Month: September 2011

One of my favorite comedies is a movie from 1936, My Man Godfrey. It is definitely a depression era movie. Part of the opening dialog is – One denizen (Powell): “Prosperity is just around the corner.” Another denizen: “Been there a long time.” I guess they weren’t having a Recovery Summer then either. My favorite…

The Japanese economy is in trouble. Big trouble. While the easily amused were obsessing with choosing the best one line punchlines to describe the status quo posturing on TV in the form of another highly irrelevant political spectacle, Japan’s economy imploded, only this time for real. Unlike back in Q2 when every downtick in the…

Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (in which he states that the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses had built “a wall of separation between church and State”) has been made at least as famous by its modern critics than its supporters. The critics argue that there is no “wall of separation,” and…

I have an article up at American Thinker The Democrat’s 2012 Victory Plan. It covers all the stuff you have seen here plus a few extras. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Zero Hedge reports. …when it comes to downgrade reviews the rating agencies are notorious for being as unpredictable in their timing as they are conflicted in their rating: for example even though Belgium was supposed to be downgraded months ago due to the fact that it continues to be the longest running modern anarchy, nothing…

My #2 son (the U Chicago graduate) sent me a link to this Chicago Reader article on Drug Prohibition in Chicago. Yes, marijuana is illegal. Yet studies show—and come on, everybody knows—that it’s widely used by all racial groups. By and large, however, black people are disproportionately getting busted for it. The ratio of black…

I usually do a nine eleven post.  It has now become fashionable to apologize at the beginning of these.  I have no intention of doing so.  No, I have not gotten over it.  No, I don’t think I ever will. Nine eleven was not a sudden, cataclysmic devastation of the sort that comes out of…

Except I can’t help it. For the past few hours, I’ve been watching coverage of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. It has been very moving and brought tears to my eyes. However, there doesn’t seem to be much of an acknowledgement of the fact that the war is not over. I may…

My friend Frank sent me an e-mail with a link to the following analysis of the Drug War. Mexico, which neither produces nor uses a lot of drugs, lies between Colombia, which produces vast amounts of drugs, and Americans, who want vast amounts of drugs. Washington does not want Americans to have vast amounts of…

Egyptian protesters have attacked the Israeli Embassy in Egypt. What were they mad about (other than the usual)? “This action shows the state of anger and frustration the young Egyptian revolutionaries feel against Israel especially after the recent Israeli attacks on the Egyptian borders that led to the killing of Egyptian soldiers,” Egyptian political analyst…

I was discussing the Drug War with a friend of mine. We got to talking about Drug War racism. He said that a friend of a friend was in the anti-narcotics bureau in Chicago. He says they discussed the subject in depth. The deal is he said, “Blacks have no protection.” If they started arresting…

Five years ago, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I wrote a long post looking back, and I opined that there was a a sort of internal war in the nation’s consciousness: …there’s this huge capacity for denial which not only won’t go away, it seems to take on a life of…

I am often glad I don’ t have kids, because the state would own them if I did. In addition to making it cause for SWAT team invasions for the “crime” of not being hooked up to the power grid, the bureaucratic authorities claim that “social isolation” also provides cause for investigation (and of course…

For as long as I can remember, the theory was that if you wanted electricity, you became an electrical customer and had to pay for it. Well, I just learned about a new rule that you want to live on your own property, you have to be “on the grid” (meaning, a customer of the local…

I don’t like the increasing tendency of parents to saddle their children with difficult and unpronounceable names, and Glenn Reynolds linked a story that’s a particularly awful example. As can be seen in the video, this Longshoreman’s union activist is plenty pissed, and he clearly has a major chip on his shoulder over the unfortunate…

This band is good. Especially the electric violin. So much so that I grabbed my Marine Band C and started wailing. There is absolutely nothing like a harp and an electric violin together. If you play either instrument find your counterpart and give it a try. Let me add that I first heard Bob Dylan…

Ron Paul says the TSA is like a sexual predator. In Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate held in California, Texas Congressman Ron Paul let it rip on TSA abuses of airline passengers (via TheHill): “If the perpetrators were a gang of criminals, their headquarters would be raided by SWAT teams and armed federal agents,” he…

Electricity. Ain’t it wonderful. Note: you may have to wiggle your cursor on the page to see how the motor is built and how it operates. Cross Posted at Power and Control

As usual I’d like to get caught up, and as usual I am falling behind. Not only can’t I fix the country, I can’t even keep up with the debates among those who claim they can. Fortunately, the video of the GOP debate the other night is available for online streaming, and even more fortunately,…

The title of this post comes from a statement made about 4:30 into the video. Part 2 – Every President since Nixon made it worse Part 3 – Obscene profit motive – Osama Bin Laden made almost all his money selling heroin in the US – Prohibition is a security risk – The more people…