F-15s in Bavaria

This is just a great picture:

Bunning's Last Stand

A little late to get religion, but hey, the mist is lifting
---------------------------------
I have been serving the citizens of Kentucky for nearly 24 years in Washington. During that time I have been a member of both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. I have taken thousands of votes in relation to spending the taxpayers' money. I will be the first one to admit that I have cast some bad votes during my tenure, and I wish I could have some of them back. For too long, both Republicans and Democrats have treated the taxpayers' money as a slush fund that does not ever end. At some point, the madness has to stop.

Over a month ago, Democrats passed and President Obama signed into law the "Pay-Go" legislation. It calls on Congress to pay for bills by not adding to our debt. It sounds like a common sense tool that would rein in government spending. Unfortunately, Pay-Go is a paper tiger. It has no teeth. I did not vote for the Democrats' Pay-Go legislation because I knew it was just a political dog-and-pony show to get some good press after some political setbacks. Since the Pay-Go rule was enacted, the national debt has gone up $244,992,297,448.11 (as of Wednesday, that is).

I have 40 grandchildren, and I want them to grow up in a country where they have all of the same opportunities I had as a child. I fear that they will not have those opportunities if Washington continues on its course of spending without paying for it. We are at over $12 trillion in debt. I know many Americans sit around their kitchen table and make the tough decisions. It is time for the politicians in Washington to do the same.
Jim Bunning is a Republican senator from Kentucky.



http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/03/column-why-i-took-a-stand-.html

Woman leaves 2000 living descendants

WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html?hp

Climategate:Criminal Penalties Next?

Senator Inhofe calls for criminal investigation and Senate hearings.  They should be using the RICO laws for this one!
--------------------------------------
The staff report describes four major issues revealed by the Climategate Files and the subsequent revelations:

1. The emails suggest some climate scientists were cooperating to obstruct the release of damaging information and counter-evidence.
2. They suggest scientists were manipulating the data to reach predetermined conclusions.
3. They show some climate scientists colluding to pressure journal editors not to publish work questioning the “consensus.”
4. They show that scientists involved in the report were assuming the role of climate activists attempting to influence public opinion while claiming scientific objectivity.

The report notes a number of potential legal issues raised by their Climategate investigation:

1. It suggests scientific misconduct that may violate the Shelby Amendment — requiring open access to the results of government-funded research — and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) policies on scientific misconduct (which were announced December 12, 2000).
2. It notes the potential for violations of the Federal False Statements and False Claims Acts, which may have both civil and criminal penalties.
3. The report also notes the possibility of there having been an obstruction of Congress in Congressional Proceeds, which may constitute an obstruction of justice.

If proven, these charges could subject the scientists involved to debarment from federally funded research, and even to criminal penalties.


http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-and-the-law-senator-inhofe-to-ask-for-congressional-criminal-investigation-pajamas-mediapjtv-exclusive/2/

Poll: Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the Governed

Peering through the mist at last?
------------------------------
The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.


http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/february_2010/only_21_say_u_s_government_has_consent_of_the_governed

Naked Emperor Raises Rate

...and stocks and commodities go up?  Confirms inflation fears.
-------------------------------------------------------

So I’ll ask the question again — why on earth would Ben & Co. raise rates? The answer should be obvious if you’ve been listening to me and my brethren for the last several years: Bernanke is terrified of inflation. He knows that U.S. debt is losing its cachet. He knows how much money has been printed. He knows the American consumer is an empty gun. He knows what’s coming, and he figures if he starts raising rates now, he can postpone the inevitable catastrophe. And maybe he can. If he raises rates to 10,000 basis-points (that’s 100%, by the way, and even that wouldn’t be enough).
You think that’s crazy? Ben doesn’t. After Friday, he’s more terrified than ever. Sure the dollar went up a little, but so did gold, oil, and stocks, and that’s not supposed to happen when the Fed raises rates. No, when rates go higher, it’s supposed to mean slower growth ahead, and less opportunity for investment. The only real exception to this rule is the anticipation of inflationary price increases — in which case markets don’t appear to care about slower growth, because investors are more focused on the likelihood of weakening currencies. In this case, markets anticipate higher prices and move up in spite of higher rates.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/189741-inflation-why-markets-ignored-the-fed-rate-hike?source=article_sb_picks

Ignore Expiration Dates on Food

They have no meaning except in relative terms.  Even the mandated ones are arbitrary, and differ from state to state.  Also remember that advancing perishability BENEFITS the producer (who sets the date, in most cases).
----------------------------------------------
The fact is that expiration dates mean very little. Food starts to deteriorate from the moment it's harvested, butchered, or processed, but the rate at which it spoils depends less on time than on the conditions under which it's stored. Moisture and warmth are especially detrimental. A package of ground meat, say, will stay fresher longer if placed near the coldest part of a refrigerator (below 40 degrees Fahrenheit), than next to the heat-emitting light bulb. Besides, as University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza explained to me, expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.

http://www.slate.com/id/2244249/

Naked Crony Capitalism

Shameless spendulus;  Picking the "green" winners and losers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvCZBKxP4TY

Best Reason to Live in AZ

 This is awesome.  I can't stand the money-leeching Mass RMV.
----------------------------
Well, maybe the second best reason… the first best is that it was 75F today.  But the second best reason is that my son got his driver’s license today, and it expires in the year 2059.  I kid you not — get your license at 16 and there are no more renewals until you are 65 years old.  Have fun at the DMV.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2010/02/single-best-reason-to-live-in-arizona.html

Obama=Bush+++

Birds of a feather:  Same policies tripled down
--------------------
At first glance former President Bush and President Obama seem like opposites when it comes to economic policy making.  Talk of Bush as a free-marketeer and deregulator abounds as Obama’s reputation as a big spender and intervener grow stronger by the day.  A closer look shows their economic policies have more in common than meets the eye.

5. They love to spend. Bush passed a $3 trillion budget for 2009.  Obama posted a $3.5 trillion budget in 2010.  Bush doubled the debt to almost $6 trillion and Obama’s plans would leave us with an IOU of an additional $8.5 trillion by 2020.

4. They shop at the same stores. Contrary to popular belief, defense and homeland security spending only made up about 40 percent of Bush’s new spending.  He increased spending across most non-defense categories – like education, Medicare, Medicaid, income security and regional development – by four to six times the rate of inflation.  In Obama’s first half year in office, as he demanded a departure from the “investment deficit” years under Bush, these budgets rose another 70 percent or 40 times the rate of inflation.

3. They dabble with stimulants. In 2001 and 2008, Bush spent billions on rebates to stimulate consumer spending.  In 2009, Obama upped the ante with his $862 billion stimulus package.

2. They give sweetheart deals to failing corporations. Obama carried out Bush’s unpopular $700 billion bailout for failing corporations.  Together, the presidents have bailed out over 600 businesses since Spring 2008.

1. They enjoy regulating in their free time. Once again contrary to popular belief, President Bush was the biggest regulator since Richard Nixon.  Under his leadership in 2007, the number of pages of regulation added to the Federal Register reached an all-time high of 78,090  – a 21 percent increase from Bush’s first year.  And spending on regulatory activities rose to $42 billion in 2009 – a 62 percent increase.  Since taking office, Obama has proposed a large and sweeping increase in regulation that many worry could lead to another financial crisis in the future.

Despite rhetoric that suggests the contrary, President Obama’s economic policies are strikingly more of the same failed policies that Bush tried before him.  This is unfortunate because, as Paul Krugman claims, the last decade has seen declining private-sector employment and declining median household income.

http://www.bankruptingamerica.org/2010/02/16/the-odd-couple-5-unfortunate-similarities-between-bush-and-obama/

Insolvency? Making Greece look good

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/188776-outstanding-external-debt-numbers-greece-doesn-t-look-so-bad?source=email

Measure the Speed of Light with Valentine Chocolate

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/02/leftover-valentines-chocolate-use-it-to-measure-the-speed-of-light/

Climategate-Moving to Capitulation

• Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
• There has been no global warming since 1995
• Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

TSA; Disabled 4-Year-Old Forced to Remove Leg Braces

I feel so much safer;
------------------------------------------
Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn't allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?
Unfortunately, it's no joke. This happened to Bob Thomas, a 53-year-old officer in Camden's emergency crime suppression team, who was flying to Orlando in March with his wife, Leona, and their son, Ryan.
Ryan was taking his first flight, to Walt Disney World, for his fourth birthday.
The boy is developmentally delayed, one of the effects of being born 16 weeks prematurely. His ankles are malformed and his legs have low muscle tone. In March he was just starting to walk.
Mid-morning on March 19, his parents wheeled his stroller to the TSA security point, a couple of hours before their Southwest Airlines flight was to depart.
The boy's father broke down the stroller and put it on the conveyor belt as Leona Thomas walked Ryan through the metal detector.
The alarm went off.
The screener told them to take off the boy's braces.
The Thomases were dumbfounded. "I told them he can't walk without them on his own," Bob Thomas said.
"He said, 'He'll need to take them off.' "
Ryan's mother offered to walk him through the detector after they removed the braces, which are custom-made of metal and hardened plastic.
No, the screener replied. The boy had to walk on his own.



http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_region/20100215_Daniel_Rubin__Another_case_of_TSA_overkill.html

Mortgage Bankers Association Underwater on their Mortgage

On Friday, CoStar Group Inc., a provider of commercial real estate data, announced that it had agreed to buy the MBA’s 10-story headquarters building in Washington, D.C., for $41.3 million. The price is well below the $79 million the trade group says it paid for the glass-walled building in 2007, while it was still under construction. The price also falls short of  the $75 million of financing that the MBA received from a group of banks led by PNC Financial Services Group Inc. for the purchase.

When the MBA announced the purchase of the building in early 2007, the trade group’s president at the time, Jonathan Kempner, said: “We have come to the inescapable conclusion that owning our own building was the smartest long-term investment for the association.”  In October 2009, however, the MBA informed its members that it had put the building up for sale. At that time, the MBA said that continued ownership of the building, which was financed with $75 million of variable-rate debt, would be “economically imprudent.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/02/06/mortgage-bankers-mum-on-how-they-fixed-their-own-mortgage-woes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Fdevelopments%2Ffeed+(WSJ.com%3A+Developments+Blog)&mod=WSJ_Real+Estate_BLOGSDEVELOPMENTSFEED

Nearly Failed Treasury Auction?

Hmmm.  Interesting.
---------------------------------------------------

I realize this sounds complicated, so simply think of it this way:
1) Direct Buyers: folks who buy straight from the Treasury, typically comprising a minor stake in US debt purchases
2) Indirect Buyers: folks who buy LARGE chunks of US debt, typically Foreign Governments
3) Primary Dealers: banks that HAVE to buy US debt to ensure an auction doesn’t fail. You don’t want to see a lot of Primary Dealer purchases as this means that those who can CHOOSE to buy US debt DON’T want to.
On Wednesday, February 10, 2010, the US Treasury issued $16 billion in 30-year Treasuries. Here are the buyer data points:

Buyer	Purchase Amount (%)
Primary Dealers	47%
Direct Buyers	24% (A RECORD)
Indirect Buyers	28%

First of all, we see Direct Buyers hit a RECORD percentage of purchases. This is extremely bizarre and somewhat disconcerting given that we have no way of knowing who these buyers are. For all we know, they could be the Federal Reserve itself or other US Government entities buying “off the radar.”
Indeed, on that note, we know that the US Federal Reserve accounted for 11% of the total purchases. Folks, you’re not dealing with a healthy debt auction when the Fed accounts for 10% of purchases.
However, far, FAR more worrisome is the pathetic Indirect Buyer takedown: 28%. Historically this number has been more around 40% (Tyler at ZeroHedge notes that the average Indirect purchase of the last four long-term Treasury auctions was 39.9%). To see such a MASSIVE drop off in Indirect Buyers (40% down to 28%) is a MAJOR warning sign that Foreign Governments are no longer willing to buy long-term US debt.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/188380-the-u-s-land-of-the-free-and-home-of-a-nearly-failed-treasury-auction-of-its-own?source=article_sb_popular

New aerial 911 photos released

Just released.  Interesting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1249885/New-World-Trade-Center-9-11-aerial-images-ABC-News.html

ClimateGate Gets Even Worse

The unraveling continues.  At what point do these guys and their complicit IPCC lackeys have zero credibility.

Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege

It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?
But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.
It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.

The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.

Jones and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University at Albany in New York, are being accused of scientific fraud by an independent British researcher over the contents of a research paper back in 1990.

The pair, with four fellow researchers, concluded that the urban influence was negligible. Some of their most compelling evidence came from a study of temperature data from eastern China, a region urbanising fast even then.
The paper became a key reference source for the conclusions of succeeding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including a chapter in the 2007 one co-authored by Jones. It said that globally "the urbanisation influence … is, at most, an order of magnitude less than the warming seen on a century timescale". In other words, it is tiny.
But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim. They were convinced that the urban effect was much bigger, even though it might not change the overall story of global warming too much. After all, two-thirds of the planet is covered by ocean, and the oceans are warming, too.

But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be "unduly burdensome", they concluded that he was covering up the error.

And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud.

He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the story period, perhaps invalidating their data.

Keenan told the Guardian: "The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres"; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that "there were 'few if any changes' to locations is a fabrication". He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud

Rx for Decongestants; Police State Gone Wild

The Pyrrhic 'war on drugs' has no bounds. Because prescriptions have done so much to stop prescription narcotics trafficing, the police state is going after my pseudophed. Imagine having to visit your doctor to get a decongestant- aren't we supposed to be trying to contain healthcare costs? How much human suffering must we all endure to appease them?

State and local efforts to thwart methamphetamine production by further limiting consumer access to a popular decongestant are pitting law enforcement against pharmacists and patients.

New ordinances in some Missouri communities and legislation pending in several states would require consumers to get a prescription to buy cold and allergy pills containing pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed and Claritin-D. The medicines still are being purchased at pharmacies to make methamphetamine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), despite an earlier nationwide effort to track sales.

The goal is to eliminate meth labs — often in homes or hotel rooms — that use a mixture of toxic chemicals that can explode or catch fire, putting bystanders at risk and requiring costly cleanups.

"I don't think I've ever been involved in my entire career in law enforcement in something that's more important than this," said Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Director Marshall Fisher, who supports a bill the Mississippi House passed last week. Mississippi seized 590 meth labs in 2009, he said, up from about 300 the previous year.

About 15 million Americans use pseudoephedrine products. Requiring prescriptions will delay access to the quick-acting medication and drive up costs to consumers through more doctor visits and co-pays, said Ron Fitzwater of the Missouri Pharmacy Association, which opposes prescription laws.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents makers of over-the-counter medication, also is against the restrictions. It wants to pay for states to install electronic tracking systems to detect and stop excessive purchases.

Oregon is the only state that requires prescriptions. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wants to mandate prescriptions nationwide. He notes Oregon had just 10 meth lab seizures in 2009.

Nationwide, cold and allergy sufferers already must show ID and sign pharmacy logs to buy restricted quantities of medications with pseudoephedrine. Those rules increasingly are being thwarted by illegal drugmakers who send people to multiple pharmacies to make small purchases. "It's a huge problem," said Gary Boggs of the DEA.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-01-decongestant_N.htm

Boom & Bust Rap

Starring Keynes and Hayek;  Too funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk&feature=player_embedded

Here are the lyrics:

[Keynes Sings:]

John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro The man you need when the economy's off track, [whoa] Depression, recession now your question's in session Have a seat and I'll school you in one simple lesson

BOOM, 1929 the big crash We didn't bounce back--economy's in the trash Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That's outrageous!

I had a real plan any fool can understand The advice, real simple--boost aggregate demand! C, I, G, all together gets to Y Make sure the total's growing, watch the economy fly

We've been going back and forth for a century [Keynes] I want to steer markets, [Hayek] I want them set free There's a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it [Hayek] Blame low interest rates. [Keynes] No... it's the animal spirits

Hayek sings:

I'll begin in broad strokes, just like my friend Keynes His theory conceals the mechanics of change, That simple equation, too much aggregation Ignores human action and motivation

And yet it continues as a justification For bailouts and payoffs by pols with machinations You provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch Then all that we're left with is debt, and a bunch

If you're living high on that cheap credit hog Don't look for cure from the hair of the dog Real savings come first if you want to invest The market coordinates time with interest

Your focus on spending is pushing on thread In the long run, my friend, it's your theory that's dead So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective

Quote of the Day

I admire the remarkable honesty

Quote of the Day

“People will never know what’s in that bill until we pass it.”

–Obama Advisor David Axelrod, discussing health care over the weekend.

IPCC; Himalayan Glacier Melt Data "Plucked from thin air"

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#ixzz0dgQzCY8Y

MoveYour Money

Bank "too big to fail"?  We can collectively fix that by making them smaller. Just because the government propped them up, this does not mean we cannot make a dent in their retail business model. Why on earth does anyone bank with the majors anyways? I think a sense of security and credibility used to be part of it, but that was clearly a false assessment.  Now they are nothing but fee factories!  Put your money in a bank that did not get bailed out!
Choose George Bailey over Mr. Potter.  Better service, higher interest, lower fees- what's not to like?

Check out the movement here:
http://moveyourmoney.info/

Kling on Causes of Depth of Recession

Some of these causes are better than others; The "innovation slump" is a huge factor, because government kept partying like it was 1999, and the private sector could not continue to feed the beast without the illusory housing boom, which (unlike the internet boom) did not do anything to improve productivity.  Productivity is the only route to real and lasting wealth, and a higher standard of living, as it has been for millennia. Lately, the government has been doing everything it can think of to kill the golden goose.
----------------------
If I had a convincing explanation for the depth of this recession, I would shout it from the rooftops. Instead, let me toss out a few ideas, in no particular order of importance or plausibility.

1. The huge transfer of wealth to failed banks sucked a lot of energy out of the economy. In other words, the bank bailouts that are credited with keeping things from getting worse are in fact what made things worse.

2. The bloated housing and financial sectors created broader distortions in the economy. If the value of New York City's exports of financial services falls, then that has all sorts of effects. The city's nontraded goods and services sector is adversely affected. Its imports from other parts of the U.S. and the rest of the world fall. And so on. All sorts of trading patterns need to change, and that requires considerable recalculation.
3. Part of the adjustment process in the economy involves physical relocation. The nature of the collapse in the housing market means that relocation costs go up, which reduces the economy's capacity to adjust.
4. Since 2000, the economy has been in an innovation slump. The human genome project yielded less immediate benefits than expected. Progress in computer and communications technology has become evolutionary, not revolutionary. Nanotechnology is far too immature to create major new business opportunities.
Only when an innovation reaches the point where its economic impact can be felt, as happened with personal computers and the Internet in the 1990's, will lots of new businesses be created. Remember that in 1987 Robert Solow quipped that "we see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics." That soon changed. Today, one could argue that we see genome decoding and nanotech research everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

The recent innovation slump was disguised by the housing boom. That is, if you take away the housing boom, you would have seen a steady increase in unemployment, due to the lack of new business formation. Instead, the housing boom caused unemployment to fall, and the crash caused unemployment to shoot up.

5. We ran into a "limits-to-growth" problem with energy. Tightness in the oil market means that we have to convert to less oil-intensive patterns of consumption growth and productions. Just as in the 1970's, this creates big adjustment problems.
Of course, it is possible to have several of these problems at once.




http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/01/why_such_a_deep.html

Noonan on the Brown phenomenon

 Of Nuts and Creeps


Speaking broadly: In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look. If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the red, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.
In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations—health care, cap and trade—and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, "Uh-oh, he's a Nut!"
...
In a telephone conversation Wednesday night, Mr. Brown spoke of what's ahead. The conversation turned to the movie "The Candidate," to the moment Robert Redford wins the election and takes a top strategist aside to ask: "What do we do now?"
Mr. Brown laughed: "I know what I want to do: Go down there and be a good person, a good and competent senator. I have huge shoes to fill, the legacy is just overwhelming. I'm a consensus builder. . . . I can disagree in the daytime and have a coffee or beer later on. Everyone's welcome to their opinion."
He said he thought the president "inherited a lot of problems," that "he's doing a great job with North Korea, a nice job with Afghanistan." A centerpiece of Mr. Brown's campaign was opposition to the president's health-care plan, but he stressed that he opposes high spending wherever it comes from. "I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government."
The next morning he took the 7 a.m. shuttle from Boston to Washington for his first trip to the Capitol. On the plane, after they took off, the pilot came on and said, "Senator Brown is on board, on his way to Washington." The plane erupted in applause.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575017503811443526.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Supremes Gut McCain-Feingold

What the hell took them so long?  Disturbed by the 5-4 vote, I mean come on now.

Justice Kennedy's opinion says it all:

“When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought.  This is unlawful ... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

WASHINGTON — Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of its conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

http://bigjournalism.com/fross/2010/01/21/supreme-court-drop-kicks-mccainfeingold-scores-victory-for-1st-amendment/

Chavez; US Caused Haiti Earthquake

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it's Haiti's disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is ... destroying and taking over Iran.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/01/21/chavez_us_weapon_test_caused_haiti_earthquake.html

Bernanke Going Down?

Not sure it would make much difference- the chairman is little more than a figurehead for the secret society that is the Fed. Would imply a crack in the facade though.

Senate Dems Not Sure They Can Get Enough Votes to Reconfirm Bernanke

Amidst the voter anger at Wall Street and Washington, D.C., ABC News has learned that the Senate Democratic leadership isn't sure there are enough votes to re-confirm Ben Bernanke for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Bernanke's term expires on Jan. 31.
"The American people are disgusted with the greed and recklessness of Wall Street," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in an interview with The Associated Press last month. "People are asking, 'Why didn't the Fed intervene at the appropriate time to stop the casino-type activities of large financial companies?'"

Sanders, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Sen. David Vitter, R-La., have all put holds on Bernanke's nomination, requiring 60 votes to proceed to a vote.

Voter anger is of heightened concern to members of Congress given the surprise victory of Sen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Mass., who rode a tide of voter discontent and economic anxiety to an upset victory in a special election earlier this week.



http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/01/senate-dems-not-sure-they-can-get-enough-votes-to-reconfirm-bernanke.html

Don't Blame Me...

I couldn't find a 1972 bumper sticker, so this will have to do.

Haiti; Man Made Disaster

Sad but true- the place was structurally unsound before the ground shook, which is what turned a tragedy into a full-blown disaster.
---------------------------------------------
Though the earthquake was a powerful one, its impact was multiplied many, many times by the weakness of civil society and the absence of rule of law in Haiti. As Roger Noriega has written, "You can literally see [the] dysfunction from space": Satellite photos of Hispaniola, the island split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, show green forests on the Dominican side and bare, deforested hills on the Haitian side. Mudslides and collapsing houses were routine in Haiti, even before this disaster. Laws designed to prevent erosion, and building codes designed to prevent criminally shoddy construction, were ignored. The rickety slums of Port-au-Prince were constructed in ravines and on steep, unstable hills. When they collapsed, they collapsed completely.
So weak were Haiti's public institutions, literally and figuratively, that nothing is left of them, either. Parliament, churches, hospitals, and government offices no longer exist.* The archbishop is dead. The head of the U.N. mission is dead. There is a real possibility that violent gangs will emerge to take their place, to control food supplies, to loot what remains to be looted. There is a real possibility, within the coming days, of epidemics, mass starvation, and civil war.

http://slate.com/id/2241861/

I'm with SEIU?

These union thugs are so intimidating

http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/showthread.php?t=90013

Look out for your 401k

The greedy pols are eying your pile of money to pay off their obscene debts.

How’s that 401(k) working out for you?  Well, if the Obama administration has its way, you won’t have to worry about that any more.
Apparently, you’re too stupid and lazy to be trusted with your own retirement planning. So, what you need is for the government to “urge” you to convert your 401(k) plan to a government annuity.

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

TaxProf has a roundup of some useful links concerning this, but here’s the key takeaway:
There literally isn’t enough money in the world to float the T-notes the Treasury must issue in order to prop up our unsustainable spending path.  There are, however, about $3.6 trillion in funds just sitting in 401(k) accounts.  If the government can urge–or force–you to convert your 401(k) into T-note funded annuities, the Treasury can continue to issue those notes to float the government’s deficit.  Essentially, you’ll be converting your retirement funds into an IOU from the government…just like your social security account has already done.

http://www.qando.net/?p=6596

Brown Polls ++

Wow!
Still skeptical, but there they are.  I'd feel better if Rasmussen was higher- they have a good record. I have no confidence this will be a fair accounting- the stakes are too high- bet they can move things 5 points with just dead people.

Politico/InAdv	1/17 - 1/17	804 LV	52	43	Brown +9
PJM/CrossTarget (R)	1/17 - 1/17	574 LV	52	42	Brown +10
PPP (D)	1/16 - 1/17	1231 LV	51	46	Brown +5
ARG	1/15 - 1/17	600 LV	52	45	Brown +7
Daily Kos/R2000	1/15 - 1/17	500 LV	48	48	Tie
InsideMedford/MRG	1/15 - 1/15	565 LV	51	41	Brown +10
PJM/CrossTarget (R)	1/14 - 1/14	946 LV	54	39	Brown +15
ARG	1/12 - 1/14	600 LV	48	45	Brown +3
Blue Mass Group/R2000 (D)	1/12 - 1/13	500 LV	41	49	Coakley +8
Suffolk/7News	1/11 - 1/13	500 LV	50	46	Brown +4
Rasmussen Reports	1/11 - 1/11	1000 LV	47	49	Coakley +2
PPP (D)	1/7 - 1/9	744 LV	48	47	Brown +1

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/ma/massachusetts_senate_special_election-1144.html

Coakley; The unprosecuted; DeMasi, Wilkerson, Turner

Crushes the Amiraults, but lets these guys off the hook. If it weren't for the Feds, they would still be in power.

Savvy politics doesn't always make for great policy, though. Take, for instance, the cases Coakley didn't prosecute as AG. Though she's gone after public officials, the three biggest public-corruption cases of the past three years—the only three that anyone remembers—saw her sitting on the sidelines. The indictment of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi for allegedly receiving payments for state software contracts that he helped push through; the indictments of state Senator Dianne Wilkerson and Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner for allegedly accepting bribe money from undercover FBI agents—Coakley didn't charge any of these people with crimes. The U.S. Attorney's Office did. The FBI had video proof of Wilkerson stuffing bribe money into her bra. Coakley did nothing. The Globe and Secretary of State William Galvin hammered DiMasi and his 
(allegedly) shady friends for 14 months. And the best Coakley could do was indict DiMasi's golfing buddy Richard Vitale? On misdemeanor charges?
Coakley knows that pouncing on big-name prey (like Goldman Sachs) will score headlines and position her as a tough prosecutor. But she also knows toughness will get her only so far. As AG, Scott Harshbarger nailed all sorts of public officials in the 1990s, and paid the price: When he ran for governor in 1998, he did it without the help of state Democrats, many of whom he'd angered at some point. Harshbarger lost.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/running_scared_martha_coakley/page2

It's not JUST That 60th Seat

Coakley is the ultimate anti-libertarian. Anti-freedom on every front. A ruthless prosecutor and a rabid collectivist. All about the power of the state.

If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.
If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Spontaneous Order in the Ivory Coast

Accidental freedom and spontaneous order in the Ivory Coast.  This is probably the freest place in Africa, and perhaps the world.  Some lessons here in prosperity caused by the absence of government. Unfortunately they seem intent on uniting with the South, and destroying their freedom.


"Here no-one can say to you: 'No, that's pirated' or 'You can't sell that here,'" he tells me when I ask if he ever has any trouble from the authorities.
"If we were in the south of the country, you could complain that no customs tax has been paid for example, but when you're in the New Forces-zone everything can come in and be sold," he says. 

Soroland may not be a breakaway zone, but for seven years the inhabitants of this zone have got used to living without government taxes, customs charges and even water and electricity bills.


"Things are a lot cheaper than in the south - we see that people from the south often come here to stock up, above all the military who come for all their electronics - mobile phones, DVDs, televisions, everything," he says.
...
Gradually with contributions from parents, the ad-hoc schools helped save a generation of children, and in some years the rebel zone got better results in national exams than the government zone.
Other volunteers helped cover for the absence of the state in other ways: setting up an ad-hoc postal service; their own television stations and some basic policing.
The New Forces do collect taxes in some areas - like from cocoa and cotton producers but most areas of business are unregulated in the city.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8446994.stm

2000+ Year Old Computer!

Technology is frequently lost to history, but this is really extraordinary.
----------------------
X-rays and advanced photography have uncovered the true complexity of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism, a device so astonishing that its discovery is like finding a functional Buick in medieval Europe.
In 1900, some divers found the wreck of a Roman vessel off the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the other treasures remanded to the Greek government was an unassuming corroded lump. Some time later, the lump fell apart, revealing a damaged machine of unknown purpose, with some large gears and many smaller cogs, plus a few engraved words in Greek. Early studies suggested it was some type of astronomical time-keeping device – researcher Derek J. de Solla Price laid the groundwork by establishing initial tooth counts and suggesting that the device followed the Metonic cycle, a 235-month pattern commonly used to predict eclipses in the ancient world.

The findings, published in Nature, are probably best described as "mind blowing." Devices with this level of complexity were not seen again for almost 1,500 years, and the Antikythera mechanism's compactness actually bests the later designs. Probably built around 150 B.C., the Antikythera mechanism can perform a number of functions just by turning a crank on the side.
Using nothing but an ingenious system of gears, the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years. It could also predict the positions of the sun and moon against the zodiac, and has a gear train that turns a black and white stone to show the moon's phase on a given date. It is possible that it could also show the astronomical positions of the planets known to the ancients: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.


http://io9.com/5441889/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1500-years-ahead-of-its-time

Correlation or Causation?

The Emperors are bleeding us dry.

Hey Big Spender- Bush's Fault!

Why it really is GWB's fault- he really raised the bar on government spending of all types, showing the next regime what was possible. Thanks Alot! Didn't buy him any friends either...
-------------------------
Spending in Bush’s first year (FY2001) was $1.863 trillion, thus he presided over an 83-percent increase in overall federal spending, which includes defense, domestic, entitlements, and interest. Even without TARP and Fannie/Freddie, spending was up a huge 70 percent under Bush over eight years. By contrast, total spending under eight years of President Clinton increased just 32 percent. These are the overall increases in nominal dollars.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/12/19/george-w-bush-biggest-spender-since-lbj/

The New Deal Constitution (c1937)

H.L. Mencken already had 2010 figured out in 1937. A better Constitution for a New Year!
-----------------------
This satirical piece first appeared in The American Mercury, 41 (June 1937), 129-36, and was reprinted in condensed form by The Reader’s Digest, 31 (July 1937), 27-29. In order to indicate what reached the widest audience, the condensed version appears here, thanks to LewRockwell.com
The principal cause of the uproar in Washington is a conflict between the swift- moving idealism of the New Deal and the unyielding hunkerousness of the Constitution of 1788. What is needed, obviously, is a wholly new Constitution, drawn up with enough boldness and imagination to cover the whole program of the More Abundant Life, now and hereafter.
That is what I presume to offer here. The Constitution that follows is not my invention, and in more than. one detail I have unhappy doubts of its wisdom. But I believe that it sets forth with reasonable accuracy the plan of government that the More Abundant Life wizards have sought to substitute for the plan of the Fathers. They have themselves argued at one time or another, by word or deed, for everything contained herein:
PREAMBLE
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish social justice, draw the fangs of privilege, effect the redistribution of property, remove the burden of liberty from ourselves and our posterity, and insure the continuance of the New Deal, do ordain and establish this Constitution.


ARTICLE I
The Executive
All governmental power of whatever sort shall be vested in a President of the United States. ...
The President shall be commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, and of the militia, Boy Scouts, C.I.O., People’s Front, and other armed forces of the nation.
The President shall have the power: To lay and collect taxes, and to expend the income of the United States in such manner as he may deem to be to their or his advantage;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to provide for its repayment on such terms as he may fix;
To regulate all commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and within them; to license all persons engaged or proposing to engage in business; to regulate their affairs; to limit their profits by proclamation from time to time; and to fix wages, prices and hours of work;
To coin money, regulate the content and value thereof, and of foreign coin, and to amend or repudiate any contract requiring the payment by the United States, or by any private person, of coin of a given weight or fineness;

To repeal or amend, in his discretion, any so-called natural law, including Gresham’s law, the law of diminishing returns, and the law of gravitation.

The President shall be assisted by a Cabinet of eight or more persons, whose duties shall be to make speeches whenever so instructed and to expend the public funds in such manner as to guarantee the President’s continuance in office.
The President may establish such executive agencies as he deems necessary, and clothe them with such powers as he sees fit. No person shall be a member to any such bureau who has had any practical experience of the matters he is appointed to deal with.
One of the members of the Cabinet shall be an Attorney General. It shall be his duty to provide legal opinions certifying to the constitutionality of all measures undertaken by the President, and to gather evidence of the senility of judges.
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/10/28/a-new-deal-constitution/

Cruel Hard Math

Naked emperors do not trouble themselves with such prosaic things as math
---------------------------------------

We're Screwed!  ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system.

What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed or something like that?
We can't. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It's beyond control. The government does put out financial statements usually in December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in 2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And that's instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially reported.

Wow.
These numbers are beyond containment. Even the 2008 numbers, you can take 100 percent of people's income and corporate profit and you'd still be in deficit. There's no way you can raise enough money in taxes.


http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=16014

Blue Moon on New Year's Eve!

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor.
...
A full moon occurs every 29.5 days, and most years have 12. On average, an extra full moon in a month - a blue moon - occurs every 2.5 years. The last time there was a lunar double take was in May 2007. New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won't come again until 2028.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091229/D9CT6H701.html

GM=Amtrak

This will never end, on the finance side or the automotive side.
---------------------------
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - GMAC Financial Services is expected to get about $3.5 billion in additional U.S. government aid to help the troubled lender absorb mortgage losses, a financial industry source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The announcement is expected within days, the source said, speaking anonymously because the talks have been private.

GMAC has already received $12.5 billion in aid from the U.S. government since December 2008.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BT06O20091230

Daley Says Dems too Radical

You know they have gone over the edge when even the Chicago machine thinks things have gone too far:

Keep the Big Tent big
By William M. Daley
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A15

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party -- my lifelong political home -- has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.
 ...
The party's moment of choosing is drawing close. While it may be too late to avoid some losses in 2010, it is not too late to avoid the kind of rout that redraws the political map. The leaders of the Democratic Party need to move back toward the center -- and in doing so, set the stage for the many years' worth of leadership necessary to produce the sort of pragmatic change the American people actually want. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/23/AR2009122302439_pf.html

Max Baucus or Max Bacchus?

Drunk with power? You decide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA

Surprise- You're a State Employee!

We're from the Union, and we're here to help you.
Do you provide services to anyone who receives government subsidies?  Congratulations- you're now a State Employee! Under this logic, anyone who accepts subsidized rent payments, food stamps, provides health care, etc., etc.... is a public employee.
This is how freedom really dies- from a million paper cuts:

Michigan Forces Business Owners Into Public Sector Unions
Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is crazy—and it's happening elsewhere in the country.
A year ago in December, Ms. Berry and more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union had won a certification election conducted by mail under the auspices of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. In that election only 6,000 day-care providers voted. The pro-labor vote turned out.
Many of the state's other 34,000 day-care providers never even realized what was going on. Ms. Berry tells us she was "shocked" to find out she was suddenly in a union. The real dirty work, however, had been done when the state created an "employer" for the union to "organize" against.
Of course, Michigan's independent day-care providers don't work for anybody except the parents who were their customers. Nevertheless, because some of these parents qualified for public subsidies, the Child Care Providers "union" claimed the providers were "public employees."
Michigan's Department of Human Services then teamed with Flint-based Mott Community College to sign an "interlocal agreement" in 2006 establishing a separate government agency called the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council. This council was directed to recommend good child-care practices—and not coincidentally, to serve as a "public employer." Although the council had almost no staff, no control over the state subsidies and no supervision of the providers' daily activities, it became the shell corporation against which the union could organize.
Thus the state created an ersatz employer and an ersatz "bargaining unit" against which what was essentially an ersatz union could organize.

Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in annual dues to the union—from the child-care subsidies. The money should be going to home-based day-care providers—themselves not on the high end of the income scale. Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to her go to a union that does little for her. She says she is "self employed and wants nothing to do with the union." 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612341241120838.html

CPSIA- No Joy in Toyland

Among the worst bills ever passed; OpEd written by one of the CPSIA regulators!

Thanks to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), small businesses like Baby Sprout Naturals and Whimsical Walney have already closed their doors. And some 40% of companies responding to a Toy Industry Association survey planned to eliminate jobs this year because the cost and complexity of compliance with this law is too great. For manufacturers and sellers of children's products, perhaps a renewed interest in saving small businesses comes in the nick of time.
The safety legislation, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2008, is a study in the law of unintended consequences. The new law reduced the Consumer Product Safety Commission's longstanding discretion to act in response to genuine risks, substituting instead the rigid, broad-brush, and unscientific judgment of Congress. 
Though written in response to dozens of recalls of Chinese-made toys with lead paint, the law goes well beyond lead paint (which poses an undeniable risk to children) to ban all children's products that contain a component with more than three one-hundredths of 1% lead. This means such ordinary items as zippers, buttons, belts, the hinge on a child's dresser—and even that bicycle from Santa Claus—are outlawed.
These products often contain lead in excess of the new legal limit, but unlike lead surface paint, this lead is contained within the metal or other substrate material. The lead can rub off these items in miniscule amounts detectable only with sensitive lab equipment, but it is not "bioavailable"—meaning it is unable to be extracted and absorbed into a child's bloodstream. By failing to distinguish between easily absorbable lead in paint and not easily absorbable lead in other materials, the legislation was a dramatic overreach. 
It gets worse. In addition to banning components that do not create a lead hazard for children, the law also imposes onerous product testing by outside labs that smaller manufacturers and handicraft makers simply cannot afford. Instead of spending money to expand and create jobs, companies have diverted billions of dollars so far to destroy innocuous but noncompliant inventory, as well as to understand and meet complex new compliance obligations.
Major charities, like Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army, have publicly estimated lost inventory and disposal costs at $100 million to $170 million in secondhand children's clothing—such as winter coats with metal snaps—that's not affordable to test for compliance, yet still needed by many families.
Bicycle manufacturers have re-engineered dozens of parts from more expensive and less environmentally friendly materials to replace handle bars, spokes, tire valve stems and other harmless metal parts that contain lead.
To cope with annual testing costs running to half a million dollars or more, domestic retailers and manufacturers like Challenge & Fun, Inc., Constructive Playthings, and ETA Cuisenaire (a maker of educational tools), have reduced payrolls or limited product lines. Many small apparel companies, including JenLynnDesigns, have either closed shop or exited the children's apparel market completely.
In just the first eight months after enactment, the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that the 2008 safety law cost businesses in the "billions of dollars range," including: more than $2 billion in losses to the toy industry; $200 million in potentially violative inventory for members of one apparel industry group (the California Fashion Association); and an estimated $1 billion in annual losses reported by the Motorcycle Industry Council for lost sales of youth model motorbikes and off-road vehicles. Several popular German toymakers such as Selecta Spielzeug, whose products comply with stringent EU regulations, have stopped selling their toys in this country. Consumers are facing higher prices for a smaller variety of products that are no safer than before.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612573263963560.html

Naked Emperors at Copenhagen!

So Chavez, one of the world's top oil barons, gets thunderous applause at Copenhagen. Doesn't this fact alone tell you that this farce has nothing whatever to do with "carbon" or even "climate"?  Down with "imperial dictatorships" he says (up with non-imperial dictatorships)?  This would all be ridiculous enough, but then they trot out Robert Mugabe...

"President Chavez brought the house down.
When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.
When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.
But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

 And a mass-murderer at Copenhagen lectures us about our crimes:

The anti-capitalist theme was picked up on by Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran President, who is the target of Western sanctions over alleged human rights abuses.
“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/putting_our_economy_in_the_hands_of_chavez_fans

Death & Taxes

3 weeks before the year ends, and they are toying around with this? 45% vs, Zero?  I swear much of this recession is just about regime uncertainty. No one can make any financial decisions because you never know what this gaggle of idiots is going to impose on us next. With so much uncertainty, no investments are made.

"In less than three weeks, the hated death tax is scheduled to expire—with the rate falling from 45% to zero for 2010. Then the tax will be resurrected in 2011 at a rate of 55%. This bizarre policy dates back to 2001 when Democrats wouldn't let President Bush permanently kill the death tax, so Republicans bet that if the tax were eliminated for one year, it would never come back.
Well, the moment of truth has arrived, and House Democrats recently voted 234-199 to cancel the 2010 repeal and hold the rate permanently at 45% with a $3.5 million exemption."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574579932066655144.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

SARBOX and Emperor Spawning

SARBOX is among the worst blows to capitalism we have experienced in the US, and a little recognized driver of the great recession. If the Supremes do their job, the entire law could be revoked for an unconstitutional spawning of Czars!

The most powerful czar in Washington will receive some long-overdue scrutiny today when the Supreme Court hears a challenge to the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).
This board, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, regulates the auditors of publicly-traded firms. The members are hired by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and, say the plaintiffs in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, do not answer to the president. This violates the Constitution's "appointments clause," according to which senior executive-branch officials should be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

A glimmer of hope lies in the fact that Sarbox, drafted in the political panic following the Enron and Worldcom accounting scandals, failed to include a "severability clause." Thus if PCAOB is struck down as unconstitutional, all of Sarbanes-Oxley could come crashing down with it.


Is all this fuss about board appointments just legal hairsplitting? Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the plaintiffs suing the PCAOB, doesn't think so. He notes that "responsibility for bureaucrats was a fundamental issue for the Framers," and that the appointments clause was created "as an essential check on overweening bureaucracy. As colonists of England, they had seen offices created by both the king and Parliament spawn more offices with no accountability, creating what the Declaration of Independence refers to as a 'multitude of new offices' and 'swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.'"
Today, people who work at public companies—and their investors—understand this problem perfectly.





http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574539921864252380.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Property Rights Victory in NY! - Kaur Case

If only the Supremes had done their job as well in Kelo...  Opinion in the Kaur case:

"The time has come to categorically reject eminent domain takings solely based on underutilization. This concept put forward by the respondent transforms the purpose of blight removal from the elimination of harmful social and economic conditions in a specific area to a policy affirmatively requiring the ultimate commercial development of all property regardless of the character of the community subject to such urban renewal."

http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/04/new-york-court-puts-a-stop-to

Sacrifice for Thee, But Not For Me

Hypocritical self-righteous naked celebrity emperors are so annoying;
Taking the private jet to Copenhagen

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/celebrity/article6931572.ece

Kid Art Comes to Life

Fun- Korean photographers bring kid art to life;

http://www.hemmy.net/2008/03/12/kids-drawing-reenacted-using-professional-photography/

ClimateGate! Bare Naked "Scientists"

Bare Naked "Scientists"
We knew something was up with the "missing data" in September, and now we can be pretty sure why it is missing. This is just shameful, if there is actually any sense of shame left in this world. Read the bit from September, and the bit from November 24.

---FLASHBACK---

September 23, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Dog Ate Global Warming
By Patrick J. Michaels
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=
Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.


Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

...Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”


Enter the dog that ate global warming.


Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.

The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.


If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

FASTFORWARD to present: 
NOVEMBER 24, 2009, 7:18 A.M. ET

Global Warming With the Lid Off  
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.


'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."
So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center.

SNL; Obama China Visit Parody

If you have not seen this, it's a must see. Does this mean it is FINALLY acceptable to criticize his highness?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d9c_1258865433

Too many people? No, too many Malthusians

They are wrong EVERY time because this is NOT a zero sum game. At what point do we stop listening?

What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything.
The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and seem to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies.
Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!’
There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds.
The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction.
The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future.
The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too.
The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination.
And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met.
We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress – we would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy who wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to the always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the population panickers.


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/