Obama Needs Joe...

Jim M. passes along this parable:

Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to
come and fix it.

Joe drives to Obama's house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood
and where it's clear that all the residents make more than $250,000 per
year.

Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that
contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells
Obama, who is standing near the door, that it's an easy repair that will
take less than 10 minutes.

Obama asks Joe how much it will cost.

Joe immediately says, "$9,500."

"$9,500?" Obama asks, stunned. "But you said it's an easy repair!"

"Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than
$250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than
that for free," explains Joe. "It's always been my philosophy. As a matter
of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did
pass earlier this year, so now *all* plumbers have to do business this way.
It's known as 'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.' Surprised you haven't heard
of it, senator."

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there's no way he's paying that much for a
small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves.

Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for
another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have
gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe's price, Obama does nothing.

The leak under Obama's sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.

A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the
sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and
there's a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with
him to return.

Joe goes back to Obama's house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says "Let's see
– this will cost you about $21,000."

"A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!" Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. "Well, because of the
'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act,' a lot of rich people are learning how to fix
their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free
plumbing I'm doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result,
the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.

"Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the
group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there's a long
waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow
plumbers out of business, and they're not being replaced – nobody is going
into the plumbing business because they know they won't make any money. I'm
hurting now too – all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won't pay
their fair share."

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: "Of course you're hurting, Joe!
Don't you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing
and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you'll be
broke, and then what will you do?"

Joe immediately replies, "Run for president, apparently."

Obama Meets Joe (the Plumber)...

Ego and Mouth...

Thomas Sowell (who is black) is not an Obama fan:

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

Read Ego and Mouth.

Obama Concedes...

Have heard that Obama's concession speech (drafted ahead of time just in case he loses next Tuesday) has leaked? Here's the conclusion:

“In closing, I just want to thank all of the little people, and their imaginary friends, for the $600 million in contributions. You can be sure that every penny went to a good cause. Thanks to your generosity hundreds of oppressed, downtrodden and needy political operatives are able to keep a roof over their heads that they can retract in warm weather.”

“Traditionally, politicians end their speeches by saying, ‘God bless you, and God bless the United States of America’. But since you’ve probably heard that recording of my pastor, let me just say, in the words of Scripture, that I will always remember you as ‘the least of these‘, and feel confident in knowing that I have done it unto you.”

Via ScrappleFace.

Warfare's Evolution...

Reading this article by Bill Roggio (who is one of the very best sources of information on the War on Terror) got me to pondering on the evolution of warfare. There's nothing new about that, of course – the way that wars are fought has never been a static thing. Roggio's story linked above is about a Predator attack on a compound in Warzistan.

The combination of modern technology and quality intelligence is turning out to be a very effective tool for us. It seems to me that it is restoring some of the symmetry to what would otherwise be called asymmetrical warfare (or guerilla warfare).

Prior to the last few years, an enemy's leadership in a guerilla war would be relatively invulnerable to direct, personal attack. Even if we had intelligence on the location of someone in a leadership role, the only means we had for attacking that person would involve boots-on-the-ground Special Forces. Such a mission would be risky, costly, and would take precious time to organize and execute. Thus they didn't happen very often, and when they succeeded were occasion for much celebration. Some of the most memorable stories from earlier wars are exactly of that nature – Yamamoto in WWII, the several failed attempts on Hitler, the failed rescues of POWs in Viet Nam, etc.

Fast forward to today. I read stories like the one linked above every day or two. The common thread on all of them: actionable intelligence about the location of someone in the chain of command for Al Qaeda (etc.), and a missile delivered by a remote-controlled aircraft (usually a Hellfire missile delivered by a Predator). The location isn't necessarily in (or even near) a place where we have boots on the ground. The remote-controlled aircraft was generally on station nearby, ready to be used for such an occasion – this is possible because of the long “hover times” these aircraft have, and the fact that the “crew” (who are generally in the U.S.) can be switched out in seconds, so missions can last for days.

Think what this combination must be like for the Al Qaeda leadership. It's pretty much impossible for any effective leader to be invisible to his troops. Therefore lots of people have some idea where any given leader is. If you're the leader, you know that any one of those people could rat you out – and if they do, no matter where you are, no matter what time of day it is, no matter how many of your guys you're protected by, and no matter how fervently you pray as you kneel on your mat, a Hellfire missile might be the last thing you ever see.

That can't be good for morale.

Quote of the Day...

From Tim Blair:

The biggest story of the past few weeks: Sarah Palin’s massive CLOTHES budget. I join with political observers of all persuasions in demanding that the attractive Alaska governor wear far fewer clothes.

Read the whole thing.

The Three Stooges...

Consequences of Obama...

Instapundit is running one of my favorite quotes from Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

Glenn didn't say this, but I'll observe that taking outrageously high taxes from those who had the gumption and creativity to improve the lot of their fellow man (and thereby make a profit) is one of the most certain ways to drive those same people away...

You Know This Is Real, Don't You?

OMG!!!

Your Morning Groans...

Don't blame me, blame Simi L. for sending these along:

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.

A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on a head.'

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

It's not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn't have the balls to do it.

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Inside Leak?

A fascinating post by someone who claims to be a former Hillary staffer, now transplanted into the Obama campaign. You really need to read the whole thing to get the full effect, but here's a little teaser:

Being in a position to know these things, I will rate what the Obama campaign already knows are their weak links from the most important on down.

1 – Hillary voters. [...]

2 – Sarah Palin. [...]

3 – Obama’s radical connections. [...]

4 – The Bradley Effect. [...]

I said “claims” above because the author could be anyone at all – you just can't tell with an anonymous blog post. But I must say that it reads like something real...

I Learned Something About My Readers...

...but I'm not sure what it is.

The post “Motivational (?) Posters” below broke all my blog's records for page views, in just 24 hours. Each time someone clicks on a picture to get a larger version, that counts as a page view.

Care to guess which poster got the most clicks? Hint: it wins by a factor of five.

Now the important question: what did I just learn about my readers?

Another Blog...

For the past week or so I've been posting on another blog, one of several work-related blogs Service-now (my employer) hosts. My posts there are all about the Discovery product that I work on, and to most of my readers on this blog they are likely to be, er, mind-numbingly boring.

But if you're a closet masochist, stop on over there and learn about our products. At least until management realizes they've let a nutcase publish stuff under their name...

Motivational (?) Posters...

Jim M. sends along this politically-incorrect collection.

As always, click to enlarge...

Huh?

What in the world is that photograph showing?

You'll have to go over here to find out...

A Few Questions...

George Newman, writing over at the WSJ, asks a few questions about how the stock market would (and has already) respond to the initiatives of an Obama administration:

- Have you thought of what a gradual doubling (and indexation) of the minimum wage, sailing through a veto-proof and filibuster-proof Congress, would do to inflation, unemployment and corporate profits? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how easily a Labor Department headed by a militant union boss would push through a "Transparency in Labor Relations" law that does away with secret ballots in strike votes, and what this would do to industrial peace? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how a Treasury Secretary George Soros would engineer the double taxation of the multinationals' world-wide profits, and what this would mean for investors (to say nothing of full-scale industrial flight from the U.S.)? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how an Attorney General Charles J. Ogletree would champion a trillion-dollar reparations-for-slavery project (whittled down, to be fair, to a mere $800-billion, over-10-years compromise), and what this would do to the economy? The market now has.

- Have you thought of what the virtual outlawing of arbitration -- exposing all industries to the fate of asbestos producers -- would do to corporate liability and legal bills? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how a Health and Human Services Secretary Hillary Clinton would fix drug prices (generously allowing 10% over the cost of raw materials), and what this would do to the financial health of the pharmaceutical industry (not to mention the nondiscovery of lifesaving drugs)? The market now has.

- Have you thought of a Secretary of the newly established Department of Equal Opportunity for Women mandating "comparable worth" pay practices for every company doing any business with government at any level -- where any residual gap between the average pay of men and women is an eo ipso violation? Have you thought about what this would do to administrative and legal costs, hiring practices, productivity and wage bills? The market now has.

- Have you thought of what confiscatory "windfall profits" taxes on oil companies would do to exploration, supply and prices? The market now has.

- Have you thought of how the nationalization of health insurance, the mandated coverage of ever more -- and more exotic -- risks, the forced reimbursement for excluded events, and the diminished freedom to match premium to risk would affect the insurance industry? The market now has.

- Have you thought of Energy Czar Al Gore's five million new green jobs -- high-paying, unionized and subsidized -- to replace, at five times the cost, what we are now producing without those five million workers, and what this will do to our productivity, deficit and competitiveness? The market now has.

Read the whole thing, and ponder before you vote next Tuesday...

The Truth Leaks Out...

...if only ever-so-slightly. The lamestream media does one thing very, very well: it “shapes” the news by withholding some information and accenting others. The media's treatment of Sarah Palin is a textbook example of this – the distorted picture they present doesn't even resemble the real person.

Don't take my word for it – here's Elaine Lafferty, the former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine and a lifelong Democrat, who recently worked with Sarah Palin and got to know her a bit:

It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

Froth away, Ms. Lafferty! This little leak in the lamestream media container is quite refreshing...

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?