“Sovereignty without Territoriality?” (H/T Hobbit) Anybody seen Mud yet? A friend recommended it glowingly and it’s at 98% on RottenTomatoes.com — almost unheard of for a live-action feature. Become your very own spy agency with these secret! NSA! Google! Tips! (Creepy, and a far cry from a Orphan Annie Decoder Pin). (Tip o’ hat to JJ) Speaking of creepy: Skype. It could have been very non-creepy. But it’s a M*******t product; so what can you say? It’s creepy. (H/T Wendy McElroy) Oh, that laugh-a-minute IRS. Turns out they also gave supposedly “private” info on conservative groups to a liberal group.…
Category: Money
Posts about being frugal, getting out of debt, staying out of debt, spending practically and splurging joyfully. This category may also contain posts about hard money and what the government is doing to all that “soft money” it creates.
No fair! How come the CIA doesn’t deliver bags of cash to me? I’m sure I could stay bought at least as well as the typical third-world puppet. (We all know those standards aren’t too high.) It’s a sure thing I could find some cronies to share the loot with. Heck, I’d probably have cronies crawling out of the woodwork as soon as they learned I was the source of buckets of untraceable dollars. I’ll bet I could even find a warlord or two to fund. So why not me? Why not you? But since it’s not us, I’d like…
Well, more honest than certain modern counterfeiters we all know and love. Over the weekend, Snopes.com brought up the charming, touching (and true) tale of “Mr. 880,” whose perfectly awful counterfeit $1.00 bills stymied the Secret Service for 10 full years. Must be a lesson in there somewhere … Source for those who can’t see the embedded video. And here’s another account of Mr. 880’s story, with an ending that sounds just a little too good to be true.
Once again, the U.S. government is making noise about going to war (oh sorry, “intervening for humanitarian reasons”) in a Mideast country on sketchy evidence. If gov-o-crats decide to side with Islamist rebels in Syria, the choice could cost us all — in more ways than one. Some of the costs are unforeseeable. One is obvious: The U.S. is going broke and will go broke faster. Well, the U.S. is going broke no matter what, and We the People — or They Our Grandchildren — are going to pay. And pay. And pay. So this seems a good time to…
Turning away momentarily from the waving flags, the shouts of “USA! USA!,” the breathless media coverage, and the hearty cheers for police, I’d like to ask a freedom question unrelated to the renewed War on Terror. (Time for that later, when the Huzzahs! have quieted down.) Precious metals. If you’ve been watching, you know that commodities, especially gold and silver, plummeted Monday and the previous Friday. There were lots of explanations from both bulls and bears, of which this struck me as one of the best. My question: What’s your take on a) what just happened to the metals, b)…
Good news and think pieces only today. How mindfulness (aka meditation) might improve brain power. (H/T. JB) Young goldendoodle saves pregnant woman and her unborn baby. (H/T ML) Also, while this “news” isn’t new, it’s a nice v*te of confidence for bully breed dogs. (One of my neighbors has the most gorgeous, most sweet pit bull/American bulldog mix — aka aka Bullypit or Colorado bulldog. I could fall in love.) “Why I’m getting rid of most of my stuff.” By the inimitable (and slightly crazy) James Altucher. (I can identify. I’ve been in an accumulating mode since buying this house;…
So have you been watching the catastrophe in Cyprus? It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. The abuse of language surrounding it would also be amusing if it weren’t so Orwellian. The original plan was for even the smallest bank depositors to pay a “tax,” a “levy,” or a “fee,” or “take a haircut” on their deposits. Nobody in the MSM ever used the proper term: confiscation. Now that Ma and Pa Cypriot have been “allowed” to keep their allegedly insured deposits and the EU is free to take all they want from the rich the moderately well-off…
Re-reading Atlas Shrugged for the umptieth time (but the first time in 10 years) has inspired that dangerous activity: thinking.
One part of the book that still holds up for me is Francisco’s money speech. That’s despite it being a speech. In the middle of a novel. It’s short, it’s brilliant, and it serves a plot-related purpose. I especially like this part:
Actually three dogs and two sets of humans.
One dog (and her human) could use our help. One dog got help — from readers of this blog! — and now has a happy tale to tell.
Because it’s long, I’m trying the “more” code for the first time. And to my amazement, it appears to be working! When you get down there, just click to read the whole entry. You’ll get to pat yourself on the back if you do.
First, the dog(s) in need:
The tale of Fuzzy and Tatter Sawyer
This is Tatter and Fuzzy. They’re littermates, about four months old when this picture was taken in January. They both belong to a New Jersey man named Tony Sawyer.
Bad grammar. It makes better passwords. (H/T J for several of today’s items.) Even in Wyoming the politicians are wimpy on guns. And in Idaho: without freaking clue. Yeah, force freedom on people; that’s the way to do it. The most important thing on the Internet. (Tip o’ hat to C^2) I think I’d trust this cool and easy-sounding new encryption more if the company that created it weren’t based in Washington, DC. (H/T MJR) ‘Nother example of how the D’s just build on tyrannical crap the R’s started. And vice versa, of course. (Via yet another one of those…