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"Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves." –- Norm Franz My Stuff Safe in the Fire Swamp Amazon Profile Old Silver Articles Blogger Profile Blogs of Friends and Heroes 3 O'Clock AM A Tenor's Tale Code Monkey Ramblings Elusive Wapiti Giraffe in a Compact Car Hart's Heart Jayhawkers and Red Legs JD's Evolution Jedi for God Jim Sinclair John of Argghhh! Kawaika Magic Negro Watch Metal Dad Mish Roland Drake Rollin' Like Sisyphus Something Feral Vox Popoli Vikings Blog ...will not be televised Required Reading 7 Lesson Schoolteacher Aliens Cause Global Warming Fire and Ice Is the USA Bankrupt? Neutral Power FTW On the Reading of Old Books The Subprime Primer The Toledoth of Genesis Archives November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009
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So much for that idea Orosius wrote:...ares Philaenorum Syrtes maiores et Trogodytas ... Byzacium usque ad lacum Salinarum ... et Rusiccada ... a meridie montes Uzarae ... flumen Maluam ...The bastard. Oh, it's not that I didn't want the Fourth Century theologian/historian/geographer to write that. In fact, I've been looking for it for a long time. I was just hoping that either someone earlier would have written it or that I would have been the first one to find it. I mentioned a while ago that I had been trying to discover the source of "The Itinerary" in Nennius' Historia Brittonum, that set of obscure landmarks that no medieval monk could possibly fake, evidence taken by Sir William Flinders-Petrie and creationalist Bill Cooper as evidence of an independent first-century tradition: The argument my nemeses make is that such obscure landmarks, falling as they do in successive order, could only have come from a person who actually sailed the south Med before the geographical reforms of Claudius and not from the imagination of some medieval historiographer, no matter his sources. And I agree. But they then claim this proves the Brut legend to be First Century. If that's the case, how then do exactly the same seven landmarks find their way into Nennius via "the most learned of the Scots" rather than through one of his three Bruts?I have answered the question - the Irish got it from Orosius, who lays out a detailed geography of the northern coast of Africa in the first book of his History Against the Pagans, and Geoffrey got it from either the Irish or Orosius or Nennius (it doesn't matter which) - and I ought to be happy about it. If you look closely above you can see "aras Philaenorum," which becomes Nennius' "Altars of the Philistines," and you can see "lacum Salinarum," the salt lakes that some interpreters have translated "The Lakes of Syria." The rest of them are there, too, mangled as they have been by some modern translators. And in finding the source to be Fourth Century and Roman, I have defeated the major argument for a separate Nennius source that is First Century and British. All I'm left with is a few independent traditions about Caesar and that cool story about the Iceberg. Despite Flinders-Petrie's assurance that no ancient lists every point in the correct order, there it is. But the reason I'm rather bummed about it was that I had this idea of making the search for Nennius' sources the basis of a Master's thesis. In the research required to find the above, I have discovered that a) it turned out to be less meaningful than I thought, and b) not knowing Irish, Latin, or old Anglo-Saxon, I am woefully unqualified to do it throroughly*. So it's back to the old drawing board. My dad talked with an Indian guide at Little Big Horn this summer who told him, once he pigeonholed her, that Custer was killed almost at the beginning of the battle, a fact that does not appear in any account of the battle that I've read. Then we looked at a map of his attack and found one major idiosyncrasy that is best explained by that fact. Maybe that could form the basis of something. At least all the sources will be in English. * but c) I have just kicked the final leg out from under Cooper's young-earth creationalist arguments in "After the Flood," at least in the British chapters. Nennius, and therefore the British, offer no support for young-earth creationalism in their histories, because there is now no way to prove that Nennius' sources pre-date the introduction of Christianity into Britain. Labels: Creationalism, history  (hat tip: JD) Labels: feminism  Financial Times catches the new paradigm:The “snooty” attitude of bankers and financiers who thought they were cleverer than everyone else is largely to blame for the global credit squeeze “disaster”, Germany’s finance minister has said.Apparently those steps include calling your financiers nasty names in public. But I actually have irrefutable proof that bankers and financiers are cleverer than anyone else: there is no one else who has the legal ability, granted by politicians, to create money from nothing and lend it at interest. Seriously, how profitable could your auto company be if it could simply create cars with the stroke of a pen and lease them out? Or maybe your airlines or trucking companies, if they could move people and products with no costs other than simply making a book entry? The beautiful thing about money is that it is literally created from nothing, from bookkeeping entries, then lent to the government ($9 trillion so far, and that's just what's on the books), which then taxes your real work to pay real interest to the bankers for use of that money? It's freaking brilliant. I wish I'd thought of it. But being fraudulent to its very core, it cannot last forever. There is also no honor among thieves. Which two things together guarantee that when the whole thing collapses at long last, one can expect the politicians to do more to the bankers than just call them dirty names. Ask the Knights Templar some time what happens when the king owes you more money than he's willing to pay. Labels: money  It seems they paid for everything else:As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.I think one of the reasons politicians love big government is because it's like having a personal bank account that replenishes itself every year. I mean, it's a noble thing to dedicate an entire city department to regulating loft apartments, but it's even better when you can use that money to pay for guards while you relax with your concubine in the Hamptons. Makes me wonder how a certain ex-president billed waiting-in-the-car overtime back in Arkansas. Of course, government money is not just for chasing paramours, just like campaign fund money is not just for paying lawyers to represent you in bathroom-sex cases. Regulating markets is a great way to get the companies in those markets to cough up money so you can travel to Paris, Hawaii, or Italy*. But there is a perfectly good reason for it all, as explained by a spokesman for GOP Rep. John Boehner: "privately funded travel by members of Congress is fully disclosed and 'leads to greater understanding of the issues' at no cost** to taxpayers." I guess if your elected officials are expected to run the world, the least they should do is see it first. If you put $3 trillion dollars a year into a big pile and divy it up by votes, you're going to attract the kind of people who want, more than anything, to spend that money. Sure, they'll spend some of it on you***, but there are more important things to spend it on as well. * while the profits that pay for the $500/night hotel rooms come from selling the government everything from spy drones to, I suspect, $500 toilet seats. ** Well, since it doesn't come from taxpayers, I guess there is such a thing as a free lunch after all. My mistake. *** for those votes. After taking it from you first, of course. Labels: politics  Labels: moonbats  The normally-careful Vox Day passes on some too-conventional wisdom:6) The Republicans have already lost the House, the Senate and staunch Spanish and Australian allies over the occupation, apparently they'll have to lose the White House before GS will consider the possibility that perhaps occupying Mesopotamia is not as popular a policy as he clearly believes it to be.And I truly hate to criticize it, because overall, both in this sentence and in the article, he's mostly right. But there is one piece of propaganda (used by both left and right) contained therein, and it's only fair that it be thus exposed. In order for the Republicans to have lost "staunch Spanish ... allies over the occupation," one assertion simply must be true: the occupation of Iraq must have been the deciding factor in the Spanish election. But it's not true. In fact, while the Socialists generally opposed occupying Iraq and while Anwar's Popular Party generally supported it, there is no evidence that leading up to the election that the occupation, even though it was unpopular, was a major factor in the election. In fact, up to a week before the election, Anzar was widely expected to be returned to office. Then on March 11th, a coordinated train-bombing attack took place in Madrid, killing 200 people and injuring 7x that number. Here's where the propaganda comes in. Opponents of the Iraqi occupation generally follow the line that Vox has taken, saying that Spaniards decided that the occupation Iraq meant their government needed to be changed. Proponents (e.g. Neal Boortz) added to that premise, dubbing the Spanish "typical Euro-weenies" for cutting and running in the face of the bombings*. But it was not until after the election** that Spain's new leader pledged to bring the troops home. So how could the occupation have been a deciding factor? It could not have been and was not. What happened is this: Spain has been suffering a terrorist campaign for decades by a group called ETA, made up of Basque nationalists, who want separation from Spain. As soon as the bombing occurred, Spanish authorities initially blamed the attacks on the militant Basque separatist group ETA, major-league opponents of the ruling party. And they did so without evidence. Even when evidence arose that it was not ETA and was possibly al Quaeda that was responsible, Aznar's government is alleged to have told its diplomats to continue blaming ETA publicly, a position that many Spanish voters found a little too convenient. When in the 2 days before the election, that position became untenable, a strange thing happened: Initially, the government was adamant the Basque separatist organisation Eta was responsible, but now it has been forced to admit that al-Qaeda has become the top suspect...I would drop the "may have." Prime Minister Aznar's public blaming of ETA, which quickly crumbled, combined with a large group of people who voted in defiance of the bombings and for the next most popular party after his, the Socialists, cost him the election. He made a huge, public error in judgment and simply did not have time to recover from it. Which means that the deciding factor in the Spanish election - the one that quickly turned the pro-occupation lead into a defeat - was not the Spanish policy in Iraq, but the Spanish government's reaction to a bombing that was not confirmed to have anything to do with the Spanish occupation of Iraq until after the election was over. Therefore while those occupation allies were lost, they were not lost over the occupation. It may seem like a distinction without a difference, and it is***, except when it is used as as evidence for precisely the point which Vox is making. * Shortly after the election, Boortz did have some facts right: Up until the time of the terrorist (apparently Islamic) attack on those trains in Spain the government of Jose Maria Aznar was holding a dominating lead in the polls. Spain's new leader will be Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. He is pledging to bring Spain's troops home from Iraq.But he was careful to re-misinterpret them quickly thereafter. ** He may very well have pledged it before somewhere, but I have not seen it mentioned in any pre-election news account, so I have to conclude that if he did make such a pledge, it was not a significant issue before the bombings. *** especially on the ground in Iraq. Labels: Iraq  Labels: demotivators  The Archbishop of Canterbury finds us a trifle wanton:THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday...Oh, that's rich. But if by "pouring resources in" you mean "plundering" and if by "administering" you mean "enslaving," then the Limies did a fantastic job in India. It's only a surprise that those ungrateful Indians eventually threw their betters out. Don't they know what's good for them? Of course, if American imperialists had our way, we would simply seize and monopolize Iraq's oil the way Britain did India's tea, unashamedly killing off or driving out everyone who said differently. Since we haven't, then we're not yet quite as bad as the Brits, are we old chap? But leaving India behind for a moment, we ought to visit Ireland* for an example of what England did when they could really sink their bad teeth into a country over a long period. Without getting too much into the religious angle**, suffice it to say that in the time of Cromwell, on one side you had Ireland (Catholic and Royalist) and on the other, England (Protestant and Parliamentarian). The English had more or less colonized Ireland since the time of Henry II (about 500 years) and had tried everything from setting up their own earls (e.g. the Geraldines and Ormonds), to depopulating entire counties (e.g. the Plantations under Bloody Mary, James I, and Charles I) and replacing them with English, but they had never managed to completely subjugate the Gaelic Irish - in fact, the longer the English stayed in Ireland the more Irish they became ("Fitzgerald," for example, is not a native Irish name, but an Anglo-Norman one). Now Cromwell and his New Model Army were about to give it another shot. English Civil Wars explains how the British "poured energy and resources into administering and normalizing" a city called Drogheda: The Parliamentarian army swept through the town, slaughtering officers and soldiers. The Royalist governor Sir Arthur Aston was bludgeoned to death with his own wooden leg, which the soldiers believed to be filled with gold coins. Catholic priests and friars were treated as combatants and killed on sight. Many civilians died in the carnage. A group of defenders who had barricaded themselves in St Peter's church in the north of the town were burned alive when the Parliamentarians set fire to the church. Around 3,500 people died in the storming of Drogheda; many of those who survived were transported to Barbados.Now lest one think that the English simply got carried away on this occasion, they did the same thing at Wexford - and in any other place the Irish defended themselves. But the finest example of English "administration" were the Penal Laws - which followed shortly afterwards - designed to disinherit Catholics (i.e. native Irish) in favor of the English Who Were Doing The Lord's Work in colonizing that country. Coincidentally, these were also known as "Anglicans," members in good standing of the very same Church of England over which our esteemed Archbishop reigns. The Penal Laws were designed to give the Irish a choice: become Anglican or starve to death. Irish Catholics were forbidden to own guns or horses, adopt orphans or foster children, inherit land from an Anglican (and Catholic land was often inherited by the nearest Anglican relative, whether the Catholic had children or no). The Gaelic Irish could not run schools, go to college, or learn a trade. They could not serve in any office from Parliament on down, including the military. In short, the Penal Laws were designed to suppress and impoverish the native Irish***, denying them any civic life, education, employment, or chance at material betterment. They were continually pushed to Connought, the westernmost and most barren part of the island, while the English re-settled the good land with good Anglicans. All for the benefit of the ruled, no doubt, which explains why the Irish came here instead of flocking to London. America does plenty wrong. We have done it in the past****, we are doing it in the present, and doubtless we will do it in the future, just like any other nation except maybe Iceland. But if we are going to aspire to do Imperialism half as well as the English did it, we've got a lot to learn*****. Nobody did it as effectively as the English did except maybe the Spanish, and few clergymen have benefited from that imperialism, historically, like the Archbishop of Canterbury. * The example of Ireland is why I am absolutely convinced that whatever its faults, and they are damned few, the American Revolution was not only justified but absolutely critical. It was also inevitable. And that's a good thing. ** Because as is most often the case, religion and power were intertwingled in such a way as to give a war about power (Parliament vs. the Stuarts and England vs. Ireland) a 'righteous' slogan. Religion is good for many things, not the least of which historically has been convincing some men to kill civilians so others can rule over their orphaned children. *** Lest anyone mistakenly think it was completely anti-Catholic rather than anti-Irish, I would remind him that the Penal Laws were simply an update to and expansion of the centuries-old Statutes of Kilkenny (you bastards), which had already banned speaking or writing in Irish, and English/Irish intermarriage, and Irish entry into many positions, upon pain of death. Not only was this done when both nations were Catholic, it was the only English pope (Adrian IV) who set the whole miserable affair in motion by granting the English king title to Ireland. **** Just ask any Native American. ***** I have no problem with people criticizing America's current (or former) policies, domestic or foreign. This blog is often nothing but that, though in the interests of the latter maybe one day I'll expound on the Founding Fathers' "Politics of Humanity" vs. Teddy Roosevelt's, Woodrow Wilson's, or George Bush's expansionism-for-their-own-good, which is thoroughly English in outlook. I also have no problem with the British per se, since I'm of English heritage and love the history of England far more than that of my own country. [bonus rant] However, for this pompous windbag of an Archbishop, who rules like some midget tyrant over a church created for no other reason than to give a corrupt, murderous, and psychotic King a legal divorce, to compare anyone unfavorably to the imperialism historically promoted by his very own church is laughable. Rather than flapping his lips in such a way he should be doing penance in the streets of Limerick, wearing a hairshirt, chanting in Gaelic and pounding his forehead with a 2x4, and begging forgiveness from the children of the orphans his church created over 5 centuries with cannon, sword, and bayonet. So here's an offer: once the US drives the native population out of Iraq, once it bans speaking and writing Arabic and teaching any Arab a trade of any sort, once it kills every Imam on sight and burns every Quran (and the person who owns it), once it purposely destroys all Arabic learning and culture, once it gives over all the territory of the country to connected Americans and their personal armies to pass to their children in perpetuity and makes anyone left behind their personal slaves over whom it gives the power of life and death, once we ban schools instead of building them, once we stop spending hundreds of billions in borrowed American dollars and pay for our government here with the plunder the Middle East, and once we do it for half a freaking millennium, purposely reducing an educated and hard-working population to abject poverty and starvation, then I'll be ready to listen to him make unflattering comparisons between us and Britain in its imperial heydey. Until then he'll simply serve as an object lesson of the absolute evil of an Established Church and of the cretinous and pedomorphic bureaucrats who feed off it like maggots on a roadside possum, who always have and always will. [/ bonus rant] Labels: history Labels: history  El Presidente misses a chance to be original:WASHINGTON (AP) — The turkey at the White House really draws a crowd. When President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden on Tuesday, he found visitors in every coveted seat, reporters standing three rows deep and staff members craning for just one good glimpse. They came for one of those signature White House moments: Bush saving the life of a huge, white, gobbling bird.What about the third bird? The anonymous, unloved* one that actually got eaten? Didn't it deserve a pardon as well? When Truman pardoned a turkey back in the freaking 40s, it was original, clever, and even cute. Now it's just silly. How sweet would it have been had Bush said, "That one looks good" and have it killed and plucked right on the Rose Garden lawn? That might be something worth watching. Happy Thanksgiving. * and probably emo as well.  (hat tip: Jozum)  A mock Supreme Court presages the real one:One jurist challenged Johnson, “I can’t defend myself in my own home in Washington, D.C.?”The Miller decision was the 1939 decision in which the Supreme Court decided the Second Amendment didn't mean what it said, and that the right to own and carry weapons was somehow a "collective" right rather than an individual one. Look, Second Amendment adjudication is not all that difficult; in fact, it takes a legal degree and years of training to be able to accurately misread it. But the reason it is seldom properly adjudicated is that it is, bar none, the most radical of all the amendments: the Second Amendment protects your right to oppose your own government with force. The amendment itself is fairly straightforward: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. If it sounds kind of funny at first, it's because we are not used to reading 18th Century English, with its odd capitalization and punctuation, so let's drop the capitalization as well as the first and last comma*. What we get is this: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The first phrase declares the purpose of the Amendment, "BECAUSE a well regulated militia, etc.," but we have a few definitions we have to make first in order to allow us to put it into context. The most important being "militia," I suppose, for which definition we will go to the constitution of my own state, Kansas**: "The militia shall be composed of all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five years, except such as are exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state." In short, the militia is and always has been "the people," the individuals who live in that state, who are able and willing to bear arms. It is not the army, it is not the national guard, it is simply every able-bodied male presumed physically able and willing to take part. Those who wrote Constitutions a century or two ago would not have dreamed of pressing women into military service***, but we'll just have to forgive them for that shortcoming. They lived before Gloria Steinem. The second question concerns what it means to be "well-regulated." It does not mean what we mean by "regulation" today, that the Federal government controls it. To regulate something means to make it regular or effective, which may require government intervention, but as Hamilton noted in Federalist 29, "little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." We are talking about no more than making sure people have a basic understanding and training in the use of their guns. So what we have so far is, "Because an effective, armed group of able-bodied citizens is necessary for the security of a free state," with "state" in this case meaning "a politically unified people," which could be a specific state or the whole nation****. We'll call it a "country." One can always argue whether it's true that a free country is better kept free by arming its citizens or rather by outsourcing its security to professionals, but that's what the words of the first clause state. Now we come to the one comma left, and because we have a because, therefore we need a therefore: "Because an effective, armed group of able-bodied citizens is necessary for the security of a free country, therefore..." Therefore what? Therefore the right of the people to keep and bear arm shall not be infringed. Four words to deal with here, and no, "people" is not one of them. Since the people keeping arms are the same as the people of the militia (which is why they are keeping arms), we have already defined that. Think of it as a two-fer. Rather they are "keep," "bear," "arms," and "infringed." To keep: It's actually a very easy word. First definition: "to hold or retain in one's possession; hold as one's own." In short, we're dealing with the individual's right to own and possess weapons. To bear: That one is rather vague, but I suspect that we will get no argument if we propose that definition 12, "to carry, bring" is what is in mind here. After all, one does not "suffer" weapons nor does one "birth" them. Arms: "weapons, especially firearms." Obviously this is what is being talked about. But what is lacking from the definition is "sawed-off shotguns" as per the Miller case or "handguns" per the DC gun ban, all the nits the judiciary likes to pick. We are talking about weapons as a class, especially firearms, and either you have the right to own and carry them all, or you do not. The amendment makes no distinction, nor should the court (but they will, just watch). Finally, the word "infringed." It's a tougher word, but it generally carries the idea of trespassing where one has no right, e.g. copyright infringement. "Shall not be infringed" is saying, "Shall not be trodden up, shall not be suppressed, shall not be breached, trespassed upon, or invaded." To put it positively, "shall be respected or deferred to," and since the Bill of Rights is a restriction on government, we'll add, "by the government." OK, so now we have our definitions, let's put it all together in 21st Century English: "Because an effective, armed citizenry is necessary for the security of a free country, the right of each person to own and carry firearms shall be respected by the government." Now, I submit to you that when the Second Amendment was passed, there was not a single proponent of the Bill of Rights that would oppose the above. That is exactly what the Second Amendment meant. There is no need for "strict scrutiny," there is no need for three-pronged tests, judicial bypasses, or differentiation of weapons classes. There is no "in public" clause, nor a 1000-foot buffer zone around airports, schools, or churches, nor an acceptible limit on the number of rounds that can be fit into a magazine. The Amendment, which I mentioned before was the most radical, says plainly that freedom is predicated on an armed populace and the government cannot step on that. But since freedom is most often grabbed by governments, that is the organization the people are primarily armed against*****. And if you think that through for 2 seconds, you'll quickly realize why the Supremes will likely come to precisely the opposite conclusion I do - or no conclusion at all - even while they take 20 times as many words to do so. UPDATE: Magician's Nephew presents an even better interpretation than mine in the comments: "Because an effective, armed citizenry is necessary for the security of a free country, the government may not restrict in any way the right of each person to own and carry any kind of weapon." Word to the Supremes. * Now lest you think that's subjective of me, I suggest you read Section 17 of Article I of the state constitution of Bethie's beloved state of Hawaii, which is obviously copying from the national, but updating the English. ** And I'm choosing Kansas because I want to spread it around here. I could cite about 40 other states that say nearly the same thing. *** Keep repeating "Everyone before me was a moron." **** the Greeks even had city-states, which always confused me as a tiny little historian. ***** which is what the American Revolution was fought against, although "Indians not taxed" probably figure in there as well. Labels: guns  Labels: republicans courtesy of cfdxprt, who informs me that it is "some shock diamonds behind a nozzle operating at Mach 4.7." Why is everyone here smarter than me? You're all just making fun of me, aren't you?  DirectorBlue notes a funny thing happened on the way to the presidency:CNN hits bottom and digs: All six debate questioners appear to be Democratic Party operatives. So much for "ordinary people, undecided voters". To paraphrase Junior Soprano, CNN is so far up the DNC's hind end, Howard Dean can taste hair gel.I don't that it's a scandal so much as it is a look into how in media and politics* nothing is left to chance. Debates and roundtables and "listening tours" are presented to the voters in order not that they learn something true, but that they learn what the politician wants them to learn, all the while thinking they are gaining insight into something real. And few and far between are the reporters who will step out and say what a charade the whole process is. One of them, the AP's Topeka correspondent John Hanna, offered the following blunt assessment about a listening tour held by Kansas' Governor Sebelius a few years ago, when she decided she needed to raise taxes and wanted to be seen being told by The People that it was necessary: In Topeka, the crowd included the usual suspects -- the professional advocates whose job descriptions include fighting for more money for education and social programs.'Educating' the Public says it all. It is the politicians' job decide how you need to be educated, the press' job to present the lessons in a digestible format, then the pollsters' job to determine how well the lesson has been learned. Then the people go to the polls so the "will of the people" can be determined and those elected can do what the people want, which is what they were told by the politicians in the fist place. Lather, rinse, repeat. If you want an argument for why the government should be in charge of running schools no more than it is in charge of running churches, there you go. (hat tip: Snoop) * to the extent that they can be distinguished. Labels: politics   cfdxprt questeth: "Do you plan to comment at all about the Liberty Dollar situation?"According to USA Today: Federal agents raided Liberty Dollar seizing gold, silver, files, computer equipment and even Ron Paul gold dollars. The gold dollars bear the likeness of the Republican presidential candidate although the Paul campaign has said that they did not give permission to Liberty Dollar to use his likeness and that they have no connection to Liberty Dollar.Not sure what to say yet. I actually have a few hundred in unredeemed currency that it looks like I'll eat. Simply another lesson in the innate suckage of paper money**. For those who don't know, last year, the US Mint declared the Liberty Dollar illegal, upon which pronouncement the Liberty Dollar sued the Treasury in federal court. Last week, the FBI and Secret Service seized all of Liberty Dollars assets - computers, bank accounts, even the warehoused gold and silver that backed paper liberty dollars, apparently leaving the legal holders of that money, those who hold Liberty Dollar certificates, in something of a legal limbo. I guess one easy way to ensure that you win a court case is to seize all the assets of your opponent so he can't sue you. * Two tons of gold dollars? That would be something. Actually, they were copper. Copper, gold, what's the dif? We've got a newspaper to run here. ** Before one argues that it proves only the suckage of private paper money, one should try to redeem a few US Treasury silver certificates, which state that "This certifies that there is on deposit in the Treasury of the United States of America X Dollars in silver payable to the bearer on demand.". Labels: money  (image hat tip: Captain Capitalism)  Discover magazine discovers an interesting theory:...some 5,000 years ago, a 3-mile-wide ball of rock and ice swung around the sun and smashed into the ocean off the coast of Madagascar. The ensuing cataclysm sent a series of 600-foot-high tsunamis crashing against the world’s coastlines and injected plumes of superheated water vapor and aerosol particulates into the atmosphere. Within hours, the infusion of heat and moisture blasted its way into jet streams and spawned superhurricanes that pummeled the other side of the planet. For about a week, material ejected into the atmosphere plunged the world into darkness. All told, up to 80 percent of the world’s population may have perished, making it the single most lethal event in history.While an interesting example of green car science*, it does make a certain amount of sense. According to the article there are 175 documented "flood myths," scattered from the Middle East (whence arises Noah and friends) to Europe to South America to Australia - pretty much anywhere there are people - and if it is true that a cataclysmic flood wiped out all but a few people, then all people living today are descendants of those survivors and therefore have a flood in their past to mythologize about. But it also makes sense that those who remained in the immediate area of the survivors and established a more-or-less static culture - which allowed them to record the event - would have a less fantastic** account than those who left the area and relied on oral tradition for millennia, like the Aborigines of Australia near Lake Tyres, whose myth states: A giant frog once swallowed all the water, and no one else could get anything to drink. After many other animals failed, eel, with his remarkable contortions, made the frog laugh, releasing the water. Many were drowned in the flood. The whole of mankind would have perished if the pelican had not picked up survivors in his canoe.I suspect, however, for such a theory to turn out to be true it will demand a) a far different distribution of peoples or continents than currently exists, and b) a far greater number of people killed. If everyone today is where they were 5000 years ago, and if flood myths are the result of an asteroid falling off the coast of Africa, one should not expect to find a story like this from Alberta: The world was flooded, and one man and one woman survived on a raft on which they collected all kinds of animals and birds. The man sent a beaver (or, some say, a muskrat) diving to the bottom, and it brought up a little mud. The man shaped this to form a new world. It was at first so small that a little bird could walk around it, but it grew and grew.Which might as well be the biblical version, as it has but a few people, a collection of animals purposely saved by them, and animals sent on a fact-finding mission by the survivor... a coincidental recollection indeed. The only significant*** difference is that it completely lacks the Biblical version's moral causes. To explain such a similarity, it's necessary to postulate that people are not found today where they necessarily were in the past - a flood that would have reached the Rocky Mountains of Canada would not likely leave ANY survivors in the plains of Europe, not to mention the river basins of Mesopotamia. They may have brought it from a shoreline area that was actually inundated. Then again, if they are talking about the very same flood, if everyone is talking about the very same flood, they may have brought their memories, told in story form for generations, very far indeed. Maybe all the way from the mountains of Ararat. And if so, it would appear that Los Alamos is harboring closet creationalists. What about the separation of church and state, I ask? * By which I mean approaching the question as "if the theory is true we ought to find X" rather than looking specifically for data that would disprove said theory. Doing "real" science when dealing with matters of history and archeology is unsurprising difficult as they are not sciences. ** as if there could be anything unfantastic about such a flood. But you have to admit, the creator of the Earth flooding it is less fantastic than a laughing frog doing so. *** I don't consider the survivor sending out a muskrat rather than a dove significant. Your mileage may vary. Labels: science  Labels: history  Disturbed00 offers a strange and oft-repeated* challenge:Christians: ... what about the fact that Jesus (your son of God, Lord of Lords, etc) saying that you must hate your parents, family, etc if you wish to be his disciple? As stated in Luke 14:26. Why must you hate? Your God and savior said this and it is obviously perfect and not up to interpretation, it must be followed...the word in the scripture is miseo, which means "HATE".Disturbed00 is correct that the Greek word Jesus uses** in Luke 14:26 when he says, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple," means "hate". I touched on this one before but never gave it a full run, so what better time than tonight? I'm pretty tired of studying the Williamite Wars anyway. But first, I would like to offer a statement from a famous Anglican clergyman, Jonathan Swift, who modestly proposed that the problems of overpopulation in Ireland could be solved in a very clever manner: [T]he remaining hundred thousand [infants] may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.One can run through all manner of dictionaries, checking every word, and never detect therefrom that Swift is proposing anything other than that the excess children of Ireland be literally fattened up and eaten by the rich. And yet is that truly the case? Let the reader decide, but only after understanding the real problems that Swift had dealt with in other places. That Jesus is using a similar rhetorical tool ought to be obvious for a number of reasons, the first being that literally hating one's parents has never been a big part of the zeal of the newly converted. One will look in vain for first-century mobs slaughtering their parents in obedience to the plain words of Jesus. Why is that? Because his audience, sharing his Semitic culture, understood that wasn't really what he was proposing. They may have looked back to Gen 29:30-31 and found there that Jacob "loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with [Laban] yet seven other years. And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated..." It's the same word - when the Jews translated their Hebrew into the Greek Septuagint they used "miseo" too - but the context obviously illustrates a figure-of-speech parallel between "hated" and "loved less." Leah was "hated" relative to the love shown another, but it does not mean that Jacob wished to kill Leah. It doesn't even mean that he didn't continue to love her. Or they may have just looked at the broader context of what Jesus was teaching, that there is a real cost to discipleship that must be borne, and understood the figure of speech that Jesus is using here. One must love one's parents - such is a natural and assumed part of the passage - and yet to be a disciple one must love Jesus more, follow Jesus more, obey Jesus more. One must be willing to set aside something, even something as dear as familial love, placing them in a secondary relative position just as Jacob placed Leah second. To say that the words of Jesus are "not up to interpretation" is just as silly as saying the words of Swift must likewise be taken literally. No one - not Jesus, not Swift, not you, not me - speaks literally all the time and maybe, as we might notice if we were to really pay attention, even most of the time. * by which I mean that I doubt he was reading Luke one day and thought, "Hmm ... this doesn't make sense." He obviously got it from a site that caters to this sort of thing. ** Ignoring just for the moment that even in Luke this is probably a translation, as Jesus spoke Aramaic rather than Greek. Labels: bible  But 21 years is not nearly enough time with Rogue. Happy Anniversary, my love. Labels: republicans  If someone reveals our secret location, we're sunk:A task force hacking through the Cleveland area's tangled web of mortgage fraud has so much work that it has opened a full-time, high-tech command center...Certainly the jolly fraudsters of Penguin Homes and Joker Mortgage have been trying to discover the secret location of the ARM Cave for years. It's a good thing we can rely on the press to keep important things secret. (hat tip: Mish)  (hat tip: Castle Argghhh) Labels: history  I'm way cool Beavis, but I cannot change the future:US President George W. Bush predicted in an interview Tuesday that the battered US dollar will get stronger because the US economy is robust.We have a strong-dollar policy. The market sets the rates. That self-contradictory statement has been the Bush mantra for several years now, and it never seems to occur that having a policy that is supposed to lead to a strong dollar is the opposite of letting the market set the rates - unless, of course, the government actually does those things that would naturally lead to the market* setting a high price for a dollar, like raising interest rates and controlling the issuance of dollars. Neither of those have exactly been hallmarks of Bush's administration. But what is interesting is Bush's fourfold reason for why the "underpinnings' of the US economy are strong, as if that is the deciding factor of the strength of the currency. Low inflation figures are fraudulent, job growth numbers are fraudulent, and GDP growth numbers are fraudulent***. The only number Bush relies on that is honestly measured is interest rates, which are low and dropping - and that situation leads to a lower dollar. But it's the numbers he leaves out that are the problem. We have hundreds of billions in off-budget expenditures. We have trillions in unfunded liabilities. We need $60 billion a MONTH from overseas to cover our trade and current account deficits. All of those numbers have gotten measurably worse under Bush, with no end in sight****. The market sets currency exchange rates. That, in this age of floating currencies, is axiomatic. But in the face of his strong dollar policy the dollar has dropped 40% under Bush's watchful gaze. If that's a strong dollar policy, I would truly hate to see what a weak dollar policy would look like. * We could always do like the Japanese and interject ourselves directly into the market, but they a) do it to hold the yen down, a b) have lots of dollars to play with. Do we have trillions of yen to buy back our excess dollars?** ** No. *** Being based, in part, upon the GDP Deflator, which attaches the missing inflation numbers to GDP growth. **** When it arrives, it's going to be a cast iron bitch, which is why the gov't does everything it can to keep the end from being seen. Labels: economy  A Mr. Bulk-E message to all XXX Employees: Helen Thomas, legendary White House correspondent, will be presenting the seventh annual Women in Government Lecture Series on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at noon in McCray Recital Hall. Doors will open at 11:15 am. Books will be available for purchase before and after the presentation, and Ms. Thomas will be available to sign them after the presentation. For questions, please contact Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxx@xxxxstate.edu or x4181. UPDATE: Hell, no, I didn't go, even after my boss gave me that "Really? Are you SURE you're not going?" look. There are few* people whom I find less interesting - and more overrated - than Helen Thomas. Longevity, in my book, is not an asset, but is occasionally** just an indication that the person has no sense of when it's time to leave. I spent the lunch hour typing up my notes for my Irish History test Friday. UPDATE the Second: Boss: "Yeah, it was kinda what you expected." Me: "Uh-huh." Boss: "All she did was bomb on Bush the whole time." Me: "Uh-huh." Boss: "Did she do that when Clinton was President?" Me: "No, but she did it when Cleveland was President." Boss: "Who?" * Molly Ivins, Bill Moyers, and Bill O'Reilly probably fall into the same class, along with a few others whose names fortunately escape me at the moment. ** Nearly always.   In quoting the Amazing Disappearing Explanation of US Job number growth (before it amazingly disappeared) John Crudele notes a sad milestone:November 6, 2007 -- Who says the U.S. doesn't export anything nowadays?Rather than being a knee-slapper, what it means is that we are now in a position where we can teach Central and South American countries a thing or two about how to run a crooked government. Ruminate on that a bit.  So I eliminated the link offering cash advances... y'all are not only smart, but smart enough not to pay too much for credit as well... (hat tip: JD)  At an extended family gathering today, the subject of St. Hillary's health care plan came up. A certain relative, filled with ready numbers and the confidence that arises therefrom, was absolutely certain that it would prove to meet the health care needs of Americans far better than not only the current system but any other system in place anywhere, and by the fire in his eyes I could tell he was primed to take on all comers.I, for my part, walked away. It's not that I could not have argued. Despite the assurances of Mr. Confident that St. Hillary's plan is not socialized medicine, what little I have read of it* leads me to believe that even so it will suffer that bane of all socialist programs: the inability to efficiently allocate resources because of a lack of pricing information. "Single payer" programs always suffer monopoly pricing because they are, at their heart, monopolies, and without the input of market prices to tell where more or fewer resources are needed always result in a sorry combination of abundance and scarcity**. It cannot be any other way, as no committee can possibly make decisions as efficiently as 300 million people acting in their own self-interest. My suspicion is that her program will combine the effectiveness of the border patrol with the customer-service skills of the TSA, resulting in a whole nation full of VA hospitals. But I guess it was just too nice a day to spend it banging my head against a wall. * Which is very little aside from what explanation/advertisement appears on her website. ** Usually an abundance of statues of Lenin and a scarcity of bread.  (hat tip: Kris)  After all that typing, I figured it best to move this up front:Huck notes Dr. Paul's riposte: "Consumer prices are going up, no matter what your CPI says." The CPI is an index designed to remove evidence of inflation from consumer prices. It is absolutely incredible how one can measure the price of anything specific from apples to gasoline to laundromats, with the single - and temporary - exception of consumer electronics, and one will find they rise, year after year, at a double-digit rate. Yet once they are aggregated, they come out at about 1.5%/yr. It's freaking criminal. As of now there are few - either in government or the financial press - who don't take the CPI numbers as gospel. When it becomes widely accepted that they are almost completely unrelated to the thing that they claim to measure, all hell is going to break loose. The biggest problem in Subprime* is not that some people can't pay their mortgages, but that no one knows what the debts, sliced and diced and packaged as they are, are worth. No one knows what's in them, so they can't price them. And when you can't price something, and when no one wants it, the value is zero. Now, fast forward to the day it becomes widely accepted that CPI is worthless, that inflation is far higher, maybe 5x higher, but no one really knows. How do you price government bonds? Sure, there will be a market and it will be far more liquid than subprime ever was. But the price will also be far, far lower than today** because without reliable information upon which to make financial decisions, people will err on the side of safety, they will simply not accept 5% for 30 years when they fear that inflation is twice that or more. The buyers, as they say, will go on strike until they are confident that they have honest numbers upon which to make financial decisions. These banks think the writeoffs they are taking today are bad***, but they have not seen anything yet. * It's bigger than just subprime but that moniker will have to serve for now. ** Meaning interest rates will be far higher than today. *** And they are correct. Labels: economy Labels: economics, republicans  The Fed washes its hands:(Reuters) - Federal Reserve Board Governor Frederic Mishkin said on Friday that monetary policy is not responsible for creating financial crises.If we assume that monetary policy is not responsible* for creating financial crises, how can we assume that monetary policy has any effect at all? It's not a silly question but one so basic as to be oft overlooked. Any action performed upon any thing - from pounding on a nail to performing brain surgery, but certainly including monetary policy - can be done correctly or it can be done incorrectly. If that action is done correctly, it will have beneficial** results. If it is done incorrectly, it must have the opposite (i.e. adverse) results, correct? In the case of monetary policy, those adverse results are, in fact, the "crisis" with which the Fed is trying to deal today. To argue that monetary policy has "nothing to do" with financial crises is to argue that either a) monetary policy cannot be done incorrectly, or b) monetary policy has no effect on financial markets. The Fed's actions show their words to rubbish, for in the case of a) there would be no need to meet to discuss or decide anything because all courses of action would be good ones; in the case of b), if what they are doing has no effect, why are they doing it? Monetary policy is of course more complicated that 'correct' or 'incorrect,' but that is exactly what makes financial crises not just possible but inevitable when the Central Bank starts manipulating markets to avoid specific consequences, like recessions. Because there are always side effects to any action, the next action is likely as not going to have to be a reaction to an unintended side effect of a previous action***. I'm actually rather relieved that he didn't take any questions, because someone who claims that either he cannot make a mistake or that if he does it doesn't matter, doesn't have any answers worth listening to. The only thing one really needs to learn from this Fed governor is that the Blame Game is just getting underway, and he doesn't intend to accept ANY of it. * Apparently they just do it in their free time, or for extra credit. ** Meaning it will bring about the results intended. It may (will) also have unintended secondary results that are less beneficial. *** e.g. the Fed dropping interest rates today is a response to bank troubles caused by them lending easy money to people who could not afford it, which was a consequence of the Fed dropping interest rates last time. Labels: economics  This is why "Teach Our Daughters to Shoot" Day is a much better idea. (Hat tip: TerryMum) Labels: feminism  A rich man tells a sob story:The United States' second-richest man has delivered a blunt message to the Bush administration: he wants to pay more tax.Yeah, I know, tilted toward the rich and blah, blah, blah. Buffett is a typical liberal in that rather than changing his own behavior*, he wants to change the world so that everyone else should be forced to do by law what he won't himself do voluntarily. For the record, he is the world's most successful investor, bar none, and built his company, Berkshire Hathaway, from nothing. His net worth is $52 billion because that's what the stock of BH he owns is worth, not because he has $52b in the bank. But Buffett has purposely, legally shielded his $52 billion from Uncle Sam. Because it's all capital gains and he has not sold the stock, he has paid no tax, just like if you bought a stock that has gone up and have not sold it, you have paid no tax. If you don't have income, you don't have an income tax. If he wants to pay taxes, all he has to do is sell some stock, just like everyone else. But he has not. In fact, he never will, because in a breathtaking display of hypocrisy Buffett, while arguing publicly for the death tax, moved to forever avoid taxation on the above stocks by using a loophole to donate them at their appreciated value to his friend Bill Gates' Foundation**. But he has a chance to redeem himself, as his company has recently received a fortunate notice from the IRS: The IRS has completed its audits of the 1999 through 2004 tax returns and has proposed adjustments to increase Berkshire's tax liabilities which Berkshire has protested. The examinations are in the IRS' appeals process..."Which Berkshire has protested?" Come on, Warren, here's your chance to pay more taxes and you don't even have to change the world to do it. (Hat Tip: Best of the Web) * For example, if he thinks the tax burden on his secretary is too high, he could always pay her more to make up for it. ** The idea of the world's second-richest man giving all his money to the richest still cracks me up.  Labels: history  At JFK's funeral, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (pbh) is alleged to have said that being Irish is to know that the world will break your heart.The Irish must be Vikings fans: Minnesota Vikings kicker Ryan Longwell thought he had the distance to kick a career-long 57-yard field goal. Instead Antonio Cromartie went the distance, 109 yards.The worst part about being a Vikings fan is not knowing that you'll never win a Super Bowl*, but rather it's knowing that every record that cannot be further broken will be broken against the Vikings. Cromartie certainly "went the distance." At 109 yards, another may tie his record, but no one will break it. There simply is no more room on the field. When Tony Dorsett ran the longest play ever from scrimmage, 99 yards, it was against the Vikings, and no one will ever break it because there is simply no more room on the field. When Steve Young ran the longest QB touchdown ever**, it was against the Vikings. When the Vikings appear on TV commercials that show "great plays," they are inevitably on defense. I don't know that it's better that the Vikings won yesterday***. I do know that it's worse that the two coaches in the greatest game played this year were both assistants with the Vikings passed over so we could recruit great coaches like Denny Green, Mike Tice, and Brad Childress-Omigodus. The Vikings will always hold the record for the best team who blew every chance to be the best, but never passed up a chance to make the highlight real - playing defense on great offensive plays. * The Vikings remain the only team that has lost 4 Super Bowls without winning one. ** Which could theoretically be broken, as it was only 50 yards or so. The picture of a wooden-legged QB scoring with 11 purple jerseys hanging off him will not be topped. *** Yes I do, and it is. Labels: vikings  Sorry so quiet. I'm in the Bears' den* until Wednesday, an ill place where everything is wired for internet, which is really useful so long as you don't mind paying $13 a day for access. Even my $50/night flophouse motel in Coeur d'Alene has free internet**, why can't the Sheraton, at 3x that, offer the same? A threadbare ham sandwich costs $12, the bottle of water in your room $6. What I don't understand about the American city is how anyone can afford to live in one - everyone here is either a cab driver or a panhandler, I think. But the conference provides all the food you can eat and all the Moldavi Cabernet Savignon you can drink for free, so I've got no complaints on that score.But the one thing I do love about cities is the old architecture. The building pictured here is the London Guarantee and Accident Building, about 2 blocks from my hotel, right on the Riverwalk. It's about 15 stories high*** and concave on both sides (this is just the front) with what looks like a 3-story Romanesque temple on top. It is truly a thing of beauty. As was Soldier Field, which I pass by bus 4 times a day to and from the conference. The original facade remains in place, over which has been built an "ultra-modern" expansion - it looks like a giant egg or a UFO just settled on top of it. I would hate to be the archaeologist who, excavating that building 5 centuries from today, has to explain that paradox. We may not build them pretty today, but it's somehow reassuring that America used to have that skill. * Which, of course, did not keep me from the traditional Wearing O' the Purple yesterday. 296 yards? Don't worry, he'll do it again as soon as the coach discovers that it might be a good idea to run AD 30 times every game. They'll pass for 500 a game as soon as they discover the trick of fake-pitching to him on every pass play. ** So long as you don't mind sitting outside the office on a hard wooden bench so the connection doesn't drop. *** and is therefore dwarfed by rectangular concrete and glass monstrosities, some of them half-built, in every direction.  Labels: demotivators  An embarrassing paragraph disappears from the NY Times:"Adding to the uncertainty about the report, most of the job gain — 103,000 of the 166,000 net new jobs — came from an estimate that the Labor Department makes each month about how many jobs were added by new businesses. The Labor Department did not actually find evidence of these jobs; it assumed they were created based on historical patterns. In October, for instance, it assumed that new businesses in the construction sector added 14,000 jobs and new financial services businesses added 25,000. Given the weakness in these sectors right now, it is possible* that these numbers will be revised down later."There are many possible reasons for its disappearance, none of which demand a conspiratorial mindset to accept. But it is interesting that the amazing disappearing explanation of the "birth-death model**," though not named, is still the best description I've seen of it in the popular press. In fact, it's nearly the only explanation that reveals the fact that when the government releases job statistics, they are not releasing a simple count of jobs but the output of a mathematical model that includes such a count as one input. But it is the "revised down later" part that is the most misleading part of the whole government jobs reporting scheme. As the Times noted elsewhere in the original article, the current month's number, "which beat even the highest estimates, follows a downwardly revised 96,000 gain in September, which was revised down from the previous estimate of 110,000." So while the architects and benefactors of the current job growth numbers talk up those numbers, behind the scenes (and once the reporters have gone away), they quietly mark the numbers down. But why? If you're going to fake numbers, why bother to (partially) correct them later? There actually is a very simple explanation: marking down prior numbers allows you to report "growth" even if the numbers don't change over time. If this month's number is reported at 100, I can report growth next month by reporting the same 100, so long as I downwardly revise last month's number to 90 when no one is looking. Yes, the memories of financial reporters are that short. * It is not possible; it is certain. How anyone can look at the current real estate market, with a record number of homes for sale, an record number of empty homes for sale, a record number of canceled contracts to build, a 50% drop in the hottest markets, and the unavailability of subprime and jumbo loans and still conclude - or believe the conclusions of others - that construction jobs are expanding is beyond me. ** Based on the assumed birth and death of companies, not individuals. That in turn is based on an assumption of where we are in the business cycle. The model's most egregious flaws were exposed very well by Mish some months back. Labels: economy  McPaper points out the need for another little Dutch boy:Amid growing losses from subprime mortgages at the giant financial services firm, (Charles) Prince, 57, retired under pressure on Sunday. He said it was "the only honorable course for me to take." ...For a problem that was declared "contained*" some months ago, there sure seems to be a lot of water sloshing around Wall Street. But the fact that a) big names are still being fired**, and b) we still have no idea how big the problem is, leads me to believe that it is very big indeed. As I mentioned before, subprime is one fuse on the debt bomb, not the bomb itself. We still have piles and piles of barrels of derivative gunpowder waiting to go off (or rather, waiting to for the admission that they have already gone off). Only 60 more shopping days until Christmas. Might a suggest a shop-vac might be in order? * Contained to three continents, one wag pointed out. ** I'm sorry, honorably and involuntarily retired. Labels: economy  Elliot Spitzer's aides illustrate two important truths:ALBANY - Once they got driver's licenses under Gov. Spitzer's plan, illegal immigrants could arm themselves to the teeth simply by lying about their status, gun experts said Thursday...And those are 1) there are pyramids of legislation, and 2) arguments are fungible. The latter simply means that arguments for or against legislation can pass freely between opposing groups like a doobie at a Bob Marley concert. Gun Control opponents* often argue that making purchasing a gun difficult just makes people buy them on the streets** while proponents of gun control, like the same Elliot Spitzer, propose that the way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to "Impose additional requirements on gun dealers..." So why is Spitzer now saying that exactly the same argument suddenly doesn't apply because the criminals are not citizens? Because the first truth is that there is a pyramid, a priority scale, as it were, and it's ok to sacrifice principles from lower on the pyramid so long as one is moving up. Guns are bad, but it's ok to promote gun control arguments that you have previously fought against*** as long as you do so on behalf of illegal immigrants, who are higher up the pyramid. That's why the whole "debate" election culture such a joke, as if the men picking on Hillary or Dennis Kucinich saying he saw a UFO are any more meaningful than a Marx Brothers movie. We are not electing a person who believes a certain thing or will even do a certain thing, because positions are interchangeable and promises meaningless. Rather, we are rather electing a performing monkey who, we hope, will entertain us for four years while not getting too many of us killed or making us too poor. * Who are no better in this case. Shame on them for arguing against the ability of anyone to purchase, own, or transport guns. They ought to know better. ** Gun laws keep people from buying guns legally, not from buying guns. *** It was exactly the same case we had with the filibuster mess: as soon it was Democrats filibustering judges rather than Republicans, the parties simply exchanged arguments.  I was momentarily mad at Jaley this morning. Well, mad isn't quite the word, it's more like instantaneously annoyed. As I stepped into the shower, I saw that she had left one of those plastic Halloween rings with a spider on them - you've seen them - in the tub. Now it's not just that she leaves her stuff all over, but I'd hate for that thing to get stuck in the drain. I hate plumbing enough already without actually have to do any of it.I was still in the process of imagining myself trying to dig that spider ring out of the trap when the damned thing moved and I noticed that there was no ring attached to the spider. He was the real-deal, about the biggest non-tarantula I've ever seen in my life. But big as he was, he turned out to be no match for Naked Plunger Man.  That no commentary can do them justice. (hat tip: Kevin DePew) |
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When you need a picture of 'the one that got away,' try Lyin' Your Bass Off. |
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