Bloggin' In The Years: 1983

Requiem for a TV series:

For half an hour each week, hawk and dove could sit together in front of the TV set and agree: war is an existential hell to which some pretty fine people had been unfairly assigned; now they were doing their best to do good and get out. As the Viet Nam War staggered to a close and M*A*S*H generated the momentum any TV series needs to sustain its quality after the first few seasons, the show revealed itself as a gritty romance about the finest American instincts. Here were gruff pragmatism, technical ingenuity, grace under pressure, the saving perspective of wit. The men and women of 4077 MASH could be seen as us at our worst hour, finding the best part of ourselves.

You might say, "Well, it was just a TV show." But what a memorable show it was. Whether you agreed with its politics or not, whether you thought-as I did-that it got too sentimental in its final years, M.A.S.H. and the 4077th crew set a standard that will be hard for future ensemble casts to top, if ever. Goodbye, farewell, and amen, indeed.

More Sugar

So all those things you were told about sugar while growing up were just urban myths?

Nearly everyone has always accepted the belief that sugar makes kids hyperactive; in fact it's so deeply ingrained that even some researchers have had trouble accepting their own results. In one study, 35 children reported by their mothers to be 'behaviorally sugar sensitive' were separated into two groups. Half were told they were given a sugary drink, half were told it was a sugar-free drink. Then the mothers played with the children and were individually interviewed. Overwhelmingly, mothers who were told their child was given sugar rated their behavior as hyperactive. In fact, all children received the same sugar-free drink. In this case, the perceived affect was confirmation bias by the mothers — where they picked up only on cues that supported their pre-existing conviction.

Another similar study found that 50 children whose mothers 'knew' that their children's behavior was worsened by sugar were given a blinded test where the children were given either sugary or a sugar-free drink, and then observed — but this time the mothers didn't know which was which. No differences between the groups could be ascertained over three separate trials. And the lack of an effect extends to classroom performance, too. 16 hyperactive boys were given controlled diets of either sugar drinks or sugar-free drinks at measured intervals throughout two school days and were regularly given behavioral and cognitive tests. Again, there was no difference in performance between the groups.

Of course, sugar can do other things-like cause diabetes-so it's not totally off the hook. But it's ironic to know that you could have had your share of it as a kid and not blame it for making you hyper after all.

The Post Stimulus Economy

Call it the cliffhanger economy:

Will our economy and society emerge so risk-averse after these experiences that years will have to pass before we return to a system naturally generating vibrant economic growth and a renewed willingness to both borrow and lend? Or will we head in the opposite direction, where faith in ultimate bail-outs will justify the wildest kind of risk-taking? Or will the entire structure collapse from government debts and deficits that turn out to be so unmanageable that chaos is the ultimate result?

I really hope that it will be the first choice, because over-reliance on the second could ultimately produce the third, which is not what we want.

Working for A Better Living

Some people might not be as bad off after all:

Even as the economy did a cliff dive in the last quarter, productivity rose an impressive 3.1 per cent. And since, in theory, workers get paid more the more productive they are, their increased productivity has helped them avoid pay cuts.

It could be that people are working longer hours to get what extra pay they can. Or it could signal an eventual turnaround. We'll see.

All In The Family

A new tome examines the Bin Ladens' priveleged, yet highly disturbed, background:

The Bin Ladens is not so much a book about Osama bin Laden himself, or his terrorist network and political aspirations, as about the power structures of modern Saudi Arabia. And in this it is most informative. Against much contemporary writing about the Arab world, which tends to explain political and social behavior by analysis of culture and religion, Coll's book is about more secular matters—about sibling rivalry; fascination with modern technology, particularly planes and means of communication; about the attraction of women; and above all, for all the talk of piety, about money.

In other words, they're like the Middle Eastern version of the Sopranos: another dysfunctional mob family.

New World Depression

The future doesn't look good:

The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow.

Maybe Obama really is FDR. The rest of the world seems to be trending accordingly...

Meet The New Charge, Same As The Old Charge

Well, this is original:

Top Republicans charged President Barack Obama with driving the United States toward socialism on Friday, opening an ideological attack on his big spending plans.

While the tough rhetoric was certain to rev up hard-line Republicans—many of whom regard “socialism” as anathema to American life—it was unclear how much it would change the debate in the Democratic-led Congress, which begins hearings next week on Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget proposal.

My guess is...not a whole lot. There's no doubt that this is big-government liberalism on a scale that we haven't seen in at least forty-five years. But it only reinforces the notion that the Republicans have no new ideas of their own to counter it with, and why they seem as intellectually bankrupt as the country is financially.

Living Outside The Echo Chamber

Marc Ambinder asks:

Righties interviewing righties has gotten so boring and repetitive; lefties fawning over lefties is lazy. Who's going to be brave enough to reach out to an ideological or intellectual opponent, promote their new book, or interview them?

Laziness seems to be mostly what the pundits on both sides have in abundance. It's easy to talk to somebody who agrees with you. Real outreach takes work. Maybe this is why bipartisanship is so difficult to achieve in Washington.

Dirty Old Voters

Now this is funny:

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama. Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

This might explain some of the anger out there. Maybe Sarah Palin needs to do a few photo shoots for Playboy to calm them down.

The Post-Stimulus Age

So what do liberals do if the stimulus actually doesn't work?

There is a very real possibility that in two or three years, America will be in worse shape than it is now--unemployment in the double digits, GDP down by same, corporate and government budgets peeling apart at the seams. I will be curious to see whether the new armchair empiricists of the left see this as casting any doubt on their central theories, or whether they will simply argue the counterfactual.

It would seem to me that the Republican presidential candidate who can effectively rebut their arguments-and come up with ones of his own without sounding like a wingnut-is the one who could replace Obama in the White House. But that Republican will have to come without the current post-Bush baggage first.

Superdutch

An argument for legalization uses the differences between America and the Dutch for how it could work.

Because Dutch policies are out of step with those in Germany, Belgium, France and Britain, lots of drug tourists, mainly young, stupid and male, pour into Dutch cities to make trouble. The state balances its tolerant drug policies with public health programs for its population — safe drug use education, etc. — but those policies don’t catch the German 19-year-old boys on a weekend ecstasy and pot binge. If a single US state were to implement similar policies, especially a small state, it would encounter similar problems. If the US implemented them on national scale, it would encounter no such problems; the US is huge.

There, you see? Legalization would help keep out the riff raff! Or they could go back to the Dutch...

McRight

John Derbyshire takes on the current conservative climate:

In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar. Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right. But however much this dumbing down has damaged the conservative brand, it appeals to millions of Americans. McDonald’s profits rose 80 percent last year.

I think there's still a place for serious discourse on the right-you just won't find it on talk radio. Not everybody wants fast food, all the time. Occasionally you do want to go out to a decent restaraunt once in a while.

The Futurism Is Now

J. Storrs Hall sums up why futurists are necessary:

When times are bad, people need futurists more than at other times. Bad economic times come because people have been walking in the dark, in lockstep, and hit a wall. There is a surfeit of people whose efforts the current state of knowledge cannot organize productively. The job of a futurist is to turn on the lights, to show what paths could actually lead to prosperity.

Where science fiction ends, futurism begins. One day there may be a happy medium where the two can merge and find common ground in creating the future, instead of just speculating about it.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1984

President Reagan may have called it a "Redeployment," but one thing is clear: The Marines are moving out.

Compared with the withdrawal of the Italian force, which took place in the streets of the city and had an elegant, professional quality, the departure of the Marines was casual and at times almost furtive. The difference was not merely of style; throughout their stay, the Italians were able to maintain their role as peace keepers, while the American force came to be seen as an active supporter of the government of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian. With the departure of the British, the Italians and the bulk of the American contingent, the 1,250-man French unit was the only component of the Multi-National Force left hi Lebanon. French officials said again last week that they hoped to stay on until some different kind of inter-I national force replaced them.

The Marines spent their last days in Lebanon doing routine chores like reinforcing the sandbag bunkers they were about to leave behind. They also played football and watched the play-by-play artillery exchanges between rival Lebanese forces. Using sophisticated electronic equipment for pinpointing artillery targets, some passed the time making a sweepstakes of the hits and misses, as Lebanese shells exploded in the nearby mountains. Watching the Shi'ite residents of a Beirut suburb, Second Lieut. John La Torre remarked ruefully, 'I guess they're just like other people, except that they've had a civil war going on for most of their lives.'

And now, thankfully, they will no longer be in the middle of it.

Thou Shall Not Erect

I think this is a good ruling, but we'll see:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday, in one of the most closely watched free speech decisions in years, that a tiny religious sect could not force a Utah city to let it erect a monument to its faith in a public park.

The fact that there is already a Ten Commandments monument in the park in Pleasant Grove City does not mean that city officials must also allow the religious group called Summum to place a monument there to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith, the justices ruled.

Is it a case of some monuments being more equal than others? Or just common sense that not every cult needs to have its bad taste on public display?

Onward Christiania Soldiers

Old hippies confront 21st Century real estate blues:

Christiania, a scruffy micronation that sits in the heart of Copenhagen's upscale, canal-incised Christianhavn district, sprang to life in 1971 when a band of utopian rebels expropriated an 85-acre former army barracks. But as Charles Hayes writes, Christiania is now facing both an existential and a property rights crisis, with an aging population of ’60s counterculturalists battling a less tolerant and increasingly antagonistic national government that sees great untapped value in the commune’s waterfront land.

If they just moved in and took over vacant property, as hippies are wont to do, then I don't think they have much of a case. It still appears to be state property. Of course, the government could always give them the money to buy it from them. It seems to be all the rage these days...

"We Are All Plutonians Now"

The Illinois state legislature has a new mission:

Like some sort of rulers of the universe, state lawmakers are considering restoring little Pluto's planetary status, casting aside the scientific community's 2006 decision downgrading the distant ice ball.

An Illinois Senate committee on Thursday unanimously supported planet Pluto and declaring March 13 'Pluto Day...' The push for a state decree on Pluto comes from state Sen. Gary Dahl, a Republican whose downstate district includes Streator, birthplace of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. Dahl told colleagues Pluto is important to the local community, which considers the vote to downgrade Pluto to 'dwarf' planet was unfair.

They must not have a whole lot to do now that Hot Rod is going to the hoosegow.

The Forgotten Occupation?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of leaving Iraq may be premature.

It seems to me that by vowing to get out of Iraq in 16 months, President Obama is not departing from the mistakes of George Bush, but repeating them. That is, Bush was persistently overoptimistic about Iraq. His original war plan assumed that the United States would get down to 30,000 troops in Iraq by the fall of 2003. Instead, here we are more than five years later with more than four times that number of troops mired in Iraq. I hope we can stop planning for Iraq only on best-case assumptions.

Since we are also faced with the prospect of an equally long presence in Afghanistan, that might be a good idea.

One Health Care System, One Payment

John Cole fears that some form of national health care may be coming whether we like it or not:

Only a fool can not see the writing on the wall- we are going to have to move to single-payer at some point, because businesses can not compete and the largest problem for Detroit is… their health care obligations and other retiree benefits. Likewise, we spend an enormous amount of our GDP on health care yet have rankings that look third world on issues like infant mortality. Something has to give.

I suppose the question is how much it will cost and how much freedom patients will have under it. The problem is, I doubt the government will be able to provide reasonable answers to these questions.

Takeover, Stat!

Josh Marshall says it's not quite the same as true nationalization:

The choice is between keeping a series of de facto insolvent banks on long-term life support, subsidizing them with vast amounts of tax payer money and involving the government in various aspects of their management or biting the bullet, take them over for a while and reprivatize them as totally private banks. Like I said, it's really no different from what the FDIC does to a couple banks every week this year.

Maybe, but the worry here is that it is such a huge effort that it might be called nationalization lite. It might be the lesser of two evils, but what of tomorrow?

Whose Economy Is This, Anyway?

The stimulus might not be popular, but Clive Cook argues that Republican hopes for support might be premature:

Congressional Republicans have done nothing to help themselves by almost unanimously opposing the massive stimulus package. Indeed, they look increasingly isolated: a narrow party that is looking inward for sustenance. Selecting former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele to be national party chairman is about the only intelligent thing that Republicans have done since Election Day. At this point, a Republican rebound seems more contingent upon a Democratic collapse than anything else.

Hoping for epic fail seems to be what the Party is about these days. They may indeed have better ideas, but so far they haveb't been able to articulate them. And the wandering in the desert continues...

Depression Shopping

I know how this woman feels:

Edick often skimps on food, some weeks spending little more than $10 on groceries, about one-quarter what the federal food stamp program calculates is needed for three 'thrifty meals' a day. She patronizes the grimy discount stores whose prices run even lower than Wal-Mart's, and can tick off their notable sales going back for months. 'I had some oranges,' she recalls with a self-deprecating smile. 'A couple of months ago, they had grapes on sale.' And, 'If it's less than three dollars for a package of six steaks, that looks like a good deal to me.' (She tries not to think too hard about the quality of a 50-cent steak.) Her staples include PB&J, canned ham salad, soup: 'I'll get chicken noodle or Campbell's Chunky. There's meat in there. You can pour it over noodles and put butter on it. It's like a delicacy.'

Hey, it beats going to a soup kitchen...

Smart Like Me

Why has the GOP had such a hard time getting the educated vote?

Republicans face an array of challenges with these voters. The GOP's anti-tax arguments that still stir business owners and executives appear to resonate less strongly with these professionals, even though Clinton raised taxes on many of them and they are again in the crosshairs of Obama's pledge to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy.

'Some people, as they get more affluent, are OK with spending more money if the services are in line,' says DuHaime, now a managing director at Mercury Public Affairs. Other analysts say that the combination of Clinton's fiscal rectitude and the huge deficits racked up on George W. Bush's watch erased any fiscal-responsibility advantage that Republicans once enjoyed with these voters.

The larger current is that many educated voters have recoiled from the same conservative cultural and foreign-policy positions that have attracted many blue-collar voters to the GOP. The backlash against the Iraq war, for instance, has hurt the GOP among college-educated voters, who generally respond more favorably than other voters to a foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy.

I would add that the strong anti-intellectual streak in the current conservative movement, which tends to view all those with degrees as suspect, has also hurt the Republican Party. The educated population is growing larger and the Republicans have to find a way to resonate with them unless they want to be a permanent minority and regional party.

The Slumdog Way

What can we learn from India? Quite a bit, actually.

For decades would-be entrepreneurs staggered under the weight of corruption and bureaucracy. Want to import a computer for your business? You'd have to get permission from a bureaucrat. Want to sell food from a small cart? You'd need all kinds of licenses.

But in the 1990s, India emerged as a high-tech powerhouse. What changed?

'In the 1990s India started liberalizing its economy,' says Dalmia, 'and it did three things: cut taxes, liberalized trade, and deregulated business.' Although they failed to cut the kind of red tape that entangled Slumdog's orphans, the reforms did make it easier for more Indians to start businesses and hire employees.

'One IT company doesn't just employ computer professionals,' says Dalmia. 'It also needs landscaping services, cleaning services, and restaurants. There was this tremendous spillover effect that allowed people to lift themselves out of poverty.'

Since the early 1990s, India has cut its poverty rate in half. About 300 million Indians—equivalent to the population of the entire United States—escaped the hunger and deprivation of extreme poverty thanks to pro-market reforms that increased economic activity.

Yet here in America we're turning away from market reform. Says Dalmia, 'It's just this great conundrum that at the same time that deregulation and markets have produced such dramatic results in India, they are falling into suspicion in America.' Dalmia's prescription for India is at odds with what politicians have chosen to 'stimulate' the United States. 'What India needs to do is continue apace with its liberalization effort, but expand it to include the poor. Release them from the shackles of government corruption and government bureaucracy.'

India is the world's biggest democracy and has the world's second-largest population, and still has widespread poverty. Yet they turned away from big-government solutions to their problems. Can we learn to do the same thing again?

What Hath Santelli Wrought?

James Pethokoukis on the growing stimulus revolt:

Rick Santelli simply vented the frustration of millions of Americans who are working, continue to pay their bills and are very angry at being forced to reward the 'Bad boys'(Wall street greed and homeowner greed) or the world comes to an end. Perhaps the focus should be on rewarding the prudent. The economy has slowed to a trickle because prudent people can't tell who's honest and who's isn't. That is as true of the bankers as it is of ordinary Americans. Everyday there's a new scandal in the news and so far the only accounting has been from the same senators and government entities that ignored the red flags in the past.

Indeed. But it appears people are now paying attention to how much it's going to cost to "Save" them. Complacent politicians, beware.

It's Good To Be The MP

And you thought Obama had problems finding an honest politician.

Members of the European Parliament are earning up to £1 million in profit in just one five-year term in office through expenses and allowances, a leaked report has revealed.

The report sparked calls for a police investigation into the systematic abuse of taxpayers' money.

The internal report into the system of allowances - conducted by Robert Galvin, a European Union internal audit official - was kept secret when it was carried out last year.

But a leaked copy of the 92-page document details the full extent of "corruption, dodgy dealing and poor financial controls" in the European Parliament, according to the Taxpayers' Alliance. It revealed that some MEPs claimed money for assistants that were neither accredited nor registered with the parliament.

Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Having acquired the report, we felt it was right to publish it so taxpayers across the EU could see the widespread evidence of corruption, dodgy dealing and poor financial controls in the European Parliament.

"It should never have been kept secret, and there must now be a proper investigation by the police.

"Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent, and if anyone is stealing from them. The EU Parliament must publish the full details of all MEPs' expenses and allowances, and name the people this report found to be ripping taxpayers off."

So along with nannystates, the Europeans have basically been subsidizing their politicians' lifestyles. You'd think they were CEOs or something.

Friend Of The Devil's Court

I guess he can't claim the Devil made him do it:

A Billings man in prison for drug possession has filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against Yellowstone County for alleged civil-rights violations, including interference with his satanic religious practices.

Jason Paul Indreland claims in the U.S. District Court lawsuit that county jail staff took from him a religious medallion, denied him access to religious material and ridiculed and punished him for his religious beliefs.

The lawsuit also alleges that Indreland was denied medical care for his drug addiction, that he was placed in situations where violence was expected and that he suffered harassment and retaliation while incarcerated.

Indreland said he has been a practicing Satanist for the past decade and the confiscated medallion was a 'protective symbol' in his religion. The lawsuit claims jail staff refused to return the medallion or allow Indreland access to a 'Satanic Bible or Book of Satanic Rituals.'

No real satanist leaves home without one, after all.

The I-Word

It's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

Even as one piggy bank after another astounds us with its emptiness, there have been only the faintest whispers about the possibility of an actual default by the U.S. government. Somewhat louder whispers can be heard, though, about the gradual default known as inflation. Just three or four years of currency erosion at, say, 10 percent a year would slice the real value of our debt -- public and private, U.S. bonds and jumbo mortgages -- in half.

Anyone who regards the prospect of double-digit inflation with insouciance is either too young to have lived through it the last time (the late 1970s) or too old to remember. Among other problems, inflation works only as a surprise or betrayal. It can never be part of any public, official plan. Plan for 10 percent inflation, and you'll get 20. Plan for 20 and you'll need a wheelbarrow to pay for your morning Starbucks.

This is the problem with planning for bankruptcy: you may wind up getting what you wished for in spades.

Hell No We Won't Pay

It's turning into a real movement.

As unemployment soars and anger over Wall Street bailouts mounts, public outrage will seek an outlet. Populism could go in many directions — and could easily ebb when the economy revives. But if it takes shape as an anti-spending movement, it could revive conservatives much as the 1970s tax protests did.

To be sure, the protest sizes so far are a far cry from the left’s anti-globalization and anti-war demonstrations of the past decade. But they appear to have grass-roots origins. The organizer of the Kansas protest, Amanda Grosserode, calls herself a home-schooling mom who is “fed up” with the spending in Washington. She has been a member of Fair Tax Kansas City since last fall.

“My husband and I were feeling frustrated that the stimulus had passed with very little debate and no one had read it,” she told IBD. “I said, ‘We need to do something.’ ” She began contacting family and friends, and eventually received attention via Fair Tax Kansas City and local talk radio.

It seems quite a few people are taking Rick Santelli's call to arms seriously. Could this be the sentiment that defines the Obama era?

It's His Economy Now

It looks like the early optimism is gone:

Investors looked forward to the economic policies crafted by Democrats in Congress and the White House. More pointedly, they wanted decisive, well-crafted action on the banking crisis. Hence the Dow soared 6.5% Nov. 21 on news that Timothy Geithner, the highly-respected head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, was Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary.

Yet, from Nov. 4, 2008 through Feb. 12, 2009, the DJI overall fell 18% — a larger drop than during the Sept-Oct plunge. In January, when the Obama plan, promising far greater deficits than the two much smaller “emergency stimulus” plans signed by Pres. George W. Bush in 2008, was unveiled, the market tanked – the worst January performance in 113 years.

Saving the economy by tanking it? At least Bush was honest when he said he had to abandon free market princples.

"So That's Where All That Extra Ice Came From"

Whoops:

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

“Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality- control measures prior to archiving the data,” the center said. “Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check."

Hey, it could happen to anybody. Just don't tell Al Gore. He needs as much inaccurate data as he can get.

The Dust Belt

This is how a state dies: drop by drop.

Federal water managers said Friday that they plan to cut off water, at least temporarily, to thousands of California farms as a result of the deepening drought gripping the state.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to completely stop surface water deliveries for at least a two-week period beginning March 1. Authorities said they haven't had to take such a drastic move for more than 15 years.

The situation could improve slightly if more rain falls over the next few weeks, and officials will know by mid-March if they can release more irrigation supplies to growers.

Farmers in the nation's No. 1 agriculture state predicted it would cause consumers to pay more for their fruits and vegetables, which would have to be grown using expensive well water.

'Water is our life - it's our jobs and it's our food,' said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the farm bureau in Fresno County. 'Without a reliable water supply, Fresno County's No. 1 employer - agriculture - is at great risk.'

Agriculture is to California what the auto industry was to Michigan and Ohio. Unfortunately California now looks like Detroit did in the Seventies, which isn't good.

Nipped In The Bud

Good:

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected his transportation secretary's suggestion that the administration consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy. 'It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration,' White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, when asked for the president's thoughts about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's suggestion, raised in an interview with The Associated Press a daily earlier.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood told the AP.

'We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled,' the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said in the AP interview.

LaHood spokeswoman Lori Irving said Friday that the secretary was speaking of the idea only in general terms, not as something being implemented as administration policy.

The problem is, there are enough bad ideas being floated around out there that one or more of them may eventually come to pass.

Leave The Good Times To Us

Not everybody seems to be hurting these days.

The deepening economic recession hasn't stopped members of Congress from throwing lavish events to raise campaign money for the 2010 election.

This weekend, donors to a political action committee run by Rep. Jeb Hensarling are invited to the Snake River Lodge & Spa near Jackson Hole, Wyo., for a ski outing hosted by the Texas Republican. The minimum donation: $2,500, according to the invitation, which touts opportunities to take sleigh rides to an elk refuge and snowmobile excursions to the Continental Divide.

Skiing also is on the agenda at a fundraiser this weekend in Vail, Colo., for Democrat Ed Perlmutter. Donations range from $2,400 for an individual to $5,000 for a political action committee.

Donors seeking warmer climes could have joined veteran Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii for a 'Weekend of Aloha' fundraiser at a resort on Honolulu's Waikiki Beach. Inouye's event, held last weekend, started two days after lawmakers passed President Obama's $787 billion plan aimed at jump-starting the economy. Lawmakers are on a week-long break and return Monday.

'Everyone is tightening their belts, but lawmakers are doing what they have always done: holding fundraisers in exotic locales,' said Nancy Watzman, who tracks political fundraising events for the watchdog group Sunlight Foundation. 'This is the kind of thing that's out of reach to most people, and it's pretty much hidden from the public.'

I guess it's all in the name of transparency, or something.

Dude, Where's My Hope?

Bill Clinton says President Obama needs to keep hope alive.

Regarding Obama's bleak warnings that 'the economy could get worse before it gets better,' and that the economic stimulus program is only the beginning of the end of the economic crisis, Clinton said, 'I like the fact that he didn't come in and give us a bunch of happy talk. I'm glad he shot straight with us.'

But he added, 'I just want the American people to know that he's confident that we are gonna get out of this and he feels good about the long run.'

Clinton thinks Obama should talk to the public in greater depth about the economy.

'I like trying to educate the American people about the dimensions and scope of this economic crisis,' Clinton said. 'I just would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we're gonna come through this.'

Reagan got America out of its post-Seventies funk by proclaiming it was a new day and by putting his enemies on the defensive. The same thing could work for Obama, if he's serious about real Change.

Best. Correction. Ever.

It's certainly become the topic of the moment:

John Gibson Did Not Compare Eric Holder To Monkey With Bright Blue Scrotum (UPDATED) — UPDATE: The Huffington Post has learned that the below video has been doctored. We regret the error and apologize to Mr. Gibson. John Gibson never compared Eric Holder to a monkey with a bright blue scrotum.

There seems to be an obsession with simians as of late. As far as I'm concerned, their scrotums are their own business.

Beer Drinkers And Former Hell Raisers

Well, it's not like they haven't earned it:

Among the perks available to residents of the Armed Forces Retirement Home: beer machines.

In the canteen, at the golf course and at various spots in hallways throughout the compound, you’ll find vending machines that dispense cold beer.

Any time, day or night, folks with a thirst and some spare change can grab a Miller, Miller Lite, Michelob or Budweiser for $1.50 a can.

Have a cold one on me, guys...

Show Them The Real Money

Honesty has its price.

For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.

The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster responses.

But the biggest adjustment will deal with revenues from the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent the wealthy from using tax shelters to avoid paying any income tax.

Even with bigger deficit projections, the Obama administration will put the country on “a sustainable fiscal course” by the end of Mr. Obama’s term, Peter R. Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Thursday in an interview. Mr. Orszag did not provide details of how the administration would reduce a deficit expected to reach at least $1.5 trillion this year.

Mr. Obama’s banishment of the gimmicks, which have been widely criticized, is in keeping with his promise to run a more transparent government.

Fiscal sleight of hand has long been a staple of federal budgets, giving rise to phrases like “rosy scenario” and “magic asterisks.”

The $2.7 trillion in additional deficit spending, Mr. Orszag said, is “a huge amount of money that would just be kind of a magic asterisk in previous budgets.”

“The president prefers to tell the truth,” he said, “rather than make the numbers look better by pretending.”

It's actually refreshing to have a President who isn't cooking the books. It would have been interesting to see what Bush's real numbers were when his party was the one spending money like water.

A Dog's Life

I guess it's better than the real thing:

A two-year-old boy has been 'married' to a dog in eastern India to 'ward off evil spirits and bad luck'.

The 'marriage' took place in a village in Jajpur district on Monday.

The 'groom', Sagula Munda, was taken to the house of the dog, called Jyoti, in a highly decorated rickshaw and priests solemnised the ceremony.

The boy's father said such 'marriages' were a tradition and would help ease the bad omen of the tooth rooted in Sagula's upper gum.

Tribal deity

The 'marriage' was in the tribal-dominated Patarpur village.
Like in every Hindu marriage, the priests chanted Sankrit prayers and hymns and there was an accompanying feast.

The boy's father, Sanrumula Munda, said of the wedding: 'Tribals not only in this state but also in neighbouring Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, observe such practices to keep the evil spirits away.'

Arranging 'marriages' with dogs kept children protected from ghosts and bad luck, he said.

So, if the kid gets to go to an orthodontist later on, is the marriage anulled?

The Union Of European Socialist Republics

As someone who lived under Communism, he ought to know.

The European Union has turned into an undemocratic and elitist project comparable to the Communist dictatorships of eastern Europe that forbade alternative thinking, Czech President Vaclav Klaus told the European Parliament on Thursday.

Klaus, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, set out a scathing attack on the EU project and its institutions, provoking boos from many lawmakers, some of whom walked out, but applause from nationalists and other anti-EU legislators.

Klaus is known for deep skepticism of the EU and has refused to fly the EU flag over his official seat in Prague during the Czech presidency, saying the country is not an EU province.
He said current EU practices smacked of communist times when the Soviet Union controlled much of eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic and when dissent or even discussions were not tolerated.

'Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition,' said Klaus. 'We learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom.'

He said the 27-nation bloc should concentrate on offering prosperity to Europeans, rather than closer political union, and scrap a stalled EU reform treaty that Irish voters have already rejected.

Klaus said that questioning deeper integration has become an 'uncriticizable assumption that there is only one possible and correct future of the European integration.'

I would say the European governments want it both ways-prosperity and nannystating. The problem is, they've already got so much of the latter that the former may forever elude them.

Yo The GOP Raps

No, it's not from The Onion:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

[...]

“It will be avant garde, technically,” he said. “It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone – off the hook.”

Somebody call Kanye West-there may be a job opening for him here...

Enter Sebelius

For Obama's sake, I hope this one paid her taxes.

WASHINGTON — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, an early Obama ally with a record of working across party lines, is emerging as the president’s top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday.

Should she be nominated, Ms. Sebelius would bring eight years of experience as her state’s insurance commissioner as well as six years as a governor running a state Medicaid program.

But with President Obama about to begin a drive to expand health coverage, an issue on which the two parties have deep ideological divisions, her strongest asset in the view of the White House may be her record of navigating partisan politics as a Democrat in one of the country’s most Republican states.

Ms. Sebelius resolved a state budget crisis on Tuesday and plans to be in Washington from Saturday through Tuesday for a meeting of the National Governors’ Association.

Asked about the health and human services job, her spokeswoman, Beth Martino, said the governor was “focused on the economic challenges currently facing Kansas, including our state budget and the impacts of the federal stimulus package.”

She at least sounds competent-more so than the Clinton insiders Obama's been bringing on board. It would be nice if somebody he picked was.

Who Watches The Spenders?

It would have been nice if they had done this when they were in the majority. Still, better late than never.

Republicans are preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending in the $787 billion stimulus package as they refocus their criticisms of a measure whose success could hurt their 2010 election prospects.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats also promise rigorous oversight, including a new Web site to help people track various projects funded by the massive bill. But the two parties will reap different political rewards if they find waste or abuse, which is virtually inevitable when the government tries to spend so much money so fast, authorities say.

Democrats want the plan to unfold as smoothly as possible, because voters see it as the product of their party and Obama. Congressional Republicans, however, opposed the bill almost unanimously, and any embarrassing examples of misused funds or other shortcomings will let them say, 'I told you so.'

House Republicans are setting up 'a stimulus-watch program' that will allow watchdog groups and private citizens to report findings as contractors and agencies start spending billions of dollars on roads, schools, renewable energy projects and other initiatives, said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor.

'We'll be taking a look in detail' and 'really providing accountability and transparency,' Cantor said in an interview Wednesday."

Of course it would be better if they had an actual plan of their own to fall back on if the stimulus doesn't work. But it's a start.

Dude, Where's My Objectivity?

George Will notes on how a bad idea could come to pass:

Brian Tierney is CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which publishes Philadelphia's Inquirer and Daily News and has missed loan payments since June. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's spokesman says Tierney has had 'a number of conversations' with Rendell about receiving state money that 'could come from a number of revenue streams.'

The Wall Street Journal designated this 'the worst bailout idea so far' and 'nuts in eight different ways,' noting that the investors Tierney led in purchasing the two newspapers put up only 20 percent in equity, making them typical of 'Americans who borrowed too heavily during the credit mania.' In response to Rendell's spokesman saying that newspapers are 'the lifeblood of democracy,' the Journal said 'newspapers aren't the lifeblood of anything if they are merely an adjunct of the state' and are 'dependent on the politicians [they are] supposed to cover.'

There are so many problems with a government bailout of the press, be it state or otherwise, that it may border on unconstitutional at best. Of course, when you have a nannystating agenda, that doesn't really matter, does it?

The Involuntary State

Oh, this will go down well.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told consumer groups, farm groups and meat industry leaders Tuesday that he will ask the meat industry to voluntarily follow stricter guidelines for new package labels designed to specify a food’s country of origin…

If the industry does not comply with the stricter guidelines, the administration will write new rules, according to those who spoke with Vilsack on Tuesday.

I for one welcome our new product label overlords...

You Can Have Your New Job And Save It, Too

It looks like Obama's given himself an out on whether the stimulus will work or not:

The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius. You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus.

Say what you will, nobody can ever accuse him of being a dummy. He's given himself some nice political cover, at least.

The Last Neocon Colony

Max Boot says we need to stay:

If we leave now, the Taliban will take over a substantial portion of the country, perhaps even Kabul, once again. The terrorist safe havens that have been established in Pakistan will migrate across the border and U.S. prestige will suffer a crippling blow -- just as the prestige of the Soviet Union suffered from its defeat in Afghanistan. Bad as the situation is in Pakistan today, it will get worse if the U.S. is chased out of the region.

It is not Vietnam, yet it is? Is this the argument we're getting from the diehard neocons out there? But there's hope for a more realistic attitude:

"Serving in Afghanistan is, I think, for anyone a humbling experience. You are continually humbled by the geography, the complexity of the society, and the weight of history. Understanding in your bones how long a drive thirty miles is without a road. Feeling in your stomach eyes watching you from canyon rims. Seeing the mixture of sorrow and hope in a child's eyes and the disillusioned stare of an adolescent with no options. That stays with you and gives a texture and reality check that is valuable when sifting through dry memoranda and contemplating strategic options," - Craig Mullaney, rumored to be soon named the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Central Asia and author of The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education.

I think one way or another we will have to decide whether we want Afghanistan to be either another test for Wilsonian nation-building or a less intrusive foreign policy. The Soviet Union was broken by Afghanistan. Let's hope we'll learn not to make the same mistakes they did.

"Just Follow Our Lead"

Iraq may becoming more like us than we'd like:

43% of all jobs in Iraq and 60% of full time work was provided by the public sector. The number of people working for the government doubled from 2005 to 2008. As reported earlier, a breakdown of jobs across Iraq’s provinces found that the government was the largest employer in fourteen of eighteen provinces, and tied for first in one more.

In a few years, maybe they can promise their people massive government stimulus packages, too...

Governance By Girlymen

This might actually explain a few things:

Hobbes argued that men’s violent hypermasculinity made them ineligible for the disciplined and mature enterprise of self-government; he believed that only an absolute monarch could control men for purposes of collective peace. Filmer also argued that men were generally incompetent for self-government. But unlike Hobbes, he argued that men were psychologically infantile and thus insufficiently manly for self-government. Filmer insisted that only the king had the requisite manliness of a powerful father and that men required the former’s love and guidance while they owed him complete obedience. The American colonists constructed a new understanding of male identity, one that was compatible with the logic of self-government in their constitution.

Bush may have been a throwback to royalty in more ways than one. Do we really still want a father figure leader at heart? Or were the Founding Fathers rebelling against Dad?

He Was For Protectionism Before He Was Against It

Canada can relax.

After he secured the Democratic nomination, however, Obama indeed backed away from his hard anti-NAFTA rhetoric. During a June 2008 interview with Fortune, Obama said that he would not unilaterally seek to reopen negotiations concerning NAFTA. Even though he had once described NAFTA as 'devastating' and as a 'big mistake,' he brushed those comments aside as 'overheated and amplified' campaigning.

An article appearing in today's New York Times describes Obama's latest statements regarding NAFTA. Obama discussed the importance of Canada as a trading partner during an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The interview took place in advance of his scheduled trip to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday.

The article confirms prior reports which reveal that Obama has substantially backed away from his anti-NAFTA rhetoric and appears unwilling to renegotiate the terms of the agreement.

More of the Same we can believe in!

The World's Policeman Retires?

A discouraging look at the effect the economic climate may have on foreign policy:

The resources available for policing the world are certain to be reduced for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the United States or simply begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies. Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.

I'm not an interventionist, but there will be times when our overseas interests are genuinely threatened. If the sun is indeed setting on the American empire, somebody else will have to pick up the pieces. The question is, who?

Sign Language Theater

Movie theaters have fallen victim to the crime of being politically incorrect.

For most cinema buffs, silent movies went out with the Coolidge administration eight decades ago.

But for film fans who are hard of hearing, today's theaters offer little beyond an indecipherable silence. Captioned showings remain rare, and existing technology that would allow attendees to read along at their seats is rarely used.

Now, a small group of Washington residents hopes to change that through a lawsuit filed earlier this month in King County Superior Court.

As others have around the nation, the lawsuit's proponents claim that most King County theaters are violating disability laws by failing to make the movies accessible to people with limited hearing.

'We can only go so far ourselves, and then we need a little help from other people so we can participate fully in life,' said John Waldo, an attorney with the Washington State Communication Access Project, which filed the suit. 'What we would like is just a much more equal opportunity.'
....

"The dream," he said, is "that we'd be able to go to any movie, any time and understand it."

I'm sorry, but I must have missed the part where everything in life had to be equal. Besides, wouldn't you rather see a close-captioned movie at home where you don't have to pay ten bucks for snacks anyway?

Best President Ever?

Is Warren G. Harding underrated?

The latest ratings of presidential greatness tells us more about the priorities of historians than it does about the presidents. The following were rated as the greatest presidents: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

Rated by the historians in the 'worst' category, by contrast, is, you guessed it, Warren G. Harding: a president who successfully promoted economic prosperity, cut taxes, balanced the budget, reduced the national debt, released all of his predecessor's political prisoners, supported anti-lynching legislation, and instituted the most substantial naval arms reduction agreement in world history. Go figure.

Harding was a product of the post-Progressive, post-World War One era. In many ways he, perhaps even more so than Teddy Roosevelt, was the first modern Republican president. Of course his administration was marred by scandal. But Mr. Harding did his job, and for that he deserves the thanks and better rememberance of a grateful nation.

Climate Change Is The Devil's Work

Are fundamantalists to blame for global warming denial?

One possible reason that global-warming denialism is more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere is that more Americans than Europeans are Biblical literalists. That involves believing that all biologists and paleontologists are either massively incompetent or deliberately trying to mislead the public about the central facts of their disciplines. [The alternative theory, held by some, is that the entire fossil record is a trick by Satan, intended to deceive those whose faith isn't firm.]

I'm not sure I totally buy this, but a certain faction of American conservatives has a vested interest in disproving any and all climate change, and their fortunes are often closely tied with those of the religious right. Maybe Jesus can set them straight when He comes back.

Recession Splurging

How to spend well without looking ostentatious:

If you can afford it, then this is exactly the moment to redo your kitchen or buy a car. Not only will you be able to get a good deal, but your spending will help revive the economy. The economist John Maynard Keynes convincingly argued 70 years ago that thrift was no virtue during a recession.

You can always get more bling when the economy recovers. In the meantime, spend smartly, not snobbishly.

Shadow Bugs

We may not be alone:

Aliens may be living among us, but we wouldn't know it because they'd be microbes that do not have the standard biochemistry of Earth-dwelling organisms.

As well as the many forms of life based on DNA that are known to science, the Earth may be home to 'shadow life,' a second creation of organisms that make up an unnoticed realm of 'life as we don't know it,' according to Paul Davies of Arizona State University, a cosmologist and theorist of extraterrestrial life.

Such 'weird life' would never have been identified by scientists because the techniques we use for studying microbes are based on the familiar biological processes that drive the living things we understand, Davies told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago on Saturday.

The identification of such life on Earth could aid efforts to find life on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system.

A second terrestrial creation would also indicate that life arises easily when the conditions are right, suggesting that it is common throughout the universe.

The search for aliens should thus begin at home in a 'mission to Earth,' Davies said.

If they're already here, should we notify the MIB or the Orkin Man?

The Bong Shall Set You Free

After all the hoopla, it comes down to this.

Now that Michael Phelps won't face drug charges, he can try to distance himself from a photo that showed the Olympian smoking a marijuana pipe.

A South Carolina sheriff decided Monday after a highly publicized investigation that he simply didn't have enough physical evidence to charge the 14-time gold medalist.

'We had a photo and we had him saying he was sorry for his inappropriate behavior. That behavior could've been going to a party,' Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said.

'He never said, 'I smoked marijuana.' He never confessed that,' the sheriff said.

So Phelps is a free man. And Sheriff Lott can go back to doing...whatever it was he was doing before he decided to make a big deal about this case.

I Married An Axe Murderer

Egads:

Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local Muslim community — reported her death to police Thursday.

Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder.

'He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead,' Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning.

Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her body.

Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light.

Well, so much for public relations...

The Hunt For French October

I know England and France traditionally don't like each other, but jeeze.

Defence chiefs are facing an inquiry into the safety of the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent after British and French submarines, each laden with missiles powerful enough for 1,248 Hiroshima bombings, collided while submerged in the mid-Atlantic.

HMS Vanguard, the lead boat of Britain's fleet of four V-class submarines armed with Trident nuclear missiles, limped back into its home port of Faslane in Scotland on Saturday showing significant damage. Witnesses said the hull was scarred with dents and scrapes.
....

For many years, Britain and France have maintained their nuclear deterrent by ensuring they have at least one of their missile-carrying submarines at sea 365 days a year with the ability to launch within seconds' notice. Vanguard and Triomphant, which was at the end of a 70-day tour, each carry 16 intercontinental missiles, armed with between six and eight warheads in each.

Politicians said the incident raised serious questions about the precautions to protect the V-class nuclear vessels, which, at nearly 16,000 tonnes and 150m long, are among the largest submarines ever built. Similar questions were being asked in France, where the 14,335-tonne Triomphant returned to its base at L'Ile Longue, near Brest. The boat will spend up to four months in dry-dock undergoing repair. The French Navy intially claimed the submarine had been in a collision "apparently with a container".

Angus Robertson, the leader of the SNP in Westminster, said: "The MoD needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world's second-largest ocean."

Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "While the British nuclear fleet has a good safety record, if there were ever to be a bang it would be a mighty big one. The public entrust this equipment to the Government confident that all possible precautions are being taken."

In the meantime, if you see something glowing in the water, run away.

Memories Aren't Made Of This

I can see where this could be a problem:

A drug which appears to erase painful memories has been developed by scientists.The astonishing treatment could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder and those whose lives are plagued by hurtful recurrent memories. But British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human. They also warned it could have damaging psychological consequences, preventing those who take it from learning from their mistakes.
....

Professor John Harris, an expert in biological ethics at the University of Manchester, said: "It is obviously up to the individual whether or not she wishes to risk the possible effects, including psychological discontinuity, of erasing unpleasant memories.
"An interesting complexity is the possibility that victims, say of violence, might wish to erase the painful memory and with it their ability to give evidence against assailants.
"Similarly criminals and witnesses to crime may, under the guise of erasing a painful memory, render themselves unable to give evidence."

It sounds like something politicians would use, too...

Their Fair Share

Jerry Pournelle comments on why California is in the shape it's in:

It’s not so much that the voters vote themselves largess from the public treasury, although that certainly happens; it is that those with a particular interest, such as civil servants including teachers and prison guards unions will always organize effectively while those who are affected less directly won’t, and the result will go in one direction. We’re certainly getting an illustration of that in California.

In other words, some beneficiaries of largess are more equal than others.

One Professor's Fascism Is Another Person's Free Speech

Ahh, diversity:

Student Jonathan Lopez told the Times that the professor, John Matteson, called him a 'fascist bastard' and refused to let him finish his speech during a public speaking class last November, weeks after California voters approved Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.

Lopez also said the teacher threatened to have him expelled when he complained to college authorities.

Lopez is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and co-founded by evangelical leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Alliance staff counsel David J. Hacker told The Times Lopez was a victim of religious discrimination.

I don't agree with Proposition 8, but I'll defend to the death another person's right to support it. "Fascism" cuts both ways, Professor.

Some Employees Are More Equal Than Others

In New York, the motto seems to be, freezes for thee, but not for me.

ALBANY - Gov. Paterson has secretly granted raises of as much as 46 percent to more than a dozen staffers at a time when he has asked 130,000 state workers to give up 3 percent pay hikes because of the state's fiscal crisis, The Post has learned.

The startling pay hikes, costing about $250,000 annually, were granted after the governor's 'emergency' declaration in August of a looming fiscal crisis that required the state to cut spending and impose a 'hard' hiring freeze.

One raise was approved as recently as last month - when Paterson claimed the budget deficit had reached an unprecedented $15.5 billion.

The raises, which have stunned the few state workers who know about them, are outlined in data obtained from the office of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, prepared at The Post's request.

Two of the raises were tied to publicly proclaimed promotions - granted despite the supposed hiring freeze - of some of Paterson's most important appointees, although the announcements didn't include disclosure of the pay hikes.

The remaining 14 raises appear to have gone to individuals who remained in their same positions, despite claims by a spokesman for Paterson that they had been promoted.
'These are not raises for old positions, rather new salaries for new positions,' Paterson spokesman Errol Cockfield insisted.

But a DiNapoli spokesman, Dennis Thompkins, said flatly, 'These are individuals who stayed in their same position and received a salary increase.'

But hey, at least Paterson didn't get caught with a hooker...

The Oregon Tax Trail

I know times are tough all over, but this sounds extreme, even for Oregon.

Five Oregon state lawmakers want to impose a hefty tax on beer and have introduced a bill that brewers say would cripple them.

Four Portland legislators joined a Springfield senator to introduce Oregon House Bill 2461, which would impose a $49.61 tax on each barrel of beer produced by Oregon brewers.

The tax would raise revenue for the state at a time when budgets are running in the red. Specifically, the bill says it would fund prevention, treatment and recovery programs for those addicted to alcohol and other substances.

The bill's language defends the tax by arguing alcoholism and “untreated substance abuse” costs the state $4.15 billion in lost earnings as well as more than $8 million for health care and nearly $1 billion in law enforcement-related expenditures.

I guess the good news would be that people won't be able to afford to become drunks, therefore they won't need these programs.

The Nationalization Virus

It could spread if we're not careful.

One of the obvious concerns about having the government nationalize major banks is that it will create a contagion effect, scaring private capital away from all banks, not just the obviously insolvent ones. If that happens, the result will be that instead of only having to recapitalize a few banks, the government will end up having to recapitalize most or all of them, expanding the costs to taxpayers and making it more likely that the government will end up running most of the banking system for an extended period of time.

I think the argument that this is actually reorganization is probably more accurate. Still, the risk is there. Given what happened in Japan in the '90's, do we really want to go down that road?

Hooked On Fundamentalism

The Republicans need to break the habit:

Most Americans have a healthy respect for religious teaching but in their lives give greater preference to common sense and practical experience. That includes almost all religious groups as well - Catholics, in particular, show conservative tendencies. The exceptions? Evangelicals and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - who are trained to forego practical reasoning for abstract truths based on unquestionable authority. Evangelical Christians are much less conservative than American Muslims, for example.

The Republican party is not, at this point in time, a conservative party, as Burke would understand it. It's a fundamentalist religious party. Until the influence of evangelicals and Mormons is reduced, it will find these tendencies reinforce each other.

What would Burke do? He would most likely be the first to call out today's Republicans for the addicts in denial that they are.

Hard Times

Times are tough for everyone these days, including Filipino terrorists.

In the south, the Moslem fighters of two rogue MILF commanders, are beginning to desert or surrender to the army. The MILF commanders made big promises to their followers, to encourage them to take part in the attacks on Christian villages. This began last August, and initially, hundreds of thousands of civilians were chased out of their villages, which the MILF men looted. But since the army quickly intervened, there's been less loot, and more getting shot at by soldiers. This is not what a lot of MILF guys signed up for and they are not happy about it. Even some of the lower ranking MILF commanders are quitting, disgusted with the lack of progress in peace negotiations, and the poverty brought on by the ceasefire (which has halted the plundering and looting the MILF typically used to maintain themselves).

Maybe they should ask Al Qaeda for a stimulus...

Two For The Vote Of One

Maybe we should try something like this:

Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu, who fought a close election last week in Israel, should share power and agree to a rotation arrangement whereby each will serve two years as prime minister, members of Livni’s Kadima Party said.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party rejected the idea today, saying that Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, should join a coalition government in which only Netanyahu presides as prime minister.

While both Livni and Netanyahu declared victory after the Feb. 10 vote, Netanyahu has more support from smaller allied parties and a better chance at assembling a majority in the 120- seat Knesset. Kadima won 28 seats in the election and Likud 27.

“Livni was the preferred choice of the public and Netanyahu has to admit it,” Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, a member of Kadima, said in an interview with Israel Radio. “A rotation is the minimum that Kadima can demand so that a stable government sees the light of day.”

Parliamentary politics has its faults, but the ability to reach a compromise isn't one of them.

The Culture War That Matters

Andrew Bacevich has a simple message for conervatives to follow:

When it comes to the culture, conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means. When it comes to foreign policy, they should advocate a restoration of realism, which will necessarily entail abandoning expectations of remaking the world in America's own image.

A little more restraint-in tone as well as action-could do the conservative movement a world of good right now.

The Dependent Elephant In The Room

If the Republicans were smart, they could take advantage of this.

If Dems seem determined to reinstate dependency–or at the least blind to the dangers of dependency–voters aren’t going to trust them to spend trillions on universal health insurance and fortified pensions. It’s hard to believe Obama doesn’t realize this . . . Welfare is a liberal sore spot that, if Republicans play it right, could become a bleeding open wound for the administration. Voters probably thought they’d settled the dole-vs.-work issue back in 1996. Obama will be fulfilling the crude GOP stereotype of his party if he even waffles on reopening it.

Say what you will about Clinton, welfare reform was perhaps his signature domestic achievement. And Obama would indeed be foolish to mess with it.

Money For Your Life

A new study suggests that there's more to money than just getting stuff:

According to SFU’s February 7 press release, the study by Ryan Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at SFU, “demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.”

In these tough times, that might be something to consider.

Clintonomics Is Dead, Long Live Obamanomics

Has the Obama administration killed Clintonomics?

One of the few undisputed triumphs of American government of the past 20 years – the sweeping welfare reform programme that sent millions of dole claimants back to work – has been plunged into jeopardy by billions of dollars in state handouts included in the president’s controversial economic stimulus package.

As Obama celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday with a return to his Chicago home for a private weekend with family and friends, his success in piloting a $785 billion (£546 billion) stimulus package through Congress was being overshadowed by warnings that an unprecedented increase in welfare spending would undermine two decades of bipartisan attempts to reduce dependency on government handouts.

Robert Rector, a prominent welfare researcher who was one of the architects of Clinton's 1996 reform bill, warned last week that Obama’s stimulus plan was a “welfare spendathon” that would amount to the largest one-year increase in government handouts in American history.

Douglas Besharov, author of a big study on welfare reform, said the stimulus bill passed by Congress and the Senate in separate votes on Friday would “unravel” most of the 1996 reforms that led to a 65% reduction in welfare caseloads and prompted the British and several other governments to consider similar measures.
....

Rector, a senior scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, argued that Obama’s spending proposals in effect encouraged individual states to add more families to their welfare rolls; the more Americans sign on to the dole, the more state budgets will benefit from US Treasury payouts.

“They have completely overturned the fiscal and policy foundations of welfare reform,” Rector complained.

Clintonomics showed how a Democratic president could take advantage of a good economy. Unfortunately, Obamanomics may be a reminder of how a Democratic president can prolong a bad one.

Continental Blues

Well, this isn't good news:

Europe sank even deeper into recession than the United States in the closing months of last year, according to figures published Friday, as finance ministers of leading industrialized nations gathered in one of the worst-affected countries, Italy, for discussions on the crisis.

In the fourth quarter, the economy of the countries sharing the euro declined by 1.5 percent, according to the European Union's statistics office. That is even worse than the 1 percent decline in the U.S. economy during that period, compared with the previous quarter.

'Today's data wipes out any illusion that the euro zone is getting off lightly in this global downturn,' said Jörg Radeke, an economist at the Center for Economics and Business Research in London.

I think we all kno what happened the last time European economies went under. Is it happening again? I wish I could say for certainty that it wasn't.

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Extortionist

Corruption is a family affair for Blago.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s brother solicited U.S. Sen. Roland Burris for up to $10,000 in campaign cash before Blagojevich named Burris to the coveted post — something Burris initially failed to disclose under oath before an Illinois House impeachment panel, records and interviews show.

Burris acknowledges being hit up for the money in a new affidavit he has sent to the head of the House committee that recommended Blagojevich be removed from office.

The affidavit is dated Feb. 5 — three weeks after Burris was sworn in to replace President Obama in the Senate.

Burris — who did not give money to the Blagojevich campaign fund in response to the previously undisclosed solicitation — provided a copy of the sworn statement to the Chicago Sun-Times Friday in response to questions about his contacts with the Blagojevich camp about fund-raising.

Burris acknowledged having three conversations with Robert Blagojevich, who headed the Friends of Blagojevich campaign fund — and one of those was likely recorded by the FBI.
Burris’ statement offers the third version of events he has given about his discussions concerning the Senate seat, to which Blagojevich appointed him in late December, after Blagojevich was hit with federal corruption charges that included an allegation he tried to sell the Senate appointment.

You know you're out of the game when you can't buy people like you used to...

A Lean, Mean Recession Machine

Americans are spending less on their overweight behinds:

Consumers have cut back sharply on food spending, shunning restaurants, opting for generic products over brand names, trading in lattes for home-brewed coffee and shopping for bargains. That is hurting sales and profits at many food processors, grocery chains and restaurants.

In 2008's fourth quarter, consumer spending on food fell at an inflation-adjusted 3.7% from the third quarter, according to data from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. That is the steepest decline in the 62 years the government has compiled the figure. The report is based on receipts from a sampling of food-oriented businesses across the country.

Is this actually healthier? Maybe, but the most economically distressed areas also tend to be notoriously obese. But perhaps people will be forced to slim down in spite of themselves.

"Who, Us?"

They are, yet they aren't.

After Election Day, the BBC declared that times are uncertain for the Religious Right. In September 2008, Newsweek declared a Religious-Right Revival after Sarah Palin was nominated vice president. Even after the election, the term “Religious Right” or “Christian Right” appeared in recent obituaries as journalists searched for words to describe Paul Weyrich, cofounder of the Moral Majority, and the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, founder of Catholic journal First Things.

However, several politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews that they do not want to be identified with the “Religious Right,” “Christian Right,” “Moral Majority,” or other phrases still thrown around in journalism and academia.

Is it jut political expediency to distance themselves from an unpopular "Brand?" Or are some of them finally realizing that maybe the rest of the country isn't as fundamentalist as they thought?

Post-Crash America

Is a permanently Blue landscape invevitable?

The landscape of the future seems more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. And the country seems at risk of dividing into wealthier, better educated, more liberal cities, where new populations will flow, and poorer, less educated, more conservative suburbs and rural areas, where the populations will grow sparser. This transformation might usher in a new era of liberal ascendancy, but it will bring new problems, new inequalities, new resentments.

If the Republicans really want to think long-term, they will have to do better than appealing to dwindling population areas, and Twitter alone won't do it.

Do The Evolution

Our long muddle through the Dark Ages may be turning a corner.

Hundreds of churches this week will revisit the question of whether man evolved from lower order species or was created whole by a higher being as part of Evolution Weekend.

Participation through sermons, Sunday school lessons and even evolution dances has expanded into 974 congregations across the country, more than doubling since the weekend began in 2006, said founder Michael Zimmerman, dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis.

Organizers said the churches include a growing number of conservative groups, among them black and Muslim groups typically linked to more traditional views.

Participants say they're not abandoning the Bible's story of Adam and Eve. Rather, they want to blend theories in a way that helps today's faithful reconcile their modern world with Biblical teachings.

'We have to give God a lot more credit than we give him now - we need to give him the benefit of the doubt that his word includes evolution,' said Mike Ghouse, president of the World Muslim Congress, a Dallas-based union of 3,000 Muslims that hosted its first ever Evolution Weekend discussion Friday.

Will we finally stop refighting the Scopes Trial? It would be nice if we did.

Trump Trumped

Even The Donald is going through hard times.

Donald Trump resigned from the board of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the debt-laden casino company he founded, ahead of a possible involuntary bankruptcy filing next week.

“I’m not managing it, it’s not me that’s responsible for managing,” Trump, who was chairman, said in a telephone interview today. “Unless we’re going to be responsible for management it’s just not something that’s worthwhile.”

Trump’s departure comes ahead of a Feb. 17 deadline to make a $53 million bond payment originally due on Dec. 1. The Atlantic City, New Jersey-based casino operator said at the time it needed to conserve cash and hold debt-restructuring talks with lenders. Since an initial grace period ended on Dec. 31, Trump Entertainment’s deadline has been extended four times.

The 62-year-old real estate entrepreneur has “no idea” whether there will be a bankruptcy filing, he said. Trump is “not thrilled” the company may continue to use his name.

I knew things were bad when I saw his hair holding atin cup on the boardwalk...

Octomom Nation

Peggy Noonan is worried:

We're still making Sullys. We're still making those mythic Americans, those steely-eyed rocket men. Like Alan Shepard in the Mercury rocket: 'Come on and light this candle.'

But Sully, 58, Air Force Academy '73, was shaped and formed by the old America, and educated in an ethos in which a certain style of manhood—of personhood—was held high.

What we fear we're making more of these days is Nadya Suleman. The dizzy, selfish, self-dramatizing 33-year-old mother who had six small children and then a week ago eight more because, well, she always wanted a big family. 'Suley' doubletalks with the best of them, she doubletalks with profound ease. She is like Blago without the charm. She had needs and took proactive steps to meet them, and those who don't approve are limited, which must be sad for them.

It's only sad in the sense that there do seem to be more of her than there are of real heroes like Sully. It's also sad to think that Sully may be truly representative of the phrase "Dying breed." It's sadder still to think that the rest of us will be subsidizing Octomom's "Right" to simply breed.

Here We Go Again

Aren't we done with this crap yet?

Tennessee Reps. Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Niceley have all agreed to be plaintiffs in a planned legal action by a Russian immigrant in California who has challenged whether Obama meets constitutional criteria to be president.

The lawsuit from the Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, which has not been filed, will be among several court challenges to Obama's citizenship.

One of the cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court late last year, and the court declined without comment to take it up, a move many interpreted as meaning the issue was dead.

The campaign posted a copy of his certificate on a page intended to counter rumors about Obama.

Swafford's letter states 'I agree to be one of the plaintiff's in a legal action filed by Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire for a Writ of Mandamus to obtain birth certificate, immigration records, passports and other vital records for Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Hussein Obama.'

The letter from the Pikeville Republican is written on the letterhead of the House of Representatives.

Niceley, Campfield and Casada, who are also Republicans, confirmed that they have agreed to be plaintiffs.

Will somebody please wake me when the Stupid Party Era is over? I may have white hair and wrinkles by then, but I'd like to think I'd still be alive to see it happen.

Constructive Opposition

Matt Welch has some words of comfort for libertarians who may be discouraged right now.

In my blinkered view, libertarianism as an outlook is all at once oppositional, constructive, and optimistic. Oppositional to whatever 19th century political party is in power, because chances are near 100 percent that their overriding M.O. will be anathema to limited-government principles. Constructive because, hey, libertarians actually have some pretty helpful ideas about how to make tax dollars more effectively accomplish such tasks as building roads, educating poor people, and (to cite an Obama favorite) creating jobs. When the politicians run out of money (and they always do), we’ll have some plausible suggestions.

When the pendulum swings the other way, as it inevitably will, libertarians will be there to help pick up the pieces. The question is, will the Republican Party still be strong enough to take it?

The Fairness Crusade

They're crawling out of the woodwork these days:

More and more Democrats in Congress are calling for action that Republicans warn could muzzle right-wing talk radio.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York is the latest to say he wants to bring back the 'Fairness Doctrine,' a federal regulation scrapped in 1987 that would require broadcasters to present opposing views on public issues.

'I think the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated,' Hinchey told CNNRadio. Hinchey says he could make it part of a bill he plans to introduce later this year overhauling radio and t-v ownership laws.

But dissent is patriotic! Or something...

Alternative Sloganeering

The Republicans are looking beyond the drill bit:

“This year, everyone’s thinking maybe they’ll actually come up with grown-up things to say,” said Republican energy lobbyist Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ impeded the conversation. We energy guys hated it.”

[...]

“‘Drill, baby, drill’ is a great slogan, but it’s not enough,” he (Gov. Tim Pawlenty) said. “We need to identify with emerging issues and get ahead of them.”

All eyes are now turning to new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who coined the phrase, and some lawmakers hope he might crank out another infectious slogan.

Call me crazy, but better ideas might help, too...

A History Lesson

Bush actually had more cooperation from the opposition party than Obama is getting today:

It's worth noting that 28 House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats voted for the final passage of Bush's big tax cut in 2001. (And remember, too, that Bush had barely won the presidential election the year before.) The size of that 2001 tax-cut package? $1.35 trillion.

Of course, that was in the days when "Reaching out" wasn't just a Democratic perogative.

Drift Away

LoJack has some good news for anyone who has a wandering relative:

Yesterday, the company announced a 'diversification strategy' to 'track and rescue people at risk of wandering, including those with Alzheimer's, autism, Down syndrome and dementia.'

The Alzheimer's market looks pretty lucrative. LoJack anticipates up to 16 million Alzheimer's patients by 2050, most of whom wander away at some point. But the company also notes that 'autism, which is the fastest growing developmental disability that now afflicts one in every 150 babies born, can also cause children to wander.' In fact, LoJack aims to address the whole range of potential wanderers. According to CEO Ronald Waters, 'This offering is a natural extension of LoJack's family of products and services and takes our solutions beyond ‘getting the bad guys' off the streets to now protecting those afflicted with cognitive disorders.'

This could also be useful for sleepwalkers, etc, or anyone who literally needs somebody to watch over them.

Ice Age On Hold

How to use global warming to prevent global cooling:

Professor Shaffer made long projections over the next 500,000 years with the DCESS Earth System Model to calculate the evolution of atmospheric CO2 for different fossil fuel emission strategies. He also used results of a coupled climate-ice sheet model for the dependency on atmospheric CO2 of critical summer solar radiation at high northern latitudes for an ice age onset.

The results show global warming of almost 5 degrees Celsius above present for a 'business as usual' scenario whereby all 5000 billion tons of fossil fuel carbon in accessible reserves are burned within the next few centuries. In this scenario the onset of next ice age was postponed to about 170,000 years from now.
....

"It appears to be well established that the strong ice ages the Earth has experienced over the past million years were ushered in by declining levels of atmospheric CO2. Our present atmospheric CO2 level of about 385 parts per million is already higher than before the transition to these ice ages" Professor Shaffer notes and adds that "The Earth's orbit is nearly circular at present meaning that the present minimum in summer radiation at high northern latitudes is not very deep. We have already increased atmospheric CO2 enough to keep us out of the next ice age for at least the next 55,000 years for this orbital setup".

Global warming can actually be good for you? Nobody tell Al Gore...

Locking Out Lech

What's old is new again: Lech Welesa meets latter-day Communism:

Nobel laureate, former Polish prime minister, and hero of the Cold War Lech Walesa will not be allowed to visit Venezuela ahead of that country's referendum on extending the rule of Hugo Chavez. El Jefe told Venezuelan media that Walesa was unwelcome in Caracas, where he was set to meet with opposition student groups, and would be prevented from entering the country. After Walesa cancelled his visit, Chavez claimed that he would, in fact, be allowed through customs but would be 'closely monitored' on his visit.

Well, at least he's familiar with such tactics. Funny how they're no longer practiced in his native Poland.

"Keep Up The Good Work"

Apparently this is the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Former U.S. Drug Czar John] Walters said increased violence in border areas of Mexico was partly a result of criminal organizations compensating for reduced income from the supply of drugs by turning to other activities, such as people-smuggling, and continuing to fight over turf.

U.S. law-enforcement officials — as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico — say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing.

“If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We’re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

Well, I'm sure the people who live in the border towns will be so gratified to know that their suffering is all for a good cause.

Silent Reading

Neil Gaiman responds to an iffy claim by Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken:

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

To summarize: if you took Aiken's argument to its extreme, a teacher couldn't read a book out loud to her students, and a parent couldn't read copyrighted material out loud to his/her kids. And you thought the RIAA was bad...

Who Do You Trust?

According to this, people aren't as ready for Change as the Democrats thought they were.

Democrats are still trusted more than Republicans to handle the economy by a 44% to 39% margin, but their advantage on the issue has been slipping steadily since November.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters found 17% are not sure which party they trust more to handle the economy, showing no change since the last poll conducted a month ago.

In the first poll conducted after Barack Obama was elected president, the Democrats held a 15-point lead over the GOP on economic issues. In December, their lead dropped to 12 points. In January, prior to Obama’s inauguration, Democrats held a nine-point lead on the issue.
....

A separate survey released today showed that 67% of voters think they could do a better job than Congress on handling the current economic crisis.

That's probably because most people actually know how to balance their budgets better than politicians do. There's a moral in there, somewhere...

The Return Of Funny

Mad Magazine may have paved the way with their cover featuring a panick-stricken Obama during his first one hundred minutes. Now Jon Stewart (among others) has apparently learned that you can in fact have some fun at The One's expense:

Jokes about Obama's speaking style. Jokes about Obama's mannerisms. Jokes about his answers. Jokes about his tedious but very thoughtful-looking pauses, despite the TelePrompter feeding him lines. And about the media's predetermined adoration/critical complex (think Bill 'The Guy Just Bores Me' O'Reilly and Chris 'Thrill Up My Leg' Matthews').

You know the honeymoon's over when late night comics start telling Obama jokes. Quick, somebody call Chris Rock!

Shot Of Sanity

Well, good:

A special court has ruled against parents with autistic children, saying that vaccines are not to blame for their children's neurological disorder.

The judges in the cases said the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the parent's claims _ and backed years of science that found no risk.

More than 5,000 claims were filed with the U.S. Court of Claims alleging that vaccines caused autism and other neurological problems in their children. To win, they had to show that it was more likely than not that the autism symptoms were directly related to the measles-mumps-rubella shots they received.

Sorry, Luddites. Looks like you're going to have to find some other scapegoat.

The Hundred Years' War

John McCain may have been right about staying in a country for a hundred years-he just had the wrong place.

Beyond the fact that we will need to dedicate decades or even a century to Afghanistan, no country in the neighborhood will cooperate except when it directly affects their own interests. They will attempt to squeeze every dollar and concession from us as we help secure their neighborhoods, all while the present drug-dealing Afghan government is bucking like a mule while our government is preparing to pin a significant amount of our combat power in a landlocked country.

There don't seem to be any good long-term solutions to Afghanistan. This will persist long after it ceases to be "Obama's war" and becomes another administration's problem.

Metabotown

A new theory examines how mega-cities are the places to be in a recession.

Big, talent-attracting places benefit from accelerated rates of “urban metabolism,” according to a pioneering theory of urban evolution developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers affiliated with the SantaFe Institute. The rate at which living things convert food into energy—their metabolic rate—tends to slow as organisms increase in size. But when the Santa Fe team examined trends in innovation, patent activity, wages, and GDP, they found that successful cities, unlike biological organisms, actually get faster as they grow. In order to grow bigger and overcome diseconomies of scale like congestion and rising housing and business costs, cities must become more efficient, innovative, and productive. The researchers dubbed the extraordinarily rapid metabolic rate that successful cities are able to achieve “super-linear” scaling. “By almost any measure,” they wrote, “the larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth creation per person.” Places like New York with finance and media, Los Angeles with film and music, and Silicon Valley with hightech are all examples of high-metabolism places.

This might explain the reverse trend of returning from the suburbs to the cities, and why the 'Burbs may wind up becoming 21st century ghost towns. If you want to be part of a healthy body, you ultimately need to leave the sick or dying ones behind.

There Goes De Judge

Jailing juveniles is apparently a cash cow in Pennsylvania.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

'I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,' said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.
The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.

So how did they rank their cases? Was a senior worth more than an eighth grader? Or were the judges equal opportunity crooks?

All's Fairness In Love And Radio

And now the Impeached One adds his voice to those calling for "Fairness" on the airwaves:

Even though no member of Congress has scheduled hearings on the Fairness Doctrine, it remains on a hot topic on both liberal and conservative shows.

Today, radio host Mario Solis Marich asked former President Bill Clinton if it was time for 'some type of enforced media accountability.'

'Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side,' Clinton said, 'because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous....'

Clinton said that there needs to be either 'more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer countervailing opinions.' Clinton added that he didn't support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan's FCC.

Obama has said that he's against bringing it back. But how long can he hold out?

People For The Creation Of A Master Race

When it comes to PETA, stupidity knows no bounds.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals knows how to grab attention. And show off its laundry.

The animal rights group, which every year stages a protest at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, had two of its members dress in Ku Klux Klan garb outside Madison Square Garden on Monday.

Their goal, according to a post on the PETA website, was to draw a parallel between the KKK and the American Kennel Club. 'Obviously it's an uncomfortable comparison,' PETA spokesman Michael McGraw told the Associated Press.

But the AKC is trying to create a 'master race' when it comes to pure-bred dogs, he added. 'It's a very apt comparison.'

The group passed out brochures implying the Klan and AKC have the goal of 'pure bloodlines' in common.

And it seems that fanatical vegeratians all have pure idiocy in common.

The Burning Green

Going green can be deadly.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. 'We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down,' he said.

'We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake.'

Later, the meeting was cut short when Mr Spooner's father, Dennis, collapsed in his chair and an ambulance had to be called. Despite losing his wife and son and everything he owned, a friend later said he had not stopped or slept since the weekend.

Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.

There was widespread applause when Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen said changes were likely to be made about the council's policy surrounding native vegetation.

But his response was not good enough for Mr Spooner: 'It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people.'

When you make vegetation more important than people, this is what happens. More than arson, environmentalism can be fatal.

Cow Cola

People do strange things in the name of nationalism.

Does your Pepsi lack pep? Is your Coke not the real thing? India's Hindu nationalist movement apparently has the answer: a new soft drink made from cow urine.

The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.

Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called 'gau jal', or 'cow water' – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched 'very soon, maybe by the end of this year'.

'Don't worry, it won't smell like urine and will be tasty too,' he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. 'Its USP will be that it's going to be very healthy. It won't be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins.'

The drink is the latest attempt by the RSS – which was founded in 1925 and now claims eight million members – to cleanse India of foreign influence and promote its ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness.

I wonder if you go into a Hindu McDonalds, will they offer this with the sacred fries?

Pardon Us While We Commit Hari Kari

They just can't seem to help shooting themselves in the foot:

An influential conservative political action committee is pledging to support primary challenges to any Republican senator who backs the economic stimulus package—the latest public show of dissatisfaction from the right over the massive measure before Congress.

GOP Sens. Arlen Specter and Susan Collins are two of the three Republicans who voted for the stimulus bill.

Three GOP senators voted for the $838 billion compromise version of the package that the Senate approved Tuesday, but all three have said they might not vote for the final version.

“The American people don’t want this trillion-dollar political payoff that will just line the pockets of non-governmental organizations who supported [President Barack] Obama in the election,” said Scott Wheeler, the executive director of The National Republican Trust PAC, an organization that calls for less government spending and lower taxes.

The American people also don't want a movement that seems more interested in "Purity" and less in what's actually good for the country. I think the bill stinks, but it did have a lot of what the Republicans wanted-and yet only three of them showed up to support it. Enjoy your time in that wilderness, guys.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1863

It was undoubtadly the social event of the season:

At last they came. Preceding them was the self-posessed, the self-poised, the shrewd-eyed, kindly-faced BARNUM-BARNUM, the Prince of Showmen, the manager of the affair, which is, in his own word, "the biggest little thing that was ever known. After the General and the Queen, followed Com. Nutt, the groomsman, and MISS MINNIE WARREN, the bridesmaid. An instananteous uprising ensued; all lookedm few saw; many stood upon the seats, others stood upon stools placed on the seats; by many good breeding was forgotten, by very many the sancity of the occasion and the sacredness of the ceremonies were entirely ignored. As the little party toddled up the aisle a sense of the ludicrous seemed to hit many a bump of fun and irrepressible and unpleasantly audible giggle ran through the church.

After a moment's reflection, the most absolute silence was maintained and the bride and groom, supported by the bridesmaid and groomsman, stood upon an elevated platform faceing the altar, where stood the officiating ministers.

It should be of some comfort to know that, even amidst a time of war and turmoil, the pomp and circumstance of matrimony is alive and well.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1979

They said they wanted a Revolution:

Armed supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the last centers of military resistance to the Iranian revolution here today, and with anarchy appearing to engulf much of the capital, he appealed for an end to the violence in a bid to prevent the uprising from slipping out of control.

So, the Ayatollah has himself a country. But can he keep it?

The Bigots That Weren't There

Shannon Love reports on when stereotypes fail.

So, a white, Catholic, leftist, college student dresses as a Muslim woman in small-town Alabama to examine predjuces against Muslims. [h/t Instapundit] Instead she finds:


“I expected people to say, ‘What is this terrorist doing here? We don’t want your kind here,’ ” said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. “I thought I wouldn’t even be served.”

Instead, Woldt’s experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through a small-town restaurant’s doors, her experience was a pleasant one.

What Woldt discovered was not the prejudices of the small-town, southern, white American but instead the prejudices and stereotypes of contemporary leftist academia. Woldt expected to find prejudice not because she had already seen it but because her education indoctrinated her to expect it in others. This little incident opens a window on the insular, elitist and bigoted world of leftists in contemporary academia.

Crusaders against bigotry are...bigots themselves? Who knew?

The 'Roid Economy

I don't know if this is quite the analogy I'd want to make if I were Obama:

President Barack Obama picked up support for his stimulus package from an unexpected source today as Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez said that he was "totally in favor of stimulus."

"Sometimes when you have to get the job done, you need a shot in the arm," said Mr. Rodriguez at a press conference in the parking lot of Yankee Stadium. "This stimulus sounds like it could be that injection."

The slugger, known to his fans and detractors alike as A-Rod, said that the U.S. economy may not seem very muscular at the moment, but that "juicing the economy" could change that overnight.

The problem is that, like "Juice," it's a temporary fix and has a tendency to shrink certain things. Although I suppose you could compare your wallet to certain body parts in this case...

Bonggate Update

The crazy continues:

We've now learned that since investigators began trying to build a case, they've made eight arrests: seven for drug possession and one for distribution. These are arrests that resulted as the sheriff's department served search warrants. We've also learned that the department has located and confiscated that bong.

Along with the A-Rod situation, this has to be one of the biggest non-stories of the year. I mean, it's not like there's an economic meltdown going on or something, right?

Working For Mrs. C

Forget about Obama-it seems the real hot ticket in town is working for Hillary.

Hillary Clinton’s famously sharp-elbowed staffers are jockeying to land jobs with her at the State Department, but there’s not enough room at Foggy Bottom for everyone who wants to work for her again.

Sources familiar with the application process call it “fierce,” with staffers from Clinton’s Senate office, her presidential campaign and her HillPac political action committee all vying for the attention of former Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams, who’s handling the hiring for the new secretary of state.

“There’s definitely a lot of elbowing and competition for it, no question,” said a former Clinton aide who’s been watching the process unfold. “Hillary has a lot of fans, and everyone is always angling to be in her inner orbit.”

“It’s typical Hillary staff behavior, and it really shouldn’t surprise anyone given the strong jockeying and shuffling during the presidential campaign,” said another former aide with lots of friends in the process.“It was cutthroat to say the least. This process is very similar.”

Obama may be the President, but to her followers Hillary is apparently still the Queen.

When In Doubt, Do Nothing?

Should we really just leave well enough alone?

Our greatest need at present is for the government to go in the opposite direction, to do much less, rather than much more. As recently as the major recession of 1920-21, the government took a hands-off position, and the downturn, though sharp, quickly reversed itself into full recovery. In contrast, Hoover responded to the downturn of 1929 by raising tariffs, propping up wage rates, bailing out farmers, banks, and other businesses, and financing state relief efforts. Roosevelt moved even more vigorously in the same activist direction, and the outcome was a protracted period of depression (and wartime privation) from which complete recovery did not come until 1946.

Of course, there are a lot of differences between now and the 1920's, not the least of which is that government is much more involved in our lives. I don't think we should be doing nothing-but I think even FDR would be surprised at how far his methods are being taken today.

The Post Unipolar Era

Andrew Bacevich puts another nail in the neocon coffin:

What we’ve learned is this: First, liberalism’s widely touted victory is at best incomplete. Especially in the Islamic world, a stubborn search for alternatives persists. Our insistence that others do things our way exacerbates the opposition we face. Second, unipolarity is a chimera, a dangerous refusal to acknowledge the world’s complexity. Third, to pursue global hegemony is to court bankruptcy. To persist in imagining otherwise will only hasten America’s decline. Fourth, although globalization may be real, the United States can neither direct its course nor fully insulate itself from its adverse effects.

The neocon philosophy was based on the idea of an insular, yet activist, America that was dominant in world affairs. Unfortunately, what could havebeen a reaffirmation of America's ideals during the Bush era turned into an expansionist and exclusionary agenda, and our image suffered for it. Such is the price of expansionism without considering the consequences.

Bloggin' In The Years: 1950

Well, this should put his mind at ease:

The state department today denied charges by Sen. McCarthy [R., Wis.] that it has 57 card carrying Communists on its payroll and that 300 employes have been certified as disloyal by the President's loyalty review board.

But I'm sure Sen. McCarthy will find some other place to continue his witch hunt. The Army, perhaps?

Bloggin' In The Years: 1964

The Fab Four have arrived.

Physically, the Beatle invasion was launched just after 1 p.m. when their airliner touched down to pandemonium at Kennedy Airport. But in fact New York has been in the tightening grip of Beatlemania for some weeks and the arrival merely confirmed that the idols really do exist in body as well as voice.

There were more than three thousand teenagers at the airport who had rallied from distant states as well as New York City, had skipped schools, faced dismissal form their jobs, and were carrying placards that had such amorous slogans as, 'I love you, please stay.' Just as there had been weeping when they left London, so there was weeping when the Beatles arrived here. But here the tears were for joy.

Shouts and squeals

There were shouts, too, and squeals when the four Beatles with their numerous entourage emerged from the plane. Maximum police protection had been called out for them - the kind of arrangement that is usually produced for kings and presidents. Certainly without the police barriers little would be left of the Beatles by now - just everyone wanted to get a close sniff of the Beatle aura.

It may be an insidious Commie plot, or maybe just the Brits' revenge for 1776. Your ears have been warned.

Obama Von Doom

Is Obama's attempt to be the next FDR going to backfire on him?

While President Bush was accused shortly after taking office in 2001 of 'talking down the economy' - and for saying the economy was 'slowing down' - Mr. Obama is using ever-heightening hyperbole to hammer home his message. But the strategy brings great risk for the 'Yes, We Can' man, who just three weeks ago told America in his inaugural address that despite 'a sapping of confidence across our land,' his election meant Americans had 'chosen hope over fear.'

'Mr. Hope has to be careful not to become Dr. Doom,' said Frank Luntz, a political consultant and author of the book 'Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear.'

'The danger for him is using the Jimmy Carter malaise rhetoric, particularly for Mr. Obama, who was elected because people thought he was the solution. There's only so much negativity they will tolerate from him before they will feel betrayed,' Mr. Luntz said.
Brad Blakeman, a senior aide to Mr. Bush from 2001 to 2004, said the new president's language is immature.

'It's not presidential. An American leader needs to be hopeful and optimistic - and truthful. Everything he says is parsed; everything he says is searched for deep meaning. When he goes to 'DefCon 5' on the economy and says that we're on the brink of catastrophe, it's absolutely insane.'

Maybe a little more of the cool he showed on the campaign trail and less of the scare tactics would be in order for the man who would be the Agent of Change.

Shot Of Reality

Well looky here.

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal.

It's bad enough when climate "Experts" use dodgy evidence to back up their claims of impending doom. It's even worse when doctors do it. In their zeal to save children from the evils of vaccination, those who listened to this quack actually did the opposite.

Stimulate? Yes We Can!

At least he's being honest about it:

When asked whether the stimulus package had turned into a spending spree, President Obama acknowledged it with pride. “That’s the point. Seriously, that’s the point.”

But that’s not the point; not the point at all. And it’s a shame BHO doesn’t realize it and a greater shame if he does. The real question is whether current government solutions to the crisis contribute to political risk or reduce it. That means knowing what’s broke before applying the screwdriver to the screw.

Oh, I think the screw is already well underway here.

Their Turn

Are they being cocky, or are they actually on to something?

In normal times, Congress might never enlarge so many programs at once. But, as with Reagan’s tax cut, the crisis-induced demand for action may suspend the normal laws of political gravity—and allow Democrats to redirect federal priorities as boldly as Reagan did. “This is a once-in-a-25-year opportunity to [implement] a lot of our agenda,” a top House Democratic aide says. Largely for that reason, most congressional Republicans are likely to resist the plan, no matter how many more tax cuts Obama offers them.

There's no doubt they control the agenda. Whether that's what's really good for the country remains to be seen.

Silence Is Golden, Sometimes

It's a mistake many make-confusing opinion with fact.

I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing — a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.'

Sometimes it really is best just to keep your mouth shut.

The Lonely Age

From a lengthy essay on our technological isolation, how our online era has resulted in creating conversational fast food.

It's important to distinguish between being alone and being lonely. In the new book Loneliness, University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo and his Massachusetts coauthor William Patrick argue the pangs of loneliness that we sometimes experience are the evolutionary equivalent of the shooting pain we feel after touching a hot stove. These pangs are ingrained reminders of how bad social disconnection is for our well-being. Cacioppo uses everything from brain imaging to blood-pressure analysis to demonstrate the serious drag on our health that loneliness can have.

At first pass, this line of thought would seem to contradict the argument Storr made in Solitude and pretty much everything I've written to this point. Yet that's not the case at all. It turns out that research shows people who feel lonely are no more likely to be physically alone. Cacioppo acknowledges that solitude can be very healthy, and he compares loneliness to a sort of thermostat, a state of mind that kicks in at different points for different people.

While we humans need social interaction, he's in agreement that we won't find it through Twittering and texting. Cacioppo points to research showing that electronic communication can increase social isolation and depression "when it replaces more tangible forms of human contact." Another team of psychologists termed this form of communication "social snacking." But, as he writes, a snack is not a meal.

So why do we feel so compelled to swap messages with people who aren't next to us and rack up hundreds of friends to keep electronic tabs on?

Perhaps because at heart, we, like other primates, are still social creatures at heart. Maybe we just need to learn how to stay away from the digital stove more often.

An Early Frost

Maelstrom notes how Frost/Nixon may have unintentionally helped in his rehabilitation:

Problem is, he doesn't come across as evil at all. In fact, there are so many points in the movie where he's validated--as a powerhouse diplomat, as a strong leader, even his defense of Vietnam is better than his enemies' attack--that when the moment finally comes where he admits to abuse of power, it seems sort of trivial. Downright petty even. And his own confession of guilt and clear feelings of disappointment and shame, well, 30 years out, I began to feel like we weren't really worthy of him--and that I wouldn't mind having him in charge today.

TIP: If you want to demonize someone, you probably shouldn't put a great stage actor up there to play him.

Nixon had his faults, to be sure. And he broke the law and was rightfully held to account for it. But he wasn't a dumb guy. Not having seen the movie, I can't say how accurate the portrayal of his character is. But making him unintentionally sympathetic may be the greatest testament to the kind of guy he really was.

Lessons From Abroad

Is this our future?

Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery. Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. . . . Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

But it seems we don't learn from history.

Dude, Where's My Mini-Depression?

I guess this is it:

The country moved into its second year of uninterrupted job losses last month, with companies shedding another 598,000 jobs and the unemployment rate moving up to 7.6 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

Economists had forecast a loss of 540,000 jobs and a unemployment rate of 7.5 percent.
Job losses were once again spread across both manufacturing and services industries, reinforcing the picture of an economy that is contracting at its fastest pace in decades.

Employers in the United States have shed jobs every month since January 2008, for an aggregate decline in payroll employment of 3.1 million.

The problem with the stimulus is that it most likely won't replace these jobs, but a lot of people will still get their share of pork pie. And the beat goes on...

The Green Sugar Bill

As the debate continues, the National Review has a good take on who would get what:

One theme in this bill is superfluous spending items coated with green sugar to make them more palatable. Both NASA and NOAA come in for appropriations that properly belong in the regular budget, but this spending apparently qualifies for the stimulus bill because part of the money from each allocation is reserved for climate-change research.....

The problem with trying to spend $1 trillion quickly is that you end up wasting a lot of it. Take, for instance, the proposed $4.5 billion addition to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers budget. Not only does this effectively double the Corps’ budget overnight, but it adds to the Corps’ $3.2 billion unobligated balance—money that has been appropriated, but that the Corps has not yet figured out how to spend......

Speaking of spending money unwisely, the stimulus bill adds another $850 million for Amtrak, the railroad that can’t turn a profit. There’s also $1.7 billion for “critical deferred maintenance needs” in the National Park System, and $55 million for the preservation of historic landmarks. Also, the U.S. Coast Guard needs $87 million for a polar icebreaking ship—maybe global warming isn’t working fast enough.

It looks like everybody will literally be getting their share. And everybody else will wind up paying for it.

The New Frontier

It's the Wild West of trade:

Globalization is like America’s rapid and aggressive push Westward across the 19th century: a lot of the same bad actors and a lot of the same tools applied. So don’t be surprised when the Pinkertons show up, or when the covered wagons are attacked, or when the Injuns head to the Badlands for sanctuary. Thus, the goals of our frontline players are fairly straightforward: create the baseline security to allow the connectivity to grow.

And, like the old cowboys and free-range drovers who didn't like barbed wire, the opponents of free trade are fighting against the enroachment of civilization. But it's still a losing battle.

Follow The Bailouts

Well, this might explain those junkets to the Caribbean:

In efforts to stabilize troubled banks, the Treasury Department overpaid those institutions by nearly $80 billion, the head of a bailout oversight panel told lawmakers Thursday.

Throwing money at a problem to make it go away doesn't always work. And sometimes, it's not really a problem.

The Shovel Economy

Popular Mechanics is skeptical about creating an army of shovelers:

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice.

Maybe an army of electricians or plumbers might be appropriate. But it would still cost a bundle, wouldn't it?

Fair Play The Hard Way

One man's censorship is another politician's fairness:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told nationally syndicated talk host Bill Press this morning that the recent flips of liberal Talk stations in several markets were a 'disservice to the public.'

Stabenow said that, in the day of the Fairness Doctrine, 'you had to have balance,' and continued, 'I think something that requires that in a market with owners that have multiple stations that they have got to have balance -- there has to be some community interest -- balance, you know, standard that says both sides have to be heard.'
....

When Press asked if it is time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, Stabenow responded, 'I think it's absolutely time to pass a standard.' To Press' inquiry as to whether she will push for hearings in the Seante 'to bring these owners in and hold them accountable,' Stabenow replied, 'I have already had some discussions with colleagues, and, you know, I feel like that's going to happen. Yep.'

I wonder if Ms. Stabenow would make the same demands of, say, Air America or Alan Colmes? Just to provide some "Balance," you understand.

Waiting For What Clampdown?

Well, so much for that idea:

Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial institutions receiving federal aid aren’t likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced yesterday by President Barack Obama.

The rules, created in response to growing public anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to top executives at companies that need “exceptional” assistance in the future. The limits aren’t retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money won’t be subject to the restrictions unless they have to come back for more.

The new guidelines are the first salvo in a broader financial-rescue plan Obama plans to announce next week. The president and Congress have had to defend billions in aid to banks that continue to provide generous bonuses and luxury perks while posting record losses. Pay caps may provide the political cover the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector that may be necessary.

Some analysts said the new rules wouldn’t have much effect.

Obama, 47, “is not proposing to go back and get that $18.4 billion in bonuses back,” Laura Thatcher, head of law firm Alston & Bird’s executive compensation practice in Atlanta, said of the cash bonuses New York banks paid last year, the sixth- biggest haul in history. “Right now, we have not clamped down” on pay at banks.

Apparently some bailout recipients are more equal than others...

Problem Solved?

How to solve a crisis, libertarian style:

Moderate the Growth of Entitlements: The elephant in the room amidst the stimulus debate is the impending imbalance in Social Security and Medicare as the baby boom generation moves into retirement. Without reductions in benefits, taxes will have to increase substantially, generating a major drag on the U.S. economy.......

Eliminate Wasteful Spending: Most discussion of the stimulus focuses on areas where, according to proponents, government spending should be higher. Much current expenditure, however, is wasteful.

Examples include agricultural subsidies, bloated transportation projects like the Big Dig in Boston, misguided infrastructure projects like the New Orleans levees (why encourage people to live below sea level?), ineffective weapons systems, pork barrel spending, and subsidies for Amtrak and the Post Office (buses are more efficient than railways, and Fedex is more efficient than the Post Office).....

Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan: President Obama plans to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq over the next eighteen months, while expanding U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It is hard to see, however, that any good arises from dragging out our Iraq exit or from staying in Afghanistan. The government should move toward faster withdrawal, and from both countries....

Renew the U.S. Commitment to Free Trade: One crucial danger in the current environment is that the U.S. and other countries will embrace protectionist policies.....The Obama fiscal stimulus risks reviving this insanity, since both the House and Senate bills require that certain stimulus-funded projects use U.S. equipment and goods. The administration should oppose these provisions......

Stop Bailing out Businesses that Took on Too Much Risk: Popular opinion blames deregulation and private sector greed for the financial meltdown, but the reality is more subtle.

Existing regulation was ineffective at preventing excessive risk-taking, and the private sector did its best to profit from the incentives that were in place. The extreme increase in risk-taking, however, would not have occurred absent policies that encouraged such risk (e.g., Fannie Mae or the Fed's reassurances about housing bubbles) or past bailouts that cushioned the losses from private risk-taking.

Makes sense to me. The question is whether the politicians on either side are brave enough to try it.

Our American Taliban

Oh, brother:

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

In other words, it's about tactics, not ideas. Welcome to the Stupid Party.

Cult Of Personality

Amy Welborn is concerned about the direction the Catholic Church has taken under Benedict:

Secrecy, hero-worship, deification of individuals, reflexive dismissal of critics as wrong-headed or even of the devil, an untoward interest in money and appearance, manipulation of members, demeaning attitudes toward non-members, deceptive means … trouble.

It could also be used to describe the Republican Party...

Life After Hardball

Are the Republicans being the loyal opposition, or just obstinate?

I'm not alarmed that this process is messy or contentious within some limits. But it also seems to me that this president and this new Congress were elected in part to address this issue, that their more interventionist stand was clear, and that they should both get the benefit of the doubt - as well as full responsibility for the consequences.

The GOP has every right to resist; but they should surely understand that they lost the last election; that they have no credibility on fiscal discipline; and that, when push comes to shove, it may be the responsible thing in a crisis like this to be a little more gracious in setting aside hardball partisanship.

Make no mistake, I think it's a bad bill. But perhaps the best way for the Republican Congresscritters to respond to Obama's impending disaster rhetoric is to come up with a better plan, instead of blocking any plan at all.

Caifornia Dyin'?

First, no affordable housing, next, no water?

California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation's leading agricultural producer.

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

'I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,' he said. 'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California.' And, he added, 'I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going' either.

Needless to say, not everyone is impressed:

Global warming skeptics were not swayed. "I am hopeful Secretary Chu will take note of the real-world data, new studies and the growing chorus of international scientists that question his climate claims," Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement. "Computer model predictions of the year 2100 are simply not evidence of a looming climate catastrophe."

But they are evidence that somebody's been sipping a little too much of Al Gore's Koolaid.

Born Under A Bad Sign

Libras need not apply.

A row has broken out in Austria after a company tried to recruit workers born under certain star signs.

The Salzburg insurance company posted an advert in major newspapers seeking employees for sales and management that were born under certain constellations, claiming statistics indicated that they were the best workers.'We are looking for people over 20 for part-time jobs in sales and management with the following star signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius, Aries and Leo,' read the ad that appeared over the weekend.

It was followed by a wave of protests from equality groups and led to an investigation by the country’s anti-discrimination authorities.The company is, however, sticking to its guns and a spokesman explained that the move was based on statistical research rather than superstition.

'A statistical study indicated that almost all of our best employees across Austria have one of the five star signs.

'We only decided to continue with that system and hire the best workers,' the spokesman said.

I guess I'd qualify since I'm a Taurus. I'll have to check with my astrologer on this.

Bailouts, Nyet

They get it:

Russia signalled a change in its policies to fight the financial crisis on Wednesday, indicating that it would switch from bailing out individual companies to supporting the economy through the banking sector.

Moscow also plans huge budget cuts in an attempt to limit its fiscal deficit – rejecting pressure to follow the US and other western countries to try to stimulate the economy with a big boost in public borrowing.

The proposals suggest that Moscow is losing hope it can stave off the crisis with public spending and is instead battening down the hatches for what might be a prolonged recession.

The plans also indicate that the authorities are not giving in to public demands for a quick-fix response and are ready to resist pressure for money from cash-strapped oligarchs.

And I would wager that things are more unstable in Russia than they are in Western Europe. Who would have thought that we would one day become more socialist than the Russians?

Waste Not, Lose Not

Are we making the same mistakes in Afghanistan that we did in Iraq?

Waste and corruption that marred Iraq's reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the U.S. transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned Monday.

The U.S. has devoted more than $30 billion to rebuilding Afghanistan. Yet despite the hard lessons learned in Iraq, where the U.S. has spent nearly $51 billion on reconstruction, the effort in Afghanistan is headed down the same path, the watchdogs told a new panel investigating wartime contracts.

'Before we go pouring more money in, we really need to know what we're trying to accomplish (in Afghanistan),' said Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. 'And at what point do you turn off the spigot so you're not pouring money into a black hole?'

Cruz, along with Stuart Bowen, the top U.S. official overseeing Iraq's reconstruction, delivered a grim report to the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Their assessment, along with testimony from Thomas Gimble of the Defense Department inspector general's office, laid out a history of poor planning, weak oversight and greed that soaked U.S. taxpayers and undermined American forces in Iraq.

....

The U.S. government "was neither prepared for nor able to respond quickly to the ever-changing demands" of stabilizing Iraq and then rebuilding it, said Bowen. "For the last six years we have been on a steep learning curve."

Overall, the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion since 2003 for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.......

There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, said Gimble, the Pentagon's principal deputy inspector general.

I guess you could argue that if we didn't teach them corruption, they wouldn't make good politicians...

Barack, Meet Booker

Was Booker T. Washington the first African-American conservative?

Like most men of his time, Washington did not believe that anyone could spend their way to success. Progress ultimately rested on a solid foundation of hard work, thrift, and production. Excessive debt, especially without the means to repay it, only created a trap leading to more debt and regress. It is doubtful that Washington could imagine the endless bailouts of our own day. They certainly would have appalled him.

It certainly would have been interesting to see what Mr. Washington would have to say about today's liberals and so-called civil rights leaders. I doubt it would be very polite.

The Ordinary One

This seems to have been the week for the Obama adminstration to come down to Earth.

An old story, with new actors, played out Tuesday: A new president's team imperfectly vetted top nominees. The nominees, it turns out, had not paid taxes for household help or other services when they were private citizens. The news media and political adversaries bored in. And rather than spend more valuable time and political capital defending the appointees, the administration dropped them and moved on.

In other words, Obama may be more ordinary than some admirers would like to admit. He will surely struggle, over the coming weeks and months, with the economy, health care, military matters and Congress, much as other presidents have.

That's hardly an indictment. But Obama's rocket ride to the White House, his extraordinary speaking skills, and his smooth, I-don't-sweat style had some people calling him 'the one,' a once-in-a-generation political leader who could rise above his predecessors' foibles.

On Tuesday, at least, he seemed to be trying to learn from their mistakes to cut his losses.

This does seem to be a key difference between Obama and his two-term predecessors. But perhaps he should just send his next list of nominees over to the IRS just to be on the safe side...

The Protectionists Among Us

First Canada, now the EU:

The EU has increased its pressure on the US to reconsider the 'Buy American' clause in the $800bn (£567bn) economic recovery package now before Congress.

The clause seeks to ensure that only US iron, steel and manufactured goods are used in projects funded by the bill.

A European Commission spokesman said it was the 'worst possible signal'.

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said President Obama had assured her the US would not follow protectionist policies.

'He stressed that,' she said.

The rescue plan has already been approved by the US House of Representatives and is under discussion in the Senate this week, which could sign it off before the weekend.

To his credit, Obama has said that he'll "Review" the protectionist clause. It didn't work for Bush when he tried steel tarrifs, and this won't work for OBama. Hopefully he's smart enough to get it.

The Payments Stop Here

Here we go again.

Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, the White House said Tuesday.

Killefer was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after President Barack Obama announced their selection.

The White House said Obama had accepted Killefer's decision and that the 55-year-old executive with consulting giant McKinsey & Co., would explain her reasons for pulling out later Tuesday.

I believe Obama is sincere when he says he wants accountability. But would it hurt him too much to try and find people who actually pay their "Fair share" like the rest of us?

Don't Drink The Bong Water

Oh, jeeze:

Olympic superstar Michael Phelps could face criminal charges as part of the fallout from a photo that surfaced showing the swimmer smoking from a marijuana pipe at a University of South Carolina house party.

A spokesman for Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who is known for his tough stance on drugs, said Tuesday the department was investigating.

'Our narcotics division is reviewing the information that we have, and they're investigating what charges, if any, will be filed,' said Lt. Chris Cowan, a spokesman for agency.

The photo first shown in British tabloid News of the World on Sunday was snapped during a November party while Phelps was visiting the university, according to the paper.

I can't think of a better argument for the decriminalization of marijuana use, if only so that it would put jackasses like Lott out of work.

Speak No Evil

This is not good news, but also, unfortunately, not surprising:

Anything which can be deemed 'religious' is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah 'will not happen' and 'Islam will not be crucified in this council' – and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.

But remember, it's in the name of "Human rights."

Le Stimulus Resistance

Not everyone thinks following the Obama way is a good idea.

Prime Minister François Fillon on Monday rejected demands that the French government seek to stimulate consumer spending, rather than follow his plan to stimulate corporate and infrastructure investment, to lift France out of its economic slump.

'It would be irresponsible to chose another policy, which would increase our country's indebtedness without having more infrastructure and increased competitiveness in the end,' Fillon said in a speech in Lyon.

More than 1.1 million people took to the streets across France last Thursday, according to the Interior Ministry, with unions putting the number of protesters at 2.5 million, to call on President Nicolas Sarkozy to stop cutting government jobs, increase the minimum wage and spend more on households as the economy enters its first recession since 1993.

Opponents of the government have been calling for an 'Obama-style' stimulus plan, one that puts money directly into the pockets of working people.

Or, as it's known abroad, the continuation of the welfare state.

Bite Me

How unpopular is Bloomberg these days? Even the groundhog doesn't like him:

Staten Island's grumpy groundhog, Charles G. Hogg, predicted an early spring this morning, but not before taking a bite out of Mayor Bloomberg for forcing him into weather prognostication.

Making his 28th Groundhog Day appearance, Staten Island Chuck wasn't thrilled about the whole business of being pulled out of his warm wooden home and lifted in the air by the mayor to the cheers of a crowd.

Bloomberg tried to lure him with a corn cob.

The 10-pound critter just snatched the cob and retreated into his home.

There then followed an undignified tussle over the corn cob between mayor and groundhog.
Finally, a zoo worker finally gave the furry forecaster a discrete shove from behind, Bloomberg grabbed him - and Chuck chomped.

'He got my finger pretty good,' Bloomberg said as he held Chuck in the air and declared an early spring.

Maybe he was just making a statement about the Mayor's nannystating...

The Thrifty Generation

American consumers seem to be smarter than their elected officials:

The latest economic data released Monday painted a picture of American consumers and businesses embarking on an era of thrift as the recession deepens, spending less on consumer goods, housing and big-ticket developments like office buildings and hotels.

Americans cut their spending for a sixth month in December and, perhaps more significant, put more into their savings accounts, the government reported Monday, as they worried about losing their jobs and earning less in a deteriorating economy.

So there's at least one group that isn't necessarily looking for the government to save them. If only Congress could have learned the same thing.

Stimulating The Fourth Estate

Here we have yet another call for a bailout of the press:

Congress, intent on jump-starting the economy, should set aside $100 million - well under 1 percent of the stimulus approved by the House of Representatives and pending in the Senate - for a national journalism fund.

The cash would seed low-cost, Internet-based news operations in cities large and small - combining vigorous, professional reporting with blogging, video posts, citizen journalism, and aggregation of stories from other sources.

Why is it that liberals who complain about government influence in the media think it's a good thing if the media gets some money out of it?

Finding Your Inner Hermit

Looking for a little peace and quiet was apparently even more difficult in the past than it is today.

Medieval Europeans in general simply accepted their lack of “personal space,” but others valued it and desired it sufficiently to retreat from the world, as hermits and anchorites, in order to get it. But these were necessarily special cases. Until the nineteenth century in Europe and other economically developed parts of the world, very few people have been able to find either solitude or silence.

These days, the trend seems to be the other way. However, someone from the Middle Ages would be amazed at the amount of privacy we actually have these days in spite of the increased surveillance and intrusion into our lives. The need for personal space hasn't changed; only the ways we can get it.

The Other Side Of Disbelief

Why angry atheism doesn't work:

There are more people who claim a religious devotion than not, in this world, by billions. There are more in this country by millions. You don’t argue your way out of niches by constantly thumbing your noses at the people who you’re trying to convert. The question then becomes, are they converting at all? Or are they merely asserting superiority?

Using the teactics of your opponents to score points is no way to win any argument. Dogmatic attitudes can afflict both sides, and we've already seen how that can affect politics. Philosophy doesn't have to be a battleground.

Saved By TiVo

DVR technology seems to havethe power to keep cult shows on the air:

Lost, for instance, would be unthinkable without those technologies. The audience would have necessarily dwindled as it went on (because new viewers would be hopelessly confused) or the show would have had to solve many more of its mysteries more expediently, to make space for entry points for latecomers.

It would have been interesting to see what effect TiVo might have had on shows like the original Star Trek. As it is, that's why we have DVD box sets and another reason why I prefer our high-tech age.

Now Stop, You'll Make Him Blush

She loves him for his mind:

Renee Zellweger has a new man in her life, but he doesn't know it.

'I have a crush on Jimmy Carter. I admit it,' Zellweger says. 'He has an extraordinary mind. He's an exceptional human being. And he writes poetry, for crying out loud. He's all good things.'

So wowed was Zellweger that she waited in the blistering Manhattan cold for 21/2 hours on Monday to have the 39th president sign her copy of his latest book, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.

Aside from the way he handled the Iran hostage crisis and the economy, and the fact that he literally builds crappy houses, he's all good things. It's all good, baby!