These are the people who are going to fix our economic mess now?
Jan 10 2009
Great date car
The car of the future… the very near future. So well made, it will the very, very, very last car you ever own.
The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition
Dec 09 2008
If it comes from a pig, it’s pork
Obama: Days of ‘pork … as a strategy’ are over – CNN.com
“You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over.”
Except that the unprecedentedly HUGE public works plans our president-elect has are one big giant piece of pork. “Pork” usually means things tacked onto a bill by a legislator to get some money back into his or her home district or state. But who needs “extra pork”, when the main bill is going to bring a multi-billion dollar project into the home district?
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Democrat caucus, as legislators have fist fights over who gets the most money. Just imagine: the Dick Durbin Memorial Wind Farm, the Barbara Boxer Interstate Canal, the Harry Reid Interstate Canal (it’s named something different in each state, you see), the Chris Dodd Dam and Real Estate Office, and my personal favorite, the Barack Obama Solar Power Generating Station and National Park (haven’t you always wanted to camp next to a huge solar power converter?).
Forget that “other white meat” stuff. They’ll all be eatin’ pretty high on the hog.
Nov 13 2008
The “Freedom of Choice Act”
I think a great many Christians and Jews, including many who voted for Obama, do not understand the radical nature of the Freedom of Choice Act that is going to be before the next Congress. If they voted for Obama, they may believe that charges of his abortion radicalism are just political, and that he is actually “moderate” on abortion.
I hope that all Christians and Jews will inform themselves of the “Freedom of Choice Act” (surely one of the more misleading names in legislative history, since its entire purpose is to REMOVE choices from physicians, state legislators, parents, other healthcare workers and, of course, the aborted baby), and consider whether they can really support it, or politicans who support it. It is even MORE radical than the original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.
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Nov 06 2008
Economic reality, government programs, food and energy
John Stossel has some good thoughts on what is, and is not, in the power of governments. He begins by quoting African-American economist Walter Williams:
“Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good,” Williams says.
The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.
“Most of life is outside the government sector,” says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. “Most change in America doesn’t come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn’t come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up.”
Continue reading “Economic reality, government programs, food and energy”
Oct 02 2008
Signs Of Intelligent Life On Earth?
Thank God for Senator Tom Coburn. Thank God there is someone in Congress willing to speak truth and lay the blame squarely where it belongs. Please read the Oklahoma Senator’s press release about the so-called “bailout” bill v.2, now before Congress.
This is a man who gets it! Why are there so few who do? We have a largely incestuous, hypocritical, power-hungry, pompous, arrogant, self-aggrandizing and immoral group of so-called leaders (called Congress) who, having abdicated their Constitutionally-mandated role and having gotten all of us in this financial mess now declare they are going to provide the solution! Preposterous! Congress has no business (and no right) whatsoever to be involved in home mortgage lending in ANY capacity! (vis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac)
As I stated in an earlier blog we as citizens do have the ability to respond in a variety of ways. We can simply bend over, grab our collective ankles and cry, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?” as these “leaders” stick it to us by pledging our money to correct their unconstitutional mismanagement. Or we can go to the ballot box in November with a shout of, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it any more! and vote OUT the offenders and their willing accomplices. We don’t have to take this!
Is anyone out there? Is anyone listening? Is this thing on? Hello?…………..John, Sarah, are you there?
Oct 02 2008
Space, the USA, the future, the shuttle, and Russia
You may have seen this very interesting article on the future of space exploration featuring an interview with the head of NASA.
However, the NASA head lamented the end of the space shuttle program in 2010, concerned that in the interim period at least the United States will be reliant on other nations to reach the heavens.
“There will be a gap. I don’t like it but there it is. For the US to lose even for a period of time independent access to space, I don’t think it’s a good thing.”
In the time between the shuttle retires and the new generation of US spacecraft — Orion — gets off the ground, US astronauts will have to rely on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station.
“I think that is a dangerous position to be in,” said Griffin. “If anything at all in that five-year period goes wrong with the Russian Soyuz … that is a great concern.”
As much as it costs, NASA is a tiny part of the federal annual budget. It is really stupid for us to have worked ourselves into any form of dependence on Russia, given its rising bellicosity, its use of Venezuela as a wedge into the Americas, its rearming, and its obvious bad intentions. We will have cause to wish that past Congress critters had been a bit wiser, a bit less parsimonious in NASA funding, and a whole lot more far-seeing.
Apollo was canceled because Congress wanted to spend the money on social program, essentially. The Shuttle was a bizarre compromise between the military and NASA. And Congress has continued to starve NASA of funding for research and development of new space transportation systems, while finding money for ever expanding entitlement programs costing HUGELY more. Just the PORK in every annual budget for the last 30 years would have seen us already on MARS and exploring the asteroids for resources.
The name for spending money on social short-term political benefit, instead of on R&D, is “eating your seed corn”. You can’t plant it after you eat it.
Maybe that’s part of the reason the price of corn has gone up.
Oct 01 2008
Why the Bubble Burst: bumped, with refreshed links
As has been pointed out before, it ain’t rocket science, and here’s an unusually succinct statement of the problem, and incisive commentary on the bailout.
The bursting of the housing bubble — which in turn precipitated the collapse of the financial and credit house of cards — is entirely government-made. Point fingers where you will, but I point mine at those congressmen and administrations that sought to win popular support by turning the Federal Reserve System, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac into public reservoirs of easy credit and home loans, available even to the riskiest and most credit-unworthy of borrowers. For years, the federales have artificially lowered interest rates and opened the loan spigots for institutional borrowers which — under inducements and even statutory pressures — opened their credit spigots, in turn, for just about any and every would-be homeowner. The usual tests of credit-worthiness that typically govern lending practices in a free, competitive marketplace were recklessly abandoned — sometimes under “moral” claim that rigorously screening prospective borrowers is “discriminatory.” So, lending has become increasingly indiscriminate, especially in the sub-prime, adjustable-rate-mortgage market.
Here’s a little more history, for those who need it, on the road up to the current problems.
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