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The Way Forward

Business

As any fule kno, Insty has put together many excellent posts during his long and storied reign as the King Of The Internet.  This one is not only one of his best, but almost certainly the most timely.

The title is excellent:

FASTER, PLEASE: Unleash the entrepreneurs America needs to build a post-coronavirus economy.

The first link is good, but it’s the second link that sets the post apart from the pack, because it points to history as a way to move forward.  Please read this Reason article (it’s long, but oh-so worth it), and I hope that our various gummint “leaders” read it too.  (I’m not too sanguine about that, though.)

Basically, the “German Non-Miracle” is of particular interest to me because in my major of Modern European History we spent almost an entire semester studying just the period 1945-1990 in West Germany.  What made the course extraordinary was that my lecturer at UNT, the peerless Dr. Alfred Mierzejewski, was not only an economic  historian, but the author of the biography of the man behind West Germany’s recovery, Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard.  (His other two works on the German railway system from 1920 until 1945 are, despite their dry titles, probably the most thought-provoking history books I’ve ever read.  They are to the history of that period as a study of the economic implications of the  Internet would be to our era.)

Needless to say, I devoured the course and read the biography (it wasn’t a set work, although it should have been), and my only wish was that it had been longer.

And for those who are Too Damn Busy to read anything longer than a few lines, here’s the executive summary of the lesson for our modern-day governments as we try to pull ourselves out of the morass of the Chinkvirus-ravaged economy:

Dirty Minds

Men & Women

There’s the old joke of a guy whose wife forces him to go and  see a pyschologist because he’s obsessed with sex.  The psych wants to test him, shows him this pic and asks the man to tell him what he sees:

The man says, “That’s my hard, rampant cock.”  The psych looks puzzled, but shows the man the next pic:

“Oh,” says the man, “That’s my sexy next-door neighbor’s inviting pussy, just waiting for me to stick my big, hard cock into it.”   The last pic is shown:

“Aargh,” the man cries, “That’s my frigid wife, with her legs crossed so I can’t fuck her.”

The psych makes a note and says, “You really are obsessed with sex, aren’t you?”  To which the man replies:

“Well, you’re the one showing me those filthy pornographic pictures!”

In that vein, here are some pictures of similar suggestiveness:

And finally, the importance of not going with first impressions:

The story behind the Swisse Me fruit pics is here.  Watch the video.

Oh, and speaking of fruit, here’s the album cover from 70s band Juicy Lucy:

I miss album covers.

Life, Art, Imitation Thereof

Funny Stuff, Mocking Furriners

One of my favorite-ever literary passages is in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, when Yossarian walks into a bedroom to discover that his lunatic navigator Aarfy has just murdered a prostitute by throwing her out the window.  While he’s remonstrating with Aarfy, the military police burst into the room — and arrest Yossarian for being AWOL.

Thus, this:

Teenage girls who were raped while out for a walk during Russia’s lockdown are threatened with FINES for breaking coronavirus restrictions

I know that this was in Russia, where strange shit happens every day;  but I would suggest that the bureaucratic mindset behind this kind of thing is universal.

News Roundup

Bad News

Keeping it short, like Tom Cruise.


…words cannot express the loathing I feel for the two smug assholes in this picture.


…for Chinkvirus.  Hell, I remember back during the Obama days, when the SecServ were more likely to test positive for syphilis.


…that would be:  yes.  And I’m still waiting to hear from Big Pharma that they’re bringing drug manufacturing back to the U.S.


…sorry, but this isn’t news.  These pricks are always getting shot — it’s an occupational hazard.


…which limits deportation destinations to… I dunno, Cuba and Venezuela, most probably.


…I’d feel much better if the shift was from China to, oh, MIssissippi;  but I’ll take what I can get.


…good grief, if this lot had been in power in 1940, the official language of the U.K. would now be German and not Hindi.


…and because this is New York, the hapless women can’t buy them because gun stores are not “essential” services, according to Gauleiter Cuomo.


…and I agree.  Truly low-skilled jobs are things like ditch-digger, peach-picker and community organizer.

Well, That Sucks

Crime, Gummint

Some smart guy at RedState gets all lawyerly on us, and explains why we won’t see the entire Obama crime family administration dangling from the gibbet anytime soon:

We can all agree that the IC and FBI certainly abused their power, but there is no crime listed in the US Code called “abuse of power.”
Although I would like to see them “perp walked” in handcuffs and leg irons in orange jumpsuits and unshaven faces, I don’t think it is in the cards or the law books. It is a shame because we all know they did wrong. The big question is what technically it was they did wrong that would stand up in a court of law.

Reading his whole article, I reluctantly have to agree with him.

Worse yet, I read this after I’d finished my breakfast pint of gin, and I have a cast-iron rule not to have another drink until after noon.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to clean a few of my guns.

This Way To The Killing Pits

Two-Minute Hate

When banks wonder why everyone in the world thinks that “banksters” should be thrown off cliffs en masse, this would be one of the reasons.

From my bank (First National Poundoflesh, LLC) comes this little snippet:

So let me get this straight, you fucking Shylocks:  you institute a bullshit fee for “low debit card usage” (Ignoring the fact that it’s my money you’re sitting on as it earns interest for you), and then you have the unmitigated gall to post tips on how to avoid the fees?

Why not just eliminate the fee to start off with?

Actually, the reason they encourage use of the debit card is, of course, the transaction fee they levy on the retail outlet each time the card is used.

So if you don’t use your debit card that often, what you should do is buy something small (like pack of gum or a single can of Coke) several times a month.  No low usage charge, and practically nothing to the bank for the transaction fee.  Here’s the math:

Monthly low usage charge:  $8
Ten debit card transactions (to avoid the fee) @ (say) $1.50 ea. :  $15
Transaction fee total (@1.75%):  $0.26 income to the bank.

Add this bullshit to the 25,000 other reasons to hate banks.