Dilbert by Scott Adams
August 31, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Liberals are Mostly Not Pro-choice
“… conservatives are pro-choice about most things — owning guns, driving SUVs, using incandescent light bulbs, etc. — other than killing pre-born babies. Liberals are pro-choice mostly about the latter.”
Another brilliant smile from George Will. I was unaware that school choice is settled law – meaning the SCOTUS has already weighed in – even in certain circumstances, when public money goes to religious schools. This, of course, does not prevent a judge from deciding, for political reasons, that he knows better. A very interestingcolumn.
Sunday, Aug. 28, 2011
School choice in Colorado
By George F. Will - Washington Post
Friday, August 26, 2011
Get Ready to Vote in the Republican Primaries
Can you believe these Republicans today? How can so few truly stupid people carry so much power in our nation? Among the Republican base, Governor Rick Perry is 10 points ahead of Romney after just a few weeks.
Is this what the Republican base loves about Perry?
· He’s an Evangelical Christian that takes the Bible literally and wants to teach creationism in public schools.
· Perry supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries and chaired the Gore campaign in Texas.
There is much for libertarians to love about Perry as well. But those of us who lived through George W. should be entirely done with Texan “conservatism” – war making, religion on our sleeve, new entitlement programs and a nation ruining don’t-tax-but-spend mentality.
What is most scary of all is that while ordinary common sense tells us this guy is unelectable [and therefore won’t be nominated], this new Republican Party is so delusional they think he can win and they have eliminated from their Party everyone with a brain that might tell them the truth. Give Brooks a read on the subject.
President Rick Perry?
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT, August 25, 2011
My favorite line from the column: “[Perry] does very well with the alternative-reality right — those who don’t believe in global warming, evolution or that Obama was born in the U.S.” Where exactly do we find so many people who can get away with promulgating such nonsense? Or the better question: What in the world is wrong with us?
Progressives, run to the primaries and vote for Perry. Sensible people, please God remember to take the time to go to the Republican primaries and vote against this turd.
The Truth about the Union/Republican Fight in Wisconsin
Here’s a column that sets the facts straight about the union fight with Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans of Wisconsin – George Will is one of the last great masters of the art of sarcasm.
Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011
Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo
By George F. Will - Washington Post
MY favorites from Will:
· Part of the new Wisconsin law despised by unions bars the union health insurance company which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars, and reducing teacher layoffs.
· The law also bars teachers unions from automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks.
· After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent.
· In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members.
· In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent.
· After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington State, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.
· Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party.
· Last year, $14 million in union dues was withheld from the paychecks of Wisconsin’s members. This year, due to massive spending on the recall elections, the Wisconsin teachers union is firing 40 percent of its staff.
I think four things should be true everywhere in America:
1. No one should be required to join any organization as condition of employment.
2. No one should be required to contribute money to any organization as a condition of employment.
3. No organization that spends money on political candidates or on influencing government legislation should be allowed to collect money from the unwilling.
4. Government employees should never be allowed to collectively bargain for any aspect of compensation, benefits or work rules. Such arrangements are corrupt by definition.
In my view, aspects of the 1935 Wagner Act [aka National Labor Relations Act] violate the Constitution by clearly interfering with our founding principal of individual rights. Fortunately, people everywhere are waking up to these facts and deserting unions in ever larger numbers. It cannot not happen too soon.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Visualizing One Trillion Dollars in Cash
This will impress.
Bud sent me an email with a PowerPoint presentation with the shots you can see here:
I couldn’t find verification for these portrayals so I did some arithmetic of my own.
This is $10,000 in $100 bills. We’re told the stack is ½ inches tall – that seems reasonable.
I used 6” x 2.5” as the size of a bill and one half inches for a $10k stack. If that’s all correct then a $100 million skid of bills would make up a cube, three and one half feet on a side – only slightly over stated in this picture.
A $billion would be 10 skids and a $trillion would be 10,000 skids or 50 skids wide by 100 skids deep by 2 skids tall to reach the height of a man – so this is pretty close:
Wow.
The depictions on this site are interesting but more exaggerated I think.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Radiation Found in Japanese Rice!!!!
Radiation is dangerous stuff. Of course it is also a miracle of modernity that reaches every aspect of civilization. Over time, I have become steadily more convinced that the general population in America and the world has a grotesquely distorted understanding of these facts. Led by tree-huggers and do-gooders – who, I am increasingly convinced, believe the nonsense they promulgate – the “common knowledge” of the general public is most distorted on the subject of danger.
Scientists and everyday circumstances constantly rebut this distorted understanding but the bugaboos persist.
· The “China Syndrome” is a fairy tale.
· Nuclear plants and waste are safe.
· Yucca Mountain would make waste even safer.
· Coal ash is the most dangerous waste on the planet and getting worse each time we improve air quality.
· Major disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi pale in comparison to many other disasters.
· “There is no such thing as a safe dose radiation,” the chicken-littles chant. Yet there is radiation everywhere, all the time and radiation is the very foundation of medical diagnosis and treatment.
[Most of this comes from the goofy, pinko-commie, “Physicians for Social Responsibility”; a group who coined the singularly irresponsible phrase: “No radiation levels can be shown to be demonstrably safe.” Well that has to be correct since it is impossible to prove a negative – morons with an agenda.]
It is not that these groups are wrong; it’s that they deliberately create vast distortion regarding dangers and safety while interfering significantly with both and preventing the expansion of zero carbon electricity production.
As an aside, on an issue that is, in my mind, closely related, I have many friends who scoff when I mention that the New York Times has biases and an agenda. Such folks can easily see the bias at FoxNews but they are deaf and blind to it from their own outlets.
[FoxNews, we might agree, is particularly heavy handed and clumsy about their biases but at the same time not as self delusional as the NYT crowd.]
This morning, I found a perfect confluence of my pet peeves. Please read this:
See what I mean? RADIATION DISCOVERED IN RICE NEAR TOKYO. OMG!!! But later: “… the radiation was well within safe levels … about one-tenth of government set limits. … two other samples tested … showed no contamination.” How many people read no further than the headline?
Boys and girls, don’t drink the kool-aide.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Warren Buffett on Charlie Rose
Do not miss this interview.
Various partisans will be misquoting what the man wrote in the NYT and what he said here. Want to feel better about the country? Buffet’s confidence and common sense always makes us feel better about our nation. Care to know what a statesman-politician would be saying to us today? Then give this the time.
Warren Buffett on Charlie Rose
Monday, August 15, 2011 - 51 minutes
Too bad Buffet is too old to run for President – maybe Bloomberg will run someday. Buffet can explain the main street version of what caused the recession, how we’ll get out, monetary policy, stimulus, the European problem, “confidence”, downgrades and everything else that ordinary folks have trouble even listening to, let alone understanding. He even suggests a fascinating immigration policy that could help end the recession and recover from unemployment.
This is what leadership looks like; what part of this is so impossible for politicians to grasp? The nation is currently a victim in an all out war between radical political Parties and their brain-dead partisans.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Heard on the Porch [from Paul with a few mods]
Nancy was sipping a glass of wine while sitting next to me on the porch recently.
She said, "I love you so much, I don't know how I could ever live without you."
"Is that you or the wine talking", I asked.
"It's me", she said, "talking to the wine."
Beautiful Space Pictures from ISS by NASA Astronaut Wheelock
Bob sent me a cool PowerPoint presentation of pictures taken by Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock during his stay at the International Space Station. You can see the pictures at this link.
At the bottom of that presentation are many more links to other amazing photos from space.
If you want these pics in PowerPoint mode, complete with music, send me an email and I’ll send you the file.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Zeituni Onyango and a Vision for America’s Future
[Zeituni Onyango is President Obama’s aunt, his father’s half-sister. She came to America on a temporary visa in 2000 and illegally overstayed until granted asylum in 2010.]
Anyone who doesn’t think Bush W and then the courts were correct to grant this particular woman asylum just isn’t thinking. Relatives of a sitting American President present a unique and compelling circumstance.
This interview from Boston TV in the fall of 2010 is fascinating – it’s making the email rounds again. I hate anecdotes and those that use them to make a political point. We cannot know whether this, or any, individual is a fringe looney or a statistically valid representation of some group or mind set. Never the less, this interview hits our current role-of-government argument in the solar plexus.
Aunt Zeituni: 'The System Took Advantage of Me'
Exclusive, Jonathan Elias, WBZ-TV, Boston, September 21, 2010
10 minutes
Zeituni Onyango’s statements are outrageous, no matter your politics, but the interview conjures broader questions about our system and about entrenched political and cultural attitudes. Watch, you’ll be equally mesmerized.
Here are a few of my thoughts:
· Illegals should not only be barred from our entitlement systems and institutions, any attempt to participate should result in getting legal or getting sent home.
o I think we should issue IDs to every citizen and visitor and ask for identification in every official transaction but most of what we need to enforce the law is already available.
· How did this woman get public housing and disability status and payments?
o She got a Social Security card when she got employment in 2001. Then she became illegal and the government started sending her disability checks. How hard is it for the computerized government to connect the dots?
o With a Social Security card – unrevoked even though the government issued it to a temporary visa holder – any person can get all the other benefits available to any citizen, in any state.
o We just don’t want to enforce the law. Why not?
· What is the source of Ms Onyango’s astonishing attitudes about what America owes her?
o Is this unique individual silliness?
o Or is it cultural and if so, which culture; African, American progressive, American under class, some sort of religious/political doctrine?
· How much of what she espouses does the American progressive movement agree with? There is an important growing debate in the country about the role of government.
· How long can we tolerate an immigration system which encourages lawlessness, sends the law abiding, highly educated foreigner home and bars business from bringing highly skilled immigrants to American jobs?
I believe President Obama when he says he would welcome a chance for the 2012 election to be a debate about competing visions for the nation’s future – anything would be better for him than a referendum on his first term. The President confidently predicts that he would easily win a debate about the correct vision for America’s future – I sincerely doubt it.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
America's Credit Rating
Naturally, there is a lot of finger pointing over the S+P down grade. Politics and the market dive increase the level of silliness.
My take is as follows:
1. The reason for the down grade is our nation’s long term, unfunded entitlement system liabilities. Our fiscal trajectory is nation-ruining.
This rating change was entirely expected and we are lucky that the other agencies have not yet gone along.
All the rest is politics.
2. Our long term outlook and the S+P rating have nothing to do with the recent sharp market decline.
The market decline comes from a simple fear of slower economic growth, worldwide. There will be more volatility.
3. There is no $2 trillion dollar “error” in the S+P calculations.
Once again, the Administration looks weak and incompetent in trying to claim an error. The Obama Administration thinks we Americans are stupid.
S+P made their position clear. The Treasury argues for a different starting point in calculating spending as a percent of GDP. S+P said, “Have it your way, the result would be no more than 1 ½% of GDP and therefore have no impact on our rating determination.” Think about it; does a sovereign rating agency make mistakes in their arithmetic?
4. America is seriously hurt by the lack of leadership and credibility from every aspect of government.
There is almost no simple factual truth coming from anyone in government.
The public conduct of nearly all national politicians is surreal in the factual vacuousness of their rhetoric.
The President demeans his office by joining in the propaganda war and involves far too many of his Cabinet Departments and advisors who should be far above the fray – think the Treasury Secretary and Chief Economic Advisor.
The caliber of almost all Republican Presidential candidates is a disgrace – and it matters.
The caliber of Party choices for national office is ever declining and ever more radical.
Our Fourth Estate encourages the fringe, focuses on the sensational, fails to debunk even the most egregious lies and gives very little time to sound analysis and expert opinion.
These are the simple facts.
Here is a very enlightening piece on the downgrade and the Monday market decline from the PBS News Hour.
Air Date: Aug. 8, 2011 - 12 minutes
I found these highlights most interesting:
· We need short term government spending that protects jobs and consumer spending with long term entitlement and tax reforms to eliminate the deficits and pay down the debt. The focus of Congress is the exact reverse – they are making things worse.
· The Fed should raise inflation; they should immediately announce QE3 as well QE4, 5 and so on. Europeans should do the same.
· Either the Congress or the Fed or both should buy more bad debt from both banks and consumers – but only via programs that seek bottom rather than those that only shift the timing.
· Congress should extend unemployment benefits and seriously consider paying those dollars to employers who hire workers who are on unemployment.
· Congress should extend the FICA tax holiday and find other ideas to stimulate real employment by real non-government employers.
· Congress must bend the curve of entitlement spending through real reform.
· Congress must raise taxes, the sooner the better, with the major revenue coming from deep tax code reform that broadens the base, eliminates [all] deductions and lowers rates.
· Critical near term spending should be on borrowed money backed by a clear path to reforms that will eliminate the deficits, pay down the debt and make our entitlement programs affordable.
It’s too bad that there was no mention of the current stupidity of the masses – idiots who want their benefits but won’t pay for them. We need media to get the message out until more of the public is demanding both entitlement and tax reform – I’m not holding my breath.
Fellow common sense, silent majority Americans, we are in for a long fight. We have to tirelessly vote the bums out. We must steadfastly refuse to take a side in any of the Parties’ clever fund raising, faux battles – don’t drink the cool-aid. As Charlie Reese said, we’ll have to sift through 300,000,000 Americans until we find 545 who can find their own butt with at least one hand.
I thought you might be interested to see the nations that still enjoy a AAA sovereign rating.
You can go to the link below to see all the ratings and the other two rating agencies – Moody and Fitch.
The second link explains the codes, if you care.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Road to a Downgrade
I took my title from a WSJ editorial of the same name.
The column included this graph:
Naturally, the Wall Street Journal blames Obama for making things worse; how big a help is that? The ending upward blip is due to recession caused bailouts and stimulus, which were supported by Bush and Obama but Congress enacted.
The graph shows us the real problem. For every dollar America collects from taxpayers, it hands out $0.65 to individuals! That is dumb enough but big problem number one is the trend – and look at the trend during those Democrat touted, “balanced budget”, Clinton 90s.
Big problem number two is that tax revenue will be down to 14% of GDP in 2011 from a traditional 18% of GDP – we’ve been moving money from defense to entitlements and borrowing the shortfall. Let’s see, if we spend a lot more and earn a lot less, how will that end?
All this would be bad enough but now we have hoards of old fools demanding no decrease in entitlement spending and no increase in taxes. What are we thinking?
Apparently we’re against killing off grandma because we’re going to need the food.
Time for Realignment
Here is a truly insightful column about the delusion of our political parties.
Waiting for a Landslide
By Ross Douthat
NYT, August 7, 2011
This is a fully bi-partisan slam. These guys are there to serve themselves and it’s time we showed them the realignment we have been waiting for.
We Need More Old Fashioned Conservatism
Bud sent me one of those goofy-right emails that tried to misuse an old Charlie Reese column. Reese reminds me of Bill Safire and so many other old-time, legitimate conservatives – today, we have almost no common sense writers left.
This classic Reese column is so appropriate to today. The problem is us – we are letting ourselves be conned into taking sides in a bogus war solely intended to protect incompetent politicians.
The 545 People Responsible for All of America's Woes
By Charley Reese
Orlando Sentinel, September 1985.
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of the 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation's responsibility to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Don't you see how the con game is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O'Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.
O’Neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, which is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it's because they want them in Lebanon.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.
Remember, Reese wrote this in 1985; how long before we wake up and do something?
Here is a more recent Reese effort that every so called conservative should read and all of us should use as the framework for judging government policy.
Why I am not a libertarian
Published April 15, 2001
Not only is no man an island, but no man is self-made. I'm going to tell you why I am almost, but not quite, a libertarian.
First, capitalism, unless moderated by Christian virtue or government, is just as brutal and cruel as communism.
I know that's hard for baby boomers to believe. After all, they grew up in the incredibly prosperous post-World War II United States. Most have never experienced really hard times. Most have not bothered to read much history or literature. Many were content to believe the fairy tales woven by Ayn Rand and her cohorts.
Try digging coal for a few pennies a ton in an unsafe mine where you are forced to buy your own tools. Try imagining a disabling injury and, instead of receiving workers' compensation or disability insurance, your broken body is just tossed off the company property.
That's capitalism.
Try a six- or seven-day work week with 12-hour days, a pittance for wages, in a hellish and unhealthy environment and absolutely no benefits.
That's capitalism.
You can still see pure capitalism in places such as Calcutta or Mogadishu. Capitalism is great if you're the capitalist, just as communism is great if you're the commissar or the party bigwig.
I wonder how many Americans would be willing to cut and sew a pair of finished blue jeans for 75 cents in a sweltering, bug-infested building. How many pair do you think you would have to cut and sew in order to feed your family?
Those $30 to $50 pair of jeans we wear were made by what amounts to slave labor in Central America or Asia.
I've never been a union member and don't intend to be one, but I can at least appreciate the struggle that union men undertook to improve the lives of working men and women. I guarantee you that without the "threat" of unionization, most working men and women would see a quite different face on their employers.
And that may not be too far off. Under phony free-trade deals, unions are being broken and pressured by the movement of and the threat to move factories overseas. Anybody who expects real compassion from a corporation would mistake Hannibal Lecter for a vegetarian. Unfortunately, the union leadership is so infected with socialists that they would rather pursue their ideological goals than look out for their members.
So, although I strongly believe in the maximum possible freedom, I also believe in community and in responsibility to that community. Not only is no man an island, but no man is self-made. Some people are just good at forgetting all the people who helped them get where they are.
If you aspire to total freedom and want to be entirely self-made, then go to a deserted island and live entirely off your own labor. If you survive, you can claim to be a self-sufficient person.
But don't live in a community with all its protections and benefits, don't go to public schools, ride on public roads, enjoy the benefits of publicly provided clean water and sanitary sewers and proclaim yourself an individual who owes nobody anything. That's just bravo sierra, and you know it.
Freedom is not a virtue per se. It can mean the freedom of the strong to bully and enslave the weak. It can mean the freedom to exploit the poor, to despoil the land and the water, to turn your back on the oppressed, the sick, the dying.
That's why, instead of a libertarian, I fall in with those old-fashioned conservatives who believe in ordered liberty, strict observances of the Constitution and a mind-our-own-business foreign policy. Don't confuse me with the neo-conservatives who like big government and imperialism as long as they run it. Most of those guys are just ex-Trotskyites, anyway. And don't confuse me with chamber-of -commerce conservatives who say that anything good for big business is good for the country. That's horse manure.
At the same time, I'm definitely not a socialist. An ex-socialist, John Dos Passos, has remarked that the world was becoming a museum of socialist failures. And so it is.
The idea of a mean, something-short-of-pure, unregulated capitalism and pure, over-regulated socialism is what we should strive for.
Personally, I’m more anti-union and free trade than Reese but I could live with him over any of the trash we elect today.
America needs a safety net and it needs regulation – and government should not “do things”. Real Americans would never consider accepting a handout but we’ve been conned into a system where we pay in a dollar and take out three. Somehow, we’ve allowed protection of the needy to evolve to where 43% of workers pay no income tax. We give handouts to corporations. Boys and girls, we are all on the dole. Americans pay their own way but today we refuse to do that. Americans pay their own way but today we refuse to do that. When did we become a nation of whiners making excuses?
The solution is to throw the bums out until we find some that will do the job properly. The progressives, the Tea Party and this President have to go. But first, we in the center are going to have to get our minds right.
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