"I Don't Care What My Electric Bill Is. I Haven't Worked My Entire Life So That My Living Room Can Look Like A Soviet Bloc Stairwell During A James Bond Fight Scene."

Dennis Miller as quoted in this American Thinker piece which calls for fighting the fight to lift the asinine, imperious, tyrannical incandescent bulb ban.

Take Away The Keys

Interesting idea:

Via the Volokh Conspiracy, where there’s this additional suggestion: “Any law that lets states be bailed out should require them to renounce their state status and revert to being territories, to be reorganised by the federal government as new states. That has the advantage of getting rid of the old, dysfunctional, state government, removing the state and its inhabitants from national influence until they’ve had a chance to learn some wisdom, and being enough of a penalty to make bailouts unattractive to other states.” I see many problems with this approach, but I admire its spirit.

Palin Let's Them Have It With Both Barrels

Nicely played.

Nicely Stated

Brutally Honest:

A kite will not fly unless it's restrained. Man cannot be free unless he's moored morally to a grounding set of beliefs. London has put forth a most interesting theory. [Weak-tea] Christianity's failure to provide moral boundaries might be leading many to embrace the constricting beliefs of Islam.

Unplugging From The Internets And Computers

For the rest of Thanksgiving Week...

Well, Shiva Is The Destroyer.

"This Show Should Come With A Mental Health Advisory."

Pretty good concise takedown of The View, highlighting near-perfect philosophical incoherence.

In A Nutshell

Althouse as quoted by Instapundit:

hey don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn’t that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people? You wallow in self-love, and what is it you love yourself for? For wanting to shower benefits on people…that you have nothing but contempt for.

Epic Fail

Who could have predicted this?

Let’s face it. Barack Obama and Eric Holder gambled their entire national-security credibility on the Ahmed “Foopie” Ghailani trial, arguing that they could get convictions of detainees captured abroad by military and intelligence assets while using federal courts as a venue rather than the military commissions that Congress repeatedly authorized for that purpose. Holder scolded critics who pointed out all of the reasons that such a strategy was much more likely to fail for “politicizing” the process, especially in regard to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose case is more problematic than Ghailani’s, where the FBI did a large part of the investigation before intelligence assets were used to seize and interrogate Ghailani.

The failure of Holder’s DoJ to win anything more than a single conspiracy count against Ghailani as a result of using a process designed for domestic criminals than wartime enemies shows that the critics had it right all along. It also shows that both Obama and Holder have been proven spectacularly wrong, since a man who confessed to the murder of over two hundred people will now face as little as 20 years, with a big chunk of whatever sentence Foopie receives being reduced by time already served.

The administration is left with three choices in regards to Ghailani: announce that they will release him at the appointed date whenever his sentence ends, announce that they will hold him indefinitely without regard to the court’s ruling on the matter while referring the case back to a military commission despite his acquittals, or refuse to state which they will do and hope the issue falls to the next administration. The first will mean that the US will knowingly release a master al-Qaeda terrorist with more than two hundred murders under his belt; the second will mean that the trial they staged was nothing but a sham. And the third will be a cowardly dodge.

Such is the state in which Holder as Attorney General has left the US. Either the US is so inept that it will eventually release a man who attacked two of its embassies abroad (which was an act of war by al-Qaeda) or that the DoJ may commit an impeachable act by knowingly submitting a defendant to double jeopardy, whether in this administration or a future administration. By committing to the civilian criminal system and assigning judicial jurisdiction where it never belonged, those are the only options left.

It was that decision that created the entirely predictable set of decisions that forced the judge to exclude the evidence gleaned by intelligence interrogation that proved Ghailani guilty — a cascade of consequences foreseen by critics and arrogantly sneered at by this administration as “politicization.” It’s both the arrogance and the incompetence that requires Eric Holder’s termination as Attorney General. Holder made these decisions and hotly defended them as perfectly reasonable, with no reduced chance of getting convictions in these cases.

It Seems Like Even More Of A Pathetic Joke After A Couple Of Years

The next time your lefty friends wax poetic about some politician, remind them of this.

Let Me Tell You--Vehemently, And In Great Detail--All About My Hobby Of Not Collecting Stamps

From the comments to this post:

"You get the argument that their position is different because it is a non-belief, rather like not collecting stamps."

This has always seemed silly to me. When an atheist claims that all atheism is is a lack of belief in god, and that therefore he makes no claims whatsoever and has no burden of proof in a discussion about atheism and theism, I ask him if he lacks belief for a reason. If not, then his position is non-rational, and not worth discussing. If so, then he does, it seems to me, make at least one claim, viz. his reason(s) justifies his lack of belief. If this is so, why is he not obligated to defend *that* claim?

The response I usually hear is, "well I lack belief because there's no evidence," to which I respond, "fine, but you must now tell me what you mean by evidence, what counts as evidence, and so on, and then defend the claim that there is no evidence for god's existence against some claims that such and such counts as evidence for god's existence, so you *still* have an obligation to defend your claim; oh, and you must use the term evidence consistently, so you cannot say that X isn't evidence for god because it fails to meet requirement R, but Y is evidence for this or that scientific theory (or whatever), if it too fails to satisfy requirement R."

Not only that, but if atheism is merely a lack of belief, then it's just a description of one's psychology: search all of S's beliefs, and you won't find the belief, "god exists." But then to say that Jones is an atheist is akin to saying that Jones has red hair. Notice, though, that while we can say it's true *that* Jones has red hair, it's meaningless to say, Jones's red hair is true (or rational, or probable, or warranted, etc.; but if this is the case, then it's just as meaningless to say that Jones's atheism is true (or rational, probable, warranted, etc.). But atheists tell us all the time that atheism is rational, etc. Hence, atheism cannot be merely descriptive, i.e. refer to a lack of belief merely.

Here's Everything You Need To Know

Dennis Miller Dishes It Out

On all the proper targets.

"The Top Ten Reasons Why Conservatives Should Not Be Celebrating The Election Results"

Here ya go.

It's Just Good Common Sense

Warning labels.

The Needs Of The 8000 Outweigh The Needs Of The Few Hundred Million

Excellent:

255 million: The number of Americans with existing health insurance coverage.

20 million: The number of Americans without any health coverage at all due to economic circumstances.

375,000: The number of Americans with pre-existing conditions HHS said would apply for coverage in the first year of ObamaCare, one of the main political arguments for its implementation.

8,011: The number that actually did.

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick.

That comes to a success rate for that prediction of just under 2.2%. The Wall Street Journal points out that the program operates at a loss — which means that consumers who qualify for the program in essence have partial subsidies by entering it. And yet, despite the billions of dollars committed to funding it and the efforts of 27 states to duplicate it, only eight thousand people have bothered to apply for the program.

The Obama administration and its allies in the Nancy Pelosi Congress revamped one-sixth of the American economy, created new federal mandates, and created chaos in system that worked for the vast majority of Americans, just to deal with eight thousand people? Perhaps they should have tested the issue by creating the program separately first and determining whether the demand required a complete overhaul of a health-care system that mainly worked for the rest of us, instead of arrogating to themselves the task of dictating the shape of a market they clearly don’t understand.

Time Magazine Bravely Steps Out In Front Of A Crucial Issue

Daring. Radical.

Not Sorry, For Some Reason

Good observation by The Anchoress. As such, it has led to tantrums in the comment section.

Quote For Our Times

Via Instapundit:

“It is odd that these days the only sacred contracts are those which the state enters into with unions for the benefit of their members.”

"Why Does This Opportunity Make The New Atheists So Angry?"

Why, indeed?

Hanson

Good stuff.

Precisely

Link:

There are two ways for a government to be ‘pro-business.’ The first way is to avoid interfering in capitalist acts among consenting adults – that is, to keep taxes low, regulations few, and subsidies non-existent. This ‘pro-business’ stance promotes widespread prosperity because in reality it isn’t so much pro-business as it is pro-consumer. When this way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing consumers, and only for pleasing consumers.

The second, and very different, way for government to be pro-business is to bestow favors and privileges on politically connected firms. These favors and privileges, such as tariffs and export subsidies, invariably oblige consumers to pay more – either directly in the form of higher prices, or indirectly in the form of higher taxes – for goods and services. This way of being pro-business reduces the nation’s prosperity by relieving businesses of the need to satisfy consumers. When this second way is pursued, businesses are rewarded for pleasing politicians. Competition for consumers’ dollars is replaced by competition for political favors.

The Headline Says It All

Haven't read the article yet, but:

California: The Lindsay Lohan of States

"Bush Got C's. Obama Probably Failed Lunch!"

Adolf's post-election analysis.

Noonan

A few pearls from her latest:

Two small points on the election's atmospherics that carry implications for the future. The first is that negative ads became boring, unpersuasive. Forty years ago they were new, exciting in a sort of prurient way. Now voters take for granted that politicians are no good, and such ads are just more polluted water going over the waterfall. The biggest long-term loser: liberalism. If all pols are sleazoid crooks, then why would people want to give them more governmental power to order our lives? The implicit message of two generations of negative ads: Vote conservative, limit the reach of the thieves.

...

On to the aftermath of the election. On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.

Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president.

His detachment is so great, it is even from himself. As he spoke, he seemed to be narrating from a remove. It was like hearing the audiobook of Volume I of his presidential memoirs. "Obama was frustrated. He honestly didn't understand what the country was doing. It was as if they had compulsive hand-washing disorder. In '08 they washed off Bush. Now they're washing off Obama. There he is, swirling down the drain! It's all too dramatic, too polar. The morning after the election it occurred to him: maybe he should take strong action. Maybe he should fire America! They did well in 2008, but since then they've been slipping. They weren't giving him the followership he needed. But that wouldn't work, they'd only complain. He had to keep his cool. His aides kept telling him, 'Show humility.' But they never told him what humility looked like. What was he supposed to do, burst into tears and say hit me? Not knowing how to feel humility or therefore show humility he decided to announce humility: He found the election 'humbling,' he said."

From The Mouths Of Synthetic CGI Puppets Comes The Truth

Good stuff.

Here's Hoping Our Next President Is From Austrian

Aren't you glad your vote is equal to theirs?

Obama's Triumphant Arrival In India

I got a kick out of this video.

See also.

Commodities Are Not Rights

Good points:

What brought the liberal left to this dismal impasse? It was the foolish notion that in America health care could ever be a fundamental right, which springs from ignorance (or denial) of what fundamental rights are in this country. For a primer on that subject, read the founding documents.

A right is not a tangible object. That would be a commodity. A right is much more precious. Rights are not bestowed on Americans by a benevolent government. Rights are given to us by God, and the founding documents were written to ensure that the government can't take them away. The liberal intelligentsia, who tend to be Humanist (euphemism for atheist) have a philosophical problem with this fact. That's tough.

A bullhorn is a commodity. Freedom of speech, immeasurably more precious, is a right. Bibles, Books of Mormon, Korans, and Torahs are all commodities. Freedom of religion is a right. A rented arena is a commodity. Freedom of assembly is a right. Lest any liberal readers still don't get it, allow me to elaborate. "To keep and bear arms," is a right. The Second Amendment guarantees that the government can't interfere with my -- God given -- right to defend myself or my family. Furthermore, it guarantees Patriots the right to band together to defend the country against a government that becomes as tyrannical as King George III, but thanks to the genius of the founder's, revolutionary change can be non-violent. The founders called such principles, "natural law," which in enlightenment thinking is synonymous with God's law.

Although it is my right "to keep and bear arms," I can't expect to be provided with a gun by the government at the expense of other taxpayers. A gun is not a right. It is a commodity.

So it is with health care. Surgeries, staples, and sutures are not rights. One of the problems with a government dispensing commodities and labeling them rights is, who gets to be the arbiter of which commodities are dispensed? I don't need health care from the government. I take care of my own health. But what I really could use is car care. My family owns three vehicles, and all of them could use a little work. Why not a "right" to car care? There is an airtight, logical argument that automobiles are essential to the U.S. economy. The nation has a vested interest in car care. And once health care is established in the American psyche as a right, who's to say car care won't be next? The problem? Car care is a commodity. The Democrats could have spared themselves a "shellacking" with a simple review of rights, "the laws of nature, and nature's God."

There's Nothing Wrong With Zero That A Massacre Of Innocents Wouldn't Fix

Brilliant.

A Real Genius

Randall Hoven:

President Obama explained us to us as follows:

And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared, and they [sic] have good reason to be.

(Just my unwashed observation: We have a president who knows what our brains are hardwired to do and can describe the emotional state of an entire country, but he can't get subject and verb to agree and pronoun and antecedent to agree in just two sentences not read from a teleprompter. Good thing he didn't say "refudiate.")

Is There Anything More Racist Than A Raving Leftist?

Doing the KKK proud.

About As Hard-Hitting A Statement As You Will Ever Get From A Fed Governor

We need more like him (ultimately less, actually, since there shouldn't be a Federal Reserve in the first place).

Richard Fisher:

In my darkest moments I have begun to wonder if the monetary accommodation we have already engineered might even be working in the wrong places. Far too many of the large corporations I survey that are committing to fixed investment report that the most effective way to deploy cheap money raised in the current bond markets or in the form of loans from banks, beyond buying in stock or expanding dividends, is to invest it abroad where taxes are lower and governments are more eager to please. This would not be of concern if foreign direct investment in the U.S. were offsetting this impulse. This year, however, net direct investment in the U.S. has been running at a pace that would exceed minus $200 billion, meaning outflows of foreign direct investment are exceeding inflows by a healthy margin. We will have to watch the data as it unfolds to see if this is momentary fillip or evidence of a broader trend. But I wonder: If others cotton to the view that the Fed is eager to “open the spigots,” might this not add to the uncertainty already created by the fiscal incontinence of Congress and the regulatory and rule-making “excesses” about which businesses now complain?

In performing a cost/benefit analysis of a possible QE2, we will need to bear in mind that one cost that has already been incurred in the process of running an easy money policy has been to drive down the returns earned by savers, especially those who do not have the means or sophistication or the demographic profile to place their money at risk further out in the yield curve or who are wary of the inherent risk of stocks. A great many baby boomers or older cohorts who played by the rules, saved their money and have migrated over time, as prudent investment counselors advise, to short- to intermediate-dated, fixed-income instruments, are earning extremely low nominal and real returns on their savings. Further reductions in rates earned on savings will hardly endear the Fed to this portion of the population. Moreover, driving down bond yields might force increased pension contributions from corporations and state and local governments, decreasing the deployment of monies toward job maintenance in the public sector. Debasing those savings with even a little more inflation than what is above minimal levels acceptable to the FOMC is unlikely to endear the Fed to these citizens. And if―and here I especially stress the word if because the evidence is thus far only anecdotal and has yet to be confirmed by longer-term data―if it were to prove out that the reduction of long-term rates engendered by Fed policy had been used to unwittingly underwrite investment and job creation abroad, then the potential political costs relative to the benefit of further accommodation will have increased.

Part of our cost/benefit analysis should include where the inertia of quantitative easing might take us. Let’s go back to that eye-popping headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: “Central Banks Open Spigot.”

My reaction to reading that article was that it raises the specter of competitive quantitative easing. Such a race would be something of a one-off from competitive devaluation of currencies, a beggar-thy-neighbor phenomenon that always ends in tears. It implies that central banks should carry the load for stymied fiscal authorities―or worse, give in to them―rather than stick within their traditional monetary mandates and let legislative authorities deal with the fiscal mess they have created. It infers that lurking out in the future is a slippery slope of quantitative easing reaching beyond just buying government bonds (and in our case, mortgage-backed securities). It is one thing to stabilize the commercial paper market in a systematic way. Going beyond investment-grade paper, however, opens the door to pressure on a central bank to back financial instruments benefiting specific economic sectors. This inevitably leads to irritation or lobbying for similar treatment from economic sectors not blessed by similar monetary largess.

It Would Be Tragic If It Weren't So Hilarious

Link

They Took On Babe Ruth. And Lost.

Interesting analysis re:Obama's attempted war against Limbaugh.

Poor Chuck

This actually makes Reid's win worth it:

HEH: The Unhappiest Man In America This Morning? Chuck Schumer.

The Shape Of Things To Come

Not as big a tsunami as I had hoped, but no matter. It'll do.

Predictions:

The next wave of this depression will hit before long and it will be much worse than 2008. Several big banks will fail unless bailed out. They will not be bailed out. Big surprise: the world won't end. The gov't will guarantee nothing whatsoever except deposits. Shareholders, bondholders, and assorted plutocrats will be wiped out, greatly diminishing their political clout (and good riddance).

Private sector unemployment will hit 30%. The House, seeking fairness in terms of bearing the economic pain, will pass a budget which includes a 20% paycut for all federal employees. Neither the Senate nor the President will go along with it. But there will be no continuing resolution and the government will shut down. Unlike 1995, it will not be the GOP that loses this one. After a month or so of stalemate, federal workers will decide that 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing. The Dems will blink and approve the budget. Folks will notice that the world will not have ended with the federal gov't inactive.

The resulting unprecedented pay cut (which will only give citizens an appetite for more) will break the solidarity of the public sector. Intelligent government workers who feel that they are doing something worthwhile will resent having their pay cut in order to support useless featherbedders, parasites, and tin horn bureaucrats. We will then behold the spectacle of government workers agitating for smaller government. It will be entertaining in the extreme to see these vampires fighting over a shrinking pie.

Some of the leftist politicians, whose only enjoyment in life is gotten from lording it over others so that the others must bow and scrape before them, will find that it is just as entertaining to have public sector workers groveling at their feet, begging for their jobs. They will wield the axe with gleee as they realize that a smaller gov't will eventually result in a more vibrant society, with plenty of opportunity for empire building and riches later.

The ugly implications of Obamacare will continue to ramify and outrage. Even leftist judges will conclude that the thing is a generational albatross, and the best strategic course will be to put it out of the Democrats misery. It will be invalidated.

The leftists and MFM will ratchet up the hatestorm to levels heretofore unimaginable. By some miracle the GOP will find its balls and not knuckle under to it, thereby defanging the shrieking media toddlers. Some enterprising entrepreneurs will buy one or more MFM outlets and clean out the stables.

Obama will attempt to rule via executive branch decree, promulgating regulatory "laws" that would previously have taken an act of Congress or a Constitutional amendment to enact. Several states will point out that the laws are null and void because they did not come from the legislative branch. The states will prevent enforcement of these laws in their borders and will ignore any federal court rulings to the contrary. This will open the floodgates as more and more entities realize that they have the power to uphold the Constitution without delegating that task to usurper black-robed Philosopher Kings.

Bringing The Hammer Down

On Myers, who is a philosophical barbarian and damned proud of it.

There is more sense in this single Egnor post than you will find in years of reading everything written by the New Atheists.

It's All Summarized In One Chart

Here.

Hillbuzz, Again With The Good Stuff

Excerpt:

If Wonder Woman in Chicago is shouting about Democrats being “diarrhea” and two guys dressing up to make fun of Tea Partiers fail to get the “Yah! We hate them too!” responses they desired, then Democrats are in for one Hell of a stunning surprise tomorrow.

They have no idea what a fringe minority they have become in the Left, and just how many tens of millions of Americans have woken up and see the Democrat Party for the Marxist mess it’s become.

I referenced the AintItCoolNews piece because over at that site, the Leftists who go there to talk about movies and occasionally engage in politics, have no clue what’s happening tomorrow. They have been making fun of the Tea Party movement, have been vociferously attacking Governor Palin, and have been wishing death on Glenn Beck for so long that they believe the majority of Americans think like them and that Democrats will prevail tomorrow — because they have the backing of the Ivy League big-thinkers, the Lincoln Park hipsters, the Austin-based basement dwellers and Hot Pockets snackers.

When Democrats receive a beatdown larger than anything the polls are showing — because I believe the pollsters have no idea just how much Americans have grown to actively hate the Democrats and see them as the manifestation of the Marxist Left in our government — all Hell is going to break loose in the ranks of the Hot Pockets eaters in their basements.

They will have no idea how to process those feelings: betrayal that Obama failed them when he was supposed to be their messiah; incomprehension over the fact they believe they are so right about everything and that Obama is wonderful and yet Americans are going to humiliate this “living god” tomorrow unlike anything we have seen in modern times; anger they have lost so much after all that gloating in 2008 declaring themselves to be masters of the universe and in complete control of this country.

These people are going to lash out.

...

The way I see it, every time these people lash out at Americans like us for speaking our minds and proudly espousing conservatism, the Left alienates more voters who never want anything to do with a party that condones such behavior. The folks at AintItCoolNews and other Leftist sites, in and outside of the political realm, don’t realize this…but their nastiness, vile attacks, and general behavior cost Democrats a great many votes.

So, keep it up, trolls. Keep the attacks coming. You only end up hurting yourselves.

So, bring it.

But just know somewhere in your brain that you brought all of this upon yourself. Every Tea Party member you ridiculed is someone who committed to voting against Democrats for the rest of their lives. Everyone you called a RAAACIST! for not supporting what Obama and Democrats are doing to this country is now an activist who is dedicated to bringing the Democrat Party down for those personal attacks. Every former Democrat Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi claimed wasn’t needed anymore because the party could function with just “blacks, urban elite, college towns, young voters, amnesty-seeking Hispanics, low information gays, and self-hating Jews” is now an Independent or even a Republican who is now using everything they know about the inner workings of the DNC to burn the party to the ground and make sure it never rises again.

The Left did this to itself.

The Democrat Party did this to itself.

Tomorrow, they will lash out at more people, behave terribly, and alienate scores and scores of more people who will then join the Tea Party and continue to work against Democrats.

Just watch.

It’s what happened to us in 2008.

It’s what happened to a lot of you who read us.

It’s happening all over.

And it is the Democrats’ own damn fault…so never let them forget that.

He Was Absolutely Correct

Heh:

Depending on turnout assumptions, Republicans either will enter election day with a 10-point lead in the generic Congressional ballot at 52/42, or if the turnout is lighter, a fifteen-point lead, 55/40. In Gallup’s history of asking the question, no party has ever had this kind of a lead heading into the final stretch...

...

And do you know who actually predicted this? Barack Obama. When asked how Democrats could avoid a 1994-style wipeout if Obama kept pressuring Democrats to vote for unpopular bills, he said the difference between 2010 and 1994 was, “You’ve got me.” Gallup says that may be the difference, but not in the way Obama thought...

Yes, the Democrats are indeed about to avoid a 1994-style wipeout--they'll wish that was all it was.