The Captain has many New Year's resolutions.
Boost my bench press to 175.
Keep Natasha's cooking off my waist and keep under 145 lbs.
Get Cisco certified.
Increase revenues for my various ventures by 20%.
However, sadly the Captain has another one.
The Captain will be scaling back Captain Capitalism.
This is not an end of the blog, but rather a drastic reduction in posts. The reasons are multiple but basically boil down to two things;
1. I've made a conscious decision to spend more time with Natasha. Fun as this blog is, it doesn't really pay the mortgage, plus you have to have your priorities straight. And as much as I all love you, Natasha is that special kind of dame.
2. The blog has already achieved what I wanted it to and that was to establish the empirical data that proves whether capitalism or socialism is the optimal economic system. After 5 years I now find myself simply updating charts or reiterating topics I've already written at length about. The posts are just simply short posts or links to other posts that highlight either the proof that capitalism works or the inanity of liberals and leftists.
This of course does not mean there won't be any posts, but the posts I do make will basically be one of three things;
1. Long, more substantive postings that could be considered essays that will tackle larger concepts than simple correlations between economic growth and taxes.
2. Short, quick charts where there will be little, if any commentary in that I trust you are all smart enough junior, deputy, aspiring, official or otherwise economists to figure it out on your own.
3. Video/audio of some speeches/seminars I plan on putting together which I think is the new way blogging/media in general are going.
I certainly welcome any links you guys want to send that you think are post worthy, and as always, all Cappy Cap readers are allowed to contribute their own writing if they so desire (CAPTcapitalism@yahoo.com). However, posts on my own will be of no particular frequency, probably averaging around one per month.
Regardless, I wish you all the best in 2010 and the best for capitalism. However, if there's one thing I've learned about capitalism it's that it doesn't need luck. It's reality. It's the people that need the luck if they ever decide to abandon it.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Everything Wrong with California
Summarized in one succinct proposal.
C
R
I
P
E
S
I would go on my regular tirade about how the sciences and what not, not only gets people out of poverty if you study and major in them, but is also the primary factor in what drives the wealth producing capacity of a nation. I would also point out this is the bonafide definition of racism. I would also point out some saying about "socialism" being "equal misery and poverty for everyone" but why bother. It's Berkeley. Self-prescribed medicine couldn't have happened to a more deserving people.
C
R
I
P
E
S
I would go on my regular tirade about how the sciences and what not, not only gets people out of poverty if you study and major in them, but is also the primary factor in what drives the wealth producing capacity of a nation. I would also point out this is the bonafide definition of racism. I would also point out some saying about "socialism" being "equal misery and poverty for everyone" but why bother. It's Berkeley. Self-prescribed medicine couldn't have happened to a more deserving people.
The Gift of Nothing
I received many gifts this Christmas. A sweater, some chocolate, some scotch. But the best gift, the absolute best gift I received was a gift from three of my friends.
Nothing.
Three men, three of my buddies, all three of them got me nothing.
And I'm being sincere when I say I appreciate nothing. And the reason why is this;
Nothing necessitates nothing in return.
It reminds me of the scene in Donny Brasco where Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are exchaning gifts. Both work for the same mafia so they basically just give each other handfuls of cash. Never mind this is essentially what happens on Christmas anyway (except there is a loss of efficiency and utility when cash is traded via goods). What I'm talking about is they effectively gave each other nothing.
This is why nothing is the best gift. You are not compelled to get a gift in return. Not only does this save you the hassle and the money, it alleviates you of the guilt or the compunction to get somebody something because they're probably going to get something for you.
I looked at one of my buddies who got me nothing and I said, "hey, thanks for the nothing." And with a sincere face and retort he said, "Hey, no THANK YOU for getting me nothing."
Now in general girls have a hard time understanding this. They seem compelled to get SOMETHING for every one. Can be the most worthless freaking crap trinket on the face of the planet, but they still feel compelled to get their far-removed acquaintences something. And the reason why is they think that if they don't display some kind of action or show some kind of affection for their friends via buying them gifts, their friends are going to somehow think they don't like them anymore.
But men have this unspoken understanding that we basically don't like spending money and our true gift to our true friends is to make it so they don't have to spend money either.
Even on birthdays. I don't know when my dad's birthday is, and he knows mine is sometime in July, but he doesn't know the day. We don't exchange gifts either on birthdays or Christmas and we're fine with that. The true gift is the convenience of not having to worry about it, nor compelling one another to do something about it.
Ergo my fellow junior, deputy, aspiring and otherwise official economists, take it from the Captain. The best thing to give your fellow chum is nothing. Nothing is the greatest gift an economist can give. I wouldn't recommend giving "nothing" to a female loved one, but for the guys nothing is as good as it gets.
Nothing.
Three men, three of my buddies, all three of them got me nothing.
And I'm being sincere when I say I appreciate nothing. And the reason why is this;
Nothing necessitates nothing in return.
It reminds me of the scene in Donny Brasco where Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are exchaning gifts. Both work for the same mafia so they basically just give each other handfuls of cash. Never mind this is essentially what happens on Christmas anyway (except there is a loss of efficiency and utility when cash is traded via goods). What I'm talking about is they effectively gave each other nothing.
This is why nothing is the best gift. You are not compelled to get a gift in return. Not only does this save you the hassle and the money, it alleviates you of the guilt or the compunction to get somebody something because they're probably going to get something for you.
I looked at one of my buddies who got me nothing and I said, "hey, thanks for the nothing." And with a sincere face and retort he said, "Hey, no THANK YOU for getting me nothing."
Now in general girls have a hard time understanding this. They seem compelled to get SOMETHING for every one. Can be the most worthless freaking crap trinket on the face of the planet, but they still feel compelled to get their far-removed acquaintences something. And the reason why is they think that if they don't display some kind of action or show some kind of affection for their friends via buying them gifts, their friends are going to somehow think they don't like them anymore.
But men have this unspoken understanding that we basically don't like spending money and our true gift to our true friends is to make it so they don't have to spend money either.
Even on birthdays. I don't know when my dad's birthday is, and he knows mine is sometime in July, but he doesn't know the day. We don't exchange gifts either on birthdays or Christmas and we're fine with that. The true gift is the convenience of not having to worry about it, nor compelling one another to do something about it.
Ergo my fellow junior, deputy, aspiring and otherwise official economists, take it from the Captain. The best thing to give your fellow chum is nothing. Nothing is the greatest gift an economist can give. I wouldn't recommend giving "nothing" to a female loved one, but for the guys nothing is as good as it gets.
Wild Man's Hooch Causes Chaos
Wild Man - My large and fearless raving partner from my hometown. He looked out for me after we were arrested, and is one of the main characters in my jail memoir. His first day at Buckeye prison, he knocked out the head of the whites in his dorm, so the Aryan Brotherhood put him in charge, and authorised him to brew hooch.
“So how did your first batch of hooch almost cause a race riot?” I asked.
“In prison, you’re supposed to stick with your own race,” Wild Man said. “The gang leaders tell you you can’t break bread with the other races.”
“Explain that a bit for the public.”
“You can’t share food with the other races. You can’t buy drugs from them. But everyone does, especially once you meet some alright guys from the other races. The Chicanos always back up the whites if there’s a race riot against the blacks, and the paisas back up the blacks.”
In Arizona, the four main racial categories are blacks, whites, Chicanos and paisas. The Chicanos are descended from Mexico, but born in America. The paisas are Mexicans born in Mexico. For a more in-depth account of the history of these gangs, including the ongoing war between the paisas and Chicanos, click here to read Warrior’s blog.
“A member of another race can’t sit on my bed under any circumstances,” Wild Man said. “I’m not supposed to sit with the other races and get drunk. But I have a friend who’s a Chicano, Casper, who was getting drunk with me, mind you he’s not sat on my bunk. He’s sat on a chair by my bunk. A white guy, Adam, is sat on my bunk. Me and Adam are messing around, stabbing one other in the arm with a pen. The deal was to see if you could get the pen in just enough to make it stand up, but obviously not get half the pen in. We were just drunk, you know.”
“Yes, sounds about right for you, Wild Man.”
“The youngsters were getting rowdy, all kinds of horseplay among themselves, getting drunk on my hooch. A Chicano youngster threw his mate on the floor, and a white youngster said, ‘Fuck that! I wouldn’t have anyone do that to me!’
The other Chicano lad said to the white youngster, ‘Shut the fuck up, you little punk. You know where the baño is. It’s chingaso time.’
The white youngster stood up, and looks at me ’cause I’m the head of the whites.
I said to him, ‘Go handle your business, and next time don’t even wait for approval. If anyone ever calls you a punk, you hit on sight.’
The youngster goes to handle his business in the bathroom.
Now Casper, the Chicano who’s getting drunk with me, is the head of the Chicanos. And Adam, the white guy stabbing me with the pen, says to Casper, ‘Fuck you, wetback!’ completely out of the blue.”
“Are these pretty big guys?”
“Adam’s about my size. Works out a lot. Has WHITE PRIDE on his chest in German. Doing time for hate crimes. Casper’s small, but stocky. Works out a lot. Has BROWN PRIDE on his belly. Casper jumped up, and hit Adam where he was sat on my bed. Adam fell back, and hit his head on the metal bunk. They were fighting in my house, so I got out of the way. I grabbed my TV, so it didn’t get knocked off the shelf.
Meanwhile, the two youngsters have finished fighting in the bathroom. They’re leaving, so Casper and Adam go to the bathroom to fight. But the Chicano youngster who’s leaving walks towards them as if he’s gonna do something, so I grab him, and throw him up against a wall. The white youngsters see this, and automatically want to fight. They’re taught to protect their head. That’s how they earn their ink. If there’s a confrontation like this, the ones who show heart will get tattoos. The Chicano youngsters are getting ready as well, so it looks like a riot is going to go off.
I say to the white youngsters, ‘Don’t boot up! It’s cool.’”
“Please explain that for the public.”
“No matter where you are or what you’re doing, if the head of a race shouts ‘Boot up!’ then the work boots go on ’cause they’ve got a rubber grip, and the sneakers are too slippy for fighting. They get their stash of shanks out, and it’s out-and-out war. They strap National Geographic magazines on their stomach and arms for body armour.
So it’s all going pear-shaped in the dorm. The cops are looking. There’s peeps stood at the window trying to block the cops’ view, but you can’t block it completely. I’m telling the youngsters, ‘Boot down!’
The Chicano youngsters are still booting up. Casper’s telling them, ‘There’s no problem. Leave it.’
One of their youngsters says, ‘Fuck that! The woods are booting up, so are we.’
Both me and Casper are yelling, ‘Everything’s alright. Boot down.’
The blacks are tripping now. They’re grouped up in a corner.
The white youngsters are drunk and looking for trouble. One says, ‘What’s the blacks fucking problem?’
Then all the youngsters who’ve booted up, whites and Chicanos, start getting ready to go and smash the blacks.
Casper says, ‘No go!’
I yell, ‘No go unless they say anything!’
Then everything settles down. The blacks are OK. The paisas are OK. The chiefs are cool. Everything’s OK, except the dorm has drunk so much hooch, I don’t have enough to pay the Aryan Brotherhood.”
“How much did you owe them?”
“They’d approved me to brew the hooch provided I paid them twenty percent, which in this case was five bottles out of twenty-five. Only I didn’t have five, I only had three left.”
“Uh oh.”
In Wild Man's next blog, he has to answer to the Aryan Brotherhood for the missing hooch.
Click here for Wild Man's previous blog.
Post comments for Wild Man below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Wild Man - My large and fearless raving partner from my hometown. He looked out for me after we were arrested, and is one of the main characters in my jail memoir. His first day at Buckeye prison, he knocked out the head of the whites in his dorm, so the Aryan Brotherhood put him in charge, and authorised him to brew hooch.
“So how did your first batch of hooch almost cause a race riot?” I asked.
“In prison, you’re supposed to stick with your own race,” Wild Man said. “The gang leaders tell you you can’t break bread with the other races.”
“Explain that a bit for the public.”
“You can’t share food with the other races. You can’t buy drugs from them. But everyone does, especially once you meet some alright guys from the other races. The Chicanos always back up the whites if there’s a race riot against the blacks, and the paisas back up the blacks.”
In Arizona, the four main racial categories are blacks, whites, Chicanos and paisas. The Chicanos are descended from Mexico, but born in America. The paisas are Mexicans born in Mexico. For a more in-depth account of the history of these gangs, including the ongoing war between the paisas and Chicanos, click here to read Warrior’s blog.
“A member of another race can’t sit on my bed under any circumstances,” Wild Man said. “I’m not supposed to sit with the other races and get drunk. But I have a friend who’s a Chicano, Casper, who was getting drunk with me, mind you he’s not sat on my bunk. He’s sat on a chair by my bunk. A white guy, Adam, is sat on my bunk. Me and Adam are messing around, stabbing one other in the arm with a pen. The deal was to see if you could get the pen in just enough to make it stand up, but obviously not get half the pen in. We were just drunk, you know.”
“Yes, sounds about right for you, Wild Man.”
“The youngsters were getting rowdy, all kinds of horseplay among themselves, getting drunk on my hooch. A Chicano youngster threw his mate on the floor, and a white youngster said, ‘Fuck that! I wouldn’t have anyone do that to me!’
The other Chicano lad said to the white youngster, ‘Shut the fuck up, you little punk. You know where the baño is. It’s chingaso time.’
The white youngster stood up, and looks at me ’cause I’m the head of the whites.
I said to him, ‘Go handle your business, and next time don’t even wait for approval. If anyone ever calls you a punk, you hit on sight.’
The youngster goes to handle his business in the bathroom.
Now Casper, the Chicano who’s getting drunk with me, is the head of the Chicanos. And Adam, the white guy stabbing me with the pen, says to Casper, ‘Fuck you, wetback!’ completely out of the blue.”
“Are these pretty big guys?”
“Adam’s about my size. Works out a lot. Has WHITE PRIDE on his chest in German. Doing time for hate crimes. Casper’s small, but stocky. Works out a lot. Has BROWN PRIDE on his belly. Casper jumped up, and hit Adam where he was sat on my bed. Adam fell back, and hit his head on the metal bunk. They were fighting in my house, so I got out of the way. I grabbed my TV, so it didn’t get knocked off the shelf.
Meanwhile, the two youngsters have finished fighting in the bathroom. They’re leaving, so Casper and Adam go to the bathroom to fight. But the Chicano youngster who’s leaving walks towards them as if he’s gonna do something, so I grab him, and throw him up against a wall. The white youngsters see this, and automatically want to fight. They’re taught to protect their head. That’s how they earn their ink. If there’s a confrontation like this, the ones who show heart will get tattoos. The Chicano youngsters are getting ready as well, so it looks like a riot is going to go off.
I say to the white youngsters, ‘Don’t boot up! It’s cool.’”
“Please explain that for the public.”
“No matter where you are or what you’re doing, if the head of a race shouts ‘Boot up!’ then the work boots go on ’cause they’ve got a rubber grip, and the sneakers are too slippy for fighting. They get their stash of shanks out, and it’s out-and-out war. They strap National Geographic magazines on their stomach and arms for body armour.
So it’s all going pear-shaped in the dorm. The cops are looking. There’s peeps stood at the window trying to block the cops’ view, but you can’t block it completely. I’m telling the youngsters, ‘Boot down!’
The Chicano youngsters are still booting up. Casper’s telling them, ‘There’s no problem. Leave it.’
One of their youngsters says, ‘Fuck that! The woods are booting up, so are we.’
Both me and Casper are yelling, ‘Everything’s alright. Boot down.’
The blacks are tripping now. They’re grouped up in a corner.
The white youngsters are drunk and looking for trouble. One says, ‘What’s the blacks fucking problem?’
Then all the youngsters who’ve booted up, whites and Chicanos, start getting ready to go and smash the blacks.
Casper says, ‘No go!’
I yell, ‘No go unless they say anything!’
Then everything settles down. The blacks are OK. The paisas are OK. The chiefs are cool. Everything’s OK, except the dorm has drunk so much hooch, I don’t have enough to pay the Aryan Brotherhood.”
“How much did you owe them?”
“They’d approved me to brew the hooch provided I paid them twenty percent, which in this case was five bottles out of twenty-five. Only I didn’t have five, I only had three left.”
“Uh oh.”
In Wild Man's next blog, he has to answer to the Aryan Brotherhood for the missing hooch.
Click here for Wild Man's previous blog.
Post comments for Wild Man below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Spoiled Brats
Listen to me and listen to me well.
The world's worst can more or less be sourced from the upper classes where they are brought up rich, have everything handed to them, and then find some kind of religion or cause by which they can go on a crusade that makes them feel better and allows them to become a hero.
What is the epitome of evil (and listen to me VERY carefully now because this is a gem) IS WHEN THESE PEOPLE PUT THEIR DESIRE AND EGO AHEAD OF THE LIVES OF OTHERS EITHER BY KILLING OTHER PEOPLE OR FORCING THEM TO DO SOMETHING THE EGOMANIAC WANTS THEM TO DO.
Karl Marx was a rich spoiled brat kid of a lawyer.
Lenin a physicist.
Castro the son of a plantation owner.
It is only kids who have everything paid for whose minds get idle and concoct grandiose ideas about what they're going to do with their lives. And it never involves real work. It never involves real production. It invariably involves finding a way to criminalize the current system, so they can heroically "rally" against it, inflating their egos, while silently living off of daddy's dime while they try to bring down the system that puts money in their bank accounts.
Adam Gadahn, though not terribly wealthy, is another perfect example of a idle-minded spoiled brat from the suburbs who was too fat to kiss a girl and instead of making something of himself joined Al Qaeda because it was instant celebrityship, "heroism" and attention/meaning in his worthless meaningless life.
Why is this relevant?
Well not that they're going to try to bomb planes or carry out terrorist attacks, but one group of people I do know have no problems avoiding real jobs and make careers by telling people what kind of lives they're going to live as if they're on a life-long crusade;
Congress.
Tell me, does anybody know one person in congress that paid their own way through college?
The world's worst can more or less be sourced from the upper classes where they are brought up rich, have everything handed to them, and then find some kind of religion or cause by which they can go on a crusade that makes them feel better and allows them to become a hero.
What is the epitome of evil (and listen to me VERY carefully now because this is a gem) IS WHEN THESE PEOPLE PUT THEIR DESIRE AND EGO AHEAD OF THE LIVES OF OTHERS EITHER BY KILLING OTHER PEOPLE OR FORCING THEM TO DO SOMETHING THE EGOMANIAC WANTS THEM TO DO.
Karl Marx was a rich spoiled brat kid of a lawyer.
Lenin a physicist.
Castro the son of a plantation owner.
It is only kids who have everything paid for whose minds get idle and concoct grandiose ideas about what they're going to do with their lives. And it never involves real work. It never involves real production. It invariably involves finding a way to criminalize the current system, so they can heroically "rally" against it, inflating their egos, while silently living off of daddy's dime while they try to bring down the system that puts money in their bank accounts.
Adam Gadahn, though not terribly wealthy, is another perfect example of a idle-minded spoiled brat from the suburbs who was too fat to kiss a girl and instead of making something of himself joined Al Qaeda because it was instant celebrityship, "heroism" and attention/meaning in his worthless meaningless life.
Why is this relevant?
Well not that they're going to try to bomb planes or carry out terrorist attacks, but one group of people I do know have no problems avoiding real jobs and make careers by telling people what kind of lives they're going to live as if they're on a life-long crusade;
Congress.
Tell me, does anybody know one person in congress that paid their own way through college?
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Are You a Good Deficit or a Bad Deficit
See, "good deficits" are those under democrats. "Bad deficits" are those under Republicans, because, well, uhhh, because republicans are nazi poopey heads.
And sadly, that is not a simplification of the argument they use.
ht
And sadly, that is not a simplification of the argument they use.
ht
Book News, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Xmas Antics and More Nonsense From Germany
It's the two-year anniversary of my release, and I've been in Germany for over a week. I just received the best possible Xmas present from my literary agent. His email began: "The good news is that you will be a published writer." Not only has he found a publisher for my jail memoir, the publisher belongs to the biggest publishing company in the world, which is, incidentally, owned by Germans.
With this publisher behind me, I can really rip the roof off Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail system. It also opens the door for the stories of the prisoners I write about. I'd like to do them as seperate books.
My agent said the earliest my jail memoir will be in the bookstores is September.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is up to his usual Xmas antics. He's forcing 8000 inmates in the Maricopa County jail system to listen to Xmas songs all day long for the duration of the holiday season. Arpaio claims to have chosen music from all faiths, and for agnostics he has selected songs by the Chipmunks.
Citing the music as cruel and unusual punishment, inmates have filed six lawsuits against it. A reporter for the Phoenix New Times pointed out that the practice of forcing people to listen to "crappy music" is used by the military for interrogation purposes. "For example, the U.S. military blared Metallica music at detainees in Guantanamo Bay with the intention of breaking them down psychologically."
Yet another pregnant woman has suffered abuse by Arpaio's guards. The woman was arrested while nine months pregnant. She gave birth while shackled to a bed, and wasn't allowed to hold her baby. She was told that if no one came to collect the child within 72 hours, the baby would be turned over to state custody.
Before I get into my adventure in Germany, I'd like to post a quote from Iron Man's latest letter that I found inspirational: "I am glad to hear about the progress you are making on all fronts. Perseverence and single-minded determination will carry the day. Remember that all great battles are won in the general's tent. So stick to your plan, dwell deeply in the present moment, and live life in every breath."
I wrote the nonsense that follows especially for those of you in a cold part of the world this Xmas.
20th December 09
I'm sat next to Kathi on the Deutsche Bahn train back to Halle. We just spent the weekend at her parents' house in a 1075-year-old village in the state of Thüringen, population 5500, where no English people have dared to tread since World War II. The village is in a mountainous region, and the temperature low was minus 18°C. Kathi is wearing five pairs of socks. A sense of feeling is returning to my feet, but I still can't feel my toes.
Kathi is sipping Holunderlikör – a liquor brewed by her friend, Netti, who shares a house in the village with numerous ferrits. Kathi's recommending I take a drink to put some warmth back into my body. Mmmm, it tastes sweet.
Upon arrival, I demanded to take a good look around the village. Venturing out in my Russian hat and thermals, the cold sent my exposed facial skin into shock. It took about ten minutes to lose all feeling in my feet, and a bit longer for my gloved hands to start to go. So we ended up hiding from the cold in the house occupied by Netti and her ferrits, with names such as Maya and Katis, who repeatedly tried to sneak up the inside of my jeans, no doubt aiming to steal that last store of heat between my legs.
Unlike most Germans I've met, Kathi's dad, Eberhard, actually smiles a lot. Her mum, Jördis, cooked some wonderful food. They live in a hundred-year-old building formerly occupied by priests. There is a Catholic church to one side, and a Protestant church to the other whose bell rang every fifteen minutes, including all night long.
Many years ago, one church was occupied by monks and the other by nuns. Village folklore has it that a tunnel running under Kathi's parents' house joins the two. That a nun and a priest, Lioba and Bertram to be precise, used the tunnel to consummate their love until a rival for Lioba, Urban, caught them in the act and stabbed them to death. Fleeing the crime scene, Urban fell off a mountain and perished. And deservedly so. Now the threesome haunt a local forest at midnight, Lioba and Bertram making all kinds of ghostly wails as Urban continues to keep them apart.
Kathi's parents speak only German, so our conversations were mostly translated by Kathi's brother, Jürgen – a 27-year-old computer genius who shows no signs of facial hair and resembles a 15-year-old Bill Gates: a youthful appearance that will undoubtedly come in handy when he's older but is presently preventing him from losing his virginity. The parents took good care of me, ensured my vegetarian needs were catered for, and Eberhard kindly insisted on us venturing out into the white yonder so he could buy Kathi and me additional layers of clothes from the outlet in the neighbouring village.
The evening meal was a dry one. Cheese with big holes in it like you see in cartoons. Brown bread, and I mean dark-brown bread that takes a serious amount of time to chew, real bread, bread for real men, bread liable to put hairs on the chest of a food softie like me. Chewing the bread, meditating on its taste, gave me flashbacks to the brewers yeast tablets I loved as a child. Tablets that no other children liked. The German mouth must be well adapted to this bread, as I was still masticating long after the others had stopped. Almost twice as long. Or perhaps it just felt like that.
The German foodstuffs combined with Karamalz Malzbier (a tasty non-alcoholic malt beer) had a strange and immediate effect on my digestive system. I found myself in the awkward position of having to hold a fart in for the duration of the first meal. The toilet was right next to the dining room, so close to where we were sat in fact that I didn't dare go in to remedy the situation as I feared the fart would be heard. For the entire after-dinner chatting that stretched to over an hour, my ability to clench the muscle between my legs was constantly tested by rising internal pressure. When it got to the point where I actually thought I could feel my midsection inflating, I had to risk slipping some out before I had an accident. Thankfully, it emerged when Eberhard was saying something particulary guttural - as Germans are prone to do - and at a volume that only I perceived.
Last night, I had my first sleep walking experience. Apparently, I got up around 3am and started searching my tiny bed and the floor. When the commotion woke Kathi up on her seperate tiny bed, I demanded the flashlight from her, yanked up my mattress, and illuminated below it.
"What are you doing?" Kathi asked, rubbing her eyes.
"I dropped my email."
"What?"
"I must find my email."
"Are you dreaming?"
"Do you have my email?" I yelled in such a nasty voice Kathi was afraid.
"Shaun, you dream."
On the floor I found a piece of wood the size of an ID card, scrutinized it for a few seconds, turned to Kathi and said, "Is this my email?"
"No, Shaun. It is a little wood."
"Why did you give me this shit!" I yelled in an even nastier voice than earlier. "You have my email!"
"You are dreaming, Shaun. Wake up."
"I must go the toilet."
"Please leave the door open," Kathi said, fearing I'd invade her parents' bedroom on my quest for the email.
Sat on the toilet – Kathi had previously instructed me to never stand and pee into this particular toilet, to sit only, or as she put it: "You pee like that is no nice for my mum. You sit or clean the toilet with your tongue!" – I realised who and where I was. I came back, apologised, and Kathi went and reheated my hot-water bottle.
My behaviour in the night armed Kathi with enough material to regale her family members with the story several times. They all had a good laugh at it, and seemed to overlook that their daughter's boyfriend is starting to show signs of the onset of insanity.
My final meal in the village was a Sunday dinner that stretched my stomach well beyond capacity. We ate potatoes grown in the garden I couldn't see due to all of the snow. They were a golden colour, and served with parsley on them. Absolutely delicious, and a credit to the boiling skills of Jördis. There was a veg medley heavy on peas (my favourite). And veggie burgers Kathi brought from Halle that raised a few eyebrows from the devourers of meatballs and bratwurst. But saying that, I must give them their due: Jürgen and Eberhard did actually try the veggie burgers, and when questioned as to whether they liked them, they nodded in that expressionless way unique to Germans that comes in handy at the poker table.
Anyway, bye for now. I can finally feel my toes again. I'm wondering whether the heater in the carriage or the Holunderlikor got there first.
"The likor has given me warm feets," Kathi just said, resting my mind.
Merry Xmas from Halle, Leipzig (where Xmas begins on the 24th and is the day presents are exchanged)! Thank you for supporting our friends inside! I wish you all a wonderful New Year! With the book coming out, it certainly should be an interesting year for Jon's Jail Journal.
Click here for The Christmas Spirit of Two Tonys
Click here to read about my last Christmas in prison
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com. To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
It's the two-year anniversary of my release, and I've been in Germany for over a week. I just received the best possible Xmas present from my literary agent. His email began: "The good news is that you will be a published writer." Not only has he found a publisher for my jail memoir, the publisher belongs to the biggest publishing company in the world, which is, incidentally, owned by Germans.
With this publisher behind me, I can really rip the roof off Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail system. It also opens the door for the stories of the prisoners I write about. I'd like to do them as seperate books.
My agent said the earliest my jail memoir will be in the bookstores is September.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is up to his usual Xmas antics. He's forcing 8000 inmates in the Maricopa County jail system to listen to Xmas songs all day long for the duration of the holiday season. Arpaio claims to have chosen music from all faiths, and for agnostics he has selected songs by the Chipmunks.
Citing the music as cruel and unusual punishment, inmates have filed six lawsuits against it. A reporter for the Phoenix New Times pointed out that the practice of forcing people to listen to "crappy music" is used by the military for interrogation purposes. "For example, the U.S. military blared Metallica music at detainees in Guantanamo Bay with the intention of breaking them down psychologically."
Yet another pregnant woman has suffered abuse by Arpaio's guards. The woman was arrested while nine months pregnant. She gave birth while shackled to a bed, and wasn't allowed to hold her baby. She was told that if no one came to collect the child within 72 hours, the baby would be turned over to state custody.
Before I get into my adventure in Germany, I'd like to post a quote from Iron Man's latest letter that I found inspirational: "I am glad to hear about the progress you are making on all fronts. Perseverence and single-minded determination will carry the day. Remember that all great battles are won in the general's tent. So stick to your plan, dwell deeply in the present moment, and live life in every breath."
I wrote the nonsense that follows especially for those of you in a cold part of the world this Xmas.
20th December 09
I'm sat next to Kathi on the Deutsche Bahn train back to Halle. We just spent the weekend at her parents' house in a 1075-year-old village in the state of Thüringen, population 5500, where no English people have dared to tread since World War II. The village is in a mountainous region, and the temperature low was minus 18°C. Kathi is wearing five pairs of socks. A sense of feeling is returning to my feet, but I still can't feel my toes.
Kathi is sipping Holunderlikör – a liquor brewed by her friend, Netti, who shares a house in the village with numerous ferrits. Kathi's recommending I take a drink to put some warmth back into my body. Mmmm, it tastes sweet.
Upon arrival, I demanded to take a good look around the village. Venturing out in my Russian hat and thermals, the cold sent my exposed facial skin into shock. It took about ten minutes to lose all feeling in my feet, and a bit longer for my gloved hands to start to go. So we ended up hiding from the cold in the house occupied by Netti and her ferrits, with names such as Maya and Katis, who repeatedly tried to sneak up the inside of my jeans, no doubt aiming to steal that last store of heat between my legs.
Unlike most Germans I've met, Kathi's dad, Eberhard, actually smiles a lot. Her mum, Jördis, cooked some wonderful food. They live in a hundred-year-old building formerly occupied by priests. There is a Catholic church to one side, and a Protestant church to the other whose bell rang every fifteen minutes, including all night long.
Many years ago, one church was occupied by monks and the other by nuns. Village folklore has it that a tunnel running under Kathi's parents' house joins the two. That a nun and a priest, Lioba and Bertram to be precise, used the tunnel to consummate their love until a rival for Lioba, Urban, caught them in the act and stabbed them to death. Fleeing the crime scene, Urban fell off a mountain and perished. And deservedly so. Now the threesome haunt a local forest at midnight, Lioba and Bertram making all kinds of ghostly wails as Urban continues to keep them apart.
Kathi's parents speak only German, so our conversations were mostly translated by Kathi's brother, Jürgen – a 27-year-old computer genius who shows no signs of facial hair and resembles a 15-year-old Bill Gates: a youthful appearance that will undoubtedly come in handy when he's older but is presently preventing him from losing his virginity. The parents took good care of me, ensured my vegetarian needs were catered for, and Eberhard kindly insisted on us venturing out into the white yonder so he could buy Kathi and me additional layers of clothes from the outlet in the neighbouring village.
The evening meal was a dry one. Cheese with big holes in it like you see in cartoons. Brown bread, and I mean dark-brown bread that takes a serious amount of time to chew, real bread, bread for real men, bread liable to put hairs on the chest of a food softie like me. Chewing the bread, meditating on its taste, gave me flashbacks to the brewers yeast tablets I loved as a child. Tablets that no other children liked. The German mouth must be well adapted to this bread, as I was still masticating long after the others had stopped. Almost twice as long. Or perhaps it just felt like that.
The German foodstuffs combined with Karamalz Malzbier (a tasty non-alcoholic malt beer) had a strange and immediate effect on my digestive system. I found myself in the awkward position of having to hold a fart in for the duration of the first meal. The toilet was right next to the dining room, so close to where we were sat in fact that I didn't dare go in to remedy the situation as I feared the fart would be heard. For the entire after-dinner chatting that stretched to over an hour, my ability to clench the muscle between my legs was constantly tested by rising internal pressure. When it got to the point where I actually thought I could feel my midsection inflating, I had to risk slipping some out before I had an accident. Thankfully, it emerged when Eberhard was saying something particulary guttural - as Germans are prone to do - and at a volume that only I perceived.
Last night, I had my first sleep walking experience. Apparently, I got up around 3am and started searching my tiny bed and the floor. When the commotion woke Kathi up on her seperate tiny bed, I demanded the flashlight from her, yanked up my mattress, and illuminated below it.
"What are you doing?" Kathi asked, rubbing her eyes.
"I dropped my email."
"What?"
"I must find my email."
"Are you dreaming?"
"Do you have my email?" I yelled in such a nasty voice Kathi was afraid.
"Shaun, you dream."
On the floor I found a piece of wood the size of an ID card, scrutinized it for a few seconds, turned to Kathi and said, "Is this my email?"
"No, Shaun. It is a little wood."
"Why did you give me this shit!" I yelled in an even nastier voice than earlier. "You have my email!"
"You are dreaming, Shaun. Wake up."
"I must go the toilet."
"Please leave the door open," Kathi said, fearing I'd invade her parents' bedroom on my quest for the email.
Sat on the toilet – Kathi had previously instructed me to never stand and pee into this particular toilet, to sit only, or as she put it: "You pee like that is no nice for my mum. You sit or clean the toilet with your tongue!" – I realised who and where I was. I came back, apologised, and Kathi went and reheated my hot-water bottle.
My behaviour in the night armed Kathi with enough material to regale her family members with the story several times. They all had a good laugh at it, and seemed to overlook that their daughter's boyfriend is starting to show signs of the onset of insanity.
My final meal in the village was a Sunday dinner that stretched my stomach well beyond capacity. We ate potatoes grown in the garden I couldn't see due to all of the snow. They were a golden colour, and served with parsley on them. Absolutely delicious, and a credit to the boiling skills of Jördis. There was a veg medley heavy on peas (my favourite). And veggie burgers Kathi brought from Halle that raised a few eyebrows from the devourers of meatballs and bratwurst. But saying that, I must give them their due: Jürgen and Eberhard did actually try the veggie burgers, and when questioned as to whether they liked them, they nodded in that expressionless way unique to Germans that comes in handy at the poker table.
Anyway, bye for now. I can finally feel my toes again. I'm wondering whether the heater in the carriage or the Holunderlikor got there first.
"The likor has given me warm feets," Kathi just said, resting my mind.
Merry Xmas from Halle, Leipzig (where Xmas begins on the 24th and is the day presents are exchanged)! Thank you for supporting our friends inside! I wish you all a wonderful New Year! With the book coming out, it certainly should be an interesting year for Jon's Jail Journal.
Click here for The Christmas Spirit of Two Tonys
Click here to read about my last Christmas in prison
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com. To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Why Avatar is a Netflix Movie
Tea Party goers
People who bitch about socialism taking over the US
and in general those who would like to see the US in its former 1940's greatness should put their money where their mouths are and not see this movie.
I was immediately skeptical of the movie when I saw obviously "Americanized" forces landing on a "undisrupted, virgin" land to take over "people who didn't look like us humans."
Sure enough Avatar is nothing more than a political statement.
Oh, sure, glitzed up with lots of special effects, but my economic spidey senses were tingling and I deep down inside knew this was going to be some kind of lecturing speech about either evil Europeans invading America in the 1500's or some kind of "Gaia" Earthy, feeling, enviro kind of thing.
Rumor has it is the "hero" is a Marine who decides to defect and some "planet nature force" helps the natives win against an obviously superior technological force. I really don't care to back this speculation up because I'm going to go out on a "crazy" limb here and take it for truth until I'm proven wrong, kind of like straddling a Texas Hold 'Em bet in that I'm supremely confident these rumors will be proven true because that's just the slant of Hollywood, and of course if I'm proven wrong, please let me know and I will take down this post. Until then, I'm going to take a wild guess and predict this Hollywood movie is going to prove my cynicism right.
Regardless, so for all you people who are all upset about socialized medicine being passed you have a choice.
Continue to throw your money at this political/propoganda machine or for once, truly boycott something that is nothing more than leftist propoganda.
I have a nice LCD projector with no children, no lines and no parking hassles in my basement. I fully intend on watching it at my house, Rumpleminze in hand, knowing I've denied these leftists sales and attendance...not to mention who in God's name actually enjoys going to the theater nowadays?
PS- I will be burning lots of wood to counter the fact I did not emit carbon driving to the theater so as to continue my contribution to global warming.
People who bitch about socialism taking over the US
and in general those who would like to see the US in its former 1940's greatness should put their money where their mouths are and not see this movie.
I was immediately skeptical of the movie when I saw obviously "Americanized" forces landing on a "undisrupted, virgin" land to take over "people who didn't look like us humans."
Sure enough Avatar is nothing more than a political statement.
Oh, sure, glitzed up with lots of special effects, but my economic spidey senses were tingling and I deep down inside knew this was going to be some kind of lecturing speech about either evil Europeans invading America in the 1500's or some kind of "Gaia" Earthy, feeling, enviro kind of thing.
Rumor has it is the "hero" is a Marine who decides to defect and some "planet nature force" helps the natives win against an obviously superior technological force. I really don't care to back this speculation up because I'm going to go out on a "crazy" limb here and take it for truth until I'm proven wrong, kind of like straddling a Texas Hold 'Em bet in that I'm supremely confident these rumors will be proven true because that's just the slant of Hollywood, and of course if I'm proven wrong, please let me know and I will take down this post. Until then, I'm going to take a wild guess and predict this Hollywood movie is going to prove my cynicism right.
Regardless, so for all you people who are all upset about socialized medicine being passed you have a choice.
Continue to throw your money at this political/propoganda machine or for once, truly boycott something that is nothing more than leftist propoganda.
I have a nice LCD projector with no children, no lines and no parking hassles in my basement. I fully intend on watching it at my house, Rumpleminze in hand, knowing I've denied these leftists sales and attendance...not to mention who in God's name actually enjoys going to the theater nowadays?
PS- I will be burning lots of wood to counter the fact I did not emit carbon driving to the theater so as to continue my contribution to global warming.
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Joe Arpaio Jail Experience (by Guest Blogger Michael)
Click here for CCTV footage of an Aryan Brother slaying an inmate who’d crossed the white prison gang at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail.
Click here for more on Tent City by Pearl Wilson whose son was murdered there by the Aryan Brotherhood.
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com. To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Michael served in the United States Marine Corps for four years, and then went through the San Diego Police Academy.
This is just a tale of a 24-hour stint. Luckily for me the prosecution lacked intelligent organization and I had one of the state’s best attorneys, Jeffrey Mehrens.
First off, I was arrested in my front yard for drunk driving. The police report was one big construed lie from the initial arrest, and then, after I lost my cool, and called the arresting officer a "candy ass," and said that he was too fat to be a cop, I ended up at the Madison Street jail, lost in the system
First off, I was arrested in my front yard for drunk driving. The police report was one big construed lie from the initial arrest, and then, after I lost my cool, and called the arresting officer a "candy ass," and said that he was too fat to be a cop, I ended up at the Madison Street jail, lost in the system
It took thirteen hours to process me. I was bounced to twelve different cells. From extreme cold to heat. From sitting room to standing room only.
Then there was a bus ride over to the tent side. From the tent side, it took about four hours of more processing. I was transferred to two cells and to finally make it to Tent City at 3am. The temperature was about 47 to 43 degrees for the three and half hour stay. They gave us one sheet, because they were out and we literally froze our asses off. The tents were well equipped with the Arpaio vending machines - use at your own risk of course - and a restroom facility that was soaked in urine. There was a hill, and for some reason the female guard had to say, “Get off the hill! It is not a hang out!” for what seemed like ever half hour.
As The sun was coming up, they transferred us to Lower Buckeye jail with a nice little nature walk. I was inserted into the we-are-kicking-you-out-of-Tent-City process. Here we - a team of six of us that traveled the entire process and for the most part landed in the same cells - eventually made it out, after being put in four more cells, with again only standing room or sitting room depending on the cell.
We received one meal and no drinks. Two pieces of bread, a chunk of sandwich meet, some cookies and a fruit that wasn’t even close to being ripe. The water was broken in one of our cells that we ended up staying in for four hours in, however the hot water worked, but again it was too hot! I had one thin sheet for 45 degree weather.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies for the most part were rejects of the military, for they all lacked social skills and humane manners with the exception of one female that I encountered.
· I paid good money for that tour, $500 to be exact, and saw how living conditions in the United States could be so inhumane. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has made it clear that the only way to educate our society is through negative reinforcement.
On another note, this is big business for Arizona. Take for example, there were two teams that went in, the 8am and 10am teams with a combined number of eleven people. I estimate that the jail received $20,900 in a one day period for us eleven, and on the weekends you can quadruple that amount, let's say $83,600. So, the DUI revenue [revenue from drunk drivers] for the Arpaio Jail Experience is about $271,700 dollars for one week, or $14,128,400 a year roughly!
$14 million for one year plus all the mandotary interlock devices and the large sums of money these companies make. Perhaps these companies are owned by one larger company? Does Arpaio own stock in them, or is he a private partner that is rewarded?
So, my final word regarding the Arpaio Jail Experience: is it really a wonder that there are DUI check points all over our city, and almost every vehicle after midnight is tagged a potential DUI? I have had five friends in five months get a DUI this year. There are billboards all over the city, of drinking advertisements, yet there is no positive transportation assistance to help prevent the DUI experience, none that are reasonable in price that I am aware of.
My wishes go out to all of those that are stuck in the cycle of this corrupt system of illegitimate punishment, to all those who are not fortunate to have attorneys or any insight in representation and civil rights—for you truly suffer from this system of deception.
I spent time in jails around the country for raising a little hell, and I must say Arizona is the worst system! If you want a fair trial, I bid you luck!
Click here for more on Tent City by Pearl Wilson whose son was murdered there by the Aryan Brotherhood.
Shaun P. Attwood
Philosophy Degrees Are Worthless
The sad truth is that majoring in philosophy is like paying some aging baby boomer professor $4,000 a quarter to tell you to read Plato.
This is a much cheaper alternative.
This is a much cheaper alternative.
Maybe Google is Capitalist After All
Effing brilliant.
What I love though is how they make it seem that Google "avoided" paying a British tax bill.
No, Google looked at corporate tax rates in the EU and said, "To hell with all you high-tax socialist places, we're going to Ireland where it's 12.5%." Google set up its subsidiary in Ireland and "avoided, schemed, side-stepped" nothing.
Google PAID the Irish government its taxes. It never owe or was behooved to Britain for anything.
Welcome to "capital flight." The leftist's worst nightmare.
What I love though is how they make it seem that Google "avoided" paying a British tax bill.
No, Google looked at corporate tax rates in the EU and said, "To hell with all you high-tax socialist places, we're going to Ireland where it's 12.5%." Google set up its subsidiary in Ireland and "avoided, schemed, side-stepped" nothing.
Google PAID the Irish government its taxes. It never owe or was behooved to Britain for anything.
Welcome to "capital flight." The leftist's worst nightmare.
China's Largest Mall
Not that you'd watch the whole thing, but
1. imagine all the carbon they emitted building this.
2. Did they do the "appropriate" environmental impact study on this?
1. imagine all the carbon they emitted building this.
2. Did they do the "appropriate" environmental impact study on this?
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Haiti - The Model of Socialism
Hey, but at least they had good intentions.
Right? Because that's all that matters, right?
I mean, forget whether it works or not. It's just that a bunch of rich spoiled brats in the west who never worked a real job in their lives "meant" to do good and that's all that matters.
Right?
You leftists mock and ridicule capitalists and free marketers all you want. In the end capitalism has done more to eliminate poverty than any government program. But of course, it's never been about ending poverty with you people, now has it? It's been about making you feel good and finding you a cushy job at a non-profit so you can feign like you care and can fake like you actually are doing something of worth in this world, just as long as you can avoid having a real job and avoid doing real work.
Right? Because that's all that matters, right?
I mean, forget whether it works or not. It's just that a bunch of rich spoiled brats in the west who never worked a real job in their lives "meant" to do good and that's all that matters.
Right?
You leftists mock and ridicule capitalists and free marketers all you want. In the end capitalism has done more to eliminate poverty than any government program. But of course, it's never been about ending poverty with you people, now has it? It's been about making you feel good and finding you a cushy job at a non-profit so you can feign like you care and can fake like you actually are doing something of worth in this world, just as long as you can avoid having a real job and avoid doing real work.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Warrior - Serving fourteen years for kidnapping and aggravated assault. Half Hispanic and Scottish-Irish with family still in Mexico. Brought up by a family steeped in drug commerce. He writes some of the best prison-fight stories on the Internet.
Shaun,
Ello my brotha from anotha motha. How you doing today? I hope the week is treating you and your loved ones well.
Dude, I'm so excited for you and the book! I can't wait to see it in print! Believe me, I'm gonna pre-order my copy! Imagine if it gets turned into a movie! I believe it's going to happen for you. You have that drive and passion, two key ingredients in the law of attraction that brings forth that which you seek: success. Believe me when I tell you that momentum in what you're doing is going to pick up and start moving fast for you. I feel it, and my feelings are rarely off - having dodged several prison shankings [stabbings] as proof. A little prison humor there. I'm rooting for ya 100% and sending positive vibes your way.
On CNN today there was a segment on a guy who was in prison, read a lot, learned to write, and turned his life around through his published poetry. He had two books published and is on his third. Dude, your writing blows this guy's out of the water. I immediately thought of you and took what I viewed as a sign that it's your time. It's your time to shine, bro.
I'm glad that Two Tonys is OK. I recently received word from someone that came from his direction. He's not looking too good physically, however, as always, his spirit is strong. I haven't seen anyone else over here that knows you. T-Bone was the last one.
I was pretty impressed to hear about the event at the Royal Festival Hall you did. Dude, arts for prisoners in America, yeah, when hell freezes over. America's definition of 'prison arts' is creating the worst prison facility and titling it rehabilitation. Concentration camps for the 21st Century.
I've read a little about incarceration in other countries. Some countries have embraced the idea, recognizing that incarcerated people will be out again in society. The U.K. seems to embrace this philosophy. It also seems the U.K. has a well functioning court system that's not congested with ambiguous laws like in the U.S.
I bet it was a little surreal for you to hear that female prisoner cry and feel a sense of accomplishment over being an arts curator. I would have been thinking how only a short time ago I was in her shoes - locked up.
You're doing great things, bro, and I find it motivating. Very motivating. I've been here 9 years, and you are one of only a handful of people from here I've seen succeed. I think I can count them all on one hand. Sad really, as there should be more trying to succeed.You've set the bar very high. I appreciate that. Success like emotion is also contagious.
As for the property officer, she wouldn't let me have the two books you sent me. They were considered contraband because they didn't have receipts with them.
Lately, this place has been doing outrageous things. With the holidays added, frustration is common. So I'm laying low, but not laying down and getting screwed. Thank you for the card by the way. I would have sent one sooner, but we've had freakin cell searches all week. Damn, I hate searches.
L & R
In the Xmas card, Warrior wrote:
May all the best come to us this New Year. Thank you for all the guidance with my writing. Most importantly, thank you for exemplifying that life, a good life even, is possible after prison. I shall follow the footsteps of success that you have left for those of us aware enough to perceive them.
Our friends inside appreciate your comments.Post comments and questions for Warrior below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com. To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
This Chart Deserves More Attention
Natasha, as you know came out with a calendar and if you have not ordered it, I recommend you do so (shoot me at e-mail at CAPTcapitalism@yahoo.com).
Sadly we did not reach the 1 million sales mark, even though she is obviously deserving more along the lines of 10 millions in sales.
However, even more deserving than that is this chart right here, which I am now ordering you to forward to people because it is that important of a chart. Forward it to Glenn Beck, forward it to Rush Limbaugh, forward it to liberals who just plain don't get it, but forward it because it is very important.
What this chart shows you is America's economic production over time. It is the rolling 20 year average of RGDP growth and the reason it is a rolling 20 year average is because GDP growth is very volatile and no discernible trend can be seen with the naked eye. However, when you average it out over generations you see essentially a HALVING of our ability to produce.
The ramifications of this are so severe that I am literally stunned so little commentary was made about this and it got such little traffic, thus behooving my re-posting this chart with a little eye candy and basically a direct order you forward this.
1. The obvious fact our ability to enrich ourselves has been halved should be of immediate shock-and-ponder value. This chart alone should trigger people across all political spectrums to ask "Why is this happening" because if it keeps going you can expect the country to not just plateau, but decline. This means we will suffer a decline in our standards of living per capita over the long term.
2. This speaks volumes about the future of Obama-Ponies-and-Puppies-for-All government entitlement programs. Where, precisely, is the economic production going to come from to fund these government programs that are growing faster than the economy. There will come a point that ALL economic production will go to finance medicare and social security, not to mention the debt servicing of our national debt.
3. Pensions? 401k's? IRA's? I dated a rather rich girl one time. She got her job due to her grand-daddy and by no intellectual merit or skill on her own. She make insane amount of coin, kept getting promoted and had banked more money in her 401k plan than I could ever hope to dream. Well the jokes on you guys who have been banking on your pensions and 401k plans. Unless they're invested in gold or foreign countries or something where economic growth is actually occurring, you can expect your pensions to go unfunded when you need to retire. Who knows, by that time rolling RGDP growth will be 0% and you'll then really start to ask about the methods of discounted cash flow to value stocks.
4. Can we please lower the freaking taxes already? You want to spurn economic growth and all you can do is think about spending more government money? Where do you think the real production in this economy comes from? ACORN employees? Government funded art projects? Rebuilding roads that needed to repairing?
5. Can we also please knock it off with the worthless liberal arts degrees and start channelling our children into studies that actually produce stuff? What ever happened to that big push into the sciences back in the 1950's to keep up with the Ruskies? You want to have a nice nursing home? Well too bad, you let your kid major in "art history" on the grounds that "we don't interrupt, we're hands off parents, whatever our child thinks is gold" and now he can't even afford the rent on his coffee barrista income let alone the gas to come pay you a visit because he's taxed at a 60% rate on a dwindling $27,000 per year income.
Sorry, sorry. I have to keep telling myself, I don't control this. I can't get excited about this. There's nothing I can do when the masses are so ignorant. All I can do is play video games, drink heavily and listen to some Lawrence Welk.
Sadly we did not reach the 1 million sales mark, even though she is obviously deserving more along the lines of 10 millions in sales.
However, even more deserving than that is this chart right here, which I am now ordering you to forward to people because it is that important of a chart. Forward it to Glenn Beck, forward it to Rush Limbaugh, forward it to liberals who just plain don't get it, but forward it because it is very important.
What this chart shows you is America's economic production over time. It is the rolling 20 year average of RGDP growth and the reason it is a rolling 20 year average is because GDP growth is very volatile and no discernible trend can be seen with the naked eye. However, when you average it out over generations you see essentially a HALVING of our ability to produce.
The ramifications of this are so severe that I am literally stunned so little commentary was made about this and it got such little traffic, thus behooving my re-posting this chart with a little eye candy and basically a direct order you forward this.
1. The obvious fact our ability to enrich ourselves has been halved should be of immediate shock-and-ponder value. This chart alone should trigger people across all political spectrums to ask "Why is this happening" because if it keeps going you can expect the country to not just plateau, but decline. This means we will suffer a decline in our standards of living per capita over the long term.
2. This speaks volumes about the future of Obama-Ponies-and-Puppies-for-All government entitlement programs. Where, precisely, is the economic production going to come from to fund these government programs that are growing faster than the economy. There will come a point that ALL economic production will go to finance medicare and social security, not to mention the debt servicing of our national debt.
3. Pensions? 401k's? IRA's? I dated a rather rich girl one time. She got her job due to her grand-daddy and by no intellectual merit or skill on her own. She make insane amount of coin, kept getting promoted and had banked more money in her 401k plan than I could ever hope to dream. Well the jokes on you guys who have been banking on your pensions and 401k plans. Unless they're invested in gold or foreign countries or something where economic growth is actually occurring, you can expect your pensions to go unfunded when you need to retire. Who knows, by that time rolling RGDP growth will be 0% and you'll then really start to ask about the methods of discounted cash flow to value stocks.
4. Can we please lower the freaking taxes already? You want to spurn economic growth and all you can do is think about spending more government money? Where do you think the real production in this economy comes from? ACORN employees? Government funded art projects? Rebuilding roads that needed to repairing?
5. Can we also please knock it off with the worthless liberal arts degrees and start channelling our children into studies that actually produce stuff? What ever happened to that big push into the sciences back in the 1950's to keep up with the Ruskies? You want to have a nice nursing home? Well too bad, you let your kid major in "art history" on the grounds that "we don't interrupt, we're hands off parents, whatever our child thinks is gold" and now he can't even afford the rent on his coffee barrista income let alone the gas to come pay you a visit because he's taxed at a 60% rate on a dwindling $27,000 per year income.
Sorry, sorry. I have to keep telling myself, I don't control this. I can't get excited about this. There's nothing I can do when the masses are so ignorant. All I can do is play video games, drink heavily and listen to some Lawrence Welk.
Mean Duration of Unemployment
Wow 
Not your average recession now is it?
Glad the stimulus is working though. Good thing we didn't have to resort to lowering corporate or personal income taxes. I mean that would have made things "worse" right?
And boy, look at all those green jobs that are saving the economy! I'm sure glad we have that HUGE "green industry" providing us all those green jobs. All the green money that is being yielded from that green industry.
*end sarcasm*
*end sarcasm*
I know, I know, it's like urinating into a hurricane.
I'm going to go back to my bachelor basement, stoke up the wood burning stove, play some Left 4 Dead, and enjoy some Rumpleminze all while blasting some James Brown on the stereo system. Because what? Like there's something I can do about this?
Mathematics By the Captain
OK Captain Capitalismites!
Time for that fun game we all love to play:
"WHO CAN DO THE MATH!!!!"
What math problem do we see here that explains why this kid is more or less condemned to end up where daddy is?
Time for that fun game we all love to play:
"WHO CAN DO THE MATH!!!!"
What math problem do we see here that explains why this kid is more or less condemned to end up where daddy is?
How Does Greenpeace Like It?
It angered me to no end when Greenpeace had a couple of their zealots scale Mount Rushmore and unfurl a banner begging Obama to do something about global warming. It angered me because Mount Rushmore is one of the few places I would deem "holy" or "sacrosanct" in my world in that I'm not religious.
But how now brown cow?
But how now brown cow?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Pension Tsunami
A very very bad site, because it is so good and you'll waste a lot of hours just looking through it, is Pension Tsunami.
Friend recommended it to me and I won't lie;
It's great reading about all the California municipalities and counties who did absolutely NO actuarial study about just how much their pensions would cost. And not just California, but just people, counties, municipalities etc., of other states who promised themselves the world and are now facing a bankrupt pension.
Call it economic Schadenfreude, it's comeuppance for those who refused to be financially literate.
Friend recommended it to me and I won't lie;
It's great reading about all the California municipalities and counties who did absolutely NO actuarial study about just how much their pensions would cost. And not just California, but just people, counties, municipalities etc., of other states who promised themselves the world and are now facing a bankrupt pension.
Call it economic Schadenfreude, it's comeuppance for those who refused to be financially literate.
Why China Will Dominate Over the US
I love stories like this in that THIS was what the US USED TO DO.
We'd just do it.
Hoover Dam.
Horseshoe Dam.
The Interstate system.
You name it.
We wanted to build it, and BAAMM!!! There it was!
But now, good luck trying to even get windmills up with all the environmental regulations, not to mention protests by groups like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. Heck, Minnesota is just trying to get a much needed bridge across the St. Croix. A whopping 1/2 mile long and the Sierra Club has held it up for the past 10 years forcing everybody in the eastern metro to wait cumulatively decades worth of human time in traffic. We can't even get a 1/2 mile bridge up, while the Chinese in a paleo-American way "just do it" with a bridge 60 times as long!
Ah, and you wonder why economic growth is decreasing over time.
We'd just do it.
Hoover Dam.
Horseshoe Dam.
The Interstate system.
You name it.
We wanted to build it, and BAAMM!!! There it was!
But now, good luck trying to even get windmills up with all the environmental regulations, not to mention protests by groups like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. Heck, Minnesota is just trying to get a much needed bridge across the St. Croix. A whopping 1/2 mile long and the Sierra Club has held it up for the past 10 years forcing everybody in the eastern metro to wait cumulatively decades worth of human time in traffic. We can't even get a 1/2 mile bridge up, while the Chinese in a paleo-American way "just do it" with a bridge 60 times as long!
Ah, and you wonder why economic growth is decreasing over time.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Link the Dollar's Value to this College Class List
In Garage Logic, a popular radio show here in the Twin Cities, the host Joe Soucheray likes to link things to one another. It is a sociological version of "for every force there is an equal and opposite force." Therefore one thing will inevitably affect the other.
However, in economics, just like a car engine starting, there are many different individual actions and movements of car parts that occur between turning the key on and the engine actually igniting. So to the layperson, they may not understand why increasing property taxes may turn Minneapolis into a cold Detroit because they don't understand how higher property taxes, lower property values, lower profits and drive capital and labor away.
So I shall test all you junior, deputy and aspiring economics. Link this:
to the value of the dollar.
Many thanks to Elizabeth for the link!
However, in economics, just like a car engine starting, there are many different individual actions and movements of car parts that occur between turning the key on and the engine actually igniting. So to the layperson, they may not understand why increasing property taxes may turn Minneapolis into a cold Detroit because they don't understand how higher property taxes, lower property values, lower profits and drive capital and labor away.
So I shall test all you junior, deputy and aspiring economics. Link this:
to the value of the dollar.
Many thanks to Elizabeth for the link!
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Tent City (Part 8 by Guest Blogger Daniel Horne)
Daniel Horne spent almost a year in Tent City. He is a business executive, husband, and father of two. Following a car accident, Daniel was not charged with drunk driving, but with aggravated assault – in Arizona’s legal system a car can be classified as a weapon you assault someone with. He is the author of the book, Accidental Felons and blog.
I spoke to one of the third shift guards when a bunk in Tent 57 became available. It wasn’t a problem for me to move. Staying with my odd luck of always getting an end bunk, the bunk I moved to in Tent 57 was exceptional. It faced the east, so I didn’t get the stifling afternoon sun. It was also away from the roads, traffic, and, most of all, the loudspeakers. It was my best move yet. I wasn’t in Work Release a month, and I was already living in the best tent in the yard. Life was improving.
Ted, William, and I stood by the entrance to the tent and were talking the morning after I moved in to the bunk next to them. It was almost seven o’clock and time to walk toward the gate, but all of us were exhausted and we were not in a hurry this morning. A group of new DO recruits were coming toward us outside the dog run on their morning jog. Dressed in white T-shirts, black shorts, black tennis shoes, and white socks, they looked like twenty clones approaching. The cadence of the drill sergeant was the next thing we heard as he called out to his troops, “Say good morning to the convicts, DOs.”
“Good morning, convicts!” all twenty of them shouted in unison to the three of us as they passed.
“What did you say?” the sergeant asked with a loud bark.
“Good morning, convicts!” the troops shouted at the top of their lungs, making sure everyone on the yard heard their greeting.
“What a joke,” Ted said. “These men pretend they’re soldiers, and look at them. Most of them are so fat they can barely run. I don’t know what to call a fat, lazy, twenty-five year old wanna be a man. There weren’t that many of them around when I was in my twenties.”
“Yeah,” William said, “They’re a funny sight. And they think they’re such tough guys, too.”
“Luckily for them, there aren’t many tough guys in this place,” I said with a laugh. “They’d be up shit’s creek if there were.”
“Come on, men. I see Mertlow going to the gate,” Ted said.
The three of us began the walk up the forty yards between the rows of tents, the gravel crunching beneath our shoes. A porta-potty door slammed to my right, catching my attention. There was a group of six porta-potties over in the Work-Furlough-yard and three at the front gate. That made ten in all.
“Ten toilets for five hundred prisoners,” I said. “I sure hope they dump these things every day, or it’s going to stink to high heaven in here.”
“Actually, they’re scheduled to be cleaned every two days,” Ted said. “I read the label on the inside.”
“Holidays ought to be interesting,” William said, as we stood on the fringe of the group of men gathered about the gate waiting for names to be called.
Ted had discovered the details of the porta-potty mystery. An inspector from the Health Department had spent ten days in jail for a DUI on the female side of the yard. She had been released and promptly came back with an order condemning the toilet facilities. The women were moved to Estrella Jail, and the women’s side of the yard was opened to male access for construction. Word was, that as bad and disgusting as the men’s facilities were, the women’s side was worse. The filth of the jail wasn’t exactly news to anyone living in Maricopa County, so the press was dutifully disinterested.
Click here for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City Part 7
Click here for details of Daniel’s website and book
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Daniel Horne spent almost a year in Tent City. He is a business executive, husband, and father of two. Following a car accident, Daniel was not charged with drunk driving, but with aggravated assault – in Arizona’s legal system a car can be classified as a weapon you assault someone with. He is the author of the book, Accidental Felons and blog.
I spoke to one of the third shift guards when a bunk in Tent 57 became available. It wasn’t a problem for me to move. Staying with my odd luck of always getting an end bunk, the bunk I moved to in Tent 57 was exceptional. It faced the east, so I didn’t get the stifling afternoon sun. It was also away from the roads, traffic, and, most of all, the loudspeakers. It was my best move yet. I wasn’t in Work Release a month, and I was already living in the best tent in the yard. Life was improving.
Ted, William, and I stood by the entrance to the tent and were talking the morning after I moved in to the bunk next to them. It was almost seven o’clock and time to walk toward the gate, but all of us were exhausted and we were not in a hurry this morning. A group of new DO recruits were coming toward us outside the dog run on their morning jog. Dressed in white T-shirts, black shorts, black tennis shoes, and white socks, they looked like twenty clones approaching. The cadence of the drill sergeant was the next thing we heard as he called out to his troops, “Say good morning to the convicts, DOs.”
“Good morning, convicts!” all twenty of them shouted in unison to the three of us as they passed.
“What did you say?” the sergeant asked with a loud bark.
“Good morning, convicts!” the troops shouted at the top of their lungs, making sure everyone on the yard heard their greeting.
“What a joke,” Ted said. “These men pretend they’re soldiers, and look at them. Most of them are so fat they can barely run. I don’t know what to call a fat, lazy, twenty-five year old wanna be a man. There weren’t that many of them around when I was in my twenties.”
“Yeah,” William said, “They’re a funny sight. And they think they’re such tough guys, too.”
“Luckily for them, there aren’t many tough guys in this place,” I said with a laugh. “They’d be up shit’s creek if there were.”
“Come on, men. I see Mertlow going to the gate,” Ted said.
The three of us began the walk up the forty yards between the rows of tents, the gravel crunching beneath our shoes. A porta-potty door slammed to my right, catching my attention. There was a group of six porta-potties over in the Work-Furlough-yard and three at the front gate. That made ten in all.
“Ten toilets for five hundred prisoners,” I said. “I sure hope they dump these things every day, or it’s going to stink to high heaven in here.”
“Actually, they’re scheduled to be cleaned every two days,” Ted said. “I read the label on the inside.”
“Holidays ought to be interesting,” William said, as we stood on the fringe of the group of men gathered about the gate waiting for names to be called.
Ted had discovered the details of the porta-potty mystery. An inspector from the Health Department had spent ten days in jail for a DUI on the female side of the yard. She had been released and promptly came back with an order condemning the toilet facilities. The women were moved to Estrella Jail, and the women’s side of the yard was opened to male access for construction. Word was, that as bad and disgusting as the men’s facilities were, the women’s side was worse. The filth of the jail wasn’t exactly news to anyone living in Maricopa County, so the press was dutifully disinterested.
Click here for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City Part 7
Click here for details of Daniel’s website and book
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Monday, December 14, 2009
GDP Growth vs. Government Spending
GDP growth is chaotic.
Therefore to see if there's any kind of trend you need to average it out over longer periods of time. I did this on a 10 and 20 year trailing average, where I simply took the past 10 and 20 years worth of economic growth and averaged it out into a "rolling average."
I like to call this figure, especially the 20 year rolling average RGDP growth, "Generational RGDP Growth" because the 20 years spans a generation, economic booms and busts included, and shows their overall economic productive capacity over those years.
Now what I'm going to do is very simple, because that's what economics is. It's very simple (plus i don't want to confuse any leftists and socialists).
I took Generational RGDP growth and compared it to government spending (state and federal) as a percent of GDP. And wonders upon wonder, guess what? The relationship is inverted.
What this means is that as government spending has gone up, economic growth has gone down.
This simple chart has many economic ramifications, most of my readers already intuitively understand. But, for those of you who vote for your presidents based on their pecs, let me spell it out for you.
1. This is why the stimulus and by large Keynesian economics won't work. Understand the government DOES NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING. It does NOT PRODUCE WEALTH. It doesn't make X-Boxes. It doesn't make food. It merely TRANSFERS WEALTH FROM ONE GROUP OF PEOPLE TO ANOTHER. Now there are some genuine services that the government provides that helps society and does show up on GDP. BUT STIMULUS MONEY TO ART INSTITUTES, ACADEMIA AND WHATEVER OTHER FLOWERS AND PUPPIES POPPYCOCK HAVE YOU DOES NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING. The reason why is that even if an Obama-fanatic sculptor produces a worthless and sinfully ugly government piece of art for the local building, the money used to pay him came from somebody else, ergo a net production increase of ZERO.
2. The government is less efficient than the private sector.
Do you want growth?
Do you want jobs?
Do you want food on the table?
Then you better let the people have the majority of the money and not put it into the government. History has shown you this via this chart. Your eyes are not deceiving you. Look at the chart again. And no, I'm not Michael Mann or Phil Jones. The data has not been tainted and comes directly from the FRED Database at the St. Louis Fed. You can recreate this very same chart on your own, whereas I cannot recreate the hockey stick chart, so if you believe in global warming, you better damn well believe this chart.
3. No, majoring in sociology or planning on becoming a government worker will not help this situation.
See, I know what a lot of you are thinking. "I want to help people because it sounds like an easier job than engineering...errr....I mean, because I am noble and moral. Ergo I will go and work for the government as a social worker, a professor or run for public office."
The problem is none of these jobs PRODUCE ANYTHING THE POPULATION NEEDS NOR REALLY WANTS. And as a higher and higher percentage of the population goes and majors in worthless subjects in the hopes of a cushy job that doesn't produce anything, but merely transfers wealth, you can expect GDP to drop further.
4. If growth keeps dropping, then where precisely are you people going to come up with the money to pay for...
social security
medicare
nationalized health care
the Obama-corps
the stimulus
education
government financed day care
not to mention the extra money we'll need to pay back the national debt?
You see, the governments combined (state, local and federal) already spend about 45% of GDP, leaving only 55% left to be taxed (difference in revenue vs. spending duly noted), how much more do you think the economy will take before people just stop working altogether?
Is everybody supposed to work in government?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the I-Pod you want?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the Wii you want?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the computer networking system so you can e-mail your friends, let alone put the food on your table?
Or are we supposed to be like the Pelosi's, the Bush's and the Gore's. Generation after generation of losers who never worked a real job in the private sector?
Of course, I know all of my regular readers understand this. My regular readers get this simple logic. Not to mention before they form opinions, they get the facts first. Not form opinions and then find facts.
But good lord, to the 60% of the population who voted for Obama, when does reality sink in? What does it take to get you people to grow the hell up, drop it with your naive, college-age thinking and idealism, and intellectually and honestly admit you have no FREAKING clue how the real world and economy works. LET ALONE take the time to study the federal effing budget and do some simple mathematical calculations much like you would your own personal finances to see if any of this socialism BS is even affordable, let alone feasible. Let alone (and this group really confuses me) for those of you with children, start to stop and really think about what you're doing to your childrens' financial future? When do you wake up?
Alas, what can I do aside from make a record of it here on this blog so that a thousand years from now historians will look back and say, "Wow, look how insane the population was. There was this one guy over here that saw it coming, but the rest of them were all doped up on REality TV, Obama's pecks, bread and circuses, they couldn't even understand how everybody working as a social worker and nobody farming the fields would result in a collapse of society!"
I'll be long dead by that time, and I'm supremely confident I'll be proven right, but in the meantime, good lord, why would anybody invest in America?
Therefore to see if there's any kind of trend you need to average it out over longer periods of time. I did this on a 10 and 20 year trailing average, where I simply took the past 10 and 20 years worth of economic growth and averaged it out into a "rolling average."
I like to call this figure, especially the 20 year rolling average RGDP growth, "Generational RGDP Growth" because the 20 years spans a generation, economic booms and busts included, and shows their overall economic productive capacity over those years.
Now what I'm going to do is very simple, because that's what economics is. It's very simple (plus i don't want to confuse any leftists and socialists).
I took Generational RGDP growth and compared it to government spending (state and federal) as a percent of GDP. And wonders upon wonder, guess what? The relationship is inverted.
What this means is that as government spending has gone up, economic growth has gone down.
This simple chart has many economic ramifications, most of my readers already intuitively understand. But, for those of you who vote for your presidents based on their pecs, let me spell it out for you.
1. This is why the stimulus and by large Keynesian economics won't work. Understand the government DOES NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING. It does NOT PRODUCE WEALTH. It doesn't make X-Boxes. It doesn't make food. It merely TRANSFERS WEALTH FROM ONE GROUP OF PEOPLE TO ANOTHER. Now there are some genuine services that the government provides that helps society and does show up on GDP. BUT STIMULUS MONEY TO ART INSTITUTES, ACADEMIA AND WHATEVER OTHER FLOWERS AND PUPPIES POPPYCOCK HAVE YOU DOES NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING. The reason why is that even if an Obama-fanatic sculptor produces a worthless and sinfully ugly government piece of art for the local building, the money used to pay him came from somebody else, ergo a net production increase of ZERO.
2. The government is less efficient than the private sector.
Do you want growth?
Do you want jobs?
Do you want food on the table?
Then you better let the people have the majority of the money and not put it into the government. History has shown you this via this chart. Your eyes are not deceiving you. Look at the chart again. And no, I'm not Michael Mann or Phil Jones. The data has not been tainted and comes directly from the FRED Database at the St. Louis Fed. You can recreate this very same chart on your own, whereas I cannot recreate the hockey stick chart, so if you believe in global warming, you better damn well believe this chart.
3. No, majoring in sociology or planning on becoming a government worker will not help this situation.
See, I know what a lot of you are thinking. "I want to help people because it sounds like an easier job than engineering...errr....I mean, because I am noble and moral. Ergo I will go and work for the government as a social worker, a professor or run for public office."
The problem is none of these jobs PRODUCE ANYTHING THE POPULATION NEEDS NOR REALLY WANTS. And as a higher and higher percentage of the population goes and majors in worthless subjects in the hopes of a cushy job that doesn't produce anything, but merely transfers wealth, you can expect GDP to drop further.
4. If growth keeps dropping, then where precisely are you people going to come up with the money to pay for...
social security
medicare
nationalized health care
the Obama-corps
the stimulus
education
government financed day care
not to mention the extra money we'll need to pay back the national debt?
You see, the governments combined (state, local and federal) already spend about 45% of GDP, leaving only 55% left to be taxed (difference in revenue vs. spending duly noted), how much more do you think the economy will take before people just stop working altogether?
Is everybody supposed to work in government?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the I-Pod you want?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the Wii you want?
Who, might I ask, is going to produce the computer networking system so you can e-mail your friends, let alone put the food on your table?
Or are we supposed to be like the Pelosi's, the Bush's and the Gore's. Generation after generation of losers who never worked a real job in the private sector?
Of course, I know all of my regular readers understand this. My regular readers get this simple logic. Not to mention before they form opinions, they get the facts first. Not form opinions and then find facts.
But good lord, to the 60% of the population who voted for Obama, when does reality sink in? What does it take to get you people to grow the hell up, drop it with your naive, college-age thinking and idealism, and intellectually and honestly admit you have no FREAKING clue how the real world and economy works. LET ALONE take the time to study the federal effing budget and do some simple mathematical calculations much like you would your own personal finances to see if any of this socialism BS is even affordable, let alone feasible. Let alone (and this group really confuses me) for those of you with children, start to stop and really think about what you're doing to your childrens' financial future? When do you wake up?
Alas, what can I do aside from make a record of it here on this blog so that a thousand years from now historians will look back and say, "Wow, look how insane the population was. There was this one guy over here that saw it coming, but the rest of them were all doped up on REality TV, Obama's pecks, bread and circuses, they couldn't even understand how everybody working as a social worker and nobody farming the fields would result in a collapse of society!"
I'll be long dead by that time, and I'm supremely confident I'll be proven right, but in the meantime, good lord, why would anybody invest in America?
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Christmas Present Game
The irony is that though I loathe children and find them more or less the root of most problems that plague society today, I do actually remember being one and come to bat for them more often than not. For while I think they may bring in communicable diseases from day care to the home, and while I think they cost roughly $500,000 to bring up, and while I think too many children too early in life is the primary cause of poverty, they are human beings. And not just human beings, but INNOCENT human beings that are all too often the victim of parents who forgot what it was like to be a child.
Ergo, a lesson in the “Christmas Present Game.”
Since the beginning of time, it has been a tradition where the children and parents battle it out over the determining of “what am I going to get for Christmas.” The parents, on the side of patience and discipline would say, “No, you must wait till Christmas,” while the children just being plain children would take whatever means was necessary to find out what they got for Christmas BEFORE the 25th (unless of course you were one of those cheating Catholic types that open their gifts on the 24th) This entailed a whole host of tactics including simple things such as shaking and studying the box, to sly, coy interrogative tactics used to coax valuable clues unconsciously from the parent opposition, to night-time clandestine operations with a Swiss Army knife to surgically cut key pieces of tape and grab a peek of what lay underneath the wrapping paper, only to reseal the presents with identical lengths of tape to cover one’s tracks (none of which I ever engaged in).
This time-honored battle has been a cornerstone of parent-child relationships and should be a much-looked-forward to event during the month of December.
However, as peers in my generation start breeding, I am sad to hear what some of them are doing. And that is
DENYING THEIR CHILDREN THEIR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO FIND OUT WHAT THEY GOT FOR CHRISTMAS BEFORE THE 25TH!
They actually refuse to let their children try to guess what they got for Christmas!
How do their cold, callous, oppressor parents do this?
By threatening their children that if they catch them trying to sneak a peak of their Christmas gifts then they will TAKE THE GIFTS BACK TO THE STORE!
I had thought we defeated nazi
Now what is really going on here is half-hearted parenting. Parents who are either too lazy or just plain don’t have enough of the Christmas spirit to realize just how important the Christmas Present Game is.
First you must realize that half the fun of gifts is the receiver not just trying to guess what they are, but the giver doing all in their power to confuse and throw off the receiver. My mom inevitably had to resort to the dirty underhanded tactic of wrapping my gifts in multiple boxes with styrafoam and papers. This game, the constant battle between the parent and the child, the child scheming and crafting ways to identify his gifts, the parent always keeping a watchful eye over their shoulder is what makes the Christmas gifts all that more exciting. And for you just to not participate in it is throwing all this fun away.
Second, come on, don’t be a sore loser. If you’re so bad at hiding gifts, lying about the gifts, or crafting a propaganda campaign to mislead your 4 year old into what he got for Christmas, then you just have to up your game. I know it’s embarrassing that a little toddler has outdone you, but that doesn’t give you the right to end the game. You must be a gracious loser and look forward to next year’s battle.
Third, if you’re too damn lazy to play the game, well then shoot, why did you have kids then in the first place? Why don’t you just store the gifts offsite and then truck them in Christmas Day? Heck, why even do that, just get the little varmints gift cards then. Better yet, become one of those people that makes a donation to a charity in their honor. Or even better still, just cut them a check the day of. That takes the least effort. Of course if you fall into this category you no doubt buy your children sweaters for Christmas instead of toys which is a violation of the game. Regardless, if you can’t play the game, then don’t even rile them up in the first place with presents.
The larger point is that if you have children and you are going to put gifts in plain site, then there IS going to be a battle regardless. Kids are kids and they will be curious and the Christmas Present Game is on. And you have a choice. You can either have fun and play this game, counter-scheming their schemes. Wrapping fake gifts and hiding the real ones. Or going so far as to tie off the gifts with a perimeter of fishing wire tied to a bell (it has been done). OR you can be a party pooper and never play the game in the first place and tell them if they find out what they got for Christmas BEFORE the 25th then you take the gifts back home.
Which one has more Christmas cheer?
My Thanks to the Democrats
This should help all my short positions against the dollar.
Thank you very much for your destruction of the dollar.
Though, I wistfully acknowledge that it really isn't the other currencies going up in value as much as it is the dollar just tanking. Ergo, no real gains.
Thank you very much for your destruction of the dollar.
Though, I wistfully acknowledge that it really isn't the other currencies going up in value as much as it is the dollar just tanking. Ergo, no real gains.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Minneapolis Fires Cops/Denies Recruits
Minneapolis is laying off some cops and denying new recruits positions.
But hey, at least we have "walk ambassadors."
And don't forget those $50,000 drinking fountains!
Now let's do the math. 10 $50,000 drinking fountains is $500,000.
Would Minneapolis been able to keep those 7 officers on the payroll with $500,000?
Liberals? Leftists? Repsonse please? Rationale? Explanation?
But hey, at least we have "walk ambassadors."
And don't forget those $50,000 drinking fountains!
Now let's do the math. 10 $50,000 drinking fountains is $500,000.
Would Minneapolis been able to keep those 7 officers on the payroll with $500,000?
Liberals? Leftists? Repsonse please? Rationale? Explanation?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Capital Flight
Today's term, boys and girls, is called "Capital Flight."
What is so hard for leftists to understand this concept?
What is so hard for leftists to understand this concept?
Recession Medicine - Humphrey Hop
Actually reminds me of all my male friends when our female friends cook for us.
Talk Radio Show - My Experience Of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Jail System
On Saturday 12th of December, I was the guest on a one-hour American talk radio show. To listen to a replay of the show click on either of the two links:
Click here to listen to the show
Click here to listen to the show
Bobby Cummines is an ex-prisoner who needs our help. As a reformed bank robber – he served 13 years – he now heads a charity that helps ex-prisoners get restarted in society, shares his story with young people, and advises the government on prison issues.
His story was submitted to the BBC. Bobby needs our help by way of votes. So if you feel like I do that Bobby’s cause is a good one, please click over to the following link, where you can give Bobby a vote by clicking on the thumbs-up icon. It’s as easy as that.
Click here to give Bobby the thumbs up
Thank you for your support!
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
On Saturday 12th of December, I was the guest on a one-hour American talk radio show. To listen to a replay of the show click on either of the two links:
Click here to listen to the show
Click here to listen to the show
Bobby Cummines is an ex-prisoner who needs our help. As a reformed bank robber – he served 13 years – he now heads a charity that helps ex-prisoners get restarted in society, shares his story with young people, and advises the government on prison issues.
His story was submitted to the BBC. Bobby needs our help by way of votes. So if you feel like I do that Bobby’s cause is a good one, please click over to the following link, where you can give Bobby a vote by clicking on the thumbs-up icon. It’s as easy as that.
Click here to give Bobby the thumbs up
Thank you for your support!
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Shaun P. Attwood
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Dawn of a New Adventure (Part 6)
Just did my third talk on drugs and prison to a school. In the previous talk, several female students started crying during excerpts from my upcoming book. So after the success of that one and the first talk, I swaggered into Ashford School in Kent expecting more of the same, but the beginning didn't work out as planned. I introduced myself, and started the jail story. I asked for a volunteer to read the first of the excerpts from my blog and upcoming book. In previous talks, many hands went up at this point from eager students willing to read. But on this occasion, I was met by a wall of silence. Many of them looked skeptical. Others seemed to be drifting off elsewhere. For a few seconds, I wondered what to do. Is it all about to go wrong? I thought. Then I asked the teacher who'd booked me to select someone to read. That stirred them up a bit, and each subsequent jail anecdote captured more of their attention, until I had them all on-board. In the Q&A session, endless hands went up, and as usual there wasn't enough time to answer all of the questions.
The teacher congratulated me at the end. A group of students kindly invited me to eat with them in the canteen, where they bombarded me with more questions. I told them I'd worried about how the talk was going at first. They explained that they get talks every two weeks. Mostly stuff that doesn't interest them. So they arrive at the talks ready to zone out. That was the atmosphere I'd detected at the beginning, but hadn't understood why. They said having the teacher pick readers had forced them to pay attention, and they'd quickly got hooked on my story after that. They said it was like something from a movie - The Shawshank Redemption was mentioned - but my presence made it real to them. One student said she'd seen Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City on TV. I could see the impact of my story in the eyes of the students I was sat with, and that gave me a good feeling.
So what started out with resistance that led me to worry I was doing something wrong ended up a success. Today, I learned that every audience has its own character, and there may be forces at work on an audience that I shouldn't take personally.
I'm still buzzing from it all, and looking forward to my next talks in January.
I've got three radio interviews coming up, and details will be posted here soon.
Click here for Dawn of a New Adventure (Part 5)
Click here for details of my talk
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
Just did my third talk on drugs and prison to a school. In the previous talk, several female students started crying during excerpts from my upcoming book. So after the success of that one and the first talk, I swaggered into Ashford School in Kent expecting more of the same, but the beginning didn't work out as planned. I introduced myself, and started the jail story. I asked for a volunteer to read the first of the excerpts from my blog and upcoming book. In previous talks, many hands went up at this point from eager students willing to read. But on this occasion, I was met by a wall of silence. Many of them looked skeptical. Others seemed to be drifting off elsewhere. For a few seconds, I wondered what to do. Is it all about to go wrong? I thought. Then I asked the teacher who'd booked me to select someone to read. That stirred them up a bit, and each subsequent jail anecdote captured more of their attention, until I had them all on-board. In the Q&A session, endless hands went up, and as usual there wasn't enough time to answer all of the questions.
The teacher congratulated me at the end. A group of students kindly invited me to eat with them in the canteen, where they bombarded me with more questions. I told them I'd worried about how the talk was going at first. They explained that they get talks every two weeks. Mostly stuff that doesn't interest them. So they arrive at the talks ready to zone out. That was the atmosphere I'd detected at the beginning, but hadn't understood why. They said having the teacher pick readers had forced them to pay attention, and they'd quickly got hooked on my story after that. They said it was like something from a movie - The Shawshank Redemption was mentioned - but my presence made it real to them. One student said she'd seen Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City on TV. I could see the impact of my story in the eyes of the students I was sat with, and that gave me a good feeling.
So what started out with resistance that led me to worry I was doing something wrong ended up a success. Today, I learned that every audience has its own character, and there may be forces at work on an audience that I shouldn't take personally.
I'm still buzzing from it all, and looking forward to my next talks in January.
I've got three radio interviews coming up, and details will be posted here soon.
Click here for Dawn of a New Adventure (Part 5)
Click here for details of my talk
Post comments below or email them to writeinside@hotmail.com To post a comment if you do not have a Google/Blogger account, just select anonymous for your identity.
Shaun P. Attwood
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