They Must Be Due to Ideology

Bill Whittle, if you haven't seen it:



Yup.

This too:

Quote of the Day - Hand of the State Edition

I believe that markets move in and out of balance on varying temporal horizons naturally. They overshoot and undershoot but become excessive in nature in a systemic way only when they are deliberately distorted.


Intervention in or manipulation of markets by the state is such a distortion. Its acts postpone the day of reckoning for years or even decades. It creates (a) false sense of equilibrium that ultimately gives way to disequilibrium and heightened instability. We have not experienced free markets — that is, the invisible hand — for decades. The recent failure of markets to predict uncertainty was not a failure of free markets but a failure of fiat money and socialism.

Ben Davies, CEO - Hinde Capital, London.
Fall Dinner Meeting of the Committee for Monetary Research and Education
Union League Club, New York
Thursday, October 21, 2010

Quoted in full at No Quarter

The whole speech is worth your time.

Quote of the Day - Nihilism Edition

While we take the electric light for granted-- to be able to read and write after dark by a clear light is a technological achievement that has transformed our civilization. Animals are governed by day and night cycles. Artificial light made it possible for us to work independently of the day and night cycle. There is no way to measure the increase in knowledge gained. And there is no better measure of the unthinking contempt of the environmentalist movement for that achievement than a call to turn off the lights and sit in the dark

--

That is the dark side of environmentalism, an ugly violent side that emerges easily. The most active non-Muslim domestic terrorist group is environmental. The undercurrent of violence finds easy purchase in environmentalism's creed that the only real problem with the world is the people. No amount of turning off the lights is enough. Eventually you come around to having to turn off the people.

Sultan Knish, Sitting in the Dark

RTWT. Godwin's Law warning, though.

See? Face Colanders

As a follow-up to Our Economic Titanic, I recommend you read The Years of Crisis and Real Blood in the Streets.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Quote of the Day - Originalism Edition

One of the most remarkable features of Justice Scalia's majority opinion and Justice Stevens's dissent (joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter) is the view that the Second Amendment means only what it meant at the time of its proposal and ratification in 1789-91. -- Sanford Levinson, Huffington Post, D.C. v. Heller: A Dismaying Performance by the Supreme Court

No, they tried to define what it meant at the time of its proposal and ratification - "original public understanding."  And Scalia was far more correct than Stevens, which Sandy Levinson didn't bother to point out.  I thought Stevens' errors were the most remarkable feature of his dissent.

Quote of the Day

I was a guest on National Public Radio earlier this week, where I debated a left-of-center law school professor. The host asked me whether President Obama could deal with the tension between his agenda of higher government spending and targeted development and the business interests of new advisors with business backgrounds such as former JPMorgan exec Bill Daley, and current General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt.  “What tension?” I asked. Why in the world would a past TARP recipient and future green energy recipient like GE object in the slightest to Obama’s vision of a world of targeted government “investments” in what he believes to be the industries of the future?

The fact that Immelt is a Republican is as beside the point as the fact that Daley is a Democrat. Increasingly our nation is divided, not between Rs and Ds, but between TIs and TBs: tribute imposers and tribute bearers. The imposers are gigantic banks, agri-businesses, higher education Colossae, government employees, NGO and QUANGO employees and the myriad others whose living is made chiefly by extracting wealth from other people. The bearers are the rest of us: the people who extract wealth from the earth, not from others.

What is the difference between crony capitalism and socialism? Not much. Both systems are based on a lack of appreciation of individual liberty. Both systems depend on elaborate centralized bureaucracies. In both systems, large proportions of people work for the government. Does it really make that much difference whether the government money is reported as W-2 income as opposed to 1099 income? Don’t the favored people become rich under socialism?

The QotD is that last paragraph, but I thought you'd appreciate the setup.  It's from The American Nomenklatura by Jerry Bower at Forbes.  Good piece.  RTWT.  Kinda goes along with the "Apparatchiks and Entropy" theme.

UPDATE: In related news, General Electric paid no taxes in 2010.  In fact, it collected $3.2 billion in tax benefits.  "What tension?" indeed.

Four Year-Old Kills Newborn Sibling

Will the parents be prosecuted for negligence?

Tragedy hit a Texas family over the weekend when a young boy accidentally ran over and killed his newborn brother with a minivan.

A 4-year-old boy climbed into his family's parked van Friday and with his 5-year-old brother sitting in the passenger seat, managed to put the keys in the ignition and start the vehicle, Dallas' Star-Telegram reported.

The boy's mother, who was holding her 3-week-old son in her arms, heard the van ignition and when she spotted her two young sons behind the wheel, ran to stop the rolling vehicle.

The van crashed into an RV power station, then knocked her down and ran over both mother and infant, killing the baby, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's office.

This happened last October, but I found the negligent parenting parallel compelling.

Our Economic Titanic

This is a harsh-your-mellow post of the Über-variety.  You are forewarned.

Every generation has its Chicken-Littles, foretelling gloom, doom and disaster if Something Isn't Done RIGHT NOW about some crisis du jour.  Paul Ehrlich springs immediately to my mind, predicting from the depths of 1968 worldwide mass starvation by 1980 even if the world's governments seized immediate dictatorial control over agriculture and human reproduction in his book The Population Bomb. Unapologetic more than forty years after his hyperbolic assertion that "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...", Wikipedia reports that in 2009 Ehrlich and his co-author wife were proud of the book, stating:

The Ehrlichs stand by the basic ideas in the book, stating in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future" (my emphasis) and believe that it achieved their goals because "it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future."

Nothing if not brazen.

Oh, and well, wrong.

Then there are the Cassandras who can see what's coming down the pike that the rest of the public can't seem to.  Their predictions aren't as immediate, but can be every bit as doom-laden.

I'm not immune.  In the seven years I've been writing here, one ongoing theme has been "Tough History Coming," a phrase from a Peggy Noonan op-ed that caused quite a stir when it was published in 2005. Many pooh-poohed this (normally Pollyannish) Noonan observation:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

One commenter stated, "(E)very generation, feels like the 'wheels are coming off' in some sense." To which Billy Beck, responded: "Every now and then, they're right about it." In fact, I quoted Billy again just the other day on the same subject.

"Man-caused disasters" of epic proportion are hardly limited to assaults on Mother Gaia. We puny humans can screw ourselves up in other ways as well. What we appear to be best at is socio-political self-savagery, followed by the interpersonal type, and America is hardly exempt.  In fact, we seem to be as exceptional at it as we've been at most everything we've tried.  Now we're trying economic self-savagery again, and this time we appear to be intent on doing it harder.

Let's look at the evidence.

The United States federal budget has, since 1968, been in the black only five years according to this Congressional Budget Office report (PDF): 1969, and 1998-2001. Those last four years the budget was black only because the Social Security surplus was used to buy our debt.  It's always used to buy our debt (and the IOUs are put in AlGore's "lockbox" and forgotten), but those five years the combination of overall revenue versus overall expenditure produced a bit of a surplus.

Over that 40-year period, the national debt climbed from $285.5 billion to $5.035 trillion, an increase of 1,763%. During that same period the expenditures of the federal government as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product hovered at about 20.6%, and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP hovered around 18.3%.

Think about that.  Take the GDP as a value of 100 units.  Our income was 18.3 units, our expenditures were 20.6 units.  Our expenditures were 112.6% of our income on average.  I don't know about you, but I couldn't run my personal finances for 40 years having to borrow the equivalent of 12.6% of my income each and every year, and never paying that debt down. Yes, I have a mortgage equivalent to a bit over 150% of my annual income, but I don't pay it with my credit cards. My net debt has increased, but I at least understand that I have to pay it down, and so far I've been able to.

When Ross Perot ran for President in 1992, the national debt was in excess of $2.6 trillion, the deficit was in excess of $260 billion, Congress showed no intention of changing its spendthrift ways, and the executive showed no inclination to restrain them. Perot ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility and lost massively. Bill Clinton won the election, and say what you will about the man (and I have), deficits did decrease under his administration until there was actually more money coming in (if you include Social Security) than going out.

That changed abruptly. We were back to deficit spending where we've been ever since, and now we're turbocharging it:




The data for this graph is from the Congressional Budget Office as well.  The projected spending, if our Congressweasels don't step up to the plate, is pretty much set.  The projected revenue, on the other hand, is vaporware as far as I'm concerned.  Does it look anything like 18% of projected GDP to you?

And will our Congressweasels step up to the plate?  Why should they?  They've been kicking the can down the road for decades already.  Nobody wants to be the guy left without a chair when the music stops.

No, we keep hearing that we should "tax the rich."  Well, we do tax the rich. No, really.  And it's not enough to keep up with the spending.

And the Left keeps clamoring for more spending, and more taxes on "the rich."

Iowahawk, in his inimitable way takes that concept to its logical conclusion.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me want to drag the driver out of the car and beat him sensible with a Cluebat™. It said, "Hey, Conservatives: Medicare IS Socialized Medicine."

Well, DUH. So is "Social Security." What's your point? They're both failing, just like all "Socialized" programs do. Social Security?

"Social Security has been the most successful social program initiated by the federal government in the history of this country," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent Socialist and the (Senate Social Security) caucus's leader. "We are getting very tired of hearing Republicans saying Social Security is collapsing."

It's not, and estimates are that its trust funds won't be exhausted until 2037.

Trust fund? TRUST FUND?? The one that's full of IOU's from the National Treasury?

Fueling the new worry is a report this week from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that suggests Social Security may be more of a drain on scarce resources - or in need of strengthening - than had been thought previously.

The CBO said that if interest were excluded, the system would run a deficit of $45 billion this year and a total of $547 billion from 2012 to 2021.

Medicare? Well, aside from the fact that Medicare doesn't pay enough to make doctors want to accept it, it's hemorrhaging money too. An estimated $100 billion a year through fraud alone. But there are bigger problems.

Medicare is already growing faster than Social Security, and it could become bigger and more expensive than Social Security in the next 25 years. It is also growing faster than the economy, and if that keeps up, Medicare could cause the national debt to swell up to more than two-thirds of the gross domestic product in just the next decade.

For years, experts have also warned that Medicare faces trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities — meaning that it will have to pay trillions of dollars more than the amount of money that is coming in. In fact, last year, the Medicare trustees warned that the program was facing more than $36 trillion in unfunded obligations.

Even worse? Other payouts, in addition to Welfare and Social Security represent one-third of U.S. wages:

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

And the public reaction?

Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country's mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Nick Gillespie of Reason says it: 3 Essential Facts About the Current Moment: We're Out of Money, The Public Sector is Overpaid, & We Can't Tax Our Way Out of This. Eric S. Raymond as well:

The political system I have been criticizing all my adult life is fast approaching the point of "no choices left". And not just in the U.S., either; the same problems of political overcommitment and structural insolvency are playing out in advanced nations all over the planet.


Politics as we know it has had a structural problem for a long time; the self-destructive interest-group scramble that Mancur Olson identified in The Logic of Collective Action continually makes parasitic demands beyond the capacity of the underlying economy to supply, and the difference has to be papered over by massive government borrowing.

This is all very well until, as Margaret Thatcher put it about socialism, "you run out of other peoples' money." The system is reaching that point now. Bond investors are figuring out that the debt load has become impossible and are increasingly refusing to either purchase new debt or roll over existing paper. The muni and state-bond market in the U.S. is near-moribund, and the threat of sovereign debt default is tearing the Euro zone apart. U.S Treasuries increasingly look like Wile E. Coyote running in midair; they’ll keep selling only as long as nobody actually looks down...

Insolvency is no longer a sporadic problem, it’s become pervasive at all levels of government everywhere. This is why the recent brouhaha in Wisconsin was so surreal. The public-employee unions weren’t just rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic, they were fighting to preserve their right to bore more holes in the hull.

References to the Titanic are getting to be common:

In the James Cameron [*spit*] movie "Titanic," there is this great scene that illustrates a point about our current economic situation.  The iceberg is struck.  Because of the glancing blow, the more primitive metallurgy that resulted in brittle steel of the hull, a long gash was ripped across three of the main watertight compartment sections of the front of the ship. With the first three main sections rapidly filling with water, the engineer/ship designer, played by Victor Garber, lays out the side view plans of the ship to show the captain that there is no doubt that the ship is going down and there is absolutely no way to stop it.  It may take an hour or so for the ship to disappear below the waves, but no amount of bilge pumping or anything else is going to stop the inevitable.

That's what is happening with our economy.

There are a lot more.

The world is paying attention. After all, other governments are going broke, too, and fewer want to buy our debt.

I thought about filling this post with charts and graphs like the ones I started it with, but that's not really necessary.  If you read this blog regularly, you're probably part of that tiny fraction of the population that's paying attention.  I've been working on this post for a while, collecting links and thinking.  You see, I'm in kind of an odd situation.  I'm an engineer, and the company I work for specializes in raping Gaia primary metals mining.  Yes, we design the plants that process the ores ripped from Gaia's womb the earth.  Iron, copper, silver, gold, molybdenum, etc.

And we're busy as hell.

So's our competition. 

We're hiring, they're hiring, the mining companies are spending money improving processes, expanding facilities, and building entire new mines all over the world.

So long as demand (and prices) stays high, we'll remain so.

But I keep thinking that we're sailing on the Titanic, rearranging the deck chairs while the public sector unions crew are boring holes in the hull and the aging population passengers are ceasing to bail out the bilges, but instead doing the exact opposite.

As I watch Japan dig itself out from under the - literal - fallout of a massive earthquake and tsunami, I observe as Victor Davis Hanson does, The Fragility of Complex Societies.  Being an engineer, I do believe I understand the world in ways most other people never will.  I understand, for one thing:

Reality is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of ugly facts.

Theory and reality are only theoretically related.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.

In practice there is.

And I understand that when someone high up in the financial machinery of the government states:

"If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when," Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said in a question and answer session after delivering a speech at the University of Frankfurt. "The short-term negotiations are very important, I look at this as a tipping point."

then The End is (most probably) Near™.

How near? Well, I'm 49 now. Let's just say that I'm more and more convinced that Dale of Mostly Cajun was more right that he probably thought when he said:

Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution.

But it won't be a revolution, I don't think.

It'll involve face colanders, possibly.

Richard Fisher said he was confident in the Americans' ability to take the right decisions and that the country would avoid insolvency.

I'm not.

I started this essay with the working title of "Apparatchiks and Entropy," inspired by my Quote of the Day for February 15, which stated in part:

The ability to get ahead in an organization is simply another talent, like the ability to play chess, paint pictures, do coronary bypass operations or pick pockets. There are some people who are extraordinarily good at manipulating organizations to serve their own ends. The Russians, who have suffered under such people for centuries, have a name for them -- apparatchiks. It was an observer of apparatchiks who coined the maxim, "The scum rises to the top."

The apparatchiks are, in part, that third of the economy made up of Federal payouts. They are, in part, the public sector union members boring holes in the hull of our Titanic economy. They are, in part, the people waiting to receive the benefits they've been told they were paying for all their working lives, whose proceeds even now they believe sit in "lock boxes"and "trust funds."  They are, in part, the people Peggy Noonan described:

I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

The apparatchiks have been manipulating organizations to serve their own ends, to "get theirs," for so long now that the entropy is irreversible. The Titanic is sinking, and cannot be saved.

And I wonder what the future of my grandchildren is going to look like, because the Cassandric words of Donald Sensing still echo in my mind:

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

UPDATE: More cheery news with another Titanic reference.

UPDATE: Found this at Theo Spark:

Quote of the Day

When conservatism reigns, people are left alone to either succeed or fail on their own in freedom. If you don't like the fail part, then you don't understand the value of failure. Ray Kroc was nothing more than a mediocre paper cup salesman until he discovered and bought the restaurant from the McDonald brothers. Walt Disney failed over and over to find the right people to financially back his ideas for most of his life. Edison tried a thousand different ways to create a lightbulb before he found the right design. The common denominator to success in this country has always been freedom and a rule of law that protects individual freedom.

When leftist ideology reigns, there is no point in striving or failing. If you succeed, the fruits of your labor will be taken from you and given to those who don't care to strive for anything beyond playing the lottery and watching American Idol and believing that anybody who has wealth must have gotten it by nefarious means. This is what produces countries like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. Equality is celebrated and encouraged until everyone but those at the top of government have become equally miserable.

The ComPost Files - Silence is Consent

Runner-up:

Apparently, our Libyan adventure is called "Operation Odyssey Dawn" because "Operation Princess Rainbow Sparkle Pony" wasn't manly enough. - "canadiancynic"

(*snort*)

Quote of the Day - Jilted Lover's Edition

All presidents play politics but good presidents rely on a set of core values. Obama’s core has a picture of Neville Chamberlain. - Bin Quick, Firedog Lake, Obama, "You're a Goddamned Quarterback!"

From the same piece, this runner-up:

Obama plans to convince hardcore Democrats to abandon their principles to re-elect his sorry Corporate Ass so he can abandon hardcore Democrats. I have an idea, try "buck up", it worked so well for the 2010 midterms. If Obama wants to energize hardcore Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats, all he needs to do is repeat this, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." Otherwise, my answer to Mr. Obama is FUCK YOU!

It gets better:

Obama doesn’t understand that he lost hardcore liberals with his compromises. Liberals and Progressives won’t support Obama2012 because we are terrified of his next round of capitulations. I'm sure some "Democrats" will surrender their principles for a perceived "victory" but I believe a second Obama term would be worse than a Palin presidency. I will donate, work for and do everything legally possible to send this sorry "Corporate Whore" back to Chicago as soon as possible.

I guess that tingle up the leg is gone, too.  Too bad "Bin Quick" is a racist, isn't it?

And the comments are priceless.

I'm with Tam when she said "It's a good thing schadenfreude doesn't have calories." I already weigh 300 pounds.  "We Told You So" tastes so good.

Quote of the Day - On This Day Edition

From Mostly Cajun:

Today in History – March 21

1947 – President Truman signs Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have allegiance to the United States. Today the freakin’ President of the United States doesn’t have allegiance to the United States.

Edumacation - We Don't Haz It

How ignorant are Americans?

When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

RTWT.

Nothing I haven't been repeating and commenting on since I started this blog.

And these people VOTE.

Slacking

I've not been blogging all that much recently, and what I have been doing is "all linky, no thinky" stuff.  There has been, obviously, a lot to write about, but for various reasons I won't go into here, I haven't felt the urge necessary to sit, think, and write.

Sorry about that.  I know that a lot of people come by here looking for free ice cream, and I haven't been delivering.

That doesn't mean, however, that I've not been paying attention. I currently have a list of no less than 31 links to stuff under the heading of "topics for blog posts," and probably half of those are for one single überpost.

Part of me doesn't have the urge, but some other part does.

I've got some errands to run today, and some other things to take care of, but I thought I'd throw up a couple of things just to keep your attention.  First up, the Quote of the Day from 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, commenting on the book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America by Walter Olson:

Every year I hire as law clerks some of the best and brightest law students in the country, and spend a year wringing out of them all the wrong-headed ideas their law professors taught them. Now I know why.

My stack of books hasn't gotten significantly shorter (I keep adding to it), but this one may need to go on it.  If you're interested, here's a podcast with the author of the book.

Second,  the subject of our failed education system comes up again in a piece at Shrinkwrapped, Oh No, Are Kidz Can't Lurn. I've covered this topic before (most recently here) - colleges forced to mandate "remedial" classes for incoming freshmen who are completely unprepared for the academic demands of a university. It used to be that a high school diploma meant you were ready to enter the workforce. Now all it means is that you attended enough classes to not be kicked out for truancy. (Do they still do that? Kick out students for truancy?)

The City University of New York has found that three-quarters of incoming freshmen are unprepared. That's 75% of the successful graduates of primary and secondary school systems.  At least in Arizona it's only a third.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.  Then put Dr. Sugata Mitra in charge of rebuilding.

And finally, a word about "unintended consequences."  Hybrid cars that require batteries made from materials mined in remote locations without environmental restriction; fluorescent lightbulbs that contain toxic mercury, don't last anywhere near as long as advertised, and require hazmat disposal; "low-flow" toilets that use only one gallon per flush, but have to be flushed three or four times if you want the bowl clean for the next use.  Well, the New York Times has discovered the concept now, and in an opinion piece by John Tierney uses "the rebound effect" to lobby for higher taxes rather than "energy efficiency"  mandates.

I think he must be a fan of Cass Sunstein and his "Nudge" theory of behavior modification through taxation. Regardless, it was an interesting thing to see in the NYT, the admission:

"Efficiency mandates have become feel-good mantras that politicians invoke," Mr. (Sam) Kazman (of the Competitive Enterprise Institute) said. "The results of these mandates have ranged from costly fiascos, such as once-dependable top-loading washers that no longer wash, to higher fatalities in cars downsized by fuel-efficiency rules. If the technologies were so good, they wouldn't need to be imposed on us by law."

No matter what laws are enacted, people are going to find ways to use energy more efficiently — that's the story of civilization. But don't count on them using less energy, no matter how dirty their clothes get.

Not quite another QotD, but close.

Quote of the Day - Tactical Facepalm Edition

Another one from MaxedOutMama. She's been spending some time over at Democratic Underground and, well, let her say it:

I have just realized that it is hopeless. These are not the people who flunked algebra, geology, long division and biology. These are the people who flunked algebra, geology, long division and biology, and attempted to burn down the school as revenge, failed, and are now attempting to expunge those ways of thinking from the known universe.

As I've noted previously, I spent some eight months there myself before being ceremoniously kicked off by "Skinner" who is apparently one of if not the founder.

But I'd figured out what MOM figured out long before then. I've not been back. As Robert Heinlein said of visiting the Soviet Union, "Once is educational. Twice is masochism."

But by all means, RTWT. Beverage alert, however, especially if you're an engineer type. And the demotivator at the bottom of the post is worth the trip itself.

Unrelated, MaxedOutMama has been keeping track of the goings-on at Japan's current nuclear disaster site.  Start at the top and scroll down for a pretty good synopsis of what is known to date.  It's not Chernobyl, but it's worse than Three Mile Island by quite a stretch.

Can we PLEASE start talking about Thorium-powered reactors now?

Quote of the Day - Progressivism is a Mental Disorder Edition

Nothing like letting the self-admitted crazies decide what restraints to put on the sane--which, when you think about it, is a core tenet of "progressivism."

David Codrea, War on Guns, I'm an Untrustworthy Headcase

There Should Be a Mandatory Waiting Period...

Reader Wolfman sent me a link to a story out of Peoria, AZ.  It seems a young hoodlum robbed a gas station.


With a rock.


No word on whether he was wearing a high-capacity hoodie containing thirty-plus more rocks.

What Am I, Chopped Liver?

LuckyGunner.com is, as has been mentioned, putting on a blogshoot.  I've been waiting for an update from them since the announcement.  Well, that first link is to the current page, where Lucky Gunner tells us:

The following "Big Guns" have already confirmed they will be in attendance:

• SayUncle
• Sebastian
• Tam

(*cough*cough*cough*)

Quote of the Day - Simple Economics Edition

Joe Huffman from Saturday:

It is predicted the Federal budget deficit will reach $1.65 trillion this year with a $14.1 trillion debt and about $2.1 trillion in income. Yet the House cannot reach agreement on spending cuts. The House Republicans want to only cut $60 billion in spending and the Democrats only want to cut spending $6.5 billion. If you were to scale this down into numbers people might be able to relate to it would look like the following.


If your family income were $50,000 then:


•Family debt is $335,700
•Family deficit is $39,300 (spending is $89,300/year)
•The head of household wants to cut $1,430 in yearly spending
•The spouse wants to cut $154.80 in yearly spending
The children should cut up the credit cards and sell everything that isn’t the bare minimum needed for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and communication. If the debt still isn’t being paid down they should consider selling their parents organs.—Joe

Quote of the Day - "WORD!" Edition

The purpose of the armed forces is to kill people and break their stuff. This isn't the frickin' Peace Corps we're running here, it is a warfighting machine. Much like the Los Angeles Lakers, it doesn't get its score at the end of the game graded on a curve based on how well it reflects "the racial, ethnic and gender mix" of America.

-- Tam, commenting on the erroneous conclusion of a recent report on the current  ethnic mix of officers in the US military

Match Report - Light Turnout

Well, we held the 10^th monthly Bowling Pin match at Tucson Rifle Club today (we took last September off while I traveled to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous).  Today's turnout was light, only six people besides me came to shoot, but we still had a lot of fun.  Because of the light turnout, we only ran two tables instead of three.  The match started at just after 9:00AM and ran until about 12:30.  I forgot my CCI Mini-Mag .22 ammo, but Larry Boykin let me shoot his Federal stuff, and it worked fine.  I also brought my S&W M25 Mountain Gun chambered in .45LC and my Browning Hi Power.

When I hit the pins with the M25, they left the table.  With extreme prejudice.

I really need to practice shooting that gun double-action.  If you want to win, you can't miss twice.  Reloads are slow.

Shooting borrowed ammo, I did manage to win the .22 class. Bill Tab won centerfire with his Kimber Classic Stainless beating me with my Hi Power in the last two rounds, but each of us had to beat last month's winner  Jim Burnett to get there.  He's a tough competitor with both his Clark Custom 1911 pin gun and his bone-stock Beretta 92.  Jim took home the $17 from the drawing at the end of the match, though and he took second in .22.

Hopefully we'll have more turnout next month, Sunday April 10.  The match will begin at the normally scheduled time - first rounds downrange at 8:00AM, not 9:00.  It's already starting to warm up.  And I'll be bringing three tables again, to help speed things along.  Hope to see you there!