Ken Nelson

Last night as I shut down the house for bedtime, some moron came on the TV saying he was disappointed with the current health care reform because “it didn’t provide free healthcare to everybody”.

What an awful last thing to hear before attempting sleep. The guy owns a coffee shop, gets hit with outrageous taxes at all levels of government, and still thinks healthcare can be “free”.

What a moron… yet, he votes. It certainly is depressing knowing idiots like that are out there offsetting my vote.

What is really depressing about it is that he isn’t a moron because he disagrees with me. He is a moron because he IS A MORON who doesn’t recognize a rape even when its happening to him.

Remember who you are Sarah

Over the last two nights I’ve watched Bill O’Reilly interview Sarah Palin.

As you can probably tell, I’m very sympathetic to her. But I did not like her performance in the interviews.

She sounded like a politician. Evading questions.  For instance, O’Reilly asked her “Is President Obama a socialist”.  She rambled on and on, avoiding the question.

Better would have been “If it quacks like a duck”…

Or “I don’t know .I view him as a narcissist Bill, it’s always about him and things are never his fault”.

Or “How would we know?  He never proposes anything. Congress writes all these bad bills, he signs them. Some leadership”.

Short, direct, answers that would show her different than a meandering Joe Biden or other politicians in love with their voice.

Anyway, I gave her a C-.

My wife gave her an A, until I explained my C-.   I don’t know her current grade, maybe she can comment here.

Anyway…. Sarah, I like you – but I won’t continue to like you if you behave like all the other schmucks in D.C.

Benign                               Dangerous

Reporters writing about stuff they know nothing is always good for a chuckle.  I know this because I know a lot about computers, software, guns, and the military. When reporters write about these things they almost always make big mistakes.

Take this article on a perceived increase in militias in the United States. Why would there be more militias now (if there are – and I don’t know if there are)?

If the words sound familiar, there is good reason. It is rhetoric that was typical of the so-called patriot movement of the 1990s, amid similar circumstances: A Democrat, Bill Clinton, was in office. There was heightened interest in gun control legislation. Veterans were returning from the first Gulf War. Elaborate conspiracy theories were spreading.

<sarcasm>Hmmm… those darned pesky VETERANS again.  Why can’t we just animate them when we have a war and then put them in cold storage so they don’t come home and run rampant killing people and joining militias. What can we do about those dangerous VETERANS?</sarcasm>

Hey Reporter… these open militias are just wacky people, similar to eco-kooks, Dead Heads, nudists, and other eccentrics.  The ones you have to worry about will not be in a compound or running about in camouflage. The government has awesome guns and guys eager to use them. The government has air power! Fighting the government with guns is stupid.

The militias you have to worry about will plan, quietly, and then strike precisely at the soft underbelly of government.  Probably via assassination of openly corrupt politicians (can you name a few?) as well as with precise attacks on the infrastructure of government oppression.  I suspect they would go after the fuel of oppression….  our money.

What might that involve?   I suspect they would infiltrate key software engineers within the IRS information systems, and on signal cause mass confusion and distrust of the tax system. Externally and internally they would wage total war on IRS IT infrastructure. The goal would be to sow such distrust that it would cause massive non-compliance.  Would it work?  Sure. Especially so if they had people on the inside.  Nary a gun required – and much more effective.

Our government is big because it has access to our money. Take the money away, it shrinks. Simple.

But hey, this is just me thinking aloud and war gaming what would be effective. Don’t worry… I’m not planning anything personally. I’m not happy with our direction, but my personal situation is fine and requires no revolution.

But it only makes sense that somebody out there is contemplating similar.

Would Al-Qaeda do this?  Absolutely not. This would be HEALTHY for us, and they like our current self-destructive path.   The old adage of not getting in the way of a self-destructing enemy applies to them.

So, Reporter, it isn’t the wacky militias you see that will undermine your socialist utopia.   And if you really care about the country, Reporter, you would focus more on the government’s problems and not on eccentrics running around in the woods.

Rupert Murdoch seems like a smart fellow. Fox News has the best ratings. Fox TV has great ratings. And his newspapers seem to grow or at least hold steady in tough markets:

The image above, from The AWL, shows what happens when you please and don’t please customers:

Some surprising trends: the New York Post has the same circulation it had two decades ago! Also, the once-captivating battle of the New York City tabloids has become completely moot.

Some unsurprising trends: the Los Angeles Times is an absolute horrorshow. Not shown: the Boston Globe disappearing off the bottom of this chart, in a two decade decline from 521,000 in 1990 to 264,105 this year.

Business is really pretty simple. Please your customers more than your competitors do. Wal-Mart failed and then succeeded last night with my humble shopping trip. The NY Post and Wall Street Journal and most things Rupert Murdoch owns must get that basic premise.

I generally think the AP stinks. But their assigning a permanent photographer to cover arrival of KIA soldiers at Dover AFB, Delaware is the right thing to do:

But these days, the press hordes that once descended on Dover are gone, and there’s usually just one organization on hand. The Associated Press, which supplies photos to 1,500 U.S. newspapers and 4,000 Web sites, has had a photographer at every arrival for which permission was granted. "It’s our belief that this is important, that surely somewhere there is a paper, an audience, a readership, a family and a community for whom this homecoming is indeed news," says Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. "It’s been agreed internally that this is a responsibility for the AP to be there each and every time it is welcome."

I agree AP. Now get whoever made that decision and put them in charge of other news covering decisions.

Note that the link above is an article about how interest in casualties has dropped now that the media can’t blame Bush. That point is certainly true. But given that we know the media is biased, it may be more useful to praise them when they aren’t than to continually kick them.

So my strategy is to ignore them, don’t buy their stuff, and occasionally praise them if they do right.

Washpo lost $143 million through the first six months of this year" Which means they lose $1.10 PER COPY.

Virgina Postrel

H/T/ Instapundit

Left off the chart… hot air

Where do Barack Obama and Bill O’Reilly agree?  Other than each is god’s gift to the world?

They both blame speculators for rapidly changing oil prices.

However, as it so often does, data says another picture from what those two say:

New quarterly data also released by the CFTC show that money flows to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in commodities failed to correlate strongly with last year’s price surge.

In other words, the people supposedly raising the price weren’t spending money when it was going up.

The more likely culprits… the US restricting supply, international demand and wars in oil producing regions.

Oh… and what is the different between O’Reilly and Obama on this topic?  O’Reilly believes what he said.  Obama just says it.

 
You get that, that, “thing” out of my house.

The Washington Post sent reporter Chris Davenport, who lives in DC, to get a gun:

It took $833.69, a total of 15 hours 50 minutes, four trips to the Metropolitan Police Department, two background checks, a set of fingerprints, a five-hour class and a 20-question multiple-choice exam.

Just imagine if they put so many hoops up before you could speak at a town hall. 

He is not gun-savvy, but he catches his groove and gets cocky:

By the end, I find myself having so much fun that I ask for the target to be moved back. For my last test, I want to try shooting two to the body, one to the head, which is more difficult than going for the bull’s-eye in the middle of the target.

I hit the body twice, but miss the head.

Later, studying my target, Abraham says I pass, which is a huge relief. But he points to a bullet hole a few inches to the right of the head.

"That’s an innocent bystander," he says.

Ouch. But lets ignore him shooting up innocents, who hasn’t had a bad trigger pull from time to time?   What really makes me lose respect for the guy is when the weenie lets his wife order the gun out of the home:

My wife is adamant that that thing can’t stay, and makes a compelling case that it’s more likely to cause harm than to save us from it. And the more I think about keeping it, the more I’m convinced that the range is where the gun belongs. Not here at home, where it feels out of place, an intruder that shakes our sense of peace more than bolstering it.

Get your lady under control!  You are the man, your job is to protect and provide for. Man up lady-man.

Okay… that last part was just me funning…You should have buy in from your wife on weapons plans for the home. But any woman that won’t let you protect her and your kids is questionable in my book…

From Michael Yon’s latest dispatch:

Finally, Axle said, “You Yanks are great.  You like to hear stories about us smashin’ the Taliban but people at home want to know how much we miss our families.”  We both chuckled, and I asked, “Really?  They don’t ask you about smashing the Taliban?”  “That’s right,” then Axle said something like, “They only want to hear how sad we are.” Axle and I got along great because I didn’t care if he missed his family and he didn’t care if I missed mine.

The soldiers, quite press savvy, know that most press are there to document their suffering, misery, and any discontent in order to move along a narrative quite in contrast to how they actually feel.

After the dispatch the British government ended Yon’s embed with 2 Rifles. No reason stated.

“Always love your country — but never trust your government!

Robert Novak
RIP
18 Aug 2009

The Politico covers how Congress currently salivates over some new taxes proposals for cigarettes, soda and booze.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee peeked into vending machines and liquor stores, company payrolls and health savings accounts, looking for a mix of tax increases and spending cuts as a way to pay for a health overhaul — which could cost more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

In terms of taxes paid, these wouldn’t be too bad personally. I don’t drink. Don’t smoke. And I can cut soda out without missing it. Of course I don’t favor them at all. Government spending and borrowing is already way too high.

BUT what I did notice was that one BIG thing was missing from this discussion of paying for proposed healthcare insurance for the un-insured….

ACTUALLY CUTTING SOMETHING ELSE that they think we need less.

And of course the Politico, and nobody else, asks the fools that question.

So we have dishonest corrupt “leaders” and stupid un-inquisitive press. What a recipe for success!

I think the number of people that truly can’t afford insurance is very small. Most uninsured are so by choice. They think they are healthy and have found that compassionate others will pay for their health care should they fall sick or have an accident.

Of course the Federal Government has no role in this. But they will persist. And they will ruin it.

Yet another thing we are doing WRONG in this country.

Actual picture of Social Security “Trust Fund”

I get a small sliver of pain in my head when I read stupid stuff like this:

Trustees of the two programs said Tuesday that Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, one year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner.

THERE IS NO TRUST FUND. 

There never has been. The minute it starts to cost more than it collects, FICA taxes will be raised on those who don’t vote Democratic, retirement age jiggled with for those who don’t vote Democratic, and benefits cut for those who don’t vote Democratic.

Shouldn’t a writer for the AP understand this?

It used to be a major incident to mention somebody who worked for the CIA to a reporter.

Not anymore apparently.

How the next “presser” should be conducted

Watching Obama’s self-congratulations last evening never cross my mind. Instead, my wife & I went on a date.

But I did force myself to review the transcript this morning.

First off, the questions were mostly inane softballs. “What surprised you the most? What enchanted you the most?”.

Second, even the answers to those usually involved fabrications revolving around self-congratulation.

Third, he seems to have an inability to say something simply, clearly and concisely.

Fourth, does he really believe he cut the deficit? Is he that self-deluded?

He didn’t call on Fox News. That is, of course, all part of his strategy to isolate those that question him as loons. But he isn’t divisive. Nope,not that.

It is going to be a long 3 years, 265 days.

 
Dazzling

Barack Obama was elected because Republicans nominated an idiot, because the Press wanted him elected, because he fooled young people that he was something “different”, and because African Americans voted for him because he was half-black.  That’s okay isn’t it, voting purely on race?  Just wondering.  Anyway, back to my original point.

His shtick doesn’t work on older folks, like the head of NATO states.  His “fresh” approach was supposed to be able to work new diplomacy tactics that would spring open the fear of commitment NATO and other countries had during the evil Bush years.

But they don’t want to send troops to Afghanistan.

I’m not surprised. They never had any intention of working for the freedom they have. Ever. Even a half-black charlatan capable of fooling vast amounts of America’s youth can’t put one over on them.

As to the Press, they are still un-deniably in love with him:

But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.

Dazzle, oh yes. Even in an article about abject failure of one of his primary “benefits” for being elected, he still “dazzles”.

If it were up to me I’d yank our troops from Afghanistan and paper the area with leaflets of maps showing where Europe is and easy ways to get there.