Throwback

clipped from online.wsj.com The fallacies of Keynesian economics were exposed decades ago by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Keynesian thinking was then discredited in practice in the 1970s, when the Keynesians could neither explain nor cure the double-digit inflation, interest rates, and unemployment that resulted from their policies. Ronald Reagan's decision to dump Keynesianism in favor of supply-side policies—which emphasize incentives for investment—produced a 25-year economic boom. That boom ended as the Bush administration abandoned every component of Reaganomics one by one, culminating in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's throwback Keynesian stimulus in early 2008. Mr. Obama quintupled down on Mr. Bush's 2008 Keynesianism. Rejecting Keynesianism in favor of fiscal restraint, France and Germany saw economic growth return in the second quarter this year. U.S. economic recovery and a permanent reduction in unemployment will only come from private, job-creating investment.

$999,999,999,999.99

clipped from article.nationalreview.com 6) Say things just because they sound good. Why not? Obama always says he’ll reduce costs even though the Democratic plans do little or nothing to reduce costs. That’s his sound bite, and he’s sticking to it. 7) Dissemble as necessary. Don’t hesitate to brazen it out as needed. The House plan authorizes the secretary of health and human services to include abortion coverage in the public option. But Obama insists reform won’t cover abortion, and accuses his opponents of lying when they say it will. Shamelessness has its advantages, especially if a compliant press will overlook it. 8) Make the price right. Washington’s new standard for expensive is $1 trillion. Naturally, Obama’s plan came in at $900 billion. He might as well have said it will cost $999.999 billion. 9) Never admit any cost or downside to what you are proposing. Even an unparalleled genius of an orator has trouble selling things people don’t like. So don’t do it.

Don't Forget The Linen ... Or Toilet Paper

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com I asked one guy, who came up from South Carolina with 160 people on three buses, who put his trip together. He laughed and said, "My neighbor." Can we drive a stake through the astroturf claim now? Another interesting detail about the march — it was filled with immigrants. I'm pretty sure every Cuban in a thousand mile radius was there, helpfully explaining to everyone who would listen that Cuba's vaunted free health care system involves shoddily trained doctors and bringing your own linen to the hospital. I also spoke to angry immigrants from England and Ireland, appalled the country was slouching toward socialized medicine.

COTD: Striped Allies

clipped from reason.com To those who just can't understand why anyone would protest against an "enlightened" Democrat administration, unless there was some kind of racism involved; I'm black. Not African-American or any other PC crap. Just plain BLACK. I am an atheist. And I am a libertarian (small l). I acknowledge that some (not most) so-called libertarians ARE racist, ignorant, fools, or just plain loony. However, I utterly reject the meme that anyone who doesn't like Big Uncle Sugar must be a redneck racist. And no, I never got a job through affirmative action, never got a minority grant, or any other crap that the so-called left like to hurl out to try to make me look line an ingrate. My poor-ass family worked hard. The people at those protests, whether they were black, white, blue, or f***ing striped, are my allies in the fight to restore the idea of reward for effort, frugality, and liberty. So, knock of the racist crap. There are asshats in every political party.

The ChicagO Way

clipped from www.suntimes.com The man federal prosecutors pressured to cooperate in the corruption probe of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich died of an apparent aspirin overdose on Saturday, law enforcement sources said. Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 10:46 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for today, a Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office spokeswoman said. Kelly was Blagojevich’s “go-to guy” who once was the mastermind of the ex-governor’s lucrative campaign fund. Kelly’s death comes just four days after he pleaded guilty to a scheme involving $8.5 million in fraud at O’Hare Airport. It was the second conviction he notched this year -- he still faced trial along with the ex-governor, in June. Kelly had been indicted three times since 2007 but refused to become a cooperating witness. When he pleaded guilty to the O’Hare scheme Tuesday, Kelly spoke of feeling intense pressure by prosecutors to abandon his loyalty to Blagojevich and cooperate with the feds.

War O Choice II: Irreversible

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Likewise, Obama didn’t “join” himself to the liberal leadership; he is the liberal leadership. The administration didn’t fall in with the wrong crowd; they are the wrong crowd. Van Jones, Yosi Sergant, and ACORN are where Barack Obama has chosen to live all his adult life. Even if he wanted to be the bipartisan centrist of David Brooks’s fantasies, look at his Rolodex and then figure out just where such a man would estimate the “center” to be. My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.

War O Choice

clipped from article.nationalreview.com And that, ultimately, gets closer than anything else he says to giving the game away. For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms

Unblinking II: TonySopranoCare

clipped from www.forbes.com Obama didn't say exactly how he would make "everyone do their part"--a question he posed repeatedly to Hillary. But his buddy Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has some rather well-developed ideas on that score. Baucus has proposed a bill that would force the uninsured to pay fines on a sliding scale of income, with those making 300% of the poverty level having to cough up as much as $3,800 a year. In short, Americans would have to pay Uncle Sam for the privilege of remaining uninsured. If there were truth-in-labeling laws for Congress, it would be required to call this bill TonySopranoCare. Which brings us to the second promise Obama broke Wednesday night: That he would impose no new taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. The penalties that the uninsured--all of whom, I would wager my grandma's life support, make under $250,000--would face are certainly a tax.

Unblinking

clipped from www.forbes.com Perhaps the most striking--and disturbing--thing about the speech was the unblinking confidence Obama exuded while breaking key campaign promises he made to voters. He had raked poor Hillary Clinton over the coals for admitting that her road to universal coverage was paved with an individual mandate. "Everyone would be forced to buy coverage, even if you can't afford it," warned Obama in an ad. "You pay a penalty if you don't." Yet, there he was last night scolding "individuals who can afford coverage but game the system by avoiding responsibility." Never mind that the prime gamers are not the uninsured (whose unpaid bills cost "the system" less than $40 billion every year) but the underinsured covered by Medicare and Medicaid (whom private insurers cross-subsidize to the tune of over $90 billion annually because the government refuses to pay the full cost of their care). Still, he hectored: "Improving our health care system works only if everybody does their part."

Absolutely Clean

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HEADLINE: Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration. So maybe I was wrong to be so skeptical. But cut it in half and it’s still a huge number. And this is priceless: “Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event – an ethic they believe should be applied to the government.” Why is the British press more honest in its reporting on this stuff than the American press? Meanwhile, a reader emails: “I’ll tell you what I find impressive. I’m watching the Fox news video about 15 minutes after the end of the event. The crowd has thinned out enough that you can see the ground and there is not a speck of trash on the grass. Absolutely clean. To contrast, google ‘pictures of litter on the mall after the inauguration.’”

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

clipped from prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com The White House on Friday said it would bar illegal immigrants from purchasing health coverage through a proposed insurance marketplace. But the administration also said that the federal government would continue to require hospitals to provide emergency treatment to illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense.

Joe Wilson watch.

Orwell Quotes For Today

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

LESS FAMOUS:

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

All Day

clipped from www.qando.net I never watch morning TV. I can’t stand all the caffeine fueled happy talk on the morning news shows and anyway I’d rather ease into the news cycle the old fashioned way – with a newspaper. But on September 11th of 2001 I happened to be listening to the radio when I heard a report that it was believed that an airplane had hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I walked over and turned on the TV. I forget which channel or network it was but I remember the anchor talking about what was then thought to be a horrific accident. It couldn’t have been 5 minutes later that the second tower was hit. I stood in horrified amazement. I realized it was no accident but I didn’t understand yet what it all meant. Then the report came in about the Pentagon. Finally I realized that it was an orchestrated attack. I wouldn’t hear about the plane that crashed in PA for a while. I remember doing something I never do – sitting in front of that TV all day.

You Can Look It Up

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Scenario A: The supposedly inept president of the United States carefully planned and orchestrated the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. Though “only” 3,000 people died, the plan was to kill many more by simultaneously attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House itself on Sept. 11, 2001. Then there’s Scenario B: An ambitious and extremely clever politician, who has at best been selectively forthcoming about large chunks of his youth, lied about his place of birth so he could be eligible for the presidency. Now, which one is more believable? For the record, I don’t believe either. But it seems to me the “birther” hypothesis is vastly more plausible than the “truther” hypothesis. Politicians lie to advance their careers. You can look it up. Whole governments rarely orchestrate incredibly complex acts of physics, logistics, and mass murder all the while pinning guilt on others (who boast that they acted alone).

pathOs

clipped from www.qando.net “Obama doesn’t need to get ‘Republicans on board.’ He doesn’t need to get Blue Dog Democrats on board. He needs to get voters on board.” And if there’s any tactic less effective at wooing skeptics than number-fudging insincerity, it’s number-fudging insincerity coupled with attacks on the veracity, motivation, and worldview of the skeptics themselves. And that is precisely the path Obama took last night.

Stated More Concisely

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Last night, Scott wrote about "Obama's missing millions." These are the 16 million people who were included when President Obama said last month that 46 million Americans lack health coverage but excluded when, in his speech to Congress, Obama lowered the number to 30 million. It seems clear that most of these missing millions (9.6 milllion, in fact) are non-citizens, and, in most of these cases, illegal immigrants. The remainder, I assume, are people who are enrolled in Medicaid or S-CHIP but didn't tell the census taker. So Obama counted non-citizens as "Americans [who] don't have health coverage" in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire speech when he wanted to inflate the number of uninsured Americans so as to persuade us that there's an enormous crisis. He then discounted them when the charge that Democrats will insure illegal aliens gained traction. Stated more concisely, in order to make his opponents out to be lying, our slippery president must now abandon his prior false statement.

Dirty Harry And The End O The World

clipped from pajamasmedia.com To get a sense of the atmosphere in Tehran these days, it suffices to know that when Karroubi’s office was raided, the chief security guy said to him, “this is the last time we will come and not arrest you.”  Karroubi replied “no need to wait, why don’t you arrest me now?  It would be an honor.” I’m impressed by that sort of response.  I only wish that the feckless leaders of the West lived up to their job titles and gave the Iranian Green Wave the sort of support it so richly deserves.  And not only for them.  For us.  That global conspiracy aimed at our destruction is for real. It would have taken all the skills of the greatest espionage writer–Charles McCarry perhaps?–to have conjured up this conspiracy, but there it is, in black and white, obvious to anyone who takes the time to read. The good news is that the American people get it.  Here’s another very important headline from the last few days: “Smith & Wesson Reports 1st Quarter Results (Net Income Up 458%)”. Dirty Harry is smiling.

Unpossible

clipped from ace.mu.nu There are questions about when these weapons entered Afghanistan, but a top U.S. military official tells FOX News that an Iranian rocket was recently fired at a base in Herat. Additional intelligence suggests that Iranians have been providing support directly to the Taliban. Hold on. The Shia Muslims of Iran helping the Sunni Muslims of the Taliban? Didn't the Democrats tell us that was unpossible? Why yes, yes they did (Warning: Think Progress link). I'm sure Obama will dash off another letter after tonight's speech. We'll get this unpleasantness cleared up right away.

Must Be A King

clipped from www.youtube.com

Billy Mays' Replacement Found

clipped from proteinwisdom.com 5:54 — “I will seek common ground, my door is always open.” When exactly is Obama IN the Oval office and not infront of a camera somewhere? 5:56 — Oh gawd… Dead Kennedy moment. Pimp that corpse, Barry! 5:57 — “Social justice” DRINK!! 5:58 — How can Obama say “self-reliance” in the same breath as proposing statism? 5:59 — Hey Barry — that helping hand is voluntary! the Government hand is NOT voluntary! 6:00 — Barry knows his history of Social Security as well as 57 states 6:01 — “without the leavening hand of Government” WTF? 6:02 — Barry is winding up with usual Messiah rhetoric unmatched by reality …. good lord that was tedious….. ****************************** Sarah Palin, whose writings have gotten the Left and Obama all wee wee’d up has a pointed response (h/t royf) ****************************** The congressman who got fed up the Obama’s blatant lie — “illegal aliens won’t get benefits under this reform” — was one Joe Wilson

#Comment by Huey on 9/9 @ 6:43 pm #

Yup, I think we just found a replacement for Billy Mays.

And Second Homes In Maine

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Stephen Green: “Self-reliance! Love of freedom! Skepticism of government! And socialized medicine! Sing it with me now: One of these things is not like the other…” My question: Is America ready to believe that a politician from Chicago will eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse? MORE: A wrapup from Megan McArdle: “In the end, I think this speech satisfied no one. There’s a little information for the wonks, but not nearly enough. There’s a little stirring rhetoric for the non-wonks, but again, not nearly enough. Journalists seem to have liked it. But if journalists were any reliable key to the sentiment of the American people, we’d already have national healthcare, and national second homes in Maine.” And profitable newspapers everywhere! And Larry Sabato tweets: “That was a tough, partisan speech. All pretense of bipartisanship is gone on both sides.”

About Those Petitions

clipped from www.humanevents.com (14) National health care will not cover abortions or illegal immigrants. This appeared in an earlier installment of "Liberal Lies About Health Care," but I keep seeing Democrats like Howard Dean and Rep. Jan Schakowsky on TV angrily shouting that these are despicable lies -- which, in itself, constitutes proof that it's all true. Then why did Democrats vote down amendments that would prohibit coverage for illegals and abortion? (Also, why is Planned Parenthood collecting petition signatures in Manhattan -- where they think they have no reason to be sneaky -- in support of national health care?) If any liberal sincerely believes that national health care will not cover illegals and abortion, how do they explain the Democrats frantically opposing amendments that would make this explicit?

Steyn Again: Stay The Hell Out Of My Life

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Derb, I'm with Jonah on this. Yes, it's pathetic that eight years after 9/11 Ground Zero is still a big hole in the ground, but these days the biggest obstacle to making things happen is Big Government of the kind Thomas Friedman mostly favors — see, for example, a typical day's pair of minor news items from the formerly Golden State. This is a fundamental difference: I feel the best way to "make things happen" is for Friedman and his pals to stay the hell out of my life. Thomas Friedman feels the best way to "make things happen" is for him and his pals to stick their nose into everything. I would bet the consequence of that would be accelerating sclerosis with more and more deforming side effects. The Ungumming Lobby should give him a wide berth.

Friends

clipped from colonelrobertneville.blogspot.com

The Boundless Me, Myself And I

clipped from secularright.org The overheated right-wing pundits were on to something after all.   Obama’s speech to the “nation’s students” was pompous, ridiculously long, chock-full of ed-school bromides, and wholly beyond a president’s proper role.  Why should students study, according to Obama?  Because they will develop “critical thinking skills” from “history and social studies” that will allow them “to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.” How about studying because you will gain actual knowledge–not just “critical thinking skills”–that will lift you out of ignorance?  How about for the love of learning and beauty?  How about because facts matter?  But reading the speech, I have changed my mind.  The impression it gives is of an enormous ego and sense of boundless power and portfolio.

Watermelon Crazed

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Van Jones spent the 1990s as an avowed Communist. He is an unabashed political hater. He traffics in poisonous “truther” conspiracy theories about 9/11 as an inside job. And, yet, he is a mainstream figure within environmentalism. The real Jones scandal is less his wince-inducingly sophomoric radicalism than how comfortably he fits within the broader world of contemporary liberalism. Even as Jones was forced from his position as the White House’s special adviser for green jobs, the Left had his back. Jones calls his vision a “Green New Deal,” but it’s more of an American Great Leap Forward, giving “an honored place for labor and social activists” so they can “change the direction of our society.” The effort “will require a World War II level of mobilization.” Lunacy? Not for enviros. As Gus Speth, a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The New Yorker, “We in the environmental movement cannot fail Van Jones.”

What's green on the outside and red on the inside? Eco-socialism of course.

Insider Buying Is Non-Existent

clipped from www.theneweditor.com

The Normal State Of Affairs

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Jones' experiences at Yale caused Lisa Schiffren to wonder about President Obama's experiences at Columbia and Harvard. We know, of course, that Barack Obama is brilliant, because everyone says so -- and he has a degree from Harvard Law School. But we know nothing about his actual education: what he studied, or how he did in his studies; what thinkers and writers (excepting Saul Alinksy) inspired him and shaped his world views. We see the credentials. What about the content? As a law student, it appears that Jones aspired to a career as a community activist. Obama's ambitions began there but extended considerably further. Thus, it's likely that Obama approached school rather differently than Jones did. Whether he learned more "content" is less clear. As John has noted, Obama appears to know little about history and less about economics. But that's been pretty normal state of affairs among students at elite institutions for many years now.

I Can Tell You What I Think

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money. One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013! Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

H/T Ray.

The Memory Hole (Part 89,935)

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue. With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"

That Reactionary HHH

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The defining accomplishment of Van Jones's life was his founding of the Ella Baker Freedom Center. While the controversy over his appointment was going on I meant to look into who she was, but didn't get it done. Ron Radosh, an expert on the hard left of which he was once a member, has the answer: [T]he name of Jones' Oakland group, The Ella Baker Freedom Center, is most appropriate. Most people have referred to the late Baker as simply a civil rights activist. I am writing from vacation in Nantucket, without benefit of my files at home. But in my book, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996, I point out that the late civil rights lawyer Joe Rauh had noted that everything Baker said in the 60's might as well have been taken verbatim from The Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. Baker was so pro-Communist that she attacked Hubert Humphrey and other liberal anti-Communists as ultra reactionaries.

He Who Goes Borrowing

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed's recourse to "credit easing". "We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como. "If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said. China's reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world's largest. "Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets," he added. "He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing," said Mr Cheng. It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Wow.

I'm Feeling Better

clipped from www.forbes.com There is nothing like data to kill a good story. Clearly, there is no evidence of recovery in this picture or that the stimulus has had any effect on consumption. As is well known and easily inferred, people have to rebuild their balances sheets and are saving more. The next picture shows the time path of investment in the same way. The last picture shows data for employment. The two previous recessions were not as severe and did not last as long as our most current decline. Evidently, the current recession will hit bottom much later than most of its predecessor’s. The severity of the downturn is evident in all of these pictures. So as not to be hoist with our own petard, we reiterate that the pictures tell us very little about whether the stimulus is working. Things could have looked even worse without it! we should take a lesson from the medical profession concerning cold remedies: They may not actually do anything, they just make us feel a little better.

Terrific

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com Terrific. So, Obama hires people to work on the taxpayer's dime with less scrutiny than your average gas station. But many, many officials, from relatively obscure advisers like Jones to the most powerful White House staffers, aren't confirmed by the Senate, and the suggestion that serious vetting didn't extend to Jones's level has raised some eyebrows from past White House officials. Did he complete the WH questionnaire? That would be No! Nah, Michelle likes them, or Obama likes them ... or some donor maybe likes them, just give them a job. What an irresponsible jack-ass this guys is. I guess he was too busy, off thinking of important ways to commune with the children, or something like that. Please, wake me from this nightmare, now. Van Jones, the Obama green jobs czar who resigned shortly after midnight Sunday, did not fill out the exhaustive questionnaire White House officials required of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position.

Ugghh

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Used to be, government jobs paid LESS than comparable civilian ones, balanced by lavish benefits. But now, it seems, gummint workers make A LOT MORE than comparable civilian workers, and STILL get the lavish benefits (including lush health care plans). Is the average Federal employee worth $30,000 a year more than the typical worker in the real world? (Chart from Clusterstock, taken from John Mauldin’s current weekly letter)

Not Any Crazier Than The Rest Of Us Looney Libs

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com They loved him and left him - Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher excoriates the cut-and-run liberals who loved Green Czar Van Jones when he was up but abandoned him in his moment of trial. I especially like her "He wasn't any crazier than the rest of us" defense: Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11.