Random Nuclear Strikes

Just got done spending a week in the Netherlands visiting some friends. The 10 hour flights & security theater aside, it was a fun trip. Got to see Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Maastrict, and many parts in-between. Also hit quite a few museums, shops, & the red light district (just browsing!). Also smelled enough reefer to think I was 15 again & living with my parents!

I also discovered Olliebollen (deep fried dough balls sprinkled with powdered sugar; why these are not sold all over America, I will never understand).

Because they don’t believe it was ever your money.

European nations begin seizing private pensions

People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.

The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.

The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.

Hit the link for the other three examples. The 112th Congress should be able to slow this from happening here. But I doubt they can stop it what with the Obama Administration’s love of the Executive Edict.

Found via VerumSerum

We would do well to add this to the oath our new Congresspersons are taking today.

There is not a man in the country that can’t make a living for himself and family. But he can’t make a living for them *and* his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.

Will Rogers

Sure, they’ll forget it as soon as the breath leaves their lips, but at least we can say they knew about it.

Let us start 2011 off with a doozie.

This whole piece could use a top to bottom Fisking, but I simply don’t have the time or the will to eat the entire bottle of aspirin that it would take to do so.

See how many things you can find wrong in just these two paragraphs

The Founders did not write the Constitution to make solving the nation’s problems impossible. They designed a framework in which problems like providing humane, universal care and a host of other national issues can be solved. How do we provide work at decent wages for everyone who needs/wants a job? How do we use fiscal/monetary policies to encourage growth and allocate wealth fairly? How do we provide a financial system that doesn’t loot the country? How do we provide sustainable commerce, industry and livelihoods that don’t destroy our own planet? So, far, not a single representative of the Tea/Republican Party has said an intelligent word on any these topics. They don’t know what their job is.

The notion of having a capable national government committed to “provide for the general welfare” is not an alien doctrine; it’s the purpose of the Constitution, the one that made America “exceptional” at the time. That’s why this foundational principle is in the Preamble. Yet this core principle somehow escapes those calling themselves the “defenders of the Constitution.”

Scarecrow

Those are two of the closing paragraphs from a piece by one of the supposed heavy hitters at the hyper-leftist FireDogLake blog. The post is on how the new Tea Party influenced members of Congress don’t know how to read the Constitution, and therefore, don’t know what it “really” says.

The link to the Preamble is in the post, and I left it there for you to fact-check/grammar Mr./Mrs. Scarecrow. He/She also includes the Preable in her post just below these paragraphs, and not too surprisingly, not a single commenter corrects the error in the post.

Now, who exactly doesn’t know how to read again?