Sadly, No!

ABOVE: Don Surber at home.

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I know that Gavin M. has already been on this truly ridiculous post from the Pythagoras of the Pocatilico, Don Surber, but more really needs to be said about Surber’s apparent inability to put two and two together and come up with an an answer within, oh, 6 billion or so of the correct answer:

In 2006, solar supplied 1% of 1% of America’s electric use. Wind supplied about ½%. Combined they produced 26.3 billion kilowatt hours of power – in a nation that consumed 4,053 billion kilowatt hours of electricity

Let’s — as they say — do the math. Now 1% of 1% is 0.01%, and 0.01% of 4,053 billion is 405,300,000. And ½%, or 0.5% of 4,053 billion is 20,265,000,000. Now when I add 405,300,000 and 20,265,000,000, I get 20,670,300,000 or 20.67 billion, more than a little short of Don’s figure of 26.3 billion kilowatt hours produced by solar and wind energy.

Now if you look at the figgerin’ of Don, he also seems to be confusing electricity generation and consumption and using the same figure for both. He talks about “4 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity generated in the USA” right before he talks about 4 trillion kilowatt hours “consumed.” Of course, electricity generation and consumption figures aren’t ever the same due to that pesky little phenomenon of transmission loss and other factors such as exports and direct use in the generation process. So perhaps he’s applying his solar and wind percentages to annual consumption which is 3.67 trillion kilowatt hours. Still no cigar because 0.51% of 3.67 trillion is 18.7 billion, again not coming even close to 26.3 billion kilowatt hours of solar and wind power that Don is talking about.

Hamsters on wheels may keep the lights on here at Sadly, No!, but hamsters on meth apparently are doing Surber’s math for him. And yet he continues to wonder why he keeps getting passed over for the Pulitzer.

Amazingly, Righteous Bubba is still arguing with deranged Creed fans in this thread that started over two years ago.

And yes, Creed still sucks.

It Lacked the Added Virtue of Being True

ABOVE: John “Buttrocket” Hinderaker

• CBS’s story debunking Hillary’s claims about her trip to Bosnia is just further proof of liberal media bias.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

ABOVE: JR Dieckmann

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JR Dieckmann is an electrician, a frequent contributor to Renew America, the editor of the modestly-titled “Great American Journal,” and not someone you would want to do the rewiring in your bathroom, particularly after you hear who he thinks is behind the snooping in Obama’s passport file. Hint: her name starts with an “H,” ends with a “y,” and sounds a little bit like Hitler:

Don’t be fooled by media (including Fox News) attempts to include Senator Clinton in this story. … Clinton’s name was included in this media story only to derail speculation that it was her campaign supporters who were involved in this breach of State Dept. security.

Fox News is aiding the Clinton campaign? What next? Is Bill O’Reilly announcing that he’s giving up those falafel-loofah showers with interns and joining Sexaholics Anonymous?

Don’t be fooled by the mainstream media’s attempts to cover for the Clinton’s by including Mrs. Clinton in the story. It is well known that the Clinton have strong connections in the State Department and many employees there were hired by the Clinton Administration.

Apparently the State Department is filled with sleeping Hillary-bots just waiting to move into action and do the bidding of the Queen of Darkness, Socialized Medicine and Forced Gay Abortion. Now before you protest that the snoopers were employees of a contractor and not a Hillary-bot employee of the State Department, ol’ JR has got that point covered:

I wonder if Sandy Burger [sic] would have been considered a “contract employee” of the Clinton Administration.

I’m not quite sure I see the point, but it appears to be that the contract employees were Hillary-bots because Sandy Berger stuffed documents in his pants, or something like that.

News reports continue to focus only on the passport application, saying little information could be gained from it other than the applicants Social Security number. Just the SS number in itself is nearly a password to other personal files.

See, the Clinton campaign was planning to steal Obama’s identity, apply for a bunch of credit cards in his name, and buy themselves three million pizzas from Pizza Hut and forty-two thousand HDTVs which would then wreck Obama’s credit rating forcing him to terminate his campaign and become a singing pirate selling chowder in a tourist restaurant:

But maybe there’s more in those files.

The question was asked earlier if the files contained one’s travel history. McCormack said he didn’t know. Where else would one’s travel history be saved if not in their passport file? My God, it’s part of the passport.

Which means that all those stamps in your passport that show where you’ve been are magically transmitted (perhaps sent by owl mail) back to the State Department where they become a permanent part of your passport file.

What other information might be contained in those files is unknown.

This, of course, is not about to stop JR from telling us what other information is in those files.

But I can assure you, there is a great deal more there than just the passport application, and possibly information that could be used in a political campaign to smear one’s opponent.

No doubt Obama’s passport file contains proof that Obama had a twenty-year homosexual relationship with Jeremiah Wright and this will be revealed any time now by the Hillary campaign to the superdelegates.

Funny You Should Ask

Above: Our Pepys of the Pocatalico

• An environmentally conscious reader asks, Would I want a coal-fired power plant upwind of my children’s school? Ha ha! How do you like me now, sucka? There is a coal-fired power plant upwind of my children’s school! [victory dance]

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

ABOVE: Ingrid “The She-Wolf” Schlueter

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They must be letting Pastor Swank write the headlines over at Wingnut Daily, because only he could have come up with this masterful headline:

Milwaukee newspaper promotes homo-sex play on Good Friday

If it weren’t already Easter Sunday, that headline could provide the only real reason to hop on a plane for Milwaukee, particularly to see whether the paper is promoting a theatrical experience or, more promisingly, an orgy of homo-sex play. But, alas, it’s too late. And, alas again, it’s a play, it’s not gay, and its not on Good Friday.

It seems, when you read the story under the headline, that a Milwaukee radio crank show host, one Ingrid Schlueter, has mounted a church lady campaign against an advertisement in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Good Friday for an April performance of “Puppetry of the P----” billed as the “Res-erection Tour”

And, no, the editors of Wingnut Daily couldn’t bring themselves to print the word “penis.” But they could print the word “erection.” I guess that’s because they figure that most of their readers probably don’t have much first-hand experience with erections, judging from all the self-defense and weight loss ads that festoon the Wingnut Daily site.

And, as you probably already know, the “Puppetry of the P----” isn’t about the gay thing at all but simply about the silly ways two guys can fold their fla--id g-----ls into various shapes to make their l-mp s-x or--ns look like, you know, dachshunds or giraffes or trucks and stuff. Gay guys don’t really spend much time trying to make their w--lies look like wiener dogs, at least not in my experience.

But Ingrid is undeterred:

“It is apparently no longer safe to even open the local paper at home. The moral squalor in our culture worsens because few are prepared to take a public stand and risk abuse for doing so. We’re going to take a stand,” she said.

She described the ad as “homo-erotic” and condemned its apparent “mocking of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” especially on such a day as Good Friday.

Of course, the real mocking going on here is by Wingnut Daily which has put a popup ad link on “Resurrection of Jesus Christ” as shown in the unretouched image below.

So, if you need to find a deal on a cheap “resurrection of Jesus” just click through the link and let the resurrection experts help you find one.

“It’s clearly not what you would expect for a big city newspaper,” she told WND. “You’d expect this in a seedy, fringe newspaper found in a coffee shop.”

I really must be going to the wrong coffee shops.

Anyway, Ingrid told WND that, after finishing her protest against the Journal Sentinel, she plans to start a campaign to stop the use of the word Easter “Basket” because of its lewd, lascivious and homoerotic connotations. The correct term, according to Ingrid, is “Easter Straw Thingy.”

*Cf.

Above: “The Dust Bowl? Oh yeah, who won
that last season?”

 
Shorter Nathan Tabor:
 

Capitalism–not perfect, but certainly the best

• Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

* Cf., cf.

ABOVE: Conservatives imagine a new dialogue on race

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Instapunk,

Will you please add me to your “niggers list?” I’m significantly whiter than most of the dudes you’ve listed, but I swear I can be just as “dirty, violent, and stupid” as Mike Tyson (although I’ve never bitten off someone’s ear or purchased a tiger for a pet).

Also, this is just classic shit:

We can have this conversation now — should have this conversation now — because African-Americans are on the verge of the greatest setback they’ve experienced since the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that black people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by black people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst black people do.

OJ’s non-guilty verdict was only the first step in our glorious War Against Whitey. Wait until Obama gets into power and puts y’all honky asses into Reparations Camps. Then you’ll learn the value of a good day’s work, ya jive-ass cracka! AAAAAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAA!!!!

(Via Glennzilla.)

UPDATE: This comment says it all:

I’m continually amazed at the sheer number of White folks who are either unable or unwilling to, er, call a spade a spade. Blacks hate Whites. Everything about the way they hold themselves to the movies they make to the way they live their lives, etc, screams it. The Thomas Sowells are the exception.

End racism? Will never happen. It had a faint chance, what with discrimination all but obliterated. But day after day after week after month after year after decade and decade of seeing with our own eyes behavior so primitive and destructive and flat out stupid, has ensured that dream is dead and buried.

I also, do not hate blacks.

Sure you don’t.

Sentiments such as these remind me why I staunchly oppose hate-speech laws. Can you imagine a world where the government prevented us from laughing at these assholes?

Kickin’:

Memo to Ronald D. Moore: I’m a big, big fan of your show. Wanna buy some ad space on our site?

(Of course, I’ve already technically given you free advertising by posting this video. Oh well. Can’t wait for BSG to start up again.)

ABOVE: Help! We’re trapped in here with Mark Steyn!

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The boys at RedState today introduce us to Mark Milke of the Calgary Herald, who provides a fine type-specimen of the wingnut paleolith, lying-with-statistics:

Viva Castro’s departure
Cuba in 2008 should be the Hong Kong or Singapore of Latin America

In 1958, the year before Fidel Castro came to power in a revolution and promised prosperity, democracy and the restoration of Cuba’s 1940 constitution, the Caribbean island, while troubled by poverty, a corrupt dictator and the American Mafia, was also better off than most developing nations.

While poor compared to the United States, Cuba in 1958 had a per capita GDP of $3,170 according to the OECD. (Canada’s was $8,947.). But Cuba outranked all other Latin American countries except four: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Tellingly, in 1958, the island nation’s per person wealth was higher than any East Asian country or colony, save Japan, which barely beat Cuba at only $3,290.¹ Hong Kong had a per capita GDP of $2,924, Singapore’s was $2,294, the Philippines’ was $1,447, Taiwan’s per person GDP stood at $1,387 and South Korea’s was $1,112.

Thus in 1958, Cuba was almost as rich as Japan, one and half times as wealthy as Singapore, richer than Hong Kong, and three times as prosperous as South Korea.

Oh, they’re still trying that one, are they?

[spits on hands, hoists ancient Texas Instruments LED calculator]

• McDonald’s Corporation 2006 revenues: $21.6 billion.²

• Total number of employees, worldwide, 2006: 465,000

Thus according to the latest available figures, at $46,451.61 per full- and part-time employee, McDonald’s workers all over the world are wealthier than the average American.

It’s amazing the mileage you can get out of the old average-vs.-median conflation. It’s like those 1950s American cars still rattling down the streets of Havana.

Fifty years later, Cuba is one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

Whoah, how did that happen?

Meanwhile, jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan (the latter two also had dictators and problems similar to Cuba in the 1950s) have long eclipsed Cuba. They’ve done so not only in per capita wealth, but in measurements Castro’s defenders point to when they assert the Marxist revolution “worked,” such as in health care and education

As opposed to the US, which for all its wealth, um, [mumble mumble] health and education [mumble mumble] thingy.

The irony of Cuba’s position became even more evident recently.

We’d say just now.

The gents at RedState comment:

The article goes on to argue for an end to the U.S. trade embargo.³ This may be a good idea, but it is worth noting anew that the dearth of trade from one country–even one as powerful as the United States–is not enough to explain Cuba’s economic woes.

Or, to carry that reasoning into hard numbers: Since there are roughly 200 countries in the world, we can make a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and argue that the US is only responsible for about 1/2 of 1% of these woes — or only about half a wo.

And come to mention it, so is Canada.

Update: As is inevitable with these things, we’ve been accused of a softness toward Cuban Communism. Um, yeah. Also, the reason we doubted all those stories of WMDs in Iraq, and were against the invasion and so forth, was because we supported Saddam Hussein. These days, we’re busy doubting anti-Iranian propaganda and atrocity stories because we condone the execution of homosexuals and are against women’s rights. Some of us favor Barack Obama because we dislike white people.

¹ It almost seems as though there should be a reason for Japan’s poor economic performance in the given period.
² McDonald’s figures are from here.
³ Milke: “It’s a significant reason for Cuba’s poverty, that and the Communist system itself — and both should end. Cuban-Americans don’t have to give up their claims to property confiscated by Castro and his thugs, but that can be dealt with if and when Cuba becomes a liberal, market-oriented democracy.”