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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
 Signs
of the Times III
- Yes,
I still do collect these odd displays of life on earth and it's
about time I got around to adding in another group on my web site.
To wit...
 
What the
public wants.
While on a trip back east I spent my first night in Weatherford,
Oklahoma. I got gas at the Conoco station right near the hotel
and on their big road sign read the message, "Our fuel has no
ethanol." What a great way to poke their finger into the eye
of the government! Unfortunately, I often had to buy gas with
ethanol in other states on my trip. [Click on photo to see a
larger image with a bigger view.]
The price of all beer!
In April I drove a couple of buddies up to a Grand Canyon trailhead
on the north side of the canyon and we stopped at the Vermilion
Cliffs establishment for lunch. On the menu was this blurb
extolling the virtues of their Happy Hour. It seems like deal
that is too good to be true - you can get all Mexican beers for a
measly $2. I'm sure I couldn't drink but maybe three or four,
but that still would only work out to fifty cents a glass!
The New Deal.
Also in the cafe at the Vermilion Cliffs was this old timey sign
from the NRA. Now, most people will think of the National
Rifle Association in this regard, but it stands for the National
Reconstruction Act (or, Administration). This was a license
plate used by truckers to show that they complied with the
industry's code of conduct. I had never seen one before.
I like Texas!
On my way back from traveling back east, I decided to visit an old
school chum who lives near Houston and to visit Carlsbad Caverns as
my final stop before reaching home in Flagstaff. Driving
through west Texas was quite charming as you can tell from the
posted speed limits in the interstate highway. I felt . . .
free!
How to cut costs!
Earlier in the year I was visiting my sister in Kingman, AZ and we
went to lunch in nearby Laughlin. Across the street from where
we stopped was the "old" Ramada Express Hotel & Casino. But,
now it is the Tropicana Express. We noticed that the signage
looked funny and Sue nailed it - they saved all the old letters that
they could and all the brighter letters were the new ones they had
to buy. That is, the R, A, A are from Ramada and EXPRESS is
the same, while the T, O, P, I C, and N are new!! LOL.
And, since the name is now longer it looks like they jammed the
letters closer to one another. I'll have to
dig though some old
photos to see if this is the case. I visited Laughlin often in
the early 1990s
when they were going through their major building boom.
The past as prologue.
I recently re-watched the entire Prisoner series. That
probably sounds like a big deal, but it only ran for one season,
back in the 1960s. Starring the late Patrick McGoohan, it is
something of a cult classic and one of my all time
 favorites.
One of the
episodes featured a "speed learning" program that the villagers were
all taking. It just cracked me up because so many in the
education establishment say similarly silly (or, stupid) things with
a straight face. In this scene, there is a poster advertising
for this program. It reads:
"our aim
one hundred per cent entry
one hundred per cent pass" - the general
speed learn
a three year course in three minutes
it can be done.
trust me - the professor
If you track the trajectory of our system of education, in the
future this will be exactly what we will be promised!
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Saturday, August 17, 2013
Ballots
& Bullets
- Earlier
this summer the Supreme Court
struck down certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
This lead to immediate breast-beating by liberals that we were
regressing into an era of rampant discrimination.
 Nonsense,
of course. The Supremes ruled that the 9 states that had been
required to get federal approval before changing voting laws (and
redistricting) no longer needed to do so, unless the Congress comes
up with
suitable measures showing that the problem still exists.
And, despite the hue and cry from the left, all this does is make
these states (Arizona included) just like the other 41, which is how
it should be.
This is some of
the backstory behind the efforts of various states to pass so-called
voter I.D. laws. Of course, it isn't just these nine
states affected by the Voting Rights Act. The governor of
North Carolina recently signed into law new rules that require
photo ID for voting, reduce the early balloting from 17 to 10 days
and eliminate same day registration. It seems to me that this
is all quite reasonable, and I totally buy into the argument about
trying to reduce voter fraud. [Critics claim there is no
evidence, but I think that is just in the nature of how corrupt the
system really is; the potential is enormous and I tend to think this
goes all the way up to the top, for example the
presidential election of 1960.]
But, let's back
off this issue a bit. On Fox's Special Report, commentator
Juan Williams
said, "[V]oting is a
constitutional right and that you shouldn't have any impediment to
pursue your constitutional rights ... This really is an effort to
suppress the vote." Now, Williams seems like a
reasonable guy and I'm willing to listen to reasonable criticism.
But, this fails the smell test. There are three logical flaws
in his argument:
Suppression has no meaning
If reducing the early balloting days from 17 to 10 is "voter
suppression," then it must be true that 17 days is suppression
relative to 18 days. And, 19 days. And, 20 days.
And on and on. There is no solution to such a "suppression"
problem!! Therefore, it has no meaning.
We live
in a world of scarcity
In the real world, resources are scarce and we have to find ways to
best use them to maximize our well-being. We can extend the
criticism of the suppression argument to include the fact that it
ignores scarcity. Getting every single person of voting
eligibility registered and having them vote is not worth the
resources. Indeed, some have argued (and, I think,
persuasively) that voting shouldn't be easy. The easier it is,
the more uninformed voters will be. That's a law of human
nature.
Apply
this reasoning to other constitutional rights
What got me started down this path was the lack of consistency in
this argument relative to other constitutional rights. If
requiring a voter to have a photo ID (which the state will do for
free) is an unconstitutional burden, then let's revisit the
second amendment. In part it reads,
"[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed." Seems like a pretty definitive statement.
So, why do we tolerate gun laws? Why do we require gun
 registration?
Why do we even tax gun sales? It seems to me that taxing guns
suppresses our ability to exercise our constitutional rights.
Can we get libs to sign a petition that asks for the government to
roll back voter ID laws and gun laws? Well, of course not!
One of the real
good voices on the issue of voter fraud is John Fund. His
book,
Stealing Elections, is a great read. Well, OK, it is a
terrible read!! Because the system is so corrupt. I read
the first edition when it came out and couldn't put it down.
If you want to look at something more recent, check out these two
articles of his:
The Reality of Voter Fraud (5/2/2012)
The Voter Fraud That ‘Never Happens’ Keeps Coming Back
(2/8/2013) |
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Monday, August 26, 2013
 The
Gutfeld Plan
- Lovable
late night talk show host Greg Gutfeld, if that’s his real name,
came up with an audacious plan that kills two birds with one stone.
Not literally, of course, as that is quite hard to do. Hit two
birds with one stone that is. Unless, the stone is enormous, like
the size of a house. And, lifting it up in the air is certainly
going to take all the pool boys you can round up. Knowing Greg, he
probably can round up a lot.
While his plan is
audacious, it is also quite simple. Well, we are talking about Greg
Gutfeld after all, and not the president of the Red Eye fan club
(that would be
John Bolton). Indeed, if the plan was any simpler,
Bill Schulz
would have come up with it.
OK, OK, so here’s
the plan – let all the illegal immigrants in the U.S. stay here
(and more are welcome to come) if they move to Detroit! We can
give them some property and let them work hard to turn that awful
 nest
of socialism into a paragon of capitalism. I would suspect that
within just a generation the per capita income there would rank
among the highest in the U.S. [It probably wouldn’t top the suburbs
of Washington D.C. where crony capitalism and corruption flourish.]
In fact, I would
extend this plan to include any area declared a “national
disaster.” Like New Orleans back during the days of
Hurricane
Katrina. Then, we can be more relaxed on whether or not to let
some local official (a governor, I guess) declare such an
emergency. That is, now there are costs as well as benefits. Under
the current system there really isn’t any downside to asking for
such a designation. [Our own governor of Arizona was recently
turned down for such a request following the wildfire in the
Prescott area that killed 19 firefighters.]
Maybe we can call my
plan, “Gutfeld Plus” although I might be talked into "Gutfeld Extra
Strength."
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Detroit's
population bombs! |
We can give
it opportunity!! |
Fallback
option - Robocop!!! |
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