It's not all that uncommon to hear one or more of our neighbors mowing their lawns first thing Saturday morning. It was no different this Saturday morning, except for one thing: it was raining quite heavily.
On one of the few mornings I get to sleep in (that means staying in bed until 7 or even 7:15) I hear what sounds like a lawn mower somewhere here in our neighborhood. It wasn't until I got up that I realized it was raining, and it wasn't a light rain.
The neighbor's mower ran for about an hour (that must be one heck of a lawn if it takes that long to mow) before shutting down. And then a few minutes I could hear their weed-whacker. A half hour later they were done.
I know some people are creatures of habit, but did this person really need to mow their lawn in the middle of a lengthy and heavy rain storm? They couldn't have waited until tomorrow when we would have some breaks in the clouds?
I guess not.
I'd like to think I did the smart thing and mowed the lawn here at The Manse late Friday afternoon, knowing the rains were coming and likely to stick around until Wednesday or Thursday. I knew if I waited until next weekend I'd have trouble mowing, between the much longer grass and the not-running-so-well Official Weekend Pundit Lawnmower.
************
The voter intimidation has already started, with so-called “Surveillance Effect” mailers going out to registered Republicans in Wisconsin in effect saying, we know who you are and who you've given political contributions to and we're going to make sure everyone else knows, too. This must be seen as an effort to negatively affect Republican voter turnout in Tuesday's re-call election in that state.I expect the Democrats to use the same organization to do the same thing once we start getting closer to the November elections. All of this is being done in the name of “research” to see if voting patterns change after receiving such mailings. It's one thing if they were going out to equal numbers of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in each 'targeted' district, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
The Dems must be running scared if they have to resort to this kind of subtle intimidation. I also expect that the intimidation will become less subtle the closer we get to November.
************
As Bogie states, Texas may have overlarge everything, but our turtles are just plain meaner: they stop traffic.************
By way of Eric the Viking comes this question: Can President Obama name ONE clean energy success?I certainly can't think of one.
************
Assistant Village Idiot expresses his opinion about pay-as-you-go highway express lanes, saying they he thinks they're a great idea.When private toll roads are quicker, even poor people will use them occasionally. At the cost of a few dollars, you can even think of it as an inexpensive luxury. If you have ever comfortably passed a mile or two of stopped traffic, you know what a thrill it is. I'm rich! I'm free!I have no problem with it.
************
Oh, the horror!!Apparently the Democrats don't like the fact that Romney is “punching back twice as hard.”
I guess they feel they're the only ones allowed to do that.
************
Then there's the public's growing disdain for so-called “green energy” and its growing costs. The problem is that people are starting to wonder why so much taxpayer money is being wasted on energy sources that are more expensive and less reliable. And to add insult to injury, a number of 'enlightened' governments are abandoning subsidies for green energy because the costs aren't worth the return.In January, the Spanish government ended absurdly lavish subsidies for its renewable-energy industry, and the renewable-energy industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable-energy industry at all. It was a government-subsidy industry where in exchange for creating conscience-soothing but otherwise inefficient windmills and solar panels, the government gave the makers piles of cash consumers never would have.It's no different here in the US. Even private investors realize there's no “there” there, with the likes of T. Boone Pickens abandoning his plans for investing in large windfarms in Texas. The return on investment just wasn't there and he felt no need to blow hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money on something that wasn't going to pay off. Why should the government use taxpayer money to do what private investors see as a money-losing proposition?
--snip--
The reason the Spanish example is so important is that it demonstrates how the whole green-energy “revolution” was really an ideologically driven green boondoggle from the start.
************
I thought I'd heard it all, but when I found out Eric Holder's DOJ has ordered Florida to stop removing foreigners from its voting rolls, I figured it had to be a joke.They do understand that non-citizens aren't eligible to vote, don't they? Or has the DOJ become so indoctrinated in the incredibly stupid “the Constitution is a living document and we can ignore the parts we don't like” mindset that they feel they don't need to enforce one of the most fundamental laws in the nation? I think we can safely say the answer to this question is an unassailable “yes”.
These people need to be fired, the quicker the better.
************
I didn't think it was possible for Obama's so-called “Smart Diplomacy” to get any stupider, but it has. And it seems to me he really has it in for the British, insulting them not once, but twice.This time around he's asked them to negotiate with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, something the British aren't willing to do. After all, they fought a war over the Falklands after Argentina invaded and occupied them in 1982. The British managed to kick them out after heavy fighting and at the cost of the lives to 250 British servicemen.
And let's not forget his “Polish death camps” gaffe, either.
All this says to me is that Obama is neither smart or diplomatic.