04.05.13
Idiot of the day
The web is so full of worthless news organizations it is hard to pick out truly spectacular examples of BAD.
However, today Benzinga made it easy.
On its website:
Benzinga is a dynamic and innovative financial media outlet that empowers investors with high-quality, unique content that is coveted by Wall Street’s top traders. Benzinga provides timely, actionable ideas that help users navigate even the most uncertain and volatile markets – in real-time with an unmatched caliber.
4. Insure Your Assets
The best time to prepare for nuclear catastrophe is not after the fact. Review your homeowner’s and auto insurance policies, making sure that your coverage extends to nuclear attacks — in most cases, it doesn’t.
Checking life insurance policies and protecting any other assets you may have is also a good idea.
Insure your assets.
And:
Beggars can’t be choosers following a nuclear attack, so prepare yourself to feast on pigeon, rabbit and other readily available sources of protein. These can be killed with a BB gun or crossbow. Remember to skin the animal before you eat.
You might almost think it’s a humor piece were it not for the careful inclusion of all relevant stock tickers/abbreviations.
From the not-moron parts, John Pike — someone I know on a weekly basis, in Newsday:
By now, Pike said he is worried North Korea has painted itself into a corner situation where it must make good on its threats or risk losing face and credibility …
“The North Koreans have run out of non-kinetic provocations, haven’t they? I mean, how many times can you declare war?” he said. “If they don’t start shooting within the next week or 10 days, everybody’s going to say they’re a bunch of chickens, that they can talk the talk but they’re not willing to walk the walk, aren’t they? And they’re going to say of Kim Jong Un, he don’t know how to run nothing but his mouth,” to paraphrase a classic Marion Barry quote.
But even for a hardware expert like Pike, the U.S. solution does not lie in deploying more weapons. South Korea and the Americans, he argued, “can take it up the escalation ladder as far as the North wants to go.” The thing that could change North Korea’s tune, he said, is China.
“The North would run out of rubble to bounce before the Americans would run out of hydrogen bombs.”
Apt, it made me laugh.
To which I’d add, no one wanted WWI after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by some nut from Serbia. But look what happened.
Our president has demonstrated, quite admirably during his first term, that he’s poor at dealing with crazy people. And that’s our crazy people.