Hemi Air Raid Siren

Hat-tip Iowahawk on Twitter.

I love how the Brits say garage. Rhymes with carriage. The way Americans say it sounds too French.

Snip, snip; the kind of thing my wife reads

My wife doesn't have a blog, but she reads a lot of blogs, probably more of a variety than I do. She should have a blog; it would be really good, but she is entirely uninterested.

On Saturday, I was walking past the dining room when I noticed a big grin on her face. So I went over to see what she was reading and saw this: "Calf Nuts on a Cowboy Hat, Chapter 2". Thus I learned that castrating boy cows can be hugely entertaining for the cowboys. Of both genders.

"I think this is funny," she said. I think I went to bed really late Saturday night.

Yeah, What About Those Small Business Tax Cuts, Mr. President?

The short answer is that small businesses don't hire union labor. So no soup for them. Excerpt:

The revenue loss would be minimal, especially as compared to the rest of the $800 billion spend-a-thon, because any untaxed gains would only be realized well into the future. We'd prefer an across-the-board capital gains cut rather than a targeted reduction. But the proposal would at least signal some Democratic interest in encouraging businesses to take risks again -- the only way the economy is going to recover.

So what happened? We're told the obstacle is House Democrats, who oppose any cut in capital gains tax rates. The objection seems to be wholly ideological, a concern that such a cut -- even for start-ups, rather than for current capital holdings -- would validate Republican tax-cutters. The White House decided not to fight Democrats to add the President's own pro-growth idea to a bill whose supposed purpose is to promote growth. This looks like an early example of Mr. Obama repeating a mistake that President Bush made too often -- refusing to challenge a Congress run by his own party.

In a related story, approval ratings are down again.

Mixed nuts and metaphors

One thing that is funny to me about Reverend Jackson's remarks is... huh, huh... he said "nuts", huh, huh.

The other main thing that I'm laughing about is that if you take another slang meaning of the word nuts, i.e., crazy people with whom the Chicago politician has been associated, Obama could say, "Hey, leave me alone, I'm trying to cut my nuts out, too." Nuts like Reverend Wright, his wife who seems to be on heavy tranquilizers, and all those peace nuts who are going nuts about Obama change of policy regarding Iraq to... something different, no one is really sure now... but it's obviously not a Change They Can Believe In. These are the kind of nuts that no one wants in a general election. They don't give a candidate any potency like the other kind of nuts.

Of course, it would have been much nastier if Rev. Jackson had said he wanted to unplug Obama's teleprompter. Now that would be political castration whether he ever makes it to the center this year or not.