Don't address a judge this way

When you are a plaintiff or defendant in a lawsuit, it's generally not a good idea to use this kind of language in your pleading.

YOU C**K SUCKING MOTHER F****RS ARE ON NOTICE

Actual, unbelievable filing is here (PDF file).

(h/t Lawnmower Man)

Health care reform was designed to fail

Employers are dumping insurance plans while premiums are being jacked up faster than ever. The bill that Nancy Lugosi said we would learn about once it was passed was supposed to make medical insurance more affordable. It says so right on the Whitehouse.gov website:

Health reform makes health care more affordable, holds insurers more accountable, expands coverage to all Americans and makes our health system sustainable.

What the White House says directly contradicts what is happening on the streets.

I think this was designed to fail. I think behind closed doors the people who put this thing together were trying to find a way to have people literally beg for Medicare to be expanded to everyone. Destroy the system and rebuild.

Pictures of Sheen's bloody hotel room meltdown

Adios, Rand Paul

Randians give off the same creepy vibes the Ronulans emit. Ron Jr.'s candidacy is finished.

Update: In fairness to the Randians, the MoveOn airhead clearly made a stupid, provocative move that would have gotten her arrested if Secret Service had been responsible for security.

The C Word

I predict that sometime during the next two years, Barack Obama will be caught saying it.

The Chinese government is getting nervous

In order to divert attention from the impending collapse of the greatest speculative mania of all time, the Chinese government has coordinated a series of "spontaneous" demonstrations against the evil empire, Japan.

I certainly understand hard feelings considering that Japan brutalized China in the 1930s, but in the past 70 years what has Japan done to China except create millions of jobs for the Chinese?

Nothing like this happens in China without consent of the Communist Party. If these protests were genuine the protesters would be rounded up and disappeared.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

After a long journey from the magical kingdom of China, Santa's sleigh Emma Mærsk has arrived at Long Beach, laden with toys for boys and girls!

China Miracle

Hideous beyond words. There is no "free" trade with this wretched place.

What he said.

WSJ:

Today, scuttlebutt about China reducing exports of rare earths to the U.S. and Europe. Japan already seems to be on the short end of the rare earths export list following a naval squabble over disputed islands.

It's time to re-open our mines in the US. We have plenty of the stuff. I agree with this rant from a blog that shall not be named:

The CENTER can NO LONGER HOLD.

It's either the f(deleted) b(deleted) a(deleted) world ACCEPTS the collapse of the US consumer and accedes to a normalization of trade flows or they F(deleted) OFF.

We CANNOT repay the debts, do they f(deleted) GET THIS? We also CANNOT continue to suffer their mercantilist ponzi currency bull(deleted). If we CANNOT repay the debts, it is sure as s(deleted) not time to rack up more. The entire EM world is developing on the back of debt they bitch about our not paying but they bitch even worse if we won't borrow it.

If we STOP the debts, their stupid debtbubble economies collapse. If we debase, they whine about that too. The world is full of b(deleted).

The specific INTENT of the mercantilist ponzis of Japan and China was to take our production capacity. Ok, DONE. Now what? We can no longer produce enough to pay for the go(deleted)d goods and neither of these two stupid idiot nations wishes to let US actually sell anything in THEIR markets.

Brazil, China, India, ALL REFUSE to allow trade flows to normalize. So, screw the whole lot of them.

iPud

Back during April I said:

iPad will not save the newspapers.
iPad will not create a new computer goldrush.

iPad is a dead end. It's a very expensive device that will be found in many junk drawers, though.

Jumping forward to today:

After Wired’s enormous first month in June, when it sold 100,000 copies — an even better result than the usual 76,000 it sells off the newsstand — sales have been about a quarter of that. In July and August, the Wired iPad app sold 31,000 and 28,000 copies, respectively, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report.

I hear that each issue is a 500MB download. That takes a long time to download over WiFi. And what if you want to store it? That's not unreasonable. In fact, most of us want to store content that we pay for. Well, you can only store a few issues on the iPad's flash drive before it runs out of space. That should be no problem, because SD cards are cheap, right? Except the iPad has no slot to do this. Oops.

There's a reason iPad sales are below expectations and the other manufacturers are now delaying the release of competing products: You can't do the same stuff you do on a laptop or desktop, and what you can do has built-in limitations. And you have to pay a premium for this reduced performance.

(bumped from this time last year)

3.25%

A mortgage broker called me yesterday. A 15-year fixed is 3.25%. On August 5th I was quoted 3.95%. I bought the house in April with a 5.25% 30-year mortgage. I think I might make the leap.

Detroit needs light rail

State Representative Marie Donigan (D-Royal Oak) has a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture. She knows that what Detroit really needs is light rail.

According to Representative Donigan, there is a limitless pool of money for projects like this. So what are we waiting for?

Another Shoeshine Boy Moment

Not that I would call Mr. T a shoeshine boy. He can still kick ass.

What if there was no apocalypse?

Now available from Costco: A crapload of freeze-dried food for $3500.00. There's nothing wrong with being prepared for Armageddon, I guess. And you can always tell yourself, "Well, doomsday didn't arrive, but I didn't waste the money because it's food and I won't have to go to the store for a year." True, but I wonder how long you'll avoid going to the store for fresh groceries when you have this to look forward to for every meal: