Freedom of Choice

I'm confused. Aren't two of the Liberal mantras "Freedom to Choose" and "Keep your laws off my body"?

Then why do the Democrats in the House feel it necessary to enforce compliance with their health care bill by criminalizing those that elect not to participate? That's right, citizens, if you do not purchase health insurance, you can be fined up to $250,000 and/or spend five years in Federal prison.

And another thing: if this health care bill is so wonderful, can we expect the Congressfolk to drop their existing plans and sign up for it?

I'm thinking...no.

We must attack someone…anyone…right now. Preferably the French.

“Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.”

"The American President's call 'to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare' was hot air...It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States...Most of Mr Obama's proposals had already been made by the Bush administration..."

Sounds like President Sarkozy might be a Limbaugh listener.

When the French think you’re weak and meek, you have an image problem.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article6098836.ece

The Finding of the Snark

The internet is awesome. While there are vast hordes of single-minded, ideologically-driven morons out there, there are those who take great delight in sniping at them. Since everybody knows that arguing online is futile, your only option is to highlight idiocy, hypocrisy, and just plain annoying-as-shit behavior with the spotlight of sarcasm. It's even better if you can work in a pop culture reference or two. This is so much faster than trying to present well-reasoned arguments, list copious links, or just automatically gainsaying whatever the other person posts.

Like most internet junkies, I've been taken in by trolls. I've even been a troll once or twice (but the novelty of that soon wears off). I've learned to hold off on hitting the "Reply" button until I've seen several posts by the same person carrying their ideas further. Then I look for the weak or inconsistent spot and retrieve one of my carefully-horded LOLcats or mocking pics and let it do all the work.

I've been known to bemoan the fact that the Left in general is better at rapidly coming up with mocking or demeaning nicknames that undercut an opponent's position or gravitas. I guess when that's your only style of argument you tend to get good at it. (Ha!) However, I did see this humorous post today from someone on the Right, addressing the "torture" at Gitmo:

You can't argue with Blazing Saddles. You just can't.

Red Tape and Bandwidth

One of the current debates in our community is whether the state should deny a license renewal to a hydroelectric company in favor of the state taking it over. I am amazed at the number of people that think this is a good idea. Their reasons for approving the theft of a private business by the state seem to distill into one of two arguments: 1. The company has polluted the water (the hard Left), and 2. They might sell it to foreigners (the hard Right).

My stance is that if pollution is your concern, enforce the laws already on the books and make the company pay for cleaning up their mess. And if you’re concerned about “Johnny Foreigner” controlling your water access, make it a condition of the relicensing that the state gets first option on any resale of the license, whereupon they can offer it to another local company.

My primary worry is not that a governmental group wants to steal a private business – hell…that doesn’t even blip on my radar anymore; I assume that’s a matter of course lately – my concern is that these folks that think it’s a good idea aren’t really considering the ramifications of the group that taxes us having total control over a truly necessary commodity. What do they think will happen the next time the state hits a budget shortfall? Our Governor has already diverted funds from our “Education” lottery to prop up their deficits, I can’t imagine she’d hesitate for one damned minute on raising fees for the water the state supplies.

On another stage, our city is planning to start a new fiber-optic service to every resident, and the big cable monopoly here in the area (Time Warner) is spending a hellacious amount of our subscription fees to lobby against it. At the same time, TW is trying to institute bandwidth “caps” because so many people are using the internet to watch shows when they want to, not when cable broadcasts them.

I’m squarely on the side of the city in this one because they’re not taking over anybody’s existing business, and it’s about time someone challenged the cable monopoly. With the amount of streaming data I consume, I’d be thrilled with fiber-optic. One of the very few things government does effectively is projects that involve dense infrastructure, and running lines to everyone’s house and business falls under that definition.

I’ve had people who know I lean Right question how I could be pleased with the city government offering internet service and be against the state offering water service. The answer is threefold: 1. The internet is not a necessity. As much as I joke about it, I don’t have to have it to live. Water, I do. 2. If I don’t like the city’s services, prices, etc., I can go back to TW. Competition is a good thing. If I don’t like the prices of my water bill (or the taxes attached to it, more likely), what do I do, invest in rain barrels and a home filtration system? Sure, there’s a monopoly with the private company, too, but they don’t raise their rates every time another division loses a few million dollars, and the state would. 3. State bureaucracy versus city bureaucracy. The larger the agency, the more complicated the labyrinthine warren of petty power players. Obviously, the Feds are the champions of this, but it’s plenty bad at the state level. At their best, they are merely competent. At their worst, they are colossal fuckups insulated behind thick tomes of regulations and phone trees whose maps resemble illustrations of the more complex ganglial structures. You can ask three different people in the same department the same question, and get three different answers. And if you call them back the next day, each answer has changed, and none of the six answers agree.

I think this is how, four years later, there are still Katrina refugees living off governmental assistance. They just keep calling FEMA employees until they get the answer they want, then cling to it as if it were holy writ.

Try that with Time Warner and see how far you get.

Scanning the headlines

Well that was money well-spent

The United States is prepared to discuss the establishment of a political party for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a U.S. diplomat says.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/03/22/Taliban_political_party_being_considered/UPI-68201237732734/

***

But but but…they said it was based on a true story

The movie, "A Haunting in Connecticut," doesn't open until Friday, but curious fans are already making a beeline for the Southington home that inspired the movie.

"It's just been really, really stressful," said Susan Trotta-Smith, who bought the home 10 years ago with her husband. "It's been a total change from a very quiet house in a very quiet neighborhood to looking out the window and seeing cars stopping all the time. It's been very, very stressful, and sometimes worrisome."

The family has never seen anything unusual inside their five-bedroom, two-family white wood-frame house and does not believe the property was haunted.

http://www.kwgn.com/pages/landing_national/?Horror-film-draws-unwanted-visitors-to-C=1&blockID=246234&feedID=23

***

Did we not have enough words already?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/22/BUCT16ES6B.DTL

What the fuck does that mean, anyway?

***

Correction

AIG did not pay their executives $165 million as was previously reported.

It was actually $218 million.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29812224/

We could probably make up some of that money by selling hunting licenses.

***

For those of you who didn’t have enough to obsess over

http://www.anorak.co.uk/media/204690.html

Just when I think humanity can’t get any crazier, they prove me wrong. God bless ‘em.

Yes We Can! (ignore the Constitution)

Today, the House passed a bill imposing a 90% tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in bailout funding. The bill is retroactive back to January 1, 2009.

This is obviously levied at AIG, since there has been great public outrage over their recently-disclosed $165 million bonuses.

One new point I saw in the article was this gem:

“About 400 AIG employees and future employees received bonuses”

Future employees?!? Those fuckers are paying out bonuses to people who don’t even work for them? These assholes need to die by inches. They are too fucking irresponsible and too fucking impertinent to be allowed to continue polluting our planet. Every fucking dime should be taken away from them before they’re kicked out of their offices. Through the windows.

Now…obviously I agree with the spirit of the penalty tax (and make no mistake, it is a punishment), but there’s just one teeny little problem:

The Constitution forbids it.

Specifically, Article 1; Section 9; clause 3, which states “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

[A bill of attainder is an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial.

An ex post facto law (from the Latin for "after the fact") is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. In reference to criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed.]

Not a whole lot of wiggle-room there, Congress. While the clauses immediately before and after Clause 3 have an “unless” mitigating their directives, Clause 3 ends with a nice, clear period. You can’t do it.

This hasn’t stopped our public serpents, though. The House passed it 328-93, a similar bill is in the Senate, and Obama has expressed support for "the idea."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Botox) said “"We want our money back now for the taxpayers. It isn't that complicated."

First off, plastic girl, it ain’t your money; it’s ours. Secondly, you only want it back because of the backlash against Congress, which should have been aware of the forthcoming bonuses, but which also stripped out language in the first money-grab bill that would have prevented the bonuses in the first place. You’re trying to save face, which is ironic since your face will be perfectly preserved long after the rest of you has crumbled into dust.

While the House is only stealing 90% of the bonuses, Charles Rangel (D-Ends justify Means), chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he expected local and state governments to take the remaining 10%. What he’s really saying is that he hopes those levels of Government are as corrupt and punitive as the House is.

This administration is showing absolutely no hesitation in ignoring the Constitution in order to punish a group of people. It only took forty minutes for the House bill to pass. Think they’ll hesitate for one second when it comes to doing anything else they want to do?

As much as I loathe the directors of AIG, I sincerely hope they get a few of their attack lawyers to take this to the Supreme Court.

Everybody who voted for this bill should be stripped of their seat, because they’re too stupid to understand Constitutional limitations. Maybe with 98% of Congress joining the ranks of the unemployed, we’ll make some real progress in fixing this shit.

Bubbles in the Brain

IQ; UQ; We all Q!

So I’m feeling a little bummed today. Y’see, I’m reading this book called Outliers, and one section discusses innate genius. The example is a man who blew the top out of the standard IQ test – he was literally off of their charts – and had to be given another one developed specifically to measure IQs above the range of the standard test. He got every question right except this one: Teeth is to Hen as Nest is to…?

Now, I knew the answer as soon as I read the question, and that’s what brung me low. Apparently I possess the knowledge to be able to answer esoteric questions built on obscure idioms, and the skills to sort and apply them, but this doesn’t translate into people beating down my door to hire me. (I’m not claiming that I would do as well on the rest of the test, by the way – pride goeth and all that; this just happened to be a question I could answer.)

***

Famous Cats in History

Saw this blog post today:

The Cat who started the Civil War

After General Nathanial Greene’s death, a young Yale University graduate, Eli Whitney, came to Savannah to take a tutoring job. Whitney began working for Greene’s widow, Catharine, and it was at Mulberry Grove that Whitney invented the cotton gin, the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton.

In fact, Whitney met Mrs. Greene on a ship from Rhode Island to Georgia when he was moving to take the teaching job and she was going to remarry. They struck up a friendship, and when he discovered that the pay for the teaching job was half what he had been promised, she offered to let him live at Mulberry Plantation while he decided what to do next.

At Mulberry Grove, much of the evening conversation was about the difficult economic situation plantation owners faced. At that point in US history, slavery was a dying enterprise. Slaves were expensive to keep and there was little profitable work for them to do. The market for local crops, indigo and rice would not support large plantations, and though growing cotton was a possibility, it was too expensive separating the cotton seeds from the fiber to make the crop profitable.

A few days later, Whitney was in the plantation barnyard watching a cat try to catch a chicken through a wire fence. Each time the cat would reach through the fence for the chicken, all he would bring back was a paw-full of feathers. This lit the bulb in Whitney’s imagination and he realized that folks were trying to solve the wrong problem with cotton. The solution wasn’t separating the seeds from the cotton fiber; it was separating the fibers from the seeds. He devised a screen-wire basket in which a roller with small picks would pull the fibers through the screen, leaving the seeds on the other side. This became his Cotton Engine, and it was an immediate success throughout the cotton-growing regions of the south. This drove a huge demand for field labor in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and led to a great transfer of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly upsetting slave families and leading to the upheaval that led to the Civil War some sixty years later.

Had Whitney not seen that cat, who knows what would have happened in American history? This is why a cat should be credited with starting the Civil War.

It was a cute post, but ignores the fact that slavery was not the underlying cause of the War of Northern Aggression.

***

From the Mailbag

(Whose robots would you rather have send you e-mail, Tyrell’s or Skynet’s? )

While I understand and appreciate the frustration people are feeling with their elected public serpents, sentences like this:

“We believe the Federal Reserve together with the above financial elites covertly manufactured the credit and real estate bubble to enhance continued foreign investment in their Treasury debt Ponzi scheme while generating obscene profits for Wall Street at the expense of the American people.”

encroach on tinfoil hat territory. The sheer number of people that would have had to be involved in this “scheme” ensures it wouldn’t remain secret. They have a legitimate gripe, though, since we’re all losing lots of money. Apparently, they are now too poor to even be able to afford commas.

It’s easy to dismiss them as goofballs, but they at least know their way around the amendment process, wanting to convene a National Convention to avoid the rigged system that is Congress. I wish them success in a spunky, underdog kind of way, but I was immediately reminded of this quote from Neal Stephenson’s novel, Interface:

“It was just a matter of time before some politician actually became stupid enough to mention forgiving the national debt.”

Click Here to Claim Your Prize!!!

A lot of couples argue about money, but how many argue about the formatting of the spreadsheet that tracks their budget? We’re such nerds.

***

A recent letter to the editor in our local paper has stirred up the incandescent vs CFL bulb argument. I’m trying to get people to look past their preferences and concentrate on the fact that the government is trying to mandate what kind of light bulbs we can buy.

***

You know those annoying flashing ads that pop up on the sides of web pages? Many of them seem to be political in nature. Not that they purport to affect anything in the political spectrum, but that they use current political events as a way to attract your attention. I noticed a couple of years ago that they also serve as a barometer of public opinion. The latest ad I saw asked “Do you regret voting for Obama?”. I thought that was interesting.

***

Let’s go to the mailbag!

An apparent resident of South Carolina, standing firm with the strength of conviction that can only be imparted by leaving anonymous comments on a personal blog, wrote in to offer their two cents’ worth on Sanford’s request.

“Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, Folly Beach Mayor Carl Beckmann Jr. and about 20 of the other mayors who signed a letter on its way to Sanford said that without the money, municipalities will be forced to make severe cuts in basic services. Not only will local services be curtailed, Riley said, but the state will lose prosecutors, State Law Enforcement Division agents and probation and parole officers — all of which will negatively impact public safety and quality of life.”

I’ve read the Mayors’ letter to the Governor. It’s more of the same blubbering about getting even more money from the taxpayers, with no concomitant plans to cut spending. My favorite line was when the Mayors helpfully noted that many states are creating “Stimulus Czars” to help allocate the funding. So I guess Obama was right when he said it would create jobs.

Just what we needed, more fucking bureaucrats.

Target Acquired

Saw today where the Democratic National Committee has released an ad attacking SC Governor Mark Sanford for opposing the distribution of “stimulus dollars” for his state. Not knowing the details, but firmly believing that if you’re taking flak, you must be over the target, I checked to see what the Governor was up to.

Seems he did say at one point he didn’t want the money. All of the Republicans in Congress voted against it, but I haven’t heard too many of them say they didn’t want any of it.

Now it seems that Sanford’s position has changed. He recently sent a letter to President Obama asking permission to use a quarter of the money allocated to SC for paying down the state’s debt rather than funding the programs the Feds are mandating.

One interesting point in the Governor’s letter was the observation that if the debt load wasn’t addressed, the state would be in a critical situation in 24 months. In and of itself, this isn’t anything special, but Sanford took pains to point out that his term was up in 20 months, and that while he certainly could leave it for his successor to deal with, he’d rather not.

Sanford has irritated the RINOs that constitute the majority of SC’s House since he was elected. One famous incident was his veto of a budget. He itemized each expenditure that he felt was wasteful spending, which (IIRC) took him several days.

It took the House less than an hour to override his veto and pass the budget.

The next day, Sanford showed up with two pigs under his arms and let them loose in the (newly-renovated) chambers. That’s just fun political theater. I picture wacky music playing – like “Yakkety Sax” – while fat politicians fall over each other trying to catch the pigs.

I’m figuring that Sanford is positioning himself for a run at the Oval Office in 2012, and the DNC is acting to tear him down before he can get any momentum going.

Saw this prediction:

“The Democrats will attempt to make South Carolina a national example of GOP corruption and incompetence – just like they did to Ohio. Expect the media to run stories about racist conservatives flying the Confederate flag, corrupt GOP lawmakers, and South Carolina’s 9% jobless rate. The Liberals will say Republicans use wedge issues like school prayer and gay marriage to con rural whites to vote against their economic self-interests. Expect these talking points to hit the news channels next year.”

Not that it takes the Amazing Kreskin to make fairly accurate guesses about how the Left will respond to challenges, but it will be interesting to see how much of this comes to pass.

Gimme Shelter

Here I was, just bitching about politicians in general – not taking sides – until Elle had to go and get all snarky. :)

“It was the Republican administration at the helm for the last eight years, which explains the hole we're in.”

I know the current meme from the White House is “I inherited this mess from Bush,” but let’s go back just a tad further than eight years. The New York Times, 9-30-1999:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action…will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits…

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Similarly, in 2004, Bush’s HUD Department increased the target of low- and moderate-income loans to 56%. More than half of their loans were federally mandated to be at risk loans.

"Are you suggesting we "stay the course" with Bush policies?"

Not at all. I’m suggesting Government stick to their Constitutionally-mandated duties and get the fuck out of our lives. In light of the fact that they don’t seem competent to run private-sector businesses, what right do they have to regulate them?

"Obama just took over in January."

I know! Isn’t it awesome? It’s only been six weeks, and this administration has already spent more than twice as much as the total cost of the Iraq War. Plus, they’ve tripled the national deficit by overseeing the largest transfer of private wealth to government, ever. Everybody said it was a historic election. Guess they were right.

"And the opposite of progress is, in fact, REPUBLICAN."

Didn’t think I’d have to spell it out, but the opposite of progress is, in fact, Congress. Doesn’t matter if there’s a “D,” an “I,” or an “R” after their names. They’re criminally negligent, power-hungry money grabbers that justify their loathsome existence by making laws favoring their campaign contributors.

"I might need some affordable health care or good insurance, Mr. Cat."

Get government out of the medical business, and you’ll see costs go down. As it stands now, doctors and pharmaceutical labs have no reason to lower their prices if they know a government agency is going to pay them. Also, according to the government, if your car is too new you can’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare – it counts as income. Apparently the government thinks having a nice car obviates the need for maintenance prescriptions or hospital stays.

"I need future employment."

I’d hire you, but I’m living in my magical healing car.

"I would fucking love some free tuition, too."

Every time the government throws more money at universities, their tuition curiously rises by the same percentage. I would wager that if the schools were cut off from the government teat, they’d find a way to max out their attendance – perhaps by lowering tuition?

Yes, I’m a free-market junkie. Maybe that blinds me to certain things, but I still believe it’s better than expecting the government to provide all goods and services. As they keep proving, the only solution they can propose to any problem is to spend someone else’s money irrespective of efficacy or relevancy.