Where Do You Draw the Line?

An anonymous commenter to yesterday's post made me try to put this into words.  About my references to the gay Al Qaeda...



from

Ding Dong the Douchebag's Dead ...

I was in bed when the news broke last night, so I heard it when I first woke up at 6 this morning, to the clock radio's alarm.  So long ago that it's a dim memory, I assumed that if they got Bin Boy, that's how I'd find out.  First thing in the morning, in the fog of waking up.  I get a lot of important news that way. 

Unless someone has broken their secrecy agreements, we probably don't know the truth about what went down, and besides: first news reports are always wrong (although I like this one).  Did they fly helicopters disguised to look like the Pakistani choppers?  Did they spoof transponder codes or other responses so that Islamabad ATC thought they were Pakistani?  Did the US pilots answer calls in the native language?  Did some key insiders in their government know?  The team was apparently on the ground for 40 minutes, enough time for them to scramble a helicopter to check out what was going on.  We have pretty good reason to believe that much of their intelligence services, the ISI, is on Bin Boy's side, so that they would have warned him that an operation was on the way, and by the time our guys got there, he would have been somewhere on K2.  

Sounds like it went as well as a complex operation can go.  No one was injured.  Captured lots of evidence.  And whoever it was who did the double tap followed training perfectly (anyone worth shooting is worth shooting twice).  Everyone is reporting it was the SEALS; Seal Team Six, which officially doesn't exist any more.  My bet is it was a combo of SEALS and Delta, probably with some CIA guys - the "All Pro" team of special ops.  Whoever it was, I really only have one thing to say:  Thank you.  Well, a few things:  Thank you.  God bless you.  Well done.   

It's probably inappropriate to say, but since this is relatively anonymous: I used to be a seal.  I have only one picture from my training days, which I release with some trepidation.

 

Wait - you thought I meant I was a Navy SEAL?  Ha hahahahahahahahaha.

Another View

A few days ago, I did a piece on why I think that QE3 is inevitable.  As an aside and not the point of this piece, there was a really bad error in that one.  I said;

"How long do you think we can sell $45 billion in bonds per day (the projected deficit for 2011 divided by 365 days)?"

There's decimal point missing: it's $4.5 billion per day.

Jeff Clark, who's a "real" stock market analyst and writer (as opposed to me) begs to differ.  He thinks Zimbabwe Ben is going to let the market suffer for a while.  His writing is nice and snarky, too.  Beating old Ben like a rented mule.

Poor Ben. Here's a man who believes his policies prevented a global depression. He saved the banking industry, kept the U.S. economy afloat, prevented unemployment from reaching record levels, and saved the earth from Martian invaders.

 

But he gets no credit for any of it.

 

Instead, he's lambasted in front of Congress, ridiculed in the newspapers, humiliated online, and de-friended from just about everybody's Facebook page. The man gets no respect.

 

My guess is he's anxious to give people a taste of what things would be like if his QE programs weren't around... at least for a little while.

 

No one appreciates the drug dealer until the agonizing moans of the withdrawing heroin addicts drown out the sound of the TV set. "Do whatever it takes to quiet them down!" people shout. "Just get things back to the way they used to be."

(See Junior Deputy Accountant for the actual Stop Bernanke bumper sticker. )

Is Clark right?   I still see red ink everywhere, and I still think that they'll do QE3 because they think it's the least awful alternative.  Ben may want to make us suffer for not worshipping him, but he'd end up hurting his banker buddies, and that probably won't happen.

They are, by definition, going to destroy the savings of any of us who have saved for retirement, "a rainy day", vacations, new homes, cars, or anything else we wanted to save for.  They are, by definition, going to make a mockery of anyone who bought US treasuries (bonds).  Remember when China told us they were concerned we wouldn't honor our debt commitments to them?  China was right.  But, you know, if you're going to make an omelet.... 

Saturday Funnies

Both by Chuck Asay, Townhall. 

The Corruption is Stunning - Part II

This time, add in-your-face arrogance.  The BATF, embroiled in the Gunwalker (aka Fast and Furious) scandal, is trying to push through silly restrictions on the purchase of long guns.

Under the proposed rule, gun dealers would have to report sales of two or more rifles to an individual at one time or during a period of five business days if the rifles are semi-automatic, with a caliber greater than .22 and detachable magazines...  (emphasis added - GB)

This proposal was out for comment in December, and I wrote them asking what "caliber greater than .22" meant.  Do they mean .22 long rifle or .22 short?  Is a .22 magnum larger than a .22?  Is .22 Hornet larger?  .22 WRF?  What about .22-250, .22 Swift, .22 Cheetah, .22 BR Remington, .22 PPC...?  I see a big future for .204 Ruger if this idiocy is passed.  It's smaller than .22 any way you measure it, but can go around 3500 fps.  Business opportunity: .204 Ruger uppers for your AR lower.

This idea that Mexican drug gangs come into the US, spend hundreds of dollars for a semi-automatic AK-47 in American gun stores, when they can get fully automatic versions in Guatemala for $25, is insane.  Cables released by Wikileaks verify that the majority of the arms the cartels use come from Central America, not the US.

Yet one of the cables maintains that 90 percent of the heavy armament Mexican security forces seize from cartel gunmen comes from Central America.

Heck they probably get guns given to them by corrupt Mexican Army members, or steal the AKs from the Guatemalans.  Which makes more sense?  Come across the border into the US, and bring back a few expensive semi-automatics, or buy a cargo container and pick it up at the port?  I know that rifles do go across the border from the US - they're all being shipped by the BATF!  Whistleblowers say thousands of guns were involved in Gunwalker, making the US Government the largest known runner of guns into Mexico.

According to Mike at Sipsey Street:

It was first published in December and had a 60-day comment period that garnered almost 13,000 responses. About 30 percent opposed the reporting requirement and 70 percent favored it, ATF said.

Looks like a concerted effort by the antis - Codrea says it was Mayor Bloomberg; also looks it's time to comment to BATFE again.  Care to join me?

Excuse me, ma'am, but where did you get that AK?

Hmm.  Maybe I should try to lobby them for my version of common sense gun laws.

How To Avoid A Dark Age

Got this link from Alan over at SnarkyBytes (who needs no introduction from me...)

Best 15 minutes I've spent in a while.  Enjoy.

The Markets React to Ben Bernanke's Talk

Gold up about $25 from a low today of $1502/oz to $1528

(read the green trace, )
Silver up $3.50, from $44.86 to $48.36

 (green trace again)
 And the dollar index hit a 2.5 year low. 

(Kitco News) - Comex gold and silver futures prices rallied sharply and moved to daily highs in afternoon trading, in the wake of a bullishly construed statement from the Federal Reserve. June gold hit a new all-time record high of $1,524.20 an ounce. The U.S. dollar index weakened and fell to its daily low, hitting a fresh 2.5-year low, in the wake of the FOMC meeting statement, which contained no major surprises but did hint that U.S. interest rates would remain low for some time to come. That was bullish for metals due to the inflationary implications and because it was also bearish for the U.S. dollar.

I find this particularly funny because I saw Elfin Timmy Geithner on TV first thing this morning, saying the US is firmly committed to a strong dollar.  I almost dropped my breakfast: 

“Our policy has been and will always be, as long as at least I’m in this job, that a strong dollar is in our interest as a country,’’ Geithner said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “We will never embrace a strategy of trying to weaken our currency to try to gain economic advantage.’’

Seems the investors of the world don't believe him.  You can see why Pimco is shorting US bonds and China has been dumping US dollars since at least last October, when they became net sellers of US debt.  

As Karl Denninger says, “The market is bigger than any one man or any one nation and it does not suffer arrogance lightly. Virtually everyone who has tried to tangle with it has wound up with their head between their legs after not only their head was chopped off but both arms as well.” In this case, the market has concluded that the Fed is going to keep deflating the dollar, keep monetizing our own debt, and the US will keep declining until the collapse.


(note: in the half hour I've been composing this, silver has gone up from $48.36 to 48.57; since the world markets reopened, not even two hours ago, up 80 cents per ounce)

Fun Rumor Out of the LHC

Turning our backs on the economic collapse, I note some interesting rumors flying around the Large Hadron Collider over at CERN.  There's some evidence that they have indeed spotted the Higgs Boson, one of the reasons for constructing the LHC.

A look down the axis of the Atlas detector in the Large Hadron Collider.  Note the people: one standing facing camera on the large white block in the middle, and another working on the left (the yellow safety helmet stands out).

In English?  Over in Switzerland, near Geneva, the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) has constructed the largest scientific instrument ever made, the Large Hadron Collider.  It is a particle accelerator and colliderl that is, it's a large machine for colliding hadrons, not a machine for colliding large hadrons.  The claim to fame of this instrument is that it is designed to generate higher collision energies than have ever been observed.  It does this by generating particles and anti-particles, accelerating them around an enormous (17 mile circumference) loop until they accelerate to nearly light speed, and then smacks them into each other in that detector (or another one like it).

The purpose of this is to understand what matter is made of, and test theories in physics.  Also, another purpose is  to look at the machine, it's parts, and the printouts of results and say, "cool...".  The idea is that when you smash the particles into each other, they break apart into the things they're made out of, much like if you smashed two watches into each other at nearly the speed of light, you'd get a shower of gears, springs and dust.  The size and energy levels in the LHC led to a lot of pre-construction speculation that it was going to somehow destroy the earth, perhaps by forming a black hole or strangelet or by bringing beings from another dimension, or something like that.  Since we haven't seen Elvis, and the planet hasn't been sucked into a black hole (unless I slept through that) I assume those were just crackpot ideas. 

The Higgs Boson features in almost every major theory of physics, but has never been observed.  The particle is named for Peter Higgs, the theoretician who figured out it must exist.  A famous physicist, Sheldon Glashow, I think, said something to the effect of "A Higgs boson is like a toilet; every house has one, but they're not objects of great beauty, and the owners don't talk about them much".  Which leads to here.

And I think an excursion that leads from the most avant garde physics of our time, to the largest particle accelerator ever built, to the Higgs Boson and finally to an over-priced toilet is probably enough for one night.

Edit: 2139  photo problems

Yo, Mr. Prez! I Can Tell You Who's Responsible for Gas Prices Going Up!

Hey!  Mr. Obama!  Hey A.G. Holder!  You don't need to appoint a fancy commission.  I can tell you who's responsible.

Look in that mirror there: that's who's responsible.  You are! (Who's the cute little despot?!  You are!!!)

Every single action you've taken since you took office has helped raise oil prices.  You shouldn't be surprised; back in 2008 (when you were running) you said "under my plan, energy prices would necessarily skyrocket".  You said, "building a coal-fired plant won't be illegal, we'll just make it so hard on them no one would want to open one".  Anyone who listens to you knows you want to destroy the American standard of living, making energy costs impossible for working Americans.  Only your rich cronies like Jeffy Immelt and Georgie Soros will be able to afford to live.

• You canceled oil drilling permits on lower 48, offshore oil fields.

• You've restricted the ability to drill onshore or in shallow water, forcing oil companies into deep water. 

• You've tied up Gulf of Mexico drilling permits since the BP disaster, but allow Petrobras and other foreign entities to do it. 

• You've had your EPA shut down an arctic ocean drilling program causing billions of dollars in losses to Shell Oil.

• You've contributed to instability in a major oil production area by encouraging uprisings in Egypt and all over the middle east, not to mention by bombing in Libya.

How does any one of these help keep gas prices low?  Every single one has been chosen to make energy more expensive.  It's almost like you want energy prices to go up and have been working really hard to make them go up. 

And then, to ice the cake, you've gone on a spending spree like no spree in the history of the world, and you're paying for it by devaluing the dollar down to the value of Charmin.  You've had the Federal Reserve create more money than ever existed in the world to buy up our debt.  More dollars chasing a fixed amount of oil has to make oil go up in price - think of oil as a commodity standard, like gold or silver.  They know you're making up more funny money, so they raise the price of oil in dollars to get more of them and offset your deliberate devaluation of the dollar.   I know Economics 101 is advanced for you guys, but you ought to read it.  Not the Cliff Notes book, the real thing.  It explains a lot!  You know, that Marx dude was a moron.  And your buddy Bill Ayers - whew! what a moron.  Hate to break it to you, but I'm just sayin'....

When you create an increase in the number of dollars like that, do you honestly think it has no effect on commodity prices? 

See, Mr President, if you knew a little about Economics 101, you wouldn't say stupid things like, "if the raw materials a business needs go up in price, they make more profit".  That means their costs went up and they may not even be able to offset those costs!  I hear you saying, "Gosh, Mr. Economics Dude: are you saying if what the oil companies pay per barrel went up, they don't make more profit??" and I say, "Way to go, little Skipper, you're getting it!"

(from Denninger)
You really ought to learn a little business math, too.  Did you know you can do percents directly on most calculators?!  That way, when someone tells you that Big Oil company made a big profit, you could figure what percent of revenue that profit is.  Then you can see that if Exxon made a big profit, on a percentage basis, it's much less than your buddies at Google or GE or Apple.  And maybe, just maybe, you can see that if you raise taxes on businesses, their customers pay the tax, not the corporation itself...

But maybe I'm asking for too much all at once.  Tell you what, Skipper: just study that Economics 101 and forget the business math 101 for now. 

An Easter Story

(Source here)
Last Saturday, author Lee Strobel wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal called "How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism".  It's short, only about "a page", so it's worth your while to RTWT - if you're the kind of person with any questions about faith, or can't understand "how can an intelligent person believe in God?", a common idea.  Ever noticed how when the average comedian does a parody of a dumb person, it's always someone with a southern accent?  If they're going to make fun of Christians, it's always a dumb southerner who pronounces "Jesus" with three or more syllables?  I'll leave the topic of perceived intelligence of southerners vs. northerners for another day (well... except for this).

In a way, his story starts the same way mine does:

It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”

This was me in the mid 1980s.  In Lee's case he goes on to say,

I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.

My wife didn't show any of those "positive changes in her character and values" - she really didn't need any - (no disrespect to Mrs. Strobel intended).  And although I didn't have "journalism and legal training", I had studied biochemistry and microbiology in college through my third year before eventually getting my degree and starting to ply my trade as an engineer.  Strobel's own book, "The Case for Christ"* played a role in filling in the gaps in my historical knowledge.

Easter is the most important day in Christianity and far more important than Christmas because of the resurrection.  Everyone has a birthday, but only one man in history has been resurrected.  So since virtually everyone, including honest atheists, agrees Jesus was a real man in history and died on the cross, the question becomes whether or not it can be verified that Christ was seen after the resurrection by someone other than the closest circle of disciples. Strobel says:

Did anyone see Jesus alive again? I have identified at least eight ancient sources, both inside and outside the New Testament, that in my view confirm the apostles’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them.

Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet, according to the Bible, Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions – including 500 at once!

In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.

The other religions of the world are about ritual and ultimately about self, about proving yourself worthy; Christianity is about grace.  You're not good enough on your best day; you are saved by Grace.  No other religion teaches Grace.  Islam teaches that Allah is unknowable.  Christianity teaches that not only is God knowable, he wants us to know him.  Islam doesn't teach salvation, it teaches servitude to a fickle, arbitrary, distant Allah.  Christianity teaches forgiveness by Grace; that you're given a gift by a God who wants a close personal relationship with us.  I like the way the Message translation does this verse (Ephesians 2: 8)

It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. 

Evolution vs. creation? I believe people pay way too much attention to this.  There's no mention of evolution in the bible, but there's no mention of the laws of thermodynamics, Avogadro's number, or relativity.  The bible isn't a science book.  Look at it this way: the creation story, how we got here, takes up a page.  The next thousand pages (or more, depending on font size, paper size, and so on) are concerned with how we treat each other while we're here.  Creation is clearly not the emphasis of the book, it just starts out that way.  And saying nothingness or a fluctuation in the quantum vacuum exploded into light ("Let there be light") sounds like as good a picture of the standard model of cosmology for non-physicists as I can think of.

Enjoy your day.  Enjoy your families.  I have a pork shoulder and three-quarters of a chicken in the smoker as I type.  Enjoy things while we can. 

* - it's probably time for my frequent disclaimer that links to books on Amazon are so you can see the book I'm talking about; I don't make any money off anything you see on this web page.  It's entirely self-funded; as long as lots of folks keep flying commercial air travel, I'll have a job as long as I want.  

How Government and Big Bank Cronies Destroyed a Hedge Fund

From Rob Kirby at Goldseek.com comes a detailed investigation of how a small hedge fund, Amaranth Advisors LLC, was apparently destroyed by the crony-capitalism collusion of JP Morgan (aka JP Morgue) The Federal Reserve, the Fed.gov and, well, the powers that be connected to the Ruling Class.  If you're counting, this was in 2006, soundly in the midst of the Bush administration, which proves the more things change the more they stay the same.  There's a reason Goldman-Sachs is called "Government Sacks"; high level executives have been going back and forth between Fed.gov and the "private sector" for a long time. 

"Amaranth Kill Shot: Collateral Damage in a 78 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Book Compliments of J.P. Morgan Chase"

A really disgusting and sordid tale.  There's a rather interesting chart in there that I'd like to point out:

Note that as of December 31, 2010, the total value of the derivatives these groups hold is essentially 300 Trillion dollars.  That's around four times the GDP of the world. 

Amaranth was destroyed for trading in natural gas futures.  Even in 2006, with the burgeoning Asian economies clamoring for energy, betting on natural gas to go up seemed logical.  The destruction of Amaranth occurred over a period of a few weeks in August and September of 2006.  The cover story is that a statistically unusual event took place, bleeding Amaranth of an average of $420 million dollars per day for the first 14 trading days of September, a loss of around $6 billion.  One analyst says this not just "unusual", it's a 9 sigma event.  That's about once in the life of the universe, so not bloody likely. As Kirby says:

You see folks, when you are printing money like a banshee and telling the world that inflation is running at 2 % - you don’t want interlopers with deep pockets – like Amaranth – bidding the price of strategic commodities like natural gas – UP.

So the Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and a few of their other lackeys broke up their party long enough to destroy a hedge fund.

Call it Brokeback Banking.

Signs of Our Times

Looks like I'm not the only skeptical of this whole airline traveler's bill of rights thing...

and this one is just prescient

Both from Townhall.com Political Cartoons.

Earth Day And Vilfredo Pareto

Today is Good Friday, and let me convey my wishes for a blessed one to my fellow followers of Christ.  I'll have more to say later.

Where I want to go is the other "holiday" we're recognizing today; the entirely secular, gaia-worshiping Earth Day.  Earth Day, as most of you know, is a holiday made up in the late 1960s at the start of the national environmental movement.  Ira Einhorn is one of the main founders of Earth Day, if not the guy who started it.  Ira practiced what he preached: he murdered his girlfriend (less stress on the planet) and composted her body in his closet.  (Hey - reduce, re-use, recycle!)

You won't find Ira Einhorn's name listed in any of the Earth Day promotional literature, as the organizers have taken great pains to distance themselves from this man, at least since he became better known for composting his girlfriend in a trunk in his closet for a couple of years in the late 1970s.

I was a science geek in high school in 1970, the first Earth Day, and indoctrinated into the liberal crap of the day.  Who can forget the commercial with the crying Indian ("Iron Eyes Cody", who - BTW - was Italian, not Native American) looking at the spoiled earth.  Caught up in the spirit of the day, we went looking for pollution, and tested a local canal for coliform bacteria.  

The movement led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, probably the best example of an agency that has outlived its usefulness. 

I suppose the ethos of modern America requires that I say I consider myself an environmentalist.  Long before 1970 and ever since, I've been a fisherman, hiker, camper, cyclist, runner, biathlete (I'm a really crappy swimmer...) and outdoor photographer.  I want a clean, healthy environment.  Nobody wants dirty air or water, nobody wants pollution, nobody wants to make themselves or their children or anybody else or anybody else's children sick.  Can we get away from those useless stereotypes and be grown ups from now on? 

That said, 95% of being environmentally responsible is cleaning up after yourself.  Most of the rest of that last 5% is recognizing "there is no such place as 'away' where you throw things".  All you do is relocate your problem from right under your nose to somewhere else. 

I don't think there's anyone alive who remembers the 1960s that doesn't think we're better off today than we were then.  The laws removing lead from gasoline and paint removed tons of the metal from the environment.  Removal of combustion products of Nitrogen from vehicle exhaust, reduction of sulfur emissions at power plants, and mandating catalytic converters to remove heavier combustion products are all big steps. 

Enter Vilfredo Pareto. 

Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian engineer who turned his mathematical skills to economic problems.  What he is best known for is the "80-20 Rule", the observation that 20% of the efforts produces 80% of the results.  Although it's an approximation, the rule is more or less right far more often than it is wrong.  Often called Pareto efficiency or Pareto Optimality, it has appeared in quality control, industrial engineering, and popular books. 

Let's say you're the head of the newly founded EPA.  How do you start?  Pareto (and most of today's Quality Engineers) would say measure your problems.  Find the 20% that cause 80% of the harm and get rid of them.  Then "Lather. Rinse. Repeat."  In a factory, you might find something like this:

You would concentrate on fixing the first two problems which add up to 65%, or the first three that get you over 80% letting the others slide while that effort takes place.  You remeasure some time later, find the new problems which cause 80% of the effects and go after them. 

In real life, you don't run out of problems, but the population changes.  Now you get a lot of small problems that contribute small totals.  Instead of three problems adding to 80%, perhaps it takes 10 to add up to 80%.  The quality improved so much that you've hit the point of diminishing returns. 


The EPA is there.  I would argue that when the things on their list to clean up are small engines that are rarely used like lawnmowers, or personal boats, the pollution problem is essentially solved.  While I know a lawnmower can produce some visible exhaust, compared to cars and buses running five days a week or more, the total amount they contribute is a tiny fraction of what we started out cleaning up.

The EPA proudly lists a lot of its accomplishments.  There's a lot of items in that list that are more "hall of shame" than "hall of fame".  Take the CFC bans they brag about.  This science has all but fallen apart in the years since the ban, sure evidence that they jumped onto a bandwagon rather than waiting for good science (I love the conclusion to that Science paper, "we don't know what we're talking about and none of our theories work, but don't doubt the conclusions that CFCs are to blame!" - yeah and frogs with no legs are deaf, too)  It has been suggested that the whole CFC ban and Montreal Protocol was expert manipulation of the governments by Dupont Chemical, because their patents on Freon 12 were going to expire and they invented a way to get the world to come to them for the solution, R134!  Does that give you much confidence the EPA regulating carbon dioxide is anything other than a handout to some groups or some people that are going to profit wildly from carbon restrictions? 

DDT?  How many people were killed by the absence of this cheap, effective malaria preventer (by killing the mosquito vectors)?

"[Any known alternative to DDT] only kills farm workers, and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes. So what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as any," said Dr. Charles Wurster, chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund's Scientific Advisory Council and a key promoter of the DDT ban.

I have to tell you that those people feel differently, Dr. Wurster.  Perhaps you and your fellow travelers will do the planet the favor of offing yourself first?  

But go back to that EPA accomplishments page.  They say:

EPA bans use of DDT because the widely-used pesticide is found to be cancer-causing and accumulating in the food chain...

Contrast that with (source):

"The scientific literature does not contain even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposures to any adverse health outcome [in humans]," said Dr. Amir Attaran, who is with Harvard University's Center for International Development and is a former WHO expert on malaria who used to support the environmentalists' call for using alternatives to DDT. Attaran changed sides on the DDT debate after he witnessed what happened when South Africa. After intense U.N. and environmentalist pressure, South Africa stopped using DDT and switched to the U.N. Environmental Program's alternative pesticides as a way to control malaria. But the mosquitoes quickly developed resistance to the new pesticides and malaria rates increased 1,000 percent....

and

Not afraid to put his mouth where his moxie was, Edwards took to swallowing a tablespoon of DDT on stage before every lecture on the subject. In September 1971, Esquire magazine pictured Edwards doing just that. The accompanying text explained that Edwards had "eaten 200 times the normal human intake of DDT." He did not even consider this gesture risky. In the one year of 1959, for instance, unprotected workmen had applied 60,000 tons of DDT to the inside walls of 100 million houses. Neither the 130,000 workmen or the 535 million people living in the sprayed houses had experienced any adverse effects. (emphasis added - Graybeard)

These two examples, gathered in a couple of hours of thought and searching, tell me the EPA is a political body that gets the occasional thing right, but has outlived its usefulness.  Perhaps there's some use for a skeleton crew to administer a few things, but No. New. Regulations. Not. One.  Shutter the windows and bar the doors.  Mr. Speaker, if you're looking for an agency to zero out in the budget and save some money, look no further.

BAG Day Will Be Late This Year

I totally forgot to post this, but it will be a while before I can post any real pictures, anyway (besides stock photos).  For our BAG purchase, the diminutive but deadly Mrs. Graybeard and I put in an order for a couple of those rifles you have to order from CMP. 

You know - the ones General Patton called, "The greatest battle implement ever devised".  They look something like this.  Actually, they look very much like this:

The Idiots Are Everywhere

In our rush to get through our daily lives, maybe make things better for someone, I personally completely missed "Steal Something From Work Day".  Srsly. 

Does your boss work less than you but take home a bigger paycheck? Is somebody zipping around in a private jet at your expense? If the corporation is making money at the end of the day, that means they’re not paying you the full value of your labor – that’s where corporate profit comes from! So if you need something in your workplace, take it. You earned it!

There's so much wrong here, I don't know where to start.  Could it be your boss knows things you don't know?  Could it be they have, you know, some training you don't have?  Could it be it was their money that they risked to start the company and maybe they should get a bigger reward for that gamble?  Could it be that the private jet is more cost effective than the scheduled airline, and it would be a dereliction of their duty as CEO to take the Greyhound?  All profit comes from stealing from your labor?  That sounds like famous Moron Bill Ayers' radio interview the other day with Larry Elder where he said all wealth comes from theft.  Not people agreeing to exchange things they value for mutual benefit, no, no, no.  Theft. 

Let's switch to the FAQ:

Is STEALING SOMETHING FROM WORK immoral?

Stealing is immoral, yes. That’s why your employers should pay you the full value they obtain from your labor, rather than a fraction of it. If you take something from the workplace, you’re not stealing, but simply taking part of your fair earnings.

The sense of entitlement is dripping from it - it reeks of the "everyone gets a trophy", "you're so special" mindset.  As they said when my peeps were young: you're unique - just like everyone else.  With the implied "get over yourself".

Your boss shouldn't pay you what you've agreed to work for, but what you think the "full value they obtain from your labor" is, as if you - in your infinite wisdom - know.  What crap.  When you take a job, you agree to work for what they pay you.  If you didn't want to work for that pay, you shouldn't take the job, it's that simple.  You had to take it, but you didn't really like the offer?  Were you raised by jackals?  You made a deal; you agreed to work for that pay.  If your word isn't worth anything, you're not worth anything.

I was hoping this was some sort of bizarre satire that I just wasn't getting, but it doesn't look good.  Look at the links and participants.   


In other Moron news, here in Central Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports the state spent $73,000 on a campaign to give capes to the unemployed.  That's right, capes. 

Dubbed the "Cape-A-Bility Challenge," a $73,000 public-relations campaign by Workforce Central Florida features a cartoon character named "Dr. Evil Unemployment" and includes handing out about 6,000 red superhero capes to jobless Central Floridians.

Maybe I'm way too old fashioned, but if somebody handed me a cape and told me I was "Cape-a-ble" I might have to hurt them.

The campaign, revealed Saturday in a report in the Orlando Sentinel, was met with derision by many unemployed who questioned spending more than $14,200 on capes and $2,300 on foam cutouts of "Dr. Evil Unemployment." They said the campaign's tone risked minimizing the severity of the region's labor problems.

On the other hand, $14,200 for 6000 capes  ($2.37 each) sounds like they got a pretty good deal on the capes.  Plus, they're red which is like the second best looking cape.  Plus they've got that whole "naughty librarian" vibe going on, although not as well as Sarah Palin pulls it off....maybe we shouldn't complain too much...

No, no, no.  We should complain as much as we can.  I want my part of that $73,000 back, please. 

Not That It's Needed, But In Defense of Ann Barnhardt

I had different plans for what I wanted to write about tonight, but ran across this story on WSRA. 

Like most of you, the first time I heard of Ann Barnhardt was her fiery  videos on YouTube two weeks ago in response to Lindsey Graham (first one here).  As you'll recall, Graham embarrassed himself and the whole country by implying we need restrictions on the constitution in the light of that moron preacher (just up the road from here) burning a Koran as a publicity stunt.  I interpreted her burning of a Koran more as a smack down of Graham than to offend Muslims, although I have to say it's hard to care less than I do if Islamic Rage Boy gets offended by her, or anything else for that matter.   Islamic Rage Boy gets offended by everything from birds singing to being around dogs, and God knows he'd poop his drawers at Denny's Baconalia. 

So I read past entries on her blog to learn a bit about her, and added her to my regular reading checks.  She has written several really good, perceptive pieces in the last few weeks, including a couple of smart summaries of self-defense for "Turn the Other Cheek" Christians (Jesus and Guns, parts 1 and 2), On Justice and a really good response to a YouTube criticism of her videos.  Ann is a devoted Catholic who "gets it", and I say that as someone who spends a lot of time digging into the Word and trying to "get it" myself!   

On April 7th, a self-anointed American spokesman for the Religion of Peace (tm) went and issued a death threat against Ann.  Ann's website doesn't allow direct links to her writing (you should, Ann), so borrowing from WSRA:

And I was beginning to feel unloved . . .
Dr. Moshen El-Guindy posted this charming little screed at
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/burning-korans/#comments
Copy and paste the URL above into your address bar to view. Be warned - Dr. Mo isn't much for brevity.

She then gives Dr. El-Guindy a reaming he's not likely to forget:

Dear Dr. ElGuindy-
If you can dismount your six year old nephew (who is also your half-brother and your double-cousin) for long enough to read this, hear me clearly. I will never, ever, ever submit to islam, which is a satanic political system, founded by an insane con-artist pedophile dirtbag.

I'm 3/4 of a continent away from Ann, so I can't rifle up and help defend her door, but I stand with her.  And I think we all should.  I don't spend anywhere near as much time talking about the threat from Islam as I could or should.  People need to know this.  

Tax Day Ramblings

Isn't it ironic that the reason Tax Day wasn't Friday the 15th this year is that Friday was holiday in D.C. because of a Saturday Holiday declared for Emancipation Day? 

It's not just "It's The Spending, Stupid" (or... or.... or....)  It's the stupid spending, too (or...  or... or...)

The evil-party meme that all we have to do to balance our budget is tax those evil rich is really getting a lot of air play.  As I wrote the other day,

A few months ago, when the debate over raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 was going around, the Secretary of Treasury, TurboTaxTim himself, said it would add about $30 billion for this year and $700 billion for 10 years.  $700 B, not 10 times 30 or $300 B?  They must be assuming some wild growth.  For this year, $30 billion from those taxpayers is 2% of the projected deficit of $1.5 trillion.  Really makes a difference, doesn't it.  Repeat after me: "It's the Spending, Stupid".

One of the under-reported (by which I mean "never-reported") aspects of the "Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy" is that they increased the percentage of the tax burden paid by the wealthy to levels never before seen in our history.  The top 1% pays nearly 42% of the total tax burden!  The morons on the bottom should be trying to thank those people, not take more of their stuff!

Our ruling class shows a fundamental failure to understand the difference between tax rates and tax revenues - or they think their stupid constituents don't understand it and take advantage of that.  Hauser's law is called a law because it has always worked.  At the left end of that chart, the top tax rate on incomes was up nearly 90%, at the end of the white area, the rate was closer to 30%, yet the revenues were constantly around 19% of GDP.  You can see the sharp divergence of income and spending when Obama took office.  The decrease in income is probably due to the extreme depth of this depression. 

On a day when Standard and Poor's downgrades their outlook on the US from "stable" to "negative", indicating an attitude that we don't take our debt seriously, what are we to do?  What's the sense of having a debt ceiling, if every time they get close to it, they just raise it?  What if we just cut spending? 

John Galt Fla over at Shenandoah puts the Paul Ryan plan under the microscope and shows how the numbers just don't work out.  (H/T, WSRA)  Unfortunately, his recommendations fall short in my estimation, and some of the numbers "just don't seem right" (Social security with a surplus?  Didn't that go away last year?).  All of his recommendations are cuts to discretionary spending, and as I understand it, you could shut down every last Federal agency except Medicare and Social Security and still not fix things. 

This chart is not that different than this year (remember, the evil party didn't submit a budget for this year - what they've been haggling over is the 2011 budget.  If you borrow about 40 cents out of every dollar you spend, you'd better consider cutting your spending by 40%.  If you ever want to pay off the debt you have, which is essentially 100% of GDP.  

So Ruger has announced their SR1911?  From what I see, John M Browning (PBUH) would be pleased.  For me?  I don't know... I am strangely drawn to 1911s until I pick them up.  One of these may be more in line for my safe.   Or one of these, if I'm ambitious.

Yet Another...

Atlas Shrugged review.  Strange as it may seem, small town Central Florida (well pop. of about 100k) got it.  And the theater was about half full. 

Terrible confession that I know puts me at the bottom of the libertarian pecking order.  I've never read the book.  Been meaning to, and all, but I've never been much on fiction, and I don't think much of her writing, at least what I've been exposed to.  In high school, I had to read The Fountainhead, and I found her writing (searching for a word) painful.  Tedious.  Ponderous.  Most of my reading tends to non-fiction, things like what you see on that list over there on the right...

All that out of the way, I enjoyed the movie.  The movie is dated 2016, and the headlines and actions of the politicians seemed completely believable.  It's a sign of the times we're in that an openly socialistic/crony-capitalistic government that passes laws to reward some companies or states and punish others is a faithful depiction of life and not the extreme fiction it was when Atlas was written.  None of the government actions struck me as going too far.   I thought Grant Bowler, as Henry Rearden, and Taylor Schilling, as Dagny Taggart, both put in compelling performances.  Certainly, Taggart, Reardon, and Ellis Wyatt were the most developed characters and the characters who made the most sense.  (Ellis Wyatt, by the way, was played by Graham Beckel, conservative brother of regular liberal commentator Bob Beckel).  Extra style points for a minor character in the movie: Dr. Potter, the government wonk that offers to buy out Rearden Metal from Hank Rearden, getting him to sell out rather than excel.  The mousey Dr. Potter is played by Armin Shimerman, best known as "Quark" in Star Trek Deep Space Nine - minus the Ferengi ears. 

I don't know enough about the book to know what's coming, but I hope they continue to get part II out next year and part III out the following year.  All planned for tax day. 

We hesitated about going because of what we've read online.  Don't know if you've noticed it, but the liberal Rand-haters hate the movie (as expected) and the die-hard Rand-fans are bad-mouthing the movie, too, for failing to live up to their expectations.

Go see it.  Maybe a few times. 

Very Busy Saturday

It has been a busy day making a bunch of things work together, but I read something I think most of my readers would like to see.

David Galland, managing director of Casey Research, on the coming endarkenment.   To whet your appetite:

Roaring in to office on a wave of anti-Bushism – an easy wave to catch – Obama dazzled a gullible public with visions of paradise on earth: a place free of pollution, evil capitalists, fat cat bankers, war mongering militarists, anti-humanist free marketers, and corrupt politicians. A place where free health care was a native right and a succoring government would kiss the boo-boos of all who suffered.

.....

While some efforts were made to cover the tracks of the true character of the president and his administration – for example by appointing people with the right progressive credentials to positions in agencies such as the EPA – even a casual examination of the president’s actions reveal him and his associates for the sociopaths they are.

.....

The signs of this trend are now appearing here, there, and everywhere. Ominously, one of the most visible signs is an upwelling in the popular media of calls for punitive levels of taxation on anyone considered wealthy.

.....

… Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Fort Lauderdale, said that “under my reading of the Fbar rules, if the government can prove that a financial institution willfully caused an Fbar violation, the government could seek a penalty on the financial institution, no matter where in the world it is based, for up to 50 percent of the balance of all accounts in question.”

.....

The next phase in the current economic crisis, which we are entering now, will be of a different nature than the sharp market reaction that occurred in 2008, though we are likely to see such a crash as well.

A little long, but the best thing I've read today.  Read the whole thing.

Edit right after posting 2157EDT:  Mis-attributed the author!  

The Corruption is Stunning

We've all talked about the Gunwalker scandal, and how it all points to the highest levels of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Eric Holder and probably the White House itself.

We've talked about how the DOJ dropped a "slam dunk" case against the New Black Panther Party, and how whistle blowers from the DOJ said it came from the top.  Whistle blowers said the DOJ policy was not to prosecute anyone for voter intimidation unless they are white. 

We saw how AG Holder talked about how focusing on dropping the NBPP case demeans "his people" in congressional testimony. 

Now another DOJ whistle blower reports the DOJ is refusing to prosecute the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other domestic groups with ties to Islamic terrorism.

To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.

To quote from higher up the page:

I asked my DOJ source why they decided to come forward now. The source said:

This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina...

Read The Whole Thing.  The level of corruption in this administration is absolutely stunning.  We may not - yet - be a third world nation, but this is a third world justice department.   

H/T to Ann Barnhardt and PJ Media.