"Agitate, agitate, agitate!" -Frederick Douglass
This Volvo decides to resist (kinda long, you might want to just skip to the end):
Ace of Spades (which also gets a hat-tip for the video) reports that the dealers are pouring sodium silicate into the gas tanks.
Gotta wonder what all that oil is going to do to nearby rivers and steams. Oh well…
Cross-posted at Virginia Virtucon.
Because the “Car Allowance Rebate System” (CARS) program (commonly referred to as “cash for clunkers”) needs a bailout after receiving higher than expected interest. The Obama Administration and Congress were shocked — shocked, I tell you — that when the government starts handing out $4,500 to anybody, they get a huge response!
It’s bad enough that there was $1,000,000,000 originally dedicated to this program but now the House, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that it needs another $2,000,000,000. And to make matters worse, 77 Republicans voted for this most recent monstrosity of corporate welfare (roll call vote). At least all the Republicans in Virginia’s Congressional delegation voted against it.
The only thing that would make this whole situation halfway rewarding is if all the cars are being sold by Ford and foreign automakers so Government Motors (GM), Dodge, and Chrysler don’t receive anymore welfare payments.
And this has to be one of the saddest pictures I’ve seen in awhile:
Yes, I know it’s a gimmick ad by some car dealer but it represents perfectly what the government is doing. They’re paying for the destruction of vehicles, not because they don’t work, but because a couple of businesses need another bailout and the government has the ability to throw away money by the billions. Cars that cost thousands of dollars, and which hundreds of people spent dozens of hours building, are being destroyed by government fiat.
And think about this: What happens when someone just out of college, or someone that has been saving money for a year to buy a used car, goes out and tries to buy a car and finds out to his surprise: “What the heck! Used cars are a lot more expensive than they were a year ago!”?
Why? Because the government has interfered with the free market and worked to destroy the existing supply of used cars.
I’m halfway through reading Atlas Shrugged, and it’s amazing how much this country is starting to look like the situation in that book…
Cross-posted at Virginia Virtucon.
Via WUSA9:
Officials say the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has positively identified the remains of Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher, whose disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his jet was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the war.
[…]
Officials say they got new information from Iraqi citizens last month that led them to a place in the desert believed to be the crash site — and there they found the remains.
Longer story available here.
You should really check out Delegate Chris Peace’s (R-97th) campaign website.
I swear that has to be one of the best designed and laid out campaign sites I’ve ever seen. The colors are great too. Ditto for the slideshow, it gets your attention but doesn’t overwhelm you when you’re trying to find something else on the site. It’s one of those things that you look at and say, “Dammit! I wish I could make something like that!”
And when you look at it you don’t realize that it actually uses a self-hosted WordPress installation. I didn’t realize that it did until I saw the standardized URLs for the news updates and I checked out the HTML code and saw the references to WordPress directories. WordPress is great for blogs if you want your site to look like a blog but you usually don’t want your campaign site to look like one. Convenience of WordPress plus a professional design that doesn’t look like a blog? Win.
It’s certainly a far cry from Catherine Crabill’s campaign website which uses a TypePad blog setup. It’s also a far cry from Bobby Orrock’s website that hasn’t been updated in two years. Albert Pollard’s site is okay but noticeably light on content, especially on the “Views” page. Of course, with the person that he’s running against, what does it matter?
And for what someone has told me and what I can find on Peace’s campaign finance disclosures, it didn’t come cheap either. $4,356 for the web hosting and design being paid to PharrOut according to VPAP. It looks like the single most expensive item he’s bought this campaign cycle in fact. Definitely money well spent even though Peace doesn’t have an opponent this year.
This travesty of writing and intellect all started over two years ago on July 15, 2007.
Via Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge:
I’ve recently been forced to implement the first ever ban of a commenter on this blog. Now, I’ve been forced to remove spam and the like for years. I’ve also been forced to remove or redact a vulgarity or two from a comment, as well as removing one comment that contained a rumor with false and defaming information. I have also removed a comment or two at the request of the commenter. But none of those incidents were outright bans and the persons involved retained their commenting abilities.
The recipient of this first ever ban is “Jason Soiman”. Why the quotes, you might be asking? Well, that’s a long story. It all started back on June 6, 2009, when “Jason Soiman” posted a comment saying that Catherine Crabill had just received a $1,000,000 inheritance from her mother’s estate which would fund her election campaign. Now, “Soiman” was mum on details even after I asked “him” how this was possible when Crabill currently has her $875,000 home on the market. She also has five or six siblings, so if Crabill managed to get a $1,000,000 inheritance, that must have been on big frakin’ pot to begin with. After I asked those questions to “Soiman”, “he” stated: “I really don’t know that much about Catherine Crabill’s finances”. Yeah, obviously.
And since then, “Soiman” has been a somewhat regular commenter on this space, with comments ranging from regularly taking up for Representative Rob Wittman (R-1st) to attacking Delegate Chris Peace (R-97th) for posting a comment on this blog.
“Soiman”‘s commenting reached its end yesterday, however, when “he” posted two comments claiming that Sheriff Tony Lippa had a been a big supporter of now-Supervisor Jeff Sili’s election campaign in 2007. “He” claimed, inter alia, that Lippa was at Sili’s campaign kickoff event in July 2007, yet Lippa’s presence isn’t noted in a press release from Sili’s own campaign (which also appeared in The Caroline Progress), despite naming every local politician that had attended the event. Mix in some more lies from “Soiman” which totally clash with the personality types of the people involved and you have a couple of comments from “him”.
I eventually decided to ban “Soiman” from posting anymore comments on this blog. I despise liars to begin with but when someone lies and the person’s claims can be easily refuted by a simple Google Search it annoys me even more. And, for crying out loud, if you’re going to lie about someone, at least make sure that the actions that you claim someone did are consistent with the person’s personality.
After I implemented the ban, I decided to do a little research. First, I Googled “Soiman”‘s name and found several comments on other blogs attacking John Brownlee and even a profile on RPV Network.
Then I Googled “his” e-mail address: nothing.
But then I Googled “his” IP address. Guess what came up? Fredtalk. And not just Fredtalk, but posts on FredTalk from one “oharascarlett”. Who is “oharascarlett”, you might be asking? Why, that would be Susan Sili’s username on Fredtalk of course. Susan Sili is, of course, the wife of Caroline County Republican Committee Chairman and Caroline County Board of Supervisors member Jeff Sili. And who did Jeff Sili endorse for the Republican nomination for Attorney General? Why, Ken Cuccinelli. And who was one of Cuccinelli’s opponents? John Brownlee. It all comes together doesn’t it?
That obviously pathological liar has been posting on this blog for over a month and I just figured it out. Grr…
After this whole experience, I feel that I need to lay out some ground rules for commenting in the future:
1.) Don’t lie.
2.) If you’re going to lie (see Rule #1), at least make sure your lies can’t be refuted by a simple Google Search.
3.) If you’re going to lie (see Rule #1), make sure that the nonexistent actions that you attribute to someone don’t completely clash with the person’s personality.
If you’re found to be in violation of these rules, with me being the sole arbitrator of that, you will be banned.
Besides that, comment away.
But before we go, I want to share a couple of lines from Atlas Shrugged:
“But don’t I have any freedom of speech?”
“In your own house. Not in mine.”
“Don’t I have a right to my own ideas?
“At your own expense. Not at mine.”
“Don’t you tolerate any differences of opinion?”
“Not when I’m paying the bills.”
For those not familiar with Godwin’s Law, it states: “As a Usenet [a message board-style system] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” It was also used in the ye olde days (back when you had to carry the electrons on your back!) to determine when a Usenet discussion had reached it’s peak and needed to be ended due to someone deciding to compare someone else they were arguing with to a Nazi or Hitler. Anyone that make a comparison to Nazism or Hitler was determined to have lost the argument as well.
Well, here’s a new wider variation coined by me: As any argument continues, online or offline, the probability of a comparison to a mass murderer, including a serial killer, approaches 1.
And, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached that point in the back and forth regarding Sheriff Tony Lippa’s vendetta against Caroline County High School football coach Benjamin Boyd. In a letter to the editor in the July 23, 2009, edition of The Caroline Progress, Roger Cavendish stated the following as part of a tirade against former Principal Jeff Wick, the Caroline County School Board, et al.:
I can certainly understand why Jeff Wick is an ex-principal with his moral values. For him to even suggest that the drug crime was nineteen years ago is disgusting. I am sure that if Mr. Wick has anything to say about it the next time Charles Manson comes up for parole, he will want to hire him as a music teacher — after all, it has been forty years since he killed Sharon Tate and he is quite a musician.
Yep folks, he just compared someone that was convicted of two misdemeanors for the possession of steroids nineteen years ago to someone that was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of seven people. Do I really have to point the absurdity of that argument? To compare someone to Manson, who was involved in the brutal murder of seven people, including the murder of Sharon Tate who was eight-months pregnant at the time of her death, is beyond absurd; it’s reprehensible.
In the same letter Cavendish also stated that former School Board member and Coach George Spaulding had also come out in support of Boyd’s hiring and condemned Spaulding for supporting Boyd. Now that’s pretty interesting since Lippa is such good friends with George Spaulding through his wife Elisabeth Spaulding. Elisabeth Spaulding is the widow of Stan Benson who was a very good of friend of Lippa before his passing several years ago. In fact, Lippa was a big supporter of Spaulding’s failed bid for the Bowling Green Board of Supervisors seat back in 2007. Does all that support and friendship go out the door when someone ends up on the wrong side of one of Lippa’s vendetta, or, in this particular case, is it just the ravings of a lunatic like Roger Cavendish? It’s hard to decide at this point.
And then we have a portion of a the letter that appeared in the same edition from former Virginia State Trooper Robert Gordon:
As for the cheap shot by Mr. Wick regarding Sheriff Lippa’s son-in-law being interested in the coach’s position, it now has become a situation where members of the School Board and former principal Mr. Wick are now attempting to portray Sheriff Lippa as the bad in this entire matter.
First, note that nowhere did Gordon deny the truthfulness of Wick’s allegation. And, uh, excuse me, that’s a cheap shot? Is it a cheap shot for the Sheriff, the chief law-enforcement officer in the county, to publicly and falsely accuse someone of committing a crime? Is it a cheap shot for the Sheriff to invade another government employee’s privacy and to go around stating as a fact what was included on the employee’s application? Is it a cheap shot to get someone indicted for two felonies as part of a larger vendetta against someone and then run to a friend at WTVR Channel 6 News (Jon Burkett) to have him do a story about the charges?
No, of course not. It’s only a cheap shot to reveal to the public why a elected public official is pursuing a vendetta against someone. This is part of a wider revelation I’ve had: To Lippa and the people that are supporting him in this travesty of justice, they think there are two sets of rules: One set just for them and another set that everyone else has to follow. The problem is their set of rules is blank. They can do whatever they want: falsely accuse someone of a crime, try to publicly ruin a man’s reputation using the media, or try to get a man fired from a job that he was properly hired for, and it goes on and on. But when someone dares to point why they’re taking this course of action it’s a ‘cheap shot’, ‘an invasion of privacy’, ‘uncalled for’, or whatever else they want to say about it.
Not a real surprise, right?
But a couple of words do not probably describe the type of folks that are behind Prison Planet.com. It isn’t just Oklahoma City Bombing Truthers (OKC Truthers) and United Nations one-government nuts like Crabill, it’s 9/11 Truther (people that believe that the Bush, or the Jews, or combination there of were responsible for the 9/11 attacks), anti-vaccine loons, anti-fluoride morons (they must worry about people trying to “sap and impurify” their “precious bodily fluids”), and, of course, those newest nuts known as Birthers (people that believe that Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” and therefore ineligible to be President). Of course, Crabill has previously shown her support for the Birthers between links on her campaign site to WorldNetDaily and comments made elsewhere.
To get a good idea on how insane the folks at Prison Planet.com are, consider this quote from the very article calling Crabill a “[p]atriot”:
GE manufactures jet and attack helicopter engines used in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill thousands. Not only is GE complicit in mass murder, it also pled guilty in federal court to civil and criminal charges of defrauding the Pentagon and agreed to pay $69 million to the U.S. government in fines — one of the largest defense contracting fines ever. Part of this fraudulent scheme was used to fund Israeli military programs not authorized by the United States – in other words, [Jim] Newell’s [the author of an article lambasting Crabill] boss helped Israel torture and kill Palestinians.
I’m loathed to even post stuff like that anywhere on my blog but I feel it’s important to document the type of insane people out there that have decided to support Crabill’s candidacy. I did make the prediction that Crabill would make the Republican Party and anyone running as a Republican look like a complete moron and it’s nice to see I was correct in that hypothesis even though I don’t like the net result.
And, no, I won’t be linking to that site. You can get your own link if you want to read that drivel! And the only reason that I even know about the endorsement post is because of a handy “Catherine Crabill” Google Blog alert. Heck, it was Google News search that found me the first article detailing Crabill’s OKC Trutherism, so they’re a a pretty good resource FYI.
From Portsia Smith’s “Caroline Crossroads” blog:
Talked to Sheriff Tony Lippa and he has confirmed that Lt. Col. Mike Hall resigned from the Caroline County Sheriff’s Office effective immediately Tuesday.
Lippa said Hall will focus on his lawn care business, B & H Site Improvements.
No other details are available at this time.
I’m sure I’m not the only that isn’t buying this. No one resigns “effective immediately” unless they get fed up and walk out or if they’re fired outright.
This is pure speculation, but maybe Hall got sick of a sheriff’s office being used to go after someone (i.e., Ben Boyd) because that someone got hired for a job over someone else’s (i.e., Lippa’s) kin (i.e., Robbie Jenkins)?
This whole thing is even weirder because it was Lippa that brought Hall into the sheriff’s office (Hall was previously a Virginia State Trooper, a sergeant I believe) to be Lippa’s Chief Deputy when Lippa was elected. I’m guessing that Major Moser is doing those duties now which he should be able to manage since he was Homer Johnson’s Chief Deputy for several years). Now, the question is will Major Moser agree to do things that Hall apparently refused to do? Only time will tell…
Let’s hope that Hall keeps his calendar clear for two years from now. That would be 2011 for those that have trouble counting. Lot of interesting stuff happening that year, constitutional officer elections amongst them.