Moving to WordPress

For those still paying attention, DLMSY is relocating to WordPress. The shutdown of the Haloscan comment system forced me to Do Something, so I decided to move. WordPress is a much cooler blogging environment, and still comes at the right price: free. Drop by and say hello. Although my blogging has been nearly non-existent for the past year, I promise to write more there. That won't be too hard.

I managed to move all my posts from here to there, but only a few of the old comments survived. I'll leave this site up, too, but I won't be adding anything here. Since Haloscan's successor, Echo, is not free, the old comments will probably disappear completely in about a month.

Tea Party Signs

Here's great site for free Tea Party sign downloads.

After you download the pdf file, put it on a flash drive or other portable device. Take the file to your local copy shop (such as Staples, Office Max or FedEx Office). The copy shop should be able to print the pdf file on 11" x 17" CARDSTOCK or cover stock. You can print 1 sign or 100 signs! Our local copy shop charges $2.00 for a one-sided color copy on 11" x 17" cardstock. That is about the same price as a piece of posterboard!

Some general advice, if you are designing your own signs: Don't let the media portray you, and consequently the whole Tea Party movement as kooky.

1. Stay away from Nazi references (Didn't we see enough of those from the Left with GWB?)
2. Forget the "birth certificate issue" for now, even if you are convinced it's important. Sorry, it just looks nutty.
3. No calls for violence and no racist slogans (Duh!)
   

Lincoln Tea Party - Sat. April 11

If you are here in Nebraska, you should attend the Lincoln Tea Party to be held at the Capitol building on Saturday, April 11, 2009. Follow that link to the home site for the event for updates. If you have a blog that covers Nebraska, please help publicize the event with the links below. If you know an appropriate blog/blogger, please pass this along to them.

KLKN TV (Channel 8) in Lincoln did a nice report on the event. Details and video here.

---

More links of interest:
Main web page (accessible to all)
Facebook group and event pages (all Faceboo members can join)

• Group
• Event

Attention Volunteers: Help needed in lots of areas from advance planning to day of the event and beyond. Please help if you can. Here's a form to submit your contact info. Your privacy is important. The organizers will not sell or give away your contact information to others.

Other important links on the main site:

• Event FAQ
• Event press release

Obama Gives Partisan Speech Denouncing Partisanship

A petulant President Barack Obama chided Republicans for disagreeing with him on the Porkulous Bill, as he spoke to a Dem Party gathering. As Politico reports, he welcomes the debate with those nasty partisans, who have nothing useful to say:

At Dem retreat, a partisan love fest - Yahoo! News: In what was the most pointedly partisan speech of his young presidency, Obama rejected Republican arguments that massive spending in the $819 billion stimulus bill that passed the House should be replaced by a new round of massive tax cuts.

“I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,” said President Obama

No more Failed Policies Of The Past that doubled the national debt in 8 years. Obama can do much better than that. He can double it in just 2 years. Yes, He Can.

UPDATE: At the same meeting, Pelosi denounces bipartisanship. Yep, she's a "rock" all right, or at least she has the same IQ as one.

When Obama finally spoke, he called Pelosi “a rock” and “the great speaker of the House.” And he said that House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey and other House chairmen had acted with “discipline” in passing their version of the stimulus bill.

How can parody compete with the reality of today's Democrat Party?

Bailoutistan Dead Ahead

Mark Steyn takes on the argument that GM and Chrysler are "Too Big to Fail." Not so much. Where does the current "bailout everyone in sight" course lead us? We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan. It's an excellent article, full of Steyn's unique wit:

"General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as 'workers' (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people."

What was justified initially as an essential, temporary, emergency measure (TARP) to prevent a credit freeze-up from bringing down everything is now open for everyone. Nevermind that it's illegal to use that money for a loan to GM and Chrysler. Apparently, the bailout window is open wide, so line up and sign up. Get it fast before it's gone, because then... ?

Obama and Blagojevich

We were initially inclined to give Pres.-Elect Obama the benefit of the doubt in the Blagojevich scandal. For one thing BHO seemed more like a victim of an extortion attempt rather than a co-conspirator in this.

Then the coverup and stonewalling began. Previous statements from David Axelrod about Obama having talked with Blagojevich about who would fill the vacant Senate seat became "inoperative." News reports from November about the meeting were scrubbed from the KHQA web site. It strains credulity to think KHQA decided on its own to remove those stories now without a strong push from Team Obama.

Why all the spin control, if there's nothing to hide?

---

Illinois politics is such a cesspool. If only some post-partisan figure would arise there, someone committed to clean government, who would root out all the corruption regardless of party. Someone like Sara Palin.

The Blagojevich scandal is so bad that even the dead people who voted for him are ashamed of themselves.

When You Have No Idea What to Do

The Associated Press: Obama promotes fiscal restraint, big spending: "WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama wants to project fiscal restraint even as his economic team assembles a massive recovery package that could cost several hundred billion dollars.
A day after introducing the captains of his economic team and promoting a giant jobs plan, Obama on Tuesday was to lay out his budget belt-tightening vision. The dual images — big spender and disciplined budget watcher — were designed to give both political and economic assurances to the public, the Congress and the financial markets."

Because nothing inspires confidence quite like the simultaneous pursuit of diametrically opposed objectives. It's kind of like the way the PLO leaders say one thing in English and the opposite in Arabic, but in this case both audiences have to be addressed in English. You might think that would make it more difficult.

An Informed Citizenry Is a Bulwark Against Tyranny

Ten minutes long, but don't miss a second of this.

Capitalism vs. Corporate Privilege

This is a somewhat long, but excellent, article on the important distinctions between free market and pro-corporate policies. This distinction is often missed by people from all perspectives:

Cato Unbound - Blog Archive - Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now: "Defenders of the free market are often accused of being apologists for big business and shills for the corporate elite. Is this a fair charge?

No and yes. Emphatically no—because corporate power and the free market are actually antithetical; genuine competition is big business’s worst nightmare. But also, in all too many cases, yes —because although liberty and plutocracy cannot coexist, simultaneous advocacy of both is all too possible.

First, the no. Corporations tend to fear competition, because competition exerts downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on salaries; moreover, success on the market comes with no guarantee of permanency, depending as it does on outdoing other firms at correctly figuring out how best to satisfy forever-changing consumer preferences, and that kind of vulnerability to loss is no picnic. It is no surprise, then, that throughout U.S. history corporations have been overwhelmingly hostile to the free market. Indeed, most of the existing regulatory apparatus—including those regulations widely misperceived as restraints on corporate power—were vigorously supported, lobbied for, and in some cases even drafted by the corporate elite.[1]"

The Lap Dogs That Aren't Barking

The sycophantic national press, having carried Obama throughout the campaign, now is providing ready-made excuses in advance for his upcoming struggles. No sooner does Obama call for reduced expectations, than the press obliges by telling us how hard he will have it. Why he's just like Lincoln and Roosevelt. Power Line comments:

"Well, yes, I can see the analogies. Like Lincoln, Obama will take office confronted by a threat of secession and civil war from the states that supported his opponent. No, wait....

The better analogy must be Roosevelt, who took office with the nation more than two years into a depression and with unemployment at 25%. Hey, at 6.5%, we're a quarter of the way there! In addition, of course, not only did Roosevelt face a "banking crisis" of his own, he had to worry about fascism rising in Europe and the threat of world war.

The 'two wars' meme is one we're hearing a lot, but by historical standards it's pretty silly. The war in Iraq is nearly won, while the Afghan conflict has so far claimed the lives of 609 American military personnel, every one of them a hero. But still: around 400,000 American servicemen died in World War II. Let's have a little sense of perspective here.

Actually, it isn't just Lincoln and Roosevelt who took office under more difficult conditions than Obama. Think of Truman; World War II was still raging and he had to decide to use atomic weapons to bring it to an end; beyond that, the Soviet threat was visible on the horizon. Or Eisenhower, who assumed office while the Korean War was going on. Or Richard Nixon: Vietnam and riots in the streets. Or Ronald Reagan, who began his Presidency with unemployment at 7.5 % and inflation at 12%. Was there a banking crisis? Oh yes, interest rates were at 18-20%. Now, THAT was an economic challenge! In addition, not only was the Cold War in full swing, the U.S. was losing with the Soviet Union advancing around the world."

What Does It All Mean?

Jonah Goldberg takes a look at Election Questions No One Asks:

"Ever since the primaries, Democrats have been promising to be 'agents of change' (which kind of sounds like a brand of James Bond villain; watch out -- he's an agent of C*H*A*N*G*E). It's a weird quirk of our television-soaked culture that we think change is a good in and of itself. The phrase 'change the channel' is a ubiquitous explanation for voters' desire to be done with President Bush. Fair enough, but change has no moral content. Winning the lottery is change, and so is catching a ball peen hammer to the bridge of your nose. The desire for change for change's sake is the stuff of children and attention-deficit disorder."

He hits a couple of pet peeves of mine, the near-deification of the Youth Vote and Undecided Voters. Why should we expect better outcomes by drawing in more people who aren't paying any attention?