Odds and ends no. 16

This is yet another collection of little items worth a paragraph (or two or three) of comment but perhaps not a full post on its own.

First, I want to announce two changes in format for my site, both of which will begin with this post. One is already something I do on Red Maryland because that site is a muli-contributor post. Beginning with this post, I’m going to introduce the “more” feature.

I wasn’t originally a great fan of that feature because I like to have posts be a complete block, but in many respects there will be advantages to this system. Ideally the totality of my posts would run the length of the sidebars so scanning a week’s worth of posts for occasional visitors would still expose them to my ads. (Hey, I like making a little coin with this site, you know, and the more the better.) So instead of 8 posts on the front page, I’ll push the number to 12 because that’s roughly a week’s output for me.

The second change is just a matter of preference, for which this post will be the first in the new format. Since I began the site, it’s always had a numerical post tag; for instance the last post was p=3225. When I began the site, it made perfect sense because the numbers were sequential. But after a recent WordPress upgrade I made for the site I noticed my numbers were no longer sequential, which defeated my purpose for having that post format. So now I’ll make my site conform more with most other sites which use a title slug as a post tag.

(Late note: this also retroactively updated items so those who have existing links to posts on my site may want to check and make sure they still work.)

Here it works out to be a nice point to insert a “more” tag, which I’ll probably begin to add in on occasions the post gets up around 700 words or so.

Now to the content portion of the program. Let’s begin with a group I discussed last summer, the Citizens for Energy Freedom. Even with gas prices well down from last summer, they’re still discussing alternative fuels. But at least they’re not holding their latest announced conference in the Midwest in January, this time they’ll do the meeting in sunny Florida. As they say in their press release:

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) exercises monopoly control over world oil supply, and alternatives to oil are urgently needed to break free of this monopoly.  The conference will highlight the national security and economic implications of OPEC’s control of world oil supply, and of America’s continued dependence on oil to fuel our cars.

As you may recall, though, the CEF group truly was lobbying for only one thing – a federal rule mandating automakers make vehicles available as flexible fuel vehicles. It’s already an option on some, mainly trucks, but obviously the market isn’t moving quickly enough for the liking of the CEF so instead they advocate the force of law to make the push.

Next up comes a reminder from my buds at Our Country Deserves Better. They actually point out a Republican National Committee video pondering over Barack Obama’s role in filling the Senate seat vacated by Obama’s elevation to the Oval Office.

This ties in with an OCDB petition drive asking Obama’s Chief of Staff appointee Rahm Emmanuel to step down.

While I generally applaud OCDB’s efforts, this may be a case of barking up the wrong tree because the Senate seat investigation will probably find no wrongdoing on the part of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. That’s not because he did nothing wrong, but because the probe was probably dropped (or its cover was blown, or both) before a crime actually took place. It’s not like we’re talking about murder here, so perhaps they wanted to make sure a particular head doesn’t roll in the process.

If it’s not already apparent that a bunch of crooks were elected last November, our country deserves a better educational system, too.

Meanwhile, the people liberals in these parts love to hate, the Club For Growth, have come up with a new award:

Starting this month, the Club will be giving out the “Comrade of the Month” award to the person who best lives up to the policies of big-government redistribution and restrictions on economic freedom. These people can include public officials, political pundits, or even Hollywood celebrities. If they support impoverishing our country through higher taxes and big government interference, we want to know about it. But first, we need your help. We need you to submit to us the nominations.

I submitted Minnesota Congressman Betty McCollum, who last week introduced H. J. Res. 4, which I alluded to in my post on SCHIP as decreeing health care to be a Constitutional right. We’ll see where that goes.

Lastly, we all know the new Obama Administration is moving in and promises to be much farther left than the Bush Administration. Or will they? American Spectator blog contributor Doug Bandow points out the vast increase in regulation during the Bush years.

Here is why one of my largest objections to big government occupies its position. We have a number of people in the federal government whose sole purpose seems to be writing new regulations, which are seemingly designed to “solve” one problem by creating two others; in turn those  new and much more onerous regulations create yet another layer of restrictions piled onto we the people in a vain attempt to streamline the process.

Bandow’s point is a very valid one; however, those of us in the conservative camp were given fair warning back in 2000 that we weren’t going to get a movement conservative in Bush. He just managed to be better than the alternative.

For now, I’m through cleaning out the “Blog ideas” closet in my mailbox – but surely I’ll have more to add as Congress, the Obamanation, and our General Assembly all crank up in 2009.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.