On Parenting, Soccer Tryouts and Goals

As I write this, my daughter is preparing for her soccer tryouts later this evening. She's a high school freshman and for a long time, her goal has been to play ball in high school. She's had a few strikes against her in life and despite years of club soccer, making the team isn't a slam dunk for her. She's a little stressed about the tryouts.

I'm ready to run in circles, screaming.

Way back when, I recommended the book, Goals!. I've been through its process several times and in so doing, I've modified my goals as a parent from helping my kids succeed to helping them learn how to make good decisions. Similarly, I've been praying about these tryouts and at first I wanted her to make the team. I realized that was the wrong thing to desire, if that was all I desired. Instead, my hope is that I am able to provide good guidance to her, to help her grow into a loving and helpful woman, regardless of how the tryouts turn out. The tryouts are just an event in life, something to help her become the best version of herself.

Of course, if she kicks booty this evening and makes the team, that wouldn't be so bad, either.

My advice to her going in to the tryouts is to relax, knowing that whatever happens, she has done everything she could have done to get ready for this. She can take pride in her preparation and effort, no matter the result. Oh, and try to score a goal like Ryan Taylor did in Newcastle's win over Everton.
Update: Did I mention it's raining like crazy? Awesome.

We've Seen This Before

The WSJ has a front-page story today, Europe Pulls Back From The Brink. Here's a tidbit.

Greece and Italy—whose fiscal and political crises have set off ever-bigger scares among global investors—took concrete steps toward budgetary austerity Friday, helping soothe markets for the moment.

We saw this kind of thing time and time again as Greece lurched from one rescue to the next, but with each rescue their bond rates ratcheted up. The rates would jump up, the rescue would come and the rates would fall back, but not as far as they rose. Inexorably, Greek rates went into the stratosphere while one rescue after another was heralded as the one that would save them all.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Elections Are Overrated

The Italians, having moistened their pantaloons as they watched their bond yields blast off, heading for who-knows-how-high, are taking things seriously. First, they want a new government, but they're not too interested in waiting to see what the population wants.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 11 - Emma Marcegaglia, the head of industrial employers' confederation Confindustria, on Friday pleaded with Italy's politicians to agree on the formation of a national unity government headed by Mario Monti.

She said the alternative to an emergency government led by the former European commissioner, snap elections, would be dangerous given the financial crisis enveloping the country...

"There are no alternatives (to an emergency government) because a three-month election campaign would ruin the country."

Meanwhile, the Italian parliament is throwing old folks and whole government agencies off a cliff in order to save the country.

(ANSA) - Rome, November 11 - An austerity package paving the way for Premier Silvio Berlusconi to hand over the reins of command passed from the Senate to the House Friday as Italy gathered momentum in addressing its debt crisis.

The package, which contains EU-mandated moves on pensions, liberalisation, administrative cost-cutting and slashing red tape, was passed by 158 votes with 11 nays.

"Liberalisation" means selling off government assets such as whole agencies and their jobs. "Slashing red tape" means removing regulations and regulators.

If socialism worked, wouldn't they be doing more of it now that there's a crisis and not less?

Here, an Italian socialist tries to get the attention of a passing capitalist, hoping he'll stop by and help out.

Am I Missing Something?

Was this supposed to be attractive? I get that fashion is sometimes over-the-top and avant-gard and all, but this looks like the woman has completely lost her mind.

see more Crazy Shoes and Cool Accessories

Link Of The Day And Matthew 25:40

Here's the link. Here's an excerpt:

At one of the stops, a group of young men and a woman came in. They must have been in their twenties, or early thirties at most. As soon as they walked into the train (it was filling up at that point), they start being completely obnoxious. They literally start making fun of the homeless guy, pretending that they are spraying themselves with deodorant, and pretty much being the worst examples of humanity that they could possibly be. They start loudly making fun of everything about this homeless man. They loudly make fun of his weight, his smell...treating him like he has no dignity whatsoever. They start laughing raucously and some other passengers start joining in with the laughing.

Matthew 25:40: Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'

Enough Is Enough With OWS

They've now got a TB outbreak in Occupy Atlanta.

The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease. WGCL reports that a health department spokeswoman said there is a possibility that both Occupy Atlanta protesters and the homeless people in the shelter may still be at risk since tuberculosis is contracted through air contact.

The Occupy barnyards ought to be shut down immediately. This isn't a matter of free speech any more, it's a matter of public health and safety. I know no one in power wants to be all Squaresville and make the kids end their sleepover, but enough is enough with this.

If Tuberculosis isn't enough to make us clean out these man-made disasters with fire hoses of Lysol, then what is?

When It Hits The Fan, Socialists Turn To The Greedmongers To Save Their Skins

Dig this.

After yields on Italian government bonds soared above 7% on Wednesday, President Giorgio Napolitano unexpectedly announced that he had named Mr. Monti, a former European commissioner, as senator for life. By bestowing an honor reserved for just a handful of other Italians in the upper house of Parliament, Mr. Napolitano made it easier for Mr. Monti to take up a government post, even though he isn't an elected official...

The moves were aimed at reversing what seems like an unstoppable decline of faith in Italy. On Wednesday, investors sent Italian shares into a tailspin and drove up yields on government bonds maturing as soon as 2013 to levels unseen since 1997...

That Mr. Napolitano, a former member of the Italian Communist Party, has sponsored a free-market economist shows how serious the head of state was in seeking the fastest way to take market pressure off his country.

Emphasis mine.

Huh. I'll bet that two years ago, Mr. Napolitano was telling everyone who would listen that Mr. Monti was a greedy, plutocrat, racist homophobe. Now that the progressives have turned Italy into a economic basket case, it's time to bring the greedmongers back to save the day.

I Resemble That Remark!

Click here.

How Fast Was The Italian Meltdown?

It was so fast that the Italians haven't even had time to riot. I'm not being flippant or snarky here, either. This has all blown apart so fast that the populace hasn't reacted yet.


Rates on Italian bonds. Note that this chart, only a few days old, is woefully out of date. The upper bound on the graph is well below the current bond rates of 7.4% or whatever they are right now.

Italian Bonds Break 7%

Oof.

Italian bond yields have now surely passed the point of no return. With 10-year bonds now yielding more than 7.3% and rising, it is hard to see how Rome can possibly stop this dangerous spiral. The mother and father of all bailouts looks inevitable if Italy is to avoid a catastrophic default: it has more than €300 billion of debt to refinance in the next year alone. But who is going to provide the money to keep Rome afloat?

Mach schnell mit der Druckerpresse!

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

And Now On To The Main Event., Italy.

Greece is saved! Or maybe not. At least the banks that hold worthless Greek debt are saved. That's what matters there. At least for 2011. For 2012 and beyond, Greece and the rest are doomed, but Eurosocialism was never about the future, only about the present.

Greece was a sideshow and everyone knew that. The chain of frantic bailout efforts and "austerity" budgets was not about Greece, it was about Spain and Italy. The typically short-sighted theory was that if the Eurosocialists could convince bondholders that Greece was going to be OK, they wouldn't panic about Italian and Spanish debts blasting out of orbit and heading for Neptune. That was never going to work for reasons that are becoming all to obvious.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote this:

You can't have the kind of debts (Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy) has with (olive oil, sardine, tourism, lousy Italian cars) income. This is like a runaway freight train and the bondholders and European Central Bankers keep getting surprised every time the thing smashes through another flimsy barricade.

The last barricades are coming up very soon as Italian bonds are getting killed. Whether Greece was "solved" or not means nothing to bondholders who are deciding that the market for their allegedly convertible Italian securities is rapidly drying up and it's time to unload the things. It's not the number of Italian bonds the Italian government is trying to sell, it's the total number of Italian bonds up for sale and with an overall debt of $2.6T, there's a lot of Italian bonds out there waiting to be be thrown onto the market. More and more people aren't waiting.

With Italian bond yields surging higher, analysts said Italy is at the brink of being unable to afford to borrow in the public markets.

Less than two weeks after European leaders unveiled an agreement that was designed to bolster confidence in the region, the yield on Italy's 10-year debt drew close to the 7% mark, a line in the sand of both practical and psychological importance to the market...

"I don't know if 7% is the upper limit, or if it's 6.9% or 7.25%, but I do know [Italy] can't go on for very long having these kinds of bond yields," said Gabriel Stein, director at Lombard Street Research in London.

The MSM is watching the fate of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Will he resign? Will his allies stick by him? Will he grow a beard? It doesn't matter. Socialized medicine, free college education, massive pensions, a huge government workforce, it's all gone. We're watching the final days of Eurosocialism no matter what. Even if they fix things in 2011, they'll return to the same problems in 2012, 2013 and on until it breaks down for good.


Silvio Berlusconi now has a beard. We're saved!

Long Beach And Los Angeles After A Rain

I spent last Thursday night at the Long Beach Courtyard. I was visiting my son, who goes to CSULB, and on Friday morning had to drive back to the LA Convention Center for BlogWorld. It rained Thursday night and Friday morning was spectacular. Here's a photo I took from my room at the Courtyard before I left. Note that you can see the mountains in the distance. The mountains! From Long Beach! The smog was all washed away. I deliberately left the image large so you could make out the details. Click on the image for the big version.


Driving in to LA on the 110 was breathtaking. When the smog has been washed away and there are big, puffy clouds in the sky, the LA skyline is beautiful. Set against the backdrop of the mountains in the north and east, the skyscrapers were clear and bright and beautiful. It was one of those moments when everything comes together to give you something wonderful to enjoy. I really wanted to stop and take a photo, but I was in a hurry to get to the conference. I probably should have pulled off and found a way to do it, but I chose the conference over the photo opportunity. Oh well.

BlogWorld LA 2011 - Google+ For Business

The first big keynote talk of the Expo was Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan describing how they used Google+ and comparing it to Facebook. In short, they both love Google+. They're of the opinion that it will be bigger than Facebook. Yes, Facebook has all the people now, but Google+ has Google behind it and in the end, that's going to be a big deal. Major points from their talk:

• Facebook is for friends and family, Google+ is for people who share your passions. It's more community-centered.


• A good way to use Google+ is to search it for keywords related to your hobbies and passions. That will reveal plenty of others in your field.


• Surprisingly, Guy Kawasaki does not use circles in Google+. Circles are what allow you to group your connections into subsets based on topic or location or whatever you want. With the people that I know, it is the primary reason to move to Google+, but he doesn't use it at all. Instead, he uses it in one, giant stream.


• Guy said the technology was going to be used in unanticipated ways. For example, there was recently a Google Hangout where a group got together to cook online. That's an interesting idea.


• Social networking in general allows you to get to know people before you get down to business. (That's been said many, many times before.)


• Guy and Chris hated avatars. They think you ought to have a photo of yourself and not something wacky. Like a cat.

Both Guy and Chris are atypical users. Most of the audience probably couldn't relate to them - I know I struggled with that. As soon as they got on Google+, I'm sure they immediately picked up 10-30,000 followers. I'm on Google+ and I'm not sure of the value of the thing, but after this talk I'm going to spend some time searching for folks with my interests and seeing where that leads.


Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan.

Occupy Boston Invades The Egyptian Consulate To Protest The Slaughter Of Coptic Christians In Egypt

... just kidding! Of course they didn't do that. They occupied the Israeli Consulate to protest the Joooooos!

Julius Streicher would be so proud!

Blogging Has Really Gone Mainstream

... you can tell because this year's BlogWorld in LA was dominated by corporate bloggers and social media experts. For most of the people I talked to, it was their first time at a BlogWorld Expo. Many had their own blogs on the side, but almost everyone I met was working for a company in the public affairs or marketing department doing the company blog or Facebook page.

It's good to see that blogging has become so accepted, but it made for a pretty subdued conference. It might also have had something to do with the fact that the event was held in LA instead of Vegas.

More later.

Courtyard Is Better Than Marriott

... because it gives you the same things a Marriott does, but without all the pretension.

I'm up in LA for Blogworld Expo and the first night, I stayed at the LAX Marriott (LAXM). I always stay within the Marriott chain in order to save rewards points and the LAX hotel was the closest to the LA Convention Center that still had vacancies. Big mistake.

I drove up, missed the self parking turnoff and got jumped by the valets. $37 later, my car was parked. Self-parking was something like $29 so I was paying either way. Gahhhh!

The hotel itself was gorgeous, but I don't care about gorgeous. Here's all I want:

• Internet


• In-room coffee


• Two beds - one to sleep in and one to throw my stuff on

I checked out the next day and went down to the Long Beach Courtyard (LBC). I was going out to dinner with my son who is at CSULB, so the place was convenient enough for me. Here's how the two compared.

LBC had a carafe for the in-room coffee meaning it brewed two cups. LAXM brewed a single serving into a paper cup. Advantage: LBC.

LBC had free Internet. LAXM charged $11. Advantage: LBC.

Both had two beds. Advantage: Even.

The LAXM had high ceilings, but while sleeping, surfing the web and blogging, that means nothing to me. The LAXM was in better shape, but while doing the aforementioned activities, I don't really notice the ratty carpet in the elevators or the aging paint on the hallway walls. Since I'm not interested in bringing some chick back to my hotel room, I don't care if it's a little shabby. I just want the hotel to be in a safe part of town with basic amenities.

I don't need my hotel to be near my meetings, either. I have this crazy box on wheels called a "car" that makes distances seem like nothing. If I listen to 10 minutes more of Mark Steyn's After America while driving to the conference, that's fine with me. I'm not coming home to kids or cat or dogs or wife, so getting in a little late at the end of the day means nothing. As far as locations go, what I really want are photo opportunities after working hours so I can post interesting shots on the blog.

Resolved: From now on, I'm staying at Courtyards in interesting locations.

Blogworld Between Sessions

I clamped my camera to a door handle in a hallway outside of the session rooms at Blogworld LA and ended up with this video. Enjoy!

G-20 Decides Not To Invest In Toads

The Euros hunt for a sugar daddy to keep their infantile social welfare states alive had better move on to Mars and Saturn because the people of Earth aren't interested in throwing mountains of money down their particular rathole.

Europe emerged Friday from the two-day Group of 20 industrial and developing nations summit with precious little to show. No G-20 country committed to help seed the euro zone's bailout fund, and the nations resolved only to continue talking about providing additional firepower through the International Monetary Fund.

Here's a fun little excerpt about Italy.

One small step emerged: Italy, the focus of substantial worries in European debt markets, agreed to permit the IMF to monitor its progress with fiscal reforms. IMF inspectors will head shortly to Italy and will report regularly on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's efforts to reduce Italy's huge debt burden, which is second only to Greece's in the euro zone.

And now, a hypothetical foretaste of where we're headed here in the US, an excerpt from a WSJ article in the not-too-distant future.

One small step emerged: America, the focus of substantial worries in global debt markets, agreed to permit the IMF to monitor its progress with fiscal reforms. IMF inspectors will head shortly to the US and will report regularly on President Barack Obama's efforts to reduce America's huge debt burden, which is second to none.

If you thought living under our government was problematic, just wait until you live under our government living under the IMF. Sovereignty is yours only so long as you can pay your bills.

Cheezburger of the Day

At Blogworld

I've been blessed to be able to attend all of the Blogworlds since the beginning and this year I'm in LA for the 2011 Expo. In the past, I've blogged right from the conference sessions, but this year I'm going retro and am not bringing my laptop. For one thing, I didn't get many hits on my posts and for another, my new laptop is basically a Lamborghini, both in speed and size. I don't want to sit with a sports car on my lap all day, so it's not coming into the buildng with me.

Instead, I'm going to be That Weird Guy Over There Who Clearly Doesn't Get This Whole Blogging Thing and will take notes with pen and paper. I'm bringing my camera, so I'll get some shots, but I'll wait until tonight to post them and my takes from the day's sessions here.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come - Capping Loan Payments

President Obama feels the pain of the poor college students who have taken out six-figure loans and are now expected to pay them back. Here's his proposal.

That’s why we’re making changes that will give about 1.6 million students the ability to cap their loan payments at 10 percent of their income starting next year.

I like this idea and think it needs to be extended to other areas as well. How about these:

• We will give you the ability to cap your tax payments to 10 percent of your income.


• We will give you the ability to cap your house payments to 10 percent of your income.


• We will give you the ability to cap your car payments to 10 percent of your income.


• We will give you the ability to cap your credit card payments to 10 percent of your income.

I think this will get America working again. After all, if we do this, I can afford a $2.5M home, a Lotus Exige and $350,000 in credit card debt. Talk about throwing the economy into high gear! Pass this bill, Mr. Heartless Republican Plutocrat Homophobe Racist!

A Lotus Exige. We can't wait!

A Little More On That Greek Referendum

Two caveats. First, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, quoted below, likes apocalyptic scenarios and dislikes the EU. Second, it's possible that the Greek Parliament may find a way to stop the referendum on the debt deal before it goes much farther. Having said that, Ambrose made some good points in his column yesterday afternoon.

The spokesman of French president Nicolas Sarkozy ... said the move was “irrational and dangerous”. Rainer Brüderle, Bundestag leader of the Free Democrats, said the Greeks appear to be “wriggling out” of a solemn commitment. They face outright bankruptcy, he blustered.

Well yes, but at least the Greeks are stripping away the self-serving claims of the creditor states that their “rescue” loan packages are to “save Greece”.

They are nothing of the sort. Greece has been subjected to the greatest fiscal squeeze ever attempted in a modern industrial state, without any offsetting monetary stimulus or devaluation.

The economy has so far collapsed by 14pc to 16pc since the peak – depending who you ask – and is spiralling downwards at a vertiginous pace.

The debt has exploded under the EU-IMF Troika programme. It is heading for 180pc of GDP by next year. Even under the haircut deal, Greek debt will be 120pc of GDP in 2020 after nine years of depression. That is not cure, it is a punitive sentence.

... The Greeks were made to suffer IMF austerity without the usual IMF cure. This was done for one purpose only, to buy time for banks and other Club Med states to beef up their defences ...

(L)ike the Spartans, Thebans, and Thespians at the Pass of Thermopylae, the Greeks were sacrificed to buy time for the alliance.

I would argue that the cause of the credit crisis has been a societal one - a belief in a secular Santa Claus. If you voted the right way, the government would shower gifts upon you, gifts that came from ... from ... from, well, from somewhere. Perhaps it was magic. In any case, you didn't have to work and save, you could just have what you wanted. Sort of like that magic piece of plastic you carry around that lets you buy whatever you want, only with many fewer and much smaller bills sent to your door.

The dream of every OWS protestor. Magical money.
So the Greeks have been getting a good, old-fashioned caning for doing exactly what the rest of Europe, the US and Japan have been doing for decades. We're teaching them a lesson and looking on them in scorn for having done it faster and more flagrantly than we did. Why shouldn't they call a referendum? Why not flip all of their creditors the bird and go back to the drachma?

You don't think we're going to pay our creditors back, do you?

George Papandreou Doing The Sensible Thing

On one side, the EU is jamming more austerity measures down Greece's throat and on the other side, there are riots going on in Athens to protest the budget cuts they are already experiencing. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has done what any sane national leader would do in his case. He threw in the towel and asked his citizens to make the choice. Washing his hands of the whole affair, he's letting the people of Greece figure out how to get out of the mess that they themselves voted to get into over the last several decades.

LONDON—Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's call for a referendum on a freshly minted bailout package rattled European officials and global markets, sparking warnings that the move could force the collapse of the Greek government and push the country into a destabilizing default on its sovereign debt.

The decision opened a rift within the ruling Socialist party, with one lawmaker resigning from the party in disagreement with the referendum and another one calling for early elections.

There's a rift? Like Papandreou cares. Right now he's probably more concerned with his offices being burned down when the police finally get tired of holding back the rioters who are protesting paying back the money they all knowingly borrowed.

Fears that the euro-zone plan could unravel if the bailout program is rejected at a Greek referendum or force new elections rattled global financial markets with stocks and the euro plunging, and 10-year Italian bond yields rising perilously close to their highest levels since the euro's inception.

Well, shucks, the rest of the Eurozone is in a bad way. I'm not sure that's keeping the Greek PM up at night. If they didn't want to be in trouble, they should have stayed solvent. Instead, they've all followed Greece down this particular rathole to one extent or another. It's not the Greeks' fault that the Italians have borrowed themselves into insolvency.

Good on ya, Mr. Papandreou.

Investigating Events 2,000 Years After The Fact

I just finished listening to Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. Lee was an atheist who was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune when his wife converted to Christianity. Using his investigative skills, Lee set out to prove that Christ, or at least Christ's divinity, was a myth. The result was the most compelling and complete case for Christianity I've ever heard. From historical accounts, archaeology, psychology and much more, Lee pursued the topic and found more and more evidence for Christ. I spent a little time noodling around YouTube and found this brief summary by Lee.

Enjoy. And then check out the book. Religion aside, I learned a lot about the different disciplines he applied to his work. His work is so compelling and so complete that I think I'm going to stop reading theology books for quite a while and go back to philosophy, fiction, business and science. After you read Lee, there's not a whole lot left to read.

Happy Halloween!

This year, my daughter went to school dressed as a cop. Sort of a Serpico cop, wearing mostly denim. They don't allow toy guns, so instead of a gun, she just held her hands together in a gun shape and shot at people this morning around the house before going to school. A lot. Here's a set of cop sayings as I believe she would interpret them.

"You have the right to remain dead!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Come out with your hands up! You're easier to shoot that way!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, it hardly matters!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Did you see anything suspicious? Did it look like this?" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Your registration has expired! And so have you!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Do you know how fast you were going? It wasn't faster than a bullet!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"I'll get you and your little dog, too!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

That last one isn't very cop-like, but in our house it just works. Hope y'all have a great Halloween!

Links: Over at The Temple of Mut, Halloween is being celebrated most, err, EgyptianGoddessally!

The Beach Boys And Church

... make an odd combination, but there it is.

We were at Mass yesterday and right as the priest was starting his homily, the sound system developed a strange feedback effect that sounded like nothing so much as the electronic rhythm at the beginning of the Beach Boys' Do It Again. I love that song anyway, so I didn't really need any more prompting to post it.

Enjoy.

San Diego Sunrise

I shot this one yesterday morning from my backyard with the camera pointed 90 degrees off of sunrise. I picked the angle because it gave me the best shot of the horizon. After playing with it, I've figured out I could do a lot better if I shoot from my upstairs balcony. It's only 60 seconds long, so it won't take too much of your time.

Enjoy.

The Ultimate Warning Sign

... seen on the Hilton Mission Bay dock.

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

European Shell Game

Greece is saved. That much we know. The Euro banks are going to take 50 cents on the dollar for Greek bonds so Greece doesn't have to pay back what it borrowed. Hurrah!

Not so fast.

The banks that loaned Greece that money rely on Greek bonds retaining their value in order to claim the reserves they need to loan money to businesses and to pay out money to depositors at the ATM. Now that the Greek bonds are cut in half, they need to restore their reserves from somewhere. Where are they going to get that cash? Well, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is going to provide that. And where does the EFSF get that money? It borrows it.

In effect, the obligation for the Greek debt has gone from Greece to the banks to the EFSF. EFSF debt is serviced by ... members of the EU ... who can't pay their bills now. The real backstop to this is the European Central Bank which can print money.

Guess who's going to end up paying the tab and how they're going to do it.


Mach schnell mit der Druckerpresse!

You Loaned A Company $529M So They Could Make A Sportscar For Multimillionaires

... but at least it is (mostly) all-electric. Don't you feel better now? Our Monks of Miscellaneous Musings have a video of the fellow who received our cash donations, err, loan.

In any case, meet the Fisker Karma.

Business partners Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler are visibly on edge. While they want to dedicate every ounce of their focus on this all-important launch of their first baby, the 2012 Fisker Karma, their attentions are being constantly pulled away from it by big conference calls regarding the money and logistics of launching the whole Fisker Automotive franchise. Are they really and truly answering a $95,900-$108,900 question with this bold effort that enough people are asking? ...

By late 2009, Fisker Automotive was coming out of essentially a nine-month hiatus during which Lucifer rose from Hell and swallowed mankind whole. Or so we thought. But investors finally felt like investing again, and just short of half a billion bucks had been promised to our heroes, much of this attracted by the imminent huge loan being talked about from the Department of Energy. Everything rode on that razor edge – not just for the Karma itself, but also for any future plans. That $529 million loan from you and me came through in September 2009 and Fisker Automotive went directly from vaporware to a $1 billion, fully-funded company with big cigar-chomping (but from sustainable tobacco farms) plans.

What's it look like, you ask? Try this.

$529M buys a whole lot of neighborhood drug rehab work and repairs on rundown schools. It can provide scholarships to deserving, underpriveleged kids. It can be given back to businesses who employ people. Best of all, it could be not borrowed in the first place. $529M can do a lot of things.

Right now it's building $100K sportscars. In Finland. For rich ecofreaks.

Awesome.

Losing The Future

... not winning it. Dig this.

The cordial 40-year-old Greek website designer Thanos Sioris never dreamed he would spend his life with his wife and son anywhere but at home in Greece, where he worked hard for 12 years to build up his company.

But the debt crisis that has rocked the euro zone abruptly shattered his world. The country's worst recession in 40 years and skyrocketing taxes are now threatening his business and forcing him to uproot his family to survive.

"Here in Greece, everything is so depressing and so expensive ... My clients are closing down, firing staff, they owe money to banks," Sioris said as he prepared to leave for Hong Kong for one month to develop contacts there.

"Why live here without work, without income?"

Sioris, who is making plans to move to the Asian financial center by next summer, is part of a new wave of emigration of thousands of qualified Greeks seeking to escape their country's record high unemployment.

They "invested" in their country to the point where their younger generation of top talent is leaving. That doesn't sound like Winning the Future to me.

Must-See Movie: The Way

Last night, my wife and I went out and saw The Way.

I can't recommend this film highly enough.

I found the trailer for the movie on YouTube, but I fear it gives away too much. Instead, here's a tiny clip of Emilio Estevez, the director and producer and Martin Sheen, the star, discussing the film.

The movie is beautiful on so many levels. It follows the path of a grieving father who decides to walk a pilgrimage road from southern France into Spain. It's one of the deepest and most moving films I've ever seen.

It's not going to be around long in the theaters. The cinematography makes it worth seeing on the big screen. Go see it if you get the chance.

Occupy Cupertino, Dude

Seriously.

This was a nasty, vindictive man who laid off workers en masse, bragged about stealing ideas from competitors, belittled his employees with screaming tirades laced with oaths and imprecations, overburdened them with heinous work schedules, cheated his best friends and oldest colleagues when it came time to distribute shares, outsourced everything he could to Chinese factories that employ child labor under dangerous conditions, practiced a cruel Darwinian meritocracy that disdained diversity, lied constantly out of pure habit, sicced the government on his chief business rival, possessed a “Nietzschean attitude that ordinary rules didn’t apply to him”, and even denied paternity of his firstborn child. Then he took credit for the work he practically whipped out of people while posing as a benevolent sage.

Grillades and Grits

I made this last night and it was delicious! It's my favorite dish at my favorite restaurant in the DC area, Southside 815. I used this recipe for the Grillades and Grits, this one for the seasoned flour and this one for the cheese grits. Note: I used cheese grits rather than normal grits as that's what they do at Southside.

The result: Pure deliciousness!

Film Noir Bible Research

At the suggestion of a local parish priest, I'm listening to Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. Lee was a legal reporter for the Chicago Tribune who was an atheist. When his wife converted to Christianity, he decided to research this Jesus fellow in the manner of his court reporting.

The Audible version is read by Dick Fredricks like a film noir narration. It makes the whole thing come across like an old movie. It's a little distracting, but in a fun way. As the story moves along, Lee interviewing one scholar after another, trying to get to the truth of the matter, I imagine him in a smoke-filled office, fingering the .45 in his pocket, wondering if the suspect he's grilling is lying to him or is about to pull out a gun and shoot him.

The Romans had found him guilty and executed him, but something just seemed fishy to me. A couple of phone calls had led me to ask some questions the cops didn't want asked. When I returned to my office, they were there waiting for me. It was going to be a long night.

East Meets West

Today's lunch: leftover Shrimp Pad Thai and a grilled Bratwurst.

White, Southern Tea Partiers Are Racist

We know this because they are the intersection of two known racist groups - the Tea Party and white Southerners.

Right?

Mitt Romney Has Real World Business Experience

... or so they say. He makes the most boneheaded marketing errors, so I'm not sure about the whole thing.

Left Coast Rebel has the round up on Mittens' latest foray into the world of Edsel and New Coke. Ohio governor John Kasich is trying to face down the public employee unions whose pensions and contracts are threatening to do to Ohio what they did to Rhode Island. There's a controversial and unpopular ballot initiative that Kasich is supporting which tries to bring some fiscal sanity to Ohio. When questioned, Mitt refused to support it.

Huh?

Mitt's biggest problem is that he is seen as a spineless worm, someone full of blather, but not full of fight. Here was a chance to flex his biceps without any risk at all. The general election voters would never know or remember his support for the initiative, but the primary voters, particularly the Tea Party and punditry zealots, noticed it immediately. It was another wimp-out by Mittens.

Mr. Capitalism had a chance to deal with his biggest marketing problem for free and he didn't understand his own marketing problems enough to take it. I don't think he's the business genius everyone says he is.

Over at Ricochet, they're going bonkers against Mitt as well. I think a lot of big name Republicans stayed out of the race for fear of Mitt and his "organization" and money. I don't think it will be too long before they smack their foreheads in anguish, realizing that Mitt is nothing more than inert material, going nowhere. You can effectively remove his 23% support from the polls and use the rest to figure out who is going to win the nomination. Chris Christie, in particular, really blew it.

Dear OWS, Rhode Island Is Bankrupt

Deep blue Rhode Island has bankrupted itself through government compassion.

ON the night of Sept. 8, Gina M. Raimondo, a financier by trade, rolled up here with news no one wanted to hear: Rhode Island, she declared, was going broke...

After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode Island’s $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis. Ten cents of every state tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it might have missed some. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions, including the big one: Are these numbers for real?

“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of this state,” Ms. Raimondo said in a recent interview. And if the fight is lost? “Either the pension fund runs out of money or cities go bankrupt.”

Meanwhile, the OWS movement has metastasized yet again and is now showing up as malignant in Providence.

I've spent a lot of time on this blog pondering what it must be like to live in Greece where the government has bankrupted the nation through hopelessly generous social spending and public employee pay. How is it possible that the populace is rioting for yet more money when they've already spent everything they've got and all of the future's money, too? How does the human brain handle that cognitive dissonance?

Wonder no more, my friends, because the Occupy Providence movement is here to answer that question. That link takes you to their website. For the life of me, I can't make heads or tails of the thing. It's worth popping over to it and spending some time clicking around. Please let me know if you see anything even resembling coherent demands. To me, it looks like a transcript from a particularly politically-obsessed sleepover by a bunch of 14-year-olds. It's like a posh private school's Model UN gone very, very wrong.

If Occupy Providence is any guide, the answer to the Greek conundrum is just about what it seems. Decades of compassion have divorced the population from reality to the point where they think they can vote themselves money - the primary business of the nation is politics. When the money spigot gets shut off, their only answer is political action.

Good luck with that.

The Best Bond Girl Of All Time - Janice Rule

... and she wasn't even in a Bond film. Let's just call her the best Spy Girl of all time.

Janice plays Sheila Sommers in the Matt Helm spy spoof, The Ambushers. Dean Martin is Matt Helm and the movie is over-the-top camp with Dino leering and drinking his way through the scenes. The plot is thin, the extras are silly and the gadgets are ridiculous. Having said that, the chemistry between Dean Martin and Janice Rule is terrific. Unlike the wooden sex toys that are the Bond girls, Janice's character is sassy and fun. The interplay between the two of them is on par with The Thin Man love-sparring between William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Janice and Dino. A great combination.
It may be that the lively, perhaps ad-libbed banter between these two would have been impossible in a Bond movie where they had to at least try to be serious. The only Bond girl that comes close to Janice's joie de vivre is Miss Moneypenny and that's probably because she was played for laughs - the running joke being that she would never win James Bond.

The Ambushers is not a great movie or even a decent spy film. It's a fun way to blow 90 minutes and wonder what the Bond films could have been like had they been a little more human.

What Happens When Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Head?

You look like this.

Why Aren't Actors Buddhist?

... or Hindu?

Over the weekend, I listened to Shatner Rules: Your Key to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large. It's William Shatner's reflections on life at age 80 and it's a lot of fun. While he's not terribly deep, he's charming, entertaining and thoroughly understands his success.

Shatner spends most of the book giving you rules for living illustrated by cute anecdotes from his life. There is a brief detour into seriousness where he talks about the environment and how he thinks we're all going to die because we're killing the planet, but the audiobook is well-constructed and it's easy to flip to the next chapter.

Shatner's sophistication is confined to life and career advice. His science and metaphysics leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately, he spends very little time on those. Having said that, as he is 80, Shatner reflects on his own mortality near the end of the book and spends a little time stumbling around the meaning of life. (Hint: his conclusion involves having fun.) He refers to himself as a Jewish boy from Montreal, but that reference just illustrates his ignorance.

Rule: You can't claim to be Jewish if you don't go to synagogue and you profess your atheism / agnosticism in your book.

When he was younger, Shatner fashionably visited the Himalayas to find enlightenment. What happened? Whatever his experiences might have been, they didn't take root. From the existential questions he poses at the end of the book, it's clear that there was no serious change in him from the experience.

Before: Act, ride horses, party.

After: Act, ride horses, party.

Rule: A trip to find enlightenment that only results in a couple of brief anecdotes is called a "vacation".

Shatner's not the only one of the Hollywood set to have gone to Tibet. So why doesn't Studio City have more Buddhist temples?

This is not a photo from Hollywood and Vine.

Mitt Romney Has A Superb Campaign Organization

... and I hope they've all got day jobs on the side.

Politics is a sales job. The product is the candidate and the voters are the prospects. There are four different states for a prospect:

1. He knows what you're selling and wants it. Easy sell!


2. He doesn't know what you're selling, but wants what it does. A few demonstrations and you've probably got the sale!


3. He doesn't know what you're selling and doesn't think he needs what it does. You have to convince him he needs it and that your product is the right choice. Tough job.


4. He knows what you're selling and hates it. Get another product to sell because you're going to take a bath on this one!

Mitt Romney is a #4 kind of product. He's been running for president for 5 years. The Republican primary voters know who he his. They also dislike him. That's why, no matter what he does, he can't break 25-30%. If you've got a #4 product, you can double or triple your sales force and it won't make much of a difference. The quality of your organization becomes irrelevant if all you've got to sell is a bag of toads.

If I was one of his field operatives, I'd bring along a nice set of non-stick cookware to sell at the same time. At least I'd be able to see what success looked like.


The ScanPan is a top-of-the-line skillet and I can offer easy payments!

An Object In Motion Tends To Stay In Motion, A Bachelor Tends To Stay At Rest

My wife is away this weekend, working the women's Cursillo retreat. I'm laying around the house like a particularly inactive sloth, a house which in two days has become littered with clothes and dishes. I don't want to do anything. I lay around, watch soccer, occasionally drag myself over to the computer and maybe visit friends.

Meh.

The California Air Resorces Board Is Made Up Of Morons

The CARB has decided to fight Global Warming Climate Change by instituting cap and trade for our state. This means we will have new regulations, new taxes, new governmental entities, blah blah blah ...

China* has decided not to do this. Here's a graphical representation of what this means.


* - Neither has India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, ... I didn't have enough space on the graphic to add all of them. That is left as an exercise for the reader.

Where's The Sense Of Shame?

I'm listening to G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man again and it set my neurons to firing in odd ways as I noodled about an email conversation that was started among friends about the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Here's what I've finally come down to.

Where's the sense of shame among these people?

They're young and got to go to college. They're surrounded by luxury and information. Even in the absence of college, they can teach themselves to do just about anything via free Internet videos. Some of them hold up signs describing their college debt, incurred in the pursuit of degrees that only a complete fool would associate with a career capable of servicing the debt.

In essence, they're running around telling us all that they are spoiled, delusional blunderers.

Have they no shame?

A photo from the "I am an idiot" rally.

Freedom Is Required For Civilization

... and I don't mean political freedom, I mean freedom of action.

Yesterday, I argued that we should be thankful for flies, in part because we could have ended up with worse things like flying, carnivorous spiders. Überblogger Tim Eisele commented,

The thing I'm grateful for is that something like starlings haven't evolved into aerial piranha. It would be a real bummer to be walking down the street, minding your own business, and then suddenly have a flock of piranha-starlings descend on you and skeletonize you in five minutes flat.

In the office, this led to a lively discussion about such things. Could piranha-starlings prevent Mankind from developing an advanced civilization? More generally, what would happen if the dominant carnivore was fast and omnipresent?

First off, in the case of avius pisces chainsawus, you'd never be able to cross an open field unless you had armor or guns. (Even the guns would be of dubious value.) If you couldn't cross open fields, how would you ever get to the point where you made armor in the first place? Human colonies would have to be mostly underground or in places where there was shelter from the Flying Death. Yes, you could start underground and then move aboveground with buildings, like the malls in Toronto that have covered walkways for Winter use, but that comes with it's own dangers like the easy spread of diseases. In effect, the flying piranhas would channel you into an enclosed spaced where microbes could wipe you out, just like the Cliff Dwellers of the American Southwest.

Chalk up another lucky break for us that God decided to lay off making winged Makita sawsalls.


Eaton Center in Toronto, designed to protect you from flying piranha.

Greek Temper Tantrums

The Greeks don't want to repay their loans. They are angry that you even suggest it.

ATHENS—Pressure on the Greek government has intensified as a general strike and mass protests focused on a parliamentary vote for deeper spending cuts to prevent the country from defaulting on its massive debt load...

More than 100,000 Greek workers, students and business owners marched through the streets of the Greek capital Wednesday, gathering in front of the Parliament in protests met by riot police. The protesters were chanting: "Burn. Burn. Burn down the bordello Parliament." ...

The protests marked the first day of a 48-hour strike by civil servants and private-sector workers in opposition to the new cutbacks. It follows weeks of almost daily strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins, as well as a two-week-long protest by municipal workers that has left uncollected garbage festering on the streets of Athens and other cities.

"We have reached the limits of our endurance and, what is worse is that there is no ray of hope," said Stathis Anestis, spokesman for the big Gsee private-sector union. "We want to send a message that these austerity policies have been a catastrophe for Greece."

Message: Please give us more of your money.

The video below, from the recent protests, is worth watching. It's the creation of new Greek ruins.

Be Thankful For Flies

Up on the mountain for this weekend's Cursillo, the weather was exceptional as was the number of tiny flies buzzing about our faces. During one Mass, someone quipped in mock-exasperation, "Why did God create flies in the first place?"

I'm here to answer that question.

First, as annoying as flies are, you have no idea what was left on the drawing board. What if we had tiny dragons buzzing about? What if flies were poisonous? How about zombie flies that only die if you shoot them in the head?

What if spiders could fly? Imagine that - flying, carnivorous spiders. Hoo boy!

How about facing off with a couple dozen winged versions of these guys?
Photo: The Firefly Forest.
Second, do you have any idea at all how hard it was to create a Universe that could sustain life? Adjust any one of a bunch of cosmic constants by just a tiny bit and you get Vast Wastelands of Death. Here's a few examples of these constants:

Fine Tuning Parameters for the Universe

strong nuclear force constant
if larger: no hydrogen would form; atomic nuclei for most life-essential elements would be unstable; thus, no life chemistry
if smaller: no elements heavier than hydrogen would form: again, no life chemistry
weak nuclear force constant
if larger: too much hydrogen would convert to helium in big bang; hence, stars would convert too much matter into heavy elements making life chemistry impossible
if smaller: too little helium would be produced from big bang; hence, stars would convert too little matter into heavy elements making life chemistry impossible
gravitational force constant
if larger: stars would be too hot and would burn too rapidly and too unevenly for life chemistry
if smaller: stars would be too cool to ignite nuclear fusion; thus, many of the elements needed for life chemistry would never form
electromagnetic force constant
if greater: chemical bonding would be disrupted; elements more massive than boron would be unstable to fission
if lesser: chemical bonding would be insufficient for life chemistry

The weak force had to be tuned to an incredibly fine value in order to allow life to evolve. Adjust it just a little bit either way and you get a gigantic, silent tomb of a Universe. Now you want the weak force tuned to the point where flies don't evolve? Aren't you being a bit ungrateful?

So that's it. It could be lots worse and just getting to the point where there are flies at all took a tremendous amount of complicated tuning of cosmic constants.

Be thankful for the flies.

Cheezburger of the Day

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"I'm 180 Days Sober ... From Porn"

I recently met a fellow who, in an unguarded moment, talked about his addiction to porn. The terminology he used, derived from counseling sessions and group therapy, was identical to that used by people who suffer from chemical addictions. That had as much of an impact on me as his description of how it had damaged his family and his life.

When I started thinking about it, it made sense. Sexual pleasure occurs in the limbic system, the rudimentary, dinosaur portion of our brain. The fellow talked about seeing brain activity maps comparing drug addictions to porn addictions and said they were functionally identical. This morning, I spent some time noodling around the Interweb Tubes and found lots of supporting evidence and analysis. Here's a very, very small sample.

Viewing porn causes a complex chemical response in the body.

When an addict looks at porn, testosterone, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin are released, creating what Dr. Judith Reisman refers to as an “erototoxin”. The chemical change, which causes the person engaging in the act to have a temporary feeling of euphoria, becomes a necessity for the person to function. Like any other type of addict, porn addicts become trapped within their disorder, and the difference between casually watching pornography and being an addict hinges on the chemical makeup of the brain.

Cocaine, meth, porn, it's all pretty much the same when it comes to brain plasticity.

A recent study supports growing evidence that compulsive sexuality can indeed be addictive. In 2007, a VBM study out of Germany looked specifically at pedophilia, and demonstrated almost identical finding to the cocaine, methamphetamine, and obesity studies. [25] It concludes for the first time that a sexual compulsion can cause physical, anatomic change in the brain, the hallmark of brain addiction. A preliminary study showed frontal dysfunction specifically in patients unable to control their sexual behavior.

Your brain adapts itself to porn in response to pleasure.

(D)opamine is also released in sexual excitement, increasing the sex drive in both sexes, facilitating orgasm, and activating the brain's pleasure centers. Hence the addictive power of pornography." he says.

But this addiction might also have to do with a protein called delta FosB that accumulates in neurons. Studies with rats have shown that drug use can increase production of this protein, permanently altering their brain chemistry. "Each time the drug is used, more delta FosB accumulates until it throws a genetic switch, affecting which genes are turned on or off," says Doidge. "Flipping this switch causes changes that persist long after the drug is stopped, leading to irreversible damage to the brain’s dopamine system and rendering the animal far more prone to addiction. Non-drug addictions, such as running and sucrose drinking, also lead to the accumulation of delta FosB and the same permanent changes in the dopamine system."

Porn addicts reinforce their addiction each time they masturbate. "Neurons that fire together wire together," says Doidge. "These men got massive amounts of practice wiring these images into the pleasure centers of the brain, with the rapt attention necessary for plastic change. They imagined these images when away from their computers, or while having sex with their girlfriends, reinforcing them. Each time they felt sexual excitement and had an orgasm when they masturbated, a 'spritz of dopamine,' the reward neurotransmitter, consolidated the connections made in the brain during the sessions."

In the end, your limbic system partially eats the rest of your brain.

Scientific evidence now strongly supports an organic basis for all addiction. Neuroscience has shown that all addictions, both drug and natural, are caused by a deficit of dopamine in the reward system. This deficit can be facilitated by viewing pornography. The viewing of pornography disrupts the regular and natural production of dopamine and resets the cells internal thermostat. This deficit produces a very powerful craving which underlies all addiction. The power or driving force behind these cravings and obsessions can literally disconnect the pre-frontal rational brain and drive one to behaviors that can destroy lives. The very definition of addiction is that one continues to participate in behaviors where there are negative consequences despite their best efforts to stop. What we are now seeing is that if the limbic system is constantly unrestrained, it grows stronger and the pre-frontal cortex actually shrinks. In other words, the part of our brains that is able to put the brakes on begins to malfunction. It simply looses the strength to restrain the unwanted behavior. Fortunately, with abstinence and counseling support, there is evidence that the brain can heal itself.

Yowsers.

Just A Quicky

I'm beat from working this weekend's Cursillo and have to saunter in to work and look busy, so I thought I'd throw a quick post out there that hopefully contains some meat to chew on.

One of the guys who came up as a candidate (newbie) this weekend was a USMC helicopter pilot. His helicopter had been accidentally blown up during a training exercise and as a result, he had lost a leg and had been burned over 80% of his body. He not only had no hair left, he had no ears.

When I first saw him, I thought he was going to be the central point of the weekend and his story was going to be one of overcoming tragedy. He was and it wasn't.

The guy had already forgiven the pilot who's dreadful miss had crippled him, he harbored no ill will and didn't come to recover from a disastrous change in his life. He came to become a better man, a better husband and a better father through Christ.

It was impossible not to notice him, his scars were so obvious. His nobility and humility made a tremendous impression on everyone. When you go to these weekends, you realize that almost everyone has had huge bombs go off in their lives - divorces, cancers, addictions, etc. - and a fellow like this Marine can't help but put your own losses and hurts in perspective and help push you to be better.

It was a great weekend. I hope you get to experience one as well.

Well-fed and Chic

I borrowed this video clip from our Monks of Miscellaneous Musings.

Dig how well-fed and well-dressed these protestors are.

Everything they wear, everything they eat, it all owes its existence to the banks and corporations and profits they despise.

Of course that's been pointed out lots of times before, but this video clip seemed to be particularly full of chic protestors, so I thought it worth noting.

I Still Love You Guys

Not replying to comments this weekend. Too hard. I'm working the kitchen at Cursillo. Four days of chopping veggies, doing dishes and waiting tables. It's more fun than a barrel of marmots!

I'll have normal connectivity on Monday. Until then, God bless!

Cheezburger of the Day

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A Good Set Of Demands For The Occupy Wall Street Crowd

... comes from Juan Peron's Twenty Fundamental Truths About Justicialism. It sounds just about perfect to me.

1. True democracy is one where the government does what the people want and defends only one interest: THE PEOPLE


2. Peronism is popular in its essence. All political circles are anti-popular and for this reason are not Peronist.


3. The Peronist works for the Movement. Whoever in its name serves a circle or a caudillo is one only in name.


4. For Peronism there exists only one class of men: workers.


5. In the new Argentina work is a right that creates human dignity and is a duty, for it is right that everyone produce at least what he consumes.


6. For a good Peronist there can be nothing better than another Peronist.


7. No Peronist should feel himself to be more than he is, or less than he should be. When a Peronist begins to feel himself to be more than he is he begins to convert himself into an oligarch.


8. In political action the scale of values of every Peronist is the following: first the Fatherland, then the Movement, and then Men.


9. For us politics are not an end, rather only a means for the good of the Fatherland, which is the happiness of its children and national greatness.


10. The two arms of Peronism are Social Justice and Social Assistance. With them we embrace the people in Justice and Love.


11. Peronism wants national unity and not struggle. It wants heroes and not martyrs.


12. In the new Argentina children are the only privileged ones.


13. A government without a doctrine is a body without a soul. For this reason Peronism has its own political, economic, and social doctrine, which is Justicialism.


14. Justicialism is a new philosophy of life that is simple, practical, popular, profoundly Christian, and profoundly popular.


15. As a political doctrine Justicialism realizes the equilibrium between the rights of the individual and those of the community.


16. As economic doctrine Justicialism realizes the social economy, placing capital at the service of the economy and the latter at the service of social well-being.


17. As a social doctrine Justicialism realizes social justice, which gives every person their right to a social function.


18. We want a socially just, economically free, and politically sovereign Argentina.


19. We constitute a centralized government, an organized state, and a free people.


20. The best we have on this earth is the People.

If you're going to be a fascist, then, by God, be a fascist proudly.

Wall Street Fascists

... and by that, I mean the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

I've got some old friends on Facebook who are now regularly posting pro-Occupy Wall Street stuff like this.


As far as I can tell, that was Thomas Jefferson arguing in favor of a common currency. It only sounds like it has something to do with rapacious investment bankers. There was another one where FDR compared his opponents to fascists because they wanted to give free markets more power. I gently pointed out to my friend that this was completely backwards, that you might be able to accuse FDRs foes of being in favor of an oligarchy, but fascism was the exact opposite and he just ducked and kept going saying, "oligarchy, fascism, whatever" or something like that.

Mark Steyn has a terrific column on the Big Sloth movement of the Occupy Wall Street crowd. If you haven't read it yet, it's worth the time. No one does polemics like Mark and this one's a doozy. He does a great job whacking the obvious nonsense of the movement, but he's still missing the big picture as he calls the protestors "anarchists for big government."

The Occupy Wall Street protestors are, in fact, fascists.

Business is to be subservient to the government. The government is to determine national goals. Private property will be forced to serve these national goals through laws, regulations, taxes and tariffs. The goals they espouse are Peronist and not Nazi, but they are still fascists.

Would calling them what they are change perceptions?

---

Elsewhere across the Theocracy, there are plenty of opinions to choose from.

Our Missionary to the Frozen, Northern Wastelands suggests the protestors can't be dismissed so easily.

Our Monks of Miscellaneous Musings point out that Washington ought to be near the top of the protestors' list of miscreants.

Secular Apostate goes through the demands one by one.

B-Daddy has a Tea Party / crony capitalism take that might surprise you.

Whew! That Was Close!

The Slovakians are going along with the latest Euro bailout after all after first getting rid of their government.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia—Slovakia's parliament will vote to endorse the amended European Financial Stability Facility, the euro zone's rescue fund, by Friday at the latest, Robert Fico, the chairman of the largest opposition and parliamentary party Smer-Social Democracy said Wednesday.

Well, it's smooth sailing from here on out!

I Love The New Passat Ads

... they're consistently funny, clever and charming.

Slovakia Conquers Europe

Slovakia voted today to put an end to the Euro bailout nonsense. All across Europe, Eurosocialists are sitting up straight in cold sweats, blinking and staring straight ahead at nothing.

Somehow This Seems Self-Defeating

Feel better about yourself yet, dummy?

Well This Is Hopeful

The Euros are finally talking about taking steps to end the debt crisis.

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- European leaders pushed back a debt- crisis summit amid opposition to Germany's drive for deeper- than-planned Greek bond writedowns that Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker says may exceed 60 percent.

When asked on Austrian television late yesterday to comment on speculation investors may lose between 50 percent and 60 percent of the value of their holdings, Luxembourg's prime minister, said "we're talking about even more." He didn't comment further.

Banks will fail, life savings will be lost, businesses will go under, but their recovery will finally be able to start.

Link Of The Day

Just click here. You can thank me for it later.

Apple, Goldman Sachs and Exxon

I'd like to suggest that if you want to see who the rapacious, greedy, put-profits-first corporations are, you need to look at Net Profit Margin. This is the amount of each dollar in sales that sluices into the pockets of the fatcats in the boardroom so they can buy new boots to stick them on your necks. Let's compare two hated multinationals and one beloved tech company.

Apple: 21.54%
Goldman Sachs: 18.17%
Exxon: 8.92%

I have to admit that the GS number surprised me. I didn't think they were quite so rapacious, but indeed they are. In 2008, GS got whacked and saw it's net profits cut by a factor of 6, so they're not quite as consistently rapacious as Apple.

Exxon, meanwhile, is a proper capitalist firm, providing valuable goods and services that we all use and need for a reasonable price while employing lots and lots of American workers, paying them fair wages.

Maybe we should hate Exxon a little less.

Juice Defender For Android

If you've got an Android phone, pick up Juice Defender from the apps market. It's great. The thing intelligently turns services off when you're not using them. It just about doubles my phone's battery life. The phone is a bit groggy when waking up as it takes a while to restart the services, but once you get beyond that, the tool works without a hitch.

Here's the Juice Defender website. If you are reading this from your phone, you can probably install it from there.

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!