DADvocate

After 4 1/2 days, I finally have my electric power restored to my house. Gee, only 4 1/2 days to restore power to an area accessible by Toyota Camry with street tires.

As I said in a comment at DrHelen's:

What's Obama doing? Making jokes about schools closing and turning up the thermostat in the Oval office.

How out of touch can this guy be? FEMA's finally sending some generators to Ft. Campbell, KY. Wait, that's 300 miles away from us.

Tuesday and part of Wednesday we had a level 3 snow emergency which means if we're on the roads we can be arrested. A friend of mine was stopped because his license plate was obscured by snow.

Give me a break! If this is how the Obama administration handles natural disasters, you better be prepared!! Of course, most of us are just a bunch of white yahoos who voted for McCain, so who cares.

Can you imagine the MSM and liberal reaction if Bush had made the school closing comment? My kids didn't go to school all week. Sunday night we got enough snow to make the roads too dangerous for school buses. (Does Obama know what a Kentucky back road looks like?) Monday night 5 inches of snow, Tuesday sleet and freezing rain, Wednesday morning about a half inch of snow to top it off.

The level 3 snow emergency thing is a bad joke too. I'm sitting at home with no heat, no electricity. Yes, I could pull something out of the freezer and thaw it/cook it on my gas grill and then sit and eat it in the cold and dark while the fumes from my kerosene heater threaten to kill me. (Several people died from CO poisoning. BTW - you can be poisoned and die from CO poisoning from a poorly places generator too. Don't put you generator in your garage, basement or anywhere else inside the structure of your home. Put it outside.) From what I heard on the Weather Channel, more people in the U.S. die from the effects of winter storms than any other weather events. Or, I could drive 1.2 miles to the bridge, go into Kentucky and eat a hot meal at a restaurant and spend the night at a friend's, which I did under threat of arrest. A friend of mine was stopped by a Brown County, OH deputy for having his license plate obscured by snow!! Helpful law enforcement. A Hamilton County, OH (Cincinnati) stopped a metro bus for being out. Huh?

Obama and the Dems are busy greasing the palms of their campaign contributors and other rich friend plus seating cabinet members who don't pay their taxes while they try to distract you with talk about corporate bonuses. Of course, the MSM has shown due diligence in covering up this charade. Hope and change my ass.

Meanwhile a story from today in Kentucky,

A state official said about 438,000 Kentucky homes and businesses remain without electricity following this week's ice storm. Many others still lack electricity in other states from the Midwest into Appalachia.

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The storm is suspected in at least 42 deaths across several states. Authorities said it could be weeks before some areas get power back.

The average household in Kentucky in 2.47 people and the population is 4.2 million. Approx. 25% of Kentucky's population is without power 3-4 days after the storm ended! Ridiculous! This is just Kentucky! These are places accessible by Toyota Camry, no flooded out roads and destroyed bridges. (I had little trouble driving my 1998 Toyota Camry where ever I wanted during this event. A little caution, a little skill, no problem.)

More here at Instapundit

Two more generator deaths here.

I would have blogged about this sooner but it's hard to blog when you have no Internet connection or electricity. I don't blog at work. I may comment but not blog.

Beautiful winter pictures to come.

Here are the pictures:


Trees bent under the weight of ice and snow on my road.


The William Harsha Bridge during the snow storm. Visibility was less than a quarter mile.


Highway 68 in Maysville, KY. This is usually the most heavily traveled section of highway in the city.


A tree completely destroyed by ice and snow.


Trees heavily covered in ice and snow.


I saw these trucks going up my street Friday morning (that's my mailbox) and thought I'd have power back than night. I was wrong.


A pretty scene in Maysville, KY.

More pictures Here

Looking closely at the top left hand corner of this photo, you'll see a line on the hillside behind the transformer on the telephone pole that roughly runs parallel to the ridge top. You can see other lines on the hillside if you look closely. What are these lines? You might think they are fallen trees. They are not. The lines are old stone fences.



These fences can only be seen a few days out of the year. When leaves are on the trees, the nothing below the tree canopy is visible. On sunny days, the shadows of the trees obscure the fence lines.

I see this view nearly every day and decided to investigate the lines which is how I came to know they are old stone fences.

Here's something else I discovered.



A ruin of a house with a stone chimney. This stands no more than 200 yards from where I've lived the past 4 years but I just found it a month ago. The trees and undergrowth obscure a view of it from the road although it's less than 100 feet off the side.

What's the significance of this besides evidence of homes and farms abandon, forgotten and grown over? Forestation. Because of improvements in farming, and other factors, we have more forest now than we did in 1920 despite nearly tripling our population. Few if any of the trees on this hillside are more than 50 years old, no old growth forest. Sometime early in the 20th century, this hillside was likely clear of trees.

When I see things like this I wonder how much people actually pay attention to the world around them. Or, do they simply accept what is spoon fed them in books, newspapers and on TV?

When my oldest son was in the first grade, I helped him do a homework assignment in which he had to match animals to their habitat. We matched the rabbit to the field. The teacher graded that incorrect.

But, but as any rabbit hunter like me knows, rabbits live in fields or on the edge of fields. I went to the library, found a book that indeed verified my experience, photo copied the page and showed it to the teacher. She lamely explained the workbook gave the answer as the forest.

So, if some book publisher in New York, who's may never have trodden a field with a shotgun listening to the beagles bay as they chase a rabbit, says rabbits live in forests, they live in forests. I'm sure you may find a rabbit or two in the forest but in all the years I've hiked, camped, hunted, fished and loitered in the outdoors, I've never seen one except in a field or a few yards from the edge of a field.

I just wonder how much people actually pay attention to their own experiences rather than what they are told.

Looking up information on snowfall records, I came across this record for my hometown of Knoxville, TN.

Most Snow in One Season 56.7" 1959-60

I was 8 years old that winter. I always had this memory that it snowed more when I was young. Well, it did. It snowed more than any other recorded winter in Knoxville.

Pass Obama's pork filled "stimulus" bill. Even to an economic neophyte like myself, the folly of Obama's bill is obvious.

Spending money we don't have won't help the problem created by spending money we didn't have. Obama and his hacks keep screaming that the public expects us to take action now, to do something now. This is crap to fill the heads of the vacuous talking heads I've listened to all day on cable news. I haven't hear anyone saying that but politicians eager to send money towards their friends and campaign contributors. I have heard people saying government needs to quit throwing money around like drunken cowboys in a brothel.

Obama's plan will fail because it's a continuation of the behavior that created the problem. It will create a national debt that will take generations to pay off. More reasons Obama's plan is wrong.

it sure seems like an economic recovery package that's heavy on government spending and light on tax cuts is just the opposite of what we should be doing right now.

An economist in Tennessee says:

To sum up, there are two basic kinds of objections: theoretical (even if we implement the best possible stimulus package, it won't do much) and practical (we are not likely to get anything close to the best possible stimulus package). For these reasons I think it might be best to simply avoid repeating the mistakes that caused the Great Depression to be more than just an ordinary recession (and I think we've already accomplished that), and let the macroeconomy do the rest.

But I really don't need to read economists analysis to know this "stimulus" package is all wrong. Just as I used to ask, "How can so many people afford these expensive houses?" and "How can so many people afford these fancy cars?" And so on. They couldn't. The banks couldn't afford to keep making bad loans. The auto manufacturers couldn't afford to keep making mediocre cars and over-paying workers.

Everybody was looking for short term gains and hoping some magical event(s) would occur that would make it all OK in the future. It didn't and it won't. Obama has quickly chosen a path of failure. The eager politicians and business people have jumped on board to get as large a share of the pie as possible. We'll be paying for this greed the rest of our lives, as will our our children and grandchildren.

HT: Instapundit and AC Kleinheider.

Added thought: I wonder if 2 years or 4 years down the road we'll be hearing Republicans who voted for this spread the greed "stimulus" package proclaiming, "I was for the stimulus package before I was against it."

Sunday night we got about two inches of snow. Monday night about six inches. Freezing rain and sleet Tuesday after noon and into Tuesday evening.

It's been below freezing long enough that there is ice on the Ohio River. Ferries are closed.


This view is looking west from the William H Harsha Bridge, Maysville, KY.


Snow on my garage this morning.

And, there's more to come. This looks to be the worst winter storm since we got 2 feet of snow in 1994.

Today's weather forecast:

In the comments at her blog where she referred to white Southerners as yokels and yahoos, Mary Mancini says,

Dad - You’d have much more credibility in making your point if your comment on this blog was the only time you ever used the word “moonbat."

Mary claimed there was nothing racial about using yokel and yahoo and it was OK to use those words despite the fact that she was singling out by race and region. But, it's not OK to use the word "moonbat."

Sounds quite hypocritical to me. There's nothing racial about the word moonbat.

Then Mary takes offense at my stating I'll never have any credibility on her blog (as if I'd want to) and makes the mature statement "Save the drama for your Mama." Obviously not the finest that liberal blogdom has to offer. No, Mary's just another liberal who thinks she should be able to say or do whatever she pleases and no one should complain. Apparently she has some sort of show on a radio station. I prefer WLW out of Cincinnati with Mike McConnell and Bill Cunningham.

that Obama is not the most popular person in history?

Post Politics asks, "
Was Obama’s The Most Watched Inauguration In Modern Times?"

The one word answer Post Politics gives, "Nope."

Immediate response from Obamaniacs in the comments:

...comparing Nielsen ratings from 1981 to 2009 isn’t exactly accurate.

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Do you ,Dan, really believe that more people across the country watched the Reagan Inauguration? Stop playing.

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This does not include
the record number who watched online via live streaming.

find the whole Reagan v Obama ratings/attendance/ debate petty and tiresome. I don’t understand the juvenile need of conservatives to rewrite history in an attempt to make the failed Republican Party seem grander than it is.

I find the last comment most entertaining. Call everybody else petty and then make your own petty comment.

I figured out this much. Using the numbers that Post Politics pointed to, and calculating what percentage they are of the population at the time of Reagan's (227.7 million with 41.8 million watched) and Obama's (305.6 million with 37.8 million watched), 21% of the population watched Reagan's inauguration and a meager, pitiful, measly 12% watched Obama's inauguration. Even if you add the 5.4 million of people, reference by the whiny commenter above, who may have watched online to the 37.8 million on TV, you only get 14.2% of the general population.

Of course, since online streaming video wasn't available to the general population in 1980, if at all, it's an unfair comparison at best. It's like saying Truman was more popular than FDR because more people watched his inauguration on TV. (Truman was the first inauguration on TV.) By this commenter's logic Reagan and Obama would be more popular than every president before 1870 when the U.S. population was 38.5 million.

Will Obamaniacs ever be able to face and accept even the simplest truth about the Chosen One?

A wonderful week to witness liberal racism and bigotry. First, Natalie Angier in the New York Times insists that is the science fields now is the time to "attract more women into the fold, and keep them once they are there." As anyone who keeps up with education and such things, women already make up the overwhelming majority of undergraduate students, law students and medical students. Now, in the never ending pursuit to drive men into a permanent underclass, Angier promotes an orgainized attack on one of the few disciplines where men still make a majority.

Obviously, women can enter the science fields as much as they want. They just haven't wanted to in large enough numbers to make Angier happy. The goal shouldn't be to recruit and push people into the sciences based on gender but based on who's the best and brightest. But this isn't about the best and brightest, it's about gender warfare and feminism run rampant.

Next, Mary Mancini talks about the end of racism in the South but in doing so shows her own bigoted attitudes. Mancini states to "While the south is still home to yahoos in Mississippi - as well as yokels in Tennessee..." I wonder what equivalent terms Mancini would use to describe blacks. Probably none. Bigotry and hatred towards whites, especially Southern and Appalachians, is a liberal/progressive staple. They're a safe target for liberal hatred.

Finally, Obama's economic adviser, Robert Reich, came out with this:

these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers.

Naturally, we wouldn't want high-skilled people taking jobs. They might get the job done right. And, again, white males are the primary safe group to hate, even by elitist whites. Liberal Democrats have promoted this position for 40 or more years in order to get the votes of minorities and women.

Hope and change. OK then.

More and more the bailouts strike me as the rich keeping the rich rich. - DADvocate

OK. I quoted myself. I thought is sounded pretty good.

Another quote:

“We all know how we got into this economic mess. We spent too much, borrowed with abandon, and acted like the bills would never come due. So what’s the prescription for getting out? Spending more, borrowing more, and acting like the bills will never come due.” - Steve Chapman

Yesterday, along with others, I watched one of my ex-wife's brothers, Pat, die from the ravages of lymphoma. His death was particularly tragic in that he worked hard all his life and never had the opportunity to fully enjoy the fruits of his labor.

At 60 years old, Pat was the second oldest of 10 children. He had five children of his own, four of whom were at his bedside when he died. One of the five was the adopted daughter of his second wife. He had raised her from the time she was in diapers. He loved her like one of his own. To the point that she was the only child to have power of attorney.

Except for serving in Vietnam, Pat spent his life as a farmer in Kentucky. We suspect that exposure to farming chemicals, smoking (which he quit 20 years ago) and possibly chemicals in Vietnam contributed to his cancer.

Pat's youngest son and my oldest son are the same age and best buddies. Much of their social lives are spent in each others company.

I've maintained a friendly relationship with my ex-wife's family. These are the aunts, uncles and cousins of my kids. I want everyone to feel comfortable. One brother-in-law who works in HVAC fixed my furnace for free during Christmas time.

Although I knew Pat had cancer, receiving a phone call at work at noon that he was in the hospital dying caught me by surprise. His lungs and other areas of his body had been attacked by the cancer. They were planning to take him off life support in an hour and my son was already there. In his living will he had requested not to be on life support unless there was a chance of recovery.

I immediately left work and drove over. Because of the morphine, I couldn't tell if Pat was aware of any one's presence. We took turns visiting him. His oldest son stayed with him non-stop. After about 5 hours the nurse told us he wouldn't last much longer.

We all went in to be with him. His breathing became shallower and quicker. Then it slowed down. His last few breaths were spaced 30-60 seconds apart. His children were telling him they loved him and it was OK for him to go. His siblings were saying the same. I stood in the back with a couple of tears rolling down my cheek. Finally, he never took another break.

The doctor and nurse came in and checked his heart and affirmed his death.

I gave a few hugs and quietly left. This was their tragedy and I needed to let them share it without interference.

Throughout the happenings, I thought back to how my own brother had lay in the hospital dying and his pain and suffering. Pat was more fortunate, if you can think of like that, in that his suffering was less prolonged. Because my brother's death was many years ago, I felt better prepared to deal with Pat's death but it was far from easy.

I'd never watched a person die before. I could hardly look at Pat at first during the final few minutes. I distracted my mind by counting his respiration's. My brain seems to like technical tasks. In the end, I was glad I was there.

During the hour trip home, I though back to my brother and when he died. He had been only 33 years old. Like Pat, he had served in the Navy. I thought of my daughter and how, at 12 years old, she had already seen three of her grandparents die, her basketball coach (who was also the father of one of her good friends) and now an uncle.

Then it struck me how all her relatives had died in the winter. It's especially chilling to stand in the cemetery while enduring a cold wind and snow. I thought back to my brother again, who had also died in the winter. Not being one to necessarily know the each day's date, I checked my cell phone. My brother had died 22 years ago to the day. I shed another tear and drove on.

It used to be the policy of banks, maybe still is, that if you overdrew your checking account, you were fired. If you couldn't manage your own money, you couldn't be trusted to manage the bank's.

This same policy should be applied to leaders of all the financial institutions that received bailout funds. They should be fired and replaced with people who can be trusted to manage the institution's money.

Likewise, Timothy Geithner failed to pay taxes and more. He failed to manage his money properly and his household employees. We need a Secretary of the Treasury who has shown better financial management skills, plain and simple.

A sign of the times? 2008 liquor sales in Ohio were the highest ever.

An increase of 4.75 percent over 2007, Ohio liquor sales for 2008 hit $719.2 million.

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Zurz attributed the increases to a rise in prices, a trend of consumers buying more premium-priced liquors and a rise in consumption.

Are people drinking more due to the poor economy? Given that premium-priced liquors increased in sales, maybe it's the wealthy watching their investments go down the drain doing all the drinking.

The good news? The second highest selling liquor was that sweet nectar from my home state of Tennessee - Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. Good stuff.

"The average household would take 57,598 years to produce as much CO2 as Obama's inauguration."

Coincidentally, this is also the length of time it will take our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc to pay off the debt created by the bailout packages.

More.

Team Obama says reducing the carbon-dioxide emissions that result from burning fossil fuels will be a priority, and some careless talk suggests his EPA will eschew carrots for the punitive stick of regulation and taxes. Now the good people over at the Institute for Liberty have punched back with a carbon-footprint estimate for the Obama inauguration itself.

Using data from the EPA, environmentalist organizations, and various news accounts, the group estimates more than 500 million pounds of CO2 will be released during the four-day inaugural festivities. Among the offenders:

• The 600 private jets expected to fly visitors to and from the event will produce 25,320,000 pounds of CO2.
• Personal vehicles could account for 262,483,200 pounds of CO2.
• The horses in the parade will produce more than 400 pounds of CO2.

The slogan for the Obama administration and the Dems is "Sacrifice for thee but not for me."

Several of us at work chipped in and order Bacon Gumballs. We are eagerly awaiting our shipment.

Bacon makes everything better.

2008 was the second consecutive year without an airline passenger death. We can thank the diligent oversight and leadership of the Bush administration for this milestone.

No passengers died in accidents in either 2007 or 2008, a span in which commercial airliners carried 1.5 billion passengers on scheduled flights, USA Today reported Monday the analysis showed.

Only one major accident occurred during that period, December's crash of a Continental Airlines (NYSE:CAL) jet in Denver.

The newspaper's analysis indicates a crash fatality-free year is rare. Only four years since 1958 have gone by without a passenger fatality, making the 2007-2008 statistic even more impressive, aviation experts said.

The coming Obama administration faces a difficult challenge to match this impressive accomplishment.

Advice so important and right on that it needs repeating.

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

The Advice Goddess, Amy Alkon, fully agrees with the above statement by Dennis Prager.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

A frequent commenter at DrHelen, Trust, left a link to the video below. Watching the video, I realized it is an excellent 10 minute lesson on the basis of the American republic. Watch it and have your kids watch it.

Instructables is an interactive community with hundreds, maybe thousands, of projects of every sort. You will find projects for almost any age and any skill level. Check it out.

I've seen several of the thinkb4youspeak ads on TV regarding the derogatory use of the word "gay." While I have no problem with the ads, my immediate reaction was "Why don't they have a similar ad campaign regarding males?"

I have yet to see a t-shirt with slogans insulting to gays but "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" t-shirts can be bought in any mall in America. I saw the calendar below at a local mall last August.



My 12 year daughter says the popular saying about boys now is:

Girls go to college,
To get more knowledge.
Boys go to Jupiter,
To get more stupider.

There are also t-shirts that have "xx>xy" on the front. Who hasn't seen the bumper sticker "Women Make Great Leaders, You're Following One." Another t-shirt "It's a Girls' World. Boys Just Live in It."



One t-shirt headline says "The Rules for Relationships." The first rule is "The female makes the rules." And, it goes from there.

"Women belong in the HOUSE and the SENATE."
"Sure, It's fun & games... until some girl kicks you BUTT!"
"Chicks Rule"
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
"Girl Power"

There are any number of the "Girls Rule" theme, Redheads rule, Italian girls rule, etc. You can find all these sayings with a simple Internet search.

I've never seen a male equivalent of any of these. Have you? If men commonly made these statements, wore shirts and had bumper stickers like these with the male gender being promoted, all hell would break loose. There would be red faced, screaming feminists on every cable news channel.

But at answers.yahoo.com, the "best answer" declares wearing "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" t-shirts as "harmless fun." There you have it. decades of insulting males, assigning them to the lowest rung on the social ladder is just "harmless fun." Why is it that so few women care about their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers that they don't make a peep about this.

What the thinkb4 ads point out as much as anything is that males continue to be assigned to the lowest caste. Not only does no one care what insults are commonly hurled at males but its a hugely profitable business.