tfl: The Flatiron Life

Literally. An expansion of the ADA went into effect Jan 1 and declares many (millions?) Americans as disabled. I am willing to bet many of you are disabled now. Congratulations?

I hope everyone is having a great new year. Now it is time to get back to work. Remember, you generally don’t have to beg people to buy things they want. Just a little tip I have to help you survive they recession.

Merry Christmas from the Tomaws. I pray that you find and share Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

40 years ago today, Man, for the first time, lost sight of Earth, as Apollo 8 went around to the dark side of the moon. As a Christmas message, I share the video and transcript of this mission’s moving Christmas message.

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts; Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders did a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon seen from Apollo 8. Lovell said, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

William Anders:

“For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you”.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Jim Lovell:

“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

Frank Borman:

“And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”

Borman then added, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.”

Laura Meckler in the WSJ backs me up on the czar issue. (But she fails to mention me by name or link to my post.)

Last week I was chatting with our mortgage broker about refinancing, now that money is free and all. She asked how long we planned on keeping our condo. This is why my answer was “until 2016 when taxes from the Olympics kick us out.”

The Holy Family, originally uploaded by flatiron32.

This Sunday we portrayed the Holy Family in the children’s Christmas pageant.

Friday night when Gabriel (aka Rev Magrini) called me, I was as surprised as Joseph. Mostly surprised that Jonah we would be a walking-almost-talking baby Jesus.

The play went well. The children were cute and sang like bashful angels, what more could you expect.

Jonah had no interest in pretending to be an infant again. Perhaps the fully God infant Jesus could walk, right?

During the part of the play when the Three Kings visited Jonah he sat on the floor staring while they sang to him. This seemed very realistic. Jonah is closer to the age Jesus would have been when they visited and I can imagine Jesus taking the same respectful stance when receiving these mystics from afar.

There were many children involved in the play. Teenagers read scripture and poems. The younger kids where angels and shepards. The youngest were sheep.

An interesting demographic quirk meant that there where 2 sheep, but 10 shepherds. Jonah has many peers though. I am sure next year there will be a large flock to be watched.

Greg Mankiw points out that Charles Wheelan is running to replace Rahm Fu#%ing Emanuel.

Wheelan teaches public policy at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He wrote Naked Economics and lists Milton Friedman as “The Best Economics Writer”. Also, his “My Favorite Obscure Economics Concept” is Seignorage! He sounds Paulian to me. He has a great profile at Yahoo! Finance, where he contributes.

Oh, and his greatest attribute to me…he is not part of a machine like the rest of the wackos running. I am thinking about volunteering for his campaign.

Who is for this bailout? Do you hear a lot of people on the streets clamoring for this?

I only hear people who say we should let the market take its course. This includes people I would normally hear calls of state action from.

It doesn’t matter what you think and politicians know it. You should hear how people scoff at me when I tell them I vote libertarian because of my principles. What is the point of voting, if you are not voting on your principles? There isn’t and this is why I encourage people to not vote. If you are not prepared for the baby, don’t fuck around. If you are not prepared to vote, don’t fuck up the country.

I think people often think we are free because of Democracy. President Bush’s idea of “Spreading Democracy” is popular, only the implementation is not. Democracy only gives legitimacy to any action a politician wants to take if there are no reasons you are voting.

I would gladly trad democracy for more liberty. As long as the system can ensure liberty I would take it. A benevolent dictator sounds great, picking the dictator is hard though.

We are free because over time bunch of people have put action to their principles. They incrementally held their government to greater and greater account. Generally this has involved taking more and more power away and adding more checks on the power that remains.

However, today, we have elected despicable people based on petty political issues and they take away our liberty and set up czars. Czars! How do we stand to allow anything to be a czar in America? Let me quote the Wikipedia,

Originally, the title Czar (derived from Caesar) meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, that is, a ruler who has the same rank as a Roman or Byzantine emperor (or, according to Byzantine ideology, the most elevated position adjacent to the one held by the Byzantine monarch) due to recognition by another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch).

Occasionally, the word could be used to designate other, non-Christian, supreme rulers. In Russia and Bulgaria the imperial connotations of the term were blurred with time and, by the 19th century, it had come to be viewed as an equivalent of King.

Caesar, Emperor, King!

Joscelynn and I decided this morning we will never again buy a car from Ford, GM, or Chrysler. We are in the market for a new car and they are also not in the running.

We are also quickly approaching the time when the ease of visiting our family is the sole reason we remain here. Voting on election day is a very weak way of voting; moving is much stronger. I would rather move to one of the Social Democracies in Europe, who are open about their socialism than live in an America that lies to itself.

Walter E. Williams provides so basic economics on why we should not bailout the auto industry. The whole, short article is worth reading, but I wish this paragraph could be read to every congressman.

What happens when a company goes bankrupt? One thing that does not happen is their productive assets go poof and disappear into thin air. In other words, if GM goes bankrupt, the assembly lines, robots, buildings and other tools don’t evaporate. What bankruptcy means is the title to those assets change. People who think they can manage those assets better purchase them.

This is completely ignored by the media, as far as I can tell.

Did I think Gov. Blagojevich was corrupt? Yes.
This corrupt? Never!

I think Mark Draughn over at Windypundit sums up my thoughts.