doubleplusundead

July 31, 2009

Chuck Devore needs your money

The guy who's running this ad needs to raise $5K more today to meet his July fundraising goals. Obviously he's running against Senator Barbara "Don't call me ma'am because I'm really a bear tranny underneath this pancake makeup" Boxer.

You can hit his tip jar here.

If a clever ad isn't enough to make you decide to support a candidate, take a gander at his voting record.

Posted by: Alice H at 11:31 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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July 30, 2009

Yes, you can buy a Congressional seat

More than one, if you're ambitious, even.

Posted by: Alice H at 12:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Moron Pundit for President: Ass Fucker!

Miss me? Miss my shenanigans*?

I know you do, but there's a good reason I haven't been able to post that much (other than my employers) or that I'm working all the time.

No, I'm just so fucking pissed off about the current political climate that I'm at a loss for words.

What kind of fucking country do we live in where a legislator can make the factual statement that it is laughable to actually, I don't know, fucking read a bill before you vote on it. Seriously? The idea is laughable to our elite Washingtonian masters?

The entire Constitution of the United States is 4400 words. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. Part of the AWESOME, AWESOMENESS of our system of government is that is was not invasive, complicated or ambiguous.

It was premised on the idea that governments are evil. Evil, but necessary. Because of that they needed to have a few powers to function but all remaining powers were relegated to something that wasn't the Federal Government. Something not covered in the man pages? That's cool, it is assumed that the Feds cannot do whatever fucking thing that is because it wasn't mentioned.

But now, we're writing multi-thousand page healthcare bills and everyone is arguing the merits of its details instead of what really matters. No bill of any nature passed by our government should be longer than the Constitution or require the aid of a professional law-talking-guy(gal) to understand.

This is fucking absurd. Unfortunately, it has become SOP for government (see: Tax Code, TARP, etc, etc, ad nauseum) to produce incomprehensible legislation, allowing it to use any vagueness to destroy or coopt any freedom it finds irritating. I'm fucking tired of it.

So, when I run for President in 2016, I'm going to support a new amendment to the Constitution.

It will read, in its entirety:

No piece of legislation enacted by Congress may surpass in length the Constitution of the United States and this legislation must be comprised of language simple enough to be understood by any person with a high school degree as defined by the mean reading comprehension of outgoing high school seniors.

No more legalese. No more Stephen King novels. Just plain, simple laws that everyone can easily digest. Then we can prevent/reverse this:

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood â€¦ it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairsâ€¦

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulationsâ€”complicated, minute, and uniformâ€”through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their wayâ€¦ it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to oneâ€™s acting on oneâ€™s own â€¦ it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Not bad for a French guy, eh?

My detractors might ask, "but what if the law being created deals with complicated issues and requires a lot of detailed provisions?"

First, the Constitution deals with what may be the most complicated issue of the human condition: the formation and maintenance of government. Second, if the provisions get complicated enough that 4400 words is too few, the Federal Government probably shouldn't be sticking their fucking nose into the problem in the first place.

Because they're retarded.

Ass Fuckers**.

* - My shenanigans are cheeky and fun.

** - Ass Fucker.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 11:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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July 28, 2009

Metallo!

It's been tough as of lateâ€”what, with the constant struggles against Obamacare and Cap and Taxâ€”to Rock out with your cock out (take that, NetNanny!) so I thought I'd offer some Metal, courtesy of our friends from Italy.

Enjoy...

Posted by: Sean M. at 03:59 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Newsweek - The recession is over! The Economist, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affars - Not so fast bucko!

The Great Recession, which rolled over our financial lives like one of P.J. Keating's giant pavers, is most likely over. Home sales, while still far below the levels of a year ago, have risen for three straight monthsâ€”a first since 2004. The stock market has rallied 44 percent since March, thanks to renewed optimism and improving earnings from big companies like Goldman Sachs and Apple. In June, seven of the 10 indicators in the Conference Board Leading Economic Index pointed upward, including manufacturing hours worked and unemployment claims. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louisâ€“based consulting firm, says the economy is expanding at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the current quarter. Economic activity "will increase slightly over the remainder of 2009," Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress.

source

All that may be true, but we exist in a globalized economy and it appears that the global economy is still verging on collapse - The Economist reports that global shipping is down some horrendous percentage:

Estimates by the World Trade Organization suggest that trade volumes will shrink by around a tenth this year. But recent figures from big economies give reasons to hope that the worst of the slump may now be past. Even in May, the value of trade was nearly a third lower than a year earlier. But the recent awful figures mask the fact that exports and imports have held more or less steady since January.

Foreign Affairs reports that the Asian economies are unlikely to recover soon, driven as they are by exports:

For decades, Asian economies used exports to the West as a means of growth. Now, if they hope to weather the global recession, they will have to enact deep structural changes such as higher wages and increased domestic consumption.

and Foreign Policy magazine predicts a coming bursting of the Chinese economic bubble:

China's fortunes over the past decade are reminiscent of Lucent Technologies in the 1990s. Lucent sold computer equipment to dot-coms. At first, its growth was natural, the result of selling goods to traditional, cash-generating companies. After opportunities with cash-generating customers dried out, it moved to start-ups -- and its growth became slightly artificial. These dot-coms were able to buy Lucent's equipment only by raising money through private equity and equity markets, since their business models didn't factor in the necessity of cash-flow generation.

Funds to buy Lucent's equipment quickly dried up, and its growth should have decelerated or declined. Instead, Lucent offered its own financing to dot-coms by borrowing and lending money on the cheap to finance the purchase of its own equipment. This worked well enough, until it came time to pay back the loans.

The United States, of course, isn't a dot-com. But a great portion of its growth came from borrowing Chinese money to buy Chinese goods, which means that Chinese growth was dependent on that very same borrowing.

Now the United States and the rest of the world is retrenching, corporations are slashing their spending, and consumers are closing their pocket books. This means that the consumption of Chinese goods is on the decline.

...

Much of China's growth over the past decade has come from lending to the United States. The country suffers from real overcapacity. And now growth comes from borrowing -- and hundreds of billion-dollar decisions made on the fly don't inspire a lot of confidence. For example, a nearly completed, 13-story building in Shanghai collapsed in June due to the poor quality of its construction.

This growth will result in a huge pile of bad debt -- as forced lending is bad lending. The list of negative consequences is very long, but the bottom line is simple: There is no miracle in the Chinese miracle growth, and China will pay a price. The only question is when and how much.

So we may have weathered the gust front but the rest of the storm is still to come.

Even Newsweek recognizes this, admitting that the recession may be over but the recovery is going to be long and painful:

To a large degree, the U.S. economy must now cope with an era of lower expectations. Road building isn't a recipe for full employment, green technology won't displace fossil fuels in this decade, the benefits of universal broadband may be overblown, and the dysfunctional health-care system won't shift overnight from a headwind to a tailwind. The recession may be over, but there's likely to be plenty of tough slogging ahead.

Does that mean the smart economy is a waste? Absolutely not. Declaring the stimulus a failure five months after its passage is a little like calling the results of a marathon at the second-mile marker. Virtually all these investments are necessary. They will make the economy and specific industries smarter. They are intelligent economic and political strategies. But they're not sufficient. Large as it is, the stimulus can't fill the hole we've created or bring a series of large industries into the 21st century. Each imperative requires investments far in advance of what even the most free-spending liberal could imagine. Transforming the nation's energy--production-and-transmission system "will take an investment of trillions of dollars over decades," says Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. "The private sector has to make this happen."

Historically, the economy has kicked into higher gear when a development comes along that can touch every part of the economy, not just particular sectors: the steam engine, electricity, the computer chip, globalization, the Internet, cheap money. By definition, it's almost impossible to know what the next disruptive, discontinuous great leap forward is going to be. On several occasions, Lawrence Summers has remarked that when he was involved in the big economic summit Bill Clinton held after winning the 1992 election, he didn't recall hearing many mentions of the words "the Internet."

Posted by: chad98036 at 12:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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July 27, 2009

To report or not to report?

On the one hand, it's hella creepy. On the other hand, this is better than a registry as far as letting everyone know the driver's hella creepy.

(Source)

Posted by: Alice H at 01:11 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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July 25, 2009

The Sound of Freedom

It is not my daughter's favorite sound, apparently. If it were, I'd have some FUCKING AWESOME video of the United States Air Force Thunderbirds flying in diamond formation over my house all afternoon.

I guess 18-month-old girls aren't as enamored of the sound of four massive jet engines several hundred feet above their heads as I am.

The sound of freedom, indeed. Inspiring.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 03:53 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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July 23, 2009

Hola! Mis amigos

DPUD has graciously allowed me to begin guest posting on his site and asked me to do an introductory post. In compliance with his wishes here goes:
more...

Posted by: chad98036 at 10:26 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Your Rights End At My Wallet

I hate to keep stealing from Mike at Cold Fury, but he's been on a blogging role lately.
In today's theft... errrrr..... linkage, we have the Gunslinger saying something that I knew but couldn't quite put it in words.
The Gunslinger says,
Anything that requires the labor of someone else cannot be a universal human right.
..snip...
It's just a greedy, selfish Want.
In a nutshellâ€”nothing that demands the labor or sacrifice of another is your right.

Bing-fucking-O Gunslinger
more:
Our Constitutional, Natural Law rights require only that others leave us alone. They require no labor, action, payment, participation or sacrifice of anyone else on our behalf.

Well, mostly. They do require that busy body assholes leave me alone and that's asking a lot, but the point is valid.

So the next time some tool says that "health care is a right", I'll be able to explain exactly and concisely why it's not.
It won't change any leftist minds, but they won't have a response so they'll have to shut up about it.
And that's about all I hope for anymore.

Posted by: Veeshir at 05:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Legal search and seizure, my ass...or his ass, anyway

I can't believe that at no point during all this did anyone - a doctor, a medical tech, a law enforcement officer - step forward and say, "Uh, maybe, just maybe we're crossing a line here."

Clement, 35, who police claim had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court in a neighboring city, was handcuffed and taken to a police station where he was strip-searched. No contraband was found, so Clement was taken to Albany Med, where doctors forcibly sedated him with powerful drugs against his will.
Sheriff's investigators did not obtain a search warrant for the procedure, and hospital officials did not require them to produce one. Police and hospital officials considered the matter a "medical emergency."
While Clement was under sedation, a camera was inserted in his rectum, he was forced to vomit and his blood and urine were tested for drugs and alcohol. Scans of his digestive system were performed using X-ray machines, according to hospital records obtained by the Times Union.

Posted by: Alice H at 04:54 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Prepare to have your childhood raped

Slow news day. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the move about fifteen seconds in just isn't appropriate for the twelve-and-under crowd, as the dude at Geekologie mentioned it too.

Posted by: Alice H at 04:44 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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RIP Futoshi Abe

Posted by: Alice H at 02:48 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Maybe it was one a them new-fangled flavored ones

That's the only explanation I can think of for finding one in soup.

Posted by: Alice H at 02:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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July 22, 2009

Soylent green

Now we know the secret ingredient in that nasty Big Mac sauce.

Posted by: Alice H at 02:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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WTF is Right With Wisconsin?

Yeah, you read that right.

If you haven't seen this video (it happened just a few blocks from my house) you really need to see it. It is simply amazing video of regular people being heroic.

Fucking amazing.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 07:07 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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July 21, 2009

I must repectfully disagree with John Hawkins and this random dude from Cracked

The Black Eyed Peas couldn't have possibly written the worst song ever, because every song by the Black Eyed Peas is the worst song ever written. You know it's true.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 11:13 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Blocked

You may or may not know that I do most of my blogging from work and now they've locked down the internet tighter than a jimmy-hat so I can't even comment here.

Lame. All the more reason for me to make some anticipated career changes sooner rather than later. After all, how can I deprive you lovely morons of my wit and charm on a daily basis?

I know, dastardly.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 11:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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