"A Socialist is only a Communist without a gun."
Rodger, the Real King of France (as quoted by)
--Dolly
Saturday May 17, 2008...
Didja Ever Have ::.
ONE OF THOSE DAYS when every report on the news, every sound bite out of the mouths of politicians, sounds ever-more surreal -- like the words of a song written by a madman?
In the darkness of the night, only occasionally relieved by glimpses of nirvana as seen through other people's windows, wallowing in a morass of self-despair made only more painful by the knowledge that all I am is of my own making. When everything around me, even the kitchen ceiling, has collapsed and crumbled without warning. And I am left, standing in the eye of a well looking up and wondering why and wherefore.
At a time like this, which exists maybe only for me, but is nonetheless real, if I could communicate, and in the telling and the bearing of my soul anything is gained, even though the words which I use are pretentious and make you cringe with embarrassment, let me remind you of the pilgrim who asked for an audience with the Dalai Lama.
He was told he must first spend five years (in) contemplation. After the five years, he was ushered into the Dalai Lama's presence, who said, "Well, my son, what do you wish to know?"
So the pilgrim said, "I wish to know the meaning of life, father."
And so the Dalai Lama smiled and said, "Well my son...
life is like a beanstalk...
isn't it?"--"In Held 'Twas In I," Brooker/Reid, 1968
...A spoken-word piece in the days before "rap" became a musical genre.
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Observation #694 ::.
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Spread The Word ::.
TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS, tell your elected officials. Hell, tell your enemies. Scare the horses! Shout it from the rooftops!
The tenets:
STRENGTHEN NATIONAL DEFENSE -- increase the size, capability and efficiency of our Armed Forces, bringing back our defense spending to historical levels as percentage of GDP.
GAIN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE -- open up ANWR and the OCS to exploration; aggressively pursue nuclear energy and green technologies; and incent private industry to aggressively pursue clean, renewable energy sources.
SECURE THE BORDERS -- build physical barriers immediately as a precursor to an overarching, sensible immigration policy. If the boat's sinking, you plug the holes first.
DEATH TO EARMARKS -- zero tolerance for earmarks.
DEATH TO CORRUPTION -- zero tolerance for corruption.
ENGLISH AS NATIONAL LANGUAGE -- national unity requires a national language. That language is English.
IMPLEMENT FLAT TAX OR FAIR TAX -- simplify the tax system by eradicating a tax code gone mad.
REDUCE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT -- provide "whistleblower-style" awards for reducing the size of government and task the IRS (which will no longer have to worry about enforcing the tax code) with achieving the reduction goals on an annual basis
SPUR HEALTHCARE COMPETITION -- Address health-care deficiencies - with competitive, free-market solutions, not Government largesse.
ADDRESS ENTITLEMENTS -- engage a bipartisan consortium to create a multi-million dollar competition to incent teams from private industry and academia to create solutions for our social security and Medicare liabilities.
This should not be a platform. It should be a promise -- an ironclad commitment -- to voters.
I have a few ideas of my own, but let's not dilute the impact by messing with a powerful message. Please, you do the same.
(No credit has been requested, but this même was started by Doug Ross @ Journal.)
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Who Could Have Seen ::.
THAT ONE COMING? Poll: McCain Support Plummets After GW Speech. Quelle surprise.
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Rich Chocolatey Goodness ::.
JOE HUFFMAN quotes a gentleman named Aaron Zelman, with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
Our main goal is to destroy gun control. We are an organization that believes we have the moral authority to point out to the rest of the world the evils that have come from gun control and how humanity has suffered because of gun-control schemes.
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We're not interested in compromise. We are only interested in the destruction of something we consider to be a very evil and deadly policy known as gun control.
We. Are. Not. Interested. In. Compromise.
Words to live by.
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Oh, Yeah. Right. Of Course. ::.
I WAS READING ALONG in this post at Bobbi X's -- Armed Citizens, Utility Thereof -- and was nodding to myself, going -- you know -- "Yup. Yup. Quite rightly" in total agreement.
And then it hit me: WELL THEN LINK TO IT, IDJIT!
I coulda toldja that, silly.
Um... right. Sorry. It was so ... right, I forgot everybody in the world might not understand it so clearly. So... RTWT.
Speaking of Armed Citizen, when are ya gonna get back ta writin' me?
When I have a peaceful place to write.
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Friday May 16, 2008...
Glass Dragonfly in the Rain ::.
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Thursday May 15, 2008...
Observation #693 ::.
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Thursday May 15, 2008...
For Those STILL In Denial ::.
OVER GLOBAL WARMING, still trying to prove the unprovable -- that the earth is warming or has warmed, that such a trend means anything, that if it did it would be a net ill for humanity, and/or that whatever trend has anything to do with human activity...
...yes.
You.
Just because the big boys are against you, just because the established science says you're an utter fool, just because your models militate against everything that science knows about how the world rolls, that doesn't mean you're right.
Yes, all paradigm-changing visionaries have been gainsaid and ridiculed by the establishment. But so were all the guys you never heard of who were dead wrong!
Buy. A. Clue.
Idjits.
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Thursday May 15, 2008...
I Think I Would Argue Otherwise ::.
IN CASE YOU HADN'T NOTICED, global average temperatures -- to the extent that we can actually determine what they are and that the figures thus derived actually (you know) mean anything -- have dropped over the last decade.
All sorts of AGW skeptics are arguing that this disproves -- or at least renders dubious -- the whole anthropogenic global warming ... (I hesitate to call it a theory, because there is a certain rigor required for a theory that has not been met by AGW proponents) ... call it a hypothesis or a conjecture.
To which, the proponents counter...
Claims that a negative observed trend over the last 8 years would be inconsistent with the models cannot be supported. Similar claims that the IPCC projection of about 0.2ºC/dec over the next few decades would be falsified with such an observation are equally bogus.
Now, since by all appearances, the AGW conjecture -- as a matter of belief, with no visible means of empirical support -- cannot be falsified, argument on that front may be intellectually satisfying, but will have little-to-no effect on the public policy debate.
No, instead, I would say that whether the AGW conjecture is correct or not, it is immaterial. The global average temperature drop over the past decade has more than wiped out the claimed increase over the previous century.
And NONE OF THE PREDICTED CALAMITIES HAS COME TO PASS.
!!!!1!!!
Therefore, it just doesn't matter. (Repeat after me:) IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. (Repeat ad lib., ad inf., ad naus.)
See? Easy.
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Thursday May 15, 2008...
You Have GOT ta Be Kiddin Me! ::.
NOW THE EARTH IS going to slow down because of friction against the aether?
Idjits! Don't they know that the friction would cause the warming? Once again, they get it exactly ass-backwards!
::giggle::
Gabrielle Francesca East (Dolly) | | |
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Thursday May 15, 2008...
Iris in the Rain ::.
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
Observation #692 ::.
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
A Modest Proposal For ::.
A NEW TURN OF PHRASE: The Second Amendment refers to "the right of the people" as a pre-existing right... a natural right, as it were. As such, the Constitution does not grant, confer, or create a right so much as it affirms it. In the dialectic war over this issue, therefore, I believe those on the right side of RKBA should begin to refer to said right as being "pre-constitutional."
You don't think the Left might cast that as equivalent to "prehistoric" and therefore perhaps vestigal?
Not if we don't pre-emptively surrender the battlespace.
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
Spotted At Maggies Farm ::.
THE BILL OF NO RIGHTS
"We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden, deluded, and other liberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights."
ARTICLE I
You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.
ARTICLE II
You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, change the channel, or express a different opinion, but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.
ARTICLE III:
You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.
ARTICLE IV:
You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.
ARTICLE V:
You do not have the right to free health care That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in public health care.
ARTICLE VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.
ARTICLE VII:
You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.
ARTICLE VIII:
You don't have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.
ARTICLE IX:
You don't have the right to a job. Sure, all of us want all of you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.
ARTICLE X:
You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to pursue happiness— which, by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.
If you agree, we strongly urge you to forward this to as many people as you can. No, you don't have to, and nothing tragic will befall you should you not forward it. We just think it is about time common sense is allowed to flourish -- call it the age of reason revisited.
Gabrielle Francesca East (Dolly) | | |
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
Horry Clap! ::.
AS RODGER PUTS IT this ought to be some serious shit. With Squirrely McCain out there stumping for draconian cuts in CO2 emissions on Monday -- calling for an end to debate -- this ought to be front page news in the New York Times -- All the News That Fits (their prejudices).
A gang of four scientists is calling for a BAN on BIOFUELS!
!!!1!!!
"We have as yet received no response from the IPCC which is astounding since the matter is of such great importance. I do not believe they can give an adequate response. The letter has received very wide circulation across the world and very significantly it is carried on the United Nations CAPSA site (Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Secondary crops development in Asia and the pacific).
The serious concerns this part of the UN must have about world food prices and shortages being driven up by biofuel makes what we say about biofuel in our letter very important.
An international movement to boycott biofuel until it is banned is needed. Biofuel is the burning of food which the world needs. The first thing to do to combat the world food crisis is to stop burning food! The alcohol-maize based biofuel in petrol must be stopped and the public should ask which petrol products include biofuel every time they buy petrol -- and refuse to buy them."
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
Then It's A Good Thing ::.
THE WHOLE CARBON footprint is a symptom looking for a disease, innit, luv?
SAVE THE PLANET -- DRIVE A HYBRID: Er, except when it's air-freighted to you from Japan. "The Lexus LS600H, which costs £84,000, was a gift from Lexus to the 65-year-old former Beatle, who helped promote the hybrid vehicle. But instead of arriving by boat as expected, the car was flown to Britain on a Korean Air flight, creating a carbon footprint almost 100 times bigger than if it had come by sea."
Seen at Instapundit.
I guess it's a good thing it's all so much bosch. Imagine if it all actually meant something.
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Wednesday May 14, 2008...
A Bit of Lost Americana ::.
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Tuesday May 13, 2008...
Observation #691 ::.
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Tuesday May 13, 2008...
I JUST PUT DOWN ::.
NEW SOD!!! Heh. Inside joke.
If you say so.
Oh, I'm guessing those few who were there might get a chuckle.
Last summer, when Casa d'Alger experienced le deluge -- a.k.a. Whole House Crap Blogging -- the plumbers tore up our front yard -- 23 years of sod nurture and garden tending down the proverbial tubes.
We spent $3,000 on a new water service and all we got was this mound of dirt in our front yard.
When Og came to visit a week or so later, he observed the truism that that which is buried by the full moon will never lie right.
Over the winter, I made several abortive attempts to lower that mound and spread the dirt. But there was only so much I could do. The minimum level of dirt in the yard was above the level of the stone walk, so the dirt had to settle before I could spread it. The trench was four feet deep and three wide and there wasn't anything I could do.
But over the winter, it did settle.
Two Fridays ago, I hauled out the spading fork and a spade and turned the mound. Then I spread the dirt around the yard, evening the burden out and giving us a slight rake toward the front walk and the street. For drainage. The next weekend, as related here, I went and bought sod and laid it. SWMBO and I have been watering it since. This past weekend, we got some good soaking rains. It's greening up. SWMBO acquired some perennials and is beginning to get things back in some kind of order. We may never get things back the way they were, but I'd venture to guess by Fall, you'll be hard-pressed to know there ever was this mound of dirt there.
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Tuesday May 13, 2008...
Point Missed ::.
IT CAN BE A BIT of a sticky wicket to disagree with someone you respect on a subject on which that person is obviously knowledgeable and passionate.
Author Frank W. James, on his blog, Corn, beans, spent brass, an empty page, and a deadline..., takes the MSM to task for its ignorance on the entwined subjects of ethanol and corn.
And, on that point, I can't say I disagree. The amount of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation spewed by the MSM on a daily basis is only slightly exceeded by its total output.
And this is timely in another way, because Republican presidential candidate John McCain is set to unveil is energy proposal on Monday. Odds favor the contentions that McCain will offer no scientific basis for his proposals, no economic basis for them, and no constitutional authorization for either president or Congress to meddle in energy policy at all.
However, I think Frank, while probably narrowly correct in the assertions he makes, misses the wider point -- that the mandated use of ethanol as a fuel source is a bad idea, no matter what the facts are relating to production of the stuff. And that is the subject I want to try to address.
And I also want to stress that mandated part. If ethanol really is a superior fuel to gasoline for any purpose other than lining the pockets of ADM (who, as a processor, stands to make a great deal more than the farmer from high demand for the product), then the market will show that handily. But every point of fact I have examined has shown the opposite. Every claim made for the clear stuff has come apart like wet toilet paper in a shitstorm.
I urge you to go and read Frank's whole piece before continuing here.
FACT #1: Higher corn prices are not the main reason for higher food prices...
I call laziness on the part of the quoted MSM reporter in this case. If he stated that corn prices are driving higher food prices, he is guilty of oversimplification and misstating the real causes of price increases, which range from increases in fuel prices to the weakening dollar.
However, it is disingenuous to suggest to the incautious reader that higher corn prices are not a contributing factor at all to higher food prices. Not entirely Frank's fault, as there is no way to express yourself so that you cannot be misunderstood, but I submit that a writer of Franks calibre should apprehend how it is possible to be misunderstood and to guard against it. The omnipresence of corn in the human food chain dictates that any straitening of supply or increase in cost will inevitably have an impact on the prices of the products in which it appears. Which is virtually everything. And two factors in pricing equations will dictate that the impact will be larger than the direct increase in the price of the commodity itself.
First, there is the multiplying effect of markups. If I, as a manufacturer, have to mark up my costs by 50% in order to maintain a 10% profit margin, I will divide my cost figure by .5 in order to arrive at my sale price. (That's my asking price -- not saying whether I'll get it.) If there is an 11-cent increase in commodity cost, (from $1 to $1.11, say), that will be reflected as a 22-cent increase in the asking price. And that markup happens every time a commodity changes hands.
Second, there is the fact that a commodity must be sold -- beyond its original producer, at any rate -- not for the price it was bought at, but at its replacement cost. In other words, the futures prices of commodities must affect the prices you pay for goods bought today. The history of the commodit prices is utterly irrelevant. We'll come back to that in a moment.
FACT #2: Ethanol does NOT take food away from hungry people, where-ever they are located.
Assuming that any market or commercial situation is a zero-sum game is foolish, I agree. That is, I believe, the root of this assertion. Markets will expand the availability of goods to meet demand -- given elastic sources of supply.
If the sources of supply are inelastic, however, restrictions on supply will inevitably price goods out of the reach of marginal players in the market. In the short term, the diversion of ever-more acreage -- and, possibly more important, production capacity -- to the growing of crops for fuel cannot help but restrict crops available for human consumption.
And, in the short term, people need to eat every day. The problem with being poor is that you have no cushion to ride out the rough spots. You're living hand-to-mouth. When what is ready to-hand gets priced beyond your means, nothing makes it to the mouth, and you go hungry.
Those futures markets are not reacting to what might happen down the road (if they were, the commodities markets wouldn't be nearly so much of a gamble for speculators), but to what is happening today -- and what that might mean in the future. The price of food today is not based on what the food sold today cost to produce yesterday but what the merchants selling food anticipate having to pay for it tomorrow. (Again, we'll be back to that in a moment or two.)
FACT #3: Ethanol production does NOT cause environmental damage.
Possibly true, but beside the point. The burning of ethanol in automobile engines most certainly does. Not only that, but -- energy in for energy out -- the use of ethanol as a motor fuel is a bad bargain. As Mostly Cajun handily explains here. Not, I hasten to add, that MC has any particular or unique expertise. It's just that he provides a handy explication of the facts which I know from my own research to be accurate.
And, more importantly -- and here's the nub, I think -- the use of ethanol will cause inevitable prices in every good sold worldwide due to a phenomenon known as the network effect. That is a principle which states that a good increases in perceived value (and generally decreases in unit cost to the consumer) the more people use it. This is, incidentally, one of several reasons that fascist attempts at so-called "universal" health care insurance insist heavily on the "universal" part.
Right now, the use of petroleum fuels for manufacture and transport of goods and energy is virtually universal. As such -- political madness aside -- the price of energy is about as low as it can be expected to be.
And if you think that changing the fuel to something else will end the political madness, I've got a bridge to nowhere I'd love it if you would take it off my hands -- dirt cheap.
Right you are, Dolly. And, since the fragmentation of the market in fuels will inevitably result in the duplication of facilities and the waste of energy and effort, there will -- guaranteed -- be a consequent increase in the cost of manufacture and transport of very nearly every good produced in the world. I think that someone with the wherewithal to track the factors will see that for every tick of increase in ethanol usage (or any non-petroleum fuel), there will be a commensurate increase in the cost of staple goods. And, in some cases, it will mean those goods -- including food -- will be priced out of the reach of players at the bottom of the market. Women, Children, and the Poor Hardest Hit, the headline goes.
Unless the "alternative fuels" juggernaut (and by that I mean all non-petro fuels) is stopped, there will be put in place a universal global drag on economies from the increased cost of energy. The price of gasoline might be back down under $2 a gallon within a year, but our total energy bill will be far higher. Bank on it.
That means if corn goes from $4 to $6 as Mr. Barry dearly laments, it does NOT represent a gross increase in the cost of that food item. It adds ONLY 11 cents of cost to each pound. Let me repeat that....the price increase in corn as a commodity has only added ELEVEN CENTS to the cost of a pound of food.
I can't dispute the figures here, because there is a key number missing -- what was the starting point of the cost-per-pound of the contribution the raw commodity makes to the per-pound price of food? Repeating the assertion of the delta does not hide that fact from the observant reader. The assertion might be quite true, or the lacuna might conceal the possibility that, while the cost-per-pound of the commodity might have risen by 11 cents, its influence on the price of the final product sold is far greater in proportion.
That markup thing: if my cost of material goes up by $2, I don't increase my price by $2, I must increase it by $4 in order to maintain my margins. And that calculus applies every time the good changes hands. This can be thought of as leverage. The moment arm of food prices is heavily influenced by the price of the raw commodities. I'm sure it sticks in the craws of farmers, because they realize so small a slice of the pie, but that's the way it is.
Or there is the possibility that, as I mentioned above, that 50% increase is historical, and the futures prices is greater (remember that principle that a seller must price his goods at replacement cost and not acquisition cost).
We just can't know from the facts as presented.
Now, unlike some, I don't blame the farmer for the increase in food prices. As a matter of fact, the farmer is probably caught in a very tight squeeze. Tighter than the rest of us, because he is more dependent on petroleum-based products than the rest of us -- from fertilizers, to fuel for his equipment, to transport to market. Nor is there any relief for the farmer in the marketplace, because the price of his product is in effect set by a combination of government fiat and commodities speculators. It's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing, and if his margin is zero or even negative, well -- ::shrug:: -- them's the breaks.
No, the blame is squarely on the politicians, who are stuck in a cleft stick more of their own making. Having gotten elected on the promise to do something they mist be seen to be doing something -- even if it is exactly the wrong thing to do. Given that the panic over the global warming hoax is only now losing headway and will probably hang on for years, yet, "solutions" to the non-problem will be cropping up for even longer. And those which get entrenched in government policy will continue to do harm for generations.
I guess the sum-up is that I may not disagree with Frank's point, but that the seeming thesis -- that ethanol isn't the boogeyman some people make it out to be -- is questionable, to say the least. And the counter -- that mandating a switchover to an inferior fuel for specious reasons is a truly Bad Idea -- should not suffer because of a poor advocate -- that MSM reporter attacking the wrong straw man.
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Tuesday May 13, 2008...
Glass Dragonfly with Iris ::.
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IS 