Motley Fool sleaze tactic

Fie on Motley Fool!  It is henceforth banned from my kingdom.

While reading an innocuous article

http://seekingalpha.com/article/178016-the-history-of-apple-price-movements-part-1

I made the mistake of clicking on the link at the side.

It led to a long, tedious, prick-tease presentation about an unnamed stock (which never was named) that was touted as one of the biggest moneymakers in history.  (“Become a millionaire!”)  The screen ran like a video, but there was no pause button or opportunity to see how long it was.

(I let it run with the sound turned down while I watched something on TV; after 20 minutes, I gave up.)

What was it?  Very simply a long bait-and-switch bit of hype to pay $150 a year for a Motley Fool newsletter.  

It was not just a matter of a chump offer, but the fact that they so abused my time in making it.  It shows contempt for their audience.

It was being locked in a basement with a fat, sweaty salesman with bad breath who was intent on selling you a timeshare on a condo in Arkansas.

What did I learn from this?  Motley Fool has become a champion of sleaze. I will henceforth boycott their site, and urge everyone within the range of my voice —digital or otherwise— to do the same.  

What Obama should say about Wisconsin unions

Time to shut up!

The slimiest politician in history

Will: America’s Worst Politician - Newsweek

George Will is far too gentle in talking about this piece of walking fecal matter.

It's not enough that he was defeated. That he got even a single vote is an indictment of the voting public.

The gov't won't even leave your toilet alone

When I built my house in Raleigh in 1986, I couldn't figure out why I had such wimpy pressure in my shower.  (This was a common Delta head, not some luxury version.)  I finally took the head apart and found there was a pressure-reducer (a glorified washer) installed as a result of government fiat.  I removed it and voilà, a normal shower experience!

Since I had my own well, it was clearly no damn business of the government how much water I used in a three-minute shower.  

But the bureaucracy didn't stop there.  When I bought my Minneapolis house eight years ago and decided to replace a worn tile floor in the master bath, I wasn't allowed to re-install the beautiful 1928 toilet!  The remodelers informed me that "If you ever take the toilet up, code won't allow you to put it back in place.  You're only permitted a 1-1/2 gallon one."

So I had to do cartwheels to find a new Kohler that roughly matched the delicate pink color and have the old American-Standard one destroyed.  (So no scofflaw could salvage it!)  

But worse —how shall we say this delicately— it doesn't do its job properly.

These incompletely-flushing toilets are such a travesty that they became the subject of a whole episode in "King of the Hill," where users had to flush the johns five or six times to finish the job.

It seems that when it comes to crap, the government giveth but not taketh.

The following is from Powerline.com

Get your hand out of my shower

Posted: 22 Jul 2010 06:10 AM PDT

Before the advent of the modern environmental movement, Bill Buckley used to assert with a glint in his eye that a liberal is someone who wants to reach into your shower and adjust the temperature of the water. Man, oh, man, was he right. The liberals' environmental agenda has brought Buckley's satirical thrust uncomfortably close to reality.

See, for example, the Wall Street Journal article "A water fight over luxury showers." Stephen Power reports:

Gene Goforth sells showerheads--big ones, like the Raindance Imperial 600 AIR. Selling for as much as $5,457, it has a 24-inch spray face, 358 no-clog channels and a triple-massage option. "You can just stand under it, and it helps your psyche," says Mr. Goforth, who has one in his home.

Now, Mr. Goforth is in a lather over the federal government's tough new line on water-hogging showerheads, part of a new effort to enforce energy- and water-use regulations. "Leave my shower alone," Mr. Goforth recently wrote in a letter to the Department of Energy.

Regulators are going after some of the luxury shower fixtures that took off in the housing boom. Many have multiple nozzles, cost thousands of dollars and emit as many as 12 gallons of water a minute. In May, the DOE stunned the plumbing-products industry when it said it would adopt a strict definition of the term "showerhead" in enforcing standards that have been on the books--but largely unenforced--for nearly 20 years.

The Journal explains in the handy sidebar to the story that the federal maximum for a showerhead is 2.5 gallons per minute, at 80 pounds per square inch.

I have a great idea for a political movement. How about a movement devoted to the restoration of limited government?

Rx for dems who think Obamacare will help them: get a second opinion

If Spector gets defeated in the democratic senate primary, it may go down as yet another example of Obama's toxic "help" in campaigns.

Needless to say, the White House is doing everything they can to aid this quisling. They've also sent in Joe Biden, which always presents the possibility that he will put not one but both feet in his own mouth.

As to trumpeting Obamacare, there's just one problem: most of the public hates it.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/march_2010/health_care_law

Cut Gordon Brown some slack!

Tomorrow’s election in the UK is critical.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7683391/General-Election-2010-five-possible-result-scenarios-for-the-Conservatives.html

David Cameron (Conservative) was comfortably ahead of Gordon Brown (Labour) just months ago. And Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) was far behind.

Then they had a US-style televised debate where Clegg charmed viewers, and now there’s a possibility, God help us, that he could win.

This could mean a radical change in the special relationship between the UK and America, with Clegg bowing and pandering Obama-style to Europe.

Clegg’s surge is IMHO a good reason not to have televised debates, which give an advantage to slick pretty-boys, and a disadvantage to anyone remotely cerebral.

We’ve been cursed with these sound-bite charades since 1960. Why Britain chose to introduce them after all these years is beyond me.

Earlier tonight, PBS aired a parade of British voters saying they weren’t “excited” about Brown’s appearances or “leadership.”

Since I regularly watch Prime Minister’s Question Time on C-Span, I wonder if I don’t have a better feel for Brown’s qualities than a lot of these UK voters.

(God knows US voters are criminally uninformed when they vote, and I’m sure the UK is working to catch up. With TV debates now a major factor, you can deduct another 20 points from the collective IQ.)

Brown is smart, albeit not as engaging as Tony Blair, and acquits himself well when being questioned on a bewildering array of subjects from his critics on the right and left.

True, so have previous prime ministers. Their system puts more emphasis on having political leaders who can think on their feet instead of making canned statements.

(In contrast to Obama, for example, always with a background of adoring listeners or other props, like “doctors” issued white coats before they’re allowed to sit in the Rose Garden and listen to him blather about health care.)

But the other factor is reported to be Gordon Brown’s comments after a voter encounter, where he forgot his mike was still on after he got in his car.

I heard the entire audio clip. What’s the worst thing he said? “That bigoted woman.” And for this he had to call on her and apologize!

So people are offended by that, compared to Crazy Joe Biden’s obscenity when he didn’t know his mike was on? Or pinhead Carl Levin producing a whole string of comments that had to be bleeped while he was grilling a witness at his House committee?

Naturally, I’d prefer to see Tory David Cameron win.

But for God’s sake, Brits, give Gordon Brown a break on this tempest-in-a-teapot.

You don't need a UK equivalent of John Edwards.

The “birther” conspiracy: glorified horse-puckey

There are endless charges right-thinking Americans can make against Obama, including his unparalleled combination of arrogance and incompetence.

But one thing that makes us look stupid and paranoid is this continuing obsession with Obama’s alleged non-American citizenship.

Depending on which of the trumped-up emails you receive, he was born in Kenya or Indonesia or Mars.

Note that all this stuff appears only in endlessly-circulated emails. No legitimate right-wing media outlet talks about this.

But for the fanatics, any signature and seal on any presented birth certificate is contested, carbon-14 dating is demanded, subterfuge and bribery is alleged, ad nauseum.

These are the grassy-knoll conspiracists of the right wing.

There is no “cover-up.”

Nobody wants Obama out of office more than me, but only a fool will waste one moment of attention on this distraction instead of the main objections to the re-election of The Anointed One and his congressional cronies.

Yes, there’s no question the lamestream media is ignoring or downplaying all sorts of Obama flaws.

But journalists' greed for fame would trump this.

Ask yourself this: If there was the slightest scintilla of evidence supporting this conspiracy theory, wouldn’t the win-at-any-price Hillary campaign have jumped all over it?

That is what campaigns do through their “oppo research.” The Clintons’ ruthless staff already did that.

Yes, the mainstream media is overwhelmingly liberal, but Fox, the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and a host of other reliable anti-Obama conservative voices will jump on any remotely-credible lead in a heartbeat.

If you want to get technical:

Part of this baloney-fest is based on two things:

a) Ignorance of the law, specifically the legal concepts of jus sanguinis (right of blood) and jus soli (right of birthplace)

and

b) A willful attempt to conflate evidence about his birth certificate being faked, the ludicrousness of which, once examined, recalls Oliver Stone’s paranoid “JFK.”

These claims have been exhaustively debunked by UrbanLegends, Snopes.com, the Chicago Tribune, FactCheck, the US Immigration Service, Grolier Online, and Wikipedia, to name just a few authorities.

For proof, just read the following and their linked articles:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/obama_citizen.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/28/hawaii-declares-obama-birth-certificate-real/

Anyone who receives one of these silly emails should send this link to whoever sent it to you. Not that it’ll do much good.