Open Eyes, Insert Icepick

Imagine for a moment that you’re a member of a political party – let’s call it the Good Party – and you’ve been in power for eight years, led by an elegant and sophisticated President who has done many great and wonderful things. Now it’s election season, and the Good Party has put up as its candidate a woman with vast amounts of political experience, though she admittedly lacks the charm and charisma of the sitting POTUS. Still, all she has to do to continue the Good Party’s legacy of doing great and wonderful things is to beat the candidate of the opposing political party – let’s call it the Bad Party – which wants to do trivial and awful things, so it goes without saying it must be defeated.

Happily, the Bad Party has nominated a complete oaf as their standard bearer. He is rich, loud, and stupid. He’s a braggart. He has weird hair. And, most appalling and revealing of all, he comes out of the gate filled with hatred and invective against Muslims and Mexicans and all things foreign. Such a terrible human being MUST be defeated, and because of his obvious shortcomings, that should be a fairly easy task.

Then the unthinkable happens. Against all odds, the Bad Party’s candidate wins the general election. As a member of the Good Party, you ask yourself how this could have happened. And the answer is self-evident: he must have cheated.

In fact, it’s the ONLY possible explanation. It couldn’t be because the Bad candidate outworked and out-thought and out-maneuvered the Good candidate. It couldn’t be because he spent far less money, because the party that spends the most money almost always wins elections. It couldn’t be because he had a message that resonated with voters, unless they were as stupid and awful as he was, which a lot of them were, but not all of them, like college educated white women, who, for unfathomable reasons, voted for the oaf and not the history-making female. It couldn’t be because a vast number of Americans were just sick and tired of being looked down at by the smugly complacent media elites who openly rooted for the Good Party and called the Bad Party candidate and his supporters every unflattering name in the book. And it couldn’t be because this totally unqualified Bad Party candidate outlined a clear plan of what he wanted to do if he won, because the stupid and bigoted morons who make up the Bad Party base don’t understand or care about the nuances of policy-making, so busy are they swilling crappy domestic beer, shooting off guns, and having sex with barnyard animals.  

So The Big Orange Clown Douchebag must have cheated. (That’s the ticket. And if he didn’t actually cheat, he probably wanted to. That’s the kind of disgusting person he is.) So let’s follow the logic. Cheating usually implies an act that’s also criminal, so we now have a criminal occupying the White House, which is very very bad for the Republic. The exact nature of his criminality can’t yet be known in any great detail, but we know that it exists, somewhere – an intercepted phone call… “Vlad, this is Jered Kushner, calling with an interesting proposition from the President Elect”… or maybe photographs of the President Elect’s daughter talking to a Russian nanny… or… something. Evidence of criminal activity must exist, and if we can’t find any actual evidence of wrongdoing, it’s not because it doesn’t exist. It’s because we haven’t looked hard enough.

So… what to do about it? A man that you KNOW, deep in your heart, is a criminal and quite possibly insane, is inaugurated. And that’s unacceptable. That cannot stand.  He’s not your President. He’s illegitimate, a make-believe “President” who must be stopped before it’s too late.

RESIST! RESIST! RESIST! Those are the fighting words that make the rounds in your pea-sized brain. Resist, because you have no ideas. Resist, because you have no Good Party candidates sitting on the bench who might stand a chance in the next election. Resist, because being more virtuous than thou is the sine que non of the Progressive identity. Resist, with your ironic pink pussy hats and your marches, and if a couple of store windows get broken, it’s completely understandable, because the horrid new “President” is such a polarizing figure he evokes hatred even in the purest of hearts.

Perhaps you hoped that all that marching and protesting and resisting would cause the “President” to reconsider, to realize he was in way over his head and resign, you know, for the good of the country. But of course he didn’t do that, because he doesn’t care about the country. He only cares about himself.

Fortunately, the Constitution gives you a way to get rid of a big fat stupid liar misogynist pig “President” who doesn’t care about the country and only cares about himself. It’s called IMPEACHMENT. With the Bad Party now in control of both Houses of Congress, impeaching the “President” will be difficult, but not impossible. If the electorate can be convinced the “President” is an incompetent boob, being investigated for colluding with the Russians to throw the election in his favor; if the media continues to examine every single POTUS misstep – and there will be many – with the intensity of Watergate or the Warren Commission; if every news show on the fake “President” lards every story on his actions with words like blunder, bungle, blooper, botch, gaffe, treason, collusion, conspiracy, Russia, racist, impeachment, chaos, lies, failure, fiasco, impeachment, white supremacy, amateur, Putin, impeachment; if every executive appointment is slow-walked; if every legislative proposal put forward by the Bad Party is ridiculed and lied about and obstructed; if every success is ignored or impugned; if all this can be accomplished without ever resorting to actual facts or evidence, maybe you’re on to something.

Maybe you can break away a fraction of the drooling illiterate Red State dopes who voted for the Bad Party and convince them to vote for the Good Party by sheer repetition of unsubstantiated and ultimately trivial charges. Maybe by pointing to falling poll numbers you can unnerve a dozen Bad Party congressmen and a half-dozen senators into voting for articles of impeachment, and get rid of the fake “President” in a constitutional way.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s always rioting and looting and stamping your feet, holding your breath, and shooting the occasional Bad Party Congressman.

Because, you know, love trumps hate.

The Voice

It comes on at noon EST, and for the next three hours it spreads like a balm over listeners desperate to hear a little reason and a good dose of common sense in this hour of national need.

It’s a baritone voice, with that easy Midwestern accent that has made fortunes for performers like Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and David Letterman. An American voice, from the middle of the country where politics plays very little role in everyday life, which is how most of the folks who live in flyover country like it. But for those listeners who feel that something creepy and awful may be overtaking our beloved land of the free and home of the brave, those three hours spent with The Voice on a weekday afternoon offer a bracing reaffirmation of what it is that has made America such a swell place to live.

Regular listeners know what they’re in for: three hours of brilliant commentary on the state of the nation and the world, delivered with confidence, humor, and perhaps most important, love. The host behind the voice takes very few callers a day, but those that do make it through are treated with unfailing politeness, even when the caller is taking issue, sometimes heatedly, with the host. (I’m convinced that part of the reason for his success is that in this polarized age where vitriol seems to be the tonic of the times, The Voice always comes across as measured, curious, and tolerant. On a broadcast last year, The Voice referred to transgendered persons as “trannies.” A transgendered caller quickly informed The Voice that the term “tranny” was offensive, and explained why. There followed five minutes of very civil and interesting dialogue between the two, at the end of which The Voice said he wouldn’t be using the word tranny anymore; and because he’s a man of his word, he hasn’t in any of the subsequent broadcasts I’ve listened to.)

But the main attraction is this: his intelligence. Even people who would vociferously disagree with the opinions being expressed by The Voice would have to agree, after listening to an hour or so of commentary, that this is one smart dude. He is widely and deeply read on almost any subject you’d care to name, from the role of the Hanseatic League in building a mercantile economy to the latest Apple product. But for the most part, The Voice talks about politics, and he expresses his ideas with such clarity and honesty that listening to him can become an addiction – just ask his millions of devoted followers.

You’ve probably guessed his name by now – a name synonymous on the left with bile, hatred, intolerance, phobias of every description, bullying, arrogance, grotesque awfulness, blind partisanship, and just about every bad and terrible adjective you can dream up. But here’s the problem: the left is 180 degrees wrong about The Voice, as they are 180 degrees wrong about almost everything. Why? Because they have never listened to The Voice, just as they’ve never actually listened to anyone who disagrees with them. In reality, you’d have to look long and hard before finding a national political commenter who exhibits more empathy or more compassion for the downtrodden and forgotten Americans in our age of globalization than the man who is routinely described as a hater; but because the left doesn’t require actual facts before holding grimly onto a baseless opinion, they can say whatever they want about their adversaries without raising an eyebrow among their fellow delusionals.  

Don’t believe me? Then try this experiment: if you know any conservatives, ask them to list ten things progressives believe, and within thirty seconds you’ll have a list that any progressive will agree reflects his/her/zir beliefs. On the other hand, ask a progressive what conservatives believe, and after a minute or two of panicked inactivity, the progressive will make a list of opinions that absolutely no conservative subscribes to.

Why the disparity? Because conservatives LIVE in a progressive environment. We see, hear, feel, and touch it every day – in our schools, our news, our movies, our TV shows, our social media. And the result of this one-sidedness is that we know you guys inside out, while you know next to nothing about us. You don’t know what we think or what we believe, and you have no clue at all WHY we believe or think the way we do. And you don’t really care to know. It’s much easier to believe that conservatives are just too mean-spirited and stupid to see the error of their ways.

And this blindness (and deafness) to the merits of the other side is why you lost the last presidential election and will certainly lose the next one. You lost because you live in a bubble. And not just any bubble. You inhabit a 24/7 echo chamber, where all you hear are your own prejudices and sophomoric platitudes (“Democracy Dies in Darkness” “The Audacity of Hope”) bouncing back at you.

Meanwhile, for three hours a day, those of us who live in the real world can listen to The Voice – calming, soothing, elucidating, encouraging – reminding those of us trapped among the coastal elites that reason and good-humored thoughtfulness are still very much alive out there in flyover country.

Megadittos, Rush. And thank you.

Boys and Guns

So a five year old boy got busted at his local elementary school for carrying a (capless) cap gun to school, where he spent TWO HOURS (really?!) being questioned by the authorities (what in the name of God were they asking him??!!) during which the poor kid peed his pants.

Things sure have changed since I was a kid, when walking around with a cap gun and holster were practically required for all boys under the age of twelve (when you graduated to a real .22).

I only have one photo of this dangerous period in my life (that's me with the bad haircut next to my younger brother, who is holding the family BB gun next to his leg) and I guess I'm kind of happy that there were no iphones around to capture me at the age of six, when I found three Nazi daggers buried under my porch while living in postwar Germany and strapped all of them on and rode my bike around the neighborhood waving them at any German kid I came across.

A scofflaw like me would never have made it out of that principal's office...

Torture

The Left can be so dense sometimes. Take the Average Progressive Position (APP) on torture. Every conversation you have with them on this subject ends up going something like this:

PROGRESSIVE:  Torture is terrible.
CONSERVATIVE:  Yes it is.
PROGRESSIVE:  So why don’t you denounce it?
CONSERVATIVE:  Because it sometimes provides useful information that may help protect us in the future.
PROGRESSIVE:  No it doesn’t! Torture doesn’t work!
CONSERVATIVE:  Yes it does. We can point to many specific instances where torturing someone saved lives.
PROGRESSIVE:  No you can’t! It’s a lie! It’s been scientifically proven that torture doesn’t work!

For most of us, this is where the conversation ends. Because, of course, Progressives are perfectly correct in saying that IF torture never produces useful intelligence, THEN there’s no reason to torture anyone.

No reason save one. The conversation continues:

CONSERVATIVE:  So if it doesn’t work, why have we been torturing people?
PROGRESSIVE:  Because you’re sadists!

Let’s pause for a moment and review how perfectly this fits into the left’s Narrative.  Because it’s been scientifically proven that torture doesn’t work, the only possible reason for torturing anyone is to get a sadistic pleasure out of it. Bush and Cheney probably watched the videos while they jacked off!

Obviously the conversation can’t move forward. The problem with torture is that it DOES work sometimes. It saves lives sometimes. And we know this, dare I say it, scientifically.  That is, the EVIDENCE supports the contention that torture sometimes produces useful information that saves lives. By choosing to ignore the evidence, leftists can assume the position on the high moral ground where they prefer to live. But we conservatives, being swamp creatures, face a real dilemma -- whether torture is worth the price (and there IS a price) we pay for information gained from such an awful practice.

Thought Experiment #1

Imagine that you brought all the millionaires in America out to some fantastic outdoor location for a weekend. And imagine that you fed them a generosity drug, and that by Sunday every single millionaire had signed over to you every single dollar they owned – roughly $25 trillion – and then went away whistling and happy and broke. (The only thing they get to keep is their homes, cars, yachts, jets, etc)  You now have $25 trillion – about a third of all the wealth in America.

And you've decided to give all that money to the poor. Because, you know, fairness.

Now – figuring that the poor would rather get a check than a dry cleaning establishment in Toledo – how to convert that $25 trillion into cash? One of the things you haven’t really had time to delve into is economics. To the extent you’ve given it any thought at all, you kind of figured that the rich kept all their money in vaults full of $100 bills. The news that it is messily tied up in various businesses, stocks, bonds, and real estate is depressing. And when your accountants mention something about a “BUYER’S MARKET” at a time when you have to SELL everything, and that this will shrink your $25 trillion stash down to somewhere in the neighborhood of  $15 trillion, you begin to understand why Hayek said, “"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."  

But let’s pretend that you can actually sell $25 trillion worth of stuff and walk away from the table with $25 trillion. Cool. Now all you have to do is figure out exactly who the poor are who will get all this money. You know, names and addresses and suchlike. And how about the amount on the check? Do you want to give the poorest the most, or everybody the same amount? Do you include illegal aliens? Felons? Should blacks get more than whites? Should whites get anything at all? What about Native Americans? These seem like fair questions and you want to be fair above all else. So you put a bunch of experts in a room and you ask them to come up with a plan that will be fair and balanced and do the most good for the most people, while you have a martini. You can afford it. After all, you’re a trillionaire.

And either the experts come up with something or they don’t. (Hayak would say it is impossible for them to come up with something that works.)  But let’s say they come up with something, and let’s pretend it will work. In some way or other, your plan will divide $25 trillion by some number of poor people. How many and who are troublesome details, but let’s say you decide to give everyone who makes under $40,000 a year an equal share. You figure out that there are 25 million American adults who fall into that income range. Divide your $25 trillion stash by 25 million poor Americans, and each of them gets $1 million! 

So, on a Wednesday morning, 25 million poor Americans wake up and find a check for a million bucks in their mailbox or slipped under their door. Talk about equality and fairness! Talk about stimulus! 

So let’s imagine what’s likely to happen under the BEST of circumstances. Well, in the real world, there might be some carping from some of these new millionaires when they realize the feds have a claim on about 40% of their million, leaving them with a mere $600,000. And there might be a little envy and some hurt feelings from the father and mother of five who both work hard at menial jobs, earned $41,000, and now watch their neighbors in the crackhouse across the street buying BMW’s and flatscreen TVs. But let’s pretend they just bite their tongues and go on working without causing a fuss. What will be the impact on the rest of us?

The good news: there will be a boom in certain parts of the economy. The luxury car and home market will explode. So will high end clothing and jewelry, yachts, private jets – there’s a whole new set of millionaires to satisfy. The bad news: most of the rest of us would lose our jobs because the rich people who were paying us are now poor and can't afford us any more.       

Now let’s close our eyes and imagine that five years have passed. Imagine what the lives of those new millionaires have now become. How many of them will have used that original stake and parlayed it into more millions by opening a dry cleaning store or a pizza shop or any other legitimate business? How many will have used it to get their kids into a school where they might actually learn something? How many of them will still be millionaires?

Certainly a few of this new crop of millionaires will use their money to improve their lives by investing rather than spending. But how many? 5%? 10%? We can’t know the answer, but a look at what happens to people who win million dollar lotteries isn’t encouraging (over 50% end up broke within five years), nor is the example of professional athletes who actually EARNED their millions (60% of NBA players and nearly 80% of NFL players file for bankruptcy within five years of their retirement).

Now ask yourselves: in that same five years since they were impoverished, how many FORMER millionaires (the ones who took the generosity drug and gave all their money to you) have become millionaires again?

Contrast and Compare: Which group -- FORMER or NEWLY CREATED MILLIONAIRES -- will have the most millionaires five years down the road?

Does your answer suggest any larger point?

Discuss.

A Question of Candy

Imagine that you are a student in Ms. Applegate’s first grade classroom, along with 29 other kids. And Ms. Applegate tells you it’s the tradition at Adams Elementary for all the kids to bring in their Halloween treats to show off to the other kids on the first Monday after trick-or-treat. Because it turns out THERE’S A CONTEST between Ms. Applegate’s class and Mr. Bucktooth’s class, and whichever class collects the most candy WINS!

So the day after Halloween all the kids bring their candy to school. Fat Howie has 265 candies, and you know for a fact that he didn’t even go out trick-or-treating because he’s a lardass who spends all day watching TV. However, his father owns a candy store. And the Baker twins collected 320 pieces between them by working hard and double shifting. And so on down the line, everyone with more or less candy depending on how hard they worked, where they lived, and who their father is.

At the very bottom of the list are three kids with zero pieces of candy on their desks. When Ms. Applegate asks them why they didn’t bring any candy, one kid says he forgot, another says he had to work in his father’s tienda that night, and another kid says he don’t need no stinking Halloween. 

To remedy this inequity, Ms. Applegate says she has a Wonderful Idea! We’re going to put all the candy in one big pile, and then we’re going to Divide It Up Equally! Everyone in favor of that great idea raise their hands!  And almost every kid in the classroom raises their hand, including you, even though you calculate that you’ll leave the class with fewer candies than you came with. But it’s all worth it because IT’S FAIR!

Now here’s the question: next year, will Ms. Applegate’s 2^ndgraders bring in more candy or less candy than they did this year? Is there any way to know for sure? Does human nature make any difference in carrying out Wonderful Ideas?

Discuss.

An Imaginary Walkabout for Progressives

I know you hate math, and budgets, and anything to do with money. But humor me, and pretend for a moment that you’re a FINANCIAL ADVISER and I come to you with the following problem:

ME: Hi. My name is Sam and I need some financial advice.

YOU:  Hey there Sam. Tell me what seems to be the problem.

ME: People tell me I’m spending too much money. I don’t really believe them and I know that I’m spending it on good things, but I said I’d seek out some independent advice and here I am.

YOU:  What sort of business are you in, Sam?

ME: Mainly charity. I give things away to people who need it. Old people, sick people, kids. So it’s not really a business per se.

YOU:  I can see how it might not generate a lot of income. So tell me. Where does your income come from?

ME: I have a bunch of nephews. Some of them are rich. Filthy rich.

YOU:  And these nephews give you money?

ME: You got it. Well, about half of them do.

YOU:  So. Let’s talk numbers.

ME: Must we? I hate all that abstract stuff. I don’t see why you can’t just say that what I’m doing with the money is good and noble and forget about the old balance sheet for once.

YOU:  I’m sure what you’re doing is good and noble. But financial advice is all about balance sheets. Your income minus your expenses. That kind of thing. Let’s start with last year. What was your income?

ME: $23,000.

YOU:  And your expenses.

ME: $36,000.

YOU:  So you spent $13,000 more than you took in.

ME: If you say so.

YOU:  And where did you get the $13,000 to continue your charitable work?

ME: I borrowed it.

YOU:  Ah. So you’re $13,000 in debt.

ME: I have the figures in this file somewhere. Umm, let’s see. Here it is. Yep, $13,000 from last year.

YOU:  Sounds like there may have been some borrowing before last year.

ME: Oh yeah.

YOU:  How much?

ME: Here it is. $160,000.

YOU:  Wait a minute. You owe $160,000?

ME: I guess. Whatever you say. Like I mentioned before, I’m not all that cozy with numbers.

YOU:  Well, Sam. I don’t want to alarm you. But I’m not sure I understand how you can ever pay back the $13,000 you borrowed last year much less the 160 grand you already owe without a significant – and I do mean significant – increase in your revenues or cuts in your spending.

ME: That’s why I’m here, babe. You’re the expert. But let’s not talk about cutting my spending. I can’t do that. I’ve promised people a lot of nice things and I don’t intend to disappoint them.

YOU:  But –

ME: Let’s talk revenue. I keep thinking the way to go is squeeze those rich nephews of mine a little tighter. Right now they only give me about a third of what they rake in. I pushed them up to 40% last year but it didn’t produce the revenue stream I’d hoped for. In fact, let's see... it brought in $800 extra dollars.

YOU:  Hmmm. That would still leave you $12,200 short.  For last year alone.

ME: Tell me about it. But here’s the thing: those suckers couldn't have made it without my help, so how about a little payback? You’d think they’d be grateful but one of them moved to the Caymans without giving me a dime. I’m thinking I should just put a gun to their heads and take it all before the rest of them skedaddle.

YOU:  And how much would that be in dollars? If you took it all.

ME: About thirteen grand. It’s perfect. I take their dough and pay off last year’s debt. Problem solved.

YOU:  For last year’s debt, maybe. But what about next year? 

ME: What about it?

YOU:  Well, do you think they’ll be likely to work next year if you took all their money this year? I’m thinking it might be a disincentive of sorts. Being selfish, they’ll either stop working or move to the Caymans. And there’s still the matter of the $160,000 you owe. How are you going to pay that off – especially after you run out of nephews.

ME: You tell me. That’s what I’m here for.

YOU:  It can’t be done. 

ME:  Darn.

YOU:  You don’t seem too worried.

ME: I’m not. I forgot to mention one little thing.

YOU:  What’s that?

ME: I have a money printing press in my basement.


NOTE: all the figures used here are proportional to the real revenue & expense of Uncle Sam and all his "rich" contributors, minus a bunch of zeroes. Thus, our $16 trillion in debt becomes $160,000, our revenue of $2.3 trillion becomes $23,000, etc. Now look at those figures and tell me there's another way out besides the printing press.

John Galt Lite

Maybe it’s time to go rope-a-dope. Maybe this is the moment for Boehner to call a news conference on the steps of the capitol, with all House and Senate Republicans clustered behind him, to say something like:  “Fellow Americans. We are here to congratulate the President and the Democrat party and the media for their election victory. For the past four years, we’ve been warning you that our ship of state is about to hit a fiscal iceberg. To make our case, we bombarded you with numbers, because numbers are the only way to calculate the distance between us and the iceberg. What we forgot is that most democrats and most media members neither like nor understand math, so all those numbers we were throwing out might as well have been Chinese.

The numbers also failed to make an impression on the Captain we elected four years ago, which isn’t surprising when you consider that he had never steered anything bigger than a rowboat on a pond in his life. And yet, last Tuesday, after four years of meandering at half-speed towards the ice field, the children in America reelected him, because he was cool, and hip, and because he promised us more candy from the inexhaustible candy tree our forefathers planted a couple of centuries ago.       

Now, as conservatives, we face a dilemma. Unlike the rest of the electorate, we understand numbers. We know the candy tree isn’t inexhaustible. We can do the math. And the math tells us we’re heading straight towards a great big iceberg, which we’ll hit in about five years – at the latest. So – and this is the question all conservatives are wrestling with – what are we to do? 

One option is to get up there on the bridge, argue with the captain, and try to slow the ship down. To many of us, that seems like the responsible thing to do. But here on the Titanic, being responsible is considered unhip and uncool, and we know we’ll be blamed for the inevitable collision.  “Those idiot Republicans.  Our fearless Captain was steering just fine before they butted in and threw him off course.”  All those bodies floating around in the cold sea?  Our fault. Obstructionism. Same as it ever was.

So we’ve made a decision – not an easy one for those of us who love our imperfect country almost beyond imagining.  It’s this:  We’re done. We’re sick and tired of being your convenient piñata when things go into the toilet, as they tend to do when children are in control.  No, we’re not going to go John Galt on America.  We know there are no hidden valleys out there in Colorado.  But, after considerable debate, we’ve decided to follow option number two – call it Going John Galt Lite.  We grownups are just going to sit back in our deck chairs and watch the children run the ship into the ice. Yep. You heard correctly. Bring any bill you want to the Congress and we’ll all do what our Captain has done so successfully throughout his career. We’ll vote present, and allow you to raid our empty treasury to your heart’s content.

You want more candy?  Grab all the fucking candy you can eat. Higher taxes on the rich?  You got it. Nothing like a depression to sharpen the senses. Fast track for Obamacare?  Let’s accelerate that sucker so the wait time for an MRI or a hernia operation is a couple of months by 2016. Amnesty for illegal aliens?  No problemo. Let’s open the borders tomorrow and get those welfare and Medicaid rolls fattened up pronto. Sixteen years of unemployment benefits?  $50 dollar minimum wage?  Send us the bill.  We’ll just roll our eyes and vote present. After all, you’ve told us we have enough candy in America to feed the whole world.

Are you with us so far?  Maybe even salivating a bit?  Excellent.  But we’re not total idiots.  We do want something in return.  Two things, actually.  First, we want you to give us back our Second Amendment rights – you know, the “shall not be infringed” part – so we can protect our families and the little property we have left when the food riots start and the long knives are being sharpened.  And, second, we want you to give us veto power over future Supreme Court nominees on the off chance the country survives long enough to have a future.     

History tells us that there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship – not even this magnificent vessel our forefathers built and handed down to us. And hindsight tells us that if the Titanic had rammed the iceberg head on, it would have stayed afloat.  For the last four years, we’ve tried to wrestle the wheel away from our teenaged Captain and his adoring crew of nincompoops, and it hasn’t worked.  Can’t work, maybe.  So it’s time to try something new – like sitting in our deck chairs reading the Federalist papers while the band plays Amazing Grace.  And we have a megaphone.  Iceberg approaching.  Wear a warm coat. 

Will it work?  We have no idea. It depends on the other passengers. Thank you and goodbye.”