Now Batting for Pedro Borbon...

It's Come to This

2012-01-27T16:43:00.005-05:00

If you were running for 5th grade class president and you wanted to be sure you'd get elected, you'd get up in front of the class and promise that if elected you would provide free ice cream every Friday during lunch. Naturally, that approach wouldn't work for the highest executive office of a complex society of adults living in the most advanced nation in history...right?

Volcker Rule Screwing Up Entire World

2012-01-27T10:39:00.002-05:00

First it was the Japanese, now the Europeans are complaining about the Volcker Rule. Not content just to screw up our capital markets, US politicians that voted for Dodd-Frank have succeeded in messing up overseas markets. But this time they've really messed up; don't they know that you don't screw with the political class's ability to feed ever-growing government with debt?? That's a no-no. You don't mess with the Vote Pump.

So All This "Draft Hillary" Stuff Isn't Analogous?

2012-01-25T17:06:00.004-05:00

Apparently a third of Republicans want another candidate to jump in the race. Big deal! The obvious point is that two thirds are satisfied with the choices they have, but more importantly, I bet the number is much higher for Democrats. Haven't we been hearing non-stop for awhile now that Hillary ought to step into the race? It seems like every other week we read of a major Democratic poo-bah or pundit calling for Hillary (or even Bill). Democrats are putting on a good face about all this, they know Obama has damaged the party for years and they know the White House is at risk along with the Senate, but he's their best shot to retain the at least one branch of government. You'd be lucky to get two out of three Democrats saying they want no one other than Obama to compete for their nomination. In fact, I bet you the comparable number for Democrats is over 50%, only very few true believers of Hopenchange are left.

Holy Moley!

2012-01-25T09:58:00.003-05:00

Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan (that is his new official title and the traditional method of reference) is eloquent and yet minces no words on how he feels about how ObamaCare's mandates conflict with religious principles. Some choice tidbits:

Now we have learned that those loud and strong appeals were ignored. On Friday, the administration reaffirmed the mandate, and offered only a one-year delay in enforcement in some cases—as if we might suddenly be more willing to violate our consciences 12 months from now.
...
The rule forces insurance companies to provide these services without a co-pay, suggesting they are "free"—but it is naïve to believe that. There is no free lunch, and you can be sure there's no free abortion, sterilization or contraception. There will be a source of funding: you.
...
By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.
...
When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead.

Ouch. Count Catholics among the various voting blocks that will exhibit diminished enthusiasm for the Lightworker in 2012 relative to 2008, which is likely to include cops, Jews, the armed forces, unemployed recent college grads, the business community, Iranian-Americans, doctors, and, investors of all types. (Also, college professors??)

Crazy

2012-01-25T09:52:00.003-05:00

Rob over at say anything pithily captures the insanity of all this "Romney is rich" angst.

So the guy made alot of money, and because of that we want to stick with the guy who never had a real job to fix the economy??? Huh???

Economy Still A Massive Anchor for Obama. Stay Focused People! ABBO!

2012-01-24T22:08:00.005-05:00

David Goldman keeps it pithy, substituting graphs for words, but he says essentially what I've been saying - the economy may get slightly better but it won't feel better, and therefore will not only not help Obama, but stands to hurt him irreparably. His only chance is a Republican fumble, which may well happen, but not if we put it all behind us and turn out and vote ABBO. Romney, Gingrich, whoever. Doesn't matter. ABBO.

UPDATE: Just got my copy of the latest American Rifleman, and let's just say that they are rallying their base big time around ABBO. The cover story is a call to arms about the election - and they've taken a tip from Justin Tuck and the G-Men - we need to be "All In." Who's All In?

Will Lefties Now Love Fracking After Obama Blesses It?

2012-01-24T21:39:00.008-05:00

The American energy industry is letting out a collective "Is he f**king kidding?" this morning after hearing Obama's taking credit for and ballyhooing progress in hydrocarbon development last night in the SOTU. There has been no US administration more hostile to the exploitation of our domestic hydrocarbon-based energy resources than that of Barack Obama. (Mark Perry has more on this.) So what to make of this:

President Barack Obama, in a State of the Union address delivered 11 months before election day, pushed drilling for natural gas in shale formations as a potential boost to the economy.
Hydraulic fracturing, which injects a mix of water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, according to a White House document released before Obama’s speech. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

First option of what to make of it is obvious - he's lying. The current Democratic Party has a few sacrosanct principles, one of which is that all hydrocarbon energy is bad. He could be using this as a talking point about jobs for campaign purposes but have no intention whatsoever to be amenable to fracking.

Second option, it is now an officially acceptable tenet of progressive orthodoxy to embrace the natural gas revolution brought about by the technology of hydraulic fracturing.

What's your guess?

Let's Face It, Who Is More Evil Than the Norwegians?

2012-01-20T15:43:00.003-05:00

Those notorious Gaia-hating, environment despoiling Norwegians! They're fast-tracking significant oil development projects!! Not only do they want to boil the planet, they want to do it quickly!! Oh the HUMANITY! How can these blond, fish-eating monsters be stopped?!?! They'll kill us all if left to persist.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy Friday gave the green light to the plan for development and operation (PDO) of Skuld, a fast-track development tied in to the Norne field in the Norwegian Sea.
Skuld is Statoil's fifth approved fast-track PDO, and the largest fast-track development so far. All of these fields are scheduled to come on stream by year-end 2012/early 2013.

War criminals, I say! Trials! We need trials for these war criminals!

Crazy Insane Got No Brain!

2012-01-20T14:53:00.002-05:00

Shell is going to spend $1 billion looking for oil offshore Nova Scotia, where there could be 8 billions barrels of the stuff. Man, I sure hope they find some, we could sure use some of it here. We'll just build a pipeline or something...bring the oil right here rather than have it shipped in via tanker...

...or we could go insane.

Why Are We "Pre-Revolutionary" Again?

2012-01-20T14:00:00.007-05:00

Let's tick off a few things:
- An official of the Department of Justice, the cabinet-level agency charged with unearthing wrongdoing and enforcing our laws, is pleading the fifth so as to be able to not reveal truths to Congressional investigators;
- ObamaCare is now forcing you and I to pay for free contraception for our fellow citizens;
- more idiocy and taxpayer funded waste at bankrupt Solyndra;
- Feds shut down file-sharing website with no apparent due process
- Coast Guard indefinitely detains seafarers over suspected pollution
- Some in Congress are proposing a "Reasonable Profits Board"
- The national debt - at least the official, understated, national debt - was, at last count, over $15 trillion;
- Our President has just shut down a major infrastructure project that would provide tens of thousands of jobs and increase our energy supplies from a friendly neighbor rather than from extremist, America-hating dictatorships;

That's just today and after just five minutes of perusing. No wonder Pat Caddell has found Americans to be in a "pre-revolutionary" mood.

I'm a Better "Tax Avoider" Than Mitt Romney

2012-01-20T12:06:00.006-05:00

Mitt Romney didn't avoid ANY US taxes by virtue of participating in Cayman Island-domiciled investment partnerships.

Loser.

Why the hell not? When you read things like this and we have Solyndra and California's High Speed Rail idiocy and the zillions of other laugh/cry examples of expensive government idiocy - all of which are paid for by you and me by coercion - how can you NOT want to resist getting fleeced for this stuff and attempt to avoid a little taxes? I do and you can too. Why didn't Romney? Is he a piker or did he perhaps know that he would be running for POTUS one day and our media are a bunch of lefty apparatchik hacks?? Ponying up every last dollar possible to fund these dimwits' blithering nonsense is pure pikerism if you ask me.

Lefties Are OK With Indefinite Detention When It's For Their Crimes

2012-01-20T09:55:00.005-05:00

This is an amazing(ly depressing) story. I thought indefinite detention was a bad thing. That's what liberals told me when we detained people who wanted to kill us in what they perceive as a war for domination. Pikers. Alas, there is no sin like environmental sin and no usurpation of liberty is too great for that. (Note: from paid site)

A US judge has forced local authorities to negotiate with Evalend Shipping after the ‘indefinite detention of crew’ in an investigation of magic-pipe allegations.

US authorities are treating seafarers “like enemy combatants”, says a US federal judge in Houston, who has strongly criticised the indefinite detention of crew members in pollution investigations.

Judge Vanessa Gilmore of the Southern District of Texas (SDTX) federal court has taken the unusual step of putting court pressure on the the US Coast Guard (USCG) and Department of Justice (DoJ) in their negotiations with owner and crew in a pollution investigation.

In the midst of an investigation of magic-pipe allegations involving Greece’s Evalend Shipping and the 15-man crew of its 5,700-dwt products tanker Mediator (built 2008), Gilmore has forced the USCG and DoJ authorities to negotiate with defence lawyers and reduce bonds and limit terms of confinement under a “security agreement” with the USCG.

In a set of personal and, at times, colourful remarks from the bench, the judge repeatedly made it clear that she is concerned about her country’s respect for seafarers’ civil rights.

According to a 52-page transcript of a 5 January hearing in the ongoing case, Gilmore told prosecutors and lawyers for the owner: “That is the thing that is really the most troubling to me of this entire deal, not the money so much, but just the indefinite detention of people, just saying, ‘You’re stuck here and we don’t have to tell you anything. You’re like enemy combatants. We don’t have to tell you when you’re going to get let go.’”

Simply lawless.

Warren Buffett Pays Down 0.000000327% of America's Debt

2012-01-18T17:10:00.002-05:00

Awesome news. Now, all we need is 306,122,449 to cut checks for $49,000 as well (oh, and not run any more deficits) and we're home free. I'll ask my 4, 7, and 10 year old kids when I go home tonight what they are good for. They did get some money for Christmas after all.

Shocker: Bloomberg Distorts Election Non-Issue Issue

2012-01-18T11:57:00.008-05:00

This headline annoys the crap out of me. No surprise it comes from Al Hunt & Co. at Bloomberg News, which is the new JournoList focused on re-electing Barack Obama.

Romney Gets Break for Taxes Less Wage-Earner

Romney does NOT get a "tax break." He pays the statutory (meaning passed by Congress) tax rate on investment income. Since he has no job currently, he does not earn any meaningful amount in wages, on which he would pay the statutory tax rate on wages. The man is living off of the investments he has accumulated over a lifetime of working, which is what we all do whether it is from the family home or other properties or stock or bonds. He is, in other words, doing nothing different from what most all retired people do. Furthermore, the taxation of investment income versus the taxation of wage income is different for a number of reasons grounded in sound economic logic. You may disagree for whatever reason - philosophical, economic or otherwise - but your beef is not with Mitt Romney, it is with the law and your elected representatives that passed and maintain current taxation policy.

This is the same dumb argument that Warren Buffett makes - he too makes most of his money from investments and he laments the fairness of his taxation rate versus that of his secretary. He never says why his rate is lower and he never makes a forceful argument against the well-established policy of taxing investment income differently from wage income. If you don't like the situation, fine, make a rational argument for equalizing the two, but don't lie and distort about who is getting breaks and all that garbage.

UPDATE: This is all to say nothing of the fact that Romney's 15% tax rate is too high, as Jimmy P. rightly points out. And John Cochrane puts a little extra meat on the bone.

America the Flakey

2012-01-18T11:37:00.002-05:00

Bloomberg is reporting that Obama will reject the Keystone XL pipeline. This is a disaster for America in strategic, economic, and diplomatic terms. It has real-world damaging affects but also it is, to my mind, the sine qua non of what I have talked about before - flakiness. This is a flakey policy. America is now flakey, and this is perhaps one of the worst outcomes of electing a man such as Barack Obama - we can't make sensible decisions and close deals that our allies and us have worked on for years.

Just But One Small Example

2012-01-18T10:24:00.003-05:00

Methanex, a Canadian chemical company with operations all over the world, is relocating one of its methanol plants (yes, it is literally taking a giant plant that looks like this and putting it on boats and reassembling it in Louisiana) to the US to take advantage of the "shale gas boom".

Methanex Corporation...announced today that it has secured land in Geismar, Louisiana, and is planning to move one of its idle methanol plants in Chile to this location. Site-specific engineering has begun and the plant is expected to be operational in the second half of 2014.

The company estimates 1000 jobs associated with the plant construction and 100-200 permanent jobs at the facility long term. More investment and jobs for America and yet our government is actively trying to thwart the development of shale gas...

Super Bowl Prediction Still Alive

2012-01-17T11:42:00.003-05:00

While we still have a ways to go, my Super Bowl prediction is still alive and well, at least for a week. Probably more than can be said for most. I bet 85% of all SB predictions were felled by the disappearance of the Packers, Saints and Steelers.

Simple Answer

2012-01-13T14:06:00.001-05:00

Great article by Kevin Williamson here and great question:

Obama: Incompetent or Evil?

The answer, of course, is YES.

Romney's Cash: Good Sign

2012-01-11T12:19:00.006-05:00

This is just the beginning. I have predicted it, Mitt is going to raise boatloads of cash from businesses big and small, who've felt beleaguered and assaulted by Barack Obama's administration and his Democratic Party for years now. The American Business community has long since completely given up on Obama. Romney doesn't have to be the conservative rock-star that some think he has to be. His basic, sensible, business-friendly, non-Obamaness is going to draw money into his coffers like flies to pies. And then he is going to use that money to pound away at 1) what a crappy economic policy Obama has unleashed and 2) what a thinly-disguised, Constitution-hating tyrant he is. Pound. Pound. Pound.

And he will maintain the persona of a not-so-scary Republican that independents and disaffected moderate (Reagan) Democrats can reasonably consider. And he will be good enough for right wing ABBO nut jobs like me. That's the formula: Money/Moderate/Not Obama.
I think it's a pretty decent strategy. It could do the trick. So let's quit all the kvetching and "git ur done."

UPDATE: Ahem, what did I say about Obama and the business community?

Even With Good Intentions...

2012-01-10T17:25:00.007-05:00

Guess what? When the government is the only entity that can buy pharmaceuticals and said government is an irretrievable deadbeat, nobody gets pharmaceuticals.

For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.

Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines. Even when drugs are available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Actually, it is not complex at all - people demand compensation for the things that they produce. If you can't pay the compensation, you don't get the things.

Strained government finances only make matters worse. Wholesalers and pharmacists say the system suffers from a lack of liquidity, as public insurers delay payments to pharmacies, which in turn can’t pay suppliers on time.

“Wholesalers simply do not have the money anymore to play bank to the pharmacies,” Heinz Kobelt, secretary general of the European Association of Euro-Pharmaceutical Companies, said in a telephone interview.

Public insurers owe pharmacists some 330 million euros ($422.1 million) for drugs bought since April, Dimitris Karageorgiou, vice-chairman of the pharmacists’ association, said in an interview last month. Payment can take three months to up to a year, pharmacists said. Some are turning to patients to pay up front.

Throw in price controls for good measure and you get shortages.

One major cause is the Greek government, which sets prices for medicines. As part of an effort to cut its own costs, Greece has mandated lower drug prices in the past year. That has fed a secondary market, drug manufacturers contend, as wholesalers sell their shipments outside the country at higher prices than they can get within Greece.

There are many lessons to unpack here, but the best one might be to view all this through the lens of compassion. Leftists are constantly telling us that government run healthcare is compassionate. What is compassionate about a system that breaks down catastrophically with no incentives to get people what they need? Take out the central-planning of the Greek healthcare system you might have a chance to get treatments to patients, albeit at higher costs. What is more compassionate, meeting patients' needs at higher cost or having them go without needed medicines altogether?

Note also, as a sidebar, that if the Greek system currently prevailed in Illinois, Illini would be similarly deprived of medicines as the state of Illinois cannot pay its bills on time.

So let's put a little addendum onto Gerry Ford's quote, "A government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have....". I would add, "whether it intends to or not." Governments can deprive you by being tyrannical or by melting down and ceasing to function - the end results is the same.

A Shame

2012-01-10T13:40:00.002-05:00

How did Newt Gingrich go from a jewel to a disgrace in less than six weeks? I guess when you are a creature of the 24-hour news cycle...

Then Do Something About It

2012-01-10T12:49:00.001-05:00

Um...er...then get out there and vote his ass out...

Pretty simple if you ask me.

Coming in 2014? The Venezuelan Missile Crisis?

2012-01-10T09:56:00.004-05:00

So just the other day, in criticizing our Demilitarizer-in-Chief, I asked what will we do when Iran parks a nuclear warhead in the jungles of Venezuela?

Yup.

Daley Out

2012-01-09T14:59:00.003-05:00

Daley stepping down. The media will make nothing of it, as opposed to the deeply disturbing meaning of, let's say, Andy Card leaving the Bush White House. That said, no administration wants the headache and/or disruption of a major change of personnel in the White House, certainly not in an election year where things have to appear to be going smoothly. Still, Obama clearly doesn't display any desire for the White House to function this year anyway - his legislative agenda is dead and he's fighting his battles against the economy at the regulatory agency level. He's in campaign mode so who cares who runs the WH anyway, right? Mostly right, but still it is an opening for opponents to say, 'Hey look, things are discombobulated, there's tumult, uncertainty...yadayada.' So how could they let Daley leave right now? What's another eleven months?

Well, if you think the Clintonites are hanging the Lightworker out to dry...this can be seen in a different light. Will there be any Clintonites left as we get into the general election campaign?

Oh, and let me ask you, dear reader, one question: What are the chances that while Daley gets out, Hillary is getting in? Yup.

More Pigovian Nonsense

2012-01-09T10:29:00.004-05:00

More Pigovian nonsense from the otherwise sensible Greg Mankiw. Alternative titles could be:
- "Taxing People for Leaving Their Homes, Saves Lives" or
- "Taxes Forcibly Alter People's Preference Functions to Conform to Other People's Preferences."

No Way. ObamaCare Pads Insurance Cos. Profits.

2012-01-06T10:40:00.004-05:00

ObamaCare has increased healthcare costs precipitously for you and me, and is keeping businesses from hiring, but hey, at least it's padding insurance companies' profits!!

Hope. Change. Enjoy!

History's Pound Foolishness

2012-01-06T09:14:00.007-05:00

The WSJ weighs in today on Obama's proposed gutting of America's military capabilities and they get it exactly right - this is history's pound foolishness. It's easy to see this as a budget issue and glaze over wot with all that green eye shade, but history transcends fiscal accounting periods and proceeds in tidal movements over decades. Obama's proposal is of a magnitude that it counts as one of history's "big ideas." Big, but neither a new or good idea.

Throughout history, great powers have voluntarily disarmed and the results have never been good. The reasons are always the same as well: 1) war is yucky, 2) we currently have no formidable adversaries, 3) we can spend the money on goodies for ourselves. Unfortunately, those that make the decisions are never around to reap the bitter fruits, it always falls upon later generations to to deal with, as the WSJ puts it, "history's next surprise." The entitlement state always wins out until there are battleships off your coasts and in your harbors.

Sure, we may enjoy free healthcare or lavish retirement benefits now, but what are we going to do thirty years from now when a Chinese carrier group sails into San Francisco Bay or, to slake their thirst for oil, China invades British Columbia (China population = 1.4 billion, Canada population = 34 million)? Or, what will we do when Iran parks several nuclear warheads in the jungles of Venezuela (more like five years from now)? Peaceniks, liberals and America-haters may scoff, but these are the scenarios that history bears out: humans are aggressive, power fills a vacuum, today's decisions set the stage for the world decades hence, and threats are ignored until they are right in front of your face.

The America-hating world will rejoice at our self-debasement but here, too, history offers scant comfort. The world is combustible and placid geographies can turn into killing fields in an instant. Europe was an abattoir for nearly all of the early half of the 20th century. After the US joined the fight and ensured ongoing security, the Europeans lived out the last half of the century in relative peace and prosperity (false, debt-fueled, entitlement-rich prosperity as it turns out). When the killing fields return to the heart of Europe and the US is militarily atrophied, how will the America-haters in Euroland feel just then? With Vladimir Putin III's army bearing down on the citizens of Berlin, after having raped and killed their way through Poland, just what will be the headline in Der Spiegel - "Thank God Obama Shrunk the US military by a Third!" ??

Laugh all you want at my hypotheticals, but show me where in history man's benevolent nature has undergirded long stretches of peace and prosperity. When was the golden age of nations living side by side in peace, the world safe from aggression of arms?

Obama opponents joke that he would turn us into France. It's no joke. He is. Here comes our transformation to the martial prowess of France. All that's left is to have not enough work to go around, so that we have to share the work with others in a 35 hour work week...oh wait...

Enjoy America. This is Hope and Change. You asked for it, you got it.

UPDATE: Another, more learned, take here. Just a quick point on this line: "Obama’s been trying to reassure Americans all this won’t endanger our national security or our strategic interests. Everyone in or out of uniform who’s free to speak knows better". You want proof? Just look at Odierno's face in this picture, it says it all.

Oh, and there is this:

Fortunately, some of the Republican presidential candidates have seen the danger coming. Mitt Romney has urged keeping the defense budget at 4 percent of GDP — it’s currently less than 3 percent — and wants to expand the Navy’s desperately endangered shipbuilding program.

Abortion flip-flops, RomneyCare, yadayada...who bloody cares? Now is the time to get the BIG things correct. So you do you still want to bitch and moan about how uninspiring Mitt Romney is?

UPDATE: While the subject is deadly serious, on a more wayward note, look at Panetta's face in that picture. What's with the ear-to-ear grin? Could he be unleashing the Clintonite Final Solution to the Era of Obama? Well, Panetta is a Clintonite and this surely will get every current and former US serviceman to the polls in November. I'm starting to think there really is something to my little conspiracy theory. All that remains is for some Clintonite to push Obama into formally declaring all individually owned firearms illegal before the election...although, based on my latest issue of American Rifleman, gun owners are already pretty fired up to vote in 2012...

Will the Economy Help Obama? A Closer Look.

2012-01-05T16:49:00.004-05:00

Byron Wien is also fond of making predictions like yours truly (H/T Mark Perry). Here's one of his:

4. The recovering economy and the declining unemployment rate help President Obama convince the voters that he didn't do such a bad job in his first term after all. He is viewed as a good speaker but a poor leader who is running against Mitt Romney, viewed as uninspired and whose positions on many issues are unclear. Democrats take back the House of Representatives but lose the Senate in an anti-incumbent wave.

It's plausible but I would go the other way. The economy is recovering but not enough and in such a way that it won't help Obama. The jobs picture may improve but it will still be pretty bad for reasons that I have discussed at length, but here is the nub:

The economy is recovering but not fast enough to add the number of jobs needed to help Obama politically. Jobs creators are justifiably cautious and the only shift has been in Obama's rhetoric; the nasty, job-killing stuff he has foisted on the economy is still fully operational down in the inner workings of the economy. Even if unemployment moderates a bit, it is a virtual certainty that it will be higher than when he took office. Not good.

Also, while the numbers may start to look better, the economy will still feel crappy, and that matters come election time. If voters don't feel times are better, they won't vote like it regardless of what the numbers say. Ask George Herbert Walker Bush about that one.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the little matter of what happened in November 2010. Republicans can make a plausible case that to whatever extent the economy is doing better, it is because Americans rose up on November 3, 2010 and effectively stopped the Obama agenda dead in its tracks, at least legislatively. Remember what we were staring down the barrel of during the first two years of the Obama administration: 1) ObamaCare, 2) Card Check 3) Cap & Trade. This represented a triple-barrel threat to the economy. We got ObamaCare (and businesses are nearly universally saying that it is a job-killer) but we avoided Card Check and Cap & Trade legislation by virtue of electing a bunch of Republicans to the Congress.

Avoiding the devastation of those two last pillars of the original Obama agenda caused a huge sigh of relief in the business world and the economy surely benefited knowing these ideas were dead in the water. Republicans can and will make this very plausible argument. Furthermore, economic progress is not uniformly spread around the country. Some states are doing much better than others, and let's not forget that in November 2010 voters put some Republicans into Governor's mansions across the country. Let me ask you, do you think that Michiganders are going to credit the meager economic bright spots solely to Obama or perhaps give Rick Snyder some kudos? Are Pennsylvanians going to give all the credit to Obama or to Tom Corbett, who embraced the fracking boom to PA? Scott Walker sure is polarizing, but does anybody think that Walker can't plausibly be credited for whatever economic progress has been made in Wisconsin? Same with Kasich in Ohio. Florida is perking up under Rick Scott, but Illinois is mired in the dumps under Pat Quinn. How's California faring?

The Obama-as-economic-miracle-worker theme is one damn thin reed. The MSM will go into overdrive to spout it, but Republicans can counter it effectively and my guess is that voters won't be buying it - four years was a long time to get very little out of Obama in terms of the economy.

UPDATE: check this out. UPPDATE: more evidence?

Constitutional Crisis? I'll Say.

2012-01-05T16:19:00.003-05:00

So Mark Levin says we have a constitutional crisis on our hands in re Obama's recent "recess" appointments. I say, add it to the list.

Me on 7/20/10: "Watch this space, this is going to get alot worse before it gets better. I see this as another area, in addition to healthcare, where we could have another constitutional crisis."

Me on 1/26/11: "And something like 10 states are now dredging up an 18th century doctrine called nullification to combat ObamaCare as if plain old lawsuits weren't good enough, which more than half the states are pursuing. If that isn't the early innings of a full-blown constitutional crisis, I don't know what is."

Me on 2/23/10: "So Democrats get sent to oblivion and we don't have to actually live with the bill. Pretty good trade. Although, the constitutional crisis that we will see by virtue of #1 won't be milk and cookies."

Me (at my subtlest) on 2/11/10: "Constitutional crisis here we come."

And finally, me on 12/31/2009: "ObamaCare passes and Texas responds w/federalist driven anti-ObamaCare bill sparking constitutional crisis"

This wasn't hard to see coming folks, the guy was a walking talking constitutional crisis time bomb from the get-go.

What Can an Oklahoma Teenager Teach European Officials Overseeing the Global Trading System?

2012-01-05T14:47:00.006-05:00

Does the story of that Oklahoma mother have lessons for high-powered international policymakers? Um, yeah. (note: likely sub. needed).

The foreign affairs select committee applauded Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent u-turn on the use of armed security teams on board UK-flagged vessels, but said guidelines on the legal use of force “lack critical detail”.
"The government's guidance on the use of force, particularly lethal force, is very limited and there is little to help a ship's master make a judgement on where force can be used,” committee chairman, Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, said.

"The question anyone would ask is that if a private armed guard on board a UK-flagged vessel sees an armed skiff approaching at high speed, can the guard open fire?

“The government must provide clearer direction on what is permissible and what is not."

How about "When malicious intent is reasonably established and further delay poses mortal risk to oneself, go ahead and shoot." Pretty simple. An 18-year old gal from Okie knows that. Do European policymakers???

And here is a shocker: "Pirates have yet to successfully hijack a vessel carrying armed guards."

Note: all my coverage of piracy is here.

Get 'Em While They're Hot - 2012 Predictions !!!

2012-01-05T13:46:00.014-05:00

Well, it's time to make my predictions for 2012. I've done pretty well on my predictions the last few years. In 2011, I nailed alot of them "directionally" if not a precise score. In making my predictions, note that I try to steer away from the obvious and make out-of-the-box prognostications that are at least plausible - they may be grounded in the obvious reality, but I try to take them further. No need to be conventional, you get that from the MSM. I'm not trying to be right as many times as I can, I'm trying to be right with a high degree of difficulty. I list them from most interesting/confident to least interesting/confident, so here goes.

- Romney/Tea Party, A Marriage Made in...Well, Just Made: Mitt Romney (who is FINE btw) chooses a VP nominee that solidifies his support with true conservatives just enough to complete his primary electoral strategy of 1) be the "non-scary" Republican that independents and moderate Dems can feel comfortable voting for and 2) be good enough for conservatives and libertarians to turn out like they need to turn out to defeat the constitutional democracy/individual liberty disaster that is Barack Obama. Likely choices are Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Jim DeMint, or Paul Ryan. I say it's Romney/Ryan because we need this one badly and Ryan adds tremendously to the ticket (Republican poo-bahs move Heaven and Earth to get Ryan to sign up).

- 2012 Election is Close Until Sep-Oct When Obama Blows It ala McCain in 2008: Obama's political skills are awesome, but his political instincts are terrible. He will do quite egregious things to please his base (wow! as if on cue). He will run neck and neck with Romney/Ryan until he blows it with a policy gaffe that conspicuously reminds voters what an amateur and/or liberal fascist he is. The gaffe could even be a Clintonite engineered self-destruction conspiracy. (Wow! I could be early on this one!)

- ClimateGate email hacker is caught and it turns out he/she/them works essentially for the Russian government.

- Something Deep, Deep Underground in Iran Blows Up: Above-ground things are blowing up left and right and we are constantly told that the Big Bad Nuke Stuff is way underground where we can't bomb it. Well, maybe not with airplanes. We/they/whoever scores a big one with a KABOOM underneath the feet of the mullahs.

- SCOTUS Shoots Down Individual Mandate, Keeps Rest of ObamaCare Intact: Chief Justice Roberts garners the five votes needed to shoot down the mandate as a bridge too far in restricting the liberties of Americans. Although never revealed, the decision is an attempt to re-establish the Court's credibility as a bastion of protection of the citizenry's liberties after the disastrous Kelo decision.

- Global Warming, Er Sorry, Climate Change Officially Dies: Canada got the ball rolling so now the flood gates are open, three more major countries opt out of the Kyoto Protocol and the global warming movement is officially laid to rest.

- The Hopes and Dreams of the "Arab Spring" Actually Take Root...in Syria: Assad is killed or leaves and Syrians actually setup the relatively liberal democracy that people thought would prevail in Egypt. The new Syrian regime makes peace with Israel and allies with the West. But not before alot of people get killed.

- Al Qaeda Makes a Big Comeback, Targets China Too: Plenty of new places to regroup - Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq. They get the band back together, and they add to the list of Great Satans.

- Vladimir Putin Escapes An Assassination Attempt: Grudge-harboring Chechen is emboldened by Putin's political weakness, but, alas, fails.

- In a Rematch of Super Bowl 35, the New York Giants Defeat the Ravens of Baltimore in Super Bowl 46 by a score of 27-17. MVP is Victor Cruz.

Maybe This Is Why America Is Bankrupt?

2012-01-05T12:51:00.005-05:00

Bankrupt individuals running our public finances...? Could that be why our cities, states and federal government are functionally bankrupt?

Check this out. This woman can't handle her own finances but she thinks she is still qualified to legislate and wield influence/power over Westchester County's $1.8 billion budget.

Citing unmanageable debt, Westchester County Legislator Virginia Perez, D-Yonkers, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Perez filed her legal papers in federal bankruptcy court in White Plains on Dec. 28, claiming that she has $476,976 in liabilities and $120,561 in assets. Her court papers also stated that she has been unemployed for different periods in each of the past three years.
“This is not going to affect my ability to represent the people of southwest Yonkers,” said Perez, 32, who was elected to the Westchester County Board of Legislators in November after defeating 10-year incumbent Legislator Jose Alvarado in the Democratic primary in September.

No, surprise there that Perez hails from the cesspool of Yonkers. Also, as a matter of prudence should we have deadbeats in public roles, aren't such people more vulnerable/prone to corruption?

A Bowl Game Win and Now This!

2012-01-05T10:40:00.002-05:00

After six long years of out migration, Michigan has finally stopped the bleeding. Hey, maybe even ex-Gov Jenny Granholm will come back at some point, although doubtful.

"One Term Rally" Update

2012-01-04T21:47:00.002-05:00

I have said it before, many times, and here comes confirmation from a very successful, market savvy Democrat. Right there at 00:50, DK says it...the country is leaning Republican and it is good for the economy and the market. (Note: DK doesn't actually predict Obama to lose, but it's a bird of a feather...)

Only A Little While Longer To Indulge in the Romney Kvetching

2012-01-04T15:56:00.006-05:00

Debbie Whatshername Schultz may think the Dems had a big night last night, but this is fundraising gold for the likes of Mitt Romney, very much in keeping with how I imagine it will go.

On that note, there still appears to be alot of moaning (#5) about how Mitt Romney fared last night (did he do good or bad? I can't tell). And here. So let me reiterate things again for those who are not following along - it's fine. Romney is FINE. By any objective standard he is exactly the type of man with exactly the type of temperament, experience, and broad and deep connections to experts in policy and American life (precisely what Obama lacked when we put him in the White House) that we have elected more often than not in our nation's history. By any standard, Mitt Romney is the most typically "presidential" candidate to run for the Presidency since George Herbert Walker Bush. So relax and focus.

And remember, if you are a rabid small-government/right-wingish/libertarian/crony-capitalism hating/Tea Party/conservative loon like me, the real fight is over the Congress. The White House would be nice, but the Congress is essential. Our strategy should be 1) Hold the House, Take the Senate, 2) Replace Obama with just about anybody, and I mean ANYBODY.

So get all your Romney-Angst out of your system now and get ready to get your butt and the butts of several relatives, friends and associates to the polls in November to pull the lever for Mitt.

Plus, you're gonna like Mitt alot more when he has a war chest of $700 million dollars (that Newt Santorum could only dream of raising) and someone like Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Jim DeMint or Marco Rubio on his ticket as VP nominee. (Or, if you like out-of-the-box scenarios...Rand Paul...)

Party of Ideas???

2012-01-04T13:43:00.007-05:00

Andy Cuomo goes back in time for one of the worst economic development ideas of the last decade or so - convention centers. (in Queens no less...sorry Mom)

Taxing the rich and building multi-hundred million dollar boondoggles...? And this guy is the next great hope for the Democratic party...?

Will the gay-marriage sainthood shield him from the inevitable results of running the Democrats' 30 year-old economic game plan? We'll see, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: While I didn't merit an "Instalanche" I claim credit for bringing this to the Good Professor's attention, and I think he covers it with the usual pithiness and perspicaciousness.

Jon Corzine's Extra Special Talent of Screwing the Little Guy

2011-12-29T17:06:00.003-05:00

It wasn't enough to go down in a fireball of ignominy by engineering the 8th largest bankruptcy in American corporate history. It wasn't enough as a swan song to cause $1.2 billion of MF Global's customers money to disappear into a swamp of opaque fraud. Effectively wrecking certain commodities markets was not a finale grand enough. No, Jon Corzine, even though in hiding save for bouts of Congressional testimony, is still reaching out to effect the lives of everyday folk in that unique and special way that so few can...

Toll increases of as much as 53 percent, a boost set when Jon Corzine was governor, will start Jan. 1 on the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike, two of the busiest roads in the U.S.

The rate for passenger vehicles traveling the Turnpike’s length during peak traffic hours will be as much as $13.85 in cash, up from $9.05 currently. The maximum charge for tractor- trailer rigs with six or more axles also will rise 53 percent, to $56.85.

The rates were approved in 2008 under Corzine, a Democrat. Republican Governor Chris Christie, who defeated Corzine in 2009, said the tolls are impossible to roll back because the state sold bonds based on the anticipated revenue.

“This is the last, I hope, one of the last vestiges of Jon Corzine’s fiscal management of the state of New Jersey (STONJ1),” Christie, 49, told WOR-AM radio’s John Gambling today.

Some people just have a talent.

Big NatGas Find

2011-12-29T14:19:00.002-05:00

Double-extra special shitload of fossil fuels found in remote corner of the world, far far from anything.

What's with all these big hydrocarbon finds right under our noses these days? I thought that it was a certainty that we can't drill our way out of our problems. I thought there is no more "out there" or no more of the "easy stuff" out there? What gives?

+1 on Pelosi Prediction

2011-12-29T11:19:00.004-05:00

2011 isn't over yet but one of my predictions is unfolding as planned. We might not see it within the calendar year, but being early is still a score of +1.

Me on Jan 11, 2011:

- Pelosi Leaves Congress: She can't stand life as second fiddle after tasting raw, unrestrained power. She leaves. (Here's my long shot prediction for extra credit: Pelosi primaries Obama for the presidential election in 2012 claiming he has sold out the progressive movement.)

Plucked today from DR:

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Big Government this week that her mother wants to leave Congress–and that she remains in Washington only at the behest of her campaign donors.

UPDATE:
BTW, one of my 2010 predictions was:

- Minor world leader is assasinated (three likelies: Assad, Calderon, Mubarak)

and this is what I said when it didn't come true:

A few of my other predictions will likely prove true (California going bankrupt and the assasination one are still pretty solid) but, alas, didn't come to pass in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Ten.

So, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven we saw Qaddafi get whacked, Mubarak narrowly avoid a whacking, and Assad is on the brink. Not a bad call way back when...

First the GOP, Then America, Needs to Grow Up Again

2011-12-28T11:51:00.005-05:00

Hinderaker lays it down,

It is time for Republicans to get serious. After flirting with just about every candidate in a large presidential field, is is time to come home to the one candidate who has the demonstrated ability to run the largest organization in the United States, the Executive Branch of the federal government; who has never been touched by the slightest taint of scandal; whose success in the private sector makes him the outsider that Republicans say they are looking for; and who has by far the best chance of beating President Obama: Mitt Romney.
The “anybody but Romney” mentality that grips many Republicans is, in my view, illogical.

and I agree, as I have said.

Yes, it is time to get serious - serious about ridding us of Barack Obama and the ruthless and irreversible accumulation of federal government power over our lives (which will be solidified by the one or two SCOTUS picks that Dear Leader will potentially get in a second term - imagine not just four more years of Barack Obama, but 20 more years of him in the form of his 3-4 SCOTUS picks!) We've experimented and had our dalliances, now it is time to get serious.

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways."

Classic Obama

2011-12-28T09:18:00.002-05:00

Obama, who will shortly relentlessly demonize a former private equity executive as unfit for leadership office, has just appointed a former private equity executive for leadership office.

"The nominees are Jeremy Stein, 51 years old, a Ph.D. economist who did a five-month stint in the Treasury and White House early in the Obama administration, and Jerome Powell, 58, who was undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance under President George H.W. Bush...

A graduate of Georgetown University's law school, Mr. Powell worked before and after his Treasury stint at investment bank Dillon Read & Co. He also has worked at private-equity firms Carlyle Group and Global Environment Fund, and at Bankers Trust Co."

Republicans Ignore Uncle Milty At Their Peril

2011-12-23T14:41:00.003-05:00

Apparently, Republicans botched the payroll tax politics. Sure, I guess. The WSJ had it right that they made the Lightworker appear to be a tax cutter, which is one mean feat. Fine, but is anybody who is paying attention really believe that Dear Leader is a tax-cutter?? Anywho...while I think that Boehner's point was worth making a stand on - two-month tax policy is the height of idiocy - and the Tea Party types in the House were right to want more spending cuts, clearly somehow, something went amiss.

And I know why. The Republicans failed to follow Uncle Milty's Axiom:

"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible."

Two months? Dumb. Creates jobs? Not a chance. Harry Reid wants it? 'Nuff said. Still, they should have asked themselves "Does it pass the Uncle Milty test?" They didn't and it bit them in the arse. It's dumb, it's a waste of time, it won't create jobs, it further imperils the bankrupt Ponzi scheme we call Social Security, and it came from Harry Reid's Senate. Not an illustrious piece of legislation to be sure. BUT IT IS A TAX CUT...it keeps money out of the hands of the government, full stop as they say.

Next time guys, use the Milton Freidman Test.

What's the Economic Chart of the Year?

2011-12-22T09:37:00.007-05:00

Mark Perry is showing off his submission for economic "graph of the year." It's a good one. It shows off the phenomenon that I call the "Job Market Vigilantes" or the hiring that has not been done under the unrelentingly hostile business climate created by the Obama administration. Notice how the relationship between the two variables is tight until just about the beginning of 2009...hmmm...what happened at the beginning of 2009...??

Personally, my submission for graph of the year, hell graph of all time would be this one, which I think sums up all of economics in one easy to understand relationship (and which Perry has highlighted before). Look at that correlation! That is TIGHT!! The bigger government is, the crappier the economy is. Pretty simple.

See, economics ain't that hard!

"Under My Plan...Costs Will Necessarily Skyrocket"

2011-12-21T16:52:00.003-05:00

The EPA has finalized the Utility MACT Rule, one of the three major assaults on fossil fuel power generation that they have cooked up under Lisa Jackson. Read this take. I expect that this rule promulgation will have two effects: 1) it will prompt large campaign contributions into the coffers of the Republican nominee for President, who will be lobbied hard to reverse the Obama-era rules if he should win office; and 2) utility companies with the largest compliance bills coming due will sue and/or announce strategic generation capacity shutdowns (and when I say strategic, I mean "during the election campaign). The electricity generation industry has tried and given up working with the Obama administration in avoiding the regulatory push or then trying to keep the new regulations reasonable. They have failed and it is very likely war-of-attrition-time. It's gonna get ugly.

Of course, you know where the title of this post comes from, right?

Only Thing Assad Reforms Is the Daily Body Count

2011-12-21T10:23:00.003-05:00

Looks like Bashar Assad's men are breaking his directive to only kill 20 or so people per day...

BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian troops assaulting a northwest town with machine gun fire and shelling have killed at least 100 people in one of the deadliest episodes of the 9-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, activists said Wednesday.
Tuesday's attack on the town of Kfar Owaid in Idlib province showed the Syrian government was pressing ahead with its crackdown despite its agreement this week to an Arab League plan for bringing a halt to the bloodshed.
"It was an organized massacre. The troops surrounded people then killed them," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

NYC Bureaucrats Tell Korean Restauranteurs How To Do Kimchi

2011-12-20T12:25:00.003-05:00

I think most sensible Americans understand that although we like regulations in theory, they don't work and wind up giving us petty tyranny in the end. When are we going to wake up and realize that for every sensible regulatory regime we setup there are 50-100 like this...

Ever since she received seven violation points during a city health inspection in June, she's been fearful about how her restaurant prepares and stores kimchi, a traditional fermented dish that is a staple in Korean cuisine. The violation points resulted from five pounds of kimchi being left at room temperature and exceeding the city Department of Health's 41-degree temperature requirement for cold foods, according to the inspection.

"They don't understand the kimchi," said Ms. Park. "Many Korean restaurants with kimchi get points because the inspector, they don't understand what it is."

Korean restaurant and business groups say they are all too often unfairly penalized by the health department because their fermented foods are determined to be above 41 degrees, the temperature below which city rules require potentially hazardous prepared cold food be stored.

A bunch of bureaucrats telling restauranteurs in the foremost Korean-American community in the nation about kimchi and setting rules. I am at a loss for words. (Note to fellow citizens, this crap won't stop until you VOTE to make it stop.)

No Lightworker to Besieged Syrians

2011-12-20T12:12:00.006-05:00

I love this. Here's your classic Realist vs. Idealist debate summed up and adjudicated right here. Airy, faculty lounge theories, of the ilk we are getting now in foreign policy, allow tyrants to flourish.

Hey, you guys may get Bush again after all...but don't bank on it, pick up some firearms and fight.

What the Heck Is Wrong With the Episcopal Church?

2011-12-19T11:09:00.004-05:00

First there's Bishop Sisk waxing more Rawlsian than Christian. Now, here's former Bishop George Packard invading private property with a few hundred of his nearest and dearest OWS friends.

Just following orders, or more likely, trying to get promoted by responding to incentives.

Obama Officially Underwater, Despite Being Headed There for Some Time

2011-12-16T13:53:00.006-05:00

So, a new AP poll is saying, for the first time, that a majority of Americans think President Obama should not be re-elected. This should not be a surprise, after all, you follow this polling data series, you know the Lightworker's approval trajectory has been, almost without exclusion, one way. (Read about those minor exclusions here and here.)

Just a reminder, I predicted Obama's meltdown back in February of 2009. As well, I predicted the "stimulus" would be a disaster for the country among many other things of which I will remind you all later. But let me return to the root of Obama's failure - here and here is the analysis I conducted early on that spelled out why Obama could have not have been anything but a failure.

Finally, and this is not a blunder but rather a fundamental flaw, Obama's legislative support is only as good as his public sheen. The reason he had to stack his administration with Clintonites is that he had no decent network to speak of. His limited experience in government, and life actually, has left him lacking in broad and deep connections to people who can achieve things and stand by him. His quick rise to popularity and electoral promise has attracted a cadre of government and business types to fill the ranks now, but they do so for the sake of Democratic power in and of itself. Does anyone think that previously loyal Clintonites/now Obamites will stay loyal if the bloom starts to come visibly off the rose? I truly wonder how much uphill sledding those around Obama now are prepared to endure. I guess some, but not much.

Directionally, I think this is all fairly obvious, but what matters is magnitude, which I can't estimate. If Obama's stumbles continue and are big enough, the massive expansion of government that is disguised as economic stimulus could run aground. I think the markets have a slight sense of this and are perking up at the thought that we aren't necessarily going to ride a wave of populism to monstrous government intervention in the economy. Bottom line, investors think Obama will be capable of alot less damage than they had originally feared, and the market is reflecting this cautious optimism.

Update On Another Green Fantasy

2011-12-16T09:50:00.003-05:00

In 2006, when President George W. Bush spoke of ethanol from wood chips and switchgrass during a SOTU address, I said "God help us."

I see the wisdom in a "don't sweat the small stuff" attitude. Being able to understand what is at the core of an issue and to marshall your energies on real priorities is a hallmark of a good leader. Maybe that is how the White House approached the SOTU address - stand firm on the critical issues of Iraq, fighting terrorism, taxes; and, for the rest, just throw out any old nice-sounding political garbage. After all, you can't be a bulldog on everything. That has to explain the rubbish that Bush spouted about America's addiction to oil and the need for ethanol from wood chips and switch grass.

Well, here is a bit of follow-up on that point. Willing it such and throwing money at it has not made it such.

Most important, the Nancy Pelosi Congress passed and Mr. Bush signed a law imposing mandates on oil companies to blend cellulosic fuel into conventional gasoline. This guaranteed producers a market. In 2010 the mandate was 100 million barrels, rising to 250 million in 2011 and 500 million in 2012. By the end of this decade the requirements leap to 10.5 billion gallons a year.

When these mandates were established, no companies produced commercially viable cellulosic fuel. But the dream was: If you mandate and subsidize it, someone will build it.
Guess what? Nobody has. Despite the taxpayer enticements, this year cellulosic fuel production won't be 250 million or even 25 million gallons. Last year the Environmental Protection Agency, which has the authority to revise the mandates, quietly reduced the 2011 requirement by 243.4 million gallons to a mere 6.6 million. Some critics suggest that even much of that 6.6 million isn't true cellulosic fuel.

Chalk up another green fantasy dashed against the rocks of reality. Meanwhile, we are discovering and producing a treasure trove of useable energy previously thought impossible and yet we are actively undermining it. As the good professor is wont to say, the country is truly "in the very best of hands."

Canada Is Out of Kyoto

2011-12-13T11:02:00.003-05:00

I called it back in 2008. Growth-minded nations simply will not sign on to a Kyoto successor plan. Sure enough, Canada has done what many others nations want to do - pull out of Kyoto - and likely will do now that we have a first-mover.

And check out this ridiculous piece of journalistic rubbish on Bloomberg:

"Obama Winning Climate Debate Opens China to Legal Accord"

1) Obama has avoided the Durban confab like the plague.

2) Nobody, China especially, has agreed to anything except to talk again. This is consistent with China's climate change policy of appease and appear to follow along.

Yet, somehow Bloomberg makes Obama's non-engagement on a failed Durban conference an active victory for him and the conference.

Sports and Religion Go Way Back, But MSM Is Freshly Creeped Out About It

2011-12-12T09:48:00.005-05:00

What on Earth is this journalist talking about?

He has led the Denver Broncos to one improbable victory after another—defying his critics and revealing the deep-seated anxieties in American society about the intertwining of religion and sports.

Deep-seated anxieties? Every post-game interview ever has some athlete giving the glory to God. Hasn't every football game ever ended with a bunch of large, sweaty bodies circled up and on bended knee in prayer? Haven't we prayed before high school football games since the Founding Era until just recently after the ACLU ceased to have anything to fill their time? Doesn't one of the most popular, iconic - and therefore televised - college football programs have a giant depiction of Jesus Christ overlooking their football stadium? Aren't religious schools disproportionately dominant in high school sports?

So, what the hell is Patton Wood talking about? Methinks he's talking about our Mainstream Media.

One last question. Wasn't Reggie White a Christian minister? Why did we not have all this hub-bub over Reggie? Ugh. The MSM is annoying.

Taylor vs. Krugman

2011-12-09T10:51:00.003-05:00

A little spat, with big policy implications, has broken out between John Taylor and Paul Krugman. Here's Taylor's characterization of the spat:

Paul Krugman is wrong in his criticism of my brief summary of last week’s economic policy conference at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Krugman was not at the conference, which lasted a full day and went well beyond previous research by the participants. In general people focused on policies to restore strong economic growth and reduce unemployment in the United States.

First, Krugman incorrectly claims that I mischaracterized the research of my Stanford colleague Nick Bloom and his coauthors Scott Baker and Steve Davis presented at the conference. Krugman says my conference summary suggested that “Bloom, Baker and Davis had showed that fear of Obama was holding the economy down.” No, my summary said or implied no such thing; there is no mention of Obama, Bush, or any politician in my summary. It simply says that these authors “presented their empirical measures of policy uncertainty and showed that they were negatively correlated with economic growth.”

First, let me say that Taylor is a gentleman and a serious and sober economist, and Krugman, regardless of what he once was, is a frothing, radical leftist gnome. But, let me settle the argument, not on my biases, but on the merits. In the course of my job I speak to CEOs, CFOs, company Directors and all sorts of businesspeople from businesses large and small and I can unequivocally state that these people ARE most definitely scared of Obama, the Senate Democrats, and the regulatory apparatus carrying out the will of the Obama administration. There is not room for argument or dispute - business decisions are being made out of an environment of fear, uncertainty and pessimism and economic activity has most certainly been retarded as a result. Nearly every businessperson I talk to has a list of projects and plans that they are sitting on waiting "to see what happens in the election" meaning whether Obama will be elected or not. You cannot have a conversation with high level managers of corporate America today without November 2012 at the center of it. Krugman couldn't be more wrong on this point and Taylor is too coy in defending his point. He is exactly right but he seems reluctant to defend why he is right.

This debate is frustrating in that it smacks of these far too typical academic tussles backed by scads of "research" and academic mumbo-jumbo, but nobody seems to have asked anybody actually in the economic arena everday what is going on.

Yet Another CEO: Obama Doesn't Get It

2011-12-07T16:15:00.002-05:00

Add yet another CEO who thinks Obama is clueless. Remember, it takes alot of guts to say this in public. Obama has overtly retaliated against companies that say things about him and these businessmen face the prospect of four more years where Obama could make life difficult for their businesses. The fact that they are speaking out means that they are beyond that point - the specific risk of White House retaliation is no greater than the risk of continuing to do business under the economic policies of Barack Obama.

Latest Addition to Feds' List of Orwellian Bulls##t ...

2011-12-07T14:50:00.003-05:00

...is "workplace violence". Yup, just another overworked stress case reacting badly to a bad boss or something. Add it to the list.

Italy to Balance Budget? Cats to Sleep With Dogs?

2011-11-30T14:01:00.004-05:00

This is awesome, great, spectacular news.

Italy: Budget To Be Balanced By 2013 - PM

November 30, 2011

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti intends for Italy to have a balanced budget by 2013, he said Nov. 30, Reuters reported. Italy will adopt a “vast political and economic operation” Dec. 5 that will implement the austerity measures decided by the previous government, he said. Monti said he will present a new finance law to his Cabinet on Dec. 5 that includes provisions for structural reform and measures to curb Italian debt in the short run, AGI reported.

We all have every reason to be skeptical, very skeptical...but if they can pull this off and maintain it over the longer term, the news is truly earth-shatteringly good. Actually, upon reflection there was never any reason to believe that any government in Europe couldn't pull this off. Their budgets are just a soup of bribes to various constituencies built up over decades, all of which are easily scaled back and/or eliminated. The notion that this was critical spending necessary for proper functioning of their economies was laughable. The ability was always there to balance the budget, just not the will. Now that power is not derived from actual voting, but by Eurocratic fiat, poiltical bribes need not be paid or honored (at least in Italy and Greece). It was hard to focus on that fact through all the Armageddon talk. Maybe Jon Corzine was on to something after all, his timing was just off...maybe...

This, along with the Spanish voting to take their medicine (theoretically), bodes very well for a non-Armageddonish resolution to the Euro crisis. Stay very tuned.

Update: Covert War Against the Iranian Bomb

2011-11-30T13:25:00.004-05:00

So all the explosions going on in and around sensitive Iranian nuclear sites (latest here) are starting to get more MSM attention (starting). So let me remind readers that way back in 2008 and 2009, before Stuxnet and all that, I told you that this covert war was coming. Well, it's fair to say that it is here.

So let's recap: Dead scientists, crashing AWACs, mysterious explosions, many dead IRGC poobahs, ultra-sophisticated computer viruses...

So what will Rodger Claire's next book on the denial campaign for the Iranian bomb be titled? I'm taking entries. My first shot: Defanging the Prophet: Inside the Covert War to Deny the Mullahs the Bomb

UPDATE: Time Mag thinks the timing of those Katyusha rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon is no co-ink-ee-dink either.

OWS Fading

2011-11-30T13:07:00.003-05:00

Certainly not an indisputable fact, but it sure looks like the OWS movement is losing momentum. If so, that would make, to my mind, three strikes against the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Rev. Mark E. Sisk. I think he was wrong on the theology, wrong on American history, and now it appears he's wrong on reading the sociological tea leaves. In a way, Rev. Sisk is a perfect miniature of worldwide church head Rowan Williams, using Christian theology as a tool to crusade for Rawlsian social justice rather than for the spiritual edification of the individual, all while the vitality of the church crumbles.

Our Fossil Fuel Future

2011-11-30T10:18:00.005-05:00

Our bright fossil fuel future rolls on and gathers steam:

- Massive natural gas discovery off of Mozambique;

- India to invest $76 billion in oil and gas development over the next five years;

- Brazil just keeps finding more oil;

...and the church of climate change holds yet another fear-mongering confab precisely as more embarrassing exposure of scientific fraud leaks out (if you know where to look, the MSM doesn't carry this stuff)

UPDATE: and those Third World/Environment-Be-Damned-Develop-At-All-Costs Norwegians will be investing $26 billion over the next two years.

The Global Warming movement is over.

Score Two for My 2011 Predictions

2011-11-21T11:34:00.002-05:00

One of my 2011 predictions has now gone about as mainstream as one can get.

And another one gets a score here - the Tea Party is over 40% approval.

Inflation: The Fed May Not See It, But the Folks Do

2011-11-18T09:55:00.003-05:00

People have noticed both the stealth inflation that I warned about and, now, the unstealthy kind. As the lady said, "Double Whammy!"

BTW, that warning of mine came back in April. Pretty good, IMO.

Fisking Sisk

2011-11-16T15:47:00.010-05:00

While I am crafting a thoughtful, respectful response to Bishop Sisk it is worth pointing out some of the glaring flaws or curious assumptions in this message as starting points for those who wish to reflect upon it. The best methodology I can think of to achieve this right now is what it known in the blogosphere as "fisking."

On Friday, October 21, I visited Zuccotti Park, the site - at least until last night - of the Occupy Wall Street protest. Whatever happens next in Lower Manhattan (and as I write, on the morning of November 15, things are moving fast, with the outcome unclear), there can be no doubt that this protest has struck a chord, and given birth to a movement that appears, in spite of everything, to be gaining momentum.
Is it truly gaining momentum? How is this measured? There are many measures by which we can conclude the opposite.
For some, this chord seems to have sounded like a long awaited trumpet call to action; for others - who have not been shy to express their disdain - it is decidedly discordant.
So, it's black or white, you disdain it or welcome it as a trumpet call? How about something else? Is it not possible to be benignly indifferent to it, to not disdain it and yet not be inspired by it?
Back in October, it was not always easy to distinguish those who were "tourists" - people who swung by to see what was going on out of simple curiosity - from those who were active participants in the protest itself. But what was clear was that this was not some tiny cell of extremists. Those present represented what was, to me, a surprisingly wide swath of the American people. Some, young and not so young, gave the appearance of being seasoned protesters. Others, again both young and not so young, seemed to be first timers: folks who held their banners and slogans with a slight aura of awkwardness.
Again, is this true or is this romanticizing? I too visited Zocotti Park. It appeared to me to represent a narrow sliver of American society rather than a wide swath. Again, how do we measure this?
It is true that it was not easy at Zucotti Park to sort out the substance from the theatre. The media have offered little help, with their focus, unsurprisingly, on the most colorful and extreme expressions of protest. They have highlighted slogans that call for the jailing of bankers, while ignoring placards like the one I saw that said "99% + 1% = ONE" - which I interpreted as intending to highlight our common interests and essential unity as a people.
Is unity a salient, defining principle of this movement? Could the media have been highlighting what was representative of the movement rather than filtering?
Nor, sadly, have those in public leadership often commented helpfully-and they are certainly disingenuous when they point to the protestors' lack of a plan as evidence of a lack of seriousness, when apparently they have no plan themselves.
There is no disingenuousness. The plan is either the status quo or the status quo plus minor refinements, which is grounded in a belief that our society is largely just and moral, or least more so than available alternatives. That too is a legitimate stance, no?
Indeed, all too often the opposing voices that we hear are shrilly dismissive-their aggressive, trivializing tone hinting, to me, at a deep, largely unconscious, level of anxiety. It cannot be lost on many that all this is taking place with the background noise of the Arab Spring ringing in our ears.
I detect in this a presumed equivalency between protesting political opppression and income inequality. Is that the church's stance?

Whatever happens next in Downtown Manhattan, it is terribly important that the core energy behind this protest not be lost behind a blizzard of slogans and rhetoric.
Energy is evocative of emotion, zeal, passion. Slogans and rhetoric are evocative of words, of expressing ideas and endeavoring to persuade. Are Christians to be governed by passion over reason? Is that what is meant here?
The particular motivations of those protesting are, undoubtedly, as mixed as the American people itself. One dominant thread, however, is an (admittedly inchoate) critique of unfettered capitalism.
Is our brand of capitalism really "unfettered"? Many believe it is significantly fettered, and therein lies not only a flaw, but perhaps a great evil.

But the fundamental issue is not that the laws of capitalism are flawed; the fundamental issue is that we are flawed in our attitude to them.

There can be little doubt that capitalism is a productive way to order economic life. But we need to remember, as the protestors have reminded us, that that is all that it is - an economic system based on the entirely reasonable propositions that capital has value, and that supply and demand are the most efficient way to set prices. Capitalism is of no help at all in determining what is morally good - that is something that must instead be determined by the community's wider values.
Capitalism doesn't lay claim to determining moral goods. Are moral goods really determined by a community's values, and thus mutable? I was taught that morality is grounded in the Word of God and is immutable. Earthly arrangements reflect our response to the will of God, but they have no bearing on it.

And there should be no question that when an economic system fails to reflect those communal values, it should be modified and governed until it does.
Many believe our system does reflect shared values - freedom, opportunity, industriousness among others.

To say, as some do, that any attempt to control or guide our economic system is neither wise nor possible is to admit that an economic system has decisive control of our lives. For a Christian, such an admission would be nothing less than to yield to idolatry. (Though I do not claim deep knowledge of other religious traditions, I suspect that this is true for them as well.)
To say such is not to admit to lack of control over our lives. It is flawed to anthropomorphize an economic system. What is at the root of how we organize our society is our humans desires and needs. To say that changes to how we organize society are unwise are reflective of our understanding of who we are, not slavery to some false idol.

God alone is the One, and the only One, to whom we can concede such ultimate authority. For the non-theist to make the argument that the laws of economics are immutable is to concede that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.
Is anybody saying that the laws of economics are such that they have led us away from what God asks of us? I'm pretty sure that is not what skeptics of the OWS movement think.

That is the same argument that those in the grip of various kinds of addiction make: "I am not in control, my addiction made me do it."

As the OWS protestors point out, wealth in our country is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, the real income of the broad middle class has not increased in more than a generation, and the ranks of the poorest among us each year become ever more solidified. These are the facts - and the reality behind them is, quite simply, morally wrong.
Respectfully, these are not the facts. Income inequality is a highly nuanced, contentious subject within the field of economics. It is not sufficiently clear how imbalanced the distribution of resources is, nor is it clear how the relative balance equates to individual well-being or even social well-being.

Ultimately, left unchecked, that reality is deeply dangerous. It is at odds with our vision of ourselves, and as Americans we ignore it at the peril of our most cherished national ideals.
Again, what are our most cherished national ideals? Income equality was never a principle enshrined in our founding arrangements. We didn't fight a civil war over income inequality. We didn't act upon the world stage in the 20th century in the name of income inequality. That is no implicit condemnation of the notion, but let's not afford it a status it doesn't have.

As Christians, we ignore it at the peril of our souls.
Really? I was never taught that the fate of my soul depended on how much earthly riches I had relative to others. I was taught the love in my heart for my fellow man, God's love, mattered regardless of whether I had more or less than my neighbor.

The way forward is not simple. In spite of what some in the public square would have us think, there are no obvious and easy solutions for complex problems. But what we must strive for is clear. We must - and I believe that this is what lies at the core of the OWS protests - rein in the imbalances that have caused our economic house to careen off course as though it is a self-perpetuating, self-governing good.
Why do you elevate the relative distribution of wealth as what Christians must strive for? Does God keep score in monetary units? What about love, faith, virtue? These are the things I hear about on Sundays. I've read too of societies that focus nearly exclusively on the former and exhibit none of the latter. Again, what is it really that we should be striving for?

The solution that we find will not be perfect, just as human beings are not perfect; but to surrender to forces as though we are helpless before them is not an answer, but an excuse.

We can do better. We are not helpless. We can, by working together, build a better, more just, society: a society founded on the American ideal of a nation in which there are "certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
How does income inequality follow from these three attributes? Why do we define "just" in terms of monetary values?

We can look to the heart of who we are as a people and draw upon our better lights to seek the common good.
Is a perpetual argument over who has more, who has less and who is worthy based on what they do or don't have in the interests of the common good?

That is our challenge as a nation. As followers of Jesus, we know that our calling now and always is to seek the welfare of the people, the children of God.
As a follower of Jesus I am tasked with reflecting his love and his sacrifice for us out into the world and to use the gifts he has given me for good. The welfare of the people may flow from that, but I'm pretty sure my explicit calling is not to address monetary imbalances here on Earth.
Finally, does God love "communities" or "societies"? I don't think so. God loves us - me, you...actual people. Does God exhort us to arrange our affairs for a proscribed amount and particular notion of justice? Maybe, but that's not what I've learned over a lifetime as a Christian. God exhorts us each to be just. Does God act on a collective basis? Again maybe, but I was taught that God acts upon the hearts of each of us. Jesus did not exhort his followers to build things in his name or achieve explicit societal goals in his name, he exhorts his follows to be "fishers of men" to act upon the individual, to secure hearts to his name. Sounds like Bishop Sisk is more a disciple of John Rawls than of Jesus Christ.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2011-11-16T14:05:00.002-05:00

Demonize banks and clamp down on banking activities...fine. Understand the consequences though, direct and indirect.

The Episcopal Church Hearts OWS

2011-11-16T12:47:00.002-05:00

In commenting on a report about a lack of church going among the political left, the other day I pointed out that the left seems to me to be quite well entrenched at least in some churches. For further proof, I give you a missive just received...

We Must Not Serve Capitalism - We Must Make It Serve Us

by the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, Bishop of New York

On Friday, October 21, I visited Zuccotti Park, the site - at least until last night - of the Occupy Wall Street protest. Whatever happens next in Lower Manhattan (and as I write, on the morning of November 15, things are moving fast, with the outcome unclear), there can be no doubt that this protest has struck a chord, and given birth to a movement that appears, in spite of everything, to be gaining momentum. For some, this chord seems to have sounded like a long awaited trumpet call to action; for others - who have not been shy to express their disdain - it is decidedly discordant.

Back in October, it was not always easy to distinguish those who were "tourists" - people who swung by to see what was going on out of simple curiosity - from those who were active participants in the protest itself. But what was clear was that this was not some tiny cell of extremists. Those present represented what was, to me, a surprisingly wide swath of the American people. Some, young and not so young, gave the appearance of being seasoned protesters. Others, again both young and not so young, seemed to be first timers: folks who held their banners and slogans with a slight aura of awkwardness.

It is true that it was not easy at Zucotti Park to sort out the substance from the theatre. The media have offered little help, with their focus, unsurprisingly, on the most colorful and extreme expressions of protest. They have highlighted slogans that call for the jailing of bankers, while ignoring placards like the one I saw that said "99% + 1% = ONE" - which I interpreted as intending to highlight our common interests and essential unity as a people. Nor, sadly, have those in public leadership often commented helpfully-and they are certainly disingenuous when they point to the protestors' lack of a plan as evidence of a lack of seriousness, when apparently they have no plan themselves. Indeed, all too often the opposing voices that we hear are shrilly dismissive-their aggressive, trivializing tone hinting, to me, at a deep, largely unconscious, level of anxiety. It cannot be lost on many that all this is taking place with the background noise of the Arab Spring ringing in our ears.

Whatever happens next in Downtown Manhattan, it is terribly important that the core energy behind this protest not be lost behind a blizzard of slogans and rhetoric. The particular motivations of those protesting are, undoubtedly, as mixed as the American people itself. One dominant thread, however, is an (admittedly inchoate) critique of unfettered capitalism.

But the fundamental issue is not that the laws of capitalism are flawed; the fundamental issue is that we are flawed in our attitude to them.

There can be little doubt that capitalism is a productive way to order economic life. But we need to remember, as the protestors have reminded us, that that is all that it is - an economic system based on the entirely reasonable propositions that capital has value, and that supply and demand are the most efficient way to set prices. Capitalism is of no help at all in determining what is morally good - that is something that must instead be determined by the community's wider values.

And there should be no question that when an economic system fails to reflect those communal values, it should be modified and governed until it does. To say, as some do, that any attempt to control or guide our economic system is neither wise nor possible is to admit that an economic system has decisive control of our lives. For a Christian, such an admission would be nothing less than to yield to idolatry. (Though I do not claim deep knowledge of other religious traditions, I suspect that this is true for them as well.) God alone is the One, and the only One, to whom we can concede such ultimate authority. For the non-theist to make the argument that the laws of economics are immutable is to concede that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. That is the same argument that those in the grip of various kinds of addiction make: "I am not in control, my addiction made me do it."

As the OWS protestors point out, wealth in our country is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, the real income of the broad middle class has not increased in more than a generation, and the ranks of the poorest among us each year become ever more solidified. These are the facts - and the reality behind them is, quite simply, morally wrong. Ultimately, left unchecked, that reality is deeply dangerous. It is at odds with our vision of ourselves, and as Americans we ignore it at the peril of our most cherished national ideals. As Christians, we ignore it at the peril of our souls.

The way forward is not simple. In spite of what some in the public square would have us think, there are no obvious and easy solutions for complex problems. But what we must strive for is clear. We must - and I believe that this is what lies at the core of the OWS protests - rein in the imbalances that have caused our economic house to careen off course as though it is a self-perpetuating, self-governing good. The solution that we find will not be perfect, just as human beings are not perfect; but to surrender to forces as though we are helpless before them is not an answer, but an excuse.

We can do better. We are not helpless. We can, by working together, build a better, more just, society: a society founded on the American ideal of a nation in which there are "certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We can look to the heart of who we are as a people and draw upon our better lights to seek the common good. That is our challenge as a nation. As followers of Jesus, we know that our calling now and always is to seek the welfare of the people, the children of God.

I can't make eloquent commentary just now, as this is hot off the presses and demands some deep reflection, but I will...

Obama Admin to Close Barn Door...

2011-11-16T11:01:00.002-05:00

Is this a bad joke? We just did the diplomatic equivalent of sticking a needle in our good friend and key energy partner's eye, and now we're setting up an energy shop within the State Department? Laugh. Cry. Whatever.

Healthcare Fail Hits Close to Home

2011-11-16T10:02:00.003-05:00

After enduring a 57% increase in my healthcare insurance costs over two years, I've just been informed that my insurance carrier is dropping several of its plans, mine included. My carrier, like a handful of others, is abandoning the small company market here in New York.

While Empire issued a statement saying it has “no intentions to withdraw from the New York Small Group market,” brokers say Empire's actions, in effect, mean just that. Empire will only offer expensive, noncompetitive products to New York City small businesses with between two and 50 workers.
“They will pull the majority of sellable products, and the four or five left are all ones people don't really care about,” said one broker.
Empire is not alone in facing extreme conditions in the small group market that make it difficult to turn a profit. The insurer experienced its first year-over-year financial loss in its small group business, a trend “that cannot be sustained,” Empire said. Since late 2006, several insurers exited the small group market in New York City, including CIGNA and HealthNet.

Fewer providers obviously means higher premiums, on top of the drastic increases we've seen to date. New York state has always had a disastrous healthcare insurance market (because we've had key elements of ObamaCare before the feds spread these toxic concepts across the nation), ObamaCare made it that much worse, and now the fallout is finally starting to crack the system. I'll have to see what my new options are but I fear that healthcare insurance costs may have finally reached the tipping point - as a small businessperson I absorb all the increase in costs - where I choose to self-insure. That'll be five more added to the rolls of "the uninsured." Way to go geniuses in Albany and Washington!

Warren Buffett Criticizes What He Helped Usher In

2011-11-15T16:35:00.002-05:00

In an interview posted today Warren Buffett describes the economy exactly as I did several times (here, here, and especially here) - pretty good for owners of capital, but pretty lousy for workers. It is worth reprinting a major chunk of what I wrote, because this situation was entirely the work of a rabid leftist policy agenda combined with political rhetoric that I predicted and chronicled all along.

Mark Perry has a post up today that perfectly illuminates what I (and others) have highlighted about this economy - it sucks for the lower skilled but isn't too bad for investors and owners. Perry notes a guy who laments the sad state of the manufacturing recovery using Census data, while Perry highlights, using Census data as well, that manufacturing profits are booming. That's what Washington has created for us, a modest recovery that is accruing to capital and not to labor. How did they achieve this feat? Easy. First we must start with a misdiagnosis of the financial crisis. Politicians blamed it all on the banks and business, when it was largely the creation of government through highly distorted incentives. They further chose to tackle a financial panic, a monetary event, as a traditional business cycle recession and applied traditional counter-cyclical Keynesian "stimulus". Also, coming out of the financial crisis, the politicians ramped up both anti-business rhetoric and an anti-business policy agenda the likes of which this country hasn't see in seventy years. So as the monetary disruptions healed, the government was sucking the oxygen out of the economy by crowding out private capital to borrow and spend on "stimulus" and sending risk-takers to hide under their desks. So as the world beyond our borders recovered, having indulged in less over the top business bashing, US manufacturers have been able to secure alot of business exporting our great products to the world, but have little incentive to hire (ObamaCare) and expand here at home (card-check, EPA, NLRB, etc). Ergo the profits but not too much hiring. So that's how we got an economy that stinks for "workers" but is OK for "owners".

It was a no-brainer to call this one. This is exactly what a leftist policy agenda is designed to achieve and it is all it is able to achieve, and this is precisely what Warren Buffett is describing. As much as I admire Mr. Buffett, I think his political understanding is appalling. He advocates for the politicians that have created this kind of economy, so it is slightly repugnant for him to criticize it or lament it.

Of course, this won't explode the great persistent and pernicious myth that the American left stands for the little guy, the working man. The American left stands for itself and it's friends, full stop. Whatever the American right stands for is subject to debate, but where leftism leads us should be beyond dispute based on today's economic environment.

One More Reason Blue States Are Going Broke

2011-11-15T12:25:00.002-05:00

The NY Post did an investigative report a few years ago about a golf club on Long Island where numerous retired transit workers, all receiving disability pensions, gathered to play golf regularly. The Post found that 100% of LIRR workers were retiring on disability pensions. The scam has since been fully exposed as a massive fraud against the taxpayers. Then they followed up with fun stories like the mixed-martial arts competitor on a disability pension and the tri-athlete as well.

Now, the media in NJ is waking up to the same union-engineered scam in NJ. Meet the cop who had an accident with a staple gun and thus garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars of Garden State taxpayers' dollars.

Oil Co. Finds A Billion Barrels in Obscure, Remote Hinterland

2011-11-14T21:57:00.005-05:00

The anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-progress, Malthusian environmental movement bases their opposition to hydrocarbon energy on, let's face it, whatever works. If they can't scare us with global warming, they will make their stand against fossil fuels on more reasonable sounding concerns over resource availability. For years they've been telling us the age of oil is over, then they qualified that to say the age of easy, or cheap, oil is over, saying we'd have to go to the ends of the earth to find increasingly smaller, meaningless pools of oil that are prohibitively expensive to tap.

How many times do we have to prove this wrong to bury the theme and convince the bamboozled public that they've been lied to for years? As North Dakota rockets to the top of the tables as an oil-producing state in a matter of a few years and Pennsylvania becomes the locus of the largest natural gas development prospects on the planet, we now learn of a nearly billion barrel recoverable resource in remote, obscure...wait for it...Colorado.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said that land it controls in northern Colorado may hold more than a billion barrels of recoverable oil and natural gas, the latest sign that U.S. energy production is set to surge.
The Woodlands, Texas-based exploration company's disclosure could vault Colorado's Wattenberg field into the ranks of major oil developments in the United States, joining the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in South Texas. These new sources of oil are reversing four decades of declining domestic energy production.

Reminds me of something...

"'Energy supply' is determined not by 'what's out there' but by how good we are at finding and extracting it. What is scarce is not raw energy but the drive and the logic that is able to locate, purify, and channel it to our own ends."

Definition of Chutzpah

2011-11-13T10:51:00.002-05:00

Lazy? Lazy?

No respect to the office is merited here. This cat is one nervy son-of-a-bitch.

But I Know Where You Can Find The Rest of Them on Sunday

2011-11-08T09:42:00.003-05:00

While this may be true,

A majority of Democrats—52 percent—say they seldom or never go to church, according to Gallup data published Monday.

the other 48% seem to have a pretty clear hold on the Episcopal Church here in the US. At my church, in eight years from 2000-2008 not once did we pray for "George, our President" while we've prayed for "Barack, our President" nearly every week since January 2009.

Is Our Nobel-Winning Energy Secretary Innumerate?

2011-11-04T14:48:00.006-04:00

Apparently Nobelist and Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu's reputation is sustaining some damage over the Solyndra scandal. I guess. His reputation ought to have taken a beating over silly statements like this rather than the Solyndra scandal, but Solyndra will have to do. Anyhow, Chu appears to be defending the Solyndra debacle thusly:

Chu cited a report saying that the global green energy market is worth almost $240 billion worldwide, and that photovoltaic systems — which turn light into electricity at the atomic level — are part of an $80 billion market.

“That’s nearly as much as Americans spend every year on beer,” he said. “The difference is that the solar PV market will grow and will dwarf the beer market.”

Holy Moley! Solar is, like, so gonna be bigger than beer!

I hope so. The approximate value of the global energy market is $8.4 trillion and the same figure for the global beer market is $325 billion. So if solar gets to be as big a deal as beer, it will still be less than 5% of the global energy market, closer to 4%.

Are we really well served by throwing precious billions of dollars that we don't have at technologies that, should they meet extremely aggressive growth targets, will still represent a small fraction of our energy sources (and thus have no impact on greenhouse gases, which have a completely theoretical relationship to global temperatures, which may or may not be bad if they were to rise...) ??

This is what happens when smart people like Secretary Chu get caught up in politics. It is a corruption of sorts.

(Not My) Thoughts On Romney

2011-11-04T12:07:00.004-04:00

While I thought I was in on most if not all meetings of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, it appears that I am not. Apparently, Mitt Romney was stumping in NYC and I wasn't invited (even after saying good things about him!). So I am unable to to give you the on-the-ground reporting that you've come to expect from me once every couple of years. Fortunately, Spengler was there in my absence and he got much the same impression I got from Herman Cain when I saw him recently in that very same Grand Hyatt ballroom. And Spengler is also ABBO, as I am, so his analysis resonates with me.

Further thoughts: I have always thought that the key attribute of a President ought to be the ability to bring into his sphere a vast array of the most qualified and serious people to guide the thinking on and approaches to issues. Romney has always had that in spades and stands head and shoulders above all the rest in that regard. The question mark was Romney's presentation and putative plasticity. I am glad to hear that Spengler thinks this is not a major concern. I also have posited that Romney is clearly the leader in assembling a campaign war chest to rival billion dollar Barack. And Romney's economic team is miles ahead of what his rivals have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not stumping for Romney. I'm just trying to make knowledge, dispassionate analysis here, and Romney is undeniably formidable in many important respects. That is pure analysis, nothing more. But, having said that, my sincerest desire and fervent plea, should Romney win the nomination, will be for all Romney doubters and those dubious of his true conservative convictions to put their reservations aside and make it a priority to get their asses to the polls and drag others' asses to the polls in November of 2012. ABBO baby. ABBO.

Irony Alert

2011-11-04T11:29:00.001-04:00

On-the-take Chinese officials are worried they'll be the victims of counterfeit luxury goods...

The popularity of Château Lafite-Rothschild seems to be waning with the elite of China, especially government officials who like the first growth as a gift or for major face giving. They are worried too much that Lafite is fake, and if they have the misfortune of serving one to a guest or giving it as a present, this would leave a very bad impression on their guests.
I have heard this many times over a week-long trip to Beijing and Hong Kong from various sources. “Everyone is worried that Lafites are fake,” he said. “It’s bad face if you give someone or serve someone fake Lafite.”

Reap. Sow. YadaYada.

$40K Settlement Suggests "Addition by Subtraction"

2011-11-04T10:43:00.004-04:00

In Re the apparent settlement amounts paid to Herman Cain's accusers, read this analysis from a lawyer. Let me add two things. First, an accuser with a real claim doesn't go away for $40,000. A legit claim is looking for high six/low seven figures. Second, that $40,000 is a bargain to find out who within your organization is 1) a liar, 2) a troublemaker, 3) lazy, 4) a litigation time bomb or some combination thereof. Having had experience with organizations that are fanatical about attracting and cultivating talent, money spent culling dead wood/the wrong people is as good as money spent recruiting great people. Conventional HR wisdom used to be "what if we invest in our people and they leave the company?" I had an HR manager who always used to say "what if we don't invest in our people and they stay?" Small settlements like this are investments in "addition by subtraction."

Media Backfire?

2011-11-04T09:59:00.008-04:00

Did somebody say that cynical hatchet jobs and shoddy, partisan journalism would actually help Cain as conservatives intrinsically gravitate to politicians that the EJM has it out for?

Looks like that somebody was right. (Note: check this out. Cain is making a smart move here, there is almost as much, maybe more, to be gained from appealing to MSM loathing than ducking and hiding. UPDATE: I just watched it again, it's more powerful than I even originally thought. Cain's symbolic linkage with Justice Thomas is brilliant, not just on the media circus, but because Thomas's jurisprudence has become talismanic for conservatives. Republican voters are gonna like Cain more when they hear, see, or even subconsciously feel a linkage with Thomas. And I can't think of more valuable conservative bona fides than to be called stupid by the likes of Al Sharpton or Harry Belafonte. Genius.)

While I'm in a self-back-patting mood, did somebody say that unemployment is going nowhere, that things are baked in the cake, that we're not getting out of this until we are rid of Obama or Obama himself alters his policy program so drastically as to repudiate everything he has ever believed?

As I have said, there is nothing that can revitalize this economy save unabashedly pro-growth policies and this President will not deliver them.

Yes I did and today's jobs data print affirms this view?

Greek Comedy

2011-11-03T15:05:00.002-04:00

Greek Finance Minister: "Referendum? Dude, do you know how f**king broke we are?!"

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos called on the Greek government to categorically rule out a referendum on a crucial bailout plan and do everything to implement the deal.

...
In a speech to fellow Socialist lawmakers on Thursday, Venizelos said the bailout ought to be approved by an increased majority of 180 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament. He said the debt-choked country needed its sixth tranche of aid from foreign lenders before Dec. 15.

While I sympathize with Daniel Hannan's view that Europe suffers from a lack of democracy and its elites like it that way, we are well past fretting over that now. The time for these deadbeat Greeks to stop dicking around is now and waving the banner of democracy doesn't change the situation. Greece is small potatoes; they can't contribute anything positive, all they can do is burn the house down. Time to shut their antics down, even if it does reinforce the elitism of Eurocrats.

Huh?

2011-11-02T15:29:00.004-04:00

I don't know what to make of this:

An unnamed source close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi confirmed the involvement of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Al Arabiya reported Nov. 2. The unnamed source said Salehi’s comments came during a recent meeting with Mohammed Nahavandian, former assistant at the National Security Council and the current president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The source quoted Salehi as saying the plot was about to be implemented and it was not fabricated by U.S. authorities.

In other words: "You're damn right we're plotting acts of war on US soil!" or alternatively "What are you gonna do about it, Obama...loser?"

UPDATE: Wow. Now we have this. Has the unclenched hand been swatted and singed so bad that it is now clenched and cocked? RTWT, as Ed has all your irony and a full scale run-down of the political hypocrisy at play in re Iran.

UPPDATE: Reporting coming through on Drudge suggests that Bibi was planning to attack and retired Mossad chief Meir Daggan leaked the plans to the press to scuttle the attack. This, IMO, is laughable. I don't think the Israelis are capable of something so clumsy when it comes to the existential threat that is Iran. I think this is a ruse to see if Iran gives up any clues - evasive hardening of sensitive sites, asset repositioning, etc. - as to what they'd do if an attack was imminent. Or it may be an attempt to draw the US and the Brits into a good cop role but a confrontational one nonetheless. This will be really interesting to follow, nothing is what it seems, I am sure of it.

Bitter Clinger Talks Jobs

2011-11-02T12:47:00.002-04:00

Clinging to that religion.

"If Congress tells you they don't have time, they got time to do it. We've been in the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John (Speaker John Boehner), you've been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That's not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work," Obama said.

Quite bitterly, I might add.

Pretty soon, Lightworker might start sounding like this guy.

Bratty, Anti-Intellectual Harvard Students (But I Repeat Myself)

2011-11-02T12:03:00.005-04:00

I can't think of a dumber statement than this:

"There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory."

Not just on the face of it - Smith is every bit as important as Keynes, perhaps more so - but, in the context especially. Aren't these students there to learn? Isn't this an introductory course? What rational basis do introductory students have to dictate course material to an experienced, tenured professor? Furthermore, how is it that introductory students are sufficiently knowledgeable to make conclusions and judgements as to the relative merits of two key figures in economics? Finally, who cares if there is bias in the course? (although based on this defense it appears, in fact, to be scrupulously fair and neutral.) Isn't the point of a liberal (18th century definition) education to learn as much as possible from all perspectives? Can students presume to call themselves educated by taking only courses that hew to one ideological perspective? If they hate taking economics from a Bush appointee, go take one from an Obama appointee or a Clinton appointee, there are several at Harvard. Or supplement your reading on your own and challenge Mankiw in class with what you've learned.

Walking out is about the most childish and anti-educational choice these young people could make. Woody Allen said 90% of life is showing up. Indeed it is. Let these bratty dopes walk out and live their 10% lives.

Or they could take this advice from Thomas Sowell: "Learn all you can before you reach conclusions. There are plenty of people out there who have pre-packaged conclusions for you to reach. You need to build up a level of knowledge and experience so that you are no longer putty in the hands of somebody else who has his own agenda." (at the 45:25 mark here if you are interested)

Sound Familiar?

2011-11-02T11:13:00.004-04:00

Funny how coincidence works. The Powerline guys have an episode of Uncommon Knowledge up featuring the great Thomas Sowell. The host, Peter Robinson, quotes from The Thomas Sowell Reader an observation that is not entirely original (simply a basic fact of historical analysis) but powerful and worth noting often: "The members of the Communist League were overwhelmingly intellectuals and professionals. It had the same kind of social composition that would in later years categorize many radical groups in which the youthful offspring of privilege called themselves the proletariat." Translation: Marxism is the conceit of rich kids with fancy educations.

Today we learn some fun facts about various OWS protestors' living quarters.

My Big Fat Greek Margin Call

2011-11-01T13:47:00.005-04:00

Thank You Dumb-Ass Greeks for just a little extra volatility to cap off your tragic soap opera of dysfunction. Losers. It'll come out, somebody got whipsawed by this little trick.

A friend said it best to me recently, the biggest problem with the European crisis is that Europeans have to solve it. (We're no great shakes, but the Euroweenies make us look like paragons of fiscal rectitude and decisiveness.)

The Media Is Playing "Pong" in a "WoW" World

2011-11-01T12:10:00.008-04:00

Someone just asked me, does this Politico story hurt Herman Cain? My answer: I don't think so. According to the folks at Pew, American trust of the media has never been lower. 66% percent think news stories are often inaccurate, 63% see the media as biased, and overall 55% percent have very little or no trust in the media. (No small irony in where that link takes you!)

Among conservatives those numbers are higher. So right off the bat, roughly 70% of people interested in learning about Herman Cain for the purposes of voting in a Republican primary probably think the story is a biased, politically-motivated attack. This will generate sympathy and give Cain a chance to both showcase crisis management skills and toughness in the face of media confrontation. So, I see it as a minor plus for Cain and a potential bigger plus if he handles it well.

That is just the media dynamics at work. There is a second dynamic, which is the laughable state of the "rights" movement manifested in these very thin claims of harassment. Civil rights, women's rights, and various other victimology aspirant rights' groups have descended into a caricature status as payola seeking opportunists. From Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push shakedowns to the tens of thousands of laughable claims of harassment/rights violations based on the painfully low, subjective standard setting of the victim-mongers - Americans are beyond suspect of such claims. They are beyond tired of such claims. They are now quite incensed at what is now a shakedown industry operating outside of any normal rules, wreaking havoc across society. Certainly conservatives feel that way, and likely many independents. So the same reaction is in play here - Cain will garner at least some small sympathy, perhaps more depending on the ultimate course of this story. If it turns out that these allegations are as lame as they appear at first blush, Cain will garner more support inversely proportional to Politico's lameness.

If Cain survives the gauntlet and actually secures the Republican nomination, the media might want to ask themselves, do they really want to remind a small army of core Republicans as well as independent swing voters just how cynical, biased and journalistically corrupt they were in service of Barack Obama in 2008 by reprising the same tactics in 2012???

We don't live in a world where someone might write an angry or skeptical letter to the editor anymore. Swarms of independent voices, self-styled watchdogs, and alternative media outlets will tear this story to shreds, if it is tearable, in a matter of minutes; and the ranker the media practice proves to be, the more it elevates its opponents. It is amazing that they haven't learned that.

UPDATE: Natch.

Yesterday was Herman Cain’s biggest campaign fundraising day, the candidate told Laura Ingraham this morning on her radio show. …

About the fundraising news, Ingraham said: “What does that tell you? Don’t let the media set the message for you. He didn’t cancel anything on his schedule. He’s not a hermit. He’s not hiding behind some wall of privacy.” Clearly, she said, “People want a fighter. They see right through the media haze.”

Headscratcher of the Day

2011-10-31T13:22:00.004-04:00

Wait a second. A reporter who doesn't want to get into specifics? Isn't that like a lawyer who doesn't want to get into "legalese"?

It Was That Kinda Game: Gameball to the Punter

2011-10-31T13:01:00.004-04:00

Who gets to live out the week next to the Hermanator? Hard to say, there were no true standout performances, everyone did just enough of what they had to do (and some not even that...yes, I'm talking about you Brandon Jacobs). So in times like this we like to go off the reservation a bit and give the gameball to someone a little unexpected. I guess we could give it to Eli for yet another winning Q4 drive or Victor Cruz for more big play heroics, but hey, why not a punter? When will we get a chance to do that again? Steve Weatherford meet the Hermanator.

Egregious Violation of Separation of Church and State!

2011-10-31T12:56:00.003-04:00

Alert! Alert!

We have evidence of football and prayer. Isn't that new stadium somehow tax=payer funded??

Somebody call the SCOTUS, call the school board, the bureaucracy...call somebody!!!

The Gini Coefficient Is Dumb

2011-10-31T12:39:00.003-04:00

One of the stupider concepts/preoccupations in economics is something called the Gini coefficient. Bloomberg News columnist William Pesek has a bit of an obsession with it, and redistributionists the world over - from guilt-ridden rich Westerners, to cash-hungry/graft-seeking/opportunist leaders of developing nations - love them some Gini coefficient.

But it's stupid. I know that is not a high form of argumentation, but it is simply the case - the Gini Coefficient is stupid (see my above link). Mark Perry has some graphs today to illuminate the point further. Take a look and tell me if you think the Gini Coefficient is something we should be worrying about. Great emphasis tying the GC to Mencken's hobgoblins.

Euro Crisis: Scarily, The Real Action Is Now In Italy

2011-10-28T11:22:00.003-04:00

For those inclined to wonk-out on the European financial crisis, watch the painfully dry and robotic bigwig Charles Dallara on Sir Lawrence's show.

It's informative stuff, and after it is all over Sir Larry asks his guests for a "whip around" commentary on the most important aspect of what Dallara shares. Since He of the House of Mustard Seed did not invite me on the show despite my clear qualifications, I will have to comment here.

Dallara hinted at it, but it's hard to escape the Big Kahuna here - Italy. Italy is the big bad mess that could sink everything. Greece is chump change and the world can move past a Greek meltdown before you can say spanikopita. Italy, however, has a big and meaningful economy and a gargantuan pile of debt for which there is no bailout solution. Italy has the potential to make this all for naught and bring the crisis right back to white hot danger levels. There must be a solvency-focused solution - deep structural reforms aimed at dynamic growth and a complete rethink of the welfare-state model - coming from the Italians. Unless that happens, we are all right back in this mess up to our necks; and the recently announced changes to the retirement age are, well, underwhelming. If the Italians don't get it right, we're f**ked, and sure enough the bond market seems to understand this and is starting to send its gentle hints.

Checking In On 2011 Predictions

2011-10-27T14:22:00.002-04:00

After you stop laughing at the sheer hilarity of this, take note of a certain prediction made almost one year ago...

- Hillary Re-emerges for 2012: Now that the Obama presidency is officially owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Clintonites, they will work to undermine his 2012 chances and/or strike a grand bargain that enhances Hillary's power post 2012 and sets her up for further gains when the time is right. The Clintonite cadre will now set the conditions as best they can for Democratic success (work with Boehner, win back business) but otherwise allow Obama to blunder into a situation that enhances Hillary's profile.

Ambition? Imagination?

2011-10-27T13:57:00.004-04:00

We've lost our ambition? We've lost our imagination? Really?

Wait a second...burying 1,661 miles of 36-diameter pipe in the ground in a $13 billion effort so that no one sees it or is disturbed by it is not ambitious or imaginative?

Expanding production of a plane with revolutionary innovations in advanced material design and fuel efficiency is not ambitious or imaginative?

Trying to cure breast cancer is not ambitious or imaginative?

Trying to tap the largest reserves of energy known to man is not ambitious or imaginative?

Maybe it is because we can't even let people try to make better ice cream that we can't do big things, because we don't even let people do small things and thus learn how to, ya' know, do things at all...

Or is it "the government" he's taking about? Wait, the government isn't doing big things? Coulda fooled me. Indeed.

President's Genius Economic Plan

2011-10-27T13:06:00.003-04:00

President Unilateral's plan to bypass Congress to heal our economy with a student loan modification program has me in mind of something I wrote long ago about the regrettable Bush/Pelosi tax rebate of 2008:

If you believe this story, the tax rebates are keeping consumers spending and buoying the softening economy. Those tax rebates took several months, almost a year, to debate, pass, and implement. Let's recap. In 2008, you and me have earned income, sent it off to the government, waited for them to send it back, and now have it back. And because we have it back, this is helping the economy. So, in the interests of further helping the economy I offer this bright idea: let's shorten the cycle time by cutting out the middle steps. Let's say that me and my fellow Americans be allowed to not send off a portion of our income to the government. That means it wouldn't take months to come back and we could help the economy right now, today, pronto, immediamente. Hmmm. But what would I call such a plan?

Obama's student loan plan displays the same stunning economic logic: Recent graduates owe money to the federal government, they owe so much that they are unable to participate in the economy as much as they'd like and as much as it needs them to. So the federal government will alter the rules, which may take awhile as the rules are designed, debated, promulgated, communicated and implemented. In due course though, the rule changes will allow the loan holders to hold some money back from the federal government and use it to participate in and help grow the economy (apparent meagerness notwithstanding).

So again I say, why don't we cut the cycle time. Let's not wait for the rules go through the various formal steps, let's get that money into those grads' hands pronto. Sounds great! But what would we call such a program?

Yeah.

Today's Economic Numbers

2011-10-27T12:27:00.003-04:00

Some brief commentary on the economic news today. First, the GDP numbers. They were OK, but not enough to help the White House. The good news is we are not tipping into another recession, the bad news is we are stumbling along in a pattern of mediocrity that won't be strong enough to have people feel good about the economy and their lives. As I have written before, this economy stinks for Joe Six Pack. And, as the stock market action today shows, life is OK for investors - not great but not nearly the troubles that the average working person is experiencing. To my mind this is a classic lefty economy - with policies designed to appeal to middle income workers superficially, but that harm them in actuality. Just check out Drudge's headline about the dollar - the Euro-driven fear premium is coming out of the dollar and the bad investment climate and profligate government spending fundamentals here in the US are taking center stage again. That's too bad for poor to middle income people whose purchasing power benefits from cheaper imported goods. Those goods will now be more expensive.

Classic lefty economy, the rich do OK, or at worst stay static, while the poor and middle class take it on the chin. Even though it is a caricatured view of a conservative economy, I bet many Americans would trade this economy for one where the rich do quite well and so do the poor and middle class. We'll see, such a choice is pending in the near future.

Tax It, Bash It...What's the Difference?

2011-10-25T15:26:00.002-04:00

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 205 to lose jobs after Piper decides to mothball Altaire jet program.

So Obama bashes private jets, private jet sales then plummet, now a bunch of jet-making workers lose their jobs. Hope and change!

Didn't we do the same thing in the 1990s with yachts??

Yes. Ugh.

A Split Enz song is ringing in my ear just now..."History never repeats, I tell myself, before I go to sleep..."

Latest Stupidity from MSM - Regulation Is, Like, Totally Harmless for the Economy

2011-10-25T12:20:00.003-04:00

In a classic of the "Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Own Lyin' Eyes?" variety, Bloomberg News - deep into its support campaign for the re-election of Barack Obama - tries to get us to believe that the explosion of regulations coming out of Washington isn't hurting the economy, and they have something snazzily called the BGOV Barometer to convince you of this. (I'm sure the BGOV Barometer would also tell you that falling out of a fourth story window wouldn't hurt either.)

Of course the definitional criteria is narrow and misses the point - employers responsible for dismissals of at least 50 employees cited regulations in just 1% of the cases. This is of course measuring large employers - companies that can lay off 50 or more people and still have people working there. Among small business owners, regulation is their number one concern. That's strike one. Strike two is that regulations are working their way into the system now, they wouldn't account for previous lay-offs. Bank of America is in the process of laying off 30,000 workers, and here is a list of more. UBS will lay off thousands. Does anybody really think that Dodd-Frank, Washington's silver medal olympian regulatory feat, has nothing to do with this? It strains logic to deny the link. Moving on, government regulations wield their most devastating effect not on existing jobs but on hiring, and we all know there has been very little hiring. So who cares if regulations don't directly link to layoffs? They do directly link to lack of hiring, which is stagnation. So regulation is Okey-Dokey because it gives mere stagnation rather than contraction? Dumb. Strike three.

Bloomberg is measuring the wrong thing, over the wrong time period and making the wrong conclusion. Regulation is they number one key to economic reinvigoration, and the next occupant of the White House, be it President Obama or Romney or Cain or Perry, will succeed or fail based on whether they can tame the onslaught of regulation plaguing the economy.

"Frack Water" Is Greens Latest Desperate Attempt Against Fracking

2011-10-25T11:16:00.003-04:00

I won't rehash the particulars of the national debate over "fracking", the technology behind the natural gas revolution here in the US (some background here). But for those who are well-versed in the industry and the relevant policy fights, a couple basic facts are more or less agreed upon. Fracking is more or less inevitable, for the following reasons:

the energy resources available to us by virtue of fracking are too big to ignore,
fracking is in the plus column in terms of environmental impact (gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and it will largely displace coal, and then replace large chunks of oil).
in the end, the greens don't have very good arguments against fracking, there just isn't the evidence that fracking is dangerous.
fracking is bringing alot of jobs to previous depressed areas, which, even if fracking was marginally dangerous, are accepting fracking for the economic impact

Given these, especially #3, people in the industry have predicted that efforts to ban or slow fracking will ultimately fail, but that greens will throw everything they have at trying to stop fracking. After the "groundwater pollution" tack fails, which it has almost completely done, the next phase will be to attack the "frack water". We are now there.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will soon begin the process of developing "comprehensive" national standards for wastewater discharges produced by extracting natural gas from underground coalbed and shale formations.

In a written statement released by the agency, the EPA noted that proposed standard will include input from federal and state governments, industry and public health groups. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson contends this latest action is necessary "to make sure the needs of our energy future are met safely and responsibly."

Frack water disposal is probably the least problematic aspect of the entire technology, but that is not stopping Obama's EPA.

The Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coaltion, which in its three-year history has established itself as a key voice for developing the Marcellus Shale play in an environmentally responsible manner, expressed bewilderment at the EPA's regulatory plans.

"While we certainly appreciate that the EPA shares our concern in protecting the environment, especially water, it is baffling that the agency would move forward with such measures that completely disregard the facts on the ground," said Kathryn Klaber, the coalition's president. "This is yet another Washington solution in search of a problem, as treated Marcellus water in Pennsylvania is no longer discharged into surface waters."

The fight goes on.

NY Post Is the First to Wonder About the Obvious

2011-10-24T10:29:00.003-04:00

Everybody seems to think that it will be the cold weather that will truly test the staying power of the OWS losers. As an old NYC hand, I have known otherwise. Even the most fastidious and anally cleanly NYCers have a hard time keeping them at bay, these clowns don't stand a chance.

Me and Steve Jobs

2011-10-21T11:35:00.003-04:00

“You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it difficult for them.

So said Steve Jobs to the Lightworker. Here's what Donny B. said to, well, um...maybe 10 or so readers:

"I guess what I am saying is what I have said before...if The One thinks he can shit on capital and business leaders for four years he's got another thing coming. People who hire other people will hide under their desks, the campaign money will dry up, the layoffs will accelerate."

Obviously, I'm similarly brilliant and perceptive as Steve Jobs. I started my own company like Steve Jobs. And I'm adopted too. So I'm pretty much just like Steve Jobs, just minus nearly $8 billion and universal notoriety and acclaim for having changed the world. Other than that though, twins.

Thoughts on The Hermanator

2011-10-21T09:53:00.005-04:00

As a member in good standing of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I got a chance to see Herman Cain a few weeks ago speak to a large-ish audience here in the Big Apple. He was great - alot more fluid and smooth than he is on TV - and never missed a beat. When he is rolling, Herman has a hard time softening the edges of that hard core black Georgia accent. I'm not saying he ought to soften it, he shouldn't - it's great, it's authentic - but he clearly attempts to do that on TV, so you don't get the full exposure. I came away with the impression that if the Hermantor gets on the Republican ticket (either as the POTUS candidate or the VPOTUS candidate), he's gonna steal a meaningful chunk of the black vote from the Lightworker. Certainly in the south, blacks are gonna see and hear Herman and conclude, 'this guy is like me - he talks like me, he says things that I hear all the time'. Barack Obama can't drop enough "g"s in ten lifetimes to come even close to affecting the authentic southern black Preacherman loquaciousness that Cain has by virtue of who he is. In 2008, all Lightworker had to do to was be more black than John McCain. This time around, if the psychology of the black vote comes down to "blackness" (which it shouldn't but often does simply because of human nature) and he has to be more black than the Hermanator, he's gonna lose that battle. Dear Leader will need to garner black support by virtue of his policies and Democratic Party loyalty.

Those were my impressions weeks ago. This week, I revisited those impressions talking to someone who I consider the archetypical smug New York City liberal sophisticate. Said person told me that they saw a clip of Cain speaking to a largely white audience in the south (in the "backwoods" was the verbatim reference, although it was very likely a small city) and that he had them quite fired up. Our NYC sophisticate concluded that if the Hermanator could appeal to "those type of people" he could be formidable. The statement was obviously suffused with the NYC bias that all the rubes in the hinterlands are so irredeemably racist that they shouldn't, if playing to type, respond so enthusiastically to Cain. There must be something to that Cain fellow, hypothesized our interlocutor, if he can appeal to such an audience - he might actually make inroads with white voters. (Shocker!) Not once though, did this person suggest that Cain might make inroads with black voters, because here on the insular island of Manhattan, blacks are presumed (taken for granted?) to vote for a Democrat, always and everywhere.

Of course such thoughts are unspeakable. As a whitey in a society where racial identity is all some people have and thus is fiercely protected, I dare not attempt suppose what a black person might think. So today, I am at least somewhat heartened to find my impressions confirmed almost exactly by the great, and black, Thomas Sowell. Unspeakable though it is in the public square, it happens to be true, and the Hermanator, if he finds his way onto the Republican ticket, may well pick off enough votes to send Obama to defeat - not because he is some sort of fig leaf for whites but because he is someone who blacks can viscerally, not superficially, identify with.

Next?

2011-10-20T14:50:00.003-04:00

Drudge Captures Defining Arrogance In Iconic Lede

2011-10-19T16:38:00.008-04:00

Drudge is having alot of fun today. He's not rotating this puppy out of top billing in favor of other news.

It's perfect...iconic even. This is where we are: a terrible economy mired in 9%+ unemployment, inflation on the rise, street protests, three years of $1.3 trillion deficits, billions pissed down the rathole of green energy fantasies, US alliances abroad in tatters, aggressively anti-US piss-ant dictatorships plotting mayhem on our soil...but he's self-satisfied, he's nailed it. Boo-Ya!

We couldn't have a more perfect example of what Reagan meant when he said that the problem isn't that liberals aren't smart, it's that so much of what they know, just isn't so.