Keeping "A Breast" of Islamic Issues

"The thought of a huge hairy face at a woman's breast does not evoke motherly or even brotherly feelings. It could go from the grotesque to the erotic but definitely not maternal."

OK, I'm a guy, so I see a story with the word breasts in it and I gotta go check it out.  This story, however, was not titillating, just creepy. 

Saudi Clerics Advocate Adult Breast Feeding

Dennis Prager cautions us that every religion has certain aspects that look weird to an outsider, but Islam, with the genital mutilation, things going boom, etc, seems really out there...

(June 5) -- Women in Saudi Arabia should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to avoid breaking strict Islamic law forbidding mixing between the sexes, two powerful Saudi clerics have said. They are at odds, however, over precisely how the milk should be conveyed.

This is what happens when a belief system becomes hidebound by its own legalism.  Is there a word in Arabic for Pharisee? 

Seems a woman cannot be alone with a man who is not a blood relative, but men who have been breastfed by a woman are OK.  I can't waste any more space explaining this, so go read the article and it will at least make sense it its own bizarre way...

"The whole issue just shows how clueless men are," blogger Eman Al Nafjan wrote on her website. "All this back and forth between sheiks and not one bothers to ask a woman if it's logical, let alone possible to breastfeed a grown man five fulfilling breast milk meals.

This reminded me of some breastfeeding issues right here in the good ol' US of A involving a breastfeeding group fighting with Facebook over what constitutes "nudity."   I'll leave the Saudi breastfeeding controversy alone since (Thank God) I don't live there.  I do believe mothers have the right to discreetly breastfeed in public.

From my article on the subject:

Breastfeeding is a beautiful, intimate experience between mother and child, and there is something creepy about the desire to turn it into a notorious display of "look at me" defiance.  (Read More)

Liberals Flunk Econ 101

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Milton Friedman

The worldwide collapse of welfare states and government ponzi schemes prove Friedman's point.  A simple glance at Michigan or California should sway liberals off of their stubborn belief in free stuff for everybody, but it doesn't...

Our capitalist economy came crashing down as well.  No surprise.  Government-sanctioned cronyism fails everywhere it is tried.  It encourages corruption and distorts markets, chasing away honest money.  The upside is that capitalism, being a coherent and self-sustaining system, contains the seeds of its own renewal; liberal welfare states do not.

Life it tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid  -- John Wayne



Daniel B. Klein explains why liberals stubbornly wallow in such irrational beliefs.  They are economically ignorant:

According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch [...],  The left flunks Econ 101.

Liberals believe such fallacies as:

$ Rent control makes apartments more plentiful and restrictions on housing development make home buying more affordable (It's just the opposite.  Scarcity drives up prices.  My kids knew that in grade school.)

$ Our standard of living is lower than it was 30 years ago.  (why are liberals so eager to think ill of our country and our people?)

$ Minimum wage and other employment laws do not increase unemployment (Yes they do.  Look at France)

White House Rejects Friedman for Marx
The economic ignorance extends to the White House.  Senior White House communists like Valerie Jarrett can't understand why the oil companies won't just sit there and suck up a half-million dollars per rig per day cost during the six month moratorium.  They're going to haul their equipment somewhere else where they can make money!

These rigs cost about $500,000 a day for oil companies. [...] the oil companies are going to move them, while they have them under contract, to foreign leases they own in order to seek oil.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimates that the moratorium will cost us 130,000 barrels of oil a day by 2011 and up to 500,000 a day by 2013. And it could put up to 46,200 jobs at risk short-term and as many as 120,000 over the long term.

Cover the Incompetence with Lies

Even Senior White House Communist Carol Browner couldn't spin this one:  That panel of experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering DID NOT endorse the six month moratorium:

The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium -- something they actually oppose.

Elect a klatch of leftist pseudo-intellectuals and this is what you get...

Heartbreak Ridge

My son and I enjoyed a Clint Eastwood double-header last night.  We watched Gran Torino and Heartbreak Ridge.

Gran Torino was, I think, Eastwood's crowning achievement.  Subtle, politically incorrect, yet ultimately celebrating humanity.

Heartbreak Ridge, one of my all time favorites, is a blast from the past.  It reminds us of the bad old days of the post-Vietnam Carter years, when we were supposed to be in decline.  The military was a joke, and many of the leaders coming up were REMFs trying to grab some glory the easy way.


Gunny Sergeant Highway was a war hero who rocked it old school, and he wasn't appreciated by peacetime desk jockeys.  Many despised  our military back then.  Hard to imagine in this post-9/11 world.


Remember Grenada?
We had a president with balls who was not afraid to make a stand.  We sent the Cubans (the ones who survived) packing back to their gulag on the Caribbean, and put some starch back in our step.

The US Military I retired from was much improved over the one I entered in the early 80's.  Some whine about the billions spend and that we have dissipated our power over the past 9 years, but that's bull.   Our military is leaps and bound over what it was in 2000.  Yes, we have spent a ton of money, but we still possess the most powerful  economic engine in the world and the greatest workforce on the planet.

America is great because her people are great.

Barack BS Bingo

If you're like me, you can't stand to hear President Obama speak and you avoid his orations like the plague that they are.  Well, here's a great way to enjoy the experience:

Play Barack BS Bingo!  (See rules below)

Rules for Barack BS Bingo:
1. Before President Obama's next televised speech, print your "Bullshit Bingo" card
2. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
3. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"

And folks, I must warn you now.  Some of my redneck buddies tried to turn this into a drinking game during the last press conference.  Ol' Bubba ended up drinking so much Jack Daniels that he lit himself on fire while trying to smoke a cigarette.   You could die of alcohol poisoning, so just stick to the bingo.  ;)

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

Much blather and hand wringing over "Banking Reform."  The solution is simple:  Don't let them gamble with government money.

Tunku Varadarajan interviews Nouriel Roubini.  Roubini boils down the Wall Street problem and what to do about it:

“Look, I’ve nothing against Goldman Sachs. But Goldman Sachs isn’t an investment bank. Goldman Sachs is a hedge fund. It’s bigger than any hedge fund. It’s more leveraged, to the power of three or five, than any hedge fund. And unlike other hedge funds, it has access to zero-interest loans from the Fed, and to implicit and explicit guarantees of the government.

So if Goldman thinks they are so good at ‘prop’ trading that they can make a profit every day—as they did in the last quarter… there was not a single day on which they lost money—fine, let them be a ‘prop’ trading firm, be a hedge fund.

But don’t use the taxpayers’ money to do stuff that’s very risky and highly leveraged.

Exactly.  No new bureaucracies and hierarchies of oversight boards and agencies.  Simply cut them loose and let them fend for themselves.

Inflation: A Silent Tax

Progressives do not want us to be self-sufficient

Citizens and governments worldwide are arguing over pension plans.  Progressive social diddlers love schemes like social security and government funded pension plans because they are a pipeline of money from the taxpayers' wallets directly to the state.  It decreases citizens' ability to take care of themselves, making many of us wards of the state.

Any talk of privatizing social security and other government pension plans is squelched by those simply pointing to the stock market and the deflated 401K's that so many had staked their retirement dreams on.  Fair enough. 

Big Government conspires against against the self-sufficient saver
A dollar is not worth what it was.  It continues to shrink.  This makes your stash of money comparatively smaller and smaller as the years go by.  You can't make it on your own.  You need government assistance or you are forced to gamble your money in the stock market.

Inflation is a silent thief.  It is a colony of termites and vermin eating away at the consumer's savings and purchasing power.  It hits those on fixed incomes especially hard, and like the silent thief it is, we don't even notice the robbery.  It leaves us wondering at the end of the month where all our money went.

Inflation is also a Silent Tax.  Progressive governments love printing money, because the rickety ponzi schemes they've constructed require it.  They must expand the money supply faster than GDP growth to keep the fraud from collapsing (they are doing this now).  This in turn causes inflation, diminishing the value of the dollar.

The Solution:  Maintain the Dollar's Value
If government would simply maintain the value of our currency, we wouldn't need to gamble on the stock market or depend on social security.  Each of us could secure a comfy and safe retirement nest egg by simply putting money, say $200 per month, in a traditional bank account each month.

See For Yourself-An Example
The good folks at Dinkytown.net have a wonderful collection of financial planning calculators, ranging from simple to quite complex.  Their Savings, Taxes and Inflation Calculator is an eye-opener. 

Say you start with nothing at 20 years old and want to save $200 per month until you're 60, when you will retire with your savings.  I've kept all the parameters very conservative so no one accuses me of rigging the game: 

Here are the inputs
Monthly Amount:  $200
Number of Years:  40
Savings Interest:  2%
Annual Rate of Inflation:  2.1%
Total deposited:  $96,000

After 40 years, you would have:  $63, 811

That's less than the $96,000 you deposited over those 40 years!

With no inflation, your ending balance would be:  $146,530

At the same 2% rate, that sum would earn you $2,800 per annum on the balance.  Not quite enough to live a Hollywood lifestyle, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. 

Bump up your monthly contributions to $400 per month accruing at 3%, and work till you're 65, and you'll have over $450,000! 

With a paid-off house and no other debt, this money could at least keep you in beer and skittles well into your late 80's.

For more on inflation see: 
CPI Data
Thomas Del Beccaro - Destroying Your Wealth

California: Greece on the Pacific

Liberal love to blame Republican-backed Prop 13 for destroying California's tax base.  It's the number one talking point used to defend the failed liberal experiment known as California.

Only New York collects more taxes per capita than California
William Voegeli explains just how wrong these liberals are in his excellent article, Don't Blame Prop 13. 

Property-tax revenues in the state have increased from $4.9 billion to $47 billion in the 30 years since Proposition 13. Adjust those figures for inflation and population growth, and property-tax revenues in California were 87 percent higher in 2009 than they were in 1979, chiefly because of rising property values.

Census Bureau data show that California ranked tenth in the nation in 2007 in terms of per-capita receipts from all state and local taxes (property, income, sales, and excise taxes) paid by individuals and corporations.

Per-capita receipts from individual and corporate income taxes were 64 percent higher in California than they were in the rest of the country: $1,764 in California, $1,077 elsewhere. All told, California’s governments received $4,731 per resident from all taxes, 14 percent more than the $4,160 average outside California.

The problem isn't too little taxes, it's too much spending.  If taxation were the answer, New York and California would be booming right now and Texas would be bust.  Liberalism kills economies.