We’re still waiting for the Texas DPS to process our CHL applications. (Yes, plural. Tammy’s getting one too.) Seems there’s been huge surge in applications since Bronco Bomber has been winning the hearts and souls of the national media.

I’m getting dangerously close to burnout on the political news. I’m still passionate about it, but with nothing really new happening and both parties playing an awful lot of the same, old, tired, political games, it’s hard to stay interested. Thus, today’s quip is an old, tired, political one.

Anyone who is capable of being elected president should on no account be allowed to do the job.
– The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I caught a very interesting bit of trivia on the radio this morning and I couldn’t wait to share it.

I knew that the word “silhouette” was French because it’s retardedly spelled (stupid French). But I didn’t know it’s origin was economic.

A silhouette is an image portrayed in shadow, a void that implies an object rather than the object itself being portrayed. In the late 18th century, if you couldn’t afford an expensive portrait, you could settle for a silhouette portrait in which your profile is traced from your shadow.

Here’s where it gets interesting. (I promise.) The word “silhouette” comes from Etienne de Silhouette who was the French finance minister the late 1750’s. Back then France was at war with England and they were running out of money. So Silhouette came up with an idea that sounded great on paper (or in speeches).

There were a few really rich people in France and a whole bunch of poor people. So, rather than try and tax a bunch of poor people, Silhouette decided to only tax the rich, and he taxed the snot out of them. He taxed them to the point that the wealth of the few was nearly spent. They were forced to melt down their golden trinkets and silverware in order to pay the taxes.

With much of the wealth spent, no one could afford painted portraits, so they resorted to cheap shadow paintings. It became a running joke that Silhouette had turned France’s wealth into a shadow of what it had been before. And the shadow paintings became known as silhouettes.

I wonder what item will be called an obama after he taxes the wealth of America into oblivion.

…

In case you were wondering (or even if you never have) I found a great resource to help you understand exactly how taxes are paid in the U.S.

The National Taxpayers Union breaks down the percentage of taxes paid by the taxpayer’s percentile of AGI. (That’s adjusted gross income, the number calculated by your 1040 tax form.)

In 2006, the top 1% of earners (that’s the 3 million richest people in the U.S., with an average income around $400,000) paid almost 40% of all the taxes that the government received, while the bottom 50% (150 million people with an average income less than $32,000) paid less than 3% of the tax receipts. And this is with all the Bush tax cuts in place! And Obama still wants to raise taxes on the rich. Apparently he thinks that they need to pay even more. 50%? 60%? Maybe he should do like Silhouette did and make the richest 1% pay all 100% of the taxes.

How exactly does he expect to make poor people richer by making rich people poorer? It didn’t work in France and it won’t work here either.

The funny thing about a free market economy, driven by consumer confidence, is that dire predictions can be self-fulling. The more the media tells you that the economy is bad, the more you believe that the economy is bad. And when you believe the economy is bad, you spend less money, hording your pennies for the “bad times” to come. And when you stop spending, retailers make less money and in turn order fewer products and are forced to cut jobs. Manufactures sell less and in turn order less raw materials and are forced to cut jobs. Materials producers (farms, mines, mills of every sort) sell less raw materials and are forced to cut jobs. Naturally, this cycle takes a while, sometimes years, but the result is the same.

It’s even more striking in the stock market. It can happen in hours instead of years. When someone says, “Ooh, look out! The market is going to drop,” everyone wants to “sell high” and get out. But when everyone starts selling at the same time, the price does drop, not because of the bad news, but because of the selling itself.

Here’s another interesting trend. Democrats (and Liberals in general) fair much better in elections when the economy is bad. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that it’s because the Liberal, socialist mantra is comforting to those who don’t know how false it is. “We will take care of you. Don’t fear. Let Papa Government care for you. Fall into the loving arms of Papa Government.” It’s easy. It doesn’t require any critical thought or economic knowledge. Just feel the warm embrace of big government. It’s no coincidence that Bronco Bomber’s slogan (in fact the bulk of his campaign) is “Hope” and “Change.”

But if you stop and think about it for just a minute, do you really want your bank or your health insurance to be run by the same beaurocracy that runs FEMA, or the IRS? Ask anyone who’s served in the military how efficiently and intelligently the government runs things. (I can wait for Uncle Robert’s and Nephew Dustin’s comments on that one!!)

My point is, the next time you feel that burning sensation in your gut while the news tells you how horrible your life is, take just a minute and think for yourself. Is your life really that bad? Is there really any reason for you to sell out of your 401k and cancel your vacation? Or are you just falling victim to a Liberal biased media’s campaign of fear?

One last thing. This morning as I ate my cereal, Good Morning America was doing a heart rending story about a new industry in Souther California. There are now companies that are paid by banks to clean out foreclosed homes. They showed these guys dumping family pictures into garbage bags and tossing furniture and big-screen TVs into dumpsters. They talked about how awful it must have been for these people to just leave their whole lives behind because they didn’t … sorry … “couldn’t” pay their mortgage.

Then, I opened my Bible and God showed me this from I Timothy chapter 6:

We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.

People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…

Amen.

I think we all need to take a moment to laugh. You know the old saying, “If you never laugh, how will you be able to appreciate your tears of sorrow, streaming from your bloodshot eyes as your retirement fund evaporates and realize you can’t even get a job scrapping gum off of the parking lot at Wal-Mart and you begin to contemplate selling your major organs on the black market to save your children from starvation and a life of prostitution.” Or something like that, I’m just paraphrasing here. Boy, I sure am glad the congress passed that big bail-out bill and saved us all from the stock crash that could have been. Oh. Right. Never mind.

Seriously, though, clicky clicky for a good chuckle.

Hang tough through the first two minutes of Bush bashing. It get’s MUCH better. Funniest Barney Frank impression EVAAAR!

I’d like to pose a question. Now, I’m completely serious here. I know I don’t have 300 million readers on this blog, but I do know that there are many more readers than usually comment. You lurkers, you know who you are. Well, I need to you stop hiding and comment on this one.

The end-of-the-world credit crisis that has sprung on us in the last week, according to all the people who are supposed to know, is primarily due to the failing credit market. That is to say, the trillions of dollars* that are about to be spent** are supposed to recapitalize the lending market. We (doing business as the US government) are going to give all that money to banks, so that those banks can keep lending money (for cars, houses, tuition, Christmas presents, and pedicures) and if we don’t bail-out the banks, they’ll quit loaning money and the economy will collapse, because, we all know, Americans can’t live their lives without credit.

Today on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, about half a dozen callers said that they had recently received loans, some in the tens of thousands of dollars, and most with no down payment and very reasonable interest.  I personally talked to a mortgage broker last weekend, asking for advice about my own plans to purchase a home next year. He said that business is brisk, virtually unchanged in the last few years. No one is having problems getting loans.

So here’s what I need you, my faithful readers, to do: Please find someone (anyone) who, despite being gainfully employed with good credit and a reasonable expectation to repay, has been turned down for a loan in the last month. Shoot, I’ll even give you the last six months. I want specifics. I want to know the name of the lending organization, the name of the person turned down, the type of the loan, and the reason given for declining the application.

I predict that I will not get any responses that meet these requirements. So, why, pray tell, is this bail-out bill so direly necessary? Did you hear that? Did you hear someone just crying, “Wolf?” I’m pretty sure I did.

* Yours and mine
** As much as I am against this bail-out, I have to be realistic, it’s going to pass eventually.

(A links shamelessly swiped from Drudge)

Flap:
Bush: Economy faces ‘painful and lasting’ damage unless bail-out passes / Sen. Clinton: ‘It sounds dire but … commerce could grind to a halt’
Fact:
National Post (Conservative Paper): Bail-out smacks of Marxism

Flap:
Dem Rep. Frank: Republicans ‘decided to punish the country’ when they killed bail-out
Fact:
Pence: ‘American people rejected this bailout and now Congress did likewise’ / 95 Dems voted against the bill that lost by 12 votes

Flap:
Telegraph (UK Paper): Western world will become significantly less wealthy

It means millions more Americans, and hundreds of thousands more Britons, will lose their jobs; it means the recession will be deeper and more protracted than previously feared; it means borrowing costs will increase on both sides of the Atlantic. Companies will cut back on investment. Pension funds will be depleted.

Fact:
Market: Stocks rebound, Dow up almost 500 points / Market: Dollar comes back strong against Euro after France passes its own bail-out

Err… That is… Uh… Unless the market bounces right back.

DangerDave has posted another great post full of intelligent calm regarding the economy. Check it out. I’ll be paraphrasing the finer points here.

It was almost exactly one year ago that the Dow broke 14,000. Back then, I wondered when the correction would hit. Just like back around Y2K, when the dot-com boom artificially pushed up the stock market, big peaks in the market are usually followed by bigger drops. Here, let me show you.

In 1987, we had “Black Monday” a huge one-day correction. It was the end of the world… except not. Between 2000 and 2002, the dot-com bubble burst and 9-11 punched the economy in the jimmy and we went to war. Over two years, the market shed 38%. It was the end of the world… except not.

A year ago, the market, buoyed by a lot of bad lending and an inflated housing market, hit 14,000 points for the first time ever. At this point, I started looking for the end of the world. It has arrived… except not. This is a correction. Corrections happen. The market continues to go up over time. There’s no reason to expect it will not continue to go up throughout our lifetimes.

As much as the Liberal-pinko-stinky media (and their favorite Liberal-pinko-stinky politicians) want you to believe otherwise, the U.S. economy is sound. All of the economic indicators that are used to define a recession are UP!

MSN’s Money page has gone so far as to add a “Financial Crisis” tab to their website where you can find articles like, “Surviving a financial panic,” “What if your bank fails?” “A survival guide for the unemployed.” I wonder if that last article talks about selling apples out of a basket for 10 cents a piece. What a farce!

If you think I’m making all this up just because I’m a conservative, look closer. According to the dems and the media, this is a huge crisis! “If we don’t bail out the market before Friday we would see the Great Depression II.” (That was last Friday) Then it was, “If we don’t get this passed by Monday…” And now it’s Tuesday. The bail-out bill failed (with 95 dems voting against it). The market is up over 300 points! And Pelosi has sent Congress home for the Rosh Hashanah holiday. WHAT??!! If this is such a huge crisis, don’t you think we might need to work through Rosh Hashanah? Well, guess what. This is NOT a crisis. This is a completely fabricated, election year, puppet show.

So what about Bush (and McCain for that matter)? The single, foremost point on which GeeDub and I have failed to see eye-to-eye is on big-business. It was the big-biz lobby that led Bush’s (and McCain’s) pro-immigration-amnesty push a while back. It’s equally clear that the big-biz lobby has pushed Bush (and McCain) on this bail-out bill. Why else would he be making so much noise about getting this bail-out through? Doesn’t it seem a little weird that Bush (and McCain) and Pelosi (and Obama) are saying a lot of the same things? That stinks like week-old raw fish and I don’t like it.

Huck doesn’t like it either. Check out his blog post:

 Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for … sinking their companies…

Amen. Put away your pitchforks. Douse the torches. Don’t sell your 401k. Go back to work. Keep producing and consuming and buying and investing just like you’ve always done and things will be just fine (so long as you vote Republican and get rid of this useless Pelosi Congress).

Now, I’ve got to get to work because this little post that was supposed to just be a link to DangerDave has gotten completely out of control.

Please watch this news report and listen very carefully. See if you catch the word that is almost entirely left out.

Clicky clicky for ABC News video.

Did you watch it? You have to watch it first. I’ll wait.

…

The issue of stem cell research is pretty much out of the news right now. Allow me to refresh your memory. Democrats (in general) have been pushing to keep federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Hollywood loves to have their bleeding-heart fund raisers for embryonic stem cell research. Michael J. Fox has become the poster child for embryonic stem cell research.

Have you caught on yet?

The reason conservatives, like Bush, are against embryonic stem cell research is that it requires a fertilized embryo. That means a viable, human life has to be created and then destroyed in order to collect embryonic stem cells. It’s a pro-life issue. It’s about the sanctity of life. And those who really know what they’re talking about (which excluded everyone in Hollywood) know that embryonic stem cell research is built directly on top of the cornerstone of Row v. Wade. Life is disposable so long as you can come up with a sappy, bleeding-heart reason to dispose of it.

However, there has been zero success in using embryonic stem cells to cure anything.

Despite ABC’s best efforts to use this piece to pump up “stem cell research”, they missed one tiny little five letter word that the local reporter slipped in there. ADULT!

This brave man has experienced miraculous recovery thanks to adult stem cells. That means that stem cells were collected from a living, mature adult human who survived the donation process. You can donate stem cells and walk out of the hospital with no ill effects whereas an embryo is destroyed when the stem cells are collected from it. And there has been huge success in treatments using adult stem cells.

So the next time you hear some pinko lefty crying about how heartless conservatives are for blocking stem cell research and how many people’s lives could be improved, you now have the ammunition to destroy their sappy, psuedo-science, monkey hurlage.

Knowledge is power!!

(Thanks to Danger Dave‘s wife Amber, for passing on the link.)

In the last few days, the federal government has made financial promises that amount to one trillion dollars. Yes, trillion with a t. That is one million million.

Funny thing is, you and I are the financiers of the federal government. There are three hundred million American’s, give a take. So this single week of bailouts is going to cost every man, woman, and child $3333. That’s $6666 for my household of two. How many people live in your house?

So anyway, I hope you’ve got a hundred thou’ or so laying around that you’re willing to part with, cuz you’re gonna have to cover my share too. I ain’t got it.

Today’s white board quip express the sentiment of our government on these financial issues.

If you want to make an omelet, you just have to kill a few people.