So Obama meets another leader of a country (one with whom we need to be on friendly terms) and his staff bumbles it. This time, they misspell a name of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Now I know that these latin folk have lots of names, some of them long, but fer Christ’s sake, you’d think that they’d get things right after all the other gaffes they have made with other foreign leaders. Plus they pushed his meeting back because it’s St. Paddy’s day. (I know, to the Irish among you, it’s an important day, but not in the greater context of national relations) Nothing like insulting a potential ally. (We all know these latin dudes have hair trigger tempers, so why push it???? Right?)

One might begin to wonder if he and his staff are really using these gaffes as veiled insults, to make already strained relations even more difficult, and to put the US at an even greater disadvantage in the eyes of the world.? I mean, Brazil has several gazillion barrels of oil and the resources to make sugar based (rather than corn based, which is a boondoggle at best) ethanol that they might ship to us (if we ever got rid of the tariff BS). We might need those barrels of oil and ethanol someday soon….

Were I a leader of a country whose fortunes could in any way be tied to the actions of the US (and its Court Jester President) I would be starting to become a bit worried about now. I mean, how unprofessional can he get?

Quinn says, “There will be some that will have a higher tax burden—but it’ll be based on the principle that all of us in a democracy can believe in; ability to pay. My philosophy is to cut taxes on as many people as possible in Illinois.”
Gov Pat Quinn, Illinois.

Democracy? Or Marxism?

I always believed that the Democrats were closet Marxists. Now I may have proof…..

Question: Does a “rich” person use any additional infrastructure or state property than a “poor” person? Who contributes more to the coffers of the state for use by the state for maintaining bridges, roads, police, etc?

But then again, I am NOT a democrat, so what do I know???

ETA: Oh, and what will the governor do if the “rich” move to another state? It’s happening in Kalifornia already. People are moving out due to taxes. If this happens in Illinois (and it will) then who will pay the taxes?

“There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”

Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Interesting lesson in capitalism today and yesterday.

I love gun shows. They, like most flea market type venues, are examples of pure market driven capitalism. And BTW, they are the place where nearly EVERYONE with few (very few) exceptions is polite to each other.

As you may have heard, gun sales are through the roof most places, and this had certainly been true in my observations at the previous gun shows that I had attended.

Most dealers had been steadily raising their prices to maximize profit ( Evil Capitalists Good Businessmen that they are….) but that appears to have run into declining, or at least no longer increasing, demand. Sales were, by most recent standards, sluggish.

Many dealers began cutting prices to stimulate demand.

Sales picked up, and a balance, of sorts, was again reached.

Capitalism, supply vs demand, and profit motive all reach a point of harmony.

I love this country.

This website is generally conservative, (and somewhat tinfoil-hat) but generally makes good points.

Go here for a somewhat long (but worth the read) chart of where England and the British empire once was and is now, and how we are poised to follow them into obscurity.

Do we want the US to become irrelevant to the outcome of world affairs? I don’t.

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OOPS! Wrong word…

You’d think, that with all the millions (billions?) (trillions?) we spend on the state department, that they’d have decent translator available for dealing with countries like the Soviet Union. It’s not like Russian is an uncommon language or anything….

Yet Hillary Clinton appears to be incompetent (as well as the Obama Administration) because of things like this. And they want to be taken seriously…

“Overcharged” vs “reset”….. yeah, I can see where the mistake could be made…..

If nothing else, they can check it at Babelfish.com in the future…..

All the way through to the end.

This is worth reading. Seriously.

If it doesn’t get your eyes watery, then you aren’t human.

Found it on Instapundit