Two news items underline the fundamental problem of the administration. The first is a story from Bloomberg reporting that the Department of Commerce now believes that the first 12 months of the recession was twice as bad as previously estimated. The article says the real steepness from the period beginning in December, 2007 sheds light on why the Fed cut interest rates so drastically, and why unemployment had declined so precipitously. It also says that the recession of 2001 was not nearly so bad as was believed. In other words, GWB was handed a better economy than thought and Barack Obama drove away from the lot thinking a paint job would set things right when all along the chassis was cracked in half a dozen places. A lunch at the White House is related, in a narrative sense, to the new story of how bad things were — or are. The Politico says that CEOs invited to lunch at the White House were billed for the meals. It’s an act without much potential to reduce to Federal deficit, but one with considerable power to communicate. We’ve gone from expectantly waiting for “green shoots” to “brother, can you spare a dime?”
Taken together the two items collectively characterize the difficulty: what, beside more symbolism, can the Obama White House do to fix the troubled economy? Maybe there’s nothing more he can do. But if he’s out of “dos” maybe he can start on “don’ts”. If government is at least partly the cause of the current problems, then high on the list of solutions would be negative actions like “don’t the feed the bubble” which started the problem in the first place; and don’t manufacture a new bubble to take the place of the old one.
But the institutional atmosphere of politics has long been one of apparent problem solving. Government is continuously ‘solving things’. Amie Parnes describes a day in the life of the man who does everything from change the printer cartridges at the White House to making sure that small Presidential favors are speedily fulfilled. “Brian Mosteller carefully pens a to-do list” that “mixes the monumental and the mundane. … In a town focused on keeping the trains running on time, Mosteller, 33, is one of the supreme conductors.” It makes depressing reading. Mosteller, who seems like an earnest and hard working man, alternately sprints and slows to a stately walk, depending on the ambiance, to keep the round of activity going. It’s a life of endless bustle, perpetual fixing, continuous motion.
The trains have to stay on time, but where are they bound? And more to the point, how much has it cost? At every level of government except the Federal, the Big Ride is slowing down. Reason Magazine writes that the salad days are over: 39 state governments are facing budget cuts. “The crisis in state budgets is not an accident, and it wasn’t unforeseeable. For years, most states have spent like there’s no tomorrow, and now tomorrow is here. They bring to mind the lament of Mickey Mantle, who said, ‘If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.’” Like the economy as a whole, government rode a bubble they thought would never end.
The days of wine and roses have been affordable due to a cascade of tax revenue. In state after state, the government’s take has ballooned. Overall, the average person’s state tax burden has risen by 42 percent since 1999—nearly 50 percent beyond what the state would have needed just to keep spending constant, with allowances for inflation. …
California illustrates the problem. Adam Summers of the libertarian Reason Foundation in Los Angeles has calculated that if it “had simply limited its spending increases to the 4.38 percent average annual increase in the state’s consumer price index and population growth each years since fiscal year 1990-91, the state would be sitting on a $15 billion budget surplus right now.”
And now it’s going to take more than charging CEOs for lunches at the White House to put things right. And as for the taxpayer, maybe he’ll finally get to where he can get off. The Ride, as is now forgotten, was once a means to an end, not an end in itself. There was a popular tune in 1950s Boston about a man named Charlie who disappeared forever in the labyrinthine toils of the subway system. The “Charlie” of the song is known in Boston as the Man Who Never Returned. With any luck, the taxpayer will fare better.
Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTACharlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
“One more nickel.”
Charlie could not get off that train.Charlie’s wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich
As the train comes rumblin’ through.As his train rolled on
underneath Greater Boston
Charlie looked around and sighed:
“Well, I’m sore and disgusted
And I’m absolutely busted;
I guess this is my last long ride.”Now you citizens of Boston,
Don’t you think it’s a scandal
That the people have to pay and pay
Vote for Walter A. O’Brien
Fight the fare increase!
And fight the fare increase
Get poor Charlie off the MTA.Chorus:
Or else he’ll never return,
No he’ll never return
And his fate will be unlearned
He may ride forever
‘neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man who never returned.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Weird, the first time there were back to back quarters of negative GDP was Q3 2008.
Here is a story that shows the graph … http://market-ticker.org/archives/1280-GDP-In-Pictures-The-Truth.html
Yeah, I get it, Bush’s fault, but the truth is the truth.
Actually, there are a whole lot of measures that could be taken to fix the economy. Unfortunately, they’d give too much money and power to Straight White Men and still, now, White Women find that odious.
For example, double the size of the Navy. Buy 2,000 F-22′s. Buy 1,000 more Abrams Tanks. Do it immediately.
What happens? Shipyard, aerospace contractors, and tank-builders immediately scramble for workers. The firms buy raw materials, further stimulating the economy, and PAYING CASH. Giving the stressed out credit markets a break. The effects ripple down, like a hunk of meat tossed into a pond — everyone gets a bite.
This is crude, but effective. It’s proven to work, at least for getting nations over the hump of a deep depression.
It’s classic Keynsian pump-priming. Obama and Dems won’t go for it.
First, being female-oriented, they HATE anything military (which is not the feature of the classic left — Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, Castro all love their tightly controlled militaries and spend much bucks on them). Women of course hate sharing power with pocket protector military contractor engineers and soldiers, sailors, and airmen that use the machines and weapons.
Second, Obama and Dems are deeply committed to a surrender by America for it’s original sin of existing, to any and every enemy. Military force gets in the way, and this is also a mainly female (though not exclusively female) phenomena. Original Sin being attached to America and of course, it’s Straight White Male founders. This is what you get in post-Christian America, like the pagan converts to Christianity before them, belief does not die merely mutates.
Third, Dem leaders themselves are stupid, convinced that America is like the famous New Yorker cartoon, depicting Manhattan the center of the world and everything else a blur that runs together. America in their view consists of Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and DC. All the “flyover states” are nothing with no people except a few redneck yokels who need to be enlightened by the privileged aristocracy.
Fourth, the elite aristocracy finds military spending and the military a threat, being an alternative path to power than birth-right. Most of the Left is an inherited aristocracy and they plan to keep it that way, with the only way in by marriage (via attractive would be Princess Dianas). Women of course love, love, and love fairy tales, princes, princesses, and the aristocracy.
I must be living in a total bubble here. I’ve never met a woman as described above. I am in fly over country, thank God.
3. bob
Not sure what part of America you can live in and not see at least a few of what Whiskey describes.
Not as many of them in the small towns you and I inhabit, and the Obamanauts come largely in other flavors than Whiskey’s women in the hinterlands, but the women he describes exist in vast numbers, and not only in urban America.
Whiskey- The reason they don’t resemble the classic left is that they are NOT the classic left.
They are the postmodern left. A distinction AND a difference.
I live in California, and I love this state. I can’t really leave, and I don’t think I would if I could.
But my taxes are horrendous: between federal income tax and social security, state income tax, a nearly 10% sales tax, various fees, and property tax, about 53% of my income goes to taxes.
And I wouldn’t mind that if I felt it was doing some good. But it’s not. My medical office building is next door to a large “affordable housing unit,” and I watch young, able-bodied people (all races) every day walk across our parking lot to go to the neighboring market. They have never been employed and never will be employed. They are not “victims” of “poverty” (except perhaps of poverty of imagination). They carry all the latest electronic gadgets and are well dressed (at least within the limits of their self-inflicted ideas of fashion).
I and my peers pay for them to enjoy this pointless and, sadly, desperate existence.
Jamie Irons
Look here. This isnt hard. Capital has gone away in a bubble. We need more capital. Where do we get capital? (Not from the Capitol, Harry.) We get capital from Profits. (I know you think they’re evil Nancy, but its the truth.) So what to do? Increase profits by cutting taxes. Eliminate the corporate income tax. Improves our trade stance since we have the highest Corporate income tax in the developed world at 35%. Improves cash flow of investors thru dividends. Increases economic activity thru investment. Whats not to love??
Now me and Buddy are going to take over the world.
…walk across our parking lot…
The edit feature failed me in this instance.
;-(
Jamie Irons
>”In other words, GWB was handed a better economy than thought and Barack Obama drove away from the lot thinking a paint job would set things right when all along the chassis was cracked in half a dozen places.”
Are you sure it’s not more like a badly tuned carburetor? Or replacing the brakes when it’s not completely necessary?
…able-bodied people (all races) every day walk across our parking lot…
I’m haing trouble with the edit feature.
;-(
Jamie Irons
#6-Jamie Irons
Your observations recall several fine quotes:
“The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrant’s greatest enemies.”
– Claire Wolfe
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back again into bondage.”
– Alexander Tyler
“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves.”
– D. H. Lawrence
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Don’t know about those Abrams tanks, but the cancellation of the F-22 Raptor is a travesty.
Yeah, yeah, it is a hand-built airplane and it still has a pricey unit cost. But the jaw-unhinging sticker price is largely paid for through the program R&D expenditures over the years. All of that “investment” (aren’t Mr. Obama’s people big on “investment”?) is now circling the drain.
So we don’t need another generation crewed interceptor aircraft because UAV’s are going to take over, their is no credible threat on the horizon (remember, the F-22 has been almost 30 years in the making — can people see out 30 years and see where China is going to be?). OK, so don’t develop another generation of crewed interceptor aircraft — don’t develop the “F-32″. The F-22, however, is already a finished project.
Obama is good with billing people for lunch in our house. When do the people get to bill him and his bare-armed wife for dinner dates and Waygu beef? How much did that fake vegetable garden cost us? He acts like a potentate of some cheesy banana republic. Next thing he’ll do is turn up in a fake military uniform with lots of medals and insist upon being addressed as “Your Glory”. The man is a miniature depiction of what a real man is. Everything about him is attenuated even his morality.
This probably won’t stop at the Federal level until it can’t do anything else.
…Unemployment had declined so precipitously…?
Ah, yes–the old Kingston Trio song.
Maybe we’re nearing some sort of tipping point when virtually half the population pays no income tax and the top 1% of taxpayers pays more than the bottom 95% percent (both items reported recently). Talking of “tax increases” under these circumstances makes no sense at all–increase taxes on the half that already aren’t paying?
And will these well-off people, with their tax experts, investment advisers, and estate planners just sit still and take it? S-u-u-r-e.
Nope–as Margaret Thatcher said: “Pretty soon you run out of other people’s money.” How I miss her.
Obama and his black pill gang want to paint the 1% GNP drop as evidence that the recession is over. The real bad news is that it was only a 1% drop only because the guvmint spent so much, and that money is quickly running out. There ain’t no mo magic fixes from our Savior, sadly.
Consumers have tapped out their sources of credit and are scaling back as fast as possible. No new consumer spending usually means no growth. lThere are tighter rules on new mortgages and appraisals which won’t help the abysmal housing market, and it is not improving Small business people are SOL on financing now that the “stated mortgage app” is gone, and small business traditionally creates two thirds of new jobs.
All and all a depressing mess.
“the Man Who Never Returned” – If I had a nickel for every time I played that number at a college party or concert I could pay off the USA`s national debt!
The way millions of people hit by a disaster recover quickly is help each other. The way they stay victims for years is to wait for the government.
Helping each other scales with the disaster. The bigger the disaster, the more helpers there are. Compare New Orleans and Mississippi after Katrina.
In the case of the economy, you want voluntary transactions, because each side comes out ahead in a voluntary transaction.
That happens because people disagree about value. If I value X more than Y, and you value Y more than X, we can trade, and the standard of living of the nation rises.
One thing that absolutely gets in the way is taxes. We have to disagree about value more than the amount of the tax on the transaction, or the transaction will not happen.
So the more taxes, the fewer voluntary transactions, and the lower the standard of living.
So what can the government do? Exactly the opposite of what it’s doing.
Zero out taxes, a good pair being corporate tax and capital gain tax.
There’s a message component to that, too: it means the government intends to get out of the way.
“They have never been employed and never will be employed.”
Sure, they’re employed.
They spend their “work” time selling those Oxy pills (up to $80 each, and plenty get 120+ a month) on the street that their “disability” has paid for.
Don’t you wish your employer “paid” you that good?
It’s a tragedy, and it’s exploding!
“”"”"The man is a miniature depiction of what a real man is.”"”"
Like something on top of a wedding cake?
the way to get the economy started again is to collapse the cost of oil. That could be done if as t boone pickens said we convert trucks to gas. that could be done for a couple hundred dollars a truck rather than 11 k per truck if epa lisencing fees were rolled back.
an intersting article on this is here.
2009/07/31/natural-gas-conversions-could-cost-a-couple-hundred/2/Natural Gas Conversions Could Cost a Couple Hundred Dollars
Economies suffer seasons too, but those in and dependent on Govt don’t seem to get that fact.
A cancer, unchecked, will grow until the body it inhabits is dead. That is the nature of cancer.
Government is not intrinsically a cancer, but it is one of the social organs most prone to that disease.
The cure is to put caps on (1)the total number of people who can be employed by the government, as a percentage of population, (2) the total amount of state GDP, as a percentage, that can be spent on salaries for state employees, and (3) the total amount by percentage of GDP that the state can extract in taxes.
If by some error it appears that the state government “miscalculated,” the solution to the shortfall shall consist of laying off enough government workers to make up the shortfall for the next fiscal year. And those government workers shall be chosen by a very simple test: those who make the highest salaries shall go first. For the most part they tend to consist of the spawn of the highly placed whose children and grandchildren don’t do a damn thing other than “networking” with other social parasites, usually because they lack any sort of talent or ability. Can you say Caroline Kennedy? There are an incredible number of such people who have high paying jobs that require nothing of them. They are the anus end of the political class, and by mass they make the head of the political monster look insignificant indeed.
I’d be fine with governments (State and federal) accumulating modest surpluses, aggregated for a few years — let’s say a 10% maximum surplus accumulated over no more than 5 years. Any amount above that must be disbursed as rebates to the taxpayers. And I’m not talking about Social Security surpluses, which have turned into an insidious way for government to keept overspending. As a matter of fact, I think we should go back to separating entitlements out of the budget, as it was before LBJ began the looting process. We should also put S.S. into that “lockbox” that the svelte pre-AGW Al Gore used to prattle on about. Tobacco settlement money and any equivalent funds intended for dedicated purposes should be off limits to other state funding. As of now, such funds are routinely raided by cash-strapped states. Attempting to access those funds should trigger impeachment proceedings and other legal actionns, and should be treated as embezzlement.
Oh, just to put my suggestions into perspective: since $2.5 trillion annually is all that we can realistically collect in revenues for the federal treasury, that should be the upper limit in constant dollars for the total federal budget. Also, the states — which now cumulatively derive more of their budget from federal subsidies than they do from their own citizenry and other in-state sources, should be cut off of any excess federal subsidy revenues above what equals or exceeds the state’s own revenue sources. Of course, ideally we would be working back down to the states receiving very little in federal outlays beyond what is needed to sustain federal programs and properties within the states.
Speaking of depressions, I just read “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan about the dust bowl in the 1930′s. It is a very powerful narrative in so many ways. One was the flimflam artists who sold the Great Plains as a horn of plenty and led multitudes to turn up all the soils waiting for a wind to blow it all away. Kind of like the endless housing bubble.
More powerful is the grit and resilience of the folks living in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. Some of these folks were reduced to eating salted tumbleweeds and still wouldn’t leave their dreams until FDR leaned on them to leave and bought them out at $1.00 an acre. Do we make folks like that anymore? Not many I fear. They remind me of a wonderful Johnny Cash song, “These Are my People”. I was going to put the lyrics here but can’t find them. You can hear it on youtube.
22 RR
Well, that’s what Alice Roosevelt Longworth said about Thomas Dewey. Not a bad fit for the current GQ mannequin.
Incidentally, Anna Wintour (known as “nuclear Wintour” to her Vogue staffers) was quoted yesterday as asking for price fixing in the fashion industry now that “we have friends in the White House now.”
http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/9931-We-have-friends-in-the-White-House-now!.html
Just a quibble. The charging of the CEO’s for the lunch that “Teh One” had invited them to at the White House was not, of course, an economy measure. The White House has two rather large accounts; either one of which that the lunches could be charged to with no problem. If those accounts are broke at this point of the fiscal year, it means that someone is embezzling big time. Unfortunately, given the propensity of this White House to embrace felons, the suspect list starts in the Oval Office and is immense.
However, I do not believe that there is any such shortfall. This was an act of deliberate and calculated rudeness that “Teh One” just could not resist. It was a deliberate snub and insult that by now has spread throughout the business community; and did so long before it was leaked. The leak was to build street cred with the Far Left-Left of his Leftist coalition. I can see joy in the revolutionary cells at this gesture.
But, it was a case of his impulses overwhelming any tactical or strategic sense. The collapse of the rule of law is something that CEO’s may understand as just business, albeit crooked business. And they may try to adapt to that, once they know that they are playing by Chicago Mafia rules.
However, deliberate personal insults takes it outside of just business. Now it is plain that this is not someone who can be “worked with”; but rather a personal enemy. Buraq Hussein just gave away a major strategic advantage on a whim.
Subotai Bahadur
whiskey,
Whatever anyone thinks of your sociology your economics is on target as is your strategic vision. We should be doubling the armed forces in 48 months and laying the groundwork to double it again. We should ensure that we have 8,000 robustly survivable strategic systems in the triad and equally robust ground, air and marine forces and the logistics to go with them. If we did and Putin sneezed in Georgia’s direction or Lil Kim failed to say “Please” and “Thank you.” then we could just raise an eyebrow and they’d shut up. We can and always could afford this. We have the people, the technology and the money and the people would support it. The stripping of America’s defenses has nothing to do with the budget. If we wanted to we could open up dozens of coal plants and mines with clean technology, real “green” jobs for real workers that work. We could also build a dozen large and 50 small secure nuclear power plants. The first step is tort reform.
rhardin:
Thanks for the explanation of voluntary transactions. I don’t think I’ve had such a aha! moment since I read Milton Friedman on inflation.
If this fiscal madness continues until the 2012 elections, would your solution (which makes perfect sense) still be possible?
whiskey,
Whatever anyone thinks of your sociology your economics is on target as is your strategic vision. We should be doubling the armed forces in 48 months and laying the groundwork to double it again. We should ensure that we have 8,000 robustly survivable strategic systems in the triad and equally robust ground, air and marine forces and the logistics to go with them. If we did and Putin sneezed in Georgia’s direction or Lil Kim failed to say “Please” and “Thank you.” then we could just raise an eyebrow and they’d shut up. We can and always could afford this. We have the people, the technology and the money and the people would support it. The stripping of America’s defenses has nothing to do with the budget. If we wanted to we could open up dozens of coal plants and mines with clean technology, real “green” jobs for real workers that work. We could also build a dozen large and 50 small secure nuclear power plants. The first step is tort reform.
I’m not sure how this ended up as Peter, I’ve removed all I wrote and will post in the next comment.
So now I know that from this point forward all the figures, statistics, graphs, etc. coming out of the Obama administration have been given that special massage to make them roll over and cry “messiah!”. It took till 1999 to see that the Clinton’s were cooking the books. Obama, he’s Clinton but faster, harder, turned up to beyond eleven.
I HAVE the solution! When Charlie’s wife goes down to the Scollay Square station every at quarter past two, she hands Charlie a sandwich as the train comes rumblin’ through, and in the tunafish (or peanut butter, or salami, etc), she has stuck the NICKEL Charlie needs to get offa that train!
I’m not Peter. Some thing is messed up.
Comment #33 I, geoffb posted. It came up with Peter and an the comment boxes had Peter and an email for a Peter in them. When I tried to remove the comment, I could and then I had a name in the comment box of “Morenuancedthanyou” and another different email addy.
Now the comment I removed is back with the Peter address again.
Now to see if this posts right.
I’m having trouble with comments, too. oh well. Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMSGrY-IlU
This is bogie wheel. Name is coming up in the Name box as buddy larsen. (you wish, bogie!)
Personally, I think it’s all Jamie Irons’ fault!
It doesn’t matter who you are. When you finally manage to make the wrong person mad at you, he won’t rest until he pays you back…with interest.
Teh One is steadily adding to the list of folks who wish him ill.
It’s now a question of when, not if.
I grew up listening to the Kingston Trio and the ballad of Charlie. Wretchard continues to astonish with his breadth of cultural knowledge and his good taste. The sad part is that we’re actually approaching that level of government insanity that functioned as hyperbole for the Kingston Trio.
Yea, comments are messed up. I also saw the peter name in the comment box, with an address, then the morenuancedthanyou, now I see trangbang68. I am not trangbang68. And I don’t even play him on TV!
I was just reading on UK Commentators about 2 May 1997, when the halls of Broadcasting House were littered with champagne bottles from the BBC staff celebrating the election of the Labour Government. It made me think of the “Mission Accomplished” parties at the WaPo and the NYT.
I’m done with the Left and the MSM. I won’t even look at a story if it originates in a Lefty publication. I no longer have any friends who hold leftist viewpoints, and I would refuse to allow a person who voted for Barack Obama into my home. I see those people on the Left as traitors who hate my race, my gender, my sexual orientation, the history of the country I grew up in, and the economic foundations of that country. I also see them as people who will not hesitate to use any method they can, up to and including violence, to insure their victory.
In short, they are no longer my countrymen; they are viciously dangerous enemies who fully intend to confiscate via legal theft everything I have worked hard to obtain. They have lied about their aims before, but now they are so close to having the necessary force to impose them they no longer seem to feel the necessity to do even that much to hide their agenda. The only questions left are 1)when does the Cold Civil War become a hot one, 2) who is the target list, and 3) which side will the military support.
The Calvo Sotelo moment approaches ever closer.
This all sounds familiar. After Roosevelt “rescued” the country from the Depression, there came the Roosevelt Depression, as they called it; it was worse than the one that swept FDR into office. His policies were to blame.
And in one sense the country never recovered from FDR’s policies until JFK came in, running well to the Right of Eisenhower, and lowered tax rates while boosting military technology. And we recovered still more when the Ronald Reagan came in and not only fixed what JFK and LBJ had screwed up but lowered taxes as well.
Just for olde times sake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMSGrY-IlU
There’s too many people that thing the .gov is the candyman. How about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-png_24OgM&feature=related
By the way, I am not trangbang68
Further to Comment #36 I’m gdude not buddy larsen, whose name and e-mail were in the Write a Comments. Cool. Must be the House Without Color trashing the B Club. Someone cut Teh O off — he must’ve had too much to drink at the picnic the other day.
My comments are screwy also, wrong name or no name in the box, then it vanished and I asked Wretchard if I got banned. Now if I reload or post I believe it goes blank in the box. Can we blame Chinese Hackers?
“Government can’t solve the problem; government IS the problem!”
–Ronald Reagan
Brother Can You Spare A Dime. Lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney, 1931. Maybe Buddy can get a short link to Bing on YouTube. In any event, the song needs new lyrics.
They used to tell me he was building a dream
And so I followed the mob
I thought that I was really part of a team
And so we gave him the job
Once I built a factory and I made it run
We made cars all the time
Now he’s given it to the union and they’re having fun
Brother can you spare a dime
On the campaign, gee we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum
Marching with Acorn, giving them hell
And I was the kid with the drum
Say don’t you remember, we called him Barack
It was Barack, Barack all the time
Say don’t you remember, Barack was our pal
Brother can you spare a dime
Signs of the Apocalypse, screwy comments boxes. Now it eats but says I posted so it must be in double super secret moderation. Tell me again how much better WordPress is please.
I am me I am not Iconoclast,
Inspects self carefully just to make sure
Brother Can You Spare A Dime. Lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney, 1931. Maybe Buddy can get a short link to Bing on YouTube. In any event, the song needs new lyrics.
They used to tell me he was building a dream
And so I followed the mob
I thought that I was really part of a team
And so we gave him the job
Once I built a factory and I made it run
We made cars all the time
Now he’s given it to the union and they’re having fun
Brother can you spare a dime
On the campaign, gee we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum
Marching with Acorn, giving them hell
And I was the kid with the drum
Say don’t you remember, we called him Barack
It was Barack, Barack all the time
Say don’t you remember, Barack was our pal
Brother can you spare a dime
Most of us have reasonable and effective solutions to the economic problems. This is missing the point, or, begging the question. The real problems are (1) that the administration desires the economic problems that it is creating, and (2)the other problem is that the media and the electorate are living in a self-destructive cultural stream, i.e. that socialism is a good thing.
Although (with the huge funding of ACORN) we are well on our way to a Chavez/Castro style of tyranny, I am optimistic that we in the Belmont Club (and others) are making sufficient inroads into the fraudulent culture.What a job Wretchard has done to gather together such a cogent band of commentators.
OT, just before submitting this message, I noticed that the blanks for the heading (Name, email and URL) had been filled in incorrectly. I assume that this must be a problem with my own computer, but I don’t know.
One of articles on Bloomberg and accompanying video is just a hoot. The D rep from NY is scared of his constituency. These folks are singing God Bless America, and the congressman feels he has to call the cops to escort him to safety.
I think the Congressman is out of touch, or at leas out of his head if he thinks the folks there would do him physical harm. Even if someone did raise a fist or even a barrel, I think most of the people there would stop it cold. The congressman couldn’t be safer among ideological foes. Heck he is probably safer there than in his own caucus.
It is filling in the name and email of the last person to post.
Herb @#7,
“Now me and Buddy are going to take over the world.”
Is there room for a third fella and his frisbee-addicted sheepdog? I can row a canoe and chew gum at the same time.
No, but really…one of the tactics I notice is favored by the governing-classes is that of imposing themselves as Americans’ arbitrators, as though we needed their prophylactic powers, like Ultra-Man needs infusions of sunlight, to live our daily lives. They arrogate to themselves (we rarely solicit them) enormous powers to mediate our health, our emotions, our interpersonal contracts, even our morality, for us.
Some citizens confuse this “helpiness” with a sincere, altruistic impulse, when, in most cases, it is anything but. Case in point: my mother refused a gift from a neighbor once and the act puzzled me, a boy of twelve. After all, why wouldn’t someone want a present, no matter who it came from?
Well, Mom explained that gifts can come with strings attached. Basically, the amount of gratitude expected (and the gestures demanded in return) may not be commensurate with the real salutory impact of the gift, so a gradient between the recipient’s expressed thanks and the benefactor’s expected return often results, which imposes a vague, unquantifiable liability on the gifted.
Of course, Mom didn’t quite put it in those words, but she gave me the gist. “Don’t take candy from strangers” says, I think, the same thing. Sadly, it appears that many voters missed this elementary lesson.
Must be a hairball stuck in there… LOL
Nope.
Ultraman rules! Especially when he’s fighting the big floating eye-ball!
To a kid in Sumatra in the early seventies, a snowy and hissing half-hour of Ultraman was a weekly treat. Our rabbit-eared black-and-white TV set could only pick up faint signals from Tokyo, so you had to squint to see the show, but…
Oops! My iPod is buzzing.
The above was a test, that was not Winslow.
At # 55 Wadeusaf posted, It is filling in the name and email of the last person to post. The post came up as winslow.
As I write this ScenarioA’s email is on my computer screen.
I have also seen steveaz’s.
walt at comment fifty-two
you’re slightly off, a bit askew;
so at you ever not to cross be
but to help and full inform ye
know ye Bing as search humdinger,
and not Crosby, Bing, the singer.
Belmont has come alive and is exchanging emails with its parts –making contacts possible –jeez –the singularity goes to war –
h/t instapundit, body language.
This is a real security issue for those who choose not to disclose their email addy to the public. WordPress is gathering it to verify your ID before clearing the post and then transmitting it to the public. If this can happen with an email addy then what can stop it from happening with a credit card number or an SSN? Wake up the PJM guys in California and get them busy with this.
We had the toilet paper thread, we had the salt thread, now the crazy blanks thread.
So maybe those Acorn foot soldiers are filling out index cards with our email addresses?
Potential for massive mischief here. It has a link at the bottom of the page that says “Manage your subscriptions.” It thinks I am buddy larsen. I can go into that subscription page and change the associated email address or change his subscription list. This is serious.
I hit the jackpot– I got Wretchard’s name and addy on my screen.
At least I know it is not just me. Thought my computer had gotten a virus or some hack.
Seems better, I emailed PJTV’s tech dept when it first happened described what happened to me back at #33
geoffb
Hi ya’ll. You were probably wondering what happened to twobyfour. Or not.
My hiatus was due to a work overload. Unfortunately, got involved in a “half-nightmare” project with moving goalposts. And that is why I write this post.
I always preferred to help other than asking for help myself, but sometimes a conspiracy of circumstances intervenes in unexpected ways.
So, if you want to know whether you want to help or just want to help, please click on my nickname and find more information, and email me — the email is listed on the page.
Many thanks!
I can’t really leave, and I don’t think I would if I could.
Horizons, Jamie.
Horizons.
Boise, Jamie Irons, Boise, we will accept you here.
Maybe we can even build a new medical school here, we are not all rubes.
I’ll even teach you how to fly fish!
Well, let us all remember how it was long ago, in memory, even if it didn’t happen just like that, when the young Italian lad would serenade the beatiful female youth, immaculate, there on the balcony, the blessed moon rising, the circkets chirping, and, human passion at the utmost.
With, I might add, some real responsibilities to come later.
We have forgotten that later part of the plot.
Well, let us all remember how it was long ago, in memory, even if it didn’t happen just like that, when the young Italian lad would serenade the beatiful female youth, immaculate, there on the balcony, the blessed moon rising, the circkets chirping, and, human passion at the utmost.
With, I might add, some real responsibilities to come later.
We have forgotten that later part of the plot.
Have deleted the lorenzo down under bit in the address box. And written in my own.
Let us see if this defeats the gremlins.
This is Dave by the way.
Yep. Some President of Mexico seems to have turned the trick for me.
Now don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Manuel Labor.
commerce dept press release??
Is that info from the secy of commerce who was approved by the Senate, kinda or a Czar devoted to transnationalism and vetted by rahm or another communist advisor vetted by ayers?
Must not be too bad, Obama is not spending the 847 Bill ObamaBucks in his check book but is holding them back for next year. Move into Nov 2010 with lots of Obama stimulus signs popping up all over.
The cost of the marginal increase in the screwed up govt program clunkers for cash is 43,500 per. Plus how many govt hours to create and manage this mess?
Are we really stupid enough to fall for this?? Not most of us, I hope.
Yep, I go away for a while and my address block says I am “Ginny”. Now is Ginny Whiskey in drag or is the cross-dressing vice-versa? Inquiring minds want to know.
BTW: Earleir in the evening I ran across a new microbrew called “Snakebite”. Consists of Harp’s Lager and Hard Cider. It is guaranteed to cure the bite of any snake found in Ireland!!!!! Faith and Begorrah! ‘Tis the libations of the Saints, fer sure.
After Manuel Labor, I posted again. Had to delete a “Ginny” from adress box. Made comment about “Ginny” being Whiskey in drag.
Also made comment about “Snakebite” microbrew and curing bite of any and all snakes in Ireland.
Wonder what happened to that post?
Looking at Rasmussens daily tracking, it seems that 0 is getting deeper and deeper into s subzero territory.
I wonder when it would hit chilly -20, mid-September?
Gee, posts came back. Up to 79 now but lead-in still says 75. However, this time my own address is in proper place.
Go figger. Time for my beauty rest.
Looking at Rasmussens daily tracking, it seems that 0 is getting deeper and deeper into s subzero territory.
I wonder when it would hit chilly -20, mid-September?
I just got an email from Hugo Chavez thanking me for the Trident submarine I bought him on eBay. And Belmont thinks I’m YOU, Dave. Seriously, your email addy is right on my screen. To prove i’m posting as-is, even tho I swear i’m buddy larsen.
Eugenics, folks –that’s where this is heading. Remember, there is a big Margaret Sanger following even unto today, Search [ hillary sanger ] –and the like. Hill just recently spoke at a Sanger conference, and restated her “proud” Sanger Progressivism. Hill speaks for a mainstream of ‘progressivism’.
my #83 was meant for the ‘rising sun’ thread. Dis is gettin’ ridicoolus!
I’m gonna sign off from BC a day or two –anything i post between now and Monday, ain’t me. Unless i retract this. or someone else does. hey what was THAT? I… i…thought i heard somethi
After reading all the id-snatching excitement above, I just had to check if I am still me….Al_Batross
Whiskey- The reason they don’t resemble the classic left is that they are NOT the classic left.
They are the postmodern left. A distinction AND a difference.
The leftism is a cover. They are old time aristocrats.
Sure, they’re employed.
They spend their “work” time selling those Oxy pills (up to $80 each, and plenty get 120+ a month) on the street that their “disability” has paid for.
It is government that has made their transactions so profitable. Ever hear of alcohol prohibition?
Most of the Left is an inherited aristocracy
Whiskey
This is really nuts.
I recall a cousin of mine, decent guy, who went to the south and Washington D.C. for some of those freedom protests back when. Rode a bus to get back there, he did. The people marching in those protests back when were not an aristocracy. It’s true that there are some big money boys and girls on the left these days but to call it an inherited aristocracy is really off base.
What we’ve got is a slow drift towards Uncle Sam providing stuff, or rather promising to provide stuff, which should be stopped, but there is no ‘inherited aristocracy of the left’.
The United States defies definition, a big slovenly country, o some many uttering tongues.
I’m for a new states rights movement, without the old racism, to put Uncle Sam back in his proper place.
Palin/2012
and, work to take back your own district in 2010. That’s what I’m gonna try to do for the next year.
mac (and Whiskey) I am a woman, angry at what is happening to my country and I am prepared to fight. I have female friends – some young in their twenties and thirties – some as old as I am, (over fifty) who are with me. If it comes to that – a hot war – I’ll see you in the streets.
Kathy R, We will fill the streets if need be.
A new emphasis on the constitution and specifically the Tenth amendment is exactly what is needed!
Onward! soldiers of Life, Liberty, and Property!
Are Comments Open again?
Is the tranposition of names and addresses fixed?
Hallo?
Let’s check. If someone after me sees my stuff, then no. But I got a blanked out entry, so maybe a kind of workaround.
It clears it out. My browser remembers, though, so I enter a letter and it auto fills.
… nope, did not check mark the remember personal info. Maybe a good idea anyway to leave it alone.
Just in case you haven’t seen the new artwork appearing all over LA….
That street art competes very favorably art-wise with these unusual paintings.