Blessed Are the Thrifty...

Thrift (also known by its broader name, Temperance)as a virtue ~ a notion familiar to the ancient Greeks, Buddhists and Catholics ~ an idea whose time has returned. That idea is a real hard-sell in post Great Depression era America. A 55 year old boomer, I have watched over my entire life as the buy-now-pay-later hucksters have quietly seized, gagged and bound our entire economy. I've watched people abuse credit card debt, bankruptcy laws and their fellow man at an ever-increasing rate, to the point that a fellow of my acquaintance who shall remain nameless, astounded our entire family and many of his friends and former colleagues and clients, by filing for bankruptcy over his credit card bills. He had the wherewithal to pay them having both an income in the high 60K range and having come into some money near the 200K range. But he chose not to. He made a calculated and more or less rational decision to leave the credit card company holding the bag and his fellow Americans making up the difference in increased interest rates, or fees, or however the credit companies figure such things. Billions upon billions in "bailout" cash, hot off the presses, and Ponzi schemes as a Wall Street fact of life based on pure greed and the fable of "something for nothing", all point like a smoking crater to a meteor crash site to the absolute requisite return of thrift and temperance.

Be sure and click on over and read the whole thing ~

From John Zmirak at Taki's magazine:
QUOTE People say that the best cure for a hangover is a hair of the dog that bit you. The people who say that are typically alcoholics. They’re using the logic of an addict, whose reason has been fried by a short-circuit in the pleasure-centers of the brain. Such people think it’s funny when they fall down at a parish Christmas party (even if they’re the Monsignor), when they puke on your champagne colored carpet (“Good thing that’s what I was drinking!”), when they shout some slur that gets you into a fight with numerous ethnic strangers—and they’ll probably think it’s funny when, one morning in the shower, their liver slides out of their ass.

And that, boys and girls, is what happened to our economy. As it lies there on the porcelain, we want to pick it up and put it back but we’re scared it might just dissolve. Anyway, the process would probably hurt. Do we really need it?

But that’s really what it means, when the Magi of either party discuss the need for an “economic stimulus,” or financial journalists worry about the decline in consumer spending—by consumers who are losing their jobs. Just to break things down: This winter our country crashed into a wall because of our addiction to spending money we haven’t got for stuff we don’t need. We overdosed, ran through our stash, and now we’re thrashing around in a cold turkey withdrawal—but here comes that nice man with the methadone…. UNQUOTE

Stewart & Zmirak Deconstruct GOP VP Nominee

From John Zmirak in Taki's Magazine (see yesterday's post on this "Read of the Week")

QUOTE
While Palin’s talk took some delightful shots at the inflatable Superman balloon that is Obama, her positive program boiled down to little more than the following:

Support our troops.
Defeatists, go home to Hanoi.
I love my kids.
My husband is a real man.
Harry Truman was unqualified, too.
I may be much hotter than your wife, but I can be just as scary.
USA! USA! USA! USA!
Small town good, big town bad.
Power corrupts, so give some to me.
Who needs beaches or seafood? Let’s drill for some oil, baby!
The Iranians are holding our people hostage.
The Russians are coming.
Barak Obama blathers on and on about himself. I blather about my children.
Obama is skinny, pale, and weak. He went to Harvard, for crying out loud.
America doesn’t negotiate with foreigners.
It isn’t just Republicans who can’t stand John McCain. Some Democrats hate him, too.
Only veterans and torture victims can really be trusted.
So let’s draft half the country, and send the rest to Gitmo.

I wasn’t entirely swayed by this analysis.

UNQUOTE

Me either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the Rez With Zmirak

God is good, he has writers like John Zmirak over at Taki's Magazine who still have wit and a sense of what is right. God bless you, Mister Zmirak.

I feel you, man, truly I do. Yeppers.

I know I always say this, but really, really, be sure and click over to read it all. You'll be glad you did. Me Vote Pretty This Time is the read of the week.

QUOTE I also forgot to watch either party’s national convention. Just plain missed ‘em. Perhaps I have been in denial, avoiding the fact that our nation’s choices boil down to a Chicago “community activist” (i.e., ghetto shakedown artist who mau-maus Whitey for handouts) and a crackbrained Deer Hunter nostalgist whose vision of America is one vast and well-policed Navy base… where we all march in formation, pick up cigarette butts when ordered, and ask our commanders for “liberty”—which they’ll grant us one weekend per month.

Yes, the outcome of the primaries left me feeling… disenfranchised. To the point where I’ve found myself checking on my passport, to make sure I’m still an American—and wondering if I won’t someday end up on a reservation for white, blue-collar Catholics. Where, of course, we will offer bingo. UNQUOTE
a a a

None of Our Beeswax

Washington has a bad habit of making murky, contradictory statements that can lead to unnecessary unpleasantness that can last for decades. From Taki's Mag by John Zmirak, who also notes that it is the Eastern Orthodox who are energetically offing each other in Georgia.

QUOTE It’s tragic to see Orthodox Christians killing each other, especially in a region where they were once jointly persecuted by an atheist dictatorship. We should all pray for peace in Georgia. That said, it’s satisfying to see Vladimir Putin resist the irresponsible--indeed, insane--attempt by West to encircle his country with client states--with the goal of joining them all, through NATO, to the U.S. in a war alliance. Make no mistake, if American interventionists had gotten their way and already incorporated Georgia into NATO, we would now be at war with a nuclear-armed Russia. UNQUOTE

cccccccccccccccc