With Malice Toward None

Welcome to the United States of Bananastan!

2011-08-06T23:12:00.000-05:00

Why did S&P downgrade the USA to AA+, trending negative?
The numbers speak for themselves:
Debt - Current National Debt: $14 Trillion. Google what a trillion is, try to wrap your mind around it.
Current US population: 330 Million people. Debt per capita if the $14 Trillion debt is evenly distributed: $42,424.
In 2009 the IRS received 236 Million tax returns, collecting roughly $1.9 Trillion in taxes. Of these, 47% paid NO TAXES AT ALL. Some estimates say as many as 51% pay nothing.
Dividing current national debt by the 125 million actual tax payers equates to $112,000 debt per taxpayer. Do you have an extra $112,000 lying around? Will you ever have an extra $112,000 lying around? I didn't think so, neither does S&P. That, and for the first time our national debt exceeds our GDP, which is to say that we now owe more than we produce as a nation in a given year.
Welcome to Bananastan.

“FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE PUNK ROCK MUSIC”

2011-07-31T09:06:00.002-05:00

Seems like a good way end the posting drought here. From Power Line's contest:

It didn't win but it's still great. There were a lot of good entries.

Roman Polanski

2009-09-28T12:42:00.002-05:00

Roman Polanski finally gets arrested for drugging, then raping a 13 year old girl 31 years ago. Old news as it were. The remarkable thing here is the chorus of "enlightened" people who have come screeching to his defense. What the bloody hell people, have you no shame? Read the grand jury minutes over at Smoking Gun. If Polanski was a homeless man these same people would be calling for his head, since when does prominence in the arts excuse the rape of children?

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

2009-07-05T00:39:00.003-05:00

about that climate change bill the Dems are trying to ram thru today

2009-06-26T17:39:00.002-05:00

From a poster over at Roger L Simon's blog:

Its not about “saving the planet.” Its about creating artificial scarcity that gives the political class a justification for running everyone else’s lives. Its about power, and the nasty, vile people who crave it.

Bingo!

"Gone" Barack Obama

2009-06-08T15:15:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama Countdown widget brought to you by

www.obamacountdownwidget.com

RIP Koko

2009-06-05T16:54:00.002-05:00

Koko Taylor dies at 80.

Keith Olbermann's Gay Marriage Stimulus Plan

2009-05-24T09:01:00.005-05:00

Alfonzo Rachel considers one of Keith Olbermann's recent contributions to the commonweal.

David Cook - Permanent

2009-05-23T16:40:00.005-05:00

His brother, Adam, died May 2. He had brain cancer. He was 37 years old.

Song property of RCA 19 Records.

Is this the moment where I look you in the eye?
Forgive my broken promise that you'll never see me cry
And everything, it will surely change even if
I tell you I won't go away today

Will you think that you're all alone
When no one's there to hold your hand?
And all you know seems so far away and everything is temporary rest your head
I'm permanent

I know he's living in hell every single day
And so I ask Oh God is there some way for me to take his place
And when they say it's all touch and go I wish I could make it go away
But still you say

Will you think that you're all alone when no one's there to hold your hand?
When all you know seems so far away and everything is temporary, rest your head
I'm permanent
I'm permanent

Is the moment where I look you in the eye?
Forgive my promise that you'll never see me cry.

You can download this song here (via iTunes). All proceeds will benefit ABC2 to fund brain cancer research.

Ruminations, May 17, 2009

2009-05-18T15:00:00.001-05:00

Economic actions to save an industry
The newspaper industry is in dire straits. It has given pause to the Democrats in Congress, notably Max Backus (D, MT) and John Kerry (D, MA). How can they save this important American industry?
Their thinking goes that the industry, as well as accompanying jobs, can be saved by reducing the taxes that these industries have to pay.
Hey! Just a thought but do you think that the Democrats are on to something? Maybe they're right: tax cuts can stimulate the economy and save jobs. What if they were to apply that thinking to the rest of the economy?
Just a thought.
Barack Obama, capitalist
Is it possible that Barack Obama is a capitalist? We have pointed out that some of his policies seem close to the fascist economic policies of Benito Mussolini and others seem to follow along with Fabian Socialists. Does that make him a fascist or a socialist? Although American presidents may lean one way or another, seldom, because of political, legislative and judicial pressures, can they be overly doctrinaire. Their economic policies tend to be somewhat pragmatic and borrow from many theories.
So, assuming Obama is true to presidential form and all over the lot, let's look at his capitalist side: does he have one? It appears that he does. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama had this to say about the American economic system: "We should be asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to a dynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility." Hmmm. That almost sounds like Milton Friedman.
Since the Republican Party is thought to be mostly pro-capitalist, we might ask: has Obama embraced any Republican principles? As we have pointed out before, one of the principles of the Republican Party since its founding in 1856 has been that of "free labor:" the idea that those who supply labor should be free to use their labor to become entrepreneurs or to sell their labor to others. In Audacity, Obama went on to comment on one of his favorite Americans, Republican Abraham Lincoln: "For Lincoln, the essence of America was opportunity, the ability of 'free labor' to advance in life. Lincoln considered capitalism the best means of creating such opportunity."
But Lincoln isn't Obama's only role model. He also admires Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although some disagree, Obama and others believe that Roosevelt saved capitalism. Obama says that "FDR also understood that capitalism in a democracy required the consent of the people, and that by giving workers a larger share of the economic pie, his reforms would undercut the potential appeal of government-managed, command-and-control systems – whether fascist, socialist, or communist."
That's good capitalist theory but, one may ask, what specific actions has Obama taken in support of these theories? Let's try to relate some of his policies to his stated convictions on capitalism.
One thing we know that capitalism requires is open competition. But, as enterprises become more powerful, they have a tendency to try to close out the competition and establish monopolies. Republican President (1900-1908) Theodore Roosevelt countered this trend toward monopolies (trusts) by promoting antitrust legislation and then using his justice department to force the breakup of large monopolies. In today's world economy, breaking up monopolies is far more complex than it was during TR's day. And what has Obama done about antitrust? He appointed Christine Varney to head antitrust enforcement with a commitment to vigilantly enforce anti-trust laws; last week, Varney said, "I believe that greater coordination with the [Federal Trade Commission] and foreign antitrust authorities is in the best interests of America's business community and consumers." It sounds like she will push for more open competition.
Obama has placed a great deal of emphasis on revising the American healthcare system. The system, as it exists today, has rapidly evolved to one that is effective, expensive and considered by many, as a right. Healthcare became a component of jobs when, during World War II, FDR created the Office of Price Administration to control prices and wages in an effort to hold down inflationary fiscal policies of fighting a war. With workers in short supply and unable to offer higher wages, fringe benefits (such as health insurance) were offered by employers. This method of tying healthcare to employment has evolved and stimulated the healthcare industry to the point where expensive and high technology medical care is now considered to be a component of any good job. With most jobs created by the private sector by small business, healthcare has become heavy burden on small business. If a way can be found to alleviate that burden, entrepreneurs and small businesses will grow more rapidly and provide more opportunities for free labor.
One of the more controversial ideas that the Obama Administration has floated has been trying to restrict pay of executives in automotive and financial industries. Typically, we look at government interference in setting salaries as a fascist economic idea. But to put it in context, when the gap between those near the top of the economic pyramid grows wider, those near the bottom feel slighted and demand a closing of that gap. There is no doubt that the economic policies of the United States since the 1980s have increased everyone's wealth but those near the top have seen their wealth increase faster than those at the bottom. While there will always be gaps, there is no economic model I know of that prescribes the optimum gap; so is the gap too big, too small or just right? To Obama's way of thinking, shrinking the gap and "giving workers a larger share of the economic pie" is an important tool for saving capitalism.
So, Obama apparently thinks that he is a capitalist and he wants to save capitalism. Does this mean that all his policies and proposals are right and should be supported? Hardly. What it means is that labeling him a socialist or Marxist is counterproductive and will be thought to be the hysterical rantings of the right wing. We need instead to be pragmatic. Where his policies will work, they should be supported. Where his policies will cause more harm than good, they should be resisted and opposed. As he said in Audacity: "we should be guided by what works."
Marijuana poll
According to Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, a recent poll, showed that half of Los Angeles thinks that marijuana should be legalized. The other half thought that it was legalized.
Quote without comment
The Washington Post in a May 17 editorial entitled, Mr. Obama's War?: "What's discouraging is how quickly many Americans seem to forget the peril of half-finishing wars... too many politicians lapse into the wishful-thinking school of making policy. We worry that there remains a touch of that in Mr. Obama's Iraq timetables and lean defense budget. But for the most part, having accepted the responsibility of keeping America safe, he has recognized that America can't always choose its enemies or its battlefields. His realism deserves support."
Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Ruminations, May 10, 2009

2009-05-15T21:34:00.004-05:00

To vilify or not to vilify
Carrie Prejean, Miss California in the Miss USA contest, was asked about the expansion of gay marriage. Here is her response:
"Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be between a man and a woman."
The responses to Prejean's comments have been almost hysterical. She has been called a "homophobe" (one of the nicer names she has been called) and people have gone into her background (a la Joe the Plumber) all because she said that she "in [her] family ... believe[s] a marriage should be between a man and a woman." (My emphasis). The reaction is really rather puzzling. Beauty contestants do not speak with authority nor are their utterances very influential.
On the other hand, President Barack Obama does speak with authority and is influential. Nine months ago, in a campaign interview in Arizona, candidate Obama was asked his opinion on gay marriage. Here is his response:
"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian – for me – for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix."
The same people who have taken offense at Prejean's assertion that "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage," have been pretty quiet on Obama's statement that "marriage is the union between a man and a woman." (My emphasis).
Why does this group of people support Obama and vilify Prejean? My guess is that they believe that Obama is dissembling and Prejean is forthright; Obama really believes the opposite of what he says and Prejean believes exactly what she says. If my guess is correct, it puts us in a kind of Orwellian world, doesn't it? If two people say the same thing, one is criticized for honesty and the other is supported for dishonesty.
Fascists are offensive
CNN's Susan Roesgen covered the "Tea Party" demonstration in Chicago on April 15^th. Actually, "covered" is not the right word; she confronted and challenged those who disagreed with President Obama's fiscal policies. At one point she confronted a demonstrator who held a sign that called Obama a fascist. Roesgen asked if the demonstrator was aware that his sign was "deeply offensive" to many people.
Roesgen may not have realized it but one of the points of political demonstrations is to be offensive. But a better question might be: what is a fascist? And, is Obama a fascist?
Fascism, created by former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), has evolved to mean many things to many people. It characteristically favors nationalism, censorship, militarism, opposes democracy and promotes statism as opposed to individualism. While some might disagree, most would agree that, based on these criteria, Obama is not a fascist.
But there are also economic aspects of fascism. The four major economic characteristics that define a fascist economic system are:
Free markets are discouraged
Private property and profits are acceptable as long as they support the overall objectives of – and are supervised by – the state.
Councils of workers and employers, with the state acting as umpire, make decisions regarding prices, wages and production.
A protectionist trade policy aims at making and keeping the state self-sufficient.
Hmmm.
In the white trunks, Ronald Reagan; in the red trunks, Mikhail Gorbachev
I had an interesting exchange the other day on the merits of Ronald Reagan versus Mikhail Gorbachev and which one was more instrumental in ending the Cold War. I maintained that Reagan was more influential and the other fellow held for Gorbachev. He did have some good arguments.
In brief, the case for Gorbachev is that through glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), he opened up the Soviet Union. He was instrumental in getting Eastern Europe to democratize, by opening borders and by ending the Brezhnev Doctrine of playing whack-a-mole any time the eastern Europeans raised their heads for democracy. The case for Reagan can be made in that he pursued a policy of negotiating from strength, supported the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, saw the economic weakness of the Soviet Union and forced them into an arms race that pushed them over the precipice to their ultimate collapse.
Who was more influential? I thought that the best way to settle the debate was to apply scientific experimentation technique to the discussion. I readily admit that applying the scientific method to a political/historical problem is bogus but bogosity never prevented me from anything before, so here goes.
In a scientific experiment with two variables, we hold one constant while changing the other and see what results. Okay, for the first part of the experiment we'll keep Reagan constant and speculate what would happen if we changed the Soviet leader to someone other than Gorbachev. What would that person be like and what would he do? It couldn't be someone just like Gorbachev because that begs the question. It would have to be someone different and that person would probably be something like his predecessors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Andropov was the former head of the Soviet secret police (KGB). He had been serving the Soviets in Hungary at the time of the abortive Hungarian Revolution in 1956, approved of the harshness with which the revolution was suppressed and thought that harshness was required to keep Eastern Europe in line. Chernenko was very much a Party man and would have probably carried out the policies of his predecessors. Both believed in concentrating Soviet power in Moscow, and extending its domination in Eastern Europe and anywhere else it could. They believed that the Soviet Union was strong militarily and should continue to build its strength and continue the fight in Afghanistan. They never thought that the Soviet Union was in any serious trouble economically.
The conclusion drawn from this is that someone other than Gorbachev would probably have continued the policies of the old Soviet Union. This person would not have had Gorbachev's insight that without change the Soviet Union wouldn't survive (survival of the Union and communism were certainly Gorbachev's aim). Another Soviet leader almost certainly would not have instituted glasnost and perestroika. More important, Gorbachev could see that the Soviet Union was failing economically and failing rapidly; his replacement from the Politburo would more likely have been oblivious to the pending economic catastrophe and would not have tried to reign in spending. In conclusion, someone other than Gorbachev would probably have hastened the Soviet Union's downfall by not making any changes to correct the rapidly deteriorating situation – although, given the quickness of the collapse, the collapse could not have come too much sooner. Whether Gorbachev or someone else, collapse was imminent.
Now for the other side of the experiment. What if Mikhail Gorbachev had assumed power and someone other than Reagan had been the U.S. President? Let's parallel the rationale that we used for the Soviet side and posit that a different U.S. leader could not have been anyone like Reagan. Someone different would probably be something like his predecessors Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter. Nixon was the author of détente. Détente was, essentially, the policy of live and let live; although the U.S. and Soviets would disagree, the two would work together and the U.S. would even help the Soviets. Further, Nixon would probably have economically aided the Soviets by extending their credit line, allowing them to purchase wheat and other goods – and it seems likely that he would not have opposed the Soviet venture in Afghanistan by aiding the mujahedeen. Carter was idealistic and placed great stock in human rights. Seeing Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika, Carter would probably have assumed good intentions and worked with the Soviets to tide them over the rough spots. Neither a Nixon nor a Carter would have forced the Soviets into an arms race and both would have worked to reduce arms, thus reducing the economic pressure on the Soviets.
This scientific experiment leads us to the conclusion that had Reagan not been President, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed when it did and may have been still in existence today. Another U.S. president would like as not assumed the Soviets to be a robust on-going state and provided assistance where necessary. Had someone other than Gorbachev been in office, it is likely that the Soviet state would not have fared any better than it did.
Reagan's policy toward the Soviet Union was, "we win, they lose" – and we won and they lost. It's hard to see the same outcome with any other person serving in the White House at the time. Were there other circumstances that contributed to the Soviet disintegration? Of course but it's hard to imagine the same outcome without Reagan.
Quote without comment
President Barack Obama at his April 29^th press conference responding to a question on abortion: "I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue. I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they – if they suggest – ... that this is simply an issue about women's freedom and that there's no other considerations."
Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Ruminations, May 3, 2009

2009-05-07T13:29:00.002-05:00

Politics and poker
In the opening act of the 1959 Musical Fiorello!, Republican Party leaders lament their prospects in the song "Politics and Poker":
Gentlemen, here we are, and one thing is clear:
We gotta pick a candidate for Congress this year.
Gentlemen, how about some names we can use?
Some qualified Republican who's willing to lose.
With the defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrats, the prospects for present-day Republicans look as bleak as they did to the stage Republicans in the musical. According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 21 percent of voters consider themselves to be Republicans. That's down from 29 percent a year ago. In Connecticut in 2006, three of the five congressional seats were held by Republicans; today, it is zero – in fact, there are no Republicans representatives in any of the six New England states.
Things do look bleak for Republicans and many are predicting that they will get worse. But, informed prognosticators don't always get it right. The late historian Theodore Paulin told me that after the Roosevelt landslide of 1936, "Many people, including me, predicted the demise of the Republican Party." Obviously, Paulin and his cohorts were wrong.
Republicans can, however, take heart from another statistic: even fewer people identified themselves as Republicans in 1983: 19 percent. The next year, Ronald Reagan carried 49 states, Republicans maintained control of the Senate and they gained 16 seats in the House of Representatives. Of course, as the political cronies of Fiorello! remind us in "Politics and Poker":
Bless the nominee, and give him our regards
And watch while he learns that in poker and politics
Brother, you've gotta have ... the cards!
Chavez's book of the month club
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented President Barack Obama with a book at the Summit of the Americas two weeks go. "It's an extraordinary book," Chavez said, "that helped me understand Latin America when I was young, our history, our reality."
Some people think that Obama should not have accepted the book. Practically speaking, under the circumstances Obama had no other choices except for throwing a temper tantrum and storming out – not very presidential.
Chavez's presentation was loaded with symbolism. He knows that Obama does not read Spanish and yet Chavez made a point of giving him a book written in Spanish. The message was that the predominant language of the Americas is Spanish and not English. The rest of the message was plainly said by Chavez, that the book represents, for many, Latin American "reality."
What is the reality represented by the book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent? Eduardo Galeano, the author, is definitely anti-American, anti-capitalist and firmly believes that Latin Americans are losers while North Americans are winners. You don't have to read far into the book to get Galeano's perspective. The second sentence reads: "Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious; it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of Indian civilizations."
Galeano's winner-loser take is interesting. In North America, we regard winners with esteem and losers are to be encouraged to become winners. In Galeano's world, winners are the bad guys – real bad – while losers are their victims.
More a student of polemics than of economics, Galeano equates capitalism with slavery – another reason to be against capitalism, if you accept his premise. Without a foundation in economics, Galeano cannot see that slavery is antithetical to capitalism; without labor being free to sell their services or to begin new enterprises, capitalism falters.
He attributes the "Great Depression of 1929" solely to the United States. Although the Depression was world wide, we would have to admit that as the world's preeminent economy, the United States did play a significant role in the downturn; but, by placing all blame on the United States and capitalism, the victim (loser) can claim to be pure as the driven snow.
Galeano quotes Che Guevara (a doctor by training and a revolutionary by experience) on economics: "The nation that buys, commands. The nation that sells, serves." This simplistic aphorism ignores the supply demand price curve but is consistent with the notion that capitalism and the United States, by buying raw materials from Latin America, are the winners that exploit the losers.
Is the book worth reading? It depends on why you read it. If you read it for a historical construct of Latin America, you will get a distorted picture. If, on the other hand, you read it to understand the way many in Latin America view history and their perspectives vis-à-vis relationships with the United States – their "reality" -- it can be informative.
Mea culpa
My mother told me that when you do something wrong, admit it, apologize for it and go on. She never told me to do what politicians seem to be doing.
More and more, American politicians seem to be traveling the world and apologizing. Have you noticed, though, they never apologize for what they have done; they apologize for what someone else has done.
When you admit no culpability for anything but point to what others have done as wrong and apologize for them, isn't this a form of self-aggrandizement? Of making yourself look good in comparison with others whose acts require apologies?
Mom never told me to apologize for others and never told me to engage in self-aggrandizement. Of course, Mom was not a politician.
Quote without comment
Comedian Rita Rudner: "Thanks to the baby boomers, 30 million women are now going through menopause; that's a billion hot flashes a day. Do you think that could be the cause of global warming?"
Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Bill Whittle Eviscerates Jon Stewart

2009-05-06T15:12:00.004-05:00

If you haven't seen this yet, go here. It's 17 minutes long but well worth your time.

Go now. See what Whittle has to say.

Ruminations, April 26, 2009

2009-04-27T09:27:00.005-05:00

Against inflation, against deflation, for flation
Actor William Powell, as fictional Senator Melvin G. Ashton in the 1948 comedy film The Senator Was Indiscreet, runs a presidential campaign in which he declares himself to be against inflation, against deflation but for flation. (Flation, we would have to assume, means price stability.) And that is the current debate in the financial community.
The financial leadership of the Obama Administration has conflicting views. In a conference at Vanderbilt University last week, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn was for inflation when he said that while deflation was still a risk, he was targeting a 2 percent inflation rate and that he could prevent inflation from becoming an unwieldy problem by "reversing the programs, reducing reserves, and raising interest rates in a timely fashion." Speaking at the same conference, New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley said that although the Administration planned to double the Fed's balance sheet to $2 trillion, they don't anticipate a resulting round of runaway inflation.
But, we have some dissention within the Obama Administration. Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman under Presidents Carter and Reagan and currently Obama's head of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board listened to Kohn and succinctly said, "I don't get it." He told Kohn that if we set and achieve a 2% annual inflation rate, then we are "telling people in a generation they're going to be losing half their purchasing power." Volcker has had experience fighting inflation and knows the difficulty: when he assumed the chair of the Federal Reserve, the annual inflation rate was over 13 percent and the policies he instituted are largely credited for halting our runaway inflation – It took Volcker several years to be successful.
Volcker's not the only one concerned about an inflationary policy. St. Louis Fed President William Poole posited that "We are very vulnerable to an inflation explosion ... [and] are underestimating the political forces [we're] going to face once the recovery starts." Volcker added, "I don't think the political system will tolerate the degree of activity that the Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the Treasury, has taken."
Just a bunch of Administration guys talking shop. In an article in the Financial Times, another administration guy, Martin Feldstein, chimed in. Feldstein, also a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, stated that under Obama's budget, "Even with a strong economic recovery, the ratio of government debt to GDP would double to 80 percent in the next 10 years." With a weak recovery it could be much higher. Furthermore, "Fed purchases ... have led to the enormous $700bn increase in the excess reserves ... when the economy begins to recover, these reserves can be converted into new loans and faster money growth." And faster money growth means higher, perhaps much higher, inflation.
In a world economy in which countries interact, we need to be concerned about what others are thinking and doing as well. In Spain, economists are worrying that deflation is now settling in. In Japan, there is speculation that a May 1 report will show that deflation has returned to Japan. In Britain, the Retail Price Index dropped 0.4 percent last month and in Ireland, it fell 0.7 percent -- that's deflation. Will these countries embark on fiscal programs to counter deflation with inflationary policies? Not so fast: In France, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said that she's not concerned about deflation but, "We're more concerned about inflation down the road, not this year, not next year, but unfortunately soon enough."
When we have inflation, people are spending and the economy over-heats. When we have deflation, people are not spending and the economy cools. The Keynesian thinking goes that inflation can create jobs. That seems why, for political reasons, Keynesian politicians favor inflation over deflation -- at least in countries that have not experienced runaway inflation. However, our experience of the late 1970s shows that a country can have high inflation and high unemployment at the same time – what is called "stagflation."
The Friedman school of economics points to stagflation and says that a stable currency is best suited to provide economic growth. Looking at the years 1982 to 2007, we had a long period of growth (with a few blips) and relatively stable prices.
Within the Obama Administration it appears that Keynesian and Friedman economists are going at it, and it looks like they are leaning to the Keynesian side.
After listening to some of the pronouncements of the current crop of Washington financial experts, why does the incipient William Powell movie character seem to fit right in? When politicians begin imitating farcical comedies, it's disconcerting.
Hold the cream
A friend was, for years, concerned about her weight. Whenever she had coffee, she would always insist on skim milk -- not cream. Also, no sugar; artificial sweetener instead. Oh, and don't forget the donut.
Well, she was going to have the donut anyway and rationalized that if she cut back on the sweetener and the cream, at least she would be saving some calories.
This came to mind as I read of President Obama's cabinet meeting in which he insisted that the cabinet cut expenditures by $100 million. By 2010, the national debt is projected to be $17.6 trillion. At 5 percent, the annual interest will be $88 billion. The $100 million that the cabinet is targeting for saving comes to 0.1 percent of the annual interest of the debt.
It's kind of like saying, "hold the cream." I wish Obama would forego the donut.
Americans support torture
The Pew Research Center has released their latest statistics on American attitudes on torture and the results are surprising, especially if you read Pew's headline: "Views About Torture Remain Evenly Split."
The respondents were asked to complete the following statement: Torture, to gain important information from suspected terrorists, is justified ... (Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never or Don't know).
The first three answers (Often, Sometimes and Rarely) seem to agree that there are some conditions under which terrorists can be tortured; 71 percent of Americans support that position. "Never" is the response of 25 percent – not really "evenly split," as the Pew headline purports. Here are the results:
Torture to gain important information from suspected terrorists is justified ...
All Americans
Democrats
Republicans
Independents
Often
15%
12%
15%
19%
Sometimes
34%
24%
49%
35%
Rarely
22%
22%
21%
23%
Never
25%
43%
14%
19%
Don't Know
4%
5%
1%
4%
It's interesting that 58% of Democrats support torture under some circumstances. One would assume, judging by the coverage of the statements in the media that Democrats were overwhelming opposed to torture in all cases.
Of course, there is still a debate as to whether the interrogations used by the CIA amounted to "torture" or were "harsh interrogations." One would have to guess that had the Pew Research Center used the term "harsh interrogations" instead of "torture," the results would be even more supportive.
More important, will the results of this survey have any effect on the Obama Administration's possible decision to hold hearings and, bring charges against members of the Bush Administration who engaged in "harsh interrogations?" If the Obama Administration continues to pursue investigations, will the investigations become persuasive or divisive? Can Obama abandon investigations, given his support by those party members who favor investigations? Will world opinion favor the actions of Obama, whatever they may be? Does world opinion mirror that of the United States with ostensible opposition but underlying support?
We live in interesting times.
Quote without comment
Senator Judd Gregg (R, NH) commenting to The Wall Street Journal on President Obama's budget: "We're headed on an unsustainable path. The simple fact is these numbers don't work and the practical implications of them are staggering for the nation and the next generation."
Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Ruminations, April 19, 2009

2009-04-21T15:56:00.003-05:00

Torturous questions
This passed week, President Obama had documents released that identified the intense forms of interrogation that were allowed under the rules set forth by President Bush's justice department. These interrogations were conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency and were directed at enemy combatants at war with the United States. There is no question that the techniques used were at times harsh; whether or not they constituted torture is a subject of debate. Also under debate is whether or not the techniques were necessary.

On one side of the debate are those who believe that the moral authority of the United States should never be in question and that there are no circumstances under which America should ever employ techniques under which we could be accused of torture. They find the techniques used reprehensible.

On the other side of the debate are those who hold that, although distasteful, there are times in which "intense" techniques are necessary to save American lives. These people state that, in fact, the interrogation results did prevent attacks.

Who's to say which position is right? Persuasive arguments can be made for both sides.

The argument seems similar to a hypothetical situation that is often given to platoon leaders in training class. During the course of battle, they are told, you may encounter a situation that will test your ethics. You may be faced with the dilemma: do you save your principles and sacrifice your troops? Or, do you sacrifice your principles and save your troops?

What's the correct answer? There is no set correct answer. It depends on the situation, your principles and you.

Swatting the Taliban
The Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan is an area of 1,382 square miles and its geographical features made it a tourist spot and that was known as the "Switzerland of Pakistan." No more.

The Taliban operating in Swat has made it a dangerous spot not only to its citizens but to the Pakistani government. During the past month, the Taliban and the Pakistani government have agreed to a permanent cease-fire in the region; Pakistan has also agreed to allow the Taliban to impose Sharia law and, in effect, run the Swat Valley.

Since the agreement, the Taliban have been flocking to the area. This is not good news for the million or so residents of Swat, especially female residents. The West is concerned; BBC's Pakistan analyst Owen Bennett-Jones called the Pakistani-Taliban deal "a capitulation by the Pakistani state." Still others warn that this agreement may set precedent for the rest of Pakistan.

Maybe so. On the other hand, if you are fighting the Taliban, would you want them spread out across Afghanistan and Pakistan, or would you rather have them concentrated in an area 55 miles by 25 miles?

To be continued.

Dissing Vets
When an individual takes the oath of enlistment in the U.S. armed forces, he or she states:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God.)

Implicit in the oath (and understood by all who take it) is a pledge to give one's life, if necessary, in defense of one's country. To take that oath is an awesome commitment. People who take the oath should be accorded some respect.

Respect has not always been accorded to servicemen and -women or to the veterans. A Vietnam veteran told me about marching in a New Britain, Connecticut, Memorial Day Parade shortly after he had returned from Vietnam. Demonstrators threw rocks at him and his cohorts.

Other troops returning from Vietnam were spat upon and called "baby killers."

Things have changed a lot since then. There are few stonings these days. War opponents today commonly say, "We support the troops but oppose the mission." In other words, when a troop goes out facing an enemy intent on the troop's death, these war opponents hope that the American fails in his mission.

Last week, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was on thin ice in terms of respect for veterans. Homeland Security issued a threat assessment in which veterans were identified as a recruiting target of right-wing militias because of veterans' "combat skills and experience." Napolitano, herself a recipient of the American Legion veterans scholarship to Girls' State, then broke through the thin ice by suggesting that "the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone-wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks." If her assumptions were well-founded, one would have to consider that this country is indeed in dire straits because we have created some 42 million veterans; people like Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman not to mention Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Al Gore and John Kerry were and are, according to Napolitano's assumptions, potential terrorists.

It is true that some veterans have had trouble "reintegrating into their communities." Is it any wonder? Put yourself in the veterans place. After taking the enlistment oath and putting your life on the line for your country, you have rocks thrown at you; people who claim to be loyal Americans support your enemy's mission rather than yours; your own government, to whom you have sworn to "defend ... against all enemies, foreign and domestic," views you as a potential terrorist. People who have taken the oath of enlistment should be accorded some respect.

If a veteran has any difficulty reintegrating into the community, it is generally not due to character or military experience. It is due to people who are dismissive of them. People like, perhaps, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Quote without comment
President Barack Obama to American troops in Iraq: "From getting rid of Saddam, to reducing violence, to stabilizing the country, to facilitating elections -- you have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country. That is an extraordinary achievement."

Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Miss California takes stand against gay marriage

2009-04-21T15:30:00.003-05:00

The Dude stands with Perez Hilton, agrees she's a dumb B*****!!!!

GM and Our Tax Dollars at Work

2009-03-30T11:58:00.002-05:00

I try not to be a moron and I try to buy things that don't suck, i.e. I drive an old Lexus and my wife drives a Honda. We do this for a reason; we don't want to be saddled with unending repair bills. Thanks to the Obama administration, I along with every other American tax payer, gets to guarantee shitty GM products without the negligible benefit of driving a shitty GM car.
When you remove the consequences, why bother making the right choice?

Insty Gets Hit On, Thinks It's His Kindle 2

2009-03-29T20:39:00.002-05:00

Using it in public places — cafes, restaurants, even once at the car wash — I’ve been surprised that most of the people who approach me to ask about it are women. (I’ve noticed this with the little netbook computers, too.)

Insty, you're far too modest. I bet Clint Howard could be reading a Harlequin Romance novel on a diamond encrusted Kindle that emits chocolate fumes and women would find a way to ignore him.

Pope Benedict and condom use in fighting AIDS

2009-03-22T21:51:00.003-05:00

I lost my intellectual interest in this politically/ideologically charged quagmire during my graduate studies in Moral Philosophy (Typical query: can celibate Roman Catholic nuns insist that certain - yet still would-be - rapists use condoms before aforesaid rape in order to prevent possible AIDS transmission or fertilization?).

But please don't be sidetracked by my personal experience.

My interest has certainly been re-awakened by the anti-scientific, anti-catholic, anti-papal BS which is floating around out there re: the Pope's recent visit to Africa and his statements about condoms/AIDS. I guess this whole bruhaha is a result of the typical blind-faith of those who report hyperbole and sensation in order to malign good opinion, that is, it is bad opinion and false reporting done by self-professed scientists and journalists despite the facts.

Recently, Edward C. Green, the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Allison Herling Ruark, a research fellow at the Center, stated:

"In fact, the mainstream HIV/AIDS community has continued to champion condom use as critical in all types of HIV epidemics, in spite of the evidence. While high rates of condom use have contributed to fewer infections in some high-risk populations (prostitutes in concentrated epidemics, for instance), the situation among Africa’s general populations remains much different. It has been clearly established that few people outside a handful of high-risk groups use condoms consistently, no matter how vigorously condoms are promoted..... A UNAIDS-commissioned 2004 review of evidence for condom use concluded, 'There are no definite examples yet of generalized epidemics that have been turned back by prevention programs based primarily on condom promotion.' A 2000 article in The Lancet similarly stated, “Massive increases in condom use world-wide have not translated into demonstrably improved HIV control in the great majority of countries where they have occurred.”'

They continue: "Thus far, research has produced no evidence that condom promotion—or indeed any of the range of risk-reduction interventions popular with donors—has had the desired impact on HIV-infection rates at a population level in high-prevalence generalized epidemics. This is true for treatment of sexually transmitted infections, voluntary counseling and testing, diaphragm use, use of experimental vaginal microbicides, safer-sex counseling, and even income-generation projects. The interventions relying on these measures have failed to decrease HIV-infection rates, whether implemented singly or as a package. One recent randomized, controlled trial in Zimbabwe found that even possible synergies that might be achieved through “integrated implementation” of “control strategies” had no impact in slowing new infections at the population level. In fact, in this trial there was a somewhat higher rate of new infections in the intervention group compared to the control group."

Read the whole thing via links here.

El Duderino's Playlist For Your Listening Pleasure

2009-03-22T15:01:00.005-05:00

The War Against The 2nd Amendment Continues

2009-03-17T20:24:00.002-05:00

It looks like the weasels in Washington have figured out that gun confiscation won't work, so they're doing everything possible to make ammunition hard to get:

It is an end-run around Congress. They don't need to try to ban guns--they don't need to fight a massive battle to attempt gun registration, or limit "assault" weapon sales.Nope. All they have to do is limit the amount of ammunition available to the civilian market, and when bullets dry up, guns will be useless.

Read the whole thing and stock up while you still can.

he's running...

2009-03-12T14:12:00.004-05:00

WTIC morning host Ray Dunaway interviewed former 2nd District Congressman Rob Simmons yesterday. Mr. Dunaway asked Mr. Simmons about a recent Quinnipiac poll showing Mr. Simmons with a one point lead over Senator Christopher Dodd in a hypothetical matchup. Mr. Simmons hasn't announced his intention to run for Senator Dodd's seat but the interview leaves one with a strong impression as to Mr. Simmons' plans.

It Ain't Your Money to Spend

2009-03-08T09:41:00.001-05:00

Carl Pavano: Schadenfreude

2009-02-28T21:41:00.003-05:00

Supposedly Carl Pavano late of The Evil Empire now with The Tribe is healthy and throwing well.
Which brings up some very strong feelings for this Red Sox fan, chiefly:
schadenfreude
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.
Origin: 1890–95; < G, equiv. to Schaden harm + Freude joy
Is it wrong to hope that he has 23 wins this season and wins the AL CY Young? Is it wrong to hope that he faces the Yankees everytime the Indians play them and shuts them out each time, maybe even no hits them or Heaven help us tosses a perfect game? The thought of the EE afficion's anguish is delicious, simply delicious.

about that cliff we just drove off...

2009-02-21T18:12:00.000-05:00

Got Shorpy?

2009-02-19T03:48:00.006-05:00

Shorpy is a nifty website with old, mostly large format photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries named after Shorpy Higginbotham a child who worked the coal mines of Alabama in the early 1920s.

Ruminations, February 1, 2009

2009-02-13T15:26:00.004-05:00

Boldness
Bold change requires an outsider – someone who has fresh insights. So, if you want to change the education system, don't hire an educator to do it. If you want to change the medical system, don't hire a doctor to do it. If you want to change the legal system, don't hire a lawyer to do it.

People who have professionally grown up in a system and have been successful in that system have vested interest in that system's success and seldom see any reason to make bold changes to it. For boldness, you need someone with new perspectives. Of course, you need input from the professionals – you just don't want them to run the show.

Today, we need to do something with our financial system. The new Treasury Secretary is Timothy Geithner who believes that experimenting with the financial system may resolve the current financial crisis. Is he the right man? Or is his thinking too ingrained in the existing system?

Geithner has a Master of Arts degree in international economics from Johns Hopkins University and in 1988 joined the Treasury Department where he held a variety of positions. In 2003, he became president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and has been chairman of the Bank for International Settlements. He seems eminently qualified. But, is he too acclimated to the existing way of doing things?

What if President Obama had selected a lawyer whose claim to fame was heading a company that built rail tunnels under rivers? Could someone like that handle Treasury? That's exactly the man that President Woodrow Wilson selected in 1913 to be his Secretary of the Treasury – William Gibbs McAdoo. Of course, the country was not in a financial crisis in 1913 but within one year McAdoo would face one.

McAdoo's first task was to implement the new Federal Reserve System and make it a functional central bank. The U.S. had suffered a financial panic a few years earlier and the Federal Reserve System was seen as a method of remedying that. The fact that the Federal Reserve System has served us for 95 years speaks well of McAdoo.

Then the financial crisis hit. In 1914, Europe plunged into World War I (the U.S. wouldn't be a belligerent for another three years but we were involved immediately). Europe needed cash to pay for their war and, thinking it would be a short war, chose to finance it by selling the securities it held – a significant portion of which was in the New York Stock Market. The market, understandably, began to plunge. The Europeans then planned to convert their sales to gold and export the gold to Europe; that would have depleted the U.S. gold supply. What did McAdoo do? He closed the New York stock market – for four months.

That step may have saved the stock market but it left Europe in sad financial shape. To rectify that and finance the war, Europe issued war bonds and sold many of them to New York financiers – who, thanks to McAdoo, had the wherewithal to handle the bonds that were used to buy war materials from the U.S. McAdoo then issued emergency currency, which kept the financial wheels of progress in motion.

McAdoo's bold action contributed to the move of the world financial center from London to New York and may have stemmed from the fact that he was not a financier.

Of course, selecting an outsider is not a guarantee of success. President Jimmy Carter boldly reached outside the box and selected the late G. William Miller as Federal Reserve Chairman. The dollar had been falling, inflation and interest rates were rising through double digits and the jobless rate kept moving up. Miller had been a successful CEO at Textron and it was hoped that he would take bold action. Miller ended up serving only one year at the Fed before Carter moved him to the Treasury. He was successful in neither position as the dollar continued to fall, and inflation, interest rates and the number of jobless continued to increase.

One wonders what a Timothy Geithner, a Henry Paulson or a Lawrence Summers would have done in 1914. With all their financial acumen, would they have taken the same bold steps as McAdoo?

Are bold steps needed today? It's hard to tell. We can speculate as to what McAdoo would do today but that's just a mental exercise. Geithner is in charge of the Treasury. Whatever is called for, we hope he is up to the task and is successful.

Turn off the bubble machine
In his parody of Lawrence Welk, the late humorist Stan Freberg had a bubble machine run amok and, eventually, overwhelm Welk's orchestra and send it out to sea – amidst Welk's plaintive cries of "Turn off the bubble machine!"

Over the years, several economies could have echoed Welk. Economic bubbles are, if not constant, frequent. An economic bubble can be defined as a situation in which the valuation of a good considerably exceeds its intrinsic value – and the price continues to rise. At some point, someone turns off the bubble machine and the bubble collapses and the price of the good tanks, such as the housing market has recently done.

It's not as if we are unaware of bubbles as they grow. Recall Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996 characterizing the NASDAQ market as fueled by "irrational exuberance" (another term for economic bubble). Nonetheless, people continued to invest in dot-coms until the bubble collapsed four years later.

What makes people partake of economic bubbles even when it is obvious what is happening? Why did people continue to rely on increasing housing values in the housing bubble that just collapsed? And we're not just talking about the uninformed general public that assumed the housing values would increase forever; sophisticated financial institutions got caught up in the mess, too.

Economic bubbles exist because people delude themselves. A few of the more prominent delusions are:
I'm a fool if I don't join in while everyone else is making money
I may be a fool for taking part but there's a bigger fool who will come after me
If the market has gone up, it will continue to go up.
But, is there an inverse economic bubble – an ephemeral economic cavity, as it were? As bubbles are characterized by "irrational exuberance," a cavity would be characterized by "irrational apathy." The delusions of a cavity may be:
I'm a fool if I don't sell while everyone else is losing money
I may be a fool for bailing out but there's a bigger fool who will bail out after me
If the market has gone down, it will continue to go down.
It would seem that we are in an economic cavity right now. Just as exuberant people keep driving up the price of a commodity beyond its intrinsic value (in this case, the housing and stock markets), cavity people drive the price of a commodity below its intrinsic value. The action of both groups, ignited by their attitudes, become self-fulfilling prophesies.

Those who seem to be in a position to know (and/or influence others) tell us today that things will get worse before they get better or it will take years to recover. Not that they should offer us Pollyanna-ish bromides, but their rhetoric fits in with those of the economic cavity.

As Stan Freberg's bubble machine swept Lawrence Welk's orchestra out to sea, so the housing market has swept us to the metaphorical sea and transformed us into a cavity of doubt and fear. Maybe somebody should turn on the bubble machine.

Ice storm Katrina
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush was excoriated for the federal government's slow response (although Bush disputes this charge, pointing out that 30,000 people were rescued from roof tops as soon as the storm dissipated).

Last week's ice storm left over one million people without power and heat. President Obama has not visited the sites or even flown over them. He has, however, declared the areas hit by the ice storm as disaster areas. What a guy!

Increasing tax revenues
When Timothy Geithner was vetted by the Obama team for the Treasury position, it was found that he had not paid his taxes for several years so he ended up paying some $50,000 in back-taxes and penalties.

When Tom Daschele was vetted by the Obama team for Secretary of Health and Human Services, it was found that he had not paid his taxes for several years so he ended up paying some $150,000 in back-taxes and penalties.

Has the Obama team hit on a new method of detecting tax scofflaws? Will Obama's appointments help reduce the national debt?

Obama and his team are to be applauded for their selection process and we wish them continued success.

Quote without comment
Former President Calvin Coolidge writing in 1928: "It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant."

Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Honest Abe 200 Today

2009-02-12T15:24:00.002-05:00

Today is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincolns birthday. Edwin Stanton was oddly poetic and perfectly correct when he said at Lincolns passing, "He belongs to the ages now".

This link has a selection of Lincoln's orations. Given all the faux eloquence bounding about these days, it's well worth a read.

Just began looking into this guy Dalrymple -- aka A. Daniels

2009-02-12T01:02:00.005-05:00

http://www.goodreads.ca/audio/2006-09-25_dalrymple.mp3

I found this interview interesting, as I like, for example, the "underclass' psychology", and ANYONE who challenges the intellectual elites of the Academy, but most particularly any ideas revolving around poverty and human development. This guy is a very interesting example of a modern literary figure who has some insights into cultural and moral issues, especially as Western Culture declines and dissolves.

It dovetailed well with my recent re-reading of William Faulkner's writings.

He may seem "prissy" at first, but in the end he packs a whallop.

You just need to close your eyes and get away from loud children or spouses.

Alex Rodriquez Abused Steroids

2009-02-08T02:01:00.003-05:00

What's next, professional wrestling turns out to be fake? In all honesty I can't say I am surprised. Anyone who is so much better than everyone else, allegedly, should be looked at long and hard for this sort of thing.
It got me to thinking, what other than the time honored A -Fraud, should we call Alex Rodriquez now?
Anabolic-Rod
AA-Rod as in Abuses Anabolics-Rod
Anabolic-Fraud
A-Roid
A, as in inject me in the Ass-Rod
Arnolds-Rod
Anadrol-Roid-Rod
Android-Rod-Roid

Infanticide in Miami

2009-02-05T17:50:00.003-05:00

Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO
Associated Press Writer
Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.
Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.
Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.
What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Notice the choice of words from the AP: "Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion". Freinds, when a person is born alive and you toss her into a plastic biohazard bag, that's not abortion, it's murder. Plain and simple.
I don't know why everyone is so shocked, people at an abortion clinic kill babies in eutero all day, every day. They merely screwed up the timing on this one.

Springsteen A Sellout

2009-01-30T17:20:00.002-05:00

So much for the working guy:

In an interview with Sunday's New York Times, Bruce Springsteen says he shouldn't have made a deal with Wal-Mart. This month, the store started exclusively selling a Springsteen greatest hits CD.
Some fans were critical because Springsteen has been a longtime supporter of worker's rights, and Wal-Mart has faced criticism for its labor practices.
Springsteen told the Times that his team didn't vet the issue as closely as he should have, and that he "dropped the ball on it."

Yeah the working man is great and all, but all that filthy WalMart lucre is really just hard too resist.
I have had it in for Springsteen since I paid $200 for two tickets for a concert only to be subjected to a non stop rant about how GWB is the anti-Christ, a chimp and worse than Hitler.

No One Wants To Sign Manny

2009-01-30T10:33:00.003-05:00

Albert Pujols on Manny Ramirez:

"I speak with Manny every three days and he tells me, `Man, no one wants to sign me,'" Pujols said, according to an Associated Press report. "I'm not an agent or general manager, but I can't understand how Manny has not signed."

Let me tell you; other than hitting - where the man is a prodigious talent - Manny is train wreck as player and a crapweasel as a team mate. Do I really need to list instances of Manny being Manny on the field or detail his departure from Boston where basically he sand bagged it so he could be traded? I prefer to let Manny be Manny somewhere else, somewhere obscure like a a beach in the D. R. or a greeter in WalMart somewhere.

Ruminations, January 25, 2009

2009-01-29T09:21:00.006-05:00

Depression relevance
Once upon a time, the U.S. had hit pretty bad economic times. The Federal deficit was nearing record proportions. Unemployment went from 2.3% to 20%. The price level had declined by 40% in a single year. The Production Index declined from 125.3 to 99.7. Farm bankruptcies were up 20%. The Gross National Product (GNP) plunged 13%.

A new president took office and delivered a plan to Congress.
1) National debt reduction
2) Tax reduction
3) Federal spending reduction
4) Immigration restrictions to protect American jobs
5) An emergency tariff to protect American industry and farm commodities.
6) Farm relief legislation

Congress acted and federal spending was cut in half; taxes were cut by a third. The result? In a little over a year, unemployment went from 20% to 3.2% and the Production Index went up to 145.3. In a few years, the stock market tripled. The GNP grew almost 16% in the first year and continued to grow. The President's plan worked. It worked so well and that depression ended up being such a minor blip that no one remembers President Warren Harding and how he fought the 1920-21 depression.

What we do remember is President Franklin Roosevelt as the depression-fighting president. Roosevelt acted by tripling taxes and stimulus programs abounded (Federal spending doubled in Roosevelt's first year and had tripled by 1940). During Roosevelt's pre-war tenure, unemployment averaged 18.6%. In short, although the GNP did grow, his actions were not wholly successful. The Depression lingered during his entire first two terms.

Of course, times were different in 1921 than in 1933. And things are still different in 2009. Just because something worked or didn't work in 1921 doesn't mean it will have relevance in 2009. Also, things that worked or didn't work in 1933 also may not have relevance in 2009.

However, one would hope that in a time of economic crisis, our leaders would examine the administrations of all presidents who dealt with economic turbulence. There may be some lessons and some relevance in some of their actions.

Power of persuasion
Several years ago, I enrolled in a cost accounting course offered by the American Management Association in New York City. The course ran several weeks and was quite comprehensive.

At one point, late in the course, we broke into teams to resolve some hypothetical problem. We had several questions to answer for our exercise. I don't know if it was because I seemed to have more knowledge of the subject, verbalized issues during discussions or had an air of confidence but I became the leader of our group. I had an idea for each of the half dozen or so questions that we had to answer and, after discussion, everyone on my team agreed that my answer was the best. When we met with the entire class, our instructor provided the right answers; every answer our team had – and I mean all of them – was wrong.

There is a good lesson, besides humility. Just because one has more knowledge, verbalizes issues at length and has an air of confidence doesn't mean that he or she knows all – or any – of the right answers.

President George Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made an effort to lead this country from the economic doldrums. President Barack Obama is about to lead this country through the continuing perilous times. Bush and his staff and Obama and his staff seem to be knowledgeable, have verbalized issues at length and have an air of confidence in their proposals. It doesn't mean they're right. I hope they are but we should not accept their answers without a fight when and if we think their answer is wrong.

Professionals in government
During the Bush Administration, it sometimes seemed as if a war was going on between the State Department and the Administration. Leaks and working at cross-purposes often seemed like the operational norm at State.

This was not just an impression that conservatives had, it was widely recognized. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed members of State on her first day in office. She told them: "This is a team, and you are the members of that team. There isn't anything that I can get done – or the President can get done – unless we make clear we are all on the American team. We are not any longer going to tolerate the kind of divisiveness that has paralyzed and undermined our ability to get things done for America." (My emphasis).

Was this a one-off occurrence that existed only in the Bush Administration that Clinton was trying to correct? Hardly. Former president Harry Truman writing in his memoirs had this to say: "Every President in our history has been faced with this problem: how to prevent [government] career men from circumventing presidential policy."

We wish the new President and his Secretary well in dealing with the career men and women in State.

A mirror
An editorial in a foreign newspaper last week said that President George W. Bush got stubbornness confused with principles.

I started thinking about it and I got confused. Then it came to me – the difference between principle and stubbornness: When I stick to my beliefs and will not change them – that's principled. When you stick to your beliefs and will not change them, that's stubbornness.

So whether or not George Bush – or Barack Obama – is principled or stubborn depends on your point of view. And it says more about the speaker than it does about the subject.

What a good editor can do
If you're president you need a good editor to word-smith your verbiage. You can steal ideas from former presidents but you need the brevity and rhythm to be quoted. To wit, here is the same idea from two former presidents:
Warren Harding, 1916: "In the great fulfillment we must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation."

John Kennedy, 1961: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Today we quote John Kennedy for his idealism and criticize Warren Harding for his lack of idealism.

Quote without comment
The late economist Milton Friedman: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand."

Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Affordable Sustainability

2009-01-29T09:16:00.003-05:00

My bother-in-law's Savannah house.

link

John Updike RIP

2009-01-28T22:05:00.001-05:00

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
by John Updike

Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and nature's beguiling irregularities. Its right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 28th, as I took a seat behind third base, a uniformed groundkeeper was treading the top of this wall, picking batting-practice home runs out of the screen, like a mushroom gatherer seen in Wordsworthian perspective on the verge of a cliff. The day was overcast, chill, and uninspirational. The Boston team was the worst in twenty-seven seasons. A jangling medley of incompetent youth and aging competence, the Red Sox were finishing in seventh place only because the Kansas City Athletics had locked them out of the cellar. They were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles, a much nimbler blend of May and December, who had been dumped from pennant contention a week before by the insatiable Yankees. I, and 10,453 others, had shown up primarily because this was the Red Sox's last home game of the season, and therefore the last time in all eternity that their regular left fielder, known to the headlines as TED, KID, SPLINTER, THUMPER, TW, and, most cloyingly, MISTER WONDERFUL, would play in Boston. "WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT TED? HUB FANS ASK" ran the headline on a newspaper being read by a bulb-nosed cigar smoker a few rows away. Williams' retirement had been announced, doubted (he had been threatening retirement for years), confirmed by Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox owner, and at last widely accepted as the sad but probable truth. He was forty-two and had redeemed his abysmal season of 1959 with a—considering his advanced age—fine one. He had been giving away his gloves and bats and had grudgingly consented to a sentimental ceremony today. This was not necessarily his last game; the Red Sox were scheduled to travel to New York and wind up the season with three games there.

Read the Whole Thing.

Obama's Inauguration Coverage Excessive

2009-01-22T00:07:00.002-05:00

You don't say:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's inauguration generated an unprecedented 35,000 stories in the world's major newspapers, television and radio broadcasts over the past day -- about 35 times more than the last presidential swearing-in -- a monitoring group said on Wednesday.

What they don't say is that the coverage was mostly gushing, fawning and nauseating.

Chirac Mauled By Depressed Poodle

2009-01-21T23:47:00.003-05:00

Sometimes something happens that is more than apt, it's poetic in all it's many facets and implications.

Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle
Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to hospital after being
mauled by his own 'clinically depressed' pet dog.
The 76-year-old statesman was savaged by his white Maltese dog - which suffers from frenzied fits and is being treated with anti-depressants.
The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said.

Obama Madness vs Insane anti-Bush Madness

2009-01-21T21:20:00.002-05:00

Hey Z and El D, I just don't have the time right now, but please post something about the ridiculous Obamification of America and the world, following upon the ridiculous vilification of Bush. I simply don't have the time, CM.

Up here in Canada, I am overwhelmed with the media/public fawning upon B.O., especially in comparison/contrast to Dubya (notwithstanding Dubya's faults).

Ruminations, January 18, 2009

2009-01-19T10:05:00.003-05:00

(My friend, Rob Kulak, has been sending out a weekly email column called Ruminations for several years now. He's given me permission to post his articles here.)

The failure in Washington
There are a large number of partisans who make the claim that the administration of President George W. Bush has been a failure. There has undoubtedly been failure in Washington over the past few years but I would not lay that at the feet of President Bush -- Congress has been a failure.

Failures include the 107th, the 108th, the 109th and the 110th Congresses – in fact, their failures seems to have accelerated over time. Their zeal to place all issues in a contentious political light coupled with a short-term desire for popularity has, I feel, rendered them responsible for many of our current and future ills. Here are just a few examples of their low-lights:

Failure to address and pass bills. Using the threat of filibuster, routine bills in the Senate could not pass unless the bill received 60 votes – not a 51 vote majority. To maintain power, the Senate (Democrats especially but not exclusively) have made virtually every vote in the Senate one that requires 60 votes to pass. As a result, many issues which could have been discussed and voted upon have been blocked.

The failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been the single most important factor in causing the financial crash. When President Bush sent a message to Congress in April 2001 (and more than a dozen times after that) saying that, unless their structure was revised, Fannie and Freddie could "cause strong repercussions in financial markets," and upgraded that warning to "systemic risk" in 2005, Congress failed to act. In February of that year, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan added that "enabling these institutions to increase in size – and they will… -- we are placing the total financial system of the future at substantial risk." Representative Barney Frank (D, MA) replied that Fannie and Freddie "are not in a crisis… are financially sound" and later added, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation." Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) added that Fannie and Freddie had "done a very very good job." Representative Maxine Waters (D, CA) said, "we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae." Representative Gregory Meeks (D, NY) added "there's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong with Fannie Mae."

Congress has failed to act on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. There is no doubt that payments to recipients of these programs will exceed our ability to pay them. Projections by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities say that the Social Security Trust Fund will begin to deplete as pay-outs exceed revenues in 2017. With no change, the Trust Fund will be empty by 2041. (Note: These projections were based on the economy before the current recession; the loss of jobs will reduce payments into the Social Security fund while the number of recipients will continue to increase.) President Bush initially offered a plan with private accounts, which some felt was not workable – fair enough. The President then asked for alternatives and Congress has refused to act. This is irresponsible.

Earmark control has failed. Earmarks are congress directed funds to pet projects that generally enhance election prospects in their home district or reward friends and relatives. According to the Office of Management and Budget, an earmark "curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds." In spite of all the political posturing, in 2008, Congress spent $16,501,833,000 on earmarks.

Pay-go has failed. When the 110th Congress took office in January 2007, they announced that they would be fiscally responsible by establishing the principle of pay-go – any new spending programs would have to be coupled with cuts in spending. It didn't last a year.

Failure to provide support to American troops by rendering aid and comfort to the enemy. We are engaged in a war on terror on two fronts. A loss on either front is unthinkable. Yet Congress, through seemingly endless hearings, nonbinding resolutions and threats to set artificial deadlines for troop withdrawal, has played into enemy hands – especially when the enemy has predicted American withdrawal under just these circumstances. Perhaps the most telling offense occurred when our enemy heard a leading member of Congress declare that "The war is lost"; that has to provide the enemy with comfort if not moral support.

Congress failed to make more domestic oil available by thwarting drilling. While alternative energies have been subsidized and have yet to make a dent in our energy supply, Congress has restricted drilling for more oil because of an apocalyptic fear of environmental damage. As a result, we have paid $475 billion in 2008 alone to foreign countries for oil. The dramatic increase in oil prices hurt those on the lower end of the economy most. The very people for whom Congress mandated substandard mortgages; in turn, the gas prices increased the likelihood that these folks could not pay their mortgages and resulted in exacerbating our present banking crisis.

Congress has failed to approve judges in reasonable time frames. The judicial approval process has hit an all-time low. Perhaps because Republicans delayed approval of Clinton judicial nominees by an average of 238 days, Democrats decided they need not exhibit maturity and delayed approval of Bush appointees by an average of 348 days. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Maybe we can say that Bush failed to convince Congress to follow his lead. In that sense, maybe he was a failure. Then again, given the self-imposed obstinacy of Congress, it would have been difficult for anyone to lead them. Given all that Bush did accomplish (tax cuts, removal of dictator Saddam Hussein, establishment of a nascent democracy in Iraq, gaining the support of Pakistan for the war in Afghanistan, getting Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction, keeping the U.S. safe from terrorist attacks for almost eight years, putting well-qualified people on the Supreme Court, lifting America out of the 2001 economic downturn, etc.), his record unquestionably is better than is the record of Congress.

The right to be manipulated
The Grey Wolves (Серые волки) is a 1993 Russian film dramatization covering the 1964 plot to expel Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union. It incorporates some word-for-word conversations from KGB archives and is co-written by Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei. Of course, in the fashion of a Hollywood blockbuster, it has some gratuitous nudity, a contrived car chase and a dramatically improbable murder. Nonetheless, it is an interesting and informative film.

One of the key players in the plot against Khrushchev was Alexander Shelepin. Shelepin at the time was a former head of the KGB and still exercised control over the secret police agency and its new head and fellow conspirator Vladimir Semichastny. As such, during the plot against Khrushchev, they were able to monitor all Khrushchev's phone calls and even stop some calls from making a connection. Whenever anyone in the film wanted to convey confidential information, he would automatically suggest a walk outside so as to avoid ubiquitous listening devices. It must have been, upon reflection, enervating to live in a society where outside the legitimate government there was another government with enough control to overthrow the legal power. It's even more troubling that the people were accepting of that overthrow.

The Grey Wolves came to mind as I read an article by George Friedman on the death of Mark Felt, the former FBI agent better known as "deep throat." (The full article by Friedman may be found here.) Felt was the source of incriminating evidence that led to President Richard Nixon's downfall. Friedman says that in order for Felt to have all the information that he fed to Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Woodward:

"he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post's coverage."

So Felt, whatever his motivations, ran an intelligence operation similar to that of Alexander Shelepin; he spied on the legitimate government and caused it to fall. Whereas Shelepin used his information to the advantage of an inner circle cabal that seized power, Felt used his information to mold the opinion of the general public and of the power brokers of Congress. The result was the same.

The point is not being made that either Khrushchev or Nixon was pure as the wind-driven snow, that either was a nonpareil leader or that their respective countries would have been better off had they remained in power. They were what they were.

And Felt and Shelepin were what they were. And we citizens are what we are.

"A lot of people"
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, last Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama had this to say on closing Guantanamo: "It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize. Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true."

It seems to be reasonable but I want to examine the first sentence in his statement: "It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," and in particular, the phrase "a lot of people."

When politicians use the phrase "a lot of people" or something similar, what they sometimes mean is "me." Other times, the phrase really means "what I want a lot of people" to believe or think. And still at other times, it may mean something else.

So, to whom was Obama referring when he used the phrase "a lot of people?" Could he have been referring to himself? Maybe, but I don't think so. He obviously realizes how difficult it will be to close Guantanamo.

Could he be saying that he wants "a lot of people" to not realize how difficult it will be to close Guantanamo? That doesn't make sense since he believes it will be difficult and doesn't want to simplify the situation or build opposition.

To whom was he referring? In this case, he is politely referring to people have misread the situation and need to have their thinking corrected. Obviously, people who don't realize how difficult it would be don't understand the situation and are perhaps ill-informed; or maybe they don't understand the situation because they are thinking with their hearts and not their heads and have been just deluding themselves. Maybe.

Maybe these "lot[s] of people" belong to a particular political group. They certainly are not conservatives, most of whom don't think it would be easy to close down Guantanamo. In fact, conservatives are quite concerned that Guantanamo may be closed down with little or no thought given to those inmates who Obama calls "very dangerous." So, it's obviously not conservatives who are ill-informed or deluded. Hmmm. That leaves … who does that leave as ill-informed or deluded?

It's always dangerous to put words in someone else's mouth but could "lots of people" in Obama's statement be a polite way of saying: "It is more difficult to close Guantanamo down than I think a lot of self-deluded liberals realize?" Just asking.

Kiner's Cadillac
Ralph Kiner was a home run hitter for the perennially last-place Pittsburgh Pirates back in the 1940s and 1950s. The story goes that after a particularly productive year, Kiner met with the Pirates' president Branch Rickey. Kiner, expecting a big raise to pay for his new Cadillac, was dumbfounded to see that Rickey was proposing a pay cut for the coming year.

"But Mr. Rickey," Kiner said, "I hit .310 last year. I led the league with 54 home runs and 127 RBIs. I was expecting a big raise."

"Ralph," Rickey replied, "where did our team finish last year?"

"Last."

"Exactly. Heck, Ralph, we could have done that without you."

Last month, GM CEO Rick Waggoner was saying that unless GM received a big bailout, they could file for bankruptcy. So we the people gave him $9.4 billion with a promise of $4 billion more.

Last week, Waggoner said that GM may still file for bankruptcy.

To paraphrase Branch Rickey: Heck, Rick. You could have done that without us.

Quote without comment
Henry Kissinger writing in The White House Years: "The pledges of each new Administration are leaves on a turbulent sea. No President-elect or his advisors can possibly know upon what shore they may finally be washed by that storm of deadlines, ambiguous information, complex choices, and manifold pressures which descends upon all leaders of a great nation."

Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

MLK's dream also included economic justice

2009-01-18T13:55:00.005-05:00

NEW YORK – The focus of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 wasn't what had been accomplished — but rather his view of what still needed to be done.
More than four decades later, King scholars say he would take the same approach at this historic moment — the inauguration of the first black president at a time when the nation is facing its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The crisis could widen the already large financial gaps between whites and blacks and make it more difficult to attain King's dream of economic equality in America.
"I believe that Dr. King would caution us not to rest on the election of a black president and say our work here is done," said Kendra King, associate professor of politics at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.
Although King is best known for his civil rights work, he was a staunch advocate for economic justice. In the months before he was killed, he had been working on the Poor People's Campaign and calling for an economic bill of rights. When he was assassinated in 1968, he was in Memphis supporting a sanitation workers' strike.
"Economic empowerment and justice was always a part of Dr. King's purpose," professor King said. "Civil rights without economic parity is still imprisonment."

Be afraid, be very afraid when our gomeril friends on the left start talking about "economic justice". How does one legislate "economic justice" without a confiscatory taxation policy? Don't bother answering, it was a rhetorical question. I guess those who profess an admiration for Castro's Cuba are sincere in their appreciation and desire fervently to turn the once august U.S. economy into a moribund Ponzi scheme.

Hammers and Fireworks With No Adult Supervision

2009-01-14T12:47:00.001-05:00

Where did the hammer go?

"Jean de Florette" director Claude Berri dies

2009-01-12T17:09:00.002-05:00

French filmmaker Claude Berri has died, may he rest in peace. If you haven't seen Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, do yourself a favor and rent both, sit down and watch them. Each is a great film, together they are perhaps the best cinema I have ever seen.

Pravda: Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age

2009-01-11T12:58:00.002-05:00

Pravda says that Earth faces an ice age that will last 100,000 years. My question is: If my home here in Central Connecticut gets bowled over by a glacier, would it be vindictive of me to find Al Gore in whatever nursing home he's in and kick him in the yarbles? Just wondering.

Victor Davis Hanson Ironies of 2008

2009-01-11T10:24:00.002-05:00

Spot on as always, I particularly liked this bit:

I confess this war on terror business is coming down to fear or no fear. A film maker, a novelist, or a comedian dreams publicly of killing George Bush—and he wins a big book contract or an arts award. A cartoonist does a sketch of a Mohammed and he faces death threats. Liberal contrarians honor the former and
abandon the latter.
We are told terrorism bad, democracy good. Really? Every terrorist Hamas rocket is aimed at a Democratic civilian; every Democratic IDF air -to -ground missile is aimed at a terrorist.
The common denominator in all this? George Bush or an IDF colonel is not going to show up at your editorial office in New York or Madrid or Paris with a suicide vest on. Write a novel about Bush deserving to die, as did Nicholson Baker, and you win a Knopf contract; write one about the Prophet as did Salman Rushdie and you go into hiding for a decade.
Read the whole thing.

Islamic Terrorist Are Amazing

2009-01-09T13:59:00.002-05:00

I struggled with how to address this story:

Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson 'targeted by Islamic Extremists'
Reports have emerged today (January 7) claiming that Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson have been included on a "terror target" hit list made in reaction to the current conflict in the Gaza region.

On one hand, I never thought I'd care one way or another if Amy Winehouse got eaten by fire ants or slightly more likely, died of an overdose. On the other, the Islamic terrorists are targeting her for all the wrong reasons. Leave it the fuck up brigade to get me squarely into Winehouse's corner, a place I never thought possible to visit.

Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

2009-01-08T16:40:00.003-05:00

Richard John Neuhaus has passed away. There are so many very decent encomia bouncing around on the web, so I won't try to wax too philosophical here. I would like you to read a snippet of what makes Fr. Neuhaus so special:

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word "good" should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Read the rest here.

Richard John Neuhaus Gravely Ill

2009-01-07T21:07:00.002-05:00

Father Richard John Neuhaus editor-in-chief of First Things has been diagnosed with cancer and is gravely ill.
A great intellect and a holy man, I wish hm a speedy recovery.

Separated at Birth: Count Von Count and Leon Panetta

2009-01-07T02:48:00.001-05:00

Count Von Count and former White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton, Leon Panetta.
UPDATE: I'll probably end up in Gitmo for this comparison originally posted in February of 2007 if Panetta becomes CIA Director.

So You Think You Had A Bad Day?

2009-01-07T02:10:00.001-05:00

At least you weren't this man. Nothing injured but his pride, but that was nearly killed.

Barometer on why N. America is facing serious demographic problems

2009-01-06T22:17:00.010-05:00

I was born in 1964. God bless my parents.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (hint, hint) was assasinated in 1963, just over 45 years ago; it was probably the most publicized and analyzed murder of the 20th Century, excepting possibly the Holocaust murders.

During the past 10-15 years, whenever I use phone "tech support", or call various businesses for info or service, or even go to checkouts at the department and grocery stores and pharmacies, or speak to utility company reps -- all of which require more or less frequent discussions about personal info (eg name, address, etc) -- I have to spell out my last name, or my wife's hyphenated last name (repeatedly) in order to complete the customer service "interview".

Most everyone I encounter nowadays cannot spell our family names without repetition. Imagine that!

Now that's a demographic shift. Can you imagine meeting a cashier in Sears, or say a Gas Company phone rep, in 1980, who couldn't spell the most recently assassinated US President's name?

Now if I had Zaphod's real name, I wouldn't be surprised!

Just an observation about demographics, no prejudice intended.

Iggy Pop on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

2009-01-06T20:34:00.003-05:00

Iggy Pop on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, proving once again that fact is the sexier, less inhibited, more voluptuous sister of fiction.
In related news, Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton has passed away, may he rest in peace.

Roman Polanski

2009-01-06T10:16:00.004-05:00

What sort of bizzaro world do we live in?
Roman Polanski Wants Court Off His Case

Polanski, who last month moved to have a decades-old charge of unlawful intercourse with a minor dismissed, filed a motion Monday to have the entire case removed from the Los Angeles Superior Court system and handed to the California Judicial Council for review.
Citing judicial bias and misconduct that was alleged in the recent documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,
the 75-year-old filmmaker's legal camp states that the "entire case should be referred to the Judicial Council for further proceedings and a determination free from even the appearance of bias and taint."

Please allow me to retort:
Since your complaints are entirely procedural, apparently you don't deny drugging, screwing and buggering a 13 year old girl. That's frowned upon in most civilized countries or were you sick the day they went over that in school? For those of you unfamiliar with what the illustrious Polanski is accused of, read the grand jury minutes here. Warning it's pretty disturbing.
In Hollywood Roman Polanski is the victim.
In Hollywood Roman Polanski is the victim, remember that when some Hollywood grandee tries to "raise your awareness" about anything.

War in Gaza

2009-01-06T09:39:00.004-05:00

I can't see how anyone can side with Hamas in this conflict unless they are made blind by Anti Zionist rage.
Some unsolicited advice for the Arabs living in Palestine. The Jewish state is a reality, get over it. You may not like it, but any attempt to get rid of it will hurt you more than it's destruction will help. Your squalor has everything to do with you, your beliefs and actions and your leaders' beliefs and actions but precious little to do with Israel's success - the pie isn't limited you can make your own pie. Get to it.
Acting all tough by blindly launching effete missiles at your much stronger neighbor then whining like a bitch when they kick your ass is not very becoming, in fact it's despicable. What did you expect them to do? Let you (try to) kill them?
Unless everything we are told here in the West is wrong, it seems that Israel makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas threatens to kill "Jewish children around the world". What are you people thinking?
Another thing. Like most Americans I am far too comfortable enjoying the sweet life here in the greatest country the world has ever known to develop much of an interest in your goat humpings, wife beatings, gay stonings and general squalor. But I seem to remember Palestinians dancing in the street on 9/11, accordingly you can kiss my dimpled American ass. I don't care if Israel, or anyone else for that matter, kills your best looking goat and singes the mustache off you least nettlesome wife. Hosea was right, you have sown the wind, now reap the whirlwind and quit bitching about it.
Renounce violence. Swallow your pride, reject militant Islam and accept your Jewish neighbors right to exist and the progress you seek has a real chance of happening. Absent that, get used to being the dingleberries festooning the asshole of the world.

Steroids In Professional Wrestling

2009-01-03T20:47:00.004-05:00

Congressman Henry Waxman, D. CA, has an issue with the abuse of steroids in professional wrestling. Who can blame him?
I think "professional wrestling" as a whole is a bad idea. 330 pound gargantuans pounding the hell out of each other with no real repercussions is not a healthy thing for kids to watch. It's funny that wrestling is on right after MMA on Spike TV. In MMA 165 pound guys elbow each other and break each other's noses. In wrestling 6'6" 330 pound guys punch each other square in the face - repeatedly- and no one gets sent to the emergency room.
It reminds me of an EMT who responded to a fight at stag party. One inebriated guest had whacked another over the back with an oak chair. But unlike what you see in every saloon clearing fight in every John Wayne movie ever made, the chair didn't break, the man's back, neck and ribs did.

Colin McEnroe Binned By WTIC

2008-12-30T15:05:00.003-05:00

Liberal gadfly, columnists and WTIC talk radio talking head Colin McEnroe was binned by WTIC. In somewhat related news WTIC center right talk show host Jim Vicevich had his show expanded by an hour.
I wonder if the rocket scientists over at the Hartford Courant can figure out why their ad revenues and circulation are so abysmal and do the same sort of thing?

Boxing Vs. MMA

2008-12-30T02:21:00.004-05:00

I'm watching a re-run of the Calzaghe Vs. Jones fight on HBO, this was supposed to have been a good fight, but I can't watch it. Apparently I have been ruined by watching MMA.
Calzaghe keeps taunting Jones by dropping his hands and dancing in front of him. Try that with a light heavyweight in MMA with their minimal gloves and you will wake up in the dressing room or an ambulance, or you might get kicked in the face, taken down and mounted.
I wonder if boxing is loosing market share to the various MMA afficions? It should be. This is what happens in the UFC when you approach your oppenent with your hands down:

The Best Commercial Ever?

2008-12-30T01:45:00.007-05:00

NOT SAFE FOR WORK. But absolutely much, much better than moldy old music videos. It's a shame Denmark has such horrible winters. Enjoy.
Shamelessly lifted from Insty.

Bleg

2008-12-28T19:59:00.001-05:00

Please, no more questionable music for a few months, PLEASE!

Michael Roe & Mark Harmon - Don't, This Way

2008-12-27T04:41:00.001-05:00

The guitar on this is so achingly beautiful.

Imagine
All those years together
As a blackbird with no song to sing
Imagine
Throwing it to the air
But it falls from broken wings

Don't leave this way, so many words unsaid
Don't lie this way, stretched straight from
Feet to head

Imagine
The sky is pouring down
On the back of all those years
Imagine
That bird helpless on the ground
Shot down by all those tears

Don't leave this way, so many words unsaid
Don't lie this way, stretched straight from
Feet to head
Don't look this way, closed eyes, unmoving lips
Don't feel this way, cold hands and fingertips

Mike Roe again (with Mark Harmon)

2008-12-27T04:36:00.001-05:00

Michael Roe & Mark Harmon - Denomination Blues

Denomination Blues (That's All)

Some people preaching
They do very well
They take all your money
And you can go to hell
And that's all... that's all
When you could have Jesus
And that's all

You can go to your college
You can go to your school
If you ain't got Jesus
You're just an educated fool
And that's all... that's all
You gotta have Jesus now
And that's all

If you pardon me sir
You ain't doin' too well
You spend your whole life sinning
And you're going to hell
And that's all
But that ain't all
Cuz you could have Jesus now
And that's all

It's good to stand together
It's bad to stand apart
The only ones going to heaven
Are the pure in heart
And that's all... that's all
You better get Jesus now
And that's all

Jesus is coming back on the dividing day
Taking in the sheep
Turning the goats away
That'll be all now
That'll be all
You better take Jesus now
And that's all

Phil Keaggy with Glass Harp

2008-12-27T03:41:00.001-05:00

Glass Harp JB's Kent, Ohio Jam

This guy can play with anybody.

Son House - John The Revelator

2008-12-27T03:20:00.000-05:00

Larry Norman does a cover of this song but his voice isn't nearly as good as this.

another Christian singer songwriter

2008-12-27T03:01:00.002-05:00

Bruce Cockburn live "The End Of All Rivers" (an instrumental)

A total freaking lefty but one of my all-time favorites.

same dude with a haircut

2008-12-27T02:52:00.002-05:00

and without the band does a more traditional version with more of the lyrics from Zeppelin's version.

Mike Roe - Nobody's Fault but Mine

wish the sound was better on this video

2008-12-27T02:00:00.003-05:00

Nobody's Fault But Mine - the 77's

The 77s do a LOT of Christian stuff. This song has been sung with different lyrics by different artists. This version is obviously a cover of Led Zeppelin's:

Nobody's fault but mine
It's nobody's fault but mine
Try to save my soul tonight
Oh, it's nobody's fault but mine

Devil he told me to roll
Devil he told me to roll roll roll roll
How to roll the log tonight
Nobody's fault but mine

Brother he showed me the gong
Brother he showed me the ding dong ding dong
How to kick that gong to life
Oh, it's nobody's fault but mine

Got a monkey on my back
M-M-Monkey on my back back back back
Gonna change my ways tonight
Nobody's fault but mine

I will get down rollin' tonight
N-N-N-Nobody's fault but mine.

Otis Redding and the Dead have also done covers.

Blind Willie Johnson is credited with writing it. Here are the lyrics from his 1927 recording:

Nobody's fault but mine
Nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read my soul be lost

I have a Bible in my home
I have a Bible in my home
If I don't read my soul be lost

My father taught me how to read
My father taught me how to read
If I don't read my soul be lost
Nobody's fault but mine

Lord, Lord
Nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read my soul be lost

I have a Bible in my house
I have a Bible in my house
If I don't read my soul be lost

Mother, she taught me how to read
Mother, she taught me how to read
If I don't read my soul be lost
Nobody's fault but mine

Lord, Lord
Nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read my soul be lost

My sister she taught me how to read
My sister she taught me how to read
If I don't read my soul be lost
Nobody's fault but mine

Lord, Lord
Nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read my soul be lost

My opinion: the 77s should have done Zeppelin's version with more of Blind Willie's lyrics. (They use some of his lyrics. I just would have liked it better if they had use more of them.)

(link)

re: Larry Norman

2008-12-27T00:57:00.003-05:00

from Wikipedia:

Following tours by the first wave of punk musicians in the British Isles in the mid-1970s, the post-punk band U2 was formed in Dublin, Ireland. Active simultaneously in the local punk music scene and the "Shalom Fellowship," some members of U2 eventually became "fans" of Larry Norman's music.[15] Both artists performed, making unannounced appearances, at the U.K.'s Greenbelt Festival in 1981.[21]

Charles Thompson IV discovered Larry Norman's music at age 13 after moving to California and seeing him in concert. Thompson said of Norman during this period: "I don't think Larry Norman was necessarily respected by religious people... he had more of a rebellious rock'n'roll kind of an image." "I dressed like him, I looked like him, he was my total idol."[22] While at college in Massachusetts, Thompson adopted the stage name Black Francis, and formed The Pixies along with Joey Santiago, Kim Deal, and David Lovering. According to Kim Deal, the title of the Pixies' 1987 EP "Come On Pilgrim", as well as a similar line from the song "Levitate Me," derive from a Norman catchphrase used during live performances. In the 1987 recording and subsequent performances of the Pixies song "Levitate Me," lead singer Black Francis shouts "Come on Pilgrim, you know He loves you!" while imitating Larry Norman's accent. [23]

link

Larry Norman

2008-12-27T00:53:00.002-05:00

On Zaphod's recommendation I youtubed Larry Norman, what do you think?
I probably won't run out and buy his Cd's anytime soon, but I kind of like it. Much, much more than Bebo Norman. Why?

Happy Kwanzaa!

2008-12-26T12:22:00.000-05:00

Or not, whatever.

Baby Please Don't Go Muddy Waters Bottleneck Stella Guitar

2008-12-24T08:42:00.000-05:00

more Bebo Norman...

2008-12-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I'm all alone
I don't know if I can
Take another breath
Some say home is where the heart is
Tell me where my home is
'Cause i'm scared to death

Falling from the rooftop
Crashing like a raindrop
Can you make my heart stop
Shaking like a leaf
Standing at the floodgate
Steady as an earthquake
Can you hear my heart break
Tearing at the seams

I am drifting in the deep end
Holding on to your hand
Is all that saves me now
Life can treat you like a beggar
You hold me together
But I don't know how

Falling from the rooftop
Crashing like a raindrop
Can you make my heart stop
Shaking like a leaf
Standing at the floodgate
Steady as an earthquake
Can you hear my heart break
Tearing at the seams

Some say home is where the heart is
And my heart is in your hands
You are all I need

Rising from the ashes
Lifting from the madness
Now you see my heart is
Deep enough to dream
Heal me from the deathblow
Lead and I will follow
Now you feel my heart glow
Mending at the seams

Bebo Norman: "I Will Lift My Eyes"

2008-12-23T21:23:00.001-05:00

Not precisely a Christmas song but it still fits.

Utter Nonense

2008-12-23T15:19:00.003-05:00

Learn from your green superiors:

39-year-old Chameides -- nicknamed "Sustainable Dave" -- recycles his garbage or else stores it in his basement. He says he wants to show that it is possible to dramatically reduce his family's consumption habits.
And he can show astounding results. Rather than the 1,600 pounds of trash the average American family produces each year, Chameides, his wife and two daughters have amassed
only 32 pounds over the last 12 months.

Great, what to do with all that garbage you have their in California?

Ironically, even Chameides's rubbish will not go to waste. In January, his refuse will be sent to the Trash Museum of Connecticut to be exhibited.

I see. Garbage makes a three thousand mile trip. Green weenies get all self congratulatory, everybody wins.

President Elect Obama To Use Lincoln's Bible at Inauguration

2008-12-23T08:25:00.002-05:00

"President-elect Obama is deeply honored that the Library of Congress has made the Lincoln Bible available for use during his swearing-in," said Presidential Inaugural Committee Executive Director Emmett Beliveau. "The President-elect is committed to holding an Inauguration that celebrates America's unity, and the use of this historic Bible will provide a powerful
connection to our common past and common heritage."

I must admit I find this rather cool for at least two reasons. First, I bet Honest Abe is looking down and pleased that an African American has been elected President, which makes me wonder if he'd be surprised that it took this long or that it happened at all. Secondly, if President Elect Obama wants to emulate someone, he could do much worse than Lincoln. Let's hope he surprises us all.

O Magnum Mysterium!

2008-12-22T22:01:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite Christmas hymns, which I was privileged to present publicly (as a poor tenor in a decent choir) several times, many years ago.

The text reads:

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

Here is the music (turn it up, as it begins softly):

Hat tip for link, N. Peters over at First Things.

Holy Moses, is this beautiful!!

2008-12-13T17:09:00.003-05:00

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008

(link)

Yet More Elves

2008-12-13T16:49:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Iran Visit

2008-12-08T04:51:00.002-05:00

I was excited to see a visitor from Iran to WMTN the other day. I wondered what brought him or her to our site, wonder no more, it was a Google search: "black girls and white seeeeex". Hmmm. Which opened this page:
http://withmalicetowardnone.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html
You can't make this stuff up.

Seperated at Birth: Snow Miser and Gary B. Smith

2008-12-08T04:06:00.001-05:00

Steven Soderbergh's Che Big In Cuba

2008-12-07T19:32:00.002-05:00

Reuters reports that "Cubans over the weekend applauded a U.S. director's new movie on Ernesto "Che" Guevara for its accurate portrayal of his fabled role in Cuba's revolution."

Reuters would report that. I suppose if two Cubans liked the movie Reuters is technically accurate. I wonder how the families of Che's victims feel about it?
No shock that Hollywood would glorify a leftist murderer. Again.
No shock that "Havana festival organizers had said in July that "Che" would not be shown if it attacked Fidel Castro, the ailing 82-year-old who led Cuba for 49 years after taking power in the 1959 revolution." God forbid anything should question the party line. This from the people who purport to speak truth to power. Ass licking, useful idiot, commie stooges would be a more apt description.

What's next a glorious biopic of the much maligned Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, or is he the wrong type of murdering totalitarian thug?

Lifehouse's "Everything" like you've never heard before

2008-12-07T12:20:00.002-05:00

"Find me here
And speak to me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you

You are the light
That's leading me
to the place
Where I find peace... again..."

God Help Us All

2008-12-07T03:56:00.001-05:00

More here.

Will Joe Biden Be Right?

2008-12-07T03:35:00.003-05:00

It looks like Joe Biden may be right about a major issue for the first time in his ever long career; President elect Obama could be tested by an international crises, namely an armed conflict between nuclear arch-enemies Pakistan and India. Great.
The main thing that makes a nuclear exchange between these two nations seem unthinkable, is that the repercussions are too ugly to contemplate. That doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. We live in interesting times.

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker

2008-12-07T02:49:00.005-05:00

We took the children to see Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker at Central Connecticut State University, a grand time was had by all.
This wasn't the Kirov, Bolshoi or Royal Ballet as seen here. It was a local ballet company. I am far from an expert on ballet or anything else for that matter, but some of the dancing wasn't too different than Marty's dance quintet. Other dancing was quite impressive. It seems that as a culture we are, in some cases, far too well fed to be prancing around in leotards.
The music, performed live was outstanding as always. It never ceases to amaze me how much effort people make merely for the sake of aesthetics. Even in this local production, more or less designed for the consumption of bumpkins like me and their offspring who attend only one ballet a year, represented thousands of hours of study and hard work. Well done.

Courage

2008-12-05T20:55:00.004-05:00

More stupidity here.

HRC Groped!

2008-12-05T20:30:00.002-05:00

In effigy at least, can you think of a better way? I can't.

The Consumer Be Damned

2008-12-05T19:01:00.004-05:00

Did you know that if an online retailer sells stuff below the minimum advertised price some pasty geek toiling away in some obscure veal fattening pen will drop a dime on them?

When NetEnforcers finds goods like cameras, handbags or ovens for sale at too-low prices, as it claims to do 5,000 to 10,000 times a day, it alerts its clients, including Sony Corp., Black & Decker Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., JVC Kenwood Holdings Inc. and Samsung Inc.

The manufacturer then notifies the retailer to raise their price or else. The retailer bound by their MAP agreement will normally comply within hours. If the retailer isn't a licensed retailer, the manufacturer will jam them up legally. How does this affect you? Higher prices from a less competitive market.

O.J. Simpson Sentenced to Prison

2008-12-05T17:14:00.005-05:00

Cue the trombones!

LAS VEGAS – A broken O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to as many as 33 years in prison for a hotel armed robbery after a judge rejected his apology and said, "It was much more than stupidity." The 61-year-old football Hall of Famer stood shackled and stone-faced as Judge Jackie Glass rattled off the punishment. Moments before, Simpson made a rambling, five-minute plea for leniency, simultaneously apologizing for the holdup as a foolish mistake and trying to justify his actions.

He could get paroled in as little as nine years. Is it wrong to wish him a Yuletide shanking?

UPDATE:

And the drama may not be over. As AP pointed out, many attorneys who have watched this case from the beginning are still sorting out the complex series of consecutive and concurrent sentences to determine how much time Simpson got and how much he will actually serve. USA Today’s newsblog shows top newspapers from around the country are just as confused. None of them agree on how much time Simpson actually got. Is it 9 years like the New York Times reports? 15 according to the Washington Post? 16 as reported by the Los Angeles Times? Or is the Wall Street Journal the one to trust with a report of 33 years? In the end, it might not matter. O.J. Simpson’s lawyer plans to appeal by arguing that a fair trial was nearly impossible after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal.

Because O.J. is at best an acquitted accused multiple murderer if not a cold blooded murderer who got away with it, that creates grounds for an appeal? What a country.

Mourning For The Mother

2008-12-05T10:11:00.002-05:00

"The above video is of a broadcast shown throughout Israel..it shows little two-year old Moshe Holtzberg, the sole survivor of the Muslim attack on the Mumbai Chabad House crying for his murdered parents at their funeral.

The video is in Hebrew, but you won't need a translation. The first part is at the funeral and shows little Moshe screaming for his mother ("eema" in Hebrew). The child obviously knows what has happened. The Rabbi with the white beard speaking is Rivka Holtzberg's father after he buried his daughter..."

(from JOSHUAPUNDIT via Roger L Simon)

link

Angelina Jolie In The Bible

2008-12-05T00:46:00.003-05:00

Can the apocalypse be far away?

First, the flashy coffee-table Bible: Dag Soderberg, a secular Swedish advertising executive wondered why so few people actually read the "good book," so he set out to make it more appealing, with glossy photos and magazine packaging. The resulting publication is an illustrated version of the New
Testament called Bible Illuminated: The Book.
Inside, photos of celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono and John Lennon are interspersed with pictures of heroic figures like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. A veil-covered African woman holding a young child illustrates the story of Mary and Jesus. Images taken from the news — both jarring and poignant — radiate a message of social justice.

Mom Your Date Is Here!

2008-12-05T00:13:00.003-05:00

Michael Campbell, before and after. I guess if you are going to have one tattoo on your face you might as well do the whole thing. Note the oh so wholesome 88 on his left temple and inverted pentagram on his forehead. I was taught at UCONN not to judge people by their outward appearance, but I think Mike may be a bad boy and suffer from some antisocial tendencies.

Bratz Dolls Banned

2008-12-04T18:09:00.004-05:00

I read this story with glee hoping that Americans had come to their senses and decided to ban the marketing of slutty toys to our kids, but no. It seems that there are two parties contesting the legal right to glorify dressing like a whore to our daughters. I am becoming a grumpy old man as I type this.

Also Born on This Day

2008-12-04T17:41:00.002-05:00

Francisco Franco - Spanish Fascist Dictator

Wassily Kandinsky - Russian Abstract Painter

Wink Martindale - Game Show Host

Rainer Maria Rilke - German Transcendental Poet

Crazy Horse - Sioux Chief

Marisa Tomei - Worst Actress to ever win the Academy Award

Jeff Bridges - the original and still the best El Duderino

I do feel a certain similarity to some of these characters.

Happy B'day, Dude

2008-12-04T17:01:00.002-05:00

update: here's another one

News You Can Use

2008-12-04T16:55:00.002-05:00

News flash from Yahoo News:

The Republican National Committee will report Thursday that it spent about another $30,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin during her vice presidential bid, a GOP source tells Politico.

It must be great to be a liberal. You can spout off about women's rights and when a capable woman comes along who threatens your perceived position you can demean her in the most ridiculous terms possible to the applause of "women's rights groups". You can spend your entire career debasing women, motherhood and the rights of the unborn under the guise of "choice" while really what you are doing is ensuring that men can be as irresponsible as they want to be at the expense of women also to the applause of "women's rights groups". Nice work that.
Let's say, for example, that Palin wore her Alaskan clothing on the national stage. Every liberal wag would come mincing out of the woodwork to decry her as out of touch bumpkin, despite the fact that Alaska has some pretty specific clothing requirements. So the GOP aware of how catty the left can be spends some money on the governors wardrobe to forestall this sort of bitch fest. Dammed if you do, damned of you don't.
Hold on to something sturdy, I'm about to defend Hillary Clinton. They did the same thing to her. Granted it wasn't about the expense of HRC's wardrobe they mocked her yellow pants suit from hell. As mock worthy as that abominable outfit is, do you hear people question Biden's hair plugs as serious criticism of his political acceptability?

Prop 8 The Musical or How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

2008-12-04T11:41:00.007-05:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Not funny. Not even remotely.
Unfair. The hep progressive cats vs. the square intolerant religious folks. Very nuanced, very tolerant.
So we can make money of Gay marriages and divorces. Even Cultman will be swayed by this unalloyed public good. We can make money by opening abortion clinics too, is this the next video?
General rule, if Margaret Cho is for something chances are it's wrong.
If I feel this way, and I'm marginally sympathetic to their cause, how does this play to the middle right?

While Brian Cashman Napped

2008-12-03T22:45:00.005-05:00

“I’ve been old-school. There’s been an understanding for years that the amateur market in Japan has really been off limits. We’ve not scouted Tazawa because we haven’t scouted the amateur market. I couldn’t tell you how good he is.”—Yankees GM Brian Cashman, discussing why his team didn’t scout or pursue RHP Junichi Tazawa, who is reportedly headed to the Red Sox.

Or, while Cashman was dozing genuine baseball professionals plucked some promising baseball talent from an unconventional yet obvious source. Sloth and/or ignorance posing as virtue is even less attractive than Cashman's creepy visage.

I bet before too long Cashman and the remnents of the Evil Empire will learn just how good the new Japanese kid is. I'm willing to wager that Tazawa will have more wins per dollar spent than Carl Pavano ($10 million per win) and Kevin Brown (a bargain at $3, 928,571.50 per win) combined. Those two along with Randy Johnson (attended high school with Mel Ott) were some old school signings, how'd they work out?

Rogue Waves

2008-12-03T08:59:00.004-05:00

Imagine you're out at sea in a super tanker or stout cruise ship in heavy seas. Thirty foot swells come and go and other than praying to the porcelain idol from time to time you and your ship are no worse for wear. Then, ahead of you the sea rears up in a massive wall of water over a hundred and twenty feet tall - a rogue wave. What's worse, the trough before the wave accelerates your craft into it and lowers your bow so that all 120 feet of wave - creating over 100 tons of pressure per square meter, come crushing down on you like a fat man's sweet tooth on a crispy creme donut.

For years mariners have told of such waves- the ones lucky enough to survive them. In the past several years there have been a handful high profile losses to such waves which has piqued the curiosity of the scientific community.

The North Sea, off the coast of Norway, was angry that day, my friends. Hurricane-strong winds were blowing and twelve meter waves crashed on the Draupner oil rig. The rig’s workers were not worried, because the rig was designed to withstand hurricanes. At roughly 3 p.m. that afternoon, the order was given that all personnel must enter the rig’s structure- no one volunteered to stay outside and watch the ocean.
For this reason, no one saw the monstrous wave that hit the Draupner oil rig at 3:20 pm. The wave did not harm the rig itself (the platform was high above the water), but was recorded by a special laser-based wave-height detector. The rig’s engineers were shocked when they went over the detector's logs. The wave was almost 20 meters high. It was practically impossible- this kind of wave should only occur once every ten thousand years. Yet the laser detector was accurate to within an inch and worked
flawlessly. The wave’s existence was undeniable.

In 1899, a new lighthouse was built on a remote group of islands off the coast of Scotland, some 20 miles from the mainland. Three light house keepers were stationed at the lighthouse, and cared for the structure.
A year after the light house was erected, a supply ship came to the islands- as it did every week- to replenish the keepers' food supply. The ship's crew found the light house was empty. Its three keepers had vanished almost without a trace. Upon examining the scene, the ship's crew found that coats had been left behind, and a chair had fallen in the kitchen. These were considered as clues that hinted to a sudden catastrophe.
An examination of the lighthouse itself revealed damage to a metal box some thirty meters above the water's surface, a railing that was bent beyond repair, and a huge rock that was somehow moved from its place.
The official examiner speculated that a giant wave had hit the lighthouse- but since it was considered impossible that a wave this size might exist, alternative theories were invented to explain the men's sudden disappearance. Some speculated a fight had broken out between the keepers, others suggested murder, suicide, abduction by foreign agents, and even abduction by aliens- everything was possible.

Satellites using radar have spotted these gigantic rogue waves which occur much more frequently then anyone had imagined. The question remains what causes them?

Some distinct local weather patterns can cause inordinate swells along the coast of South Africa and in the deep water off of Norway, but what causes these waves in the open oceans? No one really knows for certain, but it appears that the monster waves siphon energy off the waves immediately adjacent to them, again why one wave does it and another does not is unclear.

Tina Fey's Scar

2008-12-03T08:47:00.002-05:00

I don't think too much of Tina Fey's comedy, she's not quite Elayne Boosler bad but that's only because she's kinda of hot in that naughty librarian sort of way and no where near as annoying.
A few years ago, like everybody else, I noticed the scar on her face and wondered what the hell had happened to her - again like everybody else. Being the suspicious son of a cop, I assumed that she was slashed by some yahoo and it turns out I was right:

Tina Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond talks about Fey’s scar in the new Vanity Fair. Tina Fey’s scar has never been explained until now.Richmond tells the
publication of the event at age 5 that resulted in Fey’s facial scar: “It was
in, like, the front yard of her house, and some body just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen”

Jesus. What sort of freak show does that to a five year old girl or anybody else for that matter? I hope they caught the sick bastard and fed him to hamsters.

Smart Penguin

2008-12-03T08:39:00.003-05:00

That's one smart bird. Being a mammal, I would have had to resist the urge to elbow the little bastard back into the water so our Orca cousins could eat him. That'd be cool, particularly if the Orca would somehow acknowledge the solid, say by a head toss or a flipper wave with a vocalization.

Torture to gain important information from suspected terrorists is justified ...	All Americans	Democrats	Republicans	Independents
Often	15%	12%	15%	19%
Sometimes	34%	24%	49%	35%
Rarely	22%	22%	21%	23%
Never	25%	43%	14%	19%
Don't Know	4%	5%	1%	4%