1

This from an AOL/MSNBC article about Arizona's proposed "Birther" law:

Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's citizenship, and his Hawaiian birth certificates have been made public. Even though the courts have rebuffed lawsuits challenging Obama's eligibility, the issue hasn't gone away.

I understand they confirmed his citizenship....but has he ever actually displayed a valid birth certificate yet? I thought that was what all the controversy was about....that he refused to allow it to be viewed.

2 Kind of explains the damn fools who worry about spending $0.5B, plus $1M/day in Libya.

3

Oh...and FURST!

 

4 We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The familyÂ’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Math is hard, and racist!

5 When your Government becomes the company and the company store what do you expect? And I thought Dems were all against monopolies. Dumb me.

6

Most people--including myself-- are too dumb to understand this level of spending, or else the numbers are so astronomical that they're abstract.

To beat Obsama we'll have to focus on national security, unemployment, him being an assclown, that type of thing. Then one of our stellar GOP candidates will easily defeat him.

7 I think the way to go on deficit numbers is to put everything in billions. $1500B deficit might buy some people a clue.

8 Without cable TeeVee, Grandma's going to die...

9 I say we all move to Texas and let the demonrats play in their own poop.

10 It's not that bad.  Look at Zimbabwe.  There are still three or four blocks in downtown Harare that might be OK.

11 7 I think the way to go on deficit numbers is to put everything in billions. $1500B deficit might buy some people a clue.   How about assign the amount each individual is beholden for (minus the illegals - that means you too CA and the welfare and SS recepients) and explain it that way. You know the workers that have to pay it off. And their children. That should raise a few eyebrows, hell even a few unibrows.

12 Dyou tink we're schtoopid?

13
We're so screwed.

DOOM.

Hookers and blow?

14 Debt Clock

'Hawks numbers are out of date already.

15 Not the cable bill. Can't we cut the Spinich budget instead? That's less than $5? Okay. Cut the feminine products. I mean do you stop being feminine or something without products?

16 Kind of explains the damn fools who worry about spending $0.5B, plus $1M/day in Libya.

Posted by: Optimizer

 

Not really. The example given shows people proposing unrealistic and wholly inadequate responses to a known problem.

What you cite is people questioning why the fuck we're getting started on a third war when the Dear Leader states that one of the few things he is willing to cut is defense?

Better analogy: The cable company comes to repossess the cable box and the family is busily ordering PPV movies (porn of course) at the same time.

17

On the birther thing, I thought where it stood was that Obama's goons sent an image file of the "short form" to HuffPo. I'm no expert, but for all I know I could buy an image file of a Hawaiian birth certificate saying that MY parents were Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham for $20. I do know that for most jobs I've had they want to see an official birth certificate with a raised seal on it.

I'm a little fuzzy on the Hawaiian govt. I think they made some vague statement about him being a citizen, but when the governor went to find the "long form", he couldn't find it.

The "born in Kenya" stuff is pretty much impossible, but this is all very screwy.

18
I've been so lonely lately. I used to be so popular, so in demand. People used to wine and dine me, and quote me repeatedly, sometimes around the clock (see what I did there?).

19

Allahfrumdit says we will probably elect O again despite high gas and a bad economy.

He would be a great person to go to war with. /s

20 You know, I have to argue with this a little bit. People are dumb, but they're not *that* dumb. They can do math. Only a handful of truly mental defectives think that 3600 is less than 2000.

People understand the debt and deficit, it's just that half of them don't give a shit because they think either they'll be dead before it collapses or there's some stash somewhere they can steal to fix it.

Or they just have their fingers in their ears and they're yelling "LALALALALA!"

Explaining it to them again hasn't done anything for the last 30 years, why would it now?

21 It's easy if you divide by a billion. If I'm $14,200 in debt and only earn $2170 a year, well, by gosh, I've got to live within my means! So, I'm going to make the hard sacrifices and only spend $3820 this year. I am a serious fiscal hawk and will be out of debt in no time!

22 >>Most people--including myself-- are too dumb to understand this level of spending, or else the numbers are so astronomical that they're abstract. Yea, but people understand financial pain. The Fed is winding down QE2 in June and will no longer be buying bonds. Interest rates are going up, inflation is going up, gas prices are going up, food prices are going up. And this will be easy to blame on Obama mainly because he is responsible for lots of it but also because the party in charge always takes it in the shorts when the economy sucks. Obama may have thought he had a winning hand going up against evil Republicans who are trying to cut the debt but the environment is about to change dramatically. It's gonna be a long, hot summer.

23 But wait, I'm pretty sure that the Right to premium cable is in the constitution or somethin'.

24 The national debt is best symbolized by this sketch from Monte Python (@ 4:26):  Self Defense Against Fruit (Sixteen Tons).

25 Banana Boat

26

The thing about my Libya reference is that there are a great many susbtantial issues at play there. I can only presume that people worried about the money being spent are either Obama supporters who don't want to take a real swipe at Dear Leader, or Obama haters who don't really care that the amount doesn't amount to diddly in the greater context.

I couldn't believe the other day that an expenditure a million/day - with an "m" - would even make the news. That's $0.001B/day out of a DoD budget of more than $2.000B/day. And that was on one of the Fox channels.

27 Lets do away with the income tax and raise all Fed expenditures through sales tax. This path avoids the class envy angle and forces all citizens to participate in their governments funding. If they really don't like an administration action, they can just stop shopping and send an immediate and measurable message to DC. Just a thought. I have had a lifetime of class envy mau-mauing. If you like big government, pay for it.

28  I say we all move to Texas and let the demonrats play in their own poop.

Posted by: Rickshaw Jack at April 15, 2011 04:32 PM (2+nbh)

I have friends that live in Longview. They say it's nice.

29

 but people understand financial pain

But not until it hits them. Lines to restaurants, for example, are still long and people are still buying plasma TVs, is my point. Not everyone sees the DOOM we see. And they hear the lies from  Obama's media whores and think it'll be OK.

30 Iowahawk and ace bring the funneh. Unfortunately, I only have the nads^* to link to Iowahawk's pieces on my FB page, lest I offend the delicate sensibilities of my lib friends.  AoS remains my dirty little secret. 

_{*figuratively speaking, of course, being a chick}

31 AoS remains my dirty little secret.

I'm pretty sure Ace prefers it that way, Y-not.

32

I love me some Ten. Ernie Ford...but it's not as funny as 'hawks 'Supercalifragilisticexpialedotious' Parody post a week or so ago.

I couldn't read it for the tears. Great stuff as always, Iowahawk.

33 /rant on

Is it just me or has this been the most draaaaaawn-out hellacious week in forever?

/rant off

34
Y-not,

I quite face book because my notfriend-church-friends could handle the R-rated baggage.

Robin at AT couldn't handle FB either. She wrote an interesting piece about it.

35 Not politics-related, but I'd like to see Iowahawk's take on the Purdue Pete kerfuffle.  (Which, incidentally, made the big time by appearing at Althouse.) 

36 @ Jackstraw , Who's going buy the treasuries , if not the Fed ?

37

The "born in Kenya" stuff is pretty much impossible, but this is all very screwy.

Posted by: Optimizer at April 15, 2011 04:35 PM (2lTU+)

I'm increasingly thinking "born in Vancouver" or at the very least "born in Seattle."  The latter wouldn't have any Constitutional implications but it would certainly open up a whole host of questions as to Obama's biography.

Still, given that Stanley Ann was in WA less than a month after Obama's birth taking classes at UW, I'm more inclined to believe she'd been there already and maybe took an unfortunate trip to Canada where she'd given birth.

Why is this so hard?  Why are journalists suddenly the least curious people around?

38

Posted by: laceyunderalls at April 15, 2011 04:48 PM (pLTLS)

YES! It was the kind of week, where initially, I was afraid I might die. And then I was scared I wouldn't.

39

But not until it hits them. Lines to restaurants, for example, are still long and people are still buying plasma TVs, is my point. Not everyone sees the DOOM we see. And they hear the lies from  Obama's media whores and think it'll be OK.

Posted by: USS Diversity at April 15, 2011 04:43 PM (gJNMj)

A shitload of them are just putting all of this spending on credit cards.  When was the last time you saw a guy at Applebee's pull out 50 bucks to pay for the family dinner?  Banks have handed out credit like candy and people are using it to live beyond their means.  It takes 5 minutes to open a charge account at Best Buy to get that 50-inch plasma TV in time for the Super Bowl.  They think they are being frugal by shifting down from Olive Garden to Friendly's for their twice a week dinners.  They are charging their gas and groceries and not noticing how much those are going up.  Then they don't know what happened when all of a sudden they max out on all their credit lines and their minimum monthly payments are over $2000.

A whole lot of these people have stopped paying the mortgage so they can keep the credit cards.  That's why the housing market is still dead.

40 Lines to restaurants, for example, are still long and people are still buying plasma TVs, is my point.

What should they do?  Save?

Bwahahahahahaha.

41 Y-Not - what about Pete?

ps...it's Little 5 weekend in the B'town. That shithead Obama mucked it up with his presence in 2008. What a disgrace.

42 Frilliant

43 You are not alone, Y-not. Ace is my dirty little secret too. Though I've been tempted to discuss various posts with the yoga-pant-wearing moms at the bus stop.

44 Lets do away with the income tax and raise all Fed expenditures through sales tax. This path avoids the class envy angle and forces all citizens to participate in their governments funding. If they really don't like an administration action, they can just stop shopping and send an immediate and measurable message to DC. Just a thought. I have had a lifetime of class envy mau-mauing. If you like big government, pay for it.

Posted by: OBVIOUS

Ireland has a VAT. So does Greece. Both are swirling the bowl. It's the economic equivalent of making everyone wear lead boots. And Bill Gates getting hit with the same impact as Grandma on a loaf of bread doesn't eliminate the class angle. Witness the pricks from Taxachoositz. They vote for these taxes, defend them, vote for assholes, even after watching Kerry literally sail his boat (S.S. Deadbeat) away from taxation.

45 >>But not until it hits them. Yep. My point is it's about to. Most people don't understand that the only reason we have been able to sell our debt (bonds) for the last couple years is because we have kept the returns artificially low and the majority buyer has been us, the Fed. That ends in June. Interest rates are going up big time. Pain is on the way.

46 Is it just me or has this been the most draaaaaawn-out hellacious week in forever?

Yes, it kinda' blew monkey chunks. 

Today we got a bonus day of sorts - sunshine when they'd been predicting rain.  Took the doggy for a walk and cleared my head.  Expecting rain tomorrow while we house-hunt... blah. 

47 42 Y-Not - what about Pete?

For some bizarre reason someone decided to change the Purdue Pete mascot into something less freakish (but lovable) and more cartoonish.  The new one actually did kind of resemble Michigan State's guy.  Anyhoo, after about a week of pounding, they (Purdue - I assume the marketing dept of athletics) gave up. 

I kind of consider the train to be the mascot, but it still was a dumb move. 

48 See this where iowahawk and liberals disagree. They view the income as $143,000 a year (the whole GDP). Those wild ass spending and borrowing numbers are like the shopaholic wife that just knows her husband will bail her out. Thats why they always ask for more money. The problem is that the wife has ceased being that hot sexy little number and is now a screeching hag that the husband can't stand to look at let alone fork over his hard earned money for another Dooney&Burke handbag, the bitch, God I want to kill her. She makes my life a living hell, bet I'll get home tonight and the house will still look like a pig stye. Maybe a liitle carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage. Nobody will find out. Did I just say that?

49 >>Who's going buy the treasuries , if not the Fed ? At their current pricing? Nobody. Which is why interest rates are going up.

50 I quite face book because my notfriend-church-friends could handle the R-rated baggage

Yeah, I try setting up "groups" so that some people aren't exposed to my politically-incorrect leanings, but I still find myself being pretty careful about what links I post.  Although I did post the Chuck Schumer says Houston blows article with the simple statement "jerk" because I figure that's just a natural law like gravity or something. 

51 "Haven't got the ovaries" wouldn't be bad here at all. Kinda funny, really.

52 As a member of the under-20 crowd, I'm even more fucked/DOOMed than you are -- doubly so since I actually pay taxes. Thanks 52%, youth vote, etc!

53 53 "Haven't got the ovaries" wouldn't be bad here at all.

I treasure those little suckers, even though they've gone unused. 

I'm clinging to all those nice female hormones protecting me from those nasty diseases for as long as they last. 

54 That example sort of supports the need to raise taxes in addition to cutting back our expenditures because even if we cut back by 35% we still have to borrow $3130 every year.

55 At their current pricing? Nobody. Which is why interest rates are going up. ....... or Ben keeps printing and buying . Raising interest rates ( which I agree with ) opens a whole new can of worms that I can't see being tried with an election coming .

56
Lines to restaurants, for example, are still long

Really? were? Locally, I've heard an advertisement for a chain restaurant that I've never heard advertise in this market. That chain?

Cracker Barrel. In the deep south. A place that if you show up at the wrong time for Sunday brunch it'll be Sunday dinner by the time you get sat.

People have cut back, and will continue to do so.

57

The "born in Kenya" stuff is pretty much impossible, but this is all very screwy.

We know for a fact that Stanley Ann was in Seattle, Washington, in mid-August 1961, as a single mother, enrolled at the U of W, for the fall semester, about two weeks after his putative "birth" in Hawaii:

seattle 1961 dunham site:wnd.com

So it's entirely possible that he wasn't born in Hawaii at all, but rather that Stanley Ann had already been back in Seattle for some time, and could well have passed over the border into Vancouver, British Columbia, for the actual birth [so as to have avoided the humiliation & ridicule & ostracism which would have come from giving birth to a mulatto bastard in the United States].

 

58 #58, Houston.

59 16 MILLION tons.

Good Lord.

60 I think that if the 150 million (47%) people that don't pay any tax forked over 10K on Monday that would almost cover this year's projected deficit without debt service figured in.

Who wants to break it to 'em?

61 Most people--including myself-- are too dumb to understand this level of spending, or else the numbers are so astronomical that they're abstract.

It's not dumb. It's how everyone's brain works. We group any numbers larger than about five—seriously: five—by multiples of numbers we can visually grasp. People usually peak at about 12x12. The exceptions are Rain Man types, and people who've had reason to practice visualizing larger numbers. (Maybe surprisingly, the mathematicians I've known don't visualize the numbers they work with, except when they're trying to figure out how to explain something to a non-mathematician. It doesn't work.)

Basically, nothing over about 150 can be understood by anyone, except as an area that 150+ of some common object would fill. Dollars-stacked-to-the-moon-and-back and football-stadium-full-of-sand analogies are the best you can do, and no one really gets those. They just startle people. "Shit that's a lot!"

So these household-spending analogies can't work, really, because people's own incomes and expenditures exceed their numerical grasp. (Picture 32,000 of anything. You can't.) They understand their money as analogous to the time they traded for it, or to specific things it could buy. You can elicit a "My, that's irresponsible of that imaginary family!" this way, but not a real understanding. All large numbers are equally incomprehensible.

Boned.

62 >>....... or Ben keeps printing and buying . Raising interest rates ( which I agree with ) opens a whole new can of worms that I can't see being tried with an election coming Last weekend PIMCO started shorting Treasury bonds. Doom is coming and it's bringing hell with it.

63 Cracker Barrel. In the deep south. A place that if you show up at the wrong time for Sunday brunch it'll be Sunday dinner by the time you get sat.

Cracker Barrel. MMMmmmmm

64 Can we make an amendment to require all government officials and workers to pass a math test.  Minimum of a B average in Algebra II.  Old HS and college transcripts do not count.  You have to go into a room and take a test

I have worked with a lot of bullshit artists (salesmen) who don't understand fractions, percentages and they couldn't solve even the simplest word problem if you had a gun to their head.  But they are good at telling jokes and making shit up out of thin air to impress their bosses and customers.  Don't be fooled, most of these people have college degrees.  Most liberal arts colleges find ways to graduate you with no real functional knowledge of math.

Judging from our leaders' decisions I am guessing that most of our elected officials are the one's who kept getting passed along through the school system without ever really understanding math.

65 Doom is coming and it's bringing hell with it. We do live in interesting times . Whatever the Bernank does , we are fucked .

66 Billions?.....Trillions?....... Bah.....I have Panzers!

67 Lines to restaurants, for example, are still long

Where I live that is because even though people eat out a lot less, about half of the restaurants have gone out of business since 2008.

68 I think that if the 150 million (47%) people that don't pay any tax forked over 10K on Monday that would almost cover this year's projected deficit without debt service figured in.

I think that if the millions of people who do pay taxes had to pay it all at once, just one time, it might occur to them exactly how friggin much they are paying. By having it taken out of our paychecks, bit by bit, people don't even pay attention to their gross anymore. Net is all there is.

$900 a month sounds a whole lot smaller than does $10,800.

Maybe people would then sit up and take notice of how preposterous it all is.

69 and his Hawaiian birth certificates have been made public.

How many does the guy have?

70 $900 a month sounds a whole lot smaller than does $10,800.
Maybe people would then sit up and take notice of how preposterous it all is.
Posted by: Homer's redneck cousin at April 15, 2011 05:23 PM (piMMO)

$900 a month sounds like rent, which is what the Mob calls it, and is a similar type of parasitic enterprise.

71 Premium cable for only $380/year?  Sign me up!

72

I've tooted this horn a few times here over the years.  We lose sight of how big these numbers are that are thrown around so casually.  For instance:

1 billion seconds = ~33 years

1 trillion seconds = ~33,000 years

These are big, unfathomable numbers.

73 That math test sounds like the Robert Heinlein suggestion - be able to solve a quadratic equation, you can vote. Otherwise, you lose your chance at a franchise. I do, however, like the idea of a test of really basic understanding of math - which, I'm convinced, MOST of the Congress couldn't pass (ditto for the Executive side).

74

Hell, compounded interest on debt horrifies most people when someone takes the time to explain it to them.

Add a basic accounting course to the Lemmiwinks gov't workers and Congress requirements and we'll no longer get lectures on Profits and Earnings Ratios, 3000% reductions, etc.

75 You can get a second job at McDonalds. Yes You Can. I'm late for my train c ya!

76 You can may be discovered to be very splendid looking all round person, by just picking your most beloved where how can you buy abercrombie and fitchand fitch through the uk. even although you will step from home, each and every person.