Jumping For Joy

Hey! The economy grew at a blistering 3.5% last quarter. Pop the corks kids 'cuz were in high cotton. What ... are you just sitting there? Get up offyerbutt and go out and spend your windfall.

But, before you do, let's try a little thought experiment.

Suppose you had two thousand dollars in the bank. "Yay," you say, "I've got two large to cover my expenses until next payday."

Now suppose some scoundrel broke in and swiped a thousand of your dollars. "Boo-hoo-hoo," you say, "half my savings have just disappeared."

Further suppose your spouse went out and charged a hundred dollars worth of clothes on the old MasterCard, went directly to the pawn shop, resold them for fifty, and deposited that money in the bank giving you now a thousand and fifty smackers.

Would you...

A. Dance about yelling, "Woot, woot, my personal economy grew at a rate of five percent, I'll make up for that stolen dough in no time!"

or...

B. Be very sad because, not only are you out a thousand dollars, you are also an additional hundred dollars (at 20% interest) in the hole and don't even have any new clothes to wear to bankruptcy court.

I do not know which terrifies me more, the thought that our overlords think we are stupid enough to believe a single quarter of borrowed-money-fueled GDP increase is good news, or that they might believe it themselves.

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.

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.

Bernie Madoff is a piker

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a joyous Ida May Fuller day. Thanks to The New Editor for the hint.

A twenty two thousand return on a twenty dollar investment? Not even old Ponzi himself would have tried anything so brazen.

We are so screwed.

Interesting Times

So you’ve paid off the credit cards and torn them up. You’re driving a ten year old car that gets thirty mpg, and you change the oil and do the maintenance yourself. The only real debt you have is a mortgage, and you can afford that because you get your butt out of bed every day and go to work.

You selfish bastard – don’t you know there are people out there with no visible means of support and half million dollar mortgages who are going to lose their homes – you owe them. There are car companies out there who have been forced to make cars no one wants and to employ union guys who have sweetheart deals with the government – you owe them. There are public employee unions whose platinum parachute pensions are going down the toilet because their agreements with the politicians they supported basically came down to, “Don’t worry, we’ll make the taxpayers cover the difference.” You owe them. Them and every other tax-sucking parasite with a lobbyist and a political action committee.

And you're going to pay too. The legislature is going to get all bi-partisan you see. I read it in the Washington Post - Pelosi has streamlined the rules so none of that pesky debate can get in the way of saving your hide. Nationalize the banks – check! Healthcare? We are the government and we’ll just pass a law against being sick. Auto industry? Hey those new green, run-on-fairy-dust cars aren’t going to build themselves. Your 401K? What do you mean your 401K? You don’t want grandma to have to eat cat food now… do you? Fork it over. Global warming? Real or scam? Whothehellcares! We’re going to save you from that too. A trillion bucks to have people dig holes and fill them back in? That’s what we call infrastructure baby.

What, you don’t want any of the things we’re buying you? Who died and left you in charge? Just pay the bill and shut up.

Over on the senate side, Chris Dodd is making statesmanlike noises:

"There's something transformational happening here," … "It's the kind of year historians will write about. . . . Can this institution deal with it?"

For the last two years, Dodd and his ilk have been treating the American economy the same way someone with Munchausen by Proxy treats their kids, so he should take a moment to consider whether that historian is going to be more Doris Kearns Goodwin or Bruce Catton.

It's The Guns

The next time some slimeball politician spews the old "more guns leads to more crime" canard, send the S.O.B. a copy of this story out of Albany, New York and found at Of Arms and the Law.

Short version: Woman accuses the police of misconduct, and in order to prove her wrong, and charge her with the misdemeanor of filing a false statement, the prosecutor offers a violent felon a plea deal to reduce his 15 year armed robbery sentence to 3 years if he will testify against her.

In 4 years when the now free felon kills, or beats, or rapes someone, at least the victim's family can take comfort in the fact that the cops drawing the chalk outline around the body have untarnished reputations.

More guns don't lead to more crime; giving light sentences to violent felons for selfish reasons leads to more crime.

P.S. I wonder if they would offer the same deal to a guy to testify against the police should the situation warrant it.

When The History...

of the collapse of the repuplican party is written, the failure of the leadership to take this man into a dark corner of the Capitol and beat him with a sack of oranges until he bled out of his ears will be listed as a major cause.

Gavin Newsom Is...

A lying, foul, scum-sucking coward; a scurvy, base, sniveling, fornicator with dead farm animals.

If he were on fire, I would not piss on him.

Why You Little Scamps...

From Powerline:

Suppose Garrison Keillor can find a way to fit the antics of these modern day Hucks and Toms into a segment of his radio show?

Normally, I try to avoid commenting on stories like these - many other people do it better, but occasionally the antics of the Feral-American community make me too angry to remain silent.

Personal favorite? Scott County Attorney Patrick Ciliberto laying down the law:

"This type of violence cannot be accepted in our community," he said. "We had a family at the fair enjoying the holiday. Behavior like this is personal to our community."

That's telling 'em sparky. I bet every violent criminal in a hundred mile radius is looking over his shoulder now. "Whoa dude, stay outta Scott County-they take it personal!"

The suspects, charged with a third degree felony(?!?!?!), are out on bail right now, and the victims are in hiding. But not to worry, if the father who was stomped trying to keep his twelve-year-old daughter from being gang raped is found to have permanent injuries, or takes a turn for the worse, or dies or something - then these guys are in real trouble yah-you-bet-by-gum. Because according to Patrick "Law West of the Pecos" Ciliberto:

Valleyfair has had "no assault of this magnitude" since he took office in 2002. He said the father was taken to Ridges Hospital in Burnsville for a fractured eye socket bone and other injuries. His office was told Monday that doctors were waiting for the man's swelling to subside before checking for permanent injuries, which could justify more serious charges.

Look for extreme punishment in that case - perhaps an extra day of community service, or if it survives the eighth amendment challenge - taking away their gameboys.

These Minnesota prosecutors could teach the English a thing or two about dealing with violent crime.

Interesting Thought You Got There Steve

From Thirdpower we find this. My only question about Steve Herr's self-proclaimed "best solution in the world" is, once he has decided who he's not going to let have any guns, how is he going to take them away?

Seriously Steve, take me for example, I'm not really a joiner, so I'm certainly not part of any militia you would recognize, therefore you withdraw your consent for me to own guns - so be it. I've still got them what's your plan now genius?

Stevie boy - don't keep these things to yourself... share with us your next step.

Who Is Who

Linked to by Instapundit, the story of how our elected representatives, in order to suck votes and support from the public employees unions, gave our tax dollars to investment managers who promised way more than they could deliver, and now we are going to get stuck with the bill to pay for some bureaucrat's retirement home in the Outer Banks because the investment return was "guaranteed".

Sort of like having a pimp come to your house and beat you for money to pay back a client whose wallet was stolen by a hooker. Except in this case it hard to tell exactly which one is the pimp, the hooker, and the john with the missing billfold.

We do however, know who is going to get screwed.

Holy Crap

This causes the anger to rise and the black thoughts to crowd around, rattling the doorknobs, and tapping at the windows of the mind, asking to be turned into actions.

Who do these people think they are? How does it come to pass that a person may come to believe they are in the right by terrorizing those who are dedicated to improving life.

The prize for irony-proof mind goes to some human weedpatch named Jason Black:

"An animal has as much of a right to life as we do. To take a life without provocation is immoral, it's violent, there's no excuse for it,"

Uh Jason, no. An animal doesn't have as much of a right to life as I do, and if you or any of your worthless sack-of-crap friends come near my home with a firebomb - I would consider it provocation enough to shoot your ass.

It's happening in California, so the authorities probably consider these idiots to be heroes.

Suicide

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

Arnold Toynbee

Ask any emergency worker what they consider their most dangerous situation, and they will tell you its a suicide attempt. The guy holding the gun to his head might decide he doesn't have the nerve to pull the trigger, but if he pops off a couple of rounds at the police, they'll end the matter for him. The cops know suicidal rage can turn to homicidal rage in a second.

I felt like those cops today after hearing that Columbia University invited a genocidal freak to air his views on their campus under the guise of "dialog". The prissy, ass-kissing, sonofabitch who passed the invite to the Iranian terrorist supporter and tyrant had the monumental gall to lecture critics on being open minded. Apparently, a mind so open you could drive a truck through it is a requisite for the presidency of an Ivy League college.

Perhaps we should stone some rape victims to death as adulteresses, or drop walls on a few homosexuals in order to achieve a little cultural communion with the leaders of Iran... what do you think Mr. Bollinger?

Look pal, you want this country's civilization dead - that's the only explanation I can think of when someone who supposedly has the job of safeguarding and advancing our cultural heritage actually lends a forum to the worst of our avowed enemies. The terrifying part of it is you want to take the rest of us down the road to oblivion with you while paying for the privilege.

I wish there was an easy way to stop you from killing us -- sure I'll write my congressman and demand that none of my tax dollars go to buy the bullets aimed at us, but it won't help; you have the bigger voice. I'll rant to the internet about the danger you pose, but come on, even if I was a major blogger, I still have to spend eight hours at a day job to keep a roof and food over and in me respectively, while you're the full-time cultural fat cat with the endowment, and that's just the way it is.

But I will not despair, us worms of the earth have to grind away where we can.
It's a slow-motion murder-suicide you're running, and there are ways even us peasants can fight back. The mush for brains mouth breather with the face piercings at the coffee shop is the ultimate end user of the intellectual pablum you and yours have been serving up, and him I can work on -- maybe a few hints that you're a big Bush donor and its all part of the war for oil conspiracy to get us into it with Iran. It ain't much, but It will make me feel better.