A Little Travelin' Music Please

It's summer. Let's drive.

At Last, A Butt To Boot!

The @$$-kicker in chief finally has a keister sized up for the boot. No, not that one, General McChrystal's.

Before Republicans start holding a parade for the General under the heading of "the enemy of my political enemy must be great" I would suggest reading Byron York's insights this AM.

Now ol' Stan's a reasonably good guy doing a tough job. But, he screwed the pooch on this one and if Lord O cans him he is well within his rights as Commander in Chief.

A Normal Monday

The House of Saud has doubled its gold reserves. The Chinese are tinkering with their currency in preparation for the G-20 meeting. And Malia is still asking her daddy about the oil.

But, more importantly, The Big Ten has 12 teams, The Big Twelve has 10 teams, The Pac 10 has 12 teams and wants 16. These major institutions of higher learning apparently can't even handle first grade math.

And... I'm still waiting for ABC/ESPN ( The Worldwide Leader in Hype ) to send someone to the door with a ten thousand dollar check so I'll watch soccer. That's $10,000 just to watch a minute or two. More than that and you'll really have to pay.

Where's Your Unicorn Now?

Long before the Deepwater Horizon blowout disaster we made a decision here at Monkeydart Plantation to NOT buy petroleum products from BP. This is no small statement as a BP station/ liquor store is the closest supplier of automotive fuels/ booze to our home. Why did we not patronize BP? Because of their gigantic TV ad campaign that was about sunshine, lollipops, windmills, solar panels, clean restrooms, rainbow-farting flying unicorns and so on. Anything but the conversion of crude oil found underground to a fuel product found within walking distance of our home. You see, BP was no longer British Petroleum, no by gawd, they were BEYOND PETROLEUM. Well, la-dee-dah. Let's just say we have no respect for a company that apologizes for the product they sell.

Interestingly BP's buddy-buddy relationship with Cap & Trade pushers like John Kerry and Lord Obama doesn't seem to come up much these days.

Meanwhile, if BP wanted to push "green" products they would have pushed oil and gas, as Jonah Goldberg points out at the AEI site.

4 Days of Federal Debt

The shakedown orchestrated by Good Cop Obama and Bad Cop Biden yesterday at the White House netted an opening bid of $20 Billion. Of course, there are thousands of regulations and laws in place regarding drilling for oil and natural gas in the United States. All of that apparently went straight out the door of the Roosevelt Room.

Twenty Billion Dollars is a lot of money. For example, it is equal to four full days of debt created by the Terrible Trio of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. 4 days. Yep, every four days Team Obama drives us $20 BILLION deeper in debt. But we definitely want to put them in charge of energy production.

Killing Business Is Profitable in DC

Remember when the current administration, with help from their union friends at the SEIU, told us we should be angry about Wall Street bonuses?

Are we supposed to be upset about the fact that the Federal Government paid out $408 Million in performance bonuses last year? Was it a really a crackerjack year for the feds?

Believe Me, You Don't

The more I see national coverage of the Alvin Greene issue the more I realize that their ignorance is only eclipsed by their arrogance and condescension.


In Chinatown crusty old Noah Cross (John Huston) tries to let private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) know that he's heading down the wrong path.



"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't."


Of course Jake doesn't believe him. But, Noah was exactly right.

I'll give the legacy media one small hint. If you think James Clyburn is leading you towards the truth, well, you may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't.

R.I.P.

At the bottom of that pit lies a big, big man.

The Leader of the Free World?

Puppies desperately need to know who is Alpha in the pack as they grow up to become good dogs. If it isn't clear to them they assume they are the dominant member of the group. (See photo above.) It is very stressful for them to have a bad owner who won't LEAD AND COMMAND but will yell at them and threaten them when they do what to them is a natural part of pack behavior.

It is very distressing to see a decently bred dog maltreated. But, Bo, we know how it feels when the guy who is supposed to be in command doesn't know the first damn thing about leadership.

Day Late, Dollar Short

Even people who aren't part of The Apple Cult are aware of Jobs and Woz. But did you know there was a 3rd founder of Apple? There was. He lives in Nevada, cashes his social security checks and plays penny slot machines. Seriously.

If he had hung on to his 10% stake at the beginning of Apple those shares would be worth $22 Billion today. Easy come, easy go.

That's A Hot One

"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Stop it. My sides hurt.

Primarily

Our primary elections are next Tuesday, June 8th, and in South Carolina we vote on every office. There is no registration by party in South Carolina. A registered voter goes in on primary day and asks for the Republican or Democrat program for the voting computer. (Every precinct in the state uses identical electronic voting machines, by the way.) Voting in the Democrat primary in statewide races is like picking the Washington Nationals to win the World Series: a pointless activity.

So, though I've never been a registered Republican in my 38 years of voting, I'll ask for the Republican ballot and vote among over 30 candidates in a dozen or so races. DeMint for Senate of course, Mulvaney for the right to knock off John Spratt this November, Loftis for State Treasurer and on and on and on.

But the race that suddenly got national attention a few weeks ago is for Governor. Two of the candidates had run and won statewide office before: McMaster the current AG, and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. (In SC the Lt. Gov. does NOT run with the Governor like the US President/ Vice President. I've seen some outside reports that assumed that Andre Bauer was Governor Sanford's "running mate." That's not true.) As statewide office holders McMaster and Bauer polled ahead of Gresham Barrett, a US Representative from an Upstate district, and Nikki Haley, a state representative, on name recognition if nothing else.

Then a few things happened to upset the old boy network that wanted a Bauer win at best or, at least, a McMaster/ Bauer run-off. And, when you talk about The Old Boys, in South Carolina you're talking about Sanford enemy Jake Knotts and his crew.

Jake Knotts

First a few groups started to throw support and funding behind Sanford protege Haley. That helped her a bit, but nothing like what happened when Governor Sarah Palin left the NRA convention in Charlotte and stopped in Columbia to endorse Nikki.

Polls after the Palin endorsement showed Nikki Haley leaping from 4th to 1st. McMaster was now running second and that meant ol' Jake Knotts had a problem-- his boy Andre was out of the running and wouldn't even make the June 22nd run-off. But, coincidentally I'm sure, slime started oozing out of the dark corners of the state. First a hapless blogger leveled a dirty smear without any evidence. When that seemed to go nowhere a Bauer aide leveled a similar, sad, laughable attack on Haley. Since there was no evidence for this one either the electorate seemed to be seeing through it.

So, desperate, Knotts last night played trump. He intimated, in public on an Internet radio program that Nikki Haley isn't the Methodist she claimsto be, in fact ol' Jake said that like Obama, she's a "raghead." The exact quote: “We already got one raghead in the White House. We don’t need another in the Governor’s Mansion.”

And so this is what the mighty fixer Jake Knotts has come to as he sees Andre Bauer's ascendancy in grave doubt. See, with his boy Bauer in the Governor's chair Jake and his crowd would be dippin' even deeper into the emptying trough down in Columbia. Since the office of Governor is weak by design in South Carolina (see: carpetbaggers and scalawags post- War Between The States for the reason) even a Mark Sanford or Nikki Haley can't keep the oily Knotts crew from their corruption. But the difference between a Haley vetoing their schemes and a Bauer rubber-stamping them is big. Big enough for Jake Knotts to pull out everything his ugly mind can think of-- but will the voters fall for the sleaze and insult campaign next Tuesday?

The days of guys like John Spratt and Jake Knotts are coming to an end. We hope it starts Tuesday June 8th. That would be change we can believe in.

UPDATE: Nikki Haley got 49% of the vote. Her closest competitor, who she will meet in a 6/22 runoff, was 27 percentage points behind. Jake's boy, Andre Bauer, finished dead last.

Heckuva Job

It's CWS Time

The NCAA College World Series Tournament begins this weekend so over Memorial Day weekend the 64 teams and the brackets were announced. Of course, while the NCAA basketball tournament gets extensive media attention, only hardcore baseball fans followthe CWS.

Around these parts we're pretty pleased that FIVE South Carolina teams made the tournament. Throw in the state to the north of us and 8 of the 64 entries are from the Carolinas. Two of the 16 first round tourney sites are in SC: Coastal Carolina U in Conway (over near Myrtle Beach), and USC in Columbia. In fact, the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers are the #4 seed in the entire tournament-- a tremendous achievement for the Chants.

Good luck to all the South Carolina teams: The Citadel Bulldogs, College of Charleston Cougars, Coastal Carolina University Chanticleers, Clemson University Tigers, and the Carolina Gamecocks.

Carolina Stadium, USC, Columbia, SC

Fighting Back

As the legacy media informs us that the Gaza flotilla was peopled by a bunch of "peace activists" the truth is somewhat different.