Waiting for Spring and some warming. It was 23 F here in NYC this morning.
The states that are begging for bailouts. Talk about moral hazard. It's a terrible precedent.
Of course AIG paid their money out to banks and funds. That's what the money was for.
Dem tax crook of the day.
From Tiger:
I ... do not think that anger improves any argument ever, or that the intensity of anger influences the morality or justice of an argument. The merits of an argument are quite independent of the emotion with which the argument is conveyed. Finally, it is the job of elected leaders in any serious country to dampen anger rather than accelerate it. To the extent our politicians (of either party) are exploiting or promoting anger rather than calming people they are doing their constituents and their country a great disservice. The exploitation of anger is the specialty of demagogues and dictators, and is not worthy of American leaders. Not even members of the House of Representatives.
The CBO on the federal gummint's share of the economy:
As a share of GDP, CBO says this means spending will hit an astounding 28.5% in fiscal 2009, which ends this September, and still be at 25.5% next year, staying at close to 23% to 24% of the economy for the next decade. As CBO dryly notes, this is "above the average of 20.7 percent over the past 40 years." Even CBO's estimate is conservative because it assumes that most of the spending in the stimulus bill will be temporary, though Democrats are already planning to make much of it a permanent part of the budget baseline.
John at Powerline has become a warming denialist. Just in time: the rationalists have won the debate.
Nobel Economist Gary Becker: This is no time to concede to big government
False Solutions and Real Problems. Jarhead
Why financial regulation never works. Mankiw
Dodd's wife was a Director of an AIG company
Predator drones are killing Al Qaida
The MSM should resign over Obama's failures.
Related, Steyn:
The trouble with all this off-prompter stuff — the Special Olympics joke, the whining about everyone in Washington being a Simon Cowell wannabe — is that the glimpses of the unscripted Obama are disquieting in what they reveal.
And one thing they reveal is that O doesn't seem to know much:
All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company's name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on.
Unbelievable. Orion is one of the best-known constellations, mostly because it actually looks like its namesake. So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I'm beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.
To what extent is his self-confidence and reputation for brains justified? Or is he just another slick and shallow narcissistic pol?
