Dearly Beloved of the Tea Party:
The Democrats have thrown in the towel. The president is making his excuses pre factum. The national Democrats circle the money wagons, pulling cash from dozens of races once thought competitive. They recognize that votes are commercial commodities, and they can't afford many of them, so they desperately defend the 40 acres around the homestead in hopes of living to fight another day.
So the "conservatives," the Republicans, and the Tea Party will win. I haven't read anyone, high or low, who can articulate a plausible event which would change this.
Welcome to power and Gordian knot of how to use it.
Oh, I know you'll begin with the ego trip of trying to snag preferable offices in the Rayburn and Hart buildings. You'll direct your handlers to lobby for the committee assignments most likely to attract the teevee cameras to your angelic faces. You'll almost immediately have a thousand bills drafted, proposals going nowhere except, via posturing, pandering, news releases to your district newspaper desks.
Having won your seats by vilifying Washington and its politicians you will, before the cherry blossoms bloom again, have become Washington politicians, sharing the breed lust to remain one.
The troubling thing is that, as a group, however loosely organized, you have no more coherent message than the scoundrels you replace. The mantra of "lower taxes, smaller government" -- an outstanding idea -- flows trippingly from the tongue and meets loving ears among the over-taxed, over-policed, over-regulated American citizenry. Unfortunately it collides between those ears, on the rock of "where's mine?".
Meaning what are you going to do after you abolish the Department of Education? (Another good idea.) A significant number of you are winning less because you have workable notions about how to restore liberties and more because you have rekindled the hopes of the window-peeping theocrats. So you will think seriously about the fund-raising and electoral benefits of a gay marriage amendment, a Constitutional ban on flag burning, a positive assertion that teachers must lead public classroom prayers.
Given another primary source of your vote-buying money, you can't fail to sympathize with the welfare queens represented by the Farm Bureau, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Chambers of Commerce, the American Bankers Association. After all, the next election cycle starts about the time you hire the first meat to staff your office.
Redistributing honestly earned wealth is both morally wrong and economically destructive whether the pigs you feed are coke moms breeding for DHS checks or Hank Greenburg's insurance giants.
The chattering media have been faithful about attaching the term "libertarian-leaning" to your Tea Party. We will shortly know whether they know what they are talking about and, in the unlikely event they do, whether you mean it.
As any simple Bob Jones U graduate knows, all sermons should conclude with an exhortation, a plea for holiness, an invitation to sign on the dotted line.
Here's mine: Please cleave to the notion that The United States of America is not really a place, wonderful though that place is. It is not an adaptation of Roberts Rules of Order, however important procedures may be. America is an idea, and that idea is liberty, the ultimate sovereignty of the individual human being in his private affairs.
Oct 14, 2010
The case for buying boolits
I don't know why some people complain about a lack of "blog fodder." My regular morning tour of the financial press alone could keep me writing until the sun sinks slowly into the west, leaving me no time at all to live a life or make fun of politicians and hoplophobes.
I usually resist for three reasons. Not many people around here share my interest. I am usually too lazy to translate money-geek jargon into the kind of English that deals with actual referents. And the field is defiled by a high proportion of nincompoops who, like His Obamaness, possess formidable bardic talent.
But an exception occurs this morning, probably because it aligns itself with my prejudices:
“All I see is a wall of liquidity that is eventually going to be chasing too few things,” he says. “This is a story of swinging from paper to things.”
I doubt he's referring specifically to investing in 550-round bulk packs of Federal .22s, but he could be.
By a "wall of liquidity" he means, of course, hyperinflation as the result of politicians pretending they have enough money to buy voting blocks, and voters willing to go along with the gag.
Chris Martenson is an "economic researcher," and he seems to make part of his living selling videos explaining why paper -- currency, stocks, bonds -- is a fool's investment. I tag along for part of his trip, especially since he's straightforward in admitting he doesn't know exactly what will happen, or when, or whether a collapse will be bad enough to thwart the amazing ability of the human race to adapt. He adamant on just one point: The world debt level is beyond servicing barring an Industrial Revolution 2.0.
Beside, he's an expert who gives me permission to keep investing spare change in those Federals.
I usually resist for three reasons. Not many people around here share my interest. I am usually too lazy to translate money-geek jargon into the kind of English that deals with actual referents. And the field is defiled by a high proportion of nincompoops who, like His Obamaness, possess formidable bardic talent.
But an exception occurs this morning, probably because it aligns itself with my prejudices:
“All I see is a wall of liquidity that is eventually going to be chasing too few things,” he says. “This is a story of swinging from paper to things.”
I doubt he's referring specifically to investing in 550-round bulk packs of Federal .22s, but he could be.
By a "wall of liquidity" he means, of course, hyperinflation as the result of politicians pretending they have enough money to buy voting blocks, and voters willing to go along with the gag.
Chris Martenson is an "economic researcher," and he seems to make part of his living selling videos explaining why paper -- currency, stocks, bonds -- is a fool's investment. I tag along for part of his trip, especially since he's straightforward in admitting he doesn't know exactly what will happen, or when, or whether a collapse will be bad enough to thwart the amazing ability of the human race to adapt. He adamant on just one point: The world debt level is beyond servicing barring an Industrial Revolution 2.0.
Beside, he's an expert who gives me permission to keep investing spare change in those Federals.
Gunning down persons in the teevee industry has a certain emotional appeal, but we probably should stifle the urge.
And our excitable cops who get all Dirty Harry and confuse cell phones with handguns are falling somewhat short of their "serve and protect" marketing slogan.
And our excitable cops who get all Dirty Harry and confuse cell phones with handguns are falling somewhat short of their "serve and protect" marketing slogan.
Oct 13, 2010
Pretty up the veggies, Tom. Chad and Carol are still eyeballing the fries.
This is petty theft compared to what feds have proven themselves capable of, but I suppose some people still think $2 million is a respectable piece of money.
For a lot less, I would have explained to the Potomac Yokels -- led by Tom Vilsack in this case -- that it won't work. The kids are smarter than the psychologists, and if they have a taste for a cheeseburger, you are not going to feed them a kumquat, no matter how pretty the basket.
I know there's a Constitutional requirement that caring Intellectuals in Washington supervise the luncheon habits of the middle school in Nazareth, Arkansas. I just can't think of it at the moment.
----
Tom Vilsack? He got to be Secretary of Agriculture because he was Iowa governor and did not make a stink about Obama's Illinois supporters slipping across the Mississippi and packing the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
He got be governor because the Democrats needed a sacrificial lamb to run against Jim Ross Lightfoot in 1998. Lightfoot was unbeatable prior to taking the campaign advice of the Iowa Republican Party. Vilsack became the first Democrat elected Hawkeye governor in 30 years.
---
It's a nice day and I gotta go paint, but I think you are entitled to one more fact about Secretary Vilsack's authority to run American Agriculture and superintend the National Diet. You see, prior to whipping Lightfoot, he was mayor of Mount Pleasant where he hardly ever failed to raise a very nice tomato plant in a five-gallon bucket on the deck. I mean, almost every year, unless his wife forgot to water it or something.
For a lot less, I would have explained to the Potomac Yokels -- led by Tom Vilsack in this case -- that it won't work. The kids are smarter than the psychologists, and if they have a taste for a cheeseburger, you are not going to feed them a kumquat, no matter how pretty the basket.
I know there's a Constitutional requirement that caring Intellectuals in Washington supervise the luncheon habits of the middle school in Nazareth, Arkansas. I just can't think of it at the moment.
----
Tom Vilsack? He got to be Secretary of Agriculture because he was Iowa governor and did not make a stink about Obama's Illinois supporters slipping across the Mississippi and packing the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
He got be governor because the Democrats needed a sacrificial lamb to run against Jim Ross Lightfoot in 1998. Lightfoot was unbeatable prior to taking the campaign advice of the Iowa Republican Party. Vilsack became the first Democrat elected Hawkeye governor in 30 years.
---
It's a nice day and I gotta go paint, but I think you are entitled to one more fact about Secretary Vilsack's authority to run American Agriculture and superintend the National Diet. You see, prior to whipping Lightfoot, he was mayor of Mount Pleasant where he hardly ever failed to raise a very nice tomato plant in a five-gallon bucket on the deck. I mean, almost every year, unless his wife forgot to water it or something.
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