Karate Chopping a Bullet...

Your Mandarin happened across this very informative and interesting article by Ernest Emerson today regarding our dependency on “technology” especially when it comes to personal protection.

Your Mandarin commands that you read this article immediately.

Well, what are you waiting for? Just because your Mandarin has numerous devices in the lab that can bend, warp, and change the very essence and flavor of time does not mean that I have all day to wait for you! And for those of you who may be curious today’s flavor is urinal cake.

Now What Do We Do?

GorT has this great idea to go back in time and attend the Royal Wedding, which you read all about, below.

While there, Mandarin says there is something weird about Princess Kate. “When did she become a blonde?” So we all made fun of him, and did our thing.

During the reception, the photographer says the Royal Family wants a picture of us, so we oblige. Nice picture, eh?

And then this morning, one of Professor Mondo’s acquaintances writes him and says that the groom in the photo is a guy named Peter Phillips, and that the bride is Autumn Kelly Phillips.

The Czar checked into it. We went to the wrong freaking wedding.

And the Czar for one is terribly embarrassed because he put all this nice name tag that said To Kate and William, and even ‘Puter put ǝʇɐʞ ɹoɟ on his lovingly wrapped Risk game.

So evidently we went back to 2008, using the time machine rather than a dimensional portal because Mandy hates the jet lag he gets from the time difference.

We really don’t know what to do. This is very embarrassing. Do we write an apology note? Make no mention of it? Dat Ho, the little idiot, recommended we go back in time to stop ourselves from making the mistake in the first place, but he is a little idiot who is probably even now stealing a legume from the larder.

Royal Wedding!

Congratulations to the happy couple.

Naturally, the Gormogons were invited to the wedding, and we were delighted to oblige when Princess Kate or whatever her name is asked us to take a group shot with the wedding party.

You will notice that Mandarin is in his most elegant black robes, and ‘Puter donned his fancy “cyanese” tuxedo for the event. The Volgi and your Czar were appropriately dressed as always, and our dear GorT looks all buff and, well, buffed in his KL-5 armor.

Basically, the rundown at the reception went like this: we waited in a freaking long line just to get into the place (the reception was held at The Party Hut on Merkin Street, about a quarter mile from the Palace). The cause of the long line? No, not the receiving line: it was the super-tiny table seat assignments on a small white table, with everybody’s name written in about a 5-point curlicue font and distributed in random order. The Czar finally found his between Hugh Grant and Jeremy Clarkson. Fortunately, they sat the Gormogons together.

Anyway, we finally found our names and then waited in a really long line at the bar. Some dork behind us said “Ridiculous queue, what?” and Volgi punched him because he thought the guy was referring to the Volgi’s hair! Hilarious, even if the guy died. Gotta admit, the booze was free and pretty good stuff. The Czar had a vodka tonic (hey, moron bartender: when you finally turn 25 years old, you might remember that it’s 1/3 vodka, 2/3 tonic, and not a split of 80-proof vodka and Diet Bubble-Up or whatever the hell fizzwater that was).

‘Puter enjoyed a local British delicacy of Pimms and Vimto, which he promptly poured into a plant in the corner. The Volgi, annoyed over the absence of the Liao drug (“So much for top shelf,” he muttered), settled on a 125-year-old port that he found reasonably soothing. GorT enjoyed a promeliad and thrum (which he brought himself since, of course, British liquor stores won’t carry those ingredients until around 3418 AD). The Mandarin enjoyed a Blue Sapphire and lemonade, which tasted much better than it sounds. His, too, was mixed badly, which is why in 248 years, scientists will be stunned to find the dessicated corpse of a spotty 22-year-old asphyxiated bartender from the 21st Century face down in Stickney Crater on the Martian moon Phobos.

So we found our seats, and had to sit through the painfully long introduction of the bridal party couples from a DJ that looked way too much like Kyle Frasure from TopShot. It wasn’t that there were a lot of couples (remember 1990s weddings, when bridal parties had like 50 people in them?), just that when you’re dealing with royals, their names and titles get kind of long.

Anyway, we had a goofy speech from Prince William’s best man, Doug or Don or whatever, who mumbled his way through the whole thing and something about a donkey show in Tijuana. Barely understood a word of it. Then, the maid of honor (Kylie or Keyelee or something) rambled on for about fifteen choked-up teary minutes about how precious Kate is, and how special everyone is, and we swear she mentioned the word “awesome” about thirty times before someone in back (probably her dad) yelled “Wrap it up.”

Dinner was pretty fair. It was the usual: navy bean soup, a wilted lettuce salad that had way too much onion and tomato. Oven-broiled greasy chicken, Polish sausage, and shoe leather beef followed. The gravy was pretty good. Vegetables were those frozen blends of peas, carrots, and a helluva lot of lima beans (the Czar likes ‘em, though; the other guys, maybe not so much). Dessert was orange sherbet, and Mandarin had like fifteen cups of it.

Anyway, we did the whole bit where the couple had their first dance (“Fireflies” by Owl City), Mr. Middleton danced with Kate (to “Butterfly Kisses”), and then the DJ asked everyone in the wedding party to hit the dance floor with “Love Shack.” The bar reopened, so we sat there for a while, but when the DJ started cranking out “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights,” Mandarin said it was definitely time to leave.

Our gifts to the happy couple:

• The Czar brought a crockware filled with странжвик, which we hope they keep the crockware; it would be embarrassing if they thought we expected that back
• ‘Puter bought them a copy of Risk, which he wrapped up in newspaper all by himself
• Volgi gave them a very nice lantern with the Chinese word for “marriage” engraved on it; as you know, the Chinese character for “marriage” is composed of the ideograms for “eventual” and “boredom,” respectively
• GorT gave them a four-foot-tall Indonesian paper-and-wood puppet of a demon shaman; very impressive, although it would be best if any future children with which they might be blessed did not handle the puppet because (a) it is quite fragile and (b) covered with a substance that probably is really bad for the skin
• Mandy gave them a security envelope filled with about eight dollars in singles

Best of luck, William and Kate! Sorry it won’t work out for you two, or so GorT tells us.

Keynes & Hayek, Second Round

Un film de Econ Stories.

Someone needs to tell my boy Fred to keep his finger off the trigger.

America Is Coming Back

If the Czar were a liberal, he would be wringing his hands in despair. There are dark days ahead for Liberalism, and indeed they might be final days. Like someone said in the Bible about the Poor, liberals will always be with us (perhaps for the same reasons). But the Progressive Liberal might be less than a generation away from irrelevance.

Over the last years, the Czar has been listing some of these highlights, in hopes that you will enjoy some optimism, some zing that tomorrow could be better than yesterday. Another happened today: a Rassmussen Reports survey showed that a whopping 72% of taxpayers think that our schools need to start showing some real results. Added to that is that most think the schools are getting enough money; only a fraction think schools need more.

What these statistics reveal is that a majority of Americans understand that terrible school performance is not about a lack of money: it is about a public education system that fails internally. And you know what that means: Americans expect results from the unions, or else that’s it. Union arguments that schools suffer due to a lack of funds or curtailed collective bargaining are crap to us, now. The Americans are on to them, even if they do not exactly realize it as such. These statistics show that Americans have put into play a set of expectations that will only be fixed by weaking the union choke hold on school teachers.

This is really bad news for the unions, who have never suffered this badly in terms of PR. No one is sure how many more hits the unions can take and stay upright, but the last couple of shots including this one have been beautiful haymakers.

What the hell is happening?

In the Czar’s opinion, this all is the result of Generation X. The Boomers, spoiled rotten by the only bad decision of the Greatest Generation—that their children should never want for anything—were particularly susceptible to half-reasoned and ill-understood Leftist and radical recruitment. In the 1950s, they were juvenile delinquents. In the 1960s, hippies. In the 1970s, the sloppy sex and drug culture. In the 1980s, they infiltrated the marketplace and government. In the 1990s, they came to power...and now we see that no one can afford their bullshit anymore, and—as the survey shows—they have done exactly nothing with the time and money they took from us.

This realization became manifest in 2006, when the Boomers began to retire en masse from the positions they held and corrupted. As the Gen Xers began to clean up the mess, the depths of depravity became quite public. And guess what? The Gen Xers, named by the advertising community because they were impossible to know well enough to cater to, began to lose faith in the media, in academia, entertainment, and politics: instead, they used alternatives to investigate, research, and promote. And they discovered that the problems were widespread, but that their frustration was shared by the vast majority of Americans. Instead of being the misunderstood group who would have to be content with not fitting in, the Gen Xers learned they were a critically useful part of the majority.

And as the Boomers lose their power and status, facts are exposed: academia is over-run with radicals. The mainstream media is filled 2:1 with agenda-pushing liberals. Hollywood is effectively Communist. That all this ties back to the tyranny of Progressivism (painfully detailed in the Gen Xer’s favorite book Liberal Fascism). And that these same progressives so very nearly got away with it in 2006. Yes, they were too late to prevent the election of Barack Obama, but he was doomed from the start. The sheeps’ clothes were peeled away, and the wolves exposed: in order to pass government-run healthcare, laws had to be circumvented and broken. Constitutionality was an inconvenience. You had to pass a law to find out what was in it. Transparency was a joke. But rather than role over to these Boomers, the country responded quickly, aggressively, and pointedly. The 2010 repudiation was not merely effective, it was rewarding. 2012 appears to be even more vicious, as each side is seeing survival at stake.

For conservatives, composed of a majority of Gen Xers and easily recruited millions from the Greatest Generation, more and more of Gen Y, and even millions of awakened Boomers, the survival of the American way is very real. For liberals, the survival of their very cause is at stake. We all know they do not care so much for the survival of the country: they fear more the end of the salad days of irresponsibility and fantasy.

There is much work to do. But there is also great reason to celebrate.

Tour the Heavens

This is officially cool. Check out the Photopic Sky Survey: it is a 360° x 360° photograph of the entire night sky, minus planets and moons. You can view it with information (click on the link), or optionally turn it all off to test your knowledge. Zoom in, zoom out, and check your orientation with a compass in the lower left that shows your field of view.

A lot of work went into this by one individual. Read his story by clicking on the logo in the lower right corner. Enjoy.

NZC: LEM on LGM

Nice observations. I entirely agree with you, so that's boring and as gentlemen we shall not speak of it again.

Have you read Stanislaw Lem? In particular I recommend Fiasco and His Master's Voice on the general topic of bleak, realistic approaches to alien contact.

I gather he has a couple others ("Eden", "The Invincible" and "Solaris", of which I've only read "Solaris") on this general topic.

best regards,

nzc
"High Epopt and Pontiff of the Topologically Disconnected
Commonweal of Arlington and Providence Plantations"

Curious to many, the Czar does not read fiction except in the most rare of situations. You can find some here, but you will also note the rarity of said situations.

However, the odds are great that Big G readers will have read some of these and are welcome to comment accordingly. That said, the Czar does recognize Lem’s name! That is progress, perhaps.

Pfleger Suspended

Just to keep everyone updated, the Czar has talked here, here, and here about the shenanigans of Chicago’s renegade priest Fr. Michael Pfleger.

And as of yesterday, he was suspended by the Archdiocese of Chicago. As the Cardinal wrote in the formal letter, he was ultimately nailed by his own vocal disobedience. The Cardinal, who no doubt reads this site, even used our position that Pfleger functionally left the Church a long time ago.

Under suspension, he is unable to participate in any sacrament, which basically means he cannot even do Mass. His supporters are already shocked and incredulous over this totally foreseeable event.

When The Screwers Get Screwed

Democrats in Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly to deny future collective bargaining by police, fire, teachers, and other public sector unions. Thus spake local AFL-CIO president Robert “Robber” Haynes:

It’s pretty stunning. . . . These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.

Or to put it in even simpler English:

We bought and paid for these politicians, and this is how they reward us? By acting responsibly?

Yep, we live in an age when you can’t even get decent corruption anymore.

SETI Message Received: And It's Goodbye

You all know that the Gormogons love science dearly—although to be fair, ‘Puter dislikes the mathy-kind of science and likes the coloring-book-kind so much more. Once, he watched a high definition animation of an asteroid crashing into Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs twenty-something times in a row. He wiped away a tear of laughter and said he wants more science.

With that in mind, you might expect the Czar in particular to be a little bummed out that a severe lack of funding is basically shutting down SETI. These are the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence folks you saw in Contact, except they aren’t nearly as good-looking as Jodie Foster, nor as inexplicably well funded. Anyway, they would spend their days monitoring computers, and the computers would search millions of frequencies at once looking for any radio signals produced by aliens.

Over the years, there were flurries of interest. Almost all of these turn out to be military satellites, and once there was a bizarre signal that appeared once, briefly, and was never heard again. But while we learned much about the constant noise of space—finding new types of stars, identifying monster astronomical events, and so on—we never found anything close to an alien signal.

But with two-hundred billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, most we now suspect with planets of some kind, there has to be life out there looking to say hello to someone, anyone. And to increase the chances of being discovered, they will blast out a large transmission of repeating, non-random signals that make it clear there is intelligence behind it.

Yeah, probably. Still, the Czar thinks SETI is a waste of time and money. Why?

Anthropomorphism. When SETI started as an idea in the 1950s, we thought we knew everything. We loved radio, and television was taking off. Both used radio signals to send broadcasts, and that made Earth a very noisy planet on the RF spectrum. But why would aliens be broadcasting The Jack Benny Show on AM/FM signals?

And while RF is a great way to transmit programming, it is noisy as hell. Drive by electrical wires while listening to KLMR AM-radio, and you know what we mean. A smarter species will begin to get off analog broadcasting as quickly as possible.

We are, after all: a large amount of broadcast transmissions are digital now. Do you know how digital transmissions work? Well, for one, they are bigger. To increase the speed of transmission to analog-or-better speeds, we need to compress the data. This is usually done by taking any repeating data and replacing it with a smaller packet of code. This is easier to understand with a digital photo. If you take a picture of someone, the encoder looks for a particular shade of red (say FF0000) and replaces that with a simpler code (like F1). If you take a picture of a friend of yours against a red background, you get a lot of real savings: your 5 MB photo shrinks down to under 1 MB because all the repetitive color codes get replaced with smaller ones. When you view the photo later, the F1s all get replaced by FF0000, and you see the picture back in all its original beauty.

In the world of digital transmission, the voices, images, sounds, and control codes also all get reduced to 1s and 0s. A similar process looks for repetitions (take all 10101010111111s you find and replace them with F1), and shrinks the size of the transmissions massively.

Unfortunately, what this means for SETI fans is that intelligent broadcasters strip out all repetitive, non-random patterns and replace them with smaller codes. The end result is a data stream that sounds like noise unless you know the decode pattern because anything remotely repetitive is reduced out.

And who massively blasts out broadcasts? We don’t because it is expensive and requires super-powerful transmitters that eat up a crapload of electricity. Why should we expect another alien species to do so? Why should they pick up the tab?

Moreover, while it is plausible that alien astronomers might use radio signals to explore their universe like we do, they probably will not conclude that Earth—a noisy, gibberish-laden speck emitting low-power radio signals—is anything more than some heavily metallic planet plagued with gigantic electrical storms, or is some vaguely interesting brown dwarf star with some freakish ionization event that has lasted for a few decades.

So the problem the Czar has with SETI is that it presupposes that aliens think like us, transmit like we used to, and devote monstrous resources to getting Earth’s attention, based on the fact that years ago they started receiving Gilligan’s Island on a 54 MHz radio signal they happened to be monitoring. Whales have been receiving our noises for years, and yet they have not made any efforts to use their communication methods to say hello. Why should someone out there?

Conversely, what makes us think we could understand their signals correctly? Frankly, who is to say we could even comprehend their communication? What if instead of using terrestrial radio signals, the aliens have been reaching out to us using gravity waves we cannot detect? Or deflecting pulsar emissions so that we recognize some unique symbolic significance in its frequency? Or some other method that our brains cannot recognize, just as a macaw cannot comprehend Twitter? Most humans are lost on Twitter.

Okay, it was worth a look. But we looked, and there was nothing remotely obvious talking to us or anyone else. If someday we establish contact with aliens, the SETI folks will be bummed out that none of it will be on their radio frequencies. And because of that, we could easily shut it down. You tried, you did your best. But it was not going to happen, any more than the moonbats in boats off the coast of Santa Monica can talk to those whales by making whooping noises, or kids can get a parrot to understand Shakespeare by squawking at them.

Birth of a Mail

Dear The Czar,

You are dead on in your analysis.

When you couple the release of the birth certificate today with the peculiar reshuffling of the national security leadership (Gates out, Panetta to the Pentagon and Petraeus to the CIA) that makes no sense, it is clear that the President is saying "SQUIRREL!" to the public who he sees as dumb as Dug in Up.

Given the amount of time that these stories will fill in the news, the Bernanke announcement this afternoon will be an, "In other news…" What will be missed is what this other news is probably going to be about, which is that the banks are probably going to have to eat the money that was put into the system in QE2 resulting in our savings rotting away due to currency devaluation and inflation.

The change that President Obama campaigned on will be all that's left in our savings accounts…

Best,
Dr. J.
Royal Surgeon

The Czar agrees with your analysis, at least as far as he read it. And that was up until you said we were dead on in our analysis. We figured, why spoil it? So we stopped reading, quitting while we were ahead. Hope the rest was good, though.

BG is less optimistic than Dr. J.

Dread and Awful Czar:

"...This will gradually backfire on the Democrats, who now are scrambling to find anything in their playbooks that might work...."

Yeah, maybe. The problem is that the true whacko birthers won't say, "Okay, looks like he was born in the U.S.," and STFU. The drive-by media, finding the budget process too complex for their simple minds to write about intelligently, will instead produce a fistful of stories about die-hard birthers, who wouldn't be persuaded if they saw movie footage of Obama's birth. The press will identify them as right-wing teabaggers, and Obama has his phony issue.

Remember that all of Obama's speeches are deliberately peppered with fallacies of logic - his alleged deficit-reduction speech (I say alleged because he provided no evidence that he had a serious plan to reduce the deficit) was a masterpiece of the genre. With the press keeping the birther story alive by printing stories about the die-hard whackos, and pointing out they're generally conservatives, Obama can use a hasty generalization fallacy, the form of which is:

A is an X
A is also a Y
Therefore all X are Y.

Joe is a conservative;
Joe is also a whacko birther;
Therefore all conservatives are whacko birthers.

You can already hear him at a campaign rally: "My opponents have some pretty crazy ideas. They think the super-rich need more tax cuts. They think we shouldn't honor the guarantee of Social Security. They think we can get rid of Medicare and tell your grandma she's on her own. They can even look at my birth certificate from Hawaii and claim I wasn't born in the U.S. I don't know which of those ideas is the craziest."

Of course, Obama claims today that we have much more pressing issues to deal with than birther silliness. Anyone care to give odds that, accordingly, he and his minions and the drive-by media are through with this issue?

Agreed, but the Czar never said he thinks this will end the birther nonsense. The Czar’s behind too many conspiracy theories to assume people will ever just shrug and go on. Rather, our point was that Obama may have squandered this as a weapon, but ultimately he had no choice because he is running out of bluffs to play. Finally, as you quote, these last, futile attempts to distract us will fail. And, although we did not mention it, the resulting fizzle shows that the Birthers means nothing in the Big Picture now that he has produced the document.

Democrats Losing The War On Facts

By now you have heard that Americans are resoundingly rejecting Paul Ryan’s budget plan, and that protests are dogging him and other Republicans wherever they go.

Except, you might not have heard, it does not appear to be true. A ThinkProgress reporter shadowed Paul Ryan hoping to get video of these protests. The “best” they got was a single questioner asking planted but unresearched questions—whom Ryan disarmed with frank and direct answers. No other footage, either, of other Congressfolks being ambushed. Hmm.

Well, surely, the elderly are against it! No, actually, seniors seem to like Ryan’s proposed reforms as smart and sensible.

But Americans, the President said, don’t want to see these precious entitlements cut! Yeah, and that seems to be untrue as well.

In fact, it appears that although Americans are worried the cuts will be too much, two thirds of Americans agree that a monstrous collapse of Medicare and Social Security will happen in less than ten years (with a shade over half of them stating the crisis is already here).

The ever-clever Paul Ryan recently took another tack during at least one interview with CBS News. First, while explaining your idea, get the interviewer to ask a loaded question about a risky alternative:

Q: But is there no way to save [Medicare] without moving to a system of premium support?

RYAN: Yes, there is, and it’s what the President’s proposing—which is to ration Medicare. We do not want — we do not believe in the idea of having a board of unelected people putting price controls and rationing on Medicare.

Smart move: get the interviewer to link the goofy, unpopular, extreme alternative to what the President said exactly.

And so Americans, always smarter than the opposition, simply aren’t buying the claims of the Democrats and are ignoring the support of the media. And while the Ryan plan intentionally leaves more questions asked than answered (some provisions require better qualified committees to research and provide exact reforms), the public is becoming quite aware that the Democrats have absolutely no alternative, and in fact cannot sustain criticism of the plan with anything other than transparently false potshots.

Keep going, America.

Obama's Trump Card: Who Fuels the Birthers

The Czar, like 99% of Americans, does not care about the Great Birth Certificate Issue.

All right, let us be honest about this. Suppose the Birthers are right. Here is the bottom line:

• Birthers: President Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore Ronald Reagan is now president and all our spending, taxes, unemployment, foreign policy nightmares vanish in the sunlight exactly the way they did in 1981.
• Reality: The President is somehow removed from office, and Joe Biden becomes president by succession, and immediately announces the Guardians of the Universe have made him the Green Lantern of Earth (and requests that all yellow lights be turned off nationwide).

Because frankly, this is what this is all about.

So we have Donald Trump, who is clearly a Democrat stooge candidate as we identified some time ago, playing his scripted role in making Republicans look like jackasses.

Remember that this stunt worked before. The Birthers did not invent this non-controversy: Hillary Clinton did, and it blew up in her face. So the Obama team thought, “Hey, we can make this work for us again.” But how to get the GOP to buy into the same plan that hurt Hillary’s campaign? No problem—keep promoting it as a fundamental question to the Constitution, and those Tea Party bastards will spin themselves crazy. Meantime, the President will refuse to discuss the issue, the whole thing will foment, and then the President will make them all look like idiots by producing his birth certificate when the time is right.

The question is why on earth the President would play along now. Instead, the Czar was leaning in the direction of radio celebrity Michael Savage’s idea that the President would wait until some critical presidential debate in 2012, let the Republican challenger mention the President is a Marxist-socialist-radical community activist, against which the President would laugh and say, “Y’know, folks been sayin’ I’m not even an American. Well, here is my birth certificate. And it all checks out. So what other nonsense are you going to swallow from the Republicans?” That made a lot of strategic sense.

Until now, that the President insists on talking about it. Therefore, there is only one other explanation: he needs to distract us from a worse issue. And that issue is the economic mess of high gas prices, falling national credit ratings killing our bond markets, and the bad timing of QE2 that was counting on a stable bond market to limit the spread of inflation. So this is what tipped the President’s hand in opening up a three-ring media circus.

But cheer up. The President thinks we’re stupid. Trump thinks we’re stupid. And the media, who are stupid, are happy to play along with this. But you know better, as does most of America. This will gradually backfire on the Democrats, who now are scrambling to find anything in their playbooks that might work.

Blu-Ray Ain't Black-and-White-Ray

Over at Big Hollywood, there is a curious essay about the failure of Blu-Ray technology to make a profit when working with Hollywood’s classic films.

Not really a surprise, though. When you watch an action-packed, many-things-at-once modern Hollywood film in high definition, the difference between a Blu-Ray disc and a DVD is thoroughly and immediately obvious. Try watching a Blu-Ray of, say, Iron Man using an HDMI cable and a decent flat panel display, and then watch the same scene on DVD using RCA cables. Big difference, and if you can’t spot it, you are simply not looking.

Now look at the classic film market. Pop in a Blu-Ray of Casablanca, which is shown in a square 1.37:1 aspect ratio, in gloomy black and white, on re-mastered film, in mono sound. Then switch to the same scene on a DVD. Not a lot of difference there.

In fact, it almost sounds as if movie industry executives expected to see Blu-Ray magically colorize the film, put in 7.1 surround sound, and offer exciting new camera angles in high-definition. It will not happen: your DVD copy is plenty good enough.

Then there is the issue of price. Most Blu-Ray titles are quite a bit more expensive than a DVD copy, and no surprise there, either. It takes a lot of work to make a Blu-Ray (even though the final output of a classic film may be little better than the DVD), and you pay for that labor.

Also, the typical Blu-Ray these days is a package, not a disc. Open up your Blu-Ray cassette and you find the Blu-Ray disc, a DVD copy for the van and portable DVD player, as well as a digital copy for your computer at home. $30 is a great price for all three discs, but really: do you want to cough up $30 for a Blu-Ray package when you can just get a $15 DVD that offers pretty much the same quality? And are you really going to watch the digital copy? Ever? After all, you can pop the DVD into your home computer and get a better quality version than the highly compressed digital copy, and it won’t eat up a few gig of space on your hard drive.

Blu-Ray is unsurpassed in its own context. When he obtained his Royal Blu-Ray player, the Czar began to switch over on a case-by-case basis. Iron Man 2? Blu-Ray. Up? Blu-Ray. Um... Daredevil? Bargain-bin DVD. Madagascar 2? Bargain-bin DVD. The Day The Earth Stood Still (original version)? DVD. The Day The Earth Stood Still (Reeves version)? Trash can.

Look, people went nuts for classic films on laser disc and later on DVD because there was reason to. Watching a VHS tape of Strange Brew for the fifteenth time looked like crap. Laser discs fixed the problem of flagging, warbling, and static on the screen; DVDs improved the overall quality and eliminated the annoying pause halfway through the movie. These were huge technological advances. But outside of rapid action sequences, CGI realism, and booming stereo sound, what does a Blu-Ray offer? Not much, if your classic film lacks any of that.

You might not realize it, but the Czar is a big fan of Blu-Ray. Sure, it’s slow to load, and every new disc always wants us to update the software on the player (which takes a bit of time) before it will play, but the right display, the right cabling, and the right movie totally makes up for the weirdness. That said, folks shouldn’t be despairing over the format just because Sony failed to realize that the consumer was smarter about technology investments than they were.

Happy Anniversary!

Today* (yesterday) marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

'Puter mostly blames the Soviets for the disaster, as the plant's fail safes were poorly designed and the reactor had no containment unit. 'Puter does however recognize the courage of the men who raced to contain the damage as much as was possible, at the cost of their lives.

It is worthwhile to reflect that nuclear power has caused significantly fewer deaths over the years as compared to all other forms of electrical generation. Nuclear power, when using modern plant designs, is safe, cheap and efficient. And, for all you hippies out there, zero carbon emission.

*'Puter meant to post on this yesterday, but got caught up and forgot to upload. Could've been the Drano and Drambuies he knocked back at work.

Mrs. 'Puter, Devil in Disguise

Mrs. 'Puter told 'Puter last night that she had but one wish for a Mother's Day gift. 'Puter loves it when Mrs. 'Puter tells him what to get her. It prevents unfortunate occurrences such as the infamous Hickory Farms Incident of 2002. So 'Puter eagerly awaited his lovely bride's request.

And so it came: a subscription to the New York Times.

'Puter's accursed yet fetching wife had made him choose between pleasing her and rewarding the evil, corrupt, biased New York Times, and by extension the loathesome Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd.

'Puter ultimately picked pleasing Mrs. 'Puter, but it wasn't an easy decision.

Keep An Eye On Iran...

Strange things are afoot.

Rumors in certain circles are spreading that there may have been an unsuccessful coup attempt over the weekend.

Something bad happened there, and it sounds like another piece of malware, possibly named Stars, is responsible.

Ahmadî-Nezhâd has not been seen in days, which is most unusual.

Their good friends in Syria may be in their last days in government, if not on earth. There are stories of desultory pockets of protest and unrest throughout Iran.

Nothing firm yet, nor even reason to hope. But reason enough to be cautious and even nervous.

Trig Palin: Why The Left Fear Him

Frank over at IMAO has a superb essay on why (a) the Left thought it was okay to make fun of Trig Palin in such a grotesque and repugnant fasion, but why (b) Trig Palin scares the hell out of them more than ever. The psychology here is pretty sound. Quite short, and worth a read.

Christian Persecution...

Dennis Prager has a very interesting article where he asks, “Why don’t Christians help…Christians?”

The article describes the current persecution of Christians that is taking place in the Muslim world. Mr. Prager points out that despite this persecution the nearly 2 billion Christians around the work react with silence.

To address this deafening silence Mr. Prager suggests that:

“Christians should organize an international day or week of solidarity for persecuted Christians in the Muslim world. And not only Christians should attend these hopefully large events. Jews and Muslims should also be in attendance, and their representatives should speak. Jews should because it is right and because of all Christians did for Soviet Jewry and do for Israel; and Muslims should because it is right and because nothing would protect the good name of Muslims like joining non-Muslims in voicing solidarity with the many Christian victims of persecution in Muslim countries.”

Your Mandarin appreciates Mr. Prager’s efforts and sentiments regarding this attack on the Christian community and common decency at large, but wonders why there is silence at all. In reality your Mandarin believes this silence stems from the following:

1. The media does a poor job of covering what is really happening. This is largely due in part – and this is your Mandarin’s opinion – to the fact that this is Muslim on Christian violence. The media elites, and the progressive elites in general probably figure that these Christians are getting what they deserve for all the years that they “oppressed” their Muslim rulers.

2. There is a general fear that by speaking out the situation may get worse for these Christian communities. This is both naïve and cynical. What could possibly be said that would not offend the religion of the perpetually offended? The real fear is not that speaking out may cause the Muslim’s to retaliate against these communities, but rather that they would target our communities.

3. We have been conditioned by the Progressive movement to believe that all cultures are equal. But that equality only extends to all cultures and belief systems that are not our own. In an effort to right some perceived inequality the Progressive movement has denigrated Western Civilization and Christianity in particular to the point that people are afraid to proudly declare that they are a Christian in fear that they may be labeled as oppressors or worse yet racist.

Many Christians were persecuted and lost their lives to establish the faith that has shaped our world and created the foundations of democracy, the rule of law, and enlightenment. Yet for a scant few, we sit idly by and let a menace build that looks to rule by oppression and suppress all learning and innovation. It may be hard to stand up for those that are being oppressed, especially when they are a world away from our safe and insulated churches, but if we don’t stand up for them, who will be there to stand up for us.

Whether you are a devout believer or an atheist, this should be a clarion call that your way of life is under assault by an unrelenting enemy that will not be satisfied until they have thrown the world back to the 7th century.

Happy Easter! חג פסח שמח Too!

From your pals at the Castle.

Our plans for world oppression and domination will pause, briefly, today out of respect.

Holy Saturday

Hans Holbein the Younger, Das Leichnam Christi im Grab, Kunstmuseum Basel.

Morbid? Indeed. But Holbein’s point was: if you believe in the Resurrection, this is what was resurrected—a wrecked, even grotesque slab of meat that was once a man. Ecce corpus.

Via kunstkopie.de

Enzine and Heller

Hey everybody!!! I'm back! It's' me, Medea Mainstream, and the Czar asked me to rite about a news story from the news.

So today I am writing about senator Enzine and how he got fired from the goverment. He robbed a bank orsomething (no body really knows for sure) and got fired.

So like now they have to get a new senator for the US of A and they want to put in a guy named Heller. You remember him: he is the guy who sued the supreme court because they pulled a gun on him at an airport or something.

Enzine is the guy who beat up Harry Reed, who used to be the senator. Now Harry is this weird guy who walks around Washington trying to get back to his house in Nevada but like he is so old he doesnt know how to get there.

I hope I never get old. Bye till next time!!!!!

Crucifixus Est

Today is the most somber day on the Catholic (and Christian generally) calendar. For believers, today is the day where Jesus, true God and true man, offered himself in sacrifice to save us from sin and death, opening the gates of Heaven for us.
To 'Puter, the Gospel passages relating to the Good Thief have always been among the most relevant to his personal faith (Luke 23:32-33, 39-43):

And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him [Jesus] to be put to death.

And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left.

And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him saying, 'If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.'

But the other answering rebuked him, saying 'Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?'

'And we indeed justly; for we received the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.'

And he said unto Jesus, 'Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.'

And Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.'

These gifts of God are momentous. Think about it. We are offered God's infinite forgiveness if we truly repent of our sins, even up to and including the moment of our death. And not only forgiveness of sin, but acceptance into God's divine presence in spite of one's flawed sinfulness. That's how great His love for all mankind is.

These undeserved gifts, freely offered by God to mankind, make 'Puter gratefully awed because, Lord knows, 'Puter needs all the help and forgiveness he can get.

'Puter and the rest of the Gormogons wish you and yours a most blessed Easter holiday.

How It Works

So the Czar found a copy of The New York Times laying about (we choose these words specifically as a pointed jab), and flipped through it. Within was an interesting article on the weird socio-political No Woman’s Land that Camilla and Kate find themselves in.

In some odd effort to be helpful, the NYT thought it good to mention that recent polls indicate a large percentage of Brits want Charles to abdicate, when his time comes, to William, as the latter is far more popular.

Evidently, the British are a bit unclear on how a monarchy works. Polls? Popularity? Want? Well, they could extend their democracy to include the monarchy, but the Czar won’t hold his breath. Instead, he will explain it less gently to the British: Prince Charles does not care what you want or whom you find more appealing as king. When he becomes King, he won’t freaking have to.

But good luck, friends, on that whole "who reports to whom" ideology. We aren’t too happy with our leadership, but 2012 is a short skip away.

Too Much Time On Their Hands

Two New York State Assemblymen have decided that rather than address the crushing state debt and inequitable state employee benefits situation, their time is better spent making "homeless dogs" the official state canine.

'Puter thinks all of New York's elected officials are homeless dogs, but that's for another day.

Under The Bus

As regular readers know, 'Puter and GorT both enjoy high-level European soccer.

Last night, Real Madrid won the Copa del Rey, awarded annually in La Liga to the team that wins an elimination tournament. Real Madrid is one of the most storied soccer clubs in the worlds, and chock-full of World Cup level talent, including defender Sergio Ramos.

During the course of the celebration, Mr. Ramos dropped the 33 pound trophy from the top of the team's bus, and the bus promptly ran over the trophy.

Maybe if soccer players were permitted to use their hands, this would not have happened. Or maybe Mr. Ramos should simply carry trophies with his feet in the future.

HRE Writes In

Dear Czarest of Czars,

Wow. I had no idea that priest was acting up so much. I had heard he was politically active (endorsing Obama, etc), but it's crazy what he has done. As a priest myself I hope I would never be politically active as a Catholic priest. When I speak for the Church and wear my clerical collar and celebrate the sacraments I keep things as apolitical as possible. I may speak about an issue (if it relates to faith and morals), but what Rev. Pfleger does is beyond the pale. It is pretty sickening that he would not only do all this but continue to get away with it.

As to Cardinal George letting him stay in the parish, there could be other factors involved (like not wanting him to leave the priesthood, or not wanting open revolt in a parish). I really hope there are.

But, if he is ordered to move, and leaves the priesthood, he will be showing his true colors. If he holds anything more dear than God and his vows then good riddance.

Also, are you sure he took a vow of poverty? We diocesan priests don't take that vow. We do take a vow of poverty and a secret fourth vow to annihalte guinea pigs. But that's a secret.

All that business just makes me sick. I hope the whole situation turns out for the best.

God Bless,

HRE
volunteer chaplain to the gormogons' pets

Thank you for your excellent work on Barry, the Mandarin’s pet manticore. He actually let a Castle tourist pet him last week. Before he mauled him to death, of course, but still.

Unless things changed in the last few decades, the Archdiocese of Chicago has their priests take three vows (of the four, apparently): poverty (all money to and from the Church), chastity, and obedience.

Public Sector Unions

Here's 'Puter's stupid question for the day.

Assume that a public sector union contract has expired so that there is no continuing obligation between the employer and the employees. Assume further that the public unions refuse to acknowledge economic reality and downsize their demands, stalemating negotiations.

Can the public employer put the jobs out to bid, allowing individuals, companies and the current employee union to bid on the jobs? This assumes that all the bidders meet the requisite requirements for the job.

'Puter's fairly certain that the archaic Triborough Amendment in New York would prevent this. Assuming collective bargaining statues require continued negotiation with the unions, why is this a good thing?

Chicken McFajita*

Dr. J is en fuego with his contributions today.  It should be noted that this post arrived in my email box at 10am EDT today:

Dear GorT,

Not long after ObamaCare was signed into law, a cavalcade of corporations including McDonalds requested waivers. These companies offered affordable, albeit not comprehensive, health insurance plans that their employees participated in. These affordable plans were to be made extinct by the health care law, resulting in companies, such as McDonalds, moving away from offering health insurance to its employees and choosing the penalty (aka the 'not-a-tax') as it would be less expensive than the approved plans.

The Chicken McNuggets, to paraphrase the Reverend Wright, have come home to roost for ObamaCare. The legion of unemployed have flocked to McDonalds this week in hopes of obtaining one of 50,000 jobs being offered.

Dr. J seriously doubts that that many jobs would be offered if McDonalds was not granted the waiver. Alternatively they would have offered jobs that did not offer health insurance. Either way, it is clear that being exempted from the strictures of ObamaCare would help to unchain the economy from the shackles of recession. 

Perhaps this example can lend to the chorus of reasons why repeal of ObamaCare is critical to economic recovery.

Best,

Dr. J.

Royal Surgeon to the Gormogons

Apparently others have latched onto Dr. J's point and due to time traveling, I missed posting this earlier.  ObamaCare needs to be trashed - the "exemptions" are a joke and the costs are going to pile on to the already massive tax we're passing onto our children in the form of the debt.  Obama's approval rating is the lowest yet with a Gallup poll putting his rating at 41% (some have it as high as 47% but neither are good, and both are down from the start of the year).

Finally, this isn't going to be a solution in the future.  There is no reason why McDonald's can't cut 20-30% of its workforce and go with a self-checkout kiosk model.

* The title of this post is a total inside joke between a few of the Gormogons and you'll just have to accept that it's amusing to us.  Period.

Hooking In Believers

Oh wise and mighty Czar,

Please forgive my stupidity, but since I am not Catholic I had a serious question about the missive. Is paying a prostitute to attend counseling a bad thing? I mean, if it gets them in the door and he uses his own money, what's the harm? Or was he using church funds?
That aside, it sounds to me like the guy wants to be activist, not a priest. Unfortunately "activist" is typically not a paid position.

Your dominoes are bigger than my dominoes,
GD

Hey, GD!

Well, the third vow a priest takes in the Archdiocese of Chicago is one of poverty: he is not allowed to make any money on his own. Anything he makes goes up to the Archdiocese. Any money he requires comes from them. This is not true of all priests, by the way: the Jesuits, for example, do not take a vow of individual poverty. Some of them are quite successful book authors, and can use their funds as they prefer, although obviously very few drive Ferraris.

The Czar brings this up because Fr. Pfleger did take a vow of poverty—which means that he is using Archdiocese money to rent prostitutes. Yes, even if he took up a special collection from his congregation to do so, the collection plate belongs to the Church, not to him. And he neither sought nor received permission to use it on hookers.

Regardless of his motives: Pfleger argued that Jesus counseled at least one well-known prostitute of the day, Mary Magdalene, into a better life. The Archdiocese countered that he did not get Peter to pay Paulie the Pimp: Mary did so of her own volition. Further, hookers are not an approved operating expense under any Catholic church charter of accounts.

Well, what if members of the congregation pulled their money together, and did it outside of fund-raising? The Archdiocese concluded that paying a prostitute to use her hour to listen to a pro-Catholic message was tricking someone into changing their life, and the only such action they would approve is if she came in of her own free will to listen. Entrapment has not been very big with Catholic missionaries the last couple centuries.

So he was told to knock it off. But he initially refused, and this is what continue to annoy other priests throughout the Archdiocese. He refuses to obey orders, and gets another free pass.

Musings On The Tax Code

Dread & Awful Czar,

Tax day passed us by again this year, and for the 55% of us who paid taxes, were were reminded, yet again, of the politics and waste that revolve around the sorry state of our Federal Government's revenue generating system.

Dr. J. has said (plagiarized, sited, whatever) many times, "If you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it."

There were three articles that caught Dr. J.'s eye yesterday. The first was an article designed bring out the boogie man known as Class Warfare.

The author either is ignorant of mathematics or using them to deceive a naïve public.

First and foremost, the data is from 2007, the second to last year of the Bush Administration, compared against 1992, the last year of his father's term in office. He then plays havoc with average rates paid by individuals.

Let Dr. J be perfectly clear, tax rates work like this (assuming your are single, and this is still a gross simplification):

$5,700 is free (standard deduction)
The NEXT $8,350 is taxed at 10%
The NEXT$25,600 is taxed at 15%
The NEXT $48,300 is taxed at 25%
The NEXT $89,300 is taxed at 28%
The NEXT $201,400 is taxed at 33%
EVERYTHING ABOVE $372,950 is taxed at 35%

That being said, only certain kinds of income can be taxed as 'income.' Other types of income are taxed as capital gains, other types of income are not taxed at all (municipal bond income for example). There are a legion of deductions available. It is thus possible with our complex tax code that President Obama made $1.795 million dollars (total, not adjusted) last year and paid 25%. Dr. J. made considerably less money than President and paid 24%. Indeed someone could make $200,000 (as was seen in the article) and pay a pittance if he wrote off a significant number of capital losses that year.
All of this sort of behavior and much more is a consequence of our complex and convoluted tax code. Dr. Arthur (Dr. J's Mancrush) Laffer writes about this in his WSJ opinion piece from the other day. He argues that we, as a nation, lose a tremendous amount of money and productivity conforming to the complex tax code. Indeed, he strongly argues that the current system is a drag on the economy.

Thirdly, Dr. J. has spoken about how the tax code picks winners and losers. Look at the Corporate tax code. Everyone that Bernie Sanders excoriated in his facebook meme obeyed the law with regard to paying taxes. All of Dr. J.'s lefty friends were sharing this meme, crying foul on Big Business, not realizing that the real solution to be cried out for is a simple low loophole free corporate tax structure.

In other words, if the tax codes were simplified for individuals (1% of the first $20,000 followed by 15% above that for individuals, 5% for capital gains) and for corporations (5% flat rate on profits) the world would be a better place. Dr. J just hopes that the House and Senate Republicans are listening. If they aren't they will be primaried.

Best,
Dr. J.

Don't Let the Church Door Hit Ya...

Non-Catholic readers of this site must be surprised with the Roman Catholic tilt here the last couple of weeks, but there is news afoot.

Chicago Catholics are all-too-familiar with the perpetual shenanigans of Fr. Michael Pfleger, the pastor of Saint Sabina Church in a 99.9% black community of Chicago. In the Chicago archdiocese, a priest normally serves at a parish only for a few years before he is transferred to a different church. Regular priest rotation is seen as good for the churches as well as the priests; however, if a priest represents something special in a given community, he can be given one extension—for a purely theoretical example, a Laotian priest in an all-Laotian community might be given a three- or four-year extension given what he represents there. A priest involved in a massive rebuilding or construction project might be given an extension to finish out the effort, and so on. Extensions happen, but are quite rare, and never go beyond the one-time deal.

Except Fr. Pfleger, who has been at St. Sabina for thirty years. Somehow, he is continually given a free pass. Every incoming cardinal of the archdiocese immediately threatens to correct this oversight, but the church residents complain, and the issue goes away. Curiously, many churches complain when a popular priest is transferred, but no special exceptions are given.

In that 30 years, he has done nothing but attracted media attention to himself. He preaches his own liturgy, blending Baptist choirs, fiery sermons (usually done in a stereotypical urban black voice), black liberation theology, and every so often, Catholicism. Against direct orders from the archdiocese, he adopted a son—legally, because state law allowed him to do so, and there was no prohibition against such a move in the Catholic church. Indeed, a widower with children and grandchildren can become a Catholic priest, provided he maintains chastity. Pfleger used this loophole to adopt a child. Actually, he did it twice, adopting African-American boys as well as acting as a foster father to a child who was tragically murdered a short time later.

Pfleger is seen wherever radical activism appears. If Jesse Jackson, Jr., marches outside a business for whatever contrived reason, Pfleger shows up later (often in religious garb). If there was a picket line outside a television studio, gun store, or business, there was Pfleger. He has angered the archdiocese by associating with Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton—all of whom are opposed by the Church for, respectively, anti-semitism, calls for outright disobedience, and being openly pro-abortion.

When the Southside Catholic Conference athletic league refused to allow St. Sabina's basketball team to join (conference officials felt the league was large enough, St. Sabina was too far, and the neighborhood’s high crime rate needed to be addressed), Pfleger announced the reason was purely racism. This attracted the entire Chicago media, who just luv the guy. Under pressure from the archdiocese to stop the anti-Catholic media blitz, the league relented and allowed them to join. The St. Sabina basketball team performed very well, but were caught violating rules; the team quit the league in an outrage provoked by Fr. Pfleger himself. They could have simply obeyed the rules (the rule in question: students can only play on one grade level team at a time; St. Sabina was taking the best players from different grades and playing them on multiple teams to stack the deck in their favor for each grade level). When the rule was invoked, Pfleger simply cried racism and quit.

In short, Pfleger has been arrested numerous times for assorted protest-related activities, has hired prostitutes (paying them to attend anti-prostitution counseling), and publicly threatened the life of a suburban gun store owner, and has openly called for women to be ordained as priests. He admits he is an intentional problem to the archdiocese, but defends it all by imagining that the role of the Church is to be committed to social activism, rather than religion.

He has had no greater opponent than Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George, who took his position in 1997. The Church, as many of you know, has lately begun to strengthen enforcement of its beliefs and discipline its hippie priests who ran amok with the faith during 1970-2000. Particularly after Fr. Pfleger went off the deep end after the election of Barack Obama (the President himself has since expressed distaste for Pfleger and his methods after previously supporting him), Cardinal George announced that a decision would be made on Fr. Pfleger’s assignment soon.

Cardinal George has yet to announce this decision, but recently reaffirmed that it was time for a change—for both St. Sabina Church as well as Fr. Michael Pfleger. Recently, Cardinal George suggested he might be a good fit to head up Chicago’s Leo Catholic High School.

Fr. Pfleger announced that if he is asked to leave St. Sabina’s, he will leave the Catholic Church entirely.

Who is surprised? Because this is what Pfleger does: when faced with the responsibility of his own poor judgment and distaste for the rules, he quits. He found a loophole around his vow of chastity; but he can no longer thumb his nose at his vow of obedience.

Good riddance. If St. Sabina is as strong in their faith as you claim, they will have no need of you any longer. And if the church crumbles, then your 30 years there was, as we suspect, all about your social activism and not about your wasted flock at all.

Black Swan

Czar mentions in his post below that Standard & Poor's has downgraded its outlook on United Staes debt from stable to negative. Essentially, S&P acknowledged what everyone knows: if America doesn't get its fiscal act together pretty soon, its debt is going to be some degree of risky.

But what seems to have received relatively little play is BRICS's decision to seek to use local currencies in transactions among the affiliated parties. And how about rising inflation driving up borrowing costs?

Taken alone, the S&P downgrade may not be such a big deal. But along with the other flags, such as the referenced BRICS decision and the beginnings of inflation (particularly food inflation worldwide), 'Puter believes it is foreseeable that there could be a seismic shift in the next 12-24 months.

As American debt becomes riskier, buyers will demand a premium for purchasing it, driving interest rates on bonds higher. This will cause increasing percentages of the American budget to be devoted to interest payments on the debt, shunting aside other expense items or causing the government to borrow more. As the government's need for revenue rises, inflation coupled with lagging wages will sap the ability of taxpayers to fund America's burgeoning expenses. And along comes the BRICS bloc, perhaps having succesfully weaned itself off the dollar, driving down demand for our currency.

'Puter does not think this perfect storm of events is likely or even probable. Merely that it is possible. And lest you call 'Puter crazy, let him remind you that relatively few people recognized the bubbles in 2001 and 2008 until after the fact.

And the happening of an event with enormous and disproportionate impact that all right-thinking people agreed was impossible is the very definition of a black swan event.

Hmm. Just Maybe.

Let us put some pieces together.

1. Donald Trump, suddenly advocating a lot of Tea Party things, jumps up in GOP polling to where he is right with Mitt Romney.

2. He then begins putting out a lot of stereotypical comments, such as the birth certificate nonsense.

3. Many conservatives point out that Trump has a strong liberal past until quite recently. And virtually no conservative past, at that.

4. Jesse Jackson, Jr., among other prominent liberals, suddenly wonder what has become of him. He was always such a good guy and donor to their causes.

5. Trump announces that if he is defeated in a primary, he will run as an independent.

6. Indepedents invariably lose the election for the party they were previously associated with.

Is there the slightest possibility that Trump has not changed, and he is a Democratic plant designed to prevent a GOP victory? As the Czar’s poor, blighted mother said this morning... “He’s got all the hubris such a candidate would need.”

The Problem

Across America, there are debates raging about what to do about the debt and they are usually between two camps: (a) the Obama camp of cut defense and raise taxes, particularly on the high income earners and (b) for lack of a better term, the Ryan camp, aimed at cutting most programs but most notably the various income transfer ones also known as entitlement programs also know as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.  The Fiscal Times has this piece by James Cooper:

For the first time since the Great Depression, households are receiving more income from the government than they are paying the government in taxes. The combination of more cash from various programs, called transfer payments, and lower taxes has been a double-barreled boost to consumers’ buying power, while also blowing a hole in the deficit. The 1930s offer a cautionary tale: The only other time government income support exceeded taxes paid was from 1931 to 1936. That trend reversed in 1936, after a recovery was underway, and the economy fell back into a second leg of recession during 1937 and 1938.
As then, the pattern now reflects two factors: the severe depth of the 2007-09 recession and the massive fiscal policy response to it. The recession cut deeply into tax payments as more people lost their jobs, and it boosted payments for so-called automatic stabilizers, such as unemployment insurance, that ramp up payments as the economy turns down. Plus, policy actions, including the Recovery Act, boosted payments to households by expanding and extending jobless benefits and creating other income subsidies while extending the Bush-era tax cuts and adding new reductions in income and payroll taxes.
Government transfers of income to households started to overtake personal taxes at the start of 2008, and the gap has been widening. In February, households received more than $2.3 trillion in [annual] income support from unemployment benefits, Social Security, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, education assistance and other cash transfers of government funds to individuals. In the same month, households paid $2.2 trillion in [annual] income, payroll, and other taxes. The difference was about $150 billion [annually], equivalent to more than 1 percentage point of overall personal income and about four times the amount Republicans and Democrats agreed to cut from government spending through Sept. 30.

The article uses the following image to illustrate the issue (click to embiggen):

So one camp is arguing that the problem is the red line has declined.  The other camp sees the blue line's rise as the problem.  Let's be real clear: it's the blue line.

A Bad Day for America

Yesterday was a bad day for America. Not just Wall Street, but the whole country. It was mega-bad. It could be a second recession all over again kind of bad. All you know is that the stock prices fell, and that the nation’s credit rating fell.

Allow the Czar to put this into a more realistic light. For the first time in history, the United States lost its AAA credit rating (most stable investment possible) for a “negative rating” of “A-1+” This is like getting a report card that saw your grade drop from an A+ to

The Washington Post blames Republicans, and mentions that the President is reassuring everybody that S&P does not know as much about debt and bond ratings as does, say, a college law professor who never owned a business.

The actual S&P press release puts things in a carefully worded light. It says that the United States is not a safe bet due to its -out-of-control spending and inability to come to any bipartisan compromise.

The press release further adds that the President has a vague plan to raise taxes and cut spending on defense. The release also adds that Paul Ryan has produced a plan that restructures taxes, makes “significant” improvements to entitlements, and cuts spending everywhere but on defense.

However, the press release says that until leadership sets aside politics, the United States has a miserable outlook ahead of it and can no longer be trusted to pay its bills. Other than that, Standard & Poor’s makes no judgments.

No judgments? Well, okay. But the leadership here is Barack Obama, not Paul Ryan. And not only have Republicans continuously offered to meet with the president to hammer out a single agreement, but the press release was withheld until after the President’s budget speech last week.

Not that they are passing judgment as to what triggered the disastrous credit rating. But they knew for months about the Ryan Roadmap and had no comment. No, they were waiting to see if the President would provide hope and change, or simply be Candidate Obama. He made his choice; S&P made theirs.

So here is why this is bad. The credit rating basically says that America cannot be relied on as a solvent operation. As a result, borrowing costs for businesses and homeowners will rise, penalizing those few who are able to help grow the economy. The value of the dollar is certain to drop, and inflation is going up. Gasoline is now going to hit $5 a gallon. This will weaken the dollar internationally (although relax: the dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency because nothing has proven to be a stronger candidate), and already people are bailing on treasuries. This never happened to Carter.

None of this is good, and the recession will be with us right into election time. Yep: just when Obama really needed an economic upturn, he is going to give the GOP a massive public relations bonanza. Not that any of us will enjoy the immediate symptoms. Not when you see gas stations showing 87 octane at $4.899 a gallon.

Yesterday and today, the Obama camps are racing around each other to explain that this is really a good thing, or not a bad thing, and Tim Geithner is asking co-workers if he might get fired.

Many people are referring to the event as a political Rorschach: you will see in this what you wish to see. Some see it as an argument to raise the debt ceiling. Others see it as a clear endorsement of Paul Ryan. Whatever it may be, it certainly is a response to the President’s speech. And you may make your own judgment.

Who Is Smarter? Who Is Smartest?

An editorial in The Washington Examiner is slow enough to discover that President Obama is “not as nice as he looks.” No kidding. What caught the editors’s slow attention was the way Obama invited Paul Ryan to sit in the front row for his bipartisan, adult speech—but then took a series of potshots at Ryan purely for grade-school-level political points.

Well, look who just joined us. We have been highlighting some of his petulance since he displayed it days after his inauguration. He didn’t even go 48 hours before lashing out at the Press. Back then, you all laughed. Gormogon readers did not.

He is the classic prima donna college professor. He sees everyone as his students: unwashed, impertinent, in need of a good schooling. Stuck to the errors of conventional thinking. Lambs that need leading. When you ask a question, it means you did not understand the lecture and the 200-pages of assigned reading you were given last weekend.

When he says “Look,” at the start of a sentence, he wants you to stop seeing. When he announces he will be perfectly clear, he wants to confuse you. When he states “as I’ve always said,” you know he never said it. Because he is smart, and you are dumb. After all, the media basically branded him the smartest guy in the room. We should not be surprised if, more often than not, we do not understand him.

Of course, that could change. As the editors note, Peter Wehner at Commentary mentions that All the President’s Men believe that Obama is “intellectually outmatched” by Congressman Paul Ryan. The Czar would say that may be true as far as economic theory goes. And business theory. And on basic accounting. And maybe math, too. All right, to summarize it, the President’s team seems to be very worried that Ryan is smarter than he is only in the things that seem to matter to most Americans right now.

This is hardly the first time. Back in March, 2010, the Czar was reminded of the Economics 101 class Rodney Dangerfield attended in Back to School. At the time, he saw Obama as the Professor; now, moreover, he sees Ryan a bit closer to Dangerfield.

There must be a sense of panic among the re-election team. Perhaps not so much the President, who probably finds it pedestrian to worry about re-election even though he will go through the motions, but certainly among those assigned to getting him another four years. They need the President to really step it up here, but deep down they fear he has no higher gear. This is it. He’s out of gas.

We can expect cheap stunts and the usual chicanery associated with the Democratic Party over the next year. But 2010 was more than a wake up call: it was a bell tolling. They already know not to ask for whom.

And in less than ten years, the title Rules for Radicals will be an unfunny punchline to a question about failed political theory. Like The Communist Manifesto or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it will be read only by those who missed the memo from reality. Yeah, it almost worked, but history showed—once again—that no matter how intellectual, how academic, or how theoretical your leadership is, average Americans are always the smartest folks in the room.

Here's Your Receipt, Sucker

If you are like the Czar, you have already used The White House’s online tax receipt calculator to see where your money allegedly goes. Actually, if you’re like the Czar, you already suspect the IRS is gleefully monitoring every number you type in to see if that is what you really paid.

Well, it is a cute idea. Except, of course, it is hardly meaningful to know that x much money went to National Defense, and so on. What does that mean? GorT has a much more accurate calculator (which unfortunately for you is not online but in his head) that was much more precise in its computation.

Taxwise, the Czar learned that in 2010...

• $64 went to General Spandex purchases


• $18.11 was paid to a dude name Freshmo


• $933 was spent on canned tuna for a MSgt Friskie at Fort Ord


• $4,322.82 went to a Federal Smoot-Hawley Tariff Re-Enactment Guild


• $32 went to replace a cupholder in an F/A-18


• $67.33 went to buy a single over-sized pizza for Rep. Charles Bass, of New Hampshire


• $92 went to purchase something called Sponge-O


• $22,509 was simply handed to the SEIU as a tip


• Curiously, $3.14 was spent on pie


• $28.49 went to purchase a sump pump for Raymond Hulqvist of Bend, Oregon


• $765 was spent developing the tax receipt calculator

Well, you get the idea.

Oh, one neat tidbit: turns out the Czar purchased the vertical stabilizer fin of the first Tomahawk cruise missile to sail into Libya. That’s pretty cool. And who knew? The thing costs only about $1.20.

Bet He Uses a Banana Clip

Leave it to your Uncle Jay to find a picture of what the Mandarin has been up to lately.

The sad thing is that the baboon (the monkey in the photo, not the Big Guy) is probably a better shot than your Czar. But then, the baboon is part of a troop.

Sanctimony and Ceremony

Muscovy is not the largest community, and so the fact it has its own Catholic Church (Наша Дама Вечера) is quite remarkable in itself.

Anyway, it remains a fact that the Цесаревич must attend the church’s annual religious educational program since he attends a public school rather than the dirt-poor school attached to the church (by staples). If he does not attend religious ed, he basically cannot participate in the rich traditions of Catholicism fully. The Царица, you see, is responsible for the boy’s religious upbringing, since of course the Czar would squander the whole thing by taking the boys out to a shooting range every Sunday.

Which, ironically, would be cheaper. But cost is neither here nor there: the point is that if he wishes to go all the way in the Church (and he is willing to give it a shot), he needs to attend religious ed...because, God knows, the public school certainly isn’t about to make him get up at 6:30am every Sunday.

So, dutifully, the Царица enrolls him in religious ed. Okay, we clear on this?

The point is that the program is godawful. Okay, now you all know that religion and the Czar mix like bologna and whip cream. Under certain conditions, the Czar can swallow it. But even the Царица gets quite frustrated with the amateur hack running the program. First, she is one of those whack job ultra-Catholics that even ‘Puter would argue needs to lighten up in a big way. Seriously: she honestly thinks that parents force their kids to pray the rosary each night. When she learns that some parents, uh, forget here and there, she rolls her eyes and huffs in disgust. Quite theatrically. Another example: she sends notes home suggesting what gifts parents should buy the kids for their birthdays at the local Catholic stores.

She also has no pedagogical concept whatsoever. All lesson plans are the same for all ages. A little over a year ago, the Цесаревич was six. The lesson plan for his class, as it was for all the others that night, was to explain what transubstantiation personally meant to him. Lady, this is a group of kids who still think dad can pull quarters out of their ears! On his first day of class, in fact, the Czar attended and was nonplussed when she had the teachers cover the episcopacy of the magisterium. To six-year-olds. She might have had them go over Tobin’s Q for all they got out of that.

So why is she in charge? Because the attendence in the community is so bad, she winds up being the only one willing to do it. And none of the parents (thanks, 1970s!) know the catechism well enough to teach it. As a result, the parents sit through this mess while the kids are bored to tears for two hours every month until the session ends. There is only a temporary priest in residence there, and he is focused solely on retirement. He makes no waves because, we suspect, he is terrified of her. Indeed, she may know more than he does.

One other sad aspect: the woman running the program is invisible. Or something. She has a small squad of teachers who volunteer to do the actual classroom instruction while she never shows up. They follow her syllabus exactly, but even they admit the kids are getting nothing out of this.

This year’s session ended on Monday for the Summer. And the Царица was bemused to receive a survey from the church on how the program is working. Well, she mentioned, this ought to be fun. She grabbed her pen, and discovered all the questions were like this:

How would you describe the educational content?

(a) With prayer and reflection, we manage to follow it (b) Formative and informative

How are the classes paced?

(a) Just right (b) Classes should be longer (c) After class, we go home and continue with the Rosary to enrich our experience in new ways

How does your child react to the information?

(a) We are able to answer all his/her questions in accordance to the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church (b) We keep a journal of our religious questions so they can be answered at the next class (c) We could spend more time in Mass and in personal reflection and prayer

You get the idea. The priest, evidently tired of hearing about complaints, suggested she put out a survey to collect input for improvements.

And she clearly does not want to hear any crap from the likes of you quasi-protestants. So she blatantly produced a farce of a survey that will either reinforce her fantasies or will make you look like you, the parents, are inadequate in every way.

So the Царица left the questions blank and wrote See over next to each. On the back of the last page, she wrote a polite but fundamentally pointed screed about having professional educators review the lesson plans, develop content, and seek content from other nearby churches with demonstrably more effective religious education programs.

Nice, eh? This is why she fills these things out, because she already knows the Czar’s letter would be like this:

Got it. You really want to be a nun, but the fact is that no convent or order will take you in because you are overtly aggressive. Your religious views are neither unfounded nor without merit, but you present them in such an extremist fashion that you terrify the children, and worry the parents that you will leap out of the sacristy like some hyper-corrective jack-in-the-box because they hesitated on recalling the name of the cow that fed Saint Endelienta or whatever the heck you’re ramming down little kids’s throats in lieu of good, solid religious education.

Look, it isn’t ever easy being the only one to step up to the task when no one else wants to. But there exists the real possibility that you will oppose anyone else trying anyway, simply because they will expose how incapable you are at developing a religious education program that caters to the needs of the church’s youngest members. We claim no expertise in this field, but we are fairly certain that the teaching of the Church extends well beyond impressing everyone with your grasp of trivia. You are no different from the guy who sits at the ballgame and rattles off ridiculously superciliary statistics about every player because he frankly can’t play the game or read the field. At least those people serve the function of settling bets in bars. We have no idea what sort of tavern would take you in.

Anyway, the worst part about this isn’t that you are teaching the kids that church is incredibly boring and the failure of a third grader to explain Traditi Humiliati is like pinching baby Jesus. The kids are going to stay Catholic or lapse or eat poisoned jello when comets come by regardless of your bad blend of obscurity and pomposity. The worst part is that you cram your insecurity down the parents’ throats so badly that they begin to wonder if they, themselves, are good Catholics. Is it really your goal to make other Catholics doubt their own faith? Or is your goal to distract from what typically happens to people like you: they get hit with a little tragedy or setback, and wind up hating God and sitting in a dark apartment clanging an empty cereal bowl with a spoon in self-worshipping misery because all the Hobby Lobby inspirational posters were only lies. God will forgive you, but you may never have the courage to forgive yourself.

And then we will sign it St. Drogo, Patron Saint of Ugliness.

Looks like the Mandarin got that Navy contract after all

The Navy for the first time last week successfully tested a solid-state high-energy laser from a ship. The beam, which was aimed at a boat moving through turbulent Pacific Ocean waters, set the target's engine on fire.
The Office of Naval Research says the laser traveled over "miles, not yards." For now, the test is a proof of concept, and it's not yet known when it might be deployed as a weapon.
The baseball-sized laser beam, though, could be used to stop small crafts from approaching naval ships. It could also target pirates.

…

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, said the test was "remarkable" for how the Navy was able to concentrate the beam over such a long distance at sea, and given how the boat was being tossed about in rough water.
"Hats off to the U.S. Navy because that is very, very impressive," he said. "It was pitching and rolling and yet they got this very fine beam to focus on one part of an engine casing. That they managed to keep the energy in one place is remarkable."

That’s great and all, Mandy, but I’m not seeing any “ONR Contract” revenues in the budget. Don’t make me send Ghettoputer up to your lab to get the money. That never ends well.

Speaking of not ending well, I’m thinking if I’m a Somali pirate, it might be time to, you know, buy a fishing net or something.