As I’ve said before many times: federal spending has got to stop.

President Bush never met a spending bill he didn’t embrace. His utilization of the presidential veto? Damned near non-existent. He signed off on the first TARP.

But Our Hero, Mr Obama, has taken spending to absolutely unprecedented levels. And I truly believe that He has completely no concept as to the number of zeroes behind any given bill. To Him, they’re just wild-assed numbers that mean little if anything.

They hold no real significance or reality in His World.

Mr Obama already admitted that energy prices will “skyrocket” under his Cap and Trade plan. His words are plain and immured in video:

He said:

Our Hero wants to introduce these bills during an actual Recession.

Are you insane?

When has it been shown in any portion of economic history that any nation has been able to spend itself out of a recession?

When has it ever been an excellent idea to craft and pass bills that would require billions and billions of dollars to complete?

Iran will either acquire nukes or you will be paying a minimum of $50 a gallon for refined gasoline. That is, if you can get it. How did I conclude this? Do what I call the Logical Extension.

From The UK Independent:

The demise of the dollar
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

If this is true, then every aspect of your daily world is about to change negatively. I cannot even begin to predict the tumult that will result for Americans should this come to pass. Those denigrating America are about to have their wishes come to fruition. China, India, are the two most desperate countries to locate and lock in oil sourcing. Europe is fearful it will be cut off from Russian and Venezuelan oil sources. They’ll do any deal with oil producing states. Couple this with the dollar’s instability —

In an oil-based economy like ours, why hasn’t this possibility been screamed — above the fold — in every national newspaper for days? Oh, that’s right. Because we no longer have investigative journalists. We only have Media Sycophants.

Obviously your cat. Check the comb-over.

As indicated by the title, this post will be literally all-over-the-map.

You ever wonder about blogging?

How about this:

Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
Over 57 million Americans read blogs.

1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
51% of blog readers shop online .
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

Do NOT minimize the major blogs you frequent. You never know who just might be a very influential and subtle powerhouse.

And Fall is here.

The leaves are beginning to drop. The sap is beginning to pool on my car. The snap-cones are littering my deck. Right now, as I write this at midnight, storm clouds are literally gathering in the darkness and the winds make the pines bend and hiss. I’m expecting rain. Blessed rain.

People in my mountains have said: this will be a wet winter. It will be a colder winter. Wetter or colder, I’ll take whatever it gives.

I still have to hoist the wood from my outer deck and onto my inside stack. Unlike other counties in Fornicalia I can still burn wood in an open stove. No pellets. No bullshit. No restrictions. Because, after all, we leave our cars running when we get mail at the post office or groceries at the store. We kill horse thieves. Steal a car? You’re a horse thief.

I can remember a couple of years ago: I stopped at the post office and left my car running. I was heeled. I came out and this guy, in the summer — clearly a Flatlander — observed that I must be “stupid” to leave the keys there. With the motor engaged. I pulled my shirt aside to reveal my personal Sig. “No big deal,” I said. “We shoot thieves here.” I paused. “You a thief?”

I hate summer. Fall and winter are, quite frankly, my favorite months. Spring isn’t so bad — but for me it heralds the scorching months to come.

Aaaah, fall. For me it means football, the cessation of DST, cooler nights, higher winds, stacking my wood, turning leaves, the purchase of new personal knives, handgun qualification, shotgun qualification, a new blanket on the bed and, perhaps more pointedly, the exchange of my thin summer bedsheet for a quilted poofy comforter.

It also means some new local beers to sample.

An addendum: I signed my wife and I up for a year’s contract with Massage Envy. I figured that we could use the relaxation, the additional sessions. ME is remarkably flexible. If you have an ability to pay. That seems to be a priority now, with me and my wife. Some people are “ucky” with other persons touching them. Good for you. More massages for me.

Today sucked. I work in Custody now. If we can’t even perform the Basics we are doomed to failure. And I posit that failure isn’t more than “just around the corner.”

I still count my blessings:

I have a wife who adores me, and I adore her;

I am proud of the ring on my finger;

We have figured out how to argue, disagree, then make up. Consistently. And to vent.

I live in the most powerful, the most outrageous, the most blessed, the most overbearing, the most civil, the most arrogant nation in the world.

And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

You want to live in Haiti or the Third or Fourth or Fifth World?

You go ahead. Be my damned guest.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s top energy adviser said Friday there is no way Congress will be able to pass a bill on climate change this year.

“That’s not going to happen,” said the adviser, Carol Browner.

Browner made the statement at a conference organized by The Atlantic magazine, just days after Senate Democrats introduced a major bill on climate change. In a video posted on the magazine’s Web site, Browner was asked about the prospects of enacting climate legislation by the time negotiations on a global climate treaty begin in December in Copenhagen.

“Obviously, we’d like to be through the process, but that’s not going to happen,” Browner said. “I think we would all agree the likelihood you would have a bill signed by the president on comprehensive energy by the time we go early in December is not likely.”

Senate Democrats unveiled a bill Wednesday that aims to cut greenhouse gasses by 20 percent by 2020. The House passed a bill in June that calls for a 17 percent emission cut by 2020. The Senate bill includes an economy-wide cap-and-trade system that would require power plants, industrial facilities and refineries to cut carbon dioxide and other climate-changing pollution. While there would be an overall emission cap, polluters would be able to purchase emission allowances to limit reductions. The bill, however, does not lay out how emission allowances would be distributed, a contentious issue left for resolving later.

The fight isn’t over.

It really hasn’t even started yet.