The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Phrases You Wish You’d Never Read
The Glock is as sexy as Helen Thomas in a thong bikini. – Robb Allen
Carradine was found with a rope tied around his genitals and another rope around his neck. – AP story on David Carradine’s death.
I need to scrub out my mental image file with steel wool and acid now.
Twenty Years Ago
There stands a man who has had enough.
He just needed about a million others to stand with him.
So do we.
UPDATE: The blog The Right Outlook expands upon this post.
I Don’t Know Anything About Finance . . .
But I’m pretty sure this guy’s right:
I’m an attorney and CPA and I’ve spent my career in the world of investment banking, hedge funds, and private equity, etc. Tell your mother I’m almost certain a depression is on the way and many of my colleagues believe the same thing because the math has finally caught up with us. However, I believe this depression will be worse than the 30’s because, among other factors, Americans are no longer self-sufficient and we’re burdened with debt we can never repay. I don’t want to believe any of this, but I can’t ignore what I know and see. I really hope I’m wrong. I hope those in charge figure out a way to kick the can down the road one more time, but I don’t expect that because they would have to defy their Keynesian impulses. I fear it’s too late.
flyfisher on June 3, 2009 at 10:36 PM
A comment left at a Hot Air post yesterday on a proposed tax on employee health insurance benefits. It was prompted by this comment, a few minutes earlier:
I was on the phone with my mother today (a Baby Boomer, born 1955), and we were discussing the fact – not possibility, but fact – that our economy will sink into a depression if Cap-and-Trade or “Healthcare Reform” is passed before the end of the year like Obama wants. My mom said, “I just can’t believe that there’s actually going to be a depression in my lifetime. We did this once already and didn’t learn anything from it?”
I was born in 1984, so I’ve known nothing but prosperity in my lifetime. Even so, I just can’t believe that SO many Americans who remember the 70s learned NOTHING from the experience. I cannot believe that hardly a generation passes before socialism rears its ugly head again. I want the horrors I’ve read about to STAY in the history books – I don’t want to live them. For the first time, though I’m frightened. I can prepare to some extent for inflation or the loss of a job, but I really don’t know what I’ll do if the government takes over healthcare. I may be relatively healthy, but I know a lot of people (many elderly) who are not and if the government starts rationing as we KNOW they will, I hope that the wrath of the American people is finally awoken in defense of our countrymen.
Is this what it’s going to take, America? How much will be destroyed before you’ve had enough?
Animator Girl on June 3, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Good question.
Via Tam:
Quote of the Day
If it were France doing this, I’d be laughing my butt off, but it’s MY country. – Mostly Cajun, Paradigm shift
Read the whole thing. And the cartoon.
Movie Review: UP
What Your Kids are Actually Learning in School
Quote of the Day:
If you want to understand how that leftist tactic has penetrated deeply into the culture, let me tell you a personal story. Recently, I was involved in an animated discussion with my daughter about her schoolwork. Things got a little heated, and in typical teenage fashion she became flustered when I pointed out some facts about her study habits that she did not like.
“Yeah?” she yelled, “Well you’re a….racist!”
Somewhat taken aback at this insertion of this word into our conversation, I must have momentarily appeared deeply shocked, because she abruptly started laughing and the tension was broken. Which, of course, made me laugh too at the ridiculousness of her words.
Still laughing, she said that she had learned at school that the best way to end a discussion you did not like was to accuse the other person of being a ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobe.’ “Calling someone one of those names is a sure way to end the discussion,” she explained with a smile. “Kids at school use it all the time.”
Dr. Sanity, Like His Grandmother, Perhaps?
Oh, and check the cartoon at the link. Classic!
U.S. Citizen announces that Alan Gura, the attorney who won D.C. v Heller, will be attending the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this September! Too cool!
101 days left before GBR IV, Sept. 10-13 in Reno!
But what about Summer Glau?
Quote of the Day
Every nation has a number of founding myths. Britain’s principal myth is that it is the birthplace of modern democracy and a land where the law is supreme. The shocking realization that “the mother of parliaments” may have been acting as the rudest of street sluts is not easy to stomach. Some of the same politicians who go around the world lecturing others, especially in the “developing world”, against corruption, have been exposed as practioners(sic) of petty larceny. – Amir Taheri, Coming Soon: An English Revolution
Great. When do we get ours?
$2,287,706,658,821 ($2.29 Trillion)
I received an interesting email today.
It turns out that the number $2.2 trillion is not an uncommon one. It seems that in 2007 the country spent $2.24 trillion on health care.
The IMF estimates that worldwide bank losses on U.S. assets topped $2.2 trillion.
The projected cost to repair America’s infrastructure is estimated at $2.2 trillion.
Oil companies have paid a combined total of $2.2 trillion in taxes over the last 25 years, adjusted for inflation.
There’s more, but that gives you a taste.
But how do you visualize that much money?
My correspondent was ingenious. According to WikiAnswers, a single crisp new dollar bill has dimensions of
6.6294cm (2.61″) wide, by 15.5956cm (6.14″) long, and 0.010922cm (0.0043″) in thickness
Not much help.
Here’s a visual:
That’s Kheops’ pyramid, the Great Pyramid at Giza. Click for a bigger version of the image.
It has a volume of 2,583,283 cubic meters.
Now imagine all that stone was instead stacks of $1 bills:
$2,287,706,658,821.00
$2.29 trillion.
Boggles, doesn’t it?