Ramble for 6/17/11

Capitol Heights, MD– As this is written, I’m perhaps 10 miles from the monument district in Washington DC…. The very belly of the beast.  I’m delivering here, and will run to Harrisburg shortly and then to home for the weekend.

We got Pawlenty, from Alexis Levinson, Daily Caller:

Tim Pawlenty announced his candidacy for president in Iowa Monday afternoon under the banner of ‘truth,’ presenting himself as someone whose campaign would not just be made of empty promises, and

Evan Thomas: “The health care bill is a disaster”, from Daily Caller.

“The health care bill is a disaster,” Thomas continued. “We’re sort of slowly learning – it’s not working. It’s interesting – they’re implementing it and it’s

TSA stuck on stupid, TSA chief John Pistole, from CNN:

Well, I think the Israeli model, which a number of people have talked about, uses intelligence in a different way, profiling. And then if in terms of a

“Two years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s gasoline refiners to do something that is turning out to be mathematically impossible.  To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising

B.J’s fall from gtace, Los Angelos Times:

‘I am not a racist,’ ex-President Bill Clinton asserts
Former presidents get a whole lot of leeway in what they say in public. But former President Bill Clinton just violated one

• I use Firefox here at Casa de Bit; there’s a copy on every computer I have online. I particularly like the web development tools and the plugins for WordPress. I gather from the rumor mill that Firefox is about ready

Corn ethanol is becoming the Emily Litella of energy.

Don Surber.

?

Billy makes a great point this morning:

I don’t know why people keep referring to what’s going on with energy as a “market” while it’s stepped on by government every mile of the way from the field to your tank,

“The reality is that people are dying already,” said Jacques Diouf, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react,” he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn

The much talked about “oil for food’ program had it’s share of problems. Corruption, mostly. Not to be wondered at, give we’re dealing with the UN there. But apparently, trying to exchange food for oil isn’t much better, as James

Jeff Jacoby:

WHAT DO ethanol and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Each is a good reminder of that most powerful of unwritten decrees, the Law of Unintended Consequences – and of the all-too-frequent tendency of solutions imposed by

Illegal alien kills, Fox News:

MINNEAPOLIS – A woman who authorities say is in the country illegally and using an alias was charged Friday with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide and two lesser charges in a school

It is insane to use food stuffs for motor fuel.   It causes more damage to the environment and increases the cost of food.   Stephen Leahy. Environmental Journalist:L

Feb 8 (IPS) – Biofuels are making climate change worse, not better,

SAO PAULO, Brazil: A monster offshore oil discovery and promising fields near the find could help Brazil join the ranks of the world’s major exporters, but full-scale extraction is unlikely until 2013 and will be very expensive.The “ultra-deep” Tupi field