Ladies and Gentlemen! Introducing the Voters of 2012

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this video captures a million gourds. Fair maidens, ring in the new year with the Voters of 2012!



The intelligence! Oh the intellect!
Rejoice! There is so much to cheer.
We've a steady supply of workers yet –
Isn't Social Security still here?

What's that, you say?
Chin up, jobless friend!
In 2012, we ought all be gay.
Still hopeful, though changeless,
More Obama portends
This ode's mere political hay.

Ode to the Welfare State
(circa 1949, by Rep. Clarence J. Brown)

Father, must I go to work?
No, my lucky son.
We’re living now on Easy Street
On dough from Washington.

We’ve left it up to Uncle Sam,
So don’t get exercised.
Nobody has to give a damn –
We’ve all been subsidized.

But if Sam treats us all so well
And feeds us milk and honey,
Please, daddy, tell me what the hell
He’s going to use for money.

Don’t worry, bub, there’s not a hitch
In this here noble plan –
He simply soaks the filthy rich
And helps the common man.

But, father, won’t there come a time
When they run out of cash
And we have left them not a dime
When things will go to smash?

My faith in you is shrinking, son,
You nosy little brat;
You do too damn much thinking, son,
To be a Democrat.

Cheers!


Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

Target Nursing, Paula Deen, and a Few Things In Between

Happy days between holidays, frothy play-dates to all. And to all fair maidens, a very good knight. And now for my rumblings, where to begin?

The nurse-in at Target? Umm, no, my kid's ten. Our economy's crashing and I've no rat's-a** to give.

Then, there was the Muslim "honor" killing in Texas on Christmas Day. But it's heartbreaking, and depressing.

And besides, why blog it when the "honor killing" jihad facet is already getting top billing in the mainstream? (Psst - skip the local paper's fussy registration by going to this obscure site for a full reprint.)

Not least, and not last, there's the effervescent Fed.
I thought about blogging a "toldjah" post on the Federal Reserve's your bail-out of Europe. But my feel-goodness stems from my firmly-held prediction that this bail-out would be utterly obfuscated, shrouded in confusing Fed-speak.

Alas, I was right. Alas, my vindication came too soon. Still, all I can say is it's bad for our country and I'm powerless to explain why. This hardly feels good.

For now, I'm only equipped to leave it at this: Bernanke is bailing out Europe via extremely complicated currency swap lines. (But I did email my man-crush at Khan Academy today, begging him to do a video on currency swap lines. Laugh not. He actually responded to me once, and I want that on my tombstone. So, fingers crossed.)

In closing, let's fill these in-between days with a lighter note. It's a Paula Deen Krispy-Kreme/hamburger video, set extra S-L-O-W. (And a big h/t to my sister for this one):



(The first comment on YouTube? "I have a weird boner right now." Lawd, I about wet my pants watching this one).

Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

The Humanity

Lord, but retail politics can be excruciating.

Here, Newt takes a Piggly-Wiggly by storm.



But after paying your dues, you can have a bit of fun.



(h/t Hotair.com)

Update: This one was fun, too.



Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

Going the Extra Mile (Hypothetically)

Maybe it's just a tall Texas tale, but I've been told that every once in a while, a jury will cut a fellow loose because he had such a terrible lawyer. They take pity on the poor guy and find him not guilty. But I've never seen it. And "ineffective assistance" rarely succeeds on appeal. At least in Texas, bad lawyers almost always hurt the client -- and hurt 'em bad.

Years ago when I interned for a judge, I watched a personal injury trial. A woman had been badly hurt when a car rear-ended her; she had a legitimate claim. But the jury gave her nothing. After the verdict, I interviewed the jurors to find out why. They said they believed she'd really been hurt, but they gave her a big fat zero anyway because her lawyer was so bad. "She just needs to get a good lawyer and try again," one of them said. "She'll get some money next time."

Well, since "next times" are almost never, Jerry Sandusky may want to get a new lawyer now. Because the newest addition to his defense team, a Mr. Karl Rominger, is making me feel kind of sorry for old Jerry, and a wee bit sick.

In a television interview, Rominger suggested that showering with boys as old as fourteen was all part of Sandusky's Second Mile duties because, well, some of them just don't know how to bathe at that age. To wit:

"Teaching a person to shower at the age of 12 or 14 sounds strange to some people, but people who work with troubled youth will tell you there are a lot of juvenile delinquents and people who are dependent who have to be taught basic life skills like how to put soap on their body.”

So you see, there was nothing strange about it. Sandusky was just going the extra mile, teaching basic life skills to boys in the throes of puberty.

Dear God in heaven, that sort of logic is so twisted it hurts my head. But wait. It gets worse.

Shortly after this disastrous interview, Rominger clarified: he was simply offering a hypothetical explanation for why a grown man might touch a boy in a shower. He wasn't saying Sandusky actually touched boys in the shower.

Ohhhh. Well now that clears things up considerably. He was just explaining how something that never happened might have . . . happened. And happened innocently! I get it. Eureka. Anyway, as I was saying, I don't think the stupid-lawyer trick is going to work out too well for Sandusky.

Granted, Amendola's Gomer Pyle defense might not have worked either. But at least it made sense.




Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

Feeling Mercurial?

You want more "sky is falling"? Baby, I can give you more sky. Watch this.



Without any light bulbs, it's no wonder Corzine wouldn't break.

For more blue-sky-fallings, see below.
______________________________________________

No more incandescent light bulbs will be sold in the U.S., beginning in 2012. But hip hippie hooray. The new CFL (compact fluorescent lighting) bulbs are greener, and cheaper. These amazing creatures will enhance orgasms and organisms, save planets, save lives!

My God, they're from Europe. What more need ye know?

Except when they break. But oy vey, the sorrow when they break -- especially if you have children in the house. Because CFLs are filled with mercury. A helpful tip from U.S. News? Put a drop cloth down before screwing one into a lamp!

Because if one of these CFL lovelies gets broken when you're rushing out the door to soccer practice or carpool, oh, no. Oh, woe. You are so screwed.

In the event of breakage, the EPA has this to say (here, for convenience, let me summarize: haz-mat, evacuate, and renovate):

Before Cleanup

Have people and pets leave the room.

Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.

Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.

Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb:

stiff paper or cardboard;
sticky tape;
damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces); and
a glass jar with a metal lid or a sealable plastic bag.

During Cleanup

DO NOT VACUUM. Vacuuming is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken. Vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor.

Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.

Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.

After Cleanup

Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly. Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.

If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

If you can't follow all these steps but you're still concerned about mercury poisoning exposure -- and rightly so! Call your doctor, says the confidence-inspiring pass-the-buck EPA.

And all this time, I thought the autism lobby was huge.

(Umm, did I never tell you about the time my kid and his friend squashed an outdoor Christmas light bulb on the street, just for fun? Well, the resident special-needs-kid-lawyer-mom was not happy. Her email to me read, "and the exposure your son caused to said mercury was a foreseeable and proximate cause" of death and pestilence and so on and so forth. I wrote back, "Is this a pleading, or what?" and that was that . . . at least for now. I'm waiting for the statute of limitations to run before I can be sure.)

But moving right along with the autism lobby or not, I'm not buying one of those damn CFLs. No how, no way. Call me mercurial, call me crazy. Call me anti-litigious. And I'm not the only one.

No, I'm going fully intuitive on this full moon, off to Amazon to continue my stockpiling. Now then. For all those in favor of more government in our bedrooms, say "aye fry!" No mood-setting dimmers for you!




Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

The Unbearable Darkness of Being

Image: Pawelmorski
The "will work" circle is pure fantasy. NOTHING will work.

Greetings and glad sad tidings during this epochal Euro intermission.

I do hate being the bearer of bad news, but for all fair maidens with brokerage accounts-- heck, maybe even CDs or mutual funds -- this is must reading. It's the scariest thing I've read all year, frankly. Maybe the scariest thing ever.

But despite the "hypothecation," it's an article you can understand, written in plain English. So give it a go. Never let it be said I didn't tell you so. Ignorance will not be bliss.

No wonder we're kicking the can down the road. Except it's a nuclear bomb we're kicking and it's already set to detonate. Plus, we're running out of road. And kicks. Yeah, those, too.

Brace for impact.



Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

Eurocalypse: Towards a Simpler Explanation for Lay Moms

Before we turn to world affairs, let me first mention the free and trusty Stat Counter so many bloggers have come to love hate. It tells me loads of people are visiting my blog these days but it's cold comfort since most are middle easterners searching for "s*x" with soccer moms.

Still, Stat tells me I have a few true blues and you guys encourage me to keep on keeping on. As one favorite TED lecturer Sir Ken explains, it goes sort of like this: if a man speaks his mind in the forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong? I figure if my tried-and-trues read me, well then, I must have written something.

But moving on to the point of my post. My sister and I were talking about the sovereign debt crisis the other day and I realized my last Euro post was singularly unhelpful for multi-tasking non-econ moms; I started way too far down the learning curve.

Photo credit: True Woman blog

So here's my do-over: a plain and simple explanation of the Euro crisis, why a Euro crash means we'll get a crash over here a lot faster, and a question or two for the experts about dollar printing and the aftermath.

Our story begins with Francesca, a kitten-loving, sexy single mom who volunteers at the animal shelter. Once upon a time she was a successful, driven lawyer. In her high-powered days she had excellent credit, lived high on the hog, and amassed a bunch of credit cards and a mammoth debt to her dentist.

Photo credit: Leaving Law

Francesca's neighbor, Jerman, had a big crush on her and, just to be gallant, he co-signed on her car loan, her mortgage, her boat note, you name it. (Her dentist, alas, was secured only by her crowns of gold, making foreclosure without Guido nigh impossible.) Jerman's gallantry pleased Francesca, but not enough to sleep with him. But moving right along, as things quickly did . . .

All went well until it suddenly didn't. Francesca's income dropped like a stone. Her clients sent her fewer and fewer cases and demanded she reduce her hourly fees. Still, Francesca held on for a while, buying gas and groceries on her credit cards and spending money on her children like there was no tomorrow. (She's uncannily prescient, our Francesca.) Everyone -- even Jerman -- ignored her balance sheet was fooled.

Photo credit: Primped and Primed

But the day finally came when Francesca hit the wall. She could buy no more. At Target, the credit card terminal beeped, "DECLINED." Francesca blushed and fled the store, leaving her groceries and toilet paper behind. She saw her dentist in the parking lot and promptly threw up.

She applied for another credit card, but the bond market credit card company, Triple A, said hell no, girlfriend, you must be on drugs. Within days, Francesca couldn't even make the minimum interest payments on the credit cards she did have. The bond vigilantes tele-collectors began ringing her at all hours of the night.

Then Francesca's spoiled children (who would never dream of carrying a paper route or otherwise contributing) rebelled against her austerity measures: rice and beans, no cable TV, no tennis camps, no Christmas Wii. She even sold their ipads on Craigslist.

They spit on her, jumped on the beds, continually disobeyed her, and let the toilets overflow. This brought on a nervous breakdown and Francesca became completely unable to negotiate with anyone for anything. Overnight, her children ousted her and the family's gardener took control.Worse, Jerman turned his back on her. Since she'd refused to sleep with him, he had no use for her now. Sometimes at night she could hear him in his backyard, drunk, cursing her. "Screw you, Francesca Silk Pajamas! You are stupid, stupid, stupid."

So what should become of Francesca? Should we say she made her bed and she alone must lie in it? A reasonable response, certainly. Except that would put Jerman the tippler in a pickle since he'll be forced to pay off her loans. Recall that in his quest to bed her, he guaranteed most of her debts.

Photo credit: Sexy Food Therapy

Also factoring in, Jerman's neighbor Porgy was smitten with Francesca's sister Italiana. Jerman had agreed to set up Porgy and Italiana on a blind date if Porgy promised to help Jerman in the unlikely event high-powered Francesca went belly up.

Porgy readily agreed to backstop Jerman because Francesca's demise was unthinkable at the time. Besides, Porgy's brother Ire owed him a bunch of money and Ire owned a million dollar ranch in Nappa. Porgy told himself that if Francesca ever defaulted -- and surely she wouldn't -- he could collect from Ire and seize his pricey ranch, if need be.

There are many other side deals between these people I haven't told you about, because not even I, the story-teller, know them all. Suffice it to say, these fiercely independent, emotional folks are intimately connected and wildly co-dependent.

They live in the same subdivision and their kids go to the same schools. Some immigrant Muslims live in the neighborhood, too. This is fine by Porgy and Ire, who love diversity. But Francesca and Jerman are most suspicious of the Muslims and have excluded them from all block parties.

And this just in: Ire owes UniSta big money. If he doesn't pay, UniSta will go bust.

But back to Francesca. If we don't bail her out, you know the drill.

Jerman will get called to pay her bills, and Jerman will look to Porgy. Porgy can't help, though, because he had been counting on Ire if he ran into trouble and Ire is broke because his Nappa ranch is worthless. And UniSta is counting on Ire. Unbeknownst to all, UniSta took up with an unsavory prostitute named Fannie Prey and it's nearly insolvent.

Last but certainly not least, Francesca's dentist has hired Guido to get back his gold crowns. Guido will have to kill Francesca when he "repossesses" them and her children will be orphaned.

Granted, this is complicated. Relationships always are. Still, it's not rocket science. Just about everything, always, revolves around sex, money, and religion. No, we certainly can't say the story is dull. But there's a horrific domino effect if we leave Francesca out in the cold.

Now imagine these histrionic characters are real countries: France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and so on. And UniSta represents the American banks. If one of these foreign characters goes down, U.S. banks will get hit as well. And I guess we can go ahead make the UK the angry dentist in our sordid tale.

Alrighty then. You understand sovereign bonds, liquidity crises, credit default swaps, hedging, netting, credit markets, and contagion. So be intimidated never more by the fancy financial analysts you hear on TV. And (sorry, fair maidens, but it must be said): you are all grown-up now. The pundits -- nay, most economists -- are no wiser than you.

Now assume with me that if a European country fails, U.S. banks could fail, too, from panic if nothing else. Customers would get their FDIC insured deposits back, but the shareholders and bondholders and creditors would get haircuits not so much. And money market funds? Oy, vey. Don't even go there. So, given this backdrop, what should the Fed do?

Well, we already know Bernanke believes that if our banks fail, the world will come to a fiery end -- Mad Maxxy pandemonium, with people hoarding food, ammo, guns, gold and whiskey. To wit: the secret $7.7 Trillion TARP, which was done to stop runs on our banks.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

But to avoid the END OF THE WORLD as he views it, Bernanke's Fed has printed, and will continue to print US dollars fast and furiously, into eternity. The Fed will loan these newly minted dollars to the IMF, which will then loan them to the ECB ("European Central Bank" -- or the EFSF. Whatev.).

The ECB or EFSF will then loan the money to the various European countries who can't make the minimum payments on their credit cards bonds, and can't borrow (i.e., sell bonds) any more. And the Fed will have rescued Europe, at least for now. Scared foreign money will fly into our markets and the DOW will easily hit 13,000. But be ye not lulled; all is not well.

[NB: When the Fed bails out Europe, Bernanke's masterfully confusing explanations will leave your head spinning. Media reports will say stuff like the Fed was "easing liquidity shortfalls" or "injecting stability into the markets" or some other obfuscatory horse shit.]

Once trillions more U.S. dollars have been printed, and our dollar is so weak from inflation that it can't be trusted to hold its value, other countries will stop trading in dollars. They'll ask us to buy their oil in kronas or yen instead. Speaking of Mad Max, what then?

Peter Schiff likes to say, "Remember the Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules." I say, "He who controls the money supply controls the world." Same thing, I guess.

My blog-crush, the Epicurean Dealmaker, says I can flush out good stuff from experts by pretending to be one and then opining from an erroneous premise. The experts, Epicurean claims, will be drawn to my drivel like moths to a porch light, eager to argue and offer their wisdoms.

Photo credit: "trevorpersons" -- Flickr

So I'm turning on the porch light with this premise: the Fed will bail out Europe via the IMF to save our banks and, I opine, the currency war we are already in will get very scary.

No one has declared a Fed-cum-IMF bail out a fait accompli except me. (Oh wait -- just in, there's this). Now I'll grant you, in a game of chicken, you never know who will first blink. But come on, fellas. This is not a hard call, hope as I might to be wrong.

So yoo-hoo, all ye experts, tell me I'm crazy. Or if I'm not, what happens when our dollar is worthless? Because we've got little kids, a little cash in the bank, and we want to know how a currency collapse plays out in our back yards, in our 401ks, at the grocery store.



Copyright © 2011, www.lawyermommusings.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.