I was reading Scott Chaffin early this morning, and a commenter over there offered a pretty good explanation of the mess we're in vis-a-vis the devaluing of the dollar....
When the Fed bails out these banks and mortgage lenders, where do you think they are getting the money? They aren't! They’re printing it. They are giving them newly printed Federal Reserve Notes and the buying power is tremendous for the ones they give them to. As all those greenbacks trickle-down, they lose value. With all those extra dollars in circulation the value of each dollar drops, and the purchasing power drops along with it.
For the record, I think he was making way too big a deal about Phil Gramm's comment about America being a nation of whiners. To the extent Americans expect the government to solve various national problems, I'd say Gramm was spot-on. Back to the money, though, it'd be nice if the politicians would at least look at the way the money supply's being fucked with as part of the culprit behind high oil prices instead of constantly demagoguing oil companies. But of course that would take some modicum of integrity, which is something most politicians at the national level are sorely lacking.
Speaking of oil, I really liked how Ann Coulter responded to the Democrats' assertion that we can't drill our way out of the current energy crisis. From what I remember she said that was more or less like saying you can't eat your way out of malnourishment or that you can't drink your way out of dehydration. Drilling may well not be the long-term answer, but over the short term while we find those elusive alternative energy sources, I think we'd be wise to take advantage of our own resources instead of competing for the rest of the world's resources. If we have the oil and the means to extract it, then it deserves to be asked why in the hell we're not getting it already.
Moving on, Kurt Hofmann over at Armed and Safe had a hell of a good quote the other day about government regulations on gun sales:
I happen to be one of those "extremists" who believe that the government should have no more ability to control the sale of firearms than they control the sale of screwdrivers (in other words, no ability to infringe on that which shall not be infringed).That was just awesome, and I agree 110 percent. If some people are so dangerous the government doesn't trust them with guns, then what the hell are they doing walking the streets? And why don't the gun-control groups have any problem with these predators walking the streets? I always thought the Brady background check was symptomatic of some huge flaws in the American "justice" system. But of course, such a perspective is way, way beyond the ken of simpletons like Paul Helmke and Sarah Brady.
Finally today, on a non-political note, George Strait's Troubadour cd doesn't bring back the best of memories for me, to say the least, but that record's title song is arguably one of the best songs he's ever recorded. The rest of the cd is pretty good too, but that song just really stands out. He may well be an old troubadour, especially compared to all the rest of the folks on the scene -- but he's still just as on top of his game as he was 20 years ago. When he goes home to his Texas ranch for good, it's gonna be a huge, huge loss for country music -- but the genre is immeasurably richer for his contributions.
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