Fish in a barrel 4
October 14, 2009 – 8:44 pm by JohnSecretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says Americans are just going to have to get used to saving more of their money. This is after his and Helicopter Ben’s policies have deliberately inflated the money supply and induced people to spend more money on cars, houses, and their credit cards. Unbelievable. (HT: Bob Murphy)
When my liberal-Democrat friends are wary and skeptical of Barack Obama’s being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, then you know it was ill-advised. As one of the Regular Guys on Atlanta’s Rock 100.5 said Friday, why not nominate Tommy Hanson for the Hall of Fame? Thomas DiLorenzo was right on the money:
So Obama joins Woodrow Wilson in the pantheon of American presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize (Wilson won it in 1919). I learned this morning that nominations for the prize had to be in by Feb. 20, about one month after Obama was inaugurated. That means that the prize went for his rhetoric during the campaign, not anything he could have actually accomplished. As I recall, his two most memorable foreign policy pronouncements during the campaign were 1) advocating that the U.S. bomb Pakistan; and 2) escalating the war in Afghanistan. He did order the murder of some people in Pakistan by bombardment shortly after taking office. I’m still surprised, though, that he won the prize after killing so few people. Usually, one must be a major league murderer like a Wilson or a Teddy Roosevelt to win such a prize.
Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) received confirmation from Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold that under the current Senate version of the Obamacare bill, Americans would be penalized with jail time for failing to buy health insurance. Actually, as with all State mandates, the penalty is always death. (HT: David Z.’s Twitter feed on his web page)
A 6-year-old was suspended from his Delaware government school because he was so excited about being a new Cub Scout that he brought one of his new tools to school, a combination knife-fork-spoon-bottle-opener, and used it to eat his lunch. To bring this story up is to point out its stupidity. A 45-day reassignment to an “alternative school” for not hurting or threatening anyone is the latest of a million examples of “zero-tolerance” implying zero thought. Simply taking the tool away for the day and explaining that it could be dangerous, if not in his hands then in someone else’s, would have been an appropriate response. Tell his parents he can’t bring it again. Luckily his 45-day punishment was overturned by the school board in favor of a 3-day suspension. His mother, ignorantly, says she just wants to get her child back into this government indoctrination center as soon as possible. I liked one radio broadcaster’s take on this the most. He said the really alarming part about this and all the other government-school fiascoes you hear about is that our society is losing the type of person who will take a stand and say, “No, this is wrong, the literal interpretation of this zero-tolerance policy is ludicrous, and I will get fired before I punish this child for harming and threatening no one.” Government-school administrators are, by and large, incredibly dense, passionless underachievers who lack common sense or a commitment to any principles to ground their lives in.
Hmm, somehow Barack Obama’s socialized-medicine message sounds better when it’s this melodic.
