Ruminations

From the depths of depression, to guarded optimism. Come along with me on a roller-coaster ride!

* Political mercenary Dick Morris had this to say recently:

“In an effort to promote liquidity and boost the economy, the Federal Reserve yesterday announced plans to grow the money supply by another 50 percent to 60 percent. This ignores the profound observation of Gen. George Patton, ‘You can’t push a string.'”

See: http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2009/03/20/the_feds_futile_move

This looks very bad to me. A credit crunch, high unemployment, and now here comes the inflation!

For those of you who’ve got money in savings, what are you going to do with it when the inflation rate starts to exceed the interest rate?

My guess is, buy stuff. Quickly.

A usually sober financial guru advised, buy a house on a plot of land of any size you can garden on.

Some have added, guns – and don’t leave a paper trail.

There was a time I’d have considered that advice paranoid and inflamatory…

* I sometimes wonder about Dick Morris. He’s one of the few examples of a political consultant who has worked both sides. That doesn’t happen often, you rapidly make yourself unemployable doing that.

What I wonder is, after working for the Clintons, is he pissed-off after enduring Hillary’s personal anti-Semitic slurs? And after Bill threw him under the bus (pics of a toe-sucking hooker showed up in the Enquirer if you remember) is he out for revenge?

Or did the reality that the Left is finally in a position to destroy captialism, the engine of our prosperity and power, finally sink in?

After years of screwing with the market to the extent that it’s on the ropes, the Left is pointing to their handiwork and saying, “See, capitalism is a failure!”

Morris has been around the block a few times. He can see what happens under socialism – and more specifically, what has happened to Jews under socialism.

* From America’s wisest public intellectual.

“One of the many symptoms of this decay from within is that we are preoccupied with the pay of corporate executives while the leading terrorist-sponsoring nation on earth is moving steadily toward creating nuclear bombs.
Does anyone imagine that we will care what anyone’s paycheck is when we see an American city in radioactive ruins?”

Thomas Sowell, Feb. 24

* From John McCaslin’s column: http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnMcCaslin/2009/03/20/well_put

…a Tennessee constituent of Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn said it best when he told the congresswoman: “I’m tired of the government spending money I have not made yet for programs I don’t want.”

* We just saw on TV that The One Who Causes Legs to Tingle has made ovetures to sell my wife’s country to the nation that within living memory, participated in the murder of 20 percent of its population.

That’s what it looks like from here at any rate. He’s putting on hold (meaning he’s going to drop) plans to base a missile defense system in Poland, that is no possible threat to Russia – it’s a turf thing.

I couldn’t help but remember a Polish colleague in Warsaw. It was some years ago when Poland wanted into NATO, and Russia objected. It didn’t look good for Poland then, although it did get in after all.

Piotr said gloomily, “It will be second Yalta. The West will sell Poland for peace.”

The Polish prime minister said they’d have to reevaluate how they trust America.

My wife just snorted derisively.

* I just got in from filling sand bags to fight the rising flood waters in our valley. I worked with a bunch of high school students, let out for this purpose.

These young men and women were great. They did the work cheerfully, with minimal supervision, and without slacking.

One small girl held bags for me while I shoveled. I could see the exhaustion on her face, but she never complained.

She did however, abandon me for a tall, handsome young senior. At one time he had three girls holding bags for him to fill, while I had none. 😉 (However, he was shoveling like a machine.)

So I paired with a woman closer to my own age who works in the juvenile justice system. She mentioned she recognized a few of the young folks around…

I feel better about a few things now, although I’ll be stiff and sore tomorrow for sure. These kids faced up to a crisis, and believe me it’s a crisis here, with guts, grit, and cheerfulness.

These kids have have been raised in a nation with a crap educational curriculum and an increasingly toxic culture. But when the chips were down, they came through.

I don’t know if this is just a local phenomenon, this is after all a pretty isolated part of the country. And I don’t know how they’d fare faced with a threat that’s not just impersonal nature but malevolent and evil, such as resurgent communism or radical Islam.

Still, I feel good about this – and the water is still rising.

“God will save you, fear you not. Be ye the men you’ve been. Get ye the sons your father’s got, and God will save the queen.”

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