One thing that needs taking care of is re-shodding the trusty F150 with new tires, preferably with something that has a slightly more aggressive tread. Not that the tires I've had on the F150 haven't been adequate for most of my driving, but there were more than a few times when I could have used the extra traction a more aggressive tread would have provided.
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With the ISIS attack in France, a lot of people are wondering if there wasn't something that could have been done to prevent it.Of course there was, but EU policies, lax immigration laws, and hubris finally caught up with the EU and a lot more people had to die.
I expect to see more of these coordinated attacks, but I doubt they will happening on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. Frankly, ISIS doesn't have the support or logistics to pull off numerous attacks without drawing the attention of numerous national and international intelligence operations.
As my dear brother opined to me last night, “In a head to head fight against a highly organized military, they lose.”
There are a number of ways to fight and defeat ISIS, but I doubt the present occupant in the White House has either the stomach for it or the conviction that it's needed to bring the fight to an intractable enemy. One of the more effective means of doing so hasn't been used since World War II and I doubt anyone would get behind such a means, except maybe for the Russians, that being total war: flatten everything under ISIS control, then bomb the rubble, then bomb it again. Encircle ISIS held territory and move towards the center, destroying everything that moves.
The problem with this type of warfare is that there is a lot of collateral damage. A lot of innocents die, and no one really wants that.
But if ISIS escalates, starts using weapons of mass destruction such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons within Europe and the Americas, all bets are off. At that point they will have lost because all ISIS held territory will likely find themselves on the receiving end of nuclear strikes, and I doubt if a lot of attention will be paid to the so-called battle lines, particularly if Russia is involved. (Frankly, I wouldn't blame them.)
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I find this to be an intriguing question: Could the US double energy efficiency?Of course that is a rather misleading question because it's too general. There are a number of areas where increased energy efficiency is possible, but it would be incremental and the costs wouldn't be worth it because the return on investment would be a negative number and, in the end, likely to create inefficiencies in other areas.
While more gains can be achieved with better insulation of buildings, I doubt that we'd see a 50% cut in energy use without there being some negative side effects. We've certainly seen that in many super-insulated buildings where even though energy consumption decreased greatly, the health of people inside those buildings were negatively affected because the buildings were “too tight”. To fix that problem better ventilation systems were needed which increased the energy usage and canceled out some of the benefits of the better insulation.
One of the few places where we could see some major gains in energy efficiency is transportation, specifically ground transportation. Internal combustion engines are still woefully inefficient, but much better than they used to be. If efficiency could be doubled, that could mean smaller engines to provide similar power to existing engines, but the cost of doing so shouldn't exceed the cost of doing nothing otherwise there's no incentive to do so.
And so it goes.
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What happens when claims about the effects of global warming don't match reality? They disappear from the Internet.But as more than one maven has stated, nothing really disappears from the 'Net...ever.
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The New England Patriots managed to pull off a squeaker against the New York Giants, a team they've always had trouble beating. The Pats won it on a 54-yard field goal, leaving only 1 second on the clock at the end of the play. Now the Patriots are 9-0, but still only 1-3 against the Giants.***************
Moonbattery brings up a very important point in regards to the present occupant of the Oval Office:Why only fools listen to Obama.
Obama makes a statement that is easily proven to be false, in this case shortly after the church shooting in Charleston, about “This kind of violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”
The rebuttal: “If only France had rigid gun control, yesterday’s bloodbath in Paris could have been avoided. Oh wait, France is run by moonbats and does have rigid gun control. That’s why no one was in a position to fight back against the Muslims.”
Indeed.
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I think Smitty over at The Other McCain may have hit upon a brilliant idea for solving two problems plaguing America at the same time: Radical Islam in the Middle East and the increasingly fascist academia infesting our colleges.1. Trump is making waves about mass-deportation of illegal aliens. Let’s stipulate that, if they were packing the gear to get themselves here, they’ve already showed more capability than the current crop of college nitwits. Bear with me.Actually his suggestions solve three problems, the third being illegal immigration onto the US. Way to go, Smitty!
2. Instead of deporting illegal aliens, let’s deport all of academia! (Hollyweird: you’re on notice). Send all of these feckless administrators, Commie profs, and the minds they’ve polluted. . .to the Middle East.
3. I figure the encounter of Radical Islam and academia with be some sort of matter/anti-matter affair. Promises to be a jolly meltdown, but hey: haven’t they all earned it?
4. We can give American education a fresh kickstart by. . .educating the illegal aliens (who should be quite attentive to Americanization, having seen what just happened to academia.)
5. And we all live maturely ever after.
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Modern Educayshun indeed. This would be hilarious if it weren't so true.Hmm. Maybe we should apply Smitty's solution to correct this problem?
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After seeing the endless failures of zero-tolerance policies in schools that have harmed far more kids than any that might have been caused by transgressors, I have to wonder what dope this dope has been smoking that makes him want to expand such a disastrous policy.I guess he really hasn't thought about the unexpected consequences of such an expansion. I can tell you one of them – unending and very expensive lawsuits against any of the institutions that implement such policies, particularly where they violate someone's First Amendment rights. Considering the exponential growth of special and fragile snowflakes now infesting our institutions of higher learning, this is a policy that will ultimately destroy the very institutions they are supposed to 'protect'.
Too often zero-tolerance polices merely show us the weakness and/or cowardice of administrators who don't want to be bothered with having to actually make a decision. They are also yet another means of stifling our God-given rights, including the right to offend those with whom we disagree.
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More than a few people complained when the latest Democrat debate was scheduled for an evening when very few people were expected to actually watch. Whose great idea was this? If it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then she should be fired.How bad was it?
CBS ended coverage 7 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. That's how bad it was.
More people were interested in the college football games than this drivel, hence the opinion that it was an awful time slot. Who the heck is going to watch three white socialists, two if which who are really getting up there in years and none who actually have any new ideas, debate of stuff no one cares about when they can watch a diverse and stimulating college football game?
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Speaking of old white socialists, three young adults stopped by The Manse today to talk to me about Bernie Sanders, asking if I'd support him.I will admit that I had a brief impulse to let them have it with both barrels of my rhetoric shotgun, but decided they might be examples of some of the previously mention special fragile snowflakes and I didn't want to cause them to go catatonic. So I listened politely, told them I am nowhere near close to supporting anyone, and that I am not going to commit to anyone at this point, and sent them on their merry way.