Dispatch From Occupied Wall Street

—DrewM.

Via Nathen Wurtzel, Occupy Wall Street isn't your parents' hippie invested commune protest. Actually, take away the technology and yeah, it is. Some things never change.

I'm kind of surprised this is in The New Republic. (Content warning...plenty of objectionable words at the link)

The occupation has no leaders or organizers. At least that’s what its leaders and organizers told me. The smartest was Matt, a waifish blue-eyed grad-student with expressive wrists who teaches at an elite private school. At the occupation, however, he helps run the daily General Assemblies, where different decentralized committees jostle and present proposals. Matt calls on folks “not in the order people raise their hands, but with sensitivity to racial and gender order.” “It’s not leading,” he insisted. “It’s horizontal facilitating.” His facilitation duties also include enforcing codes of conduct and, well, preventing sexual harassment and assault in the square.

AdBusters, the Canadian anti-consumerist organization that started the occupation, had promised that “one demand” would soon be revealed. Anonymous, the shadowy web collective, suggested “freedom.” Unions said workers rights. Ron Paul supporters said ending the Fed. A kid in spectacles and Keds demanded more episodes of “Arrested Development.” But Matt said not to expect clear demands soon or, perhaps, ever. “The injustice is so severe, we need a radical, open, transformative, prefigurative democratic space to explore the possible.” That said, he assured me that there were some specific political proposals in the mix: bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, revoking corporate personhood, and passing the Buffet Tax right away. But if the occupation’s goals weren’t clear, its duration was. “It’s indefinite,” he smiled.

...

A man in a skull-faced grim reaper costume tapped me with his scythe and introduced himself as Phil. As it turns out, the grim reaper supports Ron Paul. “He’s the only politician not infested with lobbyists.” Phil also hates the Fed. “20 years ago, after getting out of the Air Force, I applied three times to work there and was rejected.” Now, Death works as a concierge at Ruppert Towers in Yorkville. He could never get a job in finance. “There was always a brokers son,” he told me. Although I couldn’t see his face, I heard him sigh. “My mother raised four boys on one salary. I could never do that today.”

As the topless woman danced, the yogi did yoga, and the discussion groups discussed, more and more people poured into the square. It smelled like cigarettes, sweat, and urine. But also hope. Change was in the air; the tide was turning; the mob was growing. Together, the occupiers had fought adversity, rain, and the NYPD. They were so close to revolutionary catharsis: Radiohead might actually perform.

Apparently Radiohead never showed up so they dodged that bullet.

Just remember...these were the people Obama was so proud of organizing into a community back in the day.

It's funny how the media is taking this rabble seriously but treated average, hardworking Americans who didn't want anything from the government but to be left alone as terrorists.

Jon Stewart: For Mitt Romney to Win, He Has to Convince Republicans He's Not Mitt Romney

—rdbrewer

Even a broken clock is funny twice a day.

There are a lot of times Stewart is unfair; he's intellectually dishonest, and his chief methods are taking things out of context and deliberately misunderstanding his targets. Of course, if you pointed that out to him, he'd say "clown nose on." At any rate, he barbecues Romney in this segment merely by quoting him. No need to be dishonest when dealing with a congenital flip-flopper like Mitt Romney.

Video below the fold.

GOP Primary News And Notes - Perry Rakes In The Cash, Debates, Cain Surges And Romney Talks Like A Democrat (Again)

—DrewM.

Rick Perry may have had a less than stellar roll out with voters but he's rolling in the dough.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry raised $17 million during the third fundraising quarter of the year despite a late entry into the race and a compressed time frame for raising money, campaign spokesman Mark Miner said Wednesday.

The number is significantly higher than the $10 million that the campaign had been floating as its target for the quarter. It is also nearly as high as the $18 million haul his chief rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, brought in during the second quarter. And it is likely higher than the $10 million to $12 million Romney is expected to raise during the third quarter.

Of that $17 million, Perry still has $15 million in the bank. So while his first month to 6 weeks on the trail was awful from a polling perspective at least it was cheap. If and it this point, it's a big if, Perry gets his act together, he's got plenty of money to capitalize on it.

Perry's next chance to try again on the debate front will be next week at an event held by Bloomberg TV and the Washington Post which will be moderated by...Charlie Rose?

A couple of things-

First, Bloomberg TV? If the idea is to hold one of these things and not have anyone see it...Mission Accomplished.

Second, Charlie Rose? That means each question will be 9 minutes long and candidates will have 1 minute to answer, though they will be frequently interrupted by the moderator during that time.

Overall the idea of holding a debate focused exclusively on the economy/federal spending is a good one. It should favor Romney and Cain. For Perry, it's a chance to connect his record in Texas to his vision for the future of America. He really needs to find a way to do that or he'll simply continue to squander one of his major advantages over both Romney and Obama.

For more on the GOP "debates", you should be subscribing to guest blogger Ben Domenech's free daily email newsletter (subscribe here).

But this gets back to a larger question: why are we letting the media dictate this crap? Why can't actually conservative/Republican organizations step in and take a leadership role in sponsoring these and winnowing the field? Why can't we have questioner panels on topical issues? Wouldn't it be better to see panels with questions from folks like Steve Moore, Charles Krauthammer, Steve Hayward, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Jim Pethokoukis and others? Why do we let the least serious people in the world, with an ideological bent against the right to boot, decide what questions matter? For comparison, here's Reagan and HW Bush duking it out in 1980. Anderson was still in the race at this point (had just scored two strong third place finishes in Wisconsin and Kansas at 27% and 18%), so was Howard Baker, so was Phil Crane... these are not small personalities, that's the Senate Minority Leader for crying out loud. But the candidates told them to go screw and debated in Houston. They actually just talk through policy! Reagan and Bush are, in that clip, disagreeing about how much you can cut taxes without spending cuts at the same time, disagreeing about Art Laffer... Imagine being able to see a debate where the candidates just talk to each other for a good chunk of time. That’s what they’re supposed to be, not ping-based gameshows.

In horse race news...Herman Cain momentum is starting to show up in the polls.

Herman Cain's rise through the Republican field continued Wednesday, as a new national poll found the former businessman tied with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for first place in the latest CBS News poll.

Cain and Romney both earned the support of 17 percent of American voters - a rise of 12 percentage points for Cain compared to two weeks ago. His support seems to have come almost entirely to the detriment of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who nearly halved his number of supporters, falling 11 percentage points from 23 to 12 percent.

Romney has more or less run a Rose Garden primary campaign, just sort of floating around in the low to mid 20's nationally and watching contenders like Bachmann and Perry come and go.

Faces of Occupy Wall Street: Mom's Basement Edition [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Last night we brought you this maniac polluting the streets of Manhattan with his vile diatribes. Now while all these Occupy Wall Street loons aren't quite as unhinged as he is, a common theme emerging is we've got a pack of spoiled brats simply looking to live off the rest of us.

As Michael Graham points out today, the one thing most of these slobs aren't occupying is a job.

Has there ever been such a collection of mewling, puking overgrown babies as the clueless college brats of the “Occupation” — a particularly ironic phrase given how few of these oafs actually have one.

Found here (H/T to John E.) these people are pretty much cartoon characters at this point. Life's losers with no direction, no self-esteem and no clue. Page upon page of incoherent lamentations decrying their sorry lot in life. So this tool claims he owes $87,000 in college loans that he leveraged to become a printer repairman? Can't mom help him feed the cats? Who's feeding the cats while he's running around Manhattan having a temper tantrum?

Then we have this charming couple:

Their sign pretty much sums things up, don't you think? They're demanding a secure home and adequate mental healthcare. Maybe they should head uptown to Bellevue.

But don't forget, they're the 99% or something. Or so they think.

You are not 99 percent of America. I don't mean that in the obvious numerical sense. If 99 percent of Americans had actually joined your march, Manhattan would have flipped over by now.

What I mean is that if 99 percent of Americans actually sympathized with your cause, the entire nation's economy would have collapsed long ago -- apparently to the delight of the organizers of this current protest.

What I mean to say is, you have a marketing problem.

When you decided to sit in traffic and block the Brooklyn Bridge a few days ago, with that blazing pink "SMASH PATRIARCHY-SMASH CAPITALISM" sign in hand, you probably didn't see the regular people you stranded in traffic.

You know, the ones with real-world concerns, business to attend to, families to go home to, et cetera. You may have read about such people during college in a book called "The Petit Bourgeoisie," or something like that. Many of us grew up calling them "the middle class."

Now today we'll be seeing a David Axelrod astroturfed production involving the base of the Democratic Party: The union thugs.

Hardline lefty Juan Gonzalez is practically wetting himself.

"The whole order of things today is absolutely upside down," said John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100. "Tax breaks for millionaires, working people suffer, and no jobs for these kids."

Establishment critics of the Zuccotti Park events have no clue what is happening. By setting up camp near the scene of Wall Street's still-unpunished crimes, and by persevering round the clock for nearly three weeks, these kids have created a boot camp for social change.

A bootcamp for social change? Critics have no clue what's happening? Uh, we know exactly what's happening: A failed effort being engineered by Obama and his Occupier Democrats to distract us from his abysmal record and myriad scandals.

It's not working. It would be nice instead of slobbering over these nitwits that the media did a little digging into who's funding this.

Internet pledges arrive via two main websites: occupywallst.org was registered July 14, two months before the demonstrations began, by a Los Angeles privacy service that shields the owner's identity.

The second, nycga.cc, was registered Sept. 11 by Brooklyn resident Vladimir Teichberg, records show.

The Alliance for Global Justice, a nonprofit with 501c3 status, helped Occupy Wall Street to collect tax-exempt donations and open a credit union account to centralize funds.

The Washington-based organization's most recent 2009 tax return has revenues of $843,547, including contributions and grants of $789,509, records show.

Alliance for Global Justice, huh? Funny, but a few seconds of research leads us directly to none of than George Soros and his Open Society Institute. These folks also show solidarity with Marxist regimes in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

But remember, this is just some spontaneous grassroots movement in response to the Tea Party or something.

Here's a who's who of Democratic Party apparatchiks showing up today.

AFL-CIO (AFSCME)
United NY
Strong Economy for All Coalition
Working Families Party
TWU Local 100
SEIU 1199
CWA 1109
RWDSU
Communications Workers of America
CWA Local 1180
United Auto Workers
United Federation of Teachers
Professional Staff Congress - CUNY
National Nurses United
Writers Guild East

Obama's band is back together and today they're playing Wall Street. Just don't expect the lamestream media to dig too deep as to who's behind this effort.

Follow me on Twitter or here.

Update: According to some folks in the comments the first guy is a spoof. Maybe the entire site is but I find that difficult to believe. Well, he's done such a fine job he deserves the notice.

Close it up

DOOM: This is a mean old world, try and live it by yourself

—Monty

Moody’s to Italy: BAM!

Remember this about the Greek bailout by the ECB: it was always about European banks, not the Greek people.

Teh Bernank emerges from his cave, blinks in the sunlight, states the obvious, and then goes back into his hole.

Fanniegate just got worse.

Sin taxes on college sports?

You know, for all the nattering about a “bipartisan plan” in this op-ed, I don’t see anything that amounts to an actual plan. It’s more like a firm pledge to have a plan. Later on. Maybe.

When you subsidize something, you get more of it. Econ 101.

Monty dislikes getting fat, but likes bacon cheeseburgers. Monty’s failure arises in not seeing the relationship between these two things.

When your argument has devolved to “you have nowhere else to go”, you’ve pretty much given up on rational argument altogether.

Fear China’s fall, not its rise. China is merely the (biggest) symptom of a terribly unbalanced global economy; to the extent that a Chinese fall hurts the global economy, it is because we have put too many of our eggs in the Chinese basket. The old advice is as relevant as ever: diversify, diversify, diversify.

More on the illusion of China’s economic “miracle”.

Just a reminder: that blended 8% rate-of-return calculation that so many retirement advisers use to help you plan your savings is probably wrong. If you’re smart, you’ll plan on a rate-of-return around 4-5%. You might get more if you can tolerate more risk, but that’s the key: the days of an 8% low-risk return profile are long gone. (This exact problem is why so many pension plans, public and private, are in very dire trouble. They’re assuming rates of return that they are very unlikely to get in future years.)

Euro science.

Outsiders to the world of money who start to take an interest in it soon notice that most of the things that alarm and outrage the wider public are taken by insiders to be perfectly routine and unremarkable. Consider the sums that bankers get paid, or the disruptive impact of hot money zipping around the world at the click of a mouse, tearing up industries and whole economies at will. To moneymen, those are just givens of the way the world works, and have to be accepted, in the absence of a credible plan to go off to found a new system on another planet.

Once in a great while, though, something happens that reverses the loop, and has the moneymen more scared than the rest of us. That happened in late 2007, when the credit crunch began, and it’s happening again now.

Is the loss of Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" hurting Apple? Jobs could wrap the same old tech in a new white case and convince the fanboys they were getting a new product, and even make them pay more for it, but new CEO Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs.

Rather astonishingly, the NYT comes out against Schumer's China bill. If you want to punish China for their misdeeds, there is a simple solution: don't buy their stuff. They'll get the message.

Collateral damage in the muni market.

The Obama administration would like to keep upper income taxpayers paying higher rates on their income but limit the size of their deductions and exclusions. In the case of muni bond interest, the change would in effect install a 7 percent tax on municipal bond interest for households in the 35 percent tax bracket. If the Bush tax cuts were to expire and the top tax rate rise to the pre-Bush level of 39.6 percent, the tax on muni interest for those in the top bracket would increase to 11.6 percent.

When "stimulus" no longer stimulates. Keynesianism always was a fraud, but the failures used to be hidden behind explosive growth rates in the western nations' GDPs. But as the nations have greyed, they grow more slowly and become less dynamic. Red tape blocks progress like plaque clogs an elderly person's arteries.

Cities have historically been hives of initiative and new enterprise, but in the regulation dense thicket of modern American urban life, few jobs can grow. The nation’s major cities — where so many of our poorest communities with the highest rates of long term unemployment are found — were often shedding rather than creating jobs even before the recession. The Empire State Building, then the largest in the world and still an icon of design and serviceability around the world, was built in 13 months at the start of the Depression. It has taken the coop in which I live longer than that simply to find out from the city whether we can use a certain method to replace broken gutters along the side of my building. (We are still trying to find out. So is the company that wants to do the work.)

UPDATE 1: Layoff plans soar by 126% in September. Via Insty, who needles, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" Answer: Not too good.

UPDATE 2: The end of "free stuff"? Ain't no such thing as "free". Somebody always pays, in one way or another. Always.

Three Questions for the Perry Campaign [Domenech]

—Guest Blogger

So Rick Perry’s been in the race eight weeks. He’s skyrocketed up and then come back to earth. Thanks to the compressed schedule for the Republican Primary, and following in the wake of the Washington Post smear, the next month or so constitutes the window that will determine Perry’s role in this election – as nominee or as Fred Thompson redux.

One of the reasons is that in those eight weeks, he has largely allowed himself to be categorized and boxed in by his opponents; he has not articulated a clear vision to lead the country back to prosperity; and he has seemed unprepared for attacks he should’ve expected from an audience unfamiliar with his Texas record. (For his staff: yes, the national media are idiots for not paying attention to literally anything you’ve done or said on policy for ten-plus years. No, you can’t correct that.) The combo of a lack of a coherent offensive strategy and getting stuck on defense in the debates brings us to the ABC/WaPo 16% tie for second with Herman Cain, which I think is an accurate depiction of where things stand.

He’s got roughly three months before voting starts. He's got several more debates, but they're spaced out a bit. The WaPo smear has pretty clearly backfired, and increasingly looks like a benefit to Perry in the primary, though I’m sure it’ll be blown up again in any general (though it's unlikely to bend anyone who didn't already hate his guts or view him as W. II). The early whispers are that he met his Q3 fundraising goals ($17 Million in seven weeks - Drudge is reporting this, thanks, comments - is pretty nice coin, frankly).

So there are as I see it three key questions about where he goes from here.

Top Headline Comments 10-5-11

—Gabriel Malor

Thank you, Mario...but our princess is in another castle!

Faces of Occupy Wall Street: Anti-Semitic Creep Edition [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Via Breitbart. Unhinged lunacy, or what I like to call mainstream liberalism. Can't figure out where all the hate for the elderly Jewish man is coming from. Maybe he was a janitor.

This crank calls himself The Lotion Man. Figure it out.

Overnight Open Thread: Frivolity and Disappointment Edition

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday, 'rons and 'ronnettes. I hope I've found enough stuff to keep you mildly amused for a bit.

First up, there's some excellent Star Wars toys photography over here. A taste, just because of the subject matter:

In manly men news, there are some interesting observations about the recent phenomenon of men desiring "man caves" in their homes over here. I'd never even heard the term until my twin started looking for a house last year. Sure enough, one of his requirements was that it have a space for a man cave. Of course I'm stoked that he's got it, since it means we can be as loud and rowdy as we want at all hours of the night and my sis-in-law and nieces can't hear us up in their rooms.

In other manly men news, Thomas Jane, the Punisher himself and lead actor of HBO's "Hung", says that he turned tricks with men as a young, starving actor, but that he totally decided to be straight after he could afford to feed himself. Dude.

In materialistic gimme-gimme-gimme news, Apple completely underwhelmed with the unveiling of the iPhone 4S today instead of the much-anticipated iPhone 5. On the other hand, this could have been a bit of a trial run for new Apple emcee Tim Cook (and from what I saw he needed it). Don't look now, Tim, but trouble's a-comin' up behind you.

In Chicken Little news, there was just a bit of solar activity that might be of interest to science- and space-geeks. By which I mean, images of a comet smacking the Sun right upside it's lumpy, spotted noggin.

Thanks to Adam Baldwin for that contribution to the ONT.

Finally, in entertainment news, I had high hopes for Fox's new series Terra Nova. It's got time travel, dinosaurs, guns, rebels, a hostile prehistoric environment, and enough Steven Spielberg-flavored (read: family-related) drama to shake a stick at. Which is why the first episode involved a generic hormone-addled teenager who learns a valuable lesson about obeying his father and the solution to the second episode's dire problem involved an improbable technobabble plot device. Needless to say, I am not the only person who is underwhelmed by this BS. Hell, even I can write a better Prehistoria story than that.

Alright, that's it for me. Good night, morons. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

Close it up

NFL Pickem Results Week 4

—Dave In Texas

Busy busy day. So much to do, so little time to bask in the glory of the accomplishments of others. To wit:

Hank Williams Jr. Racists

MuleTrain2016 : 38
FMG: 38
Scott: 37
Pastafarian: 37
CountryBlumkins : 37
The Plague : 37

Filthy ZIONIST LIES

DrewM : 35
CDR M: 31
Gabe : 30
Andy : 30
rd brewer: 28
Russ from Winterset: 27
DiT : 25

At least I'm consistent. Ok consistency isn't really a virtue if you're an asshole.

Thanks to Ben and CDR M.

West Virginia Special Election Results [Ben]

—Open Blogger

[Update: Earl Ray Tomblin, the Democrat, won.]

West Virginia held a special gubernatorial election today. The election is being held to fill the remaining 14 months on the term started by Democrat Joe Manchin, who resigned to become a U.S. senator last year.

The current Governor is Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin. His challenger is Republican businessman Bill Maloney. This is Maloney's first run for public office.

The election results can be found here.

The Democrats must be worried because people are getting mysterious calls informing them that their polling stations have changed or are closed.

The West Virgina Governor's Mansion

Close it up

GOP Candidate for President, a RINO and Former Democrat, Opposes a Border Fence and Supports Free K-12 Education for Illegals

—Gabriel Malor

Too on the nose? It was Ronald Reagan.

These are, quite honestly, amazing debate answers from George H.W. Bush and Reagan in 1980. This is a candidate debate in Houston. Bush and Reagan are asked whether illegals should have access to free K-12 public education (this was four years before the Supreme Court held that a public education must be provided for illegals).

Bush talks about being "sensitive and understanding" and then stumbles through a very Perry-esque examination of immigration issues, concluding that he doesn't want illegal aliens to be made to feel like they are stuck outside the law. Whoa.

Reagan then jumps in--not to rebut Bush's statement, but to add to it. Reagan also uses the word "sensitive" and, entirely unprompted, comes out against a border fence.

Surely we'd never tolerate such RINOs today.

(h/t to Guestblogger Ben Domenech.)

Cool! Video Version Of John E's Graphic

—LauraW.

We wanted to spread this thing around more, because it is so great.

Someone has put in a bit of work to here to recreate it in handy video form!

Thanks to Ace.

CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Says WH Spokesman Screamed and Cursed at Her Over Fast & Furious Investigation [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

House Republicans today called for a special counsel to investigate the massive Fast & Furious scandal following the devastating revelations reported Monday by CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, one of the few in the "mainstream" media actually reporting on this.

Today Attkisson appeared on The Laura Ingraham Show and detailed the reaction of White House and DOJ spokesthings when she questioned them last Friday.

Vice SCOAMF: Who's Van Jones? [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

You know how these senile Democrats are. All those black guys Communists look alike.

It's been what, three or four days since the walking gaffe machine last blundered?

He's slowing down.

Van Jones was appointed by President Barack Obama in March of 2009 to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council of Environmental Quality. Politico reports that Van Jones was vetted by Joe Biden himself. Van Jones wrote about the VP on the White House website.

Today's Schedule:
Chris Christie Presser at 1:00pm;
Bill Kristol Suicide at 1:05pm

—Gabriel Malor

All sources say that Big Man is once again going to announce that he is not running for the presidency. All sources except for Fox News, which spent a good 30 minutes suggesting that it had sources who said he would be running for the presidency. Guy Benson's take is probably the best I've seen.

The announcement will take place at 1pm EASTERN (just under half an hour from now). You can watch it live on the web and probably on every news channel in the United States.

Confirmed: Christie says "now is not my time." Note that unlike the President Christie managed to show up just when he said he would.

So . . . second look at Paul Ryan?

SCOAMF to Bank of America: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money”

—Andy

Well, that's not exactly what he said. It's what he said before about those millionaires and billionaires (which are exactly the same except for, you know, that x1,000 thing).

No, this is what he said about Bank of America

“[Bank of America's $5/month debit card fee] is exactly why we need this Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that we set up that is ready to go," Obama said. "This is exactly why we need somebody who's sole job it is to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. ... You can stop it because if you say to the banks, ‘You don't have some inherent right just to – you know, get a certain amount of profit. If your customers – are being mistreated. That you have to treat them fairly and transparently.” (emphasis added)

Same as the other quote, really. But can he honestly be this dumb? (yes, that's rhetorical).

Does he not understand that the Dodd-Frank law that created his Consumer Finance Protection Bureau also contained something called the "Durbin Amendment" (named of course after Dick Turban)? The Durbin Amendment significantly reduced the amount of fees banks could charge merchants for debit card use, which was great for the Wal-Marts of the world who lobbied for it. Bank of America, not so much.

How did he expect Bank of America (and other banks) to respond? He and the Dems took billions of dollars out of their pockets and they're supposed to just lie there and take it?

Why yes. Yes they are.

Of course, clown prince Durbin also had this to say about the issue

"Get the heck out of that bank," Durbin said Monday on the Senate floor. "Find yourself a bank or credit union that won’t gouge you for $5 a month. ... What Bank of America has done is an outrage."

I actually agree with Durbin to a point. A customer is free to go elsewhere if they feel "mistreated" to quote the SCOAMF. Or they can, you know, pay for the convenience of using the debit card, use cash, write checks, use a credit card and pay off the balance each month, etc.

But Durbin should look in the mirror for the source of his outrage.

November 2012 can't get here soon enough.

Claire McCaskill: "Whoever Thinks That I’m Going to Avoid Being Seen With the President Doesn’t Know Me Very Well" [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill is one of 23 incumbent Senate Democrats who have the misfortune of trying to defend their seats in 2012 with the SCOAMF at the top of the ticket. The GOP only needs to pick up four seats--a near certainty--but with the rapidly deteriorating approval of Obama, McCaskill and others will be looking to be anywhere but near him when he shows up in their states.

Last Friday, an indignant McCaskill scoffed at the notion that she would avoid Obama when he shows in Missouri for some of his 867 fundraisers scheduled for this week. Today she suddenly realized she's got other plans.

DOOM: A candy colored clown they call the sandman

—Monty

You say you want a revolution? I would remind the Democrats of something: if you keep asking for a fight, sooner or later someone is going to give you one.

A funny little man was standing on the streetcorner this morning, hectoring the passers-by. He was wearing a sandwich board upon which was scrawled: SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!!! I was told that once upon a time, this crazy dude was actually a respected economist. It's sad, really.

The emergence of money: compensation for pain and suffering inflicted on others? I’m skeptical, but then again I’m a proponent of the Austrian school that Graeber apparently hasn’t much regard for. (Whenever I hear an academic, especially a “social sciences” academic, blathering about economics, I want to reach for a heavy club.)

The “judicial recession”. (Also: California is boned.) This is what happens when the government runs out of other people’s money. The socialist state starts eating itself.

This isn’t financial DOOM; this is sure enough, grade A, End of Days DOOM. Part of the problem is that the low-hanging technological fruit has been plucked. Our technology growth going forward isn’t going to be a huge steep incline, but more of a slow expansion marked by long plateaus. This is the norm for most of human history, actually -- the last two centuries are highly atypical in terms of technological progress. And take note of this:

Like technology, credit also makes claims on the future. “I will gladly pay you a dollar on Tuesday for a hamburger today” works only if a dollar gets earned by Tuesday. A credit crisis happens when earnings disappoint and the present does not live up to past expectations of the future.

Neal Stephenson on “innovation starvation”. My view? The missing ingredients in the modern age are optimism and confidence. You have to believe in yourself, and in the future, to invent new things and start big projects. No one really believes that we can do the “big stuff” any more. We’re too risk-averse -- which is a signal of an aging society. We want to hoard what we’ve already got rather than build more. Our time-horizons stop with our own deaths; we no longer care much for posterity or legacy.

Why the crisis in Europe might cause a recession here. It's become a cliche to point out that the world's financial systems are deeply intertwined, but it's a cliche because it's true.

The Most Boned Cities. New Jersey holds the distinction of hosting three of the most boned cities in America. Michigan gets two: Detroit and Pontiac. Interesting note: all of the most boned municipalities are east of the Mississippi -- I fully expected to see several California cities on this list. Of course, this article concerns itself only with bond ratings and not other metrics.

The Neverending Recession has apparently turned us all into a bunch of penny-pinching cheapskates. We only thought the motto was “Hope and Change”; it was actually “I hope I get some change.”

The modern version of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill picks up steam in the Senate. It probably (probably) won’t get past the GOP-controlled house, but this is just more evidence that our politicians don’t even bother to study our own history any more. This would be a colossally stupid move if the effort succeeds, but I have learned never to underestimate the stupidity, venality, or cowardice of our political class. (China swears to retaliate if the bill passes, by the way. And thus does the bloodletting begin.)

Greece’s “death spiral” was in large part caused by the stubborn refusal of the EU and ECB to allow Greece to default back when it might have nipped this crisis in the bud. Now Greece’s sickness has already spread to the peripheral countries of the Eurozone and threaten the core.

In related news, Greece’s October 13 finance meeting with the Eurozone finance ministers has been delayed until November. This may be a prelude to some kind of formal Greek default -- though I suspect the EU will tie itself in rhetorical and legal knots thinking of ways to call it something other than a “default”. But it will end with the holders of Greek sovereign debt taking steep haircuts on their holdings. And these cuts won’t be voluntary.

Gold is way off its highs, but is trending back up again. I ought to buy some more before it gets out of reach again. Silver likewise is off its highs at $30/oz or so.

Investor's Business Daily finally finds a reason to praise President Obama. If I were Bammer, I'd clip that article and put it in the scrapbook; he's not likely to get much praise on his economic policies again any time soon.

Is economic uncertainty the primary reason our economy is not recovering? The GOP has been insisting that uncertainty is a primary factor in the stagnant economy, but the Democrats have been airily dismissing that argument. James Pethokoukis shows why the Democrat dismissal of the "uncertainty" argument is chock full of FAIL.

UPDATE 1: The markets are breaking bad today. Most of the unease stems from worries about the Eurozone, but there is also a lot of generalized alarm in the investing public right now -- that alarm is in part why things are so volatile. Investors are in full herd behavior, stampeding to and fro on news, rumors, and gossip. It's the endless war between yield and safety.

UPDATE 2: Interesting discussion on gender and personality differences in an economic context. (NOTE: I am neither type "A" or type "B". I am type "C" -- pay me the money you owe me or I'll send a large fellow around to redecorate your face.)

SCOAMF and the Quest for Love [Domenech]

—Guest Blogger

In the WSJ this morning, Bret Stephens writes of Barack Obama and love. Read the whole thing, but here's the conclusion.

What is it that Mr. Obama doesn't like about the United States—a country that sent him hurtling like an American Idol contestant from the obscurity of an Illinois Senate seat to the presidency in a mere four years?

I suspect it's the same thing that so many run-of-the-mill liberals dislike: Americans typically believe that happiness is an individual pursuit; we bridle at other people setting limits on what's "enough"; we enjoy wealth and want to keep as much of it as we can; we don't like trading in our own freedom for someone else's idea of virtue, much less a fabricated concept of the collective good.

When a good history of anti-Americanism is someday written, it will note that it's mainly a story of disenchantment—of the obdurate and sometimes vulgar reality of the country falling short of the lover's ideal. Listening to Mr. Obama, especially now as the country turns against him, one senses in him a similar disenchantment: America is lovable exactly in proportion to the love it gives him in return.

This brings to mind a quote I read recently while Obama was on his jobs tour. Compare and contrast, if you will, this story from a few weeks ago:

“A gentleman came in yesterday and started talking trash about Obama… He hired a new employee last week, so he made a comment that ‘I’ve created one new job — what has Obama done?’ ”

With this one from yesterday:

“For somebody’s who’s going to come in and be the great unifier — you know, that hopey-changey stuff — it hasn’t worked very well. The country is more divided now than it’s ever been. And he doesn’t appreciate other people and what they do.”

The first is a quote from Apex, North Carolina, from a small businessman. The second is from New York City’s Diana Taylor, Mayor Bloomberg’s girlfriend. How in the world did this SCOAMF unite them both?

The Last Defense of Texas' Tuition Law

—Gabriel Malor

Jonathan Last has a must-read article in the Weekly Standard explaining and defending the Texas tuition law that Rick Perry's been taking hits for the past few weeks. Last starts by noting that Perry has done an awful job defending a law that's easily defensible, and I agree.

Let's start with the obvious. Perry's first answer when asked about the Texas law should have been: "What's right for Texas may not be right for every state. We in Texas decided that we wanted all of our students to be able to go to college at in-state rates. Now that's not a free education, they've still got to pay the in-state rate, but it's something. And it gets all of our students in a position to be healthy, productive members of society. This wasn't like the federal DREAM Act, which is an amnesty. I don't support amnesty."

Easy-peasy and it would have been the last we'd heard of it. Since that didn't work out, I highly recommend Last's explanation of the law and its benefits and the incoherence of the law's recent detractors. And they have been recent. The law at its time of creation and presently remains exceptionally popular in Texas.

Top Headline Comments 10-4-11

—Gabriel Malor

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Dick Cheney actually has the bleeding heart of a liberal...He keeps it in a jar under his desk.

Monday ONT- Not This Guy Again Edition

—DrewM.

Welcome to my second ONT. As befitting a blogger here at the HQ, I put a lot less effort into this one than I did my first one. And it will show.

Someone sent this to me today. It might be old but it's pretty amazing: The Dogs of 9/11.

During the chaos of the 9/11 attacks, where almost 3,000 people died, nearly 100 loyal search and rescue dogs and their brave owners scoured Ground Zero for survivors.

Now, ten years on, just 12 of these heroic canines survive, and they have been commemorated in a touching series of portraits entitled 'Retrieved'.

The dogs worked tirelessly to search for anyone trapped alive in the rubble, along with countless emergency service workers and members of the public.

Are you a "Beta Male"? If so, take heart! You might be just one gene away from getting the girl!

Two mice run headfirst into one another in a narrow plastic tube that isn’t wide enough for both of them. One of them must give way. In their earlier encounter, the first mouse exerted its dominance by forcing its rival to reverse down the tube. This time, things are different; the second mouse pulls rank and the first one backs down.

Mouse hierarchies don’t change this readily, but the second mouse has been given a boon by Fei Wang at the Chinese Academy of Science. By injecting a single gene into one part of its brain, Wang turned the subordinate animal into a dominant one.

Most of the AoS gang on Twitter. Follow us! Pimp your handle in the comments!

In world record news....

357 women, in tiny two pieces and pink visors, paraded around Surfers Paradise beach on the Gold Coast - setting the new world record for the Longest bikini parade, according to World Records Academy

The previous Guinness world record for the largest bikini parade was achieved by 331 participants at an event organised by the Cayman Islands Amateur Swimming Association at Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.

Ever wonder what life is like on an aircraft carrier? This This multi-part series by retired Naval Aviator "Lex", Captain USN (ret), is as close as most of us will ever come.

Tonight's ONT brought to you by birthday girl Gwen Stefani.

Close it up

The Return of Totally Meghan McCain. [Moe Lane]

—Guest Blogger

Or, as she would be like to be known as now, "Totally Megan McKane."

I am, so horrific in fact, have taken steps to have my name legally changed. It turns out some jerk already owns the name Totally Meghan OchoCinco, so I have decided to go with Totally Megan McKane, which is how, it should be spelled anyway (the silent “I” in McCain doesn’t make any sense!)

[snip]
To continuing my point, this “Meghan McCain” actually had, the nerve to have a lawyer send a letter to, the good people of Red State.org, demanding that I stop impersonating her! Hello! Is my name, Totally Meghan McCain, a part of “Meghan McCain”? No. Is “Meghan McCain” a part of my name, Totally Meghan McCain? I think, as the old people say, that is QDE. Or putting it, in such a manner that independent, young voters who decide the next election, will understand, FACE!

Did Eric Holder Lie To Congress?

—Andy

Operation Fast and Furious continues to simmer. Included in the weekend data dump, though, was something sure to heat it up.

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." (emphasis added)

Well, I mean that's an easy mistake to make. Ten months. A few weeks. What's the big diff?

I remain confident that this thing is going to break wide open and that some folks close to it will see some prison time. Personally, I'd just as soon send Holder to the Mexicans and let them put him up in the lavish accommodations that are the hallmark of their penal system.

Also on the F&F; front, I should point out that Saturday's document dump post, while including that memorable PhotoShop of Michelle the gun mule, left out the one graphic that really explains this whole deal.

This chart, in the words of ATF agent Bill Newell, "reflect[s] the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up."

It's fair to assume they didn't intercept the ones on the Mexican side of the border. So all those arrows show where they "ended up" ... most likely dropped at a crime scene.

What valid law enforcement purpose was behind this? I'm not as charitable as Ace on this - I think it's a full frontal assault on the second amendment.

Maybe the Mexicans can clear out a prison wing for the lot of these bozos.

More from Bob Owens.

Are You Ready For The Next Solyndra?

—DrewM.

But we're not done with the first one yet!

Meet Nevada Geothermal. You already know their main champion, Harry Reid.

A recent audit by Deloitte & Touche expressed “significant doubt” about Nevada Geothermal Power’s “ability to continue as a going concern.” The company’s vital signs are not looking good: it “has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities,” the audit concluded.

Nevada Geothermal enjoyed significant backing from the federal government. It received a $79 million loan guarantee from the same Energy Department program that helped finance the failed solar company Solyndra. It also got $66 million in federal grants from the Treasury Department.

Reid was instrumental in securing that financing for Nevada Geothermal, the New York Times reported on Monday. “Mr. Reid has taken the nascent geothermal industry under his wing,” the Times noted, “pressuring the Department of Interior to move more quickly on applications to build clean energy projects on federally owned land and urging other member of Congress to expand federal tax incentives to help build geothermal plants, benefits that Nevada Geothermal has taken advantage of.”

Reid defends this kind of corrupt waste by saying if the federal government didn't invest in this type of high-risk speculative project no one would. Which is kind of the point. If the upside outweighed the risks then private investors would do it. Of course, there wouldn't be anything in it for politicians if they couldn't spread around your money to buy votes for themselves.

I think this "green" loan program is going to be a rich source of material for the GOP in the coming year.

Meanwhile back in the original scandal, top administration officials were warned that Obama shouldn't visit Solyndra's plant.

A Silicon Valley investor and senior administration officials warned the White House to reconsider having President Obama visit a solar start-up company because of its mounting financial problems, saying he might be embarrassed later.

“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,” California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. “Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”

Yes, so unfair that this corrupt deal is hurting Obama.

Obama himself says, meh no big deal.

“Now there are going to be some failures,” he said. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” the president added about being warned about Solyndra’s financial problems. “It went through the normal review process and people thought this was a good bet.”

Yeah, who could have seen this coming? Except for the Bush administration which rebuffed the company's efforts to get the money sooner and Obama's OMB which called the exact time of Solyndra's bankruptcy.

Occupy Wall Street Crew Has Some Demands

—DrewM.

And they are pretty much what you'd expect.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Basically they want to pass Smoot-HawleyII because that worked well last time, create trillions and trillions of new debt get paid for a job whether or not they do any work (I actually joked about this before I saw the list. Parody is dead). In general...repeal reality and destroy the economy.

I especially love the demand for an amendment demanding racial equality. Why didn't someone think of that sooner?

Demand list via Adam Baldwin.

BTW- These people are demanding jobs? If you're unemployed, how extensive is your job search if you have time to spend days at a time camping out in lower Manhattan?

I would love for someone from a Wall St firm or two come out and start passing out job applications just to see the reactions of the "protesters".

Amanda Carpenter notes that the "protesters" are looking for help in doing their laundry. An interest in hygiene is certainly a step forward in the world of hippies.

Scientist Wins Nobel Prize in Medicine For Using Groundbreaking Method to Treat Himself for Cancer [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

At least the Nobel Prize folks actually awarded someone who accomplished something in his life. Used to be a time they'd give out peace prize awards to people with no accomplishments in life other than a dazzling ability to give speeches.

Unfortunately for Ralph Steinman, he died of cancer before they actually announced the award.

A scientist who won the Nobel prize for medicine on Monday used his own discoveries to treat himself for cancer, but died of the disease just days before he could be told of the award.

Calling it "bittersweet" news, colleagues of Canadian-born Ralph Steinman at New York's Rockefeller University said he had prolonged his own life with a new therapy based on his prize-winning research into the body's immune system.

But the 68-year-old physician, who joked last week with his family about hanging on until the annual prize announcement, died on Friday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

He never knew his life's work had been crowned with the highest accolade science can bestow.

Since they're now making exceptions, perhaps they can rescind the award they gave the SCOAMF.

Follow me on Twitter or visit here.

Roseanne Barr Pines for Madame Guillotine and Re-education camps. [krakatoa]

—Guest Blogger

Honestly, this sounds too stupid to be truly what she thinks. Right? She's going Kaufman, yes?

Don't get me wrong -- I think that deep down, most people on the left aren't above a little "re-education" for the non-conformists. Hell, not even that deep down. They are willfully ignorant of their hypocrisy in the eternal fight against "the man".

But the guillotine for the rich? That's just too ironic to be a seriously held belief by anyone with half a brain, and I for one am certain that Roseanne has half a brain.

I'm trying to convince myself this must be some sort of attempt at comedy which in her case always seems to require the application of Hanlon's Razor, but I'm thrown off because she isn't grabbing her crotch.

Obama Max Donor Mark Ruffalo Joins Occupy Wall Street Protest, Declares We Need to Remove Money From Politics [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Hollywood nitwit Mark Ruffalo left the safety of his Upper East Side domicile this past weekend to join up with the filthy hippies wandering aimlessly around Lower Manhattan and has made a heartfelt plea to stop beating up on the protesters by making fun of their appearance.

He obviously has no idea why any of us are paying attention: We need the laughs.

When people critique this movement and say spurious things about the protesters' clothes or their jobs or the general way they look, they are showing how shallow we have become as a nation. They forget that these people have taken time out of their lives to stand up for values that are purely American and in the interest of our democracy. They forget that these people are encamped in an urban park, where they are not allowed to have tents or other normal camping gear. They are living far outside their comfort zone to protect and celebrate liberty, equality and the rule of law.

It is a thing of beauty to see so many people in love with the ideal of democracy, so alive with its promise, so committed to its continuity in the face of crony capitalism and corporate rule. That should be celebrated. It should be respected and admired.

Jobs can and must be created. Family farms must be saved. The oil and gas industry must be divested of its political power and cheap, reliable alternative energy must be made available.

Ruffalo also recites a common refrain of the know-nothing protesters: That is to get money out of the political process. Well, maybe he should start leading by example. He says "we are the 99%," but I'm left wondering how many of the so-called 99% have so much disposable income that they can shower money on Barack Obama?

Ruffalo has a funny way of getting money out of politics since he managed to give $1,750 to the Obama for America campaign in 2008. Then obviously realizing he would max out his individual contribution limit, he gave another thousand to Obama, but made sure it went to the Obama Victory Fund immediately prior to the 2008 election.

So let's declare our solidarity with wealthy Hollywood actors and call for the removal of money from politics, especially those who donate the maximum to Democrats.

The 99% of us have paid a dear price so that 1% could become the wealthiest people in the world. We all pay insanely high energy prices while we see energy companies making record profits, year after year. We live with great injustices in the land of justice. We live with great lawlessness in the land of the law.

Follow me on Twitter or visit here.

Borders Employees: "Good-bye, Cruel World!" [Moe Lane]

—Guest Blogger

Permit me to sum up this rather long, rather whiny, and left-unfinished* screed by they'll-be-grateful-later-that-they're-nameless Borders employees: "We totally deserved to have our book chain go belly-up, and with it our hopes for gainful employment any time soon." Not that the site that gave me the link to said screed wasn't kind of whiny, too. In fact, it was a whinefest all around, frankly.

If you believe that Wall Street is the Root of All Evil, I've got a Bridge to Sell You. [krakatoa]

—Guest Blogger

The Left doing what the Left does best: Marching to protest [fill this space with, literally, anything].

Artist's rendition of the Passion of a Leftist.

What do we want? Free unicorns!

Who do we want it from? Wall Street!

Apparently someone told them the unicorns could be found on the Brooklyn Bridge, and now the NY justice system has a new revenue stream.

I kid of course. At a great cost to NY taxpayers, these protesters will likely skate on all fines using the airtight defense of "social justice", a defense only available to roughly half the U.S. population, despite the best intentions of the Equal Protection Clause.

These are serious times. It is instructive that in these times the best the left can do is foment for violence, create economic uncertainty, and spend other people's money.

And by instructive, of course I mean axiomatic.

Buffett: "Higher taxes on the ultra-rich is not going to solve the deficit problem" [Sexton]

—Guest Blogger

According to the description provided by the person who uploaded the clip, Buffett said this at a lunch for Business Wire on Friday. That means it was just a few hours after the comments that caused such a kerfuffle over the Buffett Rule Friday morning:

DOOM: You upset me, baby.

—Monty

In news that surprises absolutely nobody, Greece is set to miss the new deficit targets set by the EU. It won't matter; the bureaucrats will make threatening noises but will hand over the the bailout money anyway in return for more promises that will not be kept. That's how the Eurozone works.

North Dakota: America's answer to Saudi Arabia. Except in ND, you can have Bibles, women can drive, homosexuals aren't flogged in public (as far as I know), and the natives actually work for a living.

California: the nightmare scenario.

When journalists bust out the Shakespeare quotes, you can be sure that false profundity and labored metaphor will follow. And this is just precious:

Still, the consequences of a disorderly default are considered so dire that Athens has cards to play, too. A strike by workers at the national statistics bureau has made it difficult to get up-to-date fiscal data. The government has said it faces default by mid-October without the aid, but “we think they were exaggerating deliberately to put pressure on us,” a senior European official said.

Bring me the head of Quincy the Quant!

Ronald Reagan used to say that "a rising tide lifts all boats". Liberals never really got that, neither then nor now.

You know what the world needs? More government!

What globalization requires, therefore, are smart government policies. Governments should promote high-quality education, to ensure that young people are prepared to face global competition. They should raise productivity by building modern infrastructure and promoting science and technology. And governments should cooperate globally to regulate those parts of the economy – notably finance and the environment – in which problems in one country can spill over to other parts of the world.

Tom Friedman hates those damned job-stealing robots. (Oh, he says that now. But wait until we get sexy replicants like Pris in Blade Runner. I bet he'll be singing a different tune then.)

Does business "despair of" Barack Obama? Barack Obama is an academic leftist ideologue with no real private-sector background or experience. I'm not sure why so many businessmen expected anything else out of His Majesty but hostility and contempt. (Here's another link if you can't get to the FT article.)

The NYT wails that "foreclosures are killing us". It may be painful, but we must clear the enormous debt-overhang in the real estate sector. Too many people took on too much debt, and it must be cleared in one way or another if a recovery is to take place. You're not doing underwater homeowners (or the real-estate market in general) any favors if you force them to stay in houses they cannot afford.

The media's war against the Koch brothers is heating up going into the 2012 elections. One wonders where this kind of due-diligence was during Barack Obama's campaign in 2008.

Americans are re-learning the virtues of thrift and saving, but it's going to be a long, tough road back to sustainability. Household debt is still historically very high.

A looming trade-war with China? It's like no one ever read about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930. Which is not to say that China is blameless; far from it. But they are simply behaving rationally according to their own priorities. We are the authors of our own misery in this case.

The latest number on public pension obligations? How does $30 Trillion dollars sound? Everybody out there who thinks all this money is actually going to be paid out, raise your hand.

UPDATE 1: The days of double-digit returns on financial assets may be over for a while. I think investors are going to have to learn to be satisfied with returns in the 5% range; an 8% return will be cause for celebration.

Top Headline Comments 10-3-11

—Gabriel Malor

Good morning. Twitter-addicted readers should know the guestbloggers' twitter handles (at least the ones I know):

@moelane
@bdomenech
@ComradeArthur
@verumserum
@cuffymeh
@JammieWF
@johnekdahl

All are worth following.

Sunday Night ONT

—Dave In Texas

Cow Nipple Fashion is a funny business. (via LauraW)

Not nearly as funny, but interesting in a dull way, washed up actress Roseanne Barr is perfectly willing to kill people who don't conform to her concept of spreading the wealth, and thinks we oughta go Al-Q on wealthy people who won't give away money (no way to tell if she, a wealthy person, is giving away hers). Also this is worth a repeat and also I suck at this ONT thing.

Big Dick Cheney: Obama owes Bush a Thank You

A man would say so. Obama isn't a man, so he won't.

Wow, we sucked today. Amazin meltdowns deserve amazing remembrances.

So here.

Football-Interregnum Open Thread [Truman North]

—Open Blogger

Blogger: Andy Rooney is saying his farewells tonight.

Morons: Wait, effing Andy Rooney is still alive??

Blogger: I know, I know. But it's true. And tonight is his last night on 60 Minutes.

And now for something completely unrelated:

The Lack of a Coherent Message ..ummm.... Is the Message! [wiserbud]

—Guest Blogger

Bless their little non-biased hearts over at AP. They do try so hard to turn failure into success for their little empty-headed ideological sisters and brothers.

Case in point, Colleen Long has written this little bit of fluff wherein she clearly points out how easy it is to find a silver lining in every dark cloud if you just look hard enough.

Of course, first you need to define the dark cloud:

It all has the feel of a classic street protest with one exception: It's unclear exactly what the demonstrators want.

"When all the bailout money was spent on bonuses and stuff everyone was outraged, but no one did anything because no one feels like they can," protester Jesse Wilson, 22, said this week when asked to take articulate the cause. "It's time for us to come together to realize we are the masses, and we can make things happen."

But he couldn't say what, exactly, he wanted to happen. Handmade signs carried by some of the demonstrators — "Less is More" and "Capitalism is evil" — hardly make it clearer.

I wonder how Jesse and his SEIU enablers feel about state employees getting their retention "bonuses" for doing nothing more than showing up for work every day? (well, most days, anyway. Don't want to stress the poor dears...)

Of course, the really funny part about the "Capitalism is Evil" mantra is found in the paragraph that precedes the one above:

They sleep on air mattresses, use Mac laptops and play drums. They go to the bathroom at the local McDonald's.

I'm sure those air mattresses were hand-made by Quadriplegic Native American Lesbians with sustainable growth hemp products. As well as the Macs. As for using McDonalds bathrooms, McDonald's being one of the biggest corporations on the planet, hey, dude, they have awesome fries!

Plague of Mind-Numbing Idiocy Moves North [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Before we regale you with 13 minutes of of pious, sanctimonious drivel from Boston, we first must offer up what has to be the best of all protest signs we've seen from the filthy hippies in Manhattan. It's almost too clever that I'm thinking this guy is an AoS moron who's gone undercover.

Now Ace has kindly asked we refrain from excessive use colorful language, so let it be known I'm just quoting this guy:

SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND BULLSHIT

The Gothamist has a pictorial spread called "The Faces of Occupy Wall Street" so go there to check out more, including this endearing young lad who smugly declares "I'm here to foil the 1%, to ruin their plans." Judging by the kid's writing skills. the only plan I see being foiled is graduating from grammar school.

Always a nice touch seeing these lefty kooks using kids. They use kids for the children, I suppose.

As for those gathered in Boston, in one respect they at least speak using coherent English and are relatively articulate. They just have no idea what they're talking about. Then again it's Boston, so I guess that makes sense.

Video after the jump.

You can follow me on Twitter or check in at my place.

Float The Rich [John E.]

—Guest Blogger

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, thinks we're headed for a billionaire exodus. While this might be welcome news for the thousands of innocent straw men that have been needlessly slaughtered in teleprompter speechifying over the past few years, the good folks over at the IRS probably aren't thrilled.

So, where will they be going? Belize? Switzerland? Nope.

In the old days, every member of the middle class thought he or she had a chance of becoming rich. In that sort of optimistic environment, you don't want to urinate in the pool that you hope to someday swim in. But lately there's more fatalism in the air, thanks to our crushing debt and the hobo militias that I assume are forming all over the country. The middle class will soon trade their unrealistic dreams of wealth for the opportunity to transfer money from total strangers to themselves—a process often referred to as fairness. That's when the rich will get serious about an escape plan, just like the brave little sea creatures billions of years ago.

But where can the rich go? Their choices include nations that have swarms of malaria-infested mosquitoes, bad TV, deadly climates, decapitation issues, French people, bland food and other signs of inhospitableness. When you consider these factors plus wars, pollution, terrorism, floods, droughts, earthquakes and tornadoes, I think you'll agree that most of the surveyed land on Earth is unfit for fancy people.

This is where technology trends come in. We've already entered the era of megaships, including plans for island-size vessels with permanent homes and businesses. We'll soon see rapid advances in high-speed Internet for seafaring vessels, floating fisheries, hydroponic gardens, energy generated from waves, and desalination. The only other element needed to trigger mass migration of the wealthy to the oceans is a financial motive. If a billionaire can escape taxation by leaving his dirt-based country behind, he'll save more than enough money to pay for his floating fortress of awesomeness.

Okay, but what about the rest of us? What if I want to aimlessly drift along the North Atlantic Current until global warming shuts it all down? Well, there's always Seasteading if you can handle being trapped on a floating libertarian utopia with a bunch of yammering Paulbots. Otherwise, it looks like we'll have to go with makeshift rafts. I'm told Glenn Beck's non-hybrid survival seeds will grow in the open ocean, though. So that's a plus.

Close it up