Wealth Redistribution in Practice...

Reader Gina P. passes this little story along:

Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read “Vote Obama, I need the money.” I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on an “Obama 08” tie, again I laughed - just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need - the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept
than in practical application.

I am so looking forward to Obama's wealth redistribution plans...

Your Morning Ponders...

Sent along by Simi L., who obviously has an inquiring mind:

1. If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times,does he become disoriented?
   
   
2. If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?
   
   
3. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
   
   
4. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?
   
   
5. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
   
   
6. Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
   
   
7. When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?
   
   
8. Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist?
   
   
9. Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?
   
   
10. Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
    
    
11. Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?
    
    
12. 'I am' is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that 'I do' is the longest sentence?
    
    
13. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?
    
    
14. What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?
    
    
15. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?
    
    
16. Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the postmen can look for them while they deliver the mail?
    
    
17. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
    
    
18. No one ever says, 'It's only a game' when their team is winning.
    
    
19. Ever wonder about those people who spend $2.00 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backwards: NAIVE
    
    
20. Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?
    
    
21. OK ... so if the Jacksonville Jaguars are known as the 'Jags' and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the ' Bucs,' what does that make the Tennessee Titans?
    
    
22. If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea, does that mean that one enjoys it?
    
    
23. Why if you send something by road it is called a shipment, but when you send it by sea it is called cargo?
    
    
24. If a convenience store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the door?

Your Morning SIgh...

And one more, again sent along by Jim M.:

Doctors opinions on the Democrat's Universal Health Plan:

When a panel of doctors was asked their opinion on the proposed Universal
Health Care program, here's what they had to say:

The Allergists voted to scratch it, and the Dermatologists advised not to
make any rash moves.

The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the
Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve, and the
Obstetricians felt they were all laboring under a misconception.

The Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted; the Pathologists
yelled, 'Over my dead body!' while the Pediatricians said, 'Oh, grow up!'

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, the Radiologists could
see right through it, and the Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the
whole thing.

The Internists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the Plastic
Surgeons said, 'This puts a whole new face on the matter.'

The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists felt the
scheme wouldn't hold water. The Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was
a gas, and the Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say anything.

In the end, the Proctologists left the decision up to some ass in the
Administration.

Heh!

Obanomics Illustrated...

Sent along by several readers, but Jim M. was first:

Wow! An Exciting Moment...

I just took Race (our border collie puppy) out for a walk down our driveway. We walked down to within 25 feet or so of our gate, when all of a sudden Race started acting very afraid – whimpering, and doing his very best to hide behind my legs. He kept looking over to my left, so I looked over there – and saw a beautiful adult mountain lion, about 25 or 30 feet away from me, just on the other side of our fence.

Wow!

The photo at right is not mine (I wish it was!), but it's the closest one I could find on Google to the one I saw. I was at almost exactly the same level as the mountain lion, so my perspective was a little different than this photo...

We have never seen a mountain lion so near our home before. I've seen them just twice (in nearly ten years) along the private dirt road above our home, perhaps a half mile away from our house. Both of those sightings were mere glimpses. This time I watched the mountain lion for about 60 seconds or so before I dared move – though the mountain lion was not acting aggressive at all. In fact, it didn't like it was paying any attention to Race and I at all.

I didn't have my camera with me (damn it!), but I did have our cordless telephone – so I called Debbie, who was out shopping with her mom and a neighbor. She was very jealous of my sighting, but also concerned that I get back in the house. Race and I sidled up the driveway, back toward the house. I picked up a big stone; I'm not sure what I was thinking I'd do with that, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. We'd moved perhaps 25 feet further from the mountain lion when it started moving, slowly, away from us down the fence line. I stopped to watch. After it moved 50 feet or so, the mountain lion moved out onto the road and then took off at a lope, up the hill and away from our house.

Race and I went back inside. I was still on the phone with Debbie (I'd given her a blow-by-blow through the whole thing). In a minute or two, I started to come down from the adrenaline rush, and felt a little shaky – it's kind of scary having a close enounter with such a beast!

A beautiful beast, though...

Interesting Datapoint...

I ran across this article measuring preference in the upcoming Presidential election for an interesting group: Russian immigrants. It's short, so I've reprinted the entire thing:

U.S. Russian community will vote for John McCain - poll

MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) - The majority among the Russian community in the United States are going to vote for Republican John McCain at the U.S. presidential election, the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights (MBHR) told Interfax on Friday, after conducting a survey among the Russian community in the U.S.

MBHR experts are monitoring the U.S. elections and are planning to be in the U.S. on election day on November 4, human rights activists said in a statement.

MBHR cited figures provided by the institute for studies of new Americans, which conducted a social poll among Russian immigrants in New York, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts between August 30 and October 10 in cooperation with the American Jewish Congress.

"Of the total number of respondents 79% (80 % New Yorkers) are certain to go to the polls. Fifty-six percent (65% New Yorkers) are going to vote for John McCain, 10% - for Barack Obama. Twenty-eight percent (19% New Yorkers) are still undecided. Of those who are likely to go to the polls 63% will vote for McCain, 11% for Obama, and 25% are still undecided," MBHR said in the statement.

Four percent of respondents made donations to the Obama campaign, MBHR said in the statement.

During the U.S. census in 2000 almost 2 million Americans claimed their Russian roots and approximately the same number said the USSR was their country of origin. After Poles (over 6 million) the Russian-speaking community is the biggest group speaking one of the Slavic languages in the United States.

New York has the greatest number of Russian-speaking American residents.

These are people with experience living under a socialist government (the Soviet Union after about 1955 was really governed more as an extreme socialist country than as a Communist one). Interesting that people with this experience reject Obama so overwhelmingly...

Sarah Palin Says...

Simon M. passes this cute little palindrome along:

Wasilla's all I saw!

(a palindrome is a word or phrase that's spelled the same left-to-right and right-to-left)

Hope and Change, Oh My!

Reader Jim M. passes along this little gem:

Notice to All Employees

As of November 5, 2008, if Obama is officially elected into office, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness.

1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales commissions into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are under achieving a 'fair shake.'

2. All hourly employees will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst yourselves. This will help those who are 'too busy for overtime' to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.

3. All top management will now be referred to as 'the government.' We will not participate in this 'pooling' experience because the law doesn't apply to us.

4. The 'government' will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging its workers to continue to work hard 'for the good of all.'

5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it's 'good to spread the wealth.' Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more 'patriotic.'

6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don't feel bad though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he'll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can't pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our democratic congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn't all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?) !!!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to think hard about your vote on November 4th.

Declaration of Dependence...

Mark Steyn contemplates an Obama win. His conclusion:

Nobody denies that, in promoting himself from "community organizer" to the world's president-designate in nothing flat, he has shown an amazing and impressively ruthless single-mindedness. But the path of personal glory has been, in terms of policy and philosophy, the path of least resistance.

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the "Now what?" questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and U.N. foreign policy.

Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

If a majority of Americans want that, we holdouts must respect their choice. But, if you don't want it, vote accordingly.

A Spooky Email...

About a week ago, I received a very spooky email – but it led to joy and celebration. You'll need some background to understand...

Over 30 years ago, I was in the U.S. Navy, on board the USS Long Beach (CGN-9). I was a Data Systems Technician, responsible for maintaining and repairing various components of the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) on board. Another guy on board (he shall remain unnamed to protect his privacy) was an Electronic Warfare technician. The two of us had a shared interest – microcomputers, the forerunners of today's PCs – and we became close friends, working together on many projects.

As the years passed, we both left the Navy, we started a business together, then went our separate ways. Through it all we remained friends and in contact, though sometimes it was many months between contacts. Then, about five years ago, my friend moved out of Southern California, to North Carolina – and after a couple of contacts I never heard from him again. My friend was a regular poster on several forums on the web, so googling his name got lots of hits – but after early 2003, no more forum posts. I got a bad feeling from this.

For several years, I'd occasionally undertake a fairly serious search. I've also had a “Google Alert” running on his name for years. One day about two years ago, I got a hit on the Google Alert – not a pleasant one, either, as it was an obituary in a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper. The obituary didn't have enough information for me to be sure it was my friend. He has an unusual, but not unique, name. So I called the obituary editor (a very nice woman named Maryanne), and told her my story. She went out of her way to help me, including calling and interviewing the family of the dead man's wife. The details she got back matched – the man who had died was about the right age, had served in the Navy for almost 20 years, was an electronics tech of some kind, and had served on a ship based in San Diego.

I concluded the obvious. My friend had died. For the past two years I've lived with this conclusion, and have been sad about it on many an occasion.

Then last week I got my spooky email: someone with the name (or claiming the name) of my friend sent me an email inviting me to be a friend on his Facebook page. My first reaction was suspicion – that someone was playing a sick trick on me. So I wrote back, asking a question that only my friend could answer.

And he did. Since then, we've exchanged several emails and photos. It's definitely my friend, alive and well in North Carolina, married to his high school sweetheart, and sounding quite happy!

Joy and celebration followed, as you might imagine...

Obama on Firearms...

For anyone who (like me) cherishes the right of individual Americans to own firearms, granted by the second amendment to our Constitution, this is a sobering view of what might happen if Obama is elected with both houses solidly Democratic. There's still the Supreme Court to stop any such moves, but they've shown themselves to be less-than-reliable defenders of the Constitution in the past 20 years. Even more worrisome: a President Obama might well have a chance to appoint as many as 3 Supreme Court Justices, thus completing a leftist sweep of all three branches of our government.

The gun agenda Obama might have in that context is easily imaginable from the fact sheet at right. Much more detail (with lots of backing links) here.

What He Said...

What He Said...

From the good Dr. Krauthammer:

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

Why I've Been Busy...

Something you probably didn't know about me:

Rumors of My Death...

...have been greatly exaggerated.

I'm just busy.

I'll be back soon.

Satisfaction...

I can't help but take some satisfaction in this chart:


It shows the price of a share of the New York Times company. It has dropped from a high of over $51 to around $12. Their subscription numbers have similarly declined.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving “newspaper”.

I Am Joe...

The other day, Joe the Plumber asked Obama a perfectly reasonable question – and Obama answered it with his now-infamous lecture Spread The Wealth. Of course, the left (and their lapdog, the lamestream media) immediately knew who to blame for this public relations disaster: Joe! So ever since, the media has been full of awful (or purportedly awful) stories about Joe. We know more about Joe and his problems than we do about Obama and his questionable associations and beliefs. That's our lamestream media at work!

The reaction on the right has mostly been to show solidarity with Joe. Someone coined the phrase “I am Joe” – and that's a good one. I am Joe, in the sense that Obama's tax policies will hurt me and my family. The graphic at right is part of the campaign to show solidarity with Joe.

Meanwhile, the irrepressible Mark Steyn has some of his trademark humor to share with us:

Give a man enough rope line, and he'll hang himself. There was His Serene Majesty President-designate Barack the Healer, working the crowd at some or other hick burg, and halfway down the rope up pops a plumber to express misgivings about the incoming regime's tax plans.

Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 percent of the American people will get a tax cut. You'd think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than 6-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you're wondering why Obama didn't simply announce that under his plan 112 percent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they'd really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 percent it is.

Go read the whole thing.

All Your Pennies Is Mine...

Oops...

This must be really dismaying to the warmies:

High snowfall and cold weather to blame.

A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area's recorded history, area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.

"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound", said glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years".

"On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface [in] late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying [did] not become snow free until early August."

Molnia, who works for the US Geological Survey, said it's been a "long time" since area glaciers have seen a positive mass balance -- an increase in the total amount of ice they contain.

Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers. Molnia estimates that Alaskan glaciers have lost about 15% of their total area since that time -- an area the size of Connecticut.

One of the largest areas of shrinkage has been at the national park of Glacier Bay. When Alexei Ilich Chirikof first arrived in 1741, the bay didn't exist at all -- only a solid wall of ice. From that time until the early 1900s, the ice retreated some 50 miles, to form the bay and surrounding area.

Accordingly to Molnia, a difference of just 3 or 4 degrees is enough to shift the mass balance of glaciers from rapid shrinkage to rapid growth. From the 1600s to the 1900s, that’s just the amount of warming that was seen, as the planet exited the Little Ice Age.

Molnia says one cold summer doesn't mean the start of a new climatic trend. At least years like this, however, might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age.

Remember just a couple of months ago, the warmies were in full throat predicting that the Arctic Sea would be completely clear of ice, and that this was the year in which the Alaskan glaciers would finally disappear?

Oops!

Sol, as You've Never Seen It...

The photo at right is a close-up view of our sun's surface. I've long been fascinated by the unexpected structure within the sun – it seems so at odds with our everyday experience of the sun as a bright, featureless disk. Sunspots are just the beginning – at every scale, and at just about every part of the spectrum, the sun is surprisingly complex.

I've never seen this visualized as well as in this collection of photos...