I have some unfinished stuff from yesterday and additional thoughts about the 4th of July.
OK I know I'm probably the 3000th blogger who has done this, but go read Lileks bleat from the 4th. I know. I know. You've already read it and I'm just another blogger who thinks Lileks is a god. That's not why I want you to read it. Just read again about the tatoos.
My friend Cindy, who is a nurse, used to work at Shepherd Center. Shepherd is renowned throughout the Southeast as one of the premier spinal cord injury rehab centers. It's where the GOC went when he broke his back. Cindy was a nurse there and that's where I met her. Now spinal cord injuries happen to various types of people: Stupid people doing stupid things (hey Bubba, hold my beer and watch me dive into this creek). Shootings (I wuz just walkin' through the parking lot and I got caught in the crossfire from the drug dealers - Me, involved in drugs? No, not me. That cocaine in my jacket wuz planted there after I wuz shot) Shootings (Me and my husband wuz havin' this here argument and the gun just kinda went off). Motorcycle accidents (Well I did have a few beers and it wuz rainin' and the tires wuz kinda bald). Automobile accidents (Hand me another beer - bet I can get this sucker over 120 miles per hour). From her eight years working on the floor she discovered one very strange correlation. She calls it the tatoo to teeth ratio. If the person has more tatoos than teeth, chances are he will survive just about anything. She and her husband watch all these reality shows that shows accidents and stuff and she'll tell Michael, her husband, 'Look at all the tatoos. And look, he's got hardly any teeth. He's gonna walk away with almost no injuries. By golly, she's right more than she's wrong. And another thing, if she saw these people at Shepherd, often she'd get to see 'em again. Ignorance can be cured. Stupidity is forever.
Another thing I want to talk about is Cynthia McKinney. Oh Lord, can't you just give it a rest already? No, I can't. She pisses me off just by existing. Every Fourth of July, Beautiful Dunwoody Georgia has a parade down Mount Vernon Highway. At one time when Beautiful Dunwoody Georgia was in the country, Mount Vernon Highway was a highway. Now it is just a two lane street that runs right through the heart of Beautiful Dunwoody Georgia.
Acccording to a listener who e-mailed Neal Boortz, our local Libertarian talk show host, Cynthia was in the parade this year. His e-mail:
I was in Dunwoody yesterday to watch their Independence Day parade, and then celebrate with my extended family (my stepfather's house is 1 block off the parade route). This being an election year, we of course saw a number of candidates. Now, it's a 4th of July parade, so one would think an essential component for every person and vehicle in the parade would be say, a few American flags, some red, white, and blue bunting, etc. Not so for Cynthia McKinney. Her campaign car was the only one in the parade without a single American flag, and not so much as a red, white and blue ribbon in her hair. I think that says quite enough about her and her supporters.
Neal's comment: The writer did not mention if Cynthia’s car sported any flags from Arab nations.
My comment: The writer did not mention if there were any hammer and sickle emblems on her car. She's not called the cutest little communist in Congress for nothing.
Anyway, what was she doing in a parade in Dunwoody? No one up here votes for her anyway. The only people who live in Beautiful Dunwooody Georgia are a bunch of white racist bigots and Jews. I drove along the parade route today and, although there were whole big bunches of campaign signs on front lawns, there was not a single Cynthia McKinney for Congress sign. I'll bet during the parade all that was going through her mind, or what passes for one in her case, was 'Damn honkies! Why am I even in this parade? Look at all those white MF's? What a f'ing waste of my valuable time!'
I've been mentioning lately that I've been agreeing with Cynthia Tucker, who edits the Opinion section of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, a lot lately. Either I'm losing my mind or she's getting smarter. But, there is still at least one dyed in the wool liberal working at that AJC. His name is Jay Bookman and he wrote this column yesterday about capitalism.
Here's a great idea: Let's take the money generated by Social Security taxes and invest it in the stock market, where it is certain to grow and grow and grow so that when we all retire at a young age we'll live like kings and queens,
Jay, I just pulled my 401(K) statement and even in the down market, my money has almost doubled. I may not live like a king or queen, but I'll be doing OK. I wish I could have done the same with the money I've had to put in the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security (which is not social and is not any where close to security). Then, with my 401(K), my IRA's and my other investments I would live like a king.
where money grows on trees, and the sun shines every day, and the profit's high, and they never lie, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Here Jay is using sarcasm. Way to go Jay. Ha Ha Ha
And here's another idea: We should abolish "government schools" and turn our children's education over to business executives who will demand the same sort of excellence, honesty and accountability that have made such successes of companies such as WorldCom and Global Crossing and Enron.
Aha! Another liberal trick. Let's compare apples and oranges. Because some companies have been dishonest all companies operate the same way, therefore, any company that would take over education would be dishonest and fraudulent. The reason some of us want to privatize schools is for accountability. I mean, do you think they could possibly do worse than the Atlanta public school system, which wastes $13,000 per pupil and manages to be one of the worst school systems in the country? Look Jay, believe it or not I do care about education for inner city children. The best route out of poverty is education. I want to solve poverty in this country as much as you do and it is not done with failing schools and a patronizing attitude towards blacks. I'm getting sick and tired of you bloody liberals telling blacks that they are dumber than whites by holding them to lower standards. Oh, and 400 years of oppression. Mustn't forget that.
Oh, and while we're on the subject, we need to get government regulators out of the way of the Internet revolution,
Hey! Jay and I agree on something!
where they're nothing more than Old Economy dinosaurs. And let's run government like a business, by golly.
Hey another good idea. Ya know when the gummint shuts down and they tell all nonessential workers to stay home? If they're nonessential, why are they working (maybe I should say employed - no that doesn't work either - what would you call drones?)? I have to pause here and tell a story about when I used to fix typewriters. If the customer had a maintenance agreement, they got unlimited service calls and two inspections/cleanings a year. I had a gummint account and they had the cleanest typewriters I have ever seen. I went in one time to clean their machines and all the ladies were sitting around reading the paper. One put her paper down and turned to another lady and said 'Are you ready to go on break?' What? These are my tax dollars here! I mean it's like the George Carlin joke , 'What do cats do on their day off? They can't lay around and do nothing all day. That's their job.' And before you cat lovers complain, I have two cats: Doofus and Ashley.
And let's pay those wonderful CEOs what they're worth.
OK If we can pay Congresscritters what they're worth. Cynthia, you're now getting $1 per hour.
And let the free market be free.
Jay, have you been reading Milton Friedman?
And let the Dow Jones rise to 30,000.
Awwwww. He's using sarcasm again
And . . .
SLAP!
How'd he know I wanted to slap him?
It's been a painful slap, too.
If I'd been able to slap you it would have been very painful.
Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. Retirement assets fell by $540 billion
between 1999 and 2001 and have fallen considerably since then.
Jay, it's called a recession. Also, the market was horribly overpriced. People got caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment and thought every dot com was gonna make millions without examing what their business model was. In the normal business cycle these things happen. Yeah, it sucks! Jobs have been lost. But, let's go back to 1988 and see where we were then as compared to where we are now. We're still way ahead of the game. And, we'll get going again. You're doing what you liberals accuse those rotten CEO's and CFO's of doing: You're looking at the short term and not the long term.
Millions of
investors have been burned,
That happens if they do not want to take the time to do some analysis of the companies they're investing in and they do not diversify.
and financial experts now talk gloomily of losing a
generation of investors to the market, just as the market collapse of 1929
permanently scared off an earlier generation.
See above.
International confidence in the U.S.
economy -- until now part of the foundation of our prosperity -- has been badly
shaken, and the dollar is falling rapidly as foreign investors pull out of American
companies.
Jay. Jay. Jay. Where else are they gonna put their money? Yeah, the dollar is dropping. Know why? Our balance of trade deficit. This makes our exports cheaper. Not necessarily a bad thing.
And every few days, it seems, another major company is revealed to have been
cooking its books, another top CEO is discovered to have enriched himself
personally at the expense of his company and its shareholders.
Yeah, and this too will pass. But I think we should take these guys and instead of sending them to country club prisons, send them in with the really bad criminals. 'Hi, I'm Bubba. You gonna be my new bitch.' Hey, why don't we do that with corrupt politicans? I know one who would be biting his lip so hard he'd bite it off. I bet that would clean up corporate America real quick.
But in our newfound appreciation for straight accounting, we should at least be
honest about our own role in this mess. It wasn't just the CEOs, or the business
press, or the free-market purists, or the talk show simplifiers. For a while there, we
all got carried away. The talk was exhilarating, the fever contagious, and the stock
market was magically transformed into a casino or sporting event.
A rare lucid moment.
As we learned, when you're standing at the roulette wheel and every bet seems to
be paying off, and the pile of chips at your side keeps getting bigger and bigger, it's
easy to believe that it will always be -- should always be -- exactly like this. So we
let our guard down.
And another.
We knew that government regulators were being called off the case, and we
accepted and even embraced their defanging, because they might spoil the party.
We knew, or at least sensed, that the "analysts" on the business TV shows were
really just shills, and we tolerated that too, because while they enthused and
gushed, they were driving the market higher.
This is getting scary. He's still making sense.
In other words, we did this to ourselves, and it's hypocritical to pretend otherwise.
Every con requires an eager sucker, and this one found millions.
Jay! They're gonna kick you out of the liberal columnists club. You're talking about personal responsibility. This is unbelievable!
That's certainly not a plea for leniency for those who lied, cheated, stole and
defrauded. They should be treated harshly, to restore public confidence in the
system and to serve as examples the next time we might be tempted into such a
spree.
Yep. Lock 'em up with Bubba and his buddies. Works for me.
Nor is it an argument for refusing to tighten our regulatory and oversight systems, as
some in Congress and the Bush administration still argue, if a little less directly with
each passing week. It's always hard to find the right balance between
no-holds-barred, ruin-the-fools capitalism and the type of stifling overregulation that
kills growth and innovation.
By golly he's right again. Tho' usually less regulation works best.
But given recent revelations, it seems safe to conclude that the current system is
significantly out of kilter. Modern capitalism is not strictly a matter of competition; to
function well it also requires checks and balances.
That's right, but, unfortunately, you liberals tend to go overboard and overregulate. I just hope you don't try that now. We've had an accounting firm go out of business. (Boss, the auditor from Andersen is here. How do you know? He has a seeing eye dog with him.) I think the remaining firms are gonna try to make sure they really look closely at the companies they audit.
For a while, we got seduced into forgetting that.
I can think of some socialists who have never forgotten government regulation. Unfortunately, this will further their socialist agenda.
But let's see where we are a year from now.
Posted by denny at July 5, 2002 06:19 PM