The Bachelor Culture and Consumerism, Rotten Fruits of Progress

My antennae are always raised by the slightest bit of economic illiteracy. When I started reading John Gatto's book I reflexively deemed him an econo-illiterate. The guy was a teacher, a steward of the Government Economy. Of course he wouldn't understand capitalism, free markets and the like. I have yet to meet one teacher who does.

In his book he continually avers that government schools are part of some underhanded alliance with "corporations". That sentiment took me aback for two reasons. One, he sounds like the typical socialist business basher, you know who hates Walmart, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, "oil companies", etc. and thinks every company in America is like the outlier Enron. And secondly, I couldn't for the life of me believe that "corporations" covet the illiterate, cheating, self-entitled graduates churned out by Big Education.

Upon further reading, it turns out we were both right. The guy is economically illiterate and somewhat self-aware of that. But Gatto is absolutely correct that historically corporations had a huge hand in shaping compulsory government education.

Remember, American forced schooling started in 1850 in Massachusetts, but it really started to gain steam in the early 1900s.

In 1908, when the play opened in Washington, the United States was in the middle of absorbing the largest influx of immigrants in its history – Irish and Germans, followed by Italians and East Europeans, Catholics and Jews – some 18 million new citizens between 1890 and 1920. (link)



Well, the industrial capitalists (Robber Barrons) who ran the country had as their greatest fears, strikes and labor unrest. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and their cohorts saw compulsory schooling as the vehicle to tame this horde of alien rabble. Schools would teach kids obedience to authority. Immigrant students would be Americanized, molded into productive citizens, forced to cite the Pledge of Allegiance, and LEARN ENGLISH.

Note schools take the complete opposite approach today, preaching ethnic pride, hatred of America, and multiculturalism to border-jumping progeny. Also, the brats don't seem to think much of authority or obedience anymore either.

So a century or so ago, the titans of industry co-opted the schools for their own purposes. They are still shaping policy today through various Ford foundations and Carnegie foundations but clearly, a lot has changed since then. Government schools have since been recast as a tool for political patronage and for chiseling the minds of future voters. "Corporations" are certainly not in charge of curricula anymore as control was wrested from them by agents of an ascendant Big Government.

Academics, socialists, and other Morons always decry what they think is the downside of the corporate structure. These cavils are dressed up as "externalities" and used to broad-brush the corporate animal. Pollution remains the most propagated symbol of an externality because that's the business basher's most effective stereotype. To them, all companies pollute in one way or another, get away with it, and therefore we need a vast regulatory arm not just to save the Earth but more broadly to clean up the excesses of capitalism. But the reality is, lawyers and private property rights are sufficient enough to stem real externalities like pollution and even the imaginary ones like "discrimination".

So what are the "negative externalities" of the corporate structure?



Consider Michael Dell for instance. He is a staunch capitalist and a Republican. So why are there full-page ads for his company every single day in the New York Times?

Well, since Dell Computer is a public corporation, it has to make purely rational business decisions. Michael Dell could hate Sulzberger and Co's guts but if advertising alongside the agitprop offers a profitable return on investment, then the ads will be bought. Otherwise he'd be disserving his shareholders. Despite a hatred of all things Dell, The Times has to accept his advertising because it's in dire financial straits (not because it is rational, a profit maximizer, or gives a hoot about shareholders).

So one potential, but nonetheless real downside of corporations (especially public ones), is their inability to be morally judgmental.

I have long wondered why nobody has organized a powerful product boycotting group to take aim at the advertisers of certain offensive media. But it recently dawned on me that advertisers are all big corporate conglomerates like Dell, wholly incapable of making value judgments.

Now my insight extends further than boycotting the sponsors of a particularly treasonous episode of 20/20 or an issue of Time magazine. Advertising corporations are averse to making value judgements of almost any kind, so lewdness runs wild on television and throughout the culture. After all, the racier a show, the more viewers it gets, the better the return on ad investment. Have you seen the way pre-teen girls are clad on the Disney Channel? They look and act like complete prostitutes.



The average child watches 28 hours of TV a week, the average teenager 23 hours.

By mid teen years children have watched 15,000 hours of TV, more time than spent with teachers, parents and friends put together.

By the age of 18 they have seen 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence.

By the age of 11 they will have watched 400,000 acts with sexual innuendo primarily between non married persons. (link)

Last night I was contemplating that last statement and tried in vain to think of ANY portrayal of married people having sex on television or in a movie. I couldn't really come up with an example. When you do the math and realize that even with the divorce rate what it is, there is still a lot of husband/wife sex going on. I just don't buy the idea that married sex isn't marketable and that explains its absence. I'll bet anyone that has "walked in" on their parents can stump for the pure beauty of the act.

Getting back to the topic at hand...

So when your child isn't at home alone inhaling this filth, they are "safe" at school with a couple hundred age-mates who are also brainwashed by insidious television programming.

Consider the following, also from that link,

The article features an experiment in which 3 year olds watched an actor on a TV screen cuddling a life size doll. The children then were led into the room where this was filmed with the same doll in it. They all cuddled the doll. Then the children went back to watching the TV and saw the actor go into the room with a large wooden hammer and strike the doll. When the normally well behaved children were led back into the room each attacked the doll furiously.

My son is two years old and through him I can vouch for children's unfettered disposition towards mimicry. This summer, my son started hitting golf balls though I never showed him how. He just saw me doing it from a distance. Every incremental word he learns or action he takes is a clear aping of someone else. Recently he started using the "F" word but not just randomly, in proper context like when he gets frustrated. For this, my wife and I point fingers at each other.

Lemma - Not only does sex sell, by mandate, corporations must buy it.

I still think a formidable boycott group will emerge one day, but it'll find it awfully hard to operate considering that there are only two kinds of computers (Dells and Apples) and every brand of soap or beef jerky is owned by Proctor and Gamble. Corporations may be in control of many aspects of American society, but they don't pull the puppet strings of government education anymore.

Another cynicism of Gatto's is that Big Education deliberately created a nation of consumers rather than producers.

First of all, even though he spent his adulthood teaching in Manhattan, Gatto is from farm country. He bears a resentment, common throughout much of rural America, against mechanization, the shift toward city life, and the destabilizing march of economic progress. He genuinely believes that corporations and Big Education surreptitiously convince the public to buy things they don't need.

Now I can forgive his small farm bias but the idea that it's possible to convince Americans to consume more than they need struck me as ridiculous. I mean how exactly could devious corporate executives pull this off?

After reading, rereading, and fully digesting Gatto I've concluded that he has a point.

The problem was, I was interpreting his message too narrowly. Sure the bucolic small family farm is sorely missed, but that's not Gatto's message. What's gone is rugged self-reliance and its lifeblood, self-production. Depend on one corporation for your job and others for your food, clothing, entertainment, heat, banking, etc. There's no more chopping firewood, well water, milking the cow, stuffing money under your mattress, or raising your own kids. If one produces nothing, they are forced into a life of consumption, are they not?

Let's shift over to the narcotic of schooling. Government education is a drug in the sense that American society has grown addicted to it. Increasing wealth may have paved the way but nefarious forces chimed in to make it a one way road; families lack the memory of homeschooling, remain unaware of its virtues, and for the most part can't rejigger their lives to accommodate it.

Compulsory mass education is seemingly free to most people. Before government schooling, sending one's children to be educated would lower the productivity of the family farm or the family store. It was an economic tradeoff, a tuition payment that shaped educational realities and institutions. One hundred years ago, nobody would send their kids to school against the interests of family wealth if they were going to come back unlettered, unruly, and un-marketable. Nowadays the kids come back ignorant and unskilled but the loss (economic and otherwise) is not so obvious to the parents. The cost is really borne by taxpayers, i.e. rich working people. Also, your kids don't look so dumb compared your neighbor's brood either - so breathe a sigh of relief.



If you are an accountant at a big corporation, bringing your two young sons into work isn't really going to help you get your job done or get you a raise. And you can't send them to work on their own either because of child labor laws (notwithstanding that sneaky little Greek kid). It's hard for your wife to stay out of the workforce and homeschool them because every other household in your local economy has a double-barreled income. That is priced into the housing market and you'd likely have to move to a less desirable neighborhood should she opt out of the workforce. Not to mention, that everyone else sends their kids to the government school AND you already pay property taxes, the bulk of which fund that school. So even if skeptical and averse to groupthink, you reluctantly hand the kids over to a government school, promising yourself to be a vigilant parent, and hoping for the best. The school can't possibly ruin your kids, after all you did okay yourself. Right?

But very few working parents can counteract the peer pressure, the brainwashing, and the television.

So how then does mass schooling fuel consumerism?

The answer is that it doesn't do so directly. Consumerism is the confluent result of the corporate efficiencies and technological progress that have completely redrawn the landscape of America. Not only are there are fewer family farms, there are fewer family restaurants, "mom and pop" gas stations (thank the environmentalists), family supermarkets, etc. Every aspect of American life today is bigger, more efficient, and more complicated than it was one hundred years ago. Very few people earning six figures can so much as change a flat tire. That may be a point of condescension for today's older folk; but I am sure their grandparents mocked them when they were young and unable to milk a cow. Getting back to point, progress and prosperity facilitated the idling of children. But take notice that while you and your wife went to work for large corporations, depraved forces have moved in to fill the void left by farm chores and child labor. If you believe they have anything resembling the best interests of your children then your own "education" fails you.

Devil's Advocate - I thought you couldn't stand the defenders of "mom and pop" businesses?

That's right. Ninety-nine percent of them are socialists. Here, I am just mentioning the undeniable fact of their demise. Banning Walmart is not going to right any of the wrongs addressed by this post. Socialism will certainly not bring back the family farm, help poor people, or reanimate the country with self-production and self-reliance - which is the subject of my post. Entrepreneurialism is not dead; in fact many recent developments (e.g. the internet) have given it a massive boost. BUT, it, like all business is constantly under siege by hyper-regulatory socialist econo-illiterate... let's just call them economic insurgents.

As I was saying, the world got a whole lot more complicated. One can't simply blame corporations for the death of small family businesses because that wouldn't tell the whole story. The Industrial Revolution, combustion engine, and the assembly line cheapened food, heat, and housing for the multitude. Its great wealth brought sanitation, better healthcare, and grew life expectancies. The cornucopia of capitalism did however fertilize the weed of Big Government. Many pundit-types refer to this as the flip side of economic growth - a ripe topic for another time.



Someone on the web captioned the above pic as "The Church of Consumerism". By that metric how pious are the women in your family? Some women I know have locked up sainthood!

So what exactly is consumerism? Wikipedia has a very tame definition but I think we all can agree that it generically refers to the purchasing of goods if not an obsession thereof. Clearly, the more money one has, the more they can purchase. The richer this country has gotten, the greater its appetite for iPods, designer jeans, hybrid cars, premium wine, organic food, etc. So where am I going with this banality?

You see, John Gatto is absolutely correct. Not only can people today not raise a chicken, kill it, pluck it and serve it up for dinner, most people today can't cook a store-bought bird. Who today hems their own pants or even owns a sewing machine for that matter? My grandfather did his own oil changes - not too long ago either. What madness, no?

What about self-entertainment? For centuries people played instruments, sung, socialized, and read books. Most of the social clubs in cities like New York and Philly are long since dead and gone and the survivors are desperate for new membership. Today when the cable is out nobody knows what to do. How pathetic is it to drive around at night and see a flickering television in almost every house? Today Americans sit on their collective asses, listening to music or inhaling the politically correct pornography on the idiot box. Everyone is consuming entertainment; no one is producing any.

Recently I have come to loathe television. For at least twenty years I used to mock my sophisticated uncle who doesn't own a television. I thought him grotesquely out of touch (of course he still is on many fronts). But now I have come full circle to his point of view, or at least its conclusion anyway. Parenthood put the first involuntary dent into my television viewing. When a newborn deigns to sleep, you find yourself relaxing by say, brushing your teeth, doing the dishes, or taking your own nap. The whole new parent experience shocks the bachelor and bachelorette lifestyles into a foreign if not alternate reality.

Even with the DVR, watching fluff shows like Pardon the Interruption just couldn't compete with an opportunity to go to the bathroom or feed myself. Predictably, I clung to my favorite programs and axed the Marginal ones. Each month it seems another of my pet shows bites the dust. Ever since the umbilical cord was cut, literally and figuratively, stark tradeoffs were manifested, and my television viewing began an irretrievable descent.

The second dent into my TV viewership began with Marginalizing Morons. When I first started this blog, I had little idea what I would write about, no less where blogging would transport me. (I did know that I wanted to avoid the sewer pit of "politics".)

Early on I put a tracker on my blog and it had a profound impact on me. I could see that people in far off places had read my posts: Pakistan, London, Iceland, Thailand, etc. And I could see exactly how they found my work. I was blown away by the prominence of my post on J-Crew's embroidered djellabah. At one time, if you googled "embroidered djellabah" my blog post came up first in the search results - right below J-Crew's listing. Now I was hooked, awed by the sheer power of the internet.

There probably has only been one other epiphanous moment like this in my life. In the fall of 1988, I went to my first freshman math meet. I didn't really train for the event nor have any idea what it was all about. Nonetheless, I turned in a perfect score - the only one of 300 kids in the county. Imagine the effect beating out perhaps the smartest kids around had on my incipient ego. Winning the event validated my arrogance or so I thought. I was hooked on the euphoria and really took to math. Once I began working at it, I graduated to national acclaim. Consequently, my mind, ego, and self-confidence ascended to dizzying heights. This is why Greg Mankiw is but a gnat to me; I have competed against and held my own with profound geniuses, guys who could memorize Π to 500 decimal places in an afternoon.

Writing a blog was the first productive endeavor of my life. Imagine that at 30 years of age, like most people I had never created or built a single thing. This novel experience has had a profound effect on my life. Today I could either vegetate in front of a ball game or I could compose my thoughts and publish them globally. The end of self-centered bachelorhood forced this dilemma on me. When I think about how much time I have spent idling with a remote control I can't help but get mad at the time I have lost. My blog will be there forever. It'll be a window into my soul for my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. Wouldn't you have liked to know your great-great-great-great grandparents?

I have said this before, my blogging is also a tool for self-education. Dumping your thoughts onto an open forum like the blogosphere makes you measure your words, balance your thoughts, and wend your way towards clarity. So again, weigh the benefits of watching the Red Sox today versus the benefits of developing your mind and leaving a legacy for your descendants.

It is a categorical trait of most Morons that they can't put their "ideas" and "opinions" on paper. If you can't formally articulate your arguments, consider that maybe you haven't thought them through or researched them. Or perhaps your opinions are not even your own - they are just propaganda clichés. I would confidently say that at least 90% of people simply pawn off others' propaganda as their own creed. Look at this email I recently received from a family member.

I will debate you on this whole global warning thing... I usually agree with your blog but your last grandstanding nonsense about global warming is wrongheaded

Scientists say 2007 may be warmest yet - Yahoo! News

One, instead of posting his dissent on my blog he sent me an email expressing nebulous disagreement. Two, he threatened to debate me at a later time but I guess only verbally. Three, note the Yahoo news link he regurgitated and propagated as "argument". Four, he still hasn't engaged me in the threatened debate. I emailed him and dared him to post a comment - he didn't. Five, it's not like he doesn't have time to post a comment - he is a shiftless bachelor!!!

The point is, consuming content pushes most people to act like my mind-numbed relative. Most people don't have any coherent ideas of their own because they are too busy consuming the thoughts of others.

I apologize for the peripatetic course of this post. Sometimes coherence can be as much an anchor as it is a rudder. How's that for a sloppiness justification!

Remember I resolved to be more positive this year, so I'll try my hand at offering a dollop of advice.

Ask yourself whether you are a consumer or a producer. If the imbalance is as bad as mine was, figure out how you can change that. Instead of joining a club or a weekly card game, start your own. Become a leader, not a follower. Instead of watching television, seek out edifying web content. Everyone isn't made for blogging but you can still engage others via comment threads. If you are going to consume content, seek out the best, the classics. Right now I am immersed in the eleven volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization. Reading is not just another form of passive media consumption. It forces your mind to stay awake, crack the code of language, and form your own mental images. One simply can't eat, doze off, and scratch themself while reading a good book as they can while watching television. There are great books on every subject; find the ones suited to your palate.

For my last chi enhancing prescription, get yourself a set of Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones - especially if you have small children in your present or future. They are also good if you ride the subway or fly often. They won't make you completely deaf but they'll make a big difference. If you've ever felt like running into the cockpit and strangling an overly loquacious pilot, you need this headset.



There are plenty of devious elements out there trying to waste your time, your money, and your mind - so fight back a little.

(Since my ramblings took us away from the Bachelor Culture, I promise to cover it in a subsequent post.)

Life Backwards

Click the image to enlarge.

Greg Mankiw Swings and Misses

Above find Dr. Mankiw's inaugural response to CaptiousNut!!!

That is in fact a truncation of my comment above the vaunted professor's. First read his original blog post - Pigovian Questions. Here is my comment in its entirety,

CaptiousNut said...

"all taxes are bad...is too common"???

Anyone that thinks that is a simpleton?

Greg tries to paint himself as the realist which I find quite ironic. The reality is that taxes have always been an end-around for more and bigger government.

In theory, one tax raise could be offset with a decrease elsewhere. But I thought Greg was trying to be realistic - when has this ever happened?

I don't buy his "there will be taxes...so we should use the least bad ones" excuse. Nor do I buy his profession that he thinks government spending is too high. If he had just one-tenth as many "cut the government down to the bone" posts as he had Pigou Club posts it'd be more credible. As it stands, his blog can be summed up as just one big ad for gasoline taxes, for the abolition of Red State agricultural subsidies, and an unending humoring of the "inequality" debate. Can you say "class warfare"?

The empirical, real-world externalities of socialism are far worse than the hypothetical externalities of carbon emissions.

I make no distinction between socialists and those that harbor them - unwittingly or not.

As of yet, no one has ever answered my question from way back:

Why not limit cars to 16 mpg instead of a gasoline tax?



The background of this is of course Greg's Wall Street Journal editorial that proposed to add a $1 tax to every gallon of gasoline sold (on top of the current 50 cent burden). He's been on this long crusade to get politicians, economists, and other pinheads to join this "Pigou Club". This nonsense is little more than his transparent job audition for a future tax-raising Democratic Administration. Click here to read his editorial. And this link will give you more context if desired.

My response to Dr. Mankiw's mistake,



For you Morons, I suggested banning Yugos and Camrys NOT Hummers and 10 mile per gallon clunkers, as Mankiw and one of his toadies mistakenly inferred. A population driving Chevy Suburbans would drive a heck of a lot less, ergo there'd be less "congestion".

Note that I eschewed all acerbity in my response to Mankiw even though he was DEAD WRONG and called me "Mr. Nut". His larger portfolio of folly is my concern, not a single overly-Captious misread.

But his response did reveal a couple of things. First it demonstrated his latent, but predictable, hostility towards me. I took a screenshot of the comment thread immediately for fear that he'd erase his embarrassing jab.

It also showed that he's both tunnel-visioned and tone deaf regarding the gasoline tax. I have proposed my ingenious solution to congestion on his blog more than a few times, so he should have been aware of my idea. Given such an awareness, he wouldn't have misread my latest comment. Mankiw is no dummy. He certainly has the capacity to understand my suggestion BUT it's been neutered by his both his animosity towards me and the self-righteousness of his own crusade. He's kind of like Jeff Jarvis with his Dell Hell.

Unshaken and unapologetic, Mankiw and one of his fawning minions vainly try to attack my proposal. A few more comments were exchanged; the noble professor who called me "Mr. Nut" actually lectures me on civility; and I smack them both down in a rousing grand finale.



CaptiousNut said...
Without directing it at anyone in particular, there is an expression, “never argue with a fool because others may not know the difference”. In that vein, I refuse to be sucked too far into debating the Pigou Manifesto, a foolish bricolage complaint. To say that my proposal would not reduce pollution, a Pigovian aim, is fatuous at best. As more than a few people have pointed out, a Pigou gas tax wouldn’t even necessarily accomplish what it purports to do. Pacify the Mid-East? Balance the budget? Reduce congestion? Save the environment? Give me a break.

Pigou Club members demand to be judged by their “aims” rather than their results. Just like all of the other socialists!

By definition, no practical, narrow solution can compete with a fantastic panacea. The Pigou gas tax is a great example of why the term panacea is mostly uttered sarcastically. The criticism of my idea is quite analogous to critics of securing the southern border who claim it’s not a “comprehensive solution” for immigration when in fact it doesn't purport to be one.

If a higher gas tax is supposed to reduce pollution, then why are emissions growing 5.4% in Western Europe and 4.7% in the U.S.? (since Kyoto no less)

Europe proves incontrovertibly that consumers are immune to a gas tax so long as little cars are legal. So, unlike my proposal, a gas tax makes no salient into congestion. By the way, for those of you with “global warming” phantoms dancing in your heads, the rotten fruit of congestion is idling, no friend of Mother Nature either. Furthermore, the fewer gallons consumed in America due to a $1 gas tax will just be burned by Third World rickshaws without catalytic converters. Al Gore’s Earth will still be doomed with or without a gas tax. Shouldn’t the inevitable energy consumption take place here, where emission standards are better?

Like I said above, I don’t want to get sucked too far into this morass of conjecture. There is a tradeoff between congestion and fuel efficiency and it’s ill met by a gas tax. My proposal better attacks congestion and may increase emissions slightly in the short term. I could care less about that but there are many feasible offsets for those that care. Massachusetts could take many cars off the road and reduce overall emissions if it: deregulated taxis, lowered the cost of mass transit, allowed car insurance companies to charge urban drivers and younger drivers higher premiums, built high rises near train stations, and modernized its toll booth collections. There may be a ton of Priuses in the Bay State and no shortage of Earth-huggers, but they are all allied politically with the opponents of my emissions offsets. Go figure.

Other states and particularly congestion-ridden cities could take thousands of uninsured drivers of the roads. BUT that might be seen as discriminatory racial profiling in some circles. Needless to say, the opponents of this offset also vote with the global warming chorus.

Taking a ton of cars off the road entirely would reduce congestion emissions for the rest of us. In the longer term, driving Chevy Suburbans would force everyone to make major lifestyle changes. People would live closer to work, there’d be more carpooling, and overall drivers would eliminate so many frivolous car trips. I think once people get a whiff of telecommuting and the facility of online ordering, not only will they’ll never go back, they’ll strive to drive even less and emissions would decrease. I’d be quite surprised if Moffatt or anyone else possessed a chart of price elasticities that could predict the future interplay of so many dynamic variables. I am sure 200 years ago no one could envision horse transportation usage dropping 100% either. When they banned smoking in public places critics said no one would quit, they’d just smoke more at home. At first nobody quit, but over time people started dropping the nasty habit in droves.

Of course my idea won’t raise tax revenue but that’s kind of the whole point. I just can’t find the law stating new revenue must be found before old revenue is eliminated. But since I am not angling for a policy job maybe it’s all beyond my ken.

8:50 AM

Marginalizing Bloomberg Television

U.S.-Led Forces Kill 20 Alleged 'Terrorists' in Iraq

That's the headline at the bottom.

Wouldn't just leaving "Terrorists" in quotes have sufficed? Isn't "Alleged" a bit on the superfluous side?

They should say either alleged terrorists or just "terrorists". As it stands, they are alleging that the Bush Administration(?) called them terrorists. They either said it or they didn't. All day long headlines like this scroll on Bloomberg, demonstrating that it's not a journalistic entity but rather an advocacy group.

The best characterization I have heard yet is that members of the media are like fish in the water, completely unaware they are wet.

January Update

Homes for sale in my hometown Newton, MA. From Realtor.com,

April 26, 2006 704

May 18, 2006 724

June 21, 2006 776

August 15, 2006 685

September 12, 2006 673

November 21, 2006 607

December 18th, 2006 476

January 3rd, 2007 388

Wow. Listings continue to crater. (I predict this will be the bottom for listings.)

Some of the dip is likely due to seasonality, but it hardly explains the entire magnitude. And the drastically lowered supply hasn't induced so much as a fleeting price uptick.

My worst case scenario continues to play out for real estate. The market is staying high for a long time, sucking more and more first time buyers in. As I mentioned in my last real estate post, mortgage rates have been dropping since June - over 70 basis points. Increasing purchasing power has been unable to stem the abrupt sales deceleration or price softening.

Many people insist that the market has already corrected significantly and that "the worst is over". While enthusiasm may have abated, PRICES ARE STILL WAY TOO HIGH. Mind you the overall economy has been very strong this year as well. What do you think will happen to house prices when any or all of this inevitably occurs: rates rise, the economy slows, stock market dips, oil rises, etc?

Denial is always the first stage...

Now take a look at the 2006 housing predictions and eventual realities from the National Association of Realtors, Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the California Association of Realtors.









Note just about all of their housing market predictions fell short even though their economic predictions underestimated the strength of the economy.

I am fully aware that these are positively biased advocacy groups but bear in mind their predictions are qualified by interest rate and unemployment data.

I want to reiterate my theory:

The dominant variable for house price prediction is PRICE MOMENTUM.

Right now, the real estate market is a massive barge drifting downstream. What, does the unemployment rate have to go to 2% for prices to uptick? There's nary a tugboat in sight...

Sorry, I was about to move on from this tedious subject but recently new homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises announced its earning results. They sucked.

Its earnings were down 70% from 2005 to 2006 ($7.16 vs. $2.14) which to me isn't even the worst news. (These companies play games by aggressively "writing down" land, I cynically think it's to make future earnings appear better).

The worst news is no matter how much Wall Street or homebuilders reduce their expectations, reality keeps arriving much worse than they feared. Hovnanian is reducing its earnings forecast for 2007 from a previously announced $2.50 down to anywhere from $1.50-$2.00 per share.

A mere three months ago, the already several-times lowered Wall Street earnings forecast for 2007 was at $3.29.



Now I am not saying that HOV will lower estimates again or won't meet the "new" forecast. In fact I find these new construction builders to be a wholly inadequate proxy for the larger housing market. I just want to highlight how prevalent the housing market denial is. This bear market narrative is a familiar and crystal clear story to me; I guess because as a trader, I have owned more than my fair share of rapidly depreciating assets. The first leg down is always "unexpected" and "healthy" and it invariably occurs within a worry-free context. Today the benign backdrop is a strong economy and bargain basement interest rates. Not until after the assets have already taken a beating does the bad news crash the party, proliferate, and cause the much nastier second leg of the implosion.



Here's some trenchant evidence of the Religious Right's stranglehold on America:

37 Percent of U.S. Births Out of Wedlock, an all-time high.

Consider that with the prevailing 50% divorce rate and the thorough skankification of television. Anyone who believes in the Religious Right's omnipotence remains thoroughly ignorant of history. Put in it's historical context, this really is a Post-Christian Era for Western Civilization. Separating the "church" from the "state" has proven a healthy move for both entities. Unfortunately the state has been hijacked by another creed. Statists today engage in the same fascist thought control, censorship, and insidious servitude typified by Louis XIV's Catholic France.



There's talk amongst ascendant Congressmen of making college tuition tax deductible. If they do this, tuition prices will simply continue skyrocketing. The mortgage interest deduction and the health insurance tax deductions have only made homes and medical care more expensive, so why do the pols think tax deductibility will help make college more affordable?

Do the pols know the deduction won't work and advocate for the econo-illiterate populist measure anyway?

Or are they just too stupid to even see the empirical evidence against their proposal?

Either way, that's one sad set of lawmakers we have.

While Harvard economist Greg Mankiw won't stop complaining about the distortionary economics of agricultural subsidies I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for him to inveigh against making tuitions deductible, a subsidy that would only increase his paycheck. Tuition could cost ten grand, fifty grand, or one hundred grand and academic economists would still insist the money well spent.

Speaking of agricultural subsidies...

What is the government's solution to oil inflation?



Well, it's inflating other vital commodities like corn and gasoline.



According to this website,

The Klan had much to do with the early gun control laws in America. Many of the current gun control laws stemmed from the fear of armed and independent minorities. After all, even a few determined (and armed) people can stop a Klan raid or make committing massacres like the 1923 Rosewood events too risky for the perpetrators.

Now query this - Is abortion racist?

Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions.

Of course one could easily argue that government schools are racist. They are poorly run and disproportionately attended by minorities. What else is needed for the racism equation?

So when will race-baiters like Jesse Jackson start inveighing against public schools, abortion, and gun-control?

Haha. They won't. Remember, Big Government socialism comes first, then all of the sub-agendas like identity politics, environmentalism, etc.

Conclusion - Historians one hundred years from now will have a heck of a time figuring out what "racism" meant in our day.

Speaking of minorities and public schools, be sure to watch The Wire on HBO. The season has concluded but can be viewed OnDemand. This year the Baltimore-based show highlights the realities of public schooling in urban drug-infested areas. Almost needless to say, such schools are scary places for all involved.

ESPN's Bill Simmons says The Wire is one of the most underrated shows on television. (I don't know why I am quoting that tool....he should be quoting me!)

Check out Harvard/Microsoft geek Steve Ballmer below.



Boston just passed a law mandating Green regulations for all new buildings over 50,000 square feet. Here is the comment I left on the above hyperlinked blog,

When the city with the highest business costs in the country (200th place according to Forbes) decides to heap more onerous expenses on job creators, all that will cause is more people moving to less “green” cities. After all, everyone has to work.

Boston simply isn’t economically wealthy enough to indulge in environmental fetishes.

Morons are always criticizing, fighting, and saddling with regulation new construction - be it commercial or residential. One key point that the Naysayers miss is that newer buildings are much more energy efficient than existing structures. Old homes and buildings kill utility bills in both the winter and the summer. They have drafty windows, inferior insulation, a dearth of ceiling fans, and antique heating and cooling systems. Environmentalists, or should I say Watermelons (green on the outside, Commi red on the inside) may get, two big green buildings built downtown, but their larger portfolio of regulations keeps thousands upon thousands of drafty oil burning shacks in the housing stock.

Similarly the Landmarks Preservation Commission in New York City also rapes the environment by preventing the modernization of buildings (and consequently drives up the cost of living for everyone as well).



There's no short list of negatives to living in Boston. Consider the amount of daylight in the following cities this time of year.

9 hours 11 minutes in Boston, Massachusetts.

9 hours 52 minutes in Charlotte, North Carolina.

10 hours 32 minutes in Delray Beach, Florida.

My friends in Delray Beach (recent New Jersey emigrants) enjoy an hour and twenty-one minutes more sunlight than us miserable denizens of Boston.

The sun is not only out less up here, it takes a lower path in the sky so it depressingly never gets really bright - that is of course when it deigns to come out at all. Incidentally, that is probably the only thing I learned in astronomy class at UPenn.

It was a "gut class" in which I did miserably. I skipped class too often and actually flunked the midterm - likely the only F I ever received. There was a lab report assigned that had to be done at the University Observatory (on a cloudless night). The syllabus stated that if it was done "before Spring Break" it would count towards 10% of your grade. Me and a buddy who were taking this class procrastinated some and didn't get the lab done before Spring Break. We came back from Florida to this announcement from Professor Shen,

"Those of you that didn't get the lab done just lost 10 points off your final grade..."

The class went into uproar (at least those who hadn't done the lab yet). We all just assumed that not doing the lab early would just shift the grading weight to the final (or midterm exam). These are the hazards of taking classes taught by ESL professors.

So with an F on the midterm and 10 additional points gone, I had to, and did, ace the final just to salvage a C+ in the class. Hey, at least I learned about the southern arc of winter sun!

I wonder if Professor Shen translated the directions for this noodle manufacturer. (Click to enlarge).



Here's a funny and revealing headline story from Reuters,

European Socialists eager to work with U.S. Democrats

Why aren't they eager to work with Republicans?

And Hillary Clinton is playing hard-to-get with a French Socialist leader...

Big Government nannies are now insisting that the Obese should have health warnings on their clothes. Personally I am against almost all warning labels on products. But if they are going to be mandated I strongly feel that newspapers should warn readers that consuming their product can make one ignorant, stupid, depressed, poor, and will embarrass them to no end when they try to converse with the informed.

Vienna to get gender-equal traffic and exit signs

Female exit signs and pictograms in bathrooms featuring a man, rather than a woman, changing a baby, will be introduced at City Hall to start with, the statement said.



Some loser male student at Clark University wanted to room with a female in the dorm but the school wouldn't let him. According to the local arm of the New York Times,

Mr. Chang researched the issue extensively and submitted a 70-page proposal.

Seventy pages? Can you say LOSER?

Buoyed by his victory and blooming ACLU street cred, the idiot went national, starting www.genderblind.org/. From that site,

They all, however, call for the option for any two students to room together, in mutual agreement, without restriction based on biological sex or gender identification.

Gender-neutral housing policies provide options for transgender students, students in the process of discovering their gender identity, gay or bisexual students who feel uncomfortable with rooming with members of the same sex, intersex students who do not wish to be identified by any sex, and students who feel that they would cooperate better with a roommate of the opposite sex. The NSGC believes that current policies, without gender-neutral options, reflect a time of institutionalized heterosexism that marginalizes countless students today.

"Institutionalized heterosexism"? "Intersex" students?

If anyone instituted heterosexuality in humans it most likely was Father Nature.

How long before some college boy comes back to the dorm drunk and has non-consensual sex with his female roommate? That ought to be a nice windfall for the victim's attorney.



This has been widely disseminated but it merits another mention.

Incoming House intelligence chief botches easy intel quiz

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks.



Now we have a nasal spray to thwart the obesity epidemic. Supposedly we can't crave what we don't smell. Medicare will probably approve billions for the nasal spray even though a simple clothespin will surely beat the spray in "blind taste tests".



Flatulence, not turbulence forces plane landing in Nashville

American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority.

The plane landed safely. The FBI, Transportation Safety Administration and airport authority responded to the emergency, Lowrance said.

The passengers and five crew members were brought off the plane, together with all the luggage, to go through security checks again. Bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane.

"American has banned her for a long time," Lowrance said.



Snake king Ali Khan dies from cobra bite

If one plays with fire he is eventually going to get burned. Throw that story in with Steve Irwin and Roy Horn.

Paper Money Discriminates Against The Blind. The government has been ordered by a compassionate judge to make "braille bills". Next up for the ACLU is most assuredly the nasty prejudice of iPods against the deaf...

I am no fan of Thanksgiving. Turkey is boring, traffic is brutal, and the holiday is too close to Christmas. What a waste!

But I am not hijacking the holiday to instill self-loathing in little children like this teacher.

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.



When Massachusetts' newly elected governor, Deval Patrick, was running for office he had to debate Kerry Healey and her proposal to immediately cut the state income tax from 5.3% to 5%. Patrick said such a tax cut wouldn't "work", it would just shift more of a burden on "our cities and towns". This is essentially a socialist's stock debating response to any and all tax cuts. To them, cutting taxes has never in the history of mankind been desirable or "effective".

Both of Patrick's gubernatorial opponents, Healey and Christy Mihos, campaigned to remove the tolls west of route 128 on the Mass Pike. Though Patrick demurred on this proposal, nonetheless the notion got some legs from the election. But note again the tired argument put forth to keep the tolls in tact,

BOSTON --Eliminating tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike west of Route 128 could force up tolls on the road's Boston extension and harbor tunnels, according to an inspector general's review of legal and financial opinions to be presented to the Turnpike board Wednesday.

Inspector General Gregory Sullivan said those legal and financial opinions, which he reviewed, show that taking down the western tolls would mean sharper toll increases for anyone using the portion of the Turnpike from Route 128 to Boston or Logan Airport.

Under one scenario, cars traveling from Logan Airport to Weston would see tolls jump from $5 to $7.31, an increase of $2.31 per trip, Sullivan said in a letter to legislative leaders and Turnpike board members dated Tuesday.

The increase would be needed to because the Turnpike would have to raise roughly $30 million more in tolls to meet its bond obligations, according to Sullivan.

Anytime there is a budget crunch or a fleeting moment of taxpayer restlessness, the socialists trot out the same arguments and innuendo. The country is broke? Well then we shouldn't stop spending, we should instead tax the rich. They must not be paying their fair share. Thou shall approve more spending (i.e. bonds) for education or we will cut out high school sports. Not only does that hit parents and students where it counts, there isn't a union to defend sports from such venomous threats. Note they never threaten to remove "vital" administrators or librarians. Cut out the Western Mass tolls? Well if you do that Eastern Mass (Boston) will have to bear the burden - because there is just no way us pols will ever cut wasteful spending. Seven dollar tolls from Weston? Well that happens to be the richest town in Massachusetts; so find it curious that socialists have incorporated that town's misery into their agitprop. It just happens to be right at Route 128 and hence the steepest toll if Western tolls should be eliminated.

The masterstroke has been to make everyone dependent on the government in one fashion or another: public education, student loans, Medicare, Social Security, or working for a government agency. Surely you and your dear friends and family have lips firmly planted on a government teat. Any proposed tax decrease or reform is invariably met with strategically placed threats to reduce spending (no more milk!) or increase taxes elsewhere. The game plan remains to inure voters to high taxes and wasteful spending so that the socialists can run up the score - no timeouts will be allowed. Big Media ostensibly referees, but does so with the probity of Soviet Olympic judges. They refuse to ever report on the wanton squandering of tax revenue - and hardly for lack of material. (Only "Iraq" is a waste of money.)



Science told: hands off gay sheep

SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of "gay" sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the "straightening" procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

The research, at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, has caused an outcry. Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the "right" of sheep to be gay. She said: “How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?" She said gay men and lesbians would be "deeply offended" by the social implications of the tests.

Approximately one ram in 10 prefers to mount other rams rather than mate with ewes, reducing its value to a farmer. Initially, the publicly funded project aimed to improve the productivity of herds.

So let me get this straight. There's no outrage over aborting fetuses that may have Down Syndrome but prescreening out the homosexual gene is "cruel"? By this logic no scientists will be allowed to find the obesity gene because it would be "deeply offensive", "cruel", and trample on the "right" to be fat.

When will these people realize that the right to be gay, fat, and retarded approximates a "right to life"?

Now I have mentioned this a few times...

A report card on youths' weight irks Cape parents

BARNSTABLE -- Almost 140 Hyannis Elementary School students went home last week with letters implying that they might be at risk for becoming underweight or overweight after a height-and-weight screening.

The school nurse, Stacey Shakel, said the letter had been meant as an education tool, not an insult.

In addition, state law requires that a school notify parents of children who are overweight or underweight, or who may be at risk of becoming so. About half of the Hyannis school's students got letters.

Elliott's third-grade daughter does not think she's overweight, Elliott said, adding that reading the letter upset her. "I don't agree with the policy," she said, "but if you're going to do it, don't send [the letter] home with the kids."

The Barnstable school district conducts height and weight screening on students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Superintendent Patricia Grenier said that the district could not afford to mail all the letters, and that in the end there's a payoff.

"Healthy children learn better," she said.

Hah! Did you get that? Fat kids can't read, write, or add.

In the end there is a "payoff"? Yeah, government schools are veritable founts of "payoffs" these days.

Anyone that thinks "unhealthy" kids can't learn hasn't intellect enough to be anywhere in the educational field - no less a superintendent. Anyone who's ever opened a history book knows that "unhealthy" people have risen to become some of the greatest achievers of Western civilization.

They were teaching "nutrition" in government schools twenty years ago when I was a inmate student and look at the burgeoning obesity epidemic since then. Where was the "payoff" for that?

Devil's Advocate - Well, maybe the epidemic would be worse if they hadn't started the education back then...

That's a tired excuse for failed Moronic measures. File it under the IF, COULDA, SHOULDA, WOULDA...

When arguing with Morons, never let them get away with this tactic. To them, poverty would be worse without welfare, we could fall behind Japan China if more money isn't spent on education, the elderly would be eating dog food if we reform Social Security.

In a nanosecond I found the following link and pic below.



Now I don't recommend arguing theoreticals with anyone, no less Morons, BUT for entertainment purposes one could use this tactic to dominate a debate.

Well how about this - Terrorism WOULD be a lot worse if we didn't fight it?

Or - A dollar tax on gasoline WOULD force the elderly to live on Alpo?

Those may not be the best examples but it's important nevertheless for a professional Marginalizer to be able to both recognize and exercise sophist debating tactics.



John Gatto introduced to me to an animal I was previously ignorant of - the utopist. Though an infinitely mutable creature, throughout history he's always believed in one borderless world, one set of laws, and one world government; by definition, the utopist is wholly intolerant of all other visions.

Who are they? Outside of the thuggish dictators and their minions, they are the True Believers at the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. They are eternally in search of larger mandates and of course more money and power.

I may have mentioned it already but I'll note it again. The issue could be "global warming", global cooling, global temperature stagnation, or thwarting an Earth-bound asteroid. Utopists will support whatever alarmist movement that enlarges their canvas.

There's no competitive market for world governing organizations. All global causes must run through the above loci of power and the the nascent European Union. Global carbon taxes are simply a back door push for world government by unblinking idealists.

Count my deplorable Congressman Barney Frank (prior post) among the utopist crowd. The new chair of the House Financial Services Committee is amenable to international securities regulation. Don't fall for his double-speaking cant.

Financial regulators on both sides of the Atlantic may not be able to resolve policy disputes through co-operation and the creation of a global regulator should be considered, according to Barney Frank, the senior Democratic congressman.

Asked if a supra-national regulator would be needed, he told the Financial Times: “I don’t know. At this point that’s something to look into.”

If CaptiousNut had absolute power, he'd immediately withdraw the United States from all of these world governing institutions, most prominently the United Nations. I understand what President Bush tried to do, sending the pot-stirring John Bolton up there in efforts to reform the aimless institution. Even if it succeeds in the short term, the inherently flawed animal would sooner or later recidivate under subsequent apathetic or sympathetic administrations.

Oh yeah, my favorite Congressman also got into a heap of dung this week for accusing the Bush Administration of "ethnic cleansing" via Hurricane Katrina. Read the transcript of what he said, muttered, and insinuated:



"And, what I believe is, at this point you’re not talking about [inaudible], but what you’re talking about is, I think, a [inaudible], what you’re talking about is when you simply, in a calculated way, refuse to do anything for well over a year … [inaudible] … and [stuttering] I, I, the policy I think here is ethnic cleansing by inaction.

"It’s not ethnic cleansing in the sense that they’re killing people or [driving] people out, but what we need to recognize here is that, they’re in this happy position for them, where the federal government does nothing, as they become richer and richer, because well not only black people needed housing assistance, but they were [predominantly poor, who did it], to simply not do anything to alleviate this housing crisis which … was being exacerbated by Katrina … [inaudible] they, they, they let the hurricane do the ethnic cleansing, because then they’re, all they’re doing is not resisting it, that’s why I call ethnic cleansing by inaction, and I know that there are people who were very happy that, as a result, … [inaudible] … [so that] Louisiana would become a more widely Republican [city] … [inaudible] … because if you lose 100,000 black voters … then you have to take a state that was prodominately Republican and made it [inaudible]."

The video is here, but it's even more throughly incoherent.

Attention Liz Clayman Stalkers

First of all, her name is spelled "Liz Claman".





Click on that image to see the audit trail left by your deviance. Your Michigan IP address is not hard to trace.

When y'all google "liz clayman cnbc nude" and get directed to my blog, your cookies tell me who you are. If you are young and politically ambitious, expect to have your entire search history exposed one day. For many it'll make "smoking a joint in college" seem like nothing at all.



I am continually astounded by how many hits my blog gets directed from "liz clayman" searches. It must be her ample bosom and a surprising dearth of stuff written on her.

Pervert Update - I found another pic for y'all.



And another!

Happy New Year Morons

It's just a little too "socialist" for me to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Alright I am back from a blogging vacation. Worry not, my mind has been working overtime and it's ready to dispense morsels of wisdom to my starving flock.

I strongly considered making a break from Marginalizing by dedicating January exclusively to positivity - perhaps titling a blog series - "January Geniuses", rife with bull financial arguments, chi management techniques, hagiographies of great minds, and a strict avoidance of all things negative.

But has Greg Mankiw and Co. really earned a month off?

I think not. Instead I will just resolve to be slightly more positive throughout 2007.

A few comments on the end of the "inclusive" holiday season.

Did you know that Hanukkah is only a notable Jewish holiday in the United States?

Do you even know anyone that celebrates Kwanzaa? It's a completely fabricated holiday not unlike Festivus - both of which were conceived in the narcotically imbued sixties.

Kwanzaa was dreamt up by a NutJob named Ron Karenga in 1966. How exactly can a Californian create a "Pan-African" holiday? The guy talks out of both sides of his mouth - or should I more eloquently state that he flatulates at both ends. From that Wikipedia link above,

He later stated, "...it was chosen to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society."

In 1967, a year after Karenga proposed this new holiday, he publicly espoused the view that "Jesus was psychotic" and that Christianity was a white religion that blacks should shun.[5] However, as Kwanzaa gained mainstream adherents, Karenga altered his position so as not to alienate practicing Christians, then stating in the 1997 Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, "Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday."

Nine years after Kwanzaa was invented, Dr. Karenga further moderated his views and became a Marxist.

Haha. California and Cambridge...the only two places where "moderates" are called Marxists.

Maybe I'll invent a holiday for the goyim to rival Yom Kippur - I feel particularly left out when that celebration comes around. Or maybe I'll start an all-white pro-basketball league. If you don't think there's a market for that then you don't know too many old white men!

I have already articulated my disgust for sharing. Remember multiculturalism is an ugly step child of socialism. Every person, every lifestyle, and every culture has to be equal in order to unite the proletariat. The children's shows on television are littered this time of year with seasonally flavored propaganda for the docile brats. The term "Christmas" is only uttered on the classic shows like "A Charlie Brown Christmas"; otherwise they use fashionable euphemisms like "holiday sharing party". I must have heard it fifty times on the Sprout Channel last month.

What does "sharing" have to do with Christmas? There may be a mutual exchange of gifts but that's not really "sharing". The next thing you know, these little kids will grow up thinking there's nothing wrong with compulsory sharing, i.e. confiscating the hard earned property of others...



Last night I turned on the television and the Sprout hostess was teaching kids to say "holiday" in sign language - what an absolute joke.

Now I am 32 years old and have never needed to use sign language beyond the universal middle digit expression, but nowadays, it's quite in vogue within certain circles to teach your toddler signing. Supposedly it aids "communication frustration". I recently met a young lady who actually taught at a school for the deaf. I asked her about these fruity parents that hire people to teach their kids sign language (ones that have no hearing problems whatsoever) and she turned red-faced with ire and declared the parents "total f*cking *ssholes".

Who could possibly complain about "global warming"?

I could see if a warm climate was getting unbearably hot, perhaps local denizens might get miffed by "human induced climate change". But in cold climes like Massachusetts, only Über-Morons could logically be upset at this year's heretofore mild winter.

It's a good thing I didn't attend my wife's holiday work party with the senior executives. She got seated next to the BIG BOSS's wife who proceeded to lecture everyone about the perils of "global warming". When I say "lecture" I mean it. She interrogated everyone on how they commuted to work. My wife won momentary plaudits for taking the commuter train into town. Yet uncomfortable with those laurels Mrs. C-Nut proudly declared that she owned a Chevy Suburban. I guess it was analogous to when Cubs fans throw opposing teams' homerun balls back onto the field.

Devil's Advocate - Well, what would you have said if you were there?

I would first raise my hand and loudly ask if anyone wanted to change seats with me.

Seriously, I hope I would have said nothing. My wife's boss controls too much of her income to risk offending him or his flaky wife. Self-interest trumps all.



Below is another timeless lesson on spousal dinner party etiquette. (Attention Morons and Luddites, you need to click, perhaps twice, on these images to make the videos play. They are not just weird pictures with a mysterious play button plastered on them.)



From personal experience I can assure you that husbands can be just as, if not more, embarrassing to their wives. Please, find my male chauvinism on other subjects.

Unencumbered, I would have told the clueless woman that "global warming" is nothing but a trendy climate theory and that she was both tragically uninformed and mortally brainwashed.

Lemma - It's a waste of time to reason with at least 90% of Morons.

Sadly, that is the conclusion I have come to over the last few years. Whether Moronic by nature or by conditioning, I have discovered that most dummies are incorrigible. My favorite tack to take with Morons is one of hectoring mockery. For whatever reason, popular learning curves flatten very early in life (age 25?) and enter a slow descent there on in. Bad ideas find easy burrowing in most adult minds, providing Captious bloggers with a target-rich environment.

How often do you hear someone say, "Well, I am not qualified to comment on that" or "I am not very fluent in that subject"???

Never, right?

While Michelangelo famously declared, I Am Still Learning, the apropos description of our times is Stuck On Stupid.

I am fully immersed in Michelangelo's mantra. Sure my learning curve was range-bound throughout my single years whilst I chased dollars, wine, women, and song; a fact that deeply pains me to think about. I certainly could have done all that but read a book or two along the way. But less than two years ago my brain was reborn, and I owe it all to this blog. I have said it before, and I'll say it again and again - I have learned more in the last two years of my life from the research, auto-didacticism, and composition of Marginalizing Morons than I have in the preceding three decades of my life.

Now back to that rich executive's Idiotic wife. Of course she lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts - the tony bastion of "conservatism and capitalism". Remember, the town doesn't even sell liquor and has "Transgendered Awareness" Day at its high school. Its reputation laughably proves the maxim that everything is relative. Anyway, this dummy has an 8 year old child in the Wellesley government school system who is "petrified of global warming". Can you say brainwashing? Or child abuse?

I remember being in the third grade (1982-83) and my teacher informed the class that Russia had a nuclear missile aimed at our city (Worcester). That was kind of scary and probably not something a teacher should be frightening kids with so glibly. But that was most likely true, in contradistinction to "global warming" mythology.

It's always risky getting pulled into "global warming" debates - you know, never argue with a fool because others may not know the difference.

To the Enviro-Evangelicals, owning a Honda Accord is always more virtuous than owning an Earth-scorching SUV. It simply doesn't matter if the Accord is driven 100,000 miles per year and the SUV sits idly in a garage. When small-brained folk scoff at my SUVs I fire back that I work from home and hardly drive at all (less than 10k miles per year). I demand to know how many miles they drive each year. Logical probing is feckless, they'll invariably exclaim, "So what, you COULD buy a minivan!"

Well, they COULD ride a bicycle to work. They COULD telecommute. They COULD turn their heat off completely and bundle up.

IF and COULD, two bywords of childish Morons, comically divorced from the reality-based world.

The woman in Wellesley...Despite her fear of the impending apocalypse, she has a couple of SUVs and feels extremely guilty about it. Perhaps in addition to shaming others into energy conservation she also offsets her carbon emissions?

Devil's Advocate - At least she cares...

Here we go again, drunk and stumbling down the steps of Conjecture Tavern. The next talking point will likely be, "Global Warming may not be happening, but we just can't take the risk...." - believe me, I have heard these arguments so often, I can predict not only the incoming talking points to a T, but also the order they get regurgitated. When did "smart" devolve into "robotically predictable"?

We can't take the risk of being wrong? Yep, the Enviro-Fanatics have co-opted Pascal's Wager.

Certainly, catastrophic risk is the most disastrous kind!!! What type of irresponsible person wouldn't be concerned about the end of Earth? Note at this nadir of the debate, the sly substitute of fear for logic, real science, and evidence. Mingled with the legerdemain is the fascist demand to avow your love of humanity and Mother Nature. This is why some of my favorite curveballs to throw "global warming" NutJobs are:

1) I bleepin' hate the environment!
2) Earth is my least favorite planet!
3) Mother Nature is a wench!!!

The fools just don't know how to respond. Guilt is puddy in their hands; so blunt the weapon.

As much as I'd like to get away from this subject I simply can not. It's the nexus of the Moron universe. As a propaganda buff, I ceaselessly marvel at the radius of "global warming" alarmism.

I just googled "george bush" and got 8.2 million search results.

While googling "global warming" currently yields 24.7 million search results.

So the most powerful man on the planet has merely a third as many search results...

Every time I come across a ridiculous "global warming" news story I dump it into a special folder for future reference. At my current rate of accumulation, I may soon have to buy an external hard drive to warehouse all of the inanity.

It takes more than just constitutional fortitude for normal people to stand up to such pervasive and sophisticated propaganda. Not only do they have to study the talking points and research the counter-arguments, they have to indulge inanity and defend the size of their cars, profess love for the Earth, proclaim themselves fearless of catastrophe, and bear the stigma inherent in tackling groupthink. If adults aren't up to this task, it's near impossible for eight-year-olds to resist the brainwashing - especially those kids of Moronic parents. Eric Hoffer has the pertinent quote,

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

"Global Warming" isn't just the shibboleth of a harmless evangelical cult; there are real casualties beyond frazzled 8 year-old boys and neutered "holiday" parties. But that's a subject for a later date.



Moving on.

First Night is the 30 year-old New Year's Eve celebration in Boston. Read its ridiculous Mission Statement:

Mission Statement: To reveal and celebrate diversity through the First Night celebration and the First Night Neighborhood Network, using art as a catalyst to unify the community through creativity, imagination and participation.

Even more asinine than that is that First Night is a complete misnomer. Since it's celebrated on December 31st, First Night should really be called "Last Night".

Devil's Advocate - Well it does turn to January 1st at midnight...

Well then it should be called "First Morning"!

I met a woman in Brooklyn last week who is a Boston émigré and an interesting entrepreneur in her own right. She organizes closets for evil rich people in Manhattan. She isn't designing them; she goes in and sorts sweaters and shoes, by season and color; she alphabetizes outfits by brand and whatnot and charges an insane hourly wage. Anyway, in talking to her, the subject of Boston came up. She shook her head and gave the most succinct and accurate description I have heard yet.

She said, "Those people up there are BACKWARD".

Yes, indeed they are.

Forget Seinfeld and Superman, Massachusetts is the Bizarro World.
While Bostonians fancy themselves the smartest people on the Overheated Earth, they are in fact among the dumbest. Bet your bottom dollar that one hundred years from now, Boston will still have Puritanical liquor laws and still be celebrating First Night on the last one of the year. Just recently I have endured countless "global warming" lectures, but never once in my life has someone told me I was going to hell for my sins. And remember I went to a Catholic high school (albeit a Jesuit one).

If you want to find a backwards, in-your-face evangelical, then blindfold yourself and throw a dart in Massachusetts.