Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

Another Storm in a Tea Cup, Apparently

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Ilana Mercer, Media, Private Property, Regulation

This blog title replicates one written in 12.19.06. The repetitiveness reflects the lack of change in the media status of the people of the “provinces.” Thanks for asking, Robert, we are okay, having weathered a major ice storm that hit the Pacific Northwest. But we were without power for close to three days.

FoxNew reported only yesterday that “250,000 electric customers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia were without power Friday because of a winter storm that coated much of Washington state in ice, swelled Oregon rivers and brought the expectation of more flooding in both states with warmer temperatures and rain.”

Scratch that: Power went out on Thursday morning. By nighttime, the temperature inside my home had plunged to 52 degrees. Even though we have a generator (purchased after the 2006, first “Storm in a Tea Cup”), we were caught with practically no fuel, having listened—and heeded—the weather reports. No warnings were issued. If anything, our weather experts predicted a big thaw come Thursday.

However, cold air and an arctic north wind saw temperatures drop into the 20s across much of the region. Fluffy snow (20cm, at least), on which I had jogged happily a day before, was soon covered in a thick sheet of ice. All through the night we listened as clumps of the stuff fell from the giant ceder trees onto the house. Fortunately we had had the trees windsailed, so they seemed stable, but the weight of the ice saw big branches snap off like twigs.

We had been thinking of having a few trees felled, for safety. But, as you know, your property is not your own, and each such consideration demands a letter from an arborist and a hefty shakedown “baksheesh,” paid to the local goons at the municipality. Such regulation is probably responsible for loss of life.

Indeed, sadly, a falling tree killed an unknown neighbor, RIP: “The tree fell on a person backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a shed this morning near Issaquah, said King County said King County sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West.”

This post reflects upon the stasis among the statists and media sycophants. And since any oscillation in the form of a learning curve is absent from the system called the state, local and federal, I will repeat the questions I posed after the 2006 storm in the Pacific Northwest:

Utilities are only nominally private and are heavily regulated. How have regulations affected their response times and, most crucially, the maintenance of the power grid?

The grid and power lines suffered mostly tree damage. In this part of the world, the trees everywhere are intertwined with the cable. Why? Why isn’t a wide tree-free swath maintained around these vital structures? Why are trees not chopped back?

I suspect the explanation lies in the self-defeating dementia of tree fetishists, and “Watermelon” legislation — green on the outside; red on the inside. However, as usual, the “Watermelon” worldview creates more havoc than it prevents. Because of wood fires, the usually pristine air in our part of the world resembles the air above the shanty town of Soweto. The resources and energy spent–and the lives lost–because of this mess are many times the cost or worth of a few thousand trees.

On a less personal note, this week’s WND column was an especially hot one, but there is no point in posting it to the blog now. I will, rather, post the column once it goes up on RT. My “paleolibertarian” column now features on the Russia Today broadcaster’s website. I ask all my BAB readers to “Recommend/Like” the RT column, each week, and retweet it. RT deserves your support for its support and interest in ideas other banal minds won’t touch, don’t you think?

And on a funny note: It was a struggle to keep our African parrots warm, but they settled into the routine. When T. Cup awoke this morning to warm, normal house temperatures and light levels, he demanded happily, in his old cute voice: “yummy-yummy.” And then he quickly comforted himself, “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

A recent image of T. Cup and his “mommy” is on the gallery. To view TC, wait for the page to upload all the images.

UPDATE II: Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2? (‘Nut Gingrich’)

Elections, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, Socialism, The State, War, Welfare

The excerpt is from “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” now on WND.COM:

“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day?

In an effort to better conjure Roosevelt, the shameless Barack Obama had flown to Osawatomie in Kansas, where, in 1910, Teddy delivered his “New Nationalism Address.” So radical was the Roosevelt political program that its author was condemned as “‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters.”

On the day of this staged affair—in eerie synchronicity—Newt Gingrich, whose favorability among Republican “caucus goers” is at 33 percent and rising, described himself to broadcaster Glenn Beck as “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.”

Back in the day, “the Eastern United States denounced [Roosevelt] as a ‘communist agitator.’” This was “the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President,” writes Robert S. La Forte in The Kansas Historical Quarterly:

“[Roosevelt’s] concepts of the extent to which a powerful federal government could regulate and use private property in the interest of the whole and his declarations about labor … were nothing short of revolutionary.”

As La Forte chronicles, “Roosevelt had no interest in retaining the ideals of Jeffersonian ‘state’s right’ demagogues, as he called them. He was interested in a Hamiltonian concept of power which he described as the ‘New Nationalism.’”

Roosevelt’s speech, seconded White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Really set the course for the 20th century.” Yet to listen to the president in Kansas, a vote for “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican” is a vote for a Mad-Max dystopia, where “everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Don’t look for a “square deal” from the characters on the other side of the aisle. “We want to avoid becoming a welfare state like the European states” is the stock phrase we get from GOP pointy heads. Truth is not their stock-in-trade. As they tell it, America has a long way to go before it turns as Rooseveltian as Europe. …”

The complete column is “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” Read it now on WND.COM.

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STAIRWAY PRESS HAS LAUNCHED A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY AND FACEBOOK EVENT FOR MY BOOK, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Invitation have gone out from The Cannibal’s Facebook Fan page. (“Like” The Cannibal when you pop by.) On offer is Mercer merchandise galore. Every fifth buyer of Into the Cannibal’s Pot will receive a free copy of my libertarian manifesto Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, together with a CD of the progressive rock guitar virtuoso and composer Sean Mercer.

Order NOW and The Publisher will endeavor to deliver in time for Christmas.

And do please “Like” Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

UPDATE I (Dec. 8): Nut Gingrich is what a a LRC.COM blogger has christened You Know Who, pointing out Nut’s support for “two governments in the United States: one that follows the Bill of Rights and one that doesn’t (for our “security,” of course).” MORE.

UPDATE II: More explosive details about “Newt’s grand schemes for a small, unintrusive federal government”: “NEWT PRESENTS A FRESH NEW VIRTUAL FACE” by Ann Coulter.

Free Mercer Merchandise

Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Literature, Music, South-Africa

STAIRWAY PRESS HAS LAUNCHED A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY AND FACEBOOK EVENT FOR MY BOOK, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Invitation have gone out from The Cannibal’s Facebook Fan page. (“Like” The Cannibal when you pop by.)

On offer is Mercer merchandise galore. Every fifth buyer of Into the Cannibal’s Pot will receive a free copy of my libertarian manifesto Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, together with a CD of the progressive rock guitar virtuoso and composer Sean Mercer.

Order NOW and The Publisher will endeavor to deliver in time for Christmas.