD ran a piece detailing Obama’s active solicitation of approval from the New Party. IBD credits Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse with bringing the matter to light. The New Party is a collection of Marxist kooks. And when I say they’re Marxists, I mean they use the word “Marxist” to describe themselves. You can be an Arab and be loyal to the US. But no far-left demagogue who buddies up to terrorists and communists should ever be elected to public office.

Marxism. There’s “change” for you.

But Killing Jews Is

Here is a guy who should run for prime minister of Israel:

Man, don’t you wish heads of state had the guts to talk that way? Well, actually, Muslim heads of state do, but everything they say is a lie.

Hat tip to Aaron.

Brains are in Short Supply

Walt Disney World is roughly fifteen times the size of the proposed drilling area inside ANWR. Think about that. Not one. Not two. Fifteen.

Another way to look at it: the drilling area is about twice the size of Central Park.

Liberals tell us the impact would be larger, because there would be roads and pipelines. Hmm…we already have a huge pipeline in Alaska, and it hasn’t caused any problems. And exactly how much road do you need to service a tiny patch of oil rigs? Not much. Here in Florida, we have something like six lanes of limited-access highway between Miami and Orlando, in each direction. Their impact on the environment is minimal. Would anyone seriously propose that ANWR would require more pavement than the main connections between two major US cities? Well, yes. An ignorant hippie would.

How can this still be controversial? The public supports ANWR drilling by a margin of nearly two to one. No President I can recall has won by a margin like that. Not even Reagan, who crushed Jimmy Carter like a peanut shell.

Far-left nuts also oppose offshore drilling, which has been perfected and has no negative environmental impact whatsoever. What’s that all about? Fish love oil rigs; they love any type of offshore structure. Here in South Florida, the greenies in the government deliberately sink old ships on our reefs, to increase fish populations. They’re fantastic for commercial and recreational fishermen, who contribute to the economy. Offshore rigs don’t have oil spills; they didn’t spill oil when Katrina hit them. We have technology to contain the chemicals released during exploration and drilling. Someone explain the problem to me.

The sad thing is, we’re going to have offshore drilling near our coasts. The Chinese are getting ready to do it. I would guess that the average American is too ignorant to know that we can’t regulate activity over twenty-four miles from shore. If the Chinese want to build an oil rig every fifty feet, from Key West to Maine, there will be nothing we can do to stop them. Shouldn’t oil close to our shores be our oil? We send China our money, but at least we get products in return. Should we give them our oil, too, for nothing? That oil is free for the taking. Whoever drills first will get it. And then, if we’re lucky, they’ll sell it to us.

Frankly, I support Chinese and Indian drilling off our coasts. I hope they drill the bejeezus out of those reserves. God bless them. We’re too stupid to drill; thank God not everyone has that attitude. Why do I say that? Because any increase in the world’s oil supply will depress costs on the worldwide market. It would obviously be better if we drilled the oil, but even if China gets it, it will reduce gas prices here.

Here’s an interesting fact I just learned. The “break even” price for a barrel of oil, which would make extraction from our gigantic, Saudi-dwarfing shale reserves profitable, is probably somewhere around $40 per barrel. And the reason we’re not extracting the oil is that investors are scared that the price will collapse. In other words, they invest while oil costs $140 per barrel, and then the price plunges to a point below the break-even level, and they have to close up shop. Is that likely? Are we ever going to see sub-$40 oil again? I tend to doubt it. Seems to me that if we’re going to try kooky liberal taxes and subsidies, the only intelligent ploy is to guarantee a profit to oil shale investors.

Look at the logic. As it stands now, these people have to invest a lot of capital, and they risk losing all of it. The up side is a potential bonanza, with profits beyond their fondest hopes. Do we have to guarantee an astronomical profit in order to get people to invest? No. An intelligent investor would be thrilled to get a guarantee of 20% per year, which we can easily afford. Wouldn’t you put your money in a project that guaranteed a 20% return? I sure would. I’d sink every loose dime into it and consider myself retired. In fact, I’d be thrilled with 10%.

We have recoverable reserves in the TRILLIONS of barrels. Most of the world’s reserves are in this country. Think about that. We have something like six times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Remember now, that doesn’t include our conventional reserves, which are also huge.

Guaranteeing shale investment sure beats production-killing taxes and money-sink subsidies on oil produced by existing technology.

Now that I think about it, why do we persist in pretending we’re running out of oil, if we have enormous reserves which we are positive we can eventually extract profitably? There’s a good question for the Presidential debates.

Think how wonderful it would be. Cheap gas to keep us going until we do the responsible thing and build more nuclear reactors. To keep us afloat while we develop new energy sources that actually work. It would allow us to make a smooth transition to something like hydrogen fuel cells.

Still, the hippies have convinced many people that the answer is to slow down, do less, and kill the economy. I wish we had their PR resources and they had our standards of personal hygiene.

The great promise of the Internet is that because of it, truth can no longer be suppressed. Information can’t be controlled the way it used to be, and we should be reaping policy dividends from that change. Yet somehow we still believe in farcical concepts like global warming, ethanol, drilling bans, and the restriction of clean, safe, cheap, abundant nuclear power.

Before the Internet broke the MSM’s stranglehold on the information pipeline, we could be excused for making stupid decisions. But now we deserve whatever happens to us.