He’s a great humanitarian, even though he’s not Jewish . . . He happens to be Hispanic, but he’s crazy about Israel . . . His heart and soul are unbelievable, you would never know he’s a Gentile.

But after listening to the whole thing it seems Mason thinks that it’s more than “you would never know he’s a Gentile” but puts the guy up as almost a yiddishe kopf.  And he’s no shnorrer either but a real mentch by the sounds of all the volunteering he does.  Hell, Mason treats the guy like mishpucha.  Let’s hope Lynch kicks the ass of any Democrat shmekel he runs against.

I don’t know if this does more harm than good but after listening to it I feel like getting shicker.

You will recall the Land Board’s 5 Democratic office-holders voted, 4-1, to approve a high “bonus bid” price which would end up pricing the coal at nearly two times the cost of coal mined only a short drive away. This allowed the Dem politicos to seem pro-coal, but also to set a price where its actual development would be in doubt: one of those having-the-cake-and-eating-it scenarios politicians have a good nose for. If no coal companies bid in the next few hours, get ready for lefties making the coal companies out to look like the baddies. In reality, it’s the Dems who have meandered into fantasy land, and who are delaying  Montana’s economic development through this crass calculation.

Five Surgeons

Five surgeons from big cities are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon, from New York , says, ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table because when you open them up,  everything inside is numbered.’

The second, from Chicago , responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try  electricians! Everything inside them is color coded.’

The third surgeon, from Dallas , says, ‘No, I really think librarians  are the best, everything inside them is in alphabetical order’

The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles chimes in: ‘You know, I like  construction workers… Those guys always understand when you have a few  Parts left over.’

But the fifth surgeon, from Washington , DC shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the  Head and the ass are interchangeable.

This story began 30 years ago almost to the day. I was a sophomore in high school on the JV basketball team. We had a game that evening in Verdigre Nebraska . We were winless and this was the one team we were expected to defeat. Go Crusaders!

Anyway, the game was close and went down to literally the last second. Pope John (my team) was down by one point and I was fouled on the last play as time ran out. The officials blew the whistle and made all the players leave the court and sit on the bench. Everyone except me of course. They called me out to the court to shoot two free throws. My coach caught up with me before I went out and told me “Relax Boes, we just need one to tie it”. I get halfway to the line and the opposing coach calls a timeout. Trying to ice me. I huddle with the coach again. I hear some mumbling from my teammates on the bench, “You better make one of these Boes”. I am pretty concerned about the situation at this point. It would be better if we were down by two and I had to make both of them. Anyone can make one out of two free throws, right? I mean Greg Tharnish, a friend of mine, used to routinely make 18-19 out of 21 free throws in the Knights of Columbus derby and that was in the 5th grade! Why couldn’t Greg have been fouled?

I step up to the line with all these thoughts in my head and whatta ya know… I miss the first throw. It wasn’t a terrible throw as it did hit the rim, but it definitely did not look good. I stepped away from the line wondering if they might ice me again. I am not sure if you can even call a timeout at that point but after seeing my first throw I am sure the Verdigre coach can’t wait for me to shoot another one. The second throw goes up and does not look good. A gasp from the crowd. We lose.

No one looks at me or talks to me as I walk from the free throw line to the locker room. Now to my credit, I sucked at free throws and I always have, so in a sort of way, I really didn’t choke. Right? I am the last one to get on the bus. The team is quiet for the first three nanoseconds and then from the back I hear this guttural sound..”meh heh eh heh heh”. Is that a sheep? No, not a sheep. That’s a goat sound. No, I’m a goat! The sound builds from back to front until the entire bus is bleating a goat tune. It was like the movie “Carrie” except with words (or bleats) instead of blood. Nowadays, kids know how to handle these things and come to school the next day with an AK47. I just sucked it up and felt bad for 4 or 5 years then pretty much got over it. I didn’t even need therapy. Kids were tough back then I guess.

Back to the present day… my 4th grader Kevin is playing in a basketball tournament in Choteau Montana . He gets fouled with four seconds left in the game and his team down by one point. Kevin knows my goat story very well as I have told it to him many times at bedtime. He always seems to get a chuckle out of this story in particular. He steps up to the free throw line. I am mortified. I wonder if he is thinking of the goat story. I am tempted to reassure him that “he only needs one” but I stay quiet. The end of the story is on the following video:

I asked Kevin what he was thinking about at the free throw line and he said “nothing”. Creating a blank slate and just living in the moment. I think Kevin taught me today how to shoot free throws and a few other things.

[T]he tribes represent the project’s latest challenge: They practice a sunrise ritual every morning on the sound and say they may have artifacts buried beneath the seabed. They have managed to qualify the sound for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, which could restrict its commercial use.

Sigh. When we’ve reached a point where we’re blocking a wind farm because it obscures a view of the sunrise, it might be easier just to find the patches of land in America where projects like these could be built. And underwater historical sites? Wha…? Sometimes seems like everywhere is a protected area — whether it be for the Wampanoag, or the mud guppy, or the memory of a historical traipse by Lewis & Clark.

The problem is that Chicago’s building code requires commercial buildings to use copper pipes in indoor plumbing. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specifically states that drainpipes for waterless urinals “cannot be made of copper pipe, which corrodes.”‘

Anyhow, I’m glad he’s back (regardless of his parochial journalistic liberalism.)

The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon.  Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it -– all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs.  As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.

Read the whole thing.

It’s true that Bush was anything but a fiscal conservative – and the major reason I left the GOP in 2001.  But, damn, if Bush was the problem Obama ain’t the answer.  And Obama’s continual harping on the past just makes him look like a whiner – which it’s becoming more clear each day that he is.

Here’s the opening salvo from Hennessey:

Argument:  The previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program … without paying for any of it.

• Response 1:  Yes, we did.  At the time, Congressional Democrats tried and failed to create an even more expensive new drug program without paying for it.  (Mr. Obama was not in the Senate at the time.)
• Response 2:  This Medicare drug program is ongoing.  If the President thinks it is too expensive, then he should propose to make it less expensive.  If instead he thinks it should be paid for, then he should propose other spending cuts or tax increases to offset the future costs.  Pending health care legislation would instead expand this expensive benefit and pay for the expansion, but would do nothing about paying for the ongoing base costs to which the President is objecting.  The past six years of deficit spending from this benefit is beyond President Obama’s control.  The future spending is not.  He could do this through reconciliation with 51 votes in the Senate.