Here We Go Again

A 'Thrill of the open road' open thread. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and the return trip.

Comments

[RichatUF]

Went the wrong way on the Beltway. Needless to say, it was an unforgiving error and long detour. Up pretty early Tom. Hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving.

[Extraneus]

Texans going wild with 'secession fever,' bumper stickers everywhere

Interesting comments.

By all means. The quicker, the better. And take all the rest of the ungrateful US citizens with you. But before you leave, Please pay back all the stimulus money that the rest of the US has sent to you. You'll be big enough to get by without all the US military bases, the military equipment not to mention the income from them. Don't be surprised if Mexico decides to reclaim their 'lost' property. Just don't expect the US military to come running to the rescue. Go right ahead and as a certain actor said 'Make my day'.

[snip]

fine go ahead you idiots! When the next hurricane comes by and levels Houston or Dallas don't knock on fema's door asking for help. Oh yeah don't ask for help when the drought takes all the water away from you. Pay to repair your own roads and police the border with mexico on your own dime. And don't bother collecting social security. And when Texas has to raise taxes to pay for it's own problems, all those corporations will run away back to the us.

[Jack is Back]

Its back to the car-rider line for school. Still turkey in the fridge and fear on the horizon. But no mention of Obama or Clinton in Zero Dark Thirty. No need to spike an over inflated football.

[bunkerbuster]

today's wingnut baffler:
If the free market works, why does the absolutely free market for news media produce a product conservatives assert is, overall, unacceptable?

[Extraneus]

They obviously haven't thought this through. If Texas secedes from the US, then Texas must shoulder for itself the responsibilities of all of the US Government Agencies on which it now relies. Perhaps they should appoint a Texan who can read to check into what it will cost the citizens of Texas to replace the services those agencies provide, such as the FDA, USDA, Army Corps of Engineers, National Guard, to name a very few of very many.

[Jane - Mock the media]

Oh I dunno - start a free market zone where manufacturers can actually produce things without a zillion regulations, and people can do business unimpaired by all the ridiculous government intervention, and watch investors flock, not to mention workers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and other capitalists. My guess is it would a huge success. The US government would be forced to buy from Texas, at an rate the market would bear. I'd move there in a heartbeat.

[narciso]

Well ZD 30, seems more like that film 'the Kingdom' it's about the team effort, to find Bin Laden, which we discovered from Bowden, began with all those 'innocent shepherds' whose attorneys had pled their case to Jess Bravin,
Jane Mayer and Scott Shane, among others, Ould
Slahi, Muhammed Al Quahtani, among others.

[narciso]

How quickly they forget;

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/21/3106921/states-rights-they-arent-just.html

[narciso]

Hm, while everyone was chattering on about Arafat;

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-turkey-president-autopsybre8ap092-20121126,0,694073.story

[Jack is Back]

narciso,

I couldn't have said your 7:42 comment any better.

And I don't remember Turkey having a mosquito problem either. I wonder if Arafat was also considered a pest?

[rse]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/does-this-mean-its-now-okay-to-say-that-obama-is-a-redistributionist.php

If anyone knows how to post at Powerline that regional aspect is icing, not the main meal. I just emailed them the Goodwin Liu change the meaning of the 14th Amendment post.

Good to know people are at least starting to notice Education is where Obama's real Transformation plans lurk. Even if I am still getting word out there on how.

Releasing that nefarious C3 Framework I wrote about yesterday the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week was ingenious as a means of getting it out there without notice. Almost. Good thing I decided to do a ham this year to leave more time for reading. Ooops.

[jimmyk]

If the free market works, why does the absolutely free market for news media produce a product conservatives assert is, overall, unacceptable?

The free market is doing its job. The NYT's stock is down 80% over the last eight years. The rise of Fox and News Corp, the comparative success of the WSJ, the rise of alternative media, all signs point to the decline of the MSM. Of course, one aspect of a big and corrupt government is that the MSM feeds off of it, just like cronies in other industries, so its death will be slow, but hopefully painful.

[rse]

Plus by and large the broadcast media are subs of Busineses that find a govt dominated Dirigiste economy quite comfortable. They are already at the Power Table and it makes it easier to stay there.

[narciso]

Well take MSNBC, a subsidiary of GE, which is cronyism central, it has integrated itself into Universal, like the Borg,

[Melinda Romanoff]

rse-

Their model is dying and government is the only tool that will keep it running. The deflationary power of on-line advertising is crushing all the margin they have and, therefore, are hemorrhaging ad revs as they lose eyes.

Quite the economic lesson.

[narciso]

But if all they see, is a shiny ball in the sky;

http://www.jammiewf.com/2012/white-house-report-gop-is-going-to-ruin-christmas-or-something/

[Melinda Romanoff]

narciso-

NBC/Universal is now part of Comcast.

[narciso]

Hence, the Borg analogy.

[Melinda Romanoff]

But no GE, which is another facet of the cube.

[rse]

Which just might benefit from that UN Broadband for All initiative plus all the Digital Content by 2017 at the latest in ed programs.

[Jack is Back]

Abbot and Costello

Martin and Lewis

Bob and Ray

Rowan and Martin

Mel and narciso:)

[Melinda Romanoff]

JiB-

I have not been on the phone, recently, with narciso so as to coordinate commentary.

[centralcal]

Good morning. I was in need of a new vacuum cleaner - mine was 11 years old and damned near worthless. After talking about Insty and his Amazon links on yesterday's thread, I decided to Cyber Monday shop for a new one this morning and I used his portal. Just doing my part to keep the "change" flowing into his pockets. ha.

(I purchased a Dyson. Hope it does a good job - they are a little pricey.)

[narciso]

Since film is rather evocative of our current reality, in the LUN.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

today's moonbat baffler:
If the free market doesn't work, why does the absolutely free market for news media produce a product leftists outside of actual Stalinists assert is, overall, acceptable?

[centralcal]

Over at Gretawire, she says that K.T. McFarland suggests Obama will NOT nominate Susan Rice, because she will be under oath during her confirmation hearings, which opens the door for multiple hard questions about Benghazi. Greta speculates that is why GOP is "softening" their opposition to her - hoping to get her under oath in hearings.

I suppose it is plausible.

[Mark Folkestad]

Rich, don't sweat the wrong-way driving mistake. Thirty years ago, while trying to drive my aunt (with drug-induced temporary senility_ and her schizophrenic son through Norway, I missed the surprising hairpin right turn to continue on the E-designation arterial highway to Trondheim. I was distracted by trying to calm an argument between my passengers. It was a "perfect storm". The highway I was on was under major construction, and some moron had decided that all road designation and mileage/destination signs had to be removed. A hundred kilometers down the rough road, after shattering the speed limit, I found myself in Aandalsnes. The only good thing about this was that it stopped my aunt and cousin from fighting. They united against me. And I couldn't mitigate the damage by taking another route to our destination, so the mistake wound up being two hundred kilometers and two hours.

[Rocco]

If our colleges and universities didn't indoctrinate our children, the free market for news media would be altogether different. Unfortunately, the left's agenda is advanced by The New York Times which in turn is dictated by universities such as Harvard.

[narciso]

Talk about a 'wrong turn at Albuquergue,' that's
141 kilometers between those two points,

[Janet]

A good Sultan Knish post - "The Democratic Party defines itself by opposition, opposition to property, opposition to values and opposition to any and all structures that predate its latest revelation from the Angel of Political Correctness. It is constantly tearing things down and takes no responsibility for building things up again. Even its building programs are a destructive tearing down of something. It tears down coal and oil to build unworkable solar and wind stations. It tears down private enterprise to add more draining government jobs. It tears down freedom to build up government."

[Melinda Romanoff]

Supremes order Liberty U. case reconsidered.

[hit and run]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOYLENT!!!

[Mark Folkestad]

Narciso? I made the error in the mountain ski resort community called Dombaas. E6 was the highway I wanted, but I wound up on the road that now bears the E designation of E136, but was then only a Norwegian road. The alternative route to get to the destination, our relatives' home, would have involved narrow, winding roads clinging to the fjord cliffs, with some ferries.

[Mark Folkestad]

Oh, and no wisecracks, please, about the village of Dombaas being appropriate for the site of a "dumb ass" mistake!

[narciso]

This case, I guess wasn't considered ripe at the time;

http://healthcarelawsuits.org/detail.php?c=2276166&t=Liberty-University%2C-Inc.-et-al-v.-Geithner-et-al

[Mark Folkestad]

Soylent Red, Happy Birthday! IF H&R is correct, of course.

[narciso]

No, I wouldn't dream of it, Mark, but how did you have enough gas, to traverse that distance,

[narciso]

Happy birthday, Soylent.

[Mark Folkestad]

Narciso, I was driving a European Ford station wagon with a good-sized gas tank, and I had filled up with gas in that village before we got to the fateful and poorly-marked hairpin right turn that I missed. I filled up with gas in Aandalsnes before I turned around and sped back. That trip almost drove me nuts. Shortly after returning to Minnesota, my aunt's doctors took her off Percodan, and she returned to her sharp-as-a-tack old self. Unfortunately, my cousin, who refused to take his meds, continued in his insanity.

[Extraneus]

Shoppers could also use TM's Amazon link.

[Mark Folkestad]

Narciso, my the experiences with my relatives on trips has given me material to keep friends entertained in "bull sessions". On my first trip to Europe, my bright and beloved aunt-by-marriage actually asked a shop clerk: "How much is that in REAL money?" A few years before that, my cousin's wife, in severe post-partum depression following the stillbirth of a daughter, snarled at my objection to her preparing a stack of postcards by affixing American stamps before mailing them in a Canadian post office. "Our stamps are every bit as good as Canadian ones!" Cousin Dave whispered to me to just let it go, that it didn't matter if the cards never got to their destinations. And his wife expressed shock later when she discovered that none had ever arrived.

[narciso]

'Forget it she's rolling' now some folks need to be back on their meds;

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-defends-enormous-climate-efforts-un-talks

[Threadkiller (Get off your couch and leave the GOP!)]

Does a recess appointment go through Senate hearings?

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oh goodie, my friend Teresa Ghilarducci is back at it, trying to put a cap on the cost to the Treasury that 401(k)s cause.

It's George Miller's contribution to the Fiscal Cliff discussions.

[maryrose]

Happy Birthday Soylent. Please post more often as I enjoy your insights.
centracal:
I also enjoyed some time away from politics and went to shop for antiques on Saturday. It's a small business that I was happy to contribute to as I purchased some unique ornaments.

[maryrose]

Senator Corker on CNBC has the fiscal cliff answer but no one is listening once again. Shelley Capito is going to challenge Jay Rockefeller. Yahoo! Maybe we can actually win this one if Rockefeller doesn't come out with a gun ad shooting a hole through Obamacare.

[sbw]

Happy birthday, Soylent. Thanks for your company.

[Jane - Mock the media]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOYLENT!!!

~~~And many more...

[rse]

The phrase "our people, the global citizenry" when used by someone leading UN talks on any issue should send shivers down each of our spines.

I am increasingly finding the term citizens being used in terms of submission to Statist Schemes.

Yes, 401(k)s are so unfair to those who never saved. Especially for those without a union pension to fall back on.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Happy Birthday, Soylent!

[AliceH]

(Language) AK Made (in part) out of a shovel.

Side note: I'd share a lot more blog posts and retweet a lot more tweets if there were not so much swearing. It's not so much that it is offensive to me (though it is that), as that it has become so utterly gratuitous and banal that it makes me sad. Vulgar adjectives have become just as vapid as "like" "you know" Valley Girl speak. "Totally"

[centralcal]

Happy Birthday, Soylent - have a great day!

Now, I am off to work - bummer.

[narciso]

The only purpose, behind pieces like this, is either instant dismissal, or ceaseless mockery;

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/mohammed-morsi-abe-lincoln-in-disguise-or-another-mubarak/265557/#

I came across on the twitter feed of an Egyptian
liberal,

[pagar]

Happy Birthday, Soylent! May you enjoy many more.
---------------------------------------------
Remember Obama will have more flexibility. Now that he got all the ignorant tools to vote for him.

http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2012/11/pravda-obama-voters-are-ignorant-tools.html

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Vulgar adjectives have become just as vapid as "like" "you know" Valley Girl speak. "Totally"

Posted by: AliceH | November 26, 2012 at 10:39 AM--

I agree with Alice that Valley Girl pictorials are much less vapid and offensive than their speech and other pointless vulgarities.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what she meant.

[Danube of Thought]

If the free market works, why does the absolutely free market for news media produce a product conservatives assert is, overall, unacceptable?

The free market "works" to provide consumers with the products and services they are willing to pay for. That includes horrible news media, pornography, hula hoops and innumerable other awful things that conservatives do not like. They tolerate them as a cost of liberty.

You silly shit.

[Danube of Thought]

Recess appointments do not require Senate hearings (they are made while the Senate is in recess), but if they are not approved by the Senate in its next session, they are vacated at the end of that session.

[narciso]

He's not worth the candle, Danube, or the aggravation,

[narciso]

Note, what's wrong with this headline;

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-border-shooting-gaza-truce-20121123,0,7966595.story

[Extraneus]

After secession, should people be able to move freely between Texas and the former US?

[narciso]

Well, I wasn't crazy about the films, but I didn't mind the star, in the LUN

[Old Lurker]

TK I think Recess Appointments expire when the next Congress is seated so wouldn't that be Jan 20 or so?

[Sue]

While it is fun to contemplate, we aren't going anywhere.

[narciso]

No, the end of next year,

[Porchlight]

After secession, should people be able to move freely between Texas and the former US?

Of course. That way we get the folks who want to be on board and lose the ones who don't. Same way it worked during the Republic. ;)

[Janet]

on FB -

Red White Blue News.com
WATCH YOUR MAILBOX - -
"Just wanted to let you know . . . today I received my 2013 Social Security Stimulus Package. It contained two tomato seeds, cornbread mix, two discount coupons to KFC, an “Obama Hope & Change” bumper sticker, a prayer rug, a machine to blow smoke up my ass, and a “Blame It on Bush” poster for the front yard. The directions were in Spanish. Yours should arrive soon.
~dad"

[Rob Crawford]

Oh goodie, my friend Teresa Ghilarducci is back at it, trying to put a cap on the cost to the Treasury that 401(k)s cause.

I was unaware it "cost" the Treasury a penny to not steal my earnings.

[Manuel Transmission]

would have involved narrow, winding roads clinging to the fjord cliffs

Been there, done that and with no guardrails! You had to back up to wide spots to let the buses pass.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Per Teresa, it's huge and unfair.

[narciso]

This is the fellow I was talking about;

https://twitter.com/salamamoussa

[Danube of Thought]

Mark Levin interviews the comely Teresa.

[Mark Folkestad]

Man Tran, were you in Norway visiting your relatives, or sightseeing, or both?

At one point, on the mountain vidda, the highway (gravel road) was blocked by a herd of goats. This was on my first trip, a joint one with another family unit. Mom asked me for the camera, and she wound up with a classic one, a close-up of a goat's arse, that has provoked hoots and howls over the decades. It served her right for just holding the camera out and snapping the picture, without seeing the image in the viewfinder.

[Danube of Thought]

The comely Teresa.

[Mark Folkestad]

DoT, compared to the likes of Bella Abzug, she IS comely.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--I was unaware it "cost" the Treasury a penny to not steal my earnings.

Posted by: Rob Crawford | November 26, 2012 at 11:25 AM--

You have much to learn young Rob.
The natural state of all monies and wealth is 100% government ownership and/or taxation.
Anything the government deigns not to own or tax is a government expense.
When the government does tax whatever it allows you to keep it is not forcibly confiscating your earnings, since anything you have was only something allowed to you by suspending the natural 100% tax rate, it is investing those earnings for you in valuable things like child molesting puppeteers on public television and paying reparations to people who didn't farm anything, which is not to be confused with that other valuable government investment of paying people not to farm.

[Manuel Transmission]

That trip was just visiting relatives. Rode with a cousin to pick up a car and followed him back. They only had roads back to their fjord by late '60s. (My grandfather's homestead on Midgulen Fjord.)

[Danube of Thought on IPad]

I have some doubt that the government has the power to nationalize 401k's, but I'm not really sure.

[cathyf]

DoT, my only question is whether 401k nationalization requires a law, or can be done merely by executive order.

[Extraneus]

Is she the one who proposed that the gov't offer annuities in return for 401k assets?

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for your 401k today."

[Thomas Collins]

Happy Birthday, Soylent.

Whether or not the Federales can scoop pension plans, it seems to me they pretty clearly can tax those aspects of already formed plans that are not subject to taxation (not only tax future inside buildup, but also impose an excise tax on the value of plans).

[Mark Folkestad]

Man Tran, I'll have to bring my sectional maps of Norway to our next meeting. Is Midgulen near Bremanger?

Yes, in the late Sixties, Norwegians who had always commuted in boats were starting to see roads being built. In '69, during my first trip, I remember vividly zooming along narrow new roads and coming to tunnels. It was quite a shock to drive from the new pavement outside the tunnel to the rough surface inside, with enormous potholes. The North Sea oil money has done wonders for Norway's infrastructure.

[Janet]

It appears the fed. government can do anything it wants. Who is gonna stop them?...the courts?...10 years later? What a joke.

It is unbelievable the grief given to the Bush administration over Gitmo & DOJ appointees, & leaks, & a thousand other things. The Dems are just doing whatever the hell they want & nobody is sure how to stop them.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Happy Birthday, Soylent. Go Big Red.

[Janet]

Oh...Happy Birthday, Soylent!!! Lots of love to you!

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ex-

Yes.

The "new" proposal is for 401(k) donations to be capped at $20,000 or 20% of income, whichever is less. Lower income participants hurt the most, naturally, which would "force" the government to eliminate it altogether, out of "fairness".

Long March sort of stuff.

[sbw]

401K confiscation? I thought all tax bills had to originate in the House.

[pagar]

Years later.

http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-ex-louisiana-congressman-152604366--finance.html

Any one remember this one?

[Extraneus]

How about mandatory reverse mortgages for seniors who own homes? (Taxing the proceeds, of course.)

[Kevin B]

So a University of Tennessee Law Prof is pushing his Amazon affiliation on his blog, so hoping to boost his income, while posting daily about The Higher Education Bubble and how soon it will burst?

Hmmm...

[Thomas Collins]

At one point, I was confident that a Federales step to scoop existing pension plans or cut back on tax bennies for existing plans would be met with overwhelming resistance. Now I wonder.

[Melinda Romanoff]

TC-

Under the radar is where this stuff is playing, this is in the House, but George Miller sits on the minority side of the Subcommittee.

[Sue]

Pagar

I remember. I didn't know he was appealing though.

[cathyf]

Any one remember this one?

How could you forget William "Cool Cash" Jefferson?!? Oh, yeah, sorry, of course the media never ridicules and instantly forgets even the most hilarious crooks -- when they're democrats.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ah, NATO member Turkey has been providing Iran all the trade it needs, so as to avoid sanctions. In exchange for natty gas.

And $6.4 Billion in bullion.

Another successful reset. (Might be behind the WSJ paywall, sorry.)

[sbw]

Sue, he is not appealing.

[Have Blue]

Years later.

http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-ex-louisiana-congressman-152604366--finance.html

Any one remember this one?

Posted by: pagar | November 26, 2012 at 12:31 PM

Among William Jefferson's less savory acts was, during the immediate Katrina aftermath, co-opting a unit of National Guardsmen to escort him to his residence to help him salvage his possessions. Included in those possessions was a freezer which was filled with bricks of cash wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil.

IIRC the plot started to come apart because of a small story in the local paper about a National Guard truck getting stuck in the mud and flood waters while assisting a congress person with his personal business.

[Have Blue]

He is not very appealing. He may be revolting though.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--He is not very appealing. He may be revolting though.

Posted by: Have Blue | November 26, 2012 at 12:54 PM--

No, the right is revolting. The left is repulsive.

[Danube of Thought on IPad]

Anyone get Kevin B's point? I sure don't.

[Dave (in MA)]

DoT, I guess we're supposed to think that it's hypocrisy or something when an educator looks to get readers of his blog to willingly help offset the costs of running his blog, which he runs at his own expense, part time.