The New Green Zone
"They want the freedom to have union leaders speak for them and the opportunity to pursue wealth regardless of the corporate balance sheet," he said. "They want the kind of safety and security that comes from knowing you'll always have a job, despite the ongoing threat posed by the fickle consumer."
In the Loop
Watch the last five seconds of this trailer for the what is surely the best line of the movie.
Hockey Sticks (Real and Imagined)
It looks like the Democrats finally found a hockey stick graph that works.
Unlike the completely discredited Global Warming graph that was supposed to show a HUGE increase in global temperatures, this one depicts the HUGE increase in unemployment since Obama accomplished his ginormous transfer of wealth from the private to the public sector.
What a surprise.
OK, so let's be honest. Is all this unemployment due directly to Obama's policies? No. We are on our way out of a very deep recession. Unemployment would naturally rise at this point in the recovery.
(Remember the screaming MSM "jobless recovery" headlines for months during the recovery of 2003? Don't expect to see anything like that now, but you get the point. Ed: Wanna play WIBDI?)
Second question. Did the "Stimulus Package" create the 3 Million jobs Obama claimed it would and help shield us from our unemployment pain? Of course not.
Transferring wealth from the private sector to the public sector creates unemployment (see Europe). Only liberal politicians think otherwise. And they have, shall we say, an incentive to believe the wholly discredited fiscal spending clap trap of Keynsian economics.
Hell, even if government spending could get into the system quickly enough to impact unemployment (which, of course it cannot), the Obama spending package targets politically sensitive sectors of the economy, not ones suffering high unemployment rates.
It's a bit silly to think that truck company dispatchers are suddenly going to become solar panel engineers at "green" manufacturing boutiques. Or lawn care "specialists" are going to easily transfer their skills to eco-transport companies. Apparently that's a level of detail our compassionate leaders didn't consider when ramming a $700 Billion spending bill through congress in what, a week? (Which, of course, none of them even read!)
Democrats, being politicians first and economists, well never, can hardly understand the signals they have sent the business community. Obamacrats sit in their plush offices contemplating macro indicators and wondering why, after pouring massive liquidity into the economy, investment hasn't taken off.
The reason, of course, is that business people know that inflation is on the way and that it will undermine the value of any investments made today. The impact of the "Stimulus Package" was immediate, all right. It made business fearful of adding new capacity.
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that the rules never change. If you try to manage the economy using methods that don't fit the rule set, it comes around behind you and takes a big bite out of your butt.
For instance, if you borrow massively in a single (simple) -minded effort to move a politically sensitive unemployment number, the economy reacts with an expectation of inflation which stifles investment and creates higher unemployment. In policy circles, this is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences.
In other circles (mine, for instance), it is known as the "No Shit Rule of Basic Economics".
The Key Question
"Suppose the deal announced today were the only possible pre-packaged bankruptcy, and your choice was to take it or allow GM to liquidate now. What would you do?"
Liquidate.
But read the whole (long) thing if you want to understand what was actually announced today.
Plus, this... as in "here we go again, just like the Chrysler deal, wrecking 150 years of bankruptcy law" (since one William C. Bullit set its foundation in law).
"The deal is unfair to unsecured creditors, because they get a worse deal than someone standing behind them in line (the UAW’s VEBA). It has nothing to do with who those parties are (labor vs. creditors). It is about the importance of maintaining a stable and predictable set of rules to govern the capital structure of a firm, and the value that stability creates for firms’ ability to raise capital. All these arguments boil down to the cardinal rule of waiting in line for the kindergarten bus: it’s not fair to cut in line. If that rule is broken too often, chaos ensues."
Cars Get the O'Rourke Treatment (QOTD)
But cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.
Unlike, for instance, our counterparts in Brussels. It now becomes more and more clear why the car is the enemy.
Whack-a-Mole
“In Spain that’s 100% legal.”
It's rough being the RIAA these days. You knock one cool service down and another pops up in its place a week later. Worse than that, the new site works even better.
One guy in his living room can do what the nets take months to accomplish with sites like Hulu. It's tough being in the entertainment distribution business these days.
Update: But just to be fair, the new Hulu desktop software is pretty cool. If you have your computer linked up to a Hi-def monitor (... of course), it snaps open quickly and works better (IMHO) than most of the standard internet TV programs (listening Microsoft?). Video quality is OK, but not as good as the standard .avi file or streaming HiDef (like MLB). So... torrents still rule.
Yes, of course...
... Cornyn is correct. Calling people racists is bad manners and mostly pretty stupid.
But I have two questions.
First, why is it always OK for Democrats to call Republicans racist, but warrants a headline from CNN when it happens in reverse? In my estimation Republicans are more color blind in their policies than Democrats, which would lead one to believe that they are less apt to account for race in their decision making (as would be "racist").
Second, do you think CNN would interview a Democrat politician if another Democrat called a Republican a "racist"? Of course not. There wouldn't be room for anything else on their web site (OK, I exaggerate. But it felt good writing it.)
Some of the least racist, most color blind institutions in America are dominated by conservatives. Like the US military. Like corporate America. Like the South, for that matter.
The places that account for race for admission and advancement are more often than not dominated by liberals... academia and government, for instance.
The media twist on issues of race is positively Kafkaesque. What is, is not. And what is not, is.
So please, spare me the faux outrage at Rush and Newt. I'll start worrying about punishing those two fat white guys when my liberal friends stop calling me a racist because I support low taxes!
Our Betters Award Themselves
"Katie had the right stuff to do that game-changing interview," Helen said. "After that, the ballgame was over."
Helen gave a dramatic pause, then said: "She saved the country."
Helen got a standing ovation, from everybody.
The sickly corpse that was once a vibrant free media in America as seen by an outsider.
It's as if they are so obsessed with themselves that they cannot see the end has already come. Newsweek magazine. The New York Times. CBS News. When was the last time that anyone actually paid for one of those products?
Hell, you don't even see Newsweek in the dentist's office anymore, let alone on the magazine rack.
The New York Times looks like a lonely relic from the past in its wire basket next to the door at my grocery store. Yesterday, I notice just three lonely copies of the grossly paired down broadsheet gathering dust. They were the same three that were there earlier in the day.
And CBS News. Having given up on TV years ago, I tried to watch it on the free download site Miro. The format wedged between Denture Grip and Polydent advertisements seemed like something out of ancient history. Has Fox News really made me intolerant of any TV format that isn't designed to be consumed in three minutes or less? I think so.
But still these dinosaurs of yesteryear, apparently comfortable in a timeless bubble, continue to congratulate themselves on their feeble part in bringing us 1930's style socialism. The only hope is that when the whole thing comes crashing down, it will be like a stake in the heart of this crowd.
It will come none too soon.
Whose Eager Staff?
Cheeky bastard:
So like parents with marriageable offspring, news bosses are both pushing forward and pulling back, fearful of looking out of date by reminding their eager staff about the danger of going too far.
Fifty years ago the reporter would have been fired for writing that sentence. Not so much today. But read the article. Interesting thoughts on Twitter and journalism.
How Many Times... Mr. Speaker!
The Maryland state revenue office says it's "way too early" to tell how many millionaires moved out of the state when the tax rates rose. But no one disputes that some rich filers did leave. It's easier than the redistributionists think. Christopher Summers, president of the Maryland Public Policy Institute, notes: "Marylanders with high incomes typically own second homes in tax friendlier states like Florida, Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia. So it's easy for them to change their residency."
All of this means that the burden of paying for bloated government in Annapolis will fall on the middle class. Thanks to the futility of soaking the rich, these working families will now pay Mr. O'Malley's "fair share."
Sorry for the obscure Howie Carr reference in the title, but jeez, how many times do governments have to fail at soaking the rich before they figure out it doesn't work. Sometimes I think you have to be an economic idiot to get elected to public office.
75 Movies Every Man Should See
Pretty impressive list. I agree with most of it. Being the guy with over a thousand movie files on my computer, yes... I have seen them all.
They picked the right Bogart movie (The Maltese Falcon) and, surprisingly, got the Bond flick correct (the first and by far the best... Dr. No). North by Northwest is the best movie of Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, which is pretty impressive in and of itself (and man, Eva in the dining car... ouch!). And then there's Glengarry Glen Ross. It had to be there.
But I have to say, how do you have a man movie list without either Twelve O'Clock High or To Kill a Mockingbird? Those movies are veritable instruction manuals on being a man. Major oversight.
But all in all not bad. Guys, you should see most of these before you pack it in.
Rita Moreno
Contributed by a valued reader with the following comment:
...in the spirit of your occasional B&W photos of hotties-of-yesteryear, I have one to add. I saw a PBS show on the history of musicals in the 40s and 50s, and it showed Rita Moreno, the original Puerto Rican latin bombshell (as you know, a weakness of mine...). She had a small part in 1953's Singing in the Rain, and later won all four of the big acting awards (Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy...). The show interviewed her recently, and she's in her late seventies and still a hottie. And, back in the fifties, she filled out those old torpedo-tit bras perfectly...
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