Winger Blog

Not so stimulating

The largest political seizure of taxpayer capital ever, and here's where it's going:

A multibillion-dollar provision of the new federal stimulus package, billed as a huge jobs boost for the Northwest, might not translate into lots of new jobs for years.

The measure, inserted into the bill at the urging of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, would enable the federal Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to take on another $3.25 billion in debt to pay for construction projects, such as massive new power lines.

But...

The stimulus package probably won’t make much difference for the one major project ready to go this year, a $342 million installation of 79 miles of new power lines paralleling the Columbia River between Umatilla, Ore., and John Day Dam.

The BPA is completing environmental studies now and could break ground on the new lines in the spring, Johnson said. In initial interviews, Johnson said the BPA could afford the new lines even without the added spending power.

The BPA appreciates the money, but says its more akin to getting their credit limit raised; it increases their comfort level, but doesn't change anything. The stimulus doesn't create one new job. Not one.

The executive director of the Northwest and Intermountain Power Producers Coalition says that permits, not money, has been the obstacle in construction.

Via Michelle Malkin.

Posted on 16 February 2009 | 2:21 pm | View Comments

Can you finance Hitler

...and still claim neutrality?

Newly discovered documents in the Swedish ministry of Finance reveal that that this neutral Nordic nation gave Nazi Germany large-scale bank credits in April 1941 - giving the Hitler regime assistance in financing its war efforts.

Posted on 16 February 2009 | 1:55 pm | View Comments

Culture of corruption

The newest Democrat in the house may already be facing a perjury investigation.

Posted on 16 February 2009 | 12:28 pm | View Comments

Junk science czar

Obama's chief science adviser is John Holdren, one of Paul Ehrlich's collaborators on the old population bomb scare, junk science predecessor to today's global warming scare. Holdren believes the ills of the world are being driven by "greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness" that have been "elevated by conservative political doctrine and practice." He also believes global warming could cause the death of 1 billion people within 11 years.

Obama thinks he's the perfect guy to make sure science doesn't get politicized by the government any more. Seriously.

Posted on 16 February 2009 | 4:53 am | View Comments

Panic sells

"President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form."

Posted on 15 February 2009 | 12:56 pm | View Comments

Blitzen blows the whistle

Reindeer herders vs. animal activists.

Posted on 15 February 2009 | 12:41 am | View Comments

Wishful thinking

Karzai hopes Obama will show "better judgement" in the future.

Posted on 15 February 2009 | 12:36 am | View Comments

Just desserts (with coffee)

I love this story.

Why, in Maine, I was visiting a small shop to get a cuppa joe, and was wearing a T-shirt with a political message on it. Apparently, some of the college-aged children there didn’t appreciate my support for conservative values. I was barraged by comments from 5 or 6 of the little brown shorts about any number of topics, including whether I belonged to the Klan, the Nazi Party, why I hated blacks, and (fill in the blank), etc. All with a great deal of profanity. I was amazed at my being able to remain calm and not respomd to the situation with the language and response I would have liked to.

The kids thought they were going to have the last laugh, as the older guy (me) with the coffee would leave and they could return to their lattes’ bottled water, and the NYT and gloat over their victory of driving me out. Rather, I calmly went over to empty table beside them and sat myself down. This caused the kids to come unglued and they ramped up their language, which I probably enabled by ignoring them. Finally, the owner came over and told the miscreants to leave, which shocked them to no end. They literally had gone pale about being told to “get out”. The best part, however, was having several other customers applaud as they left the store.

The owner came over and refunded my money, but i said that wasn”t at all necessary, but the owner insisted, so i took it and put it in the tip jar on the counter.

Because of the conveniently shiftable definition of free speech on the left, I would guess that there are some who think the free speech rights of the punks were violated.

Posted on 14 February 2009 | 12:15 am | View Comments

Winger via Kipper 2

This site has been dead for a while; you might say I went bankrupt, but that's kind of like saying a speck of dust got smaller.

For now, this is going to become a demonstration site for Kipper 2, my database-free CMS system for websites, webcomics, and light blogging.

Every corner of the site will be managed by Kipper, from the comics to the blog to the homepage. I "fixed" the Winger site halfheartedly once before with the first incarnation of Kipper, but that version of Kipper turned out to be brittle, inflexible, and overbuilt. The new Kipper has its head on straight; what Kipper 1.0 strained to do, Kipper 2.0 does without batting an eyelash.

Posted on 12 February 2009 | 11:14 pm | View Comments