* Reports are that Obama will be announcing a $300 billion jobs plan in his speech… I guess tomorrow. I don’t when it is; who cares really.

So Obama already spent $800 billion in “stimulus”, and there weren’t any jobs. But give him $300 billion more and this time he’ll make jobs. For reals.

Republicans need to turn to Obama and tell him, “You can’t make any jobs because you’re a dummy. We could get more effective use out of the money by burning it because that would at least produce warmth. Here’s a bag of golf balls; go to the driving range and stay out of everyone’s way.” Except they won’t say that because Boehner has decided not to give a response to the speech, considering it beneath his concern — something most Americans have already concluded. Pelosi is calling this disrespectful. So now not going on TV and telling everyone what a useless dummy Obama is is disrespectful. Because all Obama really wants is attention.

Anyway, here’s my idea to raise government revenue and help close the deficit: Have Obama yell out his jobs plan to passersby from a dunking booth. $20 a ball.

* There’s a Republican debate tonight at 8pm ET which will be Rick Perry’s first — if he can make. Currently he’s in Texas because his state caught fire. If he doesn’t make it, expect his opponents to hit him on this.

ROMNEY: “Know what I didn’t do while I was governor of Massachusetts? Burn down my state.”

BACHMANN: “We make sure our state can’t catch fire by covering it in snow and ice.”

RON PAUL: “Fire is not in the Constitution!”

* And with all the polling showing Rick Perry well ahead in the primary, Mitt Romney is not about to give up. He’s come up with a 59 point plan to help the economy that is 160 pages along. I haven’t read it all because… it’s a 160 page plan about the economy and I have other things to do. Still, I know that point 28 of his plan is “??” and point 59 is “Profit”.

* Debbie Wasserman Schultz (I checked; that actually is the name she goes by) says that “the Republicans who think the Recovery Act [stimulus] didn’t work are simply wrong.” But the independents and Democrats who think it didn’t work are right?

Really, this is what the Democrats are going to run on in 2012? Just point to the nation and say, “This is what $800 billion in awesome recovery looks like!”? $800 billion is more money than we can wrap our brains around, and they just wasted it all. It’s Brewsters Billions – can you spend $800 billion without helping the economy? It’s a challenge, but they did it.

Actually, Nancy Pelosi has now banned the use of the word “stimulus” because they realize what a huge epic failure it was and that they better not bring it up. Next one — which Obama will be proposing — will get called “job creation” — like any of them know anything about jobs. We can’t all be community organizers; some people have to do something useful.

* If you want to watch something funny, here’s Jake Tapper pressing Carney on why the White House won’t respond to Hoffa’s remarks. Apparently, back in 2008, Obama called on McCain to apologize for what a speaker who introduced him said, but Obama doesn’t think he needs to even acknowledge the thug who introduced him from his own event. It’s an obvious double standard, and all Carney can do is squirm like a hooked worm.

But look what some left-winger produced in his hate: You get to kill Tea Partiers in the forms of zombies. The left talk about peace and call their opponents Nazis, but push them just a little bit and all they’re fantasizing about bashing in the brains of anyone who disagrees with them.

I just hope the next time liberals act all outraged about something someone says, we know to tell them, “Shut up, you’re not actually outraged by this. You’re just a useless partisan tool; if you didn’t think the outrage gave you a political advantage, you wouldn’t even care. As evidence to this, I point to all of history of the left.” Remember the Paul Wellstone funeral? Remember the left immediately moving to action to try to score political points against their opponents out of Gifford’s being shot in the head? Remember how Michael Moore’s first reaction to 9/11 was that it should have been targeted at Republicans? There’s a point at which partisan politics replaces basic human emotion, and that’s where the left is constantly hanging out. If you surrender your humanity for politics, you have no business trying to figure out what’s best for people.

* Obama has apparently told the Pentagon to cut troop levels down to 3,000. This is way below what the generals wanted, but Obama probably knows better from all his military experience from… I don’t know where I’m going with this sentence.

It was pretty irresponsible to put Obama in charge of the military. Maybe, instead of playing golf, he could play some Call of Duty to at least become a little bit familiar with military concepts. Or if that’s too violent, how about Super Mario Brothers — just something where he’s trying to fight the enemy and win. Maybe Bubble Bobble.

* Wisdom of the Day: “How strange is our world when one of the biggest stories of the day is whether we will be able to leave our shoes on to get on an airplane?” –Rich Galen

* Just submitted a manuscript to HarperCollins this morning. It will be a short ebook under their Broadside Books imprint and should hopefully come out in November. What’s it about? Maybe I’ll tell you when there’s a firm title, but know what you can do? You can speculate in the comments! Anyway, the book will be very funny and you will all buy it. Every one of you. No exceptions.

* So on Labor Day, Obama met with some teamsters — yeah, you may have heard about teamsters on Mad Men or something, but they’re actually still around. Anyway, at the event, Jimmy Hoffa (with a name like that, you know he’s not corrupt) said about the Tea Party “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

Now, some conservatives are upset that Obama didn’t condemn these remarks. See, the left has been constantly wetting their pants at supposedly violent right-wing rhetoric, but they seem quite unconcerned when anything intemperate comes from their side. I think by now, though, everyone knows not to take the left’s complaints about rhetoric seriously, and it’s pretty obvious that the left just likes wetting their pants — possible because it’s quicker than finding a bathroom.

Also, it’s kind of hard to be threatened by the teamsters; they’re just so quaint now. Union membership has been hugely declining for years and there is no real plan to change that, so unions are sort of like newspapers and typewriters. And it’s kind of cute for them to act all powerful — it’s like a little mouse squeaking about how it will take over the world. Was Obama supposed to say to it, “Bad mouse; you’re scaring people!” or should he have said, “That’s so cute. Here’s a piece of cheese.”?

One day we won’t have unions anymore, and then people will have to be lazy without all the organization.

* It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means: Obama’s hit new lows in another poll. He has 51% disapproval in a new NBC/WSJ poll. Obama’s big problem seems to be that he’s not very good at being president. Maybe to improve his poll numbers he could try to look less like someone completely in over his head who has no idea what he’s doing.

Or maybe he could have more rallies with unions. Everyone loves unions; they’re so cute!

* The US Post Office is on the brink of default. It could soon completely run out of money and then… what exactly do we use the post office for anymore? I guess Netflix disks. Well, I canceled the disk portion of Netflix when they raised the price, so I don’t care about that. I guess I also get a few bills, but they can e-mail those to me if they have to. Not really sure we even really need the post office anymore; it’s another one of those things that’s kind of quaint these days. And one of the reasons it’s running out of money is that its workers are unionized — double quaint!

* It’s nearing the tenth anniversary of 9/11, so expect lots of articles on the true meaning of 9/11 and how we overreacted and were mean to terrorists and stuff. I’m kind of dreading it.

Anyway, here’s an article about how the next 9/11 could be from nature. And you know the article is filled with scientific fact because it quotes Al Gore a lot. If nature attacks us, I wouldn’t like to bomb nature.

I’d love it.

* And there’s no reason for nature to be mad at us because scientists are working on ways to resurrect extinct species. That means we can ravage nature and then set everything back to normal — no harm no foul. It sounds like one of the first creatures they’re going to restore is the wooly mammoth, which is great news for anyone whose main complaint about elephants is that they aren’t large enough and aren’t hairy enough.

Could this lead to resurrecting dinosaurs and putting rocket launchers on them? Well, we don’t have much dinosaur DNA, plus Obama has put tough regulations on rocket launchers and what animals you can mount them on (because he hates America). You’d think Obama would really support bringing dinosaurs back to life; if we could bring back dinosaurs, maybe we could bring back unions.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Cats: Keeping your pill bottles under your sofa since 1909.” –Dan Harmon

* Friend of IMAO author Mike Williamson has a new novel out today, Rogue, a sequel to The Weapon, though the novel is also a stand alone story.

Baen needs to start getting their books on Kindle, though. I know they have their own DRM free distribution, but it’s a convenience thing. They publish novels about the future, so they should know people in the future like convenience. And shooting aliens.

* In Britain, they’ve taken seven children away from their parents for being too fat. That’s great, because I think everyone agrees things aren’t hard enough already on fat kids so we also need to take away their parents. I can just imagine the court hearing with a lawyer pointing at the kids and saying, “Look how fat they are! They’re FAT! Let’s take their parents away!” Then a social worker will come to the crying children and say, “Sorry, but you’re just too fat to have parents.” And the whole time Michelle Obama will be standing in the back of the courtroom, pointing and laughing. She sure hates fats kids. Don’t we all?

* Just in time for Obama’s big job speech (aren’t you excited for it!), it’s being reported that zero jobs were created last month. That’s the first time that’s happened since 1945, the year my dad was born (he’s very old). Obama appeared on TV for a quick statement saying, “Thanks to my hard work, no one lost their job last month.” He then added in a really snotty voice, “You’re welcome!”

I think I helped contribute to our record zero jobs growth, as I didn’t create any jobs last month. Then again, I did work hard at my job and participate in the economy, so it’s not too unlikely I contributed to a job being created. Pretty unlikely Obama did, though.

* New White House report says that unemployment should remain above 9% throughout the 2012 election. This is bad news for Obama, because when people are asked whether they like 9% unemployment, and overwhelming majority says, “No, I do not like it.” And when asked if they’d rather unemployment be lower or higher, and overwhelming majority says they would like unemployment to be lower — and that’s the direction Obama can’t make unemployment go.

What is going to be Obama’s reelection argument going to be for this? “Remember: I inherited a horrible unemployment rate from Bush… and then I made it higher and it stayed higher.”

* New Rasmussen poll has Rick Perry — and only Rick Perry — beating Obama. Perry is considered further to the right than a lot of the other candidates — Romney, specifically — so the main argument against him is electability, but that’s not looking like an issue so far. Along with how Perry is polling against the other Republican candidates in the primary, it’s starting to look like its his primary to lose. All he has to do is avoid a big misstep, like strangling a puppy on camera. I mean, you see that puppy staring at you with those big puppy eyes and you so want to strangle it, but you first have to make sure there are no cameras around. America has never elected a puppy strangler.

* FEMA has started to use the term “federal family”. I never thought of the federal government as family, but I guess it is in the way you get to choose your friends, but you don’t get to choose your family. I mean, technically, we’re supposed to be able to choose our federal government, but it just doesn’t seem that way. It’s like if one of my close friends was a murderous psycho with a knife — but not because I wanted to be friends with him but because I was forced to choose a murderous psycho as a friend and he was the best one I could get. I sure hope he doesn’t stab me. But the federal government will be the federal government, and there’s not much I can do about it because it’s family.

* For some reason, the White House has started some online petition site. It’s been my position for some time that online petition are pretty much the most useless thing in the history of man — even more so than online polls. In fact the only thing I can think of that’s more useless is Barack Obama… and right now he says he’ll respond to petitions that get more than 5,000 signatures. Hmm… what should we start a petition on. Well, I don’t like all the spending, and I still would like to pay a lot less in taxes… Oh! I know! A petition to hunt down and execute whoever is responsible for clamshell packaging.

* Obama invited a bunch of NASCAR drivers to the White House, but five of the drivers said they won’t be attending due to “scheduling conflicts”. That’s kind of rude. I mean, I understand NASCAR drivers not wanting to hang with Obama, but Obama also probably really doesn’t want to meet NASCAR drivers. This whole being honored at the White House thing is just something you have to do and both sides should just grit their teeth and get it over with. This is just wrong; I’m going to start an online petition against it.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Alaska woman punches bear in face to save her dog. Not sure, but I think by state law that automatically makes her the new Governor.” –Fred Thompson

* Crowder has a new video today with some interesting perspective on the federal gasoline tax. Did you know part of it is to keep union workers employed? Of course it is.

* Have a fun Labor Day weekend, y’all! And watch tomorrow night as Boise State whups Georgia!

* I’ve always thought Obama was a useless idiot starting all the way back to the 2008 campaign and have thought pretty much everything he’s done as president has been a misstep, and yet somehow he still keeps slipping under my expectations. So Obama wants to give a big speech about his new jobs program before Congress during primetime when we’re already well aware he has nothing useful to say based on his last couple dozen speeches. That’s dumb enough, but he decides to put the speech up against a Republican primary debate and has his press secretary act all ignorant about it. It’s so dumb and petty and way beneath the president — I even would have assumed it was beneath Obama.

But little orange Boehner stood up to Obama and he backed down and moved the speech from next Wednesday to Thursday. Can’t we possibly wait another day for Obama’s super important jobs speech? And if it’s so important, why not just tell us about it now and get working on it this week?

Really, why do we keep paying attention to this guy?

* And for those getting tired of Obama, there’s now an iPhone app to help out. It counts down the time left in Obama’s presidency while also displaying the unemployment rate, current gas prices, housing values, the national debt, and Obama’s current approval ratings. So liberals shouldn’t get angry about it, because all it’s doing is reporting facts.

And it’s not the only right-wing app. I mean, everyone is well aware that the Angry Birds game — with it’s enraged birds smashing pigs — is supposed to represent the Tea Parties, right?

* In news even worse than what Obama is doing to our country, look what George Lucas just did to the end of Return of the Jedi for the Blu-ray edition:

Yes, George Lucas took one of the most mocked scenes in the entire series — Vader’s loud “Noooooo!” at the end of Revenge of the Sith — and decided we need more of that ruining the few good scenes left in the movie. The claim that George Lucas is trying to improve the old movies is just unbelievable. Occam’s Razor is that Lucas hates all Star Wars fans and would like to personally rape and murder all of us, but since he can’t practically do that, he’s doing the next best thing and slowly destroying these movies bit by bit in front of us in a methodical, torturous process. One day, they’ll have been so changed for so long we’ll show the movies to our children and not even be able to remember why we liked them in the first place. All good memories of Star Wars must be destroyed; that’s George Lucas’s mission.

* Now that the shuttle program has ended, do you wonder what NASA officials are up to? They’re getting arrested protesting us getting cheaper oil. How the space agency has fallen. If Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin knew this was the future of NASA, they probably would have just stayed on the moon and started a Heinleinian libertarian society.

* So Representative Andre Carson is standing by his remarks that tea partiers want to lynch minorities. Some people look at the hatred of the past and are horrified, and I guess other look at it and said, “Wow! Bigotry sure is useful politically! I wonder if I can apply it to other things than just race.”

People like Carson should not be allowed to mingle with normal, civilized people; he’s just a mindless idiot who throws out race-baiting because he’s too dumb to have any actual arguments. He should be shunned to the kiddie table along with the KKK. Moron bigots like him shouldn’t be a part of the adult discussion and instead should have to sit in the corner and rant alone to themselves. Is that really too much to ask?

* An anti-corruption official in China was found dead from eleven stab wounds. Police ruled it a suicide. Nothing to see here.

Now the leaders of the Chinese government — there’s some people I wouldn’t mind seeing hanging from a tree.

* Actor Matthew Fox was charged with assault for hitting a woman multiple times while under the influence of alcohol. Maybe Fox didn’t mean to do it; maybe he was having a weird flashback.

* Wisdom of the Day: “When I was little, I called pita bread ‘Peter bread.’ I think this is why my parents got divorced.” –Rob Delaney

* Starting yesterday (Wednesday is new comic book day as everyone knows), DC Comics has rebooted all their series. Every series is going to issue one (including Detective Comics and Action Comics, both of which I believe made it past 900 issues), and the past history for all the characters is wiped out so new readers can jump in and not get overwhelmed with decades of backstory. And I think there will be some big changes to, such as Superman is now gay and Aquaman no longer is. Just rumors.

Wish we could do a Washington DC reboot like this. All past history is wiped out and the government has to start over with the spending levels it first started with George Washington was president. Reboots are popular these days; we should try selling that.

* Obama has a new jobs plan he says he thinks could add up to one million new jobs. When asked why didn’t he unveil this plan sooner then, Obama said, “Because I didn’t think people could handle that many awesome jobs.” And when asked if these would be those invisible type jobs where he says he added them but the unemployment rate doesn’t go down, Obama said, “Hey! Some people would be happy for magic jobs!”

When Obama calls presses conferences to announce stuff, the reporters need to just stop showing up. We really have to stop encouraging him.

* Rick Perry is already responding to the dumb charges against him of being dumb with the obvious response: Pointing to Obama and his performance with the economy and wondering if that’s supposed to be the benchmark for smart. Do people really think the vague charges of dumb are going to work against a Republican when there is stark evidence of dumb for Obama?

“Wow, that Republican is a drooling moron.”

“Well, I believe he had a spike that went through his head and took out a quarter of his brain.”

“He’s barely coherent.”

“Yeah, I even saw him trying to eat a book.”

“He should be at least ten times better a president than Obama, though.”

“Oh, yes; indisputably.”

* So Canada is getting oil from tar sands. I don’t know what that means, but it’s got a lot of protesters so it must be extremely useful to society while being fairly innocuous to the environment. And the Canadians are striking back in an ad campaign, pointing out that if we get oil from Saudi Arabia, we fund oppression of women, but if we get oil from Canadian tar sands, all we fund is weird hockey obsessions. So there’s the choice: Do we help stop oppression of people by moving away from Saudi oil or do we stop… whatever bad thing whiny actors think getting oil from the tar sands is supposed to cause. I’m going to vote we do the thing that helps people. And gives us more oil.

* BTW, Vice President Biden has said that failing to invest in clean-energy technology would be “the biggest mistake this nation has made in its entire history”. Hmm… can you think of any other big mistake in American history? Martin Luther King, can you think of anything? No, I guess we’ve got a pretty good record, so not working on clean-energy would certainly be our biggest mistake.

Rick Perry sure is dumb.

* So some supposed election expert is predicting Obama has the election in the bag. Apparently, he’s predicted every election since 1984 using his formula. He has thirteen keys, and if a candidate gets six of them, that candidate wins. It’s really stupid. For one thing, every keys is equal, so huge unemployment, huge debt, and the S&P downgrade are just one strike against Obama of equal weight to him not being contested in his own primary. And for some reason he wins the key “Major domestic-policy changes in his first term” despite everyone hating all his major policies.

Now, I don’t usually try to do political predictions because I consider that witchcraft, but maybe I’ll make my own list of keys. A candidate needs to score well on these to ensure reelection:

– Doesn’t keep interrupting prime time TV to say nothing of interest to anyone.

– Has at least some idea what he’s doing.

– Doesn’t spend half the day with a bucket stuck on his head.

– Can pronounce “corpsman”.

– Doesn’t keep claiming to pivot to jobs eighty times while doing nothing useful.

– Doesn’t have giant Dumbo ears.

Ooh. Not looking so good for Obama on these points. Science!

* The Navy is working on a new stealth boat. I e-mailed Aquaman for comment, and here’s his response:

Bah! I mock and deride their “stealth” boat. No matter what people do to try and hide, my fish friends will find you and tell me about you. And then I’ll call the appropriate authority to handle you, as boats aren’t really my thing. I deal with things underwater, not above water. Though I also don’t deal with submarines; I consider those like an embassy of above waterness, so they’re also out of my purview. But if an octopus is robbing someone, I’m there.

That’s what I think of the Navy’s stealth boat.

* So the federal government is going after a guy who shot and killed a grizzly bear to protect his family. The state officials — and anyone who isn’t a heartless bureaucrat — thought the shooting was completely justified; you know a bear — on someone’s property near children — that’s the sort of thing a sensible person shoots. But the federal government, so concerned for our safety and wisely spending our money, has decided to pursue this case so society doesn’t break out into a fit of bear-murder. So, the Obama administration is not going to worry about illegal immigrants, but try and protect your family from a wild animal and they’re all over stopping that.

Never trusted bears, anyway. Their diet is mainly berries and fish, and yet they’re these giant killing machines. What is up with that? And am I now going to get a knock on my door from the feds for asking these questions? They’re not on our side; they’re on the side of the bears.

* So Obama’s working on a new jobs plan. He’s worked on lots of jobs plans before, but this time is different: He’s going to put his plan in a red binder instead of the usual green binder he’s used in the past. It’s a bold move, but will it get results? Probably not; Obama hasn’t had a very close relationship with results. Him and results are kind of estranged. Actually, a couple of times Obama has seen results on the street and has yelled out, “Hey, results! It’s me, Obama!” And results just kept walking and acted like it didn’t see him.

But Obama and spending are good friends; maybe those two can make something happen. Who wants more spending? No one? Well, too bad.

* I notice they have this fancy work for trying to reduce spending: “austerity.” Why do we need exotic terms for trying to balance the budget? Shouldn’t that just be normal and anything else called “FAIL”, i.e., “Obama’s proposing some FAIL policies.”

* Michelle Bachmann joked about the earthquake and hurricane being a warning from God about D.C.’s spending, and people took it seriously and freaked out because you have to freak out about something. Still, it’s pretty obvious God’s position on debt. Just take Proverbs 22:7 for instance:

“The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.”

Of course, when the economy collapses like it does, hitting us with an earthquake as a warning is just overkill.

* Wikileaks has dumped a whole bunch more documents, and these ones include diplomatic sources the government was trying to protect. You know, in the movies, the CIA is always being evil and murdering people to cover things up, but why hasn’t this happened with the Wikileaks people? Did Obama defang them and forbid evil murders? Poor CIA; they just get kicked around these days.

* Dick Cheney offered to resign as vice president three times. Of course, each time Cheney had a shotgun in hand and the Secret Service were shouting at George W. Bush, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

* Al Gore wants to treat skeptics of global warming as racists, and skeptics of global warming want to treat Al Gore as a fat weirdo. Let’s see which view become more popular in the mainstream.

BTW, here’s a must-see takedown of Al Gore from the Glenn Beck radio show.

* The Democrat running for Anthony Weiner’s seat was asked how big the nation’s debt was, and he guessed $4 trillion. He’s running for Congress and he had to guess how big the debt is. And his guess was off by $10 trillion. Do you ever get the feeling the Democrats don’t take this debt thing very seriously? You’d think maybe after the credit downgrade, they’d think that maybe it’s worth looking into, but apparently some Democrats don’t even think it’s important enough to know the correct order of magnitude of the debt. This is like running for Congress during WWII and when asked who we’re at war with, the candidate answered, “Someone in Europe — Finland maybe.”

I’ve made this point before and I’m going to keep making it: The people we send to D.C. are really really dumb and really really useless. That’s why it’s crucial to give them as little power as possible, and certainly as little spending power as possible.

* Do you know yesterday was the “Summer Bank Holiday” in the UK? I mean, they don’t even try to come up with a pretense for a holiday. They’re just like, “We’re a bank, we like being closed a lot, and it’s the summer.” I mean, we have next Monday off for “Labor Day”, but we at least named it to act like it’s actually about something. No one actually knows what the holiday celebrates, but at least we pretend.

* Obama’s illegal alien uncle was arrested in Massachusetts for drunk driving. I remember that Obama also had an illegal alien aunt in this country to. I bet there is going to be a lot of pressure on immigration official to deport as many Obamas as they are legally able.

* There’s some talk about extending legal protection to ugly people. How about just handing out free paper bags with eye holes in them?

* Though it didn’t get great reviews, I’ve really enjoyed Resident Evil: The Mercenaries for 3DS and played it a ton. What’s it really made me want to do, though, was go back and replay Resident Evil 4, which I owned for both Gamecube and Wii and probably ranks in my top five all time favorite games. Resident Evil 5 was pretty good and seemed to follow in the same vein as Resident Evil 4, but there was just something off about it where it just seemed like a pale imitation of Resident Evil 4. Even disregarding the forced co-op throughout the game that everyone complained about, the way it was setup — the level structure or something — just never felt as immersive as Resident Evil 4. It was more like playing through levels of an action game than being in a Resident Evil game. The 3DS will be getting it’s own full-fledged Resident Evil game next year, so high hopes they get that one right. And bring back zombies.

* So I guess hurricane Irene was overhyped, but Katrina was overhyped too (remember when it was tens of thousands dead and people were turning to cannibalism?) so that doesn’t mean the damage wasn’t bad. Still, when you hear that Washington D.C. is getting hit with a earthquake and a hurricane within a week, it sounds like God is finally deciding to lay down His wrath on them, but from the results it doesn’t look like His heart was into it.

* People are acting like it’s a big deal that Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, but could someone explain to me how in any way it’s not a Ponzi scheme? There are no actual investments in it, and if new people stopped paying into it, it would stop being able to pay out, i.e. it’s completely dependent on new investors to keep the image of stability making it a text book Ponzi scheme. The big difference between it and other Ponzi schemes is that the government forces you to pay into it, so it doesn’t matter if you know it’s a scam. And the big difference between politicians and Bernie Madoff is that Madoff probably had more respect for other people’s money.

* In more Rick Perry news (I’m guessing we’re going to see a lot of Rick Perry in the near future), he’s billed the federal government $349 million for the cost of Texas having to deal with illegal immigrants. But if everyone sues the government for incompetency, then soon it will be bankrupt and… actually then probably have the same or better in levels of competency. This is an idea we should run with.

* If you were thinking liberals might finally get in more touch with reality to be competitive in 2012, here’s Jonathan Alter with an article demanding people prove Obama’s been a bad president. I guess by his logic you’re a great president until proven incompetent or something. See, I would have thought the burden of proof would be on Obama that he’s actually ever done anything useful, but what do I know; I’m not a partisan nutjob. Anyway, I guess this will be their 2012 campaign slogan: “9% unemployment, skyrocketing debt, leadership that consists of repetitive, pointless speeches — but you can’t prove he’s a bad president!”

* Actually, here’s about as close as you will get to objective proof in these sort of matters: A comparison of Reaganomics and Obanomics. Both had inherited an economic mess, both had huge unemployment at about this time in their presidency, but one cut taxes while the other just spent and spent and spent and expanded government. And only one had GDP growth skyrocketing by reelection time. But those Keynesians sound so smart! They’re plans would totally work if we were attacked by space aliens.

* Inside of compound of Libyan leader Qdaffy, they found an album filled with photos of Condoleeza Rice. Everyone always thought Qdaffy was a weirdo, but it ends up he’s just like the rest of us.

* So far, the Obama administration hasn’t been seizing people’s guns like they feared — in fact, they’ve even given out guns to Mexican drug cartels — but now the Obama administration has started confiscating axes. The U.S. Justice Department raided Gibson, accusing it of having exotic wood, to which Gibson replied, “That’s what she said.” So Obama’s connecting with the young people by declaring war on rock & roll. Actually, does that pop garbage kids listen to even have guitars in them? KIDS THESE DAYS AND THEIR MUSIC!!!

* I finished reading the Hunger Games series at SarahK’s recommendation, and while I could nitpick it to death (so much important stuff was told instead of shown and why in a book about people fighting to the death was a stylist such a prominent character? Oh yeah; because it was written by a woman), it was overall very engrossing and I highly recommend it.

BTW, I’m trying to read more since it’s kind of silly that I’m trying to write scifi and fantasy but barely ever read any myself as an adult. What do you guys recommend in current fiction? I like stuff that’s fun and not so ponderous. For now, I’ve started John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.

* Make sure you read my column that was posted on Pajamas Media yesterday. In it, I apply the Coolidge Test and see whether a sack of hammers would have performed better, worse, or about the same as Obama in the various challenges he’s faced. Not to reveal too much, but SACK OF HAMMERS 2012!!!

* The GDP has gone up — 1%! You may think that’s not very much, but it’s better than going down 1%. In fact, it’s two percent points better than going down one percent. Math is fun.

At this rate, we’ll climb out of this hole by… Well, I’m not sure we’re beating inflation. Still, the point is, you can’t have a recession with positive growth. So as long as the economy can cling to growth above 0%, Obama can campaign on “Only one huge recession under my watch.”

* A giant hurricane is headed to DC and New York City. They’re not used to that sort of thing, and since I’ve lived through three major hurricanes, I thought I’d give them some tips. First off, whatever you’re doing to incur God’s wrath, just stop it for a little while. Second, don’t make eye contact with the hurricane. Finally, remember that the most important thing about a hurricane is to have fun.

Anyway, here’s some old posts I did on hurricanes. Here’s a Know Thy Enemy post on hurricanes from over eight years ago (hmm, I guess I used to use language like that; what a little scamp I was). And here’s Hurricane preparedness tips from nearly six years ago. Wow; I bet my archives is full of junk like this.

* Someone in the military felt the need to write an editorial about how Rick Perry doesn’t speak for the military. There are a lot of people in the American military, so if your really look around, you’re going to find one or two liberals. I think the biggest tip off this is a knee-jerk liberal screed is this paragraph:

Please explain to me how a fourth-grade science teacher is less patriotic than a drill sergeant in Killeen, Texas. Or how a social worker who helps single mothers in East Los Angeles is less patriotic than a convoy driver in Baghdad. Please explain how a fire fighter in Boston is less qualified for political office only because she has not volunteered for military duty.

I guess to the first question, what does teaching science have to do with patriotism? To second, are we talking an ACORN type social work? To the last, notice how the theoretical Boston fire fighter had to be a she — probably because he didn’t know how to subtly throw in that the fire fighter is a handicapped minority.

Also, there’s this line: “I would like to ask Perry how strength, character and altruism are missing in the day-to-day work of a community organizer in Chicago.” Only a fringe element of the American public could say that sentence with a straight face.

Anyway, they point of the article is to downplay military service as a qualification for a politician. Of course, not very long ago, liberals were calling anyone not in the military on the Republican side a chickenhawk. They were also finding the few liberal military people they could and putting them as prominent as they could. In fact, in 2004, they did a whole campaign based on portraying John Kerry as a war hero (didn’t work out great). But now they have some guy trying to argue that working at the DMV is equivalent to a U.S. Marine risking his life for the country. Seems rather incoherent, which brings me to a point that should often be repeated: The left has no coherent political philosophy. Everything for them is based on “this is our side and that’s the other side we have to defeat”. So they’ll twist themselves in knots making something a virtue one day and a liability the next. Don’t be like them. Don’t give up your principles to argue for one politician and to downplay another because all politicians are idiots and just aren’t worth it.

And I thank Dan Futrell for his service. I don’t thank the science teacher.

* CERN has found out that cosmic rays are the biggest contributor to cloud formation and thus the largest factors in setting climate temperatures. And since the sun modulates cosmic rays, it’s the biggest factor in our climate. So basically, scientists spent years studying tiny particles to figure out that the giant nuclear furnace in the sky is the biggest effect on the earth’s temperature. Great job, scientists!

* Scientists have found a planet that is basically a giant diamond with five times the diameter of earth. How many carats is that? They say it’s about as massive as Jupiter which is 1.8986×10^27 kg, and a carat is 200 mg, so… about 9.8 nonillion carats. Yeah, that’s the name of an actual number. Math is fun.

This is the sort of news we need to get private exploration: There’s gold and diamonds out there! Of course, this planet is 4,000 light-years away, so we to find stuff closer… like on Mars or in the asteroid belt. Eventually we’ll mine all of space; it’s got to be filled with riches. And hopefully we’ll find life on other planets because that might mean those planets have oil. I just have a feeling we’ll be getting to Star Trek times and our warp drives we’ll be running on diesel while we say to ourselves, “Any day now, we’re going to perfect a renewable fuel source. Now let’s play laser tag with our phasers set to stun.”

* New Crowder video! Time to go green with Crazy Pete:

Them curly light bulbs are weird and scary.

* Friend of IMAO author Mike Z. Williamson has a short story available as free download from Baen if you’re looking for some weekend reading material.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Pandas seem kind of tired of fighting this whole extinction thing. We should probably hurry and take more photos.” –Tim Siedell

* So the big news: Steve Jobs has resigned. Apple was basically the one company doing well in the Obama economy, and now what’s going to happen to them? Are people going to want the next iPhone if it’s not Steve Jobs playing up its minor improvements but instead some other old guy in a black turtleneck? I can’t imagine they will. You’ll probably be able to buy one of those expensive Mac books soon for like $20 because why would hipsters want them anymore.

So how did Obama screw this up? I don’t know; we can just be pretty sure he did something stupid. We thought we were safe since he was busy golfing, but somehow he must of done something to get Steve Jobs to quit. That’s President Obama, always costing this country Jobs.

* Did you know that way back when, Barack Obama called Bush adding $4 trillion to the debt over eight years “unpatriotic”? Obama has added more than that in two and half years, so what’s the term for that? Terrorism? No; wait — terrorism is not wanting to spend more. Oh, this is so confusing; it’s like the left-wing are babbling partisan idiots with no coherent philosophy. I guess I’m just not understanding it.

* Apparently Cheney advised Bush to bomb Syria back in 2007. Cheney came to this conclusion when he realized Syria was in the Middle East.

* According to polls, Rick Perry is now the clear frontrunner among the GOP candidates, and the White House is already focusing on digging up as much dirt on Perry as they can. They even have an online form just for people to submit what they think is the worst part about Perry’s record. I’m going to fill it out:

I hate how arrogant and aloof he is while all his efforts have been so completely inept, just wasting taxpayer money while unemployment continues to rise.

…No wait; I was thinking of someone else.

* Marco Rubio said, “The free enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than all the government anti-poverty programs combined”, but isn’t that a bit like saying, “More lives have been saved by doctors than all the chimpanzees wielding scalpels combined.” If this is news to you that the brilliant people who create business and opportunity in this country have lifted up people more than idiot bureaucrats wasting other people’s money, you’re a moron.

* Scientists say 86% of the earth’s species are still unknown. I don’t know how you count stuff you don’t know about, but the scientists did. I wouldn’t worry much about it, though, because I’m pretty sure we know about all the interesting species already. The only things left are like, “Hey, look at this bug that is slightly different than this other bug. It’s a new bug.” and “Here’s a single cell organism marginally different than other single cell organism but still just as boring.” Oh, and don’t forget new species of plants; they’re not so much undiscovered as much as no one cared. Being dropped in the jungle and told to identify all the weeds has to be the sort of thing they only do to the science intern no one likes.

* IGN has a list of the top 25 funniest shows of all time. I felt kind of dumb when I got to their video for their number one choice and hadn’t figured it out by process of elimination. I really like Arrested Development, but I guess I never thought of it as a number one contender. The more obvious choice would be Seinfeld — the Beatles of sitcoms — or the Simpsons whose first ten seasons are one of the greatest things ever (and one the greatest influences on my own sense of humor). Arrested Development just felt like it never was on long enough to contend (though that certainly wasn’t it’s fault as funny as it was). Anyway, my favorite extant comedy right now is Community which will be entering it’s third season in the fall. What’s your favorite comedy?

* If you were concerned whether you’d be able to gay marry in the next Elder Scrolls game, don’t worry you can. I guess that makes sense, because if you’re playing a game about exploring a fantasy world and fighting dragons and are at all concerned about your marriage optiobs, you’re probably gay. I don’t remember getting any sort of married in the last two Elder Scrolls games, and I didn’t feel like anything was missing. I actually hate that sort of thing; I mean I’m fine with some love interest in the story in cinema scenes, but I hate how so many games now are expecting you to cultivate some relationship with some made up person in the middle of your fantasy or scifi game. That’s not what I play games for; it’s for the purity of killing bad things. But now they add relationships and then next was, “Just killing all the bad people is so thuggish; we’ll give you pacifist options and reward you for that.” And the the sissification of games continues. People will argue that gay marriage won’t ruin traditional marriage, but it’s at least going to ruin video games. Guess I’ll stick to Tetris in which there’s nothing there to PC-ify.

* Obama’s approval ratings hit new lows in Gallup and Rasmussen polls. It seems kind of gratuitous to point out a new low for him since his last new low was only a few days ago, except it’s just fun to point out when his popularity has sunk even further and say, “Haw! Haw!”

Obama campaigned on hope and change, but it kind of seems like all that hope people had in Obama during his campaign has pretty much disappeared. People still really want change, though — maybe even more so than before. Maybe a Republican can run on the change platform but combine it with something other than hope.

“Change and Hippie Punching”

* There was an earthquake in Virginia. Just a small one, though. I mean, when the earth starts rumbling there, you’d expect all of DC to be swallowed up into the earth, but it’s not God’s job to solve all our earthly problems.

Where was Obama during all this? On a golf course, of course. They told him about it immediately, to which he responded, “Shut up; I’m putting!”

* Pretty much everyone was happy the quake was minor… except for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who wrote on Google+:

“People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.”

This is what’s called the “broken window fallacy” — a broken window stimulates the economy by giving work to the glass maker, so to really stimulate the economy you could send people around purposefully breaking windows. It’s pretty elementary how that’s a stupid theory, but apparently it’s beyond the understanding of a Nobel Prize-winning economist. It makes you wonder if that was the real Nobel Prize in Economics he won or if that’s just what they call the reward for successfully balancing your own checkbook while living in the mental ward.

It’s so dumb, I’m almost convinced it’s a hoax (and I notice Krugman’s Google+ profile has disappeared and here’s someone other than Krugman claiming he created it), but right after 9/11 he wrote about how that might stimulate the economy. Plus he recently blogged about how a space alien invasion would be an economic boon. With this and Friedman’s Chinese dictatorship love and Dowd’s… whatever in the world it is that she does, it’s like the New York Times set out to make a Mos Eisley Cantina of op-ed columnists.

* According to a Rasmussen poll, large majorities of Americans believe illegal aliens shouldn’t be allowed in public school, shouldn’t get free tuition for college, or be able to get a driver’s license. When explaining their reasoning, people said, “Because THEY’RE ILLEGAL ALIENS!”

This is one of those areas where the left likes to pretend there’s a big debate, but to the average person it’s like asking, “Should we lock up murderers?” — something they wouldn’t even think there was anything to debate about. Still, there are those who argue that Republicans need to take a softer line on this to appeal to Latino voters — since all Latinos are for breaking the law, as pro-amnesty Republicans seem to think — but my guess is if we give up on common sense for electoral gain, that will probably not work out for the best in the end.

* Even while Obama is on vacation, the debt is growing $2.95 million a minute. So that’s how successful Obama has been; the government can swell in size beyond belief even while he’s out golfing.

Here’s a new fun game: While Obama is giving speeches about the need for a “balanced approach” we can calculate exactly how much the debt grows while he does nothing but talk. A single “Let me be clear” costs $98,000.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Why does Facebook target me with ads for nude beaches in Toronto when I’ve lived my life in such a way as to avoid both nudity and Canada?” –Michael J. Nelson

* I mentioned I’m working on a novel before — and that still is my dream, to become a novelist — but a new writing project has come up, so the novel is on the back burner for now. I’m writing non-fiction — well, as non-fiction as my writing usually is — and this time I already have a publisher signed on. I’ll tell you more soon; be excited!

* Paul Ryan has said he’s not running for president, so for all of you who thought Ryan was going to ride to the rescue and cut this nation’s spending, that’s not going to happen. I still kind of expect some more people to jump in the race, though, just by the virtue of the fact that polling is now saying pretty much anyone could beat Obama (even RON PAUL!!). If you can claw your way through the primary, the only thing left standing between you and the presidency is president job-destroyer. If I were the Republican candidate, I’d spend my whole first debate with Obama just pointing and laughing.

* But Obama will fix things before November 2012 because he’s working on… wait for it… a new jobs plan! Actually, it’s been downgraded to a jobs outline. So not a whole plan; just an outline. So it will look something like this:

A. Introduction
1. Jobs are important
2. Government can help make jobs
B. Jobs Ideas
1. Spend lots of money
2. [Idea 2 goes here]
3. [Idea 3 goes here]
C. Conclusion
1. Re-elect Obama

* Good news: Vice President Biden is not going to second-guess China’s one child policy in which they have mass-sterilizations and forced abortions. So if you were fearing some basic moral clarity interfering with Biden’s visit to China, don’t worry — it’s not going to happen. Usually Biden is pretty gaffe-prone, but in China he’s going to be on his best behavior and watch every word he says. Yay.

* Obama has figured out why he’s so unpopular: Congress. That’s an interesting theory. Know what my theory is? Rogue unicorns. Unicorns have turned against Obama and now he can’t sustain his popularity without his rainbow magic.

Or, there’s the outlandish theory that Obama is just a horrible president and it’s obvious to everyone. But going by Occam’s razor, it’s most likely rogue unicorns.

* It’s looking like no one is going to to primary Obama now that Russ Feingold a few days ago said he wouldn’t. Here’s a question, though: Would Obama have a primary challenge if he were white? It’s hard to see how he wouldn’t with how horrible he’s been and how bad he’s polling against every challenger. But if Obama got primaried, it would anger the blacks who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and Democrats can’t survive without them. So racism gets Obama in play.

BTW, there is now a Martin Luther King memorial on the National Mall. If we only listened to MLK’s advice to judge people not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” we never would have been stuck in this Obama mess.

* You may have thought this recession thing was just an earth-based phenomenon, but it’s now affecting the whole universe. Scientists have found that galaxies are now running out of gas and thus fewer and fewer stars are being made. Don’t worry, though: Obama is making a new star-creation program. You may say, “But U.S. presidents can’t make stars.” Yes, but they can’t make jobs either but that’s never stopped Obama from trying.

* In other science news, scientists think they’ve found a really old fossil. The oldest fossil, in fact — 3.4 billion years. Apparently, unbeknownst to non-scientists, there’s been a big war over who has the oldest fossil. Hundreds have died. Mainly from old age.

Anyway, one guy is like, “I have the oldest fossil!” And another is like, “No, that’s just a random cluster of chemicals; this is the oldest fossil of a one-celled organism!” And it’s just goes on and on like that, but it’s very important to find out what is really the oldest fossil because whoever discovered it gets half-off at the science gift shop. They sell ant farms there.

* Wisdom of the Day: “If we raised taxes on the top 1% to 100% of their income, we’d still have a $500 billion deficit.” –PoliticalMath

* So it looks like Libya is no longer under the control of Qdaffy, but no one is sure where Qdaffy is. How hard could he be to spot?

"I shall blend in with the common folk in my bright purple muumuu and hat."

* I was thinking a solution for Obama to make sure he gets an appropriate amount of vacation time: He should form a presidents’ union. It will be a union on making sure presidents get the proper respect and benefits they deserve. And if we try to cut back his vacation days or reduce lunch time so he doesn’t have enough time to enjoy his waffles, he’ll get together with his union and go on strike. Then we’ll have to somehow make do with him not being president and not randomly spending lots of money. I’m sure we’ll then panic and give in to all his demands.

* Remember during Obama’s election when everyone was sure that if we elected Obama it would be nothing but unicorns and rainbows forever after? Pretty much even the dumbest people on the left have decided that maybe Obama was a bit overhyped, but Tom Friedman apparently thinks the jury is still out. Who is this guy anyway? All I know is he makes some of the dumbest, most repetitive editorials for the New York Times (apparently for a period of two and a half years he said what will happen in Iraq will be determined in the “next six months”) and has an obsession with how great and efficient the Chinese dictatorship is and fantasizes about Obama being dictator for a day. Yet somehow the NYT is convinced we want to hear his opinions on foreign affairs and world politics when a sane person wouldn’t take his advice on how to get to the nearest Walgreens.

“But is he dumber than Krugman?” you ask.

I dunno. That’s a hard one. Anyway, it seems like people should be a little more selective on who writes for a major newspaper, but then again, “major newspaper” is becoming a bit of an oxymoron.

* Oh, and here’s another great one from the New York Times. I guess they wanted to hear the average American’s ideas on what he would do if he were president, but the NYT has no clue what an average American looks like or where to find one, so instead they got a gaggle of leftist freaks. One actually wrote this:

“I’d grant the very rich the boon of helping them help others, as a form of gratitude for their good fortune.”

There’s like so much that’s wrong with some people in this country in that single statement. First, there’s just the general covetousness where people are obsessed with the rich despite their income being no business of anyone else. Then there’s that projection of greed on to the rich when it’s obvious who are the greedy ones here. And there’s that horrible idea that taking money by force and giving it to the hugely irresponsible people in Washington is anything akin to charity (which many rich people would be doing with their money if it weren’t being confiscated by dimwits). And finally, there’s that ephemeral concept that the rich aren’t paying enough. No one knows what they’re paying now, they’re just sure it’s not enough. What is enough? More than what is currently being paid, and that’s what forever it will be. Man, what a better country this would be if we could just take these people, tell them, “Your existence in this nation is an insult to all who have fought and died for it,” and then hand them a hatchet and drop them on the other side of the Canadian border to fend for themselves.

* BTW, have you seen the expression the left has been using for when a Democrat turns against the far left for the sake of moderates? “Hippie punching.” I like it. The Democrats are going to have to be hippie punching until their arms fall off to get any credibility these days, though.

* Wisdom of the Day: “We’re all big racist time bombs set for ‘elderly.'” –Shelby Fero

* I haven’t responded to spam e-mail in a little while, so let’s see what the Great Landlord has left me:

R. Paull is almost certainly my best favorite choice within the actual impending election, however I don’t really feel like he has receiving sufficient good coverage from the biased mass media in order to maillot away the win.

Wow. The most coherent pro-Ron Paul comment IMAO has ever received and it’s spam. No wonder Ron Paull has so much trouble trying to maillot away the win.

Throughout this awesome scheme of things you’ll get a B- with regard to effort. Where exactly you misplaced me personally was in all the specifics. As as the maxim goes, details make or break the argument.. And it could not be much more accurate here. Having said that, let me inform you just what exactly did deliver the results. Your article (parts of it) is actually rather convincing and that is most likely the reason why I am making the effort to opine. I do not make it a regular habit of doing that. Secondly, although I can notice the jumps in reasoning you come up with, I am not necessarily confident of just how you seem to connect the details which produce the final result. For now I will, no doubt yield to your position however trust in the future you actually connect the facts better.

Wow. A B-. That’s the lowest grade possible on the Obama rating system.

Despite this being random spam, I have to admit it’s a pretty on the nose critique and stings just a little.

I usually enjoy your writing but perhaps this time you might have been too sick when writing because the article it feels rushed.

Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. House.

That’s all for today! Have a great weekend… five days from now!

* The Obama administration has announced they’re going to stop deporting illegal immigrants unless they commit a crime. Isn’t staying staying in the country illegally a crime, hence the term “illegal”? I don’t know.

I wish the pro-illegal immigration crowd would be honest and just argue for open borders with no checks on anyone instead of this “we’ll keep saying its a crime and never enforce it” position. And that’s the main thing about the pro-illegal immigration people: Dishonesty. The way they’re always trying to conflate illegal immigration with legal immigration shows they know they have an untenable position and want to do anything they can to avoid dealing with it head on. That’s why we have to keep the pressure on. We can’t give up America’s sovereignty just because some people think they have a great position to win votes.

* With the economy in shambles and high unemployment, what’s the big issue right now? Evolution! You can see a video here of a mentally disturbed mom trying to push her kid into asking Rick Perry about it, and Jon Huntsman for some reason thought it was a good idea in the Republican primary to loudly profess his belief in it along with global warming — ’cause he’s smart.

I hate the belief in evolution. I don’t have any particular problem with the science of it, but I hate the belief in it. We sure spend a lot of time arguing about evolution considering that 99% of people could never have heard of evolution and it wouldn’t have caused a single change in their lives. It’s only has actual practical use to a few scientists, but it’s super important everyone believe in it for some reason. You could hear in that deranged mother’s voice how important she thought it was to press Perry on that issue, when I think I can go out on a limb and guess she’s a scientific illiterate who doesn’t even understand evolution (same for Huntsman). Science is something that’s supposed to be different from religion, but it seems like few people can hold on to that distinction in their minds. Instead it’s always reduced to people having to loudly profess certain beliefs whether they understand them or not because it just feels super important everyone believe them. That fact is, most people could live their lives thinking the sun revolves around the earth and it wouldn’t adversely affect them at all, but if just feels almost offensive to let people think that wrong way. That’s because we don’t let science be what it is and make it a worldview. A religion. Poor little science isn’t up to that.

* Word is coming from people close to the Obama campaign that they’d rather face Rick Perry than Mitt Romney because he’s easier to beat. Consider the strength of Obama right now, isn’t that like Obama saying he’d rather fight the Hulk in a cage match rather than Superman because he thinks the Hulk is easier to beat. Maybe true, but either way he’s getting pounded into a fine paste. That’s why there’s so much talk about other people getting in the race, because if you’re a Republican who wants to be president, now is probably one of the best opportunities you’ll have to run against a weak Democrat. And if you’re going by the William F. Buckley rule — “Nominate the most conservative candidate who is electable.” — the most conservative person electable is going to be a lot more conservative than in other years.

Hopefully we can find that conservative. But if we can’t, Romney’s willing and ready and Obama’s scared of him!

* Those serious liberals at Think Progress have identified what’s the problem in our failing economy: We don’t all get guaranteed paid vacations! How has America survived like this? I don’t know! Let’s pay more people not to work; I’m sure that will get things moving in this economy. Especially if it’s Obama and Congress.

And if you didn’t get enough liberal seriousness, here’s a new one on the super-serious issue of global warming: If we don’t stop it, aliens may invade us and kill us all. Yes, NASA scientists are actually arguing that. I guess they’ve given up arguing on any direct effect from global warming, so now they have to add an alien invasion to make it a threat. One supposition is that green aliens may see the harm we’re causing and wipe us out. That’s been the plot of a few scifi movies and it’s supposed to make us think, but have you ever thought of it the other way? Like if humans went to Pandora and found that the blue people were horrible polluters and we decided to mass slaughter them to save the planet, would we in any way be good guys? And if we’re wiping out all intelligent life, who exactly are we saving the planet for? If there are really aliens out there that think that way, we need to hunt down and exterminate those arrogant, murderous sociopaths before they kill more civilizations.

* Wisdom of the Day: Here’s Andy Levy delivering a righteous beatdown to Chris Brown:

* I haven’t posted pictures of Buttercup in a while, so here you go:

"You are sentenced to ten minutes in the bucket of reading!"

Buttercup

More pictures here of the cutest baby ever.

* Obama wants to assure us that we’re not in danger of another recession… but if things do stall, it’s because people disagreed with him and didn’t do what he told them. Other presidents — also known as better presidents — somehow dealt with congresses that disagreed with them and got things done. Obama had huge majorities in the Senate and the House and somehow still struggled at everything, and now that he’s lost that his only idea to try and make things happen is constant whining. How do you make an argument that this guy is not a horrible leader? Does the first step involve drilling a hole in your own head?

* Apparently, Obama has been avoiding black communities on his bus tour. Why would he need to talk to black people and assure them everything will be all right? They only have like twice the unemployment of everyone else.

Of course, it’s obvious why he isn’t visiting black people. This tour is to convince people to vote for Obama in 2012, but he doesn’t need to do that for blacks. They have to vote for Obama because they’re black. They have no choice in the matter. If you’re black, you vote for the Democrat. So Obama can just ignore them his whole presidency and then come election time have some advocacy group claim the Republican is going to burn crosses to scare them into voting as they’re supposed to. Is this news to black people? Hasn’t this agreement been going on for decades?

* Obama has reached a new low on his handling the economy — only 26% approve. And you gotta kinda wonder what in the world it is those 26% are approving of. Maybe some people don’t like economies and want them destroyed.

But don’t worry: Obama has a new jobs plan. Aren’t we excited. All his other plans were complete and utter failures, but this time he’s sure to get it right! Apparently, we won’t get the plan until he comes back from his next vacation. Which leads to my job plan: Obama does nothing but vacation for the rest of his presidency. By now, it’s pretty obvious that most useful thing he’s capable of doing is staying out of the way.

Actually, he hasn’t proved he’s capable of that.

* I’ve never watched Stephen Colbert’s show; I’ve seen glimpses of his shtick, but I’ve never understood if he’s supposed to be a parody of a conservative or a parody of what liberals who know FOX News is evil but never watched it think a conservative is like. Whatever he is, he’s a thief:

You’re watching Stephen wants to ‘nuke the moon’ on ‘The Colbert Report’ 08/16/11 – TV Replay. See the Web’s top videos on AOL Video

* I always thought the illusion with the cylinder casting a shadow on a checkerboard was the best I’ve ever seen. Usually when I’m told what the illusion is in an image, I can squint and see the trick. Not with this one; I need to actually manipulate it in photoshop to actually see that the two squares are the same color. Anyway, here’s the same illusion in video form. It looks like a special effect but it isn’t:

See, basically your brain automatically compensates for the shadow so you can perceive the checker pattern (because if you perceived the two squares as the same color you wouldn’t see a check board and miss the pattern). Your brain is doing all this background processing all the time to help you understand what your’re seeing, but it never gets any credit or even a thank you. It just gets yelled at when it gets tricked by an artificial illusion. Poor brain.

* Wisdom of the Day: “For fans of The Notebook, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is now on Netflix Instant.” –Michael Deppisch

* I like this: A California college student is asking liberal students in favor of wealth redistribution whether they would favor having their GPA redistributed to the less fortunate. One even responded, “If I do give GPA points to students that don’t deserve it, it isn’t fair, I work for what I have.” See, the conservative instinct is in everyone. You just have to figure the right way to wake it.

* On Obama’s bus tour, he told a crowd that, “I make no apologies for being reasonable.” That’s like how I make no apologies for being Latino. For one thing, being Latino is nothing anyone should apologize for. But, more importantly, I’m not Latino so the apology would make absolutely no sense. So, in that sense, I fully support Obama not apologizing for being reasonable.

* Here’s another gem from Obama from his bus ride:

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again, but over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.”

So Obama was totally fixing the economy and we were about to rocket to prosperity, but then Obama accidentally ran over a leprechaun — which we all know gives you bad luck. I mean, we were about to have a true recovery, but then Obama hooked a swing on a golf course, went to chase down the ball, and accidentally stumbled into a mummy’s tomb and got cursed.

So, you know, bad luck. Other than that, Obama has been doing awesome.

* So what do you think of Obama’s bus tour to get to know America better? I fully expect at the end for him to remark, “Wow, I wasn’t really liking the people I was meeting, but these last few stops have been much more supportive and really more my type of people.” And then he finds out he spent the last week of his trip driving through Canada.

* For some reason, people got all upset when Rick Perry said that if Ben Bernanke were to print more money, it would be “almost treasonous.” He said “almost.” He didn’t say that, after due process, Bernanke should by hung by the neck until dead. He said that should almost happen. Come on; stop being a bunch of sissies.

* And polls already have Perry has the front runner, so you should expect attacks in full force on him. One thing the left is concentrating on is dismissing the jobs created in Texas since about 40% to 48% of jobs created during the recession were made in that state. I mean the absolutely last thing they want is this to be a race against a guy who knows how to spur job creation versus a flailing dunce who only knows how to flush our nation’s money down the toilet — objective comparison’s like that just aren’t going to work for Obama.

And you know it’s inevitable they’ll start saying George W. Bush was smarter and more reasonable than Rick Perry. Sure, the left was screaming “Hitler!” at Bush not that long ago, but pretty much 95% of that hatred was just partisan nonsense and not based on any coherent ideological objections, so that hate fades almost instantly when Bush is no longer a political threat. And if you think about it, George W. was born in New England and went to an Ivy League college — he’s the liberal’s kind of Texan. But Perry is fifth generation Texan and went to Texas A&M — he’s just a dumb hick.

* BTW, I don’t really like Perry. I fully expect him to be a RINO in hiding, but I keep finding myself having to defend him because of absolutely moronic arguments against him. I mean I expect that from liberals (“HE SED ‘BLACK CLOUD’!!1!!! HE IS TEH RACIST!!1!!1!”), but it really infuriates me to see it from so-called conservatives (“HE SUPPORTED GORE IN ’88!!1! HE IS TEH LIBRUL!!11!!!”). Twenty-three years ago, Perry was a Democrat. Fourteen years before Reagan became president, Reagan was a Democrat. Lots of conservatives used to be Democrats or liberals. It’s sort of the logical progression; you start out with the simpler liberal values and then later add on to them the more complex conservative values later in life. It means nothing to point out that someone was once a Democrat or a liberal unless you can also point to something he’s doing today that makes you think he still is one. Otherwise, you’re just making a silly child argument where you’re flailing around looking for something negative to grasp to not caring about the logic of it. I expect that from the left, but not from someone who claims to be a conservative. So go ahead and point out bad stuff about Perry now — like I hear he’s not so great on immigration — but don’t make moron child arguments. Leave that for the other side.

* Also, I do think it’s neat that Rick Perry has actually exercised his gun rights. Slate has a nice little article on advice for conceal carry while jogging. I also liked how the last two paragraphs are about why it’s a smart idea to carry while jogging. Lots of people think those who carry guns are paranoid, but it seems more like the people who don’t even think about carrying are willfully naive. I dream of one day where not having a gun on you is looked upon the same way as not wearing a seat belt.

* Wow; how many Perry items was that in a row? Now I’m already sick of him. Still some talk about Paul Ryan and Chris Christie getting in the race, though. If you want to president, now’s kind of the time with how vulnerable Obama is looking. I like Paul Ryan and his big ideas, but I’m always wary of a legislator becoming president. There really isn’t much accountability as a Representative or a Senator — you just have to vote ways people like — to really prove someone is a good leader. As for Chris Christie, he’s very fat. He may do lots of budget cuts, but he’ll probably waste all the savings on bacon. If he does run and someone asks him what president he would model himself after, I dare him to say “Taft”.

* Would you like to live on an oil rig run by Ron Paul? Of course, we all do. Anyway, I guess some libertarians are trying to come up with ways to make their own countries, and I support that. We need more country competition. If you want to live in a socialist country or a silly dictatorship, you have lots of choices. You want a free country, you only have America really. With no competition, America gets lazy. So some libertarian countries to compete with would be nice. And since we can’t have them on the moon like Heinlein envisioned, I guess an oil rig will do. So what will they do for industry? Oh yeah; drill for oil.