Military School?

So I just came across an article that must have been hard for the NY Times to publish.

Apparently the government schools on military bases outperform the rest of the country.

Now I'm no fan of either Big Military or that horrible newspaper....but I've always enjoyed delicious irony!

And this news/study, I guess, is sort of a nice response to John Kerry's gaffe from not too long ago.

BTW, I just read that 32% of all homeschooled children are in military families. While I think that number is a little on the high side, it is true that many military families are even smarter than the ones whose kids are impressing the NY Times.

NY Times - Cherry Picking And Extrapolating, Again

The NY Times is up to its old tricks again...

They found a grown woman who was homeschooled in the psychedelic 70s and have paid(?) her to paint *parental education* in a horrible light. Her critique is laced with the stock Times casuistry and invokes all the usual bigoted, intolerant stereotypes.

It's a long and tedious article so I'll highlight the relevant parts for the lazy/busy set:

Today, according to a poll by the Department of Education (PDF), 83 percent of parents who home-school their children — nearly two million children are now taught at home — do so out of "a desire to provide religious or moral instruction."

Okay, that's total BS. "Or moral instruction" widens the category. Which freakin' concerned parents ARE NOT engaging in, or at least intending to morally instruct their children???

The *for religious reasons only/primarily* tag has been overdone, and over-estimated time and again. But it's typical, for propagandistic critics like the NY Times, to summon favored bogeymen...

The author repeatedly and vividly lamented how destitute their counter-culture (hippie!) family was:

We learned to make do. We had our teeth pulled by student dentists at a free clinic and shopped for bargains at the dented-can outlet. Very briefly, we stood in line for food stamps. When a broken collarbone demanded a trip to the E.R. during a blizzard, my father took me to the hospital via sporadic bus service — we couldn’t afford a car. To ease the pain of my injury (and my recovery), Dad gave me one pack of Juicy Fruit gum, which I was then made to share with my three siblings. It was such a treat that I slept with the remaining two sticks clutched under my pillow. My mother went without haircuts or date nights.

The insinuation of *stupid, uneducated, and POOR* homeschoolers just cannot be missed.

Then came the messy, painful transition to government school:

Our transition to formal schooling happened to coincide with the moment St. Louis was trying to address the problem of its segregated school system. To avoid forced busing, the city decided to open several magnet schools with specialized curricula to attract students of all races from around the city. To my parents (perhaps conveniently), these schools sounded as if they offered the kind of progressive learning atmosphere they had been seeking. They quickly enrolled us. James and I were to attend the school dedicated to math and science; Mary and John the one focused on performing arts.


One early September morning, our parents dropped us off in front of our respective schools. They didn’t walk us into the building. They didn’t introduce us to our new teachers. They didn’t even tell us what grade we were in. John remembers it this way: "Luckily, Mary and I deduced that, because I was 10, I would go into the lowest grade (fifth), and as an 11-year-old, she would go into the next (sixth)." As the youngest, only 5 that fall, I burst into tears when I was separated from my brother James. I hadn’t been warned that we’d be in different classes.


Going from yoga and tea (with parents) to gym and a packed lunchroom was a shock to our systems. And feeling lost wasn’t the hardest part. Looking like Goodwill poster children was. "I thought I looked great in my huaraches and striped, fiesta-themed peasant pants," Mary says. "But everyone else in the sixth grade was wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and jeans. I was not too naïve to realize I needed to get some jeans. Quick."


Everything about the single-file, cliquey public-school system was counter to our counter-lifestyle. "I was in math class," John recalls, "sitting at a desk wondering, Am I going to have to sit in this same spot every single day from now on? The teacher was grilling kids on decimals, which I did not understand. To me it just looked like a dot! Then the teacher asked me to recite the nine multiplication table. I answered, totally nonchalantly, ‘I don’t know it.’ The teacher paused, eyes zeroing in on me, and said, ‘Boy, I’m gonna have fun with you.’" Slowly the meaning of being unable to recite lines from "Star Wars" (we’d never seen Hollywood movies) and not having feathered hair began to sink in. We were weirdos.

After asking, "I’m curious about how you basically stood it all day," Cokie Roberts repeatedly pressed my mother about our socialization. To gain independence and prepare children for the realities of adulthood, didn’t they need to be with their peers and suffer all the harsh experiences that entails?

"I don’t know if children should be put through bad school situations just so they can be socialized," my mom replied. It was a noble sentiment, but unfortunately bad situations were exactly what was in store for us, especially for John and James. "I was very green, and a few days into school this kid pushed me so hard I fell over a desk," John remembers. "I just couldn’t understand. Why would a kid want to fight me?...

At my schoolyard, James, in third grade, was instantly picked on. Within the first week, he recalls, "an older kid kicked me in the butt really hard. The other boys were laughing. A girl finally told me someone put a ‘kick me’ sign on my back. I never heard of that, teasing and pranks." James was also taken to the back of the bus and "punched incessantly" for the better part of grade school. "Oh, God, it was awful." James never told my parents. He just "took it." Was Cokie Roberts right? James thinks so. "I wasn’t around kids," he says. "The four of us were never threatened, so I didn’t learn how to stick up for myself."

My mother worried that when we went to school, she would lose her identity. But she flourished in her new job as an editor at St. Louis magazine. We were the ones who lost ours. Mary never told anyone she’d been home-schooled. "By sixth grade I knew that kids weren’t, especially back then. When you’re a kid, you don’t want to be different, you want to fit in." Mary conformed quickly and even liked the rules, like having to "write your name at the top of paper." John was picked on until he fought back, pushing his tormentor over a desk. James learned how to fit in by observing the other kids and copying what they did. "It was a chameleon act. I was never the most popular, but I eventually made friends."

I have often wondered how the home-schooled fared compared with their classbound peers. While advocates make glowing claims — that the home-schooled do better on their college boards and vote more often — there is little hard data on achievement.

Okay.  Kids get picked on at school by bullies....that sounds to me like an indictment of the school environment more than anything else.

Essentially, it was an anti-homeschooling piece written by a sullen anti-homeschooling, homeschooled girl for good measure. This is precisely how the Times operates with EVERY subject. It's like when they given John McCain space to bash the Republicans or Warren Buffet  a column to bash the wealthy.

The irony, of course, is that most of the Times-type people who homeschool, and there are plenty of them, take PRECISELY this bohemian, unschooling approach. I've personally met a bunch of them - organic eco-planet worshipers who post messages on homeschooling forums about supporting Al Gore and Occupy Wall Street.

Furthermore, the supposed 83% who homeschool for *religious/moral reasons* are the ones who most certainly follow curricula and provide academic rigor.  Most of the kids are wearing shoes too.

Now I want those 10 minutes back I wasted reading that tripe!

Science OR Nescience?

Hah!

Now I'm certainly no flack for their ONLY political opponent...

But this is ridiculous.

How about, "DEMOCRATS AGAINST ECONOMICS"???

Since they collectively don't understand the basics of say *the pricing of goods and services* right now, right here on planet Earth y'all will have to forgive my skepticism about their INTERESTED, apocalyptic multi-decade weather forecasts.

Of course there's a chance they do in fact understand economics but they set is aside so as to retain power via *class warfare marketing*.

Except that there's plenty of EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE against that possibility...

Krugman is, of couse, low-hanging fruit and must be summarily dismissed.

Click Here - to read an old post where I Marginalize a famous Harvard economics professor.

Hunting Enemy Beasts

So the weenies are trying to rip GoDaddy CEO Bob Parson because he shot an elephant in Africa.

You watch the video and tell me if he's a mean as the New York Times would have you believe:

It was just a hunch but I Googled Mr. Parson's *politics* and instantly learned that they were antipodal to the NYT crowd. Go figure.

Homeschoolers = Flat-Earth Goatherds?

The The New York Times seems to be running an awful lot of *education* articles these days. In one of the latest the question of a federal income tax break for homeschoolers is discussed.

Now even though plenty of pinko hippies have taken upon themselves the education of their brood....homeschooling is a four-lettered word in NYT circles.

Here are some of the comments about homeschoolers from that article:

The fact is that that EVERYONE has a vested interest in the education of the kids in their communities,therefore everyone should pay. Let anyone school their kids however they want, but don't jeopardize the education of the public as a whole, to grant favoritism to a few who school their children in one certain way...


We had home schooling for thousands of years and the results were widespread ignorance, illiteracy and a near total lack of numeracy skills among the population. The recognition that a minimum level of skills combined with exposure to all members of society were the driving forces behind mandatory public education. Reverting back to the flat world concepts of the past is no reason for a tax break; indeed home schoolers should pay an additional tax for the future burden on society they are creating...


While it would be inaccurate to grab a large paintbrush and say that home schooling never works, as I've indicated above, the vast majority of the time, home schooling is a disaster for the children involved in the same. Unless some system can be developed to monitor what goes on in every home schooling situation, most often the real losers are the children...


I think it was a great mistake for America to allow home schooling in recent years. While some people may be pushing for a tax break for parents who "home school" their youngsters, I would respectfully suggest jail time for such parents...


In this country, and elsewhere, we need more intellectually advanced schools, textbooks, and teachers, not kids sitting at home watching TV all day or herding goats...


I sat beside a woman at swimming lessons who was at work convincing her friend to home school. She said it really only take less than 2 hours to teach everything they would learn in school and then the rest of the day is free. She's probably right...how long can it take to tell a kid there is no global warming and the world is flat...

Ha!  Jail time?

And don't think I cherry-picked all those unkind words.

Well I actually did....but from the top of the *reader recommendation* pile!!!

So one can safely infer that these sentiments accurately represent NYT readership.

A tax break for parents like me?

I reject the premise. I'm AGAINST the income tax altogether as all of this nation's Founders would most certainly be. So I won't get sucked into this stupid divisive debate.

Of course the income tax is horrible because it codifies *envy* via redistribution.

But it also effectively politicizes EVERY economic transaction between otherwise free men and women.

Indebted = Rich?

Hah! This is precisely the kind of headline I would expect for this story from those indefatigable class-war mongers?

Of course it's inaccurate. Just because the default rate on jumbo ($1 million plus) mortgages is now greater (at 14%) than that of other, lower mortgages....that doesn't necessarily mean it's *rich * people who aren't paying the mortgage.

For example, consider my landlord. That scumbag deadbeat had, and defaulted on, mortgages on three homes in my old neighborhood: $1 million, $1.2 million (on my house), and a $1.8 million note.

Of course he also had several hundred thousand in credit card debt and sundry other liabilities. Recall his bankruptcy filing where he declared only owning a $400 watch and having $10 *cash on hand*.

But according to the agitating New York Times....he must be counted among the reviled *rich* - three times to boot!

Attention NYT - Genuinely rich people don't have mortgages!

A Junk Debunk

So I'm skimming a blog post that claims economist Paul Krugman *debunks* the idea of heavy government cuts as a way to economic recovery.

While Krugman didn't actually do what the blog author asserted....let's put that aside for a moment.

Morons and anti-Morons were arguing back and forth in the comment thread.

One particular mental midget offered up as his entire defense of Krugman that he *won a Nobel Prize* ergo he must know what he's talking about. (Next I'll have to take seriously the advice of *doctors* just because they went to medical school! Or government school teachers' opinion on education!)

Somebody countered that there's no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Economics.

And the boob came back with *yes, there is....look it up."

Lo and behold, the anti-Moron fired back:

Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel Prize in Medicine
Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Peace Prize
Prize in Economic Sciences
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's a later addition, not in accordance with Nobel's will. Tastelessly tacked on.

Hmmmm....I didn't know that. He's right, there is no official Nobel Prize in Economics.

Look, I've been telling people for I don't know how long - that macroeconomics is pure sophistry. There's just no way they can measure the aggregates they think they can measure; furthermore, the qualities of what they try to measure are changing all the time. Pure economics remains a fascinating subject to study but only so long as students steer clear of the junk, the propaganda, the Krugmans AND the Mankiws of that world.

From a humorous prior post:

Larry Kudlow - Isn't it better to have a broad-based permanent tax cut?

Greg Mankiw - I think there are different points of view on that....If you had a bunch of economists in a room you're going to get seven opinions from six economists. So there's no real consensus on that.

So no matter what agenda a slimy pol promotes....he can be certain to attain the imprimatur of some Harvard quack!

In other words, 99% of these award-winning/tenured economists are nothing but political propagandists (and wannabe political propagandists).

Krugman, as a Marginalization target, is low hanging fruit. I've left fisking him to others from the get-go.

But for those who appreciate seeing him smacked for the bazillionth time....see comment #10 from that post:

Krugman's problem is that he demonstrates complete ignorance when it comes to the most fundamental issues of economics: incentives. Incentives are often ignored in large systems because there is some inherent balance present. However, that balance only goes so far. The reason that it is okay to slash taxes on the rich to the tune of $1.3 trillion and yet it is not okay to spend $77 billion to extend unemployment insurance is because slashing taxes increase investment and leads to economic growth because it increases the incentive to work. Providing extended unemployment insurance does the exact opposite - it increases the incentive NOT to work. This is a fundamental fact that cannot be ignored. The other fact that Krugman fails to point out is that when taxes are lower, government revenue actually increases. The reason, again, has to do with incentives. If people are provided with incentives to work, there will be less "need" for unemployment insurance, more motivation to produce and earn more, and thus a net gain in tax revenue.

One last point - Krugman's error is summed up when he talks about "slashing benefits for those in need". Krugman believes that productive citizens have a fundamental duty to provide for people who are not productive, and that the needs of those people are valid claims on the wealth of others. That kind of attitude enslaves producers to consumers. It is undeniably immoral, and any philosophy that follows from that foundation is factually and ethically wrong on its face.

Inverting The Pillars Of Civilization

Hah! That's a snapshot of an article, in the New York Times of course. Yeah, let's have the kids raise the parents!

Don Boudreaux responds...."First, clean your room!" and:

Today’s prattling by young people about how awfully dirty the globe is reflects not kids’ "inherent" tuning-in to the global environment but, instead, their indoctrination – performed by teachers and popular media – into the Church of Gaia.

But let's remember, that parents who *outsource* the mind control of their children to government agents....they aren't innocent here and might even have forfeited their right to complain about said indoctrination.

Of course, I get to complain because I have to pay for it!

Thanks to Taylor for doing the dirty work here - for mining the NYT and forwarding me the link.

Cherrypicking Bogeymen

Three cheers for the NYT!

I say *Thank God for the New York Times* and their muck-raking. It's about time someone took on those depraved Scientologists. Anyone who's been paying attention knows that these people, with all their vast political power, are what's been bringing our great nation down.

Hopefully the Times will expand this great series and tackle the *abuse* of other, albeit LESSER, cults - like the statists and eco-pagans...

Pagans Blowing It...

When Windmills Don’t Spin, People Expect Some Answers

Turbines, more than 100 feet tall, were installed last year in 11 Minnesota cities to provide power, and also to serve as educational symbols in a state that has mandated that a quarter of its electricity come from renewable resources by 2025.

One problem, though: The windmills, supposed to go online this winter, mostly just sat still, people in cities like North St. Paul and Chaska said, rarely if ever budging. Residents took note. Schoolchildren asked questions. Complaints accumulated.

Hah!

Well, the first thing I'd do if my windmill stopped spinning....is to check and make sure it was plugged in properly!

Hey, as least this article had to stones (or oversight!) to call them what they were *symbols* - even if the modifier ought to be changed from educational to *pagan*.

And I must say, I was surprised to see this article in the NYT. In the *old days*, they'd never slip up like this!

See also - Green Infighting And More On Bird-Blenders

Maureen Dowd - More Perverted Than Thou

So the article is about the sapphic daughter, Mary Cheney, of the former Vice President - and the content is otherwise quite beside the point.

The perversion comes from the title and its uncouth reference to the aforementioned.

Did you know what a daisy chain was?

I certainly didn't - and I've had HBO for a dozen years now. Furthermore, I've been known to, in the dutiful course of my blog research, once in while swim in the shallow end of the World Wide Web. Still, I'd most certainly have remembered this term had I come across it!

So there you go, just the fact that Ms. Maureen Dowd knows the term is incriminating enough.

And that she'd use the filthy allusion as the title of her column in the New York Times, and that they'd publish it....that's beyond the pale.

Down With The Ship!

Boston Globe unions did not ratify the wage concessions demanded by parent New York Times. This failure, supposedly, will result in an immediate 23% pay cut across the board:

"People understand that things are going horrendously, the paper is losing money and there have to be concessions, but people don’t feel that the company tried very hard to make the concessions more palatable or equitable," said Scott Allen, a Globe reporter. "I’m voting no. Even people who you would think can’t afford to put their mortgages at risk are voting no."

Now, who amongst y'all ever thought Globies rational or cognizant of their own self-interest?

My hand certainly ain't up.

And man, which banks were Moronic enough to write mortgages for newspaper employees?

I sure hope they were justly charged *subprime* rates!

See also - Comeuppance Imminent?.

Shocking!

The following is on Drudge right now:



Anyone watching the show won't be surprised in the least. There's no way Paula's queer behavior over the years could ever be fully explained by mere *airheadedness*.

Here's the story.

Next up, the New York Times will admit it's been addicted to deliberate distortion.....but for decades.

The New York Times And Its Suicide Fart

I just got the great news today out on the golf course that the New York Times has threatened to shut down the Boston Globe without significant union concessions.

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said yesterday.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90-minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees.

The newspaper industry, which had already been struggling as readers and advertisers moved to the Internet, has been hard hit by the recession, and the Globe is no exception. The newspaper's advertising revenues have declined sharply in recent years; once robustly profitable, it is now losing money.

This week, the Globe newsroom completed cutting the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs. But the deteriorating economy has made the Globe's financial outlook much worse. Management told union leaders Thursday that the Globe will lose $85 million in 2009 unless serious cutbacks are made, according to a Globe employee briefed on the discussions. Last year the paper lost an estimated $50 million, the employee said.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now there's so much material here that I could write 50 blog pages on the matter. But why would I waste my precious time doing such a thing?

All I wanted to do was highlight one point.

As you can see in the penultimate quote above, these newpaper dinosaurs just continue to blame everyone and everything but themselves. Sure it was just the economy and internet. It had nothing to do with bad management, specifically the terrible business decision to systematically muzzle and offend half of would-be customers!!!

And the NYT/Globe's woes have NOTHING at all to do with unionization and pensions!!!

They are asking for the *elimination of lifetime job guarantees* for some employees??? Who're the Morons who allowed them in the first place?

And why the bleep are newspaper delivery truck drivers unionized....in the first place?

The thing is, their unions probably did them in as much as anything. So a paper that spews agitprop all day long, for decades, met the fate of all statist enterprises. What irony! What justice!

There's a wonderful expression describing this.

No, not schadenfreude, that characterizes my feelings.

It's *hoist on one's own petard*.

I always mistakenly assumed that this referred to *hanging oneself*.

But it actually means to *blow oneself up with one's own bomb*.

And more accurately, a petard is a fart - according to its French etymology.

So yes, the NYT/Boston Globe did *hang itself*....

But that verbiage wouldn't properly capture the aroma we've had to take in all these years.



HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Marginalizing Calculated Risk

Blogger Calculated Risk wrote:

We will probably see a slew of articles over the next ten days on the various failures of the Bush administration. I think the two worst economic mistakes were the Bush fiscal policies (creating a huge structural budget deficit) and the administration's ideological opposition to regulation and oversight that allowed the housing and credit bubbles to form.

Okay, what the heck is *ideological opposition*?

To characterize an idea, disposition, or creed as ideological is to say absolutely nothing at all. Put it this way, what deliberate action would be insulated from such an accusation?

Maybe a *hypocritical* one, but that's about it. (And in such a case, the defendant might very well plead *rational*.)

More often than not, the *ideological* accusation comes from an outright partisan. I am no fan of Bush (click here and here), but it's been obvious for a while now that Calculated Risk is a, well, let's just call him a "non-Democrat hater". Heck the guy gushes over Paul Krugman - calling him "Professor" like a wide-eyed naughty school girl. If this isn't a Moron warning sign I don't know what would be!

Again, to say that Bush opposed regulation and oversight in the housing sector over *ideology* is to say nothing at all.

Furthermore, it's a COMPLETE FABRICATION! Here's commenter Average Joe smacking down this buffoon in the comment thread:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/....%20freddie%20labaton&st=cse

"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago....

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken.....

A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

"I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing," Mr. Watt said.

Yeah, Barney Frank actually said that! He said that Fannie and Freddie *weren't facing any crisis* more times than one could count. One might be bold enough to label his un-evolved stance as IDEOLOGICAL.

Calculated Risk also Marginalized himself in a recent post titled Demolition As Stimulus:

As the Obama team has noted, properly chosen infrastructure projects provide the best bang for the buck. These projects provide jobs today, and they are an investment in the future. We need more projects ...


And since Obama asked for suggestions ... How about a demolition program?

The idea that knocking down buildings, any buildings, could be stimulative should reek of stupidity even to non-students of economics.

It just so happens there is a well-known debunking of this very concept. It's called the Broken Window Fallacy:

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"
Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.
Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.
But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."
It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Now if you click on the Wikipedia link above, you'll find this ironic gem in the entry:

"Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack—like the original "day of infamy" which brought an end to the Great Depression—could even do some economic good. [...] the driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. As I've already indicated, the destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending."

Aha! Now guess what Moronic, Pulitzer-Prize winning economist uttered that and thus displayed the depth of their ignorance in the wake of 9/11?

It was "Professor" Paul Krugman....Calculated Risk's co-ideologue!

Convalescing...

I can't sit at my computer tonight on account of my aching back (the cold) and aching bum (the market).

Yeah, my short positions did not fare well on this 300 point (Dow) *up* day.

I did see two worthwhile stories today.

One, the *bankrupt* New York Times is, like all your Moronic friends over the past few years, taking out a HELOC to *get by*.

And the other was an interesting story in Forbes - How Zell Killed Tribune.

Honesty, Accountablility, .... It's All Gray

The other day, BY ACCIDENT, I glanced at an agitprop newspaper at my parent's house in Worcester, Massaschusetts.

Latest Kerry Ad On Fuel Aid May Be Chimera

Federal budget Not Net Set Despite Claim

After state energy officials said last week at a hearing in Worcester that the federal government is investing less in fuel assistance for the upcoming winter despite rising fuel prices, people wondered about U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry’s latest campaign advertisement.

The advertisement, which shows worried-looking people, mostly elderly, says "Many are wondering how they’ll heat their homes this winter." It shows Mr. Kerry, who faces Edward J. O’Reilly of Gloucester in the democratic primary Tuesday, and continues, "But John Kerry is doing something about it."

"He’s gotten new funding to help thousands of seniors and people on fixed incomes in Massachusetts afford to heat their homes."

But state officials said Massachusetts received $115 million from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for the federal fiscal year 2008, which will end Sept. 30. No federal budget has been passed for LIHEAP for the year that will include this coming winter, so state officials expect Congress will approve a continuing resolution.

That would provide Massachusetts with $81 million, $34 million less than last year. The program helps low-income people pay their heating bills in cold states and air conditioning bills in hot states.

It only gets worse because the Massachusetts Legislature has allocated $10 million to supplement the federal fuel assistance for the new fiscal year. That is $5 million less than last year.

When Massachusetts got $115 million in federal fuel assistance last year, it started with $81 million and $34 million in contingency funds were added later in the budget year, said Philip Hailer, state Department of Housing and Community Development press secretary.

"We can hope the federal budget comes through for what we need," Mr. Hailer said. But state officials at the hearing in Worcester, including Ian A. Bowles, secretary of energy and environmental affairs, "have to look at the worst-case scenario."

"People last week spoke in black and white when there are shades of gray," he said.



Hah! Anytime you hear someone insist things "are gray" your Moron antennae should arouse. I would never simply assert that something is gray; I would explain why it was. You see, John Kerry (or his mouthpiece) is so unhappy with the sound-bite "black or white" world that he's offering up his own SOUND-BITE of "gray", "it's complicated", "na, na, you can't pin me down!"

I could care less about his ad and its basis-in-fact. As far as I am concerned, anyone stupid enough to watch ads on TV AND let them shape their beliefs deserves to be lied to.

However, the article served up one illustrative point. The Worcester Telegram showed how unconcerned it was whether or not it was a good thing, a Constitutionally justified thing to throw tax dollars at the furnaces of poor people. If people can't afford to live in this climate, what is the reason for creating a welfare class dependent on energy bill-paying handouts? Won't they be in need every year? Shouldn't they move to where they can support themselves in a climate-controlled environment?

No, the Worcester Telegram is only concerned about how much Federal pork that Senator John Kerry brings home. That is how he should be measured, apparently.

Here's what I wrote a while back about Congress:

Congress is really just a bunch of collusive local lobbyists. The federal government scoops up tax dollars and these wanton criminals divy it up to suit their own perceived political agendas. Congressmen think it is their duty to bring home as much federal money as possible. Think about that for a second. The present-day Congressional metric for success is how much federal tax revenue they can have wasted in their own states.



The foundering Worcester Telegram is, no surprise, owned by the foundering New York Times. Stock chart above - click to enlarge.

If anyone at the Telegram did any substantive research, they'd find that their readers have all left in search of adult-level edification (on the web) or tax relief (in the South).

It's a heck of a gate-keeping job those newspapers have been doing!

In Search Of New Agitprop

So a friend of mine emailed me an article from the NYT and asked for my "rebuttal". Here it is:

Is History Siding With Obama’s Economic Plan?

CLEARLY, there are major differences between the economic policies of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Mr. McCain wants more tax cuts for the rich; Mr. Obama wants tax cuts for the poor and middle class. The two men also disagree on health care, energy and many other topics.

Whoa!!!

The poor and middle class don't even pay income taxes. Something like the top 50% of income earners pay around 95% of all Federal income taxes. Right here, in the first paragraph, this Princeton economist is asking readers to swallow a sophistical premise.

Meaningful tax cuts can only be offered to those WHO PAY TAXES.

Of course, symbolic rhetorical tax cuts can be offered by class-baiters to the entire gamut of gullible Morons.



Poor people do pay disproportionate taxes on things like State lotteries and gasoline. Of course those are voluntary tax contributions. The lottery funds are mostly jobs programs for Obama's cronies in Big Education. And gasoline taxes, heck, statists like Greg Mankiw and the New York Times crowd actually want to RAISE them.

Do I really have to read the rest of this free verse agitprop?

This garbage carries on, focusing mostly on two items:

1) Economic performance during Democratic administrations versus that during Republican administrations.

2) Trends in "Inequality" during both types of administrations.

The first is childishly argued and then, to top it off, Professor Alan Binder completely self-rebuts with this:

Such a large historical gap in economic performance between the two parties is rather surprising, because presidents have limited leverage over the nation’s economy. Most economists will tell you that Federal Reserve policy and oil prices, to name just two influences, are far more powerful than fiscal policy.

Now as for the second point, "Inequality", well, I have covered that a few times already on Marginalizing Morons. Here's something I wrote three years ago:

The Gini coefficient measures wealth inequality in a given society. In this country, it has been rising steadily for 30 years – implying a widening gap between the richest and poorest. Propagandists love to pounce on this stat to show how “unfair” capitalism is, yet countries with narrower gaps (lower Gini coefficients) suffer higher unemployment, lower growth, and lower standards of living.

This vaunted Princeton professor concludes with his *surprise* ending:

The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if history is a guide, an Obama victory in November would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain victory would lead to slower economic growth with more inequality. Which part of the Obama menu don’t you like?



You know, in the old days agitprop sold well during periods of economic hardship.

But today, the New York Times is blowing up; its revenue is simply evaporating.

I guess one could say that the market for propaganda is stagflating - just like everything else these days.

Slide Over Justice, We Have Another Bailout

Contemporary politics is usually not covered on my high-minded blog. Today will be a brief detour, er, a brief descent.

It nauseates me to hear people tooting Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin's horn. I don't care what she's done or who she is. As a Vice President, she'll be powerless. John McCain remains a complete scumbag and a thundering Moron. All Sarah Palin can possibly do in the next 2 months (potentially plus four years) is dupe some dopes into forgetting who's heading the ticket.

I fully understand that many of her defenders/apologists have, well, complicated agendas. They may be more interested in attacking her attackers (e.g. Big Media) or in defending "working mothers" or whatever.

The fact is, in my book, the praise that she's getting is a joke.

I'd reserve that level of adulation for a person who TURNED DOWN John McCain, not for someone who agrees to be his token stooge.



One example of note is Rush Limbaugh. He's a to-the-bone John McCain hater who's been out there everyday defending Sarah Palin - or so he thinks. He's actually doing McCain's dirty work; he's doing McCain's *damage control*. Whether or not this tack helps Rush's larger anti-Big Media crusade or not, in my opinion, John McCain should be left out to dry on this one, alone.

Most ironically, even before John McIdiot won the nomination, Rush had accused McCain with his *triangulation* and New York Times brown-nosing as naive. He hypothesized that McCain thought HE was using the organs of agitprop to further his political ambition. Meanwhile, obviously, Big Media felt like THEY were wagging McCain (and Lindsey Graham, Tom Daschle, et alia) to weaken the GOP. Rush paternally warned McCain that when push came to shove, if and when the question was McCain or Hillary Clinton, that McCain's media *friends* would turn on him. Of course that's exactly how it played out.

Now, I don't care how Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin spin it, right now they are the ones are being unwittingly *used*.

By my estimation, a pure socialist is far less dangerous than this complete j*rkoff. At least the former is predictable.

Defending John McCain for anything, as far as I am concerned, is like propping up or bailing out an investment bank that should be *allowed to fail*.

That's actually quite a good analogy if I do say so myself. Furthermore, anyone abetting McCain's rise forfeits the right to complain about him later on.

I want to reiterate. If Sarah Palin had half the probity her fans are proclaiming, she'd have told John McCain that he was an unmitigated ButtHead and that she would be dishonored to share the ticket with him.

Clearly she's a terrible judge of character and has at least the rudiments of an ego problem.



And there's nary a soul on this planet who knows more about *ego problems* than myself!

(Painting by Memling)

No eHarmony For NYT Losers

For a curious joke I was wondering if eHarmony would match my wife and I.

I googled "go on eharmony to see if me and my wife are a good match" and up popped an article from a New York Times writer who's already run this experiment.

Here's his article - My eHarmony Experiment: Can This Marriage Be Matched?

To make a short story shorter, eHarmony didn't match John Tierney and his wife of 12 years. That certainly doesn't disprove the eHarmony algorithm as we have no idea how happy their marriage really is. AND, of course, *for example* does not constitute proof.

What makes this article blog-worthy is its hilarious, telling comment thread.



I haven't read the entire thread, but it suffices to say the tone was set by the first few comments. In fact, six of the first seven comments involved *gayness*.

Then the losers quickly ramped it up, inveighing against the *Christian* founders of eHarmony and their "bigotry".



The author, "John", was quick to defend himself...."I already mentioned their bigotry in a prior article!"

Hah! These guys and gals living in the NYT bubble-world are stereotypical to the bone.

The thread goes on with young women - most likely bereft of any relationship harmony - lambasting the author for giving momentary false hopes to the handful of women he was actually matched up with.

OMG, this comment thread is really funny. Make sure you click on the link above and peruse this well of levity for yourself.

Comment #44 - "Yes, I’m gay but, hey, I like to walk on the beach too..."

Comment #48 - Let’s say a restaurant reviewer goes to a place that won’t serve blacks. Should they mention it? Should they even *eat* at the place? Is it okay to say, "Gosh, I thought it was great! Too bad they don’t serve blacks."?

Comment #53 - I too submitted to eHarmony scrutiny once. I am not a practicing Christian and after telling them all the things I was looking for in a partner…..I received…one! count it….ONE match. It was a toothless hooker who was 18 years my senior! Which, strangely enough, sounded like the best thing they had to offer! hee hee!

Ah, dude, maybe that's your *match*? Consider it.



Comment #24 - I think you owe the women you rejected a better explanation than “no chemistry”? It’s not just a question of wasted time, it’s a question of feeling rejected.

Maybe if you didn’t "believe that compassion has a role to play in your life, in a structure of values that encourages people to take care of themselves" you would have realized that :).

Sounds to me like they could have substituted that whole spiel of "fostering independence” into the simple phrase "Tends to vote Republican".

— Posted by Debbie R.

Wow, this Debbie seems like a real catch! I wonder if she is single or if she has been chasing the wrong scents???

Comment #23 - Why would any rational person expect a computer to match him with his wife? Nature creates partners mostly by propinquity; computer matching does it based on assumptions by psychologists...

Ah, excuse me, Moron, a computer is a whole lot more *rational* than a person could ever be.

Alright, no more excerpts. Go read the Losers' comments for yourselves.

What kills me - to no end - is how smart and how highminded these NYT stooges deem themselves.