POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Alleluia!

Gloria!

Christ is Risen! Ressurexit Vere!

I wish all the authors and readers of POWIP a most blessed Easter, and pray that God continue to hear our prayers, watch over and protect us,  and bless us all.

Click to enlarge

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Rocketman

Is Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Pregnant?

ZOMG!

The Elysee Palace on Sunday fuelled rife speculation in France that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady, has fallen pregnant* with a long-expected first child by the French leader.

Editor: News desk? I want Andrew Sullivan to fly to Paris, today.

[shifts phone to other ear, hands coffee mug to secretary]

I don't care if he's Easter egg hunting. What? I don't care if he's stoned out of his goddamn gourd! I want him on the next flight to Paris, if you have to pour him into a jug and send him freight! Do you hear me? Good!

* "Fallen pregnant"? Is that like "come down with a bad case of sperm poisoning"? Jeebus.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Good Thing Cursing In Spanish Makes It Acceptable to Print

in the Orange County Weekly:

But I, along with the millions of Latinos who come from an undocumented pedigree, whether it be our parents (me), our cousins, uncles, friends, or ourselves (like all the Dreamers out there), can't help but gloat about Vives' background. What a wonderful chinga tu madre at the Know Nothings of the world who insist illegals can't make anything of themselves in this country!

Yeah, you sure gave it to that stupid Yanqui strawman, and he didn't even know it, cabrón!

From this site, with lots of other good stuff.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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[UPDATED] I Don’t Mean To Be a Prick . . .

it just comes naturally.

By which I mean that I probably shouldn't bother to correct Wolly. Last time we noted him here, he was nattering about conservatives lacking subtlety and discrimination. The latest visitor from James (earlier today) was directed here to a post that Enoch wrote long ago about Qur'-B-Cues.

I opined at the time that the burning of Muslim holy books was tacky, but that it should be the right of any American to burn his own copies without having to be worried about savages, foreign or domestic, murdering people or lighting the temples of other faiths on fire in reaction. It is true that under the Mosaic law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were considered good form. It's also true that, before the advent of the printing press and for some time thereafter, before the technology became widespread, book burning was a serious matter. We can't really know how much of Classical and Oriental Culture was lost at Alexandria, or how many singular works were lost when a Shao-Lin temple in China was torched by a disgruntled monk, or what unique manuscripts were destroyed when the Cotton Library burned, or for that matter what nonpareil epics of retribution for hog rustling good old Ollie Cromwell might have put to the torch in Ireland.

And yes, I know what Milton said about the Seasoned Life of Man. Still, for a Religion of Peace that holds (at least in English) that the murder of an individual human being is equivalent to the destruction of a cosmos (unless it's performed according to the dictates of their Prophet), this slaughter of innocent parties seems a bit much, given the general availability of their holy book (still in print) and the fact that it lives on in the oral tradition taught with a great deal of beating in their madrassas. One has to be remarkably subtle, naturally, to understand why one's own cultural norms should be subsumed to that of such awful people, I've no doubt. Unfortunately, I'm constitutionally incapable of fathoming the reasoning behind arresting proselytizers for their own religion in Dearborn, on grounds that their leafleting amounts to a disturbance of the peace.

All of that, though, is neither here nor there. I will let it go, for now. I just want to make the point that I don't understand this:

Humpty Dumpty Has a Sad
by James Wolcott
April 19, 2011, 12:11 PM

Glenn Beck, whose crying towel doubles as a sarong, is having a righteous pout over a recent blog post of mine that made light of his lugubrious Israel-defense hour Friday on Fox News.

I tried following that post title into the sentence below, as in "Humpty Dumpty has a sad Glenn Beck," but that makes the original sentence run on. I searched in vain for the noun to be modified by "sad" through the rest of the post. Or does the title imply some ending, such as "e-i-e-i-o" to which I've missed the reference? [Haz SarahW puzzed it out in her comment and link?]

I'm not sure that "lugubrious" does very much to modify "pout," either. I would choose something stronger, such as "eel."

Then I encountered this:

God works in mysterious ways, but even so, WTF.

Hitherto, my belief has been that the acronym WTF? harbored a question, even if the question was "rhetorical" (the quotation marks are there because I believe every question, strictly speaking, to be rhetorical). Are we now to assume that the initials WTF contain the punctuation? If so, how do we distinguish the usage when someone asks, "WTF was (let us say) Krugman on this morning?"

I point this out because this is the really important stuff, and the rest of it's all a sideshow.

UPDATE: "Haz a sad" does indeed seem to be an expression current among the young, with it and hip.

@marysangiovanni Mary SanGiovanni
Am not in PA with my peeps. I haz a sad. :(

My apologies.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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America Catches the Obama Flu

Symptoms include listlessness, depression.

From The POH Diaries:

That’s what I get from two companion pieces this morning. One in the WSJ, the other in the NY Times. According to the Times, the Nation’s mood is at it’s lowest point in two years. Once again, bummer for Obama.

Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.

And further down in the article:

Disapproval of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy has never been broader — at 57 percent of Americans — a warning sign as he begins to set his sights on re-election in 2012. And a similar percentage disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the federal budget deficit, though more disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are.

Sure, this is all bad news for an incumbent headed into an election, but a guy with Obama’s winning personality can overcome all this, right? Maybe not. According to Daniel Henninger Obama’s winning personality has all but disappeared.

The Barack Obama we’ve been seeing lately is a different personality than the one that made a miracle run to the White House in 2008.

Obama.2008 was engaging, patient, open, optimistic and a self-identified conciliator.

Obama.2011 has been something else—testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and increasingly a divider.

So who is the real Obama? The hopey changey guy from 2007-2008 or this guy now who gets an attitude at the drop of a hat. Henninger (so do I) thinks that this new Obama with the attitude problem is actually the genuine Obama.

Now, Obama is lashing out at "speculators" who are driving up the price of oil, but as Anthony Martin notes, it's actually the devaluation of the dollar that's largely to blame, and that in turn is based on Obama's policy of "quantitative easing," aka printing more money.

The nation stands on the brink of yet another similar crisis, except this time the consequences appear to be shaping up to be much worse, given the Obama Administration's and the Federal Reserve's policy of devaluing the dollar. The value of the dollar has now reached historic lows against the Euro, for example, and each time the dollar loses some of its value OPEC raises the price of crude oil. This is due to the fact that oil must be bought with the dollar. The dollar is the official currency of OPEC, and thus, purchases of crude from the Middle East must be made with the dollar, which is losing its value. This means it takes more dollars to purchase oil because the dollar isn't worth as much as before.

And what does Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve do to address this issue? Obama said he wants an investigation into 'speculators' who drive up the price of oil on the market. Misguided media personalities such as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly unfortunately buy into the lie, and he mouths the mantra each evening that if only we could go after the speculators, the gasoline crisis could be ended. Both are missing the heart of the issue--the dollar's decreasing value, the fact that the dollar is the official currency of OPEC, and OPEC's willingness to address the dollar's plunge by rising prices. Not only that, but OPEC declared this week that the oil market is glutted and thus, it will cut back on production. With less oil being produced, prices will go only higher...the law of supply and demand.

As for the Federal Reserve, the response has been to continue to devalue the dollar through 'Quantitative Easing,' or, the printing of more money--which only continues to drive the dollar downward in value.

Meanwhile, Americans suffer at the pump. Most Americans cannot afford $6 per gallon, and they will cut back on other purchases in order to merely get to work. Not only that, but rising gas prices will effect every sector of society. Goods, food, clothing, and other necessities must be transported to purchase points, and that transportation is fueled by oil. With rising costs of transporting goods, food, and other necessities, those prices will be passed along to consumers. The cost for food and clothing, for example, are already skyrocketing and will only go higher.

This is pretty basic stuff. You'd have to be a Krugman or Bernanke or some other kind of jackass not to see it coming. The administration begged (and probably threatened) S&P not to downgrade the US outlook--in other words, suborned fraud--because they understand that they'll have to purchase debt at higher interest, and that in turn will make the deficit greater, and the spiral will continue.

Birthers believe that Obama's Indonesian. He's not. He's Malaise-ian.

*******

For years, Katherine Cramer Walsh has had college students come into her office with concerns about grades or assignments. Lately, however, she has found herself being asked to offer romantic advice.

“I’ve had students coming to me in tears, saying, ‘I’ve been dating this person for a year and I don’t know if I can do it anymore,’” said Walsh, a UW-Madison political science professor.

The problem wasn’t fidelity or commitment — it was Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining law. For some families, friends or even young couples in love, the debate over the bill and its move to curtail public worker union rights has become a dealbreaker that is fraying nerves and relationships all over the state.

“It’s a swing state not because we are all independent,” said Walsh, who travels Wisconsin as part of her job advising the Badger Poll. “It’s a swing state because there are people with strong leanings on both sides.”

Walsh continues:

The issues splitting the state now are not new to Walsh. Her job advising the statewide public opinion poll started taking her throughout Wisconsin in 2007, meeting with groups and asking them: “What do you care about?”

She saw a huge rural-urban divide. People resented how resources went to Madison and Milwaukee and believed their part of the state didn’t get a fair share.

In his gubernatorial campaign, Walker referred to public employees as the “haves” and to private sector workers as the “have-nots.” Walsh can see how that message might have resonated with some people.

In more rural areas of the state, particularly the tourist areas where many jobs are seasonal, teachers and public employees are some of the few who have steady salaries and good benefits.

“People feel, ‘They have so much and I have so little, and what they have is coming out of my pocket,’” Walsh said. “There is so much resentment.”

I guess I'd like to know which political parties have been pushing economic resentment, and to what end, if it's so endemic. The NLRB rulings that I've written about lately come to mind. We seem to be getting mixed signals:

Recently, a small town accountant tipped off the IRS that his employer was shorting the government on taxes. He was rewarded with a big fat check for $4.5 million (minus a 28% federal tax withholding, of course).

I’m sure the government thinks this reward is money well spent – it represents 22.5% of the $20 million in taxes that were recovered in the case, which at face value looks like a sound investment.

Consider, though, that the recovered tax was enough to keep the wheels on the bus going round and round for 2 minutes 18.4 seconds under the US government’s $3.82 trillion budget.

US Senator Chuck Grassley, a key sponsor of the 2006 bill that beefed up the IRS Whistleblower Program, couldn’t be happier: “It ought to encourage a lot of other people to squeal,” said Grassley when commenting on the case.

Grassley is a career politician. He entered the Iowa state legislature in his mid-20s almost as soon as finishing his university studies and meeting the age eligibility requirements set by the Iowa Constitution. Now at age 77 1/2, Grassley has 52-years of experience in spending other people’s money without ever having worried about earning any himself.

He’s not alone. Most of his peers are career politicians with tenures so lengthy it is as if they are entitled to their position by birthright, regardless of the destructiveness of their decisions.

Long-time politicians like Grassley who have been in the nucleus of power for so long are exactly the sort of people who are responsible for decades of mismanagement and horrendous fiscal decision-making. And now, after running the government into the ground, what is their solution?

Turn people against each other. Breed mistrust. Incentivize suspicion. Reward cannibalistic witch hunts. George Orwell couldn’t have scripted it better.

Well, look: I've got no problem with people blowing the whistle on tax cheats, but if the NLRB says that a union can fine and suspend someone for blowing the whistle on safety violations when doing so might cause trouble for their union brethren, what prevents a union from punishing a whistleblower who snitches on financial fraud? If it's okay for them to threaten to break someone's arms when they display what someone else regards as disloyalty to the union, can justifiable homicide be far behind? For that matter, why should anyone have to pay dues to a union as a condition of employment, and why should there be government contracts that can only be bid on by union contractors, when it is likely to mean the taxpayers are getting less bang for their buck?

Civility NOW!!! means Wisconsin educators warning gas station owners that they'd better not sell anything to legislators? Screw that.

You know, though, there are speculators out there who've been wanting to get rid of the dollar, whom Obama and Co. have been helping out a great deal, and who recently met at Bretton Woods to discuss their New World Order. Who elected them, I don't know.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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