No Oil for Pacifists

John Hawkins of Right Wing News posted this month's "temperature check" of right-of-center bloggers.

Whether or not you blame former Fed chair Alan Greenspan for the current crisis, economics wasn't his first career choice, says Joe Queenan in the June 29th Weekly Standard:

[F]ew Americans are aware that a career forecasting GDP and setting interest rates and tamping down the nation's money supply was not Greenspan's dream as a child. Rather, he dreamed of growing up to be a jazz musician.

Had those dreams borne fruit, the global financial system might never have been brought to its knees.

Here are the known facts. Midway through World War II Greenspan enrolled at Juilliard but soon dropped out and took a job with a roving dance band. His instrument of choice was the tenor saxophone.

The path from Mingus to Coltrane to Rand is--if true--the wildest coming-of-age tale ever. Trust me--read the whole thing.

On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office revised its projections of the budget deficit under two scenarios (the lower of the two, called the "extended baseline," is the more realistic):


source: CBO "Long-Term Budget Outlook"

As CBO director Douglas Elmendorf explains:

Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path--meaning that federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario. . .

For decades, spending on the federal government’s major health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, has been growing faster than the economy (as has health care spending in the private sector). CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from almost 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by calendar year 2035 and to more than 17 percent of GDP by 2080. That projection means that in 2080, if there are no changes in policy, the federal government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years. Constraining the costs of those health care programs will be a key to developing a sustainable fiscal policy.

Indeed, even without the prescription drug benefit, Medicare's costs-per-patient have risen faster than private sector health costs.

Further reasons to "fix Medicare first."

(via Pajamas Media's Jeffrey Anderson)

Glenn Smith at the far-left Firedoglake site says:

The gravity of America's health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century's bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole.

Uh . . . um . . . step away from the keyboard.

Or consider this: President Obama refused to pledge that he and his family would accept limits on medical treatment, "[If] it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care." Is such freedom slavery?

(via Maggie's Farm, Wizbang)

Assistant Village Idiot has an excellent series of posts (called "Sauron Himself Is But An Emissary") contrasting progressive and conservative thought process (most recent here). As the title's Tolkien reference suggests, AVI worries that "the progressive attachment to visions of a better world makes it hard for them to see others as merely wrong -- they have to ascribe pathology and evil motive to them." I agree -- and will in the future comment or post further on AVI's philosophical analysis.

But, along the way, I got distracted by one particular progressive pathology--their penchant for citing Europe's alleged economic success, touting constraints on the free market (i.e., more socialism) as the preferable path to minimizing poverty. Some recent examples:

• Russell Shorto extolling the Dutch welfare state in the April 29th New York Times magazine. (See also Ezra Klein in American Prospect.)



• Wyatt Cenac on Comedy Central's The Daily Show in late April mocking conservative complaints about Swedish socialism.



• The Center for Economic and Policy Research asserting in May that tight European labor-market regulation and high jobless benefits have led to lower unemployment as compared with laissez-faire U.S. policies.



• Landon Thomas commending in the May 13th New York Times the lessons Norway's economy could provide for U.S. policymakers.

I've already noted that--contrary to Landon Thomas--the May 20th New York Times reported that Norway just "slipped into recession." And the curious can surf to several rebuttals regarding the Netherlands (more here), Sweden (more here, here, here, and NOfP), EU labor/employment policies, and Norway.

But more broadly, AVI's narrative aptly is illustrated by the left's endless ability to fool itself into believing that Europe is more advanced and successful than America. What else could explain their repeated failure to convert economic statistics into purchasing power parity prior to comparison? In particular, this bypasses the effect of massive internal subsidies and eco straight-jackets on food prices Then there's the typical ignorance of standard-of-living measures like living space, leisure time, cars per capita as well as convenience.

Progressives prefer collectivism to capitalism and so imagine it's proven fact. But commerce, not redistribution, creates wealth--money is not a zero sum game. As MaxedOutMama says, "Economic efficiency MATTERS."

Yes, some conservatives take a theoretical commitment to individualism too far. Yet--in general--the substitution of pretty theories for testable practices is more prevalent on the left. AVI helpfully addresses "why." I got stuck on "how."

And I fear the consequences.

Eamon Javers on Politico:

Let’s be honest: Barack Obama is better than you are.

He’s a better father -- taking breaks from running the world to cheer on his daughters at soccer and basketball games.

He’s a better husband -- zipping his wife off for dinner in New York and Paris.

He’s got a better diet -- nibbling on vegetables from his homegrown garden to keep his love handles in check.

And he’s got a terrific jump shot.

You? Not so much.

Call it the politics of personal perfection. The Barack Obama brand is as much about being a personal example to the nation as it is about being a political figure.

(via Don Surber)

UPDATE: below

Blogger bobn still acquits Congress of responsibility for relaxing GSE lending standards because it avoided formal legislation by resorting to informal pressure--so-called "regulation by raised eyebrow." Beyond misreading history, bobn overlooks continuing practice:

Two Democratic lawmakers are calling on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery.

In March, Fannie Mae said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer than 70% of the units have been sold, up from 51%. Fannie Mae also won't purchase mortgages in buildings where 15% of owners are delinquent on condo association dues or where one owner has more than 10% of units, which the firm sees as signals that a building could run into financial trouble. Freddie Mac will implement similar policies next month.

In a letter to the chief executives of Fannie and Freddie, Reps. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) warned that the 70% sales threshold "may be too onerous" and could lead condo buyers to shun new developments. The legislators asked the companies to "make appropriate adjustments" to their underwriting standards for condos.

The political push illustrates the balancing act facing the two government-controlled mortgage-finance giants as they struggle to keep the housing market afloat without losing more money.

I don't get why "Congress is innocent" is important to bobn. But it remains naive form-over-substance.

MORE:

Read Wolf Howling's excellent summary.

(via Doug Ross)

As reported in Friday's Washington Post:

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January deadline.

Good.

Obama's stated reason for health care reform? He says we spend too much. "Rapidly escalating health care costs are crushing family, business, and government budgets."

How does he propose to fix that? By spending more. He asserts his health care program will only cost $1,000,000,000,000 over ten years. Only! (But now we know it will cost four times that much.) Nevertheless, Obama proposes $1,000,000,000,000 in taxes to pay for it.

Obama is going to cure rising costs by... wait for it... wait for it... spending more. Impossible you say? I agree. What the hell is he smoking?

Spending more to save money is a bad idea on its face.

Everyone knows that as demand goes up -- so does the price. Obama's cure is surely worse than the disease. The consensus among right thinkers -- exemplified by Krauthammer -- is Obama wants to leave his legacy by turning the country to socialism.

"Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can’t be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand and wants to ‘level the playing field’ with income redistribution and punishment of the achievers of society."

So, Obama wants to rule the world. What does he use as ammunition? He paints a picture of calamity -- Obama says there are 47,000,000 people without health insurance. He asserts this is a problem that he wants to solve.

Now, I disagree that is a problem. Going without insurance is not bad. In between high school and college, I went without insurance for several years. Didn't hurt me a bit. Then there are wackos that assert the health care issue is morally equivalent to the slavery issue:

The gravity of America's health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century's bloody conflict over slavery... Today's health system condemns 50 million Americans to ill health and death while guaranteeing health care to the economic privileged. It cannot stand... About 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance... America has the economic ability to save 18,000 lives each year and end the suffering of millions of more who struggle with illness and disease. The only reason we don't do it is that insurance companies haven't yet figured out how to do it at a profit....Condemning Americans to premature death and ill health so some can earn profits is the moral equivalent of slavery. Some may find the comparison extreme, others distasteful. But history will record it as a fact.

For the record, the link he cites to support his 18,000 deaths, well it only support the notion that the deaths are 'premature', so his assertion that insurance will 'save lives' is a gross exaggeration, at best. Nevertheless, this is the type of broken thinking that socialists are using to increase government control of your life. The Sky Is Falling. The Government Must Do Something. Please Save Us Obama!!!

You know what is causing illness and death in this country? It isn't lack of insurance, that is for sure. The number one cause of disease in this country is self-inflicted. Poor physical condition caused by a lack of exercise and a diet that is high in fat, sugar, and low in nutrients and fiber.

More Disease Prevention: Way Better than More Cure

What if Obama really wanted to reform the US system of care? He would not administer more 'cure' he would follow the maxim -- an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I found this from Worlds Healthiest Foods Foundation, an Open Letter to Obama on healthcare:

Scientific studies continue to demonstrate that among all lifestyle factors, no single factor is more important to our health than the food we eat. A campaign educating Americans about the benefits of eating healthier-and how to make healthy eating choices-would be a highly effective and relatively inexpensive means of improving our health.

Because the concept of practicing a healthier way of eating is so amazingly simple, a campaign focusing on healthy eating can easily be overlooked as a means to resolve our healthcare problems. Yet, promoting the intake of nutrient-rich, health-promoting, and satisfying foods-such as delicious fresh fruits, vegetables, salads, whole grains, protein-rich beans, and omega-3 rich seafood-would prove to be one of the most powerful ways to affect positive change in our national health.

Indeed, obesity has increased tremendously, and may be linked to increased health care costs. Obesity is the ill of our wealthy over-indulgent society. Do you know why Obama won't propose a healthier way of eating? Because our national agriculture is rooted around two crops: soybeans and corn. These two crops are processed and re-processed to bring us high-energy and high-fat convenience foods. As George Mateljan puts it:

Implementing a campaign for eating healthier will automatically result in decreasing consumption of unhealthy foods-nutrient-poor refined foods that are high in trans-fats, sugar, and salt (such as cookies, sodas, snack bars, candies, and fast foods), and which do not satisfy your appetite for any length of time. These foods spike blood sugar levels, providing a short burst of energy, but do little to curb satiety. This means hunger quickly returns, and, for many people, the result is a vicious cycle of consuming more calorie-laden nutrient-poor foods, a formula that perpetuates our national obesity epidemic and the chronic preventable diseases associated with obesity: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

Let us see what George has to say about the The Key Reasons for our Health care Crisis

Health care costs have risen from $3,468 per person in 1993 to $8,160 in 2008, and costs continue to rise. It is estimated that in the next 5 years, healthcare costs will increase almost another 50% to $13,100. These high costs might be justifiable if Americans benefited by being among the healthiest people in the world, but sadly, we are far less healthy than people living in countries where healthcare costs are much lower. Our current system attempts to manage end-stage disease; it does not promote health. We need to change not just the way in which disease-care costs are paid, but the care that is provided. To lower healthcare costs and make true health care available to all, we need to focus on health promotion and disease prevention, not on how to shift the costs of disease care.

About The George Mateljan Foundation for the World's Healthiest Foods. The Foundation is committed to providing the latest scientific information about the foods and nutrients needed for good health. George has specific methods to address the ills of a weathly society. George has further words how we Can Cut Healthcare Cost and Save Billions of Dollars in his Open Letter to Obama

Obesity: If obesity continues to increase at its current rate, analysts predict that by the year 2020, we will be spending 20% of all our healthcare dollars on obesity-related problems. We now know that excess fat, especially visceral fat, is not merely a storage depot for extra calories, but functions as an endocrine organ significantly increasing inflammation and the risk for chronic degenerative disease. The enormous impact of obesity is due to its promotion of other chronic preventable diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancers. For example, experts estimate that one-half of all type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented simply by controlling obesity! If we could lower the rate of obesity (even by a modest amount) through a healthier way of eating campaign, researchers project that we could also lower cases of chronic preventable disease by about 15 million cases. That reduction in chronic preventable disease translates into $60 billion dollars less in treatment costs, and $254 billion dollars more in workplace productivity.

Heart disease: According to research experts, it would not take complicated dietary changes to trigger major reductions in heart disease rates and their associated healthcare costs. For example, if we could simply take the 2% of the calories the typical American is consuming in the form of trans-fat and replace this 2% with polyunsaturated fat, we could reduce our rate of coronary artery disease (CAD) by at least 8%, and probably by much more in the 25-30% range! Since healthcare costs related to CAD total nearly $200 billion per year, we're talking about a potential savings of $50 billion dollars from a single dietary change that swaps a small amount of polyunsaturated fat for trans-fat.

Diabetes: In 2002, an estimated $132 billion was spent on diabetes-related health problems, including about $40 billion on sick day costs and disability related to this chronic preventable disease, including blindness, amputation, heart disease, and early death. Since healthcare analysts predict that half of all diabetes cases could be prevented if obesity were prevented, approximately $40 billion in diabetes-related costs could be cut simply by the implementation of a healthier way of eating that corrected or prevented obesity. I don't have good estimates for the cost savings related to other dietary steps that can be taken to lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but I definitely know what these steps are.

Even without reversing the problem of obesity, I am confident that dietary changes to a healthier way of eating could save many lives and billions of dollars in healthcare costs related to diabetes, its treatment, and its impact on everyday productivity.

Cancer: The American Cancer Society estimates that we are spending over $100 billion each year on cancer-related costs, and there is some research to suggest that about one-third of all cancer deaths could be prevented by simply choosing to eat healthier food. Since $57 billion dollars are estimated to be lost each year following premature death from cancer, prevention of 33% of these deaths by a healthier way of eating alone would mean about $20 billion dollars in healthcare savings each year. In the case of colorectal cancer, it has been estimated that a healthier way of eating combined with exercise could prevent more cases than implementation of early screening.

What We Can Learn From Other Countries

• In Japan, health officials check the waistlines of citizens over 40, and those considered too fat undergo diet counseling. Failure to slim down can lead to fines.
• New Zealand has rules barring people it deems too fat from immigrating to the country.
• Germany plans to spend $47 million on healthy eating and sports programs and to set tougher nutritional standards for school lunches.
• Denmark limits the amount of artery-clogging trans-fatty acids in restaurant foods.
• In an effort to prevent overweight in schoolchildren, a community approach that started in two towns in France has now expanded to 200 towns in Europe under the name "Together let's prevent obesity in children." The program encourages children to eat better and exercise more by taking such measures as building sporting facilities and playgrounds, and offering cooking workshops.
• And of course, there are the Mediterranean countries where they are practicing a healthier way of eating, by enjoying traditional diets that feature whole unprocessed foods from nature. The Mediterranean diet, lauded for its contribution to health, features fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, olive oil, and red wine.
• No other countries in the world allow the advertising of prescription drugs to the public except the United States and New Zealand.

I'm not a fan of Obama anymore, but George Mateljan does a fair job of pretending to be a fan. He has a lot of ideas how we can substitute better nutrition as a preventative measure, rather than reward the medical establishment with more demand when they fail to prevent disease.

If Obama really cared about the heath of this nation and its citizens, he would start with promoting better nutrition and more exercise. He could encourage the educational system to emphasize nutrition in residency programs. He would do what the drug companies will never do -- prevent disease. He would do all of that, instead of reducing costs by spending more; which is an impossibly broken viewpoint.

Michael Barone's "Three Rules of Obama":

First, Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but suffers from cognitive dissonance when new facts render them inappropriate. His 2008 campaign was a largely flawless execution of a smart strategy, but he was flummoxed momentarily when the Russians invaded Georgia and when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. On domestic policy, he has been executing his long-range strategy of vastly expanding government, but may be encountering problems as voters show unease at huge increases on spending.

His long-range strategy of propitiating America’s enemies has been undercut by North Korea’s missile launches and demonstrations in Iran against the mullah regime’s apparent election fraud. His assumption that friendly words could melt the hearts of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been refuted by events. He limits himself to expressing "deep concern" about the election in the almost surely vain hope of persuading the mullahs to abandon their drive for nuclear weapons, while he misses his chance to encourage the one result -- regime change -- that could protect us and our allies from Iranian attack.

Second, he does not seem to care much about the details of policy. He subcontracted the stimulus package to congressional appropriators, the cap-and-trade legislation to Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, and his health care program to Max Baucus. The result is incoherent public policy: indefensible pork barrel projects, a carbon emissions bill that doesn’t limit carbon emissions from politically connected industries, and a health care program priced by the Congressional Budget Office at a fiscally unfeasible $1,600,000,000,000.

He quickly announced the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and now finds his administration begging the likes of Palau and Bermuda to take a few detainees off its hands. His acceptance of Arabist insistence that all problems in the Middle East can be solved by getting an Israeli-Palestinian settlement has put us in the absurd position of pressuring Israel not to expand settlements by a single square meter but pledging not to "meddle" in Iran.

Third, he does business Chicago-style. His first political ambition was to be mayor of Chicago, the boss of all he surveyed; he has had to settle for the broader but less complete hegemony of the presidency. From Chicago he brings the assumption that there will always be a bounteous private sector that can be plundered endlessly on behalf of political favorites. Hence the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler to bail out the United Auto Workers, the proposal for channeling money from the private nonprofits to the government by limiting the charitable deduction for high earners, the plan for expanding government (and public employee union rolls) by instituting universal pre-kindergarten.

(via Conservative Grapevine)

UPDATE: The House of Representatives is now debating this legislation under H.R. 2998.
--------------------------------------------------------

Let us return to fundamentals. What does it mean to be fiscally conservative?

Being fiscally conservative means I do not speculate.

I do not speculate about the outcome of monetary actions. It means that I do not act without foresight. I refrain from borrowing more than I can afford and I make payments on time to maintain my credit in good standing. It means buying a house I can afford and living within my means. But, more than anything, being fiscally conservative means I do not speculate with my precious resources. I respect the hard work, pain and suffering it took to gain those resources, be it debt, capital, credit or equity. It means espousing a rational explanation for the actions I take.

And, what is the opposite of being conservative? It is to speculate on outcomes, take risks, trying lots of things, to experiment with the economy. It means disrespecting resources, spending with abandon, borrowing more than you can afford. It means abusing lines of credit, borrowing from friends and family up to the limit and beyond. At some point, friends and family will say 'enough'. They cut off the irresponsible speculator at some point. His credit is no good. That is the extreme result of speculation.

Sure, sometimes the speculator, the smart speculator is either good enough, or lucky enough (or both) to hit the jackpot. They invent kleenex, ziplock baggies or the iPhone and the speculator hits it big and makes a mint. However the speculator, the risk taker, the inventor, they are accountable for their actions to the shareholder. If he fails, he usually doesn't get a second chance. Criteria for success are colored in either red or black. Either you make a boatload of money, or you are out. Moreover, it usually takes some pretty sound reasoning to convince the wise rich man to invest in your speculative venture. Nor is that wise rich man liable to put all his eggs in your speculative basket; rather, he spreads the risk around investing in many such ventures to reduce his variance.

The So-Called Stimulus Bill: Liberal Speculation with Your Money

The relevance to our national position today is self-evident. We have placed all our eggs in the so-called 'stimulus' basket, and what do we have to show for it but a bunch of broken eggs?

I asked for a litmus test on spending stimulus money -- did anyone ever see one from Obama or anyone voting for stimulus spending? I believe he spoke about 'saving or creating' jobs, which is impossible to measure. Hardly a fiscally sound justification for the biggest spending bill ever in the history of the world. And -- they were wrong. The stimulus didn't work. Congress and Obama used smoke-and-mirrors to rush though a liberal speculative spending bill that didn't work. No wonder they didn't want anyone to read it. The only thing it stimulated was handgun sales. TARP has no exit strategy either, and no criteria to measure the success or failure of that program.

We need to take a short detour to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that criminal defendants have the right to cross examine the scientists who issue forensics reports that are entered into evidence.. I'm shocked we needed the Supreme Court to tell us that... but OK. Thanks Supremes, but what about Congress? No one can cross examine our elected representatives on their lawmaking. There isn't even a law that says they have to tell the truth. There is no accountability. They can lie to us about the reasons they enact laws. Our elected 'representatives' speculate with our money. Our only recourse is to 'throw the bums out'. Which is no solution because the next group of big spenders knows only to pursue power through re-election anyway.

Twelve Hundred Pages of Double Talk

And the experiment continues. Having passed the biggest spending bill in the history of the world (so called stimulus bill) they are about to pass the largest tax bill in the history of the world: HR 2454. This bill is twelve hundred pages long. I opened the bill to a random page -- here is what I found: a revision to the IRS tax code that is about a hundred lines long. An excerpt:

`(C) In the case of an eligible individual who does not file a joint return and has at least one individual qualifying individual--
`(i) If the eligible individual has one qualifying individual, the lowest income level that exceeds the phaseout amount as defined in section 32(b)(2) at which a single individual with one qualifying child is ineligible for the earned income credit for the taxable year.
`(ii) If the eligible individual has two qualifying individuals, the lowest income level that exceeds the phaseout amount as defined in section 32(b)(2) at which a single individual with two qualifying children is ineligible for the earned income credit for the taxable year.
`(iii) If the eligible individual has three or more qualifying individuals, the lowest income level that exceeds the phaseout amount as defined in section 32(b)(2) at which a single individual with three or more qualifying children is ineligible for the earned income credit for the taxable year.

What a bunch of gobbledygook that is. And, I challenge you to find a page that makes more sense. The only revision to the tax code I'd like to see is to tear the whole thing up and replace it with a flat tax.

"Nobody Knows How This Is Going To Work"

Even democrats admit "The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work." Not only that, the whole global warming thing is out the window now. The consensus is that greenhouse gasses are not causing global warming:

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

Wow there you have another reason to love New Zealand

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Read that entire excellent WSJ article, by the way.
Since the whole 'global warming' thing is out the window, the new ostensible goal for this, from Obama:

President Obama yesterday pushed for passage in a speech from the White House Rose Garden. Though he mentioned the threat of global warming, Obama mostly emphasized non-environmental benefits, such as new jobs in clean energy and reduced reliance on foreign oil.

As Carl says, we are not considering that cap and tax HR 2454 will cool the globe and Obama confirms that; he now says jobs and energy independence are the goals. Since when? How many jobs? How much independence? He's not wiling to say, and the so-called main-stream-media isn't willing to ask. How convenient. Here is an actual Q&A from the Associated Press. These are supposed to be impartial talking points:

Questions and answers about the US climate bill
By DINA CAPPIELLO and ERIC CARVIN – 12 hours ago
Cap-and-trade? Offsets? Pollution credits? The climate bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives tackles global warming with new limits on pollution and a market-based approach to encourage more environmentally friendly business practices. But what exactly do the proposed rules mean, and how would they work?
Some questions and answers about the bill, a top legislative priority for President Barack Obama:
Q: What's the purpose of this legislation?
A: To reduce the gases linked to global warming and to force sources for power to shift away from fossil fuels, which when burned, release heat-trapping gases, and toward cleaner sources of energy such as wind, solar and geothermal.
Q: How does the bill accomplish this?
A: By placing the first national limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases from major sources like power plants, refineries and factories. This limit effectively puts a price on the pollution, raising the cost for companies to continue to use fuels and electricity sources that contribute to global warming. This gives them an incentive to seek cleaner alternatives.
Q: Do most environmentalists support this approach?
A: Most do, at least broadly. Cap-and-trade has had success. Since 1990, the United States has had a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide, the main culprit in acid rain. Democrats have had to make a lot of concessions to win votes for the current bill from lawmakers from coal, oil and farm states. Some liberal environmentalists think these concessions weaken the bill. For instance, the bill's sponsors have had to lower the cap — it originally called for a 20 percent cut by 2020 — to 17 percent. Research suggests that much deeper cuts will be needed globally to avert the most serious consequences of global warming.
Q: Who opposes this approach, and why?
A: Republicans...
Q: Why is it so important to tackle global warming anyway?
A: Left untended, scientists say, global warming will cause sea levels to rise, increase storms and worsen air pollution.
Q: Other than costs potentially being passed along to consumers, will this affect most Americans' day-to-day lives?
A: It fundamentally will change how we use, produce and consume energy, ending the country's love affair with big gas-guzzling cars and its insatiable appetite for cheap electricity. This bill will put smaller, more efficient cars on the road, swap smokestacks for windmills and solar panels, and transform the appliances you can buy for your home.

The AP says this bill will end the country's love affair with big gas-guzzling cars? This Associated Press 'Q&A' reads like a left wing talking point paper. Time to add another notch for Dina Cappiello and Eric Carvin on NewsBusters.

Spain and the rest of the world think we are crazy. Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods that creating green jobs destroys more jobs than it creates.

Spain spent €571,138 ($800,000) to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million ($1.4 million) per wind industry job. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.

So Obama is clearly wrong about creation, it is destruction. As far as reducing dependence of foreign oil, well throwing the economy into a tailspin will certainly do that. And that is what the bill is going to do. From the Congressional Budget Office; Reducing emissions to the level required by the cap would be accomplished mainly by stemming demand for carbon-based energy by increasing its price. Raising the cost of energy to reduce demand, less energy consumed equals smaller economy. It means economic shrinkage. It will kill the economy.

What else does the bill do? It put our government into the climate exchange business, as 70% of climate exchange trades will be executed by the government, also according to the CBO.

So, after the wealth is destroyed by the coming economic collapse from the bill, what will happen? The remaining wealth will be distributed to the non-contributors to the economic base as "households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit." That is right -- the middle class will be soaked. If there is one left. Obama pledged to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and now is doing exactly the opposite. He is experimenting with the economy.

Putting It All Together

Global Warming is a myth, the press is perpetuating this lie to support their agenda. Liberals rushed into spending money we don't have on a 'stimulus' bill that only stimulated handgun sales. Now they are about to pass the biggest tax bill in the history of the world, telling people it is to stop global warming, or perhaps to create green jobs. It will actually destroy jobs. Even though a defendant has the right to question 'forensic' evidence, we cannot cross examine Congress on their 'expert testimony.'

They propose to reduce energy dependence by killing demand. They will kill the economy to kill the demand.

This is insane.

The false promise of doing our business in the light of day -- ha!

If congress passes this speculative bill, socialism in cap-and-trade clothing, then we need a constitutional convention. The only way to reverse the socialistic slide is to take power away from these bums, not just throw them out.

Labels: cap and trade

According to the Associated Press:

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan will soon formally order U.S. and NATO forces to break away from fights with militants hiding in Afghan houses so the battles do not kill civilians, a U.S. official said Monday.

The order would be one of the strongest measures taken by a U.S. commander to protect Afghan civilians in battle. American commanders say such deaths hurt their mission because they turn average Afghans against the government and U.S. and NATO forces.

Civilian casualties are a major source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. The U.N. says U.S., NATO and Afghan forces killed 829 civilians in the Afghan war last year.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who took command of international forces in Afghanistan this month, has said his measure of effectiveness will be the "number of Afghans shielded from violence," and not the number of militants killed.

McChrystal will issue orders within days saying troops may attack insurgents hiding in Afghan houses if the U.S. or NATO forces are in imminent danger and must return fire, said U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith.

"But if there is a compound they're taking fire from and they can remove themselves from the area safely, without any undue danger to the forces, then that's the option they should take," Smith said. "Because in these compounds we know there are often civilians kept captive by the Taliban."

Let me translate: the new rules give the terrorists a free pass to secrete themselves among civilians, using them as human shields.

This is fundamentally backwards. We're talking about an active enemy not hors de combat, and so not entitled to non-violence under international law (see Geneva IV, Article 3(1); Geneva III, Article 3(1)--even if treaty protections applied to terrorist unlawful belligerents). Further, warfare doesn't bestow "safe harbors" for atrocities; rather, the laws of war are based on providing belligerents incentives to be just via reciprocity and reprisal.

By contrast, giving terrorists--customarily considered international pirates--an "olly olly oxen free" will promote the opposite. General McChrystal's forthcoming rules of engagement inevitably will encourage war crimes.

I understand that successful counter-insurgency must secure and engage the civilian population (see Section 1, page 29). I get it that tactical retreat makes a good press release. But the turn-around in Iraq came when ordinary Iraqis understood that coalition and Iraqi security forces would protect them from Al Qaeda.

General McChrystal is poised to promulgate a perverse inversion of the laws, and practice, of war. And he's told the Taliban via the Associated Press.

(via Moonbattery)

What's worse than an average six-and-a-half-week delay before Canadian cancer patients receive treatment? The possibility that the wait time north of the border makes the government-approved treatment effectively unavailable, necessitating a referral to a U.S. hospital four hours away. On top of the health risk, this is a financial catastrophe:

Tragically, he hasn't been able to work, and his wife has just had a baby. The family relies on the charity of neighbors for the baby's clothes and other needs.

No "medical bankruptcy" under government-monopoly health care? Don't you believe it.

(via Don Surber)

President Obama wants to cut carbon emissions via a cap-and-trade regime. The Administration's justification is the cost of global warming, though its calculations plainly are flawed. (And even absent carbon control, the U.S. already has a better record on emissions growth than many other countries.) Yet there's no dispute that the price of such plans would be enormous--the equivalent of a stealth 50 percent tax hike.

So before attempting to halt global warming--even if achievable--we'd better be certain warming is real. Which brings me to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's U.S. climate summary for May 2009:

The average temperature in May 2009 was 62.5 F. This was 1.4 F warmer than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 24th warmest May in 115 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

Question: Why are we freaking out over climate change amounting to a degree per century?

(via Planet Gore)

Reason magazine reprints the 10 most hysterical Time magazine covers of the past 40 years. The most absurd dates from November 22, 1999:


source: Time magazine

(via Betsy's Page)

From the front page of the June 19th New York Times:

When President Obama arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity were in order: no lobbyists allowed.

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would "not take a dime" from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room.

(via TigerHawk)

From the June 13th New York Times:

An article Thursday about the perspective that video clips provide on the legal thinking of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who has been nominated for the Supreme Court, included a statement from a speech she made in April. The report quoted Judge Sotomayor saying in a speech in April that "Article IV of the Constitution" says treaties are "the supreme law of the land." She misspoke; in fact, as several readers later noted, it is Article VI that refers to treaties.

(via Bench Memos)

Blogger bobn insists that increases in allowable investment bank leverage was the principal cause of the mortgage crisis, as opposed to regulation of the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac):

[T]he 2004 tripling of leverage allowances at the 5 big I-Banks certainly did. My mortgage disaster post, which Carl seems to have read very poorly, shows how these events were related temporally (1st part of my post) and causally (2nd part of my post). . .

Congress made no law requiring OFHEO to keep it's hands off of FNM and FRE. Short of a law, all the ranting in the world makes no difference to the fact that a regulator is supposed to regulate.

As part of a continuing series, my reaction:

1. bobn's post quotes a liberal housing pressure group-affiliated website saying "Because investment banks provide subprime lenders with necessary funding, they wield a great deal of power in determining what sorts of loans are offered to subprime borrowers." Well, sort of--investment banks provided funding. But they didn't hold a gun to borrowers' heads. As I have said, much of this crisis was demand driven (though for some reason that notion outrages bobn). Which is why today even prime mortgages are increasingly under water.



2. Even assuming investment bank funding was the driver--the link claims only "a great deal of power"--of subprime lending, why do I care about investment bank regulation? Investment banks are not government insured--investors assume the risk. The fact that their decisions didn't pan out should be irrelevant (so long as the government doesn't bail out investment banks as the Fed did for Bear Stearns). So, I still can't get too excited about liberalizing investment bank leverage limits--the regulatory issue still centers around the oversight of commercial banks, including commercial bank affiliation with non-bank mortgage lenders.



3. bobn's claim that Congress didn't pass laws encouraging Fannie and Freddie to up mortgage lending to less credit-worthy borrowers (via subprime, Alt-A, etc.) is naive and misleading. He overlooks a decade of "regulation by raised eyebrow" where Congress pressured the GSEs to boost and broaden mortgage lending. And he omits the fact that HUD was the Hill's handmaiden:

   For 1996, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave Fannie and Freddie an explicit target -- 42% of their mortgage financing had to go to borrowers with income below the median in their area. The target increased to 50% in 2000 and 52% in 2005.

4. Along with economist Arnold Kling, bobn and I agree that repealing Glass-Steagall wasn't the problem but that the treatment of credit default swaps and off-balance sheet assets bear some of the blame. Yet that doesn't bolster the case for the sort of over-regulation President Obama proposes,¹ as Stephen Spruiell says in the July 6th National Review on dead tree (subscription-only for now):

   The argument that a lack of regulation caused the crisis is seductive in its simplicity; it completely ignores the other side of the government equation. Regulation is seldom necessary unless the discipline of a truly free market is absent -- such as when the government indemnifies companies or industries against failure, or when it juices markets with generous subsidies. In the case of the housing bubble, both of these distortions were present. Wall Street titans, led by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, juiced like Jose Canseco until they grew "too big to fail." In retrospect, it looks like a failure to regulate; in fact, regulations wouldn’t have been necessary if the government hadn’t provided the steroids. . .
   
   It is true that without Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Citigroup could not have grown as large as it did. But there is no evidence that Citi’s size or diversity of business lines had anything to do with its overinvestment in mortgage-backed assets. Financial institutions that did not diversify made the same mistake, and they arguably fared worse during the crisis. Bear Stearns, the first investment bank to collapse under the weight of its bad assets, did not have a commercial-banking arm. Furthermore, without Gramm-Leach-Bliley, commercial bank J. P. Morgan could not have mitigated the consequences of Bear’s collapse by acquiring it. (On the other hand, the Federal Reserve’s facilitation of the sale of Bear created the hazardous expectation that every failed firm would get a bailout.)
   
   As for the CFMA, Kevin D. Williamson and I have written in these pages that institutions buying credit-default insurance should be required to have a real insurable interest at stake. As it stands, an institution can buy insurance on a bond it doesn’t even own. That said, losses on credit-default swaps have been smaller than expected, because so many transactions are "netted" -- institutions buy credit protection and then sell it at a higher price, so their exposure is hedged. When Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, institutions that sold credit protection on Lehman bonds were projected to lose as much as $400 billion. After all the transactions cleared, though, sellers had lost only $6 billion on their Lehman trades. AIG’s portfolio of credit-default swaps presented a bigger problem, as the mortgage-backed assets they insured started to sour.
   
   But, contra Scheer [and bobn], deregulation was not the primary or even secondary reason that mortgage lending spun out of control. Government promotion of homeownership set the table for a massive run-up in real-estate borrowing, and the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy in the early 2000s rang the dinner bell. . .
   
   To be sure, the investment banks were more than happy to buy up the rest of the toxic debt, but one reason these banks took on too much leverage was their confidence that, in the event of a downturn, the Fed would cut interest rates -- and keep them low -- to stimulate the economy. They called this "the Greenspan put" after former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (a "put" is a financial option purchased as protection against asset-price declines). The Fed had cut interest rates to stimulate growth after the tech bubble burst, and it had cut them to historically low levels after the 9/11 attacks. From late 2001 to late 2004, the Fed held interest rates under 2 percent, making investors desperate for a decent rate of return. Mortgage-backed securities met that need. Harvard professor Niall Ferguson recently contended in the New York Times Magazine that "negative real interest rates at this time were arguably the single most important cause of the property bubble." . . .
   
   The Left continues to propagate the myth that a zeal for deregulation did us in, because it prefers government interference in the marketplace. That’s why it’s important to remember that, for the current economic disaster, government interference bears much of the blame.

Conclusion: Increased transparency--including tax policy--makes sense. But if Federal interjection was the flaw, increasing avenues for Federal regulators to intervene isn't necessarily the fix.

________________
¹ I'm particularly troubled by the President's plan to "reverse-preempt" and give states "the ability to adopt and enforce stricter laws for institutions of all types, regardless of charter, and to enforce federal law concurrently with respect to institutions of all types, also regardless of charter" (White Paper at 60). The result would give state-charted banks an enormous comparative advantage over nationally charted banks--the former would fall under the oversight of a single regulator, rather than 51 potentially inconsistent regulators. This would steamroll national banks to abandon their current charter for a state charter, effectively ending national banking.

xkcd has the best inside-mathematics cartoon ever:


source: xkcd 599

If you don't get it, read here.

More proof "it ain't the war," from the Washington Post:


source: June 14th WaPo

The deficit's largely the product of entitlements and interest payments, not the cost of the war on terror, as some claim.

Discussing healthcare reform last week, Assistant Village Idiot observed:

What other similar countries spend and what they get for it is interesting and partially relevant, but never even a close match. We have a different legal climate.

All true, but foreign healthcare policy trends can help predict how America might fare under Obama-care. And this June 18th Daily Mail (U.K.) article is a bad sign:

Gipsies and travellers should be given priority in NHS [National Health Service] hospitals and GP surgeries, doctors have been told.

They will be fast-tracked for doctors, nurses and even some dentist appointments above all other patients.

GPs have also been told to see any travellers who simply walk in without an appointment, even if all consultation times for the day are full.

They will also be given longer consultations than other patients. Five or ten minutes is the average but travellers will be given 20 minutes and allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms.

Staff will be given 'mandatory cultural awareness' training so they can fully understand what it is like to be a traveller or gipsy.

It raises the prospect that other patients will suffer worse healthcare and have to wait even longer to see their GP.

Marathon Pundit wisely warns:

There's a lesson here for Americans. Our population is more diverse, and we have countless affirmative action laws in place. A decade or two from now, someone from a less-healthy ethnic group might be seen ahead of you while you wait...wait...and wait for a doctor.

Which could generate additional medical malpractice lawsuits--another aspect of America's "different legal climate" already upping our healthcare costs.

Speculation?--sure. Yet perfectly plausible, should we increase the government's role in healthcare. Another reason to insist, as Virginia Postrel argues, that the Administration fix Medicare first:

Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.

(via Doug Ross)

Who said this?:

Senator McCain has been eager to share some details of his health care plan -- but not all. Like those ads for prescription drugs, you have to read the fine print to learn the full story.

First, we found out that he wants to pay for his plan by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history, just like George Bush. That was bad enough.

But the Wall Street Journal recently reported that it’s actually worse than we thought. It turns out, Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare--$882 billion worth. $882 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for an ill-conceived health care plan, even as Medicare already faces a looming shortfall.

Now, this should come as no surprise -- it’s entirely consistent with Senator McCain’s record during his 26 years in Congress where, time and again, he’s opposed Medicare. In fact, Senator McCain has voted against protecting Medicare 40 times. 40 times, he’s failed to stand up for Medicare.

So what would Senator McCain’s cuts mean for Medicare at a time when more and more Americans are relying on it?

It would mean a cut of more than 20 percent in Medicare benefits next year. If you count on Medicare, it would mean fewer places to get care, and less freedom to choose your own doctors. You’ll pay more for your drugs, receive fewer services, and get lower quality care.

I don’t think that’s right.

Answer: Barack Obama, October 17, 2008, in Roanoke, Virginia.

(via The Corner)

Despite repeated demonstrations that the previous President cut tax rates for all income levels--and that the poor and middle class benefited--doctrinaire lefties like copithorne insist that George Bush cut taxes of the wealthy. As reader OBloodyHell notes, that's true tautologically because the wealthy pay most of the taxes. But copithorne still fails to grasp that the cuts were hugely progressive--thereafter, the share of Federal taxes paid by upper income groups was greater than under President Clinton and highest in two decades:


source: NOfP chart; April 2009 CBO data (.xls file)

Still, copithorne translates this as "Bush passed tax cuts on the wealthy." No wonder progressives seem incapable of understanding that economic growth is the best anti-poverty program.

British Cabinet Secretary Lawrence Burgis (from Volume I, page 2 of his papers):

And so while the great ones depart to their dinner,
The secretary stays, growing thinner and thinner,
Racking his brains to recall and report
What he thinks that they think they ought to have thought.

Quoted in Andrew Roberts, Master and Commanders at xxvii (2009).

The President appears addicted to liberal spending policies:

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that worrying about the U.S. government's finances "keeps me awake at night" and the country needed to start planning now to tackle soaring deficits.

In a pair of interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg television, Obama defended increasing government spending to prevent the recession from worsening, and warned the unemployment rate may hit 10 percent this year, a level not seen since 1983.

"There's no doubt that we've got a serious problem in terms of our long-term deficits and debt," he told CNBC. "I make no apologies for having acted short term to deal with our recession."

But he said once the recession ends, "we're going to have to close that gap between the amount of money coming in and the amount of money going out."

The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the federal deficit would hit $1.43 trillion in fiscal 2010 under Obama's budget plan, slightly higher than it had previously forecast.

Obama apparently is unfamiliar with the first rule of holes--"stop digging!"--as Jules Crittenden notes:

[I]t’s hard to work up a lot of sympathy for a guy who can’t sleep with his own decisions, and is still trying to figure out ways to drive the deficit even higher -- no matter how often he says his universal health plan is going to cut costs. In fact, the news that he can’t sleep and can’t stop is more than a little disturbing.

(via Instapundit)

Iowahawk does it again:

WASHINGTON -- The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief -- citing pain, suffering and loss of income -- seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.

Take five minutes and go read it. Grab some kleenex on the way.

So the Democratic majority in the legislature is still trying to raise taxes, even after the voters soundly rejected more taxes on May 19th. Now the democrats want to raise taxes on oil and cigarettes. It is all they can do! They cannot think of anything else, and that is only because we let them get away with it.

Today's post is all about smaller government is better government, told through a series of seemingly unconnected events.

Sales Taxes Out of Sight

Flash back to the 1960's when I was a child growing up in the streets of San Diego. I cruised them in my Schwinn. When I stopped in at 7-11 to buy a Slurpee, it opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 11 p.m. That's how it got it's name by the way. Anyway the tax on that Slurpee was five cents. Today, it is ten cents! Double the tax for the same Slurpee! Back then, we had one of the best education systems in the country, and even four year university was practically free for everyone that wanted to attend.

Fast forward to today, where California schools are the shame of the nation, tax growth and government growth far outpace inflation. The median salary in California is about $42,000 a year. The median government salary is about $63,000. Plus, the government 'workers' have gold-plated benefits, fully paid insurance in many cases and a defined benefit plan. All the worthless bureaucrats in the state are raking in taxpayer dough... while we slug it out in the streets. I may have to go back to riding my Schwinn to 7-11.

Dems Want to Raise Taxes Again -- To Appease Union Thugs

As I was saying, the democrats want to raise taxes -- again. They just passed, in February, the largest tax increase, $11,000,000,000 tax increase in a recession, the largest state tax increase in the history of the nation. And they want to raise them again! Please go take a look at the video on MichelleMalkin.com where a union thug claims ownership of the elected official and threatens them in public! SEIU thuggery. "WE helped to getcha into office, ... if you don't back our program, we'll help to getcha out of office." Priceless.

Budget Conference Committee Chairwoman Is Insane -- She is a Psychopathic Socialist

Ok, I'm not a Doctor, I can't make that diagnosis, so you be the judge. Here is a speech made by Budget Conference Committee Chairwoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa). She stated on the floor that “living within our means, means nothing.” Here is the entire quote, which I have transcribed from the John and Ken Show; it is not available in the so-called news services:

Well, there is this mantra out there 'live within our means', and while that sounds really nice, it sounds really simple, and it sounds really responsible, its meaningless. Our means are completely within our control. And, as has been pointed out by numerous people, we have just recently given away huge corporate subsidies in February, we have given away other tax reductions over many many years we've created new tax loopholes, in good times we routinely give away taxes, and then in lean times we never replace those tax deductions or close those loopholes. We continuously borrow, which is an enormous cost that we shift on into future years, and we find ourselves now with a deficit that -- an ongoing structural deficit that we simply can't close. So, 'live within our means' doesn't mean anything. The fact is, we have a state that has a population that have needs, that we have a moral obligation to provide.

She says government has a moral obligation to raise taxes and redistribute wealth. Is this really the person you want controlling a big chunk of our gross domestic product? By the way, here is some of the legislation that Noreen Evans claims a moral obligation to provide.

The state requires the budget to be passed by a 2/3rds majority. She wants to make it a simple majority vote, taking power away from the minority party, taking power away from the people. Noreen Evans wants to give the state-controlled media more protection. And, she is sponsoring legislation to make "California’s horse racing fairs to deduct 0.5% of the handle in exotic parimutuel pools of races for the provision of workers' compensation insurance for horse trainers and owners who are racing horses – except for thoroughbreds – at fairs."

Why that last one? She already railroaded fourteen dense pages of single spaced horse racing laws in 2007. That bill supposedly "Enacts numerous reforms in California’s horse racing industry that will help keep jobs in our community. It will finance facility improvements to the fairs at Santa Rosa and Vallejo and reauthorize horse racing fans’ ability to wager on races across the country." What did it actually do?

Why are same-gender clubs unacceptable for a male golfer but ok for "a wise Latina woman"? Because facts have become fungible. Just don't call it discrimination--at least, not yet.

This may be the first NOfP post bobn enjoys completely. But I'll bet Paul Krugman wishes he hadn't said this in a 2002 New York Times piece:

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

(via Arnold Kling--but see Kling's partial defense of Krugman)

UPDDATE BELOW

The whole nasty Letterman attack on Sarah Palin and family is an outrage and will not blow over. Yes, Letterman after making light of it for quite a while, he finally admitted he was wrong. Good, but the Left Won't Accept Letterman's Apology. If you are still defending Letterman's remarks as 'a joke' or 'innocent' then you just don't get it. Letterman needs to be fired as an example that we will not tolerate these personal attacks.

Cynthia Yockey, my new favorite feminist will not relent: "David Letterman deliberately and viciously and with malice-of-forethought made vile, sexist attacks repeatedly on both Gov. Palin and her innocent teen-age daughters in order to destroy her career and force her out of politics in order to protect her children. " Ann Coulter is on the bandwagon as well, she is linking to Yockey.

More news: the National Organization for Women (NOW), one of the original and still one of the largest feminist organizations in the country (and still leftist) condemns Letterman and urges its members to write CBS and tell them what they think. Wow, Now that is over the top. Thanks.

In related news, Al Sharpton is finally coming out in favor of firing David Letterman. Oops -- that was a joke. Speaking of Jokes, I wish the MSM would stop referring to Letterman's viscous attacks as 'jokes'. They are attacks, not jokes as I explained last time. In the comments of that previous post, copithorne hasn't seen Letterman's attacks and wants to know what the fuss is about? (S)He says "David Letterman is not 'the left.'" Au contraire mon ami... Letterman tows the CBS line on the issues of the day. The MSM is the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. Saturday Night Live and 60 Minutes fill in for Letterman on his regular days off.

To take in the full scope of the Democratic Hate Machine -- give a read to Ashley Herzog:

It doesn’t matter whether they’re forbidding Carrie Prejean to say things Joe Biden is allowed to say or fantasizing about raping overly opinionated conservatives. Sexist liberals have always been open about their desire to prevent women from talking. Two years ago, some slobbering loser responded to one of my Townhall columns by writing, “I don't know Ashley Herzog. Never heard of her before today. I would, however, go so far to say that I would date her if she promised not to say anything.”

Nice work. Especially from people who are constantly screaming about the right’s “war on women.”

Which reminds me -- does anyone know why blacks were granted the constitutional right to vote more than fifty years before women? I mean, what was America thinking? 'Sure we can give blacks the right to vote, but not women.' Seems like a riot doesn't it? Can we ask Al Sharpton? According to Yockney, Al Sharpton "...is trying to frame his successful campaign to get Don Imus fired as right and just because he, Sharpton, was protecting an entire race, while the campaign to get Letterman fired is invalid because Letterman’s remarks were only directed at three individuals and therefore not offensive."

Seriously, it took us 53 years after passing the 15th amendment (race no barrier to vote) to pass the 19th (women's suffrage). Why? They had to wait until the Democrats were out of favor. Republican Senator Aaron Sargent wrote the women's suffrage amendment in 1878 but it could not get passed in Congress until Republicans again won control of both houses 40 years later. If history is any guide, then it will be 50 years from Don Imus firing to Dave Letterman's firing. Let us hope not.

UPDATE: News News News!!! Yielding to Pressure, Olive Garden Pulls Letterman Ads. Politico via Instapundit

Now, the advertisers start to pull out... one by one.. and Letterman is History without them.

Bye Bye David! Why don't you give the Greaseman a call find out what he is up to? You two are going to be spending a lot of time together.

UPDATE2: The Olive Garden is now denying it canceled anything in response to Letterman's attacks. However, they have no more advertising the rest of this TV season. They also issued this statement:

The Olive Garden media schedule is planned months in advance. The schedule for Late Show with David Letterman was completed earlier this month. We take all guest concerns seriously. And, as always, we will factor those concerns in as we plan our advertising schedule in the future.

It is a non-denial denial.