[High Praise! to According to Hoyt]

NOTE: This excerpt references a poem by Rudyard Kipling called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” that I’ll link here and explain via a Wikipedia quote:

It contains “age-old, unfashionable wisdom” that Kipling saw as having been forgotten by society and replaced by “habits of wishful thinking.”

The “copybook headings” to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students’ special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page.

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Government produces nothing. It doesn’t build that. It doesn’t build anything. It can’t. Government is force. It can, on threat of that force, seize enough of what someone produced to give to someone else. Even when it “builds” roads or power plants, it does so with confiscated wealth and at the expense of what the owners might have done with that wealth. (They wouldn’t have? How do you know? Remember status. Throughout history humans have funded research – often in useless stuff – and paid for innovation. How do you know left to its own devices private capital wouldn’t have created neighbordhood-sized nuclear plants? Or who knows what? The one thing we know is that nothing done by government has ever come in on time or under budget.)

When governments start thinking in terms of “feeding the hungry” which in our day becomes “giving things to the continuously redefined poor” what it is actually doing is reducing the number of people working in the productive sector. Between the bureaucrats working to redistribute wealth and the people working to keep getting the handouts, a huge contingent of people is removed from the productive sector.

When that number reaches the point where the productive sector can’t keep up, a crash ensues. An Earth-shaking Kaboom, you might say. The “you” in the poem is collective in this case. “You” individual might survive for a time, without working, given a very wealthy society. But no society can remain wealthy when it doesn’t “work” – ie. When it produces nothing. And eventually the gods of the copybook headings, in fire and terror return.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
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It’s a good poem. Give it a read.

Wow, this is trailer for Gravity is pretty intense:

I was thinking, though, if this were a disaster involving a plane, I’d just call the movie a thriller. But since it involves space, I want to call it a science fiction film. Except, I see a space shuttle in the trailer, which would mean this would have to take place in the past and would be historical fiction.

And that’s the sad state of things right now. Space travel used to be the big thing of the future, but currently it’s a thing of the past.

So, have you learned anything from the collapse of Greece or Detroit or from the success of Texas? If you did, well then that’s why you’re not a Nobel-prize winning economist, because Paul Krugman says there is nothing to learn from any of those. Who knew that economics doesn’t use data?

And also on the learning nothing front, Obama gave a speech on economics yesterday which, if you weren’t live in attendance, you could have sworn was a rerun. All these years watching the economy, flounder, and apparently he’s learned absolutely nothing. Krugman must be nodding his bearded chin in approval.

I’m starting to worry about the whole country collapsing in a pile of debt and unemployment, but I guess I shouldn’t get too worried about. It’s not like there will be a test afterwards… since there will be nothing to learn from it.

I’ve met Jimmy Carter. Couple of times, actually. He’s a nice enough fellow, I guess, though I didn’t spend any extended period of time with him. Little meet, shake hands, exchange a word or two, and that was it. So, while I’ve met him, I certainly don’t know him.

Would Jimmy Carter tell a lie? Well, he’s a Democrat politician, so I really don’t need to answer that question for you, right? But, the former president tells Larry J. Sabato that he’s had death threats.

“I have had two or three threats to my life after I came home from the White House,” Carter said in the highly-anticipated book due out October 22.

Yeah, I’m kinda thinking this whole thing is to sell a book.

I don’t want to downplay threats against former presidents, but who would want to harm Jimmy Carter? Sure, I’d like to see him shut the hell up, but that’s not the same thing. I certainly don’t want any harm to come to the man. Not even anything like the harm he did America during his presidency.

And, sure, there are crazy people in this world that will do harm to people for reasons unknown. So, you can’t dismiss any viable threat. But just what are those threats?

Consider this: Jimmy Carter was once attacked by a rabbit back in 1979. Is Mother Nature behind those threats to the former Chief Executive?

Humans are crazy, but often forgiving. And, as deadly as humans can be, we don’t always try to kill our former presidents. I don’t know of anyone who would wish physical harm on Jimmy Carter.

But Mother Nature? She’s mean. She doesn’t care. She’ll kill babies at a rate almost as fast an abortion doctor or other Democrat heroes. Maybe she has put out contracts on Jimmy Carter.

I hope he stays safe. Some rabbits have a vicious streak a mile wide and possess nasty big pointy teeth.

I kinda feel sorry for the Secret Service. Keeping Jimmy Carter, or anyone, safe from Mother Nature isn’t as easy as 1, 2, 5. Maybe if he went to another planet. Maybe Obama’s home planet would be safe for Carter. And maybe Obama would escort him there. I hear the golfing there’s good.