Knock Knock! I Keel You!

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!! Viva le Infidel Humor!!!

A'ight, Bobby!

Bayou Bobby

A new governor offers hope for disaffected Louisiana expats.

BY ROD DREHER Friday, October 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Alas for me, I didn't get to cast a vote for Bobby Jindal, the winner of last weekend's Louisiana governor's race. It's been 15 years since I left the Bayou.

The last time I voted in a gubernatorial contest there, it felt less like a civic duty than an occasion of sin. I pulled the lever for Democrat Edwin W. Edwards--instead of my fellow Republican, David Duke--following the instruction of the bumper sticker on my car: "Vote for the Crook. It's Important."

That evening, I went to a party in Baton Rouge, attached myself to a keg of Budweiser and talked long into the night about how, four years after electing the supposedly reform-minded governor Buddy Roemer, it had come to this. I was only two years out of LSU and, like just about everybody I knew then, wanted to move away. What future did any of us have in a state where the choice was either a blow-dried Ku Klucker or an oleaginous Cajun kleptocrat? (As the joke had it, the Wizard or the Lizard?)

I soon left for Washington, D.C., a new job and a new life. Many years later, in an online discussion about the fate of the state, I read that a well-known New Orleans journalist, having lost hope in his family's future there, stood in the middle of his newsroom to announce his resignation. He said that he loved the city dearly but couldn't raise his children in a town that cherished parades more than libraries. Framed that way, you can understand why so many Louisianians choose to expatriate, but never quite get over leaving.

Louisiana has been at or near the bottom of "quality of life" lists for so long that you start to believe that there's something genetically wrong with its residents. For 15 out of the past 17 years, Louisiana has been either America's Least Livable State or runner-up in the annual Morgan Quitno research firm's comprehensive rankings, which combine educational, economic, health, environmental and crime statistics. No wonder Louisiana has for at least two decades experienced a steady out-migration of young professionals.

You notice something, though, when Louisianians meet in exile. Everybody misses home and will take any opportunity to talk about it. Our friends--Yankees, mostly--get the biggest kick out of our honest-to-God tales of Bayou State life (political and otherwise). My wife, a native Texan, confessed that when we first started dating, she thought my stories about my homeland revealed me to be a pathological liar--until I took her there to see for herself. She visited my Uncle Murphy's grave and saw the headstone he'd won playing bourré (a Cajun card game) with an undertaker. He had it inscribed with the epitaph: "This ain't bad, once you get used to it."

Louisiana makes a lot more sense if you read the beloved picaresque "A Confederacy of Dunces" as an exercise in literary naturalism. There's simply no place like Louisiana. You will not find more generous and life-loving people anywhere, and Lord knows, you won't eat or drink better. It's hard to get over that. But you do, mostly. Last Sunday, I ran into a couple I know at a Krispy Kreme shop here in Dallas. We got to talking about the Jindal victory, and the wife, a non-native who had fallen in love with Louisiana as a Tulane student, said warmly that she'd love to move back. The husband gave her a look that telegraphed, "Yes, we all would, dear, but come on."

Despite all the sentimental longing for LSU Tigers tailgating and the scent of Zatarain's crawfish boil on your fingers, moving home rarely crosses the minds of us expatriates. Louisiana is a great place to be from, but the sense of fatalism that pervades life there casts doubt on whether it will some day be great place to be. In Louisiana, to be educated is to love the state and hate the state--and, for many, to leave it.

Here's the thing about Bobby Jindal: He didn't leave for good. He came home. With his Ivy League and Oxbridge education and his startling smarts, he could have gone anywhere and nobody back home would have blamed him. In fact, he is the epitome of the kind of Louisianian who emigrates to Dallas, Atlanta and points beyond--driving around with an LSU sticker on his bumper.

But he didn't. The guy actually seemed to think he could make a difference in Louisiana. He got involved in government at age 24 and stuck with it. He ran for governor in 2003 and lost to Democrat Kathleen Blanco. When the Katrina hurricane aftermath destroyed Ms. Blanco's career, Mr. Jindal's loss came to look like a blessing in disguise. Anyway, after what Katrina revealed about the chronic dysfunction of the state, how crazy would a politician have to be to think he could straighten out a place like that?

Well, now we know. This unlikeliest of all Deep South politicians, a squeaky-clean Gen-X son of Indian immigrants, a policy wonk and Catholic convert who, as a child, adopted a nickname from a "Brady Bunch" character, just got himself elected. In his victory speech, Mr. Jindal exhorted a jubilant crowd of supporters: "I'm asking you to once again believe in Louisiana." That's asking a lot.

As it happened, the night Mr. Jindal won I was having dinner in Henry County, Ky., with the farmer and agrarian poet Wendell Berry and a group of his conservative admirers. Earlier in the day, we'd heard Mr. Berry talk about how we Americans educate our children today for outgoing, not homecoming, and what a shame that is. We'd been talking about what kind of country we'd have if folks decided to stay home and learn to love their little place.

That night, my father woke me up phoning from St. Francisville, La.. "Jindal won tonight!" he said, tickled to death. So did the Tigers, but I don't think he even mentioned football.
I haven't lived in Louisiana in a long time, but this election makes me proud and hopeful--two emotions unfamiliar to exiled Bayou Staters. And the promise of Mr. Jindal's leadership makes me wonder, for the first time since I packed up the U-Haul and drove off, if maybe I--and now, my children--have a future in Louisiana.

Yes, I know, reform-minded governors (and their supporters) always come to grief in our wizardy, lizardy banana republic. Yes, I'm fully aware that Louisiana is bound to break your heart. And yes, I live happily in Texas. But you know what? My governor is a Hindu Catholic Republican, and I think he's going to write the next great Louisiana story. Maybe just this once, it's not going to be a farce.

Mr. Dreher is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News

What's This Have To Do With Palestine?

As Islamofascist apologists are always saying, "Muslim violence is about US support for Israel & the oppression of the Palestinians."

Well, what does Turkish youths in Brussels rioting & stabbing people have to do with Palestine?

Yet again, I ask, what does Muslim violence in Chechnya, Indonesia, Phillipines, Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, the riots over cartoons depicting Mohammed, etc. have to do with Palestine?

Wake up, people.

In another story:

They're just here to steal emergency supplies that Americans won't steal themselves.

There's also rumors out there, as yet unconfirmed that ILLEGAL immigrants may have started the wild fires that have been plaguing So. Cal this past week. As I've said before, I'll gladly pay $4 for an orange or tomato if it means we deport the 11-20 million illegal immigrants out of the country. Remember, when I say illegal, I mean illegal in the illegal sense meaning "illegal" as in "against the law."

Is It The Truth? Or Not?

"The truth hurts" - Anonymous

Scientific enquiry is about searching for truth not making people feel good about themselves.

Selywn Duke's take on the recent fuss over the geneticist, James Watson, who caused a stir by claiming research data shows those in Africa aren't as intellectually capable as other groups.

The thing that gets me about the PC police & the left-leanign mindset on issues like this is the skewing of semantics & the meanings of words into something the man did not say. The Left & the PC cops would have you think that Watson said something to the affect of "Africans/Blacks are intellectually incapable compared to other races, not as intellectually capable," which is a huge difference.

If you interpret that he said the former you basically read it as "Africans/Blacks are stupid." If you interpret the latter you read it as "Africans/Blacks on the whole are generally less capable intellectually." Which to most I'm sure still sounds as daming as saying "Africans/Blacks are stupid." But let's hold on for a minute.

Say hypothetically, you take an infinite # of tests which measure intellectual capacity of certain races as a quantifiable # & for the sake of the argument it comes out something like this:

1. Asians, 98
2. Native American, 97
3. White, 95
4. Arab, 94
5. Hispanic, 93
6. African, 92

Now, this list shows hypothetically that some races are more intellectually capable than others, but if we assign a test like score to these hypothetical results, everyone gets an "A" or is intellectual capable as a whole but not as capable compared to each other. So for once, we need to back up & really think about what people say & understand what they mean rather than always jump to the PC, feeling friendly conclusion & the ever ready leap to outrage.

Put this another way, if what James Watson said about possible intellectual differences amongst the races bothers you, turn it on yourself & see if you agree or disagree with statements such as "Asians are better at math," "White Men Can't Jump," "Latin lover," etc. etc.

P.S. I like the point Selwyn Duke makes in his article about how people will argue about how evolution supposedly causes groups in different environments to develop genetic differences except in humans' case & that the reason for this would be a good argument for the existence of God.

Vive Le Bobby Jihad!

A'ight! Bobbay!

Tough Love in the Big Easy
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

NEW ORLEANS -- People here haul out multisyllable adjectives to describe the back-to-back storms that devastated Louisiana two years ago.

Catastrophic, cataclysmic and apocalyptic are three of the favorites. Biblical is another.
Touring New Orleans today, seeing barren lots where homes once stood and giant X's still marking houses to indicate if bodies were found, it is easy to think in those terms.

But hurricanes Katrina and Rita did more than just destroy homes and histories. They seem to have changed Louisiana's personality.

Where once cronyism and corruption were tolerated almost as local eccentricities, today they are viewed as the detritus of a benighted past. As voters prepare to elect a new governor and a large slate of legislators on Saturday, ethics is the new byword and brains may trump political brawn.

The political emphasis post-Katrina isn't so much ideological -- Democrat vs. Republican -- as it is reform vs. status quo. Leading the reform surge, as well as in the polls, is a young politician Huey Long could never have imagined. Bobby Jindal, the wiry and wired Republican son of Indian immigrants, doesn't look like a Louisiana good ol' boy and he doesn't talk like one either.

At 36, he has a resume that should place him closer to retirement than to yet another career. A Rhodes Scholar, Jindal was accepted to the medical and law schools of both Harvard and Yale (though he attended neither). While still in his 20s, he served as president of the University of Louisiana System and as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He successfully reformed Louisiana's Medicaid program and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004.

Meeting at a Baton Rouge coffee shop late in the afternoon, I was relieved when Jindal did not have coffee. The man has so much energy already, he could charge batteries. I ordered a double cappuccino.

If elected, Jindal wants to turn that energy on ethics reform, which might make him popular among voters. With legislators, maybe not so much.

He wants to make lawmakers fully disclose their finances -- income, assets and debts. He also wants to forbid legislators from serving as lobbyists or consultants while in office and to prevent people from serving in government and doing business with government at the same time.

Jindal's tough-love approach to the business of government stems from his belief that Louisiana is at a now-or-never point in its history. If the state doesn't get its programs straightened out, the Big Easy, for one, may go down hard and Louisiana may never recover.

What happens here also affects the rest of the country, as Louisiana is home to a third of the nation's petrochemical industry. As a port and entry point to the Mississippi River, the state is also crucial to distribution of 40 percent of the nation's natural gas and 20 percent of its imported crude oil. A third of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is harvested off the Louisiana coast.

Jindal has found support in unexpected quarters, including the 65-member Louisiana Sheriffs' Association, all but seven of them Democrats. The group supported a Jindal opponent when he first ran for governor in 2003, the race Kathleen Blanco won. She is not seeking re-election.

The sheriffs' conversion to Jindal's camp is another of Katrina's legacies. St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens told me that many voters have "buyer's remorse," and, "we've come to place a high value on intellect."

Also, in the days after Katrina when state and local leaders were tangled up in red tape, Jindal materialized with his sleeves rolled up -- without cameras or fanfare -- and said, "What do you need?"

Shortly thereafter, trucks, food and medicine began arriving in St. Bernard, where most of the parish's 27,000 residential units were damaged or destroyed.

Jindal's double-digit lead in the polls has prompted his opponents to play a deck of cards -- from religion to ethnicity. One ad asserted that Jindal, a Catholic, is anti-Protestant. The state Democratic Party has used Jindal's given name, Piyush, clearly aiming to rally ethnophobes.
In an act of desperation, one opponent ran a television ad noting that, yeah, sure, Jindal's got brains, but does he have a heart?

Being too smart hasn't been plaguing Louisiana leadership lately. It couldn't hurt to give brains a chance.

Although if I'm honest, I'd vote for Huma here... soooooooooo prettyyyyyyy

"St. Al Of The Ecopalypse?" Well played, Mr. Steyn

Doom if Saint Al loses carbs

Mark Steyn October 15, 2007

A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.

For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."

I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.

And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.

A schoolkid in Ontario was complaining the other day that, whatever subject you do, you have to sit through Gore's movie: It turns up in biology class, in geography, in physics, in history, in English.

Whatever you're studying, it's all you need to know. It fulfils the same role in the schoolhouses of the guilt-ridden developed world that the Koran does in Pakistani madrassas. Gore's rise is as remorseless as those sea levels. I assumed Gore's clammy embrace would do for the environmental movement what his belated endorsement had done for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential candidacy: kill it stone dead. But governor Dean was constrained by actual humdrum prosaic vote tallies in Iowa and New Hampshire. The ecochondriacs, by contrast, seem happiest when they're most unmoored from reality.

That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".

Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.

One can forgive youthful indiscretions, like his 1988 presidential candidacy, when he became the first and only politician in US history to hire a herd of cows for the launch of his campaign, positioning them attractively around him for the photo op at the supposed Gore "family farm". The contribution to global warming from increased methane from bovine flatulence in the Gore neighbourhood was no doubt "offset" by reduced flatulent emissions from whichever farm he'd hired the cows from: it was, in that sense, a "carbon-neutral" event.

But since then there's been a pronounced pattern of behaviour. In 2000, it was revealed that his tenant, Tracy Mayberry, has asked her distinguished landlord to fix the plumbing. The toilet overflowed and the tank was held together by bread bag ties. This was after Gore had inflicted federal toilet regulations on the rest of the country in the interest of water conservancy, yet he let his own tenant's lavatory overflow for months on end. Americans have to make do with cisterns that hold less than a supersized cup at McDonald's, but Environmental Boy had a Niagara-sized torrent running through his tenants' bathroom and down the stairs 24 hours a day. After Channel 5 in Nashville ran a story, he eventually called Tracy and invited himself to dinner so they could get to know each other. But Mayberry, a Democrat, told the vice-president he could "kiss my ass", which given the state of sanitation on the property was probably not a wise idea.

An isolated incident? Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.

221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot.

As for the climate, you could take every dollar spent on "global warming" and blow it on internet porn, and the Earth's climate in 2050 will be pretty much what it would be anyway. Meanwhile, Gore is now being urged to jump into the presidential race and save Democrats from the allegedly too-hawkish Hillary Clinton. I doubt he will.

But you'll know he's considering it if he starts slimming down faster than the Antarctic shelf. When Al Gore starts getting carb-neutral, we're really in trouble.

Ewwwwwwwww, Peasants! Ick!

Crabs? Friiiiied 'r Soft-Shelled?

Dirty South?

Ewwwwwwww, tired, unwashed masses of the South. We have to go to the South? They have like, guns & stuff! And the poke their cousins so they have all these STDs!

Democracy In Action

I just loooooooooooove how great this country is. Once again, we get dragged down to the lowest common denominator. Numerical minority? No problem! Come to Amerika & spoil the fun for the rest of us!

When you get to be the majority remember to NOT let us do the same since we all know you won't let us pull the same crap. Au revoir, traditional America. It was fun while it lasted.

Coming soon to a region near you, the Fractured States of America.

Another Great Mark Steyn Article

Mark Steyn: Bend over for Nurse Hillary

By MARK STEYN

Syndicated columnist

Our theme for today comes from George W Bush: “Freedom is the desire of every human heart.”
When the president uses the phrase, he’s invariably applying it to various benighted parts of the Muslim world. There would seem to be quite a bit of evidence to suggest that freedom is not the principal desire of every human heart in, say, Gaza or Waziristan. But why start there? If you look in, say, Brussels or London or New Orleans, do you come away with the overwhelming impression that “freedom is the desire of every human heart”? A year ago, I wrote that “the story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government ‘security,’ large numbers of people vote to dump freedom – the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff.”
Last week freedom took another hit. Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled her new health care plan. Unlike her old health care plan, which took longer to read than most cancers take to kill you, this one’s instant and painless – just a spoonful of government sugar to help the medicine go down. From now on, everyone in America will have to have health insurance.
Hooray!
And, if you don’t, it will be illegal for you to hold a job.
Er, hang on, where’s that in the Constitution? It’s perfectly fine to employ legions of the undocumented from Mexico, but if you employ a fit 26-year-old American with no health insurance either you or he or both of you will be breaking the law?
That’s a major surrender of freedom from the citizen to the state. “So what?” says the caring crowd. “We’ve got to do something about those 40 million uninsured! Whoops, I mean 45 million uninsured. Maybe 50 by now.” This figure is always spoken of as if it’s a club you can join but never leave: The very first Uninsured-American was ol’ Bud who came back from the Spanish-American War and found he was uninsured and so was first on the list, and then Mabel put her back out doing the Black Bottom at a tea dance in 1926 and she became the second, and so on and so forth, until things really began to snowball under the Bush junta. And, by the time you read this, the number of uninsured may be up to 75 million.
Nobody really knows how many “uninsured” there are: Two different Census Bureau surveys conducted in the same year identify the number of uninsured as A) 45 million or B) 19 million. The first figure is the one you hear about, the second figure apparently entered the Witness Protection Program. Of those 45 million “uninsured Americans,” the Census Bureau itself says over 9 million aren’t Americans at all, but foreign nationals. They have various health care back-ups: If you’re an uninsured Canadian in Detroit, and you get an expensive chronic disease, you can go over the border to Windsor, Ontario, and re-embrace the delights of socialized health care; if you’re an uninsured Uzbek, it might be more complicated. Of the remaining 36 million, a 2005 Actuarial Research analysis for the Department of Health and Human Services says that another 9 million did, in fact, have health coverage through Medicare.
Where are we now? 27 million? So who are they? Bud and Mabel and a vast mountain of emaciated husks of twisted limbs and shriveled skin covered in boils and pustules? No, it’s a rotating population: People who had health insurance but changed jobs, people who are between jobs, young guys who feel they’re fit and healthy and at this stage of their lives would rather put a monthly health-insurance tab towards buying a home or starting a business or blowing it on booze ’n’ chicks.
That last category is the one to watch: Americans 18-34 account for 18 million of the army of the “uninsured.” Look, there’s a 22-year-old, and he doesn’t have health insurance! Oh, the horror and the shame! What an indictment of America!
Well, he doesn’t have life insurance, either, or homeowner’s insurance. He lives a life blessedly free of the tedious bet-hedging paperwork of middle age. He’s 22, and he thinks he’s immortal – and any day now Hillary will propose garnishing his wages for her new affordable mandatory life-insurance plan.
So, out of 45 million uninsured Americans, 9 million aren’t American, 9 million are insured, 18 million are young and healthy. And the rest of these poor helpless waifs trapped in Uninsured Hell waiting for Hillary to rescue them are, in fact, wealthier than the general population. According to the Census Bureau’s August 2006 report on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage,” 37 percent of those without health insurance – that’s 17 million people – come from households earning more than $50,000. Nineteen percent – 8.7 million people – of those downtrodden paupers crushed by the brutal inequities of capitalism come from households earning more than $75,000.
In other words, if they fall off the roof, they can write a check. Indeed, the so-called “explosion” of the uninsured has been driven entirely by wealthy households opting out of health insurance. In the decade after 1995 – i.e., since the last round of coercive health reform – the proportion of the uninsured earning less than $25,000 has fallen by 20 percent, and the proportion earning more than 75 grand has increased by 155 percent. The story of the past decade is that the poor are getting sucked into the maw of “coverage,” and the rich are fleeing it. And, given that the cost of health “insurance” bears increasingly little relationship to either the cost of treatment or the actuarial reality of you ever getting any particular illness, it’s entirely rational to say: “You know what? I’ll worry about that when it happens. In the meantime, I want to start a business and send my kid to school.” Freedom is the desire of my human heart even if my arteries get all clogged and hardened.
I was glad, at the end of Hillary Health Week, to see that my radio pal Laura Ingraham’s excellent new book, “Power To The People,” has shot into the New York Times bestseller list at No. 1. It takes a fraudulent leftist catchphrase (the only thing you can guarantee about a “people’s republic” is that the people are the least of it) and returns it to those who mean it – to those who believe in a nation of free citizens exercising individual liberty to make responsible choices.
Do you remember the so-called “government surplus” of a few years ago? Bill Clinton gave a speech in which he said, yes, sure, he could return the money to taxpayers but that we “might not spend it the right way.” The American political class has decided that they know better than you the “right way” to make health care decisions. Oh, don’t worry, you’re still fully competent to make decisions on what car you drive and what movie you want to rent at Blockbuster.
For the moment.
But when it comes to the grownup stuff, best to leave that to Nurse Hillary.

I'm With You, Michael Lewis!

A Wall Street Trader Draws Some Subprime Lessons: Michael Lewis

By Michael Lewis

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- So right after the Bear Stearns funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing personally against the poor. To my knowledge, I have nothing personally to do with the poor at all. It's not personal when a guy cuts your grass: that's business. He does what you say, you pay him. But you don't pay him in advance: That would be finance. And finance is one thing you should never engage in with the poor. (By poor, I mean anyone who the SEC wouldn't allow to invest in my hedge fund.)

That's the biggest lesson I've learned from the subprime crisis. Along the way, as these people have torpedoed my portfolio, I had some other thoughts about the poor. I'll share them with you.

1) They're masters of public relations.

I had no idea how my open-handedness could be made to look, after the fact. At the time I bought the subprime portfolio I thought: This is sort of like my way of giving something back. I didn't expect a profile in Philanthropy Today or anything like that. I mean, I bought at a discount. But I thought people would admire the Wall Street big shot who found a way to help the little guy. Sort of like a money doctor helping a sick person. Then the little guy wheels around and gives me this financial enema. And I'm the one who gets crap in the papers! Everyone feels sorry for the poor, and no one feels sorry for me. Even though it's my money! No good deed goes unpunished.

2) Poor people don't respect other people's money in the way money deserves to be respected.

Call me a romantic: I want everyone to have a shot at the American dream. Even people who haven't earned it. I did everything I could so that these schlubs could at least own their own place. The media is now making my generosity out to be some kind of scandal. Teaser rates weren't a scandal. Teaser rates were a sign of misplaced trust: I trusted these people to get their teams of lawyers to vet anything before they signed it. Turns out, if you're poor, you don't need to pay lawyers. You don't like the deal you just wave your hands in the air and moan about how poor you are. Then you default.

3) I've grown out of touch with ``poor culture.''

Hard to say when this happened; it might have been when I stopped flying commercial. Or maybe it was when I gave up the bleacher seats and got the suite. But the first rule in this business is to know the people you're in business with, and I broke it. People complain about the rich getting richer and the poor being left behind. Is it any wonder? Look at them! Did it ever occur to even one of them that they might pay me back by WORKING HARDER? I don't think so.

But as I say, it was my fault, for not studying the poor more closely before I lent them the money. When the only time you've ever seen a lion is in his cage in the zoo, you start thinking of him as a pet cat. You forget that he wants to eat you.

4) Our society is really, really hostile to success. At the same time it's shockingly indulgent of poor people.

A Republican president now wants to bail them out! I have a different solution. Debtors' prison is obviously a little too retro, and besides that it would just use more taxpayers' money. But the poor could work off their debts. All over Greenwich I see lawns to be mowed, houses to be painted, sports cars to be tuned up. Some of these poor people must have skills. The ones that don't could be trained to do some of the less skilled labor -- say, working as clowns at rich kids' birthday parties. They could even have an act: put them in clown suits and see how many can be stuffed into a Maybach. It'd be like the circus, only better.

Transporting entire neighborhoods of poor people to upper Manhattan and lower Connecticut might seem impractical. It's not: Mexico does this sort of thing routinely. And in the long run it might be for the good of poor people. If the consequences were more serious, maybe they wouldn't stay poor.

5) I think it's time we all become more realistic about letting the poor anywhere near Wall Street.

Lending money to poor countries was a bad idea: Does it make any more sense to lend money to poor people? They don't even have mineral rights!

There's a reason the rich aren't getting richer as fast as they should: they keep getting tangled up with the poor. It's unrealistic to say that Wall Street should cut itself off entirely from poor -- or, if you will, ``mainstream'' -- culture. As I say, I'll still do business with the masses. But I'll only engage in their finances if they can clump themselves together into a semblance of a rich person. I'll still accept pension fund money, for example. (Nothing under $50 million, please.) And I'm willing to finance the purchase of entire companies staffed basically with poor people. I did deals with Milken, before they broke him. I own some Blackstone. (Hang tough, Steve!)

But never again will I go one-on-one again with poor people. They're sharks.

(Michael Lewis is the author, most recently of ``The Blind Side,'' and is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The views he expresses are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Michael Lewis in Berkeley, California, at mlewis1@bloomberg.net .

Kudos To Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts

By Thomas Sowell

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

I can't get as fiercely involved as some other people do in controversies about the origins of human life on earth. I wasn't there.

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.

Barack Obama is the newest face on the political scene, expressing some of the oldest notions. Virtually everything he says is vintage 1960s rhetoric, as if he has learned nothing from the many disasters that 1960s notions have led to in the decades since then.

People who lament the small percentages of women in some high-end jobs seem unaware that top jobs often involve 70 or 80 hours of work per week. A mother may work that many hours at home taking care of a family, without adding the same number of hours at the office.

A recent study showed the median income of major corporate CEOs to be about $8 million a year. That's less than a third of what Alex Rodriguez earns and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes. But no one is denouncing them for "greed."

It is amazing how many people who want us to get out of Iraq want us to go into Darfur.

A joke says that a poll was taken in California, asking if people thought illegal immigration was a serious problem. The results showed that 29 percent said, "Yes, there is a serious problem." But 71 percent said, "No es una problema seriosa."

People who refuse to face the reality of hard choices are forever coming up with some clever "third way"-- often leading to worse disasters than either of the hard choices.

Sometimes it looks as if the Democrats are out to win at all costs, while the Republicans are out to compromise at all costs.

Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.

A reader says that Connecticut's "Three Strikes" law is so weak that it is more like "30 strikes and we'll think about it while you strike again."

Wise people created civilization over the centuries and clever people are dismantling it today.
You can see it happening just by channel surfing on TV or hear it in rap music or read it in the pompous nonsense of academics and judges.

Tennis star James Blake never seems to be relaxed during a match. Maybe he would be ranked even higher if he could relax. Most sports require some combination of concentration and relaxation-- and too much of either is a big handicap.

Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.

With all the old movie favorites being shown again and again on television, it is remarkable that the old movie classic "Alfie" is seldom shown. Could it be fear that the scene where cold-blooded Alfie breaks down and cries at the sight of an aborted baby is something that would unleash the furies of the feminazis?

It is amazing how many people see no problem with having pay levels determined according to what third parties would like to see, instead of according to supply and demand.

One of the great non sequiturs of the left is that, if the free market doesn't work perfectly, then it doesn't work at all-- and the government should step in.

Despite people who speak glibly of "earlier and simpler times," all that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

We all believe that people are innocent until proven guilty. Some on the left believe that they are innocent even after being proven guilty.

Chutzpah department: When disbarred former D.A. Michael Nifong mailed his Bar card back to his state Bar Association, he included a note decrying "the fundamental unfairness" with which the Bar had treated him. This from a man who was ready to ruin three lives and polarize a community, in order to win an election.

Mark Steyn Is The Man

This cat is an awesome Conservative writer.

Another one of his home runs.

A prior one.

More missionary work from the Religion of "Peace." Not sure what US foreign policy has to do with India. Isn't that the excuse for Islamic violence- US foreign policy? I'd also like to point out that in the article it's mentioned that the operations were carried out by groups based in Pakistan & Bangladesh. Now, people on the L:eft love to bitch & moan all day about how Israel was carved out of Arab lands & forced upon the Arabs, i.e. a Judeo democracy was forced on Muslim lands. Well, I'd like to point out to the ignorant people on the Left that Pakistan & Bangladesh (formerly known as East Pakistan) were Muslim countries created by carving out lands from formerly held Indian provinces & given to the Muslims as their own states out of India. So, I'm curious to the people who are anti-Israel, anti-Zionists, anti-US support for Israel, etc. why none complain about Muslim lands forced on India? And just like in Israel, the Muslim countries/peoples are causing trouble in India; dispute over the Kashmir region of norhtern India being the main example.

Moving along, Al Gore showing his simple eco-friendly lifestyle vs. George Bush.
Um, didn't Al Gore's family make money in the oil business too? Uuhhhhhh, I believe so. But only big mean Republicans are ever mentioned as "Big Oil." Waaaaaaaaah.

Do As I Say Not As I Do!

Judeo-Christianophobia!

Or is it just plain old fashion oppression & intolerance?

Awesome...

Thanks, Girl On The Right!

1:37 in- right on, Cheeky Brit Guy!

Just Ran Across This...

Mmmmmm, such a large copa to drink Jews' blood from!

Congratulations to Iraq!

As always it took sportsmen a couple weeks to do something that takes politicians, even soldiers, years to do- unite a country. Even if it is only for a short respite I can't imagine what this does to Iraqis' psyche in terms of hope. Haven't read about any deaths in the celebrations today from car bombbers so far & there will no doubt be some as there were following Iraq's semifinal win as death-loving murdering idiots target congregated revelers

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1499!

Some might scoff at the notion that, "oh, soccer/football (or sports in general) is only a game, however, that's usually said by panty-waisted academia types who never sweated, toiled & flat out busted their asses physically day in & day out to achieve an athletic goal which is nothing more than a metaphor for what you can do with the rest of your life given the same amount of effort! Not to mention in Saddam's Iraq where his eldest son ran the Iraqi Olympic & Sports Associations, losses or failures in tournaments were greeted with torture to qthletes their families.

Do sports look unimportant to these guys, Krugman?

Similarly, even for the fans, much as the Saints did last year for New Orleans citizens (& ex-citizens, for that matter!) to give hope in days that seem darkest, this will no doubt give some hope to Iraqis that "if the national team can do it, why can't we be successful?" B/c let's face it, Iraq was not an Asian continental footballing power by any means. In my sometimes arrogant but generally correct opinion, Iraq winning the Asian Cup would be like Norway or Scotland winning the European Championship, i.e. not out of the realm of possibility but pretty distant shot(s) to say the least.

Anyway, I'm sure politico types on both sides & including the Middle East will use this as political ammo to advance their causes, but police office Sabah Shaiyal in the linked office put it best:

"The players have made us proud, not the greedy politicians,"

Great picture after the final whistle as well:

Praise be King Bush for allowing Allah to grant us this greatness!

Interesting

Is this perhaps b/c out of all the Republican candidates for President so far, there isn't a true Conservative in the bunch?

So far looks like we'll have Liberals vs. fairly Liberals using (R) to run in next year's Presidential electoral race.

"I weep for the future." - Maitre'D of Chez Quis in Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Krikey Poo!

Galavision didn't have the US U-20's QF match vs. Austria like I thought! Poopola! So I have to follow the match on USsoccer.com's MatchTracker. Exiting shit to watch text scroll! Woo little icons make it fancy! Yeeeeaaaaaaaaah.

Halftime US & Austria are all square- 1-1. Altidore put the US in front on a header off a cross from Adu & Austria tied it just before the half on a ricocheted shot from a Kraut Lite naturalised African. Strange days indeed! Most peculiar, Momma.

So in the pissy mood w/o being able to see the match, other stuff:

What's the Phillipines have to do with Palestine?

The truth about a t-shirt icon. What's that in the article? Che Guevara hated blacks & gays? Tell that to the dictator chic t-shirt wearers on college campii next time you see one of their ignorant asses with his likeness on a shirt that hasn't been washed in 2 weeks. Wow & the execution of minors? But it was for the people! Viva la revolucion! Viva la Cuba! Muerte a publica non gustan Castro lo!

Seriously, Castro & Guevara suck major balls. If Cuban health care & Cuba in general is so fcking great, why do Cubans risk shark infested waters year in & year out to defect to the US & why do Cuban athletes defect a lot of times when they play in the US? Any logical answers, Mr. Glover? Belafonte? Bueller?

And finally... Yasser Arafat dying of AIDS? And possibly a bisexual pedophile? Didn't know there was a PLO branch of NAMBLA! Bwaha! BTW, Abu Ammar is Yasser Arafat's real name so don't get confused when reading the article. He changed his name to Yasser Arafat when he was a student in Egypt so as to make his own mark out form under his uncle's (or was it his father?) shadow who was one of the Mufti's that ran an Arab Nazi SS corp & was a close ally to Hitler & is alledged to be one of the key proponents & suggestors in finalizing Hitler 's "Final Soultion of the Jewish Problem."

The Real Cause Of GlobAL Warming

Researchers have discovered the true cause of GlobAL warming this morning:

Hell hath no fury like a Live Earth Concert scorned!

Scientists at We Don't Really Know But We'll Report Like We Know Labs, an independent research laboratory, have just released visual evidence of what they claim to be the real cause for global warming. The head researcher on the project, Ly Ying Prik, said of the evidence:

Dis da howtest we seen Aw Gowe since da erection fiasco of 2000. Gwain of sawt to be taken wit evidence b/c we onwy been studying Aw Gowe fow a fwew yeaws & accuwate wecowds of Aw Gowe onwy been kep sin 1998.

Proponents of the report have said that this new evidence will be a momentous step in the battle to combat global warming... or climate change... or cow burping... or whatever it is that is actually causing whatever it is that is actually going. Some of these researchers also think the genetically defective way a Liberal brain is wired also may lead to global warming or believing in global warming:

Fear & Self-Loathing In Las Cabellas

Opponents of the research have offered these countering pieces of evidence:

I cry when animals die b/c they remind me of a puppy I had once that was run over by an SUV, so obviously the environment is important to me. - Eliza Beth Green, Monterrey, Calif.

Shut up, stupid. That's like so like a photoshop of Al Gore, yo. - Haley Harris, Burlington, Vt.

You're a Nazi. If you don't believe in global warming than you probably rape babies. - Jason Giltzberg , Greenwich Village, NYC, NY

Bush lied, 1000s died in Iraq. Bush lied so his oil company CEO cronies can harm the environment with their Oilapalooza & corporations raping of Mother Gaia. - Harmony Meadows, Corvallis, Ore.

I'm like 40 now & I sweat a lot more than when I was a child & the world was idyllic b/c I'm holding onto some lost Eden myth in my head when in actuality my childhood idyllic world was nothing but stickball games on a concrete street & I didn't notice the heat b/c I was 10 & could run all day hopped up on soda & ice cream anyway. - Joey Antonini, Brooklyn, NY

I don't care that it snowed in Buenos Aires for the 1st time in 89 years. That's not "proof" that the globe isn't getting warmer b/c Bush's Weather Machine propagated by the NSA & wiretapping of environmental activists thatch huts could have easily created that snow by stealing it off Antarctic glaciers & dropping the snow from black ops helicopters that go undetected & unseen b/c of reverse engineered alien spacecraft that was also helped to be built by Bush's cronies in the Illimunati & the banking world. Oh yeah, I don't know how but Israel's treatment of the Palestinians causes global warming too. Free Tibet! - 'Peace Prophet,' San Francisco, Calif.

Yes, I will from now on listen to science experts such as Camoron Diaz, Melissa Eartheridge & Leonardo Di Caprius chastise me for burning fossil fuel & heating my apartment when they're able "offset their carbon footprints" of their Leer & Gulfstream jets, their multi-roomed mansions & ridiculous energy bills which amounts to nothing more than buying off their guilt of these excesses. I would just love to be able to leave my "carbon footprint" in Lieonardo Di Caprick's ass by breaking my foot of in it.

Viva le SUVs!

Viva le fossil fuel burning!

Which One Is Which?

I can't tell whom is who?! Both have boyish good looks, hynoptizing goofy smile, both believe in Xenu (or maybe only one, but who really cares?)

Which one is Tom Edwards and which one is John Cruise?

Tom Edwards or John Cruise?

John Cruise or Tom Edwards?

If Tom Edwards can tap into the women-who-voted-for-Clinton-b/c-they-thought-he-was-good-looking demographic, Tom Edwards can maybe upset both Hillary Obama & Barack Clinton to win the '08 Presidency

Again, When A Democrat Does The Same Thing, It's A-Ok

President Clinton & Attorney General Janet Reno fired all 93 US Attorneys when they got into office for partisan purposes & that was ok. Which I'm actually saying it is, b/c it's their right under law to have done so.

But when current President Bush & Attorney General Alberto Gonzales do it, well, again it's "proof" that the Republicans are corrupt & only want attorneys in there for partisan purposes, i.e. having Conservative attorneys. Uhhhhhh, no shit. That's their right to do so but again, not only do rules only apply to Republicans but they can't even exercise their prerogitives or rights allowed their office positions w/o creating a "scandal."

Not to mention the 8 US Attorneys that were fired were supposed to be investigating alledged Democrat voter fraud & rigging of polling places & voter suppresion in certain voting ditsricts around the country. A fact curiously swept aside by the media. But again, like everything else only Democrats get to be partisan.

So, let's review, Republican President & Attoerney General fire 8 US Attorneys over dragging their feet on investigating allegations of Democrat voter fraud; it's a scandal. Democrat President & Attorney General fire ALL 93 US Attorneys; it's a-ok. We all know those 93 attorneys leftover from President George H. W. Bush were busy engaging & perpetrating lawsuits to lock up minorities & poor people & also helping big corporations & mean CEOs make tons of money anyway. So they deserved it! Yeah right on!... Right?

I'm not saying that all Republicans or Democrats are saints, I'm not even saying that all Democrats or Republicans are corrupt, all I'm saying is call it the SAME for both parties. If it's a scandal for one party it should be a scandal for the other, period!

Maybe Clinton fired 93 b/c it was 1993 & Bush is an idiot b/c he fired 8 instead of 7 in 2007?