I’m in Mountain Top Pennsylvania this evening, getting ready to take yet another load into the Bronx in the morning. The truck continues to behave as it should, and I’m quite pleased.
The weather today is absolutely gorgeous. Sunshine, blue skies, 70 degrees.
I note with a chuckle and a shake of the head an oped in the New York Times which suggests that 18 wheelers are nothing but sweat shops. You can read it here, but frankly I’d keep a barf bag handy. It’s my thought you will probably need it.
I find it fascinating that their response seems to indicate that the only solution is additional regulation of an industry that has already been just about regulated to death.
The New York Times has made its living for over a century decrying a condition that they choose to write about within a particular industry, calling for additional regulation and when that additional regulation kills off the jobs related to that industry crying that we no longer have any jobs in the United States.
Apparently, they, (even the token Republican on the New York Times staff, David Brooks), can’t find it in themselves to understand that the regulations that they called for are causing the very conditions that they decry.
And of course, they wonder why they have no credibility with an increasing number of Americans.
The trucking industry is hardly alone in this phenomena. Witness if you will the automobile industry in this country, which in my view is drowning under the weight of over-regulation over taxation and over unionization. How did the government respond to the bankruptcy or near bankruptcy is off the automobile industry? Did they lower the amount of regulations and red tape did they lower the amount of Union demands? No, they nationalized the Industries. Took over the companies, Lock Stock & Board Room.
Ponder as well the passenger railroad industry in this country. The past is strikingly similar. In the middle seventies, the regulation Burden had gotten to the point where the major railroads were going broke. Government killed the goose that laid the golden egg. And so what happens? Government steps in takes over the then bankrupted railroads, nationalizing them which to this day still serves an agonizingly small number of riders, mostly in the big government Northeast and in Washington DC. Ever heard of the Northeast Corridor?
If you’re beginning to detect a pattern here, then you have foreseen what will happen to the trucking industry if we don’t get government back into its constitutional box.
And the country?
If we don’t break this pattern, we’re going to lose her.
Down the road I go. I’ll see you tomorrow.
I’ll say this right up front. I have never been a fan of Ron Paul. Nor of Paul the Lesser. That said, if I ever needed confirmation of that feeling, that Ron Paul was a complete idiot to be devoutly ignored, it was provided this morning.
Tonight I’m camping out in the Bronx. Not an unusual occurrence anymore. Truck is working fine, the weather is improving.
* I note with some dry amusement that Obama has decided not to attend the funeral of Nancy Reagan. Probably a good idea. I was never much on Nancy Reagan when she was alive, but she certainly deserves more dignity than anything the Obama administration is likely to cough up at this juncture.
* I have long since given up on the idea that the New York Times and its token Republican David Brooks will ever willingly Support a conservative. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll.
* Say what you will about Bernie Sanders and is economic idiocy, there is a certain utility and having a pop up with his kind of nonsense on a repeated basis during this election cycle. It creates for some easy pickings. So easy in fact I haven’t bothered for the most part. I’ve got a couple on file that I probably should pass along and probably will over the next couple of days. But I do have to say that I fear for this country that he’s got as much support as he has.
Okay, I thought it over, & I can’t resist this one.
* I note with sadness the passing of Sir George Martin. He’s the guy who produced The Beatles. And, much of America’s output as well. He was also known as an avid Railway enthusiast, and knowing his own railroad as well as a good deal of power and rolling stock. I’ll be interested to see what happens to all of that.
Down the road I go.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
Remember back in the day when Mrs. Clinton was called the Smartest Woman in the World? Well no more, from CNSNews:
Clinton jumped in again: “Anderson, I just want to finish, because this — I know some of the parents from Sandy Hook. I want people in this audience to think about what it must feel like to send off your first grader, little backpack, maybe, on his or her back, and then the next thing you hear is that somebody has come to that school using an automatic weapon, an AR-15, and murdered those children.
“Now, they are trying to prevent that from happening to any other family. And the best way to do that is to go right at the people —
“You talk about corporate greed?” Clinton asked Sanders, who was trying to interrupt. “The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make!”
One, there is no such thing as an automatic AR-15. The AR-15 is semi-automatic rifle. Pull the trigger one time, and the gun fires one bullet.
Two, who is Mrs. Clinton to rail against greed. She makes more money for giving one speech that most CEO make in an entire year. Ignorant and greedy, just what we need in the Oval Office.
This evening finds me at Gouldsboro Pennsylvania. In the morning I will run into Babylon New York out on Long Island to deliver this load and then back into Pennsylvania.
I’ve noted on trips into Long Island in the past that the seagulls there are huge as compared to the beauty of little things that we have living on Lake Ontario around Rochester. I’ll have to see if I can’t get a picture.
After some minor difficulties the truck is in fighting trim, and performing very well indeed. I am well pleased.
I notice a report this morning that was forwarded me by reader. Thank You Frank….
Anyway, the report which is here, (pdf) suggests that to make the Tesla for example practical, and economically viable, versus a normal gasoline fired vehicle, oil would have to be running in the neighborhood of $350 per barrel.
Now, one can easily assume since we’re talking about the same kind of batteries, that for example the Prius which still burns gasoline to make its electricity yeah it has very expensive batteries which need periodic replacement would require a similar cost of oil to make them economically viable.
Oh, and all of this assumes that the federal government keeps chipping in the majority of the cost of the car. Government Motors has been losing hand over fist on the Chevy Volt for example…. to the tune of $60,000 per vehicle. Then to add insult to injury, those who purchase such vehicles are given tax credits by the federal government increasing the cost of the taxpayer even further. Remove those subsidies and by some estimates the cost of oil would have to be well over $500 a barrel to make such vehicles economically viable in a free market society.
At what point do we stop wasting time and money on this nonsense?
The United States Senate is where men of modest intellect, unlimited greed, go to vegetate, wither on the vine, get rich and die. See, Dirty Reid, Teddy “Senator Oldsmobile” Kennedy, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
From Merriam-Webster:
Full Definition of ghetto
plural ghettos also ghettoes
1: a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
From the mouth of Bernie, via Newser:
“When you are white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, you don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you are walking down a street or dragged out of a car.”
Sanders an old Jew running for President who does not know what is like to be Jewish.
Mrs. Clinton, old white trash from Arkansas who did not bother to acknowledge her neighbors.
Opening of Gone with the Wind:
“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South… Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow.. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave… Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind…”
Margaret Mitchell wistfully pining for the glorious antebellum South, that never was.
From American Elephant:
The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying. When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found. Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth’s bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea. Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down. They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them. The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time. When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants.
The shattered shards and remains of green utopia that never was. It too gone with the wind.
Hat tip, Sarah Hoyt, Instapundit.
The idea that men and women are different is plain old common sense. However Social Justice Warriors are immune from common sense. Being immune to common sense means SJW’s are incapable of logic. Such as group A and can not be said to be equal to group B, if the latter demands special treatment.
It not that men and women are different. That much is known. The problem that SJW’s demand the exclusive right to deem when men and women are to treated as if they were equal and when women must be granted special privileges. If women want to be treated as if they were equal, then need to man up and put an end to female privilege, from Ashe Schow, Washington Examiner:
This is just a private company, so it’s not a big deal. I certainly hope women don’t start demanding special treatment in the workplace because of a biological function they should have learned how to deal with in middle school. I get it, some women have bad cramps or bad PMS, but there are literally hundreds of ways to fix that. If any of the numerous over-the-counter drugs don’t work, there are home remedies. If none of those work, and you have period pains so severe you can’t work, then you should probably seek medical help.
The men, naturally, won’t be getting any time off for their easily treatable aches and pains. Even if you don’t mind the discrimination against men to give women this special treatment — allowing them to skip work a few days every month while the men pick up the slack — it would also be discriminating against menopausal women. (And what about trans women?)
Schow is a word volcano and it is darn hard to pick an excerpt from her copy.
Hat tip, Glen Reynolds, Instapundit.
Added, when the monthly curse leave be offered only to ciswomen? Mean, if Bruce Jenner can be deemed a women because he imagines himself to be one, genitalia be damned, can he also be deemed eligible for the monthly curse leaves because he also imagines that he has a monthly cycle? Film at Eleven,
From Red State:
Tonight, in the Detroit debate, Donald Trump went further. He doubled down on his claim that American Soldiers should be in the business of assassinating innocent women and children because of the actions of their husbands/fathers. This is wrong. This is a war crime. This is an illegal order. When he was told U.S. troops do not obey orders to commit war crimes, he responded in typical Trump fashion. “I know leadership, I tell them to do it and they will do it. I’m a leader.”
The Donald said “I know leadership.” Non-concur. Trump does not. An American soldier takes an oath not to his commander-in-chief, but rather vows to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which includes obeying all legal orders from those appointed above him. We are a nation governed by laws, not men.
In the late Imperial Russia, the Czar ordered his soldiers to fire into the protesting crowds. Rather than murder their countryman, neighbors and family, the Czar’s soldiers murdered their own officers. There are limits to any leader’s authority. On the other hand, it was duty, and not obedience that sent three hundred forty-three New York City fire fighters into the World Trade Center on Nine Eleven. Not that I expect Trump is capable of understanding that.
To readers in Brooklyn, hope you are stock up on toilet paper. There was a sudden unexpected bowel collective bowel movement in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters,
From WaPo:
Justice Dept. grants immunity to staffer who set up Clinton email server
Story:
The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server, a sign the FBI investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing is progressing.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.
Bryan Pagliano is Clinton Criminal Clan veteran who installed a political appointment to a technical position in the State Department. If there is an innocent explanation for appointing a political hack to technical position, it eludes me.
Reaction, law blogs, Popehat, via Patterico’s Pontifications:
When DoJ gives someone immunity in an investigation involving my client I generally ask for a large increase in the fee deposit.
More law, Legal Insurrection:
The NY Times further reports the FBI may be interviewing Hillary within weeks. Failure to cooperate would be political death for her campaign
[…]
As I said earlier, Bernie Sanders just needs to hang on long enough, Bernie playing to box out other candidates after Hillary indicted.
Until Huma flips. Then it’s all over.
Non law, Red State:
“Is CNN going to put up a “Hillary Indictment Clock” any time soon?”
The Department of Justice as just lit a fuse under Mrs. Clinton campaign. Is Mrs. Clinton Berning?
At the end of the day, the firing of Melissa Click comes down to a demonstration of what happens when the free market has reign.
See the good things that happen when you hold politicians feet to the fire?
A good read from Caffeinated Thoughts
The way I read the numbers coming out of Super Tuesday, Donald Trump lost the nomination tonight. Perhaps more accurately there’s no way he can lock up the nomination.
The way I read this thing, who drops out, who gives their support to Who, is what’s going to make or break this nomination process.
Rubio Carson and the rest of the wannabes are going to have to drop out. There is no way at all that they can win the nomination. Not even close. What we have now is a two man race. Trump and Ted Cruz.
The positioning of the candidates within the next 48 hours will tell the tale.
Life, unfortunately, has a tendency to get in the way of blogging.
One of the things that has been occupying me lately is the death of a friend. I won’t say much about that except he was a fellow driver, and he will be missed.
