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  #1  
Old January 15th, 2009, 01:42 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Cool A little coke more....

"There was a lot of agreement in that room about the notion that we're facing an economic crisis unlike we've seen in quite some time ... that we must act quickly to stimulate the economy, create jobs, put money back in people's pockets." Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary
----------
Stimulants help us to know "when" we are as much as "how" and organize our sense of what to do next. Such things as such as coffee, hot sauce, and Ritalin also nurture initiative and persistence and, according to some studies, may be likely protectors against Parkinsons. And all of these substances may work through neural foundations that support the usually successful reciprocity game of "raise the stakes." That is, if you break even or make money on one round, you raise your bet on the next one.

The stimulant, cocaine - once a legal ingredient in Coca Cola - was used by Freud to write and now by some of my neighbors to feel good. There is, unfortunately, a withdrawal problem for individuals and for cultures, withdrawal now shared by most Americans as they come down not only from the stimulants they ingest but also the stimulant of excess credit spawned by Fannie and Freddie, cheap loans grand houses, or in the five credit card applications that most of us once got every week in the mail. J. Wellington Wimpy would have been ecstatic to take a prime beef hamburger today and pay for it on a bubble loan next year.

There is, ominously, a link between cocaine recovery and doing big things: accomplishing something outrageous combats the depression and withdrawal effects of the drug. Thus, my president smokes and campaigns bigger than anyone before him and a campaign talk in Berlin to 200,000 nonvoters may be symptomatic on several levels. Most recently, BHO expected to have $350 billion walking-around money and asked that George Bush hand it to him. He now asks for $900 billion in more walking around money and I sense more of Pechorin than of Abe Lincoln: We are to be given relief from withdrawal at the cost of greater withdrawal agony in our future.

Criminal and ghetto-accepted morality now play at the national level as thieves move in sync with each other: Geithner didn't pay his taxes and, therefore, could never work for the IRS, an agency he will manage. A Nevada governor withdrew his nomination for a cabinet job because he's under Federal investigation. Hillary stole china when she last exited my White House, later claimed she was a target for sniper fire at Kosovo, but is to be my Secretary of State. (Her husband, meanwhile, collects millions of dollars from Arab interests.) Nominees for the CIA and the Attorney General are also suspicious characters; Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Frank Raines - large contributors to BHO and larger beneficiaries of Fannie/Freddie - are still players not at poker in a jail but in my government.

America in withdrawal, on the other hand, now mistrusts Wall Street but saves more and spends less. The rules for personal trust apply again and the complainers in my neighborhood are possibly healthier than for years. There were suggestions on Bill Bennett's radio show that all of us send tea bags to Washington. The gang that elected BHO, even while some of them thought that Sarah Palin was his running mate, had instinctive preferences for youth, fast talk, and liveliness. As Michelle Bachman, a former prosecuting attorney for the IRS, remarked, our Democrat legislators are "full of themselves." So were democrat voters who elected a coke dealer, crook, and entertainer...a detached, self-involved sort, a preacher with too much self esteem, low arousability and, I suspect, high pain tolerance.

According to Drudge, a rhesus monkey that throws feces when angry is on the loose in Tampa Bay. I'm proud that he's my relative...

References

Cashill, Jack (2009) A continuation article on BHO's lack of writing skills. http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/newly_found.htm.

Bachman, Michele. Former Treasury prosecuting tax attorney and current representative from Minnesota http://www.bennettmornings.com/pg/js...lzdFNpemU9Mg==

Bennett, William (1/15/2009) Morning in America. www.bennettmornings.com.

Goldberg J (2007) Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. NY: Doubleday. (See also references to Sowell and to Hayek.)

Lermontov, Mihail (1839/1966) Hero of Our Time. NY: Penguin. A fine study of a Russian psychopath named Pechorin.

Roberts, G. & Sherratt, T. (1998) Development of cooperative relationships through increasing investment. Nature, 394, 175-179.

Shlaes, A (2008) The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. NY: HarperCollins. See also When my recession becomes your great depression. December 17, 2008, Bloomberg.Com. (Lots of material if you put "Amity Shlaes" into the search window. Most relevant here is http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=alBlpZw7AquE

Solinas M, Chauvet C, Thiriet N, Rawas R, & Jaber M (2008) "Reversal of cocaine addiction by environmental enrichment. Proceedings National Academy of Science. November 4, 2008 vol. 105 no. 44 17145-17150 Http://www.pnas.org/content/105/44/1...a-b5baa869940f

Sowell, T. (2002) A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. NY: Basic Books. See also Hayek Friedrich A (1944/1944) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ of Chicago.

Eskelinen, Marjo H., Tiia Ngandu, Jaakko Tuomilehto, Hilkka Soininen, Miia Kivipelto. Midlife Coffee and Tea Drinking and the Risk of Late-Life Dementia: A Population-based CAIDE Study. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 16(1), xx-xx. Summarized at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0114200005.htm

revised 1/28/09, 2/1/09

Last edited by James Brody; July 8th, 2009 at 12:41 PM..
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  #2  
Old January 31st, 2009, 01:58 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Lightbulb Steyn on Collapse

I more often find references that we (Americans) now save more money and, in California, produce less trash. Such is good news.

Meanwhile, here's another Mark Steyn essay:

"Mark Steyn: Stimulated right into being another Europe

"Plan also could trigger protectionist backlash, just like during the Depression.

"'Stimulus' comes from the verb 'stimulare,' which is Latin for 'transfer massive sums of money from what remains of the dynamic sector of the economy to the special interests of the Democratic Party.' No, hang on, my mistake. 'Stimulare' means 'to goad.' And, on that front, the Democrats are doing an excellent job. They've managed to goad 58 percent of the American people into opposing the 'stimulus' package. They've managed to goad all 117 Republicans in the House into unpacking their mothballed cojonesand voting against the bill. And they've managed to goad the rest of the world into ending the Obama honeymoon in nothing flat."

More at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/s...31-bill-pelosi
Also at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...M3NWU3ODE2NWI=
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  #3  
Old February 1st, 2009, 01:16 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Arrow Amity sez: "No more coke!"

Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

She has a new essay in today's Washington Post.

"So the Depression and the New Deal are both worth going back to, but for different reasons than many suspect. We may rely on the best of the New Deal, the matter-of-fact bravery our parents and grandparents showed then, to help us through today's unexpected challenges. But we don't have to repeat New Deal stimulus experiments, because we know that they didn't work."

Lots more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1
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  #4  
Old February 2nd, 2009, 06:49 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Cool Stimulants: the good of withdrawal

I've suggested that "stimulants" have similar functional properties in economies and in individual minds. Americans have been on a dopamine-high that was maintained by easy credit. Things have slowed, "juice" is less available, and people are in withdrawal but our children should be better off. Here's another writer that picks up on these ideas.

JimB

Consumers Are Saving More and Spending Less
By Jack Healy
Published: February 2, 2009

"American consumers and businesses are embarking on an era of thrift as the recession deepens, saving more money as they cut spending on everything from sweaters to new homes to office towers.

"That was the picture painted by two government reports released Monday. One showed that Americans cut their spending for a sixth month in December as they worried about losing their jobs and earning less in a deteriorating economy. The personal saving rate in the last three months of 2008 rose to its highest level in six years.

"'If American consumers are less indebted, live within their means and have more money in savings, they are better positioned to spend on a sustainable basis for years to come,' said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. 'As painful as that is economically in the short run, these developments will better serve us in the long run.'"
More at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/bu...n.html?_r=2&hp
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  #5  
Old February 7th, 2009, 11:45 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Cool Steyn: About Stimulation

Per Mark Steyn:

"Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic-party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those Dirty Dozen, caper-movie line-ups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off. The ends justify the mean SOBs: "Indispensable" Tim Geithner, wanted in twelve jurisdictions for claiming his kid's summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy. Tom "Home, James!" Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power. Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can't go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior."

More at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...RjZDhiNmMxMDM=
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  #6  
Old February 7th, 2009, 11:46 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Default Stimulus Defined

"'So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is?'

"That's the whole point," he said, as the audience hooted and applauded.
"Obama warned Republicans not to 'come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.' Americans, he said, 'did not vote for the false theories of the past, and they didn't vote for phony arguments and petty politics.'

"'They sent us here to bring change,' he said."

Hey, BHO: Barney Frank is still there...and "stimulus" in societies refers to spending too much money. Is it wise to treat coke-heads - who will be grateful - by giving them coke?

More at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-...-14284923.html
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