Carl Brannen of “Mass” has been a regular reader of PRS for some time now, for which I am most grateful. When a reader is also a blogger, I always check out the reader’s blog. As such, I have been keeping an eye on Carl’s blog for a while now. Here’s the thing. When Carl is speaking English, I like his site. A lot. But Carl often speaks a language with which I have always struggled – and that is the language of MATH.

Check out this post. Yikes!!

I sure wish I packed the gear to understand that stuff, but I harbor no illusions about what I can and cannot do. It’s a bit like knowing that I shouldn’t mess with chainsaws or wrestle with alligators.

When I was in college (a year or two after the Cro-Magnon Man discovered chopped chuck) I thought of myself as a pretty smart guy. That was until I bumped into CALCULUS. Yes, Peeps, I learned that I wasn’t so smart after all and that calculus was my intellectual master. I broke my ass studying four to five hours per night merely to pass the course. I recall how my knees were buckling on the way to the final exam. My gag reflex fires up even now just thinking about it.

So, I tip my hat to Carl and welcome him to Mr. Blogroll (albeit a dubious distinction). Perhaps Bou or Elisson, one of these days, can translate some of those ciphers for me.

First, check this out.

Then, take a look at this from 2004.

Then, take a look at this delusional dizzball speaking today before the vote on the Bailout Bill.

Memo to Democrats: This detestable dipshit is not helping you.

Democrats celebrating the $700 billion dollar bailout, and the certainty that there won’t be any congressional investigations of the huge role in creating this mess played by some of the miscreants in this picture.

Yes, I served as a judge today, and yes, I am tired. Lest you think I spent the day wearing robes and rapping a gavel, I did not. Rather, I spent the morning and afternoon doing my annual stint as a judge in a truck rodeo.

That’s about as close as I’ll ever get to being a robe-wearing judge.

Yes, peeps, I have theater tickets for tonight. I really don’t feel much like going to the theater, but it will give me a good excuse not to watch the McCain – Obama debate live, which I expect might well have spiked my blood pressure to dangerous levels. I’ll watch it on the web tomorrow … maybe.

The news makes me want to crawl into a cave and assume the fetal position. Politics! Finance! Bailouts! Olbermann and like-minded shitballs!

I NEED a laugh. Maybe you do too.

If so, go here. Once there, you shouldn’t have to do anything other than sit back and listen to William Shatner “sing” Mr. Tambourine Man. If you are still able to see your keyboard through the spew, scroll on upwards and listen to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It is a thing of wonder.

You’re quite welcome.

I see that the current bailout plan provides for bailing out institutions that made bad car loans, credit card companies, and institutions that made student loans. It doesn’t matter that you’ve managed your finances such that you only buy what you can afford, and you behaved like a responsible grownup, helping out these institutions is your patriotic duty.

While we’re at it, here are some other institutions that we should consider helping:

Casinos: They absolutely need the taxpayer to bail them out when people who had a bad run at the craps table don’t pay off their markers.

Da Mob: Taxpayers should make them whole if breaking the knees of their debtors still doesn’t get them paid, and bumping them off ensures non-payment. These guys truly need our help.

Landlords: We simply cannot let them be screwed by deadbeat tenants.

Evil Oil Companies: Why should they take a hit when people don’t pay their gasoline credit card bills?

Restaurant and Bar Owners: They deserve our helping hands when people eat and drink and don’t pay their tabs.

Excuse me while I puke.

Hoosierboy provides a lesson in economics in plain English. Here is a sample:

Businesses do not pay taxes.

The role of a business is NOT to provide jobs. That is a fundamental understanding you must possess. Let me repeat that. The role of business is NOT to create jobs. The role of a business is to make money. A business that does not make money for its owners will not be in business long. You should look with a sceptical eye when a Presidential candidate says he is going to create jobs. If the business that employs those workers cannot make money, there will be no jobs.

The Government, and I mean the Local, the State, and Federal Governments, only provide jobs and pay public workers by taking money from all workers and redistributing it. The Government does not make a product, sell a product or generate profit. It gets its money through taxes. It takes our money. Patriotism has nothing to do with it. If you are one of those people who thinks your new local park, road, Government Building was free because the Federal Government paid for it, you are an idiot. You paid for it, I paid for it, people in Arkansas and Indiana and Ohio paid for it. All of those roads, buildings and bridges in West Virginia — Robert Byrd did not provide them. Your money — taken from the wages due you — paid for them.

Read it all, dammit.

My cruller is cooked. Between the election combat and now the financial mess, I’ve hit “overload.”

As for the election stuff, let me say that there is nothing, NOTHING Barack _____ Obama has ever said with which I agree. If you feel otherwise, and if you have paid as much attention to all of this as I have, then neither of us will ever convince the other. We’ll just have to agree to disagree and live with the consequences of our convictions. If, however, you are an Obama supporter and you haven’t been paying as much attention as I have, I won’t change your mind, so please spare me the talking points and do whatever it is you want to do on Election Day. With any kind of luck, you won’t vote.

With respect to the financial mess, let me say that I am most skeptical of any kind of solution that can be cobbled together in a few days. I have worked on more than a few transactions involving significant sums of money, and the details of those transactions have always been damned near mind boggling. And yet, here we are, asking a bunch of goddamned legislators (most of whom, in both parties, are absolutely clueless and some of whom are part of the problem) to pass on possibly the biggest transaction in American history – one that has been put together in a matter of days!

Look, you can’t do a proper job of buying or selling even a goddamned luncheonette in this amount of time. Even with the buying or selling of a luncheonette, the devil is always, always in the details. Doing a transaction that is worth possibly a trillion dollars in such a short time is begging for trouble.

My immediate inclination is to say NO to this massive bailout. I admit that I am not an economist, but I speak English as well as most folks. I have yet to hear a single, relatively straightforward explanation of what would happen if we let the businesses that can’t make it simply fail.

Sure, like you, I’ve heard conclusory statements such as, “We must act NOW, or the entire system will collapse! Depression! The end of the world as we know it!” Maybe so, but I would like a bit more explanation than that before “we” sign off on a trillion-dollar deal.

Until I am convinced otherwise, I say, no bailout. Let the chips fall where they may.

The weather in the Garden State is perfectly lovely today, so I spent a good deal of time outside, because, before you know it, we’ll be freezing our stindeens off.

So, if you stopped by this place for some entertainment, I would hate to disappoint. This is very entertaining.

Thanks to Brian, the Air Force Vet.