Coal burns no matter how cold it gets

Quote of the week

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates. – Benjamin Franklin​

In the newest edition of Liberty Cafe, Bill Peacock explores how corporate cronyism – the partnership between big government and big business – is on its way to becoming the greatest threat to liberty. Buddy’s take: Corporate cronyism is on the increase at every level of government. It is happening in the city where I live and work, where a cabal of already rich good-old-boys rake in millions in tax breaks while the little-guy-citizen pays higher taxes to cover what the fat cats aren’t paying.

70 Percent of Republicans Would Consider Joining Trump-Led Party. A CBS News poll finds that more than two-thirds of Republicans would join or consider joining a new political party if President Donald Trump were to start one. Buddy’s take: Better we all stay in the Republican Party, but vote out ALL the deadwood elitists and replace them with men and women who, like President Donald Trump, stand with us and not the swampers.  So why create a new party? Let’s take over the existing party lock, stock and barrel, including all the cash in its coffers, and maybe rename it the New Republican Party.

And 75% of Republicans want Donald Trump to continue as the party’s leader.

We will very much miss Rush Limbaugh. Unless I missed it, Time Magazine never made Rush Man of the Year, despite his far-reaching influence. Instead, the only time Rush made the cover of Time Magazine, the accompanying blurb read, “Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?”  No surprise Time thought not, continuing, “Talk radio is only the beginning. Electronic populism threatens to short-circuit representative democracy.” 

And in death, the equally far-left New York Times found nothing good to say about the man who was so loved by many millions of listeners. 

That both Time, the magazine, and Times, the paper, have a very low opinion—bigot, racist, rabble rouser, liar, etc.—of Rush Limbaugh, even in death, comes as no surprise. Rush deserves better, far better. And so do we folks, who mourn his loss and honor him rightly in his passing. We in our millions have been and continue to be tarred by the same brush that was used on our friend. And we will remember, we damn sure will.

Rush, rest in peace, sir. We will carry on.

Buddy’s Soap Box

A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy!

As I write this Thursday afternoon, it is the first day for a few of us to be back in the office after being closed Monday through Wednesday—no power to our headquarters building and roads too icy for safe travel.  We are partially up at this point, will be better staffed Friday, will work Saturday and Sunday doing catch up, and be back to a normal schedule Monday but with some late shipping of orders.

Weather is always an act of God, beyond controlling, but not beyond mitigating when common sense is used.  Unfortunately, that commodity is in shorter supply with the passing of each year.  The politicians—as they always do—point the finger at everyone but themselves when things go wrong. But it wasn’t the public nor the power companies that took Texas coal plants off line and substituted more expensive—and more to the point—unreliable wind and solar alternatives. Our own Texas governor, Greg Abbott, just weeks ago, received a big trophy for his championing wind and solar projects. But his windmills froze up all across west Texas and coal (that burns no matter how cold it gets) wasn’t there to take up the slack. So, Mr. Jubilation P. Cornpone politician, don’t blame anyone but yourself for what happened here in Texas.

Columns worth reading

Each week under this heading, I’ll include full columns or intros to columns you can read in full elsewhere on the internet. Each of these columns pretty much express my views, else I’d not be sharing them with you.

A Scott Rasmussen poll reported by Ballotpedia finds 72 percent of voters “think political elites believe they are superior to everyday Americans.”

Examples of that elitism are pervasive these days. A writer for the Wall Street Journal recently referred to citizens as “peasants.”  And here’s another example of that bias, this from the aptly-named Vanity Fair magazine.  Note that the media believes they created President Donald Trump by covering him too much, and thus by no longer covering him they can now make him go away. We citizen voters, we peasants, will see about that.

“I think people will get tired of him”: For Donald Trump, Sara Palin’s Fall Shows the Limits of Media Obsession, by Peter Hamby.

Back in the before times of January 2015, when I was a reporter for CNN, I did a weekend live shot from the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, one of those political cattle calls where Republican presidential hopefuls take turns onstage professing their Christian faith before a crowd of people harvested from a Grant Wood painting, hoping to impress the state’s conservative activists. Most of the supposedly serious 2016 contenders had flown to Iowa: Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee. But the CNN anchor that day, Michael Smerconish, asked me a reasonable question about two attention-grabbing Republicans who were also there, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, and whether they might run for president too. Like most Very Savvy political journalists at the time, I laughed off Trump’s appearance as just another thirsty White House tease. And having covered Palin up close since she was chosen as John McCain’s running mate, I knew her best shot at the Republican nomination was back in 2012.

You can read the rest of this predictable piece at Vanity Fair article.