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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
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 Labels: demotivators  So I just talked to my Market Research professor about the textbook, because we found an error* in class and he mentioned that he would have to tell the author about it. He had mentioned before that he knows the author pretty well**, so I told him after class that I had found a few more errors (including a couple not mentioned here) and asked if he wanted to forward those along. His eyes lit up and he rubbed his hands together. "Oh, yeah," he said. "That would make him really mad." I like my professor, but I'm not sure I want to be encouraging that kind of behavior... * Which I didn't think was an error as much as a really, really dumb hypothesis. ** It turns out they are writing a textbook together on another subject. Labels: history  Fish is nothing if not succinct:Only 3 points to go!I feel like I'm watching one of those movies where the hero starts blasting away and never bothers to reload, and you're like, "He's only got three bullets left," and there's an army of bad guys just over the horizon that you can see but he can't. Of course, in the movie the hero kills them all with the jawbone of an ass or something, but somehow I don't think Bernanke's middle name is "Samson." The hardest 'disconnect' between being a student of history and living thru history is in realizing that what took 18 months or 5 years then takes 18 months or 5 years now. As students we cover it in a couple of paragraphs, with all the causes and effects neatly connected and laid bare. But with what we see before us, not so much. It's still going to take us the whole time to watch it. Which is fine, because it really does give people a chance to plan, even to react. This is going to sound weird, but history is surprisingly forgiving. Sure, we're never getting another chance to load the boat with sub-$300 gold, but we may see $700 again*. Nothing goes in a straight line. We may** be in for a short-term turnaround here. Sentiment on the dollar is so negative and the market so weak that I should not be surprised if we see a short-term reversal. Unfortunately, that does not change anything but the time scale. Bernanke only has three bullets left. The first money copter does not arrive for 4 months at best. And in the real world, 4 months is a long freaking time. * for the record, I bought my last sub-$600 a year ago. If it drops 20% from ANY point, I'll be buying it like Mitt Romney buying votes. ** wow, is THAT a weasel word. Labels: economy  Labels: democrats  "The result is that of all Jack Daniels sold is now sold outside the United States."You read that conclusion correctly. The ironic thing about market researchers is the importance they put on delivering useful information to their customers. Sure, market researchers collect data, but data is not information until it's put into a form that the business can use as a basis for intelligent decision-making. So there's a really insightful "Research Snapshot" on page 22* that reveals all manner of data about the how people around the world consume JD. At a dinner party, 4 or 5 Japanese will drink a bottle of JD as a dinner beverage. Aussies mix it with soft drinks. In China, they drink cheap knockoffs. And that's all well and good, but one useful piece of information might be how much Jack Daniels is consumed outside the US as opposed to within it. Coincidentally, that is precisely the information that has been omitted from their conclusion. * of the same textbook that misdefined "research" on page 5. Labels: science   [beser] Today my History class took a feild trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Its a museum showing kids not to be prejudice and all that good stuff.[beser] Anyways, one exhibit is two doors next to each other. One door has a sign hanging over it saying "Those with prejudice walk through this door" The other door's sign said "Those without prejudice walk through this door". Obviously the door for people without prejudice isn't openable because as the tour guide says "Everyone has prejudice". [beser] So, I start tugging on the door and say "What the hell is wrong with this damn door, did some damn Jew make this?" and the tour guide kicked me out and i had to sit in the bus for 15 minutes... Labels: racism Labels: guns  You can't lose if you don't play:LONGBOAT KEY, Fla. — ... Mr. Giuliani's risky strategy of skipping the first half-dozen presidential-nomination contests has gone nearly according to plan — three different candidates have won. Each state so far has been a battle between just two or three candidates*, and none so far has built lasting momentum.My plan for winning the nomination goes even further, as I plan to skip ALL the primaries and caucuses. It's risky, I know, but so far I have succeeded in evading victory in every one of them. * also known as "people actually running for President," and none of which has been named "Giuliani." Labels: republicans  (hat tip: fish)  A rerun from two years ago, not because I'm lazy but because its... no, actually it's because I'm lazy.New Era Investor ruminates on the new year: Every New Year's Day our church is given a verse for the year ahead which we hope is meaningful perhaps even prophetic... (This year) that verse was Haggai chapter 2 verse 9, but as I consider the year ahead for gold and silver, verse 8 leapt at me as well. Here are the two verses combined:Now I'm pretty sure God doesn't have a target price for MSFT and if he's in the market at all he's probably short GM. And I'm always amused by those (NOT New Era Investor, BTW) who try to enlist God on their side to make their stocks go up or their team win. God is probably not all that interested in tipping footballs to help you win the office pool. That being said, I'm sure we'd all be better investors if we could take market advice from God. So let me take this saw out on this limb and give "God's perspective" on the gold market (checking for lightening right now. Nope, sky is clear. Here we go.) God is not so much interested in markets as he is in truth, honesty, and fair play. How does that work into the gold market? It's actually pretty simple: gold and silver - historical and biblical money - are measured in dollars. It used to be that a dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold or silver. In that case, where the dollar simply stood in for metals, it was what the Bible calls a just measure or a just weight. When you took your beans or sheep or whatever you were selling to market, you got a certain amount of gold (or dollars exchangeable for gold). If the deal was fair (i.e. if the scales were not cheats) buyer and seller both came out ahead. Economics is not a zero-sum game, but a positive sum game, and I believe God designed it (and us) that way to facilitate peaceful and voluntary interactions and relationships. So when "dollar" meant "gold" it was true money and received the blessing of God, as he says in Proverbs 16:11: "A just weight and balance are the LORD’S: all the weights of the bag are his work." Remember, God is interested in principles, and one of the foremost is that we deal honestly with one another. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: we decided that paper was better than gold. Gold keeps the peace because it makes war expensive. Gold preserves freedom because it makes government expensive. Government doesn't like that - it likes war and more government - which is why the first thing that goes out the window in times of war and government growth is gold. Since the Federal Reserve was foisted on the nation, the value of the dollar has gone from 1/20th of an ounce of gold to 1/535th* of one. The dollar has depreciated by 96%. It is, in fact, a false measure, because you never know from day to day what your dollar will buy (you only know that it will buy less than yesterday). We call that economic phenomenon "inflation," but God calls it theft. He calls it a false weight or "divers" (different) weights. And He has a few things to say about false weights, spoken in perfect 16th century English: Le 19:36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.The practice referred to was simple. A man would have two weights, a big and a small. One was for weighing the gold given to him, the other for weighing the gold he was giving. In this way, he screwed his neighbor by reducing the value of his money. This practice led to coinage, which standardized weights and measures. Then government started debasing that currency (taking out some of the good metal) until we were left with the copper-core tokens we have today that look like silver and gold but are not. In other words, government committed an "abomination" by creating a system whereby workers got continuously screwed, just like the seller facing a buyer with false weights. They work more and more and get less value even if they get more currency. That's why prices go up: government is creating these paper nothings with impunity, which steals the value of the ones in your wallet. Now, is that going to make God happy? I think not. We have created an entire economic system based on the very thing God warned against: false weights and measures. What has this to do with the gold market? Everything. The gold market is a measurement of the strength of the dollar. When Gold goes up, it's mostly because the dollar is going down. Gold is a measure of inflation (or the expectation of inflation) and gold going up continuously means that the false measure known as the dollar is seeking its true value: nothing. I'm not going to pull a Pat Robertson and say that God is going to judge the dollar. God has not clued me in about that. But I do think that God gave us gold and silver for a reason, and that it is perfect for commerce for a reason, and that it is beneficial for human relationships for a reason, and that if we ignore those reasons and his gifts - including gold and silver money - then we are bound to suffer for that. God is not bullish on Gold because it's a good investment, but I do think he's bullish on it because it's honest. A just weight is "God's work," and I think it is for that reason a good investment. Likewise I think he's bearish on the dollar because it is a false weight. If we continue to debase our money, then we will suffer, not God's wrath, but the effects which are built into God's just universe. God has no need to step in and smite us: he has designed humans to work a certain way and when they ignore that, they bring bad effects on themselves. When this whole phony edifice collapses, a lot of people are going to claim that God has judged us (and it might be true, I don't know) and a lot of people are going to blame God for the horrible circumstances that follow. But like the people of Jerusalem in 587bc who, after repeated warnings to leave the city decided to stay and ended up eating their own children when Nebuchadnezzar besieged it, we can ignore God's warnings and persist in doing things our way. The effects of that on all of us will be as horrible as they are foreseeable. There is no new thing under the sun. But don't bother blaming God when the mess we created lands us in poverty. He'll be on the phone to his broker, shorting the yen and the Euro anyway. * As of 1/28/08, 1/915th of an ounce and falling. (hat tip: Snoop) Labels: republicans  The KC Star has a little widget to calculate how much helicopter money is coming your way.Hat Tip: 3am UPDATE: I thought you said crossing the streams was bad: "I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. But if it does not, then there will be more to come," said Pelosi, D-Calif. I love this plan. Let's do it! Labels: economy  Over in the Fire Swamp I posted a long-winded defense of treating the Constitution as literally as possible. There's no need to re-post it here when you can read it with a click. But for those of you who don't have and don't want an L.Com account, feel free to comment here.Labels: politics  Labels: moonbats  I've heard of being negative, but sheesh:Heart disease deaths in the USA have fallen below the American Heart Association's prevention goal for 2010, and deaths from strokes are nearing their own record low, the AHA said Tuesday...Let's see if I can get this straight: heart disease deaths "plummet" (the title of the article) at 25.8%. But Black guys are "not benefiting," weighing in at a mere 23.8%. I guess a 24% reduction in the death rate is absolutely worthless if someone else managed to get above that? But I think it's USA Today's own fault that black guys are still dying of heart disease. After all, it was USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux* who said about Clarence Thomas: I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that’s how I feel.I mean, with USA Today giving away the secret of killing them, how can black guys expect to compete? * Winner of the 1994 "I’m a Compassionate Liberal But I Wish You Were Dead" Award. Labels: racism   The Star Tribune explains modern macroeconomics in one sentence:The call has gone out for Americans to shop the economy into recovery.It sounds crazy, insane, but only because that's exactly what it is. The Star Tribune has distilled the essence of the Yale MBA and the Princeton PhD*, the CNBC talking head and the professional economist, into a single sentence**. All the polls that are concerned with 'confidence,' all the schemes to cut taxes and write rebate checks, the lowering of interest rates to increase home values, are concerned with one thing: getting the consumer to consume. And it may sound like the height of arrogance for little old uneducated me to stand here and tell you that most of the biggest brains in the modern world of finance are not just wrong but exactly wrong; I'm willing to live with that, and I say this: if you consume everything, eventually you will have nothing. There are really only two ways to approach macroeconomics, the study of the 'general' aspects of economic activity, as opposed to, say, the family budget, which is microeconomics. The first approach concentrates on, nee worships, GDP***. That is to say that it worships a number that represents economic 'activity'. It worships 'doing something.' It worships movement, while it totally disregards where that movement is heading. The second way is to foster future 'C' by increasing 'I' today, to assert that if you wish to live better tomorrow, you must increase your income today: you must produce and you must save. The entire modern world of macroeconomics is aligned against this idea. One will find in many articles the 'fact' that consumption ('C' in the notation below) is 70% of the economy. And it's true by definition. But from that simple fact, modern economics makes a mistake that is poised to impoverish us all: that the easiest way to increase GDP is to increase C, that the best way to increase our total economic activity is to increase consumption. That could not be a more dangerous approach, because modern economics - or more properly "econometrics" - ignores the fact that consumption is a losing game. Consumption means that real goods disappear. Work with me here while I put my world-class ignorance on display. It is a fact that consumption cannot exceed income over the long term; you cannot eat today what you will grow tomorrow. You know that in your own life; if you spend more than you make you'll go broke. It's a fact. In fact, it is the CENTRAL truth of budgeting. Modern macroeconomics tries to avoid that fact through credit, by allowing you to borrow today what you have will earn tomorrow. In order to foster that consumption it is essential that credit - debt - constantly expand - it borrows today's real goods from producers with a promise to repay them with production tomorrow. The housing bubble fostered GDP growth by allowing Americans to borrow more in line the rising value of their houses. The tax rebate is designed to foster GDP growth by giving people money to spend and it matters not what they spend it on. But it is insanity, it is a trap, because since we cannot individually consume more than we produce, we cannot collectively do so. We have tried, and we are failing as we must. Debt has its limits; you can only borrow so much from the future. Once debt reached its limits you can only do two things with it, you can either pay it off which impoverishes you temporarily or you can default on it which impoverishes you AND your supplier permanently. America is about to face a new old reality, that since one can only consume what is produced, and since production comes from 'I' - investment in those capital goods that create the things that are eventually consumed - we're going to have a period of decreased 'C,' of a lower standard of living, where the consumption fostered by borrowing rather than production comes to an end. Instead we will produce without consuming for the benefit of those who have produced what we have already consumed. The 'credit crunch' is nothing more than that. It is not a problem of 'confidence,' as if as long as we could forever borrow we could forever spend. It is the problem that we have already collectively borrowed as much as was possible. We have borrowed on our houses and our credit cards to their limits, we have issued bonds and bills; now we must produce to pay back that debt. That means reduced consumption, that means a reduced standard of living, certainly that means a recession and maybe it means a depression. The modern economist and our current government will do everything possible to foster continued 'C,' continued consumption, to keep the game going. But they are up against the hard fact that you cannot borrow from the future forever. The future eventually strikes back. Welcome to the future. * if you think Bush and Bernanke are uneducated, you could not be more wrong. But the fact that they are educated is 95% of the problem. ** An amazing feat for a member of the press. One can only assume he's the new guy. *** GDP = C + I + G + (X-M) Labels: economics  Labels: economy  NASA discovers a mystery female*:Perched on a rock, she could be waiting for a bus.Unchanged from our prior discussion, my position on life in the universe is that I suspect it's all over in various physical and spiritual forms, and I would not be terribly surprised if we turned up something somewhere someday. But I can't help think that this photo looks a lot like the famous Patterson Bigfoot photo. If one looks at the size of the 'figure' relative to the whole photo, then ponders the amount of time and effort it took to find this 'woman,' then considers that the entire photo has been looked over with similar effort and this is all that was found, I can't help but reach precisely the opposite conclusion that those fine folks at Rense do. *Maybe to replace that crazy one with a butcher knife and a diaper they had before. Labels: science  CNBC reports: A surprise Fed rate cut helped hold back a massive selloff in the stock market, although stocks remained lower on continued worries about the US economy.Bernanke is a panicker. Pass it on. UPDATE: So is Bush: WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush won't rule out the possibility of an economic stimulus package larger than the $150 billion program already outlined to reinvigorate the ailing economy, the White House said Tuesday...  Labels: demotivators, moonbats  Call me paranoid, but I'm always a little fearful of three-day weekends:LONDON (AP) -- Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.And Asia and Europe still have tonight's trading to get through. Of course, futures don't correlate exactly with indexes, and there's always the off-chance the President's Working Group in Financial Markets (aka the PPT) will work up a little magic overnight. But if they don't, it's quite possible that the market will drop the requisite amount to lock limit down for a bit. That may even happen before the market really opens*. That means no one buys and no one sells, we have some quiet time to get our heads on straight and watch developments. Then we start over again. And maybe again. This is not a crash prediction**, but it ought to serve as something of a wakeup call for the fact that the "credit crunch" is now contained to every market in the world. And we have not seen the last of it - we have not even seen the end of the first act. If the crash doesn't come tomorrow, it could come soon. Or not. There's simply too much government intercession to make such a call. But that's not really what this post is about anyway - stock markets are a barometer, they are not rain - but rather the negative reaction of those markets to El Presidente's planned "tax rebate," which solution weighs in at about twice Hillary's solution and 50% more than Obama's***. The reaction ought to be negative, though quite possibly it's negative for the wrong reasons. The market seems to think that it isn't enough to avert recession, and they are correct. But I also think it's too much - or at least the wrong direction - to avert national bankruptcy. The reason is this: $150 billion is about to be mailed out to taxpayers, ostensibly so that they can spend it. One of three things will happen: either they will spend it or they will save it or they will pay down debts with it. If they save it, as I suspect they will do, all that has happened is that a negative $150 billion has moved from the balance sheet of the government from those of individuals. That's the best that can happen for individuals. Theoretically banks could also lend that money out, but they are afraid to so that's a wash. If they spend it, then $150b in debt has been added to the balance sheet of government and people have more assets, mostly depreciating ones since you can't buy a house or a factory with $800. So the transfer becomes temporary on the consumer side, but is still permanent on the government side. If they use it to pay down debts, then the money supply contracts by that much, which is liable to make the recession deeper. That's what happens when you have debt for money****; it sloshes around until it is either paid off or defaulted on, but either way it disappears eventually. It cannot grow at a double-digit rate forever, and no tree grows to the sky; it dies and falls on your house. But in any case, the only guarantee is that the government is taking onto its own books $150 billion of the consumer's negative balance sheets - we have simply socialized the risks and losses in a way that the foolish are rewarded at the expense of the thrifty, since they will all be taxed sometime in the future to repay the money with interest. And we have ensured that the consumers have the ability to do it over again. Whichever of the three happens, it is not likely to kickstart the economy in the way that politicians hope, because the problem is, first and foremost, the size of our collective debt load - governments, businesses, and people. Debt service now commands too much of our total income. And the only way to fix that is to pay off debts (not transfer them from one entity to another) or to default on them. If we pay them off or the credit structure continues to implode and wipe them out, we get a deflationary recession or depression, as Mish expects, and his arguments are damned good. If we default on them by destroying the dollar - which means when this rebate doesn't work, we give another, then another, all the time transferring consumer debt to the government in the hopes that they will ring up more - then we will get an inflationary recession. Personally I suspect we will get both in that order. If the politicians will not allow a small recession, then we will get a big one. We may know tomorrow or not. But we will know soon enough. * Which is why I've pulled all my automated buy orders. Only a fool catches a falling knife when it is much safer (not to mention more profitable) to wait for the ringing to stop and walk over and pick it up. I also have two accounts that are 100% in cash to buy back in someday. A crash is not the end of the world, it is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. ** which, in any case would come too late, since you can't buy or sell until the market opens. *** see, I told you Bush could do them better. **** which is the primary reason a nation should have gold for money, not because gold is magic but because it is real in a way that debt is not; it cannot be created from nothing, nor does it disappear in bad times. In fact, it is in bad times that gold shines the brightest. Labels: economy "It's always easy to tell how Ron Paul does in a primary; you need merely count the number of finishers reported, then add one." Oh, it's true. Unfortunately, that trick doesn't work as well with polls.  Jones sets a bad precedent by brain-dumping his sleep images on my blog:I had a dream last night that Osama bin Laden died and since he was dead those hiding him decided he no longer had to be hidden so they gave up his whereabouts and said that he died...well, where ever it was. I remember the country started with a "S" but didn't have a real name when I looked on the map. Regardless, the next part of the dream was the U.s. government attacking the country with a massive air strike and turning it into rubble as revenge for hiding him. I remember thinking it was a totally pointless move. Now that I'm awake, I wonder what it all means.I didn't dream very much myself until I started hitting the recumbent bike a lot harder in the evenings, and now my nights seem to be full of things that confuse me*. But last night, Rogue and I took a big ride while watching a show on how to make fabulous cocktails**, and I slept downstairs because she had to work today and I wanted to sleep in - being a hard-working government employee I have the day off. [insert snarky or ironic comment here] So right after she left I crawled into our bed and it was awesome... it was warm and smelled like her and I made a huge nest out of the 10 pillows that she sleeps with right in the middle of the bed (I usually just get one and about a foot on one side). And then I had two of the psychoest psycho dreams ever. The first one was that I was back at the Prairie Village Pippin's***, a now-defunct restaurant where I worked in college and for a while afterwards. I was still my current age, but everyone there (and it was all the same people who worked there 20 years ago) were all the same age as they were then. Lots of little stuff was weird, like we had three grills instead of two. No big deal. But then Donna the Manager comes back to the kitchen with a vegetable steamer - it was a huge plate of (get this) steamed vegetables - in her hand and says the customer wants a new one, but this time to sub 18 pieces of pizza for all the veggies. I woke up a bit confused, but I managed to shake it off and go back to sleep. In the next one we tried out a new church, and it was really pretty nice - a public library in Johnson County****, but not the Johnson County Public Library (I didn't say this had to make sense). It had a black preacher, a really big fat guy, and he was yelling and hooting and running around. And I remember thinking that was pretty cool, since we have black foster kids and they would enjoy a multi-racial church. But every once in a while, everyone in a whole section (like a dozen people) would pop up and run across the church to a different section and sit down. Then a minute later, some other group would do the same. and they would either run in a perfectly straight line together, or as a square. It was really coordinated. So the preacher is walking around and he comes up to Rogue and I (we had no kids with us for some reason) and he gets right up in her face, and he asks, "Are you feeling good today?" Now when our daughter Rebel Nun was a little kid, she used to to stand there and refuse to answer a question. It was incredibly annoying. And that's what Rogue was doing. And he's like, "I said are you feeling GOOD today?" And he starts kissing all over her face. And she wouldn't answer the question until he left, and then she pipes up and asks if she could have his microphone. Then I realized my sunglasses (which for some inexplicable reason I was wearing indoors) were really 3D glasses from the movie Magician's Nephew - I could tell because when I looked at them, they said that all over the rim. Then I woke up confused again, and only an hour had passed. So I figured I'd better make some breakfast before something really confusing happened. * Rather than just my days, as had been the case prior. ** During which I learned one very cool thing. My favorite drink, a rum and Coke, is also called a Cuba Libre (Free Cuba). So now when I have one I can, in good liberal fashion, imagine that I am doing something to help those oppressed by a left-wing dicta...oh, wait, left-wing dictators never oppress anyone. That's only right-wing ones. My bad.  *** It's been a long time since I had Pippin's dreams. The last one I remember was something of a nightmare. You see, we used to get our orders via a hanging aluminum wheel with springs on it. The waitress would attach the order to the wheel via a spring which would make a snapping noise. Then she'd spin the wheel and the order would come into the kitchen. A lot of snaps meant a lot of orders, and since when you worked the grill you were facing away from the window, the snapping noise was how you knew you had more orders. I said all that to say this: I dreamt that I was working the grill, which was actually 2 grills (one for meats, one for sandwiches) and the grills went as far to the left and right as I could see. And they were both covered with orders, more orders than I could possibly manage. And behind me I'm hearing "snap, snap, snapsnapsnap," a million orders coming in. And I'm all panicked. And as I look down, I see that I have no hands, but that the ends of my arms turn straight into spatulas, like Ted Nugent's guitars on the cover of "Scream Dream." And I let out a scream and I wake up amazed that I didn't pee myself. This dream was not as bad as that one. **** Which itself was pretty weird, since most of my dreams take place in Duluth, Minnesota.  I would field test this data myself, but being married for 20+ years it is not a market I have any more than an academic interest in. However, since my sons are now in such a market, I heartily encourage them to do the requisite research before making any kind of a purchase.You guys can borrow my MGMKT*534 textbook if you wish, though I'm still in the process of correcting some of its more egregious errors. Labels: feminism  OK, so I cracked my Marketing Research textbook open today for the first time, and what to my wondering eyes should appear on page 5 but this clinker:"Literally, research (re-search) means "to search again." The term connotes patient study and scientific investigation wherein the researcher takes another, more careful look at the data to discover all that is known about the subject." -- Zickmund and Babbitt, "Exploring Market Research," p.5Bullscheisterhosen*, says I; it means no such thing. Actually, that was just my first thought, but being the good student that I am, I decided to follow the book's admonition that scientific conclusions are based on actually looking at data rather than simply going with one's first impression. The authors appear to be defining the term by its assumed derivation rather than on how it is used - and their conclusion is a bit of a strain, IMO. To research something there is no requirement that anyone has looked at the data before. In fact, one of the objectives of research is to look in completely new places. In that sense, the word is the opposite of "re-search," which really connotes covering old ground. That's our first clue that all may not be as it seems. Our second is that people never use "research" to mean, "search again." It appears that the "re-" is what throws them**, because that Latin prefix often, even usually, means "again," as in renew, recharge, rearrange, rewrite. But it does not always mean that. To "reconnoiter" does not mean "to connoiter again;" usually it means one is looking at some unknown place for the first time. To "release" does not mean "to loose again." To "relax" does not mean "to become lax again." In those cases, "re-" means to do or become completely that. If you release something, you set it completely free. It need never have been free before.*** So while based on its usage I suspect that the re- in "research" means "completely" rather than "again," there is one necessary place we ought to research, an etymological dictionary. There we will find an interesting entry: Research: 1577, "act of searching closely," from M.Fr. recerche (1539), from O.Fr. recercher "seek out, search closely," from re-, intensive prefix, + cercher "to seek for" (see search). Meaning "scientific inquiry" is first attested 1639.It turns out that "research" does not come from the Latin directly, and since it is "old Latin" (which is not necessarily the Latin from which French derives) that uses "re-" to mean "again," I am not surprised to find that the "re-" here is simply an intensifying prefix, making the meaning something akin to "really, really search." Which by an extraordinary coincidence is how the word is used. Thus I think our research is at an end. Is it nitpicking? Absolutely. Am I just being a jerk? It would not be the first time. But I do wonder about a textbook dedicated to research that can't even bother to research the correct etymology of what is ostensibly the most important word in it and therefore makes up a misleading definition based on the authors' deficient understanding of their own language. Perhaps that's just a hidden exercise for the student, or perhaps the most important word is really marketing. After all, if you market correctly, it doesn't really matter what you're selling, does it? * Pardon my German. ** And others who jump to the same conclusion. *** A mistake that Genesis "gap theorists" make when they ask, "If the earth had not been “plenished” prior to [Adam], why would he be told to re-plenish it?" Labels: science  Labels: democrats  WND's head pot levels an accusation of blackness:Some of these misguided Christian clerics cite a handful of random, out-of-context verses that might, possibly, in some way, maybe, be interpreted, if you use your imagination, to suggest we should just forgive and forget all transgressions and trespasses against our national sovereignty and our laws regarding our nation status.Farah's take seems to be that Moses here is talking about 'transgressions and trespasses' against national sovereignty, and since no one has accused illegal immigrants of literally removing a neighbor's landmark, it seems quite possible to me that he's using (and I quote from somewhere close) a random, out-of-context verse that might, possibly, in some way, maybe, be interpreted, if you use your imagination, to relate to the political issue of illegal immigration*. But I suppose before we can decide if a verse is 'very relevant' or if it's that other thing, it might be a good idea to understand the verse in question. Let's look at it again: "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark," or in the vernacular, "The man who removes his neighbor's landmark from its place is cursed." Now, what does it mean to remove (lit: "to move away," or "to displace") someone's landmark? I went back and checked the translator's notes for the Geneva Bible and found a very succinct explanation, that here God "condemns all injuries and extortions." But that seems to give us two very different interpretations here, unless an illegal immigrant is to be presumed an extortionist, which I think we can all admit is a bit of a stretch. The strong usually extort from the weak, and there are few weaker in a society than its immigrants. So what does the verse mean? One way to find out is to look at the places it is elsewhere used in scripture. Two of the three other uses are found in the Proverbs, which we will skip for the reason that their uses are poetic and don't add much** to Deuteronomy. But in the same book (19:14) we find an expanded version of the same command: Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it. In short, the landmark is a literal "land mark" which denoted the boundary between two fields, fields that were the property of families, provided their livelihood, and passed through inheritance***. Now if I am your neighbor and we have a land mark between our fields, it might be very tempting to sneak out in the middle of the night and move it a little, an act that would make my field bigger and yours smaller. Moving a landmark was a sneaky way to steal land from a family, and if it was done through threat of violence it was an extortion. In either case, it is still an injury; that's why the Geneva notes call it such. Therefore our verse has everything to do with stealing your neighbor's physical property and absolutely nothing to do with where a person lives, so long as they live there peacefully. If Mexicans were clandestinely moving the border marker pictured above, then the verse might apply - in a collective sense they would be stealing our land****. In the sense of individuals who choose to live peacefully on one side of that rock as opposed to the other the verse does not apply at all. Of course, the misuse of an isolated verse happens all the time, especially when it comes to political application. But it's fair game to be pointed out - and I might add, mocked profusely - when the writer at the same time calls out his political opponents for doing the same thing. * The Christian's treatment of the illegal immigrant is a different issue altogether and, I might add, one where Farah's case is significantly weaker. ** Though the second, Pr. 23:10, also warns not to 'enter into the fields of the fatherless,' i.e. to steal the harvest from a weaker member of society. Extortion is at least implied. *** They also reverted to the original families in the year of jubilee, meaning that they were a more-or-less permanent fixture. Land could be sold, but it still legally went back to the family after an appointed time. Under Hebrew law, the land belonged to the Lord, and this arrangement was designed to ensure that no Israelite family would be forever disenfranchised. **** Which might even be a cause for war between the US and Mexico, coincidentally how that border came to be where it is today. Labels: bible, immigration   The Girl's Guide to Geeks exhibits an incredible grasp of common sense*:Because they have been so abused and ignored by society, many geeks have gone underground. You may actually know some and just haven't noticed them. They often feel resentful, and misunderstood, and it is important to realize this as you grow closer to them. Don't ever try to force the issue, or make crazy demands that he choose between his computer and you. Remember, his computer has been there for him his whole life; you are a new interloper he hasn't quite grasped yet.I don't really have anything to add to this excellent article other than to dispel the nasty stereotype that all geeks are into Star Trek. I don't like it at all**. It's not that I dislike it, I don't. I simply have a deep and abiding ignorance of and apathy toward anything Star Trek and always have. There are Sci-Fi geeks and there are Fantasy geeks, those who play KOTOR and those who play NWN. And while the Sci-Fi geeks are the majority, I personally think the Fantasy geeks are smarter and better-looking***. Therefore girls, if you want to catch a geek, Star Trek is simply not the guarantee it's promoted as. You may have to expand at least into Dungeons and Dragons, or if you can't stomach that, be familiar enough with Tolkien**** to avoid confusing a halfling with a half-elf or a troll with an orc, and to understand that not all those who wander are lost. Which is why they don't ever ask for directions. * for something written by women, or more appropriately, TO them. The women's magazines are filled with Pandagon-style rubbish, and Dear Abby and her ilk are just as bad. That's why Starbuck's is filled with unhappy 30-something single women rather than unhappy 30-something single men. ** So perhaps, under the No True Scotsman Fallacy, I am not really a geek. *** Aw, yeah, bring on the Geek War. **** You can even see the movies, just know that Faramir was NOT like that in the books. Labels: feminism  Labels: demotivators  The Daily Green doesn't like the choices:Washington, Oregon and Idaho officials should kill up to 30 sea lions a year to protect salmon trying to migrate up the Columbia River. That's the recommendation of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service...To the Daily Green's credit, they were one of the few news outlets to note the irony that the government is proposing to kill one protected (technically, threatened) species in order to keep it from eating another. And to their credit, they also note that the current government approach*, no matter how much fun for those hired by the government, really accomplishes nothing other than to annoy some rather hungry sea lions. So two thumbs up, Daily Green**. But unless somebody important complains***, government wildlife managers are about to have a lot more fun, maybe even as much fun as this federal biologist, who gets to fly around in a helicopter with a shotgun, gunning down a couple dozen wild pigs a day. He and his team have to come to Kansas every year to hunt pigs because it's against the law to hunt pigs**** and the pigs' population keeps growing for some reason, in spite of that fact. But if they are going to hunt sea lions, they ought to be a lot more sportsmanlike about it than they are in gunning down pigs from a helicopter. In fact, in order to promote carbon-neutrally, they should forget the helicopter and firearms altogether and outsource the job to a team of young men who like to get drunk and taunt wild animals. They could be provided with wooden clubs and all the vodka they could drink, and the rest of us would be provided with an endless stream of reality cable television programs. See? Everyone wins, especially the salmon, which is who the whole sordid business is really about anyway. * hiring people to shout at the sea lions, throw firecrackers at the sea lions, and shoot rubber bullets at the sea lions. Think of it as an Intifada without funny hats. ** Let it never be said that I refuse to give credit to granola-eating, moonbat bunny huggers when it's due. *** In which case the plan will be publicly scrapped and then quietly implemented when no one is looking. ** You can still kill pigs, on purpose, with a gun, so long as you get a free permit from the government. You just can't hunt them. Labels: environmentalism  ...and I don't think it's going to be as bad as I feared. UPDATE: OK, so it's not actually marketing per se, if by that we mean America faces the daunting prospect of asterisked billboards across the fruited plain*. It's "Marketing Research," which focuses on data collection and the statistical analysis thereof to understand what customers a) want, and b) intend, rather than presentation of products for those customers**. I'm not taking the class for my own edification (it's job-related) though I can see how it may turn out to be helpful for historical research. But I did notice a couple strange things about the makeup of the class. The first is that it's about 2/3 women***. The second is that of those women, fully half are east Asians of various nationalities, but there are no male Orientals in the class. It will probably turn out that the Asian guys are all in engineering while the gals all go into business, but based on my sample size of one class I'm not ready to draw that conclusion. I just thought it odd enough to note. * No, JN, even I don't think the rest of the nation will appreciate my bizarre obsession. I'm amazed that you people even put up with it here. ** So think "heavy on the math, light on the gin and cleavage." *** Apparently shattering the stereotype that chicks don't 'do' math.  MoneyCakes* calls out the big guns:NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday that legislators should enact a fiscal stimulus package in order to help beleaguered consumers as recession fears grow...And to think I thought Senator von Munchausen's plan was expensive at $70b**. But Congress should get smart about this and kill multiple birds with one stone. See, in thinking about what I'm going to do with all the free money Congress is going to create from nothing for me, I got to thinking about those checks I used to get in the mail from phone companies. You remember those? They had a little bit of legalese on the back that said that this was a real check, but if you cashed it you were agreeing to have your phone service switched to their company. I got checks up to $100 at times. Man, I must have switched companies 8 times in like a month and a half. I'm rich, biotch! So Congress could send out checks like that, for $500 or $1000 or $2000, with writing on the back that essentially says that if you cash this check, any complaint you have against the government for acts past or present (*cough* reparations *cough*) is legally and morally paid in full. Government took your ancestral land? Paid in full. Government lost or leaked your private data, resulting in your credit rating or reputation being destroyed? Paid in full. Government fraudulently prosecuted you, bankrupted you, or destroyed your livelihood through regulation or incompetence? Paid in full. All these complaints could be done away with in one fell swoop. But it need not stop there. I wonder how many Americans would sign away their troublesome right to free speech and assembly, to a trial by jury or to bear arms, in exchange for a little made-from-nothing money. Quite a few, I suspect. On the other hand, those who take the cash might not be that foolish in retrospect, because those things are being lost so we can all be perfectly safe from Osama bin Laden*** anyway. So you might as well get a good HD-TV out of the deal. * (hat tip: Huck) ** I guess I should have realized that for both parties to be happy, we essentially need to double the number either one presents. *** Or the next Hitler-of-the-month.  Labels: demotivators  John Harwood counts the monkies flying out of, um...Just before Christmas, populist Democrat John Edwards proposed $25-billion in spending on energy, job training, and unemployment programs. Last week, Hillary Clinton upped the ante with a $70-billion package, nearly half targeted to the housing crisis...I haven't seen a final number on Obama's proposal, but based on the trend you can probably assume that it's more than $70b, and based on his abandonment of the imperative* of offsetting his tax cuts with tax increases, we can certainly conclude that such money will simply be borrowed or printed into existence. But the imperative** thing to understand is not the specifics of any plan but the underlying assumption: it is good to stimulate the economy by spending, and it really doesn't matter who spends (government in the case of Edwards and Clinton, individuals in the case of Obama***) just that spending occur. It doesn't matter if it's wise or even Constitutional; it's just the ramming through of economic activity to drive the right numbers up. This is pure Keynesian Madness, as malpracticed by both parties, and is the cause of nearly every economic problem America faces. Of course, both parties also believe it to be the solution at the same time. But the Democrats are going to have to work harder than that if they wish to beat the GOP at the stimulus game****. Bush's addition of $3.6 trillion to the national debt since 2001 is the equivalent of a $514 billion stimulus package every year Bush has been El Presidente. That's about 20 times the 'populist' John Edwards' package, year after year. All I can say is that it's a good thing that Republicans are fiscally conservative, because if they weren't, spending might really get out of hand. * I didn't think it was even theoretically possible to abandon an imperative, but Obama has done it. He is both audacious AND hopeful. ** In the non-Obama sense. *** Which is why Obama here betrays his inexperience, because his plan - while being the best of the three for individuals - could have precisely the opposite of the intended effect. Let's say that rather than just blowing the $500 on Pokemon toys, Americans got smart and paid down their debts. Money supply would immediately contract, in all probability deepening the very recession he's trying to avoid. Far better, from the Democrat perspective, to let the government spend that money. That's called "leaving it to the experts." **** The Democrats' response to the delirium tremens of debt addiction is Pabst Blue Ribbon to Bush's Hot Damn 100. Labels: democrats, republicans  Labels: feminism  My favorite time waster is Free Cell. Because I'm on dial-up at the house*, I have lots of "extra" time between page loads, time that screams out for a distraction. And Free Cell is it.Which was great with XP. Free Cell is a fairly challenging game, not easy enough that I won all the time, but I was good for 90% or so. The big problem is that you can get ahead of yourself, and with but a single 'undo' move available, it's not hard to work yourself into an unrecoverable corner. Sure, you could cheat the stats by shutting the computer down without exiting the game, but that's not really fair, is it**? So I spent a lot of time hovering right around the 90% level, and if a game would drop me below, you'd better believe I took it seriously. Enter Vista, with its new rules, including unlimited undos***. Now you can't get hung up because of a few bad moves, In fact, you can back up all the way to the beginning and start over. Now a lot of guys would expect that I'd be happy about that, because it's a lot easier to win. But I'm not, because now there is no excuse for losing. That's right; where I was satisfied with a 90% win rate before, now nothing less than 100% will do. It drives me crazy, and more than once I've been involved in a particularly tough game right at bedtime and spent an extra half hour winning it. Some people call that anal-retentive, but I like to call it, well, anal-retentive, I guess****. * I asked the cable guy about getting it run out here. He looked at my kinda funny, gave a cable in the wall a pull, and said, "Ain't gonna reach." ** Yes, I've done that on occasion. But I was almost under 90%. You understand. *** You can even escape a loss under Vista by undoing every move and then ending the game, something unavailable under XP. **** (hat tip: Happy Gilmore)  But then again, I'm only 1/4 Polish. Labels: racism  The BLS deals an unsurprising hand:WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wholesale inflation shot up in 2007 by the largest amount in 26 years even though falling gasoline costs allowed price pressures to moderate in December.Wholesale inflation, being 'in the pipeline' rather than 'on the store shelves,' is one of those numbers that is closer to reality than the CPI, not because it's higher but because it has been less massaged*. 6.3% is an incredible PPI number, even assuming it is anywhere close to the truth. At that rate, your standard of living will be halved in about 7 years, making those New Year's weight loss resolutions in 2015 much easier to keep. But that's only the good news. You see, buried in the BLS numbers are a few other numbers that are not quite so tame. Like Finished Goods, up about 6.5% for 2005 and 2006 total, they were up 6.3% for 2007 alone, and a 13% rate for the past 3 months of 2007. In other words, finished goods inflation doubled in 2007, then doubled again since October. That's gotta make you feel good. But a 13% 3-month inflation rate in finished goods is not the worst number, it just happened to be the top line of the chart. There are a few others that are far worse, like finished energy goods (51%), food and feed** (19.2%), materials for non-durable manufacturing (20.3%). No wonder El Presidente is begging his financiers for more oil; those costs find their way into everything***. Remember when Michael Sivy said that $90 oil was no problem for either the bull market or the economy? That was awesome! * It's as amazing as it is consistent how inflation numbers get smaller and smaller the longer the BLS 'measures' them. I need to get them to measure my weight for a while. ** It's a good thing food and energy come out of inflation once it reaches the CPI, I can tell you that. *** But they'll have to fax it over, because the rising VLCC Spot Rate says the ships are already full. And if petroleum banker Matt Simmons (warning, big .PDF) is correct, it only gets better from here. He says the reason the Saudis are not producing more is not because they don't want to, but because they can't. And they will likely never produce at a higher rate than they are producing right now. Which means that this is as good as it gets. Labels: economy  Kansas is about to get serious about bad words: Topeka — The Legislature could make an unusual statement about popular culture this year and criticize gangsta rap for profanity-laced language and what critics consider messages that demean women and promote violence.What a resolution is, is essentially the opinion of the legislature on an issue that they recognize they have no authority* to legislate on. Usually they're passed for the purpose of telling everyone what a fine chap Hermo Slagmeister was for risking his life to save a traveling-circus harp seal during the Great Abilene Windblast of 1936 or some such. But the legislature really has no power to enforce the fine chappitude of Hermo; they are simply saying it and hoping that you all believe them and go along with that**. This is different from a law. Laws come about when some 6th grade teacher wants to show her class how the "system" works***, so they put their little skulls full of mush together and come up with an idea that no one has thought of before, like declaring the Barred Tiger Salamander to be the "state amphibian." That's a law, and that can be enforced. Let's say some alpine newt comes along and he wants to be the state amphibian for a while. Or maybe the bullfrog does. Well that's just tough. It's the law, buddy. Now go catch me a fly or something. It is very important that this distinction be kept in mind. If you ask any legislator why they voted to make the salamander the state amphibian, or the ornate box turtle the state reptile, or the bumble bee the state insect, they'll tell you that the law was passed because it was fun or to make someone happy. Law is not serious. But when it comes to resolutions, legislators are deadly serious. Let it be known, across the fruited plain that gangsta rap "is not something that Kansas approves of or welcomes,” Mast said. Take that, Luther Campbell. * and so even though they can't enforce anything, it makes them feel like they are accomplishing something. It has been argued that government would be much better if passing such resolutions was the only authority they had - that way legislators could work out all their guilt, god complexes, and other emotional issues without bothering the rest of us. I would not go that far, but I can certainly understand the sentiment. ** I ignore all resolutions passed by the legislature as a matter of course, as all good citizens should. *** If they really want to see how it works, they would establish a PAC which could raise a bunch of money to spend on behalf of legislators, who would then get the state to underwrite half a billion dollars in revenue bonds for them. Labels: politics   Roland asks for clarification:I'd love to see the post on women submitting. I guess I'm more liberal than I thought. I submit to my wife as well. Just can't seem to get around those crazy passages in the Bible, no matter how much I want to.And I'm happy to oblige, so long as we set a few expectations/limitations up front: The first one is that I'm talking about authority, not implementation. For all the fun I have with posters of sandwiches and ironing boards, I cooked dinner tonight and did the dishes. I did so every night this week but one*. The reason is that Rogue worked later than I; since I was home first it was the least I could do to have dinner ready for her. But that implementation, that service, does not change anything I'm about to say about authority or submission for reasons that will become apparent. The second one is that this applies only to a) Christians, who b) accept the Bible as authoritative. In short, I'm going to argue that a certain thing is what the Bible, and specifically Ephesians 5, says. If someone does not accept the scriptures as authoritative, then fine, none of this applies in their case. That person shouldn't bother to tell me Paul wrote this because he hated women or some such. Paul would probably be as confused by them as they are by him. The last one is that we are going to try to answer a very specific question: does the Bible teach that wives are to submit to their husbands or does it teach that they should each submit to one another equally? In other words, is Paul's teaching egalitarian or is there a sex-based distinction that applies to matters a) of authority and b) in marriage? And that's all we are going to answer. Everyone will have to work out the inferences, implications, and implementations for themselves. Of course, the big question (one might say problem) with my position is what to do with that one verse that seems to turn up everywhere someone starts talking about submission, Ephesians 5:21, that states "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." It usually appears alone, in boldface, looking so authoritative that one is tempted to think the argument is over at that point. Actually, it has not yet begun. The first thing you will notice about it** is that it is not a sentence but a clause set off as a verse*** and followed by a period. It is not a complete thought, merely the end of one. And the thought begins at the beginning of chapter 5 (the overall theme starts in chapter 4, but we needn't go back that far) when Paul says, Be therefore followers of God, as dear children, and walk in love in the same way Christ also loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God...He is talking to the entire church and is going to lay out a collective way of life that he will compare to the way Christ and the church are related, how they interact. The rest of chapter 5, up to our verse, is made up of short statements, you might call them proverbs or homilies, ending with this: ...Do not be foolish, but understand the the will of the Lord. Do not be drunk with wine (in that is excess) but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always to God our Father for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.In short, submitting ourselves to one another ought to be the normal course of events for the general lifestyle of the Christian. This probably cannot be emphasized enough. We are to submit to one another, defer to one another, seeking not our own will but that of others. It is a general command to all believers to be carried out especially in their relationships with other believers. Now, once we move past the general command, Paul is going to draw a distinction**** - a very specific distinction even though it exists within his general theme. He is going to carve out a special role for a specific group of people, and those people are called to display, for the rest of the body, two specific attributes of the general relationship above. This should not surprise us, for as Paul teaches in 1Cor 12 there are many parts in one body and they are not all the same, nor do they perform the same functions. Immediately following Paul's general command, he writes this: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.Here we have a very specific command, submit. It is to a specific sliver of the body: wives. It is to illustrate one very specific attribute of the relationship between Christ and the Church: our obedience to him. Then Paul follows it up with the flip side: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives...There is more behind the ellipses, but that's the essence. And what we have here is another specific command, love and give. It is to a very specific body: husbands. And it is to illustrate one very specific attribute of the relationship between Christ and the Church: sacrificial service. Paul then summarizes the above, emphasizing the purpose of the distinction: For this is the reason a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife: they they become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Let every husband love his wife like he loves himself, and let every wife see to it that she reveres her husband.What Paul has done here is commanded that every marriage between a man and a woman be an example of the marriage between Christ and his church. On the one hand, you have submission, obedience: as Christians submit to Christ, so a wife submits to her husband. On the other, you have sacrificial service: as Christ gave everything for the church, so a husband must give everything*****, all he is and has, to his wife. Together, husbands and wives present millions upon millions upon millions of little examples of the relationship of Christ and the church. The roles of Christ and church are not interchangeable. Jesus does not submit to his church - he is not under its authority - the authority of the head rests in him alone, and he alone commands it. On the other hand there is truly nothing the church can sacrifice for him. It can only obey, and that is its highest calling. The relationship is symbiotic perhaps, but that does not negate the distinction in the roles to be played. So bringing us back from Happy Jesus Land to real life, there are real implications to the above, and the first is that, like the distinction in roles between Christ and his church, the roles in marriage, which are a model of that relationship, also have a real distinction. That distinction is designed to solve the real problem****** under consideration: there can only be one head for any one body. Two seconds' thought on the idea will make obvious that no matter how we try, we cannot make a democracy of two people. Because husband and wife are one flesh, we should expect that 99% of the time they will be on the same page, and if they are, as believers, in submission to Christ, this will be the case. There will also be plenty of times where the husband agrees to the wife's desires and defers to her expertise, but - and this is the important part - it is his decision as the head. That's because if they simply cannot agree on what "they" ought to collectively do, there are only two choices: either they must separate or one must have the deciding vote. Christian marriage does not allow separation (again as Paul emphasized above, "one flesh.") Therefore there must be one of the two who has the final say, and as in the relationship between Christ and the church Christ is the head, in that relationship modeled on earth the husband is the head. That is the role he's given. The role of the wife in such circumstances is to submit to her husband, to defer to his will, as the Christian is to obey the will of Christ. A marriage relationship built upon any other authority structure fails to model what Paul calls husbands and wives to model, the relationship of Christ and his church. It is really as simple as that. So all that said, where do we bring in the multitude of verses that say that there is no distinction in Christ? Gal 3:28 stands in for all of them when it says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." We bring them in Paul's general sense. All Christians, individually, are without racial, ethnic, or gender distinction in Christ. We are all equal members of the body of Christ, for "there is no respect of persons" (Eph 6:9) with God. But within that body there there are certain people who are called to special standard. This special group is asked to display some very specific attributes of the heavenly marriage, to re-create that whole relationship in miniature as a model for the world to see. Those people are husbands, who are called to serve their wives and sacrifice for them as Christ did for the church, and wives, who are called to submit to and honor their husbands, as the church does for Christ. UPDATE: I said that the reason that my cooking for my wife would not negate the fact that she is to submit to me would become apparent. And if it hasn't, I'll spell it out: I cook for my wife as Jesus cooked for his disciples (Jn 21:12). I lotion her feet when she's tired as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples (Jn 13:12). That is my given role, not in the church but in the specific relationship we call marriage. But that sacrifice, that service, did not mean that Jesus was no longer the head of the church - he did those things because the head must be the servant of all (Mk 10:44). My service to my wife does not negate my authority; it shows that I am worthy of it. Authority does not mean I should order her to make me sandwiches all day, though that is the impression a lot of people have: when they talk about submission, they really mean service. But they are not the same thing. Service ought to run the other way from submission the majority of the time; I ought to be serving her, giving myself to her as Christ gave himself for us. But as Jesus is the head of the church, so I am the head of the household, and as Jesus is the final authority, so am I. I run a benevolent dictatorship, but it is a dictatorship nonetheless. Her submission is but a recognition that I am given the final authority within this model that we are called to as married Christians. I will answer for how I play my role in this model called marriage, for how well I obey the specific commandments that God has given me as a husband. And so, for the role given her, will my wife. * Last night, when Rogue took the boys for pizza. But even when I work late, I cook far more often than she does. She does laundry far more often than I. It works for us. Plus I'm a better cook, but don't tell her I said that. ** You'll notice it because I'm going to point it out. Plenty of people don't notice it. *** And another reason to hate verse divisions. **** Actually, he's going to draw quite a few. A number of them (e.g. masters and servants) are unrelated to our purpose here, but if you read through them, up to 6:8, you'll see that they fall into exactly the same pattern we are establishing here. And this, to be blunt, is where the liberal case fails: they fail to note that there are specific cases with specific requirements within the general. ***** Which is why (and I don't care if it looks foolish or not), there is nothing my wife and I own that is only in my name. There is plenty in hers. If we were to divorce (God forbid) not only would she get everything *we* own, I would give her everything gladly. That is the sacrifice I am commanded to give her, because that is how Christ gave himself for me. ****** There is, of course, the problem that some wives do not respect their husbands and do not want to submit, and that some husbands abuse their power and are not worthy of respect. Those are not failures of design, but of implementation. Labels: bible, christianity   Huckabee avoids a debate question about what he used to believe:"Back in 1998, you were one of about 100 people who affirmed, in a full-page ad in the New York Times, the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that, quote, 'A wife [i]s to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.'Of course it's not politically viable, which is why Huckabee changed the subject, and the context, and the meaning, and apparently, his mind. What is at issue here is very near the heart of the Southern Baptist conservative/liberal split: is the New Testament, and therefore the church and the family, egalitarian or not? Conservatives generally believe (and state) that wives are to be subject to their husbands, as Ephesians 5:22 says. Liberals generally override that with 5:21 and preach a "mutual submission" that makes people feel that God is rather more in line with modern Western political ideology*. Maybe later tonight I'll lay out why the liberals are wrong, but for now it's not important. What is important is how Huckabee handled the issue. You see, he did sign the 1998 family statement and has supported the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, both of which were written to explicitly deny the liberal, egalitarian interpretation of Ephesians 5. Then when asked about it, he didn't say, "I was wrong" or "I should not have signed that," he came back with: The whole context of that passage ... I'm not the least bit ashamed of my faith or the doctrines of it... the point, and it comes from a passage of scripture in the New Testament Book of Ephesians is that as wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves, and it's not a matter of one being somehow superior over the other. It's both mutually showing their affection and submission as unto the Lord.In short, he flipped to the Mutual Submission egalitarian position of the religious liberals as soon as it became a political liability to hold his old position**. Even while mouthing that he is not ashamed of his doctrine, he's changed that doctrine to meet the political needs of the moment. For more than a decade he has stood as a conservative Baptist preacher defending conservative Baptist doctrine, until it was no longer popular. In that light, there seems to be another verse he might wish to take as his own, 1 Cor 9:22: "I have become all things to all men so that by any possible means I might become President." * And technology: Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck! May all our base someday belong to you! ** Said liberals are not amused. Labels: republicans  London's Financial Times says, "stop me if you've heard this one"The US is at risk of losing its top-notch triple-A credit rating within a decade unless it takes radical action to curb soaring healthcare and social security spending, Moody's, the credit rating agency, said yesterday.Ok, but that's not the funny part. It's here: Most analysts expect future administrations to deal with the costs of healthcare and social security...That's awesome. God I love British humor. Labels: economy  [samsim] I heard about this guy who broke into a lion's den at the zoo[samsim] and got mauled [samsim] and people were talking about how there should have been better defences put up to prevent people getting into the cage [samsim] a friend of mine suggested setting up some kind of deterrent [samsim] for example, putting some sort of fierce animal in the cage, which would attack anybody who climbed in  Big Ben says help is on the way:NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech Thursday that the central bank is prepared to continue lowering interest rates in order to help keep the economy on track.Now I'll agree that we will not slip into a recession this year, being as how we are probably already in one*. But I think that old Ben has less wiggle-room here than most investors understand, and probably even less than he thinks. The first limitation is the obvious one: the Fed Funds rate is already at 4.25%. Yes, it can be lowered even more, but it's a far cry from, say, the recession of 2001, when the rate was at 7.5% and was dragged to 1%. Already one of the spark plugs on his moneycopter is fouled. A second limitation is the fact that the dollar is already in the tank. When today's speech about the possibility of a rate cut was published, the buck spiked down half a point and gold jumped $17 to another new record. And that's just on talk of the possibility. Cutting too far or too fast creates the potential for a rout on the currency markets, something no bank wants to have to deal with. But the third limitation is the most important one even as it's the least visible, and that's that investors are now trying to outguess the Fed: To that end, investors are pricing in a 90 percent chance that the Fed will lower rates by a half-point on Jan. 30, according to federal funds futures listed on the Chicago Board of Trade.Now some of you are saying, "So what, El B? That doesn't mean they'll guess correctly." No, it doesn't. What it does mean is that the Fed, unless it wants to scare the horses, has just been given its number. You see, if the Fed cuts half a point, no problem. That's what was expected. But let's say they cut 3/4. Then everyone goes, "ooh, stuff must be really wrong for them to cut more than expected," and then the stock market tanks. So let's say they cut 1/4 point, then everyone will scream, "What are they doing? The Fed doesn't understand how bad it is here," and then the stock market tanks. Even then, 5 minutes after this cut the market starts pricing in the next cut. Basically, all Bernanke can do here is try to adjust expectations; he cannot set them. His credibility*** depends upon him looking like he understands the market, because his rap is that he doesn't and that scares the market. So he must meet their expectations, exactly, whatever they happen to be on that fateful day when 12 Fed Governors meet and pretend to look at the data. * A remark that would drive the GOP cheerleaders at Newsbusters crazy, if they knew that I existed**. But by their criteria, it is impossible to declare whether you had a recession until 8-11 months after the end of the quarter in which it began, by which time it's probably over. A damned useful metric, that one. ** Which they don't. *** He's not exactly, as they say, from the Street. This might help. Or not. Labels: economy  Labels: feminism  It's a sad day when economics is reduced to wishing upon theoretical stars:To be sure, a bad week on Wall Street isn't enough to reverse a 25-year trend of households curbing savings to support spending. That track record gives Deutsche Bank senior economist Torsten Slok hope that consumers will pull through...I really have only two questions before we begin today: 1) What, pray tell, do consumers have to sell? 2) To whom will they sell it to raise the money to buy new stuff? 5 seconds of thought on those questions will show that Slok's optimism reflects not reality but wishful thinking. It is based on an irrelevant* truism and quickly gets worse from there: "economic theory says [consumers] will sustain their spending as long as they remain confident in their long-term financial well-being."And theory is all well and good, but it must, in the end, conform to reality. Consumers can only "sustain their spending," so long as they have stuff to sell or the ability to borrow. They have sustained their consumption over the past 5 years by borrowing against their houses' rising value. That is now over and will be for 5 years or more... But the collapse of the mortgage market was not limited to mortgages - credit, and thus the ability of people to borrow, is drying up all over. The theory that presumes that spending is based only on the attitude of the borrower left out a big variable: a willing lender. If U.S. consumers want to keep consuming despite this temporary shock, they could just sell assets other than their house," Slok said.So that leaves "stuff to sell." Like what? Well, I suppose they could sell their car to raise money to buy a new car. To whom do they sell it? Probably to someone who buys that used car instead of a new one. Maybe they could hold a garage sale, or sell the dog? Sell a used TV? An old Playstation? How long can they support new spending by selling off all their old, depreciated consumer goods to other consumers? Perhaps they could sell stocks to raise money to buy a car. To whom? To another consumer who buys stocks with money that otherwise might have been used to buy a car**. Again, we have but a shifting of assets from one consumer to another. Consumers selling used goods to one another is probably a net "good thing," but it's not production nor does it represent a net increase in wealth. It is not going to help avoid a recession, nor will it end one once it is started. It is simply a shifting of already-created goods among members of the same consumer pool. "Housing is not the most significant part of the (household) balance sheet. In that sense, I'm still optimistic that we will not get a recession."I'm not sure what planet this guy is from, but here on Earth a family's house is far and away its largest asset AND its largest liability. That's exactly why the housing bubble was able to sustain spending for so long, and that's is why its busting is guaranteed to have exactly the opposite effect. Now that that bubble is over, there are simply no more assets or debt lines to rely on other than credit cards, and those can only rise for so long. The bottom line of spending and borrowing and debt is that people can only spend more than they earn so long as they can borrow the difference, but credit can only expand until income fails to pay the interest. If the collapse of the housing bubble, in conjunction with the collapse of the asset-backed commercial paper market, in conjunction with the continuing liquidy crisis in banking are any indication, that point appears to have been reached. Therefore, while Americans have been borrowing from the mortgage and from foreigners in ever-increasing amounts for more than a decade, that ride seems to be over, whether the economists are optimistic or not. * That being "a bad week on Wall Street isn't enough to reverse a 25-year trend of households curbing savings to support spending," By which is meant, "stocks going down will not keep people from going further into debt." It is irrelevant because the vast majority of new consumer debt has not been produced through the stock market, which has not moved much in 7 years, but through housing, which has increased by double-digit percentages annually in most places in the US. ** Not to mention that such selling pressure results in lower stock prices, which then results in a) less money raised by continued selling and b) less money spent (and to spend) under his own theory of "confidence in long-term financial well-being." In other words, if they do what what Slok expects, all they are really accomplishing is cutting off the limb upon which they sit. Labels: economics   The good doctor finds himself in a bit of a pickle with Snoop:Hey y’all already know I thought Ron Paul was a closet racist, duh, but this is good reading, except for Ron Paul fans, LOL! Sorry could not help that!Well, as they say in Texas: maybe they is and maybe they ain't. At issue is a conveniently-timed piece in the New Republic - and emblazoned today across the right side of the blogosphere - that sheds some light on a hidden past, a series of newsletters published by Paul, or under his name or byline, that reveals attitudes the candidate now denies: This "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" was hardly the first time one of Paul's publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled "What To Expect for the 1990s," predicted that "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" Two months later, a newsletter warned of "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter's author--presumably Paul--wrote, "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming..."The allegations, TNR notes in the fine print, are not new. In fact they were a campaign issue more than a decade ago. But as the NY Times noted last July: Paul survived these revelations. He later explained that he had not written the passages himself — quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own. But his response to the accusations was not transparent. When Morris called on him to release the rest of his newsletters, he would not. He remains touchy about it. “Even the fact that you’re asking this question infers, ‘Oh, you’re an anti-Semite,’ ” he told me in June. Actually, it doesn’t. Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and — unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration — defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel’s. His votes against support for Israel follow quite naturally from his opposition to all foreign aid. There is no sign that they reflect any special animus against the Jewish state.Well, Paul issued such a distancing today: “The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts...Now there are several interesting points about the whole sordid affair, probably the most interesting (and least answered) is, "If Paul didn't write these*, why in the world would he let them go out as his words?" Paul's claim that he accepts "moral responsibility" is necessary, but it's certainly not a sufficient answer. The campaign's position paints Paul as something of a naif or a hands-off manager the likes of which capitalism has never seen, and while that's probably the best the campaign can hope for politically, it certainly does not reflect well on the candidate. Not at all. Any reasonable person would - I hope - be a little more careful about what his name is attached to. But I think that's actually the case. He is a naif, or at least was 20 years ago. I certainly hope he learned a lesson, and it's quite possible we've not heard the end of it. I should hope not. As Ricky Ricardo was famous for saying, Lucy has some 'splaining to do here. One thing we can say about Dr. Paul,** assuming the writings are his - and based on the fact that such writings are that old, that they had to be dug out of KU library archive because there is nothing from his public speeches or legislation in that time that we can use - is that 20 years ago he held racist attitudes. And if the fact that someone used to be a racist*** is a reason someone cannot vote for Dr. Paul, well then they ought not vote for him. But they certainly ought to check if their opinion of Dr. Paul's attitudes matches up to what he has done as a Congressman for the last 2 decades and ponder what the apparent disconnect would mean in a Paul presidency. I happen to share an opinion with Jonah Goldberg about Dr. Paul, that: Let’s even say that Paul has the passionate support of the Legion of Doom, that his campaign lunchroom looks like the Star Wars cantina, and that his top advisers have hooves instead of feet.And I might add, Rudolph Giuliani, and Hillary, and Obama, and Romney, for this very reason: Whatever shortcomings Paul and his friends might have, Paul’s dogma generally renders those shortcomings irrelevant. He is a true ideologue in that his personal preferences are secondary to his philosophical principles.It is the fact that Mike Huckabee - and his equally-progressive comrades - would ban smoking nationwide because not smoking is good for you and the government is there to protect you from yourself, Constitution be damned. Paul would let you smoke and buy your own chemotherapy. I'm not supporting Ron Paul because he's a perfect man - although the fact that he is (or was) a naif gives me serious pause. I'm supporting him because the political principles he has espoused for 20 years are that everyone ought to be free to be what they wish to be. Even if they wish to be a racist. * And if the NY Times is to be believed (I know: HA!) he didn't. ** But that is not perhaps the worst we can say about Dr. Paul. "Naif" is not a defense. In fact, it is a worse character flaw than racist when it comes to Presidents. It certainly needs to be addressed. *** or maybe still is one. Labels: republicans  Anne Arundel County shows how to turn a mural into a political dogfight:Despite opposition from the state NAACP, County Executive John R. Leopold said this morning he will stand by his decision to prohibit a piece of African American art meant for the exterior of the Arundel Center overlooking Clay Street...Now as far as I can tell from the description, the mural in question is pretty huge, and made up of a combination of children's artwork and an oversized* black man breaking his chains. That's cool, my wife would probably buy a copy of it so long as the guy was Will Smith. But I do think it's pretty funny that the county executive actually had the guts to come out and, in so many words, call the work a piece of crap. Dude, don't you know elected officials are just supposed to pay artists for art? They are not allowed to have any opinions about it. We need executives like that here in the midwest, honest to God. A few years ago, Bartle Hall in KC got a makeover/expansion, which resulted in the building being extended over I-35 downtown. And on top of that part of the building were placed four "art deco pylons**." I drove past them every day for a year before someone told me they were supposed to be art. I have to admit, I never would have figured that out on my own. * Think "John Brown, Kansas Capital" but without the gun of course. ** They look like 40' tall, fat, gaudy cell phone towers. I don't know what they cost other than "too much." Labels: racism   Jeff Jacoby notes the end of a trend?THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998...Of course, snow for the first time in a century in Buenos Aires and Australia's coldest June ever could simply be anomalies. But they might not be. Since it has been awarded Nobel prizes and lavish grants, since it has been the subject of countless movies (even animated ones), books, speeches, rallies, concerts, and arguments, since everyone knows we're making the world a very warm place, and since "the debate in the scientific community is over," it seems to me we may have reached the top. If Global Warming were a stock, it might just be time to think about selling. Labels: environmentalism  Labels: democrats, demotivators  CNN reveals a national tragedy:Researchers asked 237 undergraduates to rate the importance of goals such as financial success, career, education and contribution to society, as well as goals such as romantic relationships, marriage, children and friendship.We've all seen them, meeting in groups in sidewalk cafes or on one of the hundreds of TV shows that reflect their lonely existence. Perhaps we have one in our own families. Bitter and solitary, they rage constantly against the world that tricked them into thinking it would be easy to start a family after 40, once they had made their mark in the world. As the years pass and their position solidifies, they search ever-more desperately not only for the children they will never have, but for a mate of their age and social status. What they gather instead is a harem of felines* to share their plight. So keen to put marriage and children on hold for career, they never noticed the steady ticking of the biological clock, until one day it stopped and in the silence they realized it was too late. That's right, I'm talking about the 39% of men who cry themselves to sleep in their immaculately-decorated studio apartments, certain they have screwed up but confused by the response from Dear Abby that tells them they did everything right, that if they can only project confidence and success, strength and independence, they are sure to find Miss Right. It is the saddest thing in the world when they realize at long last that they are condemned to die alone with cats. Can't somebody help those poor men? * surely you've seen the pictures on their blogs. Many of them dedicate a special day when they post pictures of Mr. Cuddles doing whatever cats do that constitutes 'cute.' And their friends ooh and aah, and post their own cats in response. Labels: feminism   CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Even the American Dialect Society knows how risky home mortgages are these days.The group of wordsmiths chose "subprime" as 2007's Word of the Year at its annual convention Friday.   The Concord Monitor reveals this isn't the first time Ron Paul has had to do it:While Ron Paul mostly has been depicted in the media as a political oddity whose following is limited to libertarians and bloggers, Paul's past shows he knows how to win tough campaigns - even when he has to fight his own party's power brokers, as he did to win a congressional seat in 1996...They say 'oddity' like that's a bad thing... Good article, and I don't have a lot of commentary on it, other than to note that the Republicans are usually quite comfortable with converted Democrats. And it's not just a GOP thing, here in Kansas our Democrat Lieutenant Governor is a former head of the state GOP and our erstwhile Democrat AG was a Dem a total of 11 months or so before his election. For two decades before that he was the Republican DA of Johnson County. Some folks will say, of course, that parties welcoming switchers has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with power. Unless your party has a majority it can't accomplish anything, so welcoming switchers simply allows the party to accomplish what it has set out to do. And they are correct. But if it's the case that nearly any politician* could be as easily a member of either party, and either party is a comfortable home for most politicians, why do we pretend that a choice between a Republican and a Democrat is a meaningful one? * at least the vast majority who have never been referred to as 'oddities.' Labels: republicans  Sarge's shirt reads, "White people can't read Chinese." And yes, I had to ask him.  El Presidente prescribes the hair of the dog:WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration, faced with a deteriorating economy and a big jump in unemployment, said Friday it was considering an economic stimulus package that might include tax cuts to ward off a recession...Here comes the cavalry. In the face of oft-repeated assertions that "The economy is strong" and "our fiscal house is in order," prepare yourselves for a period of huge deficits and dollar drop acceleration. The reason is two-fold, because as we head into a recession**, the government is about to invite a one-two shot to the fiscal chin. The first punch will be dropping tax revenues. As profits drop at companies from Bloodbath and Beyond to Citigroup, the government will collect less in corporate taxes. And when one adds onto that several tens of billions in personal income tax cuts, however temporary, the government's red ink will grow quicker than you can say "Pillory Hillary." Such a cut would be all well and good if the government cut spending in proportion to that drop. But the second punch will be increased spending, most probably on worthless makework projects chosen for political rather than economic reasons. Congress will find (and fund) all manner of boondoggles that turn out to be "absolutely necessary" to fight recession, whether they actually fight it or not. Whatever those programs turn out to be (and the specifics matter very little in the medium term) they will do naught but add either government borrowing or government printing of money. Either one of them will accelerate the dollar's dive on world markets. This of course is not a surprise, but a milestone on the road to financial oblivion. * The "Working Group on Financial Markets" is the infamous "Plunge Protection Team" or "PPT," to which gold bugs assign all manner of nefarious actions, powers, and intentions. It exists to ensure that the power of the government is used to avoid any repeat of the '87 crash. Whatever happens in the markets going forward, one can be assured that your tax dollars will be spent where they are most needed: protecting Wall Street from its own excesses. ** A recession is not itself a problem, it's simply an opportunity for bad loans and investments to be cleared from the books. That it will be fought tooth and nail will prove a huge problem. Labels: economy   Pretty Peggy sees something old as something new:[Obama's] takedown of Mrs. Clinton was the softest demolition in the history of falling buildings. I think we were there when it happened, in the debate in which he was questioned on why so many of Bill Clinton's aides were advising him. She laughed, and he said he was looking forward to her advising him, too. He took mama to school.The truth is that there is nothing new on either side.
Peggy seems to think that there's something 'new' because the latest winner happens to look young and black rather than old and white. But how will an Obama cabinet differ from that of the last black President? Not only do I suspect there would be no difference, it will probably have several of the same people in it, not unlike El Presidente's recycling of old Nixon staff appointees Rumsfeld and Cheney. On the GOP side it is no different among two top vote-getters*:
Peggy seems to think that there's something 'new' because the latest winner happens to be folksy and plays an instrument**. But it never seems to occur to Peggy*** (or any other conservative for that matter) that these candidates are all progressives in the mold of Wilson and TR. They are all believers in government as the prime mover in society. They all believe that whatever the problem, government has a solution. They all believe that if we don't like something about another country, we have a perfect right to shoot missiles at it. They all believe that it is the purpose of the government to 'run' the economy, to manipulate interest rates and money supply, to plan for the health care and retirement of individuals, to bail out stupid companies, cities, or states. Every single one of them**** has a wonderful plan for your life. But my choice among all the above, mentioned and unmentioned, was easy. You see, I happen to think we already have plenty of government. I think we already have enough laws, enough law enforcers, enough rule writers, enough investigators and inspectors and planners and gatherers and sharers. In fact, it will probably not surprise you to learn that I think we have far too many of all of them. So because I won't vote for any candidate of any party who wants more government, my first question in picking a candidate was simply, "are there any candidates who, if all of their plans are put into effect, will leave us with less government in 2102 than we enjoy in 2008?" It turns out that I didn't need a second question, because I eliminated all but one. * The next two are senators with a pocket full of government... well, you get the idea. ** I know, who ever heard of a folksy, instrument-playing governor of Arkansas? *** Not that this ought to surprise us. It took her 5 years to figure out that George Bush was a big-spending progressive. That means she'll figure out Huckabee in 2013. **** All but Ron Paul, which is why he is so hated by the conservative commentariat. They certainly would choose Hillary over Ron Paul, because they, like Hillary, are True Believers in using force to shape society. They only thing they differ with Hillary on is the shape it ought to take. And that is negotiable in conference committee. Labels: politics  Not mine. But I wish I'd thought of it.  Hugo Chavez must have spent some time in middle management:Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's latest effort to reduce Latin America's highest inflation rate revives a coin rooted in Venezuela's colonial past: the "locha,'' based on the old Spanish "piece of eight.''Back when I was a big shop/big iron geek, we had a little dance that we went through every three years or so. Whenever the attitude of the programmers toward those who used the results of that programming went negative, management would implement a sure-fire plan to arrest the decline: change the name of the customer. See, it wasn't always "customer." It started off as "user," as in one who used the computer or the reports therefrom. But when programmers started disliking the users, they became "clients." But then "client" became a bad word, so it was changed to "customer." I was gone before "customer" was changed, but surely it was replaced by a nicer, cleaner word. Maybe "user." The reasoning, of course, was that a new label on the same thing was supposed to make the thing different. But the programmers were not fooled. Changing the label on a thing, without changing the thing itself, never solved any of their problems*. Venezuela suffers hideous inflation**, a direct result of the government's print-and-spend policies, such that the old currency has lost the vast majority of its value in just a few years. But rather than change the policies, Chavez has simply changed the label. The programmers are not fooled. But what Chavez is doing there - trying to fight inflation as if it were a confidence problem rather than a spending problem - is no different from what we Americans do with our own currency. Rather than control issuance of new money (which is what inflation is), we try to control "inflation expectations." We change the makeup of the CPI index. We exclude volatile*** food and energy prices. We constantly announce that inflation is low, that it is contained, that we have a strong dollar policy. Yet the dollar falls against everything nonetheless, year after year. It makes me wonder if we will all earn a million dollars a year and pay $60 for a gallon of gas before our government starts lopping zeroes to create a "strong dollar" - you know, just to let everyone know we have a newer, better, currency. That's what managers do. But the programmers are not fooled. * but since we worked for a company that provided a series of bungee bosses (bounce in, make changes, bounce out), it did provide 'experience' for a middle-level manager. It also left the same problem to be fixed again by the next manager, who knew just what to do. ** Not that I feel any pity for the Venezuelans. Chavez was elected, twice, to steal from the rich and give to the poor. That there are shortages of basic foods, rising prices, and dictatorial repression is a predictable side effect of that election. Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. Well, this is what they asked for. *** by which we mean, things going up in price that people can see. Labels: money Lynn and Bill faxed in their 2nd half December claim voucher 12/31. That is 1 day too early and so I can not accept it. Can you ask them to refax please? thanks, Jessica XXXXXXX Accounting Clerk II Emporia Central   It was only a matter of time anyway:Unrest in Pakistan, a faltering dollar and surging oil futures sent the price of gold soaring to a record high on Wednesday, beating its previous highest level set 28 years ago.Dollar below 80? Check. Oil above $90? Check, $100 for the first time ever today. Gold at an all-time high? Check. I haven't figured out who or what the Fourth Horseman of the Dollar Apocalypse is yet, but I'm pretty sure she'll be coming along presently. As I told Jozum this morning, I am really, really glad I don't live in a city. Really. Labels: money Which literature classic are you?  Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a mystery novel dealing with theology, especially with catholic vs liberal issues. You search wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that learning is essential in life. Take this Quiz! |
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When you need a picture of 'the one that got away,' try Lyin' Your Bass Off. |
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