Happy New Year!

Well we had a nice little warm-up there over the last couple of months but the real game begins in a few short weeks. On January 20th we take the field for the battle of ideas and the real fight begins.

Should be fun...

As a better man than I once said... "Let's Roll!"

Headline on Drudge...

"MAG: OBAMA COULD DECRIMINALIZE POT"

Really, dude? Is that what you think the first black President ought to be remembered for? Seriously. Look... on the brink of 2009, it ain't the white man holding down African-Americans... it's drugs holding down African-Americans. And that's a fact. Every single achievement gap that exists between white and black Americans can be traced back to narcotics... do you REALLY want Americans to look back and say the first African-American President spent his time trying to find ways to make it easier for people to do drugs?

There's another consideration as well. You've got a whole generation of young black Americans who have found a hero, somone to look up to, in our new President... an awful lot of our young people are going to look to Obama as an example of how they should live their lives. Is sending the message that smoking pot is somehow OK by Obama really the right thing to do for all those impressionable young people?

This an important moment Mr. President... maybe we should try to think a little bigger, huh?

UPDATE: And yes, I'm one of those old-fashioned dorks who thinks it's a bad idea for government to tacitly encourage drug use by proclaiming that Marijuana should not be illegal. Call me a prude if you must, but I know too many pot-smokers to ever be convinced that this is a good idea.

I would be happy to ignore Bill Ayers... if only he'd just go away.

But he won't. And since the New York Times happily gave him an opportunity to rewrite his own sordid terrorist history without comment or rebuttal, we should all try to pass along this rebuttal by the FBI informant who infiltrated Ayers' Weather Underground, which was rejected by the same New York Times editorial board. Send it to at least one person you know... maybe we'll eventually distribute it to the same number of people who read the original NYT op-ed (which gets easier and easier to do with each passing day and each new NYT cancellation).

Here's a taste:

"Billy goes on about how the Weather Underground came into existence because “peaceful protests had failed” and “after an accidental explosion killed three comrades.” The explosion of the townhouse in Greenwich Village was the result of a bomb factory which was preparing bombs containing roofing nails for use at a Fort Dix enlisted club. The inclusion of roofing nails can have but one purpose and that’s to injure or kill people. Prior to this event Bill’s wife, Bernardine Dorhn, placed a bomb of the same design at the Park Police Station in San Francisco and killed Officer McDonnell. Additionally, I was still inside the Weather Underground when the townhouse blew up and the commitment to sabotage and terrorism had already been established and the purpose was the overthrow of the United States government."

Lovely.

And... this is a good thing, how!?

"Forget Illinois: California is poised to be the top dog in Obama-era Washington.

With roughly a half-dozen Cabinet and key administrative appointees and a powerhouse congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, California is shaping up to be the new Texas, the alpha state whose cultural and policymaking influence was inescapable through most of the last eight years."

Let's review. California is on the brink of bankruptcy. We have open warfare between the legislature and our Governor. Businesses and citizens are fleeing the State in droves. Spending is up. Revenues are down. Our representatives are about to enact massive tax increases (which will only make things worse). Our public school system is among the worst in the nation. Criminal gangs run rampant across the State. Home values are in the tank and our Governor is about to force all State employees to take two days of unpaid vacation.

And these are the people we want running the Federal Government?

The only people should be happy about this news are Republicans planning on running for office in 2010 and beyond.

Biden Speaks!

This past weekend, Vice President Elect Joe Biden gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos in which he said the economy was in danger of "absolutely tanking" and that a big bold stimulus package of another $600 or $700 billion is needed. "There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That's the only short run."

The media's assessment of Biden's remarks? Yawn.

Back in September, on day one of what would become the financial crisis, John McCain gave a speech in which he said the "fundamentals of the US economy are strong." The media excoriated him for saying that. Yet, what he was saying was correct. The fundamentals of our economy - free market capitalism - are strong. The media further piled on that deregulation is what got us into this mess. No, actually regulation, in the form of the Community Reinvestment Act, helped get us into this mess. If it were not for deregulation, Bank of America could not have bought Countrywide, JP Morgan could not have bought Chase, and Wells Fargo could not have bought Wachovia. If those banks had failed, imagine what the financial situation would look like today? In free market capitalism, certain businesses fail. It's the law of averages but it is also necessary for the market to function. There are risks to free market capitalism and failure is one of them. There is also a spectacular upside to it as well. The banks that survive will emerge stronger from this situation and be smarter than before.

Now back to Joe Biden. Consumer confidence is at an all time low and VP Elect Biden thinks it's a good idea to go on national TV and say that the economy is in danger of "absolutely tanking." What not just tell people to buy soup, ammo, and batteries for the bomb shelter in the backyard? There is a reason Joe Biden could never be president and this weekend was a prime example. He's not presidential material. People make fun of President Bush because of his accent and malapropisms but Joe Biden is far worse as he doesn't think before he speaks. But because he speaks the "King's English" and is a Democrat, he gets a pass from the media.

One thing Barack Obama does extremely well is looking or sounding presidential. During the financial crisis, as John McCain was coming up with a new plan every day, Obama remained fairly silent and appeared collected. Now, he may not have had any answers to the unfolding crisis and he may simply be following Mark Twain's advice better to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

That is clearly a lesson Joe Biden has not learned. For everyone's sanity, I think Obama needs to put the muzzle back on Joe.

The Wizard of Oz is a rejection of big government nanny statism

The movie opens with four people who can't get their lives together all coming to the conclusion that each of them are missing some crucial element that would pull everything together... "A heart, A brain, A home... Da nerve" etc etc.

So together they embark on a long arduous journey to a far off capital city to ask the "Wizard" for help. This Wizard, by the way, seems a lot like an emperor to me, with subjects who are at once in awe of him and at the same time seem to fear him deeply. Our travelers eventually learn that the things they need cannot be given to them by some head of state... rather they must be found within themselves... indeed the entire journey was a waste of everyone's time, since each of the characters learns that they had whatever it was they sought all along.

To make matters worse, they are used by the very government they came to for help. They are promised exactly the help they seek if only they will perform a nearly impossible task, only to discover that when they return, task completed, this government never intended to help them in the first place.

And what about that Wizard... the head of state that so many seemed to fear and worship in equal measure... the man to whom so many had entrusted every last detail of their lives? Well he turned out to be just a man after all... and not a very impressive man at that. Those who have treated the election of Obama as the second coming would do well to remember that lesson.

Oh and by the way, those people who live in the Emerald City are a bunch of lazy welfare no-goodniks. "Ha Ha Ha. Ho Ho Ho. and a couple of Tra La Las... that's how we laugh the day away in the Merry Old Land of Oz"???

The only citizens who seem to have jobs are the barbers who cut the Lion's hair and that tower guard who, frankly, is about as intimidating as JM J. Bullock (must've been an Affirmative-Action hire, that one)... I don't think I'd want to live in a city where THAT guy is the first line of defense. Anyway, despite their apparent idleness, the citizens of the Emerald City dress in fancy clothes and live in a castle built of, well emerald... on the backs of taxpayers of Munchkinland no doubt!

And when they're threatened by the Wicked Witch do they proudly stand on the castle walls as one in defiance of tyranny? Well no, they all run screaming for cover... and it's up to an American teenager who weighs eighty pounds soaking wet with rocks in her pockets to waltz right into the Witch's lair and kill her when there is an entire army available back at the Emerald City that you would assume would be available for the job... The Emerald City is a lot like France in that respect (recall what was going on in Europe in 1939)... which sort of explains the effete Tower Guard, I suppose.

But I guess "ha ha ha, ho ho ho, and a couple of tra la las" is how the soldiers of Oz laugh the day away as well.

Who, exactly, do weapons laws protect...

So much of our gun debate is based on hypothetical examples, I thought I would pass along a real world example of the ways in which weapons laws, which are intended to protect law-abiding citizens from the criminal element in our society, actually wind up making us softer targets for those who would do us harm.

The story I'm about to tell concerns a knife, but replace the knife with a gun, and the story remains the same, and the ramifications do not change.

I carry a pocketknife... a little three-inch Spyderco blade. It freaks some people out in this town but as I always point out, it's a tool like any other. There's no difference between what I carry and a leatherman, except that my knife is also useful for personal defense.... though mostly I use it to cut up the apples I eat with my lunch.

Couple weeks ago I went to a hard rock show at a medium sized club. Now, hard rock crowds are notorious... perhaps no other music audience is MORE notorious, with the possible exception of Hip Hop crowds. Because of that, I have never been to a rock show where I was not frisked before being allowed to enter the venue.

On this night, I parked a couple hundred yards away from the venue, it was very cold, and I was catching up with a close friend I had not seen in a while, so when we got to the front door of the club, I suddenly realized... "oh crap, my knife is in my pocket!"

Almost at the same moment, the front door opened as someone came out and I noticed that there was no security presence and no one entering the show was being frisked.

So now I faced a pretty stark calculation. I don't know if carrying a weapon into a concert is illegal, per se, but it's definitely not the smart move... especially in a venue where people were likely to be drinking. The right thing to do was to walk all the way back to my car and lock the knife in my trunk.

But again, back to the fourth paragraph of this post... hard rock crowds are notorious for carrying weapons wherever they think they can get away with it. And here we were at a hard rock show where no one was checking to see if the people coming in to the show were carrying weapons or not. Anyone with a violent streak and a propensity towards criminal behaviour was probably not going through the same mental/moral calculation that I was, and if I got rid of the knife, there was a good chance I would be putting myself in a situation where one or more of the people in the venue would be carrying a weapon, while I would be totally unarmed. But even so, the reality was that the chances I would need a knife to defend myself at some point during this concert were extremely slim.

So I did the right thing, went back and put the knife in the car.

An hour later, I'm watching the show, having forgotten about the whole affair, and sure enough, a guy behind us starts getting angry and more than a little rowdy. On top of that, he and his buddy decided that there was something about my friend and me that they didn't like. He spent the next hour or so trying to escalate into a major confrontation with us. We spent just as much time and effort trying to de-escalate the confrontation. We moved around the venue, we ignored him, nothing seemed to work. What we had going for us was that he was drinking mixed drinks two at a time through a straw, and we knew that if we avoided him long enough, he would eventually get too drunk to do anything and break off his agressiveness... which is ultimately what happened.

But what if he hadn't been drinking so heavily? What if he had taken advantage of the fact that no security guard was checking the fans for weapons, and caried something in? What if he'd pulled a knife on me?

Interesting questions as I reflected on the fact that I had voluntarily disarmed myself hours earlier.

And that's the problem with weapons laws. Law-abiding citizens obey them because we follow the rules and do the right thing. Criminals do not because they are criminals. Talk about hypotheticals all you want, but at the end of the day, weapons laws create an unarmed population of law-abiding citizens that are a soft target for armed criminals who never had any intention of following the rules in the first place.

These are the fact of the case, and they are undisputed.

I'm Verbally Rioting In The Streets

Well, I'm pissed but since I need to stay at work in order to collect my paycheck, I'm deciding to riot at my desk rather than in the streets.

To paraphrase former President Ronald Regan's line from his nomination acceptance speech at the 1984 RNC "I would say that state legislators spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors."

What is going on in New York and California this week is just absolute madness. New York Governor David Paterson submitted a budget this week that raises or imposes 137 new fees and taxes. In the middle of an economic downturn, he's proposing to raise taxes. In California, the Democrats who are constantly thwarted by the minority GOP in the legislature when they attempt to raise taxes, are now proposing to go around the GOP and impose new taxes by calling them "fees." They are attempting to cut a budget deficit that could reach $41 billion in the the next 18 months.

This quote particularly galls me.

"I still believe in bipartisanship," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. "But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today."

Your answer to governing is to raise taxes? That's it?

How about you cut spending? Cut the state income tax rate. Cut the corporate income tax rate. You might even have to impose cuts to the state's workforce. Oh wait, employee unions are resisting and they donate to Democratic campaigns so that is off the table.

And among the taxes you intend to raise are the state sales tax, the gasoline tax, and add a 2.5% surcharge to everyone's state income tax bill. These are three taxes that will hit the poorest Californians the hardest. I could at least understand their argument if they wanted to raise the top income tax bracket of 10% on people making over $1 million. But 2.5% on everybody? Are you freaking crazy?!

Has Darrell Steinberg seen the latest figures about people leaving California? For the fourth year in a row, more people left the state than moved in.

And where did they move to? Arizona, Nevada, Washington, and Texas. I'd like to note for the record that all of those states have lower income taxes than California. Texas has no state income tax. Yet Texas is not struggling to balance their state budget.

In 1998, people in the top 20th percentile paid 56% of all taxes in California. I cannot find the most up to date figures for 2007 but I'd be willing to bet that the same top 20 percentile now pays a higher percentage, if we look at the federal tax data which shows that people in the top 20th percentile pay 80% of all federal taxes.

What is becoming clear to me, and probably to some other people in California, is that you cannot balance the budget on the backs of a few millionaires and immigrant labor. It doesn't work.

When the dot-com boom was happening, did the state put away money for a rainy day? No. It spent and spent and spent.

And I'm going to spread the blame around to California voters as well. They keep approving bonds issues for projects like a high speed rail system when the state is broke. For the record, I voted "no" on every single issue that asked me for money this year. We're broke. We can't afford it. Stop spending money.

You know what I want for Christmas? I would like the California Legislators to come up with a budget that does not require raising taxes in a recession.

However, I'm not holding my breath.

This Rick Warren thing is cracking me up...

So all the Dems are pissed that Obama has chosen Rick Warren to speak at the Innauguration because he supported California's Prop 8, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Guys... Obama said he was against Gay Marriage every single time he was asked during the campaign. Why is this surprising?

Were you hoping he was flat-out lying to us?

If so, what else were you hoping he was lying about?

Hilarious.

What aren't New Yorkers rioting in the streets?

Good question. I don't know the answer but I do know that there are a lot of big cities in America, mostly run by Democrats, that would LOVE to raise taxes... but they don't because they fear the rioting. Believe me when I say every big city Mayor in America is watching New York very carefully right now. If Bloomberg et all get away with this with little to no pain from the voters, we can all expect to see similar events in our own cities in the very near future.

UPDATE: Ahem

New York Times discovers that Reaganomics works!

...sort of.

Conservatives have always done a poor job of framing a lot of our best arguments on the battlefield of public debate. Of course it certainly hasn't helped that we've had to filter those arguments through a mostly hostile media, but as Rumsfeld once said, you go to war with the Army you have, not the one you wish you had.

So before I get into the latest silliness from the NYT, let's take a minute to define Reaganomics, first. Ronald Reagan believed that if you reduce taxes and put more money back into the hands of the businesses and people who create/earn it in the first place, that this additional capital will become an engine of job creation.

As an example, let's say taxes are cut in such a way that an Insanely Rich Guy winds up with an extra ten million dollars in his pocket, and that he decides that he's going to use that ten million dollars to purchase a super yacht for cruising the Carribean.

Well someone has to build the yacht, someone has to make the materials that the yacht builder will use to build the yacht, someone has to broker the deal for the yacht to be sold, someone has to deliver the yacht to the buyer, and someone has to lease slip space so that Insanely Rich Guy has somewhere to park his yacht. By contrast, if the government had simply taken that ten million dollars instead, that money would have disappeared into the miasma of government waste. By letting Insanely Rich Guy keep the money, we have allowed him to start a project (the building of a super yacht) that could wind up employing a hell of a lot of people.

That's the essence of Reaganomics.

The Left, though, are not fans of this transaction. There is something unseemly about Insanely Rich Guy blowing a couple million on a luxury yacht he doesn't really need, no matter how many jobs he creates. And so they came up with a nasty little name that they use to denigrate the theory. They call it "Trickle Down Economics."

So, here we are in the middle of a nasty recession, and along comes the New York Times to take another little swipe at Reagan with a piece cleverly titled "Trickledown Downsizing." See, apparently, all the bad economic news means that those who service the rich are losing their jobs because the rich are cutting those service gigs first as they look to cut back on expenses to weather the downturn.

Here's the gist of the piece...

"IN September, Cathy DeVore, a real estate agent in Larchmont, N.Y., whose business has been at a standstill lately, began taking gradual steps to lay off her longtime nanny and housekeeper. Aware that the woman supports a son, a mother, and a niece in Dominica, and worried for their well-being, Mrs. DeVore wanted to make sure her employee found another source of income before losing her $500-a-week salary."

Here's the problem the Times creates for itself with this piece. The reason why they call it "Trickle Down" is because they don't believe that the jobs that are created by the wealthy pay a fair wage relative to how much the wealthy get to keep in the first place. See it's not fair to let Insanely Rich Guy keep ten million bucks, if the jobs he creates with that ten million bucks only pay 30 Grand.

But if it's a bad thing that this housekeeper is about to lose her job, then it follows that the job she's about to lose must be a worthwhile job, right?

And if this is an example of "Trickle Down Economics" costing this woman a good job, then it also follows that the reverse must be true. Jobs like this housekeeping gig are, by definition, made possible by a humming economy where the wealthy are spending profligately.

Put another way, when the rich have more money, people like Ms. DeVore's housekeeper get good jobs. There is simply no way to argue that downsizing can trickle down without ceding the point that prosperity trickles down as well.

But don't take my word for it. Dig deeper into the article and the New York Times makes the same exact point.

"In the New York area, where there is a high number of dual-career professionals and where workdays are notoriously long, the number of people filling in for them at home is also immense. Domestic Workers United, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates there are more than 200,000 nannies, housekeepers, personal chefs and other domestic workers employed in the New York metropolitan area.

And as professionals recalibrate their spending because of job losses, salary or bonus cuts or just anxiety about the future, said Ai-jen Poo, an organizer at Domestic Workers United, “domestic workers’ wages are often the first thing that gets compromised.”

“Essentially, 10,000 jobs lost at Lehman Brothers means 10,000 domestic workers’ jobs that are in jeopardy,”."

So by the New York Times' own argument (made by way of Ai-Jen Poo), if people lose good jobs when the wealthy have less money to spend, then they also FIND good jobs when the wealthy are flush with cash.

Therefore, it follows logically, that if we want more Americans to find and keep good jobs, then we need to make sure that the rich have more money to spend....

The best way to make sure that Ms. Devore's suffering does not trickle down to her housekeeper is to cut Ms. Devore's taxes to make up for the loss of income her company is experiencing.

Right?

What am I missing here?

Huh!?

I used to really love Peggy Noonan's work, but we started to grow apart during this last election... I felt like in the last year she started to officially declare herself a part of that old fuddy-duddy conservative elite that has been such a barrier to the necessary evolution of our party.

A goofy sort of Huey Long-style populism has begun to infect Peggy's faction of the party (you hear it in Mike Huckabee's speeches too) and I find she's in this weird place now where, after 40 years of arguing otherwise, government has begun to seem like a good place to go looking for the solutions to everyday problems big and small. It's kind of hard to believe that Peggy was once a devoted disciple of the man who said the ten scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you."

Now, check out this paragraph from her current piece in the WSJ.

"People talk of the incoming administration's announced plans for infrastructure spending that will "save or create" 2.5 million jobs. Everything old is new again. I suspect public support for WPA-like endeavors will be high, and not only because of the promise of job creation. Not even only because people want something new, a sense of vigor and focus—a sense that there's a plan—from the federal government. There's also, I think, a sense that it would be good to do something as a nation, together, something like the old Mercury and Apollo space programs, something that draws people together. Something that is both literally and metaphorically concrete."

Look when people talk about job creation, they're not talking about jobs... they're talking about careers. The kind of long-term opportunities for the educated or the skilled that only the private sector can produce. No one, Obama included, jumps up and down when McDonald's announces they're adding 300 new fry cook positions to the nations' job rolls.

So why should I jump up and down because the President wants to create a bunch of jobs digging holes? This rush to start "infrastructure" projects will, at best, create temporary, ephemeral positions where Americans can spend six months or a year digging a hole and filling it with cement... just to say they did something other than sit on the couch and watch Oprah all day.

This is not what Americans should aspire to.

And to compare that to the Apollo Project is not just laughable, but represents a jaw-on-the-floor level of stupidity. The space race gave us amazing technologies and career opportunities that inspired a whole generation of Americans to get an edcuation and literally reach for the stars. It proved we are capable of miracles even if it had to be done as part of an emergency crash course... or perhaps pecisely because it DID have to be done that way.

All we're going to get from Obama's plan is a bunch of roads.

I've seen roads.

If you're looking for a grand national project, I find the idea of a new bridge from this side of a river to that side less than awe-inspiring...

How about we go to Mars? Now THAT would be something.

And then there's this head-dunker....

"For a generation we've been tapping on plastic keyboards, entering data into databases, inventing financial instruments that are abstract, complex and unconnected to any seeable reality. Fortunes were made in the ether, almost no one knows how; there's a sense that this was perhaps part of the problem. Workers tapped on keyboards and produced work they cannot see, touch or necessarily admire. They'd like to make their country better, and stronger, in a way they can see."

What!?!?

Ugh, come on grandma... I've heard this line before. "I had to walk to school, uphill, both ways."

Yeah right.

Look just because you look nostalgically back on the days when your Dad could kick the tires of the Buicks he built down at the factory and say "See that Peggy? I built that. That's man's work.", doesn't mean that's what I want out of my life.

You don't have to kick the tires of something tangible to be proud of your work.

And I don't need Obama to get me a job digging a ditch in order to feel like a productive American.

Krauthammer swinging for the fences

I normally don't advocate simply posting links here as there are plenty of better-read blogs that do the job better than we ever could... but I found this piece absolutely terrifying.

Who Knew?

Tom Daschle, instant comedy:

Wanna see the dumbest sentence ever printed?

Here ya go...

"He's uncomfortable, for good reason, with people assuming that he named his project the Black List simply because he's African-American."

"I'm sorry but I find your story simply unbelieveable"

"Really?... which part?"

This part.

Obama said "I have never spoken to the Governor about this matter."

Look, I have no doubt, NONE, that Obama had nothing to do with this goofball plot to sell his Senate seat, but is he really asking me to believe that the Democratic President-Elect NEVER spoke to the Democratic Governor of his state about who would succeed him in the Senate.

Please.

Remember, it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover up, and we've just been lied to by our next President.

Not a good start.

Why a vigilant press is not just desirable, but necessary

Look, I seriously doubt that this Illinois Governor thing is going to wind up being a major problem for Obama, but we've all known about crooked Tony Rezko (among other things) for six months and no one in the press ever seemed interested in digging down into these stories to see what else they might find.

I remarked on this very blog a few months ago that it would be much better for Obama to have these scandals hit the press in smaller increments while he was still a candidate than it would be for them to explode all at once in his first 100 days while he's trying to get a handle on a very tough job.

The press laid down on the job to avoid causing Obama some short-term pain... and now it looks like he's about to pay for that with a major long-term headache.

We may be about to find out whether or not my warning was prescient.

UPDATE: Here it comes.

UPDATE 2: Remember when the press busted McCain for supposedly not vetting Sarah Palin carefully enough?

UPDATE 3: Jonah Goldberg is so giddy about the unfolding scandal he doesn't know where to start, but he makes the same point I did in a fantastic paragraph that reads thusly:

"There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end."

Spotted on Craigslist, Chicago

For sale: one U.S. Senate seat.

Something tells me this isn't going to inspire a generation of terrible writers to put out books with titles like "Worse Than Watergate" and "Dude, Where's My Country?"

Tax payer bailout

As a Detroit native I know firsthand what the bankruptcy of the big 3 will do to my hometown. A city that is so close to getting back on its feet, thanks to the recent Super Bowl, newer baseball and football stadiums, and the end of Kwame Kilpatrick's reign, will take a serious hit in a state that already has the highest rate of unemployment in the country. That doesn't mean that I'm pro-bailout. But it doesn't really matter what I, or anyone really, thinks about the bailout, because it's going to happen. However, I wonder what would this economy would look like if Congress took numbers in the billions or trillions, as they're doing right now, and distributed it to the estimated 138 million taxpayers in the United States. Just for fun, let's say that Congress gets out a calculator as I just did, and realizes that if they gave each taxpayer $500,000 to stimulate the economy, they'd be "loaning" just over 6 trillion. Not much more than the total they've loaned to wall street plus the total to automakers.

What would happen to the economy if each of us got a $500,000 check? After paying off my student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt I'd still be left with about $480,000. I could snag up a foreclosed condo in the valley outside of LA with that. I could snag up 2-3 foreclosed houses in the midwest. Or I could continue to rent and start my own business. Maybe I'd blow it all on new a new car with some leftover for a new wardrobe. What would YOU do with your $500,000 bailout check?

However we spend the money it would do some serious stimulating to the economy. This taxpayer bailout is only a fantasy that I daydream about. Instead, I overdrafted on my checking account twice this month, racked up more credit card debt, and am getting "creative" with my Christmas gifts. Hope you guys like homemade candles.

BUSTED!!!... but no one cares

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Let me be clear, I don't care that he did this (I've probably done similar things in my time) but I do care that those who claim to care whenever a Republican is involved, suddenly don't.

The NOW response is particularly shameful.

UPDATE: Dee Dee Meyers certainly cares. Good for her.

Dennis Miller, Mr. X, and following the money

Dennis Miller made an excellent point on his radio show last night... he paraphrased Donald Sutherland's Mr. X character from JFK and said if you want to know what's really important to the mainstream media, "follow the money."

The network news divisions have been flogging the Global Warming scare for ten years, but now that we're in a recession that's hitting media companies particularly hard, those same divisions have begun the inevitable layoffs.

So what part of NBC was hit with layoffs first?

The Weather Channel, including the entire staff of FORECAST EARTH... and right in the middle of Earth Week too...

You know, if we really were on the verge of the death of the planet, I would think these sorts of divisions would hold a place among the network news companies' most highly valued assets.

Guess not.

So can I go back to not worrying about Global Climate Change now? If a standardbearer of news delivery like NBC doesn't care anymore, why should I?

Democrats Want President Obama Now!

It seems that Democrats in Congress want Barack Obama to be president already.

Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama's refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country.

Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin.

"He's going to have to be more assertive than he's been," House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday.

Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues.

"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time," Frank said. "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."

Oh, that Barney Frank, what a jokester he is!

Actually, I’m being kind. I can think of another word that begins with the letter “j” and ends in “ss” that is a more apt description of Barney Frank.

This is the same Barney Frank whose shenanigans while on the House Banking Committee led to the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac debacle that now has the taxpayers on the hook for billions.

The way Congressional Democrats are treating President Bush during the final days of his administration is shameful. Then again, it doesn’t surprise me since they’ve spent the first 7+ years of his administration treating him as if he doesn’t exist and is a mere inconvenience to their grand design of liberalism. Their contempt and disdain for him is matched only by their arrogance towards the common man whom they purport to want to help.

Will someone please send Congressional Democrats a book of manners? Or alternatively, a copy of the U.S. Constitution?

The last time I checked, President Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009. President Obama’s first term (and if he does a poor job, he will not have a second) ends on January 20, 2013 and not one day before that. I actually think President-Elect Obama, while not exactly staying out of the spotlight while building his cabinet, understands that the office of the Presidency is accorded respect and that when he is President, he’ll want to serve out his full term in office without being second-guessed by the incoming President-Elect. That’s why I believe Obama has not weighed in on certain issues.

Of course, the other reason that Obama hasn’t weighed in on issues might be that he has no solutions to them. But since I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, I’ll reserve judgment until January 20th.

Wow, the recession is killing Hollywood.

Tons of Viacom layoffs coming plus... one of Hollywood's most well know trade papers might not survive past 2009!

Hollywood would be doing a lot better, I think, if they had spent the last 3 years making great movies instead of trying to make a point.

To borrow a joke from Glenn Reynolds...

They told me that if Barack Obama were elected, all the world's problems would suddenly melt away... and they were right!!!

NOTE: This joke works better if you have access to the print edition of The Hollywood Reporter because it features a better headline... "Upbeat Mood for Sundance"

Another dubious campaign promise, wisely jettisoned

I usually let a post cook in my head for a few days before I actually commit it to the Congress' board, and for the last few days I've been developing some thoughts on the "windfall profits tax" that both Obama and Hillary were so enamored of back in the halcyon days of 130 dollar oil.

Specifically, I thought it amusing that while certain politicians back then were demanding that certain American companies turn over excess profits to the government as, oh I don't know, punishment for providing a quality product that Amercians really wanted to buy, I guess... none of them are now willing to make the opposite argument that since those profits have evaporated, perhaps these companies are entitled to some kind of relief from their tax burden as compensation for hard times suffered.

After all how can it be that one action is fair and necessary, while the opposite action is not.

Well Obama isn't exactly saying that the oil companies deserve tax relief to make up for all the profits they're not making right now, but he is willing to forgoe the "windfall profits tax" for now... which isn't exactly a courageous position now that there are now windfall profits to tax, now is it? But I guess when it comes to The Great Redistributor", we're going to have to take our victories where we can get them.

Republican comeback in 2010?

So I'm looking over the results from the Senate runoff in Georgia and I find the results quite interesting. Saxby Chambliss only led his opponent by 3% in November during the general election, but absolutely DESTROYED him by 16 points this week.

Which means that without Democrats crushing the polls for Obama and voting D down the ticket, there is no mandate to replace Republicans with Democrats (at least not in Georgia)... the brand is not selling without the big man leading the charge.

If we can figure out how to frame, market, and sell our brand and present an effective counterpoint to what is sure to be a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to governance by Pelosi, Reid, et al... we could have a very Merry Christmas come 2010.

Well at least Sarah Palin got an entire wardrobe...

...and at only 5 times the price!

I guess the argument the press will make when they ignore this story is that Palin's wardrobe was bought with campaign money, and ostensibly, Obama is buying this ring with his own money. I can think of about a million reasons why this should be at least as juicy a news story as the Palin wardrobe "scandal"... unfortunately, I can also think of a million and one reasons why it won't be.

US Marine core rules for gunfighting

Found this while surfing the Intertubes last night and it made me laugh out loud, so I thought I'd share.

Weirdest Campaign Photo Op Ever.

Jim Martin with rappers T.I., Young Jeezy and Ludacris.



Uhhhhh ... dudes, you know two of those guys rap about selling drugs, one is connected to organized crime, and the other is about to go to prison on federal weapons charges ... right?