Treat him ugly? How about tar and feathers?

Four days into his announced candidacy, and our rather rough-hewn Aggie governor is already ruffling feathers by suggesting that “Texans might want to treat the Republican economist ‘pretty ugly’ if he ‘prints more money between now and the election.’”  And of course, the usual band of thumbsuckers from President Obama to this Emory University professor who can’t maintain his own web page are admonishing Perry to “tone down his rhetoric.”

Tone it down?  Under the weaselly banner Quantitative Easing, Bernanke and the Fed have been debasing the dollar while President Zero and his spendthrift Congress were maxing out our national credit line.  So now we have gas at $3.60 a gallon, dollar Hersey bars, 60¢ for a freakin’ donut, and $3 for a G*ddamned comic book!  Treat him ugly?  Given half a chance, I’d unleash a twenty-year gunnysack* on the stupid sumbitch and kick his ass from the Alamo (Davy Crockett’s digs) to the San Fernando Cathedral (Santa Anna’s HQ) and back.

Let’s hope Rick Perry continues to let slip the occasional “unpresidential” remark so he can solidify his standing with his fellow pissed-off-Americans.

* “gunnysack” may not be perfect term, since it connotes something inappropriate.  Getting even with white collar thieves is NOT inappropriate.

Update (17 August).  Wrong-o, Barack-O.  The buck shrinks with you.

Forgiveness => Punish

IBD explains that “debt forgiveness” is a code phrase for “screw the responsible creditor.”

Tip from the Instapundit.

Let’s all pay our Fair Share

NRO’s Peter Kisanow is coming around to my idea of the Non-Alternative Minimum Tax: everybody kicks in something, even if it’s only a few bucks.

Why Twitter matters

Read about how one artisan blew up Urban Outfitters with a tweet.  Then read this take-away.

Now I gotta figure out how to leverage Twitter for my students, without it becoming a farookin’ nuisance.

Tip from the Instapundit.

Meet the Cape-a-Bility Challenge

59,000 of us got jobs, but all another 6,000 of them got were these stupid capes.  I wonder how the capes will look on their resumes…

Tip from Drudge, who couldn’t permalink his a$$.

The Dutch Book, made simple

Briggsy gives a dead-simple explanation for spotting and profiting from a Dutch Book set of odds.  Even an undergrad can do it!

My kind of guy

Read about the energy biz in the NY Times:

“Things are picking up,” said Cody Chase, 24, who had just finished an overtime shift at a coal mine north of here and was having a 7 a.m. burrito and beer at a downtown breakfast joint. Hours at the mine are up, said Mr. Chase, who makes $26 an hour after less than a year on the job, and new workers have started coming on.

Burritos and beer, the breakfast of Manly Men (and champions).
Tip from Planet Gore

Happy farookin’ Tax Day

The latest in Drudge fu:

Gee, I wonder how much overlap there is between these two groups.  Freeloading bastards.

Update (19 April). Michael Walsh, writing in the New York Post, gets behind my idea of the Non-Alternative Minimum Tax:

One way to get a grip — unemotionally, intellectually — on the problem doesn’t even involve spending. According to IRS figures, nearly half of filers pay no income tax at all, while the top 5 percent pay nearly 60 percent of the total income-tax burden. This must stop. It is not healthy for our democracy to have half the population with its hand out and no skin in the game. Necessary and proper taxes ought to be the patriotic duty of every citizen.

I recommend at $100 minimum. Most folks could raise this at a pawn shop if push came to shove.

Tip from the Corner.  Worth checking out just for the Li’l Abner clip.

Update (20 April). David Harsanyi gets on board for the Non-Alternative Minimum Tax.

OK, there’s at least one sane teacher in this country

Mike Mazenko’s neighbor had a frozen pipe fixed, for $300.  “…current education reform based almost entirely on standardized test scores and college degrees is the wrong direction for Colorado and for the United States.”

Tip from Community College Spotlight.

Update (26 February).   Thomas Benton thinks this is the beginning of a perfect storm in education. “But I earned nothing but A’s in high school!”

Listening to Peter Orszag

Former CBO Director Peter Orszag spoke last night at Trinity University on the looming financial crisis.   He was quite informative, giving some good insights into Federal budget and spending.  His take is that the Federal deficit will be driven primarily by health care spending, and suggested that emerging technology that identifies and promotes “best practices” in evidence-based medicine has the potential to rein in costs. He feels that overall, Congress and the President won’t take serious action on the budget until their hand is forced by a crisis, and he he advocated–at least in health care–a ”racheting” arrangement that allows the Feds to establish best-practices policies in Medicare without further Congressional approval.  I’m not convinced that giving any government agency this sort of carte blanche is wise.

He spoke a little on entitlement reform, and rightly noted that even if we changed Social Security to make it more solvent, our approach to grandfathering benefits would mean that reforms would not realize any savings for at least seven years.  Unfortunately, at this point, he dismissed it.  Entitlement reform is like planting  a tree–are you going to stand around and bitch about no shade–and no Social Security–seven years from now?

Finally, he claims the Feds can’t close the deficit gap without a tax increase.  He was persuasive, but he didn’t answer the obvious questions any good fiscal conservative lawmaker should ask:  What spending cuts are you offering in return?  and How do we guarantee you don’t piss the additional money away on some solar-powered corn likker for indigent folksinger scheme?