Friday, February 13. 2009
One month into a failed Presidency. I did think it was odd that the Admin. had no economic plan, and ceded it all to the Dem House sandbox. Why was there no realistic plan, and just a mix of every Dem Congressman's junk pile?
Big stimulus money for warmists only. The warming biz is hot. No doubt there is plenty of pressure and incentive to come up with the wanted results. Even absent-minded professors know on what side their bread is buttered. They like to eat too, and the grant money they can bring in is their bread and butter. The grants pay their salaries.
Sullivan declares that the GOP has declared war on Obama. I think it is the other way around. When you say "F-you, we won," you aren't being collegial. When you grab the Census, you aren't even being civilized: it's a Chavez-like, Chicago-style power grab. I think the WH is planning to crush the GOP for the next 10 years. Who is using projection here? Me or Sullivan? We viewed the Dem handling of the pork and federal power-grab of the so-called stimulus as a declaration of war.
Read Ray Dalio's 4-page piece in Barron's, if you haven't (we linked a couple of days ago). His macro view, while depressing, makes a lot of sense: It's a D-process. He likes gold right now.
Re the national debt chart we posted this morning: If China is buying all of our federal paper, does that mean that they will own us?
General reminder: When you have the time, it's always worthwhile to see what TimesWatch has to say.
Reagan said "The closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this earth is a government program." The gummint racket ratchet has no reverse setting. Why the cost estimates of the stimulus are way off. Does anybody imagine that any of these hundreds of new "programs" will ever be cut or dropped when things settle down? I think we taxpayers are being rolled and scammed within an inch of our lives - if not more.
 I found the comments on this CNN Judd Gregg story quite revealing. Man, there is a lot of anger and paranoia out there.
Frederick Kagan: Afghanistan is not Vietnam
Did he or did he not run on a redistribute the wealth platform?
San Francisco: Still insane
Via Mankiw, budget deficits. This will be a big problem for us:
From Sipp:
The people who say they are qualified to micromanage the affairs of the world and everybody and everything in it can't do arithmetic well enough to be a successful bank teller, and can't figure out whether to put an apostrophe in it is.
I've broken ground on many substantial construction projects. We used to paint a shovel to look like it was made of gold, and the bankers and politicians would turn a shovel load of dirt and have their picture taken. Then we'd mount the shovel on a board with an inscription and present it as a keepsake. We used to fashion a box and fill it with sand for the participants, as it was unlikely anyone involved would be capable of turning even one spadeful of real soil from the site.
It's the greatest metaphor possible for today's Zeitgeist. People completely unaware of how anything actually gets done or paid for using an instrument fraudulently tarted up to look valuable to perform a meaningless operation in order to be given credit by the media for everything.
Thursday, February 12. 2009
Finally, it's OK to make jokes about Obama
Bernard Goldberg and the slobbering love affair between Obama and the press
They will not go after that lady whose video we posted last night the way they went after Joe the Plumber/
The press conference: The questioners were pre-picked
The true cost of the stimulus. By the way, the bill is 1473 pages, and the Repubs aren't allowed to read it. The handling of this bill - the largest spending bill in US history - has been a declaration of war on the Repubs.
How Reagan's team built its economic plan
Kondracke: Rush was right about stimulus
Will the stock market recover?
Ten worst cities in the US
NYC's rent control: Insane
 They removed E-Verify from the "stimulus" bill. Now you can hire all the illegals you want.
The savior-based economy. Michelle.
All expenses paid. Obama orders Palestinian immigration.
No Wilders, but look at the creeps England does allow in. And they want to ban the flag. Why don't they all just get it over with and shoot themselves. Oh, they can't. They gave away their guns.
You are going to pay for this so-called stimulus for a long time. Enjoy it, suckers.
Hollywood's Che Chic
" '[Senate Democrats] don’t know everything that’s in the bill,' said a laughing Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Committee."
From a Politico post on the deal. What does Rangel care? He doesn't seem to pay his taxes, and he has gotten rather rich as a Congressman.
The laughter is what ticks me off.
Wednesday, February 11. 2009
Remember the lady during the campaign who said Obama will give me free gas for my car and a free house? Well, here's Ms. "I love you Barack." Good grief. It's government-as-parent, or as spouse. Her Grandma should slap her for this self-administered humiliation:
Stimulus undoes Clinton's welfare reform. Seems like a big deal to me.
Not paranoid, just curious. Who did this run on the banks on September 15?
Mainly in response to Geithner, but to the Admin in general (names removed, obviously):
I am fired up.. uncork a few for me! a little ranting……@*#@**xx.
Geithner looked like a deer in the headlights today.. he bombed in his unveiling. Put some duct tape on him! What an amateur hour-- Obama is in trouble so soon
This moron Geithner doesn't know how a bank loan is made and the fact that mark to market acctg requires the bank to almost surely write a loan down immediately upon making it because its like a new car when you drive it off the lot it is worth less two minutes later after its made ……like bonds these loan portfolios will swing in value based upon the interest rate swings and if there isn't someone who wants to buy a new loan at face then you have to write it down, do you know how many loans are made in conjunction with deposits and relationships etc…?? I am so disgusted these yahoos are really dumb. The Feds/states already supervise the banks.
It's not about just writing down these mortgage securities, CMO's and such, but these banks are required to write down their customer loan portfolios even if they are performing!!
I am getting tired of Obama complaining about Wall Street who the F' does he think owns stocks and bonds?? Just fat cats from NYC??
Almost every person I know has 401K's retirement accts etc that have been crushed and they are measuring their wealth and ability to retire, save and survive on these values etc.. Nationalizing the banks is so stupid it's laughable.
Mark to market acctg serves really who?? The Govt who want to steal the assets of the financial institutions .. can you imagine ?? while they are at it lets nationalize the oil industry .. can you imagine Barney Franks and Dodd making decisions about where to drill and how to allocate capital ?? The retail RE business is about to drop off a cliff.
These guys are proving every day they have no clue about how business works.
Someone tell me I am off my rocker!!!
Can you imagine if all they did was guarantee bank deposits up to a few million dollars at the banks and modified mark to market acctg the trillion dollars of bank bail out capital would be cut by 90% and they would really get a stimulus plan using those same dollars cooking on worthwhile spending projects!
Things will turn around but not before enormous private wealth of this nation is wiped out and redistributed and the country starts over but it will be a decade before this happens and I am starting to wonder if it will happen peacefully?
SAD SAD SAD
Excellent piece. An interview with Ray Dalio at Barron's. One quote:
The D-process is a disease of sorts that is going to run its course.
When I first started seeing the D-process and describing it, it was before it actually started to play out this way. But now you can ask yourself, OK, when was the last time bank stocks went down so much? When was the last time the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, exploded like it has? When was the last time interest rates went to zero, essentially, making monetary policy as we know it ineffective? When was the last time we had deflation?
The answers to those questions all point to times other than the U.S. post-World War II experience. This was the dynamic that occurred in Japan in the '90s, that occurred in Latin America in the '80s, and that occurred in the Great Depression in the '30s.
Why buying these cars is "Buying American"
The new stash of mummies in Egypt
Geithner prevailed in bank bailout debate. Related: Geithner, From Indispensable to Indecipherable
Related: Skepticism about Obama's TARP
More on what the stimulus aims to do with nationalizing medical care
I am a Liberal woman. Hear me meow.
Yes, the Dems did undo Clinton's welfare reform. Why?
In Canada, you may be too old for hip surgery
The CIA is helping Britain with their internal Moslem security problems. Meanwhile, Geert Wilders banned from the UK. What am I missing here?
Equally nutty: UK considers rationing air travel
How do Congressmen accumulate money like Rangel?
John Fund explains why Obama & Co. wants control of the census
Clever but dishonest: Blankley on Obama's first press conference
I didn't know we did things like this in the US.
Job losses in the last 6 recessions (h/t, Mankiw)
Tuesday, February 10. 2009
Be very, very afraid. That's the selling-point of the sh-t sandwich of a ten-year backlog of Lefty projects and political payoffs which constitute the "Stimulus." (See $300 million for golf carts).
It's a recession. We have them regularly. But, given the timing, it's been a golden opportunity to advance every Dem Congressman's pet notion. The tactic wouldn't work, though, unless you scare people into a state of brain paralysis. In Ace's words:
President Barack H. Obama: 'Do what I want, or the economy will melt, and you'll all die poor and alone.'
Irresponsible fear-mongering is not all that presidential. Now that I think about it, weren't we promised a calm, cool, post-partisan president?
We have often observed how Leftist plans are advanced by manufacturing a sense of crisis and urgency, with a government "solution" ready in their back pocket.
How hopey-changey became "We'll scare you into buying this": Dust My Broom, Dino.
In the end, though, the Dems hold a winning hand. The economy will improve: it always does. They will take credit for it. As Paul at Powerline says:
I would add, the Democrats probably have the better political hand because they are betting that the economy, one way or another, will recover. The American economy is usually a good bet, as much as the Democrats are doing (and will do) to impair it.
This from Jonah Goldberg:
Stephen posted the quote from Barro earlier, but I think Will Wilkinson deserves to be quoted at greater length:
The deeper problem, I think, is that the textbook theory doesn’t have any politics in it. In macroeconomics textbooks, government is a benevolent central planner beyond politics. It is assumed, for simplicity’s sake, that governments can act in perfect compliance with theory. It is also assumed that theory is settled before coming to a policy problem, that motivated disagreement over theory is not an essential element of democratic policymaking. But of course, there is politics, which trashes hope of either consensus on or compliance with theory. And that’s how we ended up with the legislative monstrosity actually under consideration in Congress. As Harvard’s Robert Barro puts it:
This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.
The economists can duke it out over the possibility of successful fiscal stimulus. But is there any reason based in up-to-date economic theory to believe that this trillion dollar deficit-spending bill is not, as Barro says, garbage?
Krugman is plumping for it anyway. Hard. So what can one say about Krugman? That he is a creature of extraordinary double consciousness. Perhaps more than any economist of his caliber, Krugman understands that policy is largely determined by the outcome of the public opinion shoutfest. Yet this recognition seems to have no effect on Krugman’s ideas. Rather than bring inside his models disagreement over economic theory and the lack of political incentive to faithfully apply them, which would lead him to radically revise his prescriptions, Krugman leaves his textbook theory untouched and simply tries to win the shoutfest. Krugman’s often unbearable stridency seems to reflect an attempt to overcome the problems of democratic disagreement and incentive compatibility through sheer force of will–as if the deep reality of politics is no match for the rhetorical gifts and gold-plated reputation of Paul Freaking Krugman. It is as if his own imagined ability to singehandedly overwhelm the opposition is part of Krugman’s implicit model of how a politics-free macoeconomic theory can be made politically relevant in a time of perceived crisis, which is to say, a time of rank political opportunism.
 Photo: Captain Sully gets key to the city
This time, they beheaded a Pole. To make a point.
Black university in trouble. Why does America even have black universities anymore? I'm not necessarily against it, but it just seems strange. I assume they will accept white applicants.
How health care nationalization is buried in the stimulus package. The stimulus is one giant Trojan Horse.
A Newsweek metamorphosis
Scientific trickery re Antarctic climate
Cato on the stimulus (video): Wilkinson
Liberals: Obama's bill is a triumph for Liberalism
The new battlefield: Robots at war
Misunderstanding Limbaugh. Patterico
It's a recession not a "catastrophe." Right.
Politicizing the economy caused the crash. Deeply true, and the economy is fully-politicized now. It's as if people wanted to imagine that the gummint can control the economy. Who believes that the bozos in politics are smarter than markets? History shows the gummint can only damage it.
A cost-conscious college.
Britain: Health and safety above education. What if a kid slips on the snow and bumps his knee? More Britain: Banning C of E from a political party? Sheesh. That's sick.
Unions 1, America 0
Remember what they did to Gerry Ford when he bumped his head? They basically called him a retarded doofus.
Those salary caps are for "execs," not for the quants and the traders and the deal-makers, etc.
Obama getting the respect he deserves. Dr. Clouthier
Flopping remembers Tony Snow's pep talk, one year ago.
More gun hysteria at the NYT
How to easily save yourself $12,000/year.
I like beer room-temperature, so this beer temperature test does me little good.
Dem tax cheats. Everybody forgets to mention Al Franken.
How the internet damages our culture. Hawkins at Pajamas. Well, Maggie's doesn't damage our culture.
Monday, February 9. 2009
About individualism, kindness, office politics, etc. Mediocracy
Dead-Hobo-reporting glitch claims another Obama appointee. This hobo in the basement thing is getting out of hand, but I thought we called them "homeless persons" now - or "Those Difficult to Serve." Oh well. More on the Dem culture of corruption.
CBO: Recession will end in 2009 without stimulus. Related: Will the MSM ever correct Obama's absurd economic statements?. Related: Math says "stimulus" will cost $275,000 per job.
Peter Schiff was right before. Maybe he is right again.
Stimulus gives Milwaukee money for schools they neither want nor need
Remember the guy who linked immunization with autism? Bad person.
Talk radio failure has tantrum
Honeymoon over? Steyn
We have the same problem: Raccoons vs. the White House
The broken window theory of crime prevention works
Why is the White House taking over the Census?
The Vietnam War: Everything you know is wrong. h/t, Driscoll
Illinois sheriffs want citizens armed.
Sunday, February 8. 2009
 Photos of Chai Wallahs (h/t, Grow a Brain)
Everything about speech balloons. Cool. (h/t, David Thompson's Friday Ephemera)
$100 billion to New Orleans. What's to show for it?
What am I doing with my gifts?
Obama dimishes himself to serve Pelosi
Dicks of New York? This is about as mature as a whoopee cushion. The audience should ask themselves what they have done to protect NYC from terrorists.
Why PA is slipping away from the GOP
What causes personal bankruptcies in the US? (h/t, Tiger)
Incentives matter: betting on weight loss
He wants Obama to force people to listen to his radio show
Europe's war on free speech. Brussels Journal. Europe, like most of the world, has never really been a freedom-loving place.
Viking:
Including debt service, the cost of the Generational Theft Act is estimated at $1.175 trillion, all of which will be borrowed to be paid by America's children.
Think of it this way: we're going to borrow and spend almost one Russia, or one India. We could buy South Korea or Mexico. We could have our own continent by purchasing Australia and all their handsome actors and actresses. We could have Belgium, Sweden, and still have some pocket change left over for Greece. We could have five Hong Kongs.
Job loss: Women and minorities Men hardest hit!
The stimulus tragedy. WSJ
Via Gateway:
MICHAEL GREENSPAN ON THE STIMULUS: “This monstrosity of a bill, and the assumptions underlying it (e.g., ‘Politicians are wiser than non-politicians,’ ‘Citizens don’t own what they earn,’ etc.), are making me consider joining the Republican Party.”
Plus, from Harvard economist Robert Barro, interviewed in The Atlantic: “This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”
This was the Dems' moment to strike. From Jonah Goldberg (h/t Anchoress):
The economic crisis was almost too good to be true. Like FDR and Lyndon Johnson, Obama was poised to act on Rahm’s Rule of Crisis Exploitation in a way that would not only guarantee a newer New Deal and an even greater Great Society, but would also receive bipartisan approval. That’s why Obama wanted so much GOP support—so as to ratify the left turn to European-style social democracy, particularly when voters cottoned on to the con.
But that didn’t happen. Obama and his party were undone by their hubris. There was just too much muchness in the bill. The once impressive support from conservative economists evaporated. Right-wing radio has been having one long tailgate party celebrating Obama’s overreach. According to the polls, voters are souring on the whole thing. Republicans finally discovered testicular fortitude—and they seem to like it.
There is still probably bipartisan support for a stimulus bill, but only for a measure intended to stimulate our market-based economy rather than one that hastens its Swedenization.
Again, Obama’s presidency has many victories ahead of it, and Democrats still run the show. But the perfect storm of liberalism has dissipated to mere scattered showers.
From Here Comes the State in Weekly Standard:
Voters, then, have every reason to expect from Washington a stimulus bill that will help restore growth. But they aren't getting one. The stimulus plan is flawed. It marries a few measures that count as stimulus with tons of spending on a domestic agenda that the Democrats have waited years to push through Congress. Why? Because Obama and the Democrats who run Congress are more interested in an idea than they are in economic recovery.
Saturday, February 7. 2009
Heading up to ski at Mt. Snow this morning. It's an excellent mountain when it's not crowded - and it's close. It's the best of the southern VT mountains, unless you count Killington. I'll try to get there when the lifts open. New skis and boots. Wahoo.
Dem John Cole on the "stimulus" porkfest (h/t Outside the Beltway's Obama attacks Repubs for partisanship)
You know, putting aside the stupidity of the Republicans, I would really like it if  the Democrats would make the god damned case for this bill. There is another report up from the CBO (allegedly) that this will be more damaging in the long haul than doing nothing.
It would be nice if the Democrats would sell this bill and explain why it is good, rather than Obama just coming out and warning about catastrophe every now and then. I dealt with eight years of fear-mongering about terrorism, I don’t need it regarding the economy. I recognize our economy is a disaster, and I will support the bill heartily if you give me a reason and make your case. They simply haven’t done that, and part of my ambivalence is I am tired of doing stupid things just to be “doing something.”
Explain why this is a good bill. I double dog dare you. And if you can’t or won’t, explain why I shouldn’t be siding with the GOP in opposition, despite how crazy they are.
A family is a lousy analogy for gummint. AVI
 Ace on the Fairness Doctrine:
...if conservative talk radio 'overwhelms people's opinions' (as Stabenow says), how exactly did the Democrats manage to take control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government?
Somebody should write a book about this kind of illiberal thinking. Maybe they could call is "Liberal Fascism" or something like that.
From EU Referendum:
UN Sec Gen Ban Ki-Moon: "Deserts are spreading. Water scarcity is increasing. Tropical forests are shrinking. Our once prolific fisheries are in danger of collapse," he intones. "Failure to combat climate change will increase poverty and hardship. It will destabilise economies, breed insecurity in many countries and undermine our goals for sustainable development."
All this, of course, is bullshit.
Why Warren Buffet has been buying US equities. He works with a 10-year time horizon. h/t, Mankiw
Most wanted Nazi found. He died.
Nat Hentoff to Cato Institute. That's interesting.
Poll: Stimulus will do harm. Related: Let's give these idiots more of our money to spend, and our kids' future incomes too - which is really what it will be. I agree with this:
Hey! How about tax cuts for people who create jobs?
How about tax cuts for all working people?
How about not insisting on open ballots for unions?
How about tax cuts for everyone, across the board?
How about a suspension of ALL taxes for a year?
How about staying the hell out of the public sector?
How about not nationalizing everything that isn't moving?
How about scrapping this porkorama and starting over?
How about doing what is best for Americans instead of what is best for the Democrat Party?
Related: From Krauthammer on the Fierce Urgency of Pork:
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
Upper photo: Mt. Snow. Lower photo: Theo's girlfriend.
Friday, February 6. 2009
That's exactly what we've been saying for years. A quote from John Tomlinson in the Flint Journal:
If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.
At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"
I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.
The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.
Read the whole thing. Link above.
 The Left does not want you listening to Rush's ideas. I guess dissent is no longer "the highest form of patriotism." How can we all come together if we disagree about things?
I do not have the time to listen to Rush often these days, but I get a kick out of him when I do. He's a fine entertainer.
George Reisman corrects the record and concludes his piece thus:
Serous Leftists, i.e., those who want to establish and maintain actual government ownership or control over the economic system are all implicitly totalitarians. On the one hand, they want to take total control over people’s lives under the pretext of improving and enriching their lives. But their policies are so bad, cause so much destruction and human suffering, that the potential is created for an explosive outburst of hatred and vengeance against them once the public draws the logically inescapable conclusion that it is they and their policies who are responsible. To stay in power and keep socialism in existence, they have to prevent this from happening by crushing all possibility of dissent.
Limbaugh is a major thorn in the side of the Left. They need to remove him, because his criticisms serve to slow their advance and might even help to stop them in their tracks.
That’s why I’m for Limbaugh and I too hope Obama fails at every turn in his efforts to expand the powers of government.
Me too.
“It’s not global warming any more, it’s climate change. That gets them back in the game. These people are pretty flexible ...”
An Australian union leader, via Tim Blair
"The White House believes that if you owe taxes you should pay them." Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman. Gee, d'ya think? "Believes"? I always thought it was a legal issue, not a moral issue. From NRO on the Sec of Labor's tax problems. Yes, yet another one.
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Scientist: