The New Slogan for North Korea

... is being test-marketed for Obamacare. "Everybody in, nobody out!" works best with guard towers, machine guns, minefields and dogs. In fact, it kind of requires them.


More here.

Was that a Man-Made Disaster?

... and isn't it time for our officials to run to the neareast mosque and apologize?

FORT HOOD — An Army psychiatrist about to be deployed to a combat zone overseas shouted a religious slogan in Arabic before fatally shooting 13 people — including 12 soldiers — and injuring 28 others at this sprawling Central Texas military post on Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, said on NBC's Today Show that witnesses heard Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shout "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire. The phrase means "God is great!" in Arabic.

Staying Home

Someone is staying home to keep an eye on the blog.

Our Maximum Leader has wisely chosen not to go to Santa Fe with us.

Link of the Day

... is this post from our Missionary to the Frozen, Northern Wastelands. It's a cool photo essay about a landmark in Colorado. I thought the car was particularly interesting.

Cheezburger of the Day

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Heading off to Santa Fe

We're taking off for a long weekend in New Mexico this morning. I'm bringing my schleptop and my Nikon D60 Artillery Piece, so I'm planning to do some photoblogging from the trip. If you've got suggestions for what to see and do in Santa Fe or Taos, leave them in the comments. Right now, the plan is to not do much of anything other than scope out the artist colonies.

Blog Post Title of the Day

Is the one found here. It's teh awesome!

My Takeaway from Yesterday's Elections

The Republican Party lost, but the Democrats lost more. Oh sure, the Republicans cruised to victory in New Jersey and Virginia, crushing big-spending Democrats by healthy margins. But the real play was in New York where the Republican candidate got 6% of the vote:

Owens (D): 49%
Hoffman (C): 45%
Scozzafava (R): 6%

All of the fatcat incumbent Republicans and the stooges that populate their party committees should be looking at this and waking up. Principle beat party last night, 45-6. I'm still registered as a Republican, if only so I can vote in the primaries. If it came to it in my district, I'd have no problem voting for a Hoffman here over a creep like Scozzafava even if it meant the Democrat won. At 45-6, it looks like I'm not alone.

A Simple Question

Do vampires like to encrypt things?

What Is the Best Investment for Bad Economic Times?

What's the best? Well, actually, there are three really good ones. They're listed here.

Inspiration: Tim Eisele, author of the fabulous Backyard Arthropod Project blog, left this in a comment on another post of mine:

Well, on balance, I suppose making money by feeding the frenzy of a bunch of gold-bugs is better than supporting oneself with the other traditional pillars of the US economy - tobacco and whiskey.

The version done by the Muppets and Peter Sellers above leaves out one verse ("the show is running a bit long, Peter!") which can be found here.

Mission Trails Park

My wife and I took a walk in Mission Trails Park this weekend while my daughter rode her bike along the trail. My daughter went farther than we did and made it all the way to the dam where she took this photo with her phone. I was so taken by the quality of the shot that I thought I'd share it with you.

It's a wonderful photo and it makes me look forward that much more to getting a Droid with its 5 megapixel camera.

Indian Goldbugs

... seem to be infesting their central bank. Dig this.

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Gold jumped to a record after India’s central bank bought 200 metric tons of the metal from the International Monetary Fund, heightening speculation that there may be more official purchases.

So how much is 200 metric tons? Well, they held 350 metric tons before, so this is a 57% increase in their gold holdings in one day. Why did they do this?

Central banks, the biggest holders of gold, may diversify out of the dollar and buy bullion as ballooning U.S. debt and low interest rates weaken the currency.

“It is but a matter of time until China and the IMF announce much of the same,” said Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the Gartman Letter in Suffolk, Virginia.

If that's still a bit obscure to follow, allow me to show the reason gold is shooting up and the dollar is tanking with a simple chart.

Hope and change!

Bear 2, Terrorists 0

Har har har!

(A) bear has mauled two Hizbul Mujahideen militants to death as they hid in its cave in Shopian, South Kashmir.

According to defence spokesman Lt Col J S Brar, the two commanders dared to colonise a bear's cave at Darwal Nar in Pir Panjal in Shopian and paid for it with their lives. For, late on Sunday night, as the two slept, the bear came calling.

"It attacked the armed militants and killed them on the spot," Brar said.

A Story to Make You Smile

Via Hot Air with a tip from our Precentor of Measurements.

After eight years working at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, including two years as its director, Abby Johnson suddenly decided that she could no longer participate in abortions. What pushed Johnson out was both an ultrasound of an abortion...

Read the whole thing. There's video at the link as well.

Gobbledygook

I love it when I get documents to review that are written in some alien language instead of English the way real humans speak it. Stuff like this:

Finalization, execution, and verification of the migration including adjustments and verification/corrections required to deliver existing functionality

Whatever, dude. I'll get right on it as soon as I can figure out what you're trying to say.

Japanese Debt - Don't Try This At Home, Kids!

Robert Samuelson has a typically good piece today, uttering his standard warnings about the mountains of debt we're piling up. Within that essay is this nugget about Japan's even larger debt.

The same logic applies to exploding government debt. We have moved into uncharted territory and are prisoners of psychology. Consider Japan. In 2009, its budget deficit -- the gap between spending and taxes -- amounts to 10 percent or more of gross domestic product (GDP). The total government debt -- the borrowing to cover all its deficits -- is approaching 200 percent of GDP. That's twice the size of its economy. The mountainous debt reflects years of slow economic growth, many "stimulus" plans, an aging society and the impact of the global recession. By 2019, the debt-to-GDP ratio could hit 300 percent, says a report from JPMorgan Chase.

Numbers and percentages don't ever translate into normal human conversation very well*, so let's get a little more personal with this.

Here are the numbers for Japan in personal terms. Say you make $50,000 a year. You would have $100,000 of credit card debt. That debt would be increasing by $5,000 a year. That is, you would bring in $50,000 and spend $55,000. Since the Japanese government isn't buying real estate or anything lasting with it, this is not mortgage debt, but personal debt. For the most part, they are buying perishable items such as health insurance and social services. So in addition to whatever mortgage debt you have, you've got $100,000 on your credit cards and will have $105,000 of that debt next year.

Furthermore, you're getting older. Japan's long since gown below the replacement birth rate and their population is aging. Let's say you're about 51 years old. That means you don't have too much longer before you want to start considering retirement. With these simple facts, what can you predict about your future? Will you retire to that lovely home in Kyoto or will you be huddling over a bowl of thin gruel in a tiny apartment in Tokyo, wondering if you could survive the winter if you turned the thermostat down to 60?

Your retirement home? Probably not.
Do you want to be 51 years old, making $50K with $100K of credit card debt? This isn't theoretical, either, this is really the way it is in Japan. I've been wondering about how they keep this Ponzi scheme going for quite some time. In some future posts, I'll be boring you to tears with a bit more delving into this.

* - Mish has a good take on this when he shows that even taking the Obama Administration's wild claims as hard fact, each Stimuloid Porkgasm™ job has cost us over $323,000.

Healthy Signs for the US

This morning, I offer you three little tidbits from the Web. First, we have the staunchly liberal Joe Lieberman.

Second, we have the staunchly conservative Pajamas Media blogger, Paul Hsieh.

The details of Congress’ health care “reform” legislation are finally coming into focus, and it’s not a pretty picture. Congress is essentially proposing a national version of the failing Massachusetts system.

In 2006, Massachusetts adopted a health care plan which included an individual mandate requiring residents to purchase state-approved health insurance, new regulations on insurance companies specifying who they must cover and what benefits they must provide, and a government-subsidized “public option” for low-income residents. Supporters promised a utopia of “universal coverage” which would save money while improving quality of care. However, the exact opposite has occurred — health costs in Massachusetts have skyrocketed, while patient care has suffered.

The lefty is attacking the creation of another mammoth entitlement program and the righty is whacking Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential aspirant. Both are doing it based on principle and have well-reasoned positions. Both are getting plenty of play on the Internet and their messages have not been bottled up by the MSM.

Meanwhile, the GOP's hand-picked standard bearer in an important congressional race has had to quit the race because of a third-party insurgency*.

At a time when there's ample concern about the corruption of our government from career politicians, I'd say there are still some pretty healthy signs for democracy in the US.

* - Admittedly, this insurgency was strongly aided by the imbecilic Sarah Palin who is so dumb she actually thinks that since we get energy from oil, at $80+ a barrel it might be a good idea to get some more of our own rather than importing it, but we can't blame the insurgent candidate for the sins of his supporters.

Pathetic

I was surfing around the net, doing a little research for a different post when I clicked over on the official site of the budget of the Federal Government. It's got the budget document available for you to read. The second section of the document, a 291,000 byte PDF file, is entitled, "Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities."

Can't these guys do anything without blame? It's sick. Not only is it unmanly and obscene, it's also nonsensical. Their party ran the budget process for the last two years of the Bush Administration. That's what Congress does. There's just something hideous and fetid about this bunch. It's like we're living with the Dorian Gray Administration. It looks lovely on the outside, but on the inside it's all rotting.

A Picture of Me

For the very first time ever on this blog, I've decided to post a picture of me the author with our Maximum Leader. We took this last night on our way to a Halloween party.

Happy Halloween!

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