Annoying

The Mighty Fang is being mean to Mencken again. He's annoying Mencken by, by, ... grooming him. Note how he is holding Mencken's head down so he can attack Mencken with his Pink Tongue of Mass Grooming. Sadly, I did not catch said Pink Tongue of Mass Grooming in action this time. Oh well!

-- Badtux the Well-groomed Penguin

PS: Looking at this photo, what strikes me most is just how friggin' *big* those two cats are. I mean, that's a normal-sized futon. They make it look small. No wonder they own me and not vice-versa!

And John McCain is a member

of... THE GEORGE BUSH SOCIETY.

Yeah!

- Badtux the Music Penguin

To: The Guy with the Black Mercedes

License #XXX-XXXX

Sorry about the dent in your front fender. I was helping operations by pushing a cart loaded with outgoing systems out the loading dock door. I pushed the door open a little, then pushed the cart through it as hard as I could to get it over the door jamb, when I heard a "WHAM!" and the cart stopped. I gave the cart a couple of more pushes trying to get it past whatever obstacle was making it not want to go through the door. A couple of "WHAM!" later, I gave up and pulled the cart back in.

When I walked out of the loading dock door, I once again heard a "WHAM!" when I tried to open the door all the way. That is when I saw your black Mercedes. I walked out into the parking lot and let the door close behind me, and turned back and looked at the door and read the sign that was there:

DO NOT PARK HERE -- FREIGHT ZONE

You lose, dude.

-- Badtux the "Some people can't read" Penguin

John McCain "knows how to win wars"

Really? And how did that come about? As far as I can figure, getting shot down then sitting for five years in a Vietnamese prison getting the shit beat out of you teaches you a lot about how much pain you can take, but not much about how to win wars.

BTW, we lost that one. Just a reminder. Heh.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

An ode to a nation that is gone

Once upon a time, there was a can-do nation that could do, like, anything. Its President said that a country which had never flown a man in space, which had no idea what it would take to send a man into space, would send a man to the moon within nine years... and made it happen.

It has been thirty-nine years since Apollo 11 lifted off for the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Neal Armstrong set foot on the moon and made the famous statement, "one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind".

Thirty-nine years later, the United States no longer has the capability to send a man to the moon. It is not just a lack of desire. The sad thing is that we could not return to the moon today if we wanted to. We no longer have the expertise, the technology, or the industrial base to pull off something that big. Twenty years from now, we’re going to look up at the moon, and watch it twinkle as the first Moon city shines in the dark. And erected over that city will be a red flag with a large gold star and four smaller gold stars.

Sadly, can-do America is can’t-do America nowdays. Can’t provide health care for all its people. Can’t solve the problem of homeless junkies shooting up in public restrooms. Can’t built a replacement for the Space Shuttle before the last Shuttle is junked. Can’t find Osama bin Laden. Can’t solve the problem of people’s jobs getting exported overseas. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. It’s damned depressing, to tell you the truth, to live in a country that’s so obviously over the hill. About the only thing the United States can do nowdays is build military hardware, but even that capability is decaying… the United States, for example, could not build a new M1A2 tank today even if it wanted to. The industrial capacity isn’t there anymore. The gas turbine engine used in the M1 isn’t made anymore. The tooling for the rest of the tank was sold to Egypt. Etc. We’re living on stored Cold War gear, and that gear is going to run out sooner or later, and then what?

Now preparing to greet our new Chinese overlords...
- Badtux the Depressed Penguin

A reminder about Mr. Flip-flop

McCain argues that flip-flops are an example of a political leader who can't be trusted -- so he might as well drop out of the race. Because here is a list of 61 John McCain flip-flops -- some of which are large ones indeed.

Now, personally, I'm okay with the notion of a leader changing his opinion over time. A leader ought to change his opinions to match the facts, not stay steadfast like the captain of the Titanic and insist that reality isn't, well, reality. That way gets us George W. Bush and five years of "we're winning in Iraq! Stay the course!". Folks who get upset when a leader changes his mind after getting new facts on a matter are folks who are just plain insular and rigid and ideological. The problem for me is that John McCain's policy flip-flops have pretty much gone the opposite way -- away from reality, and towards the delusional. But anyhow, John McCain made the flip-flop argument, so it's fair to hoist him on his own petard, this penguin does think!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

How to piss off a songwriter

Steal the title of one of his songs to say exactly the opposite of the songwriter's message. That pisses off a songwriter *big time*.

OUCH, look at the email at The Republican Song site!

Update: Now, A VIDEO. Heh!

-- Badtux the Unamused Songwritin' Penguin

One parody deserves another

David Horsey takes on both the New Yorker cover and the loonie lefties throwing conniption fits over it (and the tighty righties who think it's true):

Bwhahah! This penguin loves the snark, yes he does. Why, it smells like... herring! URP!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Yet another reminder...

The problems at Fannie/Freddie are not caused by government regulation. Indeed, without government regulation, their problems would have been much, much worse. Even their sub-prime loans are "good" loans for the most part, their federal charters prohibited them from issuing the sorts of loans that got folks like Countrywide into trouble. Rather, their problems are because of a) the economy going sour and lots of people losing their jobs and thus their homes, and b) the housing market going sour and thus they can't resale those homes to make up their losses.

By law, Fannie/Freddie are exposed only to 80% of the equity position on a home. The problem is that housing prices have declined by more than 20% -- thus wiping out the 20% of equity that they could make up by foreclosing on the home and selling it to pay off the mortgage debt. There's nothing that Fannie/Freddie can do about that. A 20% drop in housing prices is not something they have control over, and indeed is one of the biggest drops to happen in a long, long time, at least on a nationwide scale (there was a similar drop in the Oil Patch when the Oil Boom of the late 70's turned into the Oil Bust of the late 80's, but that was restricted to a relatively small geographical area).

So for those who say "they should just be allowed to go bust because it's their own fault", err, no, it's not their own fault -- thanks to government regulation, they're not exposed to the sort of toxic sub-prime loans that took out Countrywide, Indy Mac, and others. The problem is that the *prime* (and "near-prime") markets are going sour too, due to hard economic times and declining housing values. If we wipe out all liquidity in the mortgage market by folding Fannie and Freddie, we end up back in the situation of 1932 -- no money in the economy, no way to buy homes, people living on the streets or in their cars or in "Hooverville" tent cities... we simply need the liquidity these guys provide, and while they should certainly be well-regulated (and I applaud the new regulations announced today that make explicit what their charters already laid out), the answer to their problems is not, and cannot, be to "fold them"... they're as necessary today as when FDR created Fannie Mae back in 1937.

-- Badtux the Liquidity Penguin

Washing away

I just spent a couple of hours looking at satellite pictures of what used to be Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana. I remember... but it's all water now. All the land except narrow strips, all the land I remember south of Houma. It's all water now. The land... it's just gone.

But the music remains. For a while, anyhow.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

The problem with arrogant computer geeks

Is that they make lousy husbands, and even lousier murderers.

I'd suspected that Hans Reiser's wife was back in Russia laughing at us, but turns out he really did off her. Sigh. Human nature strikes again.

-- Badtux the Geeky (and single) Penguin

Google: Be evil

Google has a problem with their corporate-provided child care center: it doesn't have enough room for all the Google employees who'd like to have their children at the center. Google's solution? Well, the "Don't Be Evil" solution would have been to expand their child care center. But now that Google has a new corporate motto (rather than "Don't Be Evil"), they decided on another solution: Raise the rates so that only top executives of Google can afford to have their children in the Google child care center.

Google. Their new corporate logo is, "Be evil." Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Zen and the art of motorcycle detonation

So how's that Afghan war going, anyhow? Hmm... motorcycle suicide bomber detonates, kills four and injures many. U.S. outpost overrun, nine U.S. soldiers dead. Teenager wearing suicide vest detonates it, kills two soldiers and wounds several civilians. And so on and so forth.

Yessiree, sounds like victory is in sight alright -- for the Taliban. But never fear, because the tighty righties are quick to tell us the real story -- which is that the Taliban can't keep taking those sorts of losses and remain a viable fighting force.

Funny, I think I heard that before. Where a general was saying that the attacks upon his forces could not be sustained by the Afghan insurgents. Thing is, that was in 1986, and the general in question was a Soviet general. Sigh. George W. Bush not only wasn't happy until he gave us his very own personal Vietnam in Iraq... but then he had to give us the Soviet version of Vietnam too at the very same time. Wow, double-decker disaster dude, isn't he?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Is Obama running to the right?

My answer: I call bullshit. Obama hasn't changed. His policy proposals have always been right-centrist, about making incremental changes rather than blowing up the system and starting over again. All that has happened is that the news "reporters" have started reporting on his policy proposals, policy proposals that have been the same since at least the beginning of the year, and suddenly liberals are saying "hold it, that's almost a right-wing position!"

For example, look at his health care proposal. It's been the same since the end of last year. It looks a helluva lot like the Republican bail-out of Bear-Stearns and Fannie-Freddie, which is all about privatizing the profits and socializing the risks. In Obama's proposal, insurance companies are required to write insurance even for pre-existing conditions. But, the government will come in and bail out the insurers by re-insuring the riskiest policies, the ones for people who have pre-existing conditions or who are suffering from catastrophically expensive illnesses. Privatize the profit, socialize the risk. Might as well be out of the goddamn Republican playbook. And this has been Obama's health care plan since, like, the beginning.

Obama is who he has always been -- a right-centerist pragmatist. There ain't a damned thing that's changed about him, and Obamabots and other liberals who are getting all huffy and upset about his supposed "flip-flops" need to take the blinders off their eyes and look around and see what's been there all along. That's Obama, folks. He ain't the Second Coming of Eugene Debs, and never has been. He is who he is and always has been, for better or for worse. And compared to John McCain, that's a whole lot better, for reasons I've explained elsewhere. But Eugene Debs he ain't -- and never has been.

-- Badtux the Practical Penguin

Who will drive 55?

Answer: People will drive 55mph only if it is in their financial best-interests to do that. Otherwise, they'll continue to drive whatever speed they're driving.

Look, we've been through this before, folks. 55mph didn't work the first time -- people just ignored it, other than to make the creators of radar detectors rich and create an entire movie industry around truckers using CB radios to pinpoint where cops were running radar traps. There's a saying in the military that they teach to fresh NCO's and junior officers, "never give an order that you know will be ignored." It just makes you look stupid. Same deal with laws. If you pass a law that you know will be ignored by the majority of people, it makes you look even more stupid, as well as undemocratic -- such a law, by definition, by ignoring the will of the majority of the people, makes the place look like some kinda Commie hellhole rather than a free nation. Hmm...

Anywho... folks will drive 55mph when the gas they save costs more than the time they save from driving faster. Right now, we're not there yet. Maybe when gas is $10 a gallon, we will be. That's just how it works in the real world, rather than in the fantasy land of lawmakers who think passing a law is the end of the job. A law which cannot be enforced is a law that is useless, and our lawmakers should feel ashamed of themselves for even proposing such nonsense.

-- Badtux the Law Penguin

Tool talk over at Mototux

Part two of my adventure wiring my bike for new accessories, wherein I lay out the tools and supplies I'm going to use and explain their function. Yeah, it's a bit of tool overload. But you'll see them all in action when Part Three comes around...

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Say goodbye to the dollar...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between them account for approximately 50% of the outstanding mortgages in the United States. Most of these mortgages are not the "sub-prime" mortgages that have been in melt-down for the past few years -- Fannie and Freddie didn't even get into that business until recently, and only 5% of their outstanding mortgages are subprime. Rather, the problem is that their prime mortgages are now melting down as the housing market plummets, to the point where it seems unlikely that they can continue to perform their task of purchasing and securitizing loans because, well, they just won't have the money to do so.

And at that point, the whole housing market goes into complete meltdown, because the only way you could buy a home would be to pay cash. Which means that the average home would be 10% of its current cost. Goodbye to your retirement if you hoped to sell your home and move out to the desert to retire on the proceeds, 'cause there ain't going to be any proceeds! But more importantly, all that money represented by the equity in people's homes just vanishes. Trillions of dollars. Vanished off the books. The galloping deflation end economic collapse that results would end up making the Great Depression look more like the "sorta big-ish Depression".

So what to do? Well, it's crank up the printin' presses time. And believe me, that's exactly what they're doing. They're guaranteeing to make up any losses on the loans in order to keep mortgage lending going, because if you collapse mortgage lending, you collapse much of the money supply. But to do this they're having to crank up the printing presses and create more money out of thin air. The result is going to be stagflation -- prices going up, but the economy sputtering. We've been here before -- remember the late 1970's? But we're out of good options thanks to the Bush Administration hiding its head in the sand for way too long until the only options left are bad, and even worse. Thank you, George W. Bush. Thanks for nothing.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

A bit of a fixer-upper, hmmm

This real estate agent was asked by the bank to look at this property and figure out what it should be listed at. He has a new policy now of videotaping everything so his buyers don't have to head out to the place to see what it's like, saves everybody time, money, and gas. So let's see what his reaction is when he sees *this* home, heh!

Over at Moto-Tux...

I talk about elves. Sorta. And motorcycle wiring. What do elves have to do with motorcycle wiring? Hmm...

-- Badtux the Electrifying Penguin

Bigamist for President?

John McCain got a marriage license to marry his mistress before he bothered divorcing his first wife.

I wonder if he'd even told his first wife at the time that he was divorcing her and marrying his mistress, who was sixteen years younger than him?

-- Badtux the "Hey, family values folks, where's the outrage?" Penguin