Category: Uncategorized

I am officially addicted

I heard Don’t Stop the Sandman a few months ago and thought it was hysterical. But the entire CD simply takes it to another level and redefines awesome.

“[T]he sound was achieved when the metal band was stranded on a desert island in 1989 with a CD player, plenty of batteries and the CD collection of a 13 year old girl.” I think my favorite part is when they segue into a Hells Bells riff backing the Madonna lyrics.

Rock Sugar is like the bastard love-child of Spinal Tap and Tenacious D. About the only way I can imagine it could ever be topped is if Al Jourgenson, Trent Reznor, and Rob Zombie were to team up and put out a CD covering songs by Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls, Girls Aloud, the Spice Girls, and Destiny’s Child.

They remind me of how it cracked all of us up when Paul threw in a Loverboy guitar riff after the Technojihad chorus without warning. It was the only time I can remember Mike, who had the freakish robot-like precision required to play live drums along with samples and tightly sequenced electronics, completely missing a beat.

My five highlight reel NFL players

Q: Randy Moss’ retirement made me wonder about the five player-specific NFL career highlight films that would be worth buying. My personal list would be Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders, Moss, Brett Favre and Ronnie Lott. There are players with better career numbers, but for “did you see what he just did” moments, these guys have to be at the top of the list.
— Eric, Ann Arbor

SG: I like this idea — seems like a natural for iTunes. (My five would be Moss, Barry Sanders, Gale Sayers, O.J. Simpson and Earl Campbell.)

Mine would be: Fran Tarkenton, Randy Moss, Barry Sanders, Reggie White, and Sammy Baugh.

Tarkenton for the ridiculously long scrambles, Moss for the deep routes, Sanders for the impossible escapes, White for the sacks, and Baugh just to see the all-around QB/DB/punter performance.

I still remember Reggie White playing against the Vikings. They called an ill-advised roll-out that called for Cris Carter to go in motion, then stay in and block the free defensive end, who happened to be White. White didn’t bite on the line feint, but stayed home, then literally threw Carter five yards into Warren Moon with one hand. He was dragging Moon down when the whistle blew and “in the grasp” was called. I was at that game with seats on the 20-yard line, the play was right in front of us, and it was the one of the most physically dominating defensive plays I’ve ever seen in the NFL; keep in mind that Carter was neither a small wide receiver nor a bad blocker. Even the most hard-core Vikings fans roared after that play.

It’s fascinating how one’s memory remembers things incorrectly. Until I found the clip, I would have sworn that White a) beat an initial blocker and b) actually knocked Moon down with Carter.

Downgrade on the way

Or perhaps not, if the administration can convince S&P to accept its fictitious numbers:

Two government officials tell ABC News that the federal government is expecting and preparing for bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the rating of US debt from its current AAA value. Official reasons given, one official says, will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited. The official was unsure if the bond rating would be AA+ or AA.

A third official says that S&P made a “serious mistake” in its analysis, “based on flawed math and assumptions,” so the Obama administration is pushing back. But even though “S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong, it’s unclear what they’re going to do.,” the official said.

But… but… I thought being able to borrow more money made the existing U.S. debt safer! Anyhow, I don’t think any government whose agencies have made the historical 2001 recession disappear, and whose unscheduled ex post facto revisions are nearly five times larger than the revised growth are in any position to claim anyone else is using “flawed math and assumptions”.

The worrisome thing is these are the agencies that still had Enron at AAA when it was going bankrupt. It boggles the mind to think how bad U.S. finances must be for the ratings agencies to actually notice.

UPDATE – The administration’s whining didn’t work:

– We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term rating….

– The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.

Notice that nothing is said about the need to raise taxes. S&P knows as well as the American public that more taxes will only lead to more spending. And there will almost surely be less reduction in spending than agreed to, given that this has been the case following practically every budget deal of the last 31 years.

As I wrote several times prior to the hike in the debt ceiling, increasing the amount of debt doesn’t make default less likely, it makes it MORE likely.

Guess the Race

The Milwaukee News offers its readers a new round of the American media’s favorite game:

Police Investigating Multiple Beatings Near State Fair Park

Local law enforcement agencies are investigating several incidents near State Fair Park late Thursday night.

Milwaukee police said that around 11:10 p.m., squads were sent to the area for reports of battery, fighting and property damage being caused by an unruly crowd of “hundreds” of people. One officer described it as a “mob beating.”

Police said the group of young people attacked fairgoers who were leaving the fair grounds. Police said that some victims were attacked while walking. They said others were pulled out of cars and off of motorcycles before being beaten.

Milwaukee police said at least seven people were taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. They said that number could go up as other responding agencies release information.

Who were these young people exhibiting their vibrancy so exuberantly? Were they Amish? Turkish immigrants? Native Americans? Ecuadorans? Who could possibly say? Since it’s Milwaukee, I’m going to guess it must be Norwegians run amok in light of the recent events in Oslo.

Wait a minute, this is interesting… apparently local TV wasn’t aware that its viewers enjoy playing the guessing game:

Witnesses tell Newsradio 620 WTMJ and TODAY’S TMJ4 of a mob of young people attacking innocent fair-goers at the end of the opening night of State Fair, with some callers claiming a racially-charged scene. Milwaukee Police confirmed there were assaults outside the fair. Witnesses’ accounts claim everything from dozens to hundreds of young black people beating white people as they left State Fair Thursday night….

“It was 100% racial,” claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran from St. Francis who says young people beat on his car. “I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn’t do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody’s windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it.”

Eric, a war veteran, said that the scene he saw Thursday outside State Fair compares to what he saw in combat.

“That rated right up there with it. When I saw the amount of kids coming down the road, all I kept thinking was, ‘There’s not enough cops to handle this.’ There’s no way. It would have taken the National Guard to control the number of kids that were coming off the road.

Drat, wrong again. I’m a little surprised to see that no one in the vicinity appeared to be carrying. I wonder what will happen this summer the first time a gang of “youfs” encounter an armed individual who isn’t inclined to take a beating.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the multicultis who are primarily to blame: “The incidents Thursday night come as the State Fair board over the last decade has worked to increase diversity at the annual fair, expanding its entertainment lineup and marketing to appeal to a younger, more multicultural audience. Diversity was a priority for State Fair Park Chairman Martin Greenberg, who spoke often of making it “truly the people’s park” – a “place of inclusion, not exclusion.”

Hey, mission accomplished! Nice job, guys.

Payrolls

Seldom has a payrolls report been awaited with more bated breath than this morning. Here’s what is anticipated:

U.S. payrolls probably rose by 85,000, according to a Reuters survey, after a measly 18,000 gain in June. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 9.2 percent.

I have little doubt that Ben Bernanke was on the phone to the BLS last night, informing them that the number had damn well better be north of 100,000.

Mailvox: in search of raciss

Holla has a few questions:

1. Is there a superior race? What groups represent it?

2. Is that race superior because of some sort of divine intervention or plan?

3. Does miscegenation “better” “lower” races?

4. Does Christianity allow for or encourage racialism?

5. Does God prefer whites to non-whites?

6. Why would God create races of people who were inferior to others? If you believe in some sort of evolution, is it a process guided by the/a devil, or did God purposefully create inferior races?

7. If groups of people are genetically pre-programmed to inferiority / violence, do you support genocide? I’ll use the legal definition of genocide here, but limit it to extermination, segregation, and limiting births in a specific population. Why or why not?

1. Superiority entirely depends upon the metric chosen. This question cannot be answered until you provide your favored metric. However, there are without question racial differences ergo the various races – and, for that matter, human sub-species – will presumably be superior to the others at some things and worse at other things.

2. Again, provide the metric by which “superiority” can be determined. “The quality or condition of being superior” requires a means of comparison by which that superiority can be ascertained.

3. I should think so. A half-African, half-Asian child will likely be more athletic than the average Asian and more intelligent than the average African. On the other hand, it will probably be less intelligent than the average Asian and less athletic than the average African. Hence Arthur C. Clarke’s dream of one mocha-colored, post-racial, bisexual humanity.

4. This is like asking if Christianity “permits” gravity. Christianity certainly acknowledges that the different races exist and expects Christians to surmount racial differences within the Church. But it doesn’t require or expect them to pretend such differences don’t exist outside them.

5. I see no reason to believe so. He does appear to be partial to Jews.

6. Perhaps for the same reason a game designer creates non-player characters that are not all as powerful as the protagonist. If there is to be variety, one individual must be superior to another in various ways, and therefore some groups will be superior in various ways.

7. No, I think containment is sufficient. The ancient German example and the modern Ottoman example indicate this to be the case. Violent people are usually content to fight amongst themselves if deprived of the ability to seek easier prey. Of course, the Mongol invasions would tend to argue that this strategy won’t always work. The violent breakups of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union demonstrate that even forced “unity” maintained for decades will collapse as soon as the force imposing it weakens.

Now, in light of this Federal lawsuit, I have three questions in return for Holla:

For at least two years, dozens of students at a Minnesota high school caricatured African-Americans in a homecoming week dress-up day by wearing low-slung pants, oversized sports jerseys and flashing gang signs, according to a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit filed last week claims officials at Red Wing High School knew of the activity and had a duty to stop it because it created a racially hostile environment. It follows a state investigation that found school officials did not fulfill their obligation “to provide an educational atmosphere free of illegal racial discrimination.”

“Acting ghetto, young white men seem to think that is the funniest thing in the world,” she said. “They don’t understand that kind of joke is the worst kind of stereotype.”

1. Did the school create a racially hostile environment by permitting whites to dress like blacks?

2. Should whites be permitted to sue for damages in Federal court when blacks caricature their culture by wearing suits and ties?

3. Is “acting white” also the worst kind of stereotype?

Vibrant England

Apparently black-on-white racial violence isn’t the legacy of slavery:

Shaking hands in celebration, these two youths appear to have something to be happy about. But this sickening gesture is actually two murderers triumphantly celebrating their killing of a 16-year-old schoolboy. The footage was captured on CCTV of a London bus as killers Lamarr Gordon and Dale Green fled the scene of the stabbing of Nicholas Pearton in south London.

Today, a judge described the killers as a ‘pack of animals’ as he jailed Gordon, Green and five others for a total of 74 years. The youths were all found guilty of killing Nicholas, who they chased across a park before stabbing him outside a shop doorway in Sydenham.

It is educational to see the repentant “youfs” doing their best thug impressions in the mug shots. The primary lesson is one from the Old West: it is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six. The economic downturn is not going to help, so if you aren’t carrying yet, it’s time to get to a range and start. You may not be able to save your culture or your country, but you can still save yourself.

Proving the opposite case

Jane Ziegelman inadvertently manages to present an effective case against immigration in the New York Times:

TENSIONS over immigration in Europe are flaring this summer, along with questions about what — whether language, dress or diet — makes a foreigner a citizen. Of course, these questions also have a long history in America.

One of the biggest battles over assimilation occurred a century ago in New York City, and the battleground was food. Politicians, public health experts and social reformers were alarmed by what they saw as immigrants’ penchant for highly seasoned cooking…. No immigrant food was more reviled than the garlicky, vinegary pickle. Pungent beyond all civilized standards, toxic to both the stomach and the psyche, the pickle was seen as morally suspect….

Of course, New Yorkers didn’t give up the pickle. By the mid-1920s, immigration quotas had restricted entry to newcomers from Eastern and Southern Europe. Americans became less worried about the “alien hordes,” as they were known, and diet reform efforts subsided. Today, New Yorkers can proudly claim the pickle as a regional specialty. If this footnote from our culinary past can be read for a moral, it might be this: Our powers of assimilation are greater than we know. We can speak Spanish, eat sushi and still be American. The proof is in the pickle.

Ms Ziegelman obviously thinks that the fact Americans who once shunned the pickle as depraved ethnic food now happily eat them is an indication of immigrant assimilation and therefore evidence that immigration is desirable. In fact, it proves the exact opposite and underlines the very anti-mass immigration point I have repeatedly made here.

This is perhaps easier to see if we illustrate the fundamental flaw in her logic utilizing the reductio ad absurdum approach. Suppose that instead of pickles, we consider the traditional Indian custom of suttee, which involves burning a widow to death on the pyre of her deceased husband. This is not an American practice, indeed, it is abhorrent to Americans, particularly when it is involuntary.

But suppose 30 million Indian Hindus immigrated to America and brought their vibrant funeral tradition with them. And suppose that after a few decades of protesting suttee as a particularly vicious form of murder, Americans gradually became accustomed to the practice. After all, burning all those useless widows reduced Social Security costs, permitted a more orderly transfer of familial assets to the next generation, and freed up some desirable housing stock that was largely being wasted on elderly women. It might even help increase the money supply, as elderly, unemployed women tend to neither spend nor invest their money, but prefer to hoard it.

So, after 100 years, in which a sustained campaign led by third-generation Indian Americans took place, imagine the various legal impositions have been removed. Many, if not most non-Indian Americans are now cheerfully burning their widowed mothers and grandmothers on pyres; it has become a popular new American funeral tradition. Now let us revisit the question previously posed. Is an America where Americans burn widows to death, speak Spanish, and eat pickles and sushi not still America? To this, the sane and rational mind can only answer: “No, it is not, unless America refers to nothing more than a geographic location.”

When ethnic and cultural differences survive the immigration process and impose themselves on the broader American population, this is not assimilation, it is the exact opposite of assimilation. It is transformation. While some transformations are admittedly more significant than others, Ziegelman’s article is nevertheless a powerful reminder of why mass immigration should not be permitted by any healthy, self-respecting society and why it will destroy the traditional way of life to the extent that the customs and ideologies of those those permitted to immigrate depart from indigenous traditions.

Bank runs in Europe

Still, it’s only Greece… for now:

Worried about whether the banks will stay in business, Greeks have been taking their life savings out of accounts and sticking them in metal slits in basement vaults. The boxes are so popular that the bank has doubled the rent on them in the past year – and still every day between five and 10 customers request one. This bank ran out of spares months ago. The clerk leans over: “I’ve been working in a bank for 31 years, and I’ve never seen a panic like this.”

Official figures back him up. In May alone, almost €5bn (£4.4bn) was pulled out of Greek deposits, as part of what analysts describe as a “silent bank run”.

Considering the size of the Greek economy, that’s a sizable amount.  Sarah Palin’s comments about the U.S.A. turning into Greece aside, I haven’t seen many signs of imminent U.S. bank runs, but then, it’s never a bad idea to keep an amount of ready cash and coin available. Especially of Ron Paul’s bill somehow manages to pass the House.

Rep. Ron Paul on Monday introduced legislation that would lower the federal government’s debt by canceling the roughly $1.6 trillion in debt held by the Federal Reserve.

And why not go ahead and cancel it? If the total amount of debt doesn’t matter because one person’s asset is another’s liability, then obviously canceling those debts can’t possibly matter any more than amassing them did. Since we are assured that the government’s growing debt to itself is not inflationary, then surely canceling that debt could not be deflationary.

For those who missed it

NATE: Acceptable Man Behavior.

If your daddy, or grand-daddy dies, you get to cry.  Crying at any other time for any other reason is unacceptable….

BANE: I’ll cry any damn time I want to. I am very sensitive. I will probably cry while I am whipping your invincible ass. I cry where appropriate in movies. And then I blow my nose in the hair of the girl in front of me, and cry while I whip her boyfriend’s un-understanding ass. Your post makes me sniffle a little. God gave yuh tear ducts for more than clearing gunsmoke from your bloodshot eyes. Dammit.

NATE: Great. This is what I have to look forward to. When the shit hits the fan… No doubt I’ll end up stuck in a foxhole with Bane… I’ll be cold… tired… and sittin’ there listenin’ to him cry.

***NOTE TO SELF***
Add suicide pill to bug-out-bag.