Edwardsville, Alabama gets the Obama spirit!

Who says small town folks are bitter? Barry Obama should be really proud of the residents of  Edwardsvilla, Alabma who are jumping right into the Obama spirit thing:

At first glance, the town of Edwardsville, Ala., with a population of 194 people, might raise a few eyebrows with its bid to receive $375 million from the economic stimulus package being assembled by Barack Obama and lawmakers in Congress.

At second glance too.

The tiny town, located near the Georgia border and 26 miles from the nearest "big city" of Anniston (population: 24,276), added 33 proposals—about two thirds of them related to "green" energy—to the list of "ready-to-go-projects" assembled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Total sum: $375,076,200.

OMG, "green" energy! Paging Al Gore! Blessing required on aisle 5!

There's certainly no denying that Edwardsville has big ambitions. Through the various proposals, which include a renewable energy museum, scenic railroad, and vineyards, these small Alabama communities envision themselves becoming a cutting-edge demonstration project for energy sustainability and a hub for tourism.

Renewable energy museum, scenic railroad, and vineyards? Sounds as energy efficient as Al Gore's palatial mansion.

"Do you know how hard it is to fund some of these projects when your tax base is so low?" Phillips says. "So we just breathed this sigh of relief when we found out about the stimulus package . . . especially when it had a focus on renewable energy."

I heard the gravy train was arriving soon too, but I was just too slothful to get in my application. However, it's great to see that the poor rural folks in Edwardsville are really getting into the "Chedda" lifestyle.  Unfortunately, there are always a few wet blankets:

"This really exemplifies the problem. Why are we buying light bulbs for a local community?" asks Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste. "If a municipality wants to save money, [it can] go out and buy the light bulbs. There is no reason the federal government should buy them."

Aw c'mon Tom, check this out:

One of Edwardsville's biggest proposed expenditures is for a "renewable energy museum and information dissemination center." Phillips envisions exhibits, audio tours, seminars, a research center, and a satellite lab run by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

To fund the museum, Edwardsville is requesting $32.1 million. That makes the facility the fourth most expensive museum proposed on the U.S. Conference of Mayors list—following facilities planned by Miami, Las Vegas, and Scottsdale, Ariz. (Some of those facilities have drawn their own controversy: Las Vegas's proposal for a $55 million "mob museum," for example, was used by Sen. Mitch McConnell this week as a prime example of pork spending.)

Mob museum in Las Vegas? How cool is that? Maybe they'll have a section devoted to the infamous Reid Crime Family! 

But I digress. You have to admire the chutzpah of the Edwardsville folks - why shouldn't they belly up to the bar for the free lunch just like the city slickers?

Some might wonder how many people a renewable energy museum in rural Alabama could attract. And there are other routes for museum funding, like the Institute of Museum and Library Services. If a project can't get funding through competitive grants, Schatz says, perhaps it shouldn't get funding at all.

"Clearly, no one else has been interested in funding this, so why should we be doing it now?" he asks, referring to all the projects on the U.S. Conference of Mayors list that are using the stimulus as a last-ditch funding effort. "Why should the federal government be doing something now that you couldn't do yourself?"

Tom, Tom, Tom! You just don't have the Obama spirit!

The energy museum speaks to Edwardsville's larger hope: becoming a tourist destination. The town has requested $37 million for a solar energy-enhanced "scenic railroad line." It's also asking for $9 million to go toward establishing an eventual 640 acres of vineyards, 160 acres of which would be launched first. Each of the four vineyards would be designed around the theme of a different European country and, in a bid for weddings, dotted with gazebos and chapels.

To some, the vineyards, in particular, seem dubious. The Southeast is subject to a disease that puts traditional European grape varieties out of reach, usually limiting vineyards to the muscadine grape. Partly as a result, vineyards haven't exactly been the region's strong suit. Georgia has just 1,100 acres of vineyards, while Mississippi has 400. (Compare that with California's 800,000 or even Pennsylvania's 12,000.) The 640 acres for vineyards that Edwardsville ultimately wants to establish would nearly double the vineyard acreage of the entire state of Alabama, which is currently at 650.

Ya gotta have high hopes if you want Obama and Congrees to grease your palm.

It's not yet known whether Edwardsville will get any money from the stimulus package at all. There's no guarantee as to how many projects, if any, on the mayors list will get federal funding. And although $375 million may seem like a lot of money, it's also a fraction of the $96,638,419,313 requested by all the towns on the list.

Is that good news or bad news?

I really have to get in on this stimulus scam. Hmm, I guess first I need to incorporate myself as a town and elect myself mayor. Maybe I could even get Mrs. Philosopher to vote for me if I promised her a government grant.

Marketers get into the spirit of the Obama presidency

Marketers flogging information on how to get government grants have been around for years, but now that the economy is in the tank since the Democrats made the banks give mortgages to illegal aliens and deadbeats and Barack Obama is on his way to the White House, they seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Consider (all links via tinyurl, visit at your own risk):

• Receive FREE government money that you will NEVER HAVE TO REPAY!
  
• CONGRATULATIONS! Did you know you were eligible to receive FREE MONEY from the government?
  
• Don't miss out on government grant money that may you need and deserve!
  

However, the prize for best encapsulation of the Obama spirit goes to "Chedda" of Chedda's Bling Blog (tinyurl again) whose pesky Google ads have been everywhere:

If you hop over to the "blog," you will find that Mr. Chedda's tale is a marvelously compelling one:

"Chedda's" Bling Blog

Written by Russel aka 'Chedda' | Date: October 7, 2008 4:15 pm

How I Hustled A $12,000 Check From The Government and got $5,000 a Month From the Man

Yo, my name is Chedda and I made this site to let my boys know how I went from being a broke-ass nigga to paying off all my debt and banking 5 gs a month by filling out some forms online.

My Quick Story:

In about 30 days I got a $12,000 check from the government which I never got to pay back, and started an banking a cool $5k a month with about 12 hours of work each week. No joke. All I did was fill out 2 forms online for free grants (government money):

Step 1: Free Grant Kit - Costs $1.99 for shipping.

Step 2: Government Grant Connect - Costs $3 for shipping.

It was pretty much a cakewalk. I got my grant money within 30 days and paid off all my debt, and between both of these sites I get like $5,000 a month from the government. The thing is, the government is all about giving away grant money to brothers and sisters, and most of them know nothing about it. All I did was sign up and pay for the shiping (like $5 bucks total for both of em) and they got back to me within a few days with their decision (this was the initial $12,000 check). It's like scholarships or something. Affirmative action, baby!

Indeed. If we can have an affirmative action President who never did an honest day's work in his life and whose supporters believe he is going to gas up their cars and pay their mortgages, I suppose anything is believable, even Chedda. There's much more of the marketer's art at the "Bling Blog," but here are a few more snips that I liked:

So over the past couple a years, I ended up running up a ton of debt (partying, girls, clothes, ya know) and didn't have a good job to pay this off. On top of that, I had my rent and car payment to worry about. I was working at Foot Locker making like $10 bucks an hour, so I needed to find a way to get some money.

I started to do some research and found out that a ton of government money is given to 'minorities' each year. The money can be pretty much used for whatever you want as long as you fill out all the info they need (your name and address, what you want to use the money for, any school you been to (i only finished high school)). I told them I wanted to start my own clothing line and needed to pay off my debts first and that was it. After a few weeks I got my first check and since then its been steady chedda for Chedda.
...
My Life Now:

Thanks to the cash I got from the government, Chedda be banging. I quit my job at Foot Locker and am working on setting up my clothing line with the $5 gees Im geting a month. I also, keep my girl pretty happy ;)

Sounds like a regular Horatio Alger to me. The Tiffany watch "Chedda" says he bought for his girl likely doesn't compare to the $30,000 ring Barack bought for Michelle , but it's the thought that counts. Of course, the frightening thing is that this stuff is so believable that it is apparently paying off based on the amount of advertising money spent on it.

Merry Christmas from the Country Store

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.
For Jesus Christ our Savior,
Was born on Christmas Day;
To save us all from Satan’s power,
When we were gone astray.

Y'all have a Merry Christmas!

(The above snap of a decked out tractor more closely resembles the fanciest displays around here than the computer controlled Christmas lights that seem to be all the rage in other parts of the USA. I guess we're just traditional small town folks - and proud of it.)

Today's hoot: Jesse Junior G-Man

Jon Kass at the Chicago Tribune says: Got corruption? Get Jesse Junior G-Man:

With so much news on the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, I almost missed an incredible aspect of this amazing case:

The Jesse Junior G-Man Task Force to Fight Political Corruption thing.

So I called the federal building in Chicago and asked for the Jesse Junior G-Man Task Force.

"Pardon me?" asked a female federal employee.

Don't be obtuse. It's been all over the national TV news, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Bud Light) working with the feds to fight corruption. So connect me to the Jesse Junior G-Man headquarters.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

It might not be a formal "task force." Perhaps there's another name for it, like Jesse Junior G-Man Blago Working Group. I'm a reporter. You can tell me.

"Sorry," she said. "No Junior G-Man office here."

Oh, c'mon! Just stop with your little bureaucratic games. The story was on TV. Jackson's been working with the feds, which means he's a good guy.

But she had nothing for me, so I called someone else.

"Jesse Junior G-Man? No," a guy said. "Not on this floor."

Just tell me. The Junior G-Man works in a high-tech complex buried deep underground, right? Behind a series of cool interlocking steel doors, protecting the Cone of Silence, right?

Nope, no trace of Jesse Jr. was to be found, but I did like the later comparison with the Soprano's Big Pussy. It's a good name for the little weasel too.

Where's Al Gore when you really need some hot air?

A picture from a Chicago friend illustrates the sad state of Global Warming alarmism:

Anyone who cares to notice knows that the political climate scientists have been cooking the books to try to prove that there actually is any global warming and that the evidence for man made global warming is nonexistent, but the ecoweenies have their propaganda machine ranting at full force so it may well take a really nasty winter in the USA before average folks figure out that they are being conned. Some useful tidbits via Deroy Murdock:

Actually, the odds are rising that snow, ice, and cold will grow increasingly common. As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures and so-called "global-warming."

According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2008 will be America's coldest year since 1997, thanks to La Niña and precipitation in the central and eastern states. Solar quietude also may underlie global cooling. This year's sunspots and solar radiation approach the minimum in the Sun's cycle, corresponding with lower Earth temperatures. This echoes Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas' belief that solar variability, much more than CO2, sways global temperatures.
...
"Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change," Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on Oct. 28. "According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly." That evening, as the House of Commons debated legislation on so-called "global-warming," October snow fell in London for the first time since 1922.
...
So, is this all just propaganda concocted by Chevron-funded, right-wing, flat-Earthers? Ask Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a physical chemist and retired Navy meteorologist.

"As a scientist and lifelong liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science," Hertzberg wrote in Sept. 26's USA Today. "From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C (0.45 F). From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C (1.35 F)."

As global cooling becomes more widely recognized, Americans from Maine to Malibu should feel comfortable dreaming of a white Christmas.

I certainly am, but I expect that in Castle Gore, the Dark Prince of Climate BS is chewing the carpets. Would you buy carbon credits from anyone, much more that crazed bozo? Of course, no one seems to have mentioned this little cognitive problem to Barack Obama:

When will the "Let us take over and wreck your economy so we can save you from the climate boogey-man" gang admit the earth is cooling again, and when will they admit, "OK, since cooling is worse than warming, and our own theory is that mankind can impact global temperature by what we burn, it's now your duty to hold back the Big Freeze by going out there and burning all the fossil fuels you possibly can, as fast as you can"?

(Don't even get me started on "carbon trading," a weird scam in which the buyer acquires an invisible commodity of no earthly use to him, and both buyer and seller can benefit if they overestimate the amount being "transferred.")

Instead, on Monday, President-Elect Obama ("Delay is no longer an option; denial is no longer an acceptable response") appointed as Secretary of Energy (a position and an office not authorized in the Constitution) Steven Chu, the confirmed global warming lunatic from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who says coal -- the stuff that powered the industrial revolution, cheap coal which will last for centuries and which can be burned more cleanly now than ever before -- "is my worst nightmare."

This gang still intends to effectively ban both coal-fired and nuclear power generation. Do they believe they can meet our current demand with famously costly, unreliable, and toxic wind, solar and geothermal? (Look up the by-products of geothermal energy, some time. Then look up "battery farms.") Of course not. The gap can only be closed by "conservation," they'll admit when you take a pencil and start to work the numbers.

And what does "conservation" mean, precisely?

They'd like us to think they mean just turning out the lights in our empty rooms, that kind of thing. But they don't.

Mr. Obama has said it, straight out. He, the Chosen One, has had it Revealed to Him that we can no longer use 25 percent of the world's energy when we have only 5 percent of the world's population.

This is nonsense. All mankind uses less than 1 percent of the solar energy that streams past us every hour. Is it "unfair" that the Japanese eat "more than their fair per capita share" of the world's fish?

Are we now to be ruled by a depraved schoolchild obsessed with sharing the toys, granted the ability to carry forward that Ding-Dong School philosophy with powers reminiscent of the kid in the old "Twilight Zone" episode who could "wish people into the cornfield"?

We should be proud that we've learned how to capture and harness the lion's share of the available energy in this system. It's not like we refused to share with others "the secret of coal" or "the secret of oil," is it? They saw how good it was; they've been racing to catch up to us ever since; that's the main reason the world has escaped the life expectancies of the Stone Age.

There's a real world out there. Purposely, artificially impoverish the nation, force us to give up our competitive economic advantages, and we'll eventually go the way of the Carthaginians.

I tend to think of the latter days of the Roman Empire, but whatever it is, it only happens if we let these loons do it to us. So - let it snow.

Today's Hoot: Blagojevich's eBay auction for Obama's Senate seat

Iowahawk reports: Feds Seize Blagojevich eBay Account and has screen caps of the eBay auction for Obama's Senate seat. Who would have guessed that Blagojevich's eBay userid would be HelmetHair and that he would have 11593 feedback but only a 19.7% positive rating?

Merry Fitzmas Moonbats!

Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune asks Don't they know it's Fitzmas?

This is a sad day for my state of Illinois… U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin

It is a sad day for Illinois … Barack Obama

...

This is a sad day for Illinois government and for the people of our great state.. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias

I was deeply, deeply troubled and saddened by the charges ... Tammy Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.

I am immensely saddened... .Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes

I was shocked and saddened today….U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson (D-Chicago)

...

Oh, buck up!

Tuesday was a great day in Illinois, a thrilling day, an exciting, hopeful day; one of the few happy days we've had lately.
...
Any day that U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald brings forth such an array of charges against a big-fish defendant is a day to celebrate: Call it "Fitzmas," a joyous term coined three years ago in the liberal blogosphere when Fitzgerald was bringing indictments in the Valerie Plame-leak case. (Or, if you're Jewish, call it "Hahaha.")

Yet in statement after statement, our gloomy pols were keening as though a great leader had fallen or an important factory had closed.

Perhaps this was their acknowledgment of the severity of the charges and the depths of the alleged betrayal of the people. Perhaps they felt it would be undignified to pump their fists and say "Yessssss!" as many of the rest of us did.

But look. There have been many sad days in Illinois political history.

The days when elected officials have pocketed kickbacks, payoffs and bribes, for instance.

The days when plum jobs went to nitwit relatives and big contracts went to top donors.

The days when monied interests quietly killed legislation and line items disappeared from budgets because certain people hadn't adequately opened their wallets.

The complaint against Blagojevich alleges other sad days, such as Nov. 12 when the complaint says he discussed yanking an $8 million reimbursement payment to Children's Memorial Hospital because the hospital CEO hadn't donated $50,000 to Blagojevich's political warchest; and Nov. 3, when Blagojevich, his wife and a deputy allegedly hatched a plan to blackmail Tribune Co. into firing members of the editorial board.

Wednesday, when Blagojevich returned to work as the governor of Illinois, was a sad day.

But generally we never learn about these sad days, however, until after the fact -- until the happy day when the law pounces.

It's probably a naive thought, but this Fitzmas could become a holly, jolly day on our state's calendar -- the day our lawmakers wiped those obligatory frowns off their faces and decided finally to get serious about changing the political culture that so often gives us so many reasons to be sad.

Lots of luck with that since the Democrats running the Illinois state legislature are cut from the same cloth as Gov. Blagojevich. Hmm, that reminds me - I hope Michelle told the Secret Service agents to never open the freezer in the basement at the Obama mansion. 

Q: What's the difference between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich?

A: Obama hasn't been caught yet.

Squeaky the ranch pig

A little country humor:



Remember, no one messes with a 400 lbs. watch pig who likes pizza and Dr. Pepper.

Today's Hoot: Iphone snapped my husband's genitals

Nick Farrell at The Inquirer relates a story for the modern age:

The fruit themed Iphone apparently has a glitch that will photograph your genitals, attach it to an email and place it in your sent folder.

We found the glitch reported in an Apple forum and penned by a woman called Susan.

She said she was searching through her husband's mobile, as you do, and found the snap of him attached to an email in the sent email file. The email had been sent to another woman. Obviously, she approached him with the accusation that he might be cheating on her.

The Fanboy's excuse was that he had taken the picture but never sent it to anyone. In fact he was so worried about his Iphone taking the picture that he said had paid a visit to the ironically named Apple Genius Bar. There he swore that a spokesapple had told him that it was a known glitch. Photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent, he swore blind that the Genius told him.

This is likely too "good" to be true, but predictable hilarity ensues when the support forum dwellers weigh in. Hmm, I wonder why no one thought to ask credulous Susan if she was an Obama supporter?

(Photo stolen from Gizmodo)

Thank the veterans for our freedom

God bless our veterans and bring confusion to our enemies, foreign and domestic.