GREEN COWBOYS

"I, Hal Jordan, do solemnly swear to pledge allegiance... to a lantern, that I got from a dying purple alien in a swamp."

Well I watched two movies recently with my brother, and we agreed on both of them. Green Lantern was lousy, I don't recommend it to anyone. Cowboys and Aliens was pretty fun and its worth a Netflix view.

What's interesting to me is that I had low expectations for both films. I'd heard both weren't that great, and wasn't really looking forward to watching them. In one case I was surprised and the other it just was confirmed.

Which is interesting, because I'm sure that sometimes movies are better for being downplayed. If I'd heard that Cowboys and Aliens was four-star great entertainment and favorably compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark I would have probably not enjoyed it nearly as much. Going into it with the bitterness of people upset at how it didn't live up to their expectations, I found it enjoyable.

And given the people involved, it could have been spectacular. The acting included Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Daniel Craig, and Keith Carradine. The director was Jon Favrau and one of the producers was Ritchie Cunningham. So it should be pretty great stuff, right? Except it had like 18 writers and it was pretty uneven.

Overall the film was entertaining, and both Ford and Craig were great at their roles, very watchable and engaging. Olivia Wilde did a good job as a strange girl who weaves through the story, and the tale was a fun fable with lots of interesting action. And thankfully, instead of the original graphic novel's theme of "evil European explorers shown their place by aliens exploiting them" it was just a straight adventure romp.

There were, however, some parts that had me going "what the hell?" when people acted completely irrationally (like Harrison Ford's tough rancher thinking some drunk cowpoke blew up a herd of cows and like 40 acres of Texas landscape somehow). And the big the aliens alternated between nigh invulnerability and completely soft and squishy depending on what the plot and scene required. But it was visually fascinating and it worked, overall. I'd give it 2 1/2 stars.

Green Lantern, on the other hand didn't really have anything going for it. The bad guys sucked, the main character was an unlikable lout, the girls weren't that great looking and acted completely randomly based on what the plot required. The first ten minutes or so of the movie was totally CGI, I mean not a single frame that had anything real whatsoever in it. And it was obviously CGI, like the Hulk Dogs in the Ang Lee movie.

I'm not a big Ryan Reynolds fan, and he smarmed it up above and beyond the call in this movie. It was just not very inventive, but long and cliche riddled. Large portions of the film made no sense, I didn't care about any of the characters, and as I've never been a fan of the Green Lantern Corps part of the storyline anyway, a lot of the movie was just not engaging in any way.

Plus, they mangled the character of Hal Jordan. Hal was always a straight arrow, strong willed character with terrific moral character and personality, but not a joking sophomore. In this movie he was a frat boy doofus who made jokes about everything and was a waste of space.

So the low expectations of Green Lantern I had were actually... higher than the movie deserved. I figured it would be entertaining and interesting to look at, but it was just lousy.

SPENDY RIDES

"But its an American car, so anything I'd normally like about it I'll find fault with and call it too big"
-Jeremy Clarkson (translated)

Want a new car? Well you're like fewer and fewer people, because most folks are getting their car worked on and maintained rather than buying a new one. We just don't have the money lying about to buy something new any more in the Obama economy.

But if you did have a lot of money, here are a few cars you could buy. These are some of the most expensive cars for the 2012 model year, courtesy Forbes magazine:

The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid costs just $845,000. Its not available for purchase just yet, but will be by the end of the year. It gets an effective 78 mpg and goes from 0-60 in 3.1 seconds, but I doubt the battery lasts a fraction as long as they claim.


Or you could get an Aston Martin One-77 for $1,400,000. It hits 220 mph and develops 730 horsepower.

If you'd rather have a nice luxury car, you can get this Maybach Landaulet, for the same price as the Aston-Martin. However, Maybach is going out of business next year; it just can't compete with established luxury cars. The Landaulet has a 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V12 engine that produces 620 horsepower but gets 10 miles per gallon in the city, according to Maybach. Then again, if you can buy this, gas prices are the least of your priorities.


Then there's the Koenigsegg Agera R which is a flex fuel car, for $1,711,000. It has a reported top speed of 261 and can go 0-60mph in 2.9s.


If you prefer Italian supercars, there's the Ferrari 599xx for a cool $2,000,000. With a body by Pininfarina (one of my favorite designers) it looks beautiful and set a new lap record at the Nurburgring track in Germany.


And of course there's the reliable Bugatti Veyron, still the fastest production car on earth - and the most expensive, for $2,600,000.

Well, in tough economic times, its nice to dream.

WORD AROUND THE NET

“Kerry Kennedy, daughter of RFK and human rights lawyer, is coming to Ecuador... This could give us a real boost... Will cost money, but not much.”

Most people probably know Rwanda as the place where one tribe tried to obliterate another tribe as the UN stood aside and even facilitated the massacre. However, in the years since that, the country has been doing much better. One of their biggest turnarounds was in industry and the economy largely due to coffee. William Easterly and Laura Freschi at Aidwatchers explain:

Rwandan specialty coffee is winning international competitions, commands some of the world’s highest prices, and is sought out by Starbucks, Green Mountain Coffee, Intelligentsia, and Counter Culture Coffee. There is preliminary evidence that the coffee industry is creating jobs, boosting small farmer expenditure and consumption, and possibly even fostering social reconciliation by reducing “ethnic distance” among the Hutus and Tutsis who work together growing and washing coffee.

How did this happen? First, the Rwandan government lowered trade barriers, and lifted restrictions on coffee farmers. Second, Rwanda developed a strategy of targeting production of high-quality coffee, a specialty product whose prices remain stable even when industrial-quality coffee prices fall. Third, international donors provided funding, technical assistance and training, creating programs like the USAID-funded Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD). SPREAD’s predecessor started the first Rwandan coffee cooperative as an experiment in 2001, and the project continues its work improving each link in newly-identified high-value coffee supply chains.

In other words, they worked on an industry by freeing the market and getting away from outside money and more toward training and education. They've got a ways to go but things are really looking better for the country, thanks to coffee.

The GDP for last year on average was a grand total of 1.7%, which while technically growth and not recession is so slow and tepid as to be damaging to jobs and productivity. By contrast, 2010 was 3.0% growth, although you wouldn't have known it at the time. Which makes me wonder: what is the metric being used here, exactly? Because 3% is not great but its pretty good and the nation was suffering that year.

Although registered as a non-profit and as such is tax free, the website Media Matters For America is specifically and overtly trying to create better news coverage of Democrats. Founded by Soros and the Clintons, the website claims it is a corrective to right wing distortion and media stories, but in truth its just a Democratic Party mouthpiece. Vince Cogliansese writes at The Daily Caller:

The far-left nonprofit Media Matters for America (MMFA) has attempted to court at least one Democrat lawmaker as its “all[y]” in “gain[ing] favorable media coverage” in the ongoing Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline debate. Claiming an alliance with lawmakers appears to be the latest red flag for the organization critics allege has frequently overstepped its tax-exempt privileges.

In an email distributed to the offices of both Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican Sen. James Inhofe on Wednesday — and obtained by The Daily Caller — Media Matters employee Emilee Pierce sought to “flag” a liberal study by the organization released Thursday in an effort to manipulate coverage of the Keystone pipeline.

I remember early on, Media Matters was primarily a Clinton spin machine, trying to attack anyone who questioned or criticized the Clintons, but its got a broader perspective these days. Tax free non profits have to avoid endorsing or attacking one political party or the other, according to tax law. The IRS has been strangely reluctant to act against this group, though.

Also at the Daily Caller Matt Lewis ripped Reuters News Service to bits over an error-packed story about Florida Republican Marco Rubio. Among the errors:

• Claiming Rubio voted against Sotomayor's confirmation
• He makes a lot of money but failed to make two payments on his house
• He used a party credit card for purchases

Why this story was written and in this manner is a matter of some curiosity, to say the least.

Vice President Biden has repeatedly used racist tones and statements that would have gotten a Republican thrown out of office, but no one seems to care. His most recent was to affect a faux Indian accent while talking about the call service industry, which probably was kind of funny and not racist in my book, but again: double standard.

Who was the richest president the United States has ever had? Was it Kennedy? Either Bush? Roosevelt? No, it was George Washington, when adjusted for inflation. And John Kerry would have been even richer. Funny how wealth only matters when its not a Democrat these days.

Mitt Romney is a rich man running for president. He pays about 15% federal income taxes despite having such wealth, largely because his money isn't due to income like a paycheck but other sources. While I am annoyed that the very wealthy find it so easy to dodge taxes, I don't care much that he's rich. I'd like to be rich. However, Noel Sheppard looked at IRS data and found that 97% of all Americans pay less than 15% income tax. In other words, Romney pays higher taxes than 97% of America.

This graph looks a bit messy:

But here's what all those lines mean. The IPCC FAR are the various climate reports from the UN IPCC. The estimates are the various estimates that were stated in 1990 and repeated as years went on, high and low, including variation that they predicted within those estimates (the red, blue and green straight lines). The wiggly lines are the actual temperatures as recorded in oceanic and surface temperature reports. Noted are also various global events such as when Mt Pinatubo erupted.

As you can see, every single estimate by the IPCC was wrong. All of them, even the lowest possible one. Now, at what point should a scientific endeavor change gears? When do they decide "well maybe this isn't working?" For the global climate alarmist, apparently never.

Although it had been happening for more than a century, the retreat of glaciers on Mt Kilimanjaro was one of Al Gore's exhibits of how horrible global warming was and how we're ruining the planet. According to guides who work on the mountain, however, the glaciers are growing again.

NASA's Goddard Space Institute notes that the global temperature of 2011 (as best it can be measured) was lower than in 1998. Overall the trend of temperature, as far as there is one, seems to be downward, and has been since 98. Between the two choices, cold is actually worse for humanity than warm.

Piracy isn't just something from the distant past or off the shores of western Africa. Entertainment "piracy" by copying materials and selling it illegally is very problematic for the entertainment industry. Which brings us to 3D. Customers don't actually love 3D movies that much, if they did, those 3D televisions would sell better - and they are not. Hollywood loves the format though, because its very difficult to pirate. You can't steal a movie with a video camera if the film is 3D, so that very common form of piracy is locked out. Plus, you can charge more for a 3D movie and people will pay it. So the format is not going anywhere despite being at best tolerated by most viewers and potentially causing eyestrain.

Meanwhile, cable TV and the big entertainment companies that own it are very worried. More and more people are abandoning viewing shows on cable and just watching what they want, when they want, on Netflix, Apple, and other sources. Why wait for a show to come on (often with ads) when you can just watch it at your leisure, without ads? Although DVD and movie ticket sales are down, TV licensing is the big money for big entertainment. Edward Jay Epstein at explains:

Consider Warner Bros. Its library has more than 60,000 licensable properties, including 6,500 movies and 40,000 TV episodes. Whereas its DVD sales have been on the wane, its TV licensing has skyrocketed. In 2010, according to sources at Time Warner, Warner Bros. harvested over $4 billion from worldwide licensing to TV.

Nearly 80 percent came from just four cable customers — HBO, Turner, ABC Family, and NBC Universal’s cable channels. Not only did this far exceed ithttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs share of theatrical box-office receipts, which were $2.4 billion in 2010, but this licensing is highly profitable:

The studio pays none of the cost of advertising, prints or logistics. Almost all proceeds, minus some residuals paid to third parties, go to a studio’s bottom line. Whatever the vagaries of the box office, licensing is the largest and most reliable source of profits for the studios.

These industry experts estimate that if 5% of cable customers dump their subscriptions, it would mean financial disaster. Well, maybe if you offered more content with less annoyance, and let people buy what they want rather than bundled you wouldn't pressure customers away. Oil Companies and banks are considered evil blood thirsty corporations but nobody seems to mind what awful people entertainment corporations are.

All those waiver madness of giving specific allies exemption from the "Obamacare" Government Health Insurance Takeover Act has come to a close, finally. Here are some running totals:

A recent paper by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that Sebelius has granted waivers to labor unions representing more than 547,000 employees. "By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses were granted waivers," the Daily Caller reports. And last year, according to Washington Examiner columnist Michelle Malkin, "Sebelius granted 38 waivers to restaurants, nightclubs, spas and hotels in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco congressional district. Pelosi's office said she had nothing to do with it." At another point last year, unions were getting so many waivers that Malkin asked why "union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers?"

Again, if its such a great idea, why are so many people asking to not be a part of it?

Attorney General Eric Holder is known for his willingness to ignore crimes by blacks and his heading up a deliberate effort to get automatic weapons in the hands of drug gangs to help build momentum for gun control, but his past is less known. However, Reuters dug up some past information on him and found this:

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks’ offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.
...
In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners’ lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven’t responded publicly to any of the requests.

While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm’s clients included the four largest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co – as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

Wait, aren't banks throwing people out on the streets the bad guys, Occupy? Well, I'm sure all the foreclosures were on white guys. Its social justice.

President Obama has had a lot of staffers and people working with him in the past. One of them was Zach Edwards, his "New Media" director for the 2008 campaign. He works for a Democratic Party strategy business linked to Tom Harkin at present. And he was arrested for attempted identity theft. What was he doing? He was trying to use the identities of the Iowa Secretary of state and or his brother, planning to implicate the the SoS of illegal or unethical behavior. Iowa's Secretary of State has been a serious roadblock in the way of George Soros' Secretary of State project to replace each state's SoS with ones friendly to the left. Since this office controls and oversees vote counting and elections, you can guess why they might want to do this. "By any means necessary," I believe is the quote. Or perhaps its "the ends justify the means."

Texas like all US states redrew their congressional districts because of population changes found in the 2010 census count. Every time this happens, the party in charge tries to abuse the system to maximize their power and the party out of power screams bloody murder because they can't do the same thing. The Texas Democratic Party, famous for running away and hiding last time redistricting happened, ran to their reliable allies in the courts. Unsurprisingly they were able to find a judge who drew up a map that favored Democrats better. However the Supreme Court ruled that judges cannot draw redistricting maps, only legislatures as the US and state constitutions plainly say.

Chevrolet's Volt is by all accounts a well-made car, unlike many GM products these days. However, its far too expensive for what you get and has virtually no resale value and tons of massive hidden costs. In order to inflate sales numbers and try to encourage car dealers to move the vehicle, they required lots to buy the Volt rather than lease it in order to have one on their lot. So its no surprise that Chevy dealers have been reluctant to carry the thing. Mike Colias reports at Auto News:

For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said.

In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels.

GM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick says. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him.

Given the "burst into flame" news and recalls, its no surprise these things just aren't welcome at lots. I guess that effort to destroy Toyota last year didn't work out so well.

Ever sit through a meeting and suspect everyone is getting dumber by gathering? Well now there's some evidence that actually happens - especially with women.

Researchers conducted a series of tests on groups of men and women with similar high IQ ratings. In the first set of tasks, the subjects were given basic puzzles to solve.

Then they were each told how well the others in the group had performed before being given another series of similar tests.

Once they knew the others were good at the tasks, the performance and IQ of both sexes dropped, but women's more significantly.

Scans showed the part of the brain dealing with emotion increased in activity while that associated with problem solving decreased.

The researchers, at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in the U.S., say the results suggest companies should develop strategies to get the most out of staff who may be 'susceptible to social pressures' in small groups.

Its possible that its distraction, or the need to shift to different parts of your brain in focus for social interaction, and it may be just that people tend not to think or analyze as much in groups because they figure someone else will do it for them.

Tax day is coming up in a few months. Have you paid your taxes this tax year? Well you're better than many federal workers. According to Emily Miller at the Washington Times, federal employees owe $1,000,000,000 in unpaid back taxes.

Figures released this week show 98,291 current civilian employees have a severe tax lien against them. When retirees and military personnel are included, the debt figure goes up to an astounding $3.4 billion. Without some kind of accountability, the number will grow larger.

The ironies abound. The Office of Government Ethics has one of the highest delinquency rates at 6.5 percent. You might think the U.S. Tax Court would pay its taxes, but its staff owes Uncle Sam $62,508. The Government Accountability Office has 65 employees not being held accountable. The Board of Governors for the Federal Reserves has 91 staffers who have reserved $1,265,152 in their own pockets.

The Postal Service has the most people not paying taxes, a total of 25,640.

Recently, President Obama celebrated the anniversary of the Roe v Wade debacle in the Supreme Court. While millions of people around America were remembering how many children have died (far more than the holocaust killed), the president was saying this:

And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Aside from not having sons, apparently President Obama's kids dream of infanticide.

Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered for a pro-life rally in Washington DC, but the press consistently reported it as "hundreds" and showed almost no pictures of the event. Why? Well it not only makes the president's remarks look out of touch, but it gives credence to the public shift away from abortion support in America. Ann Althouse suggests that the legacy media has become "truth-phobic" because it keeps getting in the way of their narrative.

That’s why 250 people camping out in a park gets thousands of stories, while half-a-million marching on Washington does not get reported at all, or if it does, the pictures are cropped; the attendees are caricatured, mis-named and under-represented while their opponents are over-represented.

Whatever the reason, its plain that the legacy media has one perspective and only reluctantly cares to share anything that conflicts with it.

South Carolina's dead vote. After the recent primary, the attorney general of the state requested an investigation because an estimated 900 people appear to have voted in recent elections (which would go back before the GOP primary there). Zombie rebs?

Remember Dr Ann Maest, specialist for anti-oil drilling forces? She was caught on film telling how to fake data and claim damage not being done for a court case in Ecuador. Well there's an update in the New York Post (via Whizbang) about her lawyer pall Donziger who was in on the scam:

Kennedy, 52, was secretly hired as a “public-relations consultant” by the lawyer representing the Ecuadoreans in an $18 billion lawsuit against Chevron, according to court documents.

Cashing in on her respected family name and legacy, Kennedy raked in tens of thousands of dollars and was given a 0.25 percent stake — worth as much as $40 million — if the $18 billion judgment handed down by an Ecuadorean judge is ultimately upheld. (Chevron has not yet paid pending its countersuit in Manhattan federal court.)

Kennedy was paid a flat $50,000 by lead attorney Steven Donziger on Feb. 22, 2010, bank statements made public in the case show.

“Nothing could prepare me for the horror I witnessed,” she wrote, but the money probably helped, and the horror was certainly made more plausible.

Incidentally, something you might want to think about: Newt Gingrich was fined an "unprecedented" $300,000 for alleged ethics violation by the House of Representatives. Everyone figures he was guilty because he paid and resigned. Except... when he was investigated for the actual crime he was accused of, he was found not guilty. They didn't abandon the case for lack of evidence or a weak case, they said he was absolved and had engaged in no wrongdoing. So why pay? Well to get the investigation over with and behind him, many suspect. I would guess few people know this, and its worth passing on.

The 2008 Democratic Party fight was pretty hilarious to watch: both sides looked like idiots, both were acting self destructive, both were tearing each other apart and demonstrating plainly that neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton should be president. Clinton pushed the "Obama wasn't born in the USA" theory, and Obama pushed the "Clinton can't be trusted" one. David "astroturf" Axelrod came up with this one. Memos released recently from the campaign have the details, from Amy Willis at the LA Times:

Rather than fight out their differences in policy, Mr Axelrod told Obama that the only way to secure a defeat was to attack Mrs Clinton's character. The goal was to paint Obama as the "authentic 'remedy' to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress" and to discredit his main rival in the process.

"It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress," the memo added.

It was obvious to everyone in early 2008 that the Democrat candidates were lousy, crazy, and stupid. They were tearing each other apart instead of going after the opposing party's candidate. They looked silly to the world. Sound familiar?

President Obama is running around attacking greed and demanding rich people give more to help those in need. Inevitably that comes around to how Republicans are those evil greedy rich and how Democrats just want to help but keep being stopped by the minority party in congress. Except when you look at the numbers, a different picture emerges. Mitt Romney released his tax info recently, and its shown that he gave 15% of his income to charity. President Obama, by contrast, gave... 1%.

However, Jon Stewart at Comedy Central was shocked, shocked to learn that Mitt Romney made so rich. Stewart, who makes $15,000,000 a year in salary alone at Comedy Central (plus any residuals, advertising he does, and speaking appearances) couldn't believe Romney makes so much money. Having a candidate be so wealthy and successful in business was apparently offensive to Stewart, who fought hard to get from the game show Remote Control to another TV show on MTV's network.

Google's motto is "do no evil." However, their actions pretty much put that to lie on a regular basis. Their most recent effort is to always gather all information you type into the internet for any reason on any of their platforms (such as blogger, Google searches, Youtube, Gmail, and so on) and use it to advertise to you. You cannot opt out, but you can avoid this by using other sites, such as Startpage.com for your internet searches (it uses Google through a third party, thus keeping your information anonymous).

Recently Obama's Education Department did a study on the impact of ethnic background on student loan repayment rates for... well there had to be some reason. They made a small error in their data, however. They didn't study blacks at all. Completely left them out. And it took a court order to get the data released and the error brought out. I'm sure it was completely by accident.

Daniel Greenburg at the Sultan Knish blog has an interesting examination of politics and food, and how food is used as a class weapon.

But the politicization of food goes beyond the fair trade and locally grown fetishes of the politically correct elites, the more politics ends up on your plate, the more the elites are driven to involve everyone else in their food fights. What begins as a way of raising prices while diminishing value to assert wealth and privilege becomes imposed on everyone in the name of their political morality. Once everyone else is paying more and getting less, then the classist left demands new ways to set its superior moral eating habits apart. Instead of everyone ending up with more food, everyone ends up with less.

The cultural ascendance of the left has meant that instead of conspicuous consumption, the consumption has to be disguised with conspicuous political pieties. The food may cost twice as much, but it's locally grown on a farm run by handicapped union workers who visit Cuba to receive free health care or by the indigenous peoples of Tuba-Tuba with the proceeds going to a complete sonic library of their chants and ceremonies. The entire thing is meaningfully meaningless, but it disguises the consumption in a hairshirt, which is the entire point.

He notes that Russia, once a net wheat exporter and breadbasket was a net wheat importer with the inability to produce its own food by the time the left was done with it.

Finally, Drudge has gone on record as being anti-Newt Gingrich, and is using his hugely popular site to bash and destroy the man any way he can. Recently he ran several quotes that make it seem like Newt despised Ronald Reagan in an attempt to get conservatives to abandon support of Gingrichs, but those quotes were a bit misleading as Dan Reihl shows in video of the whole interview, not just a few quotes. And over at Legal Insurrection, a commenter notes a few facts about Gingrich. He notes several strong Reagan supporters defending Newt:

Reagan Nat’l Security Advisor Bud McFarlane: http://bit.ly/zd9eAF
Reagan Economist Art Laffer: http://bit.ly/xEDETi
Reagan WH political director Jeffrey Lord: http://bit.ly/zw2ZMb
Reagan Policy Analyst Peter Ferrara http://bit.ly/zq1QxI
Reagan media consultant Richard Quinn: http://on.msnbc.com/y2sPM2
Reagan’s Speechwriting Dir. Bently Elliott: http://thedc.com/xOkDvA
Reagan’s older son Michael Reagan: http://bit.ly/yYVy7L
Reagan’s beloved wife Nancy: http://bit.ly/zrWvAw

Newt Gingrich has his problems, but being against Reagan was not among them.

And that's the Word Around the Net for January 27, 2012

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Who am I?
I'm known as British but was born in Ireland
I'm a writer and playwright
My last words were "Dying is easy, comedy is hard."
Answer after the fold...

I'm George Bernard Shaw!

Quote of the Day

"Already, we have but too much reason to deplore the violence and animosity of party spirit. It has gone far to destroy social intercourse, and all the endearing charities of life, between ancient friends and neighbours, and to substitute political opinions for virtue, intelligence, and patriotism. Already the wise and good of all parties, entertain apprehensions, lest the interests of the people and the duties of government, might be forgotten in the solicitude for party power, and the hatred of political opponents."
-Masachusetts Governor Christopher Gore, 1809

LEISURE ECOLOGY

"The person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer."

This has been sent and linked a lot in the last couple weeks but I wanted to push it here as well, in case some of my readers had not seen it. William Tucker wrote a piece in American Spectator - a source I view with some suspicion given the antics with facts they played in the Clarence Thomas story - that actually is really insightful and fascinating.

It starts out with another examination of the Keystone pipeline extension, but then Tucker gets into an area that I hadn't considered but makes a lot of sense, when you think about it:

People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs -- who are established in the environment, so to speak -- are happy to go along with this. It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They are happier with the way things are. In fact, environmentalism works to their advantage. The main danger to the affluent is not that they will be denied from improving their estate but that too many other people will achieve what they already have. As the Forest Service used to say, the person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer.

Its a lot like the SOPA/PIPA debacle. Big, established corporations do not want competition or change, unless they control the change. They are for these laws not out of some selfless desire for greater copyright protection, but because it cripples competition and keeps the sweet money train rolling in. And like those corporations, many environmentalists - even if they aren't aware of it themselves - are driven by a desire for things to never change.

Like the idiot boomer generation who thinks that if weather changes from what it was like as they grew up something catastrophic must be happening (which they, as the greatest humans in history, must be causing and can stop), these environmentalists are driven by how things are and how comfortable they are. No one has only one motive, so there probably are some genuine desire to protect beauty and care for the environment mixed in. Its just that this is a driving concern as well.

The richest environmentalists are set and comfortable, they have things how they want it, and don't want to see change. Those wind turbines make my horizon ugly, and besides they mince birds and terrify whales. Those solar panels are ugly in the neighborhood and bring down the property value. I saw China Syndrome you can't build that power plant, on and on. There's always an excuse but behind it is the certainty that things will be different than how we understand and like them. We got ours, you can't have yours if it involves making me uncertain.

So the third world countries that want to have prosperity and cut back the jungle? You're killing the rain forests, you can't have that, it might cause the weather to change where I am. You all have to cut back, you all have to fly less, you all have to stop producing and become more "sustainable" so I can keep flying and living like I do.

Just something I thought was pretty wise and helpful to understand what's going on behind the scenes.

NATURALLY GASSY

"Fracking is the exact same as licking the spoon and the bowl clean after Mother Nature's frosting is all gone."

Oil companies are a bit unsavory and untrustworthy. Like any huge, vastly wealthy corporation, they're willing to let ethics and even humanity slide in the name of profits and it becomes far too easy to incrementally ignore more and more of what you know is right. It isn't that they're any more evil than, say, the average person, its that they have far more opportunities and varied ways to let that evil come out. That's what wealth and power does: you're no more responsible than the powerless, you just have more opportunities.

Yet at the same time, the oil companies aren't uniformly awful and evil, either. They do a lot of good, not the least of which is power our entire civilization. An in fact, almost nothing they do is unethical and evil, the vast majority is either ethically neutral or beneficial, like most of us.

The problem is, the perception generally held is that oil companies are particularly wicked and evil, that they're some special nexus of satanic destruction to the world and humanity. That's just not the case, they're just another company made up of ordinary and extraordinary human beings trying to make a living and provide a service or product.

Because of this general perception, its easy for someone with an agenda to make them look awful and find an audience, while difficult for the oil companies to defend themselves. Everything they say people figure "yeah, that's what they would say, who did they pay to lie for them?" No one wants to give them the benefit of the slightest doubt, while those who attack and criticize them are met with credulty: we want them to be right, even if they don't really present the facts.

Now, no industry that makes hundreds of billions of dollars a year needs my help or protection. The fact that they do so in ways that I find problematic at times makes me even less interested in helping them out.

At the same time, I like the truth, and I especially like finding out truth when I've been told lies or distortions my whole life. Its one of my favorite times, when I read or learn something that shatters a bit of conventional wisdom and I think "aha!" Its like learning some secret or gaining a treasure: I've gained something precious and rare. And I want to share that when it happens because I want everyone to know the truth.

Then there are times when the truth isn't certain but I want people to hear and consider both sides rather than just pick one and cling to it for some reason or affection. So with that long winded introduction, I'd like to pass on a bit of information about natural gas drilling, "fracking" and the problems with one particular faux documentary called Gasland. Its one of many in the Michael Moore genre of "documentaries" which are not meant to dig into the facts and inform, but to shape opinion and attack. They are, in effect, propaganda for a cause.

I can't stand that kind of thing. If it was presented as a fiction, like Oliver Stone's history-mauling JFK or Cameron's similarly history-mauling Titanic it would be one thing. Those are bad enough, even though they leave people thinking they know the real story when its just someone's fable. But when you put out a documentary, people tend to think they're getting the unvarnished, bold truth by a crusading filmmaker against tough odds.

So Gasland basically tries to make the case that drilling for natural gas using "Fracking" is a horrific environment-destroying monster that is causing water lines to burst into flame and terrible poisons to destroy crops, kill children, and force people to run over puppies.

At Zero Hedge, Marin Katusa of Casey Research took a close look at the film and its claims and found them desperately wanting. And its not just him, the EPA (no friend of fracking or the oil companies) has been trying for years to find proof that the process is evil, and never had any success. They thought they'd found some, but they had to dig a well many times as deep as anyone ever does for water before they ran into negative effects of fracking. In essence, they dug into the natural gas layer and... found the stuff pumped into the ground to fracture the ground and release the gas. Shock of all shocks.

Like any good agit prop work, Gasland relies on distortions more than outright falsehoods. For instance:

• Fracking is exempt from the clean water act! (Only because its a state-level affair, and thus not affected by federal rules. States do regulate the procedures.)
• Frac fluids that flow back out of a well are often stored in pits in the ground that aren't even lined, where a lot of the fluid just seeps into the ground. (in the past this has happened, but the regulations and company policies require careful storage now, and its a booming business to design and build better storage units).
  
• Frac fluids are toxic mixtures of 596 deadly chemicals. (There are 596 chemicals used in fracking but only a few of them in any given operation, similar to how cooking takes thousands of ingredients, but a recipe only takes a few. Fracking fluid is typically a bit under 91% water and 9% sand with traces of other chemicals).
• People who live near fracs have been found to have elevated levels of benzene in their blood. (Only smokers in the area had the elevated levels. Non smokers showed no such change an all smokers have elevated levels of benzene in their blood.)

Then there are the outright inventions, complete falsehoods which they simply assert, either due to ignorance, misinformation, or malice:

• Fracking contaminates ground water! (The shales that contain natural gas are 5,000 to as much as 18,000 feet below ground. The aquifers we tap for drinking water are at about 500 feet. That means roughly 2 miles of rock lie between aquifer and frac.)
• Fracking causes water to become flammable! (methane in the water table does this, and it always has in these areas. The fact that you find methane gas in the same areas as shale gas is not exactly surprising. Methane pockets are quickly expended and harmless.)
• Drilling companies refuse to disclose just which deadly chemicals they use to create their frac fluids. (Actually they are required by law to show what they use, and do, on Material Data Sheets which are freely available, if a bit confusing to a non-professional.)
• The EPA has never really studied fracking. (They have done two studies, the latest of which just came out and had the false positive from drilling too deeply.)

Again, its not like the oil companies are saints here. They're as cheap, sloppy, and quick as they can get away with, because they're in the business of making money, not taking care of the environment.

There are real concerns that need to be addressed, which Marin freely discusses, such as storage of the waste water, how much water is needed (millions of gallons), and the fact that they think the procedure may have caused very small earthquakes in California(!). Granted releasing small amounts of built up pressure in tiny earthquakes is better than waiting for a Japan-level one to rip loose, but its not really anything we can control.

But they're closely watched, regulated heavily, and aren't murdering people and destroying farms like is being portrayed in this movie and an insulting, preachy CSI episode. And its good to have the facts out, or at least another side of the issue, to avoid being completely taken in by someone with an agenda.

Because while we knjow what the oil companies agenda is, and they keep it out in the open - get as rich as humanly possible - the agenda of guys making movies like Gasland is a bit more hidden, deliberately. And if we're going to be well informed and honest, we should consider both.

TREEMENDOUS

"We don't have locks and keys here."

Return of the Jedi was the first sign that all may not be right with George Lucas. The teddy bear Ewoks not being systematically annihilated by the storm troopers was the final straw for a lot of fans who like me started wondering why anyone would even put them in the movie to begin with, and how on earth such an incompetent set of idiots managed to conquer anything, anywhere to begin with. They couldn't hit anything, had no tactics, their technology was apparently little more than what a kid with a cardboard box could invent, and their armor was no protection whatsoever. These guys wiped out every single Jedi in the universe save two?

Still, the concept of the tree village, with platforms and buildings high up in massive forests is a concept that has long fascinated people, and its rarely been as well portrayed as in that movie. Michael Garnier lives in the little mountain village of Takilma in southern Oregon. There he's built a series of treehouses and platforms connected by walkways that draws to mind the Ewok village.

Garnier is sort of a treehouse nut; he has showers, toilets, heat, and power run into several of the ones he's built, which make them presumably livable even in the winters of cascade mountains living. The man claims that he has the highest concentration of treehouses in the world.

He's a bit of a hippie loon but he's pretty skilled with wood and the place looks quite interesting. He's learned a lot over the years about building treehouses. Part of the problem is that the buildings he made were not up to code and he couldn't get a permit (no concrete foundation, the wood wasn't treated etc). He was only able to get permits by getting national news out to see him test the weight but he'd built it a bit differently.

The problem with most treehouses is that they aren't flexible and won't work with the natural form of the plant they're built on to. What he does is make an artificial limb to hold the structure in place which the tree grows around, and hang the structure off these "limbs" to build off of.

In any case, the structures are interesting and its always fascinating to me how people learn to work with the limitations and difficulties of engineering something new.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

This is Henry Cavill as Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel movie.

You know sometimes I wonder if the guys who make these movies have even ever read any comics. Here's what Superman looks like:

Get it? He's huge and strong and heroic and handsome and bold looking. Not like your somewhat creepy uncle in a body stocking. Maybe having Zach Snyder direct this isn't the smartest move after all. I don't know for sure he's gay but....

Quote of the Day

"The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future- certianly none for the Germans. Facism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity root and branch, and annihilating it in Germany."
-Adolph Hitler

TRAINING FUEL

"On the other hand, if you don't build any pipeline capacity, you're going to be moving a lot of crude by train."

When President Obama finally decided to definitively say "no" to the Keystone pipeline extension through America, the progressives in America cheered a victory for clean energy and the environment. No new pipeline which would certainly break and murder billions of caribou, or whatever lives in those big states where no one votes properly!

As many have noted, this is no environmental win, since the fuel will be harvested and will be sold anyway, but there's another layer to this that isn't being discussed much. Sure, the news mentions that certain Obama allies and friends will benefit:

Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration's decision to reject TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

"Whatever people bring to us, we're ready to haul," Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in an interview. If Keystone XL "doesn't happen, we're here to haul."

But wait... shipping oil by rail? Are we supposed to believe that shipping tanks of oil over 130 year old rail lines is safer than a pipeline? Indeed it is not. Wayde Schafer, North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra Club, says "There is no question that oil by rail or truck is much more dangerous than a pipeline," and he's right.

So not only are the Canadians going to be harvesting that oil and shipping it to China, they will also be shipping it to the US, just not down a pipeline. So how, exactly, did this save the environment, again? All that's happened is that an estimated three quarters of a million jobs were not created or saved, and China gets more oil. I suspect the increased rail traffic will create a few jobs, and they'd be longer term than pipeline building, so that's a win, of sorts.

But this is a win, somehow, for progressives?

GREEN DREAMS

"The time for delay is over. The time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That's what I intend my administration to do."
-President Obama

President Obama made another speech yesterday, and it was full of his usual material. Unlike his campaign speeches he actually has to have content in these, so they are less sophistry and more content, but even the content is framed in terms of the future and prediction than hard action and results.

There's a reason for that, of course. His results have been pretty miserable. He can't run or brag on what he's accomplished or done, because its been almost uniformly awful. His okay of taking out Osama Bin Laden is about the only real bragging point and its not a very big one: it was the obvious choice. When your best accomplishment is to be better than President Clinton on taking out an enemy of the United States, you don't have much to go on. So he has to go with airy future promises and predictions, with theories and hopes.

Most of those seem to be framed around the idea of a "green" energy economy, such as these lines:

"Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last - an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values."

"We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there's no reason why Congress shouldn't at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation."

"It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable and double down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising."

"Our experience with shale gas, our experience with natural gas, shows us that the payoffs on these public investments don't always come right away. Some technologies don't pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy."

And so on. Much of the "stimulus" package was focused on "green" energy, with money going to solar and other businesses struggling to survive, and much more going to research and refitting buildings for more "renewable" energy. As a memo from Larry Summers at the time states:

The stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama insisted there was no reason not to press ahead with "clean energy" tax credits and other initiatives that he said would save businesses money, promote innovation and create jobs. Why this unrelenting focus on green energy? I am convinced that President Obama believes two things, both of which are mistaken and distant from the real world.

First, he believes that "green" or "renewable" energy is the future, and he can make it so. He thinks that the only thing holding back these alternate energy sources is a lack of government funding and push. He thinks that this kind of energy is a massive future market which will build a new, cleaner economy, that America will become the "green" energy OPEC and drive its economy on providing renewable, alternate energy and lead the world.

He's not completely wrong here - if such energy were viable and possible, that would be one way to build the economy. The problem is, it just is not, and all the programs and stimulus and subsidies and loans in the world will not alter basic physics and reality. The only "alternate" energy system that is truly reliable and powerful enough to work is nuclear, and that's one that the left does not want to push.

So his dream isn't completely fantasy, its just based on a flawed understanding of how the world works. Just wanting something to be true hard enough will not alter reality. Solar and wind and geothermal and tidal power and so on cannot and for the foreseeable future will not replace fossil fuels. It probably never will.

The second flaw is that President Obama believes that the government can do and fix anything, if only given enough power and directed by the right thinking sort of people. Several times in speeches he has alluded to the Manhattan Project (this is a popular myth among the left in general) - that if we just put our minds together and funded it enough, we could come up with alternate energy that would replace fossil fuels, clean up the environment, make us all rich, and it would be all rainbows and skittles.

This is why the president ordered the Navy to buy biofuel at $15 a gallon and required federal fleet autos to use a certain percentage of cellulosic biofuel or face fines. The idea was that this would prompt the market to start producing the fuel, since there was now a demand, in the federal government. The fact that cellulosic biofuel doesn't exist outside a few laboratories was irrelevant: now that the government is paying for it, naturally businesses would spring up to produce the stuff.

It is President Obama's opinion that what was lacking in the past for alternate energy to work was enough government money and force. Because President Obama believes that the economy is driven by and controlled by the federal government. He's not like many socialist who say that the government ought to control the economy, instead he thinks that it already does so that fixing the economy is a matter of getting the government involved and spending in the right areas.

The truth is, the government is a parasite on the economy. Instead of driving it, the government is greatly dependent on the private economy. Taxes and fees come from private financial interaction and gains; the fuel of the government is fed by the market. When the market does poorly, the government suffers lower revenues. The only influence the government can have on the market is negative by bleeding off momentum and dollars to survive. The only question is how much of a negative effect the government will have.

Every tax dollar taken out to fund something (especially to send overseas to other nations in aid and loans that are never repaid) is a dollar not being used to invest with and build the economy in the United States. To a certain, limited, constitutional level this is acceptable and proper: we need government for certain basic services and actions. That's a price worth paying and the US economy is robust enough to absorb that cost.

But with every increment of government beyond the limits of the US Constitution, the government takes that much more out of the economy which it should not, and does ever greater damage. The most obvious and painfully unmistakable example of this is the present time when businesses simply are not inclined to invest, expand, and hire because of the damage the federal government is doing to the economy and the Nuclear Warhead of Damocles hanging over their heads by a fraying thread in the form of the Government Health Insurance Takeover Act.

President Obama is right that some technologies take time and money to develop, but those technologies were based on reasonable, scientifically feasible concepts. The Manhattan Project didn't work because government threw money and great minds at it, it worked because it could work, because it was a real possibility, not simply wishful thinking and the hopes that somehow if we try hard enough we can force solar and wind to produce more energy than they are scientifically able to.

So when President Obama fixates on "green" energy, he's following through on an academic leftist theory of how the world works, driven by a dream of green energy-driven economy the federal government created. He's got an idea that was shaped by decades of leftist isolation and like-thinking interaction and clings to it like a life preserver. That's why he keeps throwing money at these start ups, keeps returning to the idea, and keeps calling for more money put into a "green enconomy" even though its been demonstrated over and over worldwide to be a complete failure.

Its sort of why leftists cling to Communism as a neat idea; they figure there's nothing innately flawed in Communism, only in how its been implemented, and in the people who tried. And ultimately, it has a sort of twisted consistency. If you think truth is relative and each person has their own truth, then the truth that "green energy" works and can build our future is just as valid as the scientific fact that it cannot.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Quote of the Day

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
-Milton Friedman

BLEG

Hey, I'm going to write up something, maybe a series, about things you always thought and were told were true by the media and education, then found out they weren't. Like... the Kent State Massacre was a bunch of Nixon troops sadistically killing flower-loving peaceful hippies. Or that silicone breast implants killed people. Or that Iraq never tried to buy yellowcake uranium.

What, you thought that stuff was all true? Just wait.

But if there are any of these stories you know about, let me know in comments, and I'll research and run with them, too. There are a lot of these out there. Things that were common knowledge, everyone knew... and were false.
-Christopher

GROWIN UP IN POVERTY

"To this day, my kids won't eat fresh green beans."

I did a series of several posts about lessons my mom and her sisters learned from the Great Depression of the 20th century. They picked up a lot of very good habits and learned patterns that its good for everybody to learn whatever their economic situation, and I fear things are going to get a lot worse soon, so its good to learn before you have to.

However, not everyone who endures a tough economic situation learns good lessons from it; many do very poorly. At Cracked Magazine online, they have a piece about 5 stupid habits you can pick up by being poor.

The first lesson is that you develop a taste for bad food. The writer claims:

Shockingly, when you're buying food based entirely on 1) how long it keeps and 2) how cheap it is, you wind up with $%@&#y food. When I was growing up, we knew that the first of each month was grocery day. That's the day that our food stamps came in. Nowadays (in the U.S., anyway) it's all done on an ATM-type of plastic called a link card that gets reloaded with "food only" money on the first of every month. But the idea is still the same: new month, new food. So when our food money arrived, to avoid multiple trips to the grocery store and burning shitloads of gas that we couldn't afford, we bought our entire month's worth of groceries all at once and stored it like (@#$ing squirrels. When you do that, you need shit that won't spoil.

Now, there's something to that. Fresh vegetables are more expensive than frozen or canned, much of the time. If you can't get to the market regularly, you can't get stuff that will not last a long time.

But here's the thing, when I was growing up we always bought almost all our food once a month, too. The difference is that mom was a cook and was home to make food, so she bought supplies like flour and made things from scratch. But too many people never learned how to do this, and when you're poor, what you can afford is usually pretty awful.

Plus, unless you know what you're doing, cooking from scratch can result in some pretty bad food, with a big focus on beans and gravy and fried foods. And let's face it, being poor is depressing, so its hard to have the energy to get up and make food that takes an hour or more to prepare. And not a few people are poor because they're basically lazy to begin with, so just opening a can is easier than making something fresh.

The second bad habit he brings up is that you spend any extra money you get right away. This I didn't ever see, and I think its a problem of personality and outlook more than poverty. My parents were in debt a lot. It wasn't gargantuan, crushing debt, but it was bad for them, and when they got extra money, it went to paying down credit cards and paying off bills. We'd have to go to the doctor, but the doctor had to put up with paying off bills 5 or 10 bucks a month. Its not much, but its a steady trickle, and that beats going to a collection agency.

So I didn't see this lesson either, but I do see it in people who are wealthy and in people who are poor. Not because of their financial situation, but because they are inclined to spend money when they have it.

Another lesson is that you become a bean counter. And this one is absolutely true, if you have a shred of responsibility.

Remember that time you were cleaning out your wallet and found an extra $5 bill stuffed inside one of the pockets? Poor people are laughing their asses off right now because I might as well be asking if they remember the time they found an extra minotaur in the kitchen. When you're living check to check, there is no amount of money that isn't accounted for, right down to the last penny. You don't have "about 70 bucks" in the bank. You have $68.17.

You think in exact numbers because, at any given point, you have to know if swiping the debit card for gas will put you into overdraft territory. You have to be able to figure on the spot how much you can spend versus how much you need to survive until the next payday, and even the numbers after the decimal point are important. The simplest miscalculation could mean the difference between an actual dinner or a bowl of McDonald's ketchup packets at the end of the week.

I remember once getting money to buy a pair of pants at the store, and I found some I liked. When I tried them on in the fitting room, I found a five dollar bill in the pocket. It felt like Christmas; I'd never had that much money at one time for myself in my life. I didn't know what to do with it. I think I blew it all in the arcade, actually. But it was like that moment in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where he finds a buck in the drain on the street. Now all my dreams can come true!

You really do get very very careful about counting every last penny. My mom collects coins, down to the penny. After a while she has enough to buy something, and she does. I hate pennies and tend to toss them aside, even though I'm poor because it takes a metric ton to buy a candy bar and they're just inefficient any more. But I still am very careful with my money. Its rare (and infuriating) when I overdraw or run out of cash because I keep a running total in my head. I've learned to estimate totals as I buy things with a level of accuracy that really surprises me.

To this day, when shopping, my mom uses a calculator to add up what she's spending along the way. Its never 100% precise, partly because we forget sometimes and partly because produce is weighed and you estimate, but she's usually within five bucks of the proper price.

I'm never as precise as my mom is, because I've never had a family desperately depending on the last cent in m y bank account, and I've always had my folks or, now, my brothers to fall back on in case things go wrong. But its a habit you learn.

The last lesson he writes about at Cracked is that you spend with the short term in mind. He doesn't mean you buy lousy throw away stuff, he means that you cannot afford more than what you need. This is the problem with places like Costco, for example. Yes, I can buy 97 rolls of toilet paper for little more than twice what that pack of 6 costs, but I can only afford the smaller package. Yes, its cheaper per unit to buy in bulk, but you have to have the money to buy that extra amount. And when you're poor you barely can afford what you're getting.

So you don't buy extra and stock up. You don't buy the mega family pack, you buy the I can afford this pack. You don't buy extra clothes for fashion or season or to have more variety, you get what you need and no more. That's the fact of life when you're poor: you can only get what you can buy.

That means that if there's any disaster (the clothes wear out, you run out of toilet paper, etc) then you're caught short: you don't have an emergency supply anywhere. And that's rough on poor people because you're certainly no more lucky than anyone else. So charities and food banks and such are a huge help. And those Salvation Army stores with hideous clothes and goofy, tacky stuff are a Godsend to the poor: yes, that blouse is out of style but its better than no blouse.

And honestly some of those habits are actually good to learn, even if they're a bit hard. Do you really need 2 closets full of clothes? Do you really need to buy the gargantupack of paper towels? Is that really the best use of your money? Most people can save money, if they look closely at their lifestyle. And most people would be shocked how cheaply they can live, if only they tried.

Here's the number one lesson everyone should know about growing up poor: its not the horror some make it out to be. It isn't the end of the world, it isn't some soul-grinding misery that people seem to portray it as so often. When you're a kid in this environment, you really don't know any better. That's just how things are. In America, being poor is not all that bad; even if things go their worst, there's places to go to survive and get food and help. Its not like if dad loses his job he has to sell a bunch of kids for medical experiments or we die in the streets.

I'm all for helping people get themselves out of poverty, but the "War on Poverty" makes it seem like being poor is the worst possible situation you can find yourself in. You know what? I'd take my poverty youth over growing up like Paris Hilton or Snooki any day.

AMERICAN IDLE

"The show must go on"

Several times in the past here and elsewhere I've mocked American Idol for its name and results. Almost nobody who competes ends up with any real career, and the ones that do aren't very major stars. Sure, there's been a few who've become somewhat popular, but the name of the show is American Idol and having as big a career as Billy Idol isn't what that implies.

An Idol would be someone like, say, Elvis or Marilyn Monroe. Not Elvis Costello, either. I watched a concert called Download from England on Palladia recently (quite an entertaining cable channel, really) and among the acts was Journey. But when I looked up to see the screen while enjoying a song, I was shocked to see an Asian guy singing. He sounds exactly like Steve Perry. I am not exaggerating here.

Turns out the guy's name is Arnel Pineda from the Philippines, and they found him when they saw him on You Tube. Like a lot of bands, Journey isn't terrified when they find a song of theirs online, and in this case, they found a gem. The video they saw was of him in his band The Zoo singing Journey hits and they immediately contacted him when they were touring in the Philippines.

He was in the studio with them 3 days and by the third day they knew they had their new lead singer, as Steve Perry had quit the band several years earlier. Now, with a new, fresh, energized singer (and he's dynamic on stage, he really looks like he's having a blast) Journey is touring again. Here's what they sound and look like now:



Queen's lead singer Freddy Mercury died of AIDS complications, ending an astounding singing and songwriting career. He really was the leader of the band and his voice seemed utterly impossible to replace. I mean, who on earth will be able to sing like that, he was truly unique, right?



Wrong. Marc Martel did this video to audition for the new lead singer of Queen and, well its uncanny. Apparently you need a moustache and a jaw like that to sing like Freddy, but he's astounding. And he's considered the front runner for the Queen cover band.

See, May, Taylor, and Deacon aren't up to touring any longer, and Deacon left the band so they're looking for guys to build a band who can tour for them. And this guy is almost certainly the best choice for the part. The Queen guys are excited by how this guy sings, and he'll almost certainly be in the band, but the decision hasn't been finalized yet.

These guys aren't from (insert country) has talent or American Idol. They aren't on some reality show, they aren't from a talent agency. Arnel had won contests and been in several bands, but he was found on YouTube showing his (and his band's) talent and got picked up for a big time, stadium filling job.

And that's what the new world is like. The television shows can be entertaining, and there can be a lot of talent on them (although it almost always ends up a certain kind of singer), but the truth is, they aren't putting out idols, and bands looking for a replacement don't go to a contest show. They watch online.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

You want our freedoms? Come and take them.

Quote of the Day

“When I was a kid it was pretty easy math. There’s rich people, and we’re not one of them but they’re out there. It was understood that if you’d like to have that [rich] guy’s house you have to bust your butt and get an education … we didn’t hate rich people growing up, we respected them.”
-Adam Carolla