The Cure Is Nigh

Federal Gridlock to Stanch Leftist Metastasis

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Read related » A Surplus of Enemies
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“A flock of liberal pundits is now trying to convince its members — and us — that losing the House and maybe the Senate is a really good thing for Obama. It’s not because he might moderate his views. Oh no, for in their book, Obama wasn’t radical enough. They suggest he’ll look better because he’ll have an “enemy” — John Boehner. […] Bill Clinton ran circles around the GOP Congress following the 1994 midterm debacle because he was more amiable, flexible, and adroit than his opponents. Whatever his faults, Clinton didn’t hate our guts. He loved being president, and he loved being praised by his fellow citizens. Obama suffers us — first in silence, and now in public. And flexibility has really not been his strong suit.”
— JENNIFER RUBIN - 10.31.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)

The most likely outcome of Tuesday's national elections will be a 50/50 Senate and a Republican-majority House, with John Boehner replacing the detestable Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. As far as I can tell, it's win/win.

"Why, TheBigHenry," you ask? Well, let's examine the typical scenario that would ensue.

Joe "BFD" Biden, the President of the Senate, will be in position to exercise his tie-breaking vote frequently to do The Obama's bidding (Bidening?) in stopping John Boehner's Republican agenda. And if all else fails, The Obama Himself will have a veto-override-proof Senate as a stopgap.

In the other chamber, the Republican-majority House will be in position to bury whatever new atrocity The Obama and his leftist minions try to Rahm through Congress. "Feck 'em if they can't take a joke," my mom used to say.

Surcease! The American people have earned it "in spades". (No racism is intended, but I am sure the Left will so proclaim it).

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Post 1,465 The Cure Is Nigh

Enquiring minds want to know: What would Whoopi and Joy do?

Read related » Obama: Two explosives on US-bound cargo planes for Chicago synagogues
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“President Barack Obama, in a special statement Saturday, Oct. 29, dismissed speculation of an Al Qaeda dry run and disclosed "a credible terrorist threat to the United States" by means of two packages containing explosives originating with al Qaeda in Yemen and planted on UPS and Fedex cargo flights bound for the US. Obama disclosed that two Jewish places of worship in Chicago were among the targets of the package plot.”
— DEBKAfile Special Report October 29, 2010 (debka.com)

By now it is common knowledge how the two clowns, Whoopi and Joy from The View, reacted when their guest Bill O'Reilly had the temerity to say on their show that the atrocities of 9/11 were perpetrated by Muslims, which is very well established, albeit not universally accepted. The self-righteous clowns made a hyper-dramatic show of indignation as they stormed of the stage on which they had been the designated hosts.

Well! Did you evah?!

What do you suppose they would have done if The Obama Himself had made today's announcement on the same TV program? Would the clowns be indignant that Obama implicitly attributed Jew-hatred to Al Queda, that poor misunderstood Islamic-terrorist organization? Would they have stormed off the stage with their patented show of indignation at Obama's insult of the terrorists' right to hate whomever they choose to hate? After all, terrorists are people too. They have rights, n'est pas?

I think for the sake of consistency and even-handedness in all situations, political correctness demands that the clowns publicly appeal to their beloved leader-in-chief that he retract that part about "synagogues". Suffice it to say that houses of worship were targeted. There is no need to be specific about the particular religion practiced in those houses of worship.

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Post 1,464 Enquiring minds want to know: What would Whoopi and Joy do?

!

Post 1,463 !

Children should be seen not heard, and I'm not sure about "seen"!

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Read related » What Makes the Left Tick
The improvement of society cannot be left to children.
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“[W]hat accounts for the dogged and pernicious investment in so obviously defective a formula for human improvement, despite the harsh lessons of that most severe of pedagogues, Reality? […] With the obvious exception of the schemers and defalcators who cash in on the political fads of the day and who are “socialists” in nothing but name, the predisposition to the left derives from a tropism of the mind rooted in what we might call the “utopian temperament” — which is to say, in a condition of prolonged infantilism. […] A related element that seems to be at work is the leftist penchant for submission to authority, the callow need for assurance, for the embrace of the family or the presence of the “strongman” acting in loco parentis. […] The same applies to a nonviolent and lower caliber messiah like Obama in whose personal charisma millions of Americans (and Europeans) willingly submerged their identities. […] This deficiency is the case even among the arguably more sophisticated, left-leaning hosts of most TV late shows, where the humor is stale, forced, predictable, and often downright embarrassing. David Letterman and Stephen Colbert are excellent examples of patently unfunny left-liberals. […] What is even more bizarre, it considers itself a “cognitive elite” when it is in actuality an epistemic rabblement, a truant demographic of cortical delinquents and moral charlatans. […] What makes the left tick is a hedonic time bomb, an explosive device located in the coltish longing for pleasurable havoc and subversion in order, presumably, to attain to a condition of unfettered, aggregate freedom. […] Which is only another way of saying that the left must be sent packing before the brats take over the house, crash the car, and vandalize the budget, believing they are establishing the pastoral estate of collective empowerment, freedom from ancestral limitation, and exemption from the rule of necessity.”
— David Solway, October 28, 2010 (pajamasmedia.com)

It is virtually impossible to reduce David Solway's superb essay to a mere snippet so as to provide a gateway for my own modest commentary, which I am wont to keep to not much more than a screenful. Hence, I strongly urge my readers to treat themselves to Solway's essay in its eminently-crafted entirety.

For several years I have blogged here while continually chaffing from the gnawing need to understand what I could only describe, heretofore, as the progressive-ideology perversion. Though I have intuited some of the observations described by Solway, I am greatly relieved to have my intuition confirmed by such a convincing and authoritative humanist/essayist as David Solway.

Henceforth, I will address my posts to a more restricted audience than I had done before. I am now convinced that those age-inappropriate children who persist in masquerading as adults, those who classify themselves as some flavor of "leftist liberals", are beyond hope and beyond change. They are mired in arrested development for a variety of reasons that do not concern me.

The leftist liberals remind me of the stiff-necked Israelites whom Moses rescued from Egyptian slavery, only to realize that he had to give up on any hope of teaching them new tricks. That is why Moses lead them around the barren Sinai for 40 years. He had to entrust the future to his charges' descendants who would have a fighting chance to discover the errors of their ancestors.

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Post 1,462 Children should be seen not heard, and I'm not sure about "seen"!

Let me count the ways …

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, center (Image by Getty Images via @daylife)

Read related » The Great Divider — or “Elections Have Consequences”
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Somehow [Obama] assumed that his own godhead could lead us, kicking and screaming, to a socialist nirvana. When that did not happen, he serially blamed the bogeymen, then our ingratitude, then our stupidity, then tried to scare and divide us into accepting his agenda. So why are people angry? I’ll end with a brief list of nineteen months of examples in no particular order. […] I’ll stop there since we have another 27 months to go. Again, to evoke any one or two of these can be written off as partisan nit-picking; in toto they paint a picture of ideological zealotry determined to remake the U.S. abroad into a UN neutral and at home into something like Belgium or Sweden.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, October 26, 2010 (pajamasmedia.com)

Yeah. What he said.

Why People Are Angry (Prof. Hanson's "brief list … of examples in no particular order"):
• A vast new health care monstrosity that will send private insurance rates through the ceiling.
• The Machiavellian way in which it was slammed through.
• Failed stimulus.
• Wasteful pork-barrel spending of hundreds of billions in borrowed money.
• Persistent near 10% unemployment.
• $3 trillion in new debt in just two years.
• Record levels of federal spending.
• The vast increase in the size of government and its share of GDP.
• Eight years of projected $1 trillion annual budget deficits.
• Record high foreclosures.
• Record high usage of food stamps.
• The Keynesian zeal of Romer/Summers/Orzag followed by their sudden resignations in the wake of failure.
• Constant talk of higher taxes on “them” — the promised new health care surcharge taxes, the promised return to the Clinton income tax rates, talk of a VAT, talk of lifting the caps on income subject to FICA taxes, new capital gains taxes, new inheritance taxes on the horizon.
• The use of extra-cabinet czars to avoid confirmation and audit.
• The neglect of the law, from reversing the order of Chrysler creditors to announcing a BP $20 billion shakedown and punishments for health insurers who don’t toe the line.
• The ascendance of ACORN and SEIU.
• The months-long shutdown of gulf drilling.
• The failure to encourage coal, nuclear, and oil and gas new production.
• The Black Panther voting intimidation mess.
• The bowing abroad.
• The apologies.
• The outreach to enemies, and the snubbing of allies.
• The unnecessary humiliation of Great Britain and Israel.
• The Iran serial “deadline” charade.
• The unnecessary announcement of Afghan troop withdrawal deadlines.
• “Overseas contingency operations” and “man-made disasters”.
• The proposed civilian trial of KSM.
• The Ground Zero Mosque mess.
• The beer summit mess.
• NASA’s new main mission of Muslim outreach.
• Stopping the border fence.
• Suing Arizona and demonizing the state.
• The apologies to the Chinese over Arizona, which was trashed from the White House lawn by the president of Mexico, and sued by foreign governments to the apparent approval of the administration.
• The constant “Bush did it” refrain.
• The gratuitous slurs against limb-lopping doctors, the thrashing of the “rich” going to the Super Bowl and Las Vegas.
• The artificial divide of them/us based on $250,000 of annual income.
• The racial divisiveness from a sad cast of characters that gave us “cowards”, “stupidly”, “wise Latina”, and whites polluting the ghetto.
• Unhinged appointees like Van Jones and Anita Dunn.
• The occasional unguarded admissions like “never waste a crisis” and “at some point I do think you’ve made enough money”.
• The wacky behavior from the whining of “like a dog”, to the sudden junketing to Copenhagen to lobby for the Chicago Olympics.
• The Orwellian cheap damning of the Bush anti-terrorism protocols only to accept or expand tribunals, renditions, Guantanamo, Predators, Iraq, and intercepts and wiretaps.
• The golf obsession and Costa del Sol while trashing the indulgent rich.

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Post 1,461 Let me count the ways …

Wish I'd Said That …

American Political Satirist and Author P. J. O'Rourke (Image via Wikipedia)

Read related » They Hate Our Guts
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class. Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats. […] It’s worse than that. Democrats aren’t just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. Politics is merely a way to power’s heart. When politics is the technique of seduction, good looks are unnecessary, good morals are unneeded, and good sense is a positive liability. Thus Democrats are the perfect Lotharios. And politics comes with that reliable boost for pathetic egos, a weapon: legal monopoly on force. If persuasion fails to win the day, coercion is always an option. […] This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order. Power has been trapped, abused and exploited by Democrats. Go to the ballot box and put an end to this abusive relationship. And let’s not hear any nonsense about letting the Democrats off if they promise to get counseling.” [emphasis added]
— P. J. O’Rourke, Oct. 23, 2010 (weeklystandard.com)

To paraphrase Big Bill the Bard's, "Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs", the Democrats are always making diprosopus beasts — pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another. Two-faced, thy name is Democrat.

In the spirit of football season, on November 2nd chant, "Push 'em back, push 'em back, waaaaay back!"

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Post 1,460 Wish I'd Said That …

Liberty: 61 years, and counting …

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Read related » Remembrance in Spacetime: Liberty
“The displaced persons had boarded the General J. H. McRae (AP-149), an American Army transport, in early October 1949 at Bremerhaven on the north coast of General Eisenhower's American Occupation Zone. The North Atlantic was stormy that October, and its crossing took about two weeks. It was a nightmare.

At the end of the second week of the hellish crossing, the mother scored a jackpot. Though she was a seasick, kerchief-wearing refugee she was, nevertheless, a pretty young woman, and she charmed a ship's officer into giving her a single tablet of Dramamine. She shared it with her son on the deck of the General McRae. The father, as usual, bore his misery stoically. After swallowing the half-tablet, the child's queasiness lifted, as did the morning haze.

And there she was. With torch held high, she beckoned to the ship's human cargo as the General McRae steamed into New York Harbor. She was beautiful, just as they had imagined she would be.

It was United Nations Day in America: October 24, 1949. But it might as well have been the Fourth of July. For the immigrant survivors, it was, as we continued to celebrate it annually, our Day of Liberty.”
— TheBigHenry, MAY 25, 2007 (hl98.blogspot.com)

Today marks the 61st anniversary of my arrival in America as a seven year-old boy, accompanied by my mother and father. My description (above) of our arrival in New York harbor is, to the best of my memory, an accurate recounting of that glorious day in 1949.

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Post 1,459 Liberty: 61 years, and counting …

A Redneck Beer Run

Read related » Who Says Rednecks Aren’t Clever? The Best Of Redneck Engineering
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
— Ned Hardy, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010 (http://nedhardy.com)

Redneck ingenuity at it's finest! (Image via Ned Hardy)

Fecking brilliant!

Post 1,458 A Redneck Beer Run

Pontificating While Vile

Read related » Nina Totenberg, [of] NPR [which] fired Juan Williams, wanted god to give Jesse Helms [or one of his grandchildren] AIDS (Video)
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“While I do not share the same views as Juan Williams, NPR was totally wrong for firing him. Check out the old footage of Nina Totenberg of NPR saying that Jesse Helms' grandchildren should get AIDS. Note the jerk [in the background] laughing […] Outrageous! Why didn't NPR fire her? Once again — total hypocrisy from the left.”
— xxxxxxxpimptaddyone, October 21, 2010 (youtube.com)

What a vile bitch! Even for an NPR pontificator, this sort of ad hominem invective is beyond ruthless, despite having been directed at someone as controversial in his own right as Jesse Helms was. And when directed at the target's presumably-innocent grandchildren, it sinks to the level of satanic.

How in the name of what little remains decent in our politically-polarized society does a Nina Totenberg remain employed by NPR, while the honestly-expressed feelings (not the opinions) of Juan Williams become grounds for termination of his contract?

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Post 1,457 Pontificating While Vile

Strike while the Irany's hot!

Chernobyl reactor #4 (Image via Wikipedia)

Read related » This could well redefine "irony"
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
David P. Goldman, "What Really Bugs Iran", 10/13:

“The rancor and disaffection of Iran's diminishing educated class is so great that the government will find very few local technicians whom it can trust, and even fewer capable of diagnosing a bug buried in thousands of lines of code, most of it written years ago by programmers who long since emigrated. Anyone who has managed large-scale information technology projects for corporations knows that the fog of war is nothing compared to the cloud of computation. And that is true under the most benign circumstances.”

— Craig Newmark, October 21, 2010 (newmarksdoor.com)

As Craig posits, "this could well redefine "irony". It could also revise it's spelling to "irany".

Arguably, the most challenging skill in computer programing is debugging; someone else's program; having tens of thousands of lines of code; when the original programer is not around for consultation (not that he would be of much use anyway, if the program had been written some time ago, and, likely, by more than one programer). Been there; done that.

Trust me. It's a bitch.

And that reactor in Iran? I wouldn't go near it — for about 10,000 years, give or take.

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Post 1,456 Strike while the Irany's hot!

The Grownups and the Leftovers

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Read related » The new Republican right
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“A fundamental change is gripping the Republican grass roots as they animate the GOP surge to a major victory in the 2010 elections. No longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail. The Tea Party has made the Republican Party safe for libertarians. There is still a litmus test for admission to the Republican Party. But no longer is it dominated by abortion, guns and gays. Now, keeping the economy free of government regulation, reducing taxation and curbing spending are the chemicals that turn the paper pink. It is one of the fundamental planks in the Tea Party platform that the movement does not concern itself with social issues. At the Tea Parties, evangelical pro-lifers rub shoulders happily with gay libertarians. They are united by their anger at Obama’s economic policies, fear of his deficits and horror at his looming tax increases. Obama’s agenda has effectively removed the blocks that stopped tens of millions of social moderates from joining the GOP.” [emphasis added]
— Dick Morris, 10/19/10 (thehill.com)

This melding of traditional GOP ideology with the Tea Party's focus on conservative economic and fiscal concerns is a great step toward a rational realignment of our national two-party political system. For too long have the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans relied on what I believe to be the less-important of the two major political issue-classes — social issues rather than fiscal issues.

It is, of course, an oversimplification, but I believe reasonable people can frequently disagree on social issues (abortion, guns, gays, and the like). But reasonable people should be in general agreement on the advantages of a fiscally responsible federal government. I am well aware that even the community of eminent economists frequently disagrees on the best way to conduct economic policy, especially at the federal level. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist or a Supreme Court Justice to know gross fiscally-irresponsible policy when it's being foisted on the general public.

With such a realignment we have the new and improved Republican Party championing, as before, fiscally conservative policy, while welcoming a diversity of opinion on social policy. While the Democrats are left to stew in their repudiated no-account fiscal-wantonness and their frequently absurd social-engineering initiatives.

We can have new names for the parties, too, to facilitate the affiliation choices for some of our perpetually perplexed voters. The Republican Party could be called the "Party for Grownups", and the Democrats could be the "Leftover Party".

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Post 1,455 The Grownups and the Leftovers

Cadence Ain't Eloquence and Arrogance Ain't Intellect

Image via Townhall

Read related » A Snob, but Not Really an Intellectual
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“[I]n no sense is Obama an intellectual. His understanding of free markets, international affairs, war strategy, and domestic policy evidences no originality. To the contrary, his vision is supported by myths and inaccuracies. (Recall the serial misstatements about history during the campaign.) It is not, then, the public that lacks reasoning skills; it is the president, whose rigid ideology prevents him from taking in new data, analyzing it dispassionately, and rendering decisions based on the facts before him. He displays contempt for Americans who don’t agree with his flawed policies, in effect instructing them to shut up. But his arrogance is both unwise (these people vote!) and undeserved. Had he not spent trillions on a flawed Keynesian economics, had he not botched the Middle East peace talks, had he not misread the mullahs, had he not mistaken appeasement for “reset” with Russia, and had he not hired ill-prepared senior advisers (who now must be cast off), his self-satisfaction might be warranted. But to put it bluntly, where does a garden-variety leftist with a track record as bad as his get off telling the voters that they lack adequate reasoning skills?”
— JENNIFER RUBIN, 10.19.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)

Where, indeed, does He get off? And, more importantly, when? Unlike The Obama Himself and the twits on "The View", Jennifer Rubin speaks passionately about issues she understands thoroughly.

The MSM keep telling us how eloquent, smart, godlike, and humble He is. Do you need to be told whom to worship and emulate? I don't either.

Does Obama truly need two teleprompters to keep Him on message? Might He not benefit if one of His teleprompters was a mirror instead, to help Him adjust His pose?

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Post 1,454 Cadence Ain't Eloquence and Arrogance Ain't Intellect

Ephemeral Emotion and Resonant Reason

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Read related » Democrats Aid Tea Partiers
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“[W]hen looking to check a presidential agenda that they detest, the voters are willing to accommodate some occasional rhetorical excesses. They are not, of course, electing a chief executive; they are electing people to stop the chief executive from doing things they don’t like. It is hard for Democrats to scare voters by painting their opponents as extremists. So they must resort to ever more hysterical claims and attacks to convince the public that the GOP challengers are so far beyond the pale that they aren’t fit to hold office.”
— JENNIFER RUBIN, 10.18.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)

The highly-emotional National Election of 2008 swept into office a man who was eminently unqualified to lead the Nation in a time of war and a concomitant economic recession — the result of irrational exuberance of the worst kind. A majority of the electorate, aided and abetted by a mainstream media that largely abrogated its credo of non-partisanship vis-a-vis a highly-divisive leftist ideologue masquerading as anything but, was persuaded to compound an already dangerous situation into a chaotic one. Moreover, two years into the fray, the abettors continue herding the dwindling unchastened-flock toward the abyss.

This election cycle, however, appears headed in a different direction — the sort of change that rational people can believe in. What is different now, as opposed to the heady days of 2008, is not the absence of emotion, but, instead, a healthy dose of reason to resonate with it. Of course, the reason for the emotion itself has changed too. No longer does it favor the inept leadership that has engendered the chaotic state of affairs, but, rather, the rationality of the opposition.

As Churchill assessed for the ages, though ensuing generations seem to require regular reminding, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time". A Constitutionally-limited republic such as ours is far from perfect, as the past couple of years has amply demonstrated. But our strength and quality as a nation with a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" rests within our rights and privileges to correct our mistakes, deriving, as they may, from irrational exuberance, mistaken identity, insufficient consideration of the candidate's worthiness to serve, and many other occasional aberrations.

In 2010 it is high-time to embrace the so-maligned "party of no". For "no" is the correct response to what ails us.

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Post 1,453 Ephemeral Emotion and Resonant Reason

You've Been Owned

Image via Wikipedia

Read related » Blasts hit secret Iranian missile launching-pad for US, Israeli targets
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“A top-secret Iranian military installation was struck by a triple blast Tues. Oct. 12 the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon. DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report the site held most of the Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stocked for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war - some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones).”
— DEBKAfile Special Report, October 15, 2010 (debka.com)

“Nuts!” — General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe, in reply to a German surrender ultimatum while defending Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II

“Bite me!” — presumed Israeli response to threats of annihilation by barking-mad I'madinnerjacket

Those "top-secret" installations have a nasty habit of succumbing to impossible snafus. Must have something to do with the best laid schemes of mice, men and douchebags.

Holocaust deniers delight in rubbing the salt of hatred into the wounded soul of Judaism. But if there is one thing above all others that characterizes the people of the book it's their retention of lessons learned. Every denial, every threat, every aggression perpetrated against them serves as a reminder — never again!

Next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

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Post 1,452 You've Been Owned

Free-Market Capitalism in a Nutshell

Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize in Economics (Image via Wikipedia)

Read related » A Genius At Work
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Thanks to the inherent genius of the free market and human innovation, people living today are able to watch true genius at work. I offer for your edification and viewing pleasure, a true genius in every sense of the word: Milton Friedman.”
— Secular Apostate, 10-14-2010 (secularapostate.net)

OK, boys and girls, you're in for a treat.

Milton Friedman, a great American economist, statistician, professor at the University of Chicago, and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, will teach you (posthumously, via the below video) all you need to know to truly appreciate the wondrous way in which free-market capitalism creates wealth for every participant, by breaking the bonds of zero-sum games (i.e., central-planning socialism).

Enjoy!


Milton Friedman - Lesson of the Pencil

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Post 1,451 Free-Market Capitalism in a Nutshell

Frank's trademark confidence not all it's cracked-up to be!

Image via Wikipedia

Read related » Stance on Fannie and Freddie dogs Frank
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“WASHINGTON — When US Representative Barney Frank spoke in a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill seven years ago, he did not imagine that his words would eventually haunt a reelection bid. The issue that day in 2003 was whether mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fiscally strong. Frank declared with his trademark confidence that they were, accusing critics and regulators of exaggerating threats to Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial integrity. And, the Massachusetts Democrat maintained, "even if there were problems, the federal government doesn’t bail them out." Now, it’s clear he was wrong on both points — and that his words have become a political liability as he fights a determined challenger to win a 16th term representing the Fourth Congressional District. Fannie and Freddie collapsed in 2008, forcing the federal government to buy $150 billion worth of stock in the enterprises and $1.36 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities.” [emphasis added]
— Donovan Slack, October 14, 2010 (boston.com)

Confucius say, "Banking queen standing on head and flapping lips with trademark confidence have big crack up."

Frankly Seriously, Barney, got Preparation H®?

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Post 1,450 Frank's trademark confidence not all it's cracked-up to be!

Yeah, we’ve got an app for that ...

Erasmus by Holbein (Image via Wikipedia)

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
— Desiderius Erasmus

“In the land of hearts, diamonds, and clubs, the deuce of spades is king, provided spades is the trump suit.”
— TheBigHenry

“In the land of overwhelming numerical advantage ruled by bloodthirsty 7th-century mentality, 21st-century cleverness in science and technology (not to mention money) is king.”
— TheBigHenry

In Erasmus's famous aphorism, the implied constraint, of course, is "all else being equal". For, as important as good vision is for the human condition, it is not necessarily the unique advantage in all circumstances; perhaps not even the crucial one.

The unconstrained mind of man and woman is humanity's singular advantage in the world of the living. It has proven to be, on numerous occasions, not only the equal of the Colt-45 equalizer, but also the ace-of-trump in existential conflicts. In the latter circumstances, it is far superior to sheer numbers of scimitar-wielding homicidal maniacs supported by legions of ethnic-cleansing enthusiasts the world over.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what the Juice have done (and will continue to do, God willing) over the millennia of contemptible persecution by hordes of homicidal ignoramuses.

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Post 1,449 Yeah, we’ve got an app for that ...

§ I Am Music and I Pick the Songs: Lonely Boy

A green lonely boy; lonely and blue ...
(image via Secular Apostate)

{Song #77 « Song #78 » T•of•C}

§ ≡ One of an ongoing series of posts in which I pick, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best songs of the second millennium. Feel free to offer constructive dissenting opinions; preferably set to music.

Song #78 is Lonely Boy, written and recorded by Paul Anka in 1959. Anka sang this song in the movie Girls Town.

When released as a single, Lonely Boy topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Anka's first song to do so. I suspect that, for some of the girls in my high-school senior-class of 1959, this was the first song that inspired them to do some amazing things, too.

Lyrics for "A Green Lonely Boy"
[with apologies to Paul Anka]

I'm just a lonely boy, lonely and blue;
I'm all alone; I haven't a clue.
I've got everything, you could think of;
But all I want is Obama to love.

Barack Obama to love; Barack is bliss;
Barack to cling to, at a moment like this.
I'd like to hear, somebody say,
"I'll give you my hope, and change every day".

Somebody, somebody, somebody please, send Him to me;
He'll make me happy, just wait and see.
I prayed so hard to Obama above;
That I might find, Barack to love.

Paul Anka - Lonely Boy
Post 1,448 § I Am Music and I Pick the Songs: Lonely Boy

Does Axelrod have any evidence that he’s not contemptible?

Image via Theo

Read related » Axelrod: Chamber must prove foreign money allegations false
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has the burden of proving false the charge by Democrats that the business group is funneling foreign money to Republican campaigns. […] “Do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob?” Axelrod said on “Face the Nation.” […] Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and one of the GOP operatives named in the DNC ad, noted that President Obama benefited from millions in undisclosed contributions in 2008 and that Republicans are now using the same rules. […] Gillespie added that it was “an unbelievable mentality” for Axelrod to assert charges about foreign contributions without backing them up.”
— Walter Alarkon, 10/10/10 (thehill.com)

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
— Albert Einstein [paraphrased]

“Well, I'm not a crook.”
— Richard Nixon

“Well, I'm not a schmuck.” or “I have a schmuck.”
— some schmuck [unsubstantiated]

“These are the times that try men's souls.”
— Founding Father Thomas Paine

David Axelrod may be contemptible. In any case, he sure is trying. So are virtually all the playas swinging for the leftist team.

It has been said that desperation elicits [pick your adjective] measures, but the adverb "dangerously" is always lurking around the adjective you choose. When The Won with His finger on the nuclear button becomes desperate, however, "dangerously" becomes inadequate to the task.

Hence, these may be not only "times that try men's souls", but also times that are interesting, albeit in the Chinese sense.

“Entitlementalia is the audacity of dopes.” — TheBigHenry's Truth Axiom

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Post 1,447 Does Axelrod have any evidence that he’s not contemptible?

Only a tad Nazi-ish?

Image via Wikipedia

Read related » Congressional Candidate Under Fire for Nazi Re-Enactment Past
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“An Ohio congressional candidate is under fire after a magazine unearthed a photo showing him dressed in a Waffen-SS uniform as part of a Nazi re-enactment group. […] But Iott, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, defended himself in a statement Saturday after Kaptur's campaign and other groups condemned him. Iott said that as a student of history he has participated in numerous military re-enactments since he was in college and meant no offense by them. […] According to the Wiking website, the organization is devoted to "presenting the history" of the Eastern Front division which fought the Russians, "never against the Americans".” [emphasis added]
— Published October 10, 2010 | FoxNews.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, we note the following:

After the war at the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to its essential connection to the Nazi Party and its involvement in war crimes.

Are we to assume that Iott participated in so many reenactments that he had to resort to joining an organization that commemorates the World War II exploits of the armed wing of the Nazi Party? Because there were no reenactments to be found that commemorated the WWII exploits of American Armed Forces? British? Canadian? Even Russian (recall that the Red Army was one of our Allies against Nazi Germany)?

Is this guy insane? Never mind answering the latter. I know the answer. Just vote for any old yellow dog running against him.

There are idiots. And then there are f*cking idiots. It's all relative.

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Post 1,446 Only a tad Nazi-ish?

Embarrassed yet?

"..., and Nixon was not a crook!" (Image via Wikipedia)

Read related » The Jewish Problem With Obama: Part One of Five
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Over the course of the past twenty elections, a stunning 75 percent of the Jewish vote has on average gone to the Democratic presidential candidate. […] Recent polls of the Jewish community reflect a significant decline in support from 2008, when 78 percent of Jewish voters pulled the lever for Obama. According to a recent McLaughlin & Associates poll, a plurality of Jewish voters would now consider voting for someone else for president. […] "I started breaking with Obama ten months ago," says Martin Peretz, editor in chief of The New Republic. "And I know that a lot of West Coast Jews are also having buyer's remorse. The gut of it is Israel. Will Jews mobilize for Obama in the fall elections? They might be too embarrassed to come out directly against him. But I'll give you one sign of the times: Chuck Schumer [New York's senior Senator] waited a year and a half before he stood up for Israel, and he's been having trouble raising money on Wall Street." […] "The idea that we saw a black president in our lifetime is wonderful," says New York City's former mayor, Ed Koch. "It conveyed to us that this country has come such a long way. But I never fully accepted that Obama didn't hear his minister [Jeremiah Wright] make those awful anti-Semitic statements over 20 years. I wanted to believe him. I willed myself to believe him.... What he has done is break that trust".”
— Edward Klein and Richard Z. Chesnoff, OCTOBER 10, 2010 (huffingtonpost.com)

I have a question for guys like Chuck Schumer, who always assumes he's the smartest guy in the room. It's a simple question: Do you know how to spell "schmuck", schmuck? I'll give you a clue, in case you haven't had enough coffee today: append the last two letters of your first name to the first five of your last and interchange the order of the "u" and the "m". Also, it rhymes with "stupid f*ck".

Ever since that scumbag Jeremiah Wright slithered onto the national scene, it became crystal clear where Obama stood vis a vis Jews in general and Israel in particular, not to mention His and His wife's sentiments toward the country He wanted to "change". You don't need the insight of a rocket scientist to figure that one out. You just need to know how to spell "schmuck". It also helps to understand what it means.

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Post 1,445 Embarrassed yet?

Nuclear Scientists Unhappy with COLA

Image via Wikipedia

Read related » Iran suspected of executing nuclear staffers over Stuxnet
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report information reaching the West in the past week that Iran has put to death a number of atomic scientists and technicians suspected of helping plant the Stuxnet virus in its nuclear program. The admission by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization, on Friday, Oct. 8 - the frankest yet by any Iranian official - that Western espionage had successfully penetrated its nuclear program is seen as bearing out those reports. […] DEBKAfile's sources find in Salehi's statement further evidence that Tehran is still fighting an uphill battle against the invasive worm and has not yet succeeded in bringing its nuclear facilities back to normal operation.”
— DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 10, 2010 (debka.com)

Yeah, for sure, you can purchase expertise. Loyalty, however, is extra.

There is a huge impedance mismatch between modern science and middle-ages theocracy. The dilemma is: you need the science to enforce the theocracy, but the theocracy doesn't allow the science to flourish.

The terror-sponsors will continue importing nuclear technology, because they know that a scimitar just can't hack it. They'll need their scimitars, however, to keep their engineers in line. But there is always the chance the bombs will fail, or simly blow up in their own backyard.

As the Beatles made clear, "Can't buy me love". It seems to apply to loyalty, as well.

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Post 1,444 Nuclear Scientists Unhappy with COLA

Now they tell me ...

Image via Wikipedia

Read related » What happens when a neo-Nazi couple discovers it is Jewish?
Ola and Pawel and their two children are a happily married Jewish couple. But several years ago they were both anti-Semites, unaware of their own personal ties to Judaism
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“A young Polish couple, formerly associated with Warsaw's neo-Nazi gangs, was at the center of a recently aired CNN documentary which revealed their path from fanatic anti-Semitism to worshiping in an Orthodox synagogue. Ola and Pawel and their two children are a happily married Jewish couple. But several years ago they were both anti-Semites, unaware of their own personal ties to Judaism. It was only after Ola vaguely recalled a conversation she had with her mother when she was 13, that she decided to look into her roots and discovered the secret that had been hidden from her, a secret which many Poles who remained in the county after WWII, hid from society and oftentimes, even their children. […] Pawel recalled how he turned to the Rabbi for help in understanding how to come to terms with his new identity. […] The couple now lives active lives in the Jewish community, Pawel is studying to work in kosher slaughterhouse and Ola works as a kashruth supervisor.” [emphasis added]
— Haaretz Service, October 08, 2010 (haaretz.com)

And they say God doesn't have a sense of humor. If I was the Rabbi that Pawel came to for guidance, I would have told him, "Why don't you guys just go f*ck yourselves?"

Have they never heard of "Live by the sword, die by the sword"? Since when did Jew-hatred, or any other hatred, for that matter, become relative? It's OK to hate a whole nation of people, men and women and children belonging to a community of religious, cultural, and ethnic traditions that have existed for millennia, just because they were not the same as your traditions? Unless, by some freak of circumstances (not unrelated to your own irrational hatred) you discover that you are your own worst enemy? Then you are entitled to a "time out"? I don't think so.

They made their bed; now they can just go f*ck themselves in it. And be sure to let their former neo-Nazi gangs know where they live. F*ck 'em if they can't take a joke.

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Post 1,443 Now they tell me ...

Standard Israeli Procedure

WARSAW GHETTO, SMASHED INTO THE GROUND BY GERMAN FORCES (Image via Wikipedia)

Read related » Israeli troops kill Hamas' West Bank commanders, hunt "Syrian" cell leader
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“Israel's manhunt for the Hamas terrorists responsible for the latest string of West Bank attacks ended Friday, Oct. 8 in a gun battle in Hebron and the deaths of Hamas' West Bank commander Nashat Al-Karmi and his lieutenant Mamoun Al-Natshe, thereby snapping Hamas' militant backbone in the territory and cutting short its drive to sabotage Israel-Palestinian talks with violence. DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report that the Hamas cell leader smuggled in from Syria for the drive-by attacks which killed four Israelis and injured two others, managed to escape. The pursuit for him continues. The two were killed when Israeli troops backed by Shin Bet operatives, air cover and the police anti-terror squad closed in on three Hebron houses in which the wanted Hamas terrorists were holed up and refused to surrender. One of the houses was bulldozed.”
— DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 8, 2010 (debka.com)

Standard Israeli Procedure: A high-tech precision operation, utilizing the coordinated efforts of two anti-terror organizations and Israeli Air Force resources to terminate with extreme prejudice (a military technical-term for "killing", not "bigoted dismissal") two terrorists. Collateral damage of one bulldozed hideout balanced by the escape of the third terrorist.

Let us consider, for a moment, how extraordinary this procedure is, however. Imagine if you will, had Gaza been a Jewish ghetto, such as the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation. And suppose that the role of Israel was replaced by the corresponding role of a European nation, such as Germany, Italy, France, or even Spain or Portugal. What do you suppose any one of these holier-than-thou Europeans would have done in response to the murder of some of its citizens?

They all would have leveled the "Jewish infestation" in their Gaza ghetto. And, in the aftermath of such a massacre, Jew-haters the world over would be dancing in the streets.

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Post 1,442 Standard Israeli Procedure