Expect to see propaganda of this sort before long.
May 7, 2009
"Manny beefing Manny"
That's my nominee for the best headline about the Manny Ramirez performance enhancing drug case. Manny's been suspended for fifty games, and will lose a serious chuck of his $20 million plus annual haul.
This might be just enough to make a race out of the NL West, which the Dodgers have been running away with.
This might be just enough to make a race out of the NL West, which the Dodgers have been running away with.
"Obama's Axis of Evil"
Really now. The Dutch, Irish and Bermudians (?) should know better.
It's one thing to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to US allies or even the US itself, the criterion George W. Bush used to assign membership in his Axis of Evil. But it's quite another to be running "tax havens" that deprive the Obama Administration of revenue that could be used to help Obama get re-elected in 2012, I mean pay for health care for children, especially those with congenital disabilities.
Shame on them. I renounce my Irish heritage as of this moment.
Sea ice around Antarctica continues its growth
As always, the fact that the extent of sea ice around Antarctica is increasing is a story you never hear in the media. And this is nothing new-this data goes (go) back to 1979, when we first started getting the satellite data that show the real story on the climate. This is information that doesn't fit the media's narrative on the climate, so it's ignored.
In fact, at the Sea Ice Index site, you have to jump through a hoop or two to see the Antarctic images, but the news that the sea ice extent is decreasing at the other end of the globe is trumpeted. Could there be research grants hanging in the balance?
Specter's got chutzpah
Snarlin' Arlen to lose the snarl and become a Christian to get his seniority (not to mention mojo) back:
No word is yet available on a possible sexual orientation change by the aged yet flexible Senator.
"Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who last week became a Democrat to boost his odds of winning re-election, again shocked the political world when he announced today that he had switched from Judaism to Christianity in hopes of regaining the seniority which the senate stripped from him Tuesday.
"Despite previous promises from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would retain his seniority on key committees, yesterday the senate voted to bump Sen. Specter to junior status on four out of five committees.
"'Now that I’m last in line,' Sen. Specter said, “I find the words of Jesus the Messiah very encouraging when he says ’some are last who will be first’..."
No word is yet available on a possible sexual orientation change by the aged yet flexible Senator.
May 6, 2009
What's the matter with Manhattan?
Rich folks, as Pres. Obama calls them-(doesn't he make the word "folks" sound condescending?)-voted for Obama- he won among people earning more than $200K, for example.
Yet the President plans to raise their taxes, and even tried to limit their charitable deductions, a particularly foolish, need I say heartless, thing to do in the midst of a severe recession.
What gives? Is this class warfare that amounts to attacking his own base? Will the wealthy continue to support the Big O? Or will those who disapprove simply move elsewhere in the world, while those that remain still cling to him? I wonder if his recent attempt to go after off-shore corporate "tax havens" is a way to warn the rich that he'll get his piece of their hide no matter where they go. Forget pulling a Gauguin and moving to Tahiti, Barack will find a way to get a good chuck of your loot wherever you go. After all, good governing is all about the accumulation of money and the dispersal of money. The best government is never the one that governs least.
In any case, it may be irrelevant. The President's unprecedented deficits will leave all of us gasping for air, as everybody taxes will go up. That's the real answer-everyone will be asked to sacrifice at the altar of Obama's economic sophistry, so no one will feel singled out. The plan is clever in its stupidity.
Yet the President plans to raise their taxes, and even tried to limit their charitable deductions, a particularly foolish, need I say heartless, thing to do in the midst of a severe recession.
What gives? Is this class warfare that amounts to attacking his own base? Will the wealthy continue to support the Big O? Or will those who disapprove simply move elsewhere in the world, while those that remain still cling to him? I wonder if his recent attempt to go after off-shore corporate "tax havens" is a way to warn the rich that he'll get his piece of their hide no matter where they go. Forget pulling a Gauguin and moving to Tahiti, Barack will find a way to get a good chuck of your loot wherever you go. After all, good governing is all about the accumulation of money and the dispersal of money. The best government is never the one that governs least.
In any case, it may be irrelevant. The President's unprecedented deficits will leave all of us gasping for air, as everybody taxes will go up. That's the real answer-everyone will be asked to sacrifice at the altar of Obama's economic sophistry, so no one will feel singled out. The plan is clever in its stupidity.
May 5, 2009
Geez, Obama can't speak Iberian OR Austrian
No, neither are languages, but don't tell The Smartest Man Alive that.
Pres. Obama referred to yesterday as "Cuatro de Cinco." I guess he was trying to make a lame joke about it being the day before Cinco de Mayo. This comes on the heels of his talking about the "Austrian" language during his recent Apology Tour. One thing that's well established about the President is that he lacks the slightest hint of wit, as every attempt at humor (Nancy Reagan, the Special Olympics) falls flat.
Maybe the Hopey-Changey crowd that voted this guy in can now apologize to the rest of us. The possession of an Ivy League law degree, especially absent any relevant accomplishments, doesn't mean Obama's brilliant. He looks more average by the day.
Pres. Obama referred to yesterday as "Cuatro de Cinco." I guess he was trying to make a lame joke about it being the day before Cinco de Mayo. This comes on the heels of his talking about the "Austrian" language during his recent Apology Tour. One thing that's well established about the President is that he lacks the slightest hint of wit, as every attempt at humor (Nancy Reagan, the Special Olympics) falls flat.
Maybe the Hopey-Changey crowd that voted this guy in can now apologize to the rest of us. The possession of an Ivy League law degree, especially absent any relevant accomplishments, doesn't mean Obama's brilliant. He looks more average by the day.
May 4, 2009
Welcome back, inflation
I've written a number of times here about the coming bout of hyper-inflation the Barack/Bernanke team is bringing on.
It's remarkable, first of all, how little the Fed/White House partnership is remarked upon. Somehow we forget that the Fed, above all else, is supposed to be independent from all sorts of political pressures. This Fed is acting as Obama's junior partner, throwing trillions around like dimes, and scaring the heck out of anyone worried about more than where the economy will be two or three or four years from now. Keynes was wrong-we may all be dead in the long run, as he wrote, but in politics the long run isn't any further out than the next election. Obama and Co. are praying that we have the recovery, but not the big-time inflation, in 2012. It's a huge risk, politically and otherwise.
Economist Allan Meltzer on the Barack/Bernanke follies:
"In the 1970s, with inflation rising, I often described the Federal Reserve as knowing only two speeds: too fast and too slow. At the time, the Fed’s idea was to combat recession by promoting expansion, printing money and making it easier for businesses and households to borrow — and worry only later about the inflation that resulted. That strategy produced a sorry decade of slow productivity growth, rising unemployment and, yes, rising inflation. If President Obama and the Fed continue down their current path, we could see a repeat of those dreadful inflationary years...
"[U]nder Mr. Bernanke, the Fed has sacrificed its independence and become the monetary arm of the Treasury: bailing out A.I.G., taking on illiquid securities from Bear Stearns and promising to provide as much as $700 billion of reserves to buy mortgages.
"Independent central banks don’t do what this Fed has done. They leave such fiscal action to the legislative branch. By that same token, Mr. Volcker’s Fed [in the '80's] had to avoid financing the large (for that time) Reagan budget deficits to be able to bring down inflation. The central bank was made independent expressly so that it could refuse to finance deficits. But is there a political consensus that the much larger Obama deficits will not pressure the Fed to expand reserves to buy Treasury bonds?
"It doesn’t help that the administration’s stimulus program is an obstacle to sound policy. It will create jobs at the cost of an enormous increase in the government debt that has to be financed. And it does very little to increase productivity, which is the main engine of economic growth.
"Some of my fellow economists, including many at the Fed, say that the big monetary goal is to avoid deflation. They point to the less than 1 percent decline in the consumer price index for the year ending in March as evidence that deflation is a threat. But this statistic is misleading...
"We should look instead at a less volatile price index, the gross domestic product deflator. In this year’s first quarter, it rose 2.9 percent — a sure sign of inflation.
"Besides, no country facing enormous budget deficits, rapid growth in the money supply and the prospect of a sustained currency devaluation as we are has ever experienced deflation. These factors are harbingers of inflation.
"When will it come? Surely not right away. But sooner or later, we will see the Fed, under pressure from Congress, the administration and business, try to prevent interest rates from increasing. The proponents of lower rates will point to the unemployment numbers and the slow recovery. That’s why the Fed must start to demonstrate the kind of courage and independence it has not recently shown..."
UPDATE: "The Chinese have cancelled their credit card": The Chinese are "sharply" cutting back on buying Treasuries. Will the Fed allow rates to rise?
FURTHER UPDATE: Heh...since March the Fed's been doing some rather aggressive quantitative easing, "which sounds so much better than [saying] they're printing money." Of course the Fed's bookkeepers will deny printing anything-they're creating it out of thin air, electronically.
Jack Kemp, 1935-2009
What can I say about Jack Kemp?
He was the only politician I ever gave money to. I gave him a few bucks when he ran for President in 1988.
His views matched my own better than anyone in politics. He called himself a "bleeding heart conservative", who wanted to level the playing field when many Republicans didn't seem to care. He wanted to level the field with economic opportunity, driven by lower taxes and less regulation. The Kemp Republican ultimately was more than a little like the John F. Kennedy Democrat. And yes, he could've been elected President.
But there was always something frustrating about Kemp. I ended up thinking of him as the conservatives' Rockefeller. Like Rocky, he had an enormous base of support, enough that he easily could've been nominated, but he had no idea how to effectively mobilize that support. His 1988 campaign never seemed able to get out of its own way, and his performance as Bob Dole's VP choice in 1996 was just bizarre-talking about the gold standard and what was wrong with Clinton's aid package to Mexico in his debate with Al Gore was less than a good use of his-or the viewers'-time.
And today, we see that the emphasis on tax cuts as a spur to economic growth can be over-done. No, I'm not going to commit economic heresy here-tax cuts are always a good thing, and Obama's planned tax hikes in the midst of a severe recession are sheer lunacy-but we re-learned during the George W. Bush years what Milton Friedman had said years before-ultimately what matters is how much government spends, not so much how that spending is financed. It was cruelly ironic that John McCain, whose conservative bona fides so many questioned, has always recognized this fact, and so many other conservatives never have. What government spends is taken of the private sector's hide, so to speak, and when the federal government grows like a weed, the private sector cannot.
He was the only politician I ever gave money to. I gave him a few bucks when he ran for President in 1988.
His views matched my own better than anyone in politics. He called himself a "bleeding heart conservative", who wanted to level the playing field when many Republicans didn't seem to care. He wanted to level the field with economic opportunity, driven by lower taxes and less regulation. The Kemp Republican ultimately was more than a little like the John F. Kennedy Democrat. And yes, he could've been elected President.
But there was always something frustrating about Kemp. I ended up thinking of him as the conservatives' Rockefeller. Like Rocky, he had an enormous base of support, enough that he easily could've been nominated, but he had no idea how to effectively mobilize that support. His 1988 campaign never seemed able to get out of its own way, and his performance as Bob Dole's VP choice in 1996 was just bizarre-talking about the gold standard and what was wrong with Clinton's aid package to Mexico in his debate with Al Gore was less than a good use of his-or the viewers'-time.
And today, we see that the emphasis on tax cuts as a spur to economic growth can be over-done. No, I'm not going to commit economic heresy here-tax cuts are always a good thing, and Obama's planned tax hikes in the midst of a severe recession are sheer lunacy-but we re-learned during the George W. Bush years what Milton Friedman had said years before-ultimately what matters is how much government spends, not so much how that spending is financed. It was cruelly ironic that John McCain, whose conservative bona fides so many questioned, has always recognized this fact, and so many other conservatives never have. What government spends is taken of the private sector's hide, so to speak, and when the federal government grows like a weed, the private sector cannot.
May 2, 2009
Obama's Supreme Court choice-the "crippling disability" of having the wrong gender
UPDATE: Stuart Taylor describes Cass Sunstein, a well-regarded legal scholar who apparently knows Pres. Obama well, as having "two crippling disabilities"-his race and his gender. This is beyond belief. We're actually about to pick a Supreme Court Justice, for a life-time post, more on the basis of skin color and sex than ability. And no, it doesn't matter if it's been done before. It's always wrong.
I'm reminded of Chief Justice Roberts' statement in a school case about racial discrimination of all kinds:
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
May 1, 2009
"The One Hundred Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time"-maybe
There are, no doubt, many hundreds of these lists of the best hundred jazz albums. But since I'm, one, a jazz guy, and two, I don't want this site to be completely overcome by the day to day insanities of Washington, DC, I thought I'd comment on this list.
The author, Alan Wiley, gets off to a bad start when he says the fact that the jazz style pre-dates the album somehow complicates the selection of the best 100 albums. Huh? That fact may make it harder to pick the best hundred artists...
Things aren't improved when he picks Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come as the greatest album of all. Wow. I'm not an Ornette basher (I do remember Miles saying "Ornette's f****** the trumpet just like he did the alto" when Coleman started also playing trumpet); I like some of his work, and his and Eric Dolphy's, among the free or nearly free jazz crowd, I can enjoy.
But just imagine, among alto sax players, whom Wiley thus disparages. Start with Charlie Parker, move on to Benny Carter, Paul Desmond, Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, Bud Shank, etc.
No 2. is Coltrane's A Love Supreme. I actually like Coltrane's playing with Miles better than his solo work, at least on the whole. Sue me. But obviously this is a defensible choice by Wiley.
The next few are standard fare: Ella/Louis, Kind of Blue, and such. At thirteen Wiley's got Chet Baker's Chet Baker Sings. Baker is in the Rene's Apple Hall of Fame, and I'm one of his biggest fans, but I'd rather hear less singing than that. I probably would've picked She Was Too Good to Me. Yes, I know Chet hated the electric piano on that album, and Paul Desmond's in questionable form here, but the choice of tunes, from the title track Rodgers and Hart considered their best song, to My Future Just Passed, is perfect, and Chet is brilliant.
The rest of the list I don't have many problems with, although how mediocre fusion group The Bad Plus made it I'll never know, and there's a conspicuous lack of large groups, except for a Basie album. But what in the name of Maynard Ferguson is a Herb Alpert (Whipped Cream and Other Delights) album doing here? I like The Tijuana Brass, it's fun and all that, but it ain't jazz. Herb himself, a serious jazz connoisseur, would doubtless say as much.
The author, Alan Wiley, gets off to a bad start when he says the fact that the jazz style pre-dates the album somehow complicates the selection of the best 100 albums. Huh? That fact may make it harder to pick the best hundred artists...
Things aren't improved when he picks Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come as the greatest album of all. Wow. I'm not an Ornette basher (I do remember Miles saying "Ornette's f****** the trumpet just like he did the alto" when Coleman started also playing trumpet); I like some of his work, and his and Eric Dolphy's, among the free or nearly free jazz crowd, I can enjoy.
But just imagine, among alto sax players, whom Wiley thus disparages. Start with Charlie Parker, move on to Benny Carter, Paul Desmond, Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, Bud Shank, etc.
No 2. is Coltrane's A Love Supreme. I actually like Coltrane's playing with Miles better than his solo work, at least on the whole. Sue me. But obviously this is a defensible choice by Wiley.
The next few are standard fare: Ella/Louis, Kind of Blue, and such. At thirteen Wiley's got Chet Baker's Chet Baker Sings. Baker is in the Rene's Apple Hall of Fame, and I'm one of his biggest fans, but I'd rather hear less singing than that. I probably would've picked She Was Too Good to Me. Yes, I know Chet hated the electric piano on that album, and Paul Desmond's in questionable form here, but the choice of tunes, from the title track Rodgers and Hart considered their best song, to My Future Just Passed, is perfect, and Chet is brilliant.
The rest of the list I don't have many problems with, although how mediocre fusion group The Bad Plus made it I'll never know, and there's a conspicuous lack of large groups, except for a Basie album. But what in the name of Maynard Ferguson is a Herb Alpert (Whipped Cream and Other Delights) album doing here? I like The Tijuana Brass, it's fun and all that, but it ain't jazz. Herb himself, a serious jazz connoisseur, would doubtless say as much.
Obama is less popular than Bush was at the same time
Despite an adoring media, despite foreign tours and a new pup, Barack Obama is less popular after 100 days in office than George W. Bush was.
According to Gallup, after a hundred days' Bush's approval was at 62%. Barack pulls a mere 56%.
Let that sink in...after an election we were told by many on the left had been stolen, Bush still out-polls Obama, who had a decisive and unquestioned victory last fall.
Obama's numbers will crumble from here on out, I'll wager. The Hope and Change Express is piloted by a strikingly average man who gives a good (though hardly great) speech when he and his teleprompter are in synch. As it becomes all the clearer that the Obama Path to Prosperity is simply one that lays ever more burdens on the taxpayer and the entrepreneur, with no real benefits, watch those numbers tank but quick.
Sure, the third of the public that loves him will continue to, no matter what. The other two-thirds has less invested emotionally and will turn fast.
According to Gallup, after a hundred days' Bush's approval was at 62%. Barack pulls a mere 56%.
Let that sink in...after an election we were told by many on the left had been stolen, Bush still out-polls Obama, who had a decisive and unquestioned victory last fall.
Obama's numbers will crumble from here on out, I'll wager. The Hope and Change Express is piloted by a strikingly average man who gives a good (though hardly great) speech when he and his teleprompter are in synch. As it becomes all the clearer that the Obama Path to Prosperity is simply one that lays ever more burdens on the taxpayer and the entrepreneur, with no real benefits, watch those numbers tank but quick.
Sure, the third of the public that loves him will continue to, no matter what. The other two-thirds has less invested emotionally and will turn fast.
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