Oh My Freakin' God, Yes!

Awesome rant about freedom of speech on the college campuses. It's nothing you haven't read before, but it's done so well, you have to applaud. My favorite bit, set up with standard "UMass Amherst let a convicted terrorist speak on campus in the name of free speech, but me - me? - while the university also allowed me to speak, they also let me be openly heckled. That's right, the demon liberals violated my free speech rights by letting others also speak freely." You know the schitck. As I was saying, my favorite bit:

After the event, I asked several [hired security guards] why they stood by while my First Amendment rights were trampled. They smiled ruefully or shook their heads. It was plain they were ordered not to engage demonstrators.

It's possible these rental guards acted this way because they understood that they were only there to make sure no one killed any one else or did drugs, but I like to believe that they were actually just pitying Don Feder: American Thinker's very tenuous grasp of how the goddamn First Amendment works.

Do I Even Need to Mention the Fascism Angle?

I was going to write about this Washington Times article that asserts:

The further irony is that the United Auto Workers, which extracted the featherbed contracts a quarter of a century ago that doomed GM and Chrysler, will now hold a majority stake in Chrysler and a slightly smaller stake in GM.

And point out that, while I don't know everything about the UAW and the auto industry, I am very surprised to learn that UAW was negotiating sweetheart deals as late as 1984. If it could be said that any union contract "doomed" GM and Chrysler (but, oddly enough, not Ford) it would be fairer to say those contracts were negotiated more than a half-century ago, but that takes some of the sting out of the idea that the current workers/retirees from the Big Three are to blame for present day ills.

But then I read this comment and I realized that rational argument was not going to matter:

My Dad had a Fiat spyder when he was stationed @ Annapolis after Vietnam. He used to curse as only a Naval officer can about what an abject piece of crap it was. Then, he'd go inside & tell my Mom that since she was Italian, SHE should go out there & start it. It started every time for her. Doubt they've changed much since then. PS. I wouldn't buy LEMONADE from President Nero, let alone a car.

Yes, because your mother succeeded where your father failed, it is pretty obvious that Fiat is a bad car company. Screw Obama.

Maybe Too Much Screwing Is the Problem, Afterall

I was going to write a blog post entitled "Screw You, NPR" because I was pissed about this morning's "news" story about the "Mexican" drug cartel and the US's "porous" border and the explanation of how a goddamn drug operation works. (Did you know that the guys at the top of the drug chain don't actually deal any of the drugs themselves? Apparently, at least according to this story, they have other people bring the drugs into the US, where people even lower on the food chain are employed in the selling of the narcotics. Now, I am skeptical about this, but according to the story, the top guys, the head honchos, the big cheeses, the "hefes," if you will, don't really care if the police arrest one of these "street-level" dealers, because there are four guys just waiting to take their place. Amazing!)

This story about the "Mexican" drug cartel went on for 7 minutes and 46 seconds and I don't believe that I heard it mentioned once that it is actually Americans who are buying all these drugs. It is largely Americans selling these drugs. Oh, I am so pissed. Don't get me started on Mexican drug violence and the hype around whether or not it will hit is here, in the US, where good, hard-working white people live! I mean if a bunch of Mexicans want to kill themselves for the right to sell Americans drugs, all well and good, just as long as the do it in Mexico, where that kind of thing belongs.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggg!

But then, when I clicked on over to the NPR page, I was confronted with this:

Kelly and Jeff Swanson, who are part of the Quiverfull movement, have seven children. But when they first got married, they didn't want children — until they found out that the Bible was high on big families. And then they decided to stop "controlling" themselves.

Apparently there are people out their who feel it is their divine duty to have as many children as possible so that the Muslims don't out-breed the Christians. Read it and weep. I did.

I Read the News Today

On a day when the Register Guard front page informs me that 25 workers at Emerald Valley Kitchen, including my sister who is raising three kids, are about to lose their jobs, and another Springfield plant is set to close with the loss of 100 jobs, and the interior pages tell me that local RV makers Monaco Coach and Country Coach are cutting back pay, and the UO's economic index is down 10% from it's baseline in 1997, it was quite a relief to turn to the editorial pages to find George Will assuring me that the economy was humming along just fine.

Apparently, sales on "Black Friday" were up more than three percent over last year! And Americans spent seven percent more than they did last year on that fateful day! On a one day snapshot, spending is up! up! up! Will warns us against reading too much into it, then proceeds to read too much into it (but with question marks for plausible deniability).

Is this evidence that the recent deleveraging of indebted households has breathed fresh life into personal consumption, which normally is 70 percent of economic activity? Is it evidence of underestimated strength in the economy in which more than 93 percent of those who want to work are employed(!), and more than 93 percent of mortgages are being paid on time? Is it evidence that Washington's jaw-dropping interventions with hundreds of billions of dollars are having their intended psychotherapeutic effects?

I would speculate that the slight increase in day-after-Thanksgiving sales is evidence of none of things. Off the top of my head, I would offer that increased sales might be due to 1. the shortened holiday calendar this year; 2. the need for people to take advantage of sales in a depressed economy; 3. the willingness of retailers to report higher than actual sales in a vain hope of spurring an temporary economic "recovery."

The point of Will's column, however, is not to argue that the economy is doing well, but to warn against interfering with the market forces that have delivered an economy with its low levels of unemployment and foreclosure. I mean if nothing is really wrong, there's no need to go fixing anything, right? Right? Black Friday sales?

It seems that Obama is promising job creation or, if all else fails, to stem the tide of job loss. This is all balderdash to Will. As Will demonstrates, absolutely without reference to population growth, there has been an average increase of 1.5 million new jobs in the US each year since the Eisenhower administration. Now, this statistic combined with the fact that the newly-elected President is talking merely about stemming job loss might be cause for concern. I mean, it seems like a lack of job growth when it is almost a given portends a gloomy economic forecast. Depressing really. Not to George "Sunshine When It's Raining" Will!

In recent years, in normal conditions, the economy has "lost" tens of millions of jobs through capitalism's "creative destruction" (Joseph Schumpeter's phrase). It also has created a few million more than that, which is why the destruction is creative.

I am sure George will (ha!) appreciate it if we skip right past that "in normal conditions," so we will. Ah,! "creative destruction" is there nothing you can't do? Each time an American loses a middle-class income paying job, an angel gets its wings two more jobs are created unloading goods at the local Wal-Mart. Progress! And this is really the heart of Will's column, the argument that free trade, despite all (no all!) indications to the contrary, has been a success for the American economy. Heaven forbid, we mess with free trade,

Should jobs "saved" by, say, protectionist policies that interfere with free trade be balanced against jobs lost when export markets are lost to retaliatory protectionism?

Will asks, rhetorically. Of course we should do nothing to damage our booming export sector. Why, if you combine American know-how with our inherent grit and determination, no one can out-manufacture the good ol' U.S. of A.! I mean, if we could open up that damn China market, why we could sell a billion toasters over night! Or cars! Think about a billion Indians all driving Hummers! Let's pray to Jeebus that nothing interferes with that plan. (Certainly not anything as short-sighted as bailing out the automakers long enough to enable them to retool their cars so that they might produce one an Indian would want to buy. That would be communism of the worst sort!) So we may lose millions upon millions of "jobs," but through the miracle of creative destruction, we'll also gain millions and millions of "jobs." Following Will's lead we will not even begin to wonder if "jobs" always equals "jobs."

You see, global free trade is all just a system of trade-offs, you lose your job making tasty organic salsa for $15 an hour with benefits, but you gain a job at Sam's Club selling salsa made in Asia! If no one can afford to buy RVs, that's okay!, you can get a job...well...um...there's always job training at the local community college! (And, by the way, look at all them trees out there just going to waste. I bet someone could make a pretty penny chopping all them trees down, then someone, somewhere could make them into a cheap table that you may be able to afford to buy one day.)

Of course, Will doesn't care about the loss of good jobs. Whereas our labor has a practical range of about 30 miles, his capital can be invested anywhere. When our jobs go to Mexico, India, or China, so does Will's money. (Thank God we have the US military to make sure that he'll get it back!) Plus, his job isn't going anywhere. You can't outsource this top-notch level of obfuscation, it takes decades of blindly spewing right-wing free market talking points to be this oblivious to what is happening all around you.

Good Points, All

Deliciousness from Oregon via TNR.

| Posted by Mike Dillon
48 of 64 | warn tnr | respond
I dont see why the Taxpayers should bail out any business, you say government but its Taxes and inflation that pay for it.What is the incentive for a business to make a profit when if they fail Uncle Sam will pay his bills? What about the millions of small business owners whos companies fail? Bail them out also? .Hell bail me out Ive lost nearly 80% of my IRA in less than a year. Its a known fact that Big Business pay proportionately less Tax than the average Joe. Look at PGE in Oregon before Enron bought them they paid 10 dollars income tax in the 90s on millions of dollars of revenue. So far 9 banks got bailed out, who was bank #10 that got the Finger and why? What about the first bailout of AIG when they threw a half a million dollar soiree and gave all of us the finger ,then they got more??? Its all catty wampus right now. Did the banks actually lose money? I thought home loans were insured by Fany and Freddy in case of default? I and many others like me lost our IRAs if we had REITS which had the best track record of any investment available at least in my Vanguard account. This whole ball game was planned long ago to happen like it is happening and who is suffering from this so called crisis? This is a war on the average American. Thank God I am not 65 I would have nothing to live on now. Hopefully it will come back in the next 10 years so maybe I can at least afford a Big Mac when I retire. Dont expect help for Average Joe with the people B. Hussein Obama has picked to run the Finances they are the ones who engineered this mess. Lets get to the real questions and that is why did Building 7 at WTC fall down ?Why are we in Iraq protecting Halliburton interests when most all of the alleged Hijackers were Saudis? Why is Cheney believed when he says he stepped down from Halliburton? Why did they move to Dubai? Was it to avoid taxes? Why was Halliburton allowed to collect tax money for serving military lunches they didnt serve to anyone and for that matter why are they serving lunches to the Army anyway? What happened to all the Mess Seargents? Why can I buy a pair of Designer bifocal prescription glasses in China for 80 bucks when the Bargain frame ones in the States cost me 500? Half of which is paid by my insurance?? And the one that actually iritates me most is why are our American Colleges filled with Illiterate Athletes who go to school for free while the intelligent students pay there own way for the most part. And last but not last how did America sit back and let Department of Homeland Security get involved in so many programs that have nothing to do with stopping terrorists? Remember the grandfather from Oregon in May 2007 that got a fine of 55,300 bucks without due process from DOHS for bringing back some cheap replica watches that cost him 14 bucks overseas? Who are the real terrorists in America today? Obviously its not Bin Laden and his cronies. Was Sadaam an Al Queda? Why has America forgotten that Bin was a CIA operative who delivered guns and money from the USA to defeat Russia in the Afghan- Russian war that was fought over where an oil pipeline was to be layed to benefit Saudis and the Big Oil companies? America has gone to Hell in a handbasket and this is only the beginning.

But What Does Sugar Tits Think About It?

I saw an ad in the Emerald for www.standupgirl.com which has a picture of a pissed off feminist looking woman calling a time out. The site is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, which intrigued me, as I do not associate the Knights with feminism.

I looked it up. Not terribly surprisingly, it is an anti-abortion site. This discovery would have gone largely unremarked, except for the fact that down at the bottom of the site, we have a nice endorsement from Mel Gibson. Nice to see Mel is still getting work.

Language Rapists

Now, this guy is an asshole.

Writing for the American Enterprise Institute, David Gelertner assures us that feminism has won the day and in the process destroyed raped the English language. How did we accomplish this mission? By teaching a generation of young men (which, of course, means men and women) to use constructs like "he or she," "s/he," "he/she," and the dreaded "they" instead of the singular male pronoun to mean a person of unspecified gender. Mr. Gelertner goes on at some length and hilariously insists on missing the point at all costs. A sample paragraph railing about the abomination of a straight "she" for "he" swap in cases of undetermined gender:

"The driver turns on his headlights" is not about a male or female person; it is about a driving person. But "the driver turns on her headlights" is a sentence about a female driver. Just as any competent reader listens to what he is reading, he pictures it too (if it can be pictured); hearing and imagining the written word are ingrained habits. A reader who had thought the topic was drivers is now faced by a specifically female driver, and naturally wonders why. What is the writer getting at? To distract your reader for political purposes, to trip him up merely to demonstrate your praiseworthy right-thinkingness, is a low trick.

You see I was picturing a "driver" turning his headlights. My "driver" just happened to be a man. A man wearing a gray flannel suit and a fedora, perhaps on the way home from working at the office. Thinking about getting home and pouring himself a nice martini, maybe reading the paper before dinner. A nice steak, potato, and green salad later, he might relax in his favorite chair, light himself a pipe and laugh along with Jack Benny. After the kids were in bed, maybe he'd, and it just happens to be a he I'm picturing here, take the wife into the bedroom for some straight-forward marital relations.

But if some fancy-pants intellectual comes along and writes "the driver turns on her headlights," I am forced to picture a woman driving a car. Then I start wondering why a woman is driving a car. I start to worry about the traffic around her. How are deliverymen supposed to get their packages delivered on time if they're having to watch out for some crazy woman driver? I mean where is this woman going? Why is she leaving the house without a male escort? Should women be in public without a male relative? Aren't they inviting rape? Corrupting young men who can't help themselves? What will become of society with all these women driving themselves around?

You see, it's just better for everyone if we continue to use the perfectly neutral masculine pronoun.

Hillary = The Complete Destruction of All That is Good and Holy

I go this from the frontpage of wingnut site Townhall.com. How many errors can you spot?

Coat Manufacture in Oregon Set to Sky Rocket

From the Oregon GOP via the Salem Statesman Journal:

...The other piece of the economic puzzle is long-overdue tax relief for Oregon families. Today, someone making minimum wage in Oregon pays the exact same tax rate as someone earning $250,000 per year. That isn't right.

Increasing the tax exemption so the working poor pay less is the right thing to do, and it will put our economy on a strong foundation to weather the coming storm.

Doubling the tax exemption will put $375 million back into Oregon's economy and create 19,951 jobs across the state, according to the Legislative Fiscal Office. Those jobs would cut our unemployment rate in half and create incentives for out-of-state companies to relocate to Oregon.

...

Numbers only go so far proving why a change in the tax exemption is a good idea. Oregon families can make the argument far better. For a family of four earning $35,000 per year, doubling the tax exemption isn't abstract; it is an extra $400. That is money that can go toward winter coats for the kids or a high school activity fee.

Now, I am no economist, but I fail to see how cutting taxes on the working poor is going to create 20,000 jobs. Not that I'm against cutting taxes for the working poor mind you, although I actually doubt that a family of four earning a total of $35K actually pays $400 in income taxes, let alone would save $400 in income taxes, but maybe. Of course, the real problem with the Oregon income tax is that it is essentially flat. Now, I know that many of my brothers and sister in AFT-Oregon would disagree with me here, but I remain resolutely in favor of progressive taxation, so I would take a serious look at raising the top end of the Oregon tax rate at the same time I check out lowering the bottom end. Maybe there is a way to make this revue neutral.

Anyway, anybody got any idea how putting $400 in the hands of a family of four to spend on coats or high school activity fees (you gotta be fucking kidding me) creates 20,000 new jobs? Selling coats? Coaching wrestling? And how why would an out-of-state company want to relocate to Oregon because we lowered taxes on the working poor? Is there any way that makes sense? Help me out here.

The 10 Most Dangerous College Courses

Boffo crazy and high-larry-us.

FSM’s Second Annual ‘America’s Most Dangerous College Courses’

Jason Rantz

It’s been two years since I’ve begun investigating insipid, scary and yes, downright dangerous college courses – sometimes funded by tax dollars – and unfortunately, little has changed. Arrogant professors, protected by tenure and faint-hearted administrators, use their classrooms to spread their twisted views of America and its allies. Sometimes, entire courses are focused on anti-American views; other times, professors take time from non-political classes, such as math or Kinesiology, to complain about George Bush, the war on terrorism, social justice, and whatever it is that happens to bother them at the time of their rants. Consequently, students are not being taught properly and universities and colleges are robbing their students of the well-rounded educations they are paying for and deserve.

Go ahead and check out the courses. I knew it was good stuff when I read about "far-Left Senator Ted Kennedy" and NBC's recent move to the far Left, led by that noted-Trot Chris Matthews.

Whaaaaa?

For those of you who don't know the comic Prickly City, it features a poorly-drawn Hispanic girl who is a conservative and her friend/pet/Hobbes who is a liberal coyote. It is a conservative comic that takes a "humorous" view of the world, especially those crazy liberals. Today's comic is a mind-bending peach. Through the looking glass we go:

Now, If It Was a Girl...Meh

I don't know if your already hepped to this bit of wingnuttery, but if you're not, lay your peeps on it, as it contains all the craziness you want in a short package.

Italian abortion mafia

Yes, I think that all real men would smack a woman who aborted our son. What the fuck else are we supposed to do?

You and I Deserve to Die

I'm sure we've all had it up to here discussing Papa Bear's anti-Kos crusade, but I couldn't help but think of it when I was reading the comments to this hilarious piece at TownHall:

Apparently, it is certain that the terrorists will attack with a nuclear bomb. This is the fault of unnamed politicians and leftist media. I love the fact that MacKinnon is bold enough to tell me the "truth," but not bold enough to risk a lawsuit by naming names.

The commentors would have us believe that this nuclear attack will be a good thing. Why? Well, because it will probably hit a major US city, killing hundreds of thousands of leftists who have it coming. Early in the comments there is expressed hope that it will be close enough to the NY Times building so as to kill all those traitorous bastards or, alternately, the terrorists hold off until a Clinton administration and they hit DC. And we're the ones with some sort of derangement syndrome.