Forget the disease, we've got just the cure

At least that's what global warming shills are saying:

This is a "smear campaign to distract the public," said Mann. "Those opposed to climate action, simply don't have the science on their side," he added.

Professor Davies called the stolen data "the latest example of a sustained and, in some instances, a vexatious campaign" designed "to distract from reasoned debate" about urgent action governments must take to reverse climate change.

I had wondered what tack the climate "scientists" were going to take once it was revealed what a credibility problem they faced. The stolen emails reveal a coordinated campaign to fudge and hide data, to exclude alternate opinions, and to ostracize journals that will not toe the accepted line. They reveal the fact prior scary-but-incorrect prognostications rely on calculations that cannot be re-created. In short, the "consensus" is fraudulent and the facts upon which that consensus agrees are vapor. That does not make it a science problem in their minds*, but a public relations nightmare. If the people do not believe scientists, they might believe anything.

So the first defense is the victim card: we are the victims of a smear campaign. With the expected sympathy not arising however, those who would crush all opposing opinion cleverly attempt to propose "reasoned debate," but not on the conclusions: the only debate allowed is the government response to the settled fact of global warming.

So don't go arguing over whether the patient has diarrhea, pyorrhea, or gonorrhea, we've got a head to amputate here: yours.

UPDATE: Awww yeah:

SYDNEY – Australia's plans for an emissions trading system to combat global warming were scuttled Wednesday in Parliament, handing a defeat to a government that had hoped to set an example at international climate change talks next week.

Who says we never have any good news here?

* After all, they are familiar with the so-called science behind it, no one better.

A question of sovereignty

The Fed doesn't want anyone else to have it:

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said congressional proposals to audit the Fed and strip it of regulatory powers as part of post-crisis reforms could damage prospects for economic and financial health in the future.

"These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States," Bernanke wrote in a column posted on the Washington Post's website.

Auditing the Fed may also cause birth defects and increase global warming*. Please consult your doctor if you are pregnant or nursing. But while Big Ben veils his concerns in vague threats, former Fed governor Frederic Mishkin cuts to the heart of the matter:

"This is really dangerous stuff... It is an outright attack on the Fed's independence."

Yes, it is, and it raises a question that ought to be at the forefront of the entire issue: ought the Fed be independent in the first place? Or rather we ought to ask, "What does it mean in government to be independent?" It means nothing less than being sovereign**, claiming and exercising ultimate power over something - in this case money - without being answerable to others. The queen of England is sovereign. Our congress, which under the Constitution holds ultimate power "To coin money [and] regulate the value thereof," is not sovereign - congressmen stand for election every two years before sovereign voters. The Fed wants nothing less than their sovereign and unconstitutional power over those voters' money to continue with no harassment by the body that ought to be doing that job in the first place.

It is the fact that the Congress is constitutionally responsible for money that makes the Fed's complaints so laughable. Somehow it is "really dangerous stuff" that the body that created the Fed and is ultimately responsible for what the Fed does wishes to examine how they are doing it. But that's not what's dangerous. What is dangerous is the concept of sovereignty in government, of a body with ultimate power that answers to no one. Ask the Founding Fathers.

But it's not exactly true that the Fed answers to no one. The Fed is a strange political beast, a corporation chartered by Congress but whose shareholders are private banks - yes, the same banks being bailed out on the taxpayers' dime***. If the Fed is unanswerable to Congress, then the Fed answers to them, because they own it.

So the real question is not, "is the Fed going to be independent?" It cannot be. The real question is whether our national monetary system is going to ultimately be answerable to the voters or to the bankers.

* thus that bitchin' use of the word "consensus."

** Sovereignty: supreme and independent power or authority in government as possessed or claimed by a state or community.

*** a coincidence, I assure you.

Of course, some states are bluer than others

Thanksgiving

I'm thankful that despite all the stupid things I've done in my life, especially today*, I'm still alive.

* Since you'll ask, I might as well tell you**. We spent the day geocaching, and the last area we visited was a state park. After dropping "the girls" off at a playground, PiffordT, my dad, and I were going to drive over to a little historical trail that explains the travails of the short-lived "Land League" that fought squatter expulsion from railroad lands in SEK just after the Civil War. To get there necessitated driving out on a dam, literally, where water trickles over a slow but wide area resulting in the buildup of a lot of very slippery moss. Through a wrong turn on my part, I ended up driving the lovely and gracious Rogue's*** SUV down the very back of the dam, past the faded paint that says "DO NOT DRIVE BEYOND THIS POINT." Realizing I had gone the wrong way, without thinking I turned the SUV around (rather than just backing up) to drive back up, right out onto the moss, and the car started sliding. Had it not caught traction, all three of us and the SUV would have slid backwards off the back of the dam and I might not be typing this. But even though the SUV needs new tires, the traction caught and we escaped without incident. It's just one of many cases in my life where things might have, and perhaps should have, turned out a lot worse for me.

** my lovely wife doesn't even know this, so it'll be our little surprise.

*** Happy Birthday, sweetie.

The era of high interest rates

is over:

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

The problem is that it has to last longer. It has to last forever.

Besides illustrating that government projections of any number more than 12 months out are completely worthless*, this chart illustrates why interest rates can never be allowed to rise again.

We are currently financing some $12 trillion in debt. At "ultra-low," short-term interest rates, the government budget does not include a whole lot of interest expense. For example, let's say that the government is financing its $12 trillion in borrowing at 2%**. The trillion plus national deficit of the next few years will then include a svelte $240 billion in interest payments. Should rates rise to a more normal 8% long bond and 4% short-term, that number will triple to some $750 billion. Should inflation kick up - after all, all this free money has to show up somewhere - and long rates return to the 10% range of the first Bush administration, we are talking a trillion dollars in interest alone, each year. Should they return to the Reagan era-levels, that number will be closer to $2 trillion, in interest alone, every year. Well, 2 trillion the first year, 2.2 trillion the second, 2.4+ trillion the third. That will be on top of whatever 'structural' deficit exists from wars in Asia, retiring boomers, and stimulus packages. We will need to find new buyers for $3-4 trillion, about a third of the nation's non-government GDP, each year. The nation's finances, which are a fire-bombed Dresden presently, will be Hiroshima permanently.

So enjoy low interest rates while they last, for they are liable to last as long as the dollar.

* no government projection expected that 18 months ago, when this chart was made, the outstanding debt would increase by a full third, from $9 trillion to $12 trillion, yet it did.

** a mixture of 4% long bonds drifting down to (literally) 0% 3-month bills. Payments are actually a bit higher in total, but we'll keep the numbers easy, and we'll ignore agency debt and state and local government debt.

(Hat tip: Giraffe)

Yo Congressman I'm really happy for you

But Jesse Jackson is the greatest race baiter of all time:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Of all time.

You know, it would be too easy to write a post detailing how Democrats use peer pressure to keep blacks in line. So I won't do it.

I'm just glad that people can apparently go back to saying "black" instead of "African American." Since the 20 years allocated to that title seems to have expired, I just wonder what the next politically correct euphemism will be, and will it have more or fewer than seven consonants?

One secret for avoiding any kind of misdirection on the part of CNBC, the Fed, or their perpetual-optimist compatriots is to look at all their numbers not on a month-to-month basis, but on a year-over-year basis. It's easy to see "green shoots" following a particularly bad month, for as we see even in the case of the dollar, nothing ever goes straight down to zero*. There will always be bounces, even in housing starts. Old houses still wear out and people still need to live somewhere.

However, a 1 or 2% uptick is put in its proper perspective when it's ~30% below the year-ago number and ~80% below the same month five years prior. If the optimist wants to argue that such a massive fall is less important than the twitches of the quivering corpse upon landing, such a person truly cannot be helped.

Rather, figure out what stocks they are buying and sell them short.

(chart hat tip: Mish)

* Well, other than Lehman. And the Zimbabwe dollar. And GM. And Chrysler.

Actually, with gold hitting daily record highs and with everyone so down on the dollar, I expect we are set up for a pretty good bounce*. If not, then the alternative is a story like this one.

You'd better hope I'm right.

* However, one might note that bounces are coming from lower and lower numbers. My "danger" level is 80 on the USDX, and I hope this time that we are still able to bounce that high.

Too bad it doesn't have one

I thought this problem was solved months ago:

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov 17 (Reuters) - California faces a budget gap of nearly $21 billion over its current and next fiscal years, according to the state government's budget watchdog agency, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday...

The projection comes less than four months after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers agreed to a budget plan that closed a deficit of more than $24 billion....

I know the $20 thousand million dollar shortfall it took nearly a year to erase is back in four short months, but just hang on a few more weeks. I read on CNBC that the recession is over.

But no one ought to get too gigly because the problem in California is coming everywhere else, too. The first year of the recession, 2008, was the year that everybody pretended to make cuts. 2009 was the year that everyone made the easy cuts, made easier by Obama giving away hundreds of billions in free money. 2010 is the first year that real, honest, painful cuts will have to be made.

But it will not be the last year.

He didn't bow this time, either

I'm pretty sure that at the moment he shook the Emperor's hand, President Obama noticed that his flag pin had accidentally fallen to the ground and, horrified at the breach of state department protocol and the symbolism of the American flag prostrate before a foreign ruler, bent over to retrieve it in an unconscious burst of patriotic fervor. Yeah, that's it.

Don't you know you can't believe anything until the official White House denial?

UPDATE: You just knew it was racial, didn't you?

If Couch Potato Conservatives had their way, the kind of cowboy behavior of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would be the order of the day: white monarchs would receive the proper greeting protocol and non-white royalty a simple hand shake. It's no wonder President Obama has to do so much work to do in restoring America's popularity around the World.

Actually, I think Zennie Abraham's not just wrong, but exactly wrong. If the conservatives' issue was simple racism, wouldn't they be happy to see a black man bow? Wouldn't they be pleased as they watched him voluntarily put himself into a subservient position time and again?

Zennie cannot distinguish between "Don't put your hands on the queen" and "Don't bow before the emperor" because he cannot see past white or yellow faces. But while the name of his blog, City Brights, is the first clue that he is completely clueless, the second and cinching proof is this:

There seems to be this macho idea that American Presidents have to show they're tough and one way to do that is to avoid bowing to the Emperor of Japan, or for that matter Saudi King Abdullah, as President Obama did in April of this year.

Moreover, some Americans forget that kings and emperors are not elected officials, they're royalty.

I guess it's fair to say that this guy doesn't know the first thing about America. Literally the first thing. Because the foremost statement about America in our founding document is that here "all men are created equal." We don't have a king, we don't believe in royalty, we fought a revolution to ensure that no American would ever have to bow before a king or an emperor. Now we have a President who has done both in short order, all while his minions deny it or pretend it's protocol. It's not. America exists in absolute opposition to bowing before royalty and has since its founding.

The problem with this whole tempest in a teapot* is not that Obama is black, the problem is that Obama is OURS. He represents US, and we don't do that.

* Of course it's petty and silly. I wouldn't have even brought it up if the administration hadn't thought it important enough to lie about.

absofrigginlutely

incredible:

For the second time in three weeks the Fort Scott Greyhounds defeated the Butler Community College Grizzlies in football. With Sunday's 13-12 win at home, Fort Scott claimed the NJCAA Region VI crown, to go along with its Jayhawk Conference championship it won earlier this season.

While I was honored to sit with ehart at last week's playoff game, today I had to be content with listening to it on the radio*. It was muddy. It was nasty. It took six players to carry the gourney of one hospital-bound player because they simply could not roll it on the field. The short version is that midway thru the fourth, FS blocked a punt for a TD, then held on for the win.

Where and when the final game will be played is still up in the air, but if all goes well**, they will play the national junior college championship game in Pittsburg on Dec. 9th. If it's not in P-burg, well, I've still got a radio and pretty decent wine cellar.

* The game is here, but it's also drizzling cold outside, and with Rogue still en route from California, I can't in good conscience subject a 3-year-old foster kid to that weather, not even for a really, really important game. So I brought up a bottle of 2001 Sterling merlot and built a fire instead.

** meaning that if I can score box seats.

Can't really call this a DEmotivator

Happy Anniversary, sweetie.

An abashed socialism

The governor of the Republic of Texas issues a timely warning:

Gov. Rick Perry had some pretty strong comments about the Obama administration on Wednesday in Midland, saying, “This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”

The only problem is that Obama is not hell-bent, but rather heck-bent.

Even on those occasions where politicians have a good point, like Ted Kennedy's* "Robert Bork's America" speech** it seems they cannot help removing from it all sense of proportion. So it is with Perry and the conservatives' complaints about "socialism." Even El Presidente Pasado, as responsible as anyone - or more responsible, because all the while he was doing it he warned against it - for the current move toward government ownership of everything, is making such a complaint. The problem is, it's not really socialism, or at least not in the "hell-bent" sense.

At the turn of the twentieth century, socialism was on the rise worldwide, not just as a reality, but more importantly as an ideology. The combination of a modernist belief in the perfectibility of man and a faith in the omniscience of science led people to believe that an enlightened and scientific government could impose upon its subjects an organization of the means of production that would benefit them all***. Mises, of course, showed the impossibility of socialism "working" in theory by demonstrating that the lack of a market-driven pricing mechanism meant that socialism ran blind - it simply could not determine how much of what should be produced. The socialists who had the chance the world over showed its impossibility in practice. As a result, no one today truly believes that socialism is more efficient or more rational than capitalism. If you don't believe that, find the quote where Obama says the government would be better at making cars than its quasi-private agency, GM.

And yet, the government now owns (or at least insures) through its various agencies nine-tenths of all new mortgages, and at a tremendous loss. It provides insurance through its 80%-owned AIG. It owns parts of Citi and other huge, failing banks. And yet it seeks - at least in print - to get rid of these as quickly as it can make a profit doing so. What kind of socialism is this?

It is not the socialism of the ideologue but of the slacker; it is the short-run easy way out of the problems caused by half-assed capitalism combined with credit excess. It is a socialism that is ashamed of itself. It's not a belief in the efficiency of government direction: not even the proponents of "public option" insurance believe that it will provide better service, they assert that the increased competition will force the private insurers to provide better service. This is a huge distinction, and one that is missed by those like Perry because they are more interested in making political hay than in making widgets efficiently.

Now perhaps this latent belief in competition is traceable to Reagan's assertions about government, but it is no mere ideological leftover; rather it is a demonstrated truth. Obama is taking us toward socialism - the government ownership of all means of production - but it is not the confident socialism that forcibly communalizes farming, it is the bureaucratism of a people too comfortable to put up with the risks and losses that competition necessitates. They demand the benefits of competition without its costs. If, against all odds, the "Public Option" should prove so competitive that it actually bankrupted private insurers, they simply would ask for, and receive, a bailout.

Of course, it will not work: tying mountain climbers together may save one who slips, but when half of them slip they all die. But at least we won't be forced to call each other "comrade" all the way down.

* Ted Kennedy: keeping the world safe from Mary Jo Kopechne since 1969.

** I don't agree with the speech. In fact, I think it was unadulterated rubbish. It just serves as the best example I can think of of a politician taking a defensible position, de-contextualizing it, and driving it to such an extreme that it becomes, well, unadulterated rubbish.

*** Though it was a given that it would benefit the organizers most of all.

Can you believe this crap?

Now I've got to buy another new computer.

The Missouri Bogeyman

So anyway, the lovely and gracious Rogue is on the west coast this week, so I figured that since I had to shuffle TK to and from day care today, I'd take a day of vacation and start plotting out this thesis. I penciled in what I needed to prove and how I was going to prove it, scratched out the chapters, identified more than a dozen recurring themes; basically I decided how I was going to expand the Good Hater term paper by an order of magnitude. Then I started organizing one of the "internal" chapters. It all went well until I discovered that the speech that would serve as that chapter's crescendo was on my computer, which not coincidentally is also visiting the west coast this week. Train of thought, meet Cliffs of Insanity.

The chapter had to do with the use of John Brown's name to scare Suthrins, specifically how an abolitionist preacher named Higginson wanted to create a regiment of cavalry, led by John Brown, Jr.*, who would invade and terrorize Virginia as soon as they seceded. It didn't really work out that way, as the regiment that was supposed to harry Richmond eventually ended up a mere company burning houses in Westport, Missouri.

But then I remembered meeting a guy from Missouri who told me that, when he was a little kid, if he was making noise in his bed late at night, his mom would come into his room and warn him in hushed tones, "If you don't be quiet, Old Brown is going to get you."

So maybe it worked after all.

* Then he explained that the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no Virginian would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley.

Who needs stimulus?

We've got him:

...with unemployment surging and the President’s poll ratings sinking, there’s growing debate about what—if anything—the President can do about the situation...

The President took his first public step in confronting the issue as well as restless voters Thursday, saying he would hold a December summit to joblessness. The brief news conference also appeared to signal that the administration had ruled out another stimulus package.

Whatever comes from the "summit to joblessness" will not be called a stimulus package, even if its ostensible purpose - to create jobs by spending oodles of newly-printed money - is identical to the original stimulus*. To call for another stimulus is to admit that the prior one failed, and that's not going to happen.

But then again, we don't need a stimulus package if the mere spending of money is sufficient to generate economic growth. The government is currently injecting into the economy 176 thousand million dollars, or about the amount of El Presidente Pasado's stimulus, every month. It is incredible that two years ago, Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were talking about spending $25-$50 billion to jump start the economy. Now we are hitting that supine equine with such a tazer shot every single week in hopes that it will get back up and run.

It won't, maybe never again. That economy where we all got rich selling our houses to each other is gone, and all those people who were employed building and inspecting houses or running strip-mall drapery stores are going to have to find other work to do.

And it might not be paid work. With the Fed starting to talk about a jobless recovery - which is shorthand for "jobs are not coming back" - what is not going to change is the economy. What's going to change is the attitudes of the people whose buying and selling and eating and dying make up the economy. If there are fewer jobs, eventually fewer people will look for them, which will bring the unemployment numbers down naturally**.

When debt falls, and it will, then the standard of living will fall, because our dearly-departed recent prosperity was simply a function of living beyond our means. And a reduced standard of living requires fewer people working to support it. I fully expect that we will soon see stirrings of a resurgence of *gasp* the single-income family, where one parent goes off to paid work and the other does work that is not so paid. Wow, how Ward Cleaver is that?

* Or as Huck would remind us, stimuli.

** I don't agree with those who want to add "people who are no longer looking for work" into the unemployment rate. If you're not looking for work, then the fact that you don't have a job is hardly a failure of government. Of course, if you want a job and don't have one, that's usually not a failure of government either.

More like commiseration

Even while we deny it, the Brits think we're going to come knocking for more men:

President Obama is to ask members of Nato to provide up to 4,000 more troops to help to break the deadlock in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama is poised to confirm a surge of more than 30,000 US combat troops, according to senior military sources. He will also urge the rest of Nato to provide thousands of soldiers to train new recruits to the Afghan National Army (ANA).

His appeal is set to be largely ignored, however...

The Brits will suck it up and send more, not because there's any chance of "winning," but because they are being good allies. So is Turkey. But I do wonder about that last sentence. Wasn't Obama supposed to be the guy who would wow our allies into joining us in hopeless causes rather than just pointing and laughing from the sidelines?

But I kind of feel bad for Obama here*; he like the rest of the Democrats pinned his war hero hopes on Afghanistan, because a) it was quieter than Iraq, and b) we have absolutely no national interest there. That was supposed to make it an easy and morally pure victory.

The second is quite important. After years of chanting "No War for Oil" there was no way the Dems were going to get into a position where they can be accused of the same**. So while the Dems love war just as much as Republicans - and while their PI*** demands they go to war somewhere - they prefer it be in places like the Balkans where we so obviously have nothing to gain that their motives cannot be brought under suspicion.

Who knew war could be group therapy for liberals?

* Much like I feel bad for the Bears.

** Are we still in Iraq? I can never tell.

*** Patriotic Insecurity. If a person complains that someone else is questioning his patriotism, the complainer is guaranteed to be a Democrat. Republicans seem immune to having their patriotism questioned, which fact makes Democrats cry bitter tears into their chablis.

The Arrogance of Sports Columnists

on full display:

Brad Childress spent Sunday watching football, and it didn't surprise the Vikings coach to see the Bears lose to Arizona and the Packers fall to the Bucs.

The losses by the Bears and the Packers gives the Vikings a three-game lead in the North Division.

"Yeah, I'm surprised, but anything can happen on any Sunday in this deal," he said.

Sometimes I wonder if reporters don't believe the answers to their stupid questions, or simply don't care.

Good Hater and etcetras

You've doubtless noticed that it's been a bit slow around here, but it hasn't been slow around here, if you know what I mean.

Last week was the first half of my history geek assessment test, 15 essays in three hours in which the department picks out 8 people or events in US history and the student has to identify and explain them. They are also bracketed in pairs and you have to write an essay on each of the four pairs explaining why one of them is more significant. The four winners "advance" and you write two more essays, then the winners, well, let's just say the War of 1812 beat out the Fourteenth Amendment in the finals.

I was talking to Rebel Nun afterward and she expressed astonishment that George Hoyt didn't win. Good thing he wasn't in it, I guess. But since the world half is Monday, I've spent the last few days studying up on the Silk Road, the French Revolution, and Charles De Gaulle rather than blogging.

That doesn't mean Good Hater has been forgotten, as I did find some more information on the first guy he ever killed (with more on the way), my mother let me piggyback on her genealogy website subscription so I now have the full text of one of his speeches that was carried in William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, and I found in the comments here a 6-month old note from a guy whose grandfather served in the regiment and who has info to share. I guess I need another filing cabinet, too.

So after Monday I'll have only two tests on medieval Europe to worry about and then I can turn my attention back to the Border War.

That said, though the Vikings don't play tomorrow, Fort Scott (now ranked #2 in the NJCAA) has a playoff game here at 1:30, so no history for me.

After all, a guy's gotta have his priorities straight.

Jozum says

Time to man up

Obama seems to forget he asked for this job:

MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush...

"We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world," Obama added.

And a year later, we have record deficits (four times as big as Bush's), two wars (one of which Obama is looking to expand), and frayed alliances around the world (that Obama seems to be doing his best to further unravel). That's a hard year's work. Makes me wonder why the article claims Obama is struggling with Bush's legacy. In many ways, he has surpassed it already.

But the sad part is not that Bush left the gas tank on E when he turned over the car of state, it's that Obama is constantly complaining about it. And it seems that the further and faster he drives, the louder his complaints get. It's unseemly. You wanted to drive, amigo, so quit your whining and drive.

Mom the Bible Scholar

is going to teach us about history and gay marriage:

grow up people.

The Romans practiced it (The men would marry women and the men would have boyfriend sexual partners....).

In other words, the Romans didn't practice gay marriage. In fact, no one has practiced it in 6000 years of recorded human history; we suddenly discovered it a decade or so ago and now it's supposed to be self-evident? I do find it interesting, though, that given that marriage has always been heterosexual - even in nations that existed long before Christians or Christianity - and those nations have also practiced homosexuality, that after all this time the most sophisticated pro-gay marriage arguments still come down to, "Christians sure are mean" and "It's not faaaAAAAIIIiiir." It's as if these nations never had any reason to design marriage the way they did other than to be mean.

Now, doubtless the Romans on occasion practiced homosexuality (else Paul would have little to complain about in Romans 1) but if we're going to look to the Romans for our laws, we might want to consider the law known as adulterium, under which both adulterers were stripped of half of their property and banished to separate islands, while if a husband found out his wife was cheating and refused to prosecute her in the courts, then he could himself be prosecuted for running a whorehouse. This law, passed under Augustus sometime around 18bc, was actually a liberalization of the Roman code; under ancient Roman law, an adulterous wife could be legally killed by her husband*. The Romans were not exactly swingers.

But that's not all, we also have a lesson in ancient writing:

Hell it was practiced even before the Bible was 'invented' and you don't know how accurate the 'Bible' because most of it was verbal until written word 'was invented' , (and you know the telephone game goes, not everything is passed 100%)......is ... if you want me to go into that, I will but that will be a whole new post about it.

That would be quite a post, I'm sure, filled with all manner of momly wisdom. But it is rather funny to see such scholars claim that most of the Bible was "verbal until [the] written word was invented," as writing was widespread in the Ancient Near East some 16 centuries before Moses is supposed to have set chisel to stone. "No writing in Moses' day" is an ultra-modern** scholarly assumption; fortunately it was one of the first assumptions of bible scholars proven incorrect when grave-robbing was promoted to science 150 years ago.

But I do wonder about the word "most" here in conjunction with the scriptures. While some (poorly) argue that Moses is based on oral tradition, and while a few argue (even more poorly) that the Gospels are, I wonder how they manage to make the letters of Paul and the general epistles (which make up nearly half of the books of the Bible) oral. The minor prophets (another dozen books) are generally considered, even by liberal scholars, to have written some or all of the books named for them, which takes us over half, and the major prophets with the exception of Daniel are all believed, even by liberals*** to have been written rather than passed mouth-to-mouth. So even if we assume all the historical works from Moses through Nehemiah were passed via the telephone game - a very bad assumption - we still could not get to "most."

I would insert a very smarmy and condescending sentence here, but I don't want to talk bad about somebody's mother.

* Alimony? HA!

** by which I mean, 18th Century

*** As Wikipedia helpfully states in the case of Isaiah, "Critics often reject the unity of the work as such would require that the author had intimate knowledge of future events— a possibility precluded by the Naturalism under-girding much of higher criticism." In other words, the main reason for rejecting the authorship of the prophets has less to do with history than with a philosophical presumption that makes prophecy itself impossible.

A Rare Sighting

Just making it up

It's easier that way:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there...

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

I'm not sure how one goes about even arguing with people who insist on their own definitions for words. In no one else's universe but Obama's does giving more money to an employee to do the same work constitute "saving a portion" of someone's job. In his magical realm, you can start with 508 jobs, end with 508 jobs, and save 935 in the meantime. At least until the clever little monkeys at the AP try to make names for themselves at Obama's expense.

But given that Obama is considering a second stimulus - even though it will be very carefully not called that*, he would probably be better off from here on out just forgetting this one ever existed. It's as indefensible as it is unmeasurable, and the longer the Administration spends trying to justify it with any specifics at all, to that extent they simply make themselves look fools.

But the fact that they would be better off treating it like a psycho ex-girlfriend is irrelevant; that's exactly what they won't do. If this administration were to admit that spending money they don't have does no actual good, they would simply have nothing to do for the next 3 years.

And no one wants to be in a big, important, powerful job and not have anything to do.

* and is actually a third stimulus anyway, unless Republican spending somehow doesn't count.

Not those kind of resorts

California resorts to highway robbery:

Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners -- holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. ...Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April.

Without interest, natch. California will gladly pay you* in April for a hamburger today, but in the meantime, there they go sucking a bunch of money out of the economy. I mean, how are people supposed to spend themselves rich if California keeps taking all their money?

There are a lot of people howling about how evil this is, too many to link. California is just cheating people out of the interest they are due, they say: California is forcing them to loan money they could be using to feed their families. Boo hoo, woe is us.

I guess I have only two responses. First, if one believes in the idea that withholding of income for taxes is a good idea**, how can you then complain at what rate the state sets that withholding? They are only raising that withholding 10%, which means there's 90% which they seem to think is just fine. What's up with that? But that's the small issue.

The big issue is that California will be the first state to go bankrupt, maybe as soon as next year. Purposely withholding money now they will have to refund in mere months is simply more evidence (if it was needed) that the state is in a financial death spiral; it cannot pay its bills now and it certainly cannot pay the larger bills it is accumulating. When you eat your seed corn, starvation is on the way.

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of legislators, IMO.

* with an IOU

** I don't, most people do.