COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Behold the depths of libtard stupidity:

"Look at Canada," says Charles Krauthammer. "Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we."

So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.

In case you missed it, Ezra - or his editors determined to dig his hole for him, entitle his piece "We ration. We ration. We ration. We ration." Hey, libtard! You wen' foget one "We ration!"

Here we have the modern libtard - and in this case, the leading public polemicist for PelosiCare - a man who cannot discern between a rationing system under a command-control economy and a free-market system. Either he's bone stupid or the intellectual dishonesty of the left has descended to unheard-of depths.

If a free-market system is "rationing," then the term has zero meaning whatsoever. We ration fuel, we ration rubber, we ration access to golf courses, movie theaters, restaurants and fruit cocktails. We ration coffee and sugar and turnips and peas. We ration newspapers and Internet access. We even ration sex, and favor people who are attractive. RATIONISTS!

This is the kind of obtuseness the left is reduced to. Up is down, left is right, war is peace, free markets is rationing, and 2 + 2 = 5. But each one of these statements is equally false, and for the same reason.

Fortunately, Reason Magazine is on the case:

Like most left-leaning folks, Klein clearly doesn't know the definition of rationing. Take this one from Britannica:

Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies.

The entire Washington Post editorial is a disaster. The whole thing is predicated on a falsehood. I've never seen such a decisive editorial FAIL before it even gets started.

I've often said - and I never have time to build the case anymore - but I've often said that any screwed up shit-for-brains lefty with a knack for turning a phrase can secure some prime real estate in our high-gloss media. For a conservative to get the same shot, he has to be five times smarter than the liberal competing for the same space. Ezra Klein utterly beclowns himself here - and scores the WaPo. Megan McArdle, love her or hate her, can think circles around Ezra Klein and Andrew Sullivan combined. If she was as hopelessly lost as those two, AND a libertarian/sort-of-conservative, she would NEVER have gotten her gig at the Economist, OR The Atlantic.

Wow. We even ration Op-eds.

Klein. Clown.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Ezra Klein, health care, Politics, stupid, The Left

The increasingly unhinged Matt Yglesias is at it again, this time leveling his sights on those evil Jew neocons, spreading their wicked ideologies like a cancer on the body politic.

It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party.

The JOOOOOS! The JOOOOOOOOS are infesting our media!

Seriously, Matt. Sociopathic?? I'm not sure just how many layers of arrogance and idiocy to peel back, here. But let's start by saying that both the terms neoconservative and sociopathic have meanings. And Matt clearly has a twisted, lazy-man libtard idea of both of those definitions.

There is simply no way on earth that neoconservatism can be expressed or labeled sociopathological. None.

Look:

From Dictionary.com:

–noun Psychiatry.
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

Neoconservative:

–noun
moderate political conservatism espoused or advocated by former liberals or socialist

s.

Ok, I guess there may be some pathology imported from libtards and socialists. But that's an unsatisfying definition. In order to be a meaningful geopolitical model, neoconservatism must have a definition beyond that of describing the former persuasions of its adherents. I submit this definition from Wikipedia:

Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries.

Close enough to be useful. And clearly, as far as batshit-whacked libtards are concerned, there is nothing more clearly sociopathological, nothing that bespeaks the lack of a moral compass or sense of social responsibility, then the belief that the US should spread liberalism, democracy, and respect for human rights to the rest of the world. JFK was clearly, as far as Yglesias must be concerned, a sociopath.

Yglesias lets the mask slip: Sure, you can make a case that neoconservatism is misguided, that it doesn't work in practice, that those swarthy brown little sub-human ragheads overseas are not ready for democracy and they will only devolve into a howling mob of Israel-hating, genocidal whackjobs. I don't believe any of those things are necessarily true, but one could build and argue a respectful and rational case for them.

But the ONLY way anyone could seriously assert that neoconservatism is pathological is if they actually hated Western values.

Yglesias has already demonstrated himself so full of shit he can't draw a distinction between the Bush White House and the inhuman, brutal, murderous thugocracy in power in North Korea.


Splash, out

Jason

EDIT: I should note that I do think there have been true sociopaths in public life. William Ayers would be one example. Marion Barry.

Unlike Yglesias, I know what words mean, I don't throw words around lightly, and I don't use specific diagnoses as a political club without understanding the term.

Back in my reporting days, there would be no way I could get away with that garbage. Because I had real editors who cared about the truth. (That's you, Adam, Maggie, and John!). I don't know who the adult supervision is at The Atlantic, but I'd get pretty tired of lazy-assed hatchet men like Sullivan and Yglesias screwing up my brand pretty fast.

This guy needs an editor.

Labels: bloggers, foreign policy, The media, Yglesias

Marcus at JustBarkingMad continues his look at the doctrinal underpinnings of the new ROE in Afghanistan here, building on this post here, but has not, as yet, provided anything approaching a useful suggestion to the platoon leader on the ground faced with contact from an Afghan house or village.

Herschel Smith gets much the better of the argument, in my opinion.

Try as I might, and having given Marcus two extensive posts to defend his position, the new ROE just doesn't seem to me to pass the 'boots-on-the-ground' test. I think his position is complicated by the fact that if ANY guidance is so complicated to express that it takes more than two full blog posts on JustBarkingMad to spell out, it will NOT pass the boots-on-the-ground test, by definition.

Here's my guidance:

Find the enemy. Cut him off. Pursue him. Fix him. Close with him. Kill him.

If Afghan forces are capable of conduction the last two, AND are at hand, then let them take the lead, by all means. But if they are not? Then go after the Taliban and kill them where they are.

It ain't rocket science. The time to get all fucking involved and kissy-faced with the tribal elders and get your panties all in a wad over civil affairs issues is BEFORE the moojies open up on you from the house on the corner. NOT during the fucking firefight.

Jus in bello concerns about proportionality and the economy of force principle of war still apply.

Marcus says "this shit is chess, not checkers."

No. This shit ain't chess. This shit is war.

Let me take it a bit further. I'm reminded of a joke at the end of the movie Colors. There's two bulls up on a hill, looking at a herd of cows. The young bull says to the old bull, "Hey, pop! Let's run down the hill and fuck one of them cows!" The papa bull says to the young bull, "No, son. Let's walk down... and fuck them all!"

Well, guess what. Just because COIN doctrine says you WALK down the hill instead of RUN down the hill doesn't mean that when you get down the hill you don't fuck the cows. YOU STILL FUCK THE COWS!!!!

Do I need to explain further?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Afghanistan, bloggers, soldiers' issues, Warfighting

I don't buy the whacky conspiracy theories being passed around by libtards mourning the WaPo's decision to let Dan Froomkin go. It's not like he's the only journo to get a pink slip this year.

But if your own ombudsman tries to get some insight into an editorial decision at the newspaper - only to be met with a wall of silence - then what is the use of having an ombudsman?

The editor-in-chief and publisher should put the word out: This ombudsman works for my readers, and therefore works for me. If you stonewall my ombudsman, you're stonewalling me, and I won't have it.

I

nstitutionally, The Post is now responding by circling the wagons -- ironic for a news organization that insists on transparency from those it covers. Its initial statement on June 18 from spokeswoman Kris Coratti lacked substance (“Editors and our research teams are constantly reviewing our online content to ensure we bring readers the most value...while balancing the need to make the most of our resources”).

I was off much of this week with a minor medical problem. But when I was able to start querying editors yesterday, a wall of silence was erected. Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees the Web site, declined to go beyond last week’s PR statement. Online Opinions Editor Marisa Katz, after talking Thursday with the Washington CityPaper, said she had been instructed not to respond to additional queries. And Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, who had previously responded to questions from me and other journalists (including the CityPaper on Thursday), today said he was unable to comment.

Readers should revolt until they have the publisher's attention.

Post Pulitzer-winning columnist Gene Weingarten, who expressed “respect” for Froomkin and regret that White House Watch was ending, said: “I don't know why Froomkin's column was dropped, but I can tell you that the diabolical conspiracy talk is nuts. Froomkin wasn’t dropped because he is too liberal; things just don’t work that way at the Post.”

Yeah, no shit. This is the same paper that syndicated Ted Rall for years.

Labels: bloggers, newspapers, Ted Rall, The media, Washington Post

How dare you, in your wildest wet dreams of moral equivocation, even remotely compare the Bush Administration with the monstrous crimes of the North Korean government and their brutal gulag system?

As in the Soviet Union during the high tide of the Gulag, it appears that the forced labor camps are important to the regime not just as a mechanism of repression, but as part of the economic model and the internal incentives of the bureaucracy. Spencer Ackerman also links to the State Department’s human rights report on the DPRK:

[P]rolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.

Needless to say, it’s easy to recognize this sort of barbarism as the torture that it is when you read about it being done by North Korea (it appears that the Bush administration and the DPRK were both modeling themselves on the Chinese Communist tactics from the Korean War). And it is being done, and on a massive scale.

Everything's a point-scoring game to you, isn't it?

You honestly can't discern a significant difference in kind and degree between the two?

Have you no decency, sir?

At long last, have you no decency?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Korea, stupid, Yglesias

Apparently, women who teach child yoga classes for a living are having a hard time making ends meet.

Surely the end times are upon us.

When Feuer started teaching yoga four and a half years ago, when she was 38, it seemed like the perfect entree to a life of free agency. Feuer spent most of her 30s working for her husband’s goth record label doing publicity and promotion. When they divorced in 2005, she wanted a job that gave her some of the same independence that he had. “I’d watched my husband go into business for himself, and I felt like I could do it, too,” she said.

Yoga gave her the same pure, elated feeling as dance, which she had done professionally in her 20s. She spent $4,000 on a 200-hour yoga training course — paid for with a home-equity loan — and then more to specialize in prenatal, mommy-baby and kids classes. Many of her prenatal students came back to thank her after giving birth. She could pick up classes from a half-dozen studios, gyms and schools, and she could arrange her schedule around the needs of her son, Sasha, who is almost 7. Since Feuer did not work full time for any employer, no one gave her health insurance or other benefits. But she earned between $35 and $65 a class, and students paid more for private sessions.

This part's just precious:

Feuer’s ex-husband pays one-third of her rent, and she had been counting on the money from the after-school classes to pay her share for July and August. “I don’t know how I will make it through the summer,” she said in an e-mail message. The bottom of the note read, “Sent from my iPhone.” The call of semidesperation via a high-tech status symbol is an emblem of the gap between the past and the present for many of urban America’s self-employed.

Wow. Looks like a reject from the Overwriters' Anonymous meeting. George Will, Call your office!

Freelancers still have the trappings of middle-class entrepreneurship. But the downturn is eating away at their livelihoods and the identity they thought they chose when they decided to work for themselves.

Most businesses fail. She is fortunate, in that she only has a few grand in capital investment in the business. I talked to several retail business owners this week who aren't sure how they'll make it through the summer, and each of them are sitting on inventory worth upwards of six figures.

Some, I think, will pull through, with a little luck, assuming their loans don't get called in a hurry. Others need to be put out of their misery before they destroy their owners' lives even more.

Speaking as a former freelance writer, I can relate, and I love folks who do this kind of independent work. But they aren't really entrepreneurs - which is why so few freelance writers can write articles that real entrepreneurs - the kind who understand capital investment, intrinsic value, leverage, asset protection, insurance, liability and exit plans can understand.

Oh, geez... of course! The writer is Emily Bazelon! A well-known liberal! No wonder she doesn't understand!

A freelance writer has a lot of freedom. But with just a few exceptions, they have jobs, not businesses. Your occupation pays you only so long as you work in it. Once you quit, you have nothing to show for it but a thick portfolio that no no one will pay you for. No exit value, no useable book to sell, no residual income, no way for a successor to pick up where you left off.

They create jobs, not businessess. So these are freelance workers, not really independent business owners. THey have some of the BENEFITS of owning one's own business - the freedom to control one's hours and working environment. And potentially they may gain some tax advantages (but at lower income levels, those aren't REALLY worth that much). But for all their efforts and freedoms, they aren't really creating anything of lasting value for themselves.

Every freelance writer, graphic designer, programmer, or artist should read a book called the E-Myth.

Chris Jagers notices the same confusion I did.

The instability of freelancing isn’t new. Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, points out that the share of workers who have standard full-time jobs with benefits has been shrinking since the 1980s. But in the past, temporary and on-call workers — everyone from data-entry employees to construction workers — were hit hardest by downturns.

Well, yes. As a freelance commercial writer with a strong financial industry specialty, I billed out significantly higher on an hourly basis or per-word basis than I did on staff. Why do you think people hire staff writers??? When work slows down, I was way more expensive than a staff writer, so I didn't get the call. Them's the breaks. And all the freedom I had to work at Starbucks or from a lawn chair at the beach (and yes, I did both!) comes with a trade-off.

You can always tell a libtard because their underlying assumption is that tradeoffs like this don't exist in a real economy - and so when the tradeoffs actually DO rear their ugly head, they get smacked in the face by the surprise, and then they write articles for the New York Times magazine describing the tradeoffs that are immediately and intuitively obvious to all right-thinking individuals from the very beginning, thinking they have some magnificent insight.

Meanwhile, everyone who's ever even THOUGHT seriously about making a payroll skips right past their drivel.

Meanwhile, unemployment insurance is still largely structured as it was when the system was instituted during the Depression. “Unemployment insurance was designed in 1935 to give temporary support to the classic male laid-off worker,” Katz says. “It’s not set up for the circumstances we see today, with a lot of people freelancing.”

Good God, Katz! Why on earth would it be? You COULDN'T set up such a system if you tried. The adverse selection would be off the charts! These independent contractors are SOLELY responsible for their own employment and their own business development. If it were possible to construct some kind of unemployment insurance for these people, the New York Freelancer's Union has the economy of scale to do it. Let them try. Jeebus. Will someone whack these libtards with a clue bat already!?

At the Freelancers Union, Sara Horowitz is pushing for a new kind of unemployment protection fund that would cover the self-employed by helping them put away money that they could draw on in times of need.

Brilliant. Let's make a name for it. I suggest we call it "savings."

You know, I have a theory - that any conservative needs to have 30 IQ points on a liberal in order to land an equivalent job. Take Megan McArdle, for instance. Megan's not perfect, and I've seen her screw up in print. But she's easily got 20 or 30 IQ points on 90 percent of the other blogger/journalists who write in her space - and has a much stronger background. But she's not a reflexive liberal. If she had the same views she has now, but wrote with the same sloppiness as the liberals there (and everywhere else)[*cough cough* SULLIVAN!!! *cough cough*], she would have been given her walking papers.

I see the same thing with journalism all over the place... Conservatives have to play major league level ball to get the same bylines and gigs as intellectually-slovenly liberals who have next to no experience outside of college.

If this 31 year old kid now responsible for GM were a conservative, he'd be grunting it out proofreading documents for a law firm in DC and fetching coffee for the partners. But he's a liberal, so he gets whisked up to the stratosphere.

But back to our regularly scheduled train wreck:

In April, Lisa Feuer sent me another message from her iPhone: “I’m at the food-stamp office now, waiting.” For months, she had been putting off this trip. Feuer’s grandparents were Jews who immigrated to the United States from Vienna in 1939. She grew up in a small town in Illinois, where her parents taught public school. She has an undergraduate degree, having majored in sociology as well as Russian and Eastern European studies, and a master’s in multimedia arts.

I think I'm beginning to see the problem!

Venkatesh is picking up this kind of unexpected neediness in his research. He has four welfare caseworkers around the city who keep track of the clients who come in to ask about public assistance. “I wanted to understand whether ‘nontraditional’ welfare clients started to file paperwork,” Venkatesh wrote in an e-mail message. “Nontraditional means white, for Manhattan.” In 2005, the caseworkers reported that 5 percent of those who came to their offices were white. This year, the percentage has jumped to 26 percent.

Now THAT is a fine statistic, and some fine reporting by Miss Bazelon! More like this, please! You'll make any editor proud.

Bottom line, though ... If you're on food stamps, and you live in New York, and you have a baby girl, and you're on track to make 15,000 this year, and last year, you only made 30% more than that... how on earth did you think you could afford an iPhone?

Ah. All your friends had one. It's part of the the independent contractors/creative workers' uniform.

Maybe I should send this woman a copy of the E-Myth, and a copy of The Millionaire Next Door. Or send them to Emily Bazelon.

I wonder if she'd read them?

I wonder if she's ready to understand them?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Arts, bloggers, Economics, economy, Emily Bazelon, finance, labor, The Left

David Harsanyi poses the question: Is it always wrong to make decisions based on fear?

In a speech defending his detainee plan this week, President Barack Obama brandished his now-famous Spock-like wisdom by claiming that "Our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight" after 9/11.

Whether you agree with the president's account of the nation's post- 9/11 policy, you might still ask yourself two questions:

First off, is it always wrong to make decisions based on fear?

Clearly not. If the enemy is capable of putting a hurting on you, you are an idiot if you don't.

But Harsanyi cedes far too much in the debate. We were at war with Al Qaeda, and still are. If not everyone knew it before 9/11, everyone on the planet (except for libtards, it seems) knew we were at war after 9/11.

In a war, it is good policy to maximize the ENEMY'S fear... by consistently adopting the courses of action they fear most, or courses of action even more damaging to their cause. It seems to me that this was, indeed, our policy under the Bush Administration, post 9/11.

Incidentally, the more Obama opens his mouth, the more I intensely dislike him. His constant criticism of his predecessor at every turn, on matters both warranted and unwarranted, strikes me as utterly cheap, petty, juvenile and unprofessional.

I think it stinks in units, it stinks in business, and it stinks even more coming from the White House.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Leadership, Obama, rhetoric, War on Terror

So asks Megan McArdle.

I'll tell you why. Because, by and large, our financial media sucks.

Here's my comment, crossposted from her blog.

Tanta. She was doing the heavy lifting for our intellectually bankrupt financial press when it counted. Too bad all of you guys were too busy playing stenographer for your sources to notice when it could have counted.

But financial journalism as a whole is pretty useless.

They flopped on the S&L scandal until it was too late.
They whored themselves out hawking Internet stocks and funds at the worst possible time. Check out The Fortune Tellers for details.

They elevate chronic money-losers like Jim Cramer and idiotic concepts like Mad Money. Ed Slott should have Cramer's show. But he won't.

They promote self-promoting mental midgets like Suze Orman, who couldn't plan her way to Starbucks for a cup of coffee, rather than real planners.

They sat approvingly on the sidelines while Dave Ramsey insisted growth stock mutual funds average a return of 12% per year while leading hapless investors out of their guaranteed contracts, whole life insurance, fixed annuities, bonds, and EIAs like the the Pied Piper leading children to oblivion, and fell all over themselves quoting how much good he's done, when taking his advice was devastating to families in 1999 and devastating in 2007-2008, and never once called him on it.

You pay lip service to 'buy and hold' investing, but every cover on the big-circ glossies screams '10 mutual funds to buy now'

Your covers feature flights to safety AFTER the market crashes, and feature aggressive investments AFTER large rises in the market.

The financial media is the reason real-life, real-world investors only realize less than a quarter of actual market gains (I'm citing DALBAR here.).

Elaine Garzarelli makes one lucky call in 1987, and you idiots are still calling her for market predictions, 22 years later. How did that work out last time, when Smart Money called her? In their December 2007 issue, She recommended Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and predicted Dow 16,000.

I guarantee you she'll still be getting calls from drooling reporters 5 years from now, if she's still working, and hasn't been shot by a client.

Smart money regards the financial media as a contrary indicator. The media is always the second dumbest guy at the poker table. The only dumber guy at the poker table is the guy who reads them.

They're asleep at the switch, by and large, while our pension crisis continues to build. They're asleep at the switch even now, while unrealistic GMIB riders threaten to cut the legs out from under major, major insurance companies, while there isn't close to enough capital in reserve at state insurance funds to make up the shortfall.

The financial media doesn't deserve Pulitizers. It deserves a kick in the nuts by an outraged public.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, economy, finance, journalism, McCardle, Media, public relations, The media

That's the word coming from the major lefty blogs. They're mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it anymore!
Here's a hint, you idiots:

The conventional media companies hire professional ad salespeople, and pay them a hefty commission, to go out and solicit ad space.

It's a brutal, highly competetive business.

The reason you haven't got your share is because you haven't put for the effort a publisher and ad sales force puts into revenue generation. Hint: If you put all your effort into content - which we love, and it's why we became bloggers instead of ad salespeople - that effort isn't going to putting hours and hours into developing a media kit, tracking metrics, spending money to get those metrics audited by a third party, and sitting down and making 400 phone calls a day to potential advertisers.

Because that's what your competition is doing to barely break even in many cases.

If Jane Hamsher would stop flapping her gums on Bloggingheads for free and sit and dial for dollars and learn to sell and close, she could bring in money.

But she wouldn't be writing, and that's not as much fun.

Libtards don't understand where money comes from. Which is why they are so eager to tax it when they think someone has too much.

I see this on www.angryjournalist.com all the time. Low-paid editorial staff complain about long hours and cutbacks in the newsroom and illustrate it by complaining about how the sales staff makes so much money, or got a neat trip or something.

Any good ad salesman should come to the newsroom, and say four little magic words: "I'm revenue; You're overhead."

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, business, Democrats, Media, stupid, The Left

A moving tribute to a blogger's father, a WWII vet.

Labels: Air Force, Army, aviation, bloggers, in memoriam, WWII

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: bloggers, Iraq, Media, Warfighting

When PBS wants to have a discussion on the role of the Washington press corps, whom do they book?

Why, they book Jay Rosen and Glen "Sock Puppet" Greenwald, of course!

No wonder those idiots can't survive without a government subsidy.

Labels: bloggers, The media

CNN discovers Colby Buzzell - four years after the fact.

Labels: Army, bloggers, CNN, Iraq, Media

I'm the dork in the foreground with the pizza shirt and the fiddle.



That's Eamonn Dillon on the low whistle, and John Schreiber on guitar in the back there.

The first tunes is Jenny's Welcome to Charlie, which I learned from the playing of Kevin Glackin, here played in Gm instead of the traditional Dm. The second tune is Over the Moor to Maggie, here played in Bb rather than in G, to accommodate Eamonn's whistle.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, fiddle blogging, friends, Ireland, Music, personal

All this talk about "going John Galt" is harmful to the economy and self-destructive to business owners and producers.

Other than some elements of estate tax threshold issues (which are usually pretty easily addressed with some planning and discussed here) there are very few business or investment decisions that make sense at a marginal income tax rate of 36% that don't make sense at a marginal income tax rate of 38%. And if you think your powers of prediction are so good that you can cut margins that close, you're deluding yourself.

Meanwhile, if you're productive - if you've demonstrated an ability to leverage the efforts of other people to profitable enterprise, and you go John Galt in a fit of pique, you will have abandoned your country when they need you most (during a recession.)

Further, you will have effectively permanently disinherited your heirs, in a sense, by destroying a family business that could otherwise have been sold or passed on to the next generation - and probably at a higher price than today, since in the aggregate, most businesses can fetch a higher price in good economies than weak ones.

If you were going to retire anyway, then retire. (But understand that the last time liberals had free reign over the economy, unfettered by a Republican legislature for more than a few years at a time) we had rampant inflation as a byproduct of Keynesian economics and Johnson's guns and butter policies.

If inflation kicks up, you will probably need that business generating revenue to supplement your savings. ESPECIALLY if you retire early.

Don't punt it away in a fit of pique.

And don't take it out on your employees out of spite. Even the libtard ones. Even the ridiculously stupid and uneducated ones.

You well understand, they know not what they do.

A few of them are grateful for the job, and a lot of them appreciate what you do and admire you for it.

Maybe not out loud, and maybe not publicly. Nobody wants to be a suck up.

But they're in your business and a lot of them bust their butts in ways you might not even know about to keep your business afloat and they have for years.

This is NOT the time for Atlas to shrug.

Keep hope alive.

And keep your congressman nervous.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, business, economy, Obama, Politics

I actually encountered this one at a leftist cafe I occasionally play music at (and where I pissed off some of the Obamatons who tried to draw me into their tripe, assuming that because I was a musician I must agree with them):

Sarah Palin pals around with terrorists.*

Their construct: Obama/Ayers = Todd Palin/Alaska Independence Party.

Their hope is to neutralize the Obama/Ayers connection by slandering Todd Palin and the AIP.

Case in point: the lameass who writes "The Smirking Chimp:"

The question that needs to be asked now more than ever is, “Are you, Sarah Palin, a terrorist?”

Governor Palin, there is a man by the name of Joe Vogler living in your state. He has led this organization called the Alaska Independence Party. Guess what, Governor Palin, your husband Todd, Alaska’s self-designated “first dude” has held membership in it.

You remember the organization well since you addressed one of their recent conventions and wished those Alaskans well.

Indeed, you wished them well, and you call Barack Obama someone who consorts with a known terrorist. Let us examine your vulnerability in that area.

Organizations are known and recognized by their leadership. As for this Joe Vogler, what does he think about the America that you are seeking to convince the nation’s voters that you are ready to lead as president or vice president?

Sarah, if you become vice president or perhaps president, should circumstances dictate, would you follow the lead of Vogler and spearhead an effort by your own state of Alaska secede from the union? Does this sound like Civil War II?

Have you read, Sarah, what Vogler has said about America on the Alaska Independence Party’s website?

Here are Vogler’s stinging words:

“I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Do you support those words of the leader of the party you wished well and that your own husband joined, Sarah?

Sarah, don’t those words of Vogler’s sound like a … like a terrorist?

The author, a libtard named Bill Hare, is a dumbass in more ways than I can count.

First of all, only a thumb-sucking imbicile could have written "there is a man living in your state named John Vogler," without first having done enough research to learn that Vogler has been dead since 1993.

Second, Hare-brain is too stupid to figure out that Vogler was killed before Palin even entered politics as a city council woman in Wasilla. Palin had very little chance to "pal around" with Vogler in any politically relevant way.

Third, Vogler was a Fairbanks guy. That's a long-ass way from Wasilla. It's a hell of a lot longer from Fairbanks to Wasilla than it is from one end of the hallway at a Chicago office building to another.

Fourth, Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist. There is no evidence that Vogler every advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government, while Ayers formally declared war against it.

Fifth, there is no evidence that Vogler ever espoused violence to achieve his political objectives; it is part and parcel of Ayers' political philosophy and he put it into practice, with deadly results.

Sixth, as a transplanted Hawaiian, I can tell Hare-brain that even though his information-starved view of history is so limited that he cannot conceive of a secessionist movement without immediately equating it to the Confederacy, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and there are legitimate secessionist movements that have absolutely nothing to do with the C.S.A., either in motive, political philosophy, or legal justification.

I do not support Hawaiian secessionism personally. But to equate them with the C.S.A. or terrorist movements is just retarded. Ditto with Alaska. Hare-brain apparently doesn't understand oddball-state psychology or native and long-time resident resentment. Hell...even Texas sometimes thinks it's still a Republic!

Seventh, there is no evidence that Palin was ever a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (but so what if she was? Vogeln wasn't a terrorist, it's legal to be an AIP member.)

Eighth: Todd Palin was indeed a member. But he did not become a member until AFTER Vogler's death. Again, not much of a chance to pal around with the guy - again, who wasn't a terrorist. Bill Ayers is.

Ninth: Todd Palin isn't even on the ballot. But Obama is.

Don't let these libtard rats try to obfuscate away the Obama/Ayers connection and Obama's radical roots. Their attempt to do so is a filthy, contemptible lie.

Splash, out

Jason

* CNBC interviews The Nation reporter Max Blumenthal without bothering to speak to anyone from the McCain campaign or anyone else to provide accountability to Blumenthal's one-sided reporting. Oh, and for good measure, CNBC doesn't bother to mention that Max is the son of former Clinton aide Sydney Blumenthal.

Labels: Alaska, Ayers, bloggers, Obama, Palin, Politics, stupidity, The Left

Heh heh heh. "Query." Heh heh heh. Nice one, Mistuh Kurtz.

If I were the owners of The Atlantic, I'd be telling Sully to find a new home about now.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Palin, Palin's Vagina, Sullivan, The media

...And the obsessive, pathetic sniffing of Palin family genitalia continues.

Hey, at least Andy is confining his vagina-sniffing to an adult now!

What a sad, pathetic little man he's become.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Palin, Sullivan, The Left

Now, I'm not exactly saying that Josh Marshall is a panty-wearing buggerer of boys and a card-carrying member of the Al Qaeda Ladies' Auxillary.

I'd hate to be the one to spread false rumors. But you know, I heard about another rumor somewhere that turned out to be true.

No. Just kidding. I wouldn't run with such a rumor. Who would run with an unsourced rumor like that?

Well...Josh Marshall and the libtards at Talking Points Memo, that's who!

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, stupid, The Left

Jeralyn Merritt's now declaring open season on Palin's children.

Stay classy, libtards!

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Palin, The Left