Great Depression?

Interesting news coming down the wires today. The U.S. unemployment rate soared from 8.1% to 8.5%.

The stunning thing is, this is the highest it's been since 1983, at the height of the Great Depression!

Oh - wait - that's not during the Great Depression, that was back in the 1930s, not the 1980s. I guess they're hoping no one notices that we're still not as bad off as we were about thirty years ago, when the unemployment rate was higher, interest rates were all in the double digits, and inflation was a real thing - not something to be held off by risking deflation.

This reminds me of the Global Warming dopes who moan that it's now the warmest it's been since the 14th Century (back in the heyday of unjustifiably huge SUVs, right?). Nice headline to scare the sheeple, as long as they don't think about what they've been told ... and sheeple don't think, they follow - to the slaughter.

grr.

His Royal Highness

All hail King Barack the first of the People's Republic of Amerika!

Showing no respect for persons or property, our fearless leader has fired the CEO of a private corporation, has encouraged ex post facto bills of attainder, has handed over unborn children to the ministrations of modern-day Mengeles, all in the name of Hope and Change.

With the fall of the Constitution, the last vestiges of limited government have finally been shaken off the titanic shoulders of our anointed leader. There is no longer anything to limit our progress toward effective government.

I tremble at the thought of what comes next. After all, if there is nothing in the Constitution itself that can stop the federal government from running rough-shod over the people, why should any of the Amendments - especially the Bill of Rights - matter to them either?

• Out of control legislators in Connecticut attempt to run the Catholic church
• The White House - with the benefit of several weeks of "study" - seeing itself as vastly more qualified to run an automotive firm than the folks who've been there restructuring them to meet the confluence of circumstance and misregulation pouring into the heartland from DC
• Hypocritical politicians (please pardon the redundancy) posturing their outrage at the bonuses they specifically authorized
• The list - disturbingly - seems only to grow with each passing day.

OK, I've calmed down a little. Here's a quote from the president's statement regarding GM and Chrysler:

"We cannot, and must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish," Obama said at the White House. "This industry is like no other, it's an emblem of the American spirit ... And we cannot continue to excuse poor decisions. And we cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars. These companies -- and this industry -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state."

Therefore, the federal government will now make all decisions for these companies?
A few observations:
"We" don't have an auto industry. There is an auto industry, part of which is based in these United States, but it's owned by the shareholders of the various companies - NOT by the people. Sill, it's hard to disagree with the president's assertion that we cannot continue to excuse poor decisions - and one hopes that each and every self-serving ersatz statesman in public "service" who's up for reelection will be bounced out on his or her ear at the earliest possible opportunity.

According the the Washington Post (not one of my usual news sources, in case you were wondering), one of the key points of contention between the companies and the Obama administration is just how large the U.S. auto market will be in the future. General Motors has offered a more optimistic scenario and shaped its business plan accordingly. So, the president is upset that GM is planning not to shrink enough for his taste - all while bloviating about the necessity of "our" maintaining "our" auto industry. Well done.

Of course, in the meanwhile, Treasury's printing presses are being prepped for a workout, the proportions of which haven't been seen since the days of the Weimar Republic. "We'll inflate our way out of debt; yeah, that's the ticket." Can't wait for the wallpapering parties to come: "Anyone have an extra $5? I've got a little space left here on the wall, and I'm out."

grr

I'm Back!

OK, I still haven't decided quite how depressed to be (there's certainly more cause for it emerging daily), but I did find a quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers that seems awfully appropriate these days:

“Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving it. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody.

“And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation."

How true, and how sad that it even needs to be said,
grr.

Merry Christmas

We were shopping at JD Penney's at Lakeside Mall last weekend and heard one of the greatest versions ever of the Twelve Days of Christmas. A solo female singer in general (there might have been harmony vocals too - I can't remember), but the melody was altered so that most of the time it would follow the descending pattern of "four calling birds" but with the initial note also descending with each step of the countdown.

Anyone know who that is? Where I can find the recording? I'd really like to know - it's driving us crazy!

UPDATE:
I found it - it's The Bird and The Bee doing it, and it's just as good as we thought it was.
It was offered as a free download at their website, so check it out- spectacular!

Still trying to decide

just how depressed / despondent / concerned to be over all that's going on these days.

Prayerful is how I'll approach it for now.

Still, one thing is just incredible to me: we in Michigan have now enshrined in our constitution the concept that it's OK to experiment on some humans, as long as we think - with or without any evidence, of course - that there might be some benefit for some other humans sometime down the line somehow. It's hard to see that as anything but a step into darkness and evil.

At the same time, California - land of fruits and nuts, source of all progressive thinking in the US, etc. - has actually put the traditional definition of marriage as a man and a woman into their constitution.

Confusion reigns here. More to come later.
grr.

Interesting Race, Now

Well, who'd have thought that John McCain would worry enough about the conservative base of the Republican Party to bother to appease them? After all, isn't he the original maverick? (I thought that was James Garner, or someone.)
Anyway, I think his choice of Governor Palin (no, not Michael Palin) was an excellent choice. Not only does she have the only executive experience in the race - both as Mayor and Governor - but she's also been involved in a real business operation, and has a husband who actually works for a living doing real work. At last an outsider who's really an outsider, but might be able to speak for regular folks.

I don't know how the debates will play out, although I think Biden won't be able to resist being a complete jerk - and be seen as one, but I know this was about the only way McCain could have gotten me to throw my vote away to the Libertarians (or some such pseudo-party), and he didn't.

Maybe I don't have to fear for my Constitutional rights after all - not even the ones McCain jumped on with his "campaign reform" legislation. As long as we avoid an Obamanation in Washington, it looks as though citizens will retain their rights and responsibilities, and perhaps even some of their money. Obama's statement regarding lowering taxes on 95% of us notwithstanding, there's no way anything he plans can happen without either taking all the money there is from everyone above the poverty line, or causing a massive Depression by spending twice as much money as there is in the whole country.

As regards Biden (I know you're all wondering about my opinion of him), it matters not a bit how much experience one has when one is completely wrong about everything - and that's Biden's position, wrong on everything.

What a garish display of cognitive dissonance or outright prevarication - this is the only country in the world where I could have worked my way up from nothing to being better than you, but you can't do it unless I take over and "help" you.

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you," ought to frighten the living whatever out of anyone with at least half a brain and a modicum of sense. Sadly, it may not.

grr.

The Pickens Plan

Well, well, well. Self-made gazillionaire (through the oil business) T. Boone Pickens has a plan to wean the US off its petroleum addiction. Somehow, he's decided that we don't need more oil, we need more wind (as if DC weren't already oversupplying that).
No doubt, this will take massive government subsidies to get up and running, and then with the regulated guaranteed profit levels of all power utilities. Hmm.

So this is a great investment, but it needs government money to make it good?

Sounds like the ethanol boondoggle all over again. E85 is cheaper than regular grad unleaded gasoline at the stations I passed this morning, but that ignores the huge subsidies we (as in We the People) pay to such otherwise-poverty-stricken outfits as Archer-Daniels-Midland so they can turn corn into alcohol. (I think Jim Beam and Jack Daniels do the same thing, don't they?)

OK, ignore the tax and cost portion for a moment. Does anyone really for a moment believe that the wind blows constantly and consistently enough to be the source of our electrical power? Certainly no one who's ever been in a sailboat thinks that. Certainly no one who ever had to depend on a windmill to pump water and grind grain thinks that.

This, of course, is the same kind of objection that is often raised regarding solar power - what about cloudy / overcast / rainy / snowy / et cetera-y days? and it is a valid objection in both cases.
However -
Why is no one following up on solar power from satellites? A fleet of satellites with large solar panels could easily beam down vast amounts of power to the Earth, with no concern for the weather conditions in any particular locale. The power (in the form of microwaves) would be collected and converted to electricity by antenna farms on the ground. In fact, they could even be precisely that - farms. There's no reason a wide-grid microwave antenna couldn't be strung over a field where cattle could graze, or where grains or other crops could be grown - we're not talking beams with the localized punch of a microwave oven, after all.

If we really want to get serious about breaking our dependency on oil - and especially on foreign oil - the best thing to do is to get about drilling for domestic oil, and using the profits - which would now stay here in the States - to fund the R&D necessary to get other forms of energy to the point where they're actually economically viable, rather than where they can be supported by taxes to the point where they kind of look affordable.
The first "Oil" company that truly embraces the idea of being an "Energy" company will be far ahead of its competitors, both in a competitive sense, and in a PR sense.

Of course, this all makes too much sense, I suppose, so it's doomed never to happen.
grr.

(PS - I'm all for nuclear plants as well, but that didn't really fit with the other thoughts here. More on that later.)