Less Than Zero Redux

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com "The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," George Bernard Shaw once said. For a socialist, Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested. The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center recently disclosed that close to half of all households will pay no income tax this year. Some will pay less than zero The true burden of government, the late Milton Friedman said, is not the tax level but the spending level. Taxation is just one way for the government to get money.

The Dollar Ditch

clipped from news.yahoo.com LONDON (AFP) – The price of gold struck an all-time high Tuesday as the dollar fell on a news report of a plan by Gulf states to stop using the greenback for oil trading. Gold hit 1,045.00 dollars per ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange in late trades. Hours earlier on the London Bullion Market, gold surged to 1,043.78 dollars beating the previous record high of 1,032.70 dollars an ounce struck in March, 2008. Barclays Capital precious metals analyst Suki Cooper said dollar weakness appeared to be related to reported secret talks about oil being priced in a basket of currencies including gold rather than the dollar,

Code Pink Moving Right Of O Duce?

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com This photo was taken by Code Pink during their trip to Afghanistan. For some reason the Code Pink Marxists did not thank George Bush for the fact that little girls were once again attending school in the former Taliban stronghold. Hell freezes over. Code Pink is rethinking their call for US troop pullout in Afghanistan. Kristinn reported this from The Christian Science Monitor: During their weeklong visit here, in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war. While the group hasn't dropped its call for a pullout, the visit convinced them that setting a deadline isn't in Afghanistan's interests, say Ms. Benjamin and fellow cofounder Jodie Evans. So does this mean that Code Pink is now to the right of the Obama Administration?

Wow. How much more do you need to know?

Initiative

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com To understand why so many Americans are dying before their time from diseases like diabetes, it might be instructive to walk down a typical street in most American cities or towns and eyeball the population. Compared to other industrialized counties I've visited, or population doesn't appear to be taking good care of itself. It may not be our medical system and its providers that are letting us down; we may be the ones who are letting us down. Recall too in this connection that there are an estimated 4.5 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid or S-CHIP but have not enrolled. It's tough to save people who lack the initiative to take advantage of free health care. It used to be fashionable for leftists to condemn America for having a high infant mortality rate. But was America to blame for the habits and behavior pattens of pregnant girls who recklessly endangered the babies they were carrying? Fortunately, most Americans don't seem to be buying the left's indictment

The Most ImpOrtant Commodity

clipped from hotair.com One of the most persistent and dangerous illusions of socialism is the belief that money becomes magically virtuous when government handles it. Politicians are at least as greedy as any captain of industry. The installation of a politburo does not eliminate ambition from a society - it changes the means used to fulfill those ambitions. The political class achieves its desires through force, by definition. Unlike commerce, force produces no side benefits for the larger population - the politician and his constituents get what they want, at the expense of everyone else. The people Moore caricatures as cold-hearted fat cats don’t go away under a socialist government - what a silly, childish notion! The million-dollar marketplace of high-level transactions still exists, but now the most important commodity is political power.

RTWT.

Stopped Clock Watch ... Kinda ...

clipped from www.nytimes.com The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging. The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness. The master in this area, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt. His first Inaugural Address was famous for the phrase: “The only thing we have to fear. ...” But he also said in that speech: “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” And he said the country should treat that task “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

... well not really but it's as close as you'll ever come with Bob Herbert. But by the end he lapses into how we need need FDR's war urgency again. But brilliant Bob seems to forget that FDR did finally use a war to get us out of the depression. Somehow that didn't make it into the jack-ass history books.

That Bus Again

clipped from www.politico.com Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order. “The administration came in reading there to be wide support for closing Guantanamo at home and abroad, and I think it misread that attitude,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who held Defense and State Department positions on detainee policy. “In general, they were right….but there was very little willingness to accept the costs and risks of getting it done.” “This clearly was a decision that had the full support of the entire national security team,” said Ken Gude, who tracks Guantanamo issues for the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. “It’s typical Washington that someone has their head on the chopping block, but it’s ridiculous that it’s Craig.”

The Country Overboard Blues

clipped from taxprof.typepad.com Following up on last week's post, 47% Will Pay $0 Income Tax in 2009: this chart breaks down the 2008 presidential election by income:

More Coincidence Ahead

clipped from online.wsj.com Jan. 20, 2010 NEW YORK—When American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons. Yet that's just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution passes. An Israeli diplomat observed bitterly that Jan. 20 was the 68th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, which historians believe is where Nazi Germany planned the extermination of European Jewry. An administration spokesman said the timing of the vote was "purely coincidental."

Without Laughing

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com President and Mrs. Obama filled their speeches to the International Olympic Committee with references to themselves, their lives, their experiences, all because of their self-evident significance to the progress of humanity. "Both Obamas," writes George Will, gave heartfelt speeches about ... themselves." This is only a slight exaggeration in the case of President Obama's speech, though entirely on the mark with respect to Mrs. Obama's. Mrs. Obama also earned extra credit with her Olympic memory of sitting on her father's lap to watch Carl Lewis compete when she would have been 20 years old. While Mrs. Obama's speech edged President Obama's in narcissism, it was a helluva close race. (The texts of both speeches are posted here.) Who can resist such stuff? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Nell in Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, one must have a heart of stone to hear it spoken in earnest without laughing.

Sellout

clipped from pajamasmedia.com GOOD GRIEF: Obama Cuts Off Funding for Iranian Human-Rights Documentation. “The Clinton State Department has decided to cut off all funding for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), which was compiling lists of protestors imprisoned in this summer’s unrest, as well as those who were killed in the crackdown. IHRDC is what human-rights advocates should be: methodical, precise, and apolitical in their work. And yet, the Obama administration has, without explanation, cut off all federal funding to the group which has consistently fulfilled its mandate.” They’re planning a sellout, and data on what the Iranians are doing to their protesters would make it more embarrassing.

The People Who Belong In The Junkyard

clipped from online.wsj.com Remember "cash for clunkers," the program that subsidized Americans to the tune of nearly $3 billion to buy a new car and destroy an old one? Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared in August that, "This is the one stimulus program that seems to be working better than just about any other program." If that's true, heaven help the other programs. Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under the program as buyers received up to $4,500 to buy a new car they would probably have purchased anyway, so all the program seems to have done is steal those sales from the future. Exactly as critics predicted. The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.

And He Would Be Completely Correct ...

clipped from reason.com Justice Scalia on whether smart people going into the law is a good thing. From The ABA Journal: “I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise. “I mean there’d be a … public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society? “I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table, and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.”

... except he has far too high an opinion of lawyers. Nuff said.

Not So

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com One would think that at least two lessons would have been learned from the financial crisis: stop pushing loans to people who cannot or will not pay them back and stop offering loans with "flexible underwriting criteria." Not so. The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are pushing their most audacious plan yet expanding the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which helped spark the crisis in the first place. As our old Hoover Institution friend Peter Schweizer points out in his Forbes column "Expanding the CRA," in the nine years running up to the economic crisis, banks operating under the constraints of the CRA to offer more than $4.2 trillion in loans to people they would ordinarily not lend money to. Now they want to expand the CRA to cover credit unions, other mortgage lenders and insurance companies. This would mean trillions more in what Peter refers to as affirmative action lending.

Welcome To Government By Jack-sses Who Need To All Be Thrown In Jail For A Good Long Time

clipped from www.qando.net The Federal Trade Commission has just released a ruling (PDF) that requires bloggers to disclose anything–and I mean anything–they receive as a result of their blogging.  Free review copies of books.  Trips to oil rigs.  Payments.  T-shirts.  Whatever it is, you better disclose it, or you get slapped with a fine of $11,000 per infraction. In other words, the government is now putting all web sites, professional or personal, under its thumb for failing to disclose everything they receive from any source.  And what are the guidelines for disclosure?  Why, none at all.  So, assuming you receive a free copy of a book–even if you don’t review it–you must disclose that you received it.  How do you disclose it?  I dunno.  How do you you know if your disclosure is sufficient?  I dunno.  The FTC, you see, will make those decisions on a “case-by-case” basis.

And if you can't figure it out, jack-ss is a reference to a particular political party in light of its mascot. Not to be confused with the Dumbo's of course.

Which brings to mind Buckley's quote: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

Never has it been more true. Except that Harvard has now corrupted Boston to the extent that a different phone book would need to be used.

Change He Doesn't Believe In

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Of course Barack and Michelle Obama failed in Copenhagen.  Their strategy could not possibly succeed.  In their academic arrogance, they thought they could sell a product they clearly do not believe in (the United States) and moreover, they could do so by stressing the benefits to the seller (Chicago) and not the buyer (the IOC).  And to top it off, they committed the faux pas of talking too much about the sales force (themselves) and not about the product or the buyer. Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Anyone who has had to succeed in the real business world -- and that includes few if any on Team Obama -- instinctively knows that to get business done you have to believe in what you are doing and offer a product or service that is focused on the benefits to the customer.  In the Obama World of Chicago pay-to-play power, business gets done by flexing muscle and clearing the field of your competitors.  You don't have to sell anything. You don't have to believe in anything.

Accountability Watch

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com So where does a far left political operative land after his organization is fined $775,000 for election violations that included hiring rapists and burglars to register voters? Inside the Obama White House, of course. Obama's ACORN operative in the White House Patrick Gaspard is helping shape domestic policy-- From left: CECILIA MUÑOZ, director, intergovernmental affairs; MICHAEL STRAUTMANIS, public liaison; CHRISTOPHER LU, Cabinet secretary; HEATHER HIGGINBOTTOM, deputy director, Domestic Policy Council; PATRICK GASPARD, political director; PHIL SCHILIRO, director of legislative affairs; MELODY BARNES, director, Domestic Policy Council. (New America Today Mag) In 2004, Patrick Gaspard Served As National Field Director For 527 Organization America Coming Together, a group that was later fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired dozens of felons some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary – to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives

Nothing Except The Party Affiliations

clipped from pajamasmedia.com IN the annals of American excess, there often arrives a moment when those with too much money, too much clout and too much hubris just can’t stop themselves from tempting the fates. They throw an over-the-top party in public, or parade their wealth and power before the press, and the next thing you know their world, and sometimes ours, has crashed. . . . It’s in this context that you have to wonder what some of the Obama era’s most moneyed and White House-connected lobbyists were thinking as they preened before a Washington Post reporter recently for two lengthy articles. We’re not even nine months into the new administration, yet these swaggering, utterly un-self-aware influence peddlers seem determined to prove that nothing except the party affiliations has changed in the Beltway’s pay-for-play culture since Tom DeLay. If these lobbyists were stocks, I’d short them. When you’ve lost Frank Rich, you’ve lost conventional-wisdom punditAmerica.

COTD: On The Inside Now

clipped from wizbangblog.com What happens when the organizer finds himself in charge? Exactly what we see today: He keeps on with the campaign. There is no attempt to describe how to govern. It is never considered. Alinsky looks only at how do you tear down the existing government. Now that Obama is in power his only actions are to keep campaigning and to continue to try and tear down our government. So he continually apologizes for the US. He insults our allies and abrogates security arrangements that protect them. He coddles our enemies and keeps them from being harmed so they can gather their own strength against us. In short he is still campaigning to bring down the US. The only difference is that he is on the inside now.

Fubar

clipped from wizbangblog.com There is a confluence of events that is having the effect of exposing this President as a politician that was enormously over promised and under delivered; an unvetted, untested and obscure politician that is failing before our very eyes. In looking back over the last several months there were telling signs of what is clearly seen today as the epitome of a politician in over his head. It began with the President's promise on inauguration day to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay (with no plan in place to accomplish that directive). Following that, in no particular order, was the failed Stimulus legislation , the CIA interrogation investigation flip flop, the government takeover of the car companies, the Louis Gates fubar , a total disregard for unemployment, the inept handling of ObamaCare , the wasted political capital on Cap and Trade, the European missile shield betrayal and the failure to implement a previously stated Afghanistan policy.

Four Years?

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com I'm beginning to seriously wonder if an Obama administration can even last four years at this rate. The only thing that's clear since he was inaugurated is that America currently doesn't have any real leadership at all. And the silly things that he does at least attempt to lead on like the Chicago Olympics have met with dismal failure. I once thought Jimmy Carter's status as the worst president in modern times was secure. Now I have my doubts. If voting present and amateurish incompetence are ever deemed to be impeachable offenses, Obama simply will not last. More important now, even if he does, what the hell is America going to do with no one at the helm. And the worst may yet lie ahead of he ever does decide to step away from the cameras and place his hands on the wheel. There's no reason to suspect Obama knows how to do anything but read from a teleprompter and preen for the cameras at this point.

Gone And Lost

clipped from www.qando.net [T]he IOC’s last two experiences in the United States were bad: the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were sullied by a bribery scandal and logistical problems and a bombing hit the 1996 Games in Atlanta. So, excess security may have caused many IOC members heartburn, some felt the president’s short stay showed a lack of respect, his pitch seems to have fallen flat, the IOC and USOC have financial disputes, and the previous two experiences with Olympic games in the US were not the best experiences for the IOC. Plus it was just South America’s time! But Bush – huh uh. Roland Burris notwithstanding, the failure of the bid seem to have had zip to do with him. Unlike Democrats, the rest of the world seems to have accepted that Bush is gone.

Without Comment

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

NYeT! They Don't Exist!

clipped from hotair.com And the prospect of winning was too irresistible. After all, Mr. Obama has already envisioned the day when he could welcome the world to his hometown, never mind that small matter of reelection. “In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president,” he told a rally in Chicago in June 2008. “So I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park … as president of the United States and announcing to the world: Let the Games begin!”… “They shouldn’t try to make politics of this,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a Chicagoan himself, told ABC News. “I think they should take some pride in the U.S.’s win, and you know, we’ll make sure they get some good seats once Chicago does host the games.” An old Soviet joke: “The future is easy to predict. It’s the past that keeps changing.” RBMN on October 3, 2009 at 1:58 PM

COTD: The Scary Joke

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “i’m surprised at how limited he seems to be” Barack Obama is a shallow and poorly read man. His Harvard law degree is something of a joke. It merely means he should be able to pass a state board exam. Harvard’s standards continue to decline. A soft science credential from this overrated academic university is often not worthy of respect. Its graduates should be considered idiots until proven otherwise. Our host is probably the exception to the general rule. “Obama could be curled up in a ball, sucking his thumb, by spring.” That’s what I have been saying for awhile. The odds are at least 50/50 that Barack Obama will experience a mental breakdown. He will unlikely finish his term in office. Joe Biden will have to take over the duties of the presidency.

The Electric Socket

clipped from pajamasmedia.com People, bless them, mostly listen to themselves. A change of heart is unlikely until their own experience convinces them of the futility of their former course. Because democracies are ruled by whoever has the current majority, each side gets to try out its formula. However until final, irretrievable and undeniable consequences ensue the results will be ambiguous and no side will win the debate. The postwar legacy made it possible to avoid stark catastrophes and thus avoid clear endings to the debate; it gave two whole generations enough of a margin to philosophically consider the most blatant nonsense and insulate themselves from the immediate effects of their follies. Now that the design margin has worn thin, the “learning moment” nears. What will we learn when we turn the page? What will we find when we stick our fingers into an electric socket. Some may already guess; but others must discover it for themselves. They’re going to do it, no matter what.

Well, it's a comment. But it's on his own post so I skipped the COTD tag.

On Never Being Wrong

clipped from pajamasmedia.com SO I GUESS HE’S NOT PLANNING ON RUNNING FOR OFFICE EVER AGAIN: Bill Frist on Health Bill: I’d Vote For It. I’m disappointed in this. UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “Always expect the worst of the political class and those who report on them. That way you will never be disappointed, and you will never be wrong.”

Looted

clipped from pajamasmedia.com MICKEY KAUS: BREITBART’S LEGACY? “Rasmussen’s latest poll finds, rather unbelievably, that voters say ‘government ethics and corruption’ is now a more important issue than ‘the economy.’ With unemployment at 9.8%! Hello? Is this all James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart’s doing? I can’t think of any big recent corruption-related events other than the ACORN and NEA scandals. … I doubt it is all liberals concerned about the power of the insurance lobby. … P.S.: This might explain why, while the MSM still gives the ACORN scandals restrained coverage, the pols are running for the hills. They have pollsters too.” UPDATE: Reader Stan Brown writes: Why does “government ethics and corruption” have to be considered a separate category from the economy? Yes, “corruption” goes beyond individual scandals to encompass things like Geithner’s tax problems, as well as general cronyism and a sense that the Treasury is being looted for the benefit of special interests.

Trick And Treats

clipped from news.yahoo.com What parent hasn't used candy to pacify a cranky child or head off a brewing tantrum? When reasoning, threats and time-outs fail, a sugary treat often does the trick. But while that chocolate-covered balm may be highly effective in the short term, say British scientists, it may be setting youngsters up for problem behavior later. According to a new study, kids who eat too many treats at a young age risk becoming violent in adulthood. The research was led by Simon Moore, a senior lecturer in Violence and Society Research at Cardiff University in the U.K., who specializes in the study of vulnerable youngsters. Moore had been investigating the factors that lead children to commit serious crimes, when, during the course of his work, he discovered that "kids with the worst problems tend to be impulsive risk takers, and that these kids had terrible diets - breakfast was a Coke and a bag of chips," he says. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

Ugly And None

clipped from pajamasmedia.com DANES EXPLAIN WHY OBAMA FAILED: “It comes down to respect. President Obama showed none. . . . He was ill-prepared and his staff failed to lay the foundation for his appearance. He came off as an ugly American who knew nothing about the territory and who felt the world somehow owed him something.”

Deep, Deep Trouble

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com There's actually something worrisome about this whole Chicago fiasco, and it goes back to President Obama's inexperience. Diplomacy 101 tells us that your head of state only shows up on the high-profile stage when a deal is complete. The lesson that most politicians learn well before they gain positions of power is that diplomacy is done by diplomats, professionals who work through all the negotiations and the hardball tactics and the carrot/stick combinations. Why were you and Ramesh surprised? Because you thought that President Obama at least knew this very basic lesson. Today's announcement suggests that he does not, and it just got advertised big-time to countries who already were pretty sure we had a rookie at the helm who didn't know how to use international power. President Obama just got upstaged by an organization against whom no retaliation is acceptable, and he wants to meet with the Iranians next month? We are in deep, deep trouble.

Top Ten Reasons Why Chicago Didn't Get The Olympics

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com 10. Dead people can't vote at IOC meetings 9. Obama distracted by 25 min meeting with Gen. McChrystal 8. Who cares if Obama couldn't talk the IOC into Chicago? He'll be able to talk Iran out of nukes. 7. The impediment is Israel still building settlements. 6. Obviously no president would have been able to acomplish it. 5. We've been quite clear and said all along that we didn't want the Olympics. 4. This isn't about the number of Olympics "lost", it's about the number of Olympics "saved" or "created". 3. Clearly not enough wise Latina judges on the committee 2. Because the IOC is racist. 1. It's George Bush's fault.

Stolen whole.

Nooooo

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Wow

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The National Post reports that the video has become something of an internet sensation since it was uploaded this past Wednesday. "Nine seconds into the film," the paper adds, "a 13-year-old Anne is seen leaning out of a second-floor window, smiling and looking down at the street to see the bride and groom." How utterly, utterly sad.

What If?

clipped from raymankojast.blogspot.com "What if President Obama held up a photograph of Neda, the young girl murdered by Iranian authorities, at his next press conference? What if he did that at every press conference? I bet that would unnerve President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and even the supreme leader far more than the loss of some German machine tool imports or Dutch tomatoes." More @slate.

$1000 to O Duce's favorite charity -- ACORN I'm guessing -- if he'll do it. What are the odds I'll lose? About 1 in 10^33 is my guess...

And That's AFTER The Hedonics

clipped from pajamasmedia.com DON SURBER compares actual unemployment with what the Obama Administration promised from the Stimulus.

Senator From Big PhRMA Confused

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Demonrat Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) admits that no one has a clue what the language of the ObamaCare Bill means, nobody else does, and so there's no point in reading it. I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language, because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life. . . . When you get into the legislative language, Sen. Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day, and I don’t think anybody had a clue, including people who had served on this committee for decades, what he was talking about. There's a video clip at Patterico in case you think I'm exaggerating. Am I alone in thinking that if your job description is "law-maker," you ought to have a minimal level of competence in writing and understanding... you know... the law?

Not Workin'

clipped from www.moonbattery.com A curious article was featured just below the fold on the Washington Compost front page -- curious in its apparent honesty (if tempered with a hint of innocent "how could this be happening" ignorance). You see, it reports what was stunningly obvious any sensible conservative or libertarian: the porkulus was never going to help our economy. The fragile economic recovery has relied heavily on government stimulus spending, but new data show that as the money runs out, a sustained rebound may be elusive. Hm. Elusive. The government's wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program drove consumer spending to its highest level in eight years in August. But after it ended, so did the growth in auto sales.