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Back in Time – Rare CPG Interview 2004

Meme Alert! Newt Is Dumb!

Yep, this is the latest meme!

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this silliness.   I’ve also seen the same applied to Victor Davis Hanson, and to Freeman Dyson.  Why are they “dumb“? Because they have differing opinions on issues than liberals do, such as Hanson’s views on immigration and Dyson’s refusal to march lock-step with the sky-is-falling global warming crowd.

Note to the smug liberal crowd  –  Just because someone has differing views than you do, that doesn’t mean they are dumb! You simply have differing views on things.  Period.

Oh, and I don’t think those who are pursuing this meme are dumb…  I just think you’re stupid for being so idiotic!!!!!   🙂

The Cort… Complete With Sonicfrog Upgrade!

Real Clear Cognitive Dissonance!

A headline from Real Clear Politics:

ABC’s Sawyer Says Palin “Targeted” Gabby Giffords In Special On Congresswoman

OK.  But then, they print exactly what Dianne Sawyer said:

DIANE SAWYER: “So does Gabby Giffords really want to go back to Washington? Back where she was once called ‘the most positive person in Congress.’

“Staying upbeat, even during the unsettling campaigns of 2010. When we all watched opposition sometimes become vitriol. After she voted for health care, she faced people in her district calling her a ‘traitor,’ booing her in town halls.

[gun shot]

“Someone even fired a gun into her office door. And you may remember Sarah Palin targeted her district with an ad that had a gun sight on it.“

It’s clear what Sawyer said – “Sarah Palin targeted her district with an ad that had a gun sight on it”.   Palin targeted her “DISTRICT”, which is accurate. Sawyer does not say Palin targeted Giffords.

File this under Journalism FAIL.

Me Playing At The Big BIG Fresno Fair! Pic 2… (It’s just dying for a caption)

A New Global Warming Deadline!!! (Oh No)

Oh No… We only have FIVE YEARS to save the Earth!!!!!

“If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change”

The Sonic-Mate asks if they’ll shut up after that so we don’t have to listen to them anymore!

These kinds of deadlines are idiotic! This new one contradicts the IPCC’s previous irreversible one by three years.

The 2009 Copenhagen Summit, which was set as a deadline and seen by many to be the last chance to do something about AGW FAILED miserably.

From 1979 – Sea rise could be 18 – 25 feet if we stay on course! Of course we stayed on course but that didn’t come quite close to happening.

No ice at North Pole this summer. No no ice happened instead.

Even world renowned Climate expert Prince Charles gave us 18 months to save the world… And that deadline passed 22 months ago.

None of this means that AGW isn’t real. None of this means that the extra CO2 we do emit into the atmosphere has no effect on temps or climate. Consider this – CO2 levels have increased from 290ppm at the turn of the 20th century to today’s levels of about almost 400ppms, yet, somehow, NOW we only have five years before it’s too late? Why wasn’t it too late 50 ppm’s ago????? (which is more likely the case)

The more they issue these kinds of deadlines and then fail to meet them, the more idiotic they look.

Ah… The Good Ol’ Days!

RareForm, at its finest!!!

My Thoughts On The Penn State Disaster.

I just read the Grand Jury report…. Horrible! The question is being asked “Why didn’t McQueary stop the child rape when he walked in on it? It’s a great question.

Sandusky was something like 50 when McQueary walked in on the act. Mcqueary was the 28 year old ex-quarterback and could have easily beat Sandusky to a pulp. Maybe that’s what he should have done. It’s what I can imagine myself doing if I walked in on something like that. But I know how attached and loyal players are to their coaches. This relationship was almost certainly like a father and son relationship.

I was trying to think of other reasons why McQueary didn’t stop the rape, and, after I read the pdf, I noticed something. McQueary does not seem to have told his boss Paterno exactly what he saw.

Assuming that is indeed true, here is my thought.

Is it possible that McQueary was also a victim of rape by Sandusky? That is pure speculation on my part, but given the details and the break-down in the communications between McQueary and others, if the grand jury testimony is indeed accurate and all are telling the truth, that would go a long way to explaining a lot.

The Heart Of Political FAIL! (can you say “Cynical?)

The Congressional Republican are offering a budget “compromise“:

“Republicans say the new revenue would come from limits on itemized tax deductions”…

“The breakdown, according to aides: $250 billion from limits on itemized tax deductions, such as the mortgage interest deduction on second homes, and about $40 billion in money the government would save by changing the way it calculates who qualifies for government benefits (“chained CPI”)”.

OK. Sound like something I’ve recommended, tax simplification, or at least the start of that process.

So what’s the problem?

“The money captured from the tax overhaul would be used to lower the top individual tax rate to 28 percent and toward deficit reduction, aides say.”

WTF?????

Does anyone think the elimination these few deductions will not only pay for yet another tax reduction on anybody AND also be able to contribute at all to any deficit reduction?

They know damned well that the Congressional democrats will never go for yet another tax rate reduction for the rich! And I forgot to mention that the other poison pill in this thing is a provision to make the Bush tax cuts permanent! This is just as bad as the crap Obama pulled during the so-called budget negotiations last time around where he slipped a huge tax increase in at the last minute, knowing the Republicans would outright reject it.

I am so sick of this shit.

People…. Can we PLEASE stop voting for people with either a “D” or “R” next to their name and vote independent? We need to show the politicians on BOTH SIDES we are absolutely sick of being jerked arouns like this!

The Heart Of The Financial Crisis

I’ve been trying to explain it and clarify it for some Conservative friends of mine, but I’ve quite gotten to the nub concisely.

Matt Taibbi said it the way I wanted, and couldn’t quite spit out. Quote:

This whole notion that the financial crisis was caused by government attempts to create an “ownership society” and make mortgages more available to low-income (and particularly minority) borrowers has been pushed for some time by dingbats like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who often point to laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as signature events in the crash drama.

But Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are at least dumb enough that it is theoretically possible that they actually believe the crash was caused by the CRA, Barney Frank, and Fannie and Freddie.

On the other hand, nobody who actually understands anything about banking, or has spent more than ten minutes inside a Wall Street office, believes any of that crap. In the financial world, the fairy tales about the CRA causing the crash inspire a sort of chuckling bemusement, as though they were tribal bugaboos explaining bad rainfall or an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth, ghost stories and legends good for scaring the masses.

But nobody actually believes them. Did government efforts to ease lending standards put a lot of iffy borrowers into homes? Absolutely. Were there a lot of people who wouldn’t have gotten homes twenty or thirty years ago who are now in foreclosure thanks to government efforts to make mortgages more available? Sure – no question.

But did any of that have anything at all to do with the explosion of subprime home lending that caused the gigantic speculative bubble of the mid-2000s, or the crash that followed?

Not even slightly. The whole premise is preposterous. And Mike Bloomberg knows it.

In order for this vision of history to be true, one would have to imagine that all of these banks were dragged, kicking and screaming, to the altar of home lending, forced against their will to create huge volumes of home loans for unqualified borrowers.

In fact, just the opposite was true. This was an orgiastic stampede of lending, undertaken with something very like bloodlust. Far from being dragged into poor neighborhoods and forced to give out home loans to jobless black folk, companies like Countrywide and New Century charged into suburbs and exurbs from coast to coast with the enthusiasm of Rwandan machete mobs, looking to create as many loans as they could.

They lent to anyone with a pulse and they didn’t need Barney Frank to give them a push. This was not social policy. This was greed. They created those loans not because they had to, but because it was profitable. Enormously, gigantically profitable — profitable enough to create huge fortunes out of thin air, with a speed never seen before in Wall Street’s history.

BINGO!

The whole article is here.