Olympics Observations

Watching the Olympics over the last couple of weeks has been fairly entertaining. The US has been impressive in events like basketball and volleyball, gymnastics, and track and field. It's actually been encouraging to see more overt patriotism from the American athletes than we've seen in previous games.

That patriotism seems to bug the NBC commentators. Chris Collinsworth seems to be one of them, based on his nauseating interview with Kobe Bryant. Too bad, because I've always thought Collinsworth was a pretty good NFL commentator. Maybe he fancies himself turning into the next Olbermann. Hope not.

The flap over the Chinese gymnasts, who certainly look closer to 12 than the minimum 16, is sort of interesting. Is anybody surprised that the Chinese cheat? Remember how the Soviets and East Germans were masters of cheating in the 60's and 70's? They had team scientists feeding their athletes all sorts of performance-enhancing drugs with the precision that guaranteed they wouldn't turn up positive when tested at the games. I remember the East German bearded women who were built like men taking the gold medals.

It's what communists do. They lie and cheat. Think anybody can prove those Chinese girls are under 16? Not in a society where the government can compel everyone to lie, and create all the false documents they want to "prove" whatever they need. The investigators have to find the evidence of cheating to make a charge, which won't happen.

It has been disappointing, especially in the case of Marion Jones, that US athletes have cheated from time to time. But at least that's because of their individual bad decisions, not because of a government athletic drug program.

Better than the Olympics, football is about to start.

My Gas Story

The gauge on my Volvo S80 was brushing the red at the bottom eighth, so I pulled into the station on the way to the office this morning. Despite the pain of the high gas price, I was still encouraged by the fact that the posted price this morning was lower than I've paid all summer.

I followed the usual procedure and began pumping the mid-grade fuel into my nearly empty tank. Things went along normally until I glanced at the pump. The dollars and cents were rolling along very slowly, which initially made me think the pump must be extremely slow. I had a mildly irritated thought that I'd have to wait a long time for my tank to fill.

But then I looked a bit closer, and noticed that the gallon counter was moving pretty fast. I quickly discovered that instead of $3.87.9, the gas was actually pumping at $0.387. When the tank was filled, I saw that instead of costing more than $60, the tank only cost a bit more than $6.

It didn't require much thought for me to conclude that the right thing was to inform someone at the station about what was obviously a mistake. So I walked into the convenience store and handed my receipt to the clerk, saying, "Either I just won some sort of contest, or the pump price isn't set right."

The clerk's eyes opened wide, and she said, "I can't deal with this." She immediately handed the receipt to someone else behind the counter, who must have been a supervisor.

The supervisor looked at the receipt with a sigh, apparently thinking she was about to have to handle some sort of customer complaint. She asked without looking at me, "What am I looking at?"

"The price."

Suddenly her expression changed, I heard "What!?", and she quick-marched over to the machine that I presume manages the gas pumps at the other end of the counter.

While the supervisor was busy punching buttons on the machine, I stood at the other end of the counter, unsure whether I should wait for her to return. After about a minute, I picked up my receipt, which she had put down on the counter in front of me, and walked to where she was continuing to work on the machine.

I asked her, "Do you need anything else from me?".

Again without looking up, she said, "Nope. Ain't nothin I can do with yours anyhow."

I thanked her and left, wondering a bit at the bizarre experience but thankful for the 1960's gas price.

Energy Truth

In the energy debate, Pelosi and Obama have both made anti-oil statements in defense of their blockade of any legislation that includes permission for domestic exploration and drilling. There are only two possible explanations for their outrageous statements; either they are astoundingly ignorant, or they are lying through their teeth.

They've been caught in some whoppers.

First, I heard Natasha spit a venomous statement about the group of GOP congressmen using the floor of the house to continue to demand a vote on their comprehensive energy bill. She called them the "handmaidens of the oil companies".

Mike Pence from Indiana is one of the leaders of the little energy revolt in the House. He's from Indiana, which is hardly an oil state. I looked up his political contributors - it's public information after all. He's taken in about a million dollars this past year, which is nothing in this age of big money politics. The top 5 industries contributing to his campaign?

Retirees
Israel Supporters
Real Estate
Investment
Lawyers

And the biggest group, retirees, barely topped $50K in contributions. So Ms. Pelosi, how again is Rep. Pence a Big Oil toady? Could it be you've told a whopper of a lie in that statement? You certainly have convinced me you're jaw-droppingly stupid, so I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt that the statement wasn't an outright lie, just dumb.

Speaking of stupid, how about Obama's speech yesterday where he proposed a goal of eliminating oil completely in 10 years? Does he have the slightest clue how much of all our daily lives are impacted by oil, both for energy and in the products we use?

During this whole debate, Democrats across the board have been speaking loftily about eliminating fossil fuels in favor of clean, renewable energy. I've been wondering something - how many people drive cars that aren't powered by gas or diesel? Aside from an infinitesimal number using natural gas or batteries, pretty much nobody.

Do Obama and his disciples really believe we can eliminate all coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power and replace them with wind and solar? In 10 years? Hundreds of millions of Americans will have to scrap their gas-powered vehicles and buy new miracle cars within 10 years using what money? Millions will have to replace their oil and gas furnaces with new miracle solar panels that, last time I checked, didn't really work?

So Obama's either frighteningly stupid and naieve, or he's lying through his teeth. No other option is possible.

But his disciples have blind faith in The Great and Powerful OB. Will that faith continue when the country falls into a deep depression after access to energy is shut down by OB and his minions, Boris and Natasha?

Boris and Natasha

I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was a kid. That's why it was so easy to figure out that the Democrat dictators of the House and Senate are actually Boris (alias Harry) and Natasha (alias Nancy).

What's hilarious about Boris is that he shut down all debate over domestic oil production while pretending he was being reasonable and the other side was the one playing politics. I'm not sure that would even be believed by his own base, although I'm sure that base is happy with anything he does to stop the evil "Big Oil".

But the biggest belly laugh was provided by Natasha, who vindictively shut down the House and turned the lights, cameras, and microphones off on the Republicans.

Meantime Barack has lost his lead in the Presidential race. Worthy of a chuckle is that Boris and Natasha are oblivious to the fact that their own actions blocking even debate of energy policy are responsible.

What a great corner Boris and Natasha have painted themselves into; if they allow debate and a vote on energy, they force the Great and Powerful OB to cast a vote that will be used against him in the campaign.

If they continue to block any votes, they are rightly vilified for doing so, taking the Great and Powerful OB down with them in public (dis)approval.

Just like poor Boris and Natasha, suffering defeat and humiliation every time they try to destroy that heroic little flying squirrel.