Katy (NARRATOR) – The year is 2019. Things are not all that different than they were 10 years ago. The television reporters seem pretty confident that the Detroit car makers just need a few more [...]]]> I co-wrote and performed a skit with a charming young lady named Katy. By popular request, here is the script.

Katy (NARRATOR) – The year is 2019. Things are not all that different than they were 10 years ago. The television reporters seem pretty confident that the Detroit car makers just need a few more months of support, and then they’ll get things turned around. Commander Obama’s food rations have been very generous this year. The chocolate quota alone is up almost three percent over this time last year.

Justin, age six, needs to raise money for his over expenditure of carbon credits at recess last week. He exhaled an estimated three pounds of carbon dioxide on the Nancy Pelosi Elementary jungle gym alone, according to his bio-feedback implant. This is where our tale of a young San Francisco native’s transformation to individualism from divisive collectivism begins.

Here we see Justin, who thinks he has a foolproof plan.

Justin – I know what I’ll do; Bobby is always talking about how big his allowance is. He doesn’t even spend it all, I hear. He’s one of those greedy savers. I’m just going to go over there and kick him in the leg until he gives me some too. It’s no fair that he has more than me.

Katy (NARRATOR) – Justin gets his way. He had to kick his old friend Bobby three times until Bobby surrendered his lunch money. But in the attack, little Bobby dropped and destroyed his Chuck Norris hologram action figure. And now the other kids are worried that they may be next victim.

Scene

Justin (SITTING DOWN) – That was not too bad. I’m able to buy some more carbon credits, but now no one wants to play with me. I just don’t get it.

Katy (STANDING NEXT TO JUSTIN) – Do you know why no one wants to play with you any more? It’s because they are afraid you will start kicking them and take their lunch money or break their things.

Justin – Hey, don’t I recognize you? You’re the leader of that opposition group that’s talking about “individual rights.” Well, what about society. Who’s going to protect the minority?

Katy – Well, the smallest minority is the individual. Now, if you want your friends back, you’ll have to apologize and replace the broken action figure.

Justin – You’re right. My mom always says it’s bad to hit people. It’s still not fair that that they have more than me. I know what I’ll do. I’ll form a democracy, so that everyone can get what they want. And I can raise enough money for a Chuck Norris action figure and everyone will be treated the same. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Katy – Oh, boy!

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – Over the next few days, Justin organizes the school playground by promising the fourth graders that they won’t have to worry about the third graders taking all swing sets and teeter totters. Almost all the third graders, except those promised leadership positions in the new government, turned against the idea.

A slight majority of the playground supported the motion, and the dawn of a new democracy began. But not long after, some unintended problems came to be realized.

Justin (TALKING TO KATY) – I never knew how expensive this new democracy would be. We’ve already had to raise the jungle gym tolls twice this week. Almost all the money we’ve raised has been to pay officials’ salaries or to fund the military against the third grader’s militia attacks. Worse yet, I’ve got almost no money left for the Chuck Norris hologram action figure. We actually owe the fifth grade middle schoolers two day’s worth of debt.

Katy – If you really want to raise those funds, then you need to provide a product that people value.

Justin – All six of my non-vegan friends tells me that my mom makes the best turkey sandwiches. I know what I’ll do. She wouldn’t mind make a few more sandwiches each morning.

Katy – Now, Justin, this is your debt, not you mom’s.

Justin – I guess.

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – The next day, Justin brings six freshly made turkey sandwiches that exactly followed his mom’s recipe. He sells them all in a flash, raising a good sum of money. However, others in the new government see Justin’s good fortunes as an opportunity to exploit.

Justin (NEXT TO KATY) – This is just great. I woke up an hour early this morning to make those sandwiches and the playground is taxing half of my income. Since the grocery store that our vice president’s mom owns won a no-bid contract to be the exclusive food supplier, my supplies costs are going to double. Oh, what’s the point? I’ll never raise the money fast enough with these costs.

Katy – You know, Justin. You’ve got to give the people a reason to resist. What are they missing out on? If you can provide that, you’ll be in the homestretch.

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – Justin spent all day pondering this question, and then suddenly like a bolt of lightening, it hit him. He has his answer. He can abolish the government sanctions, raise enough money for the new Chuck Norris hologram action figure, and then get his old friends back again.

Justin (NEXT TO KATY) – Look what I have here. I call it barbecue tofu. Since almost of the school’s parents make their kids eat vegetarian meals, the students crave the taste of meat. What’s the next best option? Meet flavored tofu. With some help from my mom, I created this tofu that has all the taste of barbecue and none of the meat. So almost everyone is happy. That grocery store does not sell barbecue, so I told all my customers that if they did not protect my rights to purchase my supplies where I needed, then I couldn’t serve them these great meals any longer.

Best of all, I’ve convinced the third and fourth graders that we don’t need all this bureaucracy to tell us what to do. The only one benefiting is the bureaucracy itself. We’ve got to stand up for our rights, and not let our neighbors be taken advantage of, because we could be next.

The End

Oklahoma state Rep. Todd Thomsen presented a resolution opposing the speaking engagement of famed atheist Richard Dawkins on the University of Oklahoma campus today. If he had his way, Dawkins would be shut up because his “published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe [...]]]> ~ Beware of atheist

Oklahoma state Rep. Todd Thomsen presented a resolution opposing the speaking engagement of famed atheist Richard Dawkins on the University of Oklahoma campus today. If he had his way, Dawkins would be shut up because his “published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.”

Most ironically, as the Ronald Bailey points out, Thomsen “introduced another bill in January entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act.”

~ How to end up on a terror watch list

In reality, this simple list of the potential troublemakers was designed to be a secret intel tool for investigation purposes. Unfortunately, it has morphed into a symbol of governmental inefficiency. Because people are inherently lazy, in leiu of doing any kind of elementary investigation, circumstantial evidence has become the norm for placement on this list.

(via COEDmagazine.com)

~ So four months after being elected, the president still hasn’t proposed any banking reforms

Charles Krauthammer wants to know where President Obama’s priorities lie.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis. What’s going on? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Things. Now we know what they are. The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his “Big Bang” agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society. Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy — worthy and weighty as they may be — are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.

~ Quote of the Day

So you can take a market and beat it, tax it, regulate it, subsidize it, flood it with fake money, punish its performers and reward its losers, hobble its capital sector, strangle consumers, nationalize stuff at will, and erect every barrier to trade and cooperation, and STILL call it a market. When the scheme fails, it’s the free market that failed, so clearly we need the totalitarian state to sweep into action. – Jeffery Tucker

(via lowercase liberty, via Mises.org blog)

~ Past returns do not guarantee future results, we hope

When the president said yesterday at a press conference that now was a good time to jump into the stock market, you know we haven’t hit bottom. Worrisome still, he doesn’t understand a straightforward financial comparison tool like P/E ratio, and yet he wants to change the very “foundation” of the economy, as he said in his address to congress two weeks ago. Very alarming.

It looks like we have a good while to go until the P/E ratio does get into some historical norms, according to smarter people than me.

Obama cleartly doesn’t know what he is talking about and his apologists should be ashamed. If you were to follow his suggestion and apply the “Price to Earnings Ratio” to current market prices – you would not invest in the Market at this time – you would sell. Using the “Price to Earnings Ratio” as a guide, the S & P will need to drop to 500 (it is currently at 702.80) a fall of additional 200 points or an additional loss of 28% before becoming an attractive buy prospect. The “Price to Earnings Ratio” would indicate that the DJIA should be trading at 5500 not the 6781 it is currently trading at – so the DJIA would need to fall an additional 1300 points (a 20% loss) before becoming an attractive “buy” prospect.

~ The Daily Show at the White House

[Edit: The video has since been removed by the user.]