Show Trials

I noticed on Ace, a story about the upcoming investigation into the CIA - headline: "Senate to investigate CIA's actions under Bush". I see they are not investigating the CIA's actions under Clinton, though many of the same people were doing the same things. I also suspect they are not trying to discover who in the CIA leaked sensitive and classified information to the media, thus undermining the fight against muslim terrorists.

I don't know much about the CIA, but after thirty years of simply holding a job, I know a lot about how people in organizations act. I know the lessons I have learned are scalable - the same backstabbing that gets you ahead at McDonald's, gets you ahead at Microsoft, gets you ahead in politics, gets you ahead at the CIA. The difference is simply one of degree.

I know the CIA may always have been, but is certainly now, a political organization - the Church Committee used the crisis of confidence of the 1970's to give politicians in congress more control over intelligence operations. Whether done to make the CIA more accountable to oversight, or to carve out for the legislative branch a slice of power heretofore held by the executive, is irrelevant - the results speak for themselves, the CIA is both player and pawn in the Washington tug of war.

For the last eight years, some in the CIA were brave whistleblowers, exposing the excesses of the evil Bush administration, or they were sleazy double dealers selling their country down the river to curry favor with the leftist establishment - toe-may-to, toe-mah-to. For the last eight years, some in the CIA were dedicated civil servants doing their best under difficult circumstances to protect the nation from those who wanted to do it harm, or they were unquestioning fascist drones mindlessly following the orders of the sinister syndicate who controlled the White House - poe-tay-to, poe-tah-to.

The past doesn't matter, because what is being shilled as an investigation into the abuses of the neocon cabal, is really of course, a purge - the house, senate, and president want to make sure what was done to Bush is not done to them, so anyone who seems to harbor too much loyalty to the previous regime has to go.

There are a couple of things I know from watching innumerable city council, planning commission, and architectural review board show trials ... er, meetings: first, the issues are already decided before the show starts, and second, the first ones in the dock are the erstwhile allies of the new boss - every new boss with a modicum of sense disposes of old friends before going after new enemies. This does not bode well for last year's whistleblowers who are now looking to the new powers-that-be for rewards for services rendered. Any Joe Wilsons or Valerie Plames still working at the CIA should take note.

And finally, just to kill any optimism anyone might have - consider the implications of this snippet from the article:

The inquiry, which could take a year or more to complete, means the CIA will once again be the target of intense congressional scrutiny at a time when it is engaged in two wars and its ongoing pursuit of Al Qaeda.

That's certain to end well. Machiavelli put it best:

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.

Translation: if you are going to have a purge, do it quickly, completely, and if possible, in one night - if you drag it out for a year, expecting your target to wait passively for the ax to fall, you are a fool, or a member of the senate intelligence committee.

What do you do...

when the lesser of two evils turns out to a totalitarian motherfu**er? Please note this bit of bipar***nship* found at The War on Guns.

New republican rebranding slogan: Hey! We can be just as intrusive, statist, and authoritarian as the democrats - plus with us, you get extra stupid sauce!

*it's more obscene than anything in a porn flick - hence the asterisks

I threw up in my mouth a little...

at the headline of this bit of Obama fellatio (Obamellatio?). (Found, as are most of the things which cause my blood pressure to rise, on Lucianne)

In his first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Obama warned that America faces a "day of reckoning" after years of trying to make a fast buck, but said the economic turmoil and ruination offer the chance to right the feckless ways of the past and reinvest in institutions and technologies that will ensure a prosperous future.

Is that what you heard Mr. Allison?

Because that's not what I heard. One of us needs to get their ears checked.

Probably me; I've spent twenty-three years on very loud construction sites - so I don't hear as well as I used to.

Over that time, I worked my way up from six dollar an hour grunt to white (ish) collar licenced professional. I make a buck, but you tell your messiah it isn't a fast or easy one.

I pay my mortgage on time, own two paid for ten year old cars, live within my means, and until things got really slow, put ten percent of my paycheck into a 401K and watched another thirty percent disappear down the bottomless gullet of the government. I had to cut back on the ten, but somehow the thirty keeps getting taken. I guess that's how a Chicago community organizer with a government job and a platinum parachute pension defines feckless.

So, you're all orgasmic that the president is going bring back hard work. My friend, it never left - it's just that you and your tin god wouldn't know it if you saw it.

We heard different things all right. You heard the siren song of hopeychange, I heard a whiny, narcissistic, man-bitch informing me I am nothing but a pocket to be picked so he'll have money enough to buy the vote of every bloated, tax-leeching four flusher in the nation, and I damn well better keep working because they don't come cheap.

You say road to recovery; I say road to serfdom - time will tell.

Empty Green Promises

You knew it was so much fairy dust and unicorn farts, and I knew it, but apparently there are a lot of people out there who actually believed there were millions of jobs to be had in the forthcoming green revolution.

Not just any jobs either, but high paying, white shirted, clipboard carrying jobs. The kind of job a man... er woman... er person of diversityness can be proud of. Jobs requiring the monitoring of flashing lights while hovering about around machines that go "beep" in the sterile, renewable, non-polluting brave, green, science-fiction-ey new world.

The fiction part they got right.

How could anyone believe this crap in the first place?

My guess is many people have grown up with teachers, parents, and authority figures of all sorts telling them their dreams are not only obtainable, but that the world owes them the realization of those dreams. Further, they have been convinced that should their dreams not be delivered in a timely manner, it is not because they are lazy, or stupid, or unlucky, or those dreams were unrealistic, but the result of a conspiracy to cheat them of what is rightfully theirs.

I can understand how people who grew up never finding out there is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy can end up in a place where political fantasies seem real, but my question is, "In what universe does your womyns studies-underwater basket weaving degree, belief that stones have souls and conviction that mathematics is a tool of patriarchal oppression suit you to being anything but the floor mopper for the green, glorious, high tech industries run by all those Indian, Chinese, and Korean kids who have been grinding down on calculus, science, and engineering since grade school?"

For The Record

One of them is a remorseless hunter, seeking prey without pity or conscience - a soulless monster operating on the most basic instinctual level - and the other is just a dinosaur.

Spine Chilling

Story in the Atlantic via Lucianne about the U.S. Air Force's last Ace.

Colonel Rodriguez scored one of the few air to air kills in the first Gulf War and later a special forces team found the wreck and extracted the last few frames of video from the Iraqi pilot's HUD. The last frame shows an AIM-7 air to air missile about to hit the cockpit.

Missile to the face - the poor guy never knew what hit him.

A stimulus Now

Commenter UTDave responding to this post:

Give me a break. No matter what your political persuasion is, I find it a stretch that a spending bill means the end of our country. The previous administration already spent more than this on the bank bailouts, not to mention the Iraq war. I agree this spending won't solve our problems, but I have to laugh at the drama queens on the right. We'll see I guess.

And again on this post:

It seems as though you're upset with at least the last 100 years of US govt policy. There was a constitutional amendment to create the income tax, which has always been a tax that fell mostly on the wealthy. (Originally it was a tax only on the wealthy). So the tax system is by definition constitutional, since it's in the constitution. I think our government has had the power to raise money and carry a debt more or less since the beginning of the country. You're very against Obama and this spending bill, but I think you should argue it on the merits rather than saying that the government has suddenly run amok, when there is really nothing fundamentally new here. Previous administrations for at least the last century have been doing the same thing.

Dave is making a couple of arguments: First, that a spending bill isn't the end of the world - we managed to survive the higher spending of the Bush years; we will survive this.

Here he makes a couple of mistakes. First, about the amount of spending over the last eight years - below is a graph from the Wall Street Journal posted by Greg Mankiw showing the nation's debt related to the GDP since 1980:


Granted, the last eight years haven't been great, but the stimulus debt for this year alone (and remember, the spending is projected for several more years) dives well into uncharted territory.

Dave's next error is blaming "the administration" when it is congress that controls the money. The president may ask, demand, beg, or cajole, but he doesn't get a penny unless the legislature gives it to him. And for the last two years, that would have been a democratic legislature keeping the money faucets open full blast.

And that money kept flowing because congress had no incentive to shut it off. Dave mentions the war in Iraq, but overlooks additional hundreds of billions spent on pork-filled agriculture, transportation, and prescription drug plans - all written in the congress not the White House.

Therefore, a more accurate, if less emotionally satisfying, way of phrasing it would be, "For the last eight years, the congress, whether controlled by democrats or republicans, and with the approval of the president spent the hell out of the economy."

The best thing however, about Dave's Tu Quoque argument is I can give the entire thing away and agree completely - you got me - George Bush used his mind control powers to subvert the constitution and trick the congress into giving him the keys to the treasury, then proceeded to bankrupt the nation playing high stakes Texas Hold'em with Vladimir Putin.

But it still leaves the question of how spending another trillion dollars we don't have is going fix things.

Dave next claims the stimulus won't be the end of the country - apparently because that's just what us right wing drama queens say will happen. I'm not sure about the connection here, but apparently it is some variation on the Cassandra theme where the truth of the message is contingent on the messenger.

Nonetheless, I agree - it doesn't mean the end of the country; it means the end of the Republic - different thing.

A republic can survive only so long as there is a clear line between the government sphere and the private one - the more defined that line the better, and as that line is erased, so also, is individual liberty.

To illustrate, here is another graph, this time from Fabius Maximus:


Every data point on that red line represents someone whose livelihood, whose mortgage payment, grocery bill, and car payment is provided by taxes. Add to that welfare, social security recipients, and the beneficiaries of all other federal largess and ask yourself what freedom can there be when so many are demanding the legislature pick your pocket to provide them their daily bread?

But there is more, because hidden within the thousand pages of stimulus legislation are the seeds of new and expanded bureaucracies - more and more people added to the payroll who create no wealth yet will require pay, and vacation, and medical insurance, and pensions - all on your dime.

And when it comes time for your congressman to troll for votes, are you so sure he won't find it easier to take more of what is yours and give it to them in return for those votes?

He won't if he is a man of the highest moral and intellectual caliber - Washington is just full of those types... right?

Finally Dave argues, that all reservations aside, the government is acting with its constitutional scope, so whatever we think is academic, because the rules say the government can do what its doing. That worked so well for Dred Scott didn't it?

Funny thing that constitution - it has a letter and a spirit, and depending where you are standing and which way the wind is blowing, you are an advocate of one or the other.

Schools in the south still segregated? Just send in the troops, and if the constitution doesn't explicitly say you can, It certainly implies it - so says the supreme court. Abortion, death penalty abolished and reinstated, Miranda warning... same with all of those. And all were accepted because the people generally agreed that in order for this to be the country they wanted, those things had to be.

But can you think of any means short of violence whereby they could have been imposed had the vast majority been adamantly opposed? In the end, what is constitutional is not what the congress passes, or the supreme court decides, but what the citizens will accept.

The usual recourse when the government has pushed too far beyond what the people will accept is to vote the bums out. The problem with the stimulus package is many of its provisions exist specifically to insulate the government from that possibility.

If you can vote every November, you have a democracy, but if the government is immune to fundamental changes because too many are dependent upon it for sustenance to allow that change, you no longer have a republic.

Dear Anonymous

Normally I don't do a lot of replies to comments, but this post prompted anonymous to comment:

I love that the republicans are so quick to resort to treason when things don't go their way.

So anon, I've got a couple of questions for you.

Was it treason when the New York Times to disclosed the agreements between the United States Government and the corporation running the SWIFT program, thereby alerting terrorist groups there finances were being watched?

When Sean Penn, a private citizen to meet with Saddam Hussein the head of state of a country which was an avowed enemy of the United States, was that treason?

When protesters attempted to block the port of Tacoma to keep equipment from reach United States military personnel engaged in combat operations... treason?

It's alright if you argue that none of those cases were treason, that every American citizen is a free and sovereign individual, and has a God-given right to stand up to what they see as a tyrannical government - I would agree with you.

Anonymous, you are aware that above individual liberty exists because the men who wrote the constitution didn't just cobble it together out of scraps found in history books. They all agreed on certain bedrock principles - principles which were inspired, radical, and almost untried in all the bloody history of the world. They could could have played it safe - created a king, and a peerage, and a parliament like every other nation of the time, yet chose instead to sail the new nation into uncharted waters.

The most radical of their ideas was the concept of enumerated powers - unless an act was on the list of things the constitution said could be done, the government could not do it. If everyone in the country wanted something not otherwise allowed, they would have to amend the constitution to allow it, otherwise it was not within the power of the government to do.

No one had tried it before, and really, no one has tried it since. Yes they compromised on the evil of slavery, near fatally as it turns out, but that doesn't change the fact the founders of the United States began by forcing the people to be free. They said right from the start, "No king, no overlord, no great leader, no emperor, this government is your servant and is limited to defending the borders, treating with other governments, and collecting a few tariffs to sustain itself - other than that, you are on your own - succeed or fail; you are on your own."

A couple more questions then:

What enumerated power gives the congress of the United States the authority to mortgage my future to the tune of a trillion dollars?

What enumerated power gives the congress of the United States the authority to enforce debt obligations on generations not yet born who cannot possibly have agreed to them?

What enumerated power gives the congress of the United States the authority to hold sway over the commercial life of the nation by taking money from all of us and distributing it those they deem worthy, and withholding it from those not do deemed?

And finally, anonymous, even if you are so clever as to unravel the skein of sophistry, double talk, and back room dealing which led to here, and then place even a thin gloss of constitutionality over this execrable mess, do you believe Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, et.al., would look upon this law, this government for that matter, and be proud to claim it as a descendant of their work?

I await your reply.


Treasonously yours etc.

Mike

Blogroll Additions

The talented Jana of Speak, Dog! Speak! actually reads my ravings (its a little embarrassing like being caught picking your nose), then to top it off, she comments. Please stop reading this, and go over there.

But don't forget to come back for your daily dose of spittle-flecked rantiness.

Update: People read this damn thing - how curious! Please also welcome the dashing and erudite Mark Alger prop. Baby Troll Blog and the estimable Earl owner /operator of Just The Library Keeper my apologies for not doing this sooner, I did not intend to slight, I'm just a lazy and lackadaisical housekeeper.

Well, they did it.

Friday the thirteenth - appropriate. Mark the tombstone that this was the day the United States officially fell from being a republic, into a feudal oligarchy. This was the day the final frayed chords snapped, and the dream of limited government - long fading - was finally extinguished.

Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?

I. Do. Not. Consent.

I do not consent to being a serf tending the land of a lord to pay off a feudal obligation I did not agree to.

I do not consent to having one third and more of the wealth I earn taken from me and distributed to those who hold me and my beliefs in contempt.

I do not consent to live under a system where wealth and power are distributed based on proximity to, and support of, the ruling party.

I do not consent to being told what liberties I may or may not have because a glib and empty man convinced 51 percent of the populace to deliver my birthright and freedom to him in return for his glib and empty promise of security.

And I do not consent to having the fruit of my labor stripped from me and distributed to the ignorant and lazy so they may escape the consequences of their own bad choices.

I do not expect liberty has gone forever, and I hope that when next a free people charter themselves a government, they look back on this day and learn from our mistakes.

News From The Cold

One of the blogs I check frequently it "In From The Cold" whoever writes it knows things I want to know, and the information is always appreciated.

Recently, the proprietors posted about a Time magazine article profiling the last draftee still on active duty in the U.S. military - Army Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger. I remember reading the article and being amazed and humbled by the man's story.

But after reading the post about the article, I feel nothing but contempt for Time, and the rest of the paleo-media. Especially this part:

Also missing from the Time account is Mellinger's standing offer to members of the press corps. During his long tour in Iraq, the CSM repeatedly invited journalists to get out of Baghdad and ride with him, to get a better feel for conditions in the country and the work being done by U.S. troops. Only one journalist took Mellinger up on the offer, a guy named Michael Yon.

After reading that, I feel no sympathy, for media types whose newspaper jobs, t.v. gigs, and magazine assignments are disappearing. All I can say is I am glad hard times have come to you because you are scum, and you work for scum, and I hope the rest of your lives consist of nothing but hardship and travail.

WHAT!!!

Normally, I read the news and spend a lot of time shaking my head at the folly of it all. I know I am stupid about some things - everyone is. But I guess knowing that, at least gives me a leg up on those who don't.

I try not to adopt the facade of world-weary cynicism common to teenagers, Europeans, politicians, and the rest of the mentally immature. Sometimes however, I run across items of such monumental stupidity, paleo-ignorance, bedrock knuckle-headedness that I am left gasping.

Our hairy-assed ancestors came in two flavors, those who felt large carnivores should be poked, and provoked, and those who felt they should be avoided. The former did not live to reproduce, while the latter did. Face it, "cave bear tag" is not a pastime for those who want to have kids.

Apparently however, some of them were frozen in ice before the consequences of their idiotery (Hey, I made a word!) were suffered. The are called democrats, and many of them ended up in the New York general assembly.

From Greg Mankiw, Harvard Economist and someone who should be in charge of things, comes the following:

Assembly Passes Rent-Regulation Revisions Opposed by Landlords

Maybe, "Assembly Passes Rent-Regulation Revisions That Will Bankrupt Building Owners; Leave Hundreds Of Vacant, Deteriorating Structures Filled With Vermin And Crazy People; Create A Black Market In Housing; Stimulate Political Corruption; And Help To Further Wreck The Economy" was too long.

Or maybe in bizarro New York Times Land, forcing someone to charge less than the market rate for their products is considered a good incentive to get them to produce more. You, know, the "You're losing money on every sale, but you'll make it up in volume" theory.

According to the story anyway, that's seems to be the idea:

Democrats in Albany cheered what they said was a step toward making living in New York more affordable for working families. Then adjourned to cover themselves in Alpo and go wrestle the tigers at the Albany Zoo.*

*That last sentence might have been a little garbled - I was dizzy from banging my head on my desk.

I try not to lose hope, but sometimes it is hard.

Stiuulus package IV

Okay, just about everybody who isn’t bound by an oath of fealty to the democratic party knows the stimulus won’t do any good. But over at Powerline, they are asking if, even aside from the wasting of a trillion dollars or so, and burdening future generations with today’s economic idiocy, it will do actual harm. I suspect the question is rhetorical, because they probably know the answer already, but in case they really are perplexed about it -- hell yes it’s going to hurt the country now, and in the near and long term.

Ignoring the inflation resulting from the printing of mountains of new money, aside from financially strengthening the most regressive, doctrinaire, and thuggish democrat special interest groups, leaving out the moral destruction of forcing a free people to become vassals of the state in order to feed their families, the true damage of this massive transfer of treasure from private hands to the public coffers, will be the sheer destruction of wealth it represents. It is as though every home, car, computer, or book which might otherwise have been purchased, were thrown into a fire and burned. Worse – at least if they were placed on a pyre and set alight, we could warm ourselves at the flames. This way all those goods and services, and the jobs, paychecks, and creative human potential they represent, become phantoms – things which might have been, but never were.

Wealth is destroyed because Marxists, leftists, liberals, democratic politicians, and other childlike beings all love the labor theory of value. It’s easy on the brain, forms the basis of most of the courses they took in college, it's theoretically tidy, and the fact that it is completely wrong and generally leads to totalitarianism is no deterrent. Marx believed there was this stuff called raw material, and this stuff called labor. If the two were combined, iron ore became ships, wood became furniture, and cows became steak. The democratic party believes we have labor to spare, and raw materials lying around unused, and all that is necessary, is to take money from people in the form of taxes (and trust me, inflation is a form of taxation), give it to workers in the form of wages, and turn them loose to build roads, ships, and bridges – and instant recovery.

Let’s do a thought experiment: On my drive home today, I saw some guys digging a trench to install sewers. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come over to your place, dig a hole in your backyard, dump a bunch of pipe into it, and send you a bill. I have performed exactly the same tasks as the people I saw on the way home – have I created any wealth?

No fair you say. There has to be context – a third factor must be involved. The material and labor must come together at the right time and place.

Right. How about this, there are shipyards in New England that are underutilized. Give me all your money and I will give it to the workers there to build ships. Barks, brigs, clippers, schooners, cogs, and caravels, we will build thousands of them, providing good paying long term jobs to the men who build the boats. Hell we will build enough boats so, end to end; they will let us walk to Europe. Better? The nice tax collectors will be by in the morning to pick up your share.

Look, you say, no one wants that many boats. It doesn’t do any good building stuff nobody wants. You have to spend the money on things people want.

Okay then, I want a Corvette, a red one with leather interior (as if there was any other kind). And building high-end sports cars is just the kind of skilled labor job we are promoting – pony up.

Not a chance you reply, If you are footing the bill, it has to go for something you want.

Then why can’t you and I just agree to an exchange – I’ll give you something you want in return you give me something I want, and we’ll leave the government out of it. We appear to have left the labor theory back at the boatyard.

It’s funny, tell some leftwit gender is a social construct, and whatever type of plumbing you have results from the secret plots of the patriarchy, and he will take it as gospel. Tell him words mean the opposite of what they say, and the declaration of independence was really a coded call for slavery, and you will receive instant agreement. Saying the personal is the political is to speak an indisputable truth. Every one of history's huge slobbering abstractions is swallowed whole without thought, but tell the poor fool that all wealth results from the voluntary movement of things from where they valued less to where they are valued more, and he will give a look like a chimp that has just been handed a bowl of wax fruit.

The corollary is also true. Wealth is destroyed when things are moved from where they are valued more to where they are valued less. And our new aristocracy is about to involuntarily move an unfathomable amount of money from our wallets, where we value it highly, and give it to their friends and supporters who don’t think enough of it to even count it before they spend it.

Be careful what you wish for

From Hot Air.

Peter Beinart thinks congress should hold us down and force the crap sandwich down our throats.

Hmmm... where have I run across that theme before?


British cartoon depicting the fate of Boston customs officer John Malcomb, who was tarred and feathered and forced to drink tea, 1774

The check is in the mail...

... I'll respect you in the morning... and the newest biggest lie in the world (via Lucianne)

Biden to Iran: US will talk, but is ready to act

Uh Joe, if you can't convince a lazy, overweight surveyor in Ohio, who really wants it to be true, do you really think you're going to convince the frothing lunatics who run Iran?

Maybe we can get his name to be no.1 on Google

I see Uncle has linked to a story about some alleged authoritarian douchebag's attempt to change libel laws to include more oversight of blogs.

For the record, I do not live anywhere near State Senator Steve Gross' district, so I cannot say with certainty that he does not have frequent carnal knowledge of dead farm animals.

If every blogger does a post assuring the world of something we cannot possibly know about Senator Gross. I'm certain the good politician would be overjoyed at the attention.

How to put this delicately.....

John Kerry can go sodomize himself with a chainsaw.

Stimulus Package III

The camera fades in: We behold the steerage section of a great Transatlantic liner.

Outside a storm rages, the howling winds and towering waves toss the ship about as though it were a toy in a tub. Mothers, their faces rigid in terror, clutch crying babes tighter to their breasts as the frigid seawater rises around them. With each pitch and roll of the foundering vessel, suitcases, bedrolls, and stuffed animals slosh back and forth across the flooding deck. Somewhere, hidden from view in the shadowed recesses of the compartment, a voice, high pitched and quavering on the edge of panic, repeats over and over a prayer for deliverance.

Suddenly, a shaft of light falls from above as the hatch separating the poorest passengers from the more refined sections of the ship opens - revealing First Officer Nancy.

“Don’t worry folks,” she calls down in her best imitation of a command voice, “Captain Obama, Executive Officer Harry, and I, have a plan to save us.”

At the mere mention of the captain’s name the frightened men below stand taller, as though a tingle of some sort had just run up their legs, and the women sigh, many unconsciously adjusting their hair.

Captain Obama! How handsome he is, how calm and charismatic. True, he has never commanded so much as a row boat, and a quick jaunt on Lake Michigan in Tony Rezko’s yacht is the total of his seagoing experience, but just to behold the man, standing trim in his uniform, his eyes twinkling and his smile bringing light to a dreary world is to have confidence in his abilities.

First Officer Nancy’s voice interrupts the reverie of the huddled masses in the dim bowels of the great ship, “The problem is, were taking on too much water and if we don’t find a way to get rid of it, we’re going to the bottom like a stone.”

At the mention of sinking, fear returns to the faces of the reeking mass of waterlogged humanity.

“Get a grip on yourselves,” continues the first officer, “Like I said, we have a plan. What we’re going to do is knock a huge hole in the bottom of the ship – back over there somewhere.” First Officer Nancy gestures vaguely toward the shadows beyond the reach of the few working lights in the steerage hold and continues, “That should let the water start to run out.”

“A plan, a plan, Captain Obama has a plan.” The grateful wretches began whispering among themselves.

“But wait,” replies the smiling first officer, “Ours is a long term plan, so there’s a next step - after we knock a big hole in the bottom of the ship, were going to steer for the big rocks off the coast which should provide a soft landing, so the Union Leaders, Environmentalists, and Movie Stars in first class can walk ashore without getting their feet wet. Isn’t that great!”

With that, First Officer Nancy slams and bolts the hatch sealing the steerage passengers in their iron tomb to await whatever fate has in store.

Walking away, she can hear their pathetic cries that the plan will leave them to die horribly.

“Maybe you didn’t understand,” she murmurs under her breath, “I said we had a plan to save us.”

Stimulus Package II

I was looking for a hook on which to hang the next part of my post, and behold it is provided to by none other than the president himself - hope and change indeed.

To its credit, the Washington Post, left the comments section open, but rather than have my reply lost among thousands of similar missives, I shall post it here to be lost among millions of similar blogs.

I read the president’s letter in stunned disbelief. He can’t be this dumb, can he? He doesn’t really believe this crap – no one could. The Russians never took the fullest advantage of Obama’s spiritual mentor, Jimmy Carter, because the culture of the politburo was such that the dumb ones died young, leaving only the most cunning predators to run the show, and they were constitutionally incapable of believing Carter was as stupid as he seemed. They felt his clueless demeanor must have been a mask for deviousness of such subtlety that even they could not fathom its depths.

Therein lies a historical axiom for those so inclined: Both geniuses and idiots overestimate the intelligence of idiots.

It must be the same with Obama’s stimulus - a trillion dollar crap sandwich so obviously doomed to failure you’d need a PHD in political science not to see it. It must be a deep conspiracy to sink the country into socialism by wrecking the economy and making a once free people dependent on government handouts – there can be no other explanation.

But what if there is? What if the seat warmers in D.C. are simply bloated tax leeches sitting around whining, “The plan has to work, if it doesn’t, I’ll have to get a job! Hey, push that button, maybe that will get things started!"

The theory gains some merit based on the president’s prescription of what is required:

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Uh, Mr. President … Americans with over room temperature IQ's know that actions from Washington are the primary cause of the urgency they feel in their daily lives - and swiftness, boldness, and wisdom – from you guys? You're kidding, right?

Could it be that simple? Does out national leadership consist of a bunch of Peter Principled numbskulls willing to sell the whole thing down the toilet because if they admit they haven't the faintest clue about what to do, they won’t get to stay in Wonderland-On-The-Potomac playing grabass with the interns?

I’m feeling a little queasy.

Stimulus Package I

I can’t help it; it sounds pornographic. I suppose that's because every time the phrase comes up I automatically say to myself, “Oh boy are we gonna get screwed.”

It won’t work- a few moments with any economics text will assure you of that. So why are we doing it?

Let’s be honest here - we are doing it, not congress, not the president, not the government – us. We the people are going to pick our own pocket, then pay our masters in Washington to give us our own money back – after they take their cut.

And we’re not just letting it happen; most of us are cheering for it to happen, hoping, pleading, and begging that it be done. There are a lot of people who know just how big a monstrosity this thing is, yet when they went to the polls last November, there was no ballot choice for them. Neither major party candidate offered any indication they were possessed of the political will to go against the tide of populist entitlement. And no, this is not some “We are all responsible for the genocide in Rwanda” collective guilt trip. It is just a simple statement of fact: if you are among the hundred million or so voters who cast a ballot for a major party candidate last election, you, and I for that matter, voted for the raping of the American economy, and with it American liberty.

The dismal failure of political will on the part of the elected, is matched by an equal failure of civic will on the part of the voters. We, and the fact of the existence of the two nonentities we accepted as candidates on the most recent ballot stands as proof, are now as convinced that the government is a cause of, rather than a result of good, as any medieval serf was of his king. We have allowed ourselves to become a democracy rather than a republic. And if you have to ask what is so bad about that, there’s no help for you.