I'm Sure This Is All Just Some Kind Of Honest Misunderstanding

If Recovery.gov is to be believed, then an LA packing company received a 1.2 million dollar grant for 2 pounds of ham.

Link

But, it's got to be some kind of typo or mistake.

Right?

Slow Down, Son

Appearing in the WSJ, some advice to Obama from a long-time Democrat activist.

Wizbang and Jennifer Rubin add their reflections on the article.

We Need This

Instapundit:

MAKE CONGRESS PAY THE SURTAX: “Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., said he will propose that a 1% surtax be applied to the salaries of members of Congress, regardless of how much they earn. Davis said that would help lawmakers share in the tax that the House bill — which this week cleared two of three House Committees — would impose on families and businesses earning more than $350,000 annually.” It’s their fair share.

Hey, how about a constitutional amendment requiring that members of Congress always pay the highest marginal rate. . . .

Health Care Mythology

A most excellent piece by Cliff Asness, an investment fund manager.

excerpt:

Myth #6 Health Care is A Right

Nope, it’s not. But we are at the nuclear bomb of the discussion. The one guaranteed to get me yelled at or perhaps picketed by a mob waving signs printed up with George Soros’s money. Those advocating socialized medicine love to scream “health care is a right.” They are loud, they are scary, but they are wrong about rights (as the 1980 kid in me resists the temptation to type “TO PARTY” – you had to be there).

This is more philosophy than economics, and I'm not a philosopher. But, luckily it doesn't take a superb philosopher to understand that health care simply is not a “right” in the sense we normally use that word. Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public spaces). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don’t choose to provide it to you, you then have a “right” to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?

In fact, although it’s not the primitive issue, the constant improvement in health care gives another good example of why the “right” to health care makes little sense. Did you have a right to chemotherapy in 1600 AD? You could have protested to Parliament all you wanted, but chemo just didn’t exist. Then, did you have a right to it the moment some genius invented it? You did not pay for the research. You did not make the breakthrough. Where do you get the right? How did it come into existence for you the moment somebody else created these things? I’m pretty sure you cannot have rights to material goods that don’t exist, and I am pretty certain that the moment some genius (or business, or even government) brings them into the world your “rights” do not improve. But strangely, many disagree.

Conundrums are easy to create. If a cure for all disease is discovered but it costs the GDP of Europe for each treatment, do we all have a right to it? Of course not. We can say we do, but it does not matter. We cannot have it (unless you agree with my forecast for Europe’s GDP and wait 50 years). But the absolute “health care is a right” position leads to a clear yes (you know those people bussed in by ACORN and the SEIU carrying signs saying “health care is a right”? Ask them what they think about this issue; I dare you). The smarter crazies might argue that they only mean the right to a reasonable level of health care. But then we have government running and rationing health care, as Congressional committee decides what’s “reasonable”? Health care is not a primitive right, but keep printing those signs.

So why do people scream health care is a “right” if it so obviously is not? If not a right it can still be willingly provided as charity by society (I’ll again leave aside the libertarian fight about whether we all need to be forced to provide charity). But those screaming “health care is a right” worry that this will not work out as well for them. It would work out if all they cared about was good health care for all, and not power, but they do love that power.

Those seeking free health care could admit these are not rights but they simply want other people’s stuff, and be honest supplicants, or open thieves. However, they believe that guilt and the false moral high ground work better for them. Do not cede that ground. They are beggars with the government’s guns behind them...

Cartoon

Via American Digest.

Link

Drink Up

Pretty good. H/T Mark Shea, who says this was made by a 16 year old.

"Bailando En La Calle, Everybody!"

Iowahawk parody.

"Green Shoots"

Denninger:

GE (NYSE: GE) was out this morning with earnings and continues to validate my central thesis: severe economic contraction.

Revenues were down 17% - another double-digit contraction, and this is particularly troublesome in what it says about the global economy, given GE's global reach.

Again, we continue to see the same sort of theme in industrial and consumer products reporting - Harley Davidson (NYSE: HOG) reported units shipped down 30% year over year yesterday, and now GE out with a 17% year over year revenue decline.

Stocks are, at their core, priced on earnings growth, with the most-common ratio used for such metrics being P/E/G, or Price-to-earnings-growth.

But earnings are not growing, they're contracting - dramatically - in percentage terms over year-ago levels. How can it be otherwise? Even with no inefficiencies due to firms having too many employees for the revenue contraction that is occurring, a 30% reduction in business done should lead to a 30% decline in profits earned. Add to that the fact that firms are nearly always behind the curve and you have profit declines that are much larger - in some cases 100% or even going from a profit to a loss.

This is not a circumstance that will reverse in the immediate future; in order for it to do so, revenue must come back up, and in order for revenue to come back to pre-bust levels, we would have to re-inflate the credit bubble - which simply cannot happen.

Multiples are going to continue to contract. Those analysts and market callers who are all over the momentum trade can in fact make a good buck trading the momentum, but that's all they're trading - they sure aren't trading earnings acceleration or even stabilization.

The move in the market off the 666 levels in March has been driven by a false premise, egged on by CNBC and the other "mainstream media" - that this is a typical recession, it is short-lived, and we will soon go back to previous spending and business patterns.

That is not going to happen, yet it is what everyone in the media and analyst community is looking for and basing their valuation and market timing calls on.

I don't know how long we have to continue to put up numbers like this before people wake up, but wake up they eventually will. When Harley Davidson ships 30% fewer motorcycles, when GE sells 17% less "stuff" (including their financial cooking) and when company after company, including Intel, IBM and others come out with revenue numbers that are down double-digit percentages on an annualized basis, there is no possible way you can justify the multiples that these firms are selling at.

When The Port of Long Beach shows container shipments down nearly 30%, when freight carloadings are down nearly 25% year over year, when sales tax receipts are down in the double digits and when income tax collections, both personal and corporate have effectively collapsed there is simply no argument that "the recession is over" or that "trend growth is around the corner."

The fact of the matter is that port, rail and tax receipts are not subject to being "gamed" by government number-crunchers, they do not play "seasonal adjustments" (since they're year-over-year numbers), they do not represent wishes, dreams, or desires.

They represent real-time, high-frequency, "right now and in your face" economic performance metrics and are impossible to argue with.

...

What those high-frequency data sources are telling us, here and now, today, is that we are in the middle of a 25-30% economic contraction - exactly as I predicted would occur in 2007.

The problem with this level of indicated weakness in the economy is that we have shielded firms, especially banks, from taking the losses that should have come last year and in 2007 related to their over-extension of credit. Now those institutions are going to have to live with the reality of a much smaller economy, meaning that they will be forced to turn to dramatically increasing credit costs to customers to avoid drowning (e.g. increasing credit card rates and spreads), which is exactly what they're doing. This in turn will suck even more money out of consumers pockets, dragging consumption down even further and will force even more defaults.

This is a vicious cycle that can only be broken when the defaults that are being hidden behind the curtain of our financial institutions are forced into the open and disposed of. Yes, this will likely cause those firms to go bust. But the economic penalty we are and will continue to pay for allowing The Bezzle to continue in these firms will, if not stopped, soon choke off any hope of recovery, just as it did in 1930, and lead to precisely the same sort of economic result.

Creotard Theocrat

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.

--Thomas Jefferson in an 1823 letter to John Adams

Link

If A Black Man Makes A Case For Anything Whatsoever, All You Gotta Do To Refute Him Is To Point Out That Other Black Men Disagree

At least in Barbara Boxer's universe. But she gets pwned for it by a black guy who is just not going to put up with that kind of racist condescension (video at the link):

Senator Boxer didn't take that inanity lying down. She played the race card badly in the Environment Committee, and it didn't go well. Watch the video.

[video]

Harry Alford represents the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and testified, complete with documentation to support his claims, that the cap and tax and tax bill that Senator Boxer so wants to see become the law of the land would not help the energy situation in this country, would actually harm it, and have a devastating impact on businesses, and by extension, jobs.

Senator Boxer didn't see Mr. Alford sitting in the witness chair as someone with a viewpoint to have a debate with. She saw an African-American man that opposed her, and proceeded to then cite a NAACP resolution and a 100 Black Men of Atlanta endorsement. Mr. Alford rightly called Boxer on her racial condescension, which clearly flustered her. Note at the end of the clip where she responds to his anger as an Army veteran as saying she married a veteran, as if that's supposed to somehow protect her with that constiuency group, too.

Boxer's entire M.O. as senator is to wield liberal ethnic or gender groups as a bat to bludgeon any criticism to her agenda. That's not debating, that's bullying. That's not respecting racial diversity. It's using racial groups as a weapon. It may be lost upon Senator Boxer, but not all African-Americans agree on everything. Not all Minnesotans do, either, for that matter. Maybe she could have cited some statistics that challenged Mr. Alford's material, and had a fruitful discussion about the merits of implementing a cap and tax and tax system. Boxer can't have that discussion. She'd lose. Instead, she implies she has more black people supporting her than opposing her, so Mr. Alford must therefore be discredited. Her stunt yesterday was reprehensible, shameful, and another blush in a long line of embarrassments all non-union voting residents of the Golden State have had to endure.

"Don't Tread On Me" Will Soon Make A Surprising Comeback, And From Unexpected Quarters

Megan McArdle:

I confess, I am surprised to find out just how little money you can raise by slapping a 5.4% surtax on incomes above a million. I also wonder at what point serious political resistance to taxes sets in. I know, it's common to claim that Americans are tax haters. But actually, Americans, even the wealthy, pay their taxes at a rate that would shock an Italian. We grumble, but in the end, we pay.

But at some point, that changes. In the highest paying zip codes, the effective average combined tax rate (not the marginal rate) on many affluent people is already well over forty percent--I shelled out more than 40% of my really non-lavish journalist's salary when I lived in Manhattan. The repeal of the Bush tax cuts will push some taxpayers into the 50+percent total tax bracket. Is America ready?

One thing I think that wonks often overrate is how fiercely the resistance to taxes mounts once you get past a certain point. Our mental arithmetic is all wrong. We think of a 5% tax increase as a relatively small amount. But of course, once you're nearing a 50% average tax rate, a 5% tax increase is something like a 10% cut in the taxpayer's take-home pay. And the higher the starting tax rate, the larger the percentage of tangible income the tax increase consumes. Yet because wonks assess tax increases relative to the size of the base rate, an increase from 55% to 60% actually sounds smaller than an increase from 15% to 20%. Yet from the perspective of the taxpayer, the former represents a much greater encroachment on their disposable income.

Someone with two million a year in adjusted gross income now takes home $650,000 out of the last million, then pays some portion of the remainder to various state and local authorities. In 2011, if all goes as currently planned, they'll lose just more than $100,000 of that income, and more to various tax increases on lower income levels. Rich people are less budget-conscious than you and I, but I bet even they notice a missing $100,000.

Should we feel sorry for them? No. But I expect they'll start felling sorry for themselves. And I'll be interested to see what impact this bill has, if it passes, on Obama's support among the wealthy.

Atheist Slap Fight

P.Z. Myers is quite properly taken to task in Chris Mooney's new book Unscientific America. Mooney is the guy who wrote The Republican War On Science, so you'd think his "New Atheist" secularist bona fides would be secure. But no, not with Myers. From Mooney's blog:

10. The Trouble With PZ Myers. In his review, Myers doesn’t address our criticisms of him–of his public writings and actions. But we will end by elaborating upon why, in the wake of the communion wafer desecration, we decided we had to speak out about Myers in a way that would really be heard.

Though we have not said so until now, Myers is among the central reasons we left ScienceBlogs. There were many factors involved, of course, but one was our shock at what he calls “Crackergate.” We describe the full incident in the book, but let us quote from Myers’ words when he closed off comments (there had been over 2,000) after posting his picture of the defiled eucharist with a rusty nail driven through it:

What effort I put into [the desecration] was not in response to the reality of your silly deity, but in response to the reality of your dangerous delusions. Those are real, all right, and they need to be belittled and weakened. But don’t confuse the fact that I find you and your church petty, foolish, twisted, and hateful to be a testimonial to the existence of your petty, foolish, twisted, hateful god.

Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to close this thread. Its purpose has been well served: the fanatical Catholics and their crazy beliefs have been fully exposed. Over 2300 comments on this subject in 20 hours is quite enough.

Watching all of this, we were appalled. We could not see what this act could possibly have to do with promoting science and reason. It contributed nothing to the public understanding or appreciation of science, and everything to a nasty, ugly culture war that hurts and divides us all.

We recognize that Myers writes entertainingly and sometimes hilariously; we know he’s kind and soft-spoken in person; and we realize he describes science accurately and insightfully. And we understand he’s a very good teacher as well.

Nevertheless, in his online persona–and nowhere more than with the wafer desecration–we believe he cultivates a climate of extremism, incivility and, indeed, unreason (the opposite of calm and respectful debate and exchange) at ScienceBlogs. And it is past time that someone spoke out about that, as we did in Unscientific America.

For too long, people in the science blogosphere have tiptoed around Myers. After all, he can send a lot of angry commenters your way. And he, and they, are unrelenting in their criticisms, their attacks, and so on. Just read our threads over the last week–it’s all there, the vast majority from people who have not read our book and do not seem inclined to do so.

But we’re not afraid of Myers or his commenters. They can leave hundreds of posts on our blog–we readily allow it–but our book will be read by a different and far more open-minded audience. It’s already happening. And that audience will largely agree that Myers’ communion wafer desecration was offensive and counterproductive, and that more generally, he epitomizes the current problems with the communication of science on the Internet.

We know how many others agree with us, because we have heard from them. We also know the standards of intellectual decency, fairness, and so on that we’ve learned from years of journalism and in academia. And if, as our book proposes, we are going to be training young science communicators, they must learn at least two basic lessons they will not be getting from Myers: civility and tolerance.

Our core concern, though, isn’t really about Myers or his blog. What worries us is what they say about the world of American science as it appears on the Internet. For Myers is, as we all know, the most popular blogger on the most popular science blogging site–and has a horde of loyal followers who see themselves as the disciples of reason, and swear by “science” (when they’re not just swearing).

And this is his most famous performance: Desecrating a communion wafer.

That doesn’t just say something unflattering about Myers–it says something devastating about all of us.

Amen, brother.

They're Starting To Notice The Barrels Of Tar And Sacks Of Feathers

Good:

House Members Being Hammered Over Waxman-Markey [Iain Murray]

I'm hearing that the popular reaction to the passage of the Waxman-Markey electricity tax bill in the House has blown House members away. The public outrage is really hurting those who voted for it, and that's why the bill has been "parked" (as the Blair government used to say) in the Senate. Very good sign. We need that sort of public pressure to defeat this monstrosity, and similarly for the health-care plans. If these two overreaches go down, Obama's political capital will be spent. How often has a president become a lame duck by his own actions within a year of taking office?

Rebuffed

This is pretty hardcore. No one would shake The One's hand.

Good Sticker

Lol.

Poseurs Are Not Really Into The Shocking And Transgressive

At least not when it's about something real.

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Another America's Got Talent amazing surprise. Actually, not too amazing and not too surprising if you know any small town "country" people. Just really darned good.

Cool Photo

Seen here.

Asymmetric Stakes

A most excellent Charles Hugh Smith column.

Well, Then Maybe They Weren't Gay To Begin With

The GLBT movement loses some poster children (Yahoo video).

Newsweek Thinks Obama Should Skool The Pope

Idiots:

In truth, though, Obama’s pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists. When Obama meets the pope tomorrow, they’ll politely disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality, but Catholics back home won’t care, because they know Obama’s on their side. In fact, Obama’s agenda is closer to their views than even the pope’s. …

Notre Dame awarded the president an honorary degree because it saw the need to highlight the best of Catholic teaching as applied to politics: the ability to open the eyes of those who would prefer to keep them closed, and to open the hearts of those who would prefer not to know the pain that their actions cause. The pope has a lot to learn about Catholic politics in America. Barack Obama can teach him.

And If The Peasants Decide To Burn Their Own Crops, What Then, Comrade?

VDH:

The Bad Guys

Ponder a simple fact: The Obama administration is dispersing income lavishly to those who do not pay taxes and it will have to be paid for by those who do. For all the talk of that awful percentile who make over $200,000, this administration has not distinguished the hyper-rich 1% that make untold money (e.g., the Buffets, Soroses, Turners, Gateses, Kerrys, Gores, etc), from the much more demonized, larger 5% of the population whose income does not come from investments and insider influence and deal-making, but rather from providing more tangible goods and services — the family doctor, the plumbing contractor, the small lumber company owner, the car dealer, the local family-held insurance company, the airline pilot, the car-leasing firm, the patent attorney, etc.

“Their Fair Share”

Last fall we heard that this percentile was unpatriotic, did not wish to spread the wealth around, and had made off like bandits under Bush. But the fact is, to quote Mayor Gavin Newsome’s “like it or not,” they are precisely those who decide most dynamically whether to hire, fire, expand, contract, buy/sell goods, etc.

And the results of the Obama war against them are threefold: 1) in major key states, the productive minority’s state income taxes will near or exceed 10%; their federal rates will go to 40%; the abolition of caps on FICA will ensure 15% plus of most of their income will go for new Medicare and Social Security bites; and they may well be eligible for a newly proposed punitive health-care surcharge tax of 4-6%.

Add It Up

If one were to add all that up (forget rises in sales taxes, inheritance taxes, luxury taxes, etc.), then one can get to 70% of one’s income. So right this minute, the electrical contractor is thinking:

“I made $412,000 last year due to Saturday jobs, overtime, risky bidding, gambles on new equipment, and new lines of credit, but under Obama I will pay maybe $50-80,000 more of my income to the government. In other words the cost of, say, hiring two more entry-level electricians, or the cost of outfitting an entire new van with boom and equipment, or what I cleared every Saturday last year — all that will go to the government.”

Ripples of Doubt

And that means rippling throughout this key sector of the economy — even before these taxes have been enacted — are hesitation, stasis, and ultimately constriction — at first for psychological reasons, soon confirmed by the actual facts of less money. In short, very bright people will be thinking how to hide income, how to barter, how to slow down and not produce goods and services, rather than blast full speed ahead and enrich angry others.

A Certain Paranoia

2) Do not discount again the psychological element. This putative electrical contractor also knows that after handing over his profits to the new government, and delaying or ending his plans for enlargement, he will not be praised, but continually demonized (I scanned CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and NBC the other evening, and all the stories had a common theme: the “rich” (yes, you see, ACME Electric is now about the equivalent to AIG and Citibank) will have to pay their “fair share” for all sorts of “overdue” necessities: cap-and-trade, nationalized health care, education grants and freebies, and new social programs.

You Owe Us

So our electrician senses that despite his newfound, sizable contribution to the public good, he will a) not be thanked but only further ridiculed; b) see his money diverted from his own wise use of it, to anonymous agencies’ liberal expenditures of it: the money will not be just lost, but invested in things that will make things worse, not better, through subsidies of failed programs and the destruction of incentives; c) see that the world under Obama is now unfair in Orwellian fashion: the Citibanks and AIGs, in Robert Rubin fashion, are so well connected to both parties that they will suffer little for their mistakes; the Ivy-League and Washington technocratic class that is to run all this is happy with its government perks and does not think new taxes and compliance apply to themselves (cf. Dodd, Rangel, Geithner, Daschle, Murtha, etc.).

You Never Needed All That Anyway

3) Finally the now chastised and ossified electrician will begin to see that his new truck, his boat, his vacation home, all these are somehow immoral in carbon, political, cultural, racial, and social terms. And he senses that others, who do not pay any income taxes (approaching 50% of the population), see themselves at war with him: the more he pays in taxes, the more others see that his compliance with such new burdens is proof of what he “really” owed all the time, and a sign that he can pay even more next round.

...

That is the model here in California and that is the model we are soon to see in Washington: the government worker and those who receive his largess, are kings; those who pay for them, and who work in private enterprise for far less, are, well, less than fools.

Vanderleun On Palin

Interesting take:

In the last week Sarah Palin has moved herself from the periphery to the center of power in the Republican party. The Party just doesn't seem to know it yet.

By resigning as the Governor of Alaska, Palin has positioned herself as the single most valuable power broker for the GOP in the 2010 elections. Simply put, in close primaries pitting Republican against Republican, and in close general elections for the Senate or Congress, Sarah Palin's endorsement and/or campaigning for a candidate can get that person elected. In addition, Palin can also raise money for a party and for candidates who would otherwise be strapped for cash. These are formidable political powers and only by freeing herself from Alaska will she be able to exercise them.

...

The question is not who among the Republicans won't want Palin's endorsement in 2010. The question is which Republicans in close contests, incumbent or challenger, would be able win without it. This raw political fact will become especially visible in the last few weeks before the 2010 polls when Palin will give a new meaning to "barnstorming."

...

2010 is a make or break election for the Republicans. And the person in that year that can make and break Republican candidates is now Sarah Palin. She's not only a star, she's the only star the Republicans have or are likely to have. Love her or hate her, the Republicans must have her, and she must be available for active campaigning across the country.

And as Palin will benefit the Party in 2010, so will she benefit from any electoral victories (primary or general) that she will have had a hand in securing. Politics raw runs on money and markers. An endorsement or appearance by Palin brings crowds, commitment, enthusiasm, and donations -- not from the interior old-guard of the Party -- but from the rank and file conservatives and the center-right feminists. These people form the mass of the Party. It might ignore them between elections, but it will need their lawn signs, donations, and door-belling in the primaries and general elections. Palin can give all this --the people -- to the candidates of her choice. She can do this by simply showing up.

A retreat from the public eye for a bit will not diminish her stature but enhance her myth. Myth, as we have seen in 2007-2008, is a powerful force in elections.

What will Palin get for bringing in victory and money? She'll get what she doesn't have now -- markers. At the present time it's hard to think of any markers that Palin holds. You have to actually deliver money or victory to a politician to get a marker from a politician. If she campaigns broadly and effectively for various Republicans in 2010 she'll have a sheaf of markers going into 2012. She'll also have a core staff already tempered by the 2010 elections, most likely a book, and an enhanced myth. By the end of 2010 Sarah Palin will have become the most powerful person in the Republican Party. Palin will be, at the very least, a kingmaker, at most a populist Queen.

Her enemies in all parties may not have quite figured this out yet, but they sense it. Sensing, they fear her. And that's why the hate goes on.

Seems like a good assessment. Is it really deniable that the only GOP politician who is not some kind of candy-assed joke, and the only one anybody gives a darn about, is Palin?

One of Vanderleun's commenters had this to say:

Necessity is the mother of invention and one would think based on that universal law that a conservative leader would have already emerged full blown. I mean a real firebrand, a fist pumping, spittle flinging, rabble-rouser. Someone, in a word, that would channel the energy and intention of that guy in the youtube video you posted beating a PC monitor with a bat as he utterly eviscerates the statism that we are now force fed daily. I pray Palin is that person. I fervently pray that the GOOD will wake up to the fact that it's evil twin has been on a winning streak these past few decades and that it is high time that sulphurous stink suffered some defeat. Sometimes I have wondered if GOOD was still in the game even. Justice is crying out from the very rocks for its turn.

Yup. It is way past time for someone to start kickin' ass and takin' names.

Attempted MSM Act Of Worship DENIED!!

Nice try.