Hanna finds fighting for your freedom "tiresome"

US Army Rangers atop Pointe Du Hoc, June 6, 1944

Richard Hanna, US Representative for New York's 24th District, has a pretty cushy deal going.  He works indoors, travels at taxpayer expense, and pulls down $174,000 of the taxpayer's money annually.  Yet, when it comes to repealing Oabamcare, the Republican  from Barneveld finds the task a hassle.

For the second time in the past year and a half, and for the 33rd time overall, the House has voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act.

It’s likely to be dead in the water when it reaches the Democratic-led Senate, and Local Congressman Richard Hanna says it’s become tiresome to continually have the repeal brought to the floor.

Hey, Richard, you know what was really tiresome?  Climbing the sheer cliff at Pointe Du Hoc under constant, deadly enemy fire, knocking out those gun positions, and taking the surviving gunners prisoner.  That would really wear a guy out, but it had to be done to protect our liberty.  Stop your whining, Dick.

Right Time of the Night

Jennifer Warnes on "The Midnight Special," 1977.

A buy and a bargain

This mansion, former state-provided home to superintendents of the Auburn state prison, was auctioned off today for only $132K.  Click this link and be amazed by photos, especially of the interior!

Trusting your future to Kirsten Gillibrand?

Pals Sharpton and Gillibrand

With the US facing an existential crisis that will make World War II seem like a speed bump, lets' check up on what New York's junior US Senator, the hot Kirsten Gillibrand, has been doing to save our nation.

 First, helping out our masses of unemployed workers.

To encourage investors, a complete exclusion on all capital gains is offered if you hold the stock of a company with under $50 million in gross assets for five years. There is also a provision that allows small businesses to write off up to $500,000 in tangible property, and all in one year, rather than over the lifetime of the equipment.

Yeah, that should help.  Why not a complete exclusion on all capital gains taxes for everybody, period?

Then of course, there's always shrub willow.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., toured Eileen Yager’s Dunlap Road farm in Richland Thursday afternoon, announcing support for a $4.3 million federal grant to encourage New York farmers to grow shrub willows as a renewable energy source.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has earmarked more than $4 million under the USDA Biomass Crop Assistance Program to pay farmers to plant up to 3,500 acres of willow in 2013 and 2014. Land preparation will start this year.

Shrub willow?  Kirsten Gillibrand made big bucks short selling sub prime mortgage companies after she and her pal Andy Cuomo at Bill Clinton's HUD forced banks to make the bad loans.  Now she's spending four million of your hard earned tax dollars to plant weeds. 

If we were advising Wendy Long, we'd suggested she start explaining who Kirsten Gillibrand really is.

The Manchurian Orator

53 seconds that should end a presidency.

Twin Mustang

While waiting for Mrs. South to finish her shopping in a giant craft supplies store, we killed a little time in the surprisingly well-stocked plastic model kit department.  It was there that we discovered the North American F-82 "Twin Mustang."  The fighter plane looks like two P-51 Mustangs connected at the waist, but is actually a more-or-less original post-WW II design.

Fortunately, a real life example of the aircraft is undergoing a complete restoration.

Truth be told, the North American F-82 wasn't just two mated Mustangs. Most of us who have never gotten our hands greasy on one have assumed the very-long-range postwar twin was simply two P-51 fuselages riveted to a wing center section and horizontal stabilizer. "We've found that there are very few parts common to the World War II Mustang series," says restoration pro Tom Reilly of Douglas, Ga., who has spent three years totally rebuilding the rarest Twin Mustang to survive—the number-two XP-82 prototype—and who estimates he still has a year and a half to go before his airplane flies.

And fly it will, for Reilly is famous among warbirders for putting back into the air projects ranging from Stearmans to B-24s that had been consigned to scrapheaps. Indeed, Reilly's XP-82 came largely from two junkyards—one outside Fair­banks, Alaska, and the other from late Ohioan Walter Soplata's famous back-lot salvage yard of rare warbirds.

More Twin Mustang info here.

Independence Day

John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776"

Enjoy the Fourth in the Finger Lakes!