Bizarre historical fact of the day

George Custer once killed a horse he was riding by accidentally shooting it in the head.

July is history writing month

So anyway, it's been decided that the next paper is going to deal with the actions of the Kansas Fifteenth Volunteer Cavalry in the last half of Price's Raid, basically from 2nd Lexington through Westport and on down* to 2nd Newtonia. But I can't seem to decide on a theme among the two decent choices.

The first is a "fast learners" theme, because since the Fifteenth had never been altogether in a straight up battle** before meeting Price, and because they lost about 4 times before beating him at Newtonia****, I could go on to show that even with the absence of Jennison*****, the fact that their new commander had a total of 2 months' real experience (with Grant in Tennessee and Mississippi in 1862), and the fact that they really didn't have enough guns (or ammunition) to destroy Price, they kept up the skeer all the way to Arkansas.

The second is an "unrepentant" theme, which is honestly where I'm leaning. The Fifteenth was raised after Quantrill's raid on Lawrence and the personnel reflected that both in composition and demeanor. Between battles, they took the time to hang a couple of wounded Confederates at Carthage and then they jayhawked a number of houses in Missouri on their way back from the Price chase. Jennison was both unrepentant and arrested - and was later court martialed and dishonorably discharged for his part in the crimes. Hoyt, as I mentioned, was promoted. So I've got to figure out how Hoyt - who was a merciless house burner and Missourian-killer himself - managed to avoid the rap that ended Jennison's career.

And to think the lovely and gracious Rogue asked me what I was going to study once I had learned everything there was to learn about history...

* Though we have to skip Mine Creek because General Blunt was having a hissy and missed it.

** Jennison led about 40 of them to Camden Point during the Paw Paw Rebellion, but that battle*** was nothing like Jo Shelby was going to offer them.

*** The Union troops surprised a bunch of Bushwhackers while the latter were having a picnic.

**** Of course, Price was in a full-on retreat by then. But you would not know it from reading his report.

***** who had been kicked in the head by a mule at Carthage and did not take part - Blunt's First was led by Good Hater who was breveted a general for his part at Newtonia.

Watching it die

Now surely this cartoon gives the Republicans too much credit*, but it is a perfect picture of how progressives - represented in most places by the Democrats - are concerned primarily not with budgeting per se, but with social engineering. Which is why I for one have little expectation that the California budget mess will avoid a state government meltdown.

The beauty of California's mess is illustrated by a cute little list of 10 Things You Didn't Know About California's Budget** from Useless News and World Distort, though one of the items is sufficient to illustrate why it's better for California to die than to live on:

#6 Californians pay the second-highest sales tax in the nation; the state's gas tax is the third-highest in the nation; and California's top earners have the second-highest state income tax rate in the country***.

If you can't make your government work with the some of the highest tax rates in the country, then it's time that someone else implement a new government there. It will hopefully be one that is far less interested in lavish, taxpayer-funded universities and tax credits and punishing productive behavior than the current one.

The progressive philosophy that government exists primarily to form the human environment is a dangerous one, and the sooner it's killed off, the better. Of course, that will not be accomplished solely by California's current government going under, but it's a really, really good start.

* Correct me if I'm wrong as regards California, Huck. There are two words that assure me it does for the GOP nationwide: President Bush.

** Which is quite an admission on their part. These are important things, so if I read their magazine, how come I don't know them already?

*** I sneak in this asterisk because #7 illustrates the extent of #6: these "top earners" ($500k+) pay 40% of California's income tax revenue.

Welcome to the long run

CNBC finds a cloud in the silver lining:

Households pushed their savings rate to the highest level in more than 15 years in May as a big boost in incomes from the government's stimulus program was devoted more to bolstering nest eggs than increased spending.

The higher savings rate is healthy in the long term, economists said. But without vigorous consumer spending, the government may have to do more to revive the economy, possibly through further tax breaks and spending...

It won't do any good. The game has changed. The heady days of 2007 are gone forever, and a frugal new world has arrived that everyone but government innately understands.

One exasperating attribute of government economists is their assumption that the long term will simply take care of itself. Savings, they tell us, are good "in the long term," yet in the short term we must always spend, spend, spend. They will give us money to spend. If we refuse to spend, they will spend for us, simply for the sake of spending, and rely on the Chinese to save vicariously on our behalf.

In that sense they are not unlike the folks who assure us "Weather is not climate." While they make many decent-sounding arguments, at the bottom one must ask, what is climate but the accumulation of days and weeks and months and years of weather? What is the economic long term but the accumulation of days and weeks and months and years of short terms? If every weather day is cold, we would rightly conclude we live in a cold climate. If it rains every day, we would be justified in concluding we live in a wet one. If the same way, if every day we spend more than we earn, then the savings that is good over the long term can never arrive.

But whether Keynes was a) wrong, or b) exactly wrong, is at this point immaterial. While economists make noises like:

"It's going to be harder for the economy to gain traction without consumers becoming more aggressive in their spending," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com...We need consumers to kick it into a higher gear before we feel confident that the economy is going to kick into a higher gear," he says.

...the truth remains that such a course is impossible, and always was. Over the last decade or more, Americans have spent much more than they earned - no one in history ever accumulated debt like we have. That's the heady spending that Zandi and Obama and others wish to get us back to.

But it's not only impossible to do so**, it's not even a good idea to try. Sure, lots of spending and credit keeps everyone busy, which government loves. All the "right" numbers go up in the short term. But such frenetic activity, with its ever-growing leverage and tax revenues, comes with a cost. While saving today guarantees future consumption by giving people the accumulated power to buy future goods, borrowing today reduces future consumption by siphoning future income to debt service. Borrowing to consume today assures that in the long run we will be so busy paying our banker that we cannot pay our grocer***.

Our population is aging, and the boomers are looking forward to retirement. They are just beginning the process of winding down their earning years and hope to sell their accumulated assets to all those kids they didn't bother to have. They need to rely on all the savings they never made to live through their post-productive years. They expect to consume the tax money of those few people still working to pay for their Social Security and Medicare. They are going to be disappointed: spending is going to go down, and GDP is going to go down, because the largest generation to pass through American history is on the verge of winding down.

Welcome to the long run.

* the whole reason Keynes is more popular in government than in real life is that Keynes gives government the excuse - nay, the duty - to spend more than they take in, day after day, year after year, and with a good conscience. It's a politician's wet dream.

** not even government can spend more than it makes forever. It must eventually destroy its currency to continue the game.

*** Of course, one of a more conspiratorial mindset than I might claim that such is precisely the reason government insists on it.

We report, you decide

Just a question

If the Norks nuked Hawaii today, how much time would pass before it was on the news?

Found at long last

I'm guessing it was tucked into Hillary's Rose Law Firm billing records.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends

Once more:

(Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said...

In an interview with the paper, [Rep. Anthony] Weiner said the rules have "had a real chill on the ability to get these condos sold," at a time when prices of condos have fallen enough to attract potential buyers.

This is what lawmakers call the "free market." It means that politicians declare that prices are right where they ought to attract potential buyers, but those buyers are too stupid to realize it and private lenders are too stupid to finance it. Therefore it's necessary to change the rules recently put in place to make sure foolish loans are not made again into rules that guarantee that foolish loans are made again.

Then when Freddie and Fannie are stuck "guaranteeing" even more worthless* loans, politicians will have sufficient grounds to declare that the free market has failed us all, and that we are in need of regulations to make sure foolish loans are not made again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

* Or at least unsaleable to anyone but the Federal Reserve.

A gift for Kawaika

Irony*

* though unintentional, I'm sure.

The bible and slavery

One cannot spend much time in the Civil War without coming across the Southern argument that the bible condones slavery and specifically slavery as it was practiced in the American South*. Jefferson Davis himself said that, "[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts."

The quotation is correct as far as it goes, for there was slavery in ancient Israel, regulated by Mosaic Law, and slavery in Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Sumer, China, Egypt, and nearly anywhere else there have been people. And there was slavery in the American South. Ergo, slavery as practiced in the Antebellum South is approved by God, right?

We Americans are at something of a disadvantage when it comes to exegeting on the issue of slavery because of our national experience - we think, without thinking, that slavery as we practiced it is what slavery was always and everywhere. However, a quick look** at some of the commandments regarding slavery that are ignored by slavery's proponents (and the Bible's accusers) will show us a few important differences.

Two pretty major distinctions are these:

• If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you. (Deu 24:7)
• Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee (Deu 23:15)
  

Well, there goes the Fugitive Slave Act, no? If you cannot involuntarily press someone into slavery, and if you cannot return a slave who has escaped, then it is obvious that our first major distinction - and perhaps the only one we really need - is that slavery was a voluntary institution in the Bible***. There is no other way around it. If all a slave has to do is leave, and no one can by law return him, then a person who is a slave is one because he chooses to be one. In fact, one way one ended up in slavery was to sell himself. Now, why would one sell himself?

"And if thy brother be waxen poor with thee, and sell himself unto thee..." (Lev 25:39, Jewish Publication Society, see also Lev 25:47 and Deu 15:12). In short, slavery was a voluntary way for the poor to get a long-term employer; it was not a system that involved Hebrew ships plying the Med in search of free labor.

Now, how long-term was the labor? Generally six years: "If one of your countrymen, a Hebrew man or woman, becomes your servant for a price and does work for you six years, in the seventh year let him go free." (Deu 15:12, BBE). It's not unlike the American practice of indentured servitude, where (most often) a Brit received passage to America in exchange for x years of work when he got here. And if he wanted to escape, well, there were plenty of places he could escape to.

Now, there are a number of other differences, and doubtless some sharp atheist will point out the fact that people often sold their children into slavery and that masters were allowed to beat their servants (though not to do bodily harm). We can deal with those if we have to, but suffice it to say that neither of them are, in practice, much different than the rights of parenting - you can make your children work and you can spank them. You just can't knock their teeth out or kill them, and neither could you with slaves.

Slavery in ancient Israel was not only qualitatively different from slavery as practiced in the American South, it was different than that practiced in the rest of the Ancient Near East (references available on request). We may not like it, though given the realities of poverty and starvation in the ancient world, it's hard to imagine that those whose choice was death or temporary slavery had much problem with the latter.

So does the bible condone slavery? Yes, but on its own terms and in its own economic and historical circumstances. Does it condone what Americans consider slavery, the kidnapping of people to perform a lifetime of forced labor on behalf of someone who buys them against their will? No, it does not.

* And one cannot read the atheist press without finding the same.

** We could do a long look, but it's my day off.

*** At least in the OT. Roman slavery was of a different nature altogether but is far less often used to justify the practice. Even then, though Paul sent Onesimus back to his Roman though Christian master, Philemon, it was voluntary: Onesimus did not have to go.

Wow, are those aliens gonna be pissed when we bomb the moon in a couple months.

How would you feel about "Kike Party" or "Nigger Party"?

The title above comes from a Democratic Underground post complaining about Republicans calling their opponents "the Democrat Party." Apparently that's some sort of slam, but it did make me laugh in light of this quote about yesterday's vote in the Senate apologizing for slavery:

Even among proponents of a congressional apology, reaction to yesterday's vote was mixed. Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University who had pushed for the Bush administration to issue an apology, called the Democratic-controlled Senate's resolution "meaningless" since the party and federal government are led by a black president and black voters are closely aligned with the Democratic party.

"The Republican Party needed to do it," Swain said. "It would have shed that racist scab on the party."

Now the reason it's funny is that the Republican party for the first, oh, three decades of its existence was called "the Nigger Party" or "the Black Republican Party" by Democrats because their more radical members worked to end slavery and for full political equality for blacks:

The Republican, Abolition, Radical, Nigger Party never was for a moment since its first organization, is not now, and never will be in a majority in the United States.
-- Condensed History of the War

And it was not only southern-slanted histories that made the jibe. A quick Google Books search will suffice to illustrate that if the Republicans' perceived lack of racism was not the main issue in Democratic politics - in both north and south - during and following the war, it was certainly one of the most persistent and offensive.

So it seems to me that the Democrats not only owe blacks but the GOP a public apology for their treatment in years gone by, an assertion that I'm sure Dr. Swain would find laughable. "That was a long time ago," I'm sure she would say.

But not as long ago as slavery itself.

Thoughts on Iran

I don't care what happens in Iran. There should be a banner or something you can put on your blog to display how much you don't care. Unfortunately I don't care enough to design one. Or even to steal one.

Those who think that a freely-elected Iranian government is going to be any better for America than a not-freely-elected one have clearly not been paying attention to that part of the world for the last 5 or so decades.

The idea that we should promote peace there seems to me a little shortsighted. The West has always had less trouble with Moslems when they are busy fighting each other. I'm not saying we should make them fight, I'm just saying.

Why do Americans have the idea that the protesters against a repressive government automatically deserve American support? Seems to me we failed to learn from that same mistake in 1979.

So far, Obama had said exactly the right thing: nothing.

About those billions...

Don't know if you heard about this. It wasn't in all the papers:

Italian prosecutors were trying to establish yesterday whether US bonds with a face value of $134 billion seized from two alleged smugglers were real or counterfeit.

The bonds were found when the two men — said to be Japanese but as yet not identified — were arrested while attempting to cross into Switzerland from Italy by train at the frontier town of Chiasso this month. Prosecutors in Como said that the two men had hidden the bonds in the false bottom of a suitcase...

There are all kinds of conspiracy ideas out there, the funniest being that since TARP was announced as having 134 billion left as of March 1, this operation is obviously Paulsen and his buddies completing their looting in a spectacularly tacky manner. Another is that Japan or China are really, really trying to get out of their dollar holdings. There's a couple reasons not to buy it and to suspect rather that the bonds are fake. But in the meantime, one cannot be encouraged by the response of the Treasury Department:

Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt, said Thursday the paper is phony.

"Based on the photos we've seen on the Web, they're not even close to looking like a Treasury security," he said.

Based on pictures we saw on the internet? Is this guy kidding? Obama must be serious about cutting budgets if the Treasury can't afford to have someone knowledgeable look at the actual bonds.

But the real reason I think the bonds are fake is that $134 billion in bearer bonds is literally unfathomable. The Treasury switched over from bearer bonds to registered bonds in the 1980s*. With that in mind, let's put a few numbers together:

The total public debt in 1980 was about $930 billion.
The longest-dated US securities are 30 years.
Not all US debt is in long bonds.
All securities after, say, 1985 were registered.

So with that in mind, $134 billion in bearer long bonds would likely represent every single outstanding 30 year bearer bond in existence, assuming** there even existed billion dollar bearer bonds. How likely is that? Not very.

So what were they for? A North Korean scheme to undermine the dollar? A Chinese conspiracy to rid themselves of our debt while making it look like they were still buying? A Nigerian scam of colossal proportions? I suspect the latter is the case. If the bonds were good enough, one of them could conceivably be used for collateral in a Swiss account in the same way scammers will "overpay" for an item with a fake money order. By the time the fake is uncovered, they have absconded with your money. How hard would it be to use a $500m bond as collateral on a bunch of gold contracts, take delivery at month end, then scoot?***

IMO, the least likely explanation is that it's some kind of official plot to hurt the dollar, because there are a lot better ways to do it than having people sneak across the borders that way - that's what diplomatic pouches are for. On the other hand, perhaps they were supposed to get caught and their bonds were supposed to be exposed. That opens up a whole other group of possible conspiracies.

Luckily no one who reads the American press is likely to hear anything about those...

* And they "encouraged" lots of others to do so as well, as the proceeds from registered bonds are far easier to tax than that of bearer bonds.

** and I don't know the answer to this, but I doubt the government ever issued single bonds that represented a full percentage of the outstanding debt. Not very liquid, either.

*** I don't know. I'm just asking because that's what I'd do.

You can't get there from here

Saint Obama has a vision:

I'm convinced that by setting out clear rules of the road and ensuring transparency and fair dealings, we will actually promote a more vibrant market. This principle is at the heart of the changes we are proposing...

To implement this vision of transparency, he's putting overwhelming and unprecedented coercive power into an independent corporation* which still will not reveal to whom it has made emergency loans on the order of a trillion dollars of our money, encourages companies to break the very laws it is charged with enforcing, and does not even publish meeting "minutes" for 6 weeks after those meetings.

No matter how much progressives talk about markets and transparency, you can safely ignore it. What they will always end up creating is - like the Fed itself - a powerful but secretive cartel that will manage your life in their your best interest.

* You didn't realize that the Federal Reserve is a stock corporation owned by banks? Shame on you.

Math is hard

(hat tip: Huck)

UPDATE: Paul Krugman shows that foresight is harder:

[The Recession of 2001] was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs* more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off...

And pull it off he did, proving that even in the rare case that government economists accomplish what they set out to do - in this case, purposely create a housing bubble and soaring household spending - the results are worse than if they had done nothing at all.

Which is why they should do nothing at all.

* note the use of the present tense here. This editorial was written in 2002.

We were wrong then

But we're right now:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that "everyone guessed wrong" on the impact of the economic stimulus, but he defended the administration's spending designed to combat rising joblessness.

Biden said inaccuracies in unemployment predictions shouldn't undercut the White House's support of the $787 billion economic revival plan that has not met the expectations of President Obama's team. Instead, the vice president urged skeptics* to look at teachers who kept their classroom assignments and police officers who kept their beats because of financial assistance from Washington.

Biden's mythmaking is a beautiful example of the fallacy of the broken window: look at how busy the glazier is, not at the out of work tailor who will not make a suit because we have spent the money he would have earned fixing windows.

But it also illustrates a central truth in politics: there are no wrong answers, only misunderstood questions. Just because Obama's squandering of almost a trillion dollars didn't do what it was supposed to is no reason not to do it. We have to do it AND probably do it again. Eventually the problems of the world will magically align themselves with Obama's pre-fab solutions and we skeptics will stand speechless, bedazzled by the wisdom and foresight of the O-Team.

Or we'll be making artificial limbs under the new Obama health plan out of mud and sticks. Take your pick.

UPDATE: This is what the road to hell looks like. But I'm sure their intentions are good.

* Obadictionary entry: Skeptic (n): a person who understands the likely effects** of an Obama plan six months before the administration learns it.

** Or in this case, non-effects.

The difference between fail and epic fail

A funny thing happened on the way to the new world

So I'm talking to a budding young college professor today during (his) smoke break, and while discussing my plaster replica of the Kensington Runestone* he's confiding his frustrations about not being able to really cover history in the US-to-1865 course he's teaching starting in 8 weeks.

BYCP: So I've got to cover 14,000 years in about 16 weeks. That leaves no time for anything interesting...

El B: Sure, but you'll be able to cover 13,800 of that pretty quick, I suspect.

BYCP: Well, yeah, the Bering Strait Land Bridge ought to take about 10 minutes, and the next thing we know it's St. Brendan, Leif Eriksen, and "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

El B: So what are you going to say about how the people here got here?

BYCP: What is there to say? According to theory, we ought to find the oldest ruins closest to the crossing, but all the evidence shows that civilization began in Central America and spread from there. And [Central Americans] don't look like Siberians, but more like Mongols. They crossed 25,000 years ago, had no contact with the old world, and yet developed a surprisingly similar civilization - with pyramids and writing and everything - almost contemporaneously with Asia? I don't buy it. You know, the only reason for even considering [Bering] is because we can't think of anything else. That's a pretty stupid basis for a theory... (shakes head) I think I'm turning into a young earth creationist or something.

Then he looked at me kinda funny...

BYCP: Um, we'd better get back to class.

El B: Um, yeah, let's.

* You have no idea how impressed I am at this point that he's not only heard of it, but is familiar with it enough to talk about it.

(language warning)

Good Hater is back. . . maybe

So anyway, in addition to 4 Civil War exams in the next 3 weeks, I have my choice of writing either three 10-page book reviews*, writing two such reviews and doing an oral presentation, or writing a 20-30 page paper on "an item of historical or biographical interest" at least tangentially related to the Civil War.

The book reports are obviously the easy way out, though I'm concerned that a) I'll be stuck with books I'm uninterested in, or b) because I have Daley this fall for a Readings class and have to do more reports, if I do the books I like now, I'll be stuck with sucky books then.

I can't just re-submit Good Hater - apparently under "the rules" that is academic fraud - but the rules do not say you cannot do another paper on a subject you have addressed in another class**. Therefore I'm thinking about doing another paper on the Good Hater, this one concentrating only on his actions during Price's 1864 campaign in Missouri. It would require explaining four battles (Independence, Little Blue, Westport, and Second Newtonia, but not Mine Creek***) with a (very) small intro and outro. I have all the research I need here, I just haven't attacked that part of his bio in any organized fashion.

The upside is that if I'm going to use Hoyt for a thesis subject, I'm going to have to do these battles anyway, and if there is not enough to make a book out of, now's the time to find out. The downside, of course, is that whatever I write I'll have to re-write later to stay on the good side of the rules.

Luckily I've got until the end of July to turn the paperwork in, though I do have to let the good doctor know next week what it's going to be.

* On books approved by Dr. Daley, who has read and apparently memorized every book in existence.

** Just like I got two oral presentations out of Good Hater last semester, one on the early history of the Kansas Seventh and one on the Red Legs. Hoyt played a role in each - and all the research was done originally for Good Hater - but they were not the same presentation. Hey, I'm all for recycling research when possible.

*** apparently General Blunt was pouting and so missed that battle, which somewhat explains reckless his actions at Newtonia****.

**** My actions at Newtonia are easier to explain. Rogue and I took last Thursday off and visited the battle site, as well as an excellent winery (White Rose) in Carthage and the George Washington Carver monument in Diamond. A good time was had by all. Well, both.

Meanwhile, over in the treasure room

I got just two words for ya:

Stocks slid further Wednesday after the 10-year Treasury auction, which had a much higher yield than expected.

The Treasury sold $19 billion of 10-year notes at a yield of 3.99 percent, the high end of expectations, and much higher than the 3.19 percent the Fed paid at the early May auction.

Andrew Brenner, senior vice president of MF Global, summed it up in two words: "Auction awful," he told Reuters.

Bzzzzt. I'm sorry, "auction awful" is not correct.

Try "auction puny." The Treasury sold a mere $19 billion into the market and the market didn't want them except at significantly higher rates* than Uncle Sam desired and expected. And there are bloody few circumstances*** under which investors can be expect to want to lend money to the Treasury going forward at anything less than today.

$19 billion out of $2000 billion that needs to be sold for the government to cover its costs this year. $19 billion out of $4000 billion that it needs in the next 2 years.

Now we understand why the Fed is become the buyer of last resort. It has been sold in the press as a good thing. Like a certain popular flowered shirt that was recently accused of being fashionable, it is very much not, a situation that will be just as obvious to anyone who sees it.

* While a move of eight tenths of one percent on the rate does not seem like much, consider that 3.99% interest is a full one-fourth more than 3.19%. That means that - if this rate were applied to our $11+ trillion in funded debt - we would be paying** 25% more in interest than is forecast in all these already horrible budget projections.

** ahem, borrowing or printing.

*** None of which will be pleasant.

(hat tip: fish)

Obviously this is not a fashion blog

nor is it fashionable, nor do I know anything about fashion. My opinion is worth nothing.

But good grief. That outfit looks like the robe my grandmother* would throw over her PJs at the cabin when she had to make the midnight walk to the outhouse. I wonder how much the taxpayers coughed up for that woven abomination.

* I'm not saying my grandmother looked like Michele, but my grandfather looked and sounded a lot like Charlie Rangel, so that's something.

Gone, gone, gone

Millions of potential viewers are being deprived of their marching orders because they no longer watch network news. I mean, seriously, how can Katie Couric and whoever else* be Walter Kronkitish demigods, able to move public opinion in a single editorial, if people aren't willing to watch them?

But wait, it gets worse:

Michael J. Copps, the acting head of the Federal Communications Commission, said that the people most likely to lose reception [due to the nationwide switch to digital] are society’s most vulnerable — lower-income families, the elderly, the handicapped and homes where little or no English is spoken. The transition will also hit inner-city and rural areas hardest, he said.

Through one of those coincidences that makes me believe there truly is justice in the universe, the people slated to lose TV coverage (i.e. those who do not have cable or satellite TV) are the very people whose only choice of news has been CBS and its twisted sisters. Society's most vulnerable(tm) will either have no television at all - certainly less of a tragedy than it's made out to be - or will have to head down to Rent-a-Center like all their neighbors. Whatever route they choose, the result ain't looking good for the networks.

Don't know if I'll cry, don't know if I'll die laughing...

* I truly don't know. I haven't watched network news more than a handful of times in the past two decades.

(hat tip: BizzyBlog)

Maybe I'm the only one old enough to find this funny

I know I'm stunned

When I read headlines like, "US Treasury Bloodbath Soaks Fund Managers":

A brutal drop in long-dated Treasury prices has caught even the best money managers off guard...

The Vanguard Group, Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price and Hoisington Investment Management have seen their government funds down anywhere between 10 percent and 30 percent...

What's stunning about the portfolio declines is the swift plunge in Treasury prices within a short period of time despite the Federal Reserve's buyback purchases intended to hold down interest rates.

It's hardly unimaginable that a government creating trillions of dollars from nothing to buy its own debt certificates might have the effect of making its other debt certificates worth less. If the government simply printing up money did not have the unavoidable effect of destroying it, then there would be no need for bonds (and therefore a bond market) in the first place.

Perhaps the problem is with the word "despite." The sentence reads far more accurately "because of."

Friday randomness

So anyway, I got a text message on my cell phone from a number that I did not recognize. It said, in total, "Hey everyone, this is my new number." It was one of the least helpful things I've ever seen.

"Joseph, you are NOT the father*."

One of my professors, in explaining the mechanics of good history writing, solemnly told us** that it was critical we "avoid cliches like the plague." I laughed out loud, and everyone in the class looked at me like I was crazy.

As far as I know, George Washington Carver is the only person who ever used the word "kucklucked." Until just now.

Shakespeare told "your momma" jokes:

Painter: You're a dog.
Apemantus: Thy mother's of my generation: what's she, if I be a dog?

It's a good thing the Bureau of Labor Statistics has managed to add 694,000 jobs to the economy since February via their statistically-laughable Birth/Death model. If it weren't for all the hard work of government statisticians to create those mythical jobs, we'd really have an unemployment problem.

* This is all the drink warning you're getting, Jozum.

** And had it on her powerpoint just like that, which made it even funnier.

Jon Stewart seems to be coming around

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
BiG Mess
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Economic Crisis

What do we burn apart from witches?

more witches:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday filed securities fraud charges against former Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and two other former executives...

In particular, the SEC pointed to Countrywide's increased origination of pay-option mortgages, which allow borrowers to choose their monthly payments even if they don't cover the entire interest amount. While the lender maintained they were being prudently underwritten, the SEC says, Mozilo wrote in an email that there was evidence that borrowers were lying on their applications and many would be unable to handle the eventual higher payments.

There was evidence that they were lying? Well, raise my rent. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that if you offer people as much money as they wish to borrow on the house of their dreams and tell them you're not going to freaking follow up on their answers, a percentage of them might fudge the numbers a bit. What is the world coming to*?

Far be it from me to cry over the hostile mob storming Mozilo's castle. If there was a face** that symbolized the whole sordid housing bubble, it was that of Mozillo, a man who made literally billions lending the leveraged money of fools to other fools. He was king of the world until his bubble machine imploded, and the court is going to give him a sound talking-to***, believe you me. In the meantime, the same politicians who loved to spend the money he brought in, both in taxes and in campaign contributions and other favors, will lead the mob and hope to God it doesn't turn aside at any of their houses.

I shan't be joining the mob. Yet. I've only got a few torches, and I'm saving them up for Bernanke's castle.

* Don't answer. That's supposed to be a rhetorical question.

** fake tan and everything.

*** "Angelo Mozilo, you've led a trite and meaningless life. And you're a very bad person."

You're doing it wrong

Imagine how surprised I was to see this:

The recent surge in interest and mortgage rates is not down to the Federal Reserve’s purchases of Treasury and mortgage assets, sources familiar with the thinking of Fed officials told CNBC.

The $1.2 trillion in mortgage assets and $200 billion in Treasurys bought by the Fed in an attempt to backstop the troubled credit market were not designed to impact rates, the sources said...

When 3 months ago, the story was this:

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the country sinking deeper into recession, the Federal Reserve launched a bold $1.2 trillion effort Wednesday to lower rates on mortgages and other consumer debt, spur spending and revive the economy...

Such action is designed to boost Treasury prices and drive down their rates, as it did Wednesday. Rates on other kinds of debt are likely to fall as well.

"This is going to help everybody," said Sung Won Sohn, economist at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University. "This might help the Fed put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

For those who don't like hints and dark maunderings, I'll spell it out: three months ago the Fed unveiled a bold new plan to spend a million million dollars to keep long-term interest rates down. Since then, long-term interest rates have gone up, up, up, and everybody* is starting to ask unpleasant questions. The Fed had a brilliant, foolproof plan to "put Humpty Dumpty back together again," but it's not working. In fact, it's accomplishing exactly the opposite of what it was designed to do**. And they are very scared about it. Very scared. This is supposed to be simple math, and 2+2 just came up hassenpfeffer.

That's why the Fed is now leaking the story that (surprise, surprise) they were never trying to control rates in the first place. After all, if you fail at something, everyone will believe you when you say you were never really trying to succeed, right?***

The bad news is, of course, that just because you're not trying and it's not working is no excuse not to not try to not do it again with even more money.

* by which I mean, "The Chinese."

** Of course it is. Keynesians do not always do the wrong thing, they always do exactly the wrong thing. Fortunately for everyone else, their attempts to drive rates down will likely accomplish something useful: making rates go up, as they ought. Enough wrongs will eventually make a right, unless they kill us all first. Even odds, I guess.

*** So long as you say it with feeling.

Advise and Consent

What I learned from watching Kung-Fu movies

In China, the older you get, the faster you get. By the time you're a 90-year-old coot with a beard to your knees, you'll be so fast no one can touch you.

All women are beautiful and in their mid to late 20s. Unmarried ones live with their fathers and possess both wisdom and incredible kung-fu. Married ones lose both and will eventually need to be rescued.

If someone jumps, all physical processes in the surrounding area (e.g. smoke rising from fires) begin to work backward.

There is no incongruity between synthesized techno music and 19th-century traditional American music. Rose of Alabamy was a very popular tune in 16th Century China.

If you fight while imitating an animal, even a really weak one like a frog or rabbit, you are invulnerable.

Armies are worthless. Since the hero can easily defeat an entire army and the bad guy who runs the army can nearly defeat the hero, it follows that the head can defeat his own army without trouble. So why employ them?

The hand of experience

Obama style*:

WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

What do you want to bet that he's not only never set foot in an auto plant, he's never actually had a job**? I'm tempted to say that there's no way someone with no business or life experience could do a worse job with GM and Chrysler than the generation that just rant it into the ground, but I think I'll just save that until we find out.

It won't be long now.

* Obama himself being a poster boy for on-the-job-training.

**excepting one that regularly uses the word "fries" in any of its glorious manifestations, of course.

cancelled in production

It will eventually become apparent what a great favor California did the nation a few weeks ago.

Of course, it really doesn't make up for all that other stuff...