Despair Inc.

You often see those motivational posters that depict beautiful imagery while having an inspiring message underneath. Then, there is Despair Inc. Their demotivational posters are absolutely hilarious. Some of my favorites:
APATHY
If we don't take care of the customer,maybe they'll stop bugging us.
BAILOUTS
From each according to his ability,
to each according to his lack thereof.
CHANGE
When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can become deadly projectiles.

and my personal favorite:
ADVERSITY
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.

Then there is this one which seems apt in light of our current elected representatives in Washington:



GOVERNMENT
If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.

Max Should Support Sotomayor

Max Baucus has been too busy to find out about Obama's Supreme Court nominee, and has told The Hill that he doesn't know how he will vote next week. I urge him to support her and vote for her confirmation. Not because I think that she will be a great justice, in fact I really don't. She was picked solely to placate the identity police, and her legal reasoning leaves a lot to be desired. But that is just the reason Max should support her.
In every trial when you are picking a jury, you are trying to guess who will be the foreman (or forewoman) since they will have extraordinary power over how the jury votes. My baseline guess is usually the oldest, tallest best educated male. It doesn't always work out, but often enough that it's a good rule of thumb. That person will be the one that can carry your side in the argument if you can persuade them.
Others in the jury will have varying degrees of influence all the way down to what are essentially fillers. People who will go along with the majority, no matter what they think.
Sonia Sotomayor is just that, a filler. She doesn't have the intellectual firepower to persuade the other justices and so she will always vote consistently in whatever way Breyer or Ginsberg tell her to. If her nomination was rejected, it is quite possible that Obama could select someone who makes a difference in the justices' conferences after argument.
She replaces Souter, whose signal achievement was the Kelo decision that says governments can take over property just because they can get more tax revenue under another owner. With this nominee, there won't be any change in the balance of the court, so no harm, no foul.

Shanghai Market to Collapse in the Next Ten Days

According to this article the Shanghai markets will collapse between today and the 27th of July. Now this may be no more than a variant of the idea that the world will end on December 21st of 2021 because the Aztec calendar runs out, but if it does happen, it could warrant another look.
On the same site, there is a post about predicting revolutions and their tipping points. Could be interesting with regards to Iran.

A Modest Proposal to Restore Fiscal Sanity

As President Obama has said, our current level of spending is unsustainable. With the addition of another $1.6 Trillion in spending to cover an additional 10 million Americans who don't have health insurance our debt is presently set to double in the next ten years. Adding in the anticipated costs of the Baby Boomer Generation retirements that will completely drain the Social Security and Medicare accounts, and the Nation will become nothing more than a set of indentured servants to our Chinese bond holders.
The time for action is now! We cannot wait for some fanciful plan to solve our pending economic crisis. In fact, those who deny the problems of so much unbridled spending are obviously traitors to our country and should be prosecuted as such and hung from the highest trees of the land. I for one, will not just stand by and let these debt deniers with their false belief system in the effectiveness of government continue to hold sway over the levers of governance. No, my fellow citizens, we must take bold and positive steps to solve this problem, and I have just a solution:
Kill the Baby Boomers.
Now, at first glance, this may seem too radical, but there is ample precedent and logic behind my proposal as I am sure you will soon see. Baby Boomers got us into this fiscal mess. After all, aren't most of the people who run Wall Street Baby Boomers? Have they not been instrumental in driving the direction of federal spending and taxation levels that have only benefited themselves to the detriment of subsequent generations? And now, having destroyed the finances of this country, they are going to enter retirement drawing Social Security in numbers that will require three workers to support each retiree with their taxes. And for what? In retirement, do they really provide more value to the country, or do they simply draw off more resources that would be better used by the productive members of our country. The Boomers fanatical focus on health and long life are going to result in a significant number living well past 100 years of age. In other words, many of them will live longer than they actually worked and paid in towards the taxes that went to their retirement under Social Security.
Many may think that I am being cruel and heartless, and nothing could be further from the truth. I am not suggesting that we should immediately terminate all of the Baby Boomers. Instead, the humane approach would be to give each of them a decent period of time (I would propose five years) in which they could enjoy their retirement, then on the fifth anniversary of their retirement, they would report to an appropriate, government run facility, (sort of like the one in Soylent Green) where they would be lovingly cared for in a clean pleasant and reassuring environment and then administered an appropriate cocktail of drugs that will allow them to peacefully pass away in their sleep.
Some may say that this is too harsh, but is it really? After all, with retirement coming at age 65 or later, depending on your birth year, can you really say that they haven't had more than enough life already? How much more do they need to have, and isn't it just a product of our capitalist society that they would be so greedy as to continue to cling to life even after they are beyond doing anything useful for the rest of society? I say it's time to end these greedhead's control of our country and return that control back to the rightful hands of the producers.
Perhaps you would argue that my plan is illegal. Ah, but there you would be wrong. After all, we use the same methods for determining that the rich have too much money and don't need it. Why is it any different from some aging codger clinging to life support? In fact, the Boomer doing everything to prolong his or her life simply consumes needed resources that could be better used elsewhere, while the rich that we tax at higher rates could at least invest the money in businesses to promote healthier economies for the world.
My plan is becoming more and more feasible every day. As the Baby Boomer generation can no longer be added to, it is shrinking and with it their political clout as well. Eventually, it won't be that hard to have a sufficient majority of right thinking Americans who will recognize that this is the only solution to our economic demise. In fact, I think that a significant number of Boomers using their heightened sense of social conscience would also agree that this proposal is imminently reasonable.
And I even have the appropriate slogan to make all of this happen: "It's for the children!"

Random Thoughts

I have a bunch of thoughts rolling around for posts, but lack the desire to flesh them all out, so I figured I would just do the Reader's Digest version of them.

Most of the Democrats like to make fun of Sarah Palin, and claim that she would be unfit to be President. This led me to compare her to Biden, that guy who is almost always in a secure undisclosed location with both feet in his mouth. And he is supposed to have been a better choice than Palin? It kind of made me wonder about Obama and his decision making abilities in picking Biden. Sure Obama wasn't in the Senate that long, but he must have had some interaction with Biden and realized what an idiot he is. But then I remembered that Obama couldn't remember the names of all 57 states either. Or a whole bunch of other facts that Obama gets wrong, but seems so utterly sure of himself nonetheless.

Maybe, Obama isn't as smart as we are all led to believe. What if he is just a particularly eloquent narcissist who is totally consumed in the BS that the Democrat Party puts out? His lack of understanding of complex situations is beginning to give even more evidence to my theory.

The Democrats will never have public hearings on any Bush/Cheney/CIA crimes. First, they know that they weren't as bad as they made it to be. Second, the Democrat leadership acquiesced in everything that they now want to prosecute. Third, they know that they will have their asses handed to them by the very people they want to prosecute. So, what are they going to do about the hoi polloi of the Democratic Underground who are screaming for blood? Especially, since if they don't get Bush/Cheney's blood they will be turning on Reid and Pelosi. So what to do? Continue the leaks and innuendo that will never see the light of day in an investigation, so that the truth will never come out to show just how feckless the Democratic leadership really is.

I wonder if in two years we are going to be having commentary about what the Democratic Party is going to become now that they have suffered such massive defeats in the 2010 elections, and what does this mean for Obama's agenda? Will the Democratic Party have to shift right and become more Republican in order to survive? And will any of the present writers of the current Republican obituary even be self aware enough to realize how stupid they are?

If the Republicans take over the House and turn the economy around by killing the Obama spending plans, will the public reward them by re-electing Obama, just like they did Clinton? As a corollary, what is going to happen to the Tea Parties? Will they form a separate political party like Ross Perot's brainchild, and hand the Presidency back to Obama, or should they act like MoveOn and take over the Republican party?

Why is it that every time Obama says, "As I have always said" or "Let me be perfectly clear" that he is changing his position?

Just sayin . . . .

Whither Sarah?

Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has just announced that she is resigning from office effective the 26th of July. My wife (The Good Democrat) is quite happy about this, because like many of those who ascribe to the statist philosophy, she loathes Palin. Which I find to be quite interesting, in that she is one of us more so than the pretend effete elite who consider themselves our betters.
The amount of attention that has been paid to Palin after the election (nearly all negative from the MSM) may help to illuminate what it is that they fear. And Sarah Palin is exactly that which they fear. After all, for Republicans to object to the selection of Joe Biden would have been ridiculous. Mr. Gaffe-O-Matic does more to call into question Obama's judgment so it is unlikely that any serious Republican would be calling for Biden's removal. Better to keep him propped up on the stage with his foot in his mouth than to have him hidden.
But I was curious about why she would resign now, instead of waiting until the end of her term. Then I listened to her speech where she said that she is willing to work to elect those who have the priorities of national security, energy independence and fiscal responsibility, and I began to realize that she just may be onto something.
For instance, 2010 is shaping up to be an excellent year for the Republicans. Obama's disastrous policies are going to destroy the economy as entrepreneurs sit on their hands rather than risk government intervention. Without capital, business will stagnate at best, and contract at worst. In other words, no growth, no jobs, no recovery. And that's without the disastrous effects of deficit spending added to the problem. By coming to close races, Palin will be able to provide the margin of victory that will come from independents and weak Republicans who are becoming more and more disillusioned with Obama. By establishing herself as a valuable asset, and at the same time establishing the connections that help to make the ground game work, she will be able to collect on the chits in 2012.
But why not do the same thing as a lame duck governor? Partly due to the unwarranted accusations that have been refuted but still continue to be brought forth on a continuing basis, it is a distraction. The other advantage to leaving early is that she can also help to recruit candidates that she wants to support, and if they succeed will be even more beholden to her.
The Governor's actions are definitely not in the usual playbook. Maybe that is why she is so interesting. If it works, she will be a hero. If it fails, no one will remember her. I'm betting it works.

This is So True

I read one time that the Host of RedEye on Fox News said that he became a conservative after hanging around liberals, and that he became a libertarian after hanging around conservatives. I'm up with that. This is parody that has way too many roots in our current reality.