major dad Just Asked Me, “How Is This Not a War Crime?”

“They’re trying to flat out assassinate Qaddafi.”

And it’s not a declared war?

Damned if I know. I DO know it’s sure gotta be sweet not being a REPUBLICAN president pulling this crap.

Dead grandchildren aren’t gonna help their arguments in justifying any of this shit though.

What The BBC Didn’t Show Yesterday…

(via Tim)

Did She Drunkenly Stumble…

…into a rococo chair in the palace?

I Liked The Fly-By In London

But it wasn’t quite the one I was hoping for…

Hearts a Flutter

Ah, they’ve kissed ~ TWICE! I can go to work happy.

Now, let the Space Shuttle ascend safely and the day will be truly blessed and grand.

Well, Ok, I Admit It

I just watched a few minutes of carriages driving about.

They look very happy and comfortable with each other.

May they always retain that.

ths update: Ditto that, little brother, and I hope they frickin’ kiss before I’m late to work! (major dad and I have been watching since right before, “I do.”) Kate looks stunning ~ OMG ~ and those two young men are incredible. LURVES it! And one last thought…

SHUT UP SKYLER!!!!!!! 🙂

Potential Upcoming Post Alert

Got an email last night from Emily May, (yes that Emily) who wanted to respond to THS’s cruel, heartless and mean-spirited attack on her character. I invited her to email me what she wanted to say and I would post it unedited, so we’ll see if she does.

You know, the suspension on this thing is pretty good: I hardly felt anything from throwing Sis under the bus like that.

With All the Horrors of Yesterday, There Was One Thing of Beauty to Behold

I just saw the picture of Gabby Giffords.

Makes me cry like a baby.

Top Ten

Favorite British Words.

Lucky sister Ave won’t have to haul herself out of bed like the rest of us who want to see THE wedding.

A Day Of Horrors

All across the South, the death toll is over 80

TENNESSEE VALLEY, AL—

The death toll is staggering, and it keeps rising. Currently, more than 40 people are confirmed dead from multiple tornadoes that hit north Alabama on Wednesday in several rounds of severe storms.

There are deaths and significant damage in most north Alabama counties. We’ve outlined the situation below.

Jackson County

Coroner John David Jordan confirms there are eight deaths in Jackson County.

Folks in Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia take cover today.

Update: Oh Christ

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The death toll from severe storms that roared across the South has risen to 173 across five states with Alabama and Mississippi each reporting increases in the number of deaths in their states.

Alabama’s emergency management agency says their death toll has gone up to 128, while Mississippi officials are reporting 32 dead in that state.

Another 11 have been killed in Georgia and one each in Tennessee and Virginia.

I wonder if our Fundraiser In Chief will find time in his busy golfing schedule to get some help to these folks?

ths update: The Tuscaloosa News has some incredible photo banks. (“Tuscaloosa is gone” might be an understatement.) In their comment section, a local pastor who weighed in saying that the destruction in Tuscaloosa is God’s tornado way of settling things, well…he’s pretty much getting a tornado of just desserts served up. As it should be.

As always, The Salvation Army, if you can, dear Swillers. You know they’re there already.

The Radar at Columbus AFB, MS

…right now. There are so many tornado warnings, the thing is wigging out and can’t keep up.

God bless all those folks under that nightmare all over the middle of the country, including Crusader and family. It’s like Toad’s Wild Ride with fangs attached.

update: This is as menacing as anything I’ve ever seen. Taken from a third story apartment in Tuscaloosa.

update: AW jeez, Birmingham took an F-5 in the chops and one sad little tweet a short while ago just said,

“Tuscaloosa is gone…“

Miss USA

…is not a TSA fan.

You Always Wanted to Open That Little Greasy Spoon

“Bingley’s Belchin’ Beer, Bait ‘n Biscuit Bar“

I know. Dreams. They’re what America’s made of.

Or used to be…

What Took So Long?

I mean, really?

ths update: In the irony segment of our broadcast, The Present is now whining on the telly about “how long this birth certificate issue has been a “distraction” “.

Whoa.

And that he’s glad it’s over because he has more important things to do.

Today it’s three fundraisers and Oprah.

Again, thank YOU to every single idiot who voted for this guy.

Say “Good Night, England”

It’s not bedtime. It’s turn out the lights time.

UK Pub Singer Arrested for Singing ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ in Earshot of Chinese Pair

Simon said: “We were performing Kung Fu Fighting, as we do during all our sets. People of all races were loving it. Chinese people have never been offended by it before.

“But this lad walking past with his mum called us w*****s and did the hand sign before taking a picture on his mobile phone.

“We hadn’t even seen them when we started the song. He must have phoned the police.

“They phoned me when I was in a Chinese restaurant that night. They arranged to meet me and I was arrested.

I wouldn’t be too smug about it though. Just wait’lll some CAIR assholes hear Leon Redbone do a riff on “Sheik of Araby”. Stick a fork in US, then.

Keeping Those Eminently Qualified Individuals He So Gravitates To

…close at hand. Lucky us.

AP sources say CIA director Panetta to take over Pentagon; Petraeus to be nominated for CIA

Southern Observations

sigh

Drama Can Be Good for the Soul

Take cliff diving, for instance.

…Take a look at this chart compiled by metalprices.com. It’s the price of a barrel of crude oil over the past 5 years.

See that big peak in the middle? That was the last oil spike, in the summer of 2008. Notice how the price hit a high point, then fell off a cliff afterwards?

The day corresponding to that peak, an all-time high of $145.16/barrel, was July 14, 2008.

By some strange coincidence, that was the very same day then-President George W. Bush lifted, by executive order, a federal ban on offshore oil drilling.

Of course, with soul-less No-Drama Obama at the helm, your dramatic end results may vary.

My Own Mini-Doom

Being very wary of treading on the Mistress of DOOOOM’s turf but here’s a quick snapshot of my own local School Board Bit O’Doom

Current budget for salaries: 87,589,651
Proposed budget for salaries: 86,061,418
Percentage difference: -1.7%

Current budget for employee benefits: 23,275,294
Proposed budget for employee benefit: 28,039,016
Percentage difference: +20.5%

That’s right: salaries decrease roughly 2% but the cost in benefits goes up by over 20%.

Hurray for New Math!
New-ew-ew Math
It won’t do us a bit of good ‘cos we’re
Screwed Math…

Rows and Flows of Angel Hair

And ice cream castles in the air…

Or solar unicorns and fairy wind dust.

…In March 2009, researchers Gabriel Calzada Alvarez and colleagues at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos released a study examining the economic and employment effects of Spain’s aggressive push into renewables. What they found confounds the usual green-job rhetoric:[5]

•Since 2000, Spain spent 571,138 euros on each green job, including subsidies of more than 1 million euros per job in the wind industry.
•The programs creating those jobs destroyed nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy (2.2 jobs destroyed for every green job created).
•The high cost of electricity mainly affects production costs and levels of employment in metallurgy, nonmetallic mining and food processing, and beverage and tobacco industries.
•Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy on average.
•These costs do not reflect Spain’s particular approach but rather the nature of schemes to promote renewable energy sources.

(Via Jonah.)

Journey To Which Mountain?

After our drive down on Palm Sunday morning Daughter and I were desperately looking forward to visit that most majestic of monuments, which from this side of the Mason-Dixon has always looked so majestic and somber. We’re talking “Georgia’s most visited attraction” here, folks: Stone Mountain.

Regal.

Dignified.

Ultra-Cheesy

That picture is the only shot I could get of the actual carving (which is the whole point of the place’s existence last I checked). They charge you $10 to park and you drive in amongst all these tall obscuring pines with lots of folks walking and hiking and what not. Then you park and walk by a bunch of kiddie rides to some faux Six Flags little shopping village (which completely blocks your view of the reason you paid 10 stinking bucks unless you stand on a bench like I did and wait for all the other suckers to get out of your way and give you a clear shot) where they sell all types of total crap-ola, and the Stone Mountain stuff all has pictures of peaches and smiling children in a Disneyesque collage of hues and cable cars and a teensy-weensy blurry image in the background of, oh, STONEWALL JACKSON, ROBERT E. LEE and JEFFERSON DAVIS. They’re definitely trying to broaden the appeal beyond the original clientele. And, frankly, judging by the cross-section we saw in the lot and “village” they’ve succeeded.

In this sanitized PC Era, those three gents have definitely been relegated to the back of the bus.

There was a fun moment in the main gift shop, however. There one can buy a mug emblazoned with the “Stone Mountain” name…and the rest of the mug is done in a tied-died hippy pattern. Priceless.

But also unfortunately not dishwasher-safe, which is why we didn’t buy my Bride one.

Southern Signs Photo Contest

Via our favorite magazine.

What’s that preacher know about whoring, anyway?

Shee-oot. Poophead.

This Is Not an Editorial

…we’d ever see in our local fishwrap and survive the shock.

Ending Medicare: A big, scary lie

…President Obama started the game by saying the House plan “ends Medicare as we know it.” Well, that’s true. Medicare would still exist, but it would function very differently. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, though, went further. That group claims the House Republicans “end Medicare.” Period.

That’s a total lie…

That Smug Mug Just Got a Little

…smugger at the mugging we’re taking.

Energy in America: EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Oil Drilling Plans

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

(Thanks to Instapundit for that link.)

Oh, but that’s okay. We had that stalwart pillar of honesty ~ Dick Blumenthal ~ on “Face the Nation” yesterday leading the “hoot and hollar” charge for investigations:

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Sunday called for a grand jury investigation into possible wrongdoing in relation to rising gasoline prices, and urged the government to actively fight “the kind of illegal speculation and trading and hedge fund activity that may be driving prices up.”

In an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Blumenthal commended President Obama for forming a task force aimed at rooting out fraud or manipulation in the oil and gas markets, but argued that stronger actions were required.

Well, I’m sure that’s just gonna terrify the hell outta of somebody and Lord KNOWS what it’ll do to take care of petrol prices right this very second.

That’s Dick for ya.

And oil companies report their earnings starting this week, so gird your loins as far The Present dusting off his best Reverend Al on the stump accent to demonize and divide, sans mentioning that oil companies don’t set prices.

More smugness, more lectures, more solar unicorns and fairy wind dust schemes that won’t ever get my car from Point A to Point B, but piss on individual me now, anyway. It’s the collective we need to be concerned with.

update: In the comments I note that Bill Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling in 1996 with the justification that nothing would be produced “in 10 years”, so what the hell good would it do anyway? Might as well save the reindeer, right? Meandering through some of the later drilling fights, I ran across this curious 2008 column from “Crooks and Liars”. The focus is Rep. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN] and what a whang-doodle-dang nutjob she is (“Big on Republican talking points, light on facts…”), especially for statements like this:

“…People are concerned about the economy and they’re concerned about gas prices, and in ’95 it was President Clinton who vetoed drilling in Anwar. If he had not done that, we would be seeing more gas in the pipeline right now. So this is an issue I think that’s tailor made for John McCain.“

To quote a famous philosopher, you can slap my hiney and call me Shirley ~ I don’t get what’s so crazy about that statement. Their next assertion, however, had me confused:

Oy. Where to begin? The ANWR myth has been debunked, but Marsha wasn’t about to let those pesky facts get in the way. Besides, it’s much better to blame Bill Clinton than take responsibility for your own party’s failures, right?

Debunked WHAT?!? I hadn’t heard that…and followed their linky-poo to the American Progress.Org take down of the 2004-5 drilling fight.

-Drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will do nothing to relieve our dependency on foreign oil. The House leadership is attempting to buy votes for drilling in ANWR – the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s energy plan – by linking proceeds to health care costs of retired coal mine workers. This ploy does not change the proposal’s fundamental flaws. Drilling in ANWR would likely produce only 3.2 billion barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, not even enough to satisfy six months’ demand; oil would not begin to reach the market for another 10 years; and it would take 50 years to extract the full amount. For this pittance, the House leadership and the administration are willing to disturb hundreds of acres of pristine wildlife habitat.

You’ll notice some similarities with the 1996 veto rationalizations, only, in 2004 when this was written, it’s damn near ten years out from that milestone already, right? It’s like they cut and paste the same old crap, “Will do nothing to relieve our dependency on foreign oil…“. Oh, STFU.

Even then, all you have to do is let your fingers do the walking to find some cherry picked/manipulated data in ‘debunk central’ and they have the nerve to snicker at Blackburn. That “pittance” of a dribble of oil that we could have been working with for a couple of years now? Darned if there isn’t a tad more available there than those liar liar pants on fire would have you believe.

…An example is the 3.2 billion barrel estimate often attributed to the 1998 USGS study. This may have originated with the 1987 BLM EIS, or it may be based on a misinterpretation of data presented in the 1998 USGS report. In either case it is wrong.

But it’d take ten years.

You know.

He Is Risen Indeed

Happy Easter everyone.