Obama to observe a moment of silence

Barack Obama will observe a moment of silence in honor of the Boston bombing victims, with no one present, no press, no outsiders, no one except the White House photographer who will be there to document the moment when Barack shut the hell up. 

Go here. 

Tragic moment last week or not, that is funny. 

I don't care who you are, that is funny. 

Picture of Barack using Teleprompters to address 6th graders came from here. 

Noted gay marriage opponent holds fundraiser at home of lesbian couple !!

Go here. 

Makes you wonder why they didn't hold a fundraiser for Mewt or Santorum. 

The Libertarian Party is THE party that wants to get government out of the marriage business.  If you care about gay and lesbian rights to marriage, we're the only way to go.   End of story. 

The protest against Obama's discriminatory politicies happened in Beverly Hills.  Pic came from here. 

22 billion in cuts for this year !!! (Ahem....there's a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit this year.)

The much-discussed, now defeated Boehner Bill would have cut 22 billion dollars from this year's Federal spending. 

22 billion is a lot of money, unless you tastelessly mention that this year's deficit is 1.6 trillion.  (That's one thousand billions, plus 600 billions - if you have trouble with all the zeroes.) 

I was looking for an illustration for this, something to show a comparison between 22 billion in cuts as compared to 1.6 trillion hole.  I only found this:

The trifling amount of cuts for this year in the Boehner Bill are roughly equal to the amount we spend on hunting trips. 

I couldn't find any pics of 1.6 trillion dollars.  However, I found a list of what all you could do with a mere one trillion.  Remember to compare the things on this list to the purchase of a tree stand, and to add another 60% to everything listed below....

If you stack up $1,000 bills, $1 trillion would need a pile that is 80 miles high.

$ 1 trillion is more than the combined gross revenues of Wal Mart, Exxon, General Motors and Ford Motors.

Assuming the United States consumes about 17 billion barrels of oil a year and assuming the cost of a barrel of oil is about $65, a trillion dollars will buy an entire year’s worth of oil for the USA.

You could buy a thousand Queen Mary 2 with accommodations for 2,620 passengers

With a population of approximately 300 million people, you could give away $1 trillion by giving every man, woman and child in the U.S. $ 3,400 each.

We could buy everyone on Earth an iPod.

We could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with 23.5-karat gold leaf.

We could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses

And in the long term, the Boehner Bill only cuts spending by 1.2 trillion over a ten-year period. 

We are freakin' doomed. 

Obi-Ron, you're our only hope....

Why the tornadoes hit Alabama and not Canada

I knew that the Global Warmists would pile on to the tornadoes and storms that recently hit Alabama and Mississippi, but I wanted to find the perfect example before posting anything about it. 

As all right-thinking people know, Jehovah/Yahweh/Zuul/Gaia doesn't like it when we tolerate gays and lesbians.  So He/She/It sent a hurricane to New Orleans to punish the offending parties. 

If our crops fail, it's because there are witches in our midst.  After we burn a few of them, the Gods are appeased and prosperity returns. 

I'll never forget going to my uncle's house in the early 1970's and hearing a farmer question whether or not our space travel was causing an uptick in hurricanes. 

Well, guess why we had tornadoes in the South last week? 

Bad legislative karma.  Yep.  Certain regions have legislators that don't bow at the foot of Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City, Tennessee.  The Gods sent the tornadoes to those exact places as payback. 

Here's Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress:

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”
The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

So there you have it.  If the congressional delegations of 'Bama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Georgia, Virginny, and Ol' Kentuck had just voted to let Al Gore buy Carbon Credits from himself, if we had just started using CFL bulbs a little sooner, if we had just built a few more idiotic windmills in West Texas, if we had implemented an economy-destroying carbon tax, if we had carpooled, starved a few more brown people by using grain as ethanol, used a push mower, minimized packaging, put on a sweater, bought a bracelet, air dried our clothes, and done other things to conform to some bureaucrat's Luddite fantasy.....

If we had turned our lives over to the government, crucified the evil Koch brothers, voted Democrat, and listened to the warnings from totally disinterested scientists whose research funding and prestige doesn't depend on government funding at all....

Then the earth-goddess Gaia would have been pleased.  Alabama would have been spared.  The tornadoes would have hit Canada, where the natives are well known for violating the Christian Sabbath.  And consuming alcohol.  And wearing clothing made of blended fabrics.  And not wearing Burkhas.   

Or it's possible that ThinkProgress needs to learn that correlation is not causation.  

I forgot to post anything for Earth Day

I found the link to this at Denny's site.  Greatness. 



But don't you hate the way that the punchline is given away in the title of the video? 

Barack Obama's Environmentally Correct Easter Egg Hunt

(CNSNews.com) – The White House announced Monday that this year’s Easter Egg Roll will be “more environmentally friendly,” with eggs made ofwood certified by an environmental activist organization and packaging that will “minimize waste and environmental impact.”

Can someone please, please, please explain to me, using little bitty words that I can understand, why it is that eggs made of trees are "greener" than the eggs that are squeezed out of chickens? 

The press release issued by the White House states that the eggs will be produced in the United States from hardwood “certified” by the Forest Stewardship Council, a non-profit organization with a presence in 50 countries and a mission “to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.”

Can someone please, please, please explain to me, using little bitty words that I can understand, why is it that involving globe-trotting bureaucrats and regulators (with a presence in 50 countries) makes something "greener"? 

The “greener” packaging for the eggs – available in purple, pink, green and yellow – is made from paperboard certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. The paperboard “uses no wood fibers from controversial sources” and the printed carton the egg comes in can be recycled. The packaging is also decorated with vegetable oil-based inks and water-based coatings.

If there's anything our President should guard against, its wood fibers from controversial sources. 
Think of the energy and resources wasted on this exercise in political correctness.  Manufacturing wooden eggs, Separating the controversial wood fiber from the more bland varieties.  Coming up with an ink made from vegetables.  Good God in heaven, the mind recoils. 

(Water-based coatings are a good thing, IMAO.  Fewer VOC's released into the atmosphere.  That part is semi-legit, but still nothing to brag about.) 

A final (imported) nail in the Locavore coffin

You might remember the "Locavore" movement, the anti-growth/anti-globalism folks who want to mandate that we supply ourselves within spitting distance of our front yards, or some such silliness.  At one time they were proposing legislation that required grocery stores to show how many "food miles" each product had travelled. 
Yeah.  Seriously. 

Yes, I guess you could grow oranges in Fort Worth, Texas, but they would have bigger carbon footprints than Al Gore's mansion(s).  And they would probably be so crappy that the producers couldn't get any economies of scale in their orange shipments.  I could go on and on, but there's no point in it. 

Here's another argument against the Locavores by Tim Worstall.  I found it on Samizdata:

Take local food. So, if everyone in North-Eastern Japan were to be reliant upon local food supplies then everyone in North-Eastern Japan would now be condemned to starvation in the next month or so. Not just the ten or twenty thousand who have already died, but the hundreds of thousands, millions, that make up the entire population. For in the wake of an earthquake that destroyed much and a tsunami that swamped the rest, there is no food, no saved food storage and no damn chance of growing any for the forseeable future.


"Localism” would kill all of these people. And the same would be true of localism in Pakistan when it floods, Queensland when it floods, Cockermouth when it floods, any damn where when there’s a drought and, in fact, any part of the planet that could be hit by any of those natural disasters which a vengeful planet can plop upon us, from the flood and drought already mentioned through to hurricanes, cyclones, potato or banana blight and plagues of frogs.

Think about any place suffering from a famine.  Famines happen when the local food supply doesn't come through, and the locals haven't been allowed to trade with neighboring (or faraway) nations. 

Ok, but what about the disruption to supply chains?  Haven't we all read about how Toyota plants in the U.S. and other a few other automakers are having to shut down assembly lines because they relied on Japanese parts? 
Wal-Mart figured that one out a long, long time ago.  They have a minimum of two suppliers for everything, just in case one of them goes broke, gets hit with an earthquake, a tsunami, or gets too uppity.  Within a couple of years, every one of Japane's major customers will have done the same. 

So good riddance to the Locavores.  If they had their way, I would be stuck eating local Texas barbeque. 

If you've got a few more minutes to kill, go here to read an account of a Locavore in British Colombia who drove all over town in a damn SUV to pick up food to serve at a locally-grown meal designed to get neighbors to turn off their floodlights.  I don't think he meant that part of it to be funny.  These are nice people, but they don't understand economies of scale. 

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to man's stupidity" - General George S. Patton

Here's a video of two girls climbing the four million dollar per mile U.S./Mexico border fence.
The important thing about this massive piece of pork? 

1) The contractors who lobbied for it got paid.
2) Politicians came up with a piece of Performance Art to show that they were doing something. 
3) The fence looks impressive without actually stopping the flow of illegals, who help fuel our economy, and drugs, which help fuel the prison/counselor/police lobby. 

If seen in the context described above, this monument is more beautiful than Mount Rushmore. 


Hit the "tortilla curtain" label below to read an old post about how much this thing costs per foot. 

The Great TSA "My-Ding-A-Ling" Singalong

Okay, everybody, get warmed up and follow the bouncing ball(s)....

P.J. O'Rourke on Climate Change

This is from P.J. O’Rourke’s soon to be classic book “Don’t Vote. It Just Encourages The Bastards”.

The following excerpt is P.J.’s take on Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change Global Climate Disruption.

What makes it so funny is the context, which I really can’t provide here. Whereas the chapters on Taxes, Gun Control, Healthcare Reform, Foreign Policy, and Terrorism are all several pages long, this entire chapter on the Chicken Little Movement is only three short paragraphs.

This is all you need to know on the subject:

CLIMATE CHANGE

There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn’t matter. There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick. Actually, if you go more than a mile of two outside China’s big cities, the wants are more basic. People want a hot plate and a piece of methane-emitting cow to cook on it. They want a carbon-belching moped, and some CO2-disgorging heat in their houses in the winter. And air-conditioning wouldn’t be considered an imposition, if you’ve ever been to China in the summer.

Now, I want you to dress yourself in sturdy clothing and arm yourself however you like – a stiff shot of gin would be my recommendation – and I want you to go tell 1.3 billion Chinese they can never have a Buick.

Then, assuming the Sierra Club helicopter has rescued you in time, I want you to go tell a billion people in India the same thing.

The End.

So, next time a politician or the EPA starts mandating limits on this or caps on that, all in the name of appeasing The Weather Gods, ask yourself what they think they’re accomplishing. (Correct answer: rewarding donors from the regulatory and green industries.)

Milton Friedman and green spoons

Columnist George Will was the speaker at the Cato Institute biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty Dinner on May 13.  He led off with this gem about Dr. Friedman:

Milton Friedman, whose name we honor tonight, was honored often for his recondite and subtle scholarship. But it was complemented by a sturdy common sense much in fashion nowhere now. About 40 years ago he found himself in an Asian country where the government was extremely eager to show off a public works project of which it was inordinately and excessively fond.
It was digging a canal.
They took Milton out to see this, and he was astonished because there were hordes of workers but no heavy equipment. He remarked on this to his government guide, who replied, "You don't understand, Mr. Friedman. This is a jobs program. That's why we only have men with shovels." To which Friedman said, "Well, if it's a jobs program, why don't they have spoons instead of shovels?"

On a related subject, here's our Vice President advocating that we begin making spoons instead of shovels, or, god forbid, draglines.  And not just spoons, but green spoons.  Think of the jobs created if we require everyone to use green spoons.  
Won't that make it all better?   

From the front page of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

From The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Energy efficiency is on the mind of every homeowner, but the same could be said of Uncle Sam.
Officials at Naval Air Station Fort Worth are increasingly embracing greener initiatives to reduce electricity, gas, water and fuel consumption and use alternative energy sources.

Here's the picture that accompanied the article.  It's one of the green, wholesome electric cars (highly subsidized, I'm sure) that are now running all over Carwell Air Force Base.  (Carswell AFB is the military installation that protects Fort Worth from sneak attacks by Oklahoma.)
These go-carts are manufactured by Daimler-Chrysler, which is now owned by Obama/Reid/Pelosi and the UAW. 

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this picture is hilarious? 

This is one of my all-time favorite meaningless symbolic gestures.  The boys at Carswell take the mega-planes up once or twice a week, just for the hell of it as far as I can tell, and totally negate any and all justification for these little Tonka Toys.  More fuel is consumed on takeoff...aww...never mind.    
I'd pay $100 for a picture of General Patton going across Europe in one of these.  
This has had me in a good mood all day. 

Why I don't go to graduations, including my own

I have a college degree, but did not graduate (as in, participate in the graduation ceremoney.  I was already gone, and told 'em to throw it in the mailbox for me.

Ceremonies like this one are the reason why.  Here's the worst 1 1/2 minutes of it:



Imagine working your rear end off for four years for a degree, and then having to sit through THAT.

What does the Federal Budget "freeze" look like?

A fresh coat of Whitening to the Tom Lewis Blog.

For the Scott Brown truck bomb - Townes Van Zandt's "White Freightliner Blues"

My friend Leslie at Leslie's Omnibus has been keeping up with the election for what people insist on calling Ted Kennedy's senate seat.
It's NOT Ted Kennedy's senate seat. It's the Kennedy FAMILY senate seat. When JFK was elected president, he had a family servant named Ben Smith keep the seat warm until young Teddy came of age (he was not yet 30). Calling it the "Ted Kennedy Seat" does a disservice to the Democratic Party's Constitutional Monarch system.

Note to self: Write a post on why the Democrats have Superdelegates at their conventions and the other political parties don't.

Scott Brown, the Republican from out of nowhere, has caught the attention of The Teleprompter Jesus by driving a truck and mentioning the truck as proof of his just-us-folks credentials. Go here for more info. Obama recently said "So, look, forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads. Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck." Brown responded with "Are you out of your damn mind? With 10% unemployment caused by your insane crap, and you wanting to tax or insure everything with a pulse? You think anybody feels secure enough to go out and buy a truck?" “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.”

That's the essence of the 2010 Massachusetts truck controversy. I'm partial to the libertarian guy who is running as an independent, Joe Kennedy (no relation to the family which has long held the seat due to royal prerogative).

Leslie is asking that everyone post a truck photo or song to commemorate this exchange between Scott Brown and The Teleprompter Jesus. A truck bomb. She should have quite a collection by the time this thing is over with. This is Townes Van Zandt's 'White Freightliner Blues' as performed by Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss, Jools Holland, and Faith Hill. (Imagine that lineup as an SAT question, where you're supposed to circle the name that doesn't fit !)



Ok, now you can forget the truck, Martha Coakley, and Scott Brown. GO JOE KENNEDY ! ! ! ! !

Passengers leave seats to thwart terrorists; Government reacts by keeping passengers in their seats

I am not making any of this up. I've double-checked all of it for accuracy as best I can.

Ever wonder how regulations are born? Ever wonder where all the red tape comes from? Have you ever wondered why it takes a day's worth of paperwork to ship a clock from overseas on Federal Express?


Here's Mark Steyn, on the recently thwarted terrorist attack on an airliner:

On September 11th 2001, the government's (1970s) security procedures all failed, and the only good news of the day came from self-reliant citizens (on Flight 93) using their own wits and a willingness to act.

On December 25th 2009, the government's (post-9/11) security procedures all failed, and the only good news came once again from alert individuals:

From an interview of one of the heroes, quoted by the New York Post:

"Suddenly, we hear a bang. It sounded like a firecracker went off," said Jasper Schuringa, a film director who was traveling to the US to visit friends.

"When [it] went off, everybody panicked ... Then someone screamed, ‘Fire! Fire!’"

Schuringa, sitting in seat 20J, in the right-most section of the Airbus 330, looked to his left. "I saw smoke rising from a seat ... I didn’t hesitate. I just jumped," he said.

Schuringa dove over four passengers to reach Abdul Mutallab’s seat. The suspect had a blanket on his lap. "It was smoking and there were flames coming from beneath his legs."

"I searched on his body parts and he had his pants open. He had something strapped to his legs."
The unassuming hero ripped the flaming, molten object — which resembled a small, white shampoo bottle — off Abdul Mutallab’s left leg, near his crotch. He said he put out the fire with his bare hands.

Schuringa yelled for water, and members of the flight crew soon appeared with fire extinguishers. Then, he said, he hauled the suspect out of the seat.

Ok, so some wide-awake passengers rose from their seats to prevent a disaster in a situation where the regulators failed.

How have the government regulators responded? Here's Joan Lowy, writing for the Associated Press:

Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing.

....Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn't have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows.



The TSA issued a security directive for U.S.-bound flights from overseas, according to a transportation security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.

Here's Rand Simberg, with Pajamas Media:

....as usual, the new measures, hastily put into place because something happened, will be measures that would likely have had no effect on what happened. But since they already had measures in place, and something happened anyway, they have to do something new to keep the curtains open in the theater.




Yep. The new regulations will be pointless, but we must be given the impression that our government is doing something. The show must go on.

Pics came from here and here and here and here. (The last one in the series is the one you're looking for.)

Also, I'm particularly proud of the labels for this post. Almost all of them reward further reading.

Their "safe word" was "Whatever I say, Don't Stop !"

From Talking Points Memo:

Rod Jetton, the former Missouri House Speaker, fired a state lawmaker from his committee chairmanship in 2007 because the lawmaker had changed a bill in order to end a state ban on gay sex -- or what Jetton called "deviate sexual intercourse."

Jetton was charged with felony assault Monday after a girlfriend alleged that he had beaten and choked her during a recent sexual encounter, in which she failed to use a mutually agreed upon "safe word." The woman also suggested that Jetton may have slipped a date-rape drug into her glass of wine, causing her to lose consciousness. In the wake of the charges, Jetton announced that the political consulting firm he has run since leaving office last year would close its doors.

The picture of Big Daddy Rod Jetton swangin' his big ol' hammer, and showing the gavel who was in charge, and bending both the hammer and the gavel to his will and making them both submit to his desires, and asking them both if they want more? Huh? Do you want it harder? Faster? Does it hurt? Do you like it when it hurts?

Sorry. Got carried away there.

That picture came from here.

But Some Are More Equal Than Others

I think my commitment to gay and lesbian rights is established by now.
Heck, I had this published as an editorial in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

But.... here's Steve Chapman, writing in Reason magazine.

.... Congress never stops trying to ensure full employment for FBI agents and U.S. attorneys. The latest stimulus is the Matthew Shepard Act, billed as an overdue effort to prevent violence against gays and lesbians.The logic behind the proposed measure is hard to follow.

Says sponsoring Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), "No members of society—none—deserve to be victims of a violent crime because of their race, their religion, their ethnic background, their disability, their gender, their gender identity, or their sexual orientation."

Ok, Ted. Your grasp of the obvious has been duly noted.

Which raises the question: Who exactly does deserve to be the victim of a violent crime?
The bill targets actions we would all like to eliminate—physically injuring or trying to injure someone with "fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device."

But it's hard to imagine that it would reduce the prevalence of such conduct, which is already 1) really, really illegal and 2) subject to harsh penalties.This legislation would add extra punishment for attacks designated as hate crimes. But if a criminal is not deterred by the fear of five years behind bars, he's probably not going to be pushed onto the straight and narrow by the prospect of six.

That's not what this is about. This is about allowing Ted Kennedy to increase the perception that he is protector of the helpless (unless you happen to be riding shotgun with him near a bridge.)

In the case of attacks like the one on Matthew Shepard, a gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998, the statute would be superfluous. His killers were eligible for the death penalty, though both made deals that assured they would be locked up for the rest of their lives. For the most horrific hate crimes, the change would accomplish absolutely nothing.

But you can click here to see how certain groups don't qualify....

That's not the only way in which it would constitute an exercise in irrelevance. Already, 45 states have hate crime laws, and two-thirds of them include crimes against gays and lesbians. In the remaining states, you will be relieved to know, such attacks are punished as violent felonies.

I think the concept is called "equal protection under the law". The way it's supposed to work is that white heterosexual baptist non-handicapped males who aren't mentally ill (I think I covered all the bases there) are entitled to the same protection under the law as gay pygmy transgendered wiccans with speech impediments.

There's that, plus the concept of Thoughtcrime should be a little scary.

If federal licensing laws required disclosure of the ingredients in congressional legislation, here's what the label on this one would say: 90 grams of empty symbolism and 10 grams of needless duplication.

Yeah, but that's Ted Kennedy. 90 grams of symbolism and 10% last name.

Bonus video: During House deliberations over the hate-crimes bill, Rep. Alcee Hastings reads a list of fetishes that would be covered under the legislation.



I bet I know what Ted was thinking if he heard that speech. So many fetishes, so little time....

I don't give a rip what gays, lesbians, Wiccans, The Senate The Mentally Ill, or the citizens of Lichtenstein do, as long as they leave me alone and don't scare the horses.

Heck, if you folks want to have a fundraiser after I die, you can sell my corpse to a colony of necrophiliacs. I'm not going to care. (Not an original joke. Heard a standup comedian say it years ago, and it just came back to me.)

But when you give ANY group special protections that you don't give everyone else, you're simply giving ammunition to racists, bigots, and the like.

It's an incredibly stupid stunt, and it will be law within a year.

Obama promises to reduce spending, along with a question about Seal and Logo Design

This is from The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, written by Will Lester for the Associated Press. I don't know how Mr. Lester could report this with a straight face.

I'm not going to put up a link yet, because I want everyone to guess the dollar amount at the end of the post.

WASHINGTON — Families are making tough decisions about their money and so will their government, President Barack Obama said Saturday, promising spending cuts soon.
At a Cabinet meeting Monday, he will ask department and agency heads for proposals for trimming their budgets.

Ok, the idiot just signed a series of spending bills beyond anything ever seen by any nation in history. Now that he's given them the money, he's going to ask them to trim their budgets? Or is he just going to ask them to jettison only the projects that are easily ridiculed? What the hell is going on here? We just recently approved spending all the money, right?

"If we’re going to rebuild our economy on a solid foundation, we need to change the way we do business in Washington. We need to restore the American people’s confidence in their government — that it is on their side, spending their money wisely, to meet their families’ needs," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, released while he attended the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

The best way to spend my money wisely to meet my family's needs? Let me do it. I don't need your help to do it. Let me keep as much of it as possible. Unfortunately, my great-great-grandchildren are going to be footing the bill for your crap.

Oh, and please come home from Trinidad. You've met enough dictators for one trip.

To help achieve his goal of an efficient government, Obama announced the appointment of Jeffrey Zients, a founder and managing partner of the investment firm Portfolio Logic, as chief performance officer.

Click here to see the amount that Zients donated.

Zients, who will also serve as deputy director for management of the Office of Management and Budget, will work to streamline processes and cut costs.

We've created new government jobs to do what....? Heh heh heh.....

"In this effort, there will be no sacred cows and no pet projects," Obama said. "All across America, families are making hard choices, and it’s time their government did the same."

Have I slept through something? Did I dream something? Is this not the same jug-eared doofus that signed off on the porkulus project? Can anyone explain this? Anybody? Dr. Ralph? Vice President Biden? I'm pinching myself and I can feel it. I'm not dreaming. Is The Teleprompter's Operator, the only person in the world more powerful than Barack Obama, really calling for fiscal discipline now that the pork is in the barrel?

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who delivered Saturday’s weekly GOP address, said, "Republicans couldn’t agree more."

The Crips and The Bloods are in agreement. Good.

Obama said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is ending consulting contracts to create seals and logos that have cost the department $_______ since 2003.

Ok, how much do you think it should cost to create seals and logos for the Department Of Homeland Security? I'm imagining a starving artist locked away in his garret with nothing but some circular canvas, some cadmium yellow, red ochre, flat white, and some garage sale paintbrushes. I'm thinking it should cost less than $3,000 to create some of the greatest seals and logos known to man.

But perhaps the seals and logos had to be market tested. Did the new designs give taxpayers the feeling of warmth and security they deserve? Did every American sub-culture look at them and immediately think "Homeland"? And most important, did the department's new seals and logos strike fear into the hearts of terrorists?

How much should this research cost? Another $10,000 at the most?

I eagerly await your guesses. Googling isn't fair. How much have we paid for Department of Homeland Security seals and logos since 2003?

P.S. - We're all doomed.

Nine Questions About The Big 3 Bailout

A few questions about the Big 3 bailout....

1) After being thoroughly chastised for arriving in D.C. in private jets for their first Subsidy Session, the Detroit CEO's appear to have learned the value of The Meaningless Symbolic Gesture. I think they all pulled into Washington in hybrids this time, simply because cars that run on BS, rhetoric, and moonbeams haven't been invented yet and were unavailable.
Anyway, question #1 is.... since corporate jets are, by almost any standard, nothing but an ego boost, are the Big 3 automakers going to sell the jets? Should there be a string attached requiring them to get rid of them, if the jets were a dealbreaker in the previous episode of Dancing For Dollars?

2) How many American automakers have already gone out of business? Is there something special about these three?

3) Companies based overseas who have opened auto plants in the Southeast appear to be doing ok. When is the last time someone got drunk enough to open a major automobile factory in Detroit?

4) Are all industries in need of a bailout based in "Blue" states? Just curious. Wondering if there's a correlation between worldview and business practices.

5) The United Auto Workers gave the Obama campaign 80 million dollars. I'm sure there were no strings attached. Obama has resigned from the Senate so he won't have to vote on this. The only sane way to bail out the Big 3 (without requiring another bailout in 20 minutes) will be to rip up the current Union contracts. Do you think some people are going to be, um, pissed?

6) A lot of people are pointing to the success of the previous Chrysler bailout , the one engineered by Lee Iacocca. Did that do any good, or did it just postpone misery?

7) I have a four year old F-150. I've taken good care of it. But I've already had to put $1,800 into it, and another $2,000 is probably on the way.
Every time I go to a dealer (the backbones of our small towns, the economic linchpins of our communities, blah blah blah) the repair quote is higher than the price charged by a smaller shop.
The other two vehicles in my Earth-Warming Fleet are imports, or should I say, their parent companies are Japanese. These cars haven't needed any major repairs in the last 5 years.
And when these vehicles do go into the shop, I don't go into cardiac arrest.
(I grew up on a Chevy-oriented farm. Switched to Fords about 10 years ago. I recently decided that I'm not going to buy another American made vehicle. Ever.)
I realize that this isn't a representative sample, but what's up with that?

8) If your organization is in trouble, and people start saying you are "too big to be allowed to fail", hasn't your size become a liability instead of an asset? Isn't the market already telling you that you're too big to pay attention to everything you're doing, and you need to trim some fat?

9) If the bailout goes through Congress and Obama signs it, does anyone want to place any wagers on how long before one of the Big 3 goes bankrupt or needs yet another bailout? I'm putting the over/under at July 1, 2011.