Patterico's Pontifications

2/13/2009

The Face of the Economic Crisis

Filed under: Crime,General — Patterico @ 10:16 pm



Or, more accurately, the face of the gimme mentality behind our government’s response to it. Namely (for you non-clicking types), it’s Octomom using your tax money and donations to get a manicure.

I love their understated final line: “It’s nice to see her doing something for herself.”

41 Responses to “The Face of the Economic Crisis”

  1. As if everything so far in her life hasn’t been about her.
    This woman is such a narcissist that she will have a wonderful future as a Democrat politician.

    AD - RtR/OS (e49fcd)

  2. She’s too narcissistic to be a politician. There’s too much time spent as a politician not being the center of attention. She could be the next Sharin’ Stone, tho.

    John Hitchcock (fb941d)

  3. She is a mentally ill person that unfortunately will get worse the more attention she gets.

    I weep for her children.

    Joe (17aeff)

  4. Talking about the mentally ill:

    “The GOP is borderline autistic in its understanding of the necessary to-and-fro of democratic government. Or rather: its ideological nature prevents it from engaging in the actual tasks of pragmatic government.”

    Andrew “The Conservative Soul” Sullivan

    Sullivan Says: Respect Mah Authoritah!

    Joe (17aeff)

  5. She’s too narcissistic to be a politician.

    Have you not met Biden?

    Scott Jacobs (90ff96)

  6. Awh, leave her alone. She’s just getting prettied up for her next ‘budding’. I hear she’s gonna shoot for decatuplets.

    gajim (e39b35)

  7. Looks like there’s another expectant mother that has been a patient of Dr. Michael Kamrava waiting to deliver multiple babies at County USC.

    Another Octuplet mom?

    Someone needs to step in and pull the plug on his practice before it’s too late – and one of his patients pays the ultimate price.

    BTW – she has no insurance, so I guess the State of California (taxpayers) will pick up the tab for mom and her babies, just like Nadya. Maybe the State needs to present Dr. Kamrava with the bill and have him pay child support…a novel idea.

    fmfnavydoc (59b1f9)

  8. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, and massive government housing, having become a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . .

    Let’s not go there.

    http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTdjMzQ0MTg3MDZkMWM0YWE1MGNiOTZhZTVkN2JhZmY=&w=MQ==

    Joe (17aeff)

  9. Not So Happy Days reported in the NYT Op-ed:

    CONGRESS has made a terrible mistake. Amid a rhetorical debate centered on words like “crisis,” “emergency” and “catastrophe,” it acted too fast. While arguments were made about the stimulus bill’s specific components — taxpayer money for condoms, new green cars and golf carts for federal bureaucrats, another round of rebate checks — its more dangerous consequences were overlooked. And now the package threatens a return to the kind of stagflation last seen in the 1970s.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/opinion/14ryan.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

    Joe (17aeff)

  10. Oh boy, another analogically flawed theory from the National Review!! Add in a desperate need for a Regnery publishing contract, mountains of sexual frustration due to an inability to get laid and a secret pot habit as big as Wyoming and hey…instant profit!

    What if we were to first off understand that the US of A has always been a democratic Republic that said NO to the British Empire in no uncertain terms and that WWII is no way compares to the British Empire’s conquest of colonial dominance. One was war of vital neccessity, the other a military campaign against undeveloped countries with mineral and strategic wealth and the differences don’t end there to anyone with half a brain.

    Facts and reality suck don’t they. Sorry NRO. You still are a parody of what you once were.

    Peter (e70d1c)

  11. As opposed to being beyond parody,like yourself.

    JD (030d7e)

  12. mountains of sexual frustration due to an inability to get laid

    Projecting again, Peter?

    Steverino (69d941)

  13. Peter has enough projection to open a chain of movie theaters.

    Techie (6b5d8d)

  14. It’s no surprise that Peter is unaware of World War One. History is so dull when you are young and eager to be supported.

    Maybe the State needs to present Dr. Kamrava with the bill and have him pay child support…a novel idea.

    Comment by fmfnavydoc

    A friend of mine, a GP, used to do vasectomies. One of his patients was his barber. One requirement that is always explained to vasectomy patients is to have a sperm count before relying on the vasectomy for contraception. The barber ignored this precaution and his wife got pregnant. He then sued my friend alleging “wrongful life.”

    I suggested the doc offer to adopt the kid as a response to the lawsuit but, in fact, he was able to show that the barber had ignored the precautionary sperm count and the suit was thrown out.

    I doubt this IVF jockey wants to adopt 14 low birthweight babies but there is a potential for the state to claim that he is responsible since he has clearly violated medical ethics in what he has done. It would be an interesting legal case.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  15. Yeah, that was weird, Steverino and JD.

    Is Peter referring to Mark Steyn? The fellow who has published several books (the latest of which was a NYT bestseller)? With regard to the women, you might ask Mike Kennedy, who has…well…actually met Mark Steyn (as I doubt Peter has) and seen his interactions with women. As for pot, who knows?

    Then the next paragraph veers off into grammar and style suggesting that cannabis may indeed be a problem, but not for Mr. Steyn.

    Whatever. Sometimes Peter writes well. Not this AM. Maybe it is the “cocktail flu” after a party last night.

    Eric Blair (ec334b)

  16. Peter does have a valid point: America didn’t depend on colonialism to become a world power like Britain did.

    Mark Steyn, subject of Canada, which is a member of the Commonwealth and home to refugee Tories, evidently doesn’t understand how insulting the comparison is to many American ears.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  17. Nice fairness, Bradley, but it doesn’t explain the reflexive (and inaccurate) personal insults Peter dealt.

    Eric Blair (ec334b)

  18. No personal offense to Britons intended in my above statement. I am something of an Anglophile. But I can’t condone the methods Britain used to build its empire, even though it was a benign empire.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  19. Eric,
    I agree with your observation. That is why I was careful to metaphorically rope off the part of Peter’s comment I agreed with. The rest was just bizarre counterproductive insults.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  20. It is Bush’s fault that Peter’s brain melted from global warming.

    JD (030d7e)

  21. Bradley, I think that it is a common habit to judge prior eras using the values of “modern times.” Thus, you can dislike British imperalism, but I will tell you that they were far, far more humane than the French or God help us the Belgians of the same period. Or the Spanish.

    Go back and read Shakespeare—in “MacBeth,” the witches have a recipe that calls for “..the nose of a blaspheming Jew...” Should I reject his work as anti-Semitic?

    I guess I am sensitive to this because I often find America judged for what it had done, say, in the nineteenth century…while ignoring the actions of other nation-states of the same period.

    Eric Blair (ec334b)

  22. While I’m at it, I also apologize to all Canadians I’ve insulted.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  23. The reactions of you intellectuals to Steyn’s article reminded me of this exchange from the Godfather:

    Michael Corleone: “My father is no different than any other powerful man — any man who’s responsible for other people, like a senator or president.”

    KAY: “You know how naive you sound…senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”

    Michael: “Oh, who’s being naive, Kay?”

    The UK’s empire ultimately declined not due to colonalism, per se, but to poor fiscal policy. That is the point Steyn was making.

    Joe (17aeff)

  24. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that any argument of any type can me met by quotes from the following sources (and not in this particular order of precedent):

    Jean Paul Sarte

    Robert Heinlein

    P.J. O’Rourke

    The Godfather (I and II only)

    Caddyshack.

    Joe (17aeff)

  25. Joe,
    The UK’s empire ultimately declined not due to colonalism, per se, but to poor fiscal policy. That is the point Steyn was making.

    Very succinctly said. However . . .

    Britain suffered from more than bad fiscal policy. Consider also the tremendous expense of fighting two world wars and especially the independence of Britain’s colonies. It is hard to envision how Britain could have escaped some level of decline under those circumstances.

    America’s economy was never based on colonialism. (Yes, we had colonies such as the Philippines, but they were far less economically important than, say, India to the U.K.).

    All this is not to deny that Britain’s turn to socialism made a bad situation worse — and that while our economy is on a stronger footing than Britain’s ever was, we could also follow in its decline.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  26. The title of the Steyn article in Joe’s link to NRO is “The Obamateur Hour.” Obamateur! Perfect.

    Official Internet Data Office (8051e1)

  27. It could be said, and I’ll say it here, that Britain’s decline into socialism was prompted by The Great War, and her loss of a generation of her “best and brightest” between the trenches of Europe.
    Without those men of leadership and education who perished in the front ranks of no-man’s land (junior-officers then led from the front, afterall), she was ill-equipped to counter the drive to Socialism that became a rampant force in the political world.
    And, it only got worse with the infestation of British Academia by the agents and enthusiasts of “Scientific Socialism” in the decade of The Great Depression.
    Of course, the class-warfare, and belittlement of commerce by the aristocracy, took a heavy toll too.

    AD - RtR/OS (289196)

  28. Comment by Joe — 2/14/2009 @ 8:43 am
    Now they tell us!
    The Grey Lady, as usual, is a day late, and a dollar short –
    guess nobody included a bail-out for the Sulzberger’s in that mess.

    AD - RtR/OS (289196)

  29. The UK’s empire ultimately declined not due to colonalism, per se, but to poor fiscal policy.

    An interesting hypothetical would be imagining the condition of Britain today — how noticeably decrepit or dysfunctional it likely would be — or would have been over the past few decades, if instead of the emergence of Margaret Thatcher, the politicians and policies of the Labor Party, particularly when it was even more socialistic (back in the 1960s, 1970s, if not later) had remained in power.

    Mark (411533)

  30. I suggest we are well inside the boundaries of a domestic class war. Not the usually suspected one, but rather the bureaucratic class versus the commercial/professional/manufacturing/healthcare/fill-in-the-blank classes. Name one industry or field that does not have a bureaucracy assigned to it. Bit by bit bureaucracy has infiltrated by law or self-decree each of these virtual battlefields. And it is never more blatant than it is currently in the financial industry. Call it imminent domain in the financial sector, or any sector for that matter. The bureaucratic chokehold on commerce and industry is the result of good intentions morphing into a noose. The irony is that the hangman’s life support hose connects straight to the hangee. “Hoisted by your own noose”…Ornrey Peetard.

    As bureaucracy goes, so goes the nation. Want to see it in play? Go back and review the videos on the goose downed airliner. Now carefully count the number of bureaucracies that were on the scene and involved after the event. Tax money [read public debt] is paying for every one of the personnel, vehicles, equipment, medical and retirement benefits, cellphones, overtime, sexual harassment seminars…even if 7 out of 10 of them were standing around superfluous to the necessary response. It’s just this sort of bureaucratic duplication, triplication, and useless layers of desk jockeys in suits that contributes to the need to borrow vast sums of money just to get through the day.

    The ultimate demise of this nation seems much more likely to be from within than without. Which dovetails nicely with historical precedents.

    allan (c90622)

  31. The Grey Lady, as usual, is a day late, and a dollar short – guess nobody included a bail-out for the Sulzberger’s in that mess.

    Just wait — that noxious idea of becoming journalistic welfare recipients is being seriously advocated:

    “I go back to the old world, to the old BBC model of taxing UK TV sets to fund the news enterprise. Why not a further tax on broadband service (where do the current taxes go anyway?) that would go into a pot to fund local journalism. . .
    “Pot disbursements must include journalism start-ups and not just newspaper companies. Just as readers have paid the cost of print distribution, they can pay it in the new world, too. Since newspaper companies (and others) have had insufficient leverage to compel carrier payment for content, taxation may be the best route. . . .”

    The whole concept is vomitrocious and oxymoronic. You can’t be an independent watchdog over the government while living on the government teat.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  32. Comment by Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! — 2/14/2009 @ 11:36 am

    Well, the media has been occupying the Whorehouse on the Potomac (with apologies to P.J.) for so long, I would assume they can readily suck on something.
    Anyway, it will give them a welcome break from the ass-kissing they’ve been obsessed with for the last two years.

    AD - RtR/OS (289196)

  33. It could be said, and I’ll say it here, that Britain’s decline into socialism was prompted by The Great War, and her loss of a generation of her “best and brightest” between the trenches of Europe.

    This is an excellent observation and absolutely true. When Sir Edward Grey said, “The lights are going out all over Europe tonight and I fear they will not return during our lifetime,” he was seeing a future that never regained the Edwardian standard. In the late 19th century, it was said and believed that a web of economic interests would insure that war was a thing of the past because the economic elite would never permit it.

    We see something like this now with a leftist elite that does not believe we have enemies that will attack us for irrational aims.

    My review of Kilcullen’s book on insurgency is up on Amazon.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  34. To continue the hang ’em high skit…from the keyboard of Wm. Bonner:

    “…[I]n London, the Guardian announced its own 12 questions to put to the bankers, including “why should profits be private, but losses be socialized?” Uh…that is a good question, but it is put to the wrong person. Why the bankers would want to offload their mistakes is a question even a Guardian reader could answer. Why else would they humiliate themselves publicly? Why would not a one of them dare show any fight? The pols control the money now; the bankers know it.

    The question is better put to the inquisitor than to his victim. Why would the government wish to take on the losses? There, the answer is fairly easy too – power. Besides, it’s not their money; it belongs to the same mouth-breathing yahoos who are enjoying the show. In fact, we have other questions we’d like to put to Barney Frank, John McFall and the rest of these sanctimonious meddlers: [snip]…And if you’re so smart, why didn’t you warn the public about the housing bubble and the toxic asset meltdown? If your committees…and your armies of regulators at the SEC, FHA, FDIC, FSA or other agencies…could do nothing to prevent the crisis, what good are they? And how cometh it to be that the biggest financial fraud of all time took place right under your own employees’ noses?

    So you see, dear reader, how deliciously the plot turns? In the bubble years, the bankers ripped off the public…pretending to make them rich, of course…while the regulators looked the other way. Now, the politicians create a distraction, pretending to punish the bankers, while together they pick the public’s pocket for $3 or $4 trillion more. The bankers are judged guilty; but the audience hangs.

    allan (c90622)

  35. Mark Steyn, subject of Canada,

    FYI – Bradley, you may not be aware that Steyn has dual citizenship, both in Canada and the US – and his permanent residence has been in New Hampshire for many years now. He saw what was happening in his home country awhile ago, and made the necessary changes – smart man.

    You can’t be an independent watchdog over the government while living on the government teat.

    Are you suggesting that the BBC is something other than neutral or objective in their reporting? Say it ain’t so!

    Dmac (49b16c)

  36. Joe @ #25 – one could add Animal House to that list. In this instance, I think of the corrupt Dean Wormer being “lobbied” by Carmen. Wormer was sure to offer an “honorarium” from the student activity fee to placate him.

    Ed (52bb9a)

  37. Thanks for the update on Steyn. Smart man to emigrate to the Live Free or Die state, where my maternal relatives are. I’m visiting them this summer.

    I am enjoying a good deal of Schadenfreude, along with my disgust, over those supposedly independent media watchdog types holding out a tin cup to the government after failing to convince the public to support them voluntarily.

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R., who wants DRJ back! (0ea407)

  38. Joe @ #25 – one could add Animal House to that list. In this instance, I think of the corrupt Dean Wormer being “lobbied” by Carmen. Wormer was sure to offer an “honorarium” from the student activity fee to placate him.

    Comment by Ed — 2/14/2009 @ 1:44 pm

    Done!

    Joe (17aeff)

  39. Did anyone see the TMZ Inside Her Womb video? Hilarious.

    Patricia (89cb84)

  40. This just kills me.

    And we must not criticize the poor people who are on welfare and whatnot–or question the things they buy or do for themselves because it’s just so insensitive to the poor people. We’re paying for these things but we’re not supposed to have any say in how our money is spent. Right!

    I’m done sitting back and not saying something is asinine when I know it’s asinine.

    Karen (4e0dda)


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