My Time to Waste

I have been a bit slow getting my two cents worth in on this, but here it is.

A year ago we really missed our chance to solve the illegal immigration problem when we did what we could to prevent a depression.   A solid 1930′s type depression would have sent all those illegals home!

We missed that chance.

There is nothing that we can do to prevent illegal immigrants from entering this country.   If we walled off the entire border, there is a whole lot of coastline.

Illegal immigration will slow when the economies to the south of us become first world economies.  What can we do to help?   Decriminalize drugs (including legalizing marijuana).  Corruption is a big obstacle between Mexico and a first world economy.  Corruption is fueled by money.  The drug trade supplies a lot of that money.

Mexico is in the grip of gang violence fueled by drugs which I am sure is not all that healthy for the economy.

Also, did you notice that when Arizona residents talk about why they like the new law aimed at illegals, it sounds like their problem has more to do with drugs than with immigrants?

Gary D’Amato, writing the Golf Beat blog at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, posts about a Sports Illustrated survey of PGA golfers.  At the end he deals with the golfer’s politics:

When it came to political questions, the Tour showed its Republican leanings. Only 17% said they approved of the job Barack Obama was doing and only 16% said the health-care reform bill was good for the U.S.

Gee, who would have guessed?

I like the first comment:

Republican leanings…?/??? Maybe there just a little more intelligent than the average shmuck.

This is three weeks old, but you get what you pay for.

Jeb Golinkin, on FrumForum, posted on the subject of the race for Obama’s former Senate seat in Illinois.  He is making the case for why the Republican Kirk might well beat the Democrat Giannoulias.

Giannoulias has the problem of

his ties to corrupt Illinois politics as usual (Blago, Tony Rezko, the fact that his biggest fundraiser was recently arrested….etc.)…It also helps that Giannoulias can’t stop finding his way into the news for all the wrong reasons. His family bank is on the brink of collapse and has loaned a clean $20 million to convicted felons.

Kirk has advantages:

Kirk is an established moderate.  He voted for cap and trade, a vote which probably horrifies many readers but might actually play in his favor by demonstrating that he is willing to go out on a limb, buck his party, and support a president who still remains popular in Illinois. Kirk also has impeccable national security credentials (for years, he has been leading the push in Congress for sanctions on Iran). Furthermore, his economic positions will appeal to voters eager to get their jobs back and see the economy moving again.

And then there is:

the fact that Rod Blagojevich, with whom Giannoulias has worked, is going to be on the front page of every Illinois paper as his trial unfolds.

So, Kirk is a moderate with a liberal vote on the record supporting Obama and Giannoulias is tarred with corruption.

Couple that analysis with the fact that the President’s party always loses seats in the mid-term election.

But you can bet your boots that if Kirk wins, there will be plenty of spin on the right that this race is just another example of the failure of Obama and the electorate’s rejection of him.

Ezra Klein cites Limbaugh’s comments on the sunken oil drilling platform.

Rush is wondering about the timing of the event and the possibility of sabotage by enviro-extremists.  Ezra says “Is there literally nothing this man can say that will convince Republicans to disavow him?”

I will be shocked and appalled if that event was the result of deliberative sabotage, but I would consider the authorities to be remiss in their job if such a possibility is not at least in the back of their minds while investigating the event.

Accordingly, I can not fault Rush for saying what he said.

A couple of counties over from me, three boys recently killed the oldest boy’s stepdad.  The oldest boy is 15 years old, the other two are 12.  The story is that the 15 year old and one of the 12 year olds sat in the room waiting with their guns and shot the stepdad when he entered the room.  I am not sure what the role of the other 12 year old is.

The judge has ruled that the two shooters should be tried as adults.

I have never understood this.  We set up a system so that we treat juveniles differently than we treat adults.  Presumably we do this because we recognize that children are simply not adults.

But let the crime be serious enough and we forget all about such fine distinctions.

Personally, I think it is wrong that either child is charged as an adult, but I accept that there are probably arguments to be made for dealing with the 15 year old as an adult.

I cannot fathom an argument for treating a 12 year old as an adult.

The first result:  housing the kids in the adult jail.

I thought that it was customary to provide a link to a website when it is being mentioned in another website.

All too often we find a surfeit of opinion, absent documented rationalization, and a paucity of information. This leads to much posturing in order to maintain one’s “brand”…It’s possible that the theoretical infinity of cyberspace encourages throwing whatever is lying around into the void. It achieves nothing. It is simply wasting time by people who have time to waste.

If that is not a reference to My Time To Waste, well, I do not know what is.

Hat tip to Althouse.

I do not pretend to understand the ins and outs of big banks and derivatives and what not.   My guess is that more regulation is needed.

On the other hand, even more important than regulation is leadership that will stand tall and address problems before they become disasters.

It was obvious there was a tech bubble at the time.  People made millions selling companies with little more than an idea.

It was obvious there was a housing bubble at the time.  People were making thousands of dollars flipping houses.  Often without doing anything to the house other than holding on to it for a few months.

Bubbles pop and damage the economy.

When the next bubble appears, what will be needed is a leader who will take action to gently let the bubble down, not regulations designed to prevent the last breakdown.

I came across this in Sunday’s Journal Gazette.  It seems Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, frequently mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate,  took a bite out of his shoe.  A recent ceremonial bill signing

was punctuated by tears and emotion as family and friends of an Ohio woman who was killed in Allen County gathered to watch Daniels sign a bill spurred by her case.

After initially behaving appropriately for the occasion and signing the bill, Daniels says to the Ohioans:

Anytime you all want to move to Indiana, lower your taxes, you’re welcome.

More compassionate conservatism I guess.

Given what Sarah Palin has been up to since I last commented on her, I have to conclude that she resigned as governor to either cash in or to run for president.  If she left to cash in, then I guess she’s not doing too bad a job of it.

But if she does indeed plan to run for president, then I do not believe she is going about things in a helpful way.  In a post at FrumForum, Danielle Crittenden describes a Palin appearance at a charity fundraiser in Canada.  Her appearance fee apparently was between $100,000 and $200,000, so that is definitely cashing in.*  Beyond the hefty fee, Crittenden describes how everything was arranged to limit Palin’s exposure to unscripted or unanticipated situations.

I am not paying enough attention to Palin to know if this is how her appearances are normally handled.  Assuming that it is, then this is poor training for a presidential run.  Her cozy perch at Fox News is also no help.  Now is exactly when she should be making as many appearances as possible and exposing herself to unscripted situations frequently so she can compile some experience dealing with them.  One does not get elected to the presidency without an ability to ad lib a wide variety of situations.

Sure, if she followed this advice, she might compile a resume of gaffs.  But the gaffs would be ancient history by the time 2012 came around.

* Long ago I read somewhere a comment that whenever an estimate varied by 100% or more, one could infer that there was really no clue as to the  actual number and the estimate was worse than worthless.  So who knows how much she was actually paid!

I picked up a jar of Grandad’s Orchard Blueberry-Peach Jam at a farmer’s market here in Fort Wayne.

The listed ingredients are sugar, blueberries, peaches, pectin, allspice, cloves, cinnamon.  There is no nutrition label, so I had no idea how many grams of sugar per tablespoon (other than the fact that sugar is listed first), and the young lady tending the table was not helpful on the subject.  But I thought I would give it a try.

A knowledgeable observer would note the interesting trifecta of spices:  allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.  A quick glance at google search results shows them used for mulling cider, etc.   That would be OK.  A blueberry peach jam that has a flavor of being mulled.

But that’s not what I tasted.  I tasted pumpkin pie.  The texture is not pumpkin pie,  but the flavor is.  This made for an odd peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Perfectly edible,  but strange.

A keen eye might also have noted the hash marks on the label.  I put them there.  I have on occasion kept track of how many sandwiches I got out of a given jar of jam.  There is quite a wide variation on this depending on the textures of the jams.  I knew as soon as I made the first sandwich that this jam was not going to go far.  In fact, as the hatch marks show,  I got only five sandwiches from this jar.  The jar was $5.00 so it added $1.00 to the cost of each sandwich.   Tastes strange and is expensive!    Looking at my records I show the following size jars producing this number of sandwiches:  20 oz., 23 sandwiches; 16 oz., 16 sandwiches; 12 oz, 13 sandwiches;  10.5 oz., 13 sandwiches; 8.5 oz, 11 sandwiches.

So five sandwiches from five ounces is not much.  And the $5.00 for 5 ounces is expensive!

For the record, here is a pic of the portion of Grandad’s Orchard Blueberry-Peach Jam I put on the sandwich:

The label shows a website:  www.bigsistersalsa.com which does show Grandad’s Orchard products, but I can not find the blueberry peach jam there.