Jokes and Hilarity All Around

Lots of hilarity all around today so let us get into it.  First up, someone give Nigel Farage a medal:

Does Trichet seriously believe his own bullshit at the end?  He was quoted directly as saying you need to lie in the face of serious fiscal situations and then takes a lesson from Bernanke by trying to play it off as a misunderstanding with a bunch of academic babble.  How theses guys can wake up everyday and look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me.  Here is one individual for which millions of livelihoods depend on the horseshit that comes out of his mouth and he gets up and lies about how he was quoted about saying one has to lie in serious situations.  I trained 14 year olds in food service who had more integrity than this guy.  Here is Farage again (ht Mish):

Brilliant.  Maybe Farage should take a look at George Soros' "Circle Jerk" of a plan to save the Euro Zone.  If the citizens of Serbia really want to join the Euro Zone, why not just put the guns to their heads now and save themselves the trouble?

The impeccable Caroline Baum is out with another great Bloomberg piece, this time it's on the absurdity of Obama's proposed job bill.  Perhaps the best and most insightful excerpt:

Section 4 of the jobs bill, titled “Buy American,” would do just that. It specifies that government funds would be available only to infrastructure projects that use manufactured goods (iron and steel, for example) produced in the U.S. It doesn’t specify that such a provision would raise the cost of those projects.

Every legislative proviso has exceptions. In the case of “Buy American,” the rules wouldn’t apply if complying was “not in the public interest” (who decides?); if there was an insufficient amount of American-produced iron and steel available (who’s counting?); or if it would “increase the cost of the project by more than 25 percent” (23 percent is OK?). One can only imagine the time and opportunity cost for small business to stay abreast of the relevant provisions.

Obama wants to protect the unemployed from discrimination in the workplace. A noble goal, to be sure, but his bill would have the opposite effect by making it illegal to use a candidate’s employment status as a qualification for work.

How would the crafters of the jobs bill expect a reasonable businessman to behave when confronted with the prospect of a discrimination suit for failing to hire an unemployed applicant? He wouldn’t even grant that candidate an interview, according to Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot Inc.

Look at the bright side: This provision is certain to provide enough billable hours for law firms to justify hiring new lawyers.

The part about making it illegal for employers to discriminate against the unemployed is the worst and most devastating part of the bill when it comes to helping the unemployed.  It will literally make the unemployed "untouchable" as no sane employer will risk a lawsuit for even interviewing a potential employee.  Think about it.  If you own a business and are looking to expand your number of low skill employees, would you call the applicant back who has been unemployed for one year to have an interview where if you were to fight him/her unsuitable for work, than they could find some TRIAL LAWYER (there is a reason that is capitalized, think about that too) to make their case that they were discriminated against?  Those who parade under the banner of egalitarianism and push for such "protections" aren't doing their targeted class any favors.  They are buying their electoral support with a raw deal to financially benefit their real target for campaign funds.  Fantastic piece as always Ms. Baum.

In regard to California Rep. Barbara Lee's completely moronic justification to not use computerized checkout lanes in supermarkets because "I know that’s a job or two or three that’s gone," Don Boudreaux responds with another fantastic letter.  The last paragraph is the most pointed:

You must, indeed, be distressed as you observe the appalling amount of labor-saving technologies in use throughout our economy.  It is, alas, a disturbing trend that has been around for quite some time – since, really, the invention of the spear which destroyed the jobs of some hunters.

Indeed, one can imagine a primitive Robert Reich running back in forth telling all his hunter neighbors that jobs are going to be lost with their crafting of spears.  The thing is, his suggestion sounds just as ridiculous now as it would have back then yet the prevailing wisdom of idiocy still remains for some of our purveyors in Washington.

To end, I wanna point out the hilarious continuation of SNL's skit on the GOP presidential debates.  This time Ron Paul gets the respectful portrayal he deserves while Herman Cain gets the ignorant portrayal he justly deserves:

Update- Looks like Time is finally catching up with the glorious inaccurate predictions of Herman Cain. In regard to the financial crisis:

He took a similar tack in a March 3, 2008, piece. “The media’s factually unsubstantiated claims of an impending recession have been going on for over a year now,” he wrote. “Many news journalists hurt people’s outlook about the economy with inappropriate comparisons and sensationalism.”

In April 2008, Cain admitted that the economy was skidding, but only, he argued, because Democrats and the mainstream media had spooked everybody with its negativity. “This writer believes that a major portion of the job losses are due to media pessimism, and employers who have swallowed the negative outlook and have hesitated to fill existing jobs or new positions” Cain wrote on April 7.

By summer, Cain was claiming that the looming financial crisis was a similar media fabrication. In a July 21, 2008, column, Cain referred to Wall Street’s troubles as “the mainstream media’s it’s-not-a-crisis-but-we-are-going-to-make-it-look-like-one banking crisis”. In less than two months, Lehman Brothers would declare Bankruptcy and, a few weeks later, Congress would pass a massive bailout to rescue the nation’s largest banks.

And even in September, Cain was upbraiding Democrats for ignoring great economic news. “We still have not had a recession since 2001,” Cain wrote early that month. “But don’t tell the Democrats and the mainstream media. You might disrupt their imaginary recession.”