Radioactive Communist Zombies

Speed Limits

I drove something like 2,300 miles on my recent vacation.  I experienced speed limits ranging from 35 miles per hour (Yellowstone Park) to 75 mph (interstates in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota).  And nothing I experienced changed my mind on this fact: Speed limits are by and large set too low.  Yes, even 75 mph speed limits.

The vehicle I rented did not have cruise control that worked.  So instead of my usual habit of setting the cruise control at 5 mph over the speed limit, I had to control my speed the old-fashoned way.  And I kept going faster.  I'd find myself doing 85 or at times almost 90 on the empty open stretches of Wyoming interstate.  And why not; there was hardly a car in sight.  And yet I wasn't going dangerously fast because there wasn't any traffic around.

I have concluded that most speed limits are set 5 to 10 miles per hour too low.  The possible exception is Montana secondary roads that are 70 mph.  That feels almost just about right.  And school zones and residential neighborhoods should be around 25 (around here school zones are a ridiculous 20 but I think that's more for revenue raising than safety).

Unfortunately, the trend now is to lower speed limits to lower CO₂ emissions and "safety" (see here and here).

Catching Up

I've been on vacation for a week (drove something like 1,200 2,300 miles).  For vacation highlights see here, here, and here.  This will probably be my last vacation until Christmas time.

So what did I miss?  Apparently AG Eric Holder is going to investigate (and prosecute?) CIA employees who interrogated terrorists.  This of course makes perfect sense: attack those who kept us safe while releasing terrorists from Gitmo.

Oh, and the Washington Post is reporting that those "enhanced" interrogation techniques worked.

There's a bill in Congress to give the President the right to shut down parts of the Internet in the event of an "emergency":

The [bill] would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat.

So maybe the emergency is too many right-wing blogs.

Probably more happened while I was gone.  And Obama gets back from vacation soon so things should start ramping up in D.C.

New Pictures

There's new pictures in "Photo Intelligence" from my recent travels (travails?).  See here, here, here, here and here.

Blogging will resume tomorrow.  Or Monday at the latest.

Mt. Rushmore

Yesterday I visited Mt. Rushmore.  I was more impressed than I planned to be.  The visitor's center is very nice and modern and large.  The only charge is a $10 per car parking fee (RVs and buses are more).    The entrance is nice:

There is a bit of commercialization with a huge gift shop and expensive cafeteria.  But the basic view is very nice:

  However there is a nice trail around to the base of the mountain which allows various views of the sculptures:

 

After Mt. Rushmore we visited the "work in progress" Crazy Horse Monument.  It's huge.  The face alone is 9 stories tall.  But they are trying to make money to complete the project so its very commercial.  This picture was taken from one mile away:

  

And they aren't taking any government money, it's all money donated or raised through the visitor's center.  So who knows when they'll finish it.  It's been going for more than 50 years.

Where the Buffalo Roam

Blogging has been light (okay, nonexistent) because I'm traveling.  Spent two days at Yellowstone Park.  When I was a kid there were bears everywhere in the park (because we lived close we visited often).  Now the bears are gone and there a buffalo/bison everywhere.  They are often on the road blocking traffic:

  

They sometimes come up close to your car:

 

And cause backups as they block traffic:

 

We saw a Park Ranger use his car to scare some off the road (something they'd probably throw you in jail for).

But most of the time, you just see them by the side of the road, often in groups:

 

After two days in the park we were thinking "Buffalo/Schmuffalo" as we saw more bison.

We also saw some deer and a female moose or elk (I can't tell the difference).

Today we're going Mt. Rushmore.

Lose Your Gun Rights Due to Government-Run Health Care?

(Hat Tip: Instapundit)

The gun rights group Gun Owners of America (I used to be a member) is warning that Obamacare could lead to people losing their gun rights.  The Hill reports:

The Gun Owners of America group, which boasts more than 300,000 members, has been warning its ranks that the proposed healthcare legislation would compile the information of Americans into a government database. The group says that by using this data, the government could deem a citizen “medically unfit” to carry a gun.

“All of the proposals that we’re aware of would handle people’s health data that way,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of the group.

“And then you end up having a gazillion people lose their gun rights because of some medical record that someone doesn’t like, where they say, ‘Oh, that might be a danger to their self or others.’ No trial, no due process, just gone.”

And if the government has access to your electronic medical records, why not.  "Oh, you're bi-polar, you can't have guns."  The anti-gun crowd would use any excuse to strip guns from Americans.

The group also objects to Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius, saying that she is prone to restrict gun rights.

“It wouldn’t be any problem for her to drag up some old discredited study from the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and say, ‘Guns are contagious and they’re a public health menace. This is another reason for someone to pay a surtax on their insurance because they’re causing all of that trouble in the emergency room,'” Pratt said. “That means that we have a dog in this fight.”

So yet another reason to oppose Obamacare.

Death of a Corvette

This is sad (hat tip Instapundit):

That car could have provided some person with years of enjoyment.  And now it's dead.  That is one reason I wouldn't have traded in a car for cash for clunkers unless I really hated the car: they would kill it.  For example, my 1999 Camaro SS.  I love that car so even if I didn't think it was worth more than $4,500 (I've got that much in modifications on it alone), there's no way I'd let someone kill it.  If/when I sell it, it'll be to someone who will love it as much as I do.

As the Volokh Conspiracy says (links original):

In the Great Depression, the government paid to destroy crops in order to prop up farm prices — about as dumb a policy as can be imagined.

Today the government pays to destroy cars in order to ... frankly, I don't know why.

"Cash for Clunkers" appears to be a bizarre combination of the "broken windows fallacy," the desire to change the climate of the planet, and staggering administrative incompetence. In other words, "Cash for Clunkers" hits the trifecta: bad economics, bad science, and bad government.

Yep, Cash for Clunkers is the perfect liberal program.  I wonder if it has to do with the left's basic anti-car bias

Carbon Credit Crime

Where there's money to be made, there will be crime.  And trading in carbon credits has the potential for a lot of money to be made and therefore, a lot of crime.  The AP reports today that police in London busted up a carbon trading crime ring:

Customs agents this week arrested nine people in the London area suspected of a multimillion dollar fraud in trading carbon permits, bringing attention to a rich new field for crime sprung from the fight against climate change.

The arrest confirmed fears among law enforcement officers that swindlers — operating from the trading floors of Europe to the tropical forests of the Pacific — are being attracted to a market that has grown to more than $100 billion.

A hundred billion dollars is a lot of temptation for criminal types.  And it could get worse:

That carbon market will get a lot bigger if the U.S. Congress passes its own cap-and-trade bill, the central component of President Barack Obama's climate and energy policies.

And it will grow bigger still if a new international climate change agreement will include financial incentives for countries to protect their forests. Negotiators from 192 countries hope to conclude a global warming accord at a major U.N. conference in Copenhagen in December.

So we have an unintended consequence of cap and trade: more crime, more fraud (other than the whole fraud of global warming and that cap and trade will do anything about it).  Seems maybe something is wrong when legislation encourages crime.

Death Panels are Apparently Real

On this whole issue of "death panels" I wasn't sure who to believe.  Some on the right said "yes" and some on the left said "no way."   Of course, I believe the right more than the left in any case.  But the main stream media were so vehement that the "death panels" were just a right-wing fallacy.

But one man I will believe is Thomas Sowell.  And he writes today that, yes, death panels are part of Obamacare and are real.

According to Sowell, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is the Obama administration's "special adviser for health policy" (or "health czar"?) and Dr. Emanuel has in an article he wrote critisized Americans for over-using health care:

Dr. Emanuel's article points out that Americans do not visit doctors or go into hospitals more than people in other industrialized countries. In fact, we go to both places less often than people do in those other countries, which include countries with government-controlled medical care.

As the article points out, "It is more costly care, rather than high volume, that accounts for higher expenditures in the United States." There are more magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices per capita in the United States, more coronary bypass operations, and Americans use more new pharmaceutical drugs created within the past five years.

Americans also have more of what the article calls "amenities" with their medical care. "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy, comfort and auxiliary services than do hospital rooms in most other countries."

In other words, it is not quantity but quality that is different — and more expensive — about American medical care. This is what Dr. Emanuel's "over-utilization" consists of.

So the fact we have higher quality health care is a problem for Obama's health czar. 

But what about "death panels"?  That comes from Barack Obama himself:

As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life" care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so much nicer — and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14.

He said "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there." He added: "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."

Thus you have the health czar complaining about over-utilization and the President saying you need "end of life guidance" that adds up to one thing: death panels.

And how would those death panels work?  See here. 

Coming to Protests Armed

The AP has spotted a trend.  This is the kind of "trend" the AP would probably spot if it happened once or twice since it feeds into their preconception of the right wing.  However, it is a trend and one that is interesting.  People are coming armed to anti-Obama protests:

About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday -- the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

This happened in Arizona where openly displaying a weapon is legal.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

And Arid-zone-a isn't the only place it's happening:

Last week, during Obama's health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading ''It is time to water the tree of liberty'' stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

''It's a political statement,'' he told The Boston Globe. ''If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights.''

The sign is an obvious reference to the Jefferson quote:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I really don't know if this is helpful.  Yes, we need to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights but bringing guns to protests only feeds the paranoia of the left and the mainstream media.  Yes, oppose Obama politically with everything we've got.  But don't bring guns and don't make veiled (or open) threats.  Just the AP headline "Man Carrying Assault Weapon Attends Obama Protest" (no, it wasn't an assault weapon) is inflammatory enough.  We don't need to make the left more afraid of guns than they already are.