Quote of the Day - Politics begins anew edition

Word:

Ok Tea Party, start your engines in earnest this time. Get nasty, really nasty. And all you Republican apparatchiks? Help the Tea Party drive the Big Government Republicans from office and drum them out the party, because not only are they The Enemy, they keep loosing elections and that can negatively impact your precious careers and that, even if you are almost all amoral scum no better than the Democrats you purport to oppose, should get your undivided attention.

That's actually the perfect combination of inspiringly high-minded and breathlessly cynical.

On the Internet, nobody can tell that you're a cat

Especially a Siamese cat.

Let's all be careful out there.

A platform for a Republican victory

I'm not a Republican and am no longer sure I'll vote much for them again, but everyone is playing the "What should the GOP do" game.  OK, here goes.

The Democrats' weakness is that they are a coalition.  GOP success will be in peeling coalition members away.  Some members seem pretty wedded to the party - African Americans and possibly hispanics.  It probably doesn't make sense putting a ton of effort here.  Other members are more interesting.  They include:

• Environmentalists, who have a ton of money but who are generally disliked by large numbers of voters.  A play that increases this dislike will be in the GOP's interest.
• SWPL elite educated urban yuppies, the Ivy League crowd and higher education in general.  These are the people most invested in Obama and his policies (it's a mistake to think that most of Obama's policies are that popular with the African American community).
• Unions, especially public employee unions.  These are increasingly rapacious in their demands and the unfunded liabilities of most State's pension systems is a big fiscal wet blanket.
• Wall Street, which supported the Democrats by large majorities.

There's a deep tradition in the American political tradition, one where the GOP could align a bunch of people who traditionally have voted Democrat, fracturing the Democrat coalition.  That strain is populism.

A lot of people have been despairing that the Democrats will always out pander the GOP, offering more "stuff" to buy votes, and so will always have a majority.  If you think of "offering more" as including "stopping financial loss" then this simply isn't true.  The Democrats' coalition demands a lot of things that raise the price of all sorts of things for Joe Everybody.  Promising to stop this and roll it back will simultaneously win populist votes and hurt the Democrat coalition.  Consider:

• Environmental regulation raises the cost of gasoline, raises the price of electricity and winter heating, and drives factories to move to China.  Automotive fuel standards raises the cost of new cars.  Other regulations mean that toilets won't flush and light bulbs cost $10 each.
• SWPL busy bodies want to tell everyone what they have to eat, what they can't eat, what they can do, and what they can't do.  The Republic does not lack for Ivy League types convinced that they're better and smarter than Joe Everyman, and don't hesitate to tell him what to do.
• Public Employee Union contracts are already on the agenda even in deep blue states like Wisconsin.  I don't need to belabor this.  Add to this the fact that schools are generally terrible, and crushing student debt destroying Joe's kid's prospects.
• Bank bailouts and regulations (hello Dodd-Frank) encourage "too big to fail" where Joe Everybody gets to pay for Wall Street fat cats.

The common thread is that each of these make Joe's life worse - he has to pay more for worse products, pay higher taxes to bail out fat cat bankers and Public Employee Unions, and has to listen to sanctimonious SWPL types sneering at him.

That's what the GOP should focus on.  Convince Joe that they're about making his life better, that they're for the Middle Class instead of all those despised hippie Professors and tree huggers.

And the great thing about this is that there are a million stories that will personalize this conflict of world visions - people who couldn't afford gas, people who had to move because local taxes went up too high, people whose kids didn't get educated, the return of Debtor's Prison for student loans (Joe's kids will have a worse life than he did), factories that had to move overseas, Wall Street fat cats sucking off the public teat, the list is never ending.

It will tug at the heartstrings of the voters that the GOP wants to win from the Democrats.  The people opposed to these pro-Middle Class policies will be entirely unsympathetic and ripe for demonization: trust fund environmentalist big wigs, humorless Ivy League busy bodies, Union fat cats, Big Bankers, bureaucrats.  Joe won't see any of those people as being on his side.

And so, the GOP platform becomes simple: We support policies that will benefit the Middle Class, and oppose policies that will hurt the Middle Class.  And they talk about the price of gas, the price of cereal, the price of new cars, the taxes that environmentalists want (Carbon, etc), out of control Union pensions, and Wall Street Democrat fundraisers.

Identify the top 10 most damaging regulations that hurt the Middle Class the most.  Find some people who were hurt by them and tell their stories.  Find more, and tell those stories.  Make sure that the regulations are all ones dear to the heart of the Democrat coalition.  Paint the Democratic Party as the party that wants to crush the Middle Class.  Paint them as anti-populists, because most people like to see themselves as being in the Middle Class.

Quite frankly, this is so simple that it's hard to see how it would fail.  It's child's play simple.  It's so simple that even the Stupid Party probably can't screw it up too badly.  Probably.

Global Warming, the Musical

The IPCC is working hard on the Fifth Assessment Report (5AR).  Given the skepticism of the public following Climategate (and 15 years of no warming at all), there's a media campaign to dial the ZOMG Thermageddon up to eleven.  This is maybe the opening shot of this new war:

Bloomberg Businessweek threw a few litres of petrol on the blazing climate-change debate with this week's cover story, less-than-subtly entitled: "It's Global Warming, Stupid."

"Yes, yes, it's unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change," the article begins, quite correctly. "Men and women in white lab coats tell us – and they're right – that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode."

The next line, however, is more acusatory. "Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all," it reads.

And just in case Business Week still has any readers (did it every have any readers?), here's the subtle and nuanced cover:

Oh, hum.  Oh, and bias?  How's this:

While Bloomberg Businessweek's article attempted to remain even-handed in its arguments concerning the need to take climate change seriously, its editor, Josh Tyrangiel, attempted no such subtlety in his opinion of global warming skeptics. "Our cover story this week may generate controversy," he tweeted, "but only among the stupid."

Stupid Deniers.  Pig headed.  No doubt ignorant of the science, like Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech.  She has a new article that has been accepted for publication, one that's worth your read - No Consensus On Consensus:

The IPCC consensus findings on attribution have been echoed in position statements made by many scientific organizations. The IPCC consensus is portrayed as nearly total among scientists with expertise and prominence in the field of climate science. The idea of a scientific consensus surrounding climate change attribution has been questioned by a number of people, including scientists and politicians. Much effort has been undertaken by those that support the IPCC consensus to discredit skeptical voices, essentially dismissing them as cranks or at best rebels, or even politically motivated ‘deniers’.

Students of science are taught to reject ad populam or ‘bandwagon’ appeals, a sentiment is articulated by the motto of the UK Royal Society: ‘nullius in verba’, which is roughly translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it’.  How then, and why, have climate scientists come to a scientific consensus about a very complex scientific problem that the consensus-supporting scientists themselves acknowledge has substantial and fundamental uncertainties?

So get ready for the know-nothing Press to hyperventillate about this time it's really happening!!!eleventy!!  Business Week is just one of many that you'll see over the next months in an orchestrated campaign by the IPCC to keep relevant.  When people sneer at you for being a skeptic, ask them what they think of Dr. Curry's article - No Consensus On Consensus.  And as a follow up, ask them who they think knows more about the science, the (biased) Press, or the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech.

And show them this - Global Warming, the Musical.



I mean, it's Peer-Reviewed and everything!  Hey Bustah!

Oh, and all the "teh Stormz are gettinz moar destructive" that's going to flood the airwaves to  your annoyance, oh no they're not.  I know that math is hard, but they really should teach at least a little in J-School.

Little Big Man

Today is the anniversary of the death of Prince Franz Joseph II of Liechtenstein.  It's a small place, known of late for bankers who put even the reticent Swiss to shame.  Also for only giving women the vote (in 1984).  We drove through there (mostly to get our passports stamped, back when you could actually get a passport stamped in Europe) and bought a tacky souvenir snow globe.

But the story is not the tchotchkes, or the diminutive size of the principality.  Oft large things come in small boxes, as did His Royal Highness' full name: Franz Joseph Maria Aloys Alfred Karl Johannes Heinrich Michael Georg Ignaz Benediktus Gerhardus Majella

Granted, it's not in the same league as St. Theodore the Studite, but that's one impressive moniker, right there.  And so good night, sweet prince.  And may flights of Mills Brothers* sing thee to thy rest.



* By coincidence, Donald Mills also died on this day.  Liechtenstein would have been a swinginer place with him.

Sitemeter fail

Sitemeter has been Tango Uniform for a couple weeks now, down more than the stock market.  I guess that I need to look around for something to replace it.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I have have a link to Clustrmaps on my sidebar because it has a neat global view of where traffic comes from, but really doesn't give day-by-day and month-by-month stats like Sitemeter does.

In Sitemeter's defense, I've been pretty happy with them for the last four years, and they do seem to be collecting stats - it's just their reporting engine that's been down.  I still get weekly totals in emails.  But then I'd have to drop it all into a spreadsheet each week and grind the numbers myself.  I get enough of that at work, I guess.

Anyone use Statcounter?  Anything else?

The Fourth Reich

The jackboots will be replaced with Addidas, but the outcome will be the same:

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel set foot in the European Parliament for the first time since 2007 and addressed the only democratically elected European institution—by design, an emasculated one that cannot even originate its own laws, though it is allowed to vote on proposals by the other European institutions. There, she laid out her plans to bring European nations together to where their budgets and other matters would become part of her “domestic policy.”

But first, the current problems should be focused on, she said to the drumbeat of economic deterioration—a day when Greece reported that unemployment jumped to 25.4% in August from 24.8% in July and from 18.4% August last year. It was 7.5% in August 2008 when borrowed euros were still growing on trees. Young people got slammed: 32.9% of the 24-to-34-year-olds and 58% of the 15-to-24-year-olds were unemployed. Revolutions have been triggered by the utter frustrations in those age groups.


...


Accompanied by this drumbeat, Merkel explained her dream to the European Parliament. It was all about a big power shift from democratically elected national parliaments to European institutions. The European Commission of bureaucrats and appointed politicians would become the actual government of Europe with executive powers over national budgets. The European Council, similarly composed of bureaucrats and appointed politicians, would become an “upper chamber,” she said. And she threw a bone to her listeners: the European Parliament would receive a bit more power as well.

...

Then the instincts of the powerful political animal broke the surface: she proposed a fund to deal with the pandemic of youth unemployment. Because “Europe is all of us together,” she said. “Europe is domestic policy.”

Her domestic policy. The Greeks, for example, didn’t vote for her, and they might not want her to run their show. They didn’t vote for the European Commission either. They might despise Greek politicians, but at least they’re their politicians. Merkel’s dream had no such room for doubts.

 The old joke was that NATO was designed to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.  I'm wondering what its mission is, now that the second is successfully completed and the third is coming apart at the seams.  What's the use for the first?  Maybe we should just leave Europe to its German fascist overlords.  I mean, they're cute and cuddly now, right?

Bootnote: a word to the wise about the site where the picture came from - they're the Provisional Government of the Confederate Republic.  Well OK, then.

There's a reason that Veteran's Day is a holiday

Sacrifice.



Are you still mine?  Yes, we are.

St. Theodore the Studite

Some of you know me by the name "Ted", but only a few of you know that this is a nickname.  My given name is Theodore, after a Grandfather.  And so this kicked over my giggle box as I was cruising through Wikipedia:

Theodore the Studite (also known as Theodorus Studita, St. Theodore of Stoudios, and St. Theodore of Studium; 759–826) was a Byzantine Greek monk and abbot of the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople.^[1] Theodore's letter^[2] containing suggested monastery reform rules is the first recorded stand against slavery.^[3] He played a major role in the revivals both of Byzantine monasticism and of classical literary genres in Byzantium. He is known as a zealous opponent of iconoclasm, one of several conflicts that set him at odds with both emperor and patriarch.

I must confess that I'm a bit of an iconoclast myself.  Studly. 

The end of growth

Via Aretae (whose wife just had a baby, stop by and wish him well) I found a very interesting site discussing the core dynamic of startups:

A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

If you want to start one it's important to understand that. Startups are so hard that you can't be pointed off to the side and hope to succeed. You have to know that growth is what you're after. The good news is, if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into place. Which means you can use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you face.

I've spent the last 15 years in Internet Security startups, so have some experience on the topic.  This is absolutely correct.  I remember one of the company executives telling me in pre-IPO days that they were being careful "not to go profitable too early" - that sounds incredible, but when you consider that the decisions you make that help you be profitable are sometimes in conflict with decisions that make you grow, it makes complete sense.

Of course, if you don't get growth, the whole thing falls apart, but that's part of the startup game.  High risk, high reward when you win.  I've seen both sides of that, and it's what you simply don't ever get working for the Government (which is low risk and stasis - this year looks a lot like last year).

Well, we're seeing the end of the high tech revolution that began in the 1980s.  What fuels startups - what allows them to run in the red in pursuit of crazy growth rates - is Venture Capital.  That's drying up:

When the National Venture Capital Association in July released its second-quarter MoneyTree report, which tracks nationwide investment by VC firms, the only bigger bummer than the industry's ongoing slump was the fear that things would look even worse in the third quarter.

Mission accomplished. With investors feeling cautious amid a slow economic recovery, venture funding dropped in the latest quarter from the previous three months, according to the most recent NVCA report.

Venture firms invested $6.5 billion in 890 deals in the third quarter, according to the report, which the association prepares with PricewaterhouseCoopers using data from Thomson Reuters.

That's down 11 percent in terms of dollars and 5 percent in terms of deals from the second quarter. And it's substantially down from the third quarter of 2011, when $7.3 billion went into 992 deals.

Nor was the MoneyTree report the only industry tracker that reported declining investments in the third quarter. According to a rival survey by Dow Jones VentureSource, the number of venture investments in U.S.-based companies dropped 32 percent in dollars and 9 percent in deals compared to the same quarter last year.

A 32% decline in dollars invested will translate into a roughly comparable decline in startup activity.  The regulatory climate is what's doing this, as the evil businessmen are targeted to "pay their fair share".  And that's Q3 numbers.  Just wait to see what Q4 looks like as said evil businessmen look to shield assets from the new year's tax regime ...

But then, government is really all about the next election, isn't it?  Politicians don't care if they kill off the last remaining vital industry in the economy, so long as they have plausible deniability to dodge the blame.  Philosopher Kings.

Expect more "unexpected" bad economic news over the next decade, not to mention a bunch of chin tugging "How did the rest of the world pass us by in Internet technology" from the Usual Suspects.

They're the Only Ones

Well, the only ones qualified to rough up a woman so badly that her breast implant burst:

A North Texas woman who says a Pantego police officer caused her breast implant to rupture during an arrest is suing the department.

Rebecca Van Hooser of Arlington, Texas,  said the officer threw her against her car on Oct. 28, 2011, when he arrested her during a traffic stop.

...

[Van Hooser's attorney] Hutchison said throwing Van Hooser against the car caused her breast implant to burst.

"She's screaming in pain, and his response is, 'This isn't supposed to be comfortable,'" Hutchison said.

Now I guess that this is the point to say that the unnamed Officer is innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda yadda.  I'd have much more sympathy for the Pantego Police Department if we didn't see all sorts of unpunished abuse by the Only Ones.

Charles Darwin for the Georgia Senate

Georgia Senate Republican Paul Broun made a remark a month or two ago, saying that the Theory of Evolution was "lies straight from the pit of Hell."  It was a dumb thing to say, and the Press made hay out of this, as they would to take down any Republican.

Didn't matter, he was running unopposed.  It was a bit of schadenfreude on my part to see the Press impotent.

And it tickled my funny bone that the voters of Georgia rose to the occasion, casting 4,000 write-in ballots for Charles Darwin:

ATHENS, Ga. — Charles Darwin, the 19th century naturalist who laid the foundations for evolutionary theory, received more than 4,000 write-in votes in Athens-Clarke County in balloting for the 10th Congressional District seat retained Tuesday by five-year incumbent Republican Paul Broun.

...

“I can’t ever remember seeing a (write-in ballot) report that long,” Athens-Clarke County Elections Supervisor Gail Schrader said after releasing the write-in numbers to news media Thursday morning.

This is a story filled with delicious schadenfreude.  Well done, voters of Athens, Georgia.

Tired puppy

Dahlonega, GA is about as cute as small towns come.  It's about an hour north of Atlanta, up state route 400, and the Missus and I went out there with Wolfgang today.  This is the view from our table at The Back Porch Oyster Bar, looking out over the Court House square.  Highly, highly recommended.  Good selection of beer and excellent sea food.  It surprised me, seeing that Dahlonega is an old gold mining town, meaning it's up in the foothills of the Appalachians (i.e. 300 miles from salt water).  The manager explained that they get their seafood fresh on ice 24 hours after it is unloaded from the boat.  Even Sockeye salmon goes by air from Washington state to Atlanta, and then an hour up GA 400 to his restaurant.  The Missus thought that the mussels (from Prince Edward Island) were some of the best she'd had.  She gave one to Wolfgang who thought it was the best he'd ever had, too.*

BTW, they're dog-friendly, at least on the front porch.  And people-friendly, too. 

We got him a small dish of vanilla ice cream.  He licked it and licked it and eventually broke most of it free from the bowl to wolf it down.  He'd attracted quite an audience (who doesn't love a German Shepherd puppy?) and people chuckled at the sight of a puppy with a brain freeze.

The square is filled with thriving shops, ranging from rural antiques to stylish shops to hippie hangouts. There's a scattering of parks where Wolfgang fetched sticks.  One of the more fun Sunday afternoon explorations we've done in quite some time.  If you're ever nearby, it's worth your while.

* It was the first he had, but still.

Mulch ado about nothing

I shamelessly stole the title from a comment that Peter left in yesterday's post.  I remain sadly mulchless.

I'm a bit mystified as to why someone would come around asking if people wanted mulch.  The thought crossed my mind that he was casing the neighborhood, but he left a business card behind.  I guess he might be some sort of criminal mastermind printing up Tree Service cards as cover, but it seems like rather more planning than your typical criminal would do.  Also the whole going around the neighborhood talking to people thing would leave a lot of folks who might be able to pick you out of a lineup.

I'm falling back to the old adage of never attributing to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.  Now I have the business card of what seems to be an incompetent tree service.

Well, shoot.  I was kind of looking forward to a mountain of mulch.

Gabriel Fauré - Requiem

The Requiem Mass (missa pro defunctus) is the traditional remembrance ceremony in the Catholic Church.  Since today's Veteran's Day is more properly known as Remembrance Day, the Requiem is the proper form of music for this morning.  Fortunately, this is a long held tradition offering a wealth of musical choices.  Mozart's unfinished one is perhaps most famous, but Fauré's is my favorite - we sang this when I was in the Choir at State U* and I've enjoyed it ever since.

I've posted on Fauré just a short while ago, and so won't recap his history again here.  Instead, the veterans who fought and died are the object of the day's meditation.  Fauré was old when the War to End All Wars staggered to a close at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.  His native France suffered terribly, as did the Commonwealth (and the German Reich, as a reading of All Quiet on the Western Front will attest).  Not even two decades later the world found that soldiers were still needed.

They still are.  We call these men (and women) heroes because they put themselves in harm's way.  They run towards the sound of gunfire, and too many never came back.  Today is a day to say a prayer for these dead, perhaps calling on those ancient words of the Mass to remember the departed.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

And an extra prayer may be in the spirit of the day as well: Donna nobis pacem.  Grant us peace.



Amen.

* It's not that my voice was ever very good but they were trying to get a Choir going and I was a Male with a pulse.  While they have been much too good for folks with my talent for a long, long time, that was good enough back then.  Of course, the music major chicks were the draw back then.  Not a bad idea if you're trying to start up a Choir and you're looking for Baritones with a pulse.

This would be a good topic for the Sunday morning talking heads

Dork Tower is pretty funny.

Opportunity knocks

In this case, Opportunity has 8 yards of mulch.  A guy is doing tree work in the neighborhood somewhere and is looking for someone to take it off his hands.  Since his price is right (free) and since the Missus wants some mulch, I told him to dump it inside the secure perimeter.

But damn, that's going to be a lot of mulch.  They say you never get as much mulch as you need; I guess we're going to test that out.

Old NFO pwns airline baggage thieves

Awesome.  Good tips on what to do when you're flying with something valuable.

Tim McGraw - Live Like You Were Dying

I've posted this song before, actually rather a lot.  Can't say I'm happy about it, that Life sometimes speaks in its Outdoors Voice.  Cancer took Dad.  It passed my older brother.  It's passed a buddy who used to work for me, one who's far too young to be dealing with this sort of nonsense.  Passed them by at least for now.

Tam is one of the spark plugs for our corner of the Internet.  She's justly known for her snark, but I also admire how she is one of the few truly educated people I've run across.  Better educated than I, in fact.  You can pick up a decent education with a daily visit to her site, along with some Google elbow grease to check the obscure references she tosses out.  The free ice cream there is nourishing indeed, if you look closely.

But her's is a big heart.  Tam is one of the best at linking to fledgling bloggers, bringing them to the attention of a broader audience than would ever know them.  If you think on it, she's one of the chief gardeners in our little Internet plot.  A blog gardener, if you will.

I should know - she left the very first comment here on this blog, and was the first to link to one of my posts.  I'm grateful for that.  But I'm not the only one she's linked to at that early stage.  I'm grateful for that, as well, bringing to me bloggers who make me think and bloggers who make me realize what it is to be human.  Bloggers like Brigid who actually does both at the same time.  Our community - for that is what makes this patch of Internet garden worth while - is a fragile thing, with seeds that will sprout in the right soil, with the right cultivation.  I should be a better gardener in our plot.

I should be as good as Tam.

We all of us find ourselves tested at some point in our lives.  At that time, we find ourselves staring into that Abyss, with the Abyss perhaps staring back at us.  Some of us are sending our wishes (and a little more) as she stands before that scene.  If you'd like, you can join us.

This is a meditation, as was Dad's journey, and Older Brother's successful battle, and my friend's similar victory.  I hope that Tam - like Older Brother, and my friend from work, and indeed all of us - lives to a ripe old age, admired by all who know her.  I hope that she lives all those days with the wisdom that comes from standing before that Abyss.  I rather suspect that she already does.

It's also a chance for the garden to look back at the gardener.  To think on Life, at its most loud. To think on life that, with Luck, is at its most triumphant.

Boy, Progressives are so much smarter than we are

The Internet expects every reader to do his duty

Zercool is raffling off some sweet holsters to raise money for Tam.  Get on over there.

Or head over to Instinct's place where he's raffling off some grips for the same cause.

What, you stiller here?  Git!

Weapons are what made us human

The gun is civilization, right?  This may have scientific backing:

Boffins investigating a find of ancient stone blades over 70 thousand years old argue that it was possession of advanced ranged weapons - and the organisation to make and use them - which allowed humanity to defeat its early rivals and spread out to conquer the world.

...

"These early moderns probably also had higher levels of pro-social (hyper-cooperative) behavior. These two traits were a knockout punch. Combine them, as modern humans did and still do, and no prey or competitor is safe," he adds. "This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister species such as Neanderthals."

...

The group's paper has thus made it into hefty boffinry mag Nature, where subscribers can read it here. There's also a free digest for laymen courtesy of Arizona State uni here.

I'm certain that none of this will come as a surprise to readers here.  It likely will be a surprise to the sort that reads Nature.  Hey - the science is settled!  Peer-reviewed, even.  What, are you some sort of Denier?

Sovereign Debt

There's an interesting guest post at The Gormogons, about the interplay of Obama's military/foreign policy, Japan, and Iran.  Worth a read, but this part stood out:

There have been rumors circulating Dear Leader plans to administratively write off the nation's debt and at the stroke of a pen tell the world we now owe nothing to anyone, thus eliminating the record deficits he's run up.

Seems like a simple solution, the easy way out for those whose poor policy choices have left them in a sea of red ink, drowning in borrowing.  There are lots of those sorts around, and always has been.  Since a sovereign Nation State can always repudiate its debt, why don't they.  I mean, it almost never happens.  How come?

The answer is that repudiating sovereign debt is only an option for governments whose budget is already in balance.  Once they default, who will loan them more money?  And if your budget is balanced, do you really need to default?  And if you're running a big deficit, how do you fund it when nobody will lend to you?

Argentina defaulted ten years ago, and has been increasingly desperate ever since.  Nobody will loan them any more money, foreign investment fled, the peso went into free fall, and (correspondingly) inflation has drained the middle class' life blood.

Now it may be possible that Obama is clueless enough about economics, or such an ideologue that he just doesn't care.  But there would be nothing simple about an American government default, either to other nation's economies or to our own standard of living.

Stop

Just stop it.

Guilty pleasure

Army of Darkness is so full of Win that it's an Internet meme!

This is my BOOMSTICK! (with unlimited ammo in a double barreled shottie)

I am not in your Tribe

The bloody remains of a Romney Campaign adviser arrived at Camp Borepatch from Castle Gormogon via Trebuchet mail.  It contained a missive from the Czar of Muscovy:

What do you make of a crazy idea that a portion of Obama's literally incredible re-election was a repudiation of Republicans. Not formally, as in "I voted for Obama to teach the Republicans not to take my vote for granted," but "The Republicans are too disorganized; I'm voting for Obama."

It's pretty clear that everything the GOP thought they had, they lacked. Like you, I was expecting a decisive Romney win and even a GOP capture of the Senate. I based that all, like you did, on logic, math, and reason. This election was pure chaos, and chaos won. And I don't think Obama expected it--I think both the GOP and the Democrats were shocked at the result.

My analysis starts with the stunning news that Mitt Romney received 3 Million fewer Republican votes than John McCain did in 2008.  Let me say that once again so that it can sink in:

Mitt Romney received 3 Million fewer Republican votes than John McCain did.  And that wasn't running against the fresh, HopenChange 2008 reach-across-the-aisle Obama, this was running against the Class Warfare Obama.  They couldn't turn out their base, and as a result lost their chance to sweep the Senate; down-race Republicans lost in unexpectedly large numbers because the base stayed home.

I didn't see that coming, but probably should have.  You see, I used to be a Democrat.

The first election where I could vote was 1976, and I voted straight (D).  I even served (briefly) on the local Democratic Party county committee.  I voted mostly (D) for the next several elections until Michael Dukakis finally made me realize that the Democrat Party wasn't what it had once been.  Scoop Jackson was gone, Ed Muskie was gone, indeed, "my kind" of Democrat was disappearing fast from the party.  I never bought into the idea that Bill Clinton was anything but a liar, even back in 1992.  Paul Tsongas (perhaps "my kind" of Democrat) had it right when he said that Clinton was an unusually good liar.

I'm certainly not the first to say it, but I don't think I left the Party, I think it left me.  From 1988 or so, I started voting increasingly (R).  In fact, I found myself voting pretty much a straight Republican ballot.  Until this year.

Regular readers know that I've never much liked Romney.  I was surprised to see that 3 Million Republican voters agreed with me.  I never saw that coming, but should have.  I thought that people's visceral dislike of Obama's policies would, in Paladin't immortal words, make turkeys fly:

I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me.  It looks like it's running away even fast, what with Boehner saying that new taxes are all groovy and everything, just let us go along to get along.  Ooooh kaaaay then.

I don't think that I'm alone, and think that this is at the heart of the GOP's problem.  Now, I'm not much of a joiner, but if they can't sell their product to McCain voters, they are in a deep, deep pit of fail.  I expected the energy of the 2010 Tea Party rebellion, and Romney and the GOP establishment demonstrated a spectacular competence in eliminating that in its entirety.

As God is my witness, I really thought that turkeys could fly.  Didn't turn out that way.  I guess that's why they call it the Stupid Party.

UPDATE 8 November 2012 15:43: Word:

So good luck in 2016, Republicans. You had this one in the bag, high unemployment, an annual deficit of a trillion dollars, Fast’n'Furious, Benghazi, bailouts, Obamacare. All you had to do was find a conservative that could rally the people to vote and it would have been a cakewalk. I suspect you don’t believe that, and that you will try to go even more liberal in an effort to gather votes that you cannot get, throwing away the core voters that want conservative, responsible government.

Epic, epic political fail.  In other words, I didn't leave their Tribe, they left me.  I'm not the only one, not by a long shot.

If nominated, I shall not run

If elected, I shall not serve.

The Republican primary process

Overheard in Camp Borepatch

#1 Son: Hey Dad, you know how Mitt Romney spent $800 Million running for President and he's not President?

Me: Uh huh.

#1 Son: And you know how you and I each spent $0 running for President and we're not President?

Me: Yup.

#1 Son: So who's the better businessmen?

Me: LOL.  Hey, Gary Johnson only got 1% of the vote.

#1 Son: Dang!  Hey, we're the 1%!

The snark is strong with that one.

The difficulty of reform

My favorite Roman Emperor is Flavius Claudius Julianus, better know to posterity as Julian the Apostate.  He was a reformer who took a run at unscrewing the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century.

Constantine the Great normalized Christianity in 303 A.D., and Emperors had all been Christian for decades before Julian assumed the throne 360.  Julian was a throwback to older, more traditional (i.e. pagan) Roman virtues.  He saw himself as explicitly trying to restore the Empire of Marcus Aurelius.  Think of him as a late Empire Ron Paul.

Except he was a Ron Paul who was Princeps - he used the Emperor's  formidable powers to prune large chunks of the bureaucracy.  He just eliminated the posts and stopped paying the officials.  He de-centralized much Imperial power, bypassing local governors and returning authority to cities. He set the Army (well, the Magister Militum, sort of a Commander-in-Chief) on corrupt high officials and had several put to death.  He had definite ideas about how to bring back the old Roman vigor, and wrote over a dozen pieces explaining his philosophy.

He was, needless to say, wildly unpopular with the Establishment.  The Church in particular never forgave him for returning to the old pagan Gods; thus his nickname down through the ages.

He failed, of course.  He blazed brightly, but ruled only two years before dieing in battle on the Eastern Front against the Sassanid Empire.  His reforms died with him.  Doubtless he would have failed had he lived, for the Empire was encrusted with 150 years of barnacles and other bureaucratic flora and fauna.

Yesterday's election made me think on Julian.  I must have a soft spot in my heart for noble lost causes.  Not that I think that our cause is lost, but as a meditation on the task of reform.

Well, I was wrong

I like to say that smart people won't argue with your numbers, they'll argue with your assumptions.  I'm not sure which of my assumptions were wrong, but the election didn't turn out at all how I expected.  I'm going to have to think on this for a while, because I don't like being wrong and want to recalibrate.

That recalibration may cause a reassessment of the effectiveness of the Tea Party.  It almost certainly won't cause a reassessment of the Republican Party as it currently exists.  It seems that turnout was something like 113 Million voters, which is way down from what I expected (maybe by 20 Million).  I'll be shocked if the GOP get out the vote effort didn't fail miserably.

I expect the economy to take an immediate hit, as businesses hoard cash for the expected tax and regulation frenzy.  Full time employment will take a nose dive, as businesses look for ways to avoid the big Obamacare taxes and mandates.  I expect gasoline to go up, as well as electricity rates as coal fired power plants are shuttered by the EPA.  Inflation in general will be back, in a big way.

I expect Congress to fail to pass a spending bill, and further expect that sequestration will hit.  I think that Obama played the GOP on this, and now has a golden opportunity to take a Trillion dollars from the Defense Department while blaming the Republicans for Grandma not getting a Social Security check.

I expect the Press to cover for him for all of this.

I keep waiting for Greece to leave the Euro, and am surprised it hasn't happened yet.  Then again, clearly my prognostications aren't particularly accurate lately.  What's new and different about Greece is that the rise of the fascists:

Fascist gangs are turning Athens into a city of shifting front lines, seizing on crimes and local protests to promote their own movement, by claiming to be the defenders of recession ravaged Greece.

As America falls back into recession, Europe will slow down as well, fuelling the fascists.

The silver lining, of course, is that Mitt Romney was entirely not up to this job.  More on that after I've thought some.

What a fun evening

(written at 22:05 last evening your time)

Many thanks to frequent commenter Broken Andy and buddy down in Atlanta for power geeky IETF meeting.  Not only was shooting a blast, but Internet power geeking at dinner was maybe even more fun.  Remember SCAP - it's the new security hotness.

And I'm sort of blown away to find people who had as many obscure unix-like Operating Systems on 5 1/4" floppy as I did.

I must confess that part of the pleasure of the evening was to completely ignore the election.  As I write, I have no idea who the new President will be.  I dare say that I'll know by the time you read this.  But it was nice to get away from the craziness.

Election day recoil therapy

Reader Andy is in town for a Power Geek session and we're going to punch some holes in paper targets.  I don't expect any hanging chads will be encountered at the range, but we shall see.

And the other upside (if you need another upside other than going to the range) is that I won't be paying attention to the dumb election!  Trigger squeeze, yes, election no.

The improving civil liberty situation in Arlington, MA

The last time we encountered Arlington, they were in full frontal assault on both the First and the Second Amendments.  Post on teh Intarwebz, lose your guns.  Fortunately, things are considerably improved since then.

How so, I hear you ask.  It seems that the Arlington PD doesn't really have a big problem with drunk and disorderly, threatening a Police Officer, and resisting arrest.  The perp even can keep his guns, no hard feelings.  I mean, boys will be boys, right?  Theres just one teensy weensy catch; see if you can spot it:

An Arlington Police officer is facing an internal investigation here after he allegedly interfered with police and verbally threatened an officer while vacationing in Key West, Fla., last week.

Michael H. Wesley, 43, a police officer in Arlington for more than eight years, was placed in handcuffs but avoided being arrested for the incident on Oct. 30 in which Key West police said he appeared intoxicated, verbally threatened a female police officer and resisted being taken into custody.

After learning of the officer’s alleged behavior, Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan said he has offered an apology to Key West Police and assigned an internal investigation into Wesley’s conduct.

Boys will be boys.  More specifically, Boys in Blue will be Boys in Blue.  See?  No problem with civil liberties or out of control public officials in Arlington, MA!

In other public safety news, a Piedmont OK policeman gave a $2,500 ticket to sumdood for public urination.  Sumdood's age?  Three years old.  Peeing in his own yard.  Clearly the Piedmont OK police department should take away the family's firearms.  For teh childrenz™, of course.

Actually, this makes a lot of sense

Judge me by my size, do you?

Remember to vote

Whomever it may be for.  Me, I like Gary Johnson (kind of).  Even though he never got rid of Ice Giants.

Actually, I don't think that's Odin.  Maybe his Vice President?

Guy Fawkes day hackathon

Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the early years of the 17th Century.  His "Gunpowder Plot" was exposed, and he and his co-conspirators were executed in various unpleasant ways.  November 5 has been for years and years an excuse for a jolly good celebration in the UK, with bonfires, fireworks, alcohol, and burning effigies of the Pope.

Good times, good times.

The Guy (as he's known) has become something of an icon to the hacktivist crowd, particularly the loose coalition that likes to call themselves Anonymous.  Today, Anonymous has been on a rampage:

Anonymous claims to have leaked 28,000 passwords from PayPal as part of a a global day of protest to mark 5 November, Guy Fawkes night.

Hacktivists uploaded thousands of email addresses, names, and passwords - supposedly snaffled from the payment processing firms systems, TheNextWeb reports. A PayPal representative said it has yet to find any evidence of a security breach, but is nonetheless investigating the claim.

‪#OpNov5‬ also featured purported hacks against a server at ImageShack and a Symantec portal, thehackernews.com reports. The Symantec hack allegedly resulted in the leak of email addresses and other personal data from hundreds of security researchers. Hackers claimed to have exploited a zero-day bug in the ZPanel portal software used by Symantec to pull off the hack.

...

The Register reported earlier today that several NBC websites including its mobile site were defaced with the message "Remember, remember the fifth of November" (extracts from a nursery rhyme about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot to blow up the UK Parliament in 1605).

However, other elements of Anonymous have distanced themselves from the NBC "prank" attack as well as from supposed plans to take down Facebook and free Zynga games later today, which always seemed unlikely. As Sophos notes, self-identifying elements of Anonymous made threats to attack Facebook last year on 5 November without anything ultimately occurring.

Rather a busy day, all in all.  No word as to whether The Lads had time for a pint or ten and a jolly fun burning of the Pontif's effigy.

Mars Rover Curiosity's self portrait

This is the picture of the millennium, so far at least.

Yes, that's from Mars:

This image is composed of a mosaic of 55 high-resolution photos. Apart from providing a great portrait of our beloved robotic emissary on Mars, these photos provide the MSL team with an invaluable means of keeping track of dust buildup and wheel tread wear. Although Curiosity is still relatively shiny and new, as the years march on, we'll likely see marked changes in its appearance. If its still-functioning rover cousin Opportunity is anything to go by, Curiosity will be coated in a rusty orange coat in no time at all.

It's times like this that I feel like chanting U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! 

I don't trust the polls for exactly the same reason I don't trust the climate databases

The problem isn't so much the data, the problem is that the data gets changed.  If all you hear about is the "adjusted" temperature data, then the science does indeed sound settled.  If you dig into the data, you find that the adjustments have entirely changed the outcome.  It's the same for the polls.

First, the headlines.  We are told that the global temperature is increasing at around 0.3°C per decade, maybe a little less.  We're told that the 20th Century saw warming of around 0.7°C.  That's the climate headlines; the RCP poll average shows Obama tied or slightly ahead, and this has been pretty stable over a period of weeks.  Sonic Charmer sums up what is pretty much the consensus view:

Now everyone says that if Romney wins, it’s likely to be via winning Ohio. But to think Romney will win Ohio, or is even all that close (the average gap above is ~3points), you have to think virtually ALL of these pollsters have (intentionally or inadvertently) a (D) bias. It is just astronomically-unlikely to get a set of results like above from 18 different pollsters (using whatever different methods) from a genuinely Romney-leaning state without there being something systematically wrong with virtually all of the pollsters.

Exactly.  Something is wrong, and it's effecting pretty much all of the pollsters.  I think that I've seen this before, in the temperature databases.  Background on temperature is in an old post of mine, How to create a Scientific Consensus on Global Warming which you really should read because it is long and detailed and I show my work.  The key part is this, though:

There are two parts to the GHCN data: the raw temperature readings, and adjustments to the readings. The raw numbers are easy - they're just the instrument reported temperature for the weather station. Look outside your house at your thermometer - that's the raw data. Here Chez Borepatch, my thermometer says that it's 39°.

Adjustments are modifications to the readings, to "remove inhomogeneities" in the raw data. You (like me) may look at that and say Whiskey Tango Foxtrot are inhomogeneities?

...

OK, we don't want a jump in the historical record if you move a station or replace a thermometer with a better one.

But. All the Climatologists in the world will look at this data. How much do the adjustments change the results?

We don't know, but people are starting to look. They're starting to find that adjustments change the data a lot. They change the data so much that they show that the earth is warming when the raw data may show that it's cooling.

Let me say that again: Thermometers may be showing that the Earth is cooling, but adjustments to this data show a rapid temperature rise.

Let me give three examples.

Darwin, Australia:The blue line is the raw data from the five weather stations in Darwin. It shows a 0.7°C cooling over the 20th Century. The Black lines are the adjustments to this data, showing a big jump in 1940 and a substantial increase since then. They turn the raw data decline into a 1.2°C increase over the course of the 20th Century.

The problem isn't with the data as originally collected.  The problem is what gets done to the data after it gets into the hands of the climate modeler.  This is my biggest problem with the idea of Global Warming - it's not clear at all from the data that things are warming up.  The adjustment process is a mess, and the scientific establishment really isn't explaining what's going on.  Thus my position as a skeptic.

It's the same thing with the polls.

Right up front, let me say that I have no reason to think that the pollsters are making mistakes in how they conduct the polls.  I will assume that their sample is suitably "random", that the questions do not lead to bias, that they correctly identify registered vs. likely voters, that the margin of error is as stated.  These may all be wrong (or some of them may be wrong), but Sonic Charmer is quite correct that it is unlikely in the extreme to have all 18 pollsters screwing up the technical internals of how polls are conducted.  My money certainly wouldn't make that bet, and yours shouldn't, either.

But that's the raw poll data.  That's not what's getting reported - what we hear about (and see in the RCP Poll Average) is adjusted poll data.  And here's where I catch more than a whiff of Bravo Sierra.  The Czar of Muscovy covers how the polling data gets adjusted in a fabulous post, Why the Polls are Screwy (Best To Ignore Them):

Something doesn’t seem right—poll after poll...after poll keeps showing the President tied with Mitt Romney and even a little ahead—and in some of the swing state polls, you see the President far ahead. Yet the average person thinks “That can’t be right.” Anecdotes, yes, are not data, but by God it sounds like people are turning out in waves to vote for Romney. Lines in GOP-friendly early voting locations are out the door, with cars lined up waiting for a chance to park. Early voting seems to be showing a massive turnout for Romney, unless a Democrat campaign spokesperson is asked; then, the numbers seem to float for Obama. All the pundits who have done this many times in their life, however, seem to anticipate a decisive Romney win—even a landslide. So how can Obama be so close or even ahead?

...

If we know that Democrats routinely make up 37% of voters, and then we can assume that 620 voters is probably too high. 620 out of 1000 is of course 62%, not 37%. So if we got 620 voters to indicate they are Democrats, than the actual number of Republican voters out of every 1,000 is probably closer to 493...all we do is multiply 304 actual Republican participants by 1.62 to normalize the number. And we see that the proportions are maintained pretty well. We can then figure out the probable number of independents from there. The results wind up:

Dems (620) 37%
GOP (493) 29%
Indep (553) 33%

Of course, this seems very scientific but it is of course absolute horseshit. It assumes that the fact Democrats average 36-38% of the vote makes a safe baseline for you to beef up the other numbers.

The polls report the Obama is slightly ahead, yet all of the polls show Romney with a double digit lead with Independents.  History shows that a sitting President never increases his share of the Independent vote over what the polls showed the week before the election.  Never.

You can argue whether the Republicans are sufficiently energized and the Democrats sufficiently demoralized, and what this will do to turnout.  I have my own opinion but it's just that: opinion.  We're all entitled to our own opinion and yours is just as good as mine.

But we're not entitled to our own data, either for climate science or for polling purposes.  When you willy nilly change the data that's been collected, expect to be challenged on your assumptions.  It looks like all of the pollsters (or almost all) are giving a weighting towards a heavy Democrat turnout and a close split of Independents, resulting in a narrow Obama win.  I think that this is nonsense on stilts, and (opinion) Republican turnout will beat Democrat turnout (note that it seems that Gallup has data backing this up).  More importantly (data) Independents will vote for Romney in significant numbers.

Add this up and you have to adjust the polling weights from D+3 to R+4.  That's my model.  Using the pollster's data in my model you come up with Romney running away with the election.  My take there was Romney 359, Obama 179 although I thought I had upped Romney's margin in a subsequent post (I can't find it, drat it all).

And so to Sonic Charmer's point, it's not the pollster's data that I challenge, it's their models.  I put more credence in my model than in theirs.  I'm not sure what motivates the pollsters but it doesn't really matter.  We'll know soon.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing

Sitting quietly, doing nothing
Spring comes and the grass grows all by itself

- Zen saying

Zen Buddhism is interestingly different from the Christian devotion.  The point is to challenge the mind with questions (called koans) that are right-brained, not left-brained.  The assumption at the core of Zen is that you cannot reason yourself into Heaven.*  Not a bad assumption, really.

The challenge of the koan is to cause the right-brain to break through to a spontaneous moment of enlightenment.  Perhaps the nearest Christian analogy is Saul's moment of realization on that road, so many years ago.  He didn't reason himself into that flash of understanding, he realized it.

Lots of folks are pretty tightly wrapped right now about the election, with justification.  But if you vote, and get those you know to vote with you, you've done what you can.  Your left-brain obligation is paid in full.  All that remains in driving yourself crazy dwelling on something entirely beyond your control.  As it turns out, Humans are pretty good at that.

Zen in general, and today's koan in particular is aimed precisely at this tendency to go nuts:

What is this saying telling us? It is simply pointing out to us the futility of fretting, worrying and agonising over something which we have no control over or in which we can do nothing to change its outcome. We humans are very good at bringing sufferings upon ourselves.  We are master in turning problems into worries and anxieties and allowing them to fester inside us. We are amateurs, poor amateurs, at that, in letting go of things.

We'll know in a couple days.  Do what you can, do what you should, and then sit quietly.  Do nothing.  Spring will come and the grass will indeed grow entirely on its own.  That grass has a lot of wisdom, for those who will listen.

* OK, "heaven" is not a Zen concept.  Work with me here.

Guilty pleasure

The Travel Channel is running a marathon of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" series.  Bourdain is one of those personality types that you either love or hate; he falls on the enjoyable side of that line with me.  Each episode is spent in a different location - Sydney, Rio, etc - and covers both the sights and the local cuisine.

As a (minor) foodie who's traveled quite a bit, this has been a surprisingly fun way to be a couch potato.

Compare and contrast

Subdood who fled socialism, behind the Iron Curtain.  This ad was made this year.



Compare with someone who described what socialists wanted.



So strange, that one never hears this in today's media.  Passing strange, that would rather the poor be poorer.  No wonder it was someone from Easter Europe that made this.  No wonder they want to block immigration from the Europe they say that we should be more like.

21 accents in 2 minutes

The southern accent was a little off, but all in all this was a pretty virtuoso performance.



It seems that Miss Walker has nearly ten million views on Youtube.  This video of hers suggests that she can do a better southern accent - certainly much better than I.  She has a number of what seem pretty interesting videos posted there.



And this is a short but sweet excerpt from Robin McNeil's "The Story Of English" describing the major American accents:



Even though I grew up in Maine, my parents were from the midwest, and so I sound very strongly Midland.  And this young man is pretty talented, offering 24 different English dialects.  The dialog is NSFW, but I love the space alien reference in the Welsh accent.  Very UK inside baseball.  Or cricket.  Or something.

Aaron Copland - The Promise of Living

Aaron Copeland is thought by the too smart by half crowd to be unsophisticated.  He uses simple, traditional, American motifs.  The too smart by half crowd often thinks this way about America itself: it lacks the intellectual finesse of the European Intelligentsia.  In this, they are right: neither America in general nor Copeland in particular display that particular European trait.

And yet Copeland is known as The Dean of American Composers, and America sent a man to the moon and returned him safely to Earth, all in the space of a decade.

That's quite an odd miss, both of Copeland's musical sophistication - influenced more by jazz and the avant garde, and only dressed up in American motifs - and of the American Experiment itself.  This Republic has fostered a society that is perhaps the closest expression of the permanent revolutionary ideal so beloved of the Left.  Copeland's music perhaps captures better than any the fact that the American Revolution wasn't a decade in the 18th Century, but played out over the centuries with the Golden Spike, the Wright Brothers, the Panama Canal, "Lucky" Lindy, the Liberty Ship, and yes, the first steps at the Sea of Tranquillity.

You are almost certainly reading this on a device designed by those same "unsophisticated" Americans.  The American Revolution of creative destruction continues strong in our day.

That creative destruction is apparent in our political process as well.  Four years ago, we took a chance on an inspiring figure who has pretty much let us down on everything he promised.  And so it's on to Tuesday - two days hence - when the Permanent American Revolution will sweep over this President and his party, drowning them in a very American display of creative destruction.

Where will it end?  Who can say.  What we know is that the American People remain at the core sensible and resilient.  We have faced worse than this,  have recovered from worse than this and gone on to great things.  The images in today's video are of those people.  I found this incredibly moving.  Inspiring.  "Simple" people - perhaps described as unsophisticated by the too smart by half crowd - that went on to face down two races of Supermen, fix the stain of government-sanctioned racism and truly opening opportunity to all, and building the greatest engine of creative destruction ever seen.

And it was done not by the too smart by half crowd, but rather by ordinary, gloriously unsophisticated Americans chasing the promise of living.  Those Americans took a chance four years ago, one that turned out to be a mirage offered up by those that would split this People.  Those politicians have done their best, and even now are scrambling madly to piece together a coalition to keep their power.

But strong bands bind this People, from sea to shining sea.  Tuesday will see the People rise en masse and do something very practical, and very American.  They will choose creative destruction once again.  They will do this because they feel in their gut that this is the path to the Promise of Living, for them and their children.



Many of you out there are disheartened at the state of our Republic.  Don't be.  Tonight, look up when you are outside, look to see the Moon.  Reflect on that image.  It's not a rock you see, it's footprints.  And three used cars.  And a golf ball.

That's the American spirit, right there.  That spirit is still alive and kicking.  That spirit horrifies the too smart by half crowd.  It's the spirit that says you don't control me.  It's the spirit that says you can't stop me.  That crowd hates this.

The Romans had a saying: Let them hate, so long as they fear.  The Romans ground their enemies down, until the Mediterranean was called Mare Nostrum - Our Sea.

Nobody did destruction like the Romans.  Nobody does creative destruction like the Americans.  This Republic isn't done, not by a long shot.  The too smart by half crowd wants everyone to think like they do.  That's not how we do things.  That's not the Promise of Living, at least on these shores.

Go vote on Tuesday. Go with gladness of heart, for you are one of the Millions of Americans that will sweep a wave of creative destruction like few have seen.

Thank you, generous Government Bureaucrats

Because of your beneficence, I will luxuriate in an extra hour sleep tonight, as we adjust our clocks off of daylight savings time.  Just think of the extra rest!

Sure, I lost that same hour's sleep last spring when we went on to daylight savings time.  Sure, it costs the world billions of dollars as people have to manually adjust clocks twice a year.  Sure, it will be a pain in the tail end adjusting all the clocks in the house and in the cars.

But that gift of an extra hour's sleep makes the buildings filled with tireless government busy bees worth the trifle of extra tax money taken.  Money well spent, I might add, because otherwise how would I get my annual gift of a "free" extra hour's sleep?

It makes me feel just like when my Income Tax refund shows up.  Thanks, Government Bureaucrat Man!*  A Grateful Republic thanks you.

* Or woman.  Don't want to get the government gender equality bureaucrats spun up here.  Of course, their job is extra double crazy important, and another excellent use of my fair and just tax rate.  But they no doubt are sadly over worked, and probably could use the extra hour's rest themselves!

Afternoon bluegrass

Awesome.  This is the American Ur-music.

The Decline of the West

#1 Son used to love Wishbone, but that was a long, long time ago.  Me, I prefer Fifty Shades of Dorian Grey, but I read a lot of 19th Century fiction as a teenager.  No Jane Eyrotica, though - Mom didn't want that stuff in the house.

Bryan Glover - When You're Holding a Hammer (Everything Looks Like a Nail)

You might have heard that there's an election coming up.  A lot of folks are itching to pull the lever for some change.  These people are sometimes called "broken glass Republicans" because they'd crawl on their hands and knees over broken glass to cast their vote this time 'round.  Or in the case of Bryan Glover, write a song about it.

This song got Glover got fired from his job as an assistant football coach.  In Tennessee.



As Insty likes to say, they told me that if I voted for John McCain people would be fired from their jobs for writing anti-Government songs.  No word on whether Mr. Glover got his job back, or how he intends to vote next week.  But it doesn't take a PhD to figure that last one out.

Freedom of speech FTW

On this day in 1960, Lady Chatterley's Lover was deemed to be not obscene.  Probably quaint enough to be SFW these days.



I really enjoy having my prurient interests aroused.

Man, we all loved this song when we were in High School.

A High Capacity Assault Kitchen

I mean, you don't need that for Sporting Purposes, do you?

Awwww

It seems that the Washington D.C. paparazzi don't want Romney to win, because it's bad for business:

Photographer Gene Young thinks Romney could force the paparazzi to abandon Washington altogether.

“If he were to win, you might have, say, Kelsey Grammer or Jon Voight, but that’s not money you can make off the photographers,” said Young. “You’re not going to have the Eva Longoria, Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith, the big name A-Listers who come and support Barack Obama. … You’ll have to travel or maybe you’ll have to find something totally different to shoot.”

I wept actual tears when I read this, not for the parasitic photogs - who are the 1% who get J. Lo pix - but for the rest of us (the 99%) who are tragically celebrityless.  It's time to share the wealth, paparazzi!  From each according to his F-Stop, to each according to her Pinterest!  You Patriarchal scum.

You're not fooling me

Some of you bloggers have been (a) telling me that I'm too optimistic about the innate sensibility of the American People and (b) blogging on the incredible necessity of voting for Mitt Romney.

You guys are such a bunch of practical jokers.  Well played, so very well played.  No atheists in foxholes and all that, what?

Spiced up blues

José Feliciano is best know these days for the Ultimate Christmas Carol, which is too bad.  He added some spice to Bill Withers' classic blues lament.

Squirrel time

Thursday is Squirrel Report.  All the cool kids hang out there.



Cute kids, too (well, Breda and Nancy, anyway).

Offered without comment on the broadcast media

"Cut!"

Pumpkin art

Reader Chad (perhaps a St. Louis fan, and possibly exercised at my Boston-St. Louis box score jack o'lantern, emails this very cool pumpkin of his:

Having tried to do the shave-the-inside-to give-a-translucent-effect thing, I can attest that the technique is hard.  As a matter of fact, it's so hard and time consuming that I don't do it.  This is what I'd do if I had more talent and work effort, in fact.

Sometimes you get the bear ...

... and sometimes you just get sick as a dog.

Blog later.  In the meantime, here's a cute puppy who doesn't like ring tones.