Just about everybody has opined on it, but I’ll add my two cents to the igNobel Prize controversy.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee may have thought that they were doing President Obama a favor. In fact, they have put the White House and his fiercest defenders in the position of having to [...]
Over at Drudge I learned that I have something in common with President Obama: we were both married on the same day–October 3rd, 1992.
Something else I saw over at Drudge was that ten American Soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on our anniversary. If you’re the President of the [...]
Sorry I’ve been posting so infrequently, but I’ve been away doing Army stuff since spring. I’m finally settled down for a few months . . . in Basrah, Iraq, where I’ll be until some time next year. Posting will be light.
[...]President Obama:
“I don’t want the folks who created this mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so that we can clean up this mess.”
I agree with the President and support his call to silence culprits likeChris Dodd and Barney Frank.
It’s Wednesday, or as it’s getting to be known in the White House, “Foot-in-Mouth Day.” Last Wednesday it was the President’s ill-advised and factually-challenged foray into a local police matter. But this Wednesday the President’s oral podiatry takes the cake.
One-third of the entire recovery act is for tax relief for you, for families [...]
I don’t think we’re going to see another prime-time presidential press conference for a while.
Tom Daschle, the original pick for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, reportedly advised President Obama to stay away from the specifics as he pushed his health care plan. It was Daschle’s belief that when discussion [...]
In Washington a gaffe occurs when a politician accidentally tells the truth. This Bidenism, then, may qualify as the Mother Of All Gaffes:
” . . . we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt.”
Some will argue that Vice President Joe Biden misspoke. But he did not. Listen [...]
A Defense Department analyst who authored a report critical of a controversial multi-billion dollar weapon system, alleged that his analysis was ”buried” by senior DoD officials on the eve of a crucial Congressional vote to authorize funding for the new program.
Alan Carlin, an economist for nearly two decades with the Office of the [...]
52 professional media outlets have asked to attend an arraignment hearing for some singer accused of beating his girlfriend . . . meanwhile the world depends on amateur footage to get honest reporting from Iran.
[...]Up on Drudge right now are two juxtaposed stories that demonstrate what I’ve long said about politics. The two stories are about the gunman who killed at least one at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. One report says that he is an “89-year old white supremacist;” the other notes that [...]
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Punchbowl Crater, Honolulu
May 25, 2009
President Obama: “Our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight.”
I’m glad to see that he now admits that all the hurried economic stimulus package and bailout plans were couterproductive and wrong.
[...]I hated them when it was a Republican Administration appointing them:
The food czar joins the drug czar, the health czar, the anti-terrorism czar, the education czar, and a whole host of other “czars” who have been placed into ceremonial positions of mock authority in order to provide the illusion [...]
I don’t often use my blog to tell you guys about my day, but this week has been so fun I just had to share. It’s been an oenophile’s dream.
On Wednesday I was at Ridge Vineyards to meet with Paul Draper, the head winemaker there since 1969. For three [...]
I think that I was the first to coin BDIT (pronounced bee-dit): “Bush did it too!” to refer to the instinctive response of Obama acolytes to justify their man’s Bush-like actions–the same actions he, and they, railed against . . . right up until November 5th.
Apparently I need another acronym: WIBHDI (pronounced wib-dee): [...]
Need a traffic recommendation from any Bay Area readers:
If I have to leave a meeting in Cupertino at noon on a weekday for another meeting in Sonoma, what route should I take?
[...]Perhaps you recently saw on Drudge a list of the various scandal investigations currently embroiling several Washington politicians. While this is currently a Democratic Party problem, it wasn’t too long ago that it was Republicans who were caught up in a mess of their own creation–remember Abramoff and Stevens?
The underlying [...]
James DeLong pens a fabulously thought-proovking piece called, ”The Coming of the Fourth American Republic.”
He divides American history, now in its 24th decade into three roughly 80 year groupings. The first is the period from the founding of the nation to the Civil War, a period during which the states [...]
. . . 80% of Republicans view big government as the biggest threat to the country, up from 68% in December 2006. At the same time, Democrats’ perceptions of the greater threat are completely reversed. In December 2006, 55% of Democrats said big government posed the greater threat, while [...]
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week . . . Thirty-three percent (33%) hold an unfavorable opinion.
. . . While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday’s events, the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view—just [...]
Imagine a loan shark who forces your business to take a loan, and then when you want to pay it back says, “No, you can’t; instead we’re just going to convert that loan to part ownership of your company, which you can’t refuse.”
It’s like a plot of a bad mobster movie–only it’s [...]
UPDATE: Thanks for stopping by from Instapundit. Look around. And please stop by my page on Facebook.
—
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, two events have leapt into America’s consciousness this week. The first was the Tea Party protests involving hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans in hundreds of cities [...]
If I was being beat by every single show from my competitor’s channel, plus three know-nothing stand-up comics, along with my own affiliated recycled news network I’d be in a pissy mood too.
FOXNEWS O’REILLY 3,980,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,239,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,947,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,740,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,401,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,185,000
COMEDY [...]
Jennifer Rubin penned a thought-provoking piece on the meaning of yesterday’s Tea Parties. It bears further exploration.
. . . the crowd, if anything, was libertarian in bent rather than conservative. These people are advocating less government, restraints on federal power, and a return to “constitutional government.” Social [...]
One of my favorite parts about today’s Tea Party protest has been watching all the Tea Party Poopers’ heads explode over their “fire doesn’t melt steel” delusions that the whole nationwide event was the result of the evil mastermind Rupert Murdoch and his minions of Fox News henchmen.
I don’t know if you [...]
UPDATE: Thanks for stopping by from Instapundit, 6MB, and others. Look around. And please stop by my page on Facebook.
Beneath a cold steel sky, between two and three thousand protesters gathered on Nashville’s Legislative Plaza this April 15th Tax Day to protest high taxes and even higher government [...]
While I’m preparing my report of Nashville’s Tea Party, enjoy some pictures. These are attendees Nichole and Brittany.
Along with two protest moms:
UPDATE:
My report is here. Thanks for visiting. Look around. And please stop by my page on Facebook.
Tags: [...]
At hundreds of locations in all 50 states thousands of ordinary Americans, many of whom have never waved a sign or marched in protest, will take to the streets to stand against high taxes and even higher government spending.
As Glenn Reynolds points out today in the Wall Street Journal, the Tea [...]
Since the two Bush tax cuts created a system whereby more than 40% of American households pays no income taxes, should we be surprised when 48% of Americans say that the income taxes they pay are “about right”?
The results of this Gallup poll might be more informative if it had a [...]
How fitting that on Easter Sunday America’s prestige on the high seas has been resurrected.
President Obama was right to order the SEAL rescue attempt and good riddance to the three pirates who deserved to die. Pirates must be reminded from time to time that if they attack an American ship [...]
Has this ever happened to you?
Caller: Hey Bob!
Me: Uhh . . . Who is this?
Caller: It’s Tammy.
Me: Uhh . . . Tammy who?
Caller: Don’t you remember? We met at the gas station and exchanged phone numbers. I’m the blonde.
Me: I think you might have the wrong ‘Bob’.
Caller: Is this Bob [...]
In the past decade we have witnessed the return of a scurge that seems as 18th century as a smallpox outbreak. Pirates once again cruise the high seas–especially off the Horn of Africa and around the busy Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia. It is such an anachronism that until the [...]
Einstein once said that if he had an hour to save the world, he would spend the first 55 minutes trying to define the problem and only five minutes on the solution. So let’s look at global warming within that framework.
Is manmade global warming a problem? Not necessarily. If the climate [...]
Surely, you can’t be serious:
General Motors Corp. is teaming with Segway Inc., maker of the upright, self-balancing scooters, to build a new type of two-wheeled vehicle designed to move easily through congested urban streets.
As a stockholder in General Motors, I object to wasting billions to [...]
In the first six months of fiscal year 2009 Washington has increased the national debt by $953 billion, just a hair under a trillion bucks in only six months. It is the equivalent of increasing the national debt by an amount equal to the entire average annual salary of [...]
A couple of Ivy League finance professors have argued that the collapse in securities prices is not due to illiquidity, but to a more realistic reappraisal of price. If they are correct, it is just another version of my “It’s the wealth, stupid” theory about the decline of the [...]
The current downturn is unlike other post-war recessions, argues Roger Altman in today’s Financial Times. As I have before, Altman argues that decreased consumer spending is due to catastrophic losses of household wealth, and that this lower level of spending is not temporary.
Further slowing recovery is that household wealth will [...]
Headline on Drudge:
NY TIMES threatens to shut down BOSTON GLOBE…
Here’s the complete lede from the story:
The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut the Boston Globe unless the newspaper’s unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said.
Really? The New York Times is threatening to [...]
This is about the Virginia ABC–Alcohol and Beverage Commission. Tennessee’s is just as bad if not worse. Unlike in Virginia, in Tennessee you can’t buy wine in grocery stores. Nor can you buy a corkscrew, or or ice, or wine glasses, or anything else you might want to accompany your wine and liquor when [...]
My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.
I think I’d rather take my chances with the pitchforks
[...]The March jobless numbers are due out this morning. Weekly initial jobless claims continued to stay above 600,000 for ten straight weeks now. A year ago, that number was 367,000 new jobless claims a week.
Given the weekly claims reports issued through the month of March, we are probably seeing a [...]
Newt is probably right:
“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012 . . . Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year. If you’re going to talk about big spending, [...]
Susan Lynn, a Tennessee State Representative has proposed a bill that would allow random drug testing for recipients of food stamps and other welfare benefits.
Without passing judgment on that bill one way or the other, I would like to see the contortions of those who argue that because the [...]
Sure, it sucks less than the Democratic budget proposal, but any plan that doesn’t foresee a decrease in the deficit (as a percentage of GDP) for another forty years is no plan at all. Under the GOP plan, we don’t even get back to 2006 deficit levels until I’m in my thirteenth [...]
With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund’s annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — [...]
[Barney Franks’s proposed] “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms [...]
Thus far the government’s actions have been an attempt to restore liquidity. The focus needs to be on restoring wealth instead.
The Wall Street Journal reports a number of home builders have introduced special financing offers for homebuyers. Still, at rates of less than 4%, they’re getting few takers. Dan Klinger, president of Hovnanian’s mortgage [...]
The state of New York, which was recently ranked 50th of 50 states for its poor fiscal and economic policies, which as has lost a nation’s worst 1.9 million citizens to domestic migration over the last decade, which has shed 146,000 jobs in the last six months alone, has decided [...]
Here is a concise statement describing one of the reasons why I expect that recovery from this economic downturn will take years:
When clearly insolvent companies are propped up by the government, we have a fake economy. Distrust of this manipulated market makes the usual economic metrics unreliable and creates [...]
Imagine owning a house so worthless that even the bank doesn’t want it back:
Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real [...]
Popular Mechanics and NBC’s Dateline have produced a story that looks at various devices that purport to improve fuel efficiency by allowing your car to run on water. Shockingly, they’re frauds. All of them.
The theory behind all these devices is that your car can run a generator which then produces [...]
The 44 million Americans who depend upon a government-backed, cost-of-living-adjusted, defined-benefit pension fund for their retirement checks have likely been laughing at their neighbors who have seen their own retirement savings dwindle in their own 401K funds. The laughter is about to turn to tears:
Just months before the start of last year’s stock [...]
Drudge highlighted a story today about the daughter of a senior politico who has allegedly been caught using drugs. I second Roger L. Simon’s call that this is a non-issue, especially since to my knowledge the daughter hasn’t been used by her father as a prominent campaign prop.
UPDATE: Thanks for the links and thanks for stopping by to visit. Look around. Please help me oust the Board of Directors. And be sure to look me up on Facebook.
Covet. I never understood what it meant to “covet” something when I was a young child in a Catholic [...]
CNBC just interviewed the head of Crane & Co., a well known maker of paper and stationery. They are also the suppliers to the Treasury Department of paper for US currency. The last question the reporter asked him was about changes in the denominations being ordered, and he replied [...]
As in, for one hour tomorrow night thousands of people around the world will demonstrate a dearth of common sense.
How am I participating? Exactly the way the World Wildlife Federation told me to:
“We are asking people to vote with their light switch,” said Dan Forman, a spokesman for World [...]
[Barack Obama’s supporters] believed the Bush-to-Obama transition would be reminiscent of the Carter-to-Reagan change, where an unsuccessful administration, widely perceived as a failure, would be followed by a saving-grace leader, who in time is vindicated by history. . . But here’s the catch: Reagan broke sharply from Carter’s worst [...]
Against my wishes and better judgment I found myself the part owner, through one of my investment funds, of a financial services company on the verge of bankruptcy.
How the company got into that condition is a long and complicated affair still being sorted out by the new management. It could be [...]
Even now, with a stubbornness born of partisan hostility or political ideology, there are those who cannot bring themselves to utter the words “victory” and “Iraq” in the same sentence. But six years after the war began, it is ending in victory. As in every war, the price [...]
UPDATE: Welcome Instapunditeers! Look around. Please help me oust the Board of Directors. And be sure to look me up on Facebook.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner responded yesterday to Chinese and Russian calls for a new international reserve currency with a proposal of his own:
[...]
No one can deliver a dressing down quite like a Brit.
You cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.
Keep in mind that [...]
If deregulation is the reason
for our poor economic season,
then who is He pleasin’
with this ideological treason?
The ignorant and the covetous will view Mr. DeSantis’ resignation letter with smug satisfaction. Those who know better know that he and those like him are the engine that powers the world.
[...]Unless the nation’s newspapers find some way of glomming off of Sesame Street or the Magic School Bus, I don’t think that equating them to PBS is going to win the public’s approval for a reprieve from the reaper.
BTW, if newspapers are allowed to continue in an NPR-like comatose existence, doesn’t [...]
I’m actually going to cut the President some slack on the Special Olympics wisecrack. We’ve all said stupid things from time to time, and who wouldn’t if a camera followed us most of the time?
I’m also going to defend the President on his decision to appear on Leno, mostly because I don’t buy [...]
Since every great political movement needs a bumper sticker slogan substitutable for actual thought, here’s one that capitalizes on the language increasingly coming from Washington these days.
“Bush did it too.”
Memorable, short, and to the point. The acronym “BDIT” has the added bonus of being pronounceable, unlike that unwieldy “WWJD” I [...]
So says Kolan McConiughey, a 35-year old Special Olympics champion who has bowled five perfect games in his life. If memory serves me correct, there is a bowling alley in the basement of the White House. Smart politics would dictate that the President should defuse some of his deserved [...]
Victor Davis Hanson excoriates the Bush apologists . . . or something like that.
Read the whole thing.
PLUS:
Now it’s a bumper sticker!
[...]The budget deficit is now another quarter trillion dollars larger, not due to any new actions out of Washington. Instead the increase is the result of the unrealistic earlier expectations of the President and Congress.
The Congressional Budget Office is expected to project a $1.8 trillion deficit for the fiscal [...]
As bad a precedent as the AIG bill is, there is one positive. Congress has established the principle that $165 million is not too inconsequential a sum as to require strict budget hawkishness. I can’t wait to apply that standard during the next earmark fight.
MORE:
If you’re visiting from Instapundit, thanks for [...]
Probably not, but as Terrence Corcoran reminds us in investor-speak, “Past success, however, is no guarantee of future recovery.”
Read the whole thing.
[...]Six years ago today America launched the war in Iraq.
There have been a lot of blunders along the way and a lot of blood spilled by the brave and the innocent. But finally, after many recent successes, 2,191 days later, American troops are coming home. In Victory.
History will decide if it [...]
About the Bill of Attainder, a type of which just passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority today, one of the Constitution’s authors, Alexander Hamilton said this:
The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, [...]
There are two statistics that illuminate why I think this recession is going to last longer than most suspect and there’s little that Washington or the Fed can do to fix it. But there’s a lot that they are doing in an attempt to fix it that will only succeed in [...]
For the sake of argument let’s assume that there really is such a thing as anthropogenic global warming and that the burning of fossil fuels is a large contributor.
If government raises significant receipts from a high level of taxation on an undesirable activity, does not the government then become reliant on that activity even as [...]
The CRA, AKA the “Loan more money to people who are less likely to repay it act,” gets closer scrutiny in this post from James Pethokoukis.
East Bridgewater Saving is like a lot of banks today in that it is coming under increased FDIC fire. However, unlike many of its brethren, EBS has zero delinquent [...]
If you are, then put the blame where it belongs: Washington.
It was in the bill. Yes, that bill. The one that was rushed through Congress. The 1,100-page bill that no one read. AIG’s bonuses were specifically in there. Congress (Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Bribestan) inserted the clause.
Remember this:
Obama: Caterpillar to rehire if stimulus passes
The “stimulus” passed, so here’s the latest news from Caterpillar:
Caterpillar to lay of 2,454 workers in 3 states
Oops.
[...]In the encyclopedia of economic history there is one volume whose lessons are undoubted by economists of nearly every stripe. “Wage and price controls are always bad,” is the tome’s name.
But, like the Black Flame Candle which shall not be lit or the “Beetlejuice” which shall not be thrice named, some idiot always [...]
The American Legislative Exchange Council has released the results of its comparison of each state’s fiscal and economic policies. Tennessee, largely as a result of its low taxes, ranks very high on the list.
What I find most interesting in the study is the correlation between ranking and net domestic [...]
According to Kathleen Parker the demise of newspapers is primarily the fault of Rush Limbaugh.
A few thoughts:
1. What is it about his 20 million listeners that they wield such influence in a nation of 300 million?
2. If they have such influence, how are they losing elections?
3. There are so many reasons [...]
ABC News’ recent Iraqi public opinion poll shows improved attitudes across the board. Except for last fall, ABC has conducted this poll roughly every six months since 2004.
Many would find the result of this latest poll release remarkable. Those who were there during the last years would not be surprised.
Some excerpts:
Those who [...]
Imagine a scenario where consumer demand falls as more and more people use their earnings to pay down debt and build up savings that have been depleted by a market collapse. The cost of goods and services falls in response to declining demand. Oversupply, particularly in the housing market, takes [...]
To be fair, it takes time to properly staff a new Administration. Vetting is a process that can take many months, particularly for those potential nominees who have no previous security clearance. However, from Bill Richardson to Tom Daschle to Charles Freeman to Rodgin Cohen and many more, the current level of [...]
The stimulus is working . . . if you live within a fifty mile radius of the nation’s capital.
One exception to the grim data is in Washington, D.C., and neighboring Maryland and Virginia. The Obama administration may create 100,000 jobs to help administer the $787 billion economic stimulus package [...]
Isn’t the Gridiron Dinner that annual Washington event where a bunch of journalist bigwigs get together to roast the President in his presence and he self deprecatingly laughs at it?
I can’t imagine why President Obama would want to miss that.
[...]If Whoopi Goldberg is getting up in arms about tax increases then this movement is crossing all kinds of lines.
And since we’re on the subject of taxes, let’s dispense with two untruths:
Untruth #1. The tax increase is just a raise in the income tax rate of 3.6% for the top two [...]
I was just downtown when I observed that Nashville is probably like a lot of America’s urban cores in that the largest employers tend to be law firms, government offices, banks, and insurance companies. No one knows exactly how all of today’s economic messes are going to shake out, but I [...]
Yesterday Pajamas Media published an op-ed I wrote. In 24 hours it received over 250 comments, making it the most popular article on the popular website.
Many of the comments were interesting, but not in ways that I expected. Intended to provoke a discussion about how the government’s actions could [...]
As expected, President Obama lifted the ban on taxpayer-funded stem cell research today.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, stem-cell research never was prohibited; the only thing banned was using taxpayer dollars to fund such research. Framed as a life-saving issue, the policy change has enjoyed great popular support from nearly every societal segment except for [...]
I have written something published by Pajamas Media which argues that, culturally, America is on the edge of very dangerous times. An excerpt:
The risk to the Administration, nay, the risk to America, is that when we reach bottom, it is not an economic bottom, but a socio-cultural one. Ayn Rand was a great observer of [...]
