Saturday, September 19, 2009

"World trade has collapsed... shipping lines have become graveyard archipelagos"


A few days ago, I pointed to a London Daily Mail article ("The Incredible Ghost Fleet Off The Coast Of Singapore") spotlighting the scores of cargo ships rusting -- unused -- in the Singapore Strait. Bulk cargo ships are the the most visible casualties of the collapse in world trade.


Tyler at Zero Hedge did me one better, using VesselTracker to graphically illustrate the carnage in world trade. I've included a sample of the overbuilding debacle, below. In each diagram, green represents an operating ship. Red denotes a ship that is currently unused.

The ghost fleet in the Singapore Strait, photographed by The Daily Mail, looks like this:

Bosporus, the trade gateway between Russia and the rest of the world, is "orders of magnitude worse" than Singapore:

Qinhungdao (the Chinese coast):

Durden concludes, "The bottom line: world trade has collapsed, shipping lines, once flourishing, have become graveyard archipelagos populated by rusting ship skeletons. Yet all of this is beyond the land, and thus far from sight. Of course, who needs trade when you have a speculative market trading in its own bubble, hitting yearly highs day after day, thanks only and exclusively to the Chairman's printing press. It is a pity these ships can not sail in the sea of hundred dollar bills that is being created each and every day at the Federal Reserve, whose only use these days it seems is to buy junker stocks and to feed the algos that lift whatever offers are stupid enough to float in the equity market."


Linked by: Ed Driscoll. Thanks!

The 75 Democrats who endorse the use of taxpayer funds to support human trafficking, child sex slavery, tax fraud...


Following the Senate's overwhelming vote, the House of Representatives acted to cut off taxpayer funding of ACORN. The vote was 345-75 to strip ACORN of support. The seventy five representatives who voted to continue funding ACORN -- despite its apparent expertise at child sex slavery, tax evasion, human trafficking, mortgage fraud and Tijuana donkey shows -- are as follows:

Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.
Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.
Robert Brady D-Pa.
Corrine Brown, D-Fla.
G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.
Mike Capuano, D-Mass.
Andre Carson, D-Ind.
Kathy Castor, D-Fla.
Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.
James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y.
Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Danny Davis, D-Ill.
Diane DeGette, D-Colo.
Bill Delahunt, D-Mass.
Mike Doyle, D-Pa.
Donna Edwards, D-Md.
Keith Ellison, D-Minn.
Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
Chaka Fattah, D-Pa.
Bob Filner, D-Calif.
Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio
Al Green, D-Tex.
Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.
Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii
Rush Holt, D-N.J.
Mike Honda, D-Calif.
Jesse Jackson, Jr. D-Ill.
Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Tex.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex.
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio
Rick Larsen, D-Wash.
Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
John Lewis, D-Ga.
Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.
Markey, D-Mass.
Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
McDermott, D-Wash.
McGovern, D-Mass.
Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.
Gwen Moore, D-Wisc.
Jim Moran, D-Va.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
Richard Neal, D-Mass.
John Olver, D-Mass.
Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.
Donald Payne, D-N.J.
Jared Polis, D-Colo.
David Price, D-N.C.
Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.
Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.
Bobby Rush, D-Ill.
Linda Sánchez, D-Calif.
Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
David Scott D-Ga.
Bobby Scott, D-Va.
Jose Serrano, D-N.Y.
Brad Sherman, D-Calif.
Albio Sires, D-N.J.
Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
Pete Stark, D-Calif.
Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.
Niki Tsongas, D-Mass.
Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
Diane Watson, D-Calif.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Robert Wexler, D-Fla.
Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

I would recommend calling these Congresspeople and expressing your gratitude.

Hat tips: Ethel Fenig and David Freddoso.

Larwyn's Linx: Democrat solution for illegals and health care? Amnesty!

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

Obama’s solution on illegals and health care? Amnesty: Hot Air
Seven ex-CIA chiefs: Drop the probe: Surber
Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional: WSJ

Taxpayer-funds filtering activists to ACORN: BigGov
Connecting the Insidious Obama and ACORN Nexus: Aces
Obama and MA's next Senator: Patterico

Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation: Parker
Are you a racist?: Power Line
Senate's ACORN defender Gillibrand in trouble: JWF

ACORN's history of prostitution: NRO
Obama: legalize illegals to get them health care: GWP
McCain: Carter worst president of 20th century: Hot Air

Nancy, your side is the violent one: Surber
Let them eat arugula!: Fausta

Economy

ACORN's Illegal Alien Home Loan Racket : Malkin
General Electric: Obama's Halliburton?: AT (Regan)
SEIU: Anti-American teabagging extremists need to elevate discourse: Hot Air

Health Reform Allies MoveOn and ACORN have an enemies list: Times
Tort reform worked in West Virginia: Surber
Does He Lie?: Hammer

Surprise: Chysler chief owes $1.4M in taxes, delinquent loans: BlogProf
Sen: Rockefeller: no idea how we'll pay for ObamaCare: Surber
'Economy back from the brink' as 42 states lose jobs in August, up from 29: BlogProf

New boss? Same as the old boss — only worse. Lessons not learned.: RBO

Media

Our paranoid, race-baiting media: Karl
Pelosi almost brought to tears: Surber
WaPo Finally Finds an ACORN-Related Scandal: Hannah Giles's Father: NRO

Bait as we say, not as we do: Crittenden
How to find millions of racists: AT (Wright)
AP warns Democrats: time to ease off on the race-baiting: Hot Air

Media Matters smears Hot Air: Verum Serum

World

Poland reacts to Obama's theft of missile defense: Treason!: GWP
What they really think: Power Line
Live-blogging the Iranian demonstrations: Ledeen

Former Iranian President Attacked By Hardliners in Tehran: GWP
Sucker-r-r-r-: JWF
High Holy Days: Kesler

Dumbest Speaker In History: Selling Out Eastern Europe 'Brilliant': JWF
Massive Iranian Protest on Al-Qods Day: GWP

SciTech

Google vs. Apple: who's telling the truth?: CNet
AT&T to offer remote PC repairs without system booting: Infoworld

Cornucopia

Awesomely bad engagement photos: Guidespot
Oh dear, no "Tuscan" kale... what to do.: American Digest
I find your lack of grace disturbing: Treacher

Ferrari 458 Italia aims to sear your eyes out: AutoBlog

Friday, September 18, 2009

People of Wal-Mart


Bernie sent this one in...

The ladies love my pink velour stretch pants and cowboy boots.

How am I supposed to slap a ho without an essential part of my balanced breakfast?

The freezer section makes me tingle!

I have this outfit in red, b***hes.

It's all in the parenting.

And while you were reading this, I vomited.

Leotards ain't just for ballet, b***hes.

The sequel to the Da Vinci Code revolves around the mystery of this man's underwear.

The Earth, Wind & Fire Reunion Tour begins... right... here.

If you don't shop with a parakeet, you're missing out on all of the best deals.

You step on my white suede shoes and you're toast.

Eh, what?

You'd never guess it, but these guys are all close friends.

See the flame shoes? Those mean I won't think twice about roundhouse-kicking you into the next zip code!

Every man worth his salt wears a Steelers jersey and hot pink shorts to go shopping.

It's chocolate, I swear to the frickin' Aztec Gods of cocoa!

Sarcasm depleted. No words possible.

The man in the yellow go-go boots knows how to rock the house.

Rawrrrrrrrrrrr...

How did we survive?


I am one of the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964. I sometimes wonder how we survived. Consider:

Our mothers smoked and/or drank while pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with brightly colored, lead-based paints.

There were no childproof lids on medicine or special locks on cabinet doors.

We we rode bikes, we wore baseball caps, not specially engineered helmets.

As infants, we rode in cars without car seats or booster seats, no seat belts and no air bags. Sometimes, as tots, we rode in small moving boxes packed with blankets and toys.

We rode in the back of pickup trucks and no one was arrested or cited.

We drank water from garden hoses, not from plastic bottles.

We shared a single bottle of Coca-Cola with three friends -- and no one died.

We ate cupcakes with food coloring, white bread, real butter and bacon. In fact, we drank Kool-Aid mixed with tablespoons of real sugar.

Yet we weren't overweight, because we were always outside playing.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when dusk fell. And no one was able to reach us all day. And: we were okay.

We'd spend hours in the forest with Daisy rifles, or building go-carts without brakes, or sledding with wooden and steel monstrosities that could sever a limb.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's and X-Boxes. There were no video games, no cable television, no DVD players. There were no computers, no web, no Facebook, no Twitter.

We had friends and we went outside and found them... without cell phones or text messages.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits resulting from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns and knives for our birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, played lawn darts and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

We have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, inventors and entrepreneurs ever.

The last 50 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

We had the good fortune to grow up as kids in America, before the government regulated so much of our lives "for our own good".

Give thanks, for such an age will never occur again.


Hat tips: How Beautiful We Were (American Digest), Contrairimairi and AdClassix.

Blues State


Democrats have controlled California for over two decades. Their policies have transformed a beautiful, industrious state into a monumental catastrophe.

Open Borders and Easy Access to Welfare: as the stack graph shows, California accounts for 12% of the nation's population but 32% of welfare recipients. Only California and Texas registered high enough to include the state name on the Y-axis. Texas has 8% of the U.S. population and is equally burdened by border issues but has only 1/10th of California's welfare rolls.

More Open Borders, More Welfare: This pie will give you indigestion; California represents 32% of America's welfare caseload. Chuck Devore explains, "California's share of the nation's welfare recipients has been soaring since Democrat legislators severely relaxed welfare rules and eligibility while hiking benefits around 2001. The result was as predictable for welfare as California's high taxes and heavy regulations have been for jobs and business."

Even More Open Borders and More Relaxed Welfare Policies: While the Blue State of New York has its own bragging rights (highest per capita spending on welfare rolls), the distance between New York and the other states compared to California is like the distance between the Earth (other states), the Moon (New York), and the Sun (California). California is the only state that refuses to "seriously enforce the federal lifetime limit of 5 years of welfare for able-bodied adults."

California faces the biggest financial crisis in its history due in no small part to the waste, fraud, and abuse related to its outrageous entitlement programs. Devore calls them "a honey pot for many in America who find it easier to accept a taxpayer handout than to work."

This "generosity" with other peoples’ money impels Sacramento lawmakers to give such large sums of working Californians' money to non-working Californians inevitably results in less of the former and more of the latter. This is simple economics, and it's a shame that it escapes the architects of our state's governance today.


Powerful and Unaccountable Unions: San Francisco, to use a simple example, employs at least 100 unionized workers who earn over $200,000 annually (including a $350,000 a year "Special Nurse").

Los Angeles has nearly 300 retirees earning over $100,000 a year.

The website Pension Tsunami recently noted several articles of interest related to union pension funds. “Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout” summarizes how public employee pension funds have cooked their books for years. This has gotten worse in recent years, as public sector employee unions have, "consolidated their power in state and local governments by controlling elections [and] demanded unsustainable increases to the benefit packages of their members – often retroactively – from politicians whose survival depended on their obedience."

Gee, by all means, let's pass card-check (also known as "The Employee No Choice Act")!

The facts are indisputable: Blue States are melting down.

California is an ominous preview into America's future. Perhaps an enterprising progressive (or is that an oxymoron?) could explain why we should follow the Obama-Pelosi-Reid brain-trust into certain oblivion.


Linked by: Verum Serum. Thanks! Hat tips: Chuck DeVore will be a candidate for Senate in 2010, challenging the egregious Barbara "Call Me Senator" Boxer, No Oil For Pacifists.