Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

From The Boston Herald:

A Quincy mom has disconnected her support for striking Verizon workers yesterday after a group of mouthy picketers surrounded non-union repairmen and turned a phone-line fix at her home into what she is calling a “ridiculous” protest scene.

“I looked in the street and there are picketers, 10 of them or more, doing a circle around the Verizon truck,” said Karen Austin, 64, a mother of five who lives on Forest Avenue. “Every time (the repairmen) would walk up to my house they would follow them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is ridiculous. Why are they picketing my house?”

With tensions rising in a work-stoppage now in its fifth day, Verizon filed lawsuits in five states, including Massachusetts, yesterday to limit picketing by the 45,000 striking workers.

The company claims picketers have harassed non-union workers, and has reported suspected sabotage, such as sliced cables. The union has denied sabotage.

Paul Feeney, spokesman for IBEW Local 2222, the Dorchester-based union for 6,000 Verizon landline workers, said picketers take to the streets because that’s where the work is done.

“For us to be able to effectively picket the work that’s being done we have to go out in the field,” he said.

Feeney said the union strategy is to send its message to management outside Verizon offices and stores, and to the public on main streets with high traffic volumes.

“We haven’t actively sought out residential work,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is disrupt the neighborhoods.”

But Austin, who reported the 9 a.m. protest to Quincy police, said she believes the union went too far in her neighborhood.

“I’m not on a main street ... I’m not a business. I’m a person who needed a line fixed,” she said.

The upside of the London riots

From Zero Gov:

The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass has released a statement in support of the economic stimulus activities undertaken this week in London.

“Over the past three nights,” said guild spokesman JM Keynes, “The brave young people of London have taken it upon themselves to guarantee the economic health of our city for years to come.” Keynes went on to explain that the Glaziers expect a 10,000% increase in demand for new glass windows over the coming weeks, which will employ hundreds of new glassmakers, who are paid as much as six francs for each new window produced.

Shopkeeper F (Frederic) Bastiat took a rather dimmer view of the stimulus package, citing its cost to his business. “Look here,” he said, gesturing to his store’s broken window. “They broke that, broke the door, came in and took things right off the shelves.” Bastiat expects that his insurance will cover some of the damages, but that much of his inventory will be a total loss. “I had a year’s profits tied up, just in what was on the shelves,” he explained. “And some of it they just destroyed! This television was too heavy to steal, I suppose, so they just smashed it.”

Bastiat’s selfishness, though, is not representative of most Londoners. In addition to creating jobs and increasing private spending, the stimulus is providing an increased standard of living for some participants. ”I got tones of stuff todayyyy!” explained one of the stimulus agents via twitter, ” … whop whop … wat ev;; it was free so i took it ennit,, didn’t get caught so[.]”

Hit the link up top to read the rest.  This guy is greatness. 

There is no chance of a U.S. credit default

I heard former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan say this on Meet The Press yesterday. 

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default."

There.  Don't you feel better already? 

Why don't we go ahead and print 14 of some trillion dollar bills, and call it even?

Obama 2012 Campaign Poster

This poster isn't fair. 

The Republican Party should be featured in the background of this thing.  The Obama/Reid/Pelosi Axis Of Incompetence didn't get us downgraded by acting alone. 

But damn, this is funny ! 

 

Finally

Someone finally did it.  Thank God. 

(CNN) -- The Standard & Poor's rating agency announced Friday that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from its top rank of AAA.

Our national debt is now 100% of GDP.  Think of your yearly household income.  Go in debt by that amount.  Can you pay it off?  Didn't think so. 

Think of the yearly household income of your supermarket shelf-stocker.  Put him in debt by that amount.  Can he pay it off?  Didn't think so. 
Ditto for Bill Gates and the guy who mows your yard and everyone else you know.

(Yeah, I know there's a difference between yearly income and yearly production.  The analogy works the same way, though.) 

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," the agency said about the move, which was announced after the markets had closed.

Rating agencies -- S&P, Moody's and Fitch -- analyze risk and give debt a grade that is supposed to reflect the borrower's ability to repay its loans.

Hey China !  Russia !  Latin America !  Silly people who buy government bonds !  All of you !  Stop lending us money !  We are not going to pay you back in any way, shape, form or fashion, with the possible exception of Ben Bernanke Gift Certificates from the Federal Reserve printing presses !  We are not going to pay you back !  We are not going to pay you back !  We are not going to pay you back !  We are not going to pay you back ! We are not going to pay you back ! We are not going to pay you back ! We are not going to pay you back ! We are not going to pay you back !  So, for the love of God, please stop giving those idiots money.  They spend it on harmful things, and it takes the money away from productive, useful projects.  Please, please, please, please !!! 

Just because you've gotten money from us before doesn't mean things can't change.  You've been warned ! 

The safest bets are stamped AAA. That's where U.S. debt has stood for years. Moody's first assigned the United States a AAA rating in 1917.

Fitch and Moody's, the other two main credit ratings agencies, maintained the AAA rating for the United States after this week's debt deal, though Moody's lowered its outlook on U.S. debt to "negative."

What the hell are they waiting on?  This is like a fleet of submarines going deep into the Atlantic to consider putting some more lifeboats and safety equipment on the Titanic.  The disaster has already happened.  We're on the hook for the money.  The Republicrats recently joined hands with the Demoblicans to increase the debt goal by another 2 trillion dollars that we'll never ever pay back. 

 

Don't say I didn't warn you.  I'm looking out for your best interests, even if Fitch and Moody's aren't. 

 

End of rant. 

Fred Bastiat Quote Of The Day

“Poor people!” he lamented of the duped French populace in the same tumultuous year [1848]. “How much disillusionment is in store for them! It would have been so simple and so just to ease their burden by decreasing their taxes; they want to achieve this through the plentiful bounty of the state and they cannot see that the whole mechanism consists in taking away ten to give it back eight, not to mention the true freedom that will be destroyed in the operation!” - Frederic Bastiat

From The Coyote Blog

Picture of Fred Bastiat The Dachshund and Fred Bastiat The French Economist came from my dining room table. 

Libertarian Street Art - Who Will Watch The Watchers?

I found this on Libertarian Reddit:

Quote Of The Day, on Greed

I saw this little gem at the Libertarian News blog. 

"It’s true: greed has had a very bad press. I frankly don’t see anything wrong with greed. I think that the people who are always attacking greed would be more consistent with their position if they refused their next salary increase." – Murray N. Rothbard

Coincidence??

69% of Americans believe that it is likely that scientists have falsified Global Warming / Cooling / Climate Change research. 

In related news, GM sold only 125 Chevy Volts last month. 

Yes, Joe Biden said that

From the comedic greatness of Vice President Joe Biden:

Why I love the war on drugs

I hire a lot of ex-convicts.  Sometimes they are a bargain. 

Think about it.  Imagine a 25-year-old who would be making 50K per year in a just and fair world, based on his intelligence, computer skills, and work ethic.  But suppose he got caught up in the George Bush/Barack Obama War On Drugs because of possession of a trifling amount of a weed, and he now has some prison time on his record. 

He is now lucky to get minimum wage. 

My company pays most people a lot more than minimum, but not for employees that no one else will hire.  We sometimes can hire ex-convict geniuses for 9 bucks an hour. 

If you're willing to put up with employees having to leave work at odd hours to waste time meeting with probation officers, parole officers, government counselors and other bureaucratic pygmies, ex-cons are a bargain. 

It doesn't seem fair, does it?  I get great employees for half-price !!   Thank you Democrats !!!!

So what should be done about my unfair advantage?  Well, a nation that didn't have its head up its collective ass would legalize marijuana use and possession, along with other victimless crimes.  We have 6% of the world's population and 25% of its convicts.  We do love turning our children into Food For The Machine. 

San Francisco is now debating what to do about my discriminatory practices.  Are they going to legalize marijuana in their city?  Make it legal for entrepreneurs to sell plants without a permit?

Oh no.  Nothing like that.  They're going to leave all the current laws in place, but make it illegal for anyone to ask about convictions.  I swear to God, that's the approach they're taking.  Here's a quote from the Coyote Blog:

A legislative proposal in San Francisco seeks to make ex-cons and felons a protected class, along with existing categories of residents like African-Americans, people with disabilities and pregnant women. If passed by city supervisors, landlords and employers would be prohibited from asking applicants about their criminal past. [...]According to The City’s Human Rights Commission, San Francisco has the highest recidivism rate of any big city in California, almost 80 percent. With an influx of new prisoners set to be released because of the state’s budget crisis, supporters argue felons need legal protections before they’re disqualified simply because of their record, which could be decades old and for crimes that have nothing to do with the job they’re hoping to get.

Yep.  They're going to continue ruining lives because, after all, jailers, probation officers, parole officers, counselors, border patrol guards, Narcs, and SWAT teams need jobs.  But they're going to make it illegal to ask about it. 
I love being alive, just for moments like this.  

What 28 ounces of gold would purchase in 1916. And today.

From Tarrant County Libertarian Party Chair John Spivey's Facebook page:

Hey Federal Reserve fans! I just did some fun research - Shortly after the Fed was hatched, in 1916, Chevy released it's "Model-T Slayer", the 490! Very slick, this roadster with the optional "full electrical system" ran $550 or 28.9 ounces of gold. Today, the Chevy's roadster, the Camaro Convertible 2 SS with several fun options runs $47,145... or 28.3 OUNCES OF GOLD! ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME!!!!!!

On "The Tea Party's War With America"

Joe Nocera has an editorial in The New York Holy Times that almost perfectly illustrates the difference between the Statist and Libertarian mindsets.  Fisking the entire thing would grow tiresome, but the main points show up in the first few paragraphs. 
Here's Mr. Nocera:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

You know what's coming after that, right?  Yeah.  The people who want more freedom for themselves and for others are "terrorists".  To paraphrase an Instapundit commenter,  "This has to be the first ‘Terrorist’ movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone.”

Back to Mr. Nocera:

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.

Oh for the love of God.  Washington D.C. has indebted every f-ing taxpayer with a $130,000.00 bar tab.  The Statists want to increase that debt.  They've already doubled the debt since Bill Clinton left office.  The Tea Party Republicans have trotted out a 2.4 trillion in cuts (over 10 years), a 2.4 trillion that will be cut out of future increases, not from the current geysers of gloppy glutinous pork.  And these people making the pitiful little efforts to reduce the spending are jihadists ????

Back to Mr. Nocera:

Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

I, for one, don't want America to have any more credit.  I want those Chinese bastards to stop mailing credit cards to Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner.  I want it to stop now.  I don't want my daughter to be burdened for the rest of her life with paying for George Bush and Barack Obama's ineffective wars on poverty, illiteracy, inflation, unemployment and brown people. 

Seriously, can you imagine a credit card company sending a card application to a person whose debt was 100% of his yearly income? 

Mr. Nocera thinks it would be a great idea.  Otherwise, things would, er....change. 

Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the House speaker, tried to cut a deal with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases, they humiliated him. After this latest agreement was finally struck on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama — Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4 trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning.

Well, numb-nuts, we are 14 trillion dollars in debt.  A 4 trillion dollar cut over a ten year period is nothing.  2.4 trillion cut from a 10 year period doesn't even cover the defict of each year. 

The "Tea Party" Republicans have suffered a hellish defeat.  Despite all the howling and cloth-rending from the Statist side, nothing has changed.  This is 100% business as usual. 

There's no point in going further with this.  Hit the link to read the rest of Nocera's editorial, in which he explains why taking money away from legit job producers and giving it to bureaucrats is the best way to end unemployment.  Gag me with a dirty diaper. 

Debt Ceiling Quote Of The Day

The Debt Ceiling should be renamed "The National Debt Target" - Peter Schiff

To understand that quote is to understand the nature of the problem. 

You're gonna pay !!!

This is the best thing I've seen on our habit of passing our bills on to the unborn.  The clip of Harry Reid holding the little zygotes at gunpoint is classic. 

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....

From Libertarian Reddit

Assorted pics from the Top 10 posts in Libertarian Reddit:

This quote is apocryphal, if I'm not mistaken.  But if Alex D.T. didn't say it, then he should have:

Coming Soon: The One Hundred Trillion Dollar Federal Reserve Note

This is a one hundred trillion dollar Federal Reserve Note.  (It's from the Zimbabwe printing press, not the Bernanke Publishing Company.) 

No one in Zimbabwe thought they would ever hold one of these. 

The people who inflated Zimbabwe's currency to the point of uselessness claimed to be doing so for the good of The People. 

This piece of paper isn't linked to anything of value, just like the U.S. currency isn't linked to anything of value. 

Printing one hundred trillion-dollar banknotes creates massive problems for the general populace, but it solves problems for the elite few who run the government printing presses.  Therefore, the elite few are going to run the shit out of the government printing presses. 

Like Zimbabwe, the U.S. has very few safeguards in place to prevent someone from printing all the money they think we need, and using it to pay their buddies for stimulus packages, TARP plans, deficit non-reduction schemes, and the like. 

It will happen here.  Hide and watch. 

Harry Browne, on Elitism

"The most ignorant person in the land still knows enough to come in out of the rain.  The lowliest soul in America knows better than you do what would make him happy.  How can you presume to set the rules of life for him - and to force everyone to obey your rules - and then have the audacity to claim that you're doing it for everyone's own good?" - Harry Browne

Time to purge the photo files

Once again, it is time to purge the photo files.  Here are the things I've saved from Libertarian Reddit, emails and elsewhere that I couldn't find an immediate use for:

Here's an excellent map of our foreign aid expenditures.

Here's a cool drawing of how to cut timber:

Greatest mugshot EVER:

That's all I've got this morning.  Hope everyone has a great day. 

On reaching out

The BBC has published a list of the U.K.'s least favorite Americanisms. 

It's a good list, since it includes "deliverables", "deplane", and "I could care less".   ("I could care less" was once a sarcastic statement, but is now meaningless). 

The most vile phrase mentioned is "reach out to" instead of "ask" or "call".  It's number 35 on the list, and was suggested by a Londoner named Nerina. 

"Reach out to" when the correct word is "ask". For example: "I will reach out to Kevin and let you know if that timing is convenient". Reach out? Is Kevin stuck in quicksand? Is he teetering on the edge of a cliff? Can't we just ask him?

Well said, Nerina.  Well said.  I get it all the time from salespeople who call my warehouses.  "Whited, should I reach out to Aaron in your purchasing department about your need for fastening solutions?"  (Fastening solutions are what we used to call nuts and bolts.) 

"Whited, I'll reach out to Darin at your office about this." 

"Do me a favor and reach out to Bentonville about the Wal-Mart shipment." 

Grrrrrr.....

It makes the speaker sound as if he's a freakin' televangelist, reaching out to those who are lost without his product line.  The next salesman to disturb my slumber at work, daring to say he wanted to reach out to me, I'm going to reach out to him with an email containing a link to this post. 

Sir, evangelists reach out.  First basemen reach out.  Grocery stock clerks reach out, as do roofers, peanut salemen at ball games, firemen trying to get cats out of a tree, and politicians working rope lines. 

Salesmen either call, ask, or contact.  They are not God reaching out to Adam to give him the divine spark of life, their product line of fastening solutions, or low, low rates for shipments going to North Dakota on Thursdays. 

Most of the other Americanisms on the list don't bother me as much.  I could care less. 

A Fresh Coat Of Whitening to Radley Balko for the link. 

On having to ring up your own groceries but pay "full price"

I saw the following quote on Instapundit:

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “I work all day, go to Kroger late night, stock up on groceries and then get to the checkout and have to scan and bag everything by myself and still pay full price while Kroger can eliminate a job. Hmmmmm. That’s the equivalent to you coming into my restaurant, cooking your own food and I still get to charge full price. Am I being unreasonable???”

I honestly don't know where to begin.  For lack of a better place, let's start with the history of grocery stores. 

If you ever find yourself in Memphis Tennessee with a couple of hours to kill, check out The Pink Palace museum.  They've got a beautifully reconstructed model of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store inside. 

Why? 

Piggly Wiggly (founded in Memphis) was the first self-serve grocery store in the U.S.  Instead of handing the clerk behind the counter your list of groceries, if you were a Piggly Wiggly shopper, you took a cart or a basket and got your groceries all by yourself. 

This move didn't save or create any jobs in the grocery industry.  In fact, it eliminated them.  But it saved a lot of money for consumers.  This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries. 

Skip forward about a half century.  Someone came up with a pattern of lines called a "barcode" that could be read by another device called a "scanner". 

This move didn't create any jobs in the grocery industry.  It made checking out much, much faster, and eliminated a lot of inventory and supply chain jobs in the grocery distribution system.  But it saved a lot of money for consumers. This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

By the time the scanners came along, the U.S. military had already been using a warehouse concept called "cross-docking" for quite some time.  This is a warehouse design where incoming shipments are received on one side, outgoing shipments are shipped on the other, with minimal storage space in between.  Minimal inventory is kept on hand in the warehouse at any given time. 

Sam Walton, of Wal-Mart fame, was the first to apply this concept to the grocery and retail industry. 

This move didn't create any jobs in the grocery industry. It made distribution much, much faster, and eliminated a lot of inventory and supply chain jobs in the grocery distribution system. But it saved a lot of money for consumers. This allowed them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

Finally, someone invented the self-serve grocery checkout stand.  If you have a minimal amount of stuff to ring up, you can choose to do it yourself. 

As the Facebook commenter wrote, the customer is doing some of the work himself.  Kind of like the Piggly Wiggly customer started doing in the 1920's. 

This move toward self-checkout doesn't create any jobs in the grocery industry. It makes getting out of the store much, much faster, and it saves a lot of money for consumers. This allows them to eventually purchase more of other things instead of food: iPods, flatscreen TV's, or laptop computers, creating jobs in the iPod, TV and laptop industries.

I hope this has helped. 

We have not become a prosperous nation by "saving or creating jobs".  We have become a prosperous nation by constantly churning the process, always trying to come up with a better way to get things done. 

No one can predict what the next way will be.  No one knows which kid is working in the Produce Department of an Albertson's Grocery Store who has already come up with a better way to distribute and merchandise fruit and vegetables, and who just can't wait to open his own store and try out his idea.  No one knows which computer geek in his Mom's basement has already come up with a system to make distribution and logistics more efficient. 

These people are going to bring us improvements and levels of progress that we can't even imagine, here in the primitive year 2011. 

The only thing we do know is that there will always be someone complaining about the cost of progress and doing everything in his power to keep it from happening. 

Rupert Murdoch attacked by pie assassin - Who will be the next victim?

It looks like Rupert Murdoch's media empire is infested with reporters who illegally hack into phones and emails. 
Any reporter doing this in the U.S. should be locked up, and the key should be thrown away. 
Here's a video of a protester trying to hit Murdoch with a pie during some testimony before Parliament.  Murdoch's wife intervenes before the pie-chunker can get too close.


 
In the U.S., we're supposed to be protected from warrantless wiretaps by the Fourth Amendment:

The wording is straightfoward.  Unless George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove have a warrant, they don't have any business going through your papers or "effects".  "Effects" would be your email or your cell phone. 

But during the Bush administration, we went into a blind panic and surrendered our rights to some people who wanted to go through our stuff without a warrant.  It was all for our own protection and safety. 

And it continues.  Here's the Wall Street Journal on Obama's "evolving" stance on listening to your conversations:

....we're beginning to wonder if the (Obama) White House has put David Addington, Mr. Cheney's chief legal aide, on retainer. The practical effect is to prevent the courts from reviewing the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program that Mr. Obama repeatedly claimed to find so heinous -- at least before taking office. Justice, by the way, is making the same state secrets argument in a separate lawsuit involving rendition and a Boeing subsidiary.

Hide the children, but we agree with Mr. Obama that the President has inherent Article II Constitutional powers that neither the judiciary nor statutes like FISA can impinge upon. The FISA appeals court said as much in a decision released in January, as did Attorney General Eric Holder during his confirmation hearings. It's reassuring to know the Administration is refusing to compromise core executive-branch prerogatives, especially on war powers.

....Then again, we are relearning that the "Imperial Presidency" is only imperial when the President is a Republican. Democrats who spent years denouncing George Bush for "spying on Americans" and "illegal wiretaps" are now conspicuously silent. Yet these same liberals are going ballistic about the Bush-era legal memos released this week. Cognitive dissonance is the polite explanation, and we wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Holder released them precisely to distract liberal attention from the Al-Haramain case.

Hit the link to read the whole thing. 

So....  who would you rather have illegally listening to your phone calls and reading your emails?  Rupert Murdoch or Barack Obama? 

And is Michelle Obama prepared to step between Barack and a pie? 

The pic of the Obama Pie came from here. 

Ok, whose turn is it this year to be the "responsible, small government party"?

This is from Weasel Zippers.  A summary of the 2006 vote to raise the debt ceiling. 
Please note how many small government Republican senators voted to put us further into debt. 

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 109th Congress — 2nd Session

As compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Question: On the Joint Resolution (H.J.Res.47 )
Vote Number: 54 Vote Date: March 16, 2006, 11:17 AM

A cynic might claim that our two political factions enjoy taking turns. 

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies." - Barack Obama, 2006

And so it begins....

For the few die-hards who think there's a difference between the Republicrats and the Demoblicans, go here.    Please.  Hit the link.  And don't even think about acting surprised by what you read. 
This means you, Harper !!  :)

As long as we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we've been getting:  debt, wars, needless regulation, bureaucracy, half the world's prisoners, violence on the border, Barack Obama regulating bedroom behavior, increasingly worthless currency, import quotas, high school graduates who've never read a book, and entitlements from hell. 

The Republicans have worked hand in hand with their co-dependents to raise the debt floor ceiling before the current move to put in a new debt floor ceiling 70 times (so far). 
Leopards don't change their spots.  They do what they do.  Don't be distracted by all the hand-wringing and scenery-chewing.  It is as scripted as a production of Hamlet. 

Just enjoy watching them get your grandchildren further and further into debt.