davintosh

The Yankton Trail Bridge has been a landmark in Sioux Falls for a long, long time. The bridge gets its name from the trail & stage road connecting the settlement that became Sioux Falls to Yankton, which was then the capital of Dakota Territory. A small remnant of the original trail remains on the grounds of my alma mater, The University of Sioux Falls. I have no idea when the bridge bridge on the trail was built over the ford; it’s looked pretty old as long as I remember.

Up until the 1970’s, when a much bigger bridge was built over the Big Sioux River at Western Avenue, southbound traffic on the gravel road heading south out of town went over that bridge. The Yankton Trail Bridge was then handed over to the Sioux Falls Parks & Recreation Department, and saw limited use from vehicle traffic entering & exiting Yankton Trail Park, but years later the park’s traffic flow was redesigned, and the bridge was relegated to strictly foot & bicycle traffic. The bridge remained essentially unchanged from its original Pratt Truss design, but the Parks Dept. added a plank deck over its open mesh deck; being able to see through the deck you’re walking or riding over is a bit unnerving, so the plank deck was a welcome addition.

True, the Yankton Trail Bridge is somewhat useful for bike trail users, but with two other pedestrian-friendly bridges within about 600 yards in either direction, it is a bit redundant. There is little historic significance attached to the bridge, so it’s something of an anachronism.

This spring we noticed that construction had commenced on the bridge, and we watched as it continued through the summer. Work on it was just recently completed; the original stone and masonry abutments were removed and new concrete abutments were built, new decking and railing were installed. It looks very nice.

Last week though, I ran across this little tidbit on the city’s website…
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I’ve never heard of this guy before, just bumped into his blog while Googling for something totally unrelated. But after reading this paragraph — a comment on wildly inaccurate temperatures recorded by NOAA — VOX POPOLI may be added to my blogroll, and my daily reading list…

Needless to say, restructuring the global economy on the basis of conclusions drawn from data of this sort wouldn’t be so much stupid as absolutely and certifiably insane. As for the so-called “scientific consensus”, remember two things. 1) Most people are idiots. 2) All scientists are people. Ergo, it is safe to assume that most scientists are idiots, especially when one takes into account their apparent inability to understand either a) that science depends upon capitalist wealth not government largess, and, b) that the basic laws of supply and demand apply to their profession as well as their academic credentials.

Reading through some of the background stuff on his site leads me to believe that he is the anti-xtcian. Seriously.

Congressman Pete Stark has represented California’s 13th Congressional District since 1973, but in all that time he doesn’t seem to have learned much about the government’s Constitutional limitations…

Amazing. I sincerely hope this is just a case of an old man fumbling his words out of frustration and anxiety, and that he doesn’t really believe what just proceeded out of his mouth. If the latter, and if there are others like him…

YouTube Link

Let’s say you’re the President, and you have to pick between two public appearances scheduled for the same day… Which do you choose? One of them is an invitation to speak at the 100th Anniversary Jamboree of the Boy Scouts of America, and the other is to go hang out with Whoopi, Barbara & the girls on The View…

Seems like a no-brainer to me. How many times will a sitting President get the opportunity to take part in the 100th anniversary of an iconic American institution such as the Boy Scouts? And how often will the girls get together to tape The View? A no-brainer to me, and to most other right-thinking Americans, but not so for the current resident of the White House. Faced with that decision, he chose to spend yesterday in New York for a taping of The View. Pardon me while I get my eyes to stop rolling.

With his poll numbers on a continual downward slide these days, you would think he would’ve gone the other way for today’s engagement, trying to maybe win over some of the conservative crowd who see the value of Scouting. But then again on The View he’s guaranteed an adoring left-wing crowd throwing him softball questions & giving him an open platform for pushing his increasingly unpopular agenda. Plus I’m sure he’s far more comfortable with the anything-goes crowd on The View than with the Scouts and their not-quite-politically-correct Oath…

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Yeah; I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Can’t help but be disappointed though.

Update: Just saw this a short time ago and had to throw it in…

Whatever else happens, Barack Obama will provide The View with some much needed estrogen.

Rush Limbaugh

I present to you New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. He gave a speech to the Manhattan Institute last week, and had some great things to say.

Links to YouTube pages — Part One, Part Two, Part Three, & Part Four.

Christie has also made some earlier splashes that caught my attention, like his taking on a dipstick reporter in this video clip…

There’s a lot to like in Governor Christie. He seems like a straight-shooting, honest, down-to-earth guy who’s been elected against steep odds and strong opposition. His election comprises a mandate from the voters to fix some serious budgetary problems, and he’s tackling them head-on. I can only wish him the best, and hope he’s able to get New Jersey’s house in order. I doubt he’ll have the job done in time for the 2012 Presidential election, but he’s the kind of guy that we’ll likely need on a Federal level to fix the mess that’s being built now.

… At least on immigration policy. So many people have their underwear so incredibly bundled about Arizona’s new law giving police the ability to enforce existing US immigration laws. Those people somehow think it’s perfectly ok for the US to leave it’s borders wide open to allow illegal immigrants to flow back & forth across the Mexico/US border for any reason at all, and as long as they’re here anyway, it’s ok for those illegals take advantage of government-provided ‘entitlements’. After all, they’re just looking for a better life, right?

Although there are a lot of people thinking that way, I’m thankful there are a lot more who see the flaws in that kind of thinking, and they don’t all reside in Arizona. But Arizona, because of SB1070, has become the whipping boy for the open borders crowd. Everybody — from President Obama right on down to the foulest mouths in the blogosphere — is railing against Arizona, while not even understanding what’s in the bill. It’s like they’ve all heard that it’s awful and have no desire to learn any different. Heaven forbid they actually read the bill. The entire thing is only 17 pages long, and doesn’t take that long to read, yet even Attorney General Eric Holder admits he hasn’t read it, nor has Janet Napolitano or anyone else who says they don’t like the law, or so it seems anyway. It would take, what? 20 minutes to read it? I love how Holder claims he hasn’t taken the time to read it, but apparently formed a pretty definitive opinion of it based on what he’s read in the news about it. And this is the guy who is supposed to be briefing the President on this sort of thing; doesn’t give me much hope that Obama has much of a clue as to what’s in it either.

And things just don’t seem to be letting up on this subject; last week Mexican president Felipe Calderon visited Washington, DC, and did his share of taking shots at Arizona. But I wonder what Arizona’s critics would say if they were to examine Mexico’s immigration laws… Or if immigration laws in the US were modeled after Mexico’s?

Here’s an excerpt from an article that reveals some details about Mexican immigration policy…

Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,

• “A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally.” (Article 123)
• Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)
• Foreigners who “attempt against national sovereignty or security” will be deported. (Article 126)

Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:

• A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison. (Article 127)
• Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)

From what I’ve read of the Mexican justice system, enforcement is probably a bit of an issue, but a bit of cash applied to the palms of the right officials will likely get them to look the other way. Even so, it’s pretty hypocritical for Calderon to be criticizing Arizona’s law.

Another thing that gets me is how government officials all over the US are overreacting to SB1070; last week a Chicago-area girls’ basketball team had to cancel a trip to Arizona for a tournament because the school district’s assistant superintendent thought the trip, “would not be aligned with our beliefs and values.” Funny thing is, the school district has sent groups of kids to China and the Czech Republic, so apparently the policies of those countries are more closely aligned with her beliefs and values?

Yup, the name of the game is hypocrisy. Just doesn’t get much better than this.

So President Obama wants to drastically scale back the NASA budget, but still wants to keep America in space. Perhaps what he’s got in mind is something like this…
Reminder: Don’t try this at home, unless you truly are a rocket scientist, like the guys in the video.

It’s been a crazy-busy day for me today, one that followed by an even crazier day for the folks in our nation’s capital, and that one word title kinda sums up my reaction to the day.

Crap.

As in what I said when I heard Obama’s poorly named “Health Care Reform” bill barely got the votes needed to pass it.

Crap.

As in what the politicians supporting this bill are full of and are spreading around thick. Example: Our Glorious President said last week that this bill will add “almost a decade of solvency to Medicare;” wonderful, but what happens after that? And does anybody else notice the irony in a statement like that being used to defend a program that will make Medicare look like a first-aid box by comparison? How long will Obamacare program stay solvent? And what new and bigger-still program will be proposed to extend Obamacare’s solvency when it’s suffered a few decades of expansion and three card monte at the hands of politicians?

They say it will ‘only’ cost just shy of a trillion dollars, but it will reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions in the first ten years. Bull crap. What they don’t tell us is that “$53 billion of the $118 billion “lower” deficit over the next 10 years comes from Social Security payroll tax revenues that result from the increase in wages that employers will offer employees instead of health insurance.” Horse hockey. But what about the burgeoning number of Social Security recipients that will be on the government dole in the next ten years? Seems like the CBO might have missed that little detail.

There’s also the matter of some $463 billion in cuts to the Medicare program over the next decade. While Obamacare essentially adds how many millions of people to the Medicare rolls? The cost to run Medicare isn’t going to magically shrink in the coming years; it seems like every day you hear something about some pharmacy chain or hospital or group of doctors that refuse to see any new Medicare patients because when they bill Medicare for services rendered, they either don’t get paid or get paid a fraction of the bill. It also looks like the Feds will just push some of those costs off to the states and make them worry about where it comes from. Can you say “unfunded mandate”? Last I heard there were already eleven states lining up to bring suit against the Federal Government once Obama signs this thing into law. (and what do you wanna bet that nobody in Congress or the CBO took legal costs into consideration.)

Crap.

As in what this bill is worth.

If you listen to the Democrats and the mainstream media, this bill is full of Sunshine and Rainbows and Puppy Dogs. It’s passage is important not only for the President’s Legacy, but it will also reduce the deficit, be revenue-neutral, cure blindness, eliminate hunger, cool the climate, slow the rise of the oceans, heal the planet… (sorry; different speech.) Meanwhile the Republicans counter with their own version of what this bill will accomplish, and paints a somewhat less rosy picture. Somehow I think the reality of the thing be somewhere in between, but as trustworthy as the Democrats have proven to be since taking control of Washington, I’d say the Republican version is closer to reality. The good that’s in it is more than outweighed by the bad in it. Like a pan of brownies made with all the best ingredients, but has had a half cup of dog crap mixed in. I don’t care how great the other ingredients are, you won’t catch me eating one.

Yup. Crap is the word.

Wow; this guy is in-stinkin’-credible! Now he’s telling us that if his Health Care Insurance Reform somehow makes it through Congress, we and our health insurance providing employers will see 3000% reductions in our insurance premiums. Three thousand percent!

Of course, it was a slip of the tongue or more likely a teleprompter miscue, but still… If it had been George W. Bush making a mistake like this, the media would be all over it, but again, our President can do no wrong. This guy is supposed to be the brightest bulb to grace the White House in centuries; shouldn’t he have caught that flub or at least corrected himself after he said it? And what about the adoring crowd? Was no one listening to what the man actually said and applying any critical thinking before cheering madly?

It seems the man is in permanent campaign mode, constantly trying to sell us something, even when polls show that we don’t want what he’s selling, and the facts show him to be dead wrong. Even Congressional Democrats are afraid to vote on it fearing a backlash come November.

They really can’t be serious about this, can they?

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.
…
In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

This is only another attempt by the Democrat “Leadership” to obfuscate the fact that even with the huge majority they have in the House, Nancy Pelosi still is unable to muster the votes to push this thing through. The Representatives know a ‘yes’ vote would be political suicide, so they don’t want to touch it. Comically, the story from Nancy is still that the Republicans are the problem (cue rolling of eyes). Even if they proceed with this cockamamie plan, a vote to accept the rule will still have the stink of death on it, so the issue is pretty much moot.

Speaking of leadership (or the lack thereof), for the last few weeks President Obama has been insisting that Congress get this healthcare thing put to bed before Malia & Sasha’s Big Adventure (featuring stops in Guam, Indonesia & Australia; one can only wonder whether a visit to Dad’s birthplace is on the itinerary…) The Southern Hemisphere Tour was supposed to take off March 18, but has been pushed back to March 21. Again, he has drawn a line in the sand, and allowed that line to be moved. Is it any wonder that his job approval numbers have tanked? Or have they tanked because he’s pushing so hard for something so many people don’t want? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?