New Lesson

Airgas has let me down.

I went out to the garage, figuring I’d finish my saw-blade hangers. I fabricated the parts, and I was going to weld them up. I tried to do this a few days ago, but it turned out I had no gas. I had left the valve open.

I hate exchanging pretty new Ebay tanks for old rusty bottles, but I decided I had to get used to it, so I let the Airgas guy give me an exchange. Today when I tried to connect it, my regulator wouldn’t screw into it far enough to seat. I took out the regulator doodad, and I looked at the valve. The threads had shavings hanging off of them. I have no idea how Airgas did it, but they mangled the threads on their tank. It scraped my threads up a little when I tried to attach the tank, but thank God, I had better sense than to force it with a wrench.

And of course, I found this out fifteen minutes before Airgas closes for the weekend.

I wonder if I could just use CO2. I have it lying around in little beer tanks.

I also wonder if Airgas has a whole bunch of ruined valves. I assume they use the same fitting to put gas in that customers use to let it out. Or maybe they don’t. The valve has another side to it, and it has something on it that sort of looks like a quick-release. I suppose that would be faster for their purposes.

Anyway, no welding until Monday. Unless I resign myself to CO2.

Rebels are we…Born to be Free…

I am more pessimistic than ever about Obamanomics.

I just saw Jared Bernstein on CNBC. He’s Biden’s economic wonder boy. There were four pundits interviewing him about the stimulus package.

Just for background purposes, Paul Krugman endorses Bernstein, and Bernstein writes for The Daily Kos. Or did before he was appointed. This should tell you all you need to know about his leanings.

It was horrible to watch. The pundits kept asking him why we should take money away from responsible people and give it to people who took on debt they could not handle. And he refused to answer. He smiled, and he kept saying, “That’s a great question,” but he weaseled and sidestepped and refused to answer. This wasn’t Fox, mind you. This was CNBC, home of openly belligerent liberals like Erin Burnett and Mark Haines. But this panel was hostile.

He said the handouts would not go to “speculators.” Okay, first of all, many professional speculators are productive people. They may have screwed up in the housing boom, but many of them are excellent businessmen, and I would rather see them get the money than give it to hopeless perennial deadbeats. Second, as the hosts fairly screeched at Bernstein, an impoverished individual who signs a note with an adjustable rate IS a speculator. He’s just not a sophisticated and rational speculator who has a chance of succeeding. He’s speculating that he’ll have enough income to pay the note, and that the interest rate will remain low. And the basis for his speculation? HOPE that his basic nature will CHANGE. Suddenly he’ll become capable of handling money, in spite of a lifetime of poverty.

Bernstein kept saying, “through no fault of their own.” But as the hosts pointed out, when you sign a note you can’t pay, it’s definitely your fault.

Rick Santelli, who may well become a cult figure, asked how subprime-borrower losses differed from stock losses. Why shouldn’t stock losses be covered? Millions of responsible people put their retirement money in carefully chosen stocks, and now it’s gone. And come to think about it, it’s gone because of the irresponsibility of the people Bernstein wants to continue subsidizing. With money taken from the responsible, who are already eating major investment losses!

The injustice is mind-boggling.

Bernstein whined about foreclosures. Look, if the banks don’t want to foreclose, they don’t have to. They can write off principal and eat big losses. They can lower interest rates. They don’t have to adjust rates based on the prime rate. They can go as low as they want, voluntarily. The banks took this risk. Responsible people didn’t. Why shouldn’t the banks take the hit? After all, they made the bad loans, and they made the voluntary choice to raise interest rates above a sustainable level for their subprime borrowers.

And if we have foreclosures, so what? Sure, people who had no business buying homes will lose their houses. What will happen then? Responsible people–the class of people who sold them the homes to begin with–will snap up the homes. They’ll rent them to the subprimers, and life will go on as it was before the boom, when all of these people were renting, anyway.

Here’s a nasty little secret nobody wants to discuss. As a class, these people are going to lose their homes regardless of whether we help them. No one wants to talk about that. The reason? They’re not the kind of people who can hold onto wealth. If they were, they wouldn’t have needed subprime loans. Sure, there are exceptions, but the fact is, people who can’t qualify for loans are rejected for good reason. They fail to make the payments. Save them this year, and they’ll be in default two years from now. Why is no one talking about this? Many, many of these loans are going to fail regardless of what we do. They would have failed even if the economy hadn’t tanked. Sooner or later.

Even if we gave them the homes outright, many of them would mortgage them, blow the money, and end up on the street. You cannot make people prosperous. It is impossible. All you can do is provide opportunity. History proves that when you give poor people enough money to live well, without requiring them to be responsible, you do not get affluent people. You get more poor people.

I’ll tell you what I always say about “the rich,” and by that, I mean people who do reasonably well. Democrats call them rich; so will I. If you took everyone’s money and possessions away and started over from nothing, and you let people scratch their way into the best economic positions they could manage, in six months, the people who were rich before would be rich again, and the poor would still be poor.

Come to Miami, if you don’t believe me. This town is full of rich Cubans who were rich in Cuba, then poor in Miami, and then rich again in Miami. It’s also full of Cubans who were poor in Cuba and have gotten rich here, but that’s because the US has a better economy and is considerably less corrupt.

Fidel and his minions enjoyed cutting the Cuban rich down to size. But a lot of the people the communists stole from came to the US and had the last laugh.

Bernstein and Obama want equality of outcome, regardless of how we get there. That’s a mirage. You can’t reach it. It’s the wax carrot of socialism. The carrot is phony. The stick is all too real.

The Democrats are going to get their way. I think a lot of people who used to see themselves as liberal now realize they’re more conservative than they thought; many people are furious about what’s happening. But Obama will win. We are in deep, deep trouble. It has to be the hand of God. We are not this stupid. We didn’t walk into this obvious trap; we charged. Like we were getting free admission to Disneyland.

It’s Cuba all over again, and this is 1958.

She Crieth in the Chief Place of Concourse

I couldn’t get this to load on CNBC’s site, and it occurred to me that I may not be alone.

Here is Rick Santelli, calling for a revolt against Obama’s mindless, destructive socialism:

Bigger quotation:

10 My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.

11 If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:

12 Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:

13 We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:

14 Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:

15 My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:

16 For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

17 Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

18 And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.

19 So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.

20 Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:

21 She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying,

22 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?

23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

24 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;

25 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:

26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;

27 When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:

29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:

30 They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.

31 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.

32 For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.

33 But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.

That’s from Proverbs, chapter 1. Gives me chills.

Jump In

Reader Paula sent this in an email. It appears on a site called Caringbridge.com:

I have been diagnosed with Ewings sarcoma. The cancer started in my right hip and leg area and the tumor is quite large. Scans have shown that the cancer has already spread to my lungs. My first cycle of chemotherapy January 15 and the second cycle is to begin on January 29.

Paula says this is from a lady named Chrissy. She is 27 and married. She has kids aged 5, 6, and 7.

In other news, Mish Weiss wants to give up her fight against leukemia. Her doctor is very upset, and he put a message on her blog. He has gotten her to agree to 21 more days of treatment, using new drugs.

I hope you’ll join me in praying that she will be healed, and that she will do what it takes to please and serve God. I’m not suggesting there is something wrong with her behavior. Whenever I pray for someone to receive something, I also pray that they will turn to God and make a change. I do that because blessings are connected to obedience and faith, not because I am judgmental. Spare me the angry comments.

Surprise, Surprise

Imagine you are an evil spirit, and you want to destroy a wealthy, powerful nation that, on balance, serves God. What would be a good way to do it?

First you might come between the old and the young, introducing musical genres and dance styles and other cultural changes that act as barriers. You might even manage to create an extremely bizarre and unnatural situation in which the old and young separate to socialize. No healthy civilization has ever had a sick, twisted segregation of the generations. It’s a great way to bring nations down. It’s like girdling a tree. You disconnect the leaves from the roots, and the leaves die.

The separation would prevent the young from being around the old enough to absorb their time-tested wisdom, so when you filled the heads of the young with destructive garbage, there would be no responsible voice to balance it. You could make the young believe really stupid things. “Pride is good.” “Aggression is a virtue.” “All types of sexual behavior are healthy and natural.” “Abstinence is sick and impossible.” “Money solves life’s hard problems.” “Man created God because man is weak and cowardly.” Wisdom is strength. Take it away, and you get weakness.

To help you brainwash the young, you could destroy the educational system. You could corrupt it to the point where most teens had a hard time succeeding at simple tasks like finding major countries on a map or naming fundamental principles and rules expressed in the Constitution. They’d be so ignorant, they’d believe any ridiculous claim, including the claim that socialism–which has been utterly discredited by history–works.

You could misuse the Constitution to remove Christianity from schools, and eventually, you would be able to use the schools to attack Christianity openly. Once you manage to get courts to say that acknowledging Christianity amounts to establishing a religion, you end up with a helpful logical conclusion: saying positive things about Christianity in state-run schools is unconstitutional, but preaching the nonexistence of God is not.

When the country’s standard of living began to decline as a result of sin and rebellion, you could mask it by pretending to fight for women’s rights. You could convince women that raising children is a trivial job fit only for ignorant, unskilled immigrants, and that no woman who has no outside-the-home career should have any self-respect. Then women would go out into the workplace, and families would have more income. By objective standards like home ownership, they would be worse off than their parents, and they would work more, and each breadwinning pair might earn less real wealth than a typical male wage earner in an earlier generation, but things would look good on the surface.

You could convince people that loading up on credit, which has been considered stupid for centuries, was a good thing. Their neighbors would have fancy cars and houses, in which they actually had little or no true ownership interest, and people would get jealous and join the flock of debtors. The borrowing would enable people to have better possessions, and they would seem and feel richer than they actually were.

It would be helpful if the value of the currency could be manipulated, so you might take the country off the gold standard. Then inflation would be considered normal, and people would earn salaries that seemed high because they contained a lot of zeroes. And they’d feel pretty good about that.

Then you could convince people that Israel and the Jews caused a lot of the world’s problems by holding onto land captured in war. Never mind the fact that territory has traditionally been acquired in this manner. Forget the fact that the wars in question were defensive wars, and don’t mention the size of Israel, and the need for buffer areas around it. Israel’s enemies have proven that they don’t keep promises, and that land doesn’t satisfy them, and that their real goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. Try to keep the press from acknowledging these things.

Eventually, you’d end up with a nation that supports Muslim land grabs, in opposition to God’s promise to Abraham, which, as your state-paid teachers say, is just a fable. And once a land opposes Israel, its fortunes will fall.

When it’s all over, you have an economically depressed land full of atheism and other forms of idolatry, which opposes Israel, embraces just about every type of sin, has fractured families, and has no clue about the value of ancient wisdom. The people have debt. They have no savings. They are losing their jobs. They don’t know how to pray or repent. God has no plans to help them; in fact, he now helps their enemies. He looks elsewhere for champions, because unlike George Bush and Barack Obama, God does not promote and assist failures at the expense of the responsible.

Job well done.

This blog post expresses an idea that has been rolling around in my head for a while. And time seems to be bearing it out. Maybe it’s just something I thought up on my own, out of neurosis and pessimism. Or maybe someone merciful and generous and patient whispered it in my ear, to help me and my family survive, and to equip me to inform others. Maybe that same someone is whispering it into hundreds of millions of ears all over the planet.

We’re Going to Miss the Frying Pan

Looks like the Dow is poised to open way down. Another victory for Obamanomics.

This is shocking. You can hear the fear in the voices of the hosts on CNBC.

Sometimes being right is not pleasant at all.

Now pundits are talking about inflation. Where do you go in an economy in which stocks are dead, your wages are depressed or gone, and your savings are under attack from inflation?

Frankly, I hope the anti-deflation measures bomb. At least, I hope they fail badly enough to protect responsible people who saved money and didn’t get caught up in the sleazy, ill-fated housing orgy.

My clever and sophisticated survival plan is to trust God. I think this recession is his punishment for slicing up Israel and turning away from him, and if he can punish a nation, he can protect people within that nation.

The Bible says, “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.”

Hold on tight.

A/C Help

Help me out again. I asked about this a long time ago, but now I’m serious. I want to put an air conditioner in a cinderblock garage wall. The garage has become an even better refuge than Frank Costanza’s “The Place to Be,” but it won’t be much of a refuge when it’s 90 degrees in there with 80% humidity.

I have determined that a 115-V unit 18″ high by 24″ wide, pumping out 15,000 BTUs, should do the trick. The space is 565 square feet. It’s not insulated, and I suppose I could go above 15,000 BTUs to be sure, but I hate to cut a bigger hole, and I’d really like to stay at 115 volts so I can avoid running a third circuit.

I need help with the hole. I believe it will have to be 26″ by 20″, which is not much. I can put a special blade in my ancient circular saw and make the hole. But what do I do to finish it? The unit has to sit on something, and I would want something across the top of the hole to support the cinderblocks above it.

I assume there must be a product made for this. I suppose I could fake it with pressure-treated wood, but that would make me nervous.

WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

At this writing, the Dow is down about 50 points. Wow, that Obama recovery is really something. This morning the futures looked good. We were expecting a rally because of “overselling.” Now it looks more like underselling is what actually happened.

I saw a funny Youtube this morning. It showed clips of CNBC’s Jim Cramer, talking about the new exciting BULL MARKET! And if the person who put the Youtube together was honest, Cramer was saying these things in the fairly recent past. And he was not playing around. The bear market was OVER; no ifs, ands, or buts. And CNBC’s Rick Santelli was in the video, telling Cramer how wrong he had been. Cramer claimed otherwise, but the clips seem to prove Santelli right.

A Drudge-linked story says inflation is here, but it’s based largely on temporary peaks in energy prices. Look at oil prices now, and tell me January is meaningful.

It’s amazing how poorly Obama is doing. He’s not just average or mediocre. He is a full-blown train wreck, and not all of it is related to the economy. He can’t even do a competent job of appointing cabinet members. How hard is that? When it looks like you’re going to be elected, you tell your people to find good prospects. You give them a simple list of questions to ask, and one of those questions is, “Do you pay your taxes?” Everyone knows this. Remember how we ended up with the catastrophic Janet Reno DOJ regime? Bill Clinton’s top choice didn’t pay her taxes. The tax question is routine and obvious. If you don’t ask it, you risk hiring someone who causes the death of two dozen kids, because she has no idea how hostage negotiations work. We waited 444 days to get the Iran hostages out safely, and they were adults. After 51 days of trying to extract innocent children, Reno decided it was time for the tear gas and tanks.

Not all of Obama’s choices are tax evaders. Richardson paid his taxes but may also have paid off political supporters.

Suddenly Bristol Palin doesn’t look so bad. Although when I say that, I am trying not to think of her shameful Fox interview, which I’m sure you’ve all seen. And she’s a kid, not a governor or Senator or whatever.

Cartoonist Sean Delonas is in trouble for drawing a cartoon of a dead chimp, suggesting a chimp wrote the Porkulus Package. People say it compares Obama to a monkey. One problem: Obama didn’t write the bill. This is another one of his giant failures. He has no idea what’s in this bill. He broke his promise to post it on the Internet before signing it, and there is no possibility that he has had time to read it. I’m not sure the Internet is big enough to hold it. You know, I’m considering spending a low four-figure sum for a lathe, and I’m taking weeks to get it right, and it’s a relatively small sum which will have absolutely no effect on my future. Can’t we take weeks before we decided how to spend eight hundred billion dollars?

For the cartoon to reflect on Obama, he would have to have authored the bill. That bit of logic, like most others, is lost on the openly anti-Semitic Al Sharpton, who encouraged blacks to riot in Crown Heights, leading to the brutal murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. Sharpton thinks the cartoon is troubling. I guess Delonas needs to atone by drawing a cartoon encouraging chimps to kill Jews. Or portraying Jews as chimps. Or something. Cartoons like those would be just fine by Sharpton’s standards.

If you check Youtube, you can find videos of real secular prophets: people who knew the economy was doomed, and that Obama would make it worse. One example is Peter Schiff. He was a Ron Paul supporter, which means not all of his Eggos have popped out of the toaster, but he pointed out something chilling. He said the boom we experienced after 2001 was based on excessive borrowing and inflated housing prices, which gave consumers economic leverage that was not based on real income or assets. Whee. Does that mean what I think it does? It seems to mean the real economy–the one we would have, had we not mortgaged the entire country–has been tanking for almost a decade, and now we’re just getting the bills. Which are bigger, because we prolonged the “boom” by borrowing.

Nothing is worse than borrowing money in anticipation of higher income, and then getting lower income. And when the lower income is partly caused by the borrowing…it’s like M.C. Escher economics.

I wonder if Escher is available to be a cabinet member.

Schiff says to buy guns and ammunition. I guess you could call that “bearish.” My response? Way ahead of you, bucko. Let me know if you find a place that will sell me Claymores.

“Carter 2.” That’s what the smart money was betting on, but it looks like Obama is going to make Jimmy Carter look like Ronald Reagan. Or, if you’re a partisan who can’t admit Reagan’s greatness, Abraham Lincoln. I compared Obama to Gilligan the other day, and I’m still going with that metaphor. Although you could also compare him to Lucille Ball, trying to keep up with the machine at the candy factory. I won’t compare Biden to Vivian Vance, because Vivian Vance tried to help Lucy, while I’m pretty sure Biden has been chloroformed and stuffed in a closet.

What we need in the Oval Office is a guy like Fred Mertz. An old bald veteran who will pull his huge pants up way too high, spit in his palms, and get the job done.

I think Biden still can’t believe his luck. Judging from reports about the process by which he was chosen, Obama’s people were frantically making calls to anyone they could think of, and they got Biden on the line, and they said, “Vice President or Secretary of State?” And after Biden threatened to find out who their parents were and turn them in for making prank phone calls, he chose the job which would enable him to have the highest profile while doing the least. So he’ll be Ed McMahon or Hank Kingsley, which is about as hard as being a stuffed penguin, and Hillary has to bust her hump being Doc Severinsen.

BDS sufferers won’t remember this, but George Bush didn’t start out this way. He looked pretty good for a long time, and to rational people, he still doesn’t look as bad as BDS would suggest. Obama is doing so badly, he’s not going to get a hundred-day honeymoon, and this, from the press that used to suckle him to sleep and leave mints on his pillow.

I may buy a little gold. You never know.

I really wanted to get a lathe and a mill, but I seriously think that if I wait a month, someone who has lost a business will actually pay me to take them.

Be Glad When Someone Puts the Smite to You

Let me pose a question to my Christian readers.

Suppose you communicate from time to time with another Christian. And you and this person agree that donating to the church and to charities is very important. But this person has a habit of telling you exactly how much he gives.

Imagine also that this person has represented himself as financially comfortable, and has expressed a belief that the money was a reward from God. Then this person admits having financial problems.

It worries you that this person tells you the amounts of the donations, because you believe a Christian’s generosity will be rewarded in one way or another, and that disclosing the amounts of one’s giving will cut off or reduce whatever blessings may come of it. After all, Jesus said not to let one hand know what the other was doing. You worry that this is the reason the person needs money.

Finally, out of concern, you tell the other person you are concerned about learning these amounts, for the above reasons. And this person tells you that you are impossible to communicate with because you are judgmental.

Is what you’ve done okay, or is the other person right?

I think the other person is completely wrong. After all, both testaments of the Bible are full of examples of believers giving each other advice. We’re expected to do it. Most people wouldn’t even know what the word “rebuke” means, were it not for the Bible. Everyone makes mistakes, and we need other believers to warn us, for the same reason you’d warn someone who was walking toward a minefield. Psalm 141 says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.”

I’m sure I have the punctuation wrong. The KJV has very weird punctuation.

I think it’s fine–not just acceptable, but important–to talk about the importance of giving, because you don’t talk about it in order to glorify yourself. You do it to help other Christians realize there is a blessing they may be missing out on, and you talk about it for the sake of the church, and for the sake of the needy. And it’s fine to mention organizations that deserve donations. How else are people supposed to find them? That’s why I have charity links on my site. And if you read this blog regularly, you know that I don’t just recommend charities. I also ask for recommendations.

I also think it’s fine to say you feel you’ve been rewarded for giving. That’s called “testimony.” It’s helpful to others.

At the same time, I think you harm yourself when you talk about how much you give, or what an empathetic or generous person you are.

I’ve gotten all sorts of great advice from other Christians. I take it very well unless it’s offered in a snotty way. Sometimes I manage to take it well even then, but I’m not nearly saintly enough to do that consistently.

Sometimes people are clearly self-righteous when they tell you about an error you’re making, or something you missed out on. But most of the time, they’re trying to help.

I think it’s important not to get mad when someone throws a fit over advice you’ve given them. Anger and division are just what the enemy wants, and they waste time, make you miserable, and interfere with God’s ability to grant the things you ask in prayer. Sometimes people get really mad when you give them advice, and then a week later, they’re taking the advice and either thanking you for it or pretending they thought of it themselves. Either way, it’s a positive result, and it’s less likely to happen if you start whacking each other with your giant leather-bound designer Bibles.

If I were to break character and give to charity or the church I would tell NOBODY but the IRS, and I would even be tempted to keep it off my tax returns. Not because I’m a wonderful person (although I am) but because I would like to get some sort of worthwhile reward. Let’s be honest; unless you’re a complete martyr, a lot of what you do as a matter of faith has a big element of self-interest. That’s perfectly reasonable. You won’t find Biblical figures saying things like, “O Lord, increase my leprosy, give my enemies victory, make me fight with my family, and keep me in poverty.” And God wouldn’t have given us tons of promises regarding rewards, had he not expected us to try to get the benefit. God always says, “Do this and get a reward, or do that and suffer.”

Hello? I didn’t make the rules. God isn’t a socialist. He realizes that even good people act out of self-interest.

I don’t agree with prosperity preaching. It’s wrong to tell people God has a magical machine in the sky that automatically turns every ten-dollar donation into a hundred-dollar return. But I do believe giving to God and the poor is crucial to a blessed life. We’re supposed to be like God in our character, and God is generous. I think it is literally impossible for a person or a family to have peace and prosperity and harmony without being generous. Sooner or later, you will find corruption in whatever good things you receive. You’ll make good money, but you’ll get a divorce and your kids will end up on drugs. You’ll get a nice business going, but you’ll be too sick to run it, or a lawsuit will destroy it. Something like that.

I also think God probably respects every donation made in the right spirit, but he may reward you with something other than money, because sometimes money is not what you should have. Maybe you can’t hold onto it. Maybe it will lead you to do stupid things with it and end up like one of the many wealthy celebrities who died by thirty. Not everyone can be counted on to do the mature thing and buy expensive machine tools.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with pointing out dangers other people may be courting with their behavior. The Bible actually says that if we don’t correct people, we share responsibility for their sins. The people who can’t stop parroting “judge not, et cetera” need to learn that there is more than one verse in the Bible. And I can tell you this: if people had not pointed my own sins out to me on occasion, I would be in a real mess right now.

Scrap is Gold

I love my bandsaw.

I decided to make a new zero-clearance throat plate for the Powermatic 66 today. I had half-inch MDF, and I had read that half-inch sheet goods were the thing to use. I used the old worn-out throat plate as a guide. I used it to set the table saw to the right depth to cut an MDF strip for throat plates, and then I put it on the MDF and traced its outline, to use as a pattern.

I stuck it on the bandsaw and cut off the ends, making the plate semicircular on each end. I did it very badly and was still well within a millimeter at every point. I didn’t feel like turning on the compressor and the Dynabrade, so I used the bandsaw to “sand” the sides of the plate until it popped into the table saw hole.

Problem: everyone who said half-inch material was the right choice is crazy. The hole for the throatplate is maybe 13/32″ deep. Now I had an MDF throat plate that was too thick to use.

By the way, I used my outfeed gadget to cut the MDF. It works like a dream.

I didn’t want to put MDF in my planer. It’s not wood, and planer knives are no fun to replace if you screw them up by planing the wrong material. So I was stuck. I could resaw the plate on the table saw, but I pictured kickback sending it whizzing into my face at a hundred miles an hour, propelled by my freakish 5-HP Baldor. No, for once I would be mature and not risk death.

I don’t have a resaw fence on the bandsaw. Yet. I figured it would be impossible to resaw this thing to size, even though it was only 4″ tall when stood on its side. I thought it would be too hard to keep aligned with the blade. But the choice was to pack up the tools and give up, so I gave it a shot. I moved the fence up to the 1/4″ blade, stood the MDF against it, and checked for squareness. Unbelievably, the tuning job I had done on the saw had worked. The blade was perfectly parallel to the MDF.

I started shaving little bits off. The blade didn’t seem to like that. It seemed to drift toward my right, onto the surface of the MDF. I thought I was hogging MDF too fast. The saw was whining a little (I don’t know what a happy bandsaw sounds like), and the cut was not good. But after I got the depth right, I found I actually needed to push the MDF much faster. It squirted right through! I looked at the MDF. The quality of the cut was amazing. Very flat.

I have crammed the plate into the table saw, and I have raised the blade to make a slot. This is what the experts tell you to do. What they don’t tell you is that the Powermatic 66 will not let you lower the blade enough to clear the plate. At least mine won’t. I had to run the saw with the plate halfway into the hole. But it worked.

Now I’m trying to find my Microjig splitter. I finally have a chance to use it. I’m not sure it’s any good, but I want to try it. I think they invented it because it’s an incredible pain in the butt to use their other product–the Gripper–with a regular splitter. Later I’ll go to Home Depot and get Allen screws to use as levelers.

My throat plate isn’t perfect, but to learn that, you’d have to go right up to it and check it pretty carefully. And it’s more than good enough. I plan to baste it with Danish oil. After that, I figure I’ll be done.

I cleaned the cast iron with Break-Free, Sheila Shine, and mineral spirits. I used a Scotchbrite pad, as a reader advised. Then I used car wax on the metal. It’s not really clean, but it sure is better.

I have to make a crosscut sled, before I turn my fingers into seviche. I have been going back to my books and DVDs and refreshing my table saw safety knowledge, and it looks like I’ve been committing a few really horrendous blunders. Example: crosscutting with the miter gauge, using the fence as a stop. Oh well. I’m alive.

That bandsaw is a dream come true. I have to agree with professional woodworkers who say it’s more important than a table saw. If you have a big bandsaw and a circular saw with a guide system, you can survive without a table saw for a very long time. But nothing replaces the bandsaw. And it’s so quiet and safe and handy, and there’s so much less dust. It rocks.

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This shows what a bandsaw can do. You’re looking at the throat plate and the layer I shaved off of it.

Learn From Other People’s Pain

I am skimming a story about the Stanford fraud scandal. Looks like Mr. Stanford is a student of Bernie Madoff. The claim: he took money from investors, paid too-big returns to the first ones in, and in doing so, spent the money invested by those who came along later.

Hey, is he the guy who designed Social Security?

It’s a remarkable business model. It’s even better than taking millions of dollars and paying yourself a huge salary to publish a group blog no one reads.

Not that anyone has ever done that.

The thing that struck me about this was that it confirmed what I suspected when the Madoff scandal popped up. I was talking to my dad about it, and I said I wondered how many other Madoffs were out there waiting to be flushed into the open. I knew the odds were against Bernie Madoff being the only Ponzi broker on Wall Street. And sure enough, here’s a new one.

Does this mean I’m a genius? Yes. Well, no. I wish it did. It means that in middle age, I have finally begun to understand human nature, and to profit by my understanding.

Whenever I have a moment like this, I think of an old Saturday Night Live character, the superhero “Middleagedman.” He ran around with his sidekick, Beer Buddy, solving life’s problems by applying wisdom obtained via sitting around and watching the world. You know the kind of thing I mean. Example: never get an aisle seat on an airplane unless you like being bumped by drink carts. And when you make a reservation, make sure you ask if they’re trying to stick you in one of those seats that don’t recline. Old people know this stuff. In fact, that’s pretty close to Middleagedman’s theme song, which went, “MIDDLEAGEDMAN….he knows a lot of stuff!”

There’s a company called Bottom Line that sells this kind of wisdom. My dad bought a book from them. It’s full of tips other people came up with after lots of misery. It’s sort of like the book of Proverbs, without the religious aspect.

Let’s see. Never give a friend a big loan. Up to maybe three hundred bucks, you’re cool. Above that, you will never see it again, and you will lose the friendship. Never date a woman with children unless their father is dead or in an iron lung. Never date a fat woman who just lost a hundred pounds, unless you wouldn’t mind if she gained it back. Roughly 95% of people who loudly proclaim that they will never desert you in a crisis…will desert you.

This is good material. Save it.

Avoid preachers who talk about God helping you because you give them money, but who rarely mention God helping you for helping the poor. Never, ever leave your kids with a male babysitter or day care attendant unless you want them to be molested; men who love being around kids are generally not normal. If you’re a woman and your boyfriend likes to dance more than you do, ask a male friend if he seems gay. Men generally dance only because they have to, and women have absolutely no gaydar. You might spare yourself an STD later on. If he ever talks about your shoes and seems to know what brand they are, run.

This is gold, I’m telling you.

Shun fantastic deals on used stuff, unless the sellers are clearly idiots or in financial trouble AND they are willing to produce ID and sign receipts. Never wait until Friday afternoon to go to any place where you will have to wait in line; the post office and banks are the worst. Do not EVER let an attractive woman stay with you and your wife for more than one night, especially if it’s a friend of your wife’s and she just had a painful breakup. If you’re a man and your girlfriend flirts with your friends, dump her. Women use men they’re not crazy about to help them meet better men.

Never date anyone who carries a dog everywhere. Never date anyone who tells you everything her friends and relatives have told her in confidence. She does the same thing to you, in spades. If you’re already in such a relationship and you want to find out the most embarrassing thing she has told her friends, pick a fight with one of them and see what she says.

Don’t buy a Chrysler product. Just don’t. They have been crap since about 1972. You can make an exception for a Viper.

Men: never wear a wig. Some of the newer hair transplant surgery methods are pretty good, but there is no such thing as a good toupee. Look at Burt Reynolds and William Shatner. Is that how you want to be remembered? Ladies: do whatever it takes to remove your facial hair, even if the results aren’t that great. Remember this rule: the worst wax job in history was more attractive than the prettiest beard.

If you have gas in public, go stand near the fattest, ugliest person you can find. Everyone will think he or she did it.

If your girlfriend asks you annoying, prying questions and says you should have no secrets from each other, ask yourself whether she tells you as much about herself as you tell her about yourself. Women like to collect information to use against you later. If your boyfriend likes to tell you what to do, it may not be because he feels protective; he may be an Ike Turner in the making.

Never date a man who drives a black car with the windows tinted black, especially if he himself wears black. In his mind, he is about 12 years old, and he will make you suffer. Never date ANYONE who wears black all the time. It’s not chic, and it’s not indicative of depth or intelligence or sophistication. It’s pretentious and creepy. People who wear black all the time crave admiration. Or they’re in the Viet Cong, which is even worse.

A man who is nasty and brutal to other people will treat you the same way sooner or later. Generally, people who mistreat others will eventually give the same treatment to people who trust them.

Never date someone because you feel sorry for them and think you can help them. There is no such thing as a fixer-upper or mechanic’s special.

Man, I wish someone had told me all this stuff years ago.

When you start a charcoal grill, use tons of fluid, assuming you’re a fluid guy and not an electric-starter guy. Get it done the first time; don’t play around so you have to keep adding fluid later. Don’t buy a time share. Don’t buy a boat in partnership with your best friend whom you would trust with your life. Never even think about buying a new boat. Always used.

Never buy small tools; I think I may have mentioned that once or twice in the past. Make them at least two sizes bigger than you think you need. And when it comes to expensive tools, try to buy used. Let someone else eat the depreciation.

In the summer, heavy wool socks are cooler and dryer than thin cotton socks. Some of the best meat is the cheapest; you just need to know how to cook it. When you’re out of mosquito repellant but oddly, you have fresh basil, rub the basil on your skin. Mosquitoes hate it.

Don’t date a person you find physically unattractive. It won’t work.

For digging shallow holes, a sharp hoe is about ten times as fast as a shovel. Never cut down a tree with an axe. It’s not the right tool. Use a saw. Do you think lumberjacks cut trees down with axes? Maybe the stupid ones do. The ones that accept sandwiches from strange, plastic-faced kings who pop up beside them in bed.

I’m not really sure what axes are for. Saws cut much, much better, and axes are useless for splitting wood. A long time ago, I worked for a guy who ran a tree service. He had all sorts of tools in his truck. But if memory serves, he didn’t have an axe. We never had a use for one.

You know, I think I may start a self-help cult. I wonder if I could hire Tom Cruise away from the Scientologists. It’s amazing that I know all these great things, yet somehow fail to apply most of them.

Anyway, the Wall Street scandals probably won’t end with Madoff and Stanford. Middleagedman knows all.

Send the Wife and Kids Out of the Room

I know nothing whatsoever about Sterling Machinery, but I have to congratulate them on this Youtube video.

That’s what a milling machine is and what it does.

The earth moved while I watched that.

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I bought plans for a mobile base for a Bridgeport. I was worrying about rearranging the garage, but then I realized that with a mobile base, there was no point. Shove it behind the Powermatic 66, and you’re all set.

I don’t like the plans, though. I have a neurotic fear that the mill will tip. The plans are for a base that raises it up, and the base is only slightly wider than the mill.

I had an idea, based on a couple of brilliant dollies a guy made. You get 4″ by 6″ angle iron half an inch thick. I know this stuff exists. You cut it so it’s longer than the side of a Bridgeport base. You drill two holes in it, and you thread them for big bolts. You lift each side of the mill high enough to scoot the angle iron under it, and you run bolts down through the base of the mill (pre-drilled holes already exist) into the iron.

Then you take short pieces of the same angle iron, and you weld them to the sides of the angle iron you attached to the mill, so the flat 6″ parts extend horizontally to the sides of the mill, high enough for casters to fit under them. Actually, you might be better off using long pieces of angle iron, since the length won’t hurt anything, and it will make the thing more rigid.

You drill holes in the horizontal tabs and attach swiveling casters. If you can find places to weld in gussets, do it. You probably can’t use casters with brakes, because they’re too big to swivel under the 6″ tabs. So you add tabs close to the floor, threaded for bolts that screw down and anchor the machine.

This should work. The pull on the bolts won’t be much, because of the small moment arm against which the mill presses. The casters can be a foot in front of the mill, which adds up to stability. The anchor things should keep wobble to a minimum. And you don’t have to lift a one-ton mill six inches to get it onto the base. You can do it with a crowbar and some scrap wood or small pipes.

Tell me why it will be a disaster.

Explain Yourselves

While I’m dealing with pet peeves, can someone tell me when the English decided to rewrite the rules of subject/verb agreement?

I just read a headline I cannot understand. It says “England refuse to force follow on as Windies are bowled out.” WHAT? WHAT? “Bowled out?” “Windies”? Am I hallucinating?

Must be a cricket story. I refuse to click. Oops, I mean “Steve refuse to click.”

Anyway, it’s an example of what I’m complaining about. “England” is a singular noun, and the writer treats it like a plural noun.

This ungrammatical BS is a new thing. It has to be. The Bible mentions a lot of nations, and it was written in England, and it doesn’t say things like “Israel also WERE had in abomination with the Philistines.” Look for yourself. Here’s another one: “Egypt WAS glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them.”

Stop it, English people. Or else pretentious Americans who say “cheers” instead of “bye” and write “colour” instead of “color” will start doing it, too.

Picture Barack Obama Falling Out of a Palm Tree

Can I point something out, just to keep my hairline from receding? Here it is: there is such a thing as a logical fallacy which is, in and of itself, a fallacy. Sort of.

Very often, web denizens toss out Latin phrases which are names for recognized logical fallacies, and then they sit back all smug, thinking they’ve won the argument. Which never happens on the Internet regardless of how right you are, unless of course you’re me. Even then, I’m the only one who agrees that I’m right, which doesn’t matter, because I’m right about that, too.

Here’s the particular fallacy I’m thinking about: argumentum ad hominem. It means you attack the person instead of the man. The inverse or converse or whatever of this is “appeal to authority,” which means you cite some big bloviating authority and claim his apparent agreement with your sniveling blog comment makes you right.

You know what? Ad hominem arguments are often–maybe usually–totally valid. Maybe not in the strictest technical sense, but in application. And like Mr. Spock used to say, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.” Which isn’t actually true, but let’s go on.

I’ll give you an example. Charles Manson walks into your house with a severed head in his hand, and he says, “You should put all your money in soybean futures, because the Chinese are going to outlaw oral contraceptives, and they’re going to need a lot of tofu.”

Now, you realize right away that this argument is crap. Why? Because you’re an expert on soybeans and the Chinese birthrate? No. Because Charles Manson is an idiot, and nothing he says should be taken seriously. Implicit in your reasoning–which is perfectly sound–is a heavy-duty ad hominem argument. A logic professor might get his sexually ambiguous drawers in a knot and point out that Charles Manson’s argument could be correct, and that you haven’t really refuted it. Who cares? You’re right, and you have better things to do than argue with Charles Manson.

Appeal to authority works the same way. Today I put up Youtubes of Jim Rogers, one of the world’s most successful and sophisticated investors, as evidence of Barack Obama’s economic foolishness. And I impugned the Obamessiah’s crazy approach to fixing the recession by pointing out that he is not a skilled investor.

Jim Rogers is an authority on money. My imaginary logic professor can whine all he wants; anything Jim Rogers says about money automatically carries weight. His reputation may not prove he’s right, but it makes listening to him much, much smarter than listening to Barack Obama.

The legal system recognizes the fact that a person’s qualifications determine the weight of his statements. Am I appealing to authority again? Maybe, although like Bumble said, “The law is a ass. A idiot.” If you look at the Federal Rules of Evidence, you’ll find that they heartily endorse argumentum ad hominem and appeal to authority. For example, only people whose credentials are proven extraordinary are allowed to testify as experts. On the other hand, a person who can’t prove his credentials is shut out not because of the validity of his testimony, but because of his nature.

We also have ethical rules that reflect the same basic idea. Example: usually you shouldn’t represent codefendants in a criminal case, because they may come to have adverse interests. Then when you argue on behalf of one, you may let the other one down. So you’re supposed to push your clients to hire separate attorneys, OR, much more importantly, to sign a paper saying they know the risks and still want to give you all their money. That’s actually true; I’m not saying it the way the bar associations like to see it presented, but it’s correct. You can represent two people with conflicting interests as long as you inform them and get them to agree. Anyway, without consent, you are presumed to be ineffective when arguing on their behalf, not because of the merits of your arguments and decisions (which probably don’t exist at the time the conflict arises and therefore can’t be evaluated), but because of your position as an advocate for both defendants. The system PRESUMES you will do or say something stupid.

Pointing out recognized logical fallacies (or, more often, what you mistakenly think are logical fallacies) doesn’t really win arguments most of the time. It’s a cheesy way to help you avoid arguing in the first place. It’s a cop-out, unless it’s so obvious that your objections are valid that you can be excused. I think most logic, in the real world of soft and unknown variables, is ultimately fuzzy. Things like intuition and emotion aren’t always unproductive. Sometimes they get you to the truth faster than your puny reasoning skills. It’s a lot more convincing to stay in the game than to hop up and down screeching “TU QUOQUE!”, which nobody even understands.

It’s like another cheap tactic, which always makes me chuckle. You post this: “SOURCE? LINK?”

Right, I’m supposed to spend a week Googling, in order to back up, say, my assertion that peas are better for you than rat poison, or my claim that Canada is bigger than Thailand. How much did you research in order to come up with “SOURCE? LINK?” You didn’t research at all. That’s the whole reason you typed it. You’re lazy, and you know putting people on the defensive is easier than making a real argument. Isn’t it? Well, isn’t it? Prove it’s not. SOURCE? LINK?

See what I mean? No matter what the other person is saying, you can always say “SOURCE? LINK?” Even when it’s clearly inappropriate.

Argument is overrated, anyway. As a means of getting to the truth, it scores pretty low. I mean the kind of argument that involves short, informal exchanges. Like debates. When two people argue and one wins, very often, all it proves is that he argues better than the other guy. O.J. Simpson told me that. No, he didn’t, but he knows it. He tried to push it a little farther than he should have, but it worked for him against Chris Darden and Marcia Clark. I think the best way to get at the truth is for people to put their pitches in written form, in great detail, and let other people look at them. This way, they get to think more about what they say. They don’t get flustered and lose arguments because they’re too mad to think.

Anyway, Barack Obama is the Gilligan of economics. Time will prove me and Jim Rogers right.

Roger That

The Dow is sliding again today. It’s interesting; the lower the index goes, the more serious a three-digit loss seems. At 12,000-14,000, it didn’t seem like a big deal to lose 500 points in a day. Now it looks a lot worse. There are only about 15 500-point days between the current index level and zero.

Obama’s socialist policies, which, oddly, George Bush agreed with, are already killing us. And the pain is only beginning. Socialism doesn’t work. Socialism doesn’t work. I can’t say it enough. It didn’t work in good times. It is bizarre that people have decided it will work in bad times, when capitalism is more important than ever.

Obama is not a financial guru; he’s a hack politician who has never defied his handlers and Illinois-machine patrons. It’s amazing that he succeeded in billing himself as the agent of change, because he is the personification of reactionary liberalism. I can’t think of a politician who is more opposed to change. He’s giving us exactly what a pre-Reagan liberal would have given us in 1976: pork, big government, excess regulation, debt without reward, and paternalism. Obama is a leftist; therefore, all his ideas about prosperity are diametrically opposed to what works. If he knew anything about wealth, he’d be a successful investor, but he is not. He survives on high income and sweetheart deals. When you have those things going for you, you don’t learn anything about investing. He’s in the same class as people like Britney Spears. We shouldn’t be listening to them. We should be listening to people who have proven they can invest.

Case in point: Jim Rogers. If you don’t know who he is, you might as well quit reading now. Here are a couple of recent interviews.

Jim Rogers is rich. He will die rich, in all likelihood, and it won’t be because he was a powerful politician to whom people funneled money. It won’t be because his fame as a rock-star politician allowed him to sell five million copies of a self-worshiping autobiography. It will be because he knew what he was doing.

Look what he’s telling us. Let the bad businesses fail. Let the bad executives be fired, so they can be replaced by competent executives who will lead their companies to success. Don’t pile up debt with bailouts that prolong the agony and make things worse. And he’s telling us America is going to keep declining for a good long time, so he’s betting on continued losses in our most respected stocks. And he has moved to Singapore. He says moving to Asia now is like moving to New York in 1907.

What can I tell you? Jim Rogers is shorting blue chips, and we’re both shorting Obama.