By Klono's Carbonite Claws, He Doesn't Believe in Government for Government's Sake - Trust Him

This isn't a joke.

Terrified, sickened, and generally fed-up Hat-Tips to Michelle Malkin and Breitbart.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to create a new agency to police the fine print on consumer products like credit cards and mortgages and determine what fees, penalties and interest rates are fair.
The Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be in charge of regulating those products in the same way other government agencies regulate the safety of drugs, food and toys.

Fine Print Police? Really? Is our Dear Leader jealous of the Quebec Language Police or something?

And then there's

The CFPA is part of Obama's broader plan to increase oversight of the financial industry and eliminate regulatory gaps believed to have contributed to the economic crisis.

So is there anyone left who's stupid enough to believe a word that comes out of Obama's mouth that doesn't involve the phrases "I will take more of your money", "My friends are all terrorists and felons", or "I am doing everything I can to destroy the very foundations of this country because I believe in the primacy of the state over the individual"?

What a dick.

Senator Clown Shoes

Minnesota. Senator. Al. Franken.

Ugh.

Just once I'd like to see or hear of a close election where Democrats don't keep "finding" new votes in cars, warehouses, and the like. Or where recount parameters are applied uniformly.

Six years of shame begins today.

Gun Shop Experts

There is a long list of places where you can get lousy information on guns. National Public Radio, The Brady Campaign website, cocktail parties in Berkeley, the MoveOn.org message boards.

Add your neighborhood gun store to the list.

I'm no expert, so I ask a lot of questions. And because very few other people are experts, I check the answers. The list of Dumb Things I've Heard In Gun Shops includes such gems as:

"Disconnecting the magazine safety in a Browning Hi-Power is illegal."

"Its not loaded." (Said of a shotgun that was pointing at my middle)

"You'll ruin that pistol if you dry fire it." (It was a Glock.)

"With a shotgun for home defense, you don't even have to aim"

The latest addition to this list is something I heard at a gun shop when I was looking for something to treat the unfinished stock on an M1 Garand. While the Gun Shop Guy was hunting up a can of Tru-Oil, I mentioned that I'd just gotten the rifle from the CMP.

"Oh really?," he said. "Which of their stores did you drive to?"

I was puzzled. "I didn't have to go anywhere," I told him. "They FedExed it to me."

"That's illegal," he snapped.

"Well, if its illegal," I said "They're breaking the law about 3000 times a month." We went around and around but he didn't budge.

In Gun Shop Guy's world, its illegal to send guns by courier service, and the CMP didn't really send me a Garand, even though its in my safe right now.

Also, when the plunger tube on my SW1911 flew downrange in proud emulation of a 230-grain round, it was illegal for me to send it to Smith and Wesson, and double-secret illegal for them to send it back to me, after they fixed it. (Thanks, guys!)

Its not illegal for Gun Shop Guy to sell me Tru-Oil, thanks be to Zoroaster.

When I get the stock all treated and pretty. Ill post a picture of my non-existant, illegally shipped rifle that I got from the FedGov, in a FedEx box.

I Have Betrayed Paul Krugman

...and I didn't even have to try. Seems the Krugster is quite relieved that the House passed yet another economy-braking bill that they haven't read last week, and even though I wasn't there,

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

I've committed treason against the planet, because I'm one o' them there "deniers". Now, I'd love to sit down with Paul (may I call him Paul?), hand him a fine beverage and a cigar, and explore the concept of applying the label "denial" to the process of simply not acknowledging things that aren't there. For instance am I a 'Salma Hayek in my bedroom' denier because there's no evidence that Ms. Hayek's ever been in there before and so I'm quite comfortable with assuming she's still not? Or am I just logical? Maybe I'd even have some fun drawing the easy parallels between anthropogenic global warming folks and rabidly zealous prosleytizing religious folks.

I think I'd enjoy that a great deal.

But as fun as that would be, I'd probably want to spend some time talking about this section:

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Well, the above may be facts to Paul Krugman, but they aren't to anyone else. All the data anyone cares to examine (ice, atmospheric temps, oceanic temps, surface temps, etc.) show that things are cooler now than 10 years ago, and coupled with/driven by an historically-inactive Sun, are likely to continue to trend in that direction for the near future. But Paul's abominable grasp of science aside, let's look at the language he's chosen:

"pessimists"
"terrifying rate"
"catastrophe"
"unthinkable"

I assume that if I used those same words to describe the unread, un-shared with the public like Obama promised everything would be Cap & Trade bill that was passed last week, Paul, or someone of his ilk, would accuse me of hyperbole, panic, and fearmongering. Never mind that a step closer to a command economy scares the holy bejebus out of me a helluva lot more than desertification or storm surges.

Further in he drabbles on, and closes with:

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Since he brought a strawman to the fight I will too, and I'd close my hypothetical discussion with Paul by stating that I could remind him what betrayal really is, and so could Walter and Gwendolyn Myers. Now, I harldy ever read Paul's work because it's pretty stupid stuff, so maybe he's already written on this, but I'd ask him if the Cuban spy couple were on the same level of betrayal, by actually passing sensitive state secrets to an enemy of the nation for decades, as I am; a guy who is confident that this planet's climate is driven, in the medium run, overwhelmingly by the star around which we orbit, and who sees no strong evidence to the contrary.

So does he really want to throw words around like "denier", "betrayal", and "treason"? Is he going to make me wear a red "C" on my breast to call attention to my lack of interest in his beliefs about Carbon?

Really?

The Real Problem With Lefties...

...is that they really have no concept of private property. I used to listen to our local Air America station pretty regularly on my way to and from work. During the election I had to give it up because even the calm, logical afternoon guy, Tom Hartman, felt it was likely that Sarah Palin's child wasn't really hers. In short - he is just as batshit insane in his own way as Mike Milloy is.

Anyway, I'm driving in today and I pop over to Hartman's show for a lark, and it's his regular Friday hour with Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, a caller, and I'm assuming some yakking about Obama's health care putsch. The caller says, true to form, that if the right wing is so whiney about costs, "just repeal the Bush tax cuts" to which Hartman immediately responds "go back to the Reagan tax cuts".

Which is so prototypical it makes me laugh. Need money? Just take it from someone else.

And they really really really don't see anything wrong with that. I think that has to be the most primal difference between liberals and conservatives, and it's a telling one. It's why I have no problem slapping the label of "socialist" on most liberals and their ideas - because at their heart, most of their ideas involve the concept that nothing really belongs to anyone; everything belongs to The State.

The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Of In Weeks

So, you're a state governor and you think a) that you can flit off to South America for a little Bologna Bounce just because, and b) that NO ONE WILL FIGURE IT OUT?

Seriously, how stupid does one have to be? I couldn't get away with that, and I'm just a citizen.

If I'd voted for him I'd feel a little insulted.

The Electoral College and You

Continuing my recent habit of perusing old haunts and lifting posts of mine that I like, here we have an entry of mine in a thread that posed "the question that won't go away": Is the Electoral College past its prime?
=====================================

The EC is "better" than a popular vote because we already HAVE a branch of government completely determined by popular vote and that's the House of Representatives.

[pedantry]
I've said it a million times but some folks don't seem to grasp the simple reality that our system was DESIGNED, it wasn't stumbled upon.[/pedantry]

Legislative Branch

The House, the PEOPLES' House, is strictly proportional to population - the more you have, the more representin' you get. And its members are elected by direct and popular vote and serve 2 year terms. Bob Jones gets 85,000 votes and Jane Smith gets 85,001 votes? Say hello to Representative Jane.

The Senate is not propotional, it is uniform and "fair" - 2 Senators per state, 6 year terms, no matter how big or small your state is. Senators were originally appointed by the individual state Senates until the 17th Amendment. Now they are directly elected like Representatives.

Executive Branch

The President is elected to a 4 year term via a weighted system whereby appointed and elected Electors cast their votes as determined by popular vote within their states. The total number of electoral votes in a state is based on the sum of its Senators and Congressmen. Most states are "winner take all" states for their Electoral votes. The Legislative branch breaks ties.

Judicial Branch

Nine Supreme Court justices, appointed by the executive, serving life appointments.

If you take various parts of this system and make it based on popular vote where it wasn't designed to be such, it throws off the concepts of "checks and balances" that were originally set up with multiple branches subject to various and separate forces and fads for different lengths of time.

It's just a bad idea.

Cold Dead Fingers, Etc.

Seems to me that the Iranian people would be doing better if they only had some guns to use...

Fancy that.

Let's Make an Ideal!

Doing a little brain-filtering today and came across an old discussion on a forum where we were discussing the Supremes' Heller decision of last year which confirmed that the 2nd Amendment does indeed apply to individuals, not just collective groups or The State. Re-reading a few of my posts I came across the following, which I kinda like, so I'll post 'em here.

Because I can.

"Which, that the Framers intended for me to be able to own a nuke or that it's reasonable for such ownership to be effectively prohibited?

Either way, I agree with both parts. The ideal that I will always seek to drive for, the asymptote if you will, is private ownership of nukes. I will be satisfied with coming up short of that ideal as long as that remains the ideal.

The world isn't ideal. Goals can be."

And to the question: "So you think that they meant it to include cannon and such?"

"Like I've said, I think that was the ideal, yes. I think the Framers would have been far more comfortable with the locals having an Abrams and a Mark 19 and an F-22 than with the government having one. Hell - they didn't even want a standing army, let alone one that could run roughshod over the citizenry.

And because of the technology of weaponry in that era there was literally nothing a government could afford or produce that a private citizen or collection of such could not as well. Nothing.

Like I've also said, I understand where reality trumps ideals, but it doesn't necessarily change them."

In Soviet Russia, Fly Swats You!

"You see? He stares at the fly. How many times have each of us tried to do this? Look at the hand coming up. The poise. The cupping. And the quick slap...Just knocked it away, very rare."

"We've also just confirmed the President is a Ninja."

"You just have to appreciate the, the concentration and the precision! Just a few things going on in the world but it's as if everything was stopped and at a standstill for the President to lower the boom."

So President Obama nailed an insect and, like any proud 12 year old, showed it off to the grown-ups in the room. And yes, the morning TV gaggles that the above quotes were culled from are more clowns than journalists no matter what.

But still. The gushing, the foaming, the child-like awe. You watch that clip and you can see that several studio sets are going to be needing new seat cushions - these people were behaving like Traci Lords at a big dick convention.

So the next time someone tries to tell you with a straight face that the American press isn't biased, or just plain foolish, just ask them to watch

the video here.

This is the kind of doe-eyed vacuum-brained hero-construction that you're supposed to laugh at from the old Soviet Union, or Mao's China, or North Korea. It's not supposed to happen here. If you meet the American President on the street (not that that can happen anymore) you're supposed to be able to shake his hand and tell him "Thanks" or "I don't like what you're doing", not tremble in fear and grind your forehead in the dirt.

Just makes my skin crawl.

Barney Frank: So Easy To Hate

I don't need another reason to loathe that odious, bombastic shit Barney Frank. But in its generosity, the Universe keeps providing them.

As we all know, General Motors is firing workers and closing plants and facilities as part of it's restructuring plan. One of the facilities was a parts distribution warehouse in Norton, Mass that employed 90 people. When he learned that a GM facility in his district was about to be closed, Rep. Frank (D) (duh) called GM CEO Fritz Henderson and got the warehouse a 7-month extension.

When you are the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, you can do that kind of thing. Lex bovis, non jovis*, after all.

Apparently Frank's long experience not working in the car industry (or any other industry) means he knows better than the poor bastards who are trying to unfuck GM. Or maybe the kind of arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial idiocy that would not be out of place on a Soviet apparachik just comes naturally to him.

If this is the kind of enlightened stewardship practiced by the US Congress, we might as well give up now and start importing all our cars from China.


*The law is for the cattle, not the gods.

If Only Someone Had Listened To Paul Krugman Back in 2002....

Back in August of 2002, Paul Krugman wrote this.

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

This would have saved us all, if only someone had the wit to lower interest rates and create a credit-fueled housing bubble!

Area Of Concern

Whoever convinced men to wear 'skinny jeans' must be laughing his ass off right about now.

Shut Up, John McCain

My esteemed co-blogger once said "John McCain's not really presidential timber, but he'd make a great Secretary of Fuck You."

That quality of McCain's was on display recently when the Senator got up to opine on the recent Iranian elections and give some advice to the current president.

"He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election," said McCain. "The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.""I think it's possible to engage. But item number one is giving the Iranian people a free and fair election," he said.

Actually, Barack should keep his trap shut on this subject and so should McCain. Anyone who campaigned on their ability to size up the intricacies of international relations (looking at you here, Johnny) should see the reasons why immediately.

First of all, the Iranians aren't going to do anything just because you ask them to. They don't like us, remember?

Secondly, the more you throw your weight around, the more ammo you hand to people who think the USA is trying to dictate policy to Muslims and the Middle East.

Thirdly, if you really want Mir Hossein Mousavi to win, the worst thing you can do is say so, and start jacking your jaws into microphones on his behalf. If he starts looking like the USA's choice, he's finished politically in Iran.

Finally (not that we need another reason) a really good way to line up the Iranians behind a hardliner is to start threatening them.

President Obama should shut up as well. His statement that he's 'deeply troubled' by the election results is exactly the kind of lecture he promised not to deliver, and exactly the sort of patronizing chatter the rest of the world is tired of hearing from Washington.

Health Care Reform

This here is an interesting piece about health care reform and the current state of affairs.

"...during World War II a tax break was extended to non-wage benefits such as health insurance premiums paid by employers. Over time, this effectively tied most American health insurance to employment. This forces patients to fire their employer before they can fire their insurance company. It is small wonder why we get such poor treatment from insurance companies. The key to returning true competition to health care is to make it possible for individuals to fire their insurance company, which requires eliminating the tax break on employer-provided health insurance by extending it to privately purchased policies."

The author also explains why just extending Medicare is a bad idea, no matter how happy people may be with it. Medicare does cost less, because the government refuses to pay higher prices. As a result, everyone not on Medicare gets charged more to subsidise those who are.

Artificially lower reimbursement rates don't cover the full cost of procedures, so health care providers shift costs to everyone else. In other words, the relative lack of competition in today's market leads to higher insurance costs for people who aren't old enough to qualify for Medicare. Extending Medicare-like insurance to everyone is a fallacy of composition: What works for some cannot work for all as a matter of logic.

Its a very thought provoking article. Go read the whole thing. I'd add that the author doesn't even address making it easier for people to buy differing levels of coverage (ie. let young single people buy bare bones coverage instead of the fancy plans on offer with most employers) or even buy them across state lines.

Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Memoranda of Sanctions

Even the U.N, famous for letting nearly anyone get away with nearly anything, can get seriously hacked off if you poke sticks at it long enough.

Today, the Security Council swallowed hard, found its testicles in an old storage closet somewhere, and imposed new sanctions against North Korea, citing a recent nuclear test.

The latest sanctions on these Commie wingnuts include restrictions on weapons exports and financial dealings, and allows inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas.

The last one is the most interesting. Only a few weeks ago, Pyongyang (no shortage of balls here, to say nothing of bombast and hysteria) announced:

"Any minor hostile acts, including cracking down on or searching our peaceful vessels, will be an unacceptable infringement of our republic's sovereignty," North Korea's military said in a statement broadcast by state media. "We will respond with an immediate and strong military strike."

Should be interesting, given that there are about 10,000 North Korean artillery pieces pointed at Seoul right now.

This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

We need to update the plaque on the Statue of Liberty to say something like "Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to be Free, And Also, Anyone Too Fat or Lazy to Wipe Their Own Ass."

Behold, America: The Comfort Wipe.

I weep for the nation, I really do....

Them Jews....

Poor Reverend Wright. He is the latest victim of the International Zionist Conspiracy, who are keeping him from seeing his old buddy Barack. Jake Tapper's of ABC tells us that a reporter from a Virginia newspaper tracked down the Rev a few days ago and asked him if he'd chatted with the president recently.

Wright said, "them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office."

I again fling this question out into an uncaring universe. If the Jews are running everything, where is my fucking share?

Thanks, Professor JRRT

"Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and seized the axe of an orc-captain and wielded it two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried aloud: ‘Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, who thought thus to do him more evil than by death. Therefore the Orcs grappled Hurin with their hands, which clung to him still, though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, till he fell buried beneath them."

My spur-of-the-moment re-read of LOTR recently also turned into another trip through the Silmarillion and co. Usually the passage that stays with me is the one in which Fingolfin battles Morgoth, but this time it's the above imagery that stands out. I doubt Professor Tolkien would have appreciated such a vulgar comment, but man, that's some severe badassery up there.

"Read My Lips. I Lied"

Back in February, President Obama made this simple pledge to Congress, "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

That was probably before he realized how much money the government was spending on bailing out the auto and financial sectors, and how much cap-and-trade, health care reform, and entitlements would cost. Health care alone is supposed to run 1.2-1.5 trillion dollars.

Maybe he really meant meant (but did not say) "income taxes", because there is a whole host of new taxes being discussed in Washington DC these days, including:

-- An additional payroll tax on the value of your employer supplied health benefits.

-- A national sales tax on soda.

-- A larger national beer and spirits tax

--Whatever extra we pay in our energy bills for cap-and-trade.

I guess 'change you can believe in' refers to what's left in your paycheck after the government gets through taking its fair share.

Layman Opinion #453

So the President's first pick for the Supreme Court is a racist, bigoted liberal, and some folks appear to be in a tizzy about it.

So what? Did anyone honestly expect anything different? And while it's tempting emotionally to want to jump up and down and be a pile of blistered dicks like the Dems were for Bush's judicial appointments, it would serve no purpose. So I'm in the camp that says "stand up, ask good questions that illustrate the candidate's strengths and weaknesses, do some work to verify that she's qualified and clean, and assuming that she is that, vote to confirm."

He's the President - he gets to appoint, the Senate is only supposed to guard against incompetence or illegality, not political philosophy.

Lead by example, gents.

You Can Have My Pepperoni When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Hands

The Washington D.C. City Council has officially run out of crime fighting ideas.

The latest proposal to cut down on violence involves banning pizza joints that attract a late night crowd.

Instead of asking the cops to put criminals in jail, or having police officers patrolling the city, DC Councilman Jim Graham wants to ban jumbo slice pizza.

Democrat Party councilman Jim Graham says the late-night “Jumbo Slice” pizza shacks operating on the popular Adams Morgan club and bar strip in Ward 1 attract the element that is likely to commit crime.

“Even though it’s a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance,” Graham said. “Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence.”

I'm not usually at a loss to express exactly how idiotic something is, but Jim Graham has defeated me.

Assuming this measure passes, I guarantee that the late-night crowd will move over to cheap Chinese restaurants, or the new Pork-Chop-On-A-Stick Franchise, or the whatever muck and lard is available to violent drunkards after midnight.

I assume the intrepid Councilman Graham will be ready with another stern measure, forbidding the citizens of DC to eat latkes or sate or hamburgers after the bars close. Eventually if Jim gets his way, it will be illegal to eat outside at night, and then, finally the citizens of Washington DC will be safe.

Vrooooooooom!

C'mon people, seriously. You can't see the guy on the big black motorcycle twenty feet away from your windshield? What do I have to do, put a rotating light on top of my helmet?

I mean, really.

A Cool, Rational Look At The Book Publishing Industry

Some businesses are not dumb at all. Google, for example, is an example of an innovative technology company making oodles of lovely money. You have to dig to find anything dumb in the Googleverse, although Google Sites may be close.

Some businesses seem smart, but when you look into them a little, you find seething pools of dumbness. Selling cars to Americans is a pretty way to get rich, but if you start rooting around, you find the Pontiac Aztek and the GM Job Bank.

Finally, some businesses are dumb right from the first look. Today I'm picking on book publishing.

First of all, book publishers don't test their products on anyone. Ever. In other words, the opinion of the editor and associate editors and the head of the publishing house determines what manuscripts make it into print.

Hollwood does it much the same way, and bungles it most of the time -- Universal passed on Star Wars, essentially turning down a license to print money, and every studio in town except Paramount turned down Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The literary geniuses at Knopf and Little Brown and others compound this error by paying advances to almost all their authors. An author delivers a couple chapters -- or most of a book if they are a first-timer -- and they get paid before the publishing house makes any money, or even knows if they will.

Then the publishing house spends money on editing, typesetting, designing covers, printing, publicity (if there is any) and distribution.This is all very expensive, and explains why fancy cookbooks with full color illustrations cost $9 million each.

The more books you print, the cheaper it gets per copy, but you can run into problems fast by overprinting. Read on.

Book stores must have won a bet or some kind of underground shadow-war against the publishers years ago, because they are allowed to take all the books on consignment. If they don't sell, the publisher has to take them back and refund the money.

If the book does sell and stores need more copies, the publisher has more problems. The second print run is a rush job and therefore costs more per copy. Its also probably smaller the your initial print run, and therefore costs more per copy.

If it doesn't get to the bookstores in time, the fickle reading public forgets all about you, and your chance for a bestseller evaporates. Just like the first print run, unsold books go back and the money is refunded.

Essentially, publishing houses take a royal asspounding from every single entity they do business with from the author to the bookstores to the printer. No wonder they depend on the big stars like James Patterson, Tom Clancy and Stephen King to subsidize all the other books and authors.

I suppose there are some reasons for optimism. The Amazon Kindle and Sony ebook reader with digital distribution, print on demand and market testing using a multivariant fractional factorial approach have the potential to change the industry, if applied right.

Its significant that the companies developing and distributing these tools and technologies are not book publishers, who could probably teach Luddites a thing or two about hating technology.

Which leaves me predicting that the publishers who got themselves into this mess will not have have the vision to get themselves out.