Rant: "Bush's Fault!"

The Democrat-dominated Congress inherited the situation in 2007, and continued the domination of Congress for 4 years – the first 2 under a compliant Republican[1] president, and next 2 under a sympathetic Democrat. During that short time, and in contrast to promises to end deficit spending (by whatever means), the debt increased nearly 60%[2]. AFAIK, no substantive spending cuts have been passed by either chamber during this period. To the contrary, the only recurring & earnest deficit-reduction suggestion is “end the Bush tax cuts for the rich”; eliminating the deficit thru tax increase would require a 100% rate on all income over $200,000.  

At some point the steaming bag on the desk is the current occupant’s responsibility.
Especially when a second one appears during the occupancy.  

1 – issued 12 vetos, half of which were resolved or overridden, the rest were not significant economic differences.
2 – that’s a 60% increase in 4 years over what debt had accumulated in more than 2 centuries.

Movie: The Expendables

This...is the biggest B-movie action movie. Ever. It has no redeeming qualities, contains relentless action, and brings in near every top-billed A- and B-list action star of our time for the gratuitous purpose of doing so. Well that was fun; what's next on my queue?

Rant: Feds - cut spending NOW

Federal revenue never exceeds 20% of GDP. We’re over 18% now. Doesn’t matter who you squeeze how, the feds aren’t getting more than about another 1% GDP - which is about $140B, nowhere near “enough”.

Given that, the next obvious thought is to raise GDP. Start with the fact that GDP fell for the first time in ‘09, then consider that for ~15 years before that it rose at $500B/yr. At this point, just getting back to normal growth would be a remarkable accomplishment - and would net another $100B/yr annual growth in revenue, again nowhere near enough. Outer-limits SWAG is doubling long-term GDP growth, growing revenue by a still-inadequate $200B instead.

So squeezing hard and stimulating fast, while munching skittles falling from rainbows whilst perched on a unicorn’s back, the best we could Hope(TM) for is $340B new revenue. Meh.

Washington is spending $1500B more of our money than they're getting. For the most optimistic schemes offered, they'll still spend over a trillion dollars more than there is to, putting us and our children on the hook for not just paying off tens (hundreds?) of trillions of dollars, but making our kids pay the interest bill as well with money they'll need for other things and no reason to pay for our folly.

That leaves...50% across-the-board spending cuts.

Stock up & hunker down, this ain’t gonna be pretty.

Movie: The Omega Man

I'd like to say that this was - was - an intelligent well made movie befitting it's time, and that that time has passed and, alas, it has not aged well. I'd like to, but alas I snuck a peek just moments ago at Roger Ebert's then-current review, and find it is what it was: a well intentioned story bogged down in the ways of that age of storytelling, no less compelling today than it was then.

Of late, the then-uncredited novel "I Am Legend" has been remade into a telling a bit more believable. A bit. The core difficulty with this story, aside from creating a convincing world for the protagonist and all the technology and talent needed, is getting the zombies right. Heston's foes were too smart to be that stupid, and Smith's foes were too dumb to be that smart. The rest of the tale then struggles to cope with the resulting cognitive whiplash.

Given the intelligence and wit of "World War Z" (movie version pending with trepidation), I'm exploring the zombie genre in hopes of finding comparable competence. Some, like "The Omega Man", are obligatory viewing in this study. Obligatory, however, does not denote worthwhile.

Rant: A sponge only soaks up so much

For 2011,
· Revenue: $2.17T
· Spending: $3.82T
· Debt: $14.56T
 
Assuming all else remains unchanged[1], we’d have to cut federal spending by $2.14T – that’s 56% – to eliminate the debt in 30 years.
 
What’s that? “Increase taxes on the rich!” I hear, over and over?
 

... if individuals earning more than $200,000 were taxed at a 100 percent marginal rate–and we confiscated their passports so they could not flee–the take would come to $1.27 trillion, or just 77 percent of this year’s deficit.
- Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute

 
Ok, for sake of argument, raise taxes on the “rich” to 100%[2]. Kicking ballpark numbers around, that leaves $0.41T in cuts – real cuts, not “rate of increase cuts” – in spending just to stop the deficit hemorrhaging. We need another $0.49T in cuts – real cuts – to pay off the debt in a very generous 30 years.
 
So, ball back to the Democrats' court: going whole-hog 100% “tax the rich” nets about $1.27T, and the deficit is still out of control. What $0.90T in spending cuts is the Left willing to offer? This amounts to the minimum amount of spending cuts[3] we need to make now just to clean up this mess[4] over the next generation.
 
Sure, it’s more complicated than that – but that’s the core framework to operate from. If we tax “the rich” (loosely defined) to the point of running out of other people’s money, we see the minimum steps required just to start moving in the right direction.
 
One alternative to cutting spending is, of course, to increase revenue. But how? Consider:
 

As a result of reducing taxes on the rich, the rich got much richer — so much so that they wound up paying nearly four times as much total tax (and nearly three times as much tax per rich person) as when taxes were higher.
- http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271013/folly-soaking-rich-mario-loyola#

 

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962

 
Your move.
 
1 - note that spending, in most cases, increases faster than revenue. Therein lies the core problem: political unwillingness to spend less than revenue.
2 - ignoring the agreed fact that increasing taxes on the rich slows the economy, and going to 100% would drive subsequent revenues to $0. This is reducto ad absurdum exercise in identifying how far each side is willing/capable to go.
3 - that’s real cuts, not “reductions in increase”. That’s next year and ongoing from that, not “over 10 years”.
4 - “this mess” is here, and continual pointing fingers years into the past at debatable causes doesn’t clean it up now.
 

Rant: Conspiracy of Oz

Legend has this quote:

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.
~ Rick Polito, Marin Independent Journal's TV listing for "The Wizard of Oz"

A co-worker's retort is too good to let fade:

I have always thought that Glinda was the real villain in the story. She could have sent Dorothy home right off the bat, but nooo- she was secretly plotting the demise of two of her world leaders- The Witch of the West and Oz. (She had already lived to see another foe destroyed, The Witch of the East.) I mean, the Witch of the West just wanted her now deceased sister’s magic shoes. Why wouldn’t she be angry when the person who just dropped a house on her sibling stole them from her? Dorothy was but an unwitting pawn in Glinda’s machinations to set up puppet governments (Scarecrow got Oz, The Tin Woodsman got Winkie Land in the east) all over the world and rule from on high in the North.

Movies: In Queue

I've posted movies I've seen.
Occurs to me to post my queue of what I haven't but want to.

3:10 to Yuma
Cinema 16: European Short Films: Disc 2
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
High Noon
Scarface
The Snow Walker
Fires of Kuwait: IMAX
Apocalypto
Serial Experiments Lain: Vol.1-4
Pixar Short Films: Vol. 1
Samurai Jack: Season 1-4
Philip Glass: Looking Glass
Untraceable
Hidden Fortress
Throne of Blood
Live Free or Die Hard
Stomp: Stomp Out Loud
Great Expectations
Hulk
Constantine
Underworld
Apocalypse Now / Apocalypse Now Redux
Gods and Generals
Dog Whisperer: Season 3
Gangs of New York
Cold Mountain
Reformation Overview
MirrorMask
Dark City: Director's Cut
The Kingdom
Layer Cake
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Grindhouse: Death Proof
Speed Racer
Iron Man
Strangers on a Train
Chaos
Mongol
Déjà Vu
Revenge
Samurai Trilogy 1: Musashi Miyamoto
Samurai Trilogy 2: Duel at Ichijoji Temple
Samurai Trilogy 3: Duel at Ganryu Island
Aliens vs. Predator 2
The City of Lost Children
Lions for Lambs
Papillon
Red Dawn
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Cinema 16: European Short Films: Disc 1
Resident Evil: Degeneration
Cinema Paradiso
Dawn of the Dead
Inside the Actors Studio: Robin Williams
Don't Say a Word
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Andromeda Strain
Logan's Run
What Lies Beneath
The Others
Open Season 2
Glass: Portrait in Twelve Parts
Fraggle Rock: Season 1
The Spirit
The Postman
Moby Dick
The Leopard (English version)
Barry Lyndon
The Tale of Despereaux
The International
Tales of the Black Freighter / Under...
The Thief of Bagdad
The Thief of Bagdad: Bonus Material
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Horton Hears a Who!
Kiki's Delivery Service
Dinosaur
Brother Bear Widescreen Version
75th Annual Academy Awards Short Films
Pulse: Stomp Odyssey
Max Payne
Last Stand of the 300
Future Weapons: Season 1
The Ox-Bow Incident
Out of the Wild: The Alaska
Body of Lies
Hamlet
Public Enemies
Rebecca
My Dinner with Andre
True Romance
The White Countess
Sherlock Holmes
Snatch
Robin Hood
The Expendables
Inception
Salt
Star Trek
Up
Defiance
Red
The Secret of Kells
Wallace & Gromit: Loaf and Death
Wallace & Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
The Tourist
The Illusionist
9
Sukiyaki Western Django
The King's Speech
13 Assassins
My Dog Tulip

(This is my current Netflix DVD list. Since Netflix is raising prices by a lot, and separating DVDs from streaming into a separate cost, and most DVDs sit around an average of a month before I get to 'em, I'm copying the list here partly for my own reminding as I'll drop DVD service soon. I hope the DVD industry is paying attention to how many people are doing this.)

Rant: "...but Democrats inherited this mess!"

I keep hearing Leftists complain that the Democrats inherited this economic mess.

The Democrat-dominated Congress inherited the situation in 2007, and continued the domination of Congress for 4 years – the first 2 under a compliant Republican[1] president, and next 2 under a sympathetic Democrat. During that short time, and in contrast to promises to end deficit spending (by whatever means), the debt increased nearly 60%[2]. AFAIK, no substantive spending cuts have been passed by either chamber during this period. To the contrary, the only recurring & earnest deficit-reduction suggestion is “end the Bush tax cuts for the rich”; eliminating the deficit thru tax increase would require a 100% rate on all income over $200,000.
 
At some point the steaming bag on the desk is the current occupant’s responsibility.
Especially when a second one appears during the occupancy.
 
1 – issued 12 vetos, half of which were resolved or overridden, the rest were not significant economic differences.
2 – that’s a 60% increase in 4 years over what debt had accumulated in more than 2 centuries.

Movie: Just Go With It

Better yet, don't.
The two things this romantic comedy lacks are, in large part, romance and comedy.

Enough is injected to attract the genre label and provide cuts for a convincing trailer. The remaining runtime is devoted to setting up embarrassing situations, earned or not, and attempting to laugh at the subjects thereof; for most movies I tend to wander off for the few awkward minutes this occurs, but by starting there and never letting up I'd have been rude to the audience and to my $5 expended for the iTunes rental.

Its hard to sympathize with the romantic leanings of a lecherous protagonist, a doctor whose patients would be wise to walk out upon his bedside manner. That the frumpy babe wants his hand may work out fine and special for her, but there are other romances for us to enjoy on screen. That the hot babe is hot guarantees she will not end this with the marital devotion her kind & patient heart deserves.

The remaining theatrical attributes worth considering evaluate in kind. The cinematography is perfunctory: correct, but not special. Music prolific, but borrowed. Acting, gratuitous. Cast, wasted despite laudable efforts by Jennifer Aniston and Brooklyn Decker.

It is, to wit, an Adam Sandler film.

Movie: Tron:Legacy

A sequel embracing the true spirit of sequels:

• bigger budget (by 10x: $170M vs. $17M)
• better technology (by 10,000x: Moore's Law)
• more hero (by 3x: not just one Jeff Bridges but three of 'em)
• highlights redux bigger (disc battles, lightcycle races, honkin' big wierd machines)
• awesome music (Walter Carlos, meet Daft Punk)
• more overall spectacle (imparting "yeah, that's what I remember, but cooler!")
• and...and...oh, what was that last thing...oh, right - plot (I guess that mangled heap in the corner is a plot).

For geeks remembering Atari 800s and PC-selling Charlie Chaplin, a must-see return to a historical milestone.
For anyone else, a high-tech fireworks show - no real meaning, but still really fun to watch.

Rant: "That's where I want to be"

View Larger Map

Hurricane Pass, Tetons, Wyoming.
One of my fondest late-childhood memories was hiking there.
 

Quote: Why Doesn't Microsoft Understand Tablets

Awesome quote from http://www.quora.com/Microsoft/Why-doesnt-Microsoft-understand-tablets


So, in this dream, er, nightmare I have, I walk into Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft office back in 2006 and say:
“Hi Steve, I gotta talk to you about our tablet strategy.”
“Sure, Scoble, what you thinking about?”
“Well, it sucks. It just isn’t working. Customers aren’t delighted. The market isn’t afire. Our employees are even bored with it.”
“So, what should we do?” he asks.
“We should ship a device that doesn’t run Office. Indeed, doesn’t run any Microsoft application. Doesn’t do multitasking. Doesn’t run Flash. Doesn’t have a camera. Can’t print. Can’t use a Microsoft Mouse or Keyboard, either. Oh, and just to be really revolutionary, we can’t put any of our normal packaging or stickers on the device or around it. Finally, we can’t sell it at Best Buy, but we have to build a new series of stores to distribute it in.”
“What the f*** are you smoking, Scoble? Get the f*** out of here before I call security. That’s the stupidest idea I’ve heard. Ever.”
Then I wake up and realize, no, I’m not Steve Jobs.

Link: Borepatch: I am TJIC

The center of reporting & pontificating on the TJIC incident is at Borepatch: I am TJIC

Rant: I am TJIC

Tis unwise for a government to oppress those who fear being oppressed by their government and opine it unwise.

Rant: Sony BDP-S570 "Internet Connection Failed"

For those struggling with that error on that Blu-ray player...

Select Custom wireless network configuration, with:
IP Address something which no other device on your wireless network will have, say 192.168.1.111 (fiddle with the last number; try a random number between 150 and 254).
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.1
Primary DNS: 8.8.8.8 (Google's)
Secondary DNS: 8.8.4.4

Apply those numbers. If it doesn't take, wait a couple minutes and try again.

Worked for me.