Straightening Out the Misunderstandings About the SUV

I drive a Buick.

Yes, I’m quite aware that the stereotype places me in Senior Citizen range.  But I’m 51.

The Buick I drive is a ’04 Rainier.  Yes, the dreaded and much maligned SUV is my main ride. “Why would you drive an SUV?” a friend recently intoned as we sat around the lunch counter.  “You’re never going to take the thing off road.” The comment showed me just how far out of touch this guy was with the reality of the thing, so I decided to educate the man on the spot.

“First off”, I said wearily, “The thing is an ALL wheel drive, not a FOUR Wheel drive. The difference is that All-Wheel , while it’ll off road pretty well,(And I’ve done it)  isn’t designed for off-road performance, really. Rather, it’s for cornering and for wet weather and winter traction. In short, it’s designed for the roads I drive on around here.” (Talking about Western NY state)

“Cornering? In an SUV?” my friend asked dripping incredulity.  “That’s right”, I said, calmly. ” Cornering. Between the All Wheel Drive and the air ride suspension, it handles better than any stock econobox on the road.”

“OK”, he allowed, let’s say that’s the case. “Then why the SUV at all?” And why a  Buick?

“Simple,” I replied. “I may as well be comfortable. The Buick has that one covered. Secondly, I have a family. My wife and I are both 6 footers, and we have two boys. Do the math. Oh… And a dog. On the face of it, we’re not going to fit us and our stuff into a Prius.  And, I tow a 5000lb camper.  You simply can’t do that with a smaller rig. For example, the largest vehicle Honda makes… the Ridgeline, can’t tow my trailer, and yet it gets the same gas mileage, while developing far less power.”

“What? It’s an SUV… those things swill gas like no tomorrow….(Pause) …what kind of mileage can it get, anyway?”

“Oh, about 22 on the open road, give or take a headwind.”

“Huh? What have you got in that thing, anyway?” my friend asked suspiciously.

04 Rainier like mine, (More or less) courtesy FAMILYCAR.COM

“A straight 6″, I said. ” 4.3 liters, 290 horsepower, 275 ft lbs of torque. Dual Overhead cam, direct injection, and I’ve done a few mods on my own… better intake and exhaust, mostly.  ”

My friend sat quietly for a moment. Finally, “That’s more horsepower than my old Pony car used to have, and I didn’t get gas mileage numbers anywhere near that!”  “True”, I said.  ” Less displacement, too, I’ll bet. But that’s how the technology has improved.”

“Why not one of those four door pickups for towing then?”

“Simple; The gas mileage isn’t as good, and this fits in my driveway better. ” Plus, the rig we got has heated leather inside, all the toys and tricks you’d expect to find on a Buick, And it was cheaper to begin with”

“Hmm.” he said. “Well, yeah, I guess it’s not a Hummer, huh?”

“Let me tell you something.  The H3 has a smaller engine than my rig does, and it gets about the same milage:.”

“Say what?”

“Yep. Kinda makes you think twice about all those SUV stereotypes we’ve been fed, eh?”

I offered him a ride in the thing, an offer he’s not taken me up on yet. But I could see the conversation had opened his eyes to a few things about SUV’s.

Suddenly, a light went on in his eyes. “Yeah, but what kinda mileage do you get when you’re pulling that trailer?”

“About 10 or 12 mpg”

“Yikes! How can you afford that?”

Well, simple. Last year, I took the family to western Ohio for a vacation, our around Cedar Point in Sandusky. You know the place?” He nodded.

“Now,  A campsite… even one with full hookups at the peak of the season, will never cost more than around $40 a night. I generallly go for the ones running $25 or $30 might. So, let’s add the costs up.”

” Now…From my front door to the campsite we hooked up with is 380 miles. Let’s assume we’re getting 10MPG the whole way… that’s way low, on what we usually get, but let’s keep it there for round numbers. Easier to figure. With me so far?” He nodded again.

“OK, that means we’re at 64 gallons of gas for the round trip.  Again, let’s keep the numbers round and say $4 even per gallon.  That comes out, give or take, $250 dollars for fuel. ”

“Ouch!” he said.

“Yes”, I replied… but have you ever tried to fly anywhere with a family of four for $250?”

Silence.

“Now,” I said, “add to that the costs of hotels, and restaurants. Every meal ends up being around $50.”

Bit's rig all set for the road

“What do you do for meals in the trailer?” he asked, starting to show some interest in the logic.

“The trailer has a full galley,” I said. “Full stove, microwave, fridge… even a grill if you’re in the mood for it.  We bring food from home. In other words, we eat what we’d be eating at home anyway.  Far healthier than road food and cheaper, too. We figured it out once and it amounts to $125 to $150 per day and that’s more than enough savings to cover the fuel expense… particularly if you’re staying for a few days…. even at today’s fuel prices.” Add in the cost of a campsite vs the cost of a hotel and it’s a no brainer.

“What about the cost of the trailer? ”

“We paid $10,000 for it. We’ve had it for 6 years, and plan to keep it a few more.  We figure when it comes trade-in time, we’ll get around $5000 for it. We pay about $80 per year on state tags, and I do all my own maintainence. Biggest expense is tires and I’ve not bought those yet. ” So, about $500/year is what we figure so far.

“How long can you use it per year?”

“Usually, April or May to late October. We’ve even camped in November, though that’s rare. It’s got central heat and an air conditioner.”

Silence.

“OK, you’ve convinced me it’s a cheap way to vacation. But you have to drive the tow rig the rest of the year!”

“That’s true” I said, “And you’re right, it costs me more than the average Econo-box. But… see… That’s the beauty of this thing; It runs rings around just about every car out there in the snow, and a lot of the trucks, too, since I don’t have to switch in and out of 4 wheel drive mode.  And it’s a Buick, so it’s got a bit of class about it.”

My friend was called away at that point. But, the conversation illustrated rather clearly to me just how misinformed people can be about SUV’s and their drivers. They do tend to make a rather handy target for politicians who want to be seen as being on the correct side of the ‘global warming’ scam, but when the facts come out, the objections kind of slip away.

Except of course for the eco-crazies. But, as with JIhadists… and I think the comparison particularly apt, here,  since when has anyone ever been able to reason with insanity?

What brings me to write all of this? Well, an article this morning by Terry Box of the Dallas Morning News. In that article, Box goes to some significant lengths to describe why he loves a high performance automobile.

…the truth is, at 57, I still delight in turning the key in my ’07 Mustang Shelby GT and feeling the thunder as its 4.6-liter V-8 engine explodes into life. I relish pointing it toward what little open road is left in this part of Texas and engaging in occasional immature outbursts of, shall we say, joyful exuberance. I revel in its sounds and its power and its mechanical sensations. And I accept its excesses.

No.  I suggest that he doesn’t merely accept those excesses. He revels in them, as do I. I’ve had more than one flat-out performance car in my lifetime. most recently, I had an 86 Firebird.  That was an interesting car.  It had a 231 in.³ V-6 in the, that was so small you could stand quite literally between the engine and the radiator without hitting either.  While it was running.  Even then, the Enviro-nuts not understanding that the thing develped less horsepower than did their Honda,  were trying to make moral judgments based on their misconception that I had a huge 455 V8 under the hood.  You see, it’s all about perception for these people…. as if it was their business in the first place.. the reality of it was that that car was kind of like driving an MG.  You had to stay on the gearbox all the time to keep the engine revved up for you wouldn’t get anywhere at all.  The front end was so light though that the thing handled beautifully under just about every situation except of course for snow. But it fulfilled a lot of my expectations about a sports car, as Box describes it.

I love the sound of a salty engine echoing through big stainless-steel exhausts. I appreciate tight, precise steering and brakes strong enough to slow time. Throw in great handling, blazing straight-line performance and a dash of style, and you have sculpture that springs to life with the twist of a key.

And yet lots of people these days see cars as mere appliances that can be re-jiggered with an electric motor or a fuel cell and sent puttering down the road like some jazzed-up can-opener on wheels. Pardon my French, but that’s a bunch of donkey dust. No appliance sounds like a ’67 427 Corvette or a new Ferrari F430 or a Hemi-powered ’32 Ford hot rod.

…

What worries me most is the rush to blame all environmental — and many societal — ills on cars. Come on, people. Lighten up.

Cars define our lives, transporting us to work, school, grocery stores, banks, malls, furtive trysts, whatever. They’re “pretty much a part of us,” says David Lewis, a professor at the University of Michigan who teaches a course on the global auto industry. “It’s pretty hard to imagine a world without them.”

Which, of course, is precisely why the left is trying so desperately to control them. Let’s be honest here; this has never been about the environment.  It’s about control. And cars and trucks are the perfect target for such people because so central are they  to our society, that if you control them you control our society.  It’s really that simple.

They envelop us in slick metal containers that supposedly say a lot about who we are. My Mustang shouts, “Short skinny guy over 50, seeking validation and maybe a couple of inches of height from a white muscle car with silver skunk stripes.” Baptists and senior citizens, meanwhile, drive Buicks. Republicans prefer two trucks in the driveway: an SUV for Mom to use as a soccer bus and a big $40,000 pickup for Dad’s power trips. Democrats favor anything nerdy in gray or white, and plaster their battered back bumpers with pious political stickers.

Who cares whether any of those stereotypes are true? Cars ‘r us. I know some people in Dallas who opt to live in sun-baked one-bedroom apartments that slump along roaring freeways so that they can spend $800 or $900 a month on a new Corvette or a 3-series BMW or a black C-class Mercedes-Benz.

Yet the constant harangue over our modes of transportation here in the United States, leads under-informed people to belief that somehow my little Rainier is an overindulgence, and extravagance, all of course because it’s a threat to our environment, yada, yada, yada.

Like Terry Box, I find myself increasingly annoyed at having the entirety of the world’s problems laid squarely on what it is I happen to have in my driveway. more annoying still, is the idea that the majority of those placing such blame on my little truck, are themselves driving less fuel-efficient, or more extravagant automobiles.  Or, I else, in masochistic fashion shoehorn themselves into vehicles with less steel in them than any thimble in my wife’s sewing kit.

At the end of the day, the truth of the matter is that I drive what I drive because it works for me, not because it’s politically correct.  As a matter of fact if it happens to be politically incorrect so much the better.

I’d like someone to explain to me how it is that Al Gore, who lives in a house that takes more energy in a week than my living quarters do in a year can tell me what is more environmentally feasible, sustainable, or morally, or politically correct.  While I have no tolerance whatever for the enviro-whackjobs, like Gore, I do have a certain level of tolerance for those like my friend who are simply parroting what they are told, but clearly don’t understand it. I have to tell you, in all honesty though, that tolerance is waning.  My accepting these mule fritters because I’m being polite, is coming to an end, and in looking around me I suspect that my tolerance is not the only tolerance that is waning on such matters.  I’m telling you, dear reader, there is about to be a political backlash in this country the likes of which has not been seen since the Reagan revolution.

Frankly, I won’t be sorry to see it happen.

Don Surber has more

Little Green Footballs:

Even as John Edwards was trying to appear sincere and apologetic, behind the scenes he was cynically attempting to manipulate the media in order to minimize the damage. He’s reportedly furious with ABC News for breaking the story of his extramarital affair early on Friday, instead of waiting for the Olympics opening ceremonies to start.

The implications of this are many, and perhaps best left to the reader. And in any event, we’ve covered the angle of the press running cover for Edwards instead of covering Edwards.

But one thing that should be pointed out; Why would Edwards be annoyed at ABC for ‘releasing the story early” if he’d not as a matter of tradition been accoded that degree of cover in the past? He clearly expected it this time and didnt get it.

… MoDo starts caling Edwards “Breck GIrl”.

No, Rielie, really she did.

The stunning admission Edwards made to ABC’s Bob Woodruff, and in a written statement from Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon, was that he’s a narcissist.

Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.

…

He has an affair with Hunter, while he’s honing his speech on the imperative to “live in a moral, honest, just America.” A married former aide says he’s the father when she gets pregnant, even though she’s telling people Edwards is the dad. And one of his campaign donors pays off Hunter to get her resettled with the baby out of North Carolina.

But the Breck Girl wants a gold star for the fact that he sent his marriage into remission when his wife was in remission. That’s special.

Of course Dowd treats this as if it’s all new to her; as if she’s never seen this before.  Of course we have. It’s pretty much the same deal as the after action report I mentioned at OTB’s comments section last week, from Amanda Marcotte, when she got booted form Edwards’ campaign staff.  Each spends the majority of their ‘confession’ scrambling to find cover.  Pretty much, also, the same situation as we found with Bill Clinton, back in the day.And the reaction of the left in this morning’s news shows is quite predictable.

As Hawkins says this morning:

In our hearts, we hope that politicians are honest, decent people. In our brains, we know that they are politicians, and we shouldn’t expect much. But, the last thing we want is some vainglorious narcissist yapping about 2 America’s and America being better, when he himself is anything but, and lies about it.

I suggest that factor is why the Dinosaur Press ignored the story for as long as possible.  The consequences to leftist political power, was more grusome to leftists than the consequences of the press getting caught burying the story.

Now, before you start in on me, the foregoing is not to suggest that it doesn’t happen among Republicans as well. It surely does. However, the Dinosaur Press didn’t wait for a convoluted ‘confession’, to report on the facts they knew. As an example, I cite Newt Gingrich, whose situation with HIS wife was similar in many respects. The main difference?  The press didn’t wait for an announcement from Gingrich to start printing the story. Oh… and Gingrich isnt a Democrat.

Kaus:

A paternity test seems inevitable, no? [Update: Edwards has volunteered to take one. Make sure it’s not Mudcat Saunders who gets the DNA from the kid.] If Edwards wanted to snake out of this scandal, the cunning way to do it was always to build up press anticipation of a paternity test and then have the test come back negative (after which the press will forget that he still cheated). He may have now lucked on to this strategy by accident. But paternity isn’t the key moral question, it seems to me. It’s whether Edwards treated his wife as honorably as he unsubtly boasted in the campaign (plus his subsequent coverup, and what it involved). Whether Edwards continuted the affair after the recurrence of her illness is one factor in making that judgment (and paternity would be damning evidence in that regard, given the timing). Whether he thought he was the father, and continued seeing Hunter for that reason, is more important than whether he actually turns out to be the father.

I dunno, Mikey. I still maintain the issue is the press and how this was being handled by them. It strikes me that one one entity in all of this with less credibility than Edwards and ironically, less creds than the National Enquirer, is the MSM when it comes to Democrats and their misdeeds.

Bernie Mac has died in Chicago, at age 50.  The Chicago Tribune reports:

Comedian and Chicago native Bernie Mac died early Saturday morning from complications due to pneumonia, his publicist confirmed.

Mac, 50, had been hospitalized for about a week at Northwestern Hospital, according to his spokeswoman. A few years ago, Mac disclosed that he suffered from sarcoidosis, a rare autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in tissue, most often in the lungs

Sad.

You know for some reason, I always kinda figured it’d be a heart attack with him. Sadder still, that one of his last performances ended up being a source of contoversy.

There’s a fair amount of defense being put up for Edwards this morning, most of it knee-jerkish. One of the points of defense is that supposedly the National Enquirer got the ‘love child aspect wrong.

Me at OTB just now:

Yes, well, we are not exactly flush with evidence on that point, are we? All we have is the word of an admitted liar, that the kid isn’t his. on the other hand, we do have the age of the child. now, what we can either accept the idea that the kid is his, or we are forced to conclude that the woman was carrying on affairs of her own with someone else, while she was involved with Edwards.

Neither possibility makes either one of them look very good.

But here again I say that this is the smaller of the two issues. The larger issue is the press as a reaction to all of this. If we make the assumption that the press has been covering for John Edwards, as opposed to covering John Edwards, and then logically we are forced to ask the question what else has the press been selectively telling us, about whom, and to what purpose?

Perhaps more correctly, the issue is what has the press been selectively not telling us. My feeling at this point is that this selective reporting goes far beyond one more example of infidelity. The reactions to it, from Democrat party heavies, some of which we’ve already seen, does much to put a face on things.

John Edwards has finally admittted to having an extra-marital affair with Rielle Hunter.  Comments: one the National Enquirer was right and; two, the MSM was in denial.  Memorandum has a flock of links.

Addendum I: (Bit) John Hawkins probably has the headline that comes closer to the truth than anything else:The Silky Pony Admits To Lesbian Affair With Rielle Hunter: Mainstream Media & Daily Kos Hardest Hit

In the end here there is really no way around the point that the press fell all over itself trying to defend John Edwards by their own internal denial that the story even existed. Taking it a step farther, it’s something of a political axiom that if you get bad news to deliver, put it out on Friday afternoon late, so that the six o’clock news shows don’t get a hold of it. Say, Hume, for example. clearly, they followed that axiom in this case.  Obviously, Edwards still considers himself a player on some level of a Democrat administration.  He was also supposed to be speaking as I gather it at the Democratic national convention in Denver.  Because of his union ties, and because all of Barack Obama’s utter LACK of them, Edwards was my odds-on bet for the VP slot. Clearly, that’s not going to happen now.

Dodd Harris over at OTB notes that David Bonior is publicly acting annoyed…

David Bonior, Edwards’ campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid, said Friday he was disappointed and angry after hearing about Edwards’ confession.  “Thousands of friends of the senators and his supporters have put their faith and confidence in him and he’s let them down,” said Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan. “They’ve been betrayed by his action.”

Which action would that be precisely, David? That he was cheating, or are you annoyed that he actually confessed?  It would appear that the worst thing that one could possibly do in the Democrat party these days is to cop something that they’ve done.

Asked whether the affair would damage Edwards’ future aspirations in public service, Bonior replied: “You can’t lie in politics and expect to have people’s confidence.”

Yes, well, let’s talk about that for just a moment.  Does anybody watching this story not understand the chances are very high that Bonior has know for longer than the story has been out there, what was what? the man was his campaign chairman.  David Bonior knew John Edwards as well as anybody and worked as closely with him as anybody did.  The possibility that Bonior didn’t know what was going on, strikes me as small enough to not mention at all.  On that basis his “I’m shocked… just SHOCKED”  routine, doesn’t come off and the more convincingly than did Claude Raines Louie Renult character in Casablanca.

And then, finally, we come to the press.  The mainstream media, or so they call themselves.  We have absolutely no indication whatsoever that the mainstream media ever tried to cover this story as it should’ve been covered.  As a matter of fact what we do have, is an example of the mainstream media in the personage of the editor at the LA Times directly saying to his people that the story should not be touched.

The National Enquirer chased the story.  The mainstream media did not.  Given their history it’s fairly clear to me why then is;  that capital D. after his name. Let me put it to you this way; when a flea farm like the National Enquirer takes on the lead on investigative journalism it’s a safe bet to say that the MSM is covering for a Democrat.

And yes, YAJ I see you on this. That’s the real story… the MSM covering this stuff up; you’re quite right. that John Edwards was screwing around on his cancer ridden wife probably isn’t all that much of a story. Unless you consider that when Newt Gingrich did it, there was a generous amount of press coverage.

And thereby, I think, hangs a comparison; the mainstream media couldn’t yet its backside out on the street trying to gather information about that affair fast enough to satisfy themselves. The question clearly is why was the story covered up this time… And particularly by comparison.  Clearly we’re talking about a liberal bias within the mainstream media, that’s nothing new. Thing is, for all intents and purposes, John Edwards was well out of the race.  Only a few such as myself were saying that Edwards was going to be a player in much of anything in this election, after he dropped out. So why the smokescreen, then?  Why the flat refusal to cover the story?  Can it be that word had filtered down from on high that Mr. Edwards was going to be the VP pick?  If so, why wasn’t that reported?

As you see, there’s an awful lot of questions swirling around all of this, none of which are going to be answered effectively, between now and November.  Most of those questions swirl around what appears increasingly to be an incestral relationship between the press and the Democrats.

Addendum II:  (David L)

Lying Lizzy, b.ka. Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards posted a piece of drizzle to the Kos.  MacRanger responds:

I’m sorry Elizabeth, but no we won’t, and you can stick that “voyeurism” where the you know what don’t shine. This isn’t about your “privacy” and your “pain”. Amazingly enough you showed none of the same sympathy over the last couple of years while slandering others.

That you “knew” about this affair but continue to lie along with your lying husband even in the midst of accusations to the contrary and while people of your party seriously considered picking him for VP, makes you just as much a liar as he

Lying Lizzy took a page of Mrs. Clinton’s play book and lied about her worthless cad of a husband.   I wonder why the media is eager to pronounce the Edwards’ lying as career killing but continue to ignore the Clintons’ lying.

• 08-08-08. Not sure it means anything, but it’s interesting.
• Just about mid-summer. The Telegraph reports what I told you about at about mid-spring would happen at Mid-summer: The great oil Bubble has burst.
  

  The market’s conviction that oil prices were set on an unstoppable upswing was underpinned by a set of mantras to be chanted daily before breakfast by anyone hoping to make money by following the crowd: insatiable demand from China; indolent Opec sheikhs unwilling to open the supply taps; that nasty Vladimir Putin playing political hardball with Russia’s oil and gas resources; those mad Iranian mullahs hell-bent on nuclear conflict; and beyond all these, the looming threat of “peak oil”, the inevitable moment when Mother Earth’s carbon-fuel gauge starts pointing towards empty.One way or another, said the fundamentalists, the only destination for oil prices in the medium term was somewhere north of $200 a barrel. And hooray to that, chorused the green lobby, because it may be the only thing that will ever make us wake up to the need to stop cooking the planet with carbon emissions.

  …
  Now the psychological tide seems to be turning. On the supply side, Saudi Arabia, the dominant member of Opec, is now signalling greater willingness to open the oil taps. When the princes of the desert made a rather smaller gesture of willingness in that direction in June, the market took no notice and prices marched on. But in the new mood, any hint of an increase in Saudi supply is a reason to mark down prices.

  As for the Russians and the Iranians, the pundits have remembered that even the most externally truculent or internally turbulent of energy-exporting nations can feed its people at home only by selling its natural resources abroad, so must ultimately stay on good terms with its customers.

  And meanwhile, five years of rising oil prices have provoked a wave of investment in new drilling and refinery capacity – including the opening up of inaccessible oil sources that no one wanted to tackle when prices were low. Whether it is deep under the Arctic ice-cap or soaked into the tar-sands of northern Alberta, there turns out to be quite a lot more oil waiting to be exploited before we really approach the peak-oil apocalypse. More than that, high oil prices have encouraged rapid development of such alternative energy sources as wind and solar power, and more efficient engine and heating technologies.

  They have the story a little sideways. The Saudis and the others are opening the taps because they see that Americans are willing to drill here, even if the Democrat leadership isn’t. They know their monopoly on oil is being seriously challanged. They need to make domestic oil expensive enough to maintain their monopoly. As I suggested would happen.  And again, as I predicted yesterday, we saw a little upward movement yesterday. Today it’s down to $114 and change/BBL.  As I said last spring, when this rocket ride started,  I’ll keep my SUV, thank you.

•  A guy issues threats against Obama and Bush. Guess which threat gets reported?   Go ahead. Look at this one, and then look at the muzzle the press put on themselves with this Edwards thing we’ve all been talking about, on the blogs… and tell me again about how there’s no bias in the press.
• By the way, did anyone note the Euro is falling? Most it has in eight years, today.
• I note with a jaundiced eye, James reporting on events in the former Soviet state of Georgia. Things seem to be on course to getting very hot indeed over the weekend. But I have some doubts it’ll go beyond this.
• I note Cheny and Bush will both speak the opening night of the convention, contrary to rumors I’d been hearing. I never mentioned them here because frankly, I didn’t trust them. Turns out, Bithead was right again.
• Bubba will be speaking in Denver, too. Nothing about Hillary, though. Apparently the Obama camp doesn’t trust her much. He’s not that far gone yet, apparently.  But he’s gonna need to figure something out pretty quick.
• I’m both annoyed by the sentance handed down to Hamdan, yesterday, and amused at the reactions.  Amused because  I’ve not seen much from the left on this one, yet. Their stunned silence seems an indication that it was far lighter a sentence than even THEY wanted, but after all the defense put up for the man by them, they dare not say so. Else they’ve not figure out how to get this to match their narrative, as James says… or maybe they’ve not figure out how to spin the story so it does fit.
• That turned that slimeball Kwame Kilpatrick loose last night. But then, they charged him.
  

  The mayor faces two counts of assaulting or obstructing a police officer in the furtherance of their duties. Each felony count brings up to 2 years in prison or a fine of $2,000. The mayor and a top aide already face perjury, official misconduct and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his testimony in a civil trial last year….
  In May, the Detroit City Council asked Gov. Jennifer Granholm to invoke a little-used state law and remove Kilpatrick from office for misconduct. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 3.

  Consider all the other sperm that gave their lives so this idiot could live.  And…. should it be pointed out that Granholm is a Democrat as is Kilpatrick? Suffice it to say Granholm won’t remove Kilpatrick.

• The Olyimpics. Rah, Rah, freakin’ Rah. TIBET. And Hong Kong of course. Cheers from here for Presdient Bush for speaking out againt China. He’s playing the middle line here exactly as he should. Can you imagine such an attitude from Obama?
• Speaking of which, David Limbaugh correctly reminds us that what should be shocking us is not how Obama has yet to close the deal, but rather that, despite his lack of qualifications, and experience he’s made it this far.  What should really frighten anyone with a brain is that this is the best the Democrats have to offer. can you imagine worse? Better not to spend much time on it. Your blood pressure.
• Yes, I get your Feedback. It’s shameful I don’t answer it as much as I should. But I do read it.
• Lots of things going on at Casa De Bit. I may not get to go camping, next weekend as I planned. At least, not where I planned. We’ll see.
• 
• You really didn’t think that Obama Sign was original, did you? Funny how it can be traced back to a Startrek episode, and that it was used in that episode by a bunch of idealistic crackpots who in real life woulda been given rooms with that nice rubber wallpaper.  BBCT:Hot Air. But let’s call this mistique surrounding Obama what it really is, with a BBCT to Michelle:

The subject of Negative Campaigns came up at OTB yesterday.

I tell James:

There are some issues one cannot play Pollyanna over. As an example, and at the risk of tossing this thing down a subthread, let’s run a quote from Boortz, this morning:

Barack Obama is trying his darndest to link John McCain to “big oil” and Dick Cheney. Yesterday on the program we talked about Obama’s latest McCain-Exxon ad, where he claims that John McCain has received $2 million in campaign contributions from people in the oil industry … which is completely untrue. The actual figure is more like $1.3 or $1.4 million, but that is beside the point. What Obama failed to mention is that he himself has received well over $400,000 in campaign contributions from “big oil.” Nice try, BO!

Something else that Barack Obama has failed to bring up … and that the media has failed to point out (there’s a surprise) … is that Obama voted for an energy bill in 2005 that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. Dick Cheney was credited with writing, or at least influencing, much of the bill. And yet Barack voted for it … twice. Even more surprising is that John McCain did not vote for the bill “because it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.”

The Obama camp says that he supported the bill because it included “huge investments in renewable energy.” Yeah, like the ethanol industry … and we know how well that has gone.

Want another example of Obama’s failure to tell the whole truth? He is also saying that McCain is trying to push a $4 billion tax break for the oil industry. Just what is The Chosen One talking about? That would be McCain’s proposal to lower corporate income taxes. Currently the United States has the second-largest corporate income tax in the industrialized world. Our punishing tax rates are chasing businesses and capital overseas. Now if you do the math you will see that if McCain manages to get his cut in the corporate tax rate through would cut corporate taxes to oil companies by about $4 billion. So there you go …. Ignoring all of the other American businesses that would benefit, The Big BO is pushing the idea to his ignorant followers that this is really nothing more than a big break for big oil.

OK, granted that’s pretty snarky, though I’ll note that Boortz tends to be that way as a matter of reflex. But Obama’s getting caught in several bald faced lies. How does one present this without having the charge of ‘going negative’ thown at you?

“Well, he delivered these lies in a wonderful speaking voice….”

That’s what this really comes down to, and why I have always and invariably chafed at the complains about politics ‘going negative’. Sorry, but bringing flaws of the candidates out into the open …sometimes by force….  is what campaigns are suppsoed to be all about. A political campaign, hopefully,  is the crucible in which we expose the impurities of content of those candidates who willingly enter it so as to allow the voter an informed choice.  Anyone (Yes, including McCain) who enters a campaign, telling us he’s taking the high road and not going negative, what they’re really doing is forcing the voter into the position of judging candiates soley by their abiliy to mouth empty, meaningless platitudes… and in that event,  Obama wins hands down.

New York Slimes:

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired – has held its first trial. It produced … a guilty verdict.

The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism.

The Slimes libels six good officers.  When I performed my jury duty, I took my oath serioiusly.   There is no reason to believe these six Navy officers took their oath any less seriously.  Note the Gitmo jury deliberated three days.  Compare that to the exhaltled Simpson, which deliberated four fours.

Bit Rambled:

Bill Clinton, championing Monogamy? Isn’t that kinda like Keith Richards championing sobriety?

True, but,  Independent(UK):

In an interview with the BBC recorded in Africa, Mr Clinton said that increasing support for monogamy was not just a problem for the continent worst hit by Aids but for the world.

“To pretend we can ever get hold of this without dealing with that – the idea of unprotected sexual relations with unlimited numbers of partners – I think would be naïve,” he said.

Ok, B.J. isn’t exactly the perfect messenger, but there is true both in the targeted scope and in the larger ramafications.   I fully expect B.J. to either deny the logical consequences of this statement or repudiate it outright.  B.J has refuted modern liberal gospel.  To wit:

All lifestyles are not equal.   In the United States the HIV virus, the cause of AIDS, is almost entirely vectored by stupid behavior.   To wit using illegal street drugs, having sex with other men, or for women having sex with men have sex with men.   Stop the stupid behavior and stop the spread of the virus.

BO’s historical thesis via Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”

FWISW, Ed also has the video posted.   Ok the Messiah has said that American was once great, but isn’t great anymore.   So was our country great in BO’s eyes?

Oh let me see, the country was born in 1776, however at the time we abided slavery.   So BO can’t be refering to any time prior to tha ratification ot Thirteenth Amendment, in 1868.  In fact I think that BO can’t refering to anytime prior the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Traversing in the other dirction, BO can’t be refering to the adminstrations of either B.J the Groper or Bush the Evil.

So what happened between 1965 and 1982 which made America great in BO’s eyes and what happened to end it?   Well prior to 1973, it was not a constitutional right to kill unborn children.  Is BO secretly pro-life?

The ugliest race in America, New York Slimes:

In the culmination of a racially fraught Congressional campaign in Memphis, a black candidate is linking her liberal-leaning white primary opponent in Thursday’s contest, Representative Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan in a television advertisement.

[…]

The advertisement for the challenger, Nikki Tinker, juxtaposes Mr. Cohen’s picture with that of a hooded Klansman, and criticizes Mr. Cohen for voting against renaming a park in Memphis currently named for the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan founder.

Both the incumbent, Steve Cohen, and the challenger, Nikki Tinker, are race pandering bigots.   Cohen was the sponsor of the vile apology the House foisted off for slavery and Tinker compares Cohen, who is Jewish, to Sheets Byrd’s organization, the Klu Klux Klan, which as about as much tolerence for Jews as it does blacks, to wit none.

• Morgan Freeman is not even out of the hospital, and he’s back in the rumor sheets, this time beause he’s divorcing his wife of 24 years. I guess when you’re God, you live an eventful life.
• Bill Clinton, championing Monogamy? Isn’t that kinda like Keith Richards championing sobriety?
• “Find out where his kids go to school” Now imagine if a Republican had said that. What would the press do? More correctly, what would the press NOT do?
• Wonder how many carbon credits this houseboat is costing Al Gore.
• They finaly got the slime of a Mayor in jail in Detroit. That’s right…Kwame Kilpatrick is in the slam. About time. Not that it’ll affect his re-election chances in that pit of despair, of course. Why on earth would anyone move to Michigan anymore? I used to like it there, too. Sad. Liberalism on parade.
• They’re not the only ones. Down in the big Apple, officials are moving to thawrt the large amount of groping that’s going on in subways there. Makes you want to vacation there, doesn’t it? Seems a great reason to avoid mass transit. I’ve said it before I’m not interested in placing my welfare in someone else’s hands. In this case, literally.
• 18 people in an SUV.  In Arizona. About 90 miles out of Pheonix. And only about 30 miles off the Mexican border at Nogales, though the article somehow fails to mention that landmark relationship.   And Interstate 10 is less than a mile to the west. You tell ME who we’re dealing with, and why they’re running the back road instead of the interstate. Anyway, They roll the thing over, killing about half of ’em.  You watch; Someone’s going to blame the SUV.
• I told you Hillary Clinton wasn’t out of the race.  And apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
• Jets fans should not get their hopes too high about Favre showing up. A great QB, (which, for the record,  Favre decidedly is ) can cure a great many ills. In looking at the performance of the Jets, however, one wonders if they dont have more problems than even Favre can cure. And let’s not under-estimate the talents of a Chad Pennington, huh? If you think Favre is the cure for the Jets problems, then you’re saying the blame for those problems is all on the shoulders of Pennington… and I’m afraid I simply don’t buy that argument. The guy’s no Favre, but he’s not slouch, either. Moreover, Favre isn’t favre 10 year sago, either, if you catch my drift. As evidence, I point to Bledsoe and the Bills. Need I say more?
• Some upward movement on oil today. Only a buck or two at most. We’ve seen this before. Expect the downward slide to continue after some resettling at the new level. 
• Pelosi’s book isn’t selling so well. Under 2500 copies last I heard, this monring. Let’s think, now; The people in her district are all fairly literate, fairly well off, and all of them support her, or so we’re led to think, by her website and her public statements. So how to explain these sales numbers?

The good news and the bad news.  The good, an account of what is now known about the Anthrax terrorist attacks and what is not known.   The bad, it is from Ace, so it comes wiht a language warning.

Boortz, this morning:

Nancy Pelosi has responded to the current Republican debate, which continues in her absence. She is blaming Republicans for failing to “support serious, responsible proposals.” Yeah … wind farms.

Funny he should bring this up. A reader referred me to this a few days ago, and I’d put it on hold until an opportune moment. Now seems the time. An article, dated the 31st of July from Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com.

Simply put, Pickens’ pitch is “embrace wind power to help break our ‘addiction’ to foreign oil.”

As I’ve told you here previously, that strikes me as a lie right off the bat. Pickins is talking about generating electricity with wind. Fine, but where in these United States is oil being used to generate electricity?

With that disjointed an opening from Pickins, you know something underhanded is going on. Here’s the important part:

Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there’s more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here’s where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.

Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming — and what if landowners won’t sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens’ route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?

At Pickens’ behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens’ wife and the manager of Pickens’ nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel’s three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens’ employees.

A member of a local water conservation board told Bloomberg News that, “[Pickens has] obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.”

What’s this got to do with Pickens’ wind-power plan? Just as he needs pipelines to sell his water, he also needs transmission lines to sell his wind-generated power. Rights of way for transmission lines are also acquired through eminent domain — and, once again, the Texas legislature has come to Pickens’ aid.

Earlier this year, Texas changed its law to allow renewable energy projects (like Pickens’ wind farm) to obtain rights-of-way by piggybacking on a water district’s eminent domain power. So Pickens can now use his water district’s authority to also condemn land for his future wind farm’s transmission lines.

Who will pay for the rights-of-way and the transmission lines and pipelines? Thanks to another gift from Texas politicians, Pickens’ water district can sell tax-free, taxpayer-guaranteed municipal bonds to finance the $2.2 billion cost of the water pipeline. And then earlier this month, the Texas legislature voted to spend $4.93 billion for wind farm transmission lines. While Pickens has denied that this money is earmarked for him, he nevertheless is building the largest wind farm in the world.

So, my initial suspcion was correct… there’s something underhanded going on here. And what of the Kelo ruling? Clearly, that nonsense in New London will begin to play large in Texas shortly. And essentially, the fallout here will be that the Greens will have control over the US energy supply. How will that go down?

Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal gives us the word:

When Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats spent a week holding the people’s chamber under house arrest, they made plain a political vulnerability beyond drilling. To achieve greenhouse gas goals in the out-years, they are willing to risk a slowdown now in the American economy. How else can you interpret what happened this week? These Democrats aren’t environmentalists. They’re enviromaniacs.

An environmentalist with two feet on the planet is someone who admits that fixing what economists call “externalities,” such as air pollution or climate effects, requires a balance between those goals and protecting the productive economy.

An enviromaniac is the sort of person who would say: “Breaking our oil addiction . . . will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.” The completetransformation of our economy?

So said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in his major energy statement this Monday. Though the speech had hedged bows to oil, coal and nuclear, it was overwhelmingly a Goreian jeremiad about “building” a new economy on a promise called renewables.

An Empty promise. At best, the audacity of wishful thinking.

Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:11pm EST

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state.
The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.
System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur.
No other customers lost power during the emergency, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers were restored in about 90 minutes and the emergency was over in three hours.

So, this is the wave of the future?

But it gets even better. Let’s face it, our economy, as affected as it would be by such lack of reliability, would be more greatly affected by the imposition of anti-Oil thinking, as Henneger points out.

This nonsense is the basis of the Democrat party today. LIke what you see, America?

I’ve done some additional work on the CSS so that the picture/gfx positioning is a little smoother. Writers should no longer need to play with the short code to get the thing to work.

Turns out, I was right; WPv2.5 added some code to the way pics are handled… and it really fouled the layout of the old theme up something terrible. The new one a bit less so. the CSS coding I added, should solve the problem for both themes, plus any others I toss at it.

David, particularly, take note. Should save you some trouble.

And yes, I’m working on a theme switcher, too, but later for that.

• Arianne Balsom is blogging from Antarctica, and McQ is blogging from onboard theUSS Kearsarge. And I didn’t get to go anywhere.
• Tony Blankley has a great bit up at Townhall, today. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone starts screaming about the toes that have been stepped on.
• Hey, Denver: Wouldn’t it be easier just to ban leftists? Did you really understand when you signed on for the DNC, what you were really exposing yourself to?
• Interesting. Viewed over time, gas prices are not rising nearly as fast as crude oil prices. Say Anything has the details. 
• I’d say thisis indicative of problems that Obama’s not willing to admit to. So too, is this.   They both indicate a profound lack of support among about everyone but the leftist elites. What interests me is ths stuff is starting to slip out with increasing frequency. Perhaps there’s a lot more water behind that dam than they’re lettin’ on, Clem…
• Documents just released via FOIA requests show that the “Troopergate” scandal of the Democrats here in New York State, was worse than we originally knew.  Does anyone think that if a Republican were involved, say, George Pataki, that we’d not be in non-stop mode with this stuff? But since we’re dealing with Spitzer, a Democrat… you’ll not hear about this at all except for the blogs.
• Will someone please explain to me why the hell anyone would clone a pit bull? It’s not like there aren’t enough of the breed around being dumped at animal shelters daily.
• Gaffe-o-matic strikes again. No wonder Obama is in the gym all the time. You gotta be pretty flexable to operate with your foot in your mouth like that. Again, you’ll not see much about this, since it’s a Democrat. Interestingly most Americans are getting tired of hearing about Obama. You can only watch the press give the man a tounge-bath for so long, I suppose.
• Look, even if you accept the need for this kind of nonsense… as this site clearly does… apparently drowning in their own kool-aid… where the hell is the electricity supposed to come from? No nukes, no coal, or oil, no natural gas, and yet you’re asking an already fragile power grid to accept the draw of another million electric vehicles? I mean, particularly on the coasts where such things will be more likely to sell… forget it. It ain’t happening. Whoever said Democrats or greenies were ever realistic in their demands?
•  Market up, oil dropping. $117 as of noon and still falling. I still wonder if oil dropping now doesn’t take the pressure off the Democrats to drill.
• That parrot is not dead, he’s pining for the Fiords. I mean, I suppose that you have to expect this kind of thing when a dictatorship runs things. I guess what amuses me so is that so many are clearly shocked when the obvious happens.