Ernesto Guevara was a bloodthirsty murderer, full of hatred. There was nothing noble or decent about him. And: "...it was Guevara who publicly criticized car races as capitalist and bourgeois and put an end to them in Cuba."
What better way to give him the finger than to make him the mascot for a race with a $500 budget?
* * *
The fun thing about the Lemons races is that the people who participate in them can spend just $500 on their cars. Safety equipment is excluded from the budget, of course, but anything that's not for safety has to count against that $500 limit.
You can sell the parts of the car you don't need, so there is some wiggle room. Let's say you get a 1995 Escort for $400. You can sell the exterior lights and the interior pieces you don't need on Ebay. You can axe the catalytic convertor and sell it to a recycler. You end up with about $300 in cash from selling that stuff; you can spend that on your car.
But you'd better keep your receipts, because every car is inspected, and if the judges think you're trying to pull a fast one they'll slap you with penalty laps.
A roll cage, fuel cell, fire extinguishing system--these are safety items and don't count. Often the safety equipment in these cars costs many times what the car itself cost.
That's what makes it fun. The 24 Hours of Lemons is an enduro; your team has to keep that car running and racing for 24 hours, and it's real racing, where the most consistently fast car wins.
* * *
Obamanomics band-aid. Obama wants to give businesses a tax break on capital investment.
Problem: businesses aren't hiring because they're afraid of the tax burden of hiring. Hiring people is not capital investment.
Other problem: capital investment by business often takes place at the expense of consumer spending, and lack of consumer spending is why the economy is on the skids. This could exacerbate the problem, rather than allieviate it.
* * *
Democrats like the control that high tax rates gives them. Obama is no different.
* * *
We're going to be rid of Daley. Now if only I could be assured that whoever takes his place would actually be better...but he won't. Daley's replacement will be a Democrat machine politician just like Daley.
* * *
Alan Caruba's mistake here is that he forgets: an editorial is an opinion piece, so it doesn't have to be completely true.
Which is why I have to disagree with his lede: "It’s rare to come across a newspaper editorial in which virtually every assertion is false,..." In fact, it is rare not to come across such an editorial.
An excellent post, though. He's dead-on right about what he says; if he could just get away from thinking that newspapers care about discussing the facts....
* * *
Yeah, Iran just wants nuclear power because it's so cheap and efficient. It has nothing to do with building atomic bombs; oh no!
*sigh*
You don't enrich uranium to 20% U-235 to make reactor fuel. You just don't.
Oh, but if we were to develop thorium reactors, we could help Iran with a peaceful nuclear program! They could have the nuclear power plants they want without us having to worry about them building bombs!
...which Iran doesn't want. Iran wants the Bomb. When will you lily-livered liberal asshats get that through your pointy little thick skulls?
* * *
Speaking of a liberal with a thick and pointy skull, this anus blames TEA partiers for the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
You'd better fear the TEA partiers! They have time machines! 'Cause that's the only way a movement which got its start in 2009 could possibly have effected assassinations which took place forty years earlier.
...someone clue this useless fuckwit in: Sirhan Sirhan was a leftist from Palestine. Even if the TEA parties had existed back then, he would have dismissed them with the same leftist sneer that this anus does.
Come to think of it, I think I read about this useless horseshit somewhere else--let me see....
Ah! Over at Ace of Spades there's a nice piece debunking the entirety of this dysenteric effluent. So I don't need to get any more worked up over it.
* * *
The third segment of this Curmudgeon Emeritus post at Eternity Road talks about Democrat notions of making little tax concessions in order to garner votes in November.
Mainly it's about Democrats attempting to motivate their base:
* Obama is composing a huge tax-breaks-for-business bill;In reverse order:
* In recognition of the massive shift of corporate donations away from the left, he's also getting ready to propose additional relief for homeowners in mortgage trouble;
* On the class-warfare / beggar-thy-neighbor front, Robert Reich wants to raise the top income tax rate to 90%;
* To motivate the black racialists, Uber-racialist agitator Al Sharpton has been ranting that once a state senate seat has been held by a black man, it has to remain in black hands;
* And of course, the Pretender-In-Chief himself is whining about his his opponents are treating him.
1) Obama has always bitched about how unfairly he was being treated.
2) Al Sharpton. Enough said.
3) Robert Reich is an idiot if he thinks this is a good idea. (Hint: Robert Reich is an idiot.)
4) This would be another band-aid to the federal housing program, which is what caused the economy to turn sour in the first place.
1) I dealt with this nonsense above already.
* * *
Dick says it looks like fun when a cruise ship enounters seas that its stabilizing system can't compensate for. I have to agree; then again I'm a sailor type, myself.
You try being out on Lake Michigan in a 23-foot sailboat in 6-10 foot swells. If you can stay below without throwing up, you'll be fine elsewhere.
* * *
There is no question that the Katrina disaster was bad. But it wasn't nearly as bad as the press would have you believe; or, rather, it was not bad in the ways the press would like us to believe.
My sister lives down there; I've heard her stories. The area is still recovering from it. But the truth of the situation doesn't fit the template the press wanted for it; the reality of New Orleans and Katrina couldn't make an effective bludgeon to use against George Bush.
Hence the myths.
* * *
Butterscotch is a terrorist! Fear the evil robo-pony! It will sneak into your neighborhood by night, and sit there being "equipped with wires and batteries", just waiting for the opportune moment to shout "allahu akhbar!" and go up in a deafening explosion of flames and horror! The brave local police will have no choice but to send in the bomb disposal robot to blow it up before it can achieve its nefarious ends!