Archives for November 2005

I think Cathy Young does a decent job, here, of sorting through the steaming piles of bullshit that represent the left’s case against and the right’s case for the war in Iraq. You should take the few minutes to read it regardless of what side you’re on.

Of course, the charge that the Bush administration manipulated
intelligence data either is true, or isn’t true. There’s no such thing
as an unpatriotic fact.

And here’s the reason I hate this kind
of debate. To have a truly informed opinion on this topic would
probably take months of meticulous research, and probably some
specialized knowledge as well. That means most people commenting on the
issue tend to form their opinion based on selective information and
based, at least in part, on their political biases. It’s just a little
too convenient that nearly everyone who opposes the war thinks the Bush
administration cooked the intelligence, and nearly everyone who
supports it thinks that’s a cynical lie.

Yea, I’m generally for it, but only because killing primitives whose religion includes killing me to gain favor with their delusionally imagined god is a moral imperative. I said it way back at the beginning: the WMD-justification for war was stupid load of crap. Defending it, to this day, is moronic and makes Bush look like an imbecile. Then again, all politicians look like imbeciles, to me.

(Tipped off by: Hit & Run)

“Whenever Merck was up there [on the witness stand], it was like wah, wah, wah,” juror John Ostrom told The Wall Street Journal, imitating the drone of Charlie Brown’s teacher after dunning Merck & Co. for $253 million in damages. He was describing his own reason for finding that Merck’s Vioxx had killed a 59-year-old man, even though the trial established that the man had died of unrelated causes.

Ostrom’s fellow jurors don’t seem much cleverer. Marsha Robbins prayed to be made forewoman, and in an irrefutable proof of God’s bounty ended up getting the position uncontested. Lorraine Blas noted in her questionnaire that she’s a fan of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and when plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Lanier in his closing arguments suggested a guilty verdict might land the jury a spot on Oprah’s show, Blas, rather than being creeped out by this used car salesman’s trick, laughed and enjoyed the lawyer’s attention. And consider juror/medical genius Matthew Pallardy, who, despite evidence to the contrary, “kind of figured” the victim suffered from a Vioxx-related blood clot, “even if it went away real quick.”

The irony, here, is that this example of injustice in the form of gross incompetence and dereliction of a sworn oath is actually justice in action. It’s reality’s backlash against a culture that has come to promote frivolous, incurious, immature, unintellectual, and hedonist mediocrity. I see it virtually everywhere I look, nowadays.

At home, school, and even at work, we’re raising and sanctioning generations of the uninteresting, the shallow, and the moronic.

One way or another, you and I are going to pay for it.

When reality comes home to roost, it’s the purest form of justice because it’s perfectly Objective. Do you grasp the implications? This is justice at essentially a metaphysical level. You’ll pay because you’re a human being and so much of what’s going on is an abject rejection of all the principles necessary to live a human being’s life. That’s bound to effect you regardless of your own personal exercise of rationaliity and mature good sense.

On a related but different note with current personal undertones, I often ponder what I can do in this life to have some small effect, as well as to retain some measure of self-respect and integrity. I’ve argued many times for doing one’s best to go along and get along in order to have the most successful, happy, and fulfilled one-and-only life you can have (you’re welcome to delude yourself, but such delusions serve only to diminish the value of your one-and-only life).

What it’s really come down to, for me, time and time again, is to pursue an ideal of living with an extreme sense of justice. That means, ideally: a very careful exercise of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. And, ideally: all come at a very stiff and inflexible price. The truth is, life is too short to waste it on bullshit all the time. I’m tired of being party to a moronic, "don’t-worry-be-happy" culture of perpetual and instantaneous forgiveness of any and every wrong with virtually no limit and no serious permanent repercussions.

OK, here’s the deal: go read what Kyle Bennett did to some thieves, and then imagine had he called "the authorities" to help him out.

Here’s what I imagine. Rather than justice having been rendered in total, by now, Kyle is still sitting there with the guys who’ve got to "file their report" (in order to justify their budget: use it or lose it, y’know?), and they’re still stuck on the part where the thieves hotlinked the image feed off Kyle’s own site. "Ok, ok, now…lemme go over this again…ok, ok, how’d you say that works, again?"

The announcement by GM to eliminate a whopping 30,000 jobs delivers a good opportunity for a lesson in causes & effects. Since you’re very unlikely to receive any sort of accurate assignment of same anywhere in the major media, let’s give it a bit of a go here, shall we?

Of course, you’re going to hear the standard inversion of cause and effect. You’re going to "learn," because the labor unions are going to make sure you do, that the "reason" for the dire straits in which U.S. automakers find themselves is due to competition from Japan and Korea. And it’s true, except that this "unbeatable" competition isn’t a cause, it’s an effect.

In the same article I linked above, they talk all around the real cause, bringing up and implying all sorts of causes that are not causes at all, but effects. The primary practical cause (principle causes are philosophic in nature) is contained right within the article, but is not identified as such.

The UAW responded to Wagoner’s announcement with an angry statement to the media indicating it would push to keep furloughed workers on GM’s payrolls for the duration of its current labor contract, which expires in 2007.

That could mean that laid off workers would continue to receive most of their pay and benefits, with the plant closings providing little immediate savings to GM.

"The UAW-represented workers impacted by today’s action are protected by our job security program as well as other provisions and protections of the UAW-GM National Agreement," the union said in its statement.

Big surprise. It reminds me of the Monty Python bit where the knight progressively gets limbs cut off but keeps on talking smack like he’s still in contention. You know, the communists of the USSR obstinately pushed against reality right up to the end of their political tenure, by which I mean that communism is still alive ideologically. To wit: environmentalism and labor unions:

He [Karl Marx] used the LTV to support a very different political argument than Locke’s, clarifying the Ricardian socialists’ contributions: in his view, landowners are exploitative because only labor adds value to the product.

(emphasis, mine)

Anyway, there is some cause for celebration. America’s most deeply and perniciously communist element, the labor union, may be on its way out as far as the private sector goes.  As a percentage or the workforce, private-sector union membership is at its lowest point in over 100 years — and declining.

I’m not happy to see people lose their jobs, of course. But I’m always happy, however, to see someone come face-to-face with a reality they have willfully ignored or been innocently ignorant of. Whether willful or innocent, remaining unapprised of the reality of things never does anyone any good, long term.

Message to the willfully ignorant: told you so, you dumbshit morons. Message to the blissful: ’bout time you woke up. You all, and you all alone are responsible for your own lot in life. A guaranteed income for life without capital that you’ve created or inherited, that continues to work for you is a complete fantasy. It’s only made possible by stealing the capital output and income of others. Of course, we dance all around the coldness of that particular reality with all sorts of euphemisms like "social security," "medicare," and such.

Well, every collision into the brick wall of reality, is, in reality, an advance.

I like to report on good service I receive whenever I can. As I’ve blogged, we recently sold our home. One of the motivating factors was to use some of the profits to invest in other real estate.

Phoenix, AZ, happens to be the hottest appreciating market in the country, right now, and even though the run-up in prices in the last year precludes positive rental cash flow (unless you go in with lots of equity), appreciation should far outstrip the outlay I’ll have over the next three years, which is my anticipated holding period.

So, I contacted my friend Greg Swann, of Bloodhound Realty. Told him I wanted three rentals, but not just any rentals. I wanted relatively new houses, stucco, tile roofs, in nice suburban neighborhoods. In short, I want houses that will attract the cream of the crop in tenants and command market rental rates, even though I may set the price slightly below just to rent them quick. We’ll see.

I also told Greg that I did not want to travel to Phoenix — not now, not ever! (not really) No, I just want to be able to do everything remotely.

I’m happy to report that he runs a fantastic turnkey operation for out-of-state investors. First, he referred me to a loan professional who specializes in investor loans. Then, Greg searched out 16 prospective properties and took lots of photos of each. He then recommended three, and, because I’m smart, I went with his recommendation 100%.

This one, this one, and this one.

Greg drafted the contracts on Friday, we signed them on Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon, we had firm deals on all three. Inspections are scheduled, loans are proceeding, property management will be established very soon.

All is proceeding very smoothly.