Sunday, January 25. 2009
Photo above via Moonbattery. It would be a good ad for Dunkin Donuts. (Yes, that is The Kid from Brooklyn.) Starbucks seems to be in trouble.
Went to see Slumdog last night, but both seatings were sold out.
Waxman as Boogie Man
Would a nicer NRA be more effective? Reason
Mitch Daniels, Hoosier rock star
Black preachers did not like Obama's religious references
What's up with GE? Megan. Always been one of my favorite stocks...
Obama's attack on Rush. Good for Rush. His plan is working. Says Insty:
WERE OBAMA’S ATTACKS ON LIMBAUGH AND FOX A MISTAKE? “Beyond the absurdity of a Democrat barking orders at his political opposition, he’s especially foolish to air his fear of Limbaugh and talk radio in a public setting.”
Plus this: “I’m picturing Rush delirious with glee, pacing the cavernous rooms of his mansion, booming out monologues to his kitty cat Pumpkin, as he waits for Monday noon to finally roll around. This will be good.”
Is Iran terrorism's Mother Regime?
I didn't know PBS did stuff like this: Lesson Plan on the Economy
Welcome back Carter? Anchoress
Sarkozy to rescue French newspapers.
Eric Holder on the fairness doctrine. NRO
Headline comparison:
Headlines 4 years ago:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party, Ordinary Americans get the shaft"
Headlines last week:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million"
"Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"
"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"
Female tree below from Theo, of course.
Saturday, January 24. 2009
Amusingly pointed, from Steyn. He rightly quotes Matthew Parris:
This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily by complicated credit instruments that it took a while for the market to rumble.
Moonbat warmist crank James Lovelock interviewed by a sexy babe named Gaia, at Jules. Lovelock predicts a "90% cull" of humans. I predict that somebody in his family will get him back on his medication.
Close Gitmo? OK. And then what? Laura Ingraham suggested sending them all to Barbra Streisand's neighborhood. The Obama transcript is an embarassment. The guy doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.
Big Lizards has good thoughts on the subject.
Friday, January 23. 2009
Remarkable photos of the Airbus salvage in the Hudson on the Manhattan shore, taken mainly by the crane crew. Jersey shore opposite. Photos are in sequence in continuation page below.
Continue reading "Salvage photos of Flight 1549"
Israel discovers huge oil reserves.
 I am heading to Killington for a weekend of skiing and general merriment in the snow and cold, and leaving these droppings behind.
Yo Yo and Itzhak faked it? Sheesh. Just like Milli Vanilli. Would have thought it beneath their dignity.
How to get your wife to screw you. (Just thought I'd throw that in the pile to surprise you.)
Too busy for the Medal of Honor Ball? A sick and sickening decision.
Your orange juice is killing the planet. Thought you would like to know. I'll have a Screwdriver, hold the OJ. (h/t, Junk Science)
Major fault in Arkansas. But when?
Are Republicans too nice? I do think they have trouble playing the dirty pool. Dems don't mind looking bad, and accept the reality that politics is the ugliest sport.
Rick Moran:
...are we to endure 4 or 8 years of this over the top, out of control, masturbatory media overkill? Everything about him his so perfect that any criticism at all seems harsh. Obama doesn’t necessarily invite this sort of thing but it seems to happen anyway. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to examine this phenomenon as the months pass and reality sets in.
First time I ever heard of Hillary's "people skills." I've heard that she is a chain-smoking, no-class, potty-mouthed, menopausal bitch on wheels butchy harridan who expects to be treated like royalty. But otherwise a very nice person. I do not think I would want to work for her sort.
Related: The new US foreign policy - Make them love us. Didn't Jimmy Carter try that? Guess what. They have their own interests, and do not give a damn about ours.
Frum's new website: New Majority
Vanderleun's personal journey with abortion
Scientists get misty-eyed over Obama
Stephanopoulis gets misty-eyed over Obama
From Bruce Kesler:
Now that the grand coronation, er inauguration, is old news, with our major media continuing in its electoral path of ignoring the troubling portents of the policies and appointments coming from now President Obama, can we look forward to the major media resurrecting its role as -- it likes to view itself, but polls showing majority distrust from its consumers -- speaking truth to power?
There are plenty of opportunities for the major media to do so, from a bloated economic recovery bill that explodes with political payoff boondoggles and catastrophically expands inflation-inducing inflation, to payoffs to unions that reduce independent worker protections and hobble efficient business management, to ignoring the desires of the 85% of Americans who don’t want their health care dictated by bureaucrats in Washington, to half-hearted defenses against worldwide terrorists.
As readership and viewership continue their sharp declines, and major newspapers shrink in content and TV networks increase their cheaper to produce unreality offerings, they might stop to reconsider the poor survival sense of being inane lackies of the reckless ideologies and pontifications that now hold power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and its echoing commercial failures from Hollywood.
Not likely, but one can hope for change, can’t one?
Broadway, 1894. More here. h/t, Theo
Touching it makes you want it.
The myth of the business cycle, and why Greenspan is bewildered.
The Wilders prosecution persecution. Front Page
A trillion bucks but they cannot promise a single job.
Obama to press: Kiss my ass
Do you want these interrogation centers closed?
What the Left is saying these days. Thompson. Good grief.
Mr. Free Market remembers Rorke's Drift
Still perpetuating the lie of Leftist "compassion"
Declaration of Dependence:
"We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their government with the unalienable right to be taxed, subsidized, regulated, lectured, scolded, herded, harassed, and otherwise ruled in whatever ways work."
Thursday, January 22. 2009
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
Murtha's Latest Pork - Guantanamo
Never missing an opportunity to bring pork to his congressional district, the porkmeister Congressman Jack Murtha says he’ll be pleased to relocate the prisoners at Guantanamo to his district.
The news report notes: “Murtha only has a minimum security prison in his district. But he says he'd have no reservations about holding detainees there in a maximum security prison.”
The construction cost of a maximum security prison is upwards of $110 million, and operating costs in US prisons run an average of almost $100 per day per prisoner, and higher for maximum security. Plus there will be all the extra costs of housing and officing the government lawyers needed. Then, there’s the boon to the local hotels and restaurants from all the defense attorneys and reporters. Murtha’s constituents might disagree with Murtha’s comment that, "They're no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo." But, hey, there’s jobs and profits involved. I wonder which friend or contributor of Murtha owns the site that would be sold to the government. I wonder how close the site may be to Murtha’s house.
I don’t wonder anymore at Murtha’s gumption to bring home the pork, er or whatever it might be renamed in respect to Moslem food sensitivities.
Heads up, cousins. Jonah is coming! (The author of Liberal Fascism - if they still permit you to read such radical and subversive books.)
Of course, the Brits are already experts on liberal fascism. They live it.
Gummint rules keep WH in dark ages
Docs have to treat anybody? No, they do not. They can treat who they want, when they want, and how they want.
Tax cheat to head IRS. It's "change."
Prosecuted for criticizing Islam. Good grief. Seems like everybody criticizes some religion or other these days.
What we don't know about Obama. Politico
Insty:
STEVE CHAPMAN: “We all know how we got into this economic mess. We spent too much, borrowed with abandon, and acted like the bills would never come due. So what’s the prescription for getting out? Spending more, borrowing more, and acting like the bills will never come due.”
Yeah, that’ll work.
Tiger:
... if Republicans did nothing but expose pork and keep their own noses relentlessly clean for two years -- a tall order, I admit -- they would rehabilitate their reputation as the guardian of the hardworking, taxpaying non-complainer who puts his shoulder to the wheel every day whether he likes it or not, and vastly improve their chances in 2010 and beyond.
Sad to say, I'm not holding my breath.
More good stuff later, busy today. No recession in my biz. Counter-cyclical is good.
Reality check: Your career in IT
Why major in Econ? Mankiw
Brave TV. Ex-Jihadists talk about why.
Did the dinosaurs die out quickly?
The Oprahfication of Obama. I never saw Oprah. What exactly does she do?
Remembering Fr. Neuhaus. Acton Inst.
Back to a spending orgy. Michelle
Good luck demonizing John Kasich. We love the guy. Demonization is the new political tool.
From Rick Moran:
On my radio show last night, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker pointed out that in the last decade we have freed Muslims from persecution and tyranny in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Praytell why is it the United States who should be coming hat in hand to the Muslim world? What more could we possibly do to prove our “respect?” Time for the moderate Muslims to stand up and start reciprocating. That is the true way forward with US-Muslim relations.
From Barone on Obama's speech:
...when Obama says, "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth," he's not far away from plugging the multicultural idea, more prevalent in Western Europe than here in America, that every culture has the same moral worth—except maybe ours, which is worse. That's a very dangerous and wrongheaded way of thinking. And it's directly contrary to the way our first black president—and our first Catholic one—won their elections. Kennedy excelled and Obama excels at speaking the English language. The civic culture they mastered was our Anglo-Protestant culture, despite the fact that one went to a Catholic church and the other's father was a citizen of Kenya (and not, I think, as people tend to say, an immigrant: I presume he was in the United States on a student visa, and we know that he went home to Kenya and participated in politics there). Kennedy and Obama won because they did not fit the negative stereotypes of their ethnic groups, just as Margaret Thatcher won in Britain not because she was warm and cuddly but because she was the Iron Lady. Kennedy seemed more like an English lord than an Irish pol (one of his sisters was engaged to the marquis of Hartington), and Obama seemed more like a law professor than a ghetto protester.
Wednesday, January 21. 2009
Leonhardt, in The NYT. Makes sense to me. I was there. In my view, some folks hype the badness simply to rationalize government power and money grabs.
The Big Three car-assemblers are dead men walking, and have been for years. I do have a concern about the banks, however, because when governments end up owning them, politics ends up running them. That is even worse than having politics run medical treatment.
Maybe it's a query: Which is worse: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Nancy Pelosi controlling your doctor - or controlling your bank?
Most from the US, second most from Canada. From The Myth of America's Oil Addiction:
The United States consumes about 21 million barrels of oil a day. Just over a third is domestically produced, while the rest is imported from a diverse array of sources from Latin America to Canada to Africa and the Middle East. The top five sources are geographically diverse: Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria. If Americans want to wring their hands in fear of being held hostage to oil imports, they might worry about a Big Five conspiracy: a secret Riyadh-Ottawa-Mexico City-Caracas-Lagos cartel that turns off the tap one day. If that sounds impossible and ridiculous, it’s because it is.
Photo: The Englishman's place, this week. Love the pic. But where's all the snow?
Everybody has his or her own critique of Obama's speech. I thought it was OK. Why is this such a big deal? The guy got a promotion. I had collected a bunch of interesting comments about it, but it's really not important so I decided not to link them.
Horowitz on conservatives and the inauguration
Kenyans waiting for their free stuff. Me too.
GM: We're still dying. NYT: We're still dying. They had to go to a loan shark? Also, the banks are bankrupt. There isn't enough money in the world to rescue all these dying things.
Wonderful Thank You George Bush photos.
Who is this obnoxious a-hole? Oh, he's Obama's Chief of Staff, putting away childish things.
Stimulus = pork.
Want influence in the new Admin? Be George Soros.
Ace's honeymoon is over. Well, when I heard that white and right thing I said things outloud that I cannot post at Maggie's.
On Obama's first day, he calls for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. First things first, right?
Obama channeling Fred Astaire?
Also not drinking the Kool Aid.
Non-political: parents of autistic kids try anything. Sadly, they are easy prey for quacks and mountebanks.
 Orangutans threatened by Green Movement (h/t Jungleman). Orangs are almost people, aren't they? Without clothing, haircuts, etc.? See our photo of a well-groomed female Orang lounging at the beach.
The Great College Hoax. (h/t, Dr. Helen)
How is your fastball reaction time? (h/t, Theo)
If movie posters were honest (h/t, Wall St. Fighter)
Checklists for everything. I could not live without them. Especially my travel checklists. Without them, I'd end up at the beach without my flip-flops, in the woods without camera and ammo, in Italy without walking shoes, and in Nantucket without my red shorts.
Tuesday, January 20. 2009
 Good luck to the new Pres, and all the best to George Bush with our thanks for taking on a thankless job (photo from Anchoress). These people are only human...and, for better or worse, there happen to be three equal branches of the federal government. It's a bully pulpit, though, if one knows how to use it. GW didn't know how, or didn't care to. Celebrity was not his goal.
The death or re-birth of the financial supermarket/ Or will all of the banks end up nationalized?
A proposal to make newspapers non-profits.
What Obama brings to Conservatives.
Good essay: Kristol on Our next War Pres
Reminder to the orgasmic MSM: Half the country voted for the other guy.
McCain's campaign was pitiful. Like Dole, I think he was told from the start that he had no chance, so just go out there and be a good sport.
From the unions, a deafening silence on climate. Related: Climate update at Gateway
What is affordable housing? Sowell
Hamas torturing Fatah. That is true torture.
Florida: The Fool's Golden State. Vanderleun
A guy who is clearly not optimistic about Obama.
A grim milestone indeed. Government jobs in the US pass manufacturing jobs (h/t, Insty):
Who is supposed to make the money and profits to pay for all of those salaries, benefits, and pensions?
Despite being older than Insty - old enough to remember the Civil Rights era - I'll ditto Insty on his post. I always want the best for our country, and wisdom for our leaders government employees.
I refuse to term them "leaders" because, as a cranky Yank, I rarely follow anybody unless they're going where I am going.
We have never done an "open thread" here at Maggie's. In the spirit of 'change," let's give it a semi-open try.
"Hope" and "Change" are empty vessels. What do our readers want for Hope and Change (if anything)?
 I have never enjoyed inaugurations, whether I voted for the guy or not. They have always seemed too much like coronations to me, neither fitting the role nor the country. We build 'em up to superhuman size...and then we tear 'em down. Our founders rightly feared that human nature would try to turn Presidents into kings. Yes, it is kinda cool that we elected a young black guy, but just to say that is not only racist but also rather adolescent.
Blame Bernie Madoff's parents
Two thirds of African-Americans believe King's vision has been fullfilled.
From The Day the Newspaper Died in The New Yorker:
Soon after Jefferson came to power, he, like Adams, developed doubts about the unbounded liberty of the press. Printers, Jefferson complained, just days after his election, “live by the zeal they can kindle, and the schisms they can create.” In his second Inaugural Address, Jefferson ranted against printers who had assaulted him with “the artillery of the press,” warning that he had given some thought to prosecuting them. During his beleaguered second term, Jefferson suggested that newspapers ought to be divided into four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies. What Jefferson wanted for the nation under his governance was a “union of opinion.” But that, of course, can never be the aspiration of a democracy—a point that newspapers have been very good at making over the two centuries since.
A critical view of Bush's tenure, at Reason
Wanted: More Nazis
From Mark Levey Leave the New Deal in the history books:
By 1939 Roosevelt's own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had realized that the New Deal economic policies had failed. "We have tried spending money," Morgenthau wrote in his diary. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!"
The problem was that neither Roosevelt nor President Herbert Hoover before him grasped the essential nature of the crisis, which was not the stock-market crash, but global deflation. At the end of the roaring '20s, an overhang of intergovernmental war debt from World War I, coupled with falling commodity prices and a currency crisis, had started the decline. Weak credit structures and European banks hurt by wartime inflation worsened it. When the Austrian Creditanstalt Bank failed, it ignited a global banking crisis that slashed across the international financial system cutting down everything in its path. Deflation went into full howl.
The same perils are now confronting President-elect Barack Obama, as the risk of deflation casts a long shadow over the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have been correctly focused on shoring up financial institutions to prevent a collapse of the financial system, and stave off a severe decline in the general price level. If that were to occur, the unspoken fear has been that the U.S. and global economy could go into a deflationary death spiral that would cause the collapse of the international financial system.
From Karlgaard in Forbes: A Failure of Morals not Capitalism:
Many people do blame capitalism for bringing us to this low moment in the economy. Do they have a point?
They do if capitalism, as they define it, is devoid of any underlying morality. True enough, it is hard to see any underlying morality when one surveys the present carnage caused by liar loans, shady banks, duplicitous politicians, Ponzi schemers and regulators angling for Wall Street jobs.
This weekend, I caught a BBC radio program on the meltdown in “The City”--London’s financial district. The program quoted many young Brit bankers who said morality was a barrier to personal success in The City. Better to have the sociopath gene if one wants to become a billionaire.
Whole thing here.
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