Government aid could save US newspapers, spark debate

It isn’t sexual excess, or any other appetite gone wrong, that leads certainly to moral collapse.  It’s the little easy vistas on the road to Gimme City, down the lanes of entitlement that lead to someone else’s unguarded stash.  

It’s the route taken by people nestled in the folds of great prosperity or the ones crushed in the vise of privation.  The latter is forgiven,  the former just a social cancer, eating away at the contract we all sign to take care of ourselves, within arguable human limits.  It takes generations to create a stable society, held together by tradition, restraint, the norms and customs that make good citizenship not only possible, but desirable.  Such a world can be undone in a decade. 

One could ramble for hours on the final degradation of the Bush administration (and America), with its cavalier inability to understand that wealth is not created by fiat.  Access to the fruit of your neighbor’s labor, after you’ve exhausted your own,  is inherently evil in the smallest detail.  On the scale practiced today, it’s an enormity vast enough to nail its victims and beneficiaries to the ground for a generation.

For platinum plated BS and plastic vomit combined, read the link.  The idiots of Connecticut now find a social priority in keeping the most dismal, stupid, biased and ultimately useless product alive in the middle of its supersession.  The print newpaper. 

As a ”news” container, the local hard copy newspaper ”informs” fewer people than the broadsides and pamphlets of long ago.   And for political conformity, the Bristol Press is indistinguishable from the New Haven Register, the Hartford Courant, Waterbury Republican, Meriden Record/Journal, The Middletown Press, or even, especially, The New York Times. 

There is no argument for keeping these rags alive, any of them.  Let them fail and allow something new to take their place.

UPDATE:  End Times from The Atlantic:

Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print - the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital….But what if old media dies much more quickly?  What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely?  Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business - like this May?

…everything has its day.

Libertarian vs. Obama voter

When one looks at the future of this country, one needs look no further than the next generation of voters.

To make this easy for the average reader and extremely simple for the liberal mind, I chose to use images or when dealing with liberals, paleontologists call them pictographs.

The following illustrate the point:

The intelligent, educated, thoughtful voter

 Appears to be neat in habit and thought.

The Obama voter

Quite a piece of work, no?

Vermont’s New Hybrid Vehicle is Carbonless

Vermont’s Progressive and Green Parties celebrated a first in the nation, outdoing CA in being Green. Vermont’s vehicle hybridizes solar, wind and stored kinetic energy establishing the “MotoFutura” as the centerpiece of the resurgent Vermont economy.

 This is the Climate Change special, you know Obama will want one for all.

(Sorry about that…attention getter.)

             Charity homes built by Hollywood begin to crumble

Anything done by the wicked hands of the vile Jimmy Carter could be nothing other than a Potemkin Village, literally and metaphorically.  Habitat for Humanity does nothing to address the causes of poverty, and in the case of Fairway Oaks, built 85 “homes” on a garbage dump, in a ”blitz” period of 17 days. 

The Hollywood contribution is irrelevant to this issue…the overcompensated clods who contributed to this are just a staff infection…they spend their lives pretending, and are not to be presumed competent in any matters other than the evanescent froth of movie-making.

There’s material here for double entendres about Carter’s Love Canal, but we’ll leave his despicable harridan wife out of it.

I’ll wait for a liberal to tell me that the occupants are simply low-life,  and unable to appreciate what was given to them.

                             FRANCE! Now with 31% more auto da fes!

And so French “youths” from the banlieus are frustrated again.  In France, as in Athens, across the UK, in Holland and Scandinavia, they haven’t gotten the message that Europe is oh-so-superior to the US. 

Maybe French cars are just more combustible than ours.  I don’t know, but I do recall the days when French automobiles were imported to America.   Such beauties they were, too!  The cute and charismatic, suicide-door Renault CV2 was an outhouse on little wheels.    It just begged to be set afire.

Today, on the radio, Mark Steyn described Britain as “Somalia with chip shops”.   Mogadishu was probably quieter on New Years Eve than the island thugville off the coast of Europe.  Read on:

Boozy Britain’s bloody New Year.  A 999 call every seven seconds in alcohol-induced mayhem.

Social disintegration is sometimes slow and quiet, hardly noticeable, or noisy and bloody.  Sharia Law will come as a relief to these people.  The Rolling Stones were prescient….

Oooh see the fire is sweepin’
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way
(Gimme Shelter)

In a few short days, an African American man will move from his private residence into a much larger and infinitely more expensive one owned not by him but by the taxpayers.

A vast lawn, a perimeter fence and many well trained security specialists will insulate him from the rest of us but the mere fact that this man will be residing in this house should make us all stop and count our blessings - because it proves that we live in a nation where anything is possible.

Many believed this day would never come. Most of us hoped and prayed that it would, but few of us actually believed we would live to see it.

Racism is an ugly thing in all of it’s forms and there is little doubt that if this man had moved into this house fifteen years ago, there would have been a great outcry - possibly even rioting in the streets.

Today, we can all be both grateful and proud that no such mayhem will take place when this man takes up residency in this house.

This man, moving into this house at this time in our nation’s history is much more than a simple change of address for him - it is proof of a change in our attitude as a nation. It is an amends of sorts - the righting of a great wrong. It is a symbol of our growth, and of our willingness to “judge a man, not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character”.

Who is this man? you ask.

You think you know, don’t you?

He just needs some Democrats to keep him company!

Nice jewelry

The stimulus plan currently under discussion won’t boost the economy much.  The few parts that aren’t welfare, like more spending on health care, target state and city governments, society’s least efficient economic engines.  Any multiplier effect will be seriously curtailed by this delivery mechanism. 

And, when you examine what some of these cities want to do with the money, it’s not hard to see zero being the net economic multiplier:

The package would include spending millions to fix roads and sidewalks, making the city more green with energy efficient lights and heating, and $1.6 million for a system to collect and clean all the run off water that pollutes the lake at Durand Eastman Beach.

Sidewalks for economic growth?  Oy vey!  The stimulus is turning into a real charlie foxtrot.  The best alternative idea out there is lowering payroll taxes.  It would help employers hire and retain workers while also not generating more dependents for the government dole.  After all, what happens to the sidewalk builders when they finish: they beg for stimulus package version 3.0.

Well, we have almost 100 choices, but Christopher Dodd is Number Two (heh!) on Judicial Watch’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2008.

If there’s a sweet side to Greasy Thumb Dodd’s exposure, it’s an overdue counterpunch in the grim exchange that occurred here last year with two young members of Dodd’s campaign brain trust. 

Both of them supported Dodd’s pathetic hallucination that he could be President of the United States.  One of our commenters quickly revealed himself to be a wildly vulgar, homophobic egomaniac, and the other was just a soft-hearted subliterate.   

While vilifying ”Republicans” for being anti-gay marriage and chuckling about Larry Craig’s  men’s room misadventures,  neither of these dunces knew that Dodd ALSO opposes gay marriage.  

From Judicial Watch:   

Which member of the U.S. Senate took the most campaign money from corrupt institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?  Answer: Chris Dodd, Chairman of The Senate Banking Committee.  Given this fact, there is little reason to wonder why Senator Dodd blocked reform proposals for Fannie and Freddie, calling them “ill-advised”.  Dodd’s willingness to protect Fannie and Freddie would alone merit a spot on “the ten most corrupt list”, but there is much more.  Dodd was also nabbed for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial.  The Connecticut Senator admitted earlier this year that he was told in 2003, when he refinanced two properties that he was being placed in Countrywide’s “VIP program”, but said he believed that this was simply a courtesy which had nothing to do with his position in the US Senate. This was either a blatant lie or horribly naive for a man who has served in the Senate for 25 years and currently chairs The Senate Banking Commitee that regulates the mortgage industry.  We’re not buying it.

The most disgusting act in this drama is that Dodd will be re-elected and re-elected, just like that other swollen food container, Charley Rangel.  Every day that these bums feed at the public plate, the country grows cheaper and cheaper.  Why do we accept it?

Dodd, by the way, learned from his father, Senator Tom Dodd, who was censured by the Senate for using campaign funds for his home mortgate.  You might think the son would try a little harder to stay straight.

Overextended?

Desire bigger than your wallet?

Caught that ‘I’m a Swell” fever?

Did you reach a little too far?

Did that nasty banker stick you with a sub prime mortgage? Was it that “must have” $60,000, 72-month car loan that clamped down on your neck just as you got that dreamy ride?

Aw, Snookems, sometimes you can reach too far!

When you find yourself stuck in circumstances, your stupidity placed you,

REMEMBER…

Your Government…

is always right there!

Believe it.  This moron raises the mean IQ of Hamas to 12.  Another possibility is that he’s a teacher’s son from Seattle with hygrophobia.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is the gift that keeps on giving till it hurts Democrats.  How many politicians would have the cajones to play the race card by appointing an African-American to the seat and dare his fellow Democrats to block him.  Imagine how horrified Illinois Democrats were when all their scheming to retain the seat by refusing to grant a special election or impeaching the governor all came to naught.  The man is a mad genius.

And now that Governor Blagojevich, bless his soul, has put this issue back on the front burner, perhaps the press will ask some questions about the president-elect’s self-clearing report.  I’d be real interested to know why Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed Barack Obama for starters.

President Bush has done an excellent job defending the US.  After 9/11, I expected more terrorist attacks, but we’ve been free from terror for a little over 7 years now.  For this, he deserves a great deal of credit.  But for all that, his domestic policy has just been abysmal.

The latest example in a long litany of domestic failure?  The administration’s handling of the economic crisis.  As if giving away trillions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability wasn’t bad enough, now they’re pumping $6 billion into just above subprime auto loans:

GMAC said it would provide financing for retail car and truck buyers with a score of 621 on the Fico credit-rating scale, just above what is considered sub-prime. GMAC had tightened lending criteria two months ago, restricting finance to those with 700 or more out of a maximum 850.

I thought it was lose credit that got us into this mess?  Giving an addict more crack doesn’t cure them, but don’t worry, I’m sure the bailout for the borrowers victims of GMAC’s predatory lending practices is just around the corner.

But sadly, that’s not even the funniest most depressing part of this story:

The Treasury had already allocated all the $350 billion that Congress authorized for the first half of the program. But even though the Treasury Department has not yet requested the second half of the money, officials said they could provide the financing to GMAC because they have not actually used all of the money allocated for recapitalizing banks.

Did you catch that?  The Treasury has written $356 billion dollars in checks on $350 billion in funds.  That’s called check kiting, and it’d be illegal for you and I.

So, what can you say about this debacle except that President Bush doesn’t want to be known as the Herbert Hoover of our era.  Therefore, he’ll do anything and everything to get himself to 20 Jan 09 when he can dump the whole mess on Barack Obama.  I know I’ll regret it a couple years down the road, but I’m not saddened by his departure.

Would your car survive a nuclear blast?  A ’50’s Caddy would, along with a few other lead sleds.  

A helpful pamphlet of the era recommended rolling down your windows (when the sky lit up like a thousand suns) to “equalize the pressure of the shock wave”.  There was therefore no need to replace the window speaker at the Drive-In.

No instructions were provided on how to free your hands from a melted steering wheel, or your butt from the plastic seat cover.

One of our favorites.  He’s melting unevenly, or maybe he’s relieving the effects of that taco with beans and egg salad sandwich.  The final progression of his condition is to look like a lamprey.

Another of our favorites.  Driving the Transportation Department’s new JNK 1000 Design for GM.  It automatically practices the “oblique left” drill so well known to military veterans.