Thank You George

Ok, GW has not lived up to most conservatives’ expectations including mine, but today he certainly made a difference. Thank You President Bush for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. Today the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns because of the individual gun rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment. This should have been a slam dunk since the Constitutional Amendment is quite clear to most of us but with Justice Kennedy’s recent rulings it became somewhat questionable (what was Reagan thinking?).

With Kennedy’s affinity for European law and his anointing foreigners with America citizen rights in the recent Boumediene vs. Bush case and then the decision favoring the brutal rapist in Kennedy vs. Louisiana , he seems to be losing touch with the Constitution. In addition to Kennedy, unfortunately Republicans gave us 2 of the 4 most liberal justices on the bench. Ford appointed Stevens and G.H.W. Bush gave us Souter but at least 41 made up for it the next year by appointing Clarence Thomas.

As a side note on bias, the CNN gallery of current justices points out that Scalia “worked actively to strike down Roe v. Wade” while Stevens “has championed the individual's right to have an abortion”. They also devote two paragraphs to the sexual harassment charges against Justice Thomas while not bringing up any negative comments on other justices.

What do think the outcome would have been today had Gore or Kerry been elected? Since Justice Stevens turned 88 this year and Ginsburg 75 and is in poor health, it would seem once again to be an extremely important presidential election. While I have doubts about McCain I have no doubt that Obama would appoint someone to the left of Ginsburg (if that is possible).

I’m Just Saying, it could certainly be worse.

Are the Inmates Running the Asylum?

It’s really difficult to understand the sheer stupidity of our elected officials. Their complete lack of understanding the oil industry is my rant today. This time it’s not just the democrats, some of the republicans are as equally inept.

They have banned offshore drilling except along part of the Gulf Coast and on most of the onshore areas controlled by the government. Instead of opening up these areas to exploration our illustrious lawmakers say that it won’t bring immediate relieve and would take 5 years or more so why bother. I believe this is the same response they gave 10 years ago. Now I don’t work for NASA but seems like some of those areas could be producing oil by now if they had listened then.

Another popular response is to claim it will destroy the beaches and therefore their tourism industry. Well duh, if the tourists can’t afford to get there it’s likely the tourism business is going to be nonexistent. Besides you don’t have to pollute the air and water to drill for oil and gas as can be seen in Norway They utilize CO2 for increased oil production, oil spill detection systems, cleaning of formation water from oil production and the recovery of crude oil vapors to maintain pristine waters and a clean shoreline.

Last but not least is their complaint that there are 68 million areas of undeveloped leases that should be drilled before opening up additional leases. Perhaps this is where their ignorance shines the brightest. If all you had to do was get a lease then setup a drilling rig to pump out the oil you might find them more difficult to come by. Maybe that’s why it’s called exploration. It only starts at the lease sale and last year the US government received $3.7 billion dollars from ONE sale. Do they not have any idea how much time and money it then takes to conduct exploration surveys, obtain permits, obtain a drilling rig, then setup production and transportation systems if they’re lucky enough to be successful?

Oh yeah, and their only solution to the problem is to tax the productive oil companies because of their “obscene wind fall profits”. ExxonMobil, the nation’s largest oil company, profited 10 cents for every dollar it brought in revenue in 2007. That puts its profit margin in the middle of other Fortune 500 companies, including Bank of America (18-percent profit margin) (NYSE: BAC), AT&T (11.8 percent) (NYSE: T) and Proctor & Gamble (13.1 percent). Exactly how is making your product less profitable going to be an incentive for the oil companies to continue with the expense of exploration dollars? Of course this scheme won’t lower your gasoline cost but will only redistribute wealth to those too lazy to work for a living. The only ones making an obscene profit here is the US government. (see chart below) In 2006 their share of 27 oil companies profit was $90 billion plus an addition $10.9 billion in non-income tax AND another $48 billion in excise taxes. The last time we had a wind fall profits tax was when Jimmy (the peanut) Carter was in power and we all know how well that worked out.



And now these idiots want to take over all domestic oil refineries? Well considering how efficient the government run bureaucracies can be, I can hardly wait.

I'm Just Saying, you think gasoline prices are high now?

Five Years and Still Going & Going....

Just like the little Energizer Bunny, the moron democrats in congress are still going and going and going, five years after we first heard about Valerie Wilson/Plame they're starting yet ANOTHER investigation. (see House committee subpoenas Bush, Cheney FBI interviews)

Besides the fact that the special prosecutor never charged anyone with a crime for "outing" Plame (maybe since it wasn't a crime) they will do anything to further discredit the Bush administration. Perhaps someone should tell them he's not running for president this year! Maybe they don't remember her husband lying to the bipartisan Intelligence Committee about all the pertinent facts including that she was the one that sent him to Africa in the first place or that he actually did find some evidence that Iraq was up to something in Niger.

It seems highly unlikely that she was "covertly" driving in and out of the front gate at CIA headquarters in Langley everyday. Unless she happened to wear disguises while holding down her desk job it would have been pretty easy to see where she worked.

One would think that our congress could direct their attention on a few of the problems we are currently facing but then again it might be better if they just continued to do nothing.

I'm Just Saying, who cares - it's time to move on.

Father's Day - I Remember

Daddy taking us into town to get a .10 ice cream cone when .10 meant a lot more than I knew

Never really knowing we didn’t have a lot of money, it didn’t seem important

“Helping” add our indoor bathroom

“Helping” tend to a sick calf

Watching the Gillette Friday Night Fights together on our first TV

Him turning the TV around so all the kids could sit out on our lawn and watch TV through the window while catching fireflies.

Having the preacher over for Sunday lunch and the table loaded down with food collapsing to the floor

Walking home from school and stopping at the little store to get a Coke and bag of peanuts to pour into it while telling the store owner to “put it on Daddy’s account”

While outside standing around he’d always wind up squatting down

He always wore short sleeve shirts (most plaid as I recall) even in the dead of winter

His integrity as shown by his favorite saying “If I tell you a hen dips snuff you can look under her wing and find a box”

Our move to Houston in the U-Haul truck while I was sitting on the floor of the truck looking up at his big strong arms

Him catching the preachers grandson testing the “Cats have nine lives” theory on the church’s cooling tower while the cat was on number eight

Riding out to Pasadena to buy his first pick-up truck and his bargaining with the salesman until walking out over what amounted to .25 a week only to be called back in by the sales manger to close the deal.

Him taking us to La Porte to swim at the “beach” and having to get out of the water when a ship passed by

Helping him build a camper for the pick-up out of ply wood, aluminum frame windows, and black paint

His fresh starched khaki pants that Mother had done with metal frames

Sleeping in our camper atop the nice and breezy hill in downtown Hot Springs only to be run off by the park patrol and sent to the state park down in a hot still valley

Leaving Houston during Hurricane Carla because he didn’t think our garage apartment would withstand the storm. It did, but our trip to Navasota was a great experience

Talking him into a two door 1966 Ford Fairlane with a 289 for our family car

Going to work with him at Hermann Hospital and being fascinated with all the gauges and the cooling towers

Watching EVERY Dallas Cowboy football game that was broadcast

Helping him rebuild our ’51 Ford and learning how to work on cars

His first heart attack and visiting him in the hospital while he was still under the oxygen tent

His great love of our daughter even if she did always seem to wind up with a wet diaper when he had on his green pants

Running out of gas about 10 miles from their house late one freezing night and contacting him via CB radio relay and him siphoning enough gas from his truck to get us there

Catching the biggest bass of my life that November and how great it was that he was there to net it

His ride on the back of my motorcycle while holding onto me – by the way it takes further to stop with two people on a motorcycle

Sitting in their backyard while Mother pointed out the cloud that looked like a sycamore tree – it actually was a tree and we laughed while kidding her about it for years

Stopping at the donut shop in Tyler after visiting Mother in the hospital after a knee operation

We named our son after Daddy’s birth surname and he was so proud

The stroke and how although he was never the same, I knew he was still there when I gave him a hug

Being “too busy” on too many occasions to go visit when I should have

The call – when I was informed of his death and the emptiness and pain that followed

I’m Just Saying - Happy Father’s Day, I love you Daddy

Vote for Whitey

I just finished reading "Black conservatives conflicted on Obama campaign" and to say I am disappointed is a HUGE understatement. Especially by JC Watts;

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he's thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he's still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.

Apparently even the black conservatives are not as color blind as they demand of us. The fact that Obama is the most liberal to ever run for the office of president is not relevant. So he wants to raise your taxes, give in to the terrorist, ban handguns and concealed carry permits, increase entitlements, etc, etc, etc - none of that matters. Skin pigmentation is the only qualifier for blacks voting in this election.

I'm Just Saying, using their logic I guess I'll have to vote for McCain because he's white.

War bill helps Iraqis, may ignore Katrina victims

This is the headline from a news story I saw today at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080608/ap_on_re_us/iraq_katrina_1.

Of course my first thought was duh, why should a war bill NOT ignore Katrina "victims". Last time I checked we weren't at war in Louisiana so why should they be included? Well as it turns out it was just a case of something being added onto another bill because it lacked support to pass on its own merit.

These are the same people that looted big screen televisions in the aftermath of the storm. These are the same people that had ample opportunity to leave the city before flooding and sit around waiting for the water to rise. These are the same people that re-elected the moron of a mayor that sat around with them watching the water rise instead of using transportation readily available to evacuate the city. These are the same people that trashed hotel and motel rooms across the nation as thanks for a free place to stay. These are the same people that refused jobs offered by companies trying to help out.

Exactly how long are we supposed to shell out money to keep these people sitting on their ass? The problem is, most of these people were sitting around sucking on the government teat before the storm and now after two and half years additional money on top of their welfare the milk is beginning to dry up.

I'm Just Saying, it's about time!

What ever happened to...

What ever happened to the terms biracial or mulatto? They seem equally descriptive of our president elect but all the press refer to him as "our first black" presidential nominee, not our first half white nominee. He even referees to himself as black and how we must come together as one. His black heritage seems to be the defining characteristic that has brought out more black voters than ever before in history.

Exactly how is it that he became so proud of his black heritage? His black father abandoned him when he was two only to be later dumped with his mother's WHITE parents that raised him. The current tuition for the school he attended through high school is $17,000 a year so he wasn't thrown in with white trash.



I'm Just Saying, seems to me he should be more proud of his white heritiage than his black.