A Battle in the War Between the Sexes

The Toxic Waste Of Modern Feminism
01/19/09 - AdviceGoddess by Amy Alkon

The post is about the Feminist desire to deny the usual attractions, to be loved only for what is inside rather than superficial looks. An anecdote provided as a comment by wolfboy69 captures the essence of the problem.

[edited]
One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says, 'I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me.'

I said, 'WHAT??!! What was that?!'

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear ... 'You're just not in touch enough with my emotional needs as a woman, for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man.'

She responded to my puzzled look by saying, 'Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?'

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take, so I told her we'd just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said, 'Lets get a pair for each outfit.'

We went on to the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you ... she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis.

I think I threw her for a loop when I said, 'That's fine, honey.' She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation, she finally said, 'I think this is all dear, let's go to the cashier.'

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, 'No honey, I don't feel like it.'

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled, 'WHAT?'

I then said, 'Honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch enough with my financial needs as a man, for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman.'

And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, 'Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?'

Apparently I'm not having sex tonight either....but at least she knows I'm smarter than she is.

Stimulus Bill Boondoggle

Biggest Boondoggle in American History
01/18/09 - PowerLineBlog by Paul Hinderaker
The stimulus bill is a whole lot of spending.

About "paid for by our children and grandchildren", don't count on it! Spending now wastes resources now. Those are the resources that you want in your life. More waste now means less national production now and later. I don't mean to be crude, but you will be emptying your own bedpan while you look out at all of those shiny new bridges and schools that they want to build, to support construction unions with their lovely votes and contributions. (See also: A short argument against stimulus)

[edited] We are living in an historical moment of uncharted territory. Minority Leader John Boehner sent out an email about the House Democrats' ridiculous $825 billion "stimulus" bill.

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A Dozen Fun Facts About the House Democrats' Massive Spending Bill

1. The House Democrats' bill will cost each and every household $6,700 additional debt, paid for by our children and grandchildren.

2. The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

Read more ...

Fake Cashier's Checks

Protecting Customers from Fake Cashier's Checks
01/17/09 - BankersOnline by Mary Beth Guard

Bank Checks or Cashier's Checks can be fake. It takes 10 days to detect the fraud. Crooks are sending fake checks and asking for some or all of the money back before the fake is discovered. There are more stories at the link.

[edited] People may be misled about whether a cashier's check is good. Funds may be available a few days after deposit, but will be taken back if the check does not clear a week later. When bogus cashier's checks are deposited, some banks do not give accurate information about when the check will be cleared and good, so that the customer can safely use the funds.

Some banks say that the check will be good in 24 hours, or that the check is guaranteed good, so there are no worries about using the funds. Feeling safely assured, the bank customer goes through with the transaction. Days later, when the checks are found to be counterfeit, the banks hold their customer responsible for the entire amount of the check, even though the bank had assured them that the funds were good.

There should be laws that hold the banks responsible for releasing the funds from these checks before they verify that the check is good, or telling the customer that the check is good, only to announce days later that it is not. If they know it takes 10 days for the check to clear, they should tell that to the customer. Banks are issued warnings from the FDIC when cashier's checks are stolen from other banks, yet they do nothing to increase the security measures that they take when handling a cashier's check.

Nobody knows how to make a pencil

Nobody knows how to make a pencil
01/15/09 - AlexBarnett.net (11/18/06)
Do you believe that the economy can be managed, beyond setting free and fair rules and protecting property rights? Consider that there is no single person or small group in the world who actually knows how to make a lowly lead pencil.

The Pelosi-Obama-Reid Economy

The Pelosi-Obama-Reid Economy
01/15/09 - PajamasMedia by Tom Blumer
A good review of recent events, the Government's plans, why they won't work, and the quality of top analysis and leadership. This is a short excerpt.

[edited] Meltdowns at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were decades in the making, aided and abetted by Democrat cronies like Frank Raines. This exposed how Fannie, Freddie, and the Community Reinvestment Act ruined the mortgage-lending market by lowering credit approval standards.

The Fan-Fred poison spread to other lenders. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson panicked and made up the amount of $700 billion to buy “troubled assets”, mostly mortgage loans in delinquency and foreclosure. Paulson's threats of financial Armageddon stampeded a reluctant President Bush into agreement. Pelosi, Obama, and Reid were proud advocates.

Paulson did not use the money as promised. He forced major banks to accept direct government investment. Bailing out one industry has already led to another (GM-Chrysler) and endless calls for more, from private businesses, states, local governments, and other public entities.

Is it a surprise that investors, entrepreneurs, and business managers are in no mood to invest or expand? They are shedding employees at a scary rate, down 500,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) for a second month.

Why start or expand any business if the government may aid your competitors or whimsically alter the rules? Consumers have billions of extra dollars available thanks to energy price drops and lower interest rates. But, they seem to be reducing their spending due to uncertainty.

Washington's solution is more bailouts and more uncertainty, through another bigger “stimulus” that should be slower than the last. Tax “rebate” checks sent out February 2008 were not very effective, but they put money into consumers’ pockets quickly. The new “stimulus” package is mostly public “investment” that, even if justified, will take much longer to affect the economy.

Roosevelt spent on massive public works during the Depression. This prolonged the Depression for seven years. Japan tried government stimulus for 10 years in the 1990s. It resulted in “the lost decade”.

Tennessee Sludge Spill: Government Disaster

Tennessee Sludge Spill: Government Disaster 30 Times Worse than Exxon-Valdez
01/14/09 - BusinessAndMedia by Julia A. Seymour
TVA is responsible, but media ignore that it is run by the government.

[edited] The Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA) is a government agency created during the Great Depression, and the nation’s largest electric utility. Their earthen dam in the town of Kingston, TN held more than one billion gallons of thick, black coal sludge. This is coal ash mixed with water, enough to fill more than 550 [sic] Olympic-sized swimming pools. [I compute 1266 pools x 790K gals/pool via Wikipedia]

About December 22, 2008 the dam collapsed. Sludge spread out over hundreds of acres, fouling waterways, and burying homes while people were sleeping.

News reports portrayed the disaster as a failure of the coal industry, not of a government agency. Left-wing environmentalists called for more regulation of the utility industry, instead of blaming the government for failing to police itself.

TVA’s CEO Tom Kilgore admitted to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that “the most expensive solution wasn’t chosen … Obviously, that doesn’t look good for us.” That solution would have cost the TVA $25 million. The cleanup will cost $20 million, plus the settlement of lawsuits. [And, the dam will need to be rebuilt.]

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA: “We didn’t really do much in the first two years looking at TVA”.

Shaka Mitchell of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research: “If there is one thing we can all learn from the disastrous toxic ash spill in Kingston, it’s that when government-run companies fail, no one is held accountable, but everyone pays.”

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Tennessee Gets a Lesson in Unaccountable Government
02/07/09 - WSJ Opinion by Scott Barker

The national media briefly gave some attention to the spill. In the Tennessee Valley, faith in government control of TVA may never recover. It was a wall of fly-ash sludge, a waste product of coal combustion from a nearby power plant. 300 acres were coated with debris in Swan Pond, a rural community about 35 miles west of Knoxville.

"I wouldn't have bought this land and built here if I knew this would happen," Mrs. Spurgeon told me after the disaster. "I guess you just trust government agencies."

Fly-ash contains arsenic, lead and beryllium, among other pollutants, so residents are worried about possible long-term effects to their health, water quality and property values.

TVA is trying to mitigate the damage by spending $1 million a day on the cleanup. But with several lawsuits in the works and a state investigation under way, nearly everyone is calling for the utility to be held accountable.

The problem is that it isn't really accountable to anyone. It is not scrutinized by shareholders and, unlike traditional government agencies, it is self-funded, so it doesn't have to justify itself to Congress to win annual appropriations.

The Economy is Not a Machine

The Economy is Not a Machine
01/13/09 - TCSDaily by Max Borders

[edited] The idea of fixing, running, regulating, designing, or modeling an economy rests on the notion that we can appoint smart directors who will implement an intelligent plan.

But the economy is not a mechanism. There is no mission control. Government cannot swoop down to explain and fix. The knowledge required to grasp the billions of actions, transactions and interconnections would fry the neural circuitry of a thousand Ben Bernankes.

F.A.Hayek called this the knowledge problem. Knowledge is dispersed through society, not concentrated in a few central authorities. Bad consequences follow government interventions because a ruling committee cannot have enough knowledge or judgment.

Many blame "greed" for our current problems. The profit motive is a good thing in an environment where bad investments receive losses and good ones are profitable. Government can distort that system, giving profits to people who make bad decisions. Greed becomes much more dangerous in that environment.

Create a Million Jobs

Job Creation
01/13/09 - ChicagoBoyz by David Foster

[edited] I know a way to create at least a million jobs, almost immediately, at no government expense whatsoever. Ban the automatic operation of elevators.

The Elevator Safety and Economic Opportunity Act of 2009 will preempt state regulation of elevators and will require that after March 1, 2009, no elevator shall carry passengers without being under the exclusive control of a qualified and certified elevator operator. In the early 1950s there were about 500,000 people employed as elevator operators. There are a lot more buildings and elevators now. Surely, we can count on a million new jobs.

We Don't Bother Raising Our Hands

We Don't Bother Raising Our Hands
01/12/09 - Media.NationalReview by Guy Benson
Quote from Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin

[edited] We have been deferential, eager to please, and prepared to keep a careful distance from Obama in news conferences. Most of us in the press corps do not bother any more to raise our hands to ask questions. Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day.

Self Defense and Security

Self defense and security
01/12/09 - Samizdata
Video (5:30). Dr. Susan Gratia testifies to a US Senate committee about the use of guns for self defense and as a right under the Second Amendment.

She owned a handgun, but had stopped carrying it in her purse, afraid of laws that make gun possession a felony in some local areas. She had no weapon when a madman crashed into a cafeteria and systematically shot everyone he could. Her parents were killed. She barely escaped through a back window.

She asks, why does her government prevent her from having the means for self-defense, and defense against the government if needed?