Have a fire extinguisher close by

this will set your wig on fire so anyway, from American Thinker (via Ace) a primer on the Cloward / Pivin Strategy: Obama adheres to the Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals method of politics, which teaches the dark art of destroying political adversaries. However, that text reveals only one front in the radical left's war against America. The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change. Scary siht, that. The writing is on the wall, large. (Posted from the not-so-way-back machine, written 07FEB09. Why I didn't post it at the time remains a mystery) more soon

The Limbaugh Challenge

all the cool kids are talkin'bout it

so anyway, I first saw this over at Cold Fury, now it looks like all the VRWC bloggers are weighing in on "The Limbaugh Challenge".

It seems that one Andrew Klaven of The Los Angeles Times fame has "served" the libtards thusly:

"If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration's recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That's the likelihood; here's the certainty: You've never listened to Rush Limbaugh.

Oh no, you haven't. Whenever I interrupt a liberal's anti-Limbaugh rant to point out that the ranter has never actually listened to the man, he always says the same thing: "I've heard him!".....

......By lifting some typically Rushian piece of outrageous hilarity completely out of context, the distortion gang knows full well it can get you to widen your eyes and open your mouth in the universal sign of Liberal Outrage. Your scrawny chest swelling with a warm sense of completely unearned righteousness, you will turn to your second spouse and say, "I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate, and I'm tolerant of a wide range of differing views -- but this goes too far!"

There is more untruthfulness in that statement than in a speech by President Obama. Even the commas are self-deceiving. You're not a moderate or you wouldn't be reading this newspaper. You're not tolerant of a wide range of views; you are tolerant of a narrow spectrum of variations on your views. And, whatever you claim, you still haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh......

.....Let me guess at your answer. You don't need to listen to him. You've heard enough to know he's a) racist, b) hateful, c) stupid, d) merely an outrageous entertainer not to be taken seriously or e) all of the above.

Now let me tell you the real answer: You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward. You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do....."

Spot on, Sir. Read the whole thing.

Like Klaven, I listen to Rush every chance I get. But, as I work for a living at my thankless Stoopid Business™ job, my opportunities to listen in are few and far between.

The critisims of Rush Limbaugh haven't changed much in the twenty-plus years he's been on the air. The critics have expanded from attacking Rush's audience (we're all just "mind-numbed robots") to attacking the man himself. And not just any old attack, no, it's an attack from our President, turning the full force and fury of the bully pulpit on a private citizen who just happens to be in the public eye.

Jebezus Christo, it's like Rush is Rick Wagoner, or some siht.

Limbaugh's audience doesn't listen to him to be told how to think; we already know how to think, thank you very much. Rush's popularity stems from him espousing a conservative viewpoint that was seldom heard on the airwaves prior to his debut on the scene. We don't listen to Rush to know what to think; we listen to Rush because he endorses what we think.

It's all about causal relationships, kids. We listen because 'he's saying what we think', not 'we think what he's saying'.

I had a "global warming" metaphore to tie all this up in a nice, tight bundle, but it's left me. There's always tomorrow.....

more soon

Wait a second...

Mr.President? There's a "Mr.Galt" holding for you on line one.....

so anyway, Mike of Cold Fury fame (Cold Fury Actual, to be precise) tips us to yet another example of the growing "Galtism". "Austrian", over at AR15.com has posted an OutStanding rant in the Galt idiom. A long-ish taste:

So, let me get this straight, Mr. or Ms. Congressional/Executive Scumbag....

You've spent the last two decades pumping trillions upon trillions of dollars into particular segments of the mortgage market, a major portion of the U.S. economy, dictating what risks were appropriate, how much would be paid for assuming those risks and generally underpricing risk in the entire system for years and years. You've been inflating a bubble and assuring that the inflation passed to the riskiest portions of the economy. You've been passing the buck for four decades. Every time the economy tries to correct itself, you stall, pump borrowed money into the system, and grow the disaster the country will eventually have to face. You buy votes year after year by delivering graft now, to be paid for later (after you've long left office). In effect, nearly one third of the American economy has been run by central planning for the last five years. During this inflation, you happily collected taxes on everyone, effectively collecting tax on borrowed money and inflated assets (none of which you propose to repay- what luck would I have asking for the real-estate taxes I have paid for years on appraisals that were pure illusion?) I didn't hear you complaining when you saw massive, record revenues to the Treasury thanks to the boom the finance community facilitated and delivered to you, year in and year out. I didn't see you pointing fingers when we dug in and pulled your ass out of two recessions. Finance is a massive portion of the economy because it creates wealth. Period. Your social programs, state and local, are massive bloated vote-buyers because of our hard work, sweat and craft. (New York State, I'm looking at you). We work until mid-May for you and your vote purchasing juggernaut. I accept that. I have for years. This is because what I make from June to December is more than enough to, not just enjoy the American Dream and the promises of success and wealth, but to take the capital I collect over the years and invest it, again and again back into American business, start-ups, and even your fucked up GSE mortgage securities (which my taxes support). We carry the freight. 10% of us pay 70% of all income taxes. 50% of us pay 97% of all income taxes. We tolerate this because this is the promise of America. Work hard, pay taxes, and no one will second guess what you spend your money on in your personal time. No one will tell you how much is a "fair wage."

Now, now that you have run out of delaying tactics, you want to point the finger at... me?

Now that I have pushed the boundries of "fair use", please do go read the whole thing. Austrian lays it out, chapter and verse; the excerpt above is when he's just getting warmed up. Read it all.

We'll have words again soon.

The Department of Righteous Shootings

doG, how I do miss Kim duToit on days like these

so anyway, here's the deal. Some hoodlum wearing a ski mask walks into a Miami Burger King with a gun and places his special order: "Gimme an fcukin' Angry Whopper and all the fcukin' cash in the fcukin' register!" Another customer, Our Hero, who just happened to bring his own gun along, because he has a legal concealed weapons permit (or to put it otherwise: "Shut up, that's why") trades shots with the hoodlum, on principle.

End result? The hoodlum has assumed room temperature, Our Hero is in serious, but stable condition as I type this on the inter-web net-tubes thingies.

If you're the praying type, please include Our Hero in your prayers.

The comments on the Miami Herald piece are heartening. I had expected a lot of panty-waisted wankers exploring what drove the hoodlum to such a degree of desperation that he had no other choice but to commit armed robbery and sacrificed his life because of the oppression of TheMan. Au contrair, the commentary that I've read runs more along the lines of "bad guy dead=good; all the best to Our Hero".

I'm sure I've mentioned this in the past, I haven't the time to search through the past (almost) five years of blogging, but isn't it curious that every time there's some serious gun-grabbing siht going on, we get a rash of these kind of stories? Just sayin', that's all.

we'll have words again soon

Finished, at last

I've submitted my petition to the government for redress of grievances.....give me my money back

so anyway, I've finished the taxes and can now maybe resume a normal schedule, blog wise.

Yes, I'm "Going Galt". I actually had jacked up my exemptions back in December, upon receiving notice from my Stoopid Business™ employer that I could expect 20% less in my paycheck for the month of January 2009.

Wankers. Plural. The government and my Stoopid Business™ employer. And a cast of thousands.

I'd go on and on, but I'm right in the middle of downloading several "symphonic" Led Zeppelin vids and the box is about to crash.

We'll have words again, I'm sure

A few things have caught my eye this week

it's not an all-inclusive list

so anyway, the past week has been a blur, highlighted by a "Black Friday" at my thankless Stoopid.Business™ job; 80 (eighty!) people got sacked, we're talkin' blood on the floor and growd men crying; so my compelling urge to blog has been somewhat subdued. Add that to the fact that my Stoopid.Business™ employer just got de-listed by the NYSE.

Yeah, it's been a stellar week. Tell me agian why I didn't study Marine Biology or go to Culinary Arts School?

Anyone? Is this thing on?

anyway, a few other things left a mark on me in the past few days:

My personal favorite quote of the week:

...or the threats to sue mortgage lenders for redlining and not making loans to the same folks based on the dead, white male concept of doing the fucking math... (Uncle Jimbo, posting at Ace of Spades HQ)

Embolding mine.

"...the dead, white male concept of doing the fucking math..." Dude, I'm going to get weeks of use out of that line.

Elsewhere, R.S.McCain drops any pretense of civility and lets us know what he really thinks:

Foreclose and Evict the Deadbeat Scum

It's along the lines of "your mortgage is not my problem", only a bit harsher. And That's.A.Good.Thing.

McCain's premise, in a nutshell:

That's why I've announced my own plan, "Foreclose and Evict the Deadbeat Scum" (FEDS). It's very simple:

• The banks take back the houses currently occupied by deadbeat scum.
• The deadbeat scum either find a place to rent, or move in with relatives, or go straight to hell. It doesn't really matter. We're talking economics.
• This creates a housing occupancy in the homes formerly occupied by deadbeat scum.
• The banks must either (a) sell the homes for whatever the market will pay, or (b) rent the homes to people who weren't foolish enough to take on balloon-payment mortgages.
• Whatever the ultimate result -- and rents for homes made vacant by the FEDS program may need to be reduced in order to attract tenants -- the point is that the excess-valuation problem in the housing market will be resolved, so that prices once again reflect actual supply and demand.
• Homeowners who don't wish to participate in the FEDS program can opt out by making their fucking loan payments, like they fucking agreed to when they fucking signed their fucking contracts.

Speaking as someone who is currently upside-down on their mortgage, I whole-heartedly endorse his FEDS plan. But you already knew that....

More soon

Did I mention

that LinkedIn is a huge time-suck

so anyway, I've finally succumbed to the whole "social networking" thingie. Which is weird, because I am neither "social" nor do I "network".

That said, I have "re-connected" to a few people from years gone by, so I guess there is an upside. Whatever.

I'm still seeing LinkedIn as a ginourmous time-suck; but then again, I'm not "social" and I don't "network". Your mileage may vary....

More soon