Monday, June 28, 2010

A Very Good Boy


Sydney Brillo Dog passed away on Sunday. He was a very good boy.

A gentle, good natured shepherd and chow mix rescued from the mean streets of Passaic County, New Jersey in 1996, he brought love, joy and laughter to his pack. A constant companion and home sentry, he offered regularity and certainty in the whirlwind of human affairs and contrivances. He represented home and the responsibilities attending to it. He started our day and he ended our day, and at the end of the day, any day, he would be there in regal repose, cashing out the affairs of the day in sleep, a reminder that the next day is a new one of opportunity.

Defiler of rugs, burner of lawns, licker of kitchen dishwasher plates, scratcher of wood floors, devourer of kitchen can garbage, chaser of squirrels, listener of approaching peril, heaver of gargantuan sighs, comfy chair aficionado.

A very social beast, of visitors he demanded at least five minutes of your dedicated attention to the scruff of his neck or, in his youth, a few minutes with your leg.

He suffered the indignities of babies, of banishment to the basement, and the existence of cats.

An ingenious member of his species, he spent much of his free time observing his surroundings for any opportunity to eat. Long suspected of a string of food disappearances, highlights of his career are said to include the ninja like removal from the back of the kitchen counter of a platter of twelve raw tenderloin steaks awaiting the barbeque; a birthday cake; a loaf of bread scored from the grocery bag as it was being carried into the house; and 12 goody bags full of candy left carelessly on a playroom floor.

His favorite walks included Jockey Hollow National Park in Morristown, NJ; the beaches of Delaware; the C&O Canal Tow Path; the Westland Middle School field; and, in these last years, the streets and grass path near his house in Maryland for short walks to school.

No one rode shotgun like him.

Spring offered sweet, green shoots of grass for his casual consumption; snow astounded him; he loved to stretch out on a 100 degree deck; and every pile of Fall leaves required several minutes of olfactory forensics.

A great and loyal animal, his loss will be felt across the seasons.

He was a very good boy.

Rest in Peace.

Friday, June 25, 2010

What News of the Swallowtail?



Sydney Brillo Duodenum pays close attention to his neighborhood e-mail list serve. As SBD resides in an enclave of liberal fantasists, there's constant news of Earth's peril. Today, we have this:


I'm starting to get nervous. Last year by this time we saw many Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies flitting around our backyard, along with other butterflies that were less numerous.

This year, nothing.

Not one butterfly, even though we probably have more birds, many of which are raising young. Those are cardinal, robin, catbird, house wren, carolina wren, house finch.

Has anyone seen the swallowtail in their yards?

Now this week, in no particular order . . .

The president's handpicked commander for the defining American conflict overseas and his elite handpicked staff are caught with their ACUs about their ankles as they are felated by a reporter from a music review magazine and speak unkind thoughts of the putative leader of the free world and his chosen emissaries, leading to the commander's resignation, the elevation of another tactician once accused of betraying his country, our national humiliation, but a firm declaration from the goat skinned Fourth Estate that the CinC's handling of the entire affair was "brilliant."

Sixty years since the commence of hostilities, North Korea threatens war daily upon their civilized brothers to the south while the United States figures out how much food and fuel they'll need to hand over to buy some more time and global humiliation.

The American president wantonly sits on the assets, might and reach of the deepest bureaucratic construct in human history, preventing a competent and focused response to the largest man-made environmental disaster in the country's history because allowing a bigger mess to destroy a wider swath of the country's southern water barrier might make it easier for him to pass a 2,000 page bill that will make it illegal to use a wood burning stove in Vermont.

An American president eats designer hamburgers with the puppet-jowled Russian president, declaring a successful "reset" of relations with the nation that during almost the entire 20th Century was focused entirely upon diminishing and pushing back American military, political, economic, cultural and social influence - in effect the standard of liberty and freedom - across the globe.

America's unceasing enemy of 31 years, Iran, proceeds merrily along on the production of nuclear material for use in regional ballistic missiles and as tools of the terror trade while the United States grandly announces a new set of sanctions that close huge holes in the last set of sanctions that Iran was able to slip through.

The United States Congress has passed another 2,000 page legislative monstrosity to address alleged financial structure weaknesses threatening to stop the unstarted economic recovery after the largest government intervention into the messy affairs of men ever, and the immediate result is that bank stocks soar, indicating quite clearly that another major sector of the economy has fully accepted its corporatist role vis a vis its government masters.

The child playing dress up as the United States Treasury Secretary casually admits to a UK audience that the world "cannot depend as much on the US as it did in the past."

Whereas in the past a pothead might shoot or knife a drug dealer in a back alley and steal his stash and cash, today they are walking into "marijauna dispensaries," gunning down the paid employees, and stealing the stash and cash.

Pressed to the wall, the Governor of the Bankrupt State of California, declaring that he will "use every available power . . . to protect taxpayers from waste, fraud and abuse in government,'' is forced to ban the use of welfare debit cards to withdraw cash at ATMs located at tribal casinos and state-licensed poker rooms.

The United States edges ever closer to Europussification with every advance it makes in the World Cup.

The Democrat-controlled United States Congress, fearful of losing that control in November, while happy that the Supreme Court found that unions have a right to free speech in their participation in our electoral processes but chagrined that the Supreme Court found that corporations as well have a right to free speech in their participation in our electoral processes, passed legislation that would make it harder for one set of Americans - in the form of corporations - to exercise their right of free speech and would make it easier for another set of Americans - in the form of unions - to exercise their right of free speech.

A group of concerned assholes in New York is set to sue McDonald's because they claim McDonald's "creepy and predatory" Happy Meal is violating numerous consumer protection laws by entising children into its restaurants where they are forced to buy and consume fat ladden fast food unbeknownst to their parents. McDonald's announced that the claims are ludicrous and at the same time announced they are changing their name to Pied Piper's Burgerland.

The American president's choice for the Supreme Court Elena Kagan . . .

Oh, yes, yes, yes . . .

. . . but what news of the swallowtail?

Monday, June 21, 2010

Parasites, leeches, and blood suckers


Public employee unions:


Public unions' traditional strength - the ability to finance their members' rising pay and benefits through tax increases - has become a liability. Although private-sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can't choose - they are, in effect, "captive consumers."

At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that:

-- They are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have.

-- Government services, from schools to the Department of Motor Vehicles, are not good enough - not for the citizen individually nor the public generally - to justify the high and escalating cost.

We are at that point.


Of course, the author, Peter Sheer, has to ruin a perfectly fine editorial with this complete howler for advice:
Public employee unions need to reboot. The old strategy of cynically buying political influence and excluding the public from decision making has run its course. Unions can rebuild public support by recommitting to an agenda of open government in the public interest. If they don't, they will be further marginalized.
Yeah, right, that will happen.

Crush them, shame them, banish them, soak them in salt.

H/T: Mish

Friday, June 18, 2010

When the Future of the Free World Was at Stake

Winston Churchill, June 18, 1940:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Resistance is Futile


Chart of the Day:
Today's chart provides some long-term perspective in regards to the gold market. As today's chart illustrates, gold has been in a strong bull market since 2001. The pace of that upward trend increased beginning in mid-2005. Following the financial crisis of late 2008, gold surged once again. While gold made another record high today, it still trades significantly below resistance (red line) of its upward sloping trend channel. In the end, with gold currently trading near $1,250 per ounce, gold has more than quadrupled in price during its nine-year bull market.