Fox rox

Just saw Fox News this morning, and the Friends are working without a net.

Alyson Camerata was doing a standup with, as usual, no script on the teleprompter, only notes. Fox prefers its people to adlib rather than read straight.

She mentioned a couple of news items and then tossed out this gem of a sports note, saying the weather probably wouldn't interfere with "the NAACP Women's Golf Championship".

Then she said quizzically, "I think that's right".

If it is, then the old argument, "golf is a white man's game" has been, like, put to bed.

The problem nobody's talking about

IT's been said by others, and I"ll echo it-- this story will make the Enron collapse (with its casualties, the workers who lost pensions) look like a Disney movie.

All across America, state and local governments are running pension funds. They are running benefits departments. For hundreds of thousands, in sum probably millions, of workers.

Their funding is done on the basis of actuarial data, the insurance company-style estimate of what will happen in the future based on what has happened. Factors like the average age of death, length of time spent with illness, average age of retirement, average performance of investments, etc., are used to calculate how much the government should put into the fund in year x so that when the retiree draws his pension in year z, there is sufficient money in the account to cover it.

Funds are invested, just as mutual funds and private company pension funds. And those investments haven't gone as well as the actuaries expected. Experts are now looking over these decisions, and more than one actuary has been fired. Actuarial firms are even being sued for state and local pension fund underperformance. This is not a case of being able to 'blame it on the evil Bush stock market'; these people are responsible for deciding how much to invest and for predicting how much that investment will yield. It is their area of expertise, it is what they sell when they sell themselves as consultants. Politicians enjoy nothing more than being told they have 'extra money'. And governments have used these rosy actuarial premises to remove monies from the annual pension fund set-asides and use those funds for other things... as all politicians can be counted on to do (see Social Security funds-- missing in action).

Bottom line? Millions of retirees may not get the retirement the government has promised them. That, or the government is going to have to jack taxes through the roof to cover the shortfalls. Many constitutional challenges await whatever decisions the governments might make, but it is certain that this is a nationwide financial catastrophe that nobody is talking about.

And without an Enron to blame for it, the Dems (who are nominally if not totally in charge of most of the governments with failing pension funds) are going to be swinging in the breeze.

As will the American taxpayer, the mighty beast of burden, the dumb ox who gets his cart loaded with more and more people every year, pulling harder and harder, soon to get the whip, and someday to stand still in spite of that whip, no longer willing to move for any reason.

Atlas will shrug, dear reader; it is only a matter of time. Government is not only not PERFECT, it is probably the MOST flawed organization of any kind anywhere in the country. Politicians should not be in charge of money.

Obamaniacal leftism

So good old B. O. believes that we should somehow check with 'other countries' before we decide how much we'll eat, what kind of car we'll drive or where we set our home thermostats.

He thinks it's unfair that we consume 25% of the world's energy when we are only 3% of the populace.

Does this mean that B. O. will be satisfied if we reduce our energy consumption to 3% of the worlds', in order to be fair?

Seems so. And that, of course, means (in the fair world of B. O.) we will use roughly 85% less energy than we do now.

This is the end, my friend. This kind of change means catastrophic collapse of the world's economy, not just ours.

And even if he denies that a 'fair' match between energy consumption and population share is what he had in mind (why bring it up if he did not?), we are still faced with a putative leader who wishes to check with France, Russia and Iran every time we order a Big Mac or give the thermostat a nudge on a hot day, or even buy a used car!

Rules, restrictions, chains, prisons, slavery. Call it what you will, it's the end of American national sovereignty and personal freedom.

"but Dave, we should conserve and use wisely and be good stewards!" Agreed. We should volunteer to make changes in our own lives that suit the times. But when it's mandatory, and when it's at the demand of OTHER COUNTRIES, it's no longer liberty, no longer America.

Imagine the HOUSING CRISIS that would erupt if the European Union was allowed to legislate how big the typical American house should be! Half the houses in the nation would plummet to ZERO value! Banks would collapse, business would close by the thousands, jobs lost by the millions, unemployment and welfare benefits rocketing far beyond the taxpayers' ability to fund them!

"But monsieur, it is simply unfair zat you should have such a big house and such high energy consumption when zere are starving people in Ethiopia!"

You are free, sir, to have that opinion. I am free to dispute it, as I can't imagine what my living in a smaller house would do for an Ethiopian. But once you enslave me with legislation that removes my right to make such decisions for myself, the value of the house I presently own will drop to zero. Forbidden. Too big. Against the international law.

Unwilling to make payments for a worthless property, I will then default on my mortgage, along with the millions of people whose houses are bigger than mine, and banks will fail, Home Depot will close its stores nationwide as will its competitors, and every lawn mowing illegal in Texas will have to go home to Mexico to find a job.

Of course, rather than make a larger home illegal, they could just impose punitive Euro-style taxes on them. This wouldn't necessarily drop their value to zero, but it would darn sure depress it big time. Nobody wants to buy an obligation to pay stupidly higher taxes. We've already seen depressed areas all over America caused solely by rapid and large increases in property tax.

And as the value drops, more defaults, more credit crises, more lost Home Depot jobs, more Mexicans going south to cut their OWN lawns.

Every small and medium business in the neighbourhoods of larger homes will eventually be hit; jobs lost there, stores closed, restaurants starved for business as everyone feels the pinch. More jobs lost, more benefits claimed, higher taxes needed to pay for them, and with the tax increase even fewer profits for business, even more closed stores, even more lost jobs, and the cycle continues.

this is B. O.'s vision for America.

Perfect timing....

Yet another proof that the ethanol subsidy on the part of the world's governments is a truly terrible idea--

Not only are forests being razed to grow corn (adding to global warming, anyone? No more CO2 absorption by THOSE trees), and not only has ethanol production contributed to corn shortages and food riots in poor countries, but now there are other food shortage problems cropping up, so to speak.

When this is all done, the ones who suffer most will be, as always, the POOR.

The very people leftists always claim to be speaking for, helping, defending against the depredations of the evil rich, are the ones who suffer most from the consequences of leftist policies.

When the evil rich are taxed and beaten down to lower middle class, they will still be able to eat.

Not so the poor.

John Kerry, your phone's ringing

Recall, if you will, John Kerry's foolish assertion in that speech; if you get a good education, your prospects are wonderful. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Well, the King of horror, Stephen, is apparently unaware of the damage that assertion did to Kerry's reputation, and has fired a similar volley in a public appearance.

Do these lefties really not know that if you can't read, the military won't TAKE you?

An ironic message, to those who can't read, from he who cannot write.

Canseco defaults, press misses point

Jose Canseco has decided to walk away from his mansion, owing 2.5 million bucks on it.

He says in this article that it makes no sense, given there's a judgment against the house, for him to continue paying the bank for it, 'since it already belongs to someone else'.

Never mind that he is obligated to pay the bank, since he bought the house with a bank loan and the bank is not affected, or even interested, in any judgments against CANSECO. They made a deal with him and want him to honor it.

But the reporter clearly asked him if he sympathized with people losing their homes because of high interest rates, and he said he did.

What does this story have to do with people losing their homes from inability to pay? Canseco CHOSE to walk away, DEFAULTED on his loan, not because he couldn't afford to pay but because in his selfish and unethical judgment it didn't 'make sense' to keep paying for a house that one of his ex-wives was going to get in a judgment!

Canseco didn't LOSE his home, he WALKED AWAY voluntarily. He was not foreclosed. He simply said 'I will not bother to pay this debt which my signature obliges me to pay'.

I hope the bank sues the steroids outta that guy.

at last, acknowledgement

Well, looks like the cooling trend of the last two plus years can no longer be ignored by the powers that be in the great global warming scam.

Now they're admitting that global warming 'could take a break' over the next DECADE.

This is a warning shot, dear reader. They do NOT intend to be shouted down or otherwise moved from their long term target of a global tax regime that redistributes wealth 'for our own good'.

They will continue to whine and complain that global warming is going to kill us all, even as the globe significantly cools. And any warming that comes after the next decade will be PROOF POSITIVE that they were right all along.

You only THOUGHT you could dismiss them when the globe cooled.

But it was never going to be that easy.

But if sunspots don't come back, maybe that 'decade' will turn into a generation or more, like it did a couple of times in the past 500 years. If it does, we'll have way more global problems than the attempt to put us all under the yoke of de facto communism.

We're going to have trouble finding something to EAT. Cooler temps worldwide will significantly impact crop growth to the negative.

A warmer planet means more areas can be used for agriculture. A cooling planet, not so much.