Super Bowl Picks

Okay, enough about politics and theology and other deep chin-stroking topics.
We have a football game this weekend.
Super Bowl 43.
The Arizona Cardinals vs The Pittsburgh Steelers.

The line opened with Steelers -6.5, and there was so much money wagered on the Steelers that they've increased the spread to Steelers by 7. Super Bowls are usually blowouts by the home team. The favorite usually wins. But I like the Cardinals to at least cover a 7-point spread.

And now, the fun stuff....

The winning coach usually gets a sideline Gatorade shower. Odds are 3-1 that the Gatorade will be yellow, instead of any other color. Load up on the other color. There's been so much publicity on this bet, I'm predicting some contrarians have stocked the coolers with the Red Fruit Punch flavor.

Here are a few others listed by Fox Sports:

Kurt Warner -23.5 passing yards over Ben Roethlisberger. If the Cardinals are going to at least cover a 7-point spread, it'll be because Warner throws at least 75 yards more than Big Ben. Take Warner.

Will Kurt Warner break Joe Montana's Career Super Bowl Record of 1,142 Passing Yards? Yes: +475 No: -700 (If you don't understand Money Line "Yes/No" bets, click here.) Take the NO, and quickly. Warner would need 364 passing yards to do this, and that ain't going to happen.

Total rushing yards by Willie Parker — Over/Under 75.5 The guys at Fox News don't like the odds of Parker breaking 75.5, and took the under. The guys at Fox News also didn't like the odds of Barack Obama being elected President. Take the over.

Total receiving yards by Larry Fitzgerald — Over/Under 83.5 Larry Fitzgerald is a beast. Larry Fitzgerald is not human. Larry Fitzgerald doesn't just bite, he also chews. Take the over.

Total kickoff returns by both teams — Over/Under 9.5 Remember, you have a kickoff to begin each half. That leaves you with only 8 more touchdowns or field goals needed to break this one. I think we'll have plenty of field goals. I like the over.

Total distance on the first punt of the game — Over/Under 41.5 yards Yeah, your typical NFL punter can boot it a lot further than 41.5 yards. But what if you're kicking from somewhere in no-man's land between midfield and field goal range? Go under.

Pittsburgh + Arizona total points -12.5 over LeBron James total points at Detroit For newcomers to Super Bowl betting insanity, you might need me to break this one down for you. Here's how it works. Add up the total points scored in the Super Bowl. Subtract 12.5 points. (The half point eliminates any chance of a tie.) Is this number higher or lower than the number of points that the NBA's LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers will score against the Detroit Pistons?
LeBron knows about this bet, right? LeBron will want to reward everyone who picked him to cover this, right? LeBron has been averaging 28 points per game, right? LeBron can control his own destiny in this thing easier than the Steelers and Cardinals, right? Take LeBron.

Pittsburgh + Arizona total sacks -0.5 over Ernie Els fourth round birdies (18 holes/Dubai Classic) It's golf, fer heaven's sake. Who cares? Take the sack total anway.

How long will it take Jennifer Hudson to sing the National anthem? — Over/Under 1:54 Just one minute and fifty four seconds? Jennifer Hudson is going to throw in more obligattos, fermatas, trills, shakes and shimmies than Francis Scott Key could have imagined. Yes, I know the music at these things is always pre-recorded. There are people out there who already know the exact length of Sunday's national anthem. But if you're singing at the Super Bowl, you don't sing it like a marching band plays it. Take the over.

What color will (Cardinals owner) Bill Bidwell's bow tie be? Red -600, Any other color +400 Cardinals are red. The team and the bird. Bidwell usually wears red bow ties, except for when he doesn't. He wears red so often that I think this one is fixed, simply because they're willing to take money on it as a competitive wager. I think someone has gotten Bidwell a good luck bow tie in a color other than red. Take the other color.

These picks have been brought to you by The Whited Sepulchre Sports Wagering Ministry.

US Air Rescue Cartoon - Please discuss

Please discuss this cartoon. Be thorough. All religions, communities of faith, bodies of believers, and skeptics are welcome.
Did God intervene in the US Air jet landing and rescue operation on the Hudson river?
If God does intervene, why didn't he do something about the 25,000 or so people who died of malnutrition on the same day as this rescue?
If God intervenes, why didn't he simply intervene to save the geese?
Why are there no rescue tugboats in the cartoon?
Are we terrified to admit/affirm that we've been in an unbroken chain of cause and effect ever since The Big Bang?

John Cornyn - Damaged ! Defective ! On Sale While Supplies Last !

Texas Republicans are attacking Obama's Stimulus plan, or so says the Houston Chronicle.

Big, Fat, Hairy Deal. It doesn't matter. These are symbolic little protests, meaning nothing.

The fix is in. They've already thrown the fight. Senator John Cornyn (Daddy Party, Texas) voted in favor of the Timothy Geithner confirmation. If you can vote to confirm Tim "The Tax Dodger" Geithner as Chief Tax Collector/Big Brother Of The Bailout , is there anything you won't do?

Here's the frustrating thing.... John Cornyn is great on Free Trade and 2nd Amendment rights. He's consistently voted anti-mafia anti labor union.

But he believes that Social Security benefits are sacred, that we need a constitutional amendment against flag desecration, and that we need a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. When George W. Bush did the right thing and vetoed the latest obscene Farm Bill, John Cornyn voted to overide the veto. Cornyn is also for teacher-led prayer in the public schools.

In short, John Cornyn is a typical Daddy Party politician. (All of the above info comes from a site called On The Issues. Long-time libertarians will be interested in the chart at the bottom of the page....)

Our current party system has an infuriating division with The Daddy Party advocating economic freedom and an insane amount of government interference in what should be private matters, while The Mommy Party fully embraces economic insanity, but has an ok record on social freedom (after the mid-1970's, anyway).

Having to vote between The Daddy Party and The Mommy Party is like shopping in a massive warehouse full of Factory Seconds, Damaged & Defective Product, and goods that couldn't pass the final Quality Control Inspection. Every now and then a Jeff Flake or a Ron Paul appears on the warehouse shelf by mistake, but those guys are like diamonds in a dungheap.

In the meantime, $1,000,000,000,000.00 gets taken from your pocket and given to the Daddy/Mommy Party supporters because you don't think you have any other choice.

Just a reminder....there are other warehouses where you can shop.

How Jesus Evolved

Here's Bishop John Shelby Spong, from "Why Christianity Must Change Or Die", Chapter five:


"We need to be prepared....to discover that there is an enormous gap between the theological claims that have been made for Jesus in the life of institutional Christianity and the record that was actually contained in the Gospels....Most believers....do not learn in church that the virgin birth accounts were not original to Christianity, and did not appear in Christian history until the ninth decade."

"Perhaps more important....the divine nature of Jesus....was also a late-developing reality."

This might need a bit of elaboration. The first books to be written in the New Testament were those of Paul, who probably wrote between 18 to 34 years after Jesus' death.
Then came the Gospel of Mark.
Matthew was next.
Then Luke.
Then John.
Got it? Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. You can argue the fine points, but even some of the most fundamentalist of Biblical scholars agree with that timeline. The Apostle Paul was blogging away long before the first Gospel accounts of Jesus' life were written.

Paul writes as if Jesus didn't perform any miracles during his lifetime. Not once does Paul mention a virgin birth. Paul says that Jesus was designated a "son of God", but God did all the designating. There's no sense of divine equality between God and Jesus. You can search Paul's writings (and the rest of the Bible) in vain for the word "Trinity".

Paul claimed that the designation of Jesus as God's divine son took place by his "resurrection from the dead." You could make the case that Paul believed Jesus wasn't thought of as God's son until Jesus experienced a spiritual resurrection, something totally different from the heroic "Jeff Bridges In White" moment shown below.

About ten or fifteen years after Paul, someone wrote the Gospel of Mark. Like Paul, the author of Mark doesn't seem to know anything about virgin births, Mary being visited by angels, or even any post-resurrection appearances. (Note how the oldest copies of Mark end at Chapter 16, verse 8. Someone got creative with Mark about 100 years after the first draft.)

The author of Mark wasn't content with Paul's theory that "God designated Jesus as 'God's Son' at the time of the resurrection". Some one-upmanship was in order.... Mark took Paul's words and put them in the voice of God during Jesus' baptism. When Jesus is lifted out of the water, the voice of God says "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased". But read the text in Mark 1:9-11, and you get the idea that no one saw the heavens splitting open or heard God's voice except Jesus.


Yeah, right. Good job there, Mark.


Anyway, Mark moved the moment of Jesus' divinity forward about three years, from the resurrection to the baptism.


Then, about 50-55 years after the time of Jesus, came the book of Matthew. Spong writes that "It was for Matthew an intolerable idea that Jesus became something either at his baptism or his resurrection that he was not already,"

So an unnamed angel appears to Joseph (only in a dream) and tells him that Mary's child is from the Holy Spirit. "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

Matthew trumped Mark and Paul nicely, giving Jesus a divine pedigree at the moment of his conception.


Just a few years later, Luke used the same storyline, but firmed it up a bit. The angel was given a name (Gabriel), and appeared in person to Mary, not Joseph. Gabriel tells Mary that she's to be the mother of "the Son of God", the "Son of the Highest", and that "The Holy Spirit will come upon you".


So Luke is sitting back, in the words of Mark Twain, with "the calm confidence of a Christian holding four aces". Nobody would EVER be able to improve on that. Conception is the earliest point in our existence, right?


Wrong.




Here's Bishop Spong again: "Jesus' identity with God had become so complete by the tenth decade of the common era that he was said to have shared in that identity prior even to his conception and birth. So pre-existence became a category of which Christians began to talk."

Near the end of the first century someone composed the Gospel of John. Chapter one of John begins like this: " 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made..... 9 And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."


And there, ladies and gentlemen, is your proof that plants and animals aren't they only thing to evolve.
Gods do it too.

Pictures from here and here and here and here and here.

Does Your Package Need Stimulating ???

Here's The Cato Institute on the proposed stimulus package.

The video proposes several obvious things:

1) The stimulus package is nothing more than a payoff to contributors, or a way of bribing selected voters to become Big Government Sheeple.
2) George W. Bush increased government spending at a previously unimagined rate. This failed to stimulate the economy, or anything else, except the packages of military contractors.
3) All government spending is money taken out of the "regular" economy. Therefore, it is money taken from those who will use it most efficiently, and given to those who will use it least efficiently.
4) If you need to have your package stimulated, persuade someone else to stimulate it for you. Or stimulate your package yourself. Forcing someone else to stimulate your package is just wrong.

Caption Contest - Frosty Edition

I need a caption for this picture.

According to The Competition Committee, Flea won the last caption contest. There would have been more entries, but the comments degenerated into analysis, deconstruction, and mutual admiration.

It reminded me of a basketball game where the players stopped the action to critique each others' jump shots.

So Many Blogs, So Little Time

Check out the Fort Worth Renaissance site when you get a chance.
They have good general interest posts and other Town Of The Cow-related stuff.
The site has the look and feel of a Pete Wann production.

Going to Pete's site led me to Fort Worth Foodie. It's all about unhhh....Fort Worth Food. You get hungry looking at the screen.

And The Ghetto Plainsman.... one of the Fort Worthers I'd most like to meet. He's your typical African-American vegetarian fitness expert environmentalist kind of person.

Thimblethwicket - by Cynthia Shearer, a TCU writing perfesser. Check out this post about Mississippi (NOT CHICAGO, DAMMIT) blues legend Muddy Waters. She even gives a shout-out to Nicholas Lemann's brilliant but forgotten "The Promised Land", the best book ever written about the Black migration from the Mississippi Delta. And Good Lord Have Mercy, she used to be a curator at William Faulkner's house. Ms Shearer must have deep Mississippi roots, and therefore she is the best writing professor at TCU. Sign up now. I bet space is limited.

All are now blogrolled in the Fort Worth Bloggers section, and all are worthwhile.

Everybody on this planet is now typing faster than I can read. I love it.

Smoking Bans

At the latest Texas State Libertarian Executive Committee meeting, we took the "smoking ban" issue and beat it to a bloody pulp.

If someone wants to smoke on their own property, it's their own business.

If they want to allow others to smoke on their property, it's their own business.

Like carpenters who risk their thumbs, like high rise construction workers who risk their life, like schoolteachers who risk their sanity, if you're willing to expose yourself to 2nd-hand smoke, it's your own business.

Fort Worth Weekly's Blog (Blotch) has an article on our effort to fight The Health Nazis (yeah, I just violated Godwin's Law).

Here's a brief excerpt:

I’ve never really understood how a city can legally force private property owners to ban smoking in their own establishments, whether a bar, restaurant, or whatever. It seems like a smart thing to do health-wise, but doesn’t seem legally possible. Still, cities across Texas and the country are cracking down on public smoking.The Libertarian Party is fighting back, calling it a private property rights issue. Here’s their announcement about an upcoming legislative push....

The comments have already gotten interesting, and it would be nice to see a few dozen more added to the dogpile.

So Get Busy ! ! !

"First they came first for the Gays and Lesbians, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Gay or Lesbian;
And then they came for the Pot Smokers, And I didn’t speak up because I didn't smoke marijuana;
And then they came for the Gun Owners, And I didn’t speak up because I didn't own a gun;
And then they came for the Cigarette Smokers, And I didn't speak up because I didn't smoke cigarettes;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
But they kept the tobacco subsidies in place, because lots of millionaire tobacco farmers liked the money, and they were big time campaign contributors."

With sincerest apologies to Pastor Martin Niemoller

Health Nazi Swastika came from here.

Verbosity - An Example, and A Test

Sometimes I get long-winded.
This is because I truly believe that if you disagree with me, it's because you're not aware of all of the facts.

But I'm an amateur.

Click HERE to see the longest comment in the history of the internet. I gotta admit, I'm proud to host it. I can't even walk onto the same verbosity playing field with this guy.

I Googled some of the phrases used, and found that he (why do I just know that it's a He?) has copied the same comment onto more than 900 websites and blogs. You have to admire that kind of commitment and stamina.

While looking for a picture to illustrate this post, I discovered somthing called the Blog Verbosity Test, which should probably be taken with not a mere grain, but an extremely large shaker of salt.
They claim that my average post is 67 words in length. That's 87% fewer words than other bloggers who took the test.



So take that, YOU and YOU.

It's Sad That This Is The Most Publicity We've Received

The Church Of Global Warming might be due for a membership drive

Here's on Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City, Tennessee, from Dan Sernoffsky of the Lebanon Daily News:

In 1971, perhaps entertaining thoughts of entering the full-time ministry, Al Gore, raised in and baptized into the Southern Baptist Church, entered the Vanderbilt Divinity School.


His sojourn was relatively brief. In three semesters, he enrolled in eight classes. He received an “F” as his grade in five of those classes.

I left Southwestern Baptist Theological Semetary (not a typo) with a 3.0 Not that I'm particularly proud of abandoning the same grad school program as The Goracle.

So, having failed out of school, he entered the family business, which was politics. But he apparently never lost his desire to enter a ministry, and since he couldn’t make the grade in the conventional sense, he did the next best thing. He started his own religion.
The result was the Church of Global Warming. With Gore as its high priest, the church was not long in establishing tenets of faith, nor in immediately branding those who refused to worship there as apostate.
The tragedy is that Gore, in his tenure in the family business, learned well how to work the political system, and when he turned to evangelizing for his new church, he was able to effectively use what he learned as a politician to grant government sanction to that church, sanction that would have been vehemently opposed had he attempted to grant government sanction to the church in which he grew up.



Think about the similarities between the global warming/cooling/climate change movement and a religion..... The earth is our mother (God is our father) something must be "saved" (You've got to get saved), people who deny that the earth is warming are compared to holocaust deniers (You filthy atheist), we've got to act now - we don't know what tomorrow will bring, no sacrifice is too great (If you were to die tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?) The earth is offended, and it's all your fault (God is offended, and it's all your fault) I could go on and on....

The entire article is worth reading. Here are a few more that take a hatchet to the Church Of The Inconvenient Thermometer. Let's start with The Washington Times:




Turn up the heat, somebody. The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket. Winter has barely come to the northern latitudes and already we've got bigger goosebumps than usual. So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month.

How are anyone's campaign donors going to make any money off of that? You mean, it's not getting warmer? Not to be undone, The Goracle's disciples have introduced a new threat to all that is holy. We're not worried about global warming any more. The One True Church is now threatened by.....Climate Change ! ! !

The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995. You may have noticed, in fact, that Al and his pals, having given up on the sun, and no longer even warn of global warming. Now it's "climate change." The marketing men enlisted by Al and the doom criers to come up with a flexible "brand" took a cue from the country philosopher who observed, correctly, that "if you've got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, on average you're warm." On average, "climate change" covers every possibility.

Watching the Church of Climate Change try to loot The Treasury for money to invent perpetual motion machines is going to be comical, now that most of the nation is colder than a well-digger's posterior. The sad thing is, they'll probably be succesful.


They've got God on their side.



(Thanks to the G.O.C. in Atlanta for the Church of G.W. article)

The Ron Paul Page-A-Day #3

Here's the 3rd installment of the Ron Paul Page-A-Day, in which I supply a section of Ron Paul's "The Revolution: A Manifesto" for your enlightenment and commentary. I hope to continue this until I've posted the entire book, or until Congressman Paul's publishers say "cease and desist". In the previous installment, The Good Doctor lamented the Republican anti-intellectualism and Democratic naivete and inconsistency. In this installment, he indulges in a wee bit of back-patting before explaining why his short-lived campaign exceeded initial expectations:


"In late 2006, a number of friends and colleagues urged me to consider running for president. I was a reluctant candidate, not at all convinced that a sizable enough national constituency existed for a campaign based on liberty and the Constitution rather than on special-interest pandering and the distribution of loot.

Was I ever wrong.

On November 5, 2007, we set a record when we raised over $4 million online in a single day. That December 16, on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, we broke that record by raising over $6 million. In the fourth quarter of 2007, we raised more than twice as much money as any other Republican candidate. Not only is the freedom message popular, but if fund-raising ability any indication, it is more intensely popular than any other political message.

By the end of 2007, more than twice as many Meetup groups had been formed in support of our campaign than for all the rest of the candidates in both major parties combined. I have never seen such a diverse coalition rallying to a single banner. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, constitutionalists, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, antiwar activists, homeschoolers, religious conservatives, freethinkers - all were not only involved, but enthusiastically so. And despite their philosophical differences in some areas, these folks typically found, to their surprise, that they rather liked each other.

The mainstream media had no idea what to make of it, since we were breaking all the rules and yet still attracting such a varied and passionate following. I began making this a central point of my public speeches: the reason all these different groups are rallying to the same banner, I said, is that freedom has a unique power to unite us.

In case that sounds like a cliche, it isn't. It's common sense. When we agree not to treat each other merely as means to our own selfish ends, but to respect one another as individuals with rights and goals of our own, cooperation and goodwill suddenly become possible for the first time.

My message is one of freedom and individual rights. I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively. We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion. That, and not a desire for "economic efficiency" is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusion into our lives: government is force, not reason.

"I Want Some TARP", by Bill Zucker

The "Troubled Asset Relief Program" has finally been immortalized in song.
Here's Bill Zucker's "I Want Some TARP".

HT to here.

Just Say "No" to Timothy Geithner

Our government is allowed to use force to accomplish its objectives.
Therefore, all government officials appointed or elected to use force in the course of their duties should be chosen very carefully.

I pay my taxes. Many of you pay your taxes. But the current nominee for Secretary of The Treasury, the person who might soon be in charge of the IRS? He tried to avoid paying all of his taxes.

I heard on the radio that Geithner had apologized for not paying his taxes "on time". Well, Al Capone didn't pay his taxes "on time" either. That's why he went to jail.

Don't get me started about using Summer Camp as a Daycare credit.

Geithner is a driving force in the bailout - the greatest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in the history of our universe. He is a hardcore advocate of all the Loot The Children ® programs.

Timothy Geither is a tax dodger. He is seriously being considered for the post of chief tax collector. He will soon be authorized to take your money.

Let's say that again, for the sake of those who received The Gift Of The Holy Spirit on The Day Of Pentecost, also known as The Inauguration.... Timothy Geither is a tax dodger. He is seriously being considered for the post of chief tax collector. He will soon be authorized to take your money.

Is irony dead? Are we so bedazzled by the recent annointing of the Obamessiah that we're going to tolerate this?

In short, are you willing to give this __________ your money?????

Here are the names of representatives who have voted "No" in the recent Senate Panel hearings. God bless 'em. The confirmation vote from the full senate is Monday.

Here's a link where you can email your senator, and ask them to vote NO on this confirmation.

Relying on government to solve the problem....

What problem are these inauguration crowds in Washington going to be relying on government to fix first?


(Hint: you will get a clue at the 1:05 mark....)

With undying gratitude to Iowahawk.

"Fitna", by Geert Wilders - A film about "The Religion Of Peace"

Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs brings us the disturbing news that Dutch politician and filmmaker Geert Wilders will be prosecuted "for inciting racial hatred with anti-Islamic statements that include calling the Quran a "fascist book," a Dutch court ruled Wednesday.

Well, look at the man's movie, Fitna. That's what all of this is really about. Youtube breaks it into two eight minute sections. It's very well done. Wilders gives references from the Koran or a Haddith, then shows newsclips of the consequences of following the teachings of the seventh century pedophile who inspired those references. There's little or no narration, no voiceover explaining the things we're seeing, and no deniability about the accuracy of his film.


Let's break it up a bit with this from Jihadwatch: "And make no mistake: even though the Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West present themselves as embattled victims of racism and "Islamophobia," that is exactly what is going on here: this is just one part of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference's efforts to silence speech that they deem critical of Islam -- including "defamation of Islam" that goes under the "pretext" of "freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security."



I don't consider myself to be Islamaphobic. The word seems to imply a fear of Muslims. I've liked the Muslims that I've worked with ok, simply because they didn't really believe that Jews were evil, or that I was evil, or that Muhammad flew from Mecca to Jerusalem on a winged horse that had the face of a man.
But this thing with Wilders is bad news. Surf the 'net for a while, and you'll see that he's probably going to come to the U.S. to escape persecution prosecution. The Dutch government will make Tut-Tutting noises about minority rights, sensitivity, and respect for the beliefs of others. In the meantime, they've allowed artists like Theo Van Gogh to be beheaded by Muslim extremists, and they'll probably drive Wilders across the Atlantic.

This is bullshit. It's not sensitivity. It's not respect. It's the whimper of whipped dogs, rolling on their backs before one of the most evil belief systems ever devised by man.

Here's Samizdata's Perry De Havilland on the same issue.

How do you define a Rottweiler? Let's leave it to the Muleshoe City Council.

I took a random sampling of my dachshunds to meet some friends at Fort Woof Park this past Sunday. Channel 11 was there doing a story on a proposal that might be brought to the Texas State Legislature this spring. The legislature might once again consider giving Texas towns the authority to ban certain "dangerous" dog breeds.

I apologize for the lack of a Youtube, but here's a link to the Channel 11 video:
http://cbs11tv.com/video/?id=37411@ktvt.dayport.com

That's my friend Brenda at the end of the video (not in the picture above), sounding suspiciously like a libertarian, advocating personal responsibility and less government intervention. My friends Elaine and Dr. Liz were encouraging me to get in front of the camera and hold forth, but the only thing I could think of was a racial analogy. (Our prisons have a disproportionate number of Hispanics and African-Americans, but we would never dream of using the same logic to ban racial groups from certain areas based on the actions of a few bad apples, blah blah blah. I didn't feel comfortable trying to properly express that awkward comparison to everyone in Fort Worth/Dallas. And that's probably a good thing!)

Here's more info on the proposal from the Houston Chronicle:

In a letter to Attorney General Greg Abbott, Republican state Rep. Tony Goolsby requested an opinion to clarify a state law that cities and counties have interpreted as preventing them from targeting breeds. He wrote that confusion caused by “varying interpretations” of the law has stopped local governments wanting to pursue such measures. Most of the confusion concerns whether the law would apply to a dog that has not been deemed “dangerous.”

Here's what I should have said to Channel 11, but couldn't pull my reasoning together until the ride home:

"The Texas State Legislature is possibly going to give the Abbot, White Settlement, Uvalde, Muleshoe, and Rio Frio City Councils the authority, expertise, and funding to determine exactly what is and isn't a Rottweiler? How do you tell the difference between a Rottweiler/Portuguese Water Dog/Labrador mix that is harmless and a similar one that's dangerous? Would it be legal to own a Pitt Bull/Cocker Spaniel mix? Where would you draw the line? This bill would be a feast for lawyers, which is probably what the advocates of this bill intended."

You know how frustrating it is to think of the perfect thing to say when the opportunity has already passed. Anyway, I checked it out with the Aggie. There's no way to be 100% sure what percentage of breeds make up any particular mutt dog.

Pitt Bull owners should be responsible for their dogs, and keep them safely enclosed. There are plenty of laws to that effect already on the books.
Parents should be responsible for their toddlers, and keep them safely enclosed. There are plenty of laws to that effect already on the books.
Voters should be responsible for their legislators, and keep them safely enclosed. There aren't nearly enough laws to that effect on the books.

We need a ban on bans.

"Good fences make good neighbors" - Robert Frost

Dog pics from here and here.

Best description of the inauguration

Here's the Coyote Blog, on the fawning adoration surrounding the changeover from The Daddy Party to The Mommy Party:

For a libertarian like myself, its like watching people line up at 3am to be the first to be in the store when McDonald’s switches its fountain drinks from Coke to Pepsi.

The Coyote Blog. Save the link. Blogroll him. There's more good sense on that site than there is in all of D.C. tonight.

The hidden cause of the recent airliner crash

After a week of careful surveillance, the CIA has determined what caused the US Air jet to crash into the Hudson river....

The Obamessiah now dwells among us

From The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, verses 13-17:




13 Then the Obamessiah came from Chicago to the Temple to be blessed by The Sheeple.
14 But The Sheeple tried to deter him, saying, "We need to be blessed by thee, for we are the ones who should be serving; for we are not worthy to touch the hem of thy garment, Obamessiah."
15 The Obamessiah replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all that the prophets foretold." Then The Sheeple consented, and brought forth from The Holy of Holies the Ark Of The Covenant, and from it the Chief Priests took The Book Of The Seven Seals.
16 And when The Obamessiah lay his hand upon The Book, he slowly levitated from the Temple steps, and ascended halfway unto the heavens. And we beheld his glory. And at that moment the heavens were opened, and we saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.
17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased. And you are The Sheeple of his pastures. And you shall be fleeced, lo, even unto the third and fourth generations, for his yoke will not be easy, and your burden will not be light."

Picture of The Obamessiah from here.

New Blog Widget

Regular readers might notice that there's a new "Obama The Warmonger" widget off to the right.
In the interest of fairness, I'm giving him until midnight on inauguration day to pull the troops out of Iraq. Then the official countdown begins.
I've not yet created the countdown code for "Lowering The Sea Level", "Raising The Dead", or "Firing Hillary".

Salon.com is now shocked ! ! ! ! ! !

The earnest chin-stroking Left-wingers at Salon.com are SHOCKED. Shocked, I say !! ....when they discover that "[the President-elect's] support of the bank bailout is payback to his wealthy Wall Street supporters."

He had wealthy Wall Street supporters? I thought his campaign was paid for with $4.37 (average) contributions from retired seamstresses, gay orphans, and the people who pick up trash on the side of the highway because they have a vision of everything America could be.

What is going on here? I mean, the Salon editorial is very well written, but..but...but....

The First Annual Whitey Awards

Government waste has always been a favorite topic on this site.

It's time for the readers of The Whited Sepulchre blog to vote on who in the last year has done the most to eliminate government waste.
There are several ways to end government waste. The best method, of course, is the one least discussed: don't give the government any of your money.

I'm going to nominate three candidates below. Nominate others as write-ins if you wish. The candidate with the highest total will receive the highly coveted Whitey Award.

And the nominees are:

1) [the President-elect's] nominee for Secretary Of The Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who at the time of his nomination for the post of chief tax collector, owed $42,000.00 in unpaid taxes, and, according to The Washington Post, is also being investigated for including using his child's time at overnight camps to calculate deductions for dependent-care, taking deductions for ineligible donations to charity and failing to pay an early-withdrawal penalty from a retirement plan.

A brilliant man, Mr. Geithner. Had he paid that 42K in taxes, it would've been wasted. Had he not deducted sending his kids to camp as a childcare expense, that money would've been blown on something useless. Timothy Geithner will be hard to beat.

2) James P. O’Hare, and David J. Dalaia. This is the duo that wheeled their deceased friend's rotting corpse into a check-cashing store in a failed attempt to cash their dead friend's $355 Social Security check.

Yes, they failed. Yes, they might have spent the $355 on alcohol. But if that money had stayed in The Treasury, it would've been given to some millionaire as an agricultural subsidy. A noble failure, and worthy of consideration for The Whitey.

3) Hillary Clinton, our next Secretary of State. Ms. Clinton's act of heroism didn't occur in the last 12 months, but since this is the first year The Whitey has ever been awarded, I'm allowing it for consideration. It is, after all, my damn award.

Former Senator Clinton, lover of Big Government, Policy Wonk, and disparager of Free Markets and Nafta, once claimed a two dollar tax deduction for donating some of Bill's used underwear to charity.

Remember, it's not the quantity saved, it's the quality. Who else would go to such extreme lengths to save such a paltry sum from The Gaping Maw Of The Beast? Every penny counts.

Those are my nominees. You may wish to nominate others.

7 Things You Didn't Know About Me

Pete Wann at Cowtown Chronicles has tagged me with an online meme called "7 Things You Didn't Know About Me". He's written a list of 7 things we didn't know about him, he's linked to 7 other bloggers who are supposed to do the same. Then I'm supposed to link to 7 other bloggers, and next thing you know, we've got this Amway pyramid of links and traffic going back and forth to each other.

Here are my 7 things.

1. On the top of my left ear, I have a feature called "Darwin's Point". According to The List Universe, "Darwin’s point is found in the majority of mammals, and humans are no exception. It is most likely used to help focus sounds in animals, but it no longer has a function in humans. Only 10.4% of the human population still has this visible left-over mark of our past.

My grandmother called it "The Howard Mark", after the branch of the family that all had wolf bumps on their ears.

2. I played acoustic guitar for an earlier incarnation of this group while I was in college, and we were able to do a European tour every couple of years. One night in an Austrian restaurant, I stood up and loudly sang "Dixie" for a group of bewildered locals. There was a very well-dressed couple being honored in one of the back rooms, and they and their friends were not amused by my performance of a Minstrel Show Battle Hymn from The War Of Northern Oppression. The next morning, I discovered that the Guests Of Honor in the next room were the Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein. All I can say is that alcohol was involved. (But I've sung "Dixie" for royalty !)

3. In Pete's list of 7 things, he mentions that he once made an ass of himself in front of noted Fort Worth actor Bill Paxton. I've never done that. But I once accidentally set someone else up to do so. Yes, with noted Fort Worth actor Bill Paxton. What are the odds? It's a long, long story.

4. I was born with an undescended testicle.

5. I don't smoke, except for the occasional cigar with the Libertarians at Pop's. But I once had a group of nicotine-addicted employees who claimed they needed more than two minutes for a "quick smoke break". To prove them wrong, I once smoked a Marlboro Light down to the filter in less than 15 seconds. Not recommended.

6. I've made five work-related trips to China. Thanks to multiple sets of flash cards, at one point I could recognize more than 500 characters in Mandarin Chinese. Now that we have another manager over there full time, I've forgotten almost all of them.

7. Thanks to the mind-expanding trips to Asia, I can eat or drink almost anything and enjoy it. The only two things I don't like and refuse to consume are pickles and iced tea.

And now I'm supposed to tag 7 more people with this thing. (The goal is to send traffic back to Pete's site, via my link, and then I'm supposed to go whoring for 7 more links back to my site.) Since I tagged all my Usual Suspects via an earlier meme called "The Anti-Library", I'm going to try something different.
I'm going to tag the bloggers who, according to Google, have made the most popular use of the word "antidisestablishmentarianism". Just to see what happens.

1. I'm tagging the good people at "Flippin' Kites", who marvelled at seeing antidisestablishmentarianism used in a real live sentence....

2. And I'm tagging the Atheist Bible Reading And Forum. They have an actual video about antidisestablishmentarianism, and once you've watched it, you'll never, ever forget it. It's incredibly effective. (heh, heh, heh...go there. You'll be glad you did. Seriously. Go there. Watch the video. Let me know if you watched the video. You'll walk away knowing EXACTLY what antidisestablishmentarianism means.)

3. For something completely different, Reconciliationtalk.com asks the question "Antidisestablishmentarianism, or not?"

4. A Staunch Calvinist at Reformation 21 has a post simply titled "Antidisestablishmentarianism". It seems that Rowan Williams, an archbishop in the C of E, is actually contemplating disestablishmentarianism.

5. David Keen at The Wardman Wire has the most in-depth analysis of Antidisestablishmentarianism you'll ever surf through. No stone is left unturned.

6. Andrew King, of Downed Robin fame, has yet another post entitled "Antidisestablishmentarianism". This guy's pretty entertaining, stating that "That old tease, Archbishop Rowan Williams, has titillated New Statesman readers with the enticing prospect of thew Church of England finally getting its lardy butt off the gravy train and being disestablished, not before time."

7. Finally, Boondoggle has a short piece entitled "Antidisestablishmentarianism Out Of A Beard". Polly Toynbee, states Boondoggle, knows what the longest word in the English language is.

So there are 7 bloggers tagged, and all 7 bloggers have written pieces about whether England should or shouldn't have an established church. If any of them link back to me with their 7 things about themselves, much less blogroll me, I'll be amazed.

Oh, one other thing I should've put on my list.....

8. When I was very, very young, my mother taught me how to spell and define "antidisestablishmentarianism".

We knew him waaaaay back when....

Cheers and high praise are in order for my friend, agent provocateur, and co-hymnologist Dr. Ralph.

Just one year ago, he was content to sound off on a few technical and political opinions every month.

But his comments on these pages in praise of truly gawdawful government-funded art are now so well known, British bloggers are now name-dropping him in posts about Czech "Art" on Australian websites.

Dr. Ralph is now a worldwide phenomenon.

And we knew Dr. Ralph when he was just an intern.

The Browncoat Libertarian has been struck down ! ! !

I got this email today from John Spivey, The Big Daddy of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party....

I just wanted to let you know that John S. Jones....one of the Organizers of this Meetup group, a District Rep for the Texas State Libertarian Executive Committee (SLEC) and the Secretary for the Tarrant County Libertarian Party is in the Intensive Care Unit of Harris Methodist Southwest Hospital with a life threatening case of pneumonia.

John also blogs as The Browncoat Libertarian. He and I represent State Senate District 10 on the SLEC. He's a great guy. If you haven't made it to one of his Libertarian Meetups at Pop's Safari bar, you've missed a treat. Now, back to Spivey's email....

Currently, his condition is classified as 'critical' and he's on a ventilator. This situation came on very quickly and I was surprised to hear this since we rode together to the SLEC meeting just last weekend and he couldn't have been better. However, a few days ago, I received an email from him saying he'd be out of commission as he was in the ICU with Pneumonia. It appeared he was getting better, but for unknown reasons, things took a bad turn yesterday.

He'll be on mechanical ventilation for probably at least a few more days and therefore won't be able to receive any visitors. However, I'm sure John and his wife Jackie will appreciate your moral support, kind thoughts, prayers and anything else good that you've got in your heart! I've thrown it out there to do whatever may need to be done (errands, whatever - anything) during this time. So if anybody else is willing to help out where needed, let me know. Again, I'm sure that would mean a lot to them to know that we've got their back.

We're pulling for our good friend and chief voice of liberty in Tarrant County, John S. Jones! Keep fighting, brother - - We need you fighting for freedom and helping to guide our organization!!

At this point in the email, John Spivey gave out his personal cell phone number, which I'm sure Mr. Spivey doesn't want broadcast to the seven continents.

Thanks,
John Spivey

John, we all hope you get better soon. I'm giving you one more day to rest, and then I'm going to Harris Southwest and sneaking a cigar underneath your ventilator.

Everyone, please leave your best wishes to The Browncoat Libertarian in the comment field below, or even better, hit the link above to his site and leave them there.

A Theoretical Question, Part 2

Here are my thoughts on The Theoretical Question in the previous post.... and if you want to see more comments, I cross-posted it on Reddit, where it has kept my hit counter whirring nicely.

Let me begin with a story from a George Mason University economics professor named Russell Roberts:

"After Hurricane Isabel hit Washington D.C. in September 2003, one of my students whose husband was a contractor told me how disgusted her husband had been with the high prices people were charging for generators. Surely a contractor would want a backup energy supply, I said. Surely he had paid the high price. No, she explained, he already had a backup and had been considering buying a second backup. But at double the regular price, he passed. Someone else got that generator and I got a richer understanding of higher prices."

That encounter with a student was the genesis of Roberts' latest book, "The Price of Everything". The book begins with a hurricane. One store leaves prices alone and sells out. The other store doubles prices, which automatically acts as a rationing mechanism, but there's a near riot at the checkout line. Some university students stage a protest a few weeks later, but then....well, I hope you'll read the book.

It's not the best-written book I've ever read, but when I finished it I immediately turned back to page one and plowed through it again.

Do you every wonder why the shelves in our supermarkets are full? Ever wonder why countries afflicted with the blessings of communism had supermarket shelves that were mostly empty? Ever wonder why we don't have to wait in long lines for gasoline, or endure rationing like we did in the early 1970's? Ever wonder why the minimum wage in Cuba is somewhere near $14.00 (PER MONTH !!) ??

Do you want to know how to ensure that more people will die during a famine? Legislate artificially low prices. Want to keep people from delivering water to drought stricken areas? Put anti-gouging laws into place.

Do you ever wonder why we can simply go out and buy our basic necessities?

It's because our (somewhat) Free Market Economy allows prices to go up when there's a shortage, and decline when there's a glut. We don't have an idiotic Flashlight Czar (yet), setting flashlight prices all over the country based on hours of darkness, hurricanes, or electrical problems. People can charge whatever they want to for flashlights. Therefore, when you really, really need see in the dark, somebody out there is probably willing to sell you a flashlight.

So, according to Professor Roberts, not only was the Big Store doing the right thing economically when it doubled its prices after the hurricane, it was doing the right thing logically, socially, and morally.

Once again, the book is called The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity, by Russell Roberts.

Professor Roberts also blogs at Cafe Hayek, which I wish was read daily by everyone eligible to vote.

A Theoretical Question

A hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. Supply chains are disrupted, and will likely remain that way for days.
The Home Depot store in the hardest-hit area doesn't raise its prices immediately before or after the hurricane. Their shelves are quickly emptied.
Let's say that another retailer called "Big Box", located next door to Home Depot, doubles The Price Of Everything in their store. They still have many of the items (like flashlights, batteries, diesel generators, etc.) that are in high demand after a hurricane. Big Box keeps the high prices in place until the replenishment system returns to normal.

People are outraged. Shortly after the storm, customers arrange a protest.

With which store should the customers be angry?

After you've had time to think about it, click here for more info on the origin of the question....

Government Regulation: Do we need more pounds or more pages?

Here's Samizdata on "The Myth of Unregulated Global Capitalism". Check it out and get back to me.....

They don't even bother mentioning the Community Reinvestment Act, The Federal Reserve, that Fannie and Freddie are quasi-government entities, or that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd's fingerprints are all over the warnings that were tossed in the trash. (Well, Samizdata is a British site. But I thought I should mention those things too.)

Here's Reason magazine, on the same subject:

Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations' cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are "economically significant," meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That's a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.

Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.

So.... the people who are wanting more regulation of our supposedly unbridled Free Market Economy.... Are you wanting more pounds of regulations? More pages? Or something more specific that says if you put your money down at the blackjack table, you can only win? Something that will punish your enemies and reward your friends?

Ron Paul Is Pissed !

Hat Tip to Liberty Maven.

The New Workers' Paradise

Here's the scariest thing you'll read all day: Cuba is no longer The Workers' Paradise. Washington D.C. has taken its place. Here's The New Republic on Pete Rouse, Obama's current Senate chief-of-staff, and soon to be White House senior advisor.

A legendary workaholic in a town where the competition for that distinction is fierce, the (unmarried, childless) Rouse is said to have little time for outside-the-office distractions. There's his occasional Friday night out for an Ivy League hockey game and the one week of summer vacation in August. But, beyond that, Rouse is all about the job. "Pete Rouse is always working," e-mails one fan/colleague. "The first one in the office and the last one to leave."

Here's commentary on Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, who will soon be in charge of Homeland Security:

Hearing of Napolitano's appointment, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell declared his fellow chief executive perfect for the post because she has "no family" and "no life" and thus can "devote literally nineteen, twenty hours a day" to the job. Rendell's remarks were derided in some quarters as sexist.....In fact, Napolitano's intense job focus and unmarried status have, in the past, spurred whisper campaigns about her sexuality, prompting the governor to quip that she's not a lesbian, "just a straight, single workaholic."

Here's a charming anecdote about Obama's soon-to-be senior advisor Valerie Jarrett:

Back in the summer, Jarrett recalled to me how, at one point during her tenure as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's deputy chief of staff, she was lectured by Daley's wife, Maggie, for working too hard. "She told me, 'You have got to take one day a week off to be with your daughter.' I said, 'I can't do that.' And she said, 'The mayor doesn't work on Sunday, why should you?'" Jarrett's compromise was to start taking Laura along to weekend work functions.

We know these people. We've read about them. We know their stated goals. And unfortunately, they're all going to be working very, very hard.

May God have mercy on us all.

pic from here.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

First, there was the Community Reinvestment Act. Uncle Sam required banks to make loans to people who ordinarily wouldn't qualify for them.

These loans became known as Subprime Mortgages. You may have heard of them, especially if you've stopped living under a rock or if you finally decided to leave the monastery. There was plenty o' money to be made on Subprime Mortgages, since the banks could charge slightly higher interest on these loans and there were the written and unwritten guarantees that Uncle Sam would intervene if too many people defaulted on them (an assumption that was later proven to be correct).

This created the towering house of cards (or game of Jenga) that eventually collapsed, leaving a lot of investors holding houses that are now worth....not a lot. They were built on the assumption that there were plenty of people who could afford them. It's gonna take a while for the market to clear.

But that's ok. The Government has stepped in with your money, and is propping up the system.

Now, in an effort to guarantee full employment for Government system-proppers, here's this gem from the January 12, 2009 issue of Time magazine.

In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.

Did you get it? Huh? Did you see it? Want to read it again?

In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.


But there's a reason that GMAC hasn't been making those loans in the past, right? Aren't these loans the GM equivalents to Subprime Mortgages? Let's look at those two sentences again.


In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.


How can the good people at Time magazine type that drivel without further commentary? The U.S. Treasury is as broke as the 10 Commandments, and it's making 6 billion dollar loans to GMAC, which is about to go broke, so GMAC can make loans to people with lower credit scores?

If everyone with a low credit score would now offer to loan money to the U.S. Treasury, then the The Circle Would Be Unbroken. You could all get rich by guaranteeing loans and defaulting on each other. The Treasury, to GMAC, to You, to The Treasury, to GMAC, to You.

Not one penny of your own money will be at risk.

Dilbert on education

Here's Scott Adams (Dilbert's creator) with predictions on changes in education:

In California we're facing a severe budget deficit, and this will demand cuts in education among other things. I can imagine a future economy where everyone is home schooled over the Internet, and the average result is an improvement. With the Internet you could leverage the best teaching methods to the entire country. No one gets the bad teacher or the disruptive class. There are no bullies and no cliques.
Obviously you can see lots of problems with this approach. We assume that kids gain a lot from the social interaction of being in school. And of course personal attention from a teacher is important. But we have enough home schooled kids in the world to test that theory. My guess is that as long as home schooled kids have friends in the neighborhood, and siblings, they socialize just fine. The social skills can be learned on sports teams and at Girl Scouts. And I suspect a parent can give better personal attention than a teacher with 20 students.
Poor kids don't have computers and Internet connections. But subsidizing them would be far cheaper in taxes than sending them to school. And suddenly everyone would get the same quality of education.

A couple of weeks ago I asked the Aggie how much of her college education could have been done on line. She ruled out her Physical Education elective and her Labs for Chemistry and Animal Science. Everything else could've been done via the Internet.

You'd still have to have traditional teaching formats for writing. Maybe art and music. Overall, it would be a massive win for the kids.

But think of the massive loss of government power and control that we'd have. Think of how bored you were in some classes, waiting on everyone else to finish reading one page while you had to sit. And sit. And sit.

Think of the subjects where you were slower than the majority, and needed extra help. Is anyone willing to say that Algebra II couldn't be explained somehow, somewhere online, in a way that even the slowest student could catch it?

Look at what the government spends per student. Look at what the private schools spend per student. Surely we can find a way to enter the 20th century (not a typo) and do better than this.

A Failed Fisking Of Pat Buchanan

Journalist, Presidential Speechwriter, Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan has written a column entitled "Obama's Choice: FDR or Reagan".

Hmmmmm.....I'll be needing my Fisking tools....
Scalpel - thanks.
Laptop - got it.
Righteous Indignation - I've got plenty.
Various History Websites - check.
My copy of "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes - Here it is. First edition.
Chainsaw - yep.
Let the Fisking begin ! Here's Pat Buchanan:

Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.
The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.
By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent -- among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.

Nothing I can argue with there, although I can't find a reference for 89% of stock value being wiped out.

FDR's answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes -- like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.

Not much to attack there, either. But curiously absent from this analysis? The Smoot-Hawley tariffs. As soon as economic times got tough, Little Herbie Hoover signed something called the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which raised taxes on any goods imported into the U.S. That prompted all of our neighbors and trading partners to do the same, in a misguided effort to "protect" their own manufacturers. The result? No one traded with anyone. The only way to wealth is through the market, and the market died.

Next time you hear or read someone like Pat Buchanan or Tom Tancredo wanting to put up more trade barriers, remember that disaster. (To read an old post of mine that I'm rather fond of, click here. I was trying to explain the exact location of Tom Tancredo's head.)

The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot."

I'm seeing that Morgenthau quote all over the 'Net, but haven't found a source for it. But if he didn't say it (Morgenthau was an FDR appointee) he could have done so and remained truthful. It just doesn't seem like something an FDR loyalist would say.

Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR's landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.

As the cliche goes, "Anyone robbing Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul." Especially when Peter is still wearing diapers and can't vote.

Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the "stagflation" of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.

I bet somebody out there can help me out with this question.... Has EVERY economic crisis (recession) since 1929 been called the worst since The Great Depression? Do politicians like to hype the situation so that we can Loot The Children® to line our own pockets?

Reagan's answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.
From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. "The Seven Fat Years," author Robert Bartley called them.

That's pretty much how it happened. Too bad that Reagan spent money like a Hollywood Cowboy with Alzheimer's. Which, come to think of it, he was.

Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson's wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in "The Roaring '20s," a time of unrivaled prosperity.

Ahh yes. Harding and Coolidge. The laziest presidents, with the best economies. Mommy Party Messiahs don't get the same results. Could there possibly be a correlation?

The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT WE STARTED TRADING WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN A BIG, BIG WAY, TARIFFS BE DAMNED, SUPPLYING THEM WITH EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO CONTINUE FIGHTING THE DAMN NAZIS. That may have helped a little, Pat, you protectionist clodhopper....

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.
In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.
Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan's largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.

Wait a minute....wait a minute....didn't we already spend something like 700 Billion channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats when we bailed out Wall Street? Wasn't that supposed to solve the problem? Or could it be that the Obama candidacy was paid for by Wall Street, and that first 700 billion was merely in exchange for services rendered? And now we've gotta go back to the well for the real bailout? I have a warped admiration for Loot The Children® policies as much as the next person, but even the four-year-olds are starting to figure this thing out, and are starting to protest.

And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?
Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern "demogrant" program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.
Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for "infrastructure" projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.

Yeah, the "infrastructure" projects are a synonym for pork and earmarks. But I kinda like Obama's idea of unemployed stockbrokers and investment bankers working on the roads, building bridges, leaning on their shovels, and taking a lunchbox to work.

Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money.

Foreigners will give Bernie Madoff money before they give us any more money. Foreigners will loan money to Somali pirates, in hopes of a quick turnaround on their investment, before they loan us any more money. They might seriously consider the plight of that nice Christian lady in Nigeria who wants to get her money out of the country, but they're not going to loan us any more money. Foreigners will give money to the winos lounging outside of Convenience Stores who "just need a little money for gasoline so they can get home" before they give us any more money.

So The Fed is going to print the money. Count on it.

Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?
Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?

Well, when my daughter was playing blackjack on our recent cruise ship vacation, she lost more than half of her allotted gambling funds on the very first night. By putting more money at risk, she was able to restore prosperity. Eventually. It could've gone either way. She's a big girl now, and it was her choice. What if I'd bailed her out after the first night? I could belabor the analogy by guessing that she might've kept the money instead of putting it at risk again, much like the banks are doing now with the first 700 billion that The Children® loaned them.

Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.

I prefer to see the toolbox as half-full. There's still a chance that Somali pirates will attack Pearl Harbor.

And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.

Or a very well-funded Jack Sparrow movie.

I apologize for the total failure of this Fisking. Things are in a sad state when I find myself in general agreement with Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan.

The Ron Paul Page-A-Day #2

Here's the 2nd installment of the Ron Paul Page-A-Day, in which I supply a section of Ron Paul's "The Revolution: A Manifesto" for your enlightenment and commentary. I hope to continue this until I've posted the entire book, or until Congressman Paul's publishers say "cease and desist".
In the previous installment, The Good Doctor lamented the fact that Republicans posture as small-government types but do little or nothing to shrink the size of government. (In fact, it's grown more under presidents named Reagan and Bush than any others.) The Democrats campaign as the anti-war candidates, but generally vote to authorize foreign adventures.

With no further ado, here's Ron Paul:

A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers. There are still some good and decent conservative leaders to be found, and a portion of the grass roots has remained uncorrupted by the transformation of conservatism into just another Big Government movement. But Big Government at home and abroad seems to suit many conservative spokesmen just fine. Once in a while they will latch on to phony but conservative-sounding causes like "tax reform" - almost always a shell game in which taxes are shuffled around rather than actually reduced overall - in order to pacify the conservative base, but that's about it.

When Republicans won a massive off-year election victory in 1994, neoconservative Bill Kristol immediately urged them not to do anything drastic but to wait until the Republicans took the White House in 1996. Well, the Republicans didn't take the White House in 1996, so nothing ever got done. Instead the Republican leadership urged these freshman congressmen to focus on a toothless soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

Needless to say, I am also unimpressed by the liberal Left. Although they posture as critical thinkers, their confidence in government is inexcusably naive, based as it is on civics-textbook platitudes that bear absolutely zero resemblance to reality. Not even their position on unnecessary wars is consistent, as I noted above. Even Howard Dean was all in favor of Bill Clinton's intervention in Bosnia, going so far as to urge the president to take unilateral military action beyond the multilateral activity already taking place. Liberals at the grass roots, on the other hand, have been deeply alienated by the various betrayals by which a movement they once supported has made its peace with the establishment.

No wonder frustrated Americans have begun referring to our two parties as the Republicrats. And no wonder the news networks would rather focus on $400 haircuts than matters of substance. There are no matters of substance.

Caption Contest - Presidential Edition

I need a caption for this historic photo.






Hit the "Captions" label below to see Procrustes' winning entry to the previous "Hawgs Gone Wild" edition of the contest.

I've been out of town

I was unexpectedly sent out of town on Monday; hence the lack of posts.

Fortunately, the general "tone" of this site was elevated in my absence. On the previous post, NickM and Dr. Ralph and Tarrant Liberty Guy engaged in a spirited (yet polite and scholarly) debate on the merits of government-funded artwork. (Dr. Liz and the Lazy Slacker chimed in on other issues.)



In appreciation to everyone who read the whole thing, I'd like to offer up this desecration of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Compliments of Democratic Underground. For more of the same, click here. (If you're a Kinkade anti-fan, it's worth it !)