Category: Uncategorized

by Smitty

Insty links NBC Washington:

Cocaine use in the District was also high. The survey says that while D.C. residents age 17 and under reported some of the lowest cocaine use in the country, District adults were among the top coke users in the United States, with 3.78 percent of residents saying they had used over a one year period.

I’m not trying to imply any correlation between the amount of blow in play and the non-approach to integrity, economics, leadership, sense, planning, decency, &c evidenced by our Ruling Class Overlords.
Not me.

by Smitty

Joining the Formidable Ann Althouse in the self-identifying rube chorus is Peggy Noonan. Sort of.

The [Republican] establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledge reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens.

Had you been paying attention, Peggy, you’d have realized that this establishment you revere was really just a pack of Ruling Class Overlords, building since the Wilson administration. For all Reagan’s tactical success, he really didn’t leave much in the way of an intellectual heir, to continue the resurgence of America as Intended.
Thus, matters have decayed to the point where we have a POTUS of whom Peggy can say, in closing:

He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.

Political Clown Parade brings this statement home in a rather heavy ‘shop. Also, thanks for the pointer to Peggy’s article, PCP.
Yet even here, Peggy stands too close to the problem. She doesn’t grasp that BHO is a losing product of a system geared to produce losers, all the while talking about creating fair-adise. The Progressive Paradise is always Paradise Lost.

Update: linked at The Mind Numbed Robot, who aggregates the Peggy-flogging nicely.

by Smitty

Mrs. Other Smitty and I haven’t slept more than two hours in a row since the World’s Youngest Blogger arrived. This is not a complaint. We’re strangely exhilarated. He starts off at the top of the newborn range, and already thinks swaddling is some form of Socialism.
God bless all the readers and well-wishers, here and on Twitter. Also, go have more children, as opportunity presents. This is a blast.

by Smitty

Not to get too cocky about matters, lest the Almighty put me in check, but the World’s Youngest Blogger really sports a surfeit of cute. I told him that his name is Niklas Dietrich Smith. Then I told him that, as a result of government irresponsibility, he was starting out in the hole 60 large:

That’s a 9 pound, nearly 2 foot long piece of pissed off American right there. Fortunately, we calmed him down for a better pose with dad:

So, yeah, I may be a little busy doing the daddy thing here the next few days.

by Smitty (via Digg)

Police say a man who robbed a business in north Houston is dead after apparently being run over by the person he robbed. Kenneth Kobobel Sr., a 72-year-old Marine veteran chased down his attacker in his car pinning him against a fence. The assailant attempted to shoot Mr. Kobobel, but his injuries from being hit by 4000 lbs of car ended his life before he was able to commit any additional crimes.

by Smitty

William over at Alan Colmes’ joint has a magic chart culled from Think Progress that shows Tea Party activity is down in 2011. From Think Progress:

This study only looked at events organized by Americans for Prosperity or Tea Party Patriots and their affiliates — other Tea Party groups’ event numbers were not readily available. The two groups, however, serve as complimentary proxies for the overall movement.

Meanwhile, via Director Blue, we have a Ushanka post about Tea Partiers rallying outside of Speaker Boehner’s office.
My excuse for less activism this year is that I’ve been ‘cooling’ my heels in Afghanistan. I figure the bulk of the the fellow Right Wing Extremists out there have been (a) engaging in other forms of activism than holding rallies, and (b) girding their loins for 2012 which is when we absolutely have to ‘bring it’.
What say ye?

Update: Tea Party DC is awaiting a permit for a 27 July rally, noon to 1PM. I’m going to plead the fact that I’m writing this from the Labor and Delivery ward of the hospital. Dunno when the World’s Youngest Blogger is going to arrive, but his early commitment to McCainism (the systematic refusal to adhere to a schedule) is strangely admirable.

by Smitty

Kind of a head-scratcher here (emphasis original).

. . .Sarah Palin’s rise to power in Alaska and her excellent achievements and immense popularity as governor. The problem is that all of this happened in the context of boldly and bravely challenging the corrupt Republican establishment. This made her very popular with Democrats in Alaska. She worked in a bipartisan way, mainly to extract money from oil and gas resources in Alaska, and that was popular with everyone, pushing her ratings above 80% in Alaska. She was raking in money for Alaskans and challenging the big corporations (and their inside dealings). What’s not for Democrats to like?

But once McCain brought her in as the vice presidential nominee and she launched into ripping up Barack Obama, her ratings plummeted in Alaska. And non-Alaskans never got up to speed about the things that had made her popular in Alaska.

And then she concludes:

Democrats were central to Sarah Palin’s greatness: That is the argument in the movie. If that is true, there is no greatness upon which to build a presidential bid.

As with the debt ceiling kerfuffle, the real problem besetting Governor Palin is boredom: we know the 02 August Line of Death couldn’t be less meaningful if had been decided by the Qaddafi One himself; also, the pregnant pause we all sort of anticipate will give birth to a Presidential run seems to be going on too long.
However, if and when Governor Palin decides to enter the race, then the question becomes whether the propaganda media has successfully poisoned the well to the point where she gains no significant traction. Yet, if The Undefeated’s thesis is valid, and she has the charisma to draw in significant Democrat support, then she should, well, draw significant Democrat support.
By the time the 02 August debt kerfuffle reaches its next stage of idiocy, making the anti-DC case shouldn’t be terribly hard.

Speaking of Sarah, via the FaceBook page above:

Victory Film Group and ARC Entertainment, the distributor of “The Undefeated,” the film about Gov. Sarah Palin’s rise from obscurity to national prominence, jointly announced today that beginning on September 1st the film will be available to 75 million homes via Video on Demand and Pay-Per-View access through national and regional cable and satellite operators. The DVD will launch on October 4th and will be available at traditional and online retailers nationwide. ARC is estimating its initial unit shipment to be approximately 250,000 units. A “Special Edition” DVD will contain additional new content and will only be sold in Walmart stores. ARC will continue to expand the limited engagement theatrical release nationwide throughout August and September as demand across the country remains high.

Maybe we can have a viewing party. I’m planning some sort of Smittypalooza event for Friday, 07 October to celebrate just a few blessings.

by Smitty

Via the ever-upbeat Monty at Ace of Spades, this Hernando de Soto article is worth your time. He outlines six specific developments that have destroyed the clarity and reliability of information in the global economy, and then concludes:

If we can agree that the recession wasn’t about bubbles but about the organization of knowledge, we can move on to restoring the systems that allowed the global economy to expand more in the last 60 years than in the previous 2,000.
We are now staring at a legal and political challenge. A legal challenge because American and European governments allowed economic activity to cross the line from the rule-bound system of property rights, where facts can be established, into an anarchic legal space, where arbitrary interests can trump facts and paper swirls out of control. The rule of law is much more than a dull body of norms: It is a huge, thriving information and management system that filters and processes local data until it is transformed into facts organized in a way that allows us to infer if they hang together and make sense.

Mainly, though, it’s a political challenge. Politicians must raise the financial crisis to commanding heights, where the entrenched institutional problems of a failing order can be addressed. Markets were never intended to be anarchic: It has always been government’s role to police standards, weights and measures, and records, and not condone legalized sleight of hand in the shadows of the informal economy. To understand and repair one of mankind’s greatest achievements—the creation of economic facts through public memory—is the stuff of nation-builders.

I’ve seen up close what this economic confusion looks like. An Afghan government entity wants some construction done, and has a project with a U.S. entity. At a meeting, the U.S. representative states that there are some approval hoops for the project funding that are delaying commencement. The Afghan rep. says, ‘Fine, but could you at least put a ditch at the property boundary? If you don’t then locals will move in, park livestock, and commence to make ownership claims.’
Not only should we avoid investing in things we don’t understand, we should identify politicians trying to do incomprehensible things and run them out on their ear the next election cycle. Stated another way: go write some software. You’ll appreciate immediately the need to remove complexity wherever possible. Complexity is not your friend, though it may be the business model of someone else.

Update: linked at The NeoSexist.