The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
The great wickedness of Liberalism, I saw, was that those who devise the ever new State Utopias, whether crooks or fools, set out to bankrupt and restrict not themselves, but others. — David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
Found at City Journal. I am going to have to get that book.
I think we’re raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy. They’re not a decade old, and they’re being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they’re being taught that it’s important to have views, and they’re not being taught that it’s important to know what you’re talking about. It’s important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it. — Uncommon Knowledge, Economic Facts and Fallacies interview, Part V
Thomas Sowell is now 80 years old. I get the feeling that he’s glad that he won’t be around to see the worst of what’s coming.
U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions
The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.—The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.
But not to worry, a “liberal” spokesman says:
Michael Lind, policy director at the liberal New America Foundation’s economic growth program, says there is no near-term crisis for federal retirement programs and that economic growth will make these programs more affordable.
“The false claim that Social Security and Medicare are about to bankrupt the United States has been repeated for decades by conservatives and libertarians who pretend that their ideological opposition to these successful and cost-effective programs is based on worries about the deficit,” he says.
That’s because conservatives and libertarians have been RIGHT ABOUT IT FOR DECADES. The liberals have pooh-poohed the warnings for decades because of their ideology, and the chickens, as the saying goes, are now coming home to roost. “Cost effective”? COST EFFECTIVE??
The government has promised pension and health benefits worth more than $700,000 per retired civil servant. The pension fund’s key asset: federal IOUs.
I don’t have any money? Well let me write myself an IOU!
We are well and truly screwed.
Another take on the “bunker scene” meme from the movie Downfall. This one is funny, but . . .
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGw2e7P8g-s?rel=0]
Comments?
There’s been a bit of interest in a recent post about psychopaths in places of power. Excerpt:
Rape a housekeeper… you might be a psychopath.
Lie to the nation about having sex with an intern… you might be a psychopath.
Having multiple public affairs while putting at risk the largest endorsements in the world… you might be a psychopath.
Cheat on your wife and have a love child with house hold staff… you might be a psychopath.
Cheat on your wife with $3,000 an hour prostitutes while prosecuting others… you might be a psychopath.
Divorce your wife while she is recovering from surgery… you might be a psychopath.
Cheat on your wife, father a love child, have a sex tape, and asking for a divorce, while your wife is dying form cancer… you might be a psychopath.
Blow a million dollar TV career on coke and hookers… you might be a psychopath.
Create financial instruments that you knew were going to blow up the housing market… you might be a psychopath.
Create a billion dollar Ponzi scheme to steal billions… you might be a psychopath.
Hide billions of losses in off the books shell corporations to pump up your stock… you might be a psychopath.
Claim that you are doing “God’s work” while your company sucks the life blood out of the company… you might be a psychopath.
Show no remorse for 500,000 dead Iraqi children… you might be a psychopath.
Lie to a nation about the real reason we are going to war… you might be a psychopath.
Lie to a nation about the real strength of the dollar… you might be a banker.
Talk about coming back as a deadly virus to eradicate over population… you might be a psychopath.
Create and fund wars to steal others natural resources… you might be a psychopath.
Help support tyrannical regimes all over the world… you might be a psychopath.
Holding up the American taxpayer to bailout your buddies… you might be a psychopath.
Perpetuating a huge lie in order to to become a carbon credit billionaire and sexually assaulting a masseuse … you might be a psychopath.
These are the people who grasp for the levers of power. These are the people we’re supposed to trust to do what’s right, not what is personally beneficial, expedient, easy. These are the people the media is supposed to vet, not anoint.
There’s also this recent book, The Psychopath Test. Watch the embedded video there.
There’s a preponderance of psychopaths, people with a complete lack of human empathy at the heart of the political and business elites.
But Government = Good, Business = Bad! That’s what we’re constantly told. Just put the right people in charge of government, and things will be made RIGHT!
But it never is. And it’s never their fault. The solutions were just poorly implemented! There was too much resistance from reactionaries! We didn’t spend enough money! The philosophy cannot be wrong! We must do it again, only HARDER!
The Founders understood, and that is why they wrote a Constitution of defined, limited powers. And that’s why that Constitution had to be folded, spindled, mutilated and made void.
Entropy sucks.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKdScVerrBU?rel=0]
It’s not bad when they do it. It’s the intention that matters, not the results.
The syphilitic camel is getting more and more attractive.
After a two-month hiatus for berm work at the Tucson Rifle Club action range, we’re back on! Registration begins at 8:00 AM. Sign in at the range office, but if all you’re going to do is shoot the match, you don’t need to pay the daily use range fee – it’s part of the match entry fee for non-members. $10 for the first gun, $5 each for additional guns. First round downrange (hopefully) by about 8:45.
We’re going to shoot Major (.40S&W and above), Minor (9mm and below), and .22 rimfire as separate classes, in a double-double-elimination contest. Line up three abreast, whoever wins two rounds takes that set. Lose two sets, you’re eliminated from that class.
Smallest centerfire allowed: .38 Special. Hollowpoint and flat-point bullets work better at carrying pins off the tables than round-nose or FMJ bullets do, regardless of caliber.
You’ll be paired off against other shooters in your division for head-to-head competition, again, best 2 out of 3 wins the set. Whoever’s left at the end of the match with no more than one loss is the winner for that class. Bring enough ammo! Most tables take well over five shots. Even if you lose the round, you can keep shooting until you’ve cleared your table if you want to. Consider it practice for the next round.
The last match of the day will be a best two-out-of-three competition between the top Major and Minor shooters (unless, of course, it’s the same person). Your only prize: the accolades of your peers.
Everyone who hangs around until the end of the shoot will be put in for a drawing. $1 of each entry goes into a pot. A drawing from the names of those present will be taken, and the winner gets the whole pot.
See you Sunday, June 12!
(T)here is no reforming our government. There is no fixing it. There is only the hope that one can survive it. – Robert McDonald, My Tumultuous Adventure, I’m Shocked, Shocked I Tell You!
Yup.
Where do I vote for the syphilitic camel?
Stacy McCain has brought back an old idea. Glenn Reynolds for President! Hell, I’ll even go with the original Vice Presidential nominee, Rachel Lucas, regardless of the fact that she’s living in Europe now.
(Original artwork by Chris Muir)
The cabinet secretaries and ambassadorships will have to change, but what the hell, Elect the Great in 20082012!
Glenn’s fingers say “No, no!” but his heart is saying “YES! YES!” (He’s got to be better than a syphilitic camel, right?) Expect a national tour by luxury coach, wrapped in patriotic imagery to begin July 4!
Breda posted recently about Luckygunner.com‘s use of “gunbunnies” at the recent Bullet Fest event, linking to an interview with Brian Crane. Completely unrelated to her topic, here’s something I found very interesting:
Brian: I have an arrangement with them which was essentially tied to how the marketing of the business did. That’s going to be off the record what that actual arrangement is. Needless to say, I became one of the co-founders and they said, “Brian, go do our online marketing. Figure this stuff out.”
Andrew: So what’s the first thing that you do, Brian? You come in there, they put all this on your shoulders. What do you do?
Brian: Immediately start reaching out to the bloggers. So in our particular space, you had just a ton of sites that all had really solid back link profiles. I’d say there’s probably at least 100 active bloggers that have page rank five sites where they’re talking about guns. You start reaching out to them and working with them to promote Lucky Gunner through their sites. Holistically from a marketing standpoint, you want to get that community of influencers pushing us to their . . . twofold, to their actual readers but then also linking to us because it was building our back link profile very quickly as well.
I think the tipping point was essentially there was an event called the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous and not to go into a lot of details, but the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous does a raffle where they give away a bunch of stuff as part of this raffle and they were selling tickets online. And they were using PayPal as the channel for selling these tickets. And PayPal came in and said, “This has to do with guns. We’re going to shut you down.” They cut the raffle off in the middle of it. They essentially removed the component of being able to sell the tickets in the middle of this push to do the raffle, and so we stepped in and we were the back end for those raffle ticket sales. And that introduced us also to a much bigger community of these gun bloggers because people were like, “Awesome. You guys are helping out. Screw PayPal. We hate PayPal.” It’s an interesting space just because people are like . . . it’s a very combative stance because the tech companies don’t really get or like firearms.
Andrew: I saw some blog posts about you and with you on that issue. So apparently it was really heated, and you got a lot of attention and as you say a lot of props for coming in and helping out.
According to the interview, Luckygunner.com was in business for two months before he was brought on board. During that two months they were moving merchandise at a rate of about $250k per year. At the end of the year they’d done $3.2 million in sales.
Brilliant marketing move! And I was quite happy about it, myself. Thanks again, Brian! I’m glad we were able to help out a new company.