(1) Thousands in scramble for free books after Amazon supplier abandons warehouse

(2) Microsoft Shows Off More Windows 7 Improvements

(3) 14 Awesome Windows 7 Wallpapers

(4) Ryanair Pay-to-Pee Proposal Pisses Off Customers

(5) Peter Arnell Explains Failed Tropicana Package Design (The packaging was the equivalent of the iObama™ European Socialism Plan)

(6) Pulp friction at Tropicana

Labels: airlines, books, microsoft, weekend

The Coming Depression

Update

>>> Holy Grue! <<< (in convenient chart form)

Additional background is available at Financial Armageddon and BobKrumm.com.

If you need a little palette cleanser take a look at Christopher Countrywide Dodd's nice Irish cottage. He lives like one of those greedy job-creating entrepreneurs he's always demonizing.

Related
Mean Street: Obama’s Dow 5000
$25,573.48 - what Barack Obama's budget will cost each taxpayer
The Coming Blue State Collapse

Labels: dodd, economics, end times, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

This is a bizarre battery operated ice cream truck I found at a local toy store. It's MADE IN CHINA and manufactured by BEI TIAN. I've posted videos on YouTube here and here.

The driver and front-seat passenger look like the chubby mascot from Big Boy Restaurants International. The inside of the truck includes such veritable ice cream favorites as Snow Berry and Grue Stick.

Where the manufacturers really demonstrate their marketing prowess is in the packaging! The box makes it very clear that happy purchasers can SELL GOODS with the FluXian Bus! Another significant selling point is on the truck itself- the Grue logo (is this a brand???) on the front door is powerful marketing!

I should also mention the FluXian Bus also comes with NEW UNIVERSAL DRIVE! Additional features include:

Emulation Mode
Super Power
4WD The Doors Can Open
Go Forward & Back Off
Left & Right Swerve
Light

Back Off is the most impressive feature (although Light and Left & Right Swerve deserve a separate post). Do you think if GM and Chrysler could build vehicles with Super Power, Back Off and Light they could survive without additional taxpayer bailouts?

Lastly, I love the license plate! This could very well be a prototype of the vehicles Ray Nagin is going to purchase for New Orleans with taxpayer "stimulus" money?

Labels: toys

Christ, from my cradle I had known You everywhere,
And even though I sinned, I walked in You and knew
You were my world:
You were my France and England,
My seas and my America:
You were my life and air.

- Thomas Merton

Related
Lenten Reading Suggestions from The Anchoress.

When my grandfather graduated from high school in 1928 he was given a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of New Jersey in a hard cover book. I keep a copy of it on my bookshelf.

The very beginning of the book includes a copy of the American's Creed by William Tyler Page. In this age of entitlement and intense political corruption (tax cheats Geithner and Rangel and sweetheart deal Christopher Countrywide Dodd to name just three) it reads like an epitaph:

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

The Anchoress refers to 1984 in her latest post. I'm countering with a quote more chilling and prophetic from the same book. Draw your own conclusions:

"One day a chocolate-ration was issued. There had been no such issue for weeks or months past. He remembered quite clearly that precious little morsel of chocolate. It was a two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days) between the three of them. It was obvious that it ought to be divided into three equal parts. Suddenly, as though he were listening to somebody else, Winston heard himself demanding in a loud booming voice that he should be given the whole piece. His mother told him not to be greedy. There was a long, nagging argument that went round and round, with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargainings. His tiny sister, clinging to her mother with both hands, exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over her shoulder at him with large, mournful eyes. In the end his mother broke off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston, giving the other quarter to his sister. The little girl took hold of it and looked at it dully, perhaps not knowing what it was. Winston stood watching her for a moment. Then with a sudden swift spring he had snatched the piece of chocolate out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door.

'Winston, Winston!' his mother called after him. 'Come back! Give your sister back her chocolate!'"

Labels: end times

I should use my quote of the week more judiciously since it's only Monday but Michael Ledeen has offered this early contender and it's quote of the month material:

Which is where the Left has arrived at the end of its long journey from the Revolutionary Parliament in Paris in the 18th century. Its ideology, as Hegel forecast, having been rendered irrelevant by the changes in the real world, they can no longer explain the world, let alone change it effectively. So they are left with an insatiable desire for power. As we once said about a failed Republican president, they are not very good at the "vision thing." They just scramble around trying to grab whatever they can, and from time to time emerge with incoherent babbling about "cowardice on race," claims that tax increases are actually tax cuts, promises about reducing the deficit that they cannot possibly accomplish, and appeasement of our enemies, since somebody else once advocated support for freedom around the world.

It's the global equivalent of country-club politics, now firmly in the hands of the Democrats.

Labels: democrats, quotes

This is from The Economist:

Within Hollywood, of course, the Academy Awards still matter a great deal. Prestige and acclaim are hard currency in the film business, in many ways more valuable than money. The danger is that Hollywood’s taste in its own products is becoming as removed from public opinion as its political views are outside the American mainstream. What viewers will see on Sunday night is an industry talking to itself.

Labels: hollywood, liberals

Investor's Business Daily examines the market sell off (30% in six weeks).

My favorite quote:

"Business leaders are demonized. Yes, there are bad eggs out there like the Madoffs and Stanfords. But most CEOs are hugely talented, driven, highly intelligent people who make our corporations the most productive in the world and add trillions of dollars of value to our economy.

They don't deserve to be dragged before Congress, as they have been dozens of times in the past two years, for a ritual heaping of verbal abuse from the very people most responsible for our ills — our tragically inept, Democrat-led Congress."

Obama misspent his "mandate" when he outsourced the spending bill to Pelosi/Reid.

Why?

Did Obama owe them for his victory? Was his transition team too lazy to draft something on their own? Was his plan to have Pelosi/Reid own this travesty all along?

Or is Obama just a charlatan, slippery enough to hide his hard-core lefty ideology from a gullible public hungry for change after two decades of Bush/Clinton/Bush?

I'm not sure America would have given Obama a "mandate" for European style socialism had they known the truth. It's unfortunate he was abetted by the media (derelict in its duty) because the real cost of this debacle is now becoming clear. As Kudlow wrote a month ago capital is on strike and all those evil CEOs progressives decry provide the ornaments of civilization.

There is hope though! Congressional approval ratings were at an all time low in July (Gallup) and this cadre of miscreants (Pelosi/Reid/Dodd/Rangel/Frank) will be put before the American public again in 2010.

Related
Tea Party USA Watch: Taxpayers coming together

Labels: dodd, liberals, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

A Prayer for Peace
(From a prayer read in the House of Representatives on April 12, 1962, Wednesday in Holy Week by Thomas Merton)

Almighty and merciful God, Father of all, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, Lord of History Whose designs are inscrutable, Whose glory is without blemish, Whose compassion for our errors is inexhaustible,

in Your will is our peace.

Mercifully hear this prayer which rises to You from the tumult and desperation of a world in which You are forgotten, in which Your name is not invoked, Your laws are derided, Your presence is ignored.

Because we do not know You, we have no peace.

Help us to be masters of the weapons that threaten to master us. Help us to use our science for peace and plenty, not for war and destruction. Show us how to use nuclear power to bless our children's children, not to blight them.

Resolve our inner contradictions that now grow beyond belief and beyond bearing. They are at once a torment and a blessing: for if You had not left us the light of conscience, we would not have to endure them. Teach us to be long-suffering in anguish and insecurity. Teach us to wait and trust. Grant light, grant strength and patience to all who work for peace.

If the exterior of a product the disposition and the specification is changed, excuse us.

- The FluXian-Bus (MADE IN CHINA)

Related
70,000 Chinese factories have closed recently; 20 million lost jobs as a result (via Instapundit)
Clinton pushes environment, finance in China (via America in the World)
Obama retreats from call for China toy-import ban (Reuters)

Labels: clintons, obama, toys

My niece is absolutely precious!

I took this picture of her on Skype. I have family all over the country so Skype and my Logitech webcam have become indispensable.

Labels: weekend

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit continues to cover the raw hypocrisy and ethical obtuseness of Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd. See here, here, here, and here.

I lived in Bridgeport, CT in 2004 when Dodd was running for re-election and I remember his goons swooping into the Black Rock Area and plastering it with hundreds of his hideous black and yellow signs.

Michelle Malkin has been covering the growing taxpayer (tea party) protests here. She was at the tea party in Denver on February 17.

Meanwhile Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com explains how Obama has delegated domestic policy to a virulently anti-capitalistic House.

Lastly, Mark Steyn writes about the significance of Obama's decision to return the bust of Sir Winston Churchill to the British.

Conservatives need heroes and Mark Steyn, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Reynolds are as BIG as they come. I would add Jonah Goldberg to this list as well.

Labels: dodd, england, obama, pelosi, the good guys

"When the Spirit of God comes He does not give us visions, He tells us to do the most ordinary things conceivable. Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God's creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple things-the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is there. The inspiration which comes to us in this way is an initiative against depression; we have to do the next thing and do it in the inspiration of God. If we do a thing in order to overcome depression, we deepen the depression; but if the Spirit of God makes us feel intuitively that we must do the thing, and we do it, the depression is gone. Immediately we rise and obey, we enter on a higher plane of life."

- My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers

Labels: weekend

As Pervy Sage is fond of saying, Let's do this.

(1) Top 10 Disney LEGO Sets We'd Like to See (Wired.com) - My list would include the Contemporary, Polynesian and Grand Floridian Resorts.

(2) My Year in Hell (Kiplinger.com)

(3) And what exactly are your demands?

(4) My photo expose of the Playmobil Crusades continues here and here. I took these using a Canon PowerShot SD790 IS.

From the IKEA LINNARP bookshelf...

"Among the more lavish items accumulated by Hermann Goering during his profitable career of indiscriminate looting and exploitation of state and private coffers was his personal yaht, the Carin II. During the 1930s, he regularly sailed her along inland waterways from Berlin to the Elbe and down through the canals to the Rhine to the applause of Germans lining the banks. Dressed in a white uniform and languidly sprawled in a deck chair, he would beam as the boat's loudspeakers blared out gaudy popular songs such as "Blame It on Napoleon" or Wagner operas. Once, he sailed her up to Copenhagen to see a performance at Elsinore Castle of Hamlet and purchased some of his beloved Danish pastries. During the war she was moored on the Oder, but that February she had been removed from her moorings to save her from the Russians and brought to Molln. Here she now lay, a desolate symbol and reminder of a venal and corrupt regime in its final death throes."

- Endgame, 1945 by David Stafford

Labels: disney, toys, weekend

Slow Drip of Financial Ruin by Dennis Byrne

Reason is the facility of the mind used to intelligently form judgments, make decisions and solve problems. Emotions are feelings, desires, fears, hates and passionate drives—all of which are the tools that Obama deployed to sell the stimulus package to a gullible public. Endeavor to go through all 1,100 pages of this stuffed piggy and you'll find little rational connection between the nation's problems and its solutions—other than if we throw enough money out there, some of it will stick to the wall.

Yes, John Edwards, There Are Indeed ‘Two Americas’ by Jennifer Rubin

It is true that the stimulus bill was just passed so we have barely begun to feel its real-world impact. But consumer confidence indicators and the stock market are predictive of future behavior. If investors are fleeing to gold and selling stocks, consumers are not planning any major purchases, and the banks are declaring a lack of confidence in the man charged with the bank bailout, that says something about the Democrats’ handiwork so far.

And it is certainly true that the president’s own gloom and doom rhetoric has not helped matters. It is possible to talk down the market and scare consumers. There is a fine line between lowering expectations and creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Labels: obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

Stocks Hate Obeynomics
The results are clear. The market hates Obama’s stimulus package and just about everything related to Obamanomics. Or shall we call it Obeynomics? Stocks are down 27% since the Nov. 4th election. Stocks have plummeted more than 40% since Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination in June.

Capital is on strike. And why wouldn’t it be? Private capital has no idea what future holds in terms of taxes, regulation, trade, deficits and the value of the dollar. None whatsoever.

More

Related
Obama’s Tainted Win
Slow Drip of Financial Ruin
Yes, John Edwards, There Are Indeed ‘Two Americas’

Labels: obama

Rollie Massimino coaches the Northwood University basketball team in West Palm Beach, Florida. Northwood is my alma mater and has campuses in Michigan, Florida and Texas. They also operate the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Maine. The library celebrates the thirty-two year congressional career of former United States Senator Margaret Chase Smith (I wonder what she would think of Snowe and Collins?).

Anyway...

Massimino has quite the resume and the brief description in the NYTIMES article (see below) about life at a small university is everything I loved about Northwood.

Massimino, an N.C.A.A. Winner, Becomes N.A.I.A. Success
Northwood (West Palm Beach, Florida), which has 900 students, was offering a modest salary and a chance to play in Division II of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. The university did not even have a gym at the time, and the first few months of practices were held on outdoor tennis courts, where there was also a basketball hoop. The only lure was a chance to get back in the game.

“I guess you’d call me one of those basketball lifers,” Massimino, a former stalwart of the Big East and the architect of a national championship at Villanova in 1985, said earlier this month.

From 1973 through 1992, he led Villanova to a 355-241 record and 11 N.C.A.A. tournament appearances. In 1985, Villanova defeated Georgetown, 66-64, to win the national championship in a game many consider the greatest upset in tournament history.

I was at the Villanova/Georgetown game in Lexington, Kentucky in 1985 with my dad.

For Obama, it’s more about showmanship than sunlight

Obama's Permanent Campaign

The Obamateur Hour (How long will it last?)
Someday soon this inaugural Obamateur Hour (as one of my correspondents, John Gross, calls it) will end and the “events” phase will begin. Back last spring, some gloomy reflections of mine on multiculturalism prompted a reader to advise me to lighten up: “We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.” A mere nine months later, the first part of that equation no longer seems quite so obvious. The market value of the U.S. banking sector is worth barely a quarter of what it was two years ago — from just north of $1.4 trillion in February 2007 to under $400 billion at the beginning of this month, and that due only to the “bailout.” The so-called Wall Street fat cats are, in fact, emaciated cadavers in the late stages of that feline version of HIV.

(1) The Best Conservative Movies (according to NRO). Brazil (22) was my favorite. I watched this in college at about the same time I was studying Dystopia. Here's a list of the Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time.

How would you categorize Americathon and First Family?

(2) Very cool ads for Rios Illustration via Design You Trust.

(3) Beckham's Milan move benefits all parties

Labels: weekend

Then we have President Obama. Maybe a sincere, well-meaning guy. But, surrounded and advised by tax-scofflaws, connected former industry lobbyists, and some of the very politicians and financial scoundrels who let this mess develop, his lack of experience is really starting to show. Instead of engendering "hope" he sounds more like a funeral director who's misplaced late Aunt Ethel's corpus delecti. Not, "we're gonna fix this mess" but "it'll be years of pain." Judging by this “stimulus” package and who the money's going to, he's probably right. When people are told to expect “pain” they don’t tend to take a lot of air trips, printed-money stimulus checks notwithstanding.

Source

Related
The Real Stimulus Burden (WSJ)
We'll be paying for this in many ways, for many years.

We aren't deficit scolds, but these levels are uncharted territory, especially if any economic recovery is weak because the spending doesn't stimulate. The new spending means new federal debt in the trillions of dollars over the next few years, which will test the limits of America's credit-worthiness. To the extent that taxes rise to pay for it all, the U.S. will become less desirable as a destination for the world's capital. Perhaps the Federal Reserve will try to inflate away this growing debt, but the world's bond vigilantes will get a vote on that.

We recognize this bill is going to pass as early as today. But Americans need to understand the vast expansion of government they are getting -- and who voted to pass it.

Limestone Commentary
The chart in that WSJ article is frightening.

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid

**UPDATE**
The US MNT defeat Mexico 2-0. Michael Bradley scored goals in the 43rd and 90th minute.

The US MNT has a BIG World Cup Qualifier tomorrow night against archrival Mexico. The match is in Columbus, Ohio @ 7:00 PM ET and is being televised on ESPN2.

Need something to get you fired up? Watch this video of gringo voodoo dolls being sold at Blockbuster. This will raise your ire and get you to watch!

Related
Looking for a company to boycott? How about Blockbuster.
Converge on Columbus
Bradley calls on experienced players to step up
Groups and Standings (FIFA)

Labels: soccer

Playmobil Creator Dies
Hans Beck was the German inventor of the toy figurines that became a wild success all over the world. Hans Beck, German inventor of the Playmobil toy figurines, died on 30th January 2009, aged 79.

Playmobil has very passionate fans. I think these photos on Flickr demonstrate Beck's legacy.


My own contribution to that collection and a tribute to Hans Beck.

Labels: playmobil, toys

Labels: obama

Reagan Smash

Labels: end times, the good guys

The money quote is in bold. This is why government bureaucrats shouldn't be deciding where capital is directed.

SEOUL - A US$260 million (S$390 million) South Korean airport has become a 'ghost airport' with not a single passenger in the past three months, officials and a news report said on Monday.

Yangyang International Airport on the east coast handled its last flight on Nov 1, the Korea Airport Corporation said.

The state firm admitted that last year 146 airport staff served only a daily average of 26 passengers at the seven-year-old airport.

The airport, built with a government budget of 356.7 billion won (S$390 million) to promote regional tourism, has posted a deficit of more than 10 billion won each year for three consecutive years, it said.

The corporation estimated that 11 out of 14 local airports around the country posted a deficit last year.

The conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Monday termed Yangyang a 'ghost airport'. It blamed 'incompetent planning and administration' by previous liberal governments and said the airports should either be shut down or privatised.

Related
Someone got rich off this scam
The golf cart stimulus

No posts this weekend. Obama will be on national television tomorrow night trying to convince us that the sky is falling and that salvation rests in his TRILLION DOLLAR spending plan. The interest alone on the bill is 350 BILLION DOLLARS. When you include the TARP money the cost of all this government malfeasance is almost 3 TRILLION DOLLARS. Obama will blame some bogeyman tomorrow night but his cohorts (Dodd, Rangel, Franks and Pelosi) are a BIG part of the problem. No household in America could live as recklessly as the federal government without having a reckoning.

The Democrats will OWN this spending bill despite the "patriotic" support of 3 GOP Senators (Collins, Specter, Snowe). The NYTIMES can spin this anyway they want but this will pass along party lines. The good news is that the government can't print/borrow/tax 3 TRILLION DOLLARS without retarding growth (or inviting inflation). And Obama will need to play funny business with the census and make sure there's enough payouts to special interest groups (welfare and reparations) to stave off a one-term tour of duty or a referendum in the mid-term elections in 2010.

Michelle Malkin has a quick summary on the spending bill (see below).

Agriculture: $5,109,430
Commerce: $21,513,000
Defense: $3,746,000
Energy & Water: $53,843,000
Financial & Gen. Govt: $10,762,000
Homeland Security: $5,076,700
Interior: $11,643,600
Labor, HHS, Education: $169,184,000
Military & VA: $7,428,295
THUD: $60,580,500
Appropriations: $365,629,525 (of course, this one isn’t broken out)

Bottom line: Global Warming, Government Healthcare, Teachers Unions, School Building Contractors, Subsidized Housing, and MASSIVE Pork.

You can also download a copy of the bill in her post.

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid

I’ve said we've got to work the night. Because if we don't, Mr. President, and Friday’s financial markets look at us not having been able to accomplish anything, it is a bad day not only for America, but the rest of the world.

Reid is predicting financial Armageddon on Friday if the Senate doesn't pass his party's TRILLION DOLLAR spending bill. Apparently all hell is going to break loose if bureaucrats can't spend $400 million TAXPAYER dollars on hybrid cars. They did the same thing (rush job and fear mongering) with TARP and that's been a total debacle.

Labels: reid

"Everywhere I went during my 10-day road trip, people vented their disgust with New York and Washington. Bashing New York and Washington is a national pastime under any circumstances, but the vitriol now is three orders of magnitude greater. Respectable businesspeople said they wanted to put John Thain, Henry Paulson, Christopher Cox, Bernie Madoff, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and numerous television talking heads before a firing squad. I’ve not heard talk like this since college, and never from business leaders.

Polls that show only 37% of Americans supporting the stimulus package overstate the support. Over the course of 10 days, I didn’t talk to a single person who thought the stimulus package made any sense. People at airports heckled White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as he promoted the stimulus package on CNN."

Source: Ten Days' Thoughts On The Economy

Related
This article in Newsweek is pure bunk. If the Democrats really believed that their [denote ownership] TRILLION DOLLAR spending bill would work they wouldn't need Republicans to get on board.

But now Obama needs to remind the American people that unless the Republicans get on board, they will bear political responsibility for failing to act in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Labels: left-wing media, pelosi, reid

We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest Nation that ever lived. This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid

I just pulled 5 but NRO lists 45 more just as silly!

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
$650 million for digital TV coupons, including $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”
$600 million to convert federal auto fleet to hybrids
$850 million for Amtrak

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid

Some more Econ 101 from NRO and the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl:

The grand Keynesian myth is that you can spend money and thereby increase demand. And it’s a myth because Congress does not have a vault of money to distribute in the economy. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. You’re not creating new demand, you’re just transferring it from one group of people to another. If Washington borrows the money from domestic lenders, then investment spending falls, dollar for dollar. If they borrow the money from foreigners, say from China, then net exports drop dollar for dollar, because the balance of payments must adjust. Therefore, again, there is no net increase in aggregate demand. It just means that one group of people has $800 billion less to spend, and the government has $800 billion more to spend.

My favorite commentary on the spending plan is from Donald L. Luskin at The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid:

How can anyone seriously think that government rushing to commit all that money for a hodge-podge of projects, programs and that other thing that begins with “P”—pork—could possibly be of any particular help to the economy? Yet apparently people do, even elite economists. In fact, it's standard textbook macroeconomics that government spending can get a country out of a recession...You shouldn't have to be an economist to see why it won't work. If government borrows money to pay for spending programs, that money has to come from somewhere. Someone has to not spend that money so that government can spend it. Economists reading other chapters of the same standard textbooks call that “crowding out.”

Labels: economics

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid

It's not going to take very long for Americans to figure out that Obama and his ilk are a bunch of two-bit charlatans. Biden told us it was patriotic to pay taxes which means that Rangel (the government employee who authors the tax code), Geithner (the government employee who collects the taxes) and now Daschle must be positively un-American. These three tax cheats, all party apparatchiks calling for higher taxes, are poor representatives in Obama's new era of responsibility.

"They and Barack want me to do more, to work harder? I just bailed out every stupid company in America, you [deleted]! We're going to be saved because Puff Daddy is going to turn his lights out? I'm supposed to buy a $30,000 hybrid because some Hollywood [deleted] tells me I should?"

Actually, that's a highly sanitized version of what Blue-Collar Guy wrote. The dude is angry. He knows perfectly well that the liberal cultural elite have no use for people like him and tend to regard his kind as bitter, racist mouth-breathers who "cling to guns or religion" because, the thinking goes, they don't have jobs.

Don't sneer at or underestimate the anger of Blue Collar Guy. We in the news media rarely see him, much less sympathize with him. But he knows what's going on. He knows he's not too big to fail. He knows where he stands in the eyes of power elites – and he's figuring out where he's got to take his stand when the time comes.

Labels: dodd, obama, rangel

They don't need the GOP to pass this TRILLION DOLLAR spending bill. They have absolute control. And what party would want their name on this POS anyway?

Obama is essentially asking investors to fund a massive giveaway program stateside. The federal government will prop up corporations and pay individuals to work, all with money taxed or borrowed from the private economy.

Simplified, the Obama economic plan is one whereby we'll run deficits to fund welfare programs that, by definition, will slow economic growth. Indeed, individual stimulus will involve taking from the productive to aid the less productive, and it's easy to see how this will cause the productive among us to reduce their efforts.

The recent Daily Show promos are amusing. Stewart just prattles on about how the GOP is thwarting the spending bill. How exactly are they accomplishing this since they are powerless to stop the bill that Obama/Reid/Pelosi have authored?

Labels: obama, pelosi, reid