The U6 President and His Zombie Armada

Next week the July unemployment rate will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is likely to be a very significant seasonal adjustment - enough of one that there might even be a modest improvement in the U3 unemployment rate - the commonly reported rate.  Expect the administration to trot out the "right direction" meme and claim things are still picking up.  Expect too, a compliant ultra-liberal press to carry the president's water once again, on that argument.  Expect the message to go out to the president's zombie armada, that everything is great, and expect the zombie armada to eat it up.  But this president is not the employment president, he's the U6 president, and U6 is downright bad.

Romney Zombies on the loose

I just finished a fantastic steak dinner at Toronto's Harbour 60, and decided there was no better time to start thinking about zombie metaphors and how zombies can be related to the current political situation in America.  Of course - doesn't the thought process follow? Steaks, zombies eating brains.  Well, it made sense to me at least.  Now, I've talked about zombie democrats before. Collectivism is suited perfectly to zombie metaphors and Democrats have shifted pretty far into that territory.  But that's sort of stale now.  There's some zombification happening in the GOP primaries as well.

Conservatism will outlive the Fairness Doctrine

Take heart conservatives, as unfair as the impending draconian imposition of the Fairness Doctrine may be, it won't last. Not as long as conservatism will last. The ideology is out of the bag, it cannot be stifled forever. Unfortunately the same could be said for Marxism. Someday it will rear it's ugly head in a big way again. Maybe in 100 years or 1000. But despite it's stupendously dismal failure in the Soviet Union, Marxism is unfortunately, not dead. And American conservatism is far, far from dead. Despite being knocked on it's heels by a Democrat 1-2 punch in 2006 and 2008, conservatism is vibrant and will be ready in 2010 to take back some ground from the liberals. The new Chi-coms (no, not Chinese communists, the Chicago communists).

Let's look at the Fairness Doctrine with a little bit of level-headedness. Something it's authors would never do. The idea that a specific medium like talk radio, dominated by conservatives, would be required under the threat of fines, to provide equal time to liberals is in itself unfair. Why? It only applies to the media that the Democrats don't totally own. Specifically talk radio and potentially the Internet. It's the liberal version of Nazi book burnings, and I bet they won't even bat an eye at that, since they believe they are doing humanity's work (I'd say God's work but, well, you know.)

But here's the thing even if they manage to railroad this absurd legislative idea through the House, the Senate and across Obama's desk with a Republican filibuster either non-existent or a mere speed bump along the way, IT WON'T STOP CONSERVATIVES. Why not? Because we're mean, angry SOBs who are zombies of the destruction of freedom. Not really, but it sounds scary.

Seriously though, conservatives should hearken back to our own principles and remember one thing. The Free Market. More specifically, borrowing from the economic treatises of Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), The Invisible Hand (of zombie death). Boy, I hope some liberals somewhere are reading this and taking the zombie thing seriously.

This is how I see this playing out;

1) The Fairness Doctrine gets passed, in all it's rancid glory.

2) Radio stations, knowing that Air America was a failure (possibly set up to do so, in order to encourage this exact action down the road), decide rather than adding liberals to radio, it's cheaper to throw the conservative shows off the air.

3) The opportunity to take over the Internet media dies at the same time, since it's been included in the legislation as along with some obscure pork barrel project for Hawaii involving a T-shirt factory, gummy bears and $27 Billion in bailout TARP money.

4) The liberals throw a party, snort coke and cheat on their spouses, then lie about it.

5) This is where it gets interesting. The Invisible Hand takes over. People like Rush Limbaugh see that their capacity to educate, entertain, and generate income have been entirely smote by the legislation. They try to find another way to maintain their audience and continue to be heard.

6) The only place they can go is either (a) some medium that has not been invented yet - not possible, or (b) the Mainstream Media because it is not covered in the legislation. Wouldn't that be an interesting turn of events?

7) Conservatives manage to find their way onto television and into print, providing actual competition to liberal domination of the MSM, and bringing an unwanted sense of accuracy to those who'd rather just be pushing their own warped, liberal agenda. And the reason this will happen is because the Invisible Hand yet again - the numbers will bear out the profit-rationale of letting conservatives have an outlet for our ideas. And it doesn't matter if the head of broadcasting for CBS doesn't want conservative views to get air time, Westinghouse can see the dollar signs. Rush has 20 million listeners? Sign him up, he can do even better on TV (with the right production resources behind him every step of the way). Ann Coulter controversial? Great! Michelle Malkin shut out of Twitter now? Get her a prime time show! If the business case makes sense, the ideology floats away.

8) It almost makes sense for conservatives that the travesty of the Fairness Doctrine should happen during the recession. The dollar signs will be all that more appealing to bottom-line-conscious executives.

9) Then the living dead will turn up and try to eat the brains of liberals, only to die of starvation.

Remember, every threat is an opportunity in disguise. Or, a zombie.

Friday Musical Interlude - The Zombie Apocalypse is Karen

I haven't done a Friday Musical Interlude in a long time, but I thought this one was apropos. The SurfPunters' Zombie Apocalypse themed album isn't about zombies, it's really social commentary about Karens and society being full of zombies incapable of critical thinking.  All wrapped up in a surf-pop package.

Friday Musical Interlude - because, why not?

I've really enjoyed my side-side-gig making AI-powered music. Here's another couple of recent ones. First a surf punk zombie themed song called Rock Zombie which is actually about society. Secondly a bubbly summer bubblegum pop song about Cherry Coke:

Armalite versus Zombie

The real reason for the Second Amendment?  It's actually pretty simple.

This:

defeats this.

The founders knew this, and they perhaps also knew that zombies were inevitable in America.  All you had to do to get a zombie horde was to pass them some free health care.  Of course zombies don't need health care being undead already.

Then again, there's plenty of people alive today getting things from government that they don't need.  But they get it because it's free.

There's a mandate now (for now) to buy health insurance.  There should be a mandate to buy Armalites.  Now that would be interesting!  

By way of non sequitur, today is April Fool's Day. But I digress. 

The real reason for this post is that I wanted to use the word Armalite.  It's a cool-sounding word, and a hip reference.  But it's not as cool the Adam 12 reference posted on The Last Tradition.

Cornficker Worm on April Fool's Day

April Fools day. The day the Internet was to stand still.

(CNN) -- A computer-science detective story is playing out on the Internet as security experts try to hunt down a worm called Conficker C and prevent it from damaging millions of computers on April Fool's Day.

This piece of computer code tells the worm to activate on April 1, 2009, researchers at CA found. The anti-worm researchers have banded together in a group they call the Conficker Cabal. Members are searching for the malicious software program's author and for ways to do damage control if he or she can't be stopped.

They're motivated in part by a $250,000 bounty from Microsoft and also by what seems to be a sort of Dick Tracy ethic.

"We love catching bad guys," said Alvin Estevez, CEO of Enigma Software Group, which is one of many companies trying to crack Conficker. "We're like former hackers who like to catch other hackers. To us, we get almost a feather in our cap to be able to knock out that worm. We slap each other five when we're killing those infections."

The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.

Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt,
director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company.

What happens on April Fool's Day is anyone's guess.

I don't know if my computer has been zombified but I don't see anything unusual. So, this is just like Y2K when the nuclear missiles were all supposed to launch and the world was supposed to end. Or like global warming was supposed to melt the earth within a few years?

Look there's are serious issues around cyber-security and national cyber-security especially considering the Chinese are deliberately working on cyber-warefare methods and plan for it to be part of any future foreign conflict they are involved in. But the hysteria around Cornficker is just the latest example of over-hype. It may be better to be safe than sorry, but usually patches and anti-virus updates are prepared in time and panicking never helps anything.

Just my two cents on that.

Dictator Watch - March 2013

It's been a long time since three's been a Dictator Watch post on Nonsensible Shoes and a lot has happened on that front since the last one.  Too much in fact, since time restrictions require that I combine the Dictator Watch with the Two word opinion format.

Hugo Chavez - Dead. Definite zombie.

Kim Jong Un - Insane and preparing for an offensive war against America. Not happening.

Mahmud Ahmedinejad - insane and proving it.  See above.

Vladimir Putin - investing in Syria just because he can. Prevent defense.

Friday Musical Intrerlude - Sweet Virginia (live)

The Rolling Stones pre-zombie-Richards era (1972) performing Sweet Virginia in Austin, Texas. Nothing Justin Beiber has done or ever will do can touch this - just saying.

 

In addition to the Stones line-up, this featured Nicky Hopkins on piano, Bobby Keys on saxophone and Jim Price on horns.

A critical eye on Peter Zeihan

From time to time I have shared videos from geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan because he's right about a lot of stuff.  But I'm no zombie.  Unlike a mindless horde of woke leftists, I like to validate my beliefs and part of that comes from applying a critical eye towards what I believe in.  Question your beliefs.  Yaron Brook, whom I also like, spent a long form monologue critiquing Zeihan's analyses.  While he also appreciates Zeihan's assessments, he also raises some valid points about where he believes Zeihan was not correct, or not completely correct.

As I said, the critical eye towards your own accepted views is one of the best tools a person has to check if he or she is on the right path. That's what critical thinking is all about.

Saturday Learning Series - Engineering (concrete)

What do you know about concrete?  Can you make it when the zombie apocalypse happens? If not, this might help you a little.

...and why does it need reinforcement?

28 Days Later: A political story

It's not a movie this time?

Back in 2002 a British zombie movie came out.  The premise is that a virus quickly sweeps across Britain, and a few pockets of resistance arise in the form of uninfected human.  The virus results from research wherein  chimps are infected with a virus that promotes a permanent stage of psychotic rage.

Lessons from Obama-land 100

There will be many lessons that come out of the current Presidency, but the two most glaring examples of "What have we learned?" so far relate to the President's strategic approach to his agenda. The first lesson appears to be that you can be too aggressive for your own agenda.

By charging out of the gate on the stimulus package, and then the omnibus bill, by not letting the crisis 'go to waste', the President set himself up for resistance and potentially failure on any subsequent bill. Cap and Trade squeaked through Congress and may die in the Senate. The Health Care bill, once it exists, may face stronger resistance and may in fact fail entirely. President Bush, if you recall, wanted to spend the political capital from his second election win in 2004 (NOT his first, in case you are a stolen-election-of-2000 zombie). He tried to spend it on "Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror."

Notice what he said first - Social Security. Did it change? No. Did it go anywhere? Not really. Why? It was too aggressive an issue . It happened to President Bush and it's starting to happen to President Obama - resistance. When confronted with radical agendas, politicians in Congress scurry back to the middle of the political spectrum to protect their careers. The political middle is the same thing as inertia because change is hard and doing nothing is easier for people to take. The President may want to have universal health care, but the cost, rightly, scares many Democrats. Particularly those in vulnerable districts, but in general, Congressional Representatives don't want to rock the boat too much. They want to be re-elected.

The lesson is that if you are too aggressive, you lose support quickly. It's hard to imagine now, but at this rate, Obama could be a lame duck President by the end of his first year in office. No doubt it will end up being tagged as a problem of racism if that happens. As a corollary to the lesson, it may turn out that any future President's real impact ends up being determined in the first 100 days. Beyond that they might end up predominantly as an administrator. If that turns out to be the rule - beyond 100 days you can't get anything done, then the lesson is to be as aggressive as you can in those early days to take advantage of the grace period you've been given. Or perhaps it's a chicken and egg argument. Maybe a less aggressive first 100 days might free up more flexibility beyond that window. That version of events is not likely to happen to any future President. America is a quick fix society, with short attention spans and heavy political filters on the people's focus.

There's another lesson to be taken from Obama-land, just over 100 days into it. That lesson is that experience matters. Lack of understanding has led to a lot of questionable decisions by the President. From alienating Israel, to allowing North Korea to run wild, to embracing socialist dictators and responding slowly and meekly to an uprising in Iran, the decisions have lurched from wrong to bad to worse. On cap and trade and the stimulus bill he's put ideology before pragmatism - in the midst of a steep recession, he's spent trillions and loaded the country up with unsustainable debt.

Community organizer experience, a barely warmed Senate seat and a campaign for President, did not give the man any qualifications for the Presidency and it shows. He still views the Presidency as a soap box and will use it at every chance he gets to try to convince people of his ideology. That's not running the country, it's running his agenda. It's more in tune with his underexposed activist roots than what the country needs.

John McCain may have been a mamby-pamby ultra-soft lefty conservative, but you would not now be a majority shareholder in GM. Wait, scratch that, you aren't - the government is. The government isn't you - it's Obama and Pelosi and Reid. You get nothing.

Experience matters. Obama doesn't realize it, and neither does the press, or much of the public. But he's in over his head and things will only get worse until he is forced to cool his jets on his torrid pace of attempts at radical reform. It will be interesting to see if time, combined with the growing reluctance of Democrats manage to cool those jets for him.

The Walken Dead

I'm travelling yet again today but at least it's a same day turnaround.  In the meantime, here's some zombie humor for your Thanksgiving Weekend.

NOTE: Some language.

Brandon = Mr. Yesterday's Mistakes

It's like the Jimmy Carter era all over again, and many of us saw it coming. I'm not sure if City Journal is new to the party on the inevitability of the current inflationary spiral, but many of the things they mention in the recent article are correct.  This is a repeat of the Jimmy Carter mistakes of the 1970's. Since Brandon has no playbook of his own, why not use the some of the worst ideas EVER?

...most economists agree that fighting inflation in this case should take a back seat to lessening the shock’s effects on employment. The textbook prescription is stimulating demand via expansionary fiscal and monetary policy—but not too much, and not for too long, or the price effects go from uncomfortable to painful.

To see what can go wrong, we need only recall the 1970s, when two major shocks to the energy sector—the oil embargo of 1973–74 and the 1978–79 oil crisis associated with the Iranian Revolution—plus some lesser disruptions and bumbling policy responses, produced not just a Great Inflation but slow growth and high unemployment. Inflation averaged 7.4 percent and unemployment 6.4 percent for the period 1970–79; by 1980, the sum of those indicators—the “misery index”—hit 19.7 percent. That unhealthy combination required economists to devise a new word, “stagflation,” and to go back to the drawing board and figure out how it all happened.

The best thinking about stagflation highlights three key factors: policymakers were guided by some bad theories; their strategies based on some good theories were badly executed; and circumstances were unique and, therefore, conducive to error.

I was young, but lived through the era of stagflation, the malaise days.  They were bad.  And when Reagan became president and they had to change the monetary policy to deal with it, the cure was almost as bad as the disease. It worked but it was far more painful because they had tried to forestall any pain by doing more of what was causing the problem.  Printing money and deficit spending are not solutions.  It's a lengthy explanation as to why, but I studied economics for years and basically it's truth.

Brandon is falling for the same solution proposals as did Carter.  Spend and print, but now on steroids. Mr. Yesterday's Mistakes.

I disagree with the last paragraph above from City Journal.  Yes policymakers were guided by bad theories.  But their strategies were not based on good theories that were badly executed, they were based on very flawed theories.  Spending your way out of a recession not only isn't advisable if the government doesn't have a massive cash surplus to cover the cost (which is not the case), it's doomed to failure if you have to print money to execute it.

I also disagree with the whole "unique circumstances" notion.  While the specifics of each crisis may be different, the economic portion of the situation does not change. Job losses, inflation, interest rates are drive by fundamental economic laws like the elasticity of supply and demand. These while hard to measure, are immutable.  It doesn't matter if the impetus is a tsunami, a pandemic, an oil crisis or a zombie plague, how the government and the Federal Reserve tackle the problem is what makes a difference as far as jobs, inflation and interest rates.  If you respond stupidly, or by putting politics ahead of the national interest, disaster will follow.  That is what we are seeing now, and it is going to get worse before it improves.