Shots Across the Bow

Yesterday, I found an article on Big Hollywood covering several Hollywood celebrities cracking jokes about the Japan earthquake/tsunami. I posted a link to the article on Facebook, and a friend posted a link to a similar piece from wonkette calling out a conservative for the same thing.

While my buddy was trying to point out that obnoxious stupidity isn't the exclusive property of the left, his choice of articles clearly illustrated their dominance in that regard.

In the Big Hollywood piece, after listing a few quotes from celebrities, and noting that Gottfried was fired, John Nolte wrote:

Free country. Free to mock. Free to terminate employment. Free to wonder how anyone could see or look for or attempt to mine humor and attention from the relentlessly heartbreaking images broadcast over the weekend.

That's it. No name calling; no snark; no hyperbolic rhetoric. Just a recitation of the facts, and the opinion that all those involved had the right to say what they said, and fire who they fired, followed by a fairly gentle protest against inappropriate humor.

Now, compare this to the wonkette piece:

Here’s something Sarah Palin will be super angry about until somebody (Willow?) tells her Haley Barbour is a Republican: Mississippi white pig Haley Barbour’s press secretary sends out a heehawlarious email news roundup “to Barbour’s staff and other allies” with fun jokes about Janet Reno looking like a man and all those Japs getting killed by the earthquake/nuclear apocalypse. Palin might even type a “Half u no shamez, Halle Barber?” on her Twitter or whatever! But Haley Barbour’s press secretary wants you to know that Haley probably doesn’t even read these things, because he is a six-hundred-pound klan-whale who can’t figure out the ‘puter, so he gets “printouts” of the email, and the jokes are probably not visible on the printouts because of … white southerners are dumb? Yes, let’s go with that, which is all we can figure from this Politico item.

Ben Smith pastes a chunk of these dumb, offensive emails into the Politico content management system:

Otis Redding posthumously received a gold record for his single, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”. (Not a big hit in Japan right now.)

In 1993: Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first female attorney general. (It took longer to confirm her gender than to confirm her law license.)

Ha ha, Otis Redding. Sounds like a colored name! (“But if he’s black, why did his mama name him ‘Redding,’ haw haw.”) Anyway, there’s your news item about Haley Barbour’s email list which is written by Haley Barbour’s press secretary and not Haley Barbour himself, because come on, Haley Barbour would have as much chance of success trying to type as a walrus would, using flippers, because Haley Barbour is so fat and racist. Anyway, nobody apologized or anything, because it’s your fault for always trying to cause trouble. God, it’s just an email making fun of the Japs getting killed in earthquakes. Did everybody forget Pearl Harbor already?

I'm really tempted to take this post apart, point out all the deliberate errors, but I don't really need to. It speaks for itself.

So, reading these two posts, which side do you think is practicing civility and which is just talking about it?

If you want proof that unions are counterproductive and reduce efficiency and performance, all you need to do is look at the current controversy over teachers and tenure. Here in Tennessee, Gov Haslam gave his State of the State speech. In it, he said that the criteria for keeping teachers should be their effectiveness as teachers, and not their longevity. Achievement, not seniority should rule when layoffs come around. Predictably, the unions are against this.

What amazes me in all this is the implicit admission that under union rules, the teachers kept the longest are not necessarily the best teachers. In fact, teacher's unions are admitting that their rules are designed to protect inferior teachers. If, as Gov Haslam suggests, teacher retention were based on teacher performance, then by definition, the teachers with the most seniority would also be the best teachers.

I don't know precisely how the liberal mind works, but to me, a system which automatically rewards and protects the best teachers is the one I would like to see used in our schools instead of the one that by design protects the weaker teachers. Then again, I'm funny that way. I believe that the purpose of schools is to educate our children, not to provide jobs for those who can't do anything else.

And before you go off on a rant about how many good teachers there are out there, and how dare I attack them, re-read the post. I'm not attacking teachers; I'm attacking their union, and I'm attacking those specific teachers who are more concerned about their seniority than about whether or not their pupils are performing to their full potential. I work in the real world. If I don't produce; I'm out of a job, regardless of how long I've been working there.

Why should teachers be any different?

So, we talked about the general way a nuclear power plant works. The fuel in the reactor heats water to a high temperature. That water is used to make steam, the steam turns a turbine that spins a generator, making electricity. Today, we're going to look more closely at the first stage of that process, the nuclear fuel itself.

First of all, we all learned in science class that everything is made up of atoms, and that atoms are the most basic building blocks of matter. In fact, the greek root for the word atom means indivisible. Well, what we learned was actually wrong; we've now identified more sub atomic particles than atomic particles, and we theorize the existence of many more, but for our purposes, all we really need to talk about is the atom, and the three particles that make it up: the proton, the neutron, and the electron.

The proton is a positively charged particle that has a mass of 1 Atomic Mass Unit (amu). (Roughly 1.66x10-27kg.) It stays in the nucleus of the atom, and the number of protons determines the identity of the atom, what element it is. Hydrogen has one proton, Helium has two, Carbon has 6, and so on.

The neutron has no charge, and also has a mass of 1 amu. When the number of neutrons changes, but the number of protons remains the same, then we have different isotopes of the element. For example, the most abundant form of carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons. If two more neutrons are added to the nucleus, then we're dealing with the isotope Carbon-14, a radioactive isotope useful in dating old objects.

Protons and neutrons together make up the nucleus of the atom.

Electrons have a very, very small mass when compared to the proton and neutron, so we usually assume it is zero. It has a negative charge and it flies around the nucleus within a certain distance. That distance is determined by the energy level of the electron, and is a property of the electron we'll discuss in more detail later on. For now, realize that the electron does not orbit the nucleus like a planet, but instead is always within a certain range of the nucleus. An atom normally has the same number of electrons as it has neutrons, resulting in a neutral charge for the atom. If the atom gains or loses electrons, it acquires a negative or positive charge, and is called an ion.

So, the atom has electrons circling a nucleus which is made up of protons and neutrons. So, I have a question for you. What happens when you take two magnets, and hold the same poles together?

They fly apart, right? Well, particles with the same charge do the same thing. When you group a bunch of particles with the same charge together, they try to fly apart.

So, what is holding the nucleus together? It's a bundle of particles with the same charge and particles with no charge. It should fly apart all by itself.

It doesn't because there's another force at work, the nuclear force. (Actually, there are two forces, the strong and the weak nuclear forces, but that's beyond the scope of this post.) The nuclear force acts to hold the nucleus together, and is stronger than the electrostatic repulsion of the similar charges. When an atom splits, the energy that held the nucleus together, the binding energy, is released and that is the energy we call radiation.

The next question is how does this atom split, and that's what we'll address in the next post.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan as they begin the long recovery process after the earthquake/tsunami and deal with the complication of two nuclear power plants that were damaged. And while I share the sympathy expressed by so many others, I realized on my way home from work that here is where I can provide additional information that the MSM doesn't have the time, will, or knowledge to provide, and that is basic understanding of nuclear power, how it works, how the plants work, and a little bit about what is going on in Japan right now.

The purpose of any power plant is to convert energy from the form it is stored in to one that we can use, namely electricity. This is done by using a fuel to generate steam, which turns a turbine and generates electricity. So we're converting the energy from the fuel, to thermal energy, to physical energy, and then to electrical energy.

Coal or gas fired plants use chemical energy; solar generation plants do the same thing, harnessing the sun's thermal energy (PV cells are a different technology; rather than converting the sun's energy to thermal energy, they convert it directly to electric energy. More on those in another article.); wind plants harness physical energy, and a nuclear plant harness the power inside the atom. But all of them convert that energy to thermal energy, then to electrical energy.

The layout of a nuclear power plant is pretty straight forward. The reactor itself is staged inside a primary containment. The primary containment is built to contain any fuel or coolant leaks, preventing exposure to people outside the plant. The reactor is cooled by a constant flow of water. Relatively cool water, a few hundred degrees F, goes into the reactor core, where it is heated up while cooling the core. The hot water then goes to a steam generator, which uses the heat from the coolant to make high pressure steam. This steam then goes through a turbine generator. The steam spins the turbine, which is connected to a generator, making electricity. The steam then passes through a condenser, which cools it back down to water and is sent back to the steam generator.

There are other systems to control the reactor, maintain pressure, and other functions, as well as emergency response systems and emergency cooling systems, and I'll talk about those systems in a little more detail later. For now, the important thing to know is that while the Japanese plants are having problems, so far, the radiation levels and the contamination levels outside the plant are still well within safe limits. Not healthy limits, not optimum limits, and not what the plant designers wanted to see, but not Chernobyl like levels either. This despite the worst earthquake recorded in Japanese history, a 9.0 by the latest estimates, and a tsunami that devastated the nation.

While the situation is still developing, and things could very well get worse, the important thing to know is that we're a couple of days into the crisis, and things are still manageable. I'm not trying to soft-pedal the dangers ahead, or minimize the damage already done to the reactors, just pointing out that the emergency systems are doing a good job of containing the reactors, despite the massive failures due to the quake.

Pretty impressive engineering.

Next, we're going to dig deeper into where the energy in nuclear fuel comes from.

Stay tuned boys and girls. I'm just getting warmed up.

The monthly deficit for February was $222 billion dollars. And of that deficit, Republicans could only find about $10 billion to cut. That's embarrassing.

Sadly, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, the Democrats make the spendthrift Republicans look like valedictorians from Dave Ramsey's School of Financial Management. They said cutting anymore than $1 billion a month would be dangerous and irresponsible. I think putting either group in charge of any financial operation bigger than a corner lemonade stand is dangerous and irresponsible.

A few quick comments first.

• With labor union supporters swarming the state capitol, breaking into the building, blocking the doors to try and prevent the Assembly from meeting, death threats filed against Republican Senators and Assemblymen, violent rhetoric and calls for massive protests, we've discovered the new tone of civility sought by Democrats is based on the civility rampant in Paris during the French revolution.


• When Democrats leave the state to avoid losing a vote, abdicating their responsibility to the people who elected them, they are considered heroes. When Republicans use a legal procedure to pass the legislation anyway, they are tyrants.


• When a Republican proposes spending cuts to bring the state budget in line with other states, and collective bargaining rule changes that compare favorably to federal rules, he's a dictator on a level with Hitler. When a Democrat Senate proposes budget cuts of $10 billion over 6 months when the monthly deficit is $222 billion, they are called responsible.

It just goes to show that whether you're talking at a state level or a Federal level, Democrats cannot be taken seriously when it comes to balancing the budget. And before you come back at me saying that neither can republicans, I'll tell you right now that I agree with you. The only good thing I can say about Republicans is that fiscally, they aren't as bad as Democrats. Of course, that's like saying freezing to death is better then burning to death. Either way you're dead; one way just hurts less.

But that is why Wisconsin is a win, no matter what happens next. The people of Wisconsin voted for Walker and his fellow conservatives because they promised to do two things: ease unemployment and bring the budget under control. And that is exactly what Walker and the Republicans have done. One of his first acts in office was to create incentives for businesses to add workers. predictably, the left called these incentives tax cuts to the rich, but that's only because they didn't do them themselves. Had Democrats enacted identical legislation, they would have called it subsidizing job creation, and been happily holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

Next, Walker tackled the growing deficit by attacking the most out of control sector of public spending, salary and benefits for public workers. What most people don't realize, and the media sure as crap won't tell them, is that salary represents only a fraction of the cost of employment. Benefits make up a significant portion of the compensation package, and the public unions made sure that the package was lavish indeed. I'm ly not going into detail; it's available all over the net if you're interested, but public employees make significantly more than their private sector counterparts, and pay significantly less for their health care, pensions, and other benefits.

The reason they get such a sweetheart deal is clear; collective bargaining gives them an unfair advantage.

Here's how that looks. In a private union, management and labor each have their own agenda and they work to find a compromise that suits both sides. The two sides are completely independent with no conflict of interest. In a public service union, that isn't the case. Management, in this case, the legislators, is picked by labor. I know that if am going in to some tough negotiations, the ability to pick the guys on the other side of the table is nothing but good news for me. It becomes in his best interest to keep me happy or I may turn around and fire him.

This, plus all the federal regulations that give unions a tremendous advantage in collective bargaining results in what we're seeing in Wisconsin and many other states; underfunded pensions, rapidly escalating budget deficits and unhappy citizens who can't understand why their taxes keep going up while the service keeps going down. As long as public unions have this advantage, no matter what budget cuts the states pass, they will quickly find themselves back in the same hole. Scott Walker recognizes this, and is trying to implement a long term cost control solutions, one that will allow him to pay all the public employees, avoiding both lay-offs, and tax increases.

For this, the press and the teacher's unions call him Hitler.

Which tells me everything I need to know about the press and the teacher's union.

This is why even ardent labor supporters have been quoted as saying that public unions would never work. of course, that was back in the days when people actually gave a damn about the future, and thought that keeping the country viable was more important than lining their own pockets, when public service wasn't a euphemism for self service.

Today, that sentiment seems as outdated as stacked heels and polyester leisure suits.

Except now, Scott Walker has shown a streak of true public service. He did what he was elected to do, in the face of national opposition by trade unions, paid political hacks and the mainstream media, if I'm not being redundant there. He demonstrated a firm resolve to get the job done, a quality sadly lacking in most of our politicians, whose firm resolve lasts about as long as Hugh Hefner's after the Viagra wears off. But now, other states are following Walker's lead, passing short term fixes and long term solutions, giving me a faint hope that we just might slide through this crisis and remain solvent for another few years, at least long enough for me to get my garden fully established.

We'll just have to see how strong the push back is, and whether America is truly addicted to the hand out mentality.

Test 1...2...
Check...Check.

Wow, look at the dust!

Yeah, I know what I said, but there's just too much going on that's too important to just sit by quietly and let it happen.

The last time I posted here, I was tired of being angry at what I saw going on. I knew that nothing I said would make a difference, and that most of what I said was being said by other writers, and probably better, clearer, and certainly more concisely.

I've decided I don't care. There are certain things that need to be said, and if there's several of us saying it, then that just adds a bit more weight to what we say. besides, even though I consider America to be on an irreversible downward spiral into decadence, maybe, if we try hard enough, we can slow the inevitable decay down long enough for my kids and grandkids to have a shot at a decent life.

If nothing else, they'll know we tried.

So, hang on to your shorts. Shots is back!

If you haven't noticed yet, I'm posting here now.

I'm not done writing; I'm just not going to be doing it here.

I had my fill of writing about politics about a year before the election, but just when I said I was through, Democrats launched one of the most offensive smear campaigns I have seen in my life, targeting the Palin family for destruction. Democrat campaigners showed no honor, no respect,and no restraint as they attacked each and every member of that family.

It was a disgusting display of partisanship made worse by the fact that so-called moderate liberals did nothing, giving their tacit approval to the process.

And so I go fired up again. I dug into Obama's past political campaigns, his history as an executive, short lived and unsuccessful as it was. I learned that nobody should have been surprised at the treatment the Palin family got because that was the standard M.O. of the Obama political machine. His ascension to power was waged as a scorched earth campaign, regardless of the cost to others. As he said when questioned about the ethics of one of his early campaigns, he simply said,"If you can win, win."

I put that information out, and was met with a collective yawn.

The far left thought Obama's tactics were wonderful, while the moderate left (all two of them) were upset that I and others who were presenting the facts were "muckraking."

But I kept on, thinking in the back of my head that there were liberals out there who were interested in the facts, who could handle a debate, and could put together a sound argument that would explain their position in a rational manner.

I was wrong.

My mistake has been thinking that liberalism,or more properly, progressivism, is an ideology, as is conservatism. That is, an idea, based on facts and reason, useful for describing te behavior of a society, and the best manner of organizing that society. It isn't. It has more in common with religion than anything else, complete with hierarchy, a rigid orthodoxy, excommunication for dissenters,and an intolerance for questioning.

And you can't talk a man out of his religion. All you will do is piss him off.

The Nobel Peace Prize was the final straw. There is no rational way to defend giving it to President Obama. Not without debasing everything the Prize used to stand for. The Committee has said that they wanted to help shape the direction of American policy by giving the award to Obama. Many progressives find nothing wrong with that. But let's think about it for just a minute. Here we have an external group attempting to shift the course of American policy by giving an award to the sitting President.

Is it just me, or did the Nobel committee just try to buy off the US President?

And the progressives are okay with it. Of course, we know buying and paying for politicians is the Chicago way,but even in Chicago they try to be a little bit more subtle about it.

Putting the whole bribery thing aside, the act that many progressives,including people I know and respect, are so caught up in the idea of an Obama Presidency that even this farce, that tops Pia Zadora's Golden Globe and Milli Vanilli's Grammy, must be defended.

It's ludicrous

And then I see CNN running a fact checking story on a Saturday Night Live skit about Obama. Yeah, a real news organization investigating a comedy sketch show for factual references because they dared to poke fun at Obama.

That's scary. It's not surprising; after all, we've seen other news organizations target critics of President Obama, both before and after the election. What makes it scary is how few people seem to mind.

If they don't care, then why should I? As the progressive agenda is crammed down our throats over the next few years, and as people trade away basic rights and liberties in exchange for government supplied security, they will quickly learn that when you put your faith in men, you will always be greatly disappointed. And government is nothing but a group of men.

I'm out of the fight. Not because I somehow think I'm too good to get my hands dirty, or that I'm above the fray, or that I'm debating the issue on a higher plane. All that crap is nothing more than the loathsome lies of a man too cowardly to stand on his principles. Rather than choose to stand, he chooses to abandon principle in favor of a deluded sense of self aggrandizement, based on his supposed ability to stand above it all. To those, I simply leave the words of Rev 3:16;

So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

I'm out not because I refuse to commit but because the fight is lost. I used to hope that what I wrote might make a difference,even in a small way. I'm not egotistical enough to believe that I could change the course we're on, but that maybe I could contribute to a flood of writers that could energize people, get them involved, and maybe get this thing called Americaturned aroundand back on the right track. I no longer believe that can happen. I think it's too late.

Over a million people marched on Washington to demonstrate their anger at the course our government is taking. Most of these people had never demonstrated before in their lives. The march was a culmination of months of demonstrations and town hall meetings. meetings where the people spoke to their representatives, and voiced their concerns. And after this unprecedented display of grass roots activism, nothing has changed. The President claimed to be unaware of the march. The media downplayed it. The progressives caricatured the people,using offensive epithets to mock and demean the participants.

It was a shining moment, but it came too late. Most people are too ignorant or too apathetic to realize exactly where we are being taken by our dully elected government. (No, that isn't a misspelling.)

So, I'm not going to fight the tide anymore. We're going to get government health care whether we want it or not. That's the message Washington has sent and I'm getting it loud and clear. Cap and trade will pass as well, and I suspect Obama will then move on to education reform, to make sure he indoctrinates kids as quickly as possible. The world is sensing weakness, not just on the part of our President, although that's bad enough, but on the part of the American people, because we elected him. And folks, there's nothing worse than showing weakness to a pack of wolves. We're about to see the dollar fall like nothing anybody has ever seen before. We're about to see America become a laughingstock as our powerlessness is demonstrated over and over again. We're about to see Israel face extinction as she is hemmed in by enemies on every side, without the strong support of the United States.

We're about to see hard times like we've never seen before, and my efforts are going to be aimed at getting ready for them.

And that is what Stability For Our Time is all about. Isaiah 33:6 says that:

Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, And the strength of salvation; The fear of the LORD is His treasure.

I don't know about wisdom, but I do have a lot of knowledge. More importantly, I know here to find out things that I don't know, and I have the ability to help people understand these things. While the site is barely built and as ugly as the north end of a south bound mule, it is functional, and it's time I started using it .I'm sure that when she gets time,my lovely wife will drop in and spruce the place up a bit.

I'll still cover a lot of the same topics, but you can expect a lot more posts about what I'm doing, and why, and how, along with posts on natural philosophy, and most importantly, my journey as an awakened Christian. I also hope that as I purge the poison of politics from my veins, my sense of humor will return as well. I've been missing it.

And so, after 7 years, Shots Across the Bow is out of ammunition. The guns are silenced, but the ship is still afloat. I hope you all make the switch over to Stability, but more importantly, I am honored that so many of you have found my ramblings a worthy way to spend a little bit of your time.

Thank you.

Three times this season, the Vols have both shown their potential and fulfilled it. In the first game of the season, the dominated Western Kentucky, a weaker team. In the second, they went toe to toe with the Florida Gators, but losing. But now, the Vols have thoroughly beaten a quality team in the Georgia Bulldogs.

The players have demonstrated they have the talent to play with and beat just about any team in the SEC. Now it's up to the coaches to demonstrate that they have the ability to consistently get this team to perform up to their potential.

They'll have the chance to do just that in 2 weeks.

So, let me get this straight. The Milli Vanilli President was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after his two weeks in office for his efforts to reach out to America's enemies, who are now blasting the Nobel Prize committee (figuratively,not literally...yet) for giving him the award for reaching out to him. Meanwhile, the DNC is charging anyone who comments on the idiocy of giving him the prize a few months later with being in league with America's enemies.

While it's nice to see the DNC finally recognizing that America has enemies, they are sounding just like the Bush administration. "If you don't honor the President for this empty achievement, then you are aligned with terrorists."

What a bunch of hypocrites.

How is a Nobel Peace Prize like a Grammy?

Apparently you can win either one without actually doing anything as long as you look good while not doing it.

UPDATE: Thanks to the folks who let me know that writing a post at 1AM can lead to mistakes, like misidentifying the offensive coordinator. Obviously, Ed Orgeron is not the offensive coordinator. I've made the appropriate corrections.

No, that wasn't a typo.

After four games, I've seen enough to make this simple declaration. The Vols will never be a top tier team in the SEC with Lane Kiffin as head coach.

Here's why.

The Vols were out coached on both sides of the ball today, but in the end, they played well enough that they had a shot to win. Monte Kiffin's crew gave up big play after big play all night long, but they played well on the goal line, forcing the Tigers to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns. Ed OrgeronJim Chaney's offense, well, let's just say that the only thing Tennessee had fired up on the field was the batons at halftime. Jonathon Crompton was off target for most of the night, and when he chanced to hit a receiver in the hands, they dropped the ball.

Probably from shock.

But the Vols stayed in the game, mainly through the sheer physical talent of Montario Hardesty and Eric Berry.

Tennessee was trailing by 17 with just over 11:00 to go in the 4th quarter when Hardesty caught a Crompton pass and wiggled his way 31 yards into the end zone for a touchdown. The defense forces Auburn into a three and out, and the Vols had the ball and just over nine minutes left in the game. They needed two scores, so clock management was critical. The offense responded, driving the ball methodically up the field, until they had the ball first and goal. The drive had taken 4 minutes off the clock, and the Vols ran three plays but couldn't get the score.

It was 4th and goal from the 10, and there was about four and a half minutes to go in the game. The drive had eaten up over five minutes, meaning that there wasn't enough time left for them to get back into this position again. Kicking a field goal would give all the advantage to Auburn, since all they would have to do is hold the ball for a couple of minutes and then punt, robbing Tennessee of the time needed to score again. Going for it and making it, on the other hand, gave Tennessee more ways to win. If Auburn took the ball on their next possession, and Tennessee held them to a field goal, the Vols would still only need one score to tie or win.

By going for the touchdown, Tennessee would give themselves more chances to win. By kicking the field goal, they would give Auburn more chances to win. This was the call Lane Kiffin had to make, and he blew it. He chose the field goal, conceding the game with over four minute to go. Auburn drove the length of the field, kicking a field goal and putting the game out of reach.

Lane Kiffin didn't give his team a chance to win.

Monte Kiffin adjusted his defense and managed to contain the Tigers as well as could be expected. Ed OrgeronJim Chaney, despite the bad passes and dropped balls, managed to put enough points on the board to keep the Vols in the game. But when the pressure was on, when Lane Kiffin had a choice to either play to win or play not to lose badly, he folded. He opted to play it safe, take the points he could, and try not to lose too badly.

You don't win games in the SEC coaching like that.

Playing to win is not something you can teach a coach. It's a character thing; you either have it or you don't, and Lane Kiffin doesn't. He may be a fine assistant coach, or position coach, but he doesn't have what it takes to be a head coach.

On Friday, Paul borrowed $50 from Stanley and promised to pay him back the next Tuesday. After a crazy weekend, Paul was flat broke, but he knew Stanley would kick the crap out of him if he didn't get his money,so he went to Peter and borrowed $50 to pay Stanley, promising to pay him back on Friday.

Well, Friday rolled around, and Paul was still broke, and being rather fond of knees that bent in only one direction, and knowing that Peter would enjoy altering that natural limitation of motion, Paul went back to Stanley and borrowed $50, promising to pay him back on Tuesday.

This cycle repeated itself for a few weeks, with Paul borrowing from Stanley to pay Peter and vice versa, until they all three met in a bar on Wednesday.

Paul said, "Peter, you know that I'm going to borrow $50 from you on Tuesday so I can pay back Stanley, right?"

Peter said,"Yep." Peter is a man of few words.

Then Paul said,"Stanley, you know that I'm going to borrow $50 from you on Friday so I can pay Peter back, right?"

Stanley merely grunted, being a man of even fewer words than Peter.

Then Paul said, "Well, since you both know that I'm going to be borrowing $50 from you to pay the other, why don't you just trade $50 back and forth between the two of you and leave me out of this?"

That used to be a funny joke until the Obama administration started using that same process to prop up our banking system.

By the way, those of you from Tennessee remember Jake Butcher, who ran a similar scam with his banks. He went to prison, and a lot of people lost their life savings in the ensuing collapse.

But hey, it might work out better this time, right?