Hey Tea Party Folk!! August 10, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.53 comments
I never did any of the Tea Party gigs, ‘cuz that’s not my thing. So I don’t have any first-hand experience to refute the comments made by one of my friends this morning:
…any attempt to rationalize the Tea Party as some sort of grass roots reaction to elites is absurd. The Koch brothers are pumping shitloads of money into this effort.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
It’s an anti-Obama distraction. And it’s not, not, not a conservative movement. It’s an extremely activist fanatical right-wing movement. There a huge difference between the two.
Obviously he’s been exposed to a lot of negative propaganda. I was hoping that, in a civil and informed way, Tea Party regulars could give me their reactions explaining why his characterization is untrue.
Thanks.
Craazy August 9, 2011
Posted by Retired Geezer in Man Laws, Music, Religion, Sex.16 comments
This is the awesomest acoustic guitar solo evah.
YMMV
Take note of all the Harmonic taps.
I never even heard of this guy before.
A Respite From Market News August 9, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.7 comments
While we’re all waiting for King Putt (saw that in Monty’s Doom post this morning, and it cracked me up) to lay hands on NASDAQ and the NYSE and cure their ills, I thought I’d steer clear of all that and talk about something really interesting.
I speak, of course, of China.
Gordon Chang has an article in Forbes this morning, where he talks about China’s currency manipulation and its effect on the US dollar. Everything was going really well until he said this:
By flooding the world with them [US dollars], Chinese officials are keeping dollar interest rates abnormally low and therefore making it too easy for the U.S. government to borrow. The U.S., therefore, would not be in such a debt fix if Beijing had allowed the renminbi to float and honored its trade promises, thereby allowing a more balanced trade between the two nations.
Hunh? “Making it too easy for the US government to borrow?” We heard that with the “predatory loan” business, where eeevil banks and mortgage companies took advantage of unsophisticated borrowers to “trap” them into loans they couldn’t afford. But to say this about a country whose economic policy is formulated by some of the world’s foremost academicians, ably led by a President who knows “more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors?”
That’s undoubtedly racist. It’s certainly silly, at the very least.
So I lied – I didn’t really talk about China yet. Let me redeem myself.
Gordon Chang also wrote a book called The Coming Collapse of China, which talks about the corruption and internal weaknesses of the Chinese economy. This is a theme you hear echoed about the blogosphere, and it’s certainly true that those problems exist. But he wrote that book in 2001. Ten years of prophesy, but no doom.
Waiting for your competition to fall on their faces, documented weaknesses or no, is a feeble, passive strategy. I’d prefer to see a strategy that addresses their strengths, rather than their weaknesses.
Meanwhile they just keep coming.
Jubilee is 30 August 7, 2011
Posted by Retired Geezer in Family, Gardening, Man Laws.2 comments
This is the show that I did the Lighting for, for about 20 years, right up until I retired. It’s still going strong.
Lots of fun memories.
Even Michael and Cathy have seen it.
Slighting Texas A&M August 6, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.7 comments
Mrs. Peel should really be writing this, but since she ain’t, I wanted to defend Texas A&M from this comment by some anonymous yahoo who was quoted by the Huffington Post.
“A&M wasn’t exactly Harvard on the Brazos River,” recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post.
That quote seems very unlikely – I’d go so far as to say that it was fabricated by someone who knows nothing about A&M. After all, the Aggies are ranked 13th among engineering schools. Hahvahd? #18.
But how about Rick Perry’s major – animal sciences? Harvard doesn’t appear to have such a major, but A&M’s graduate program is ranked 8th in the country (I couldn’t find a ranking for the undergraduate program). Not too shabby.
Perry’s grades may have been pathetic, but the school he went to has strong academics and is perfectly reputable. Fortunately for his candidacy, HuffPo couldn’t keep its mouth shut until a more critical moment in his campaign.
Sending Mixed Messages, the Scouting Way August 5, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.5 comments
I don’t think these two designs go together very well:
Bong Scouts of America?
You can have one of these sweet babies for a mere $8.99.
The Poverty Brand™ August 4, 2011
Posted by Michael in Economics.197 comments
Everybody agrees that our fiscal problems are directly attributable to “entitlement spending.” Nobody agrees on what to do about it.
During the Great Depression, my Grandpa Dave worked for the Works Progress Administration building roads. (This was FDR’s failed “stimulus” plan.) I heard about how he would come home exhausted and drenched in sweat. He worked himself half to death, because he was ashamed to be receiving public assistance and wanted to prove to himself that he had earned his pay. That is the attitude we need today. Instead, we have created a culture where women think it is perfectly OK to make a career out of being sluts, pumping out babies, and expecting the public to take care of them and their bastards.
I have the solution. Let’s make poverty shameful again. Let’s expurgate the entire concept of “entitlement” from our public discourse, and go back to the concept of charity. Poor people should feel pitied. Instead, they feel oppressed if they don’t think the government is doing “enough.”
See, I have no issue with a social safety net. I just think the beneficiaries of this net should be grateful and embarrassed. Instead, we have a growing population who thinks they are “entitled” to food stamps, AFDC, Section 8 housing, a free cell phone, health care, a nice hot lunch for the kids instead of Mom packing a lunch box (even in the summer), and on and on.
The “entitlement” mentality perfectly suits the massive bureaucracies that support their dependencies and are very well paid to do so, and the fraudsters who prey on the system. So, in America we have “poor” people who, by any global standard, are living large with cable TV, air conditioning and internet access. Meanwhile, the average taxpayer is getting raped.
In order to stop this, poverty needs to be understood as it used to be — something that is shameful. Consider this as a marketing exercise. We need to create a brand identity for poverty.
Start by picking a color. I nominate orange, because it is the most annoying color.
Next, we need a logo. Here’s a candidate:
OK, now we need a jingle to associate with poor people.
The first 20 seconds of this song come to mind:
So far so good. We now have the essential elements of the Poverty Brand™, oriented around the color orange and the “loser” theme. How do we use it? The possibilities are endless.
1. Food stamp recipients should be given a plastic debit card that is orange and about three times as large as a credit card, so it is real conspicuous. When they check out at the grocery store, an orange light should go off (like the K-Mart “blue light specials” of yore). The PA could announce, “poor person checking out register 3″ and then the jingle could be played.
2. Anyone receiving public health care assistance should wear an orange hospital gown, and the Loser Logo should be posted on their hospital door so that passers-by can walk into the room, view the objects of their charity, and (hopefully) receive their heartfelt gratitude. The Loser Jingle should be piped into their room.
3. All Section 8 housing should have orange doors with the Loser Logo.
4. Children enrolled in Head Start, which is nothing more than a massive free babysitting service which achieves no educational objectives (according to DOE’s own study) should have to wear orange T-shirts while in attendance. The kids won’t care; the parents will be ashamed.
5. Kids who get free school lunches should be required to wear an orange hat during the lunch period. Hey kid, maybe Mom should make your lunch.
6. If you get AFDC, your hair must be dyed Loser Orange™ or you will lose your benefits. We’ll pay for the dye.
7. Free or subsidized phones should be orange with the Loser Logo prominently stamped on them.
I could go on, but you get my point. Once again, poverty should be a stigma, not a self-righteous badge of oppression. Please feel free to contribute your own ideas for the Poverty Brand™ in the comments.
Ancestors August 4, 2011
Posted by Michael in Music.20 comments
Time for some hippie music.
I know, New Age is old, but I’m a big fan* of Keith Medley on his 27-string guitar, which he made and there is no other, so I wanted to share this with you. This song exploits the full range of the instrument.
Just looking at the dang thing is kind of awesome. I mean, just the nine bass strings on that sucker make Dave’s bass look like a punk-ass bitch.
How many people decide to build a whole new and incredibly complex stringed instrument, and then learn how to play it?
Keith Medley, that’s how many.
*Actually, I’ve never heard of Keith Medley and this link was another tip from ScottW.
The Fastest Living Thing on the Planet August 3, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.4 comments
…Michael’s hands being a close second.
Resigning Ourselves to Reduced Economic Growth August 3, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.27 comments
I’m not optimistic about our economic future. I don’t believe that we’ll ever get a handle on our debt problem, our regulatory problems, our education/training problems and our enfattened government problem. I do believe that increasing international competition for customers, resources, and jobs will continue to slow our growth henceforth.
And I believe this:
People talk about 4 – 5% GDP growth as if it were the norm, and they base all their budget projections on the economy returning to that sort of growth rate. Absurd.
We haven’t seen consistent 5% GDP growth for 35 years.
If it weren’t for the dot.com boom, we wouldn’t have seen consistent 4% GDP growth for 25 years. Our economy is settling in at 2 – 3% growth for the foreseeable future.
The Democrats’ Plan for Prosperity: Tax Us Into Stagnation August 1, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.13 comments
Having just weathered the debt limit debates, I thought it was interesting to examine one of the integral parts of the Democrat’s proposals. That was the assumption that increasing revenues during a recession was a sensible way to start cutting the deficit. Puh-leeze.
There’s a reason that we don’t want to increase taxes right now – the economy is in tatters, with news articles now telling us that we’ve already dipped into our second recession before recovering from the first. And there’s a very definite correlation between taking more from the people and suppressing economic growth.
Some liberals have shown charts saying that increased taxes on the highest tax bracket correspond to times of prosperity, but that’s a poor way to judge the effect of taxes on the economy. Here’s what I propose: let’s look at all government revenues as a % of the size of our economy, and see what it does to economic growth.
And what a happy coincidence!! I have such a chart right here!
So if you get rid of the outliers due to the recent recessions and the irrational exuberance of the dotcom boom, it’s pretty clear. Anybody who is proposing revenues in the 21% of GDP range (like, say, many of the Dems’ proposals), is likely to be suppressing annual GDP growth to well below 2%. At that rate we’ll never really recover from our current problems.
This is why Paul Ryan’s budget projections crawl up from 16% of GDP to 19% of GDP over the course of 15 years.
Some claim that taxing high earners exclusively won’t have such a negative effect. They say that they’re not investing enough or spending the money anyway, so the government might as well take it. Kind of a silly argument – rather than motivating them to invest more, taking their money will lead them to invest and spend even less. It’s a typical scenario where the Democrats won’t understand why things are getting worse despite their cleverest and most socially just programs.
The media and the DNC have had a field day ragging on the Tea Party. A little self-inspection would show them that the “responsible” course that they’re advocating leads straight to disaster.
Not that I’m sure they care.
