Missing the point on PPIP

By way of Megan, we get this

Potential buyers of assets complain that, a month after Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, unveiled the public-private investment programme, the authorities have yet to reassure them they would not be subjected to draconian Congressional scrutiny.

Megan, mising the point, has this to say

I think it’s very clear what the implications are:  if you take the King’s Shilling, the King gets to micromanage your life.  Nor do I see what good it will do to have Treasury clarify its statement.  The government is no longer capable of making a credible committment to keep its hands of firms that participate.  If the voters decide that you make too much money, Congress will move heaven and earth to take that money away from you, plus some extra money, and maybe they’ll deny you permission to build that bathroom addition, too.  They also reserve the right to tell you how to run your company.

And in general, I am not against having strings attached to government money.

The problem isn’t that “strings come with government money.”  Of course they do, and of course they should.

The problem is that the idiots running this Democrat Congress are attaching brand new strings after the money’s been taken.  That is dishonest, wrong, and the problem.  When teh strings are up front, you can look at them, and decide whether the deal is worth it.  When they’re after the fact, no rational person would want to get involved.

And that’s what the Democrats who Megan supported in the last election have given us.

Destroying a post with an aside

Megan McArdle has a great post about debate / discussion tactics up, where she firmly points out that making an argument you don’t believe in, because you think it might help you “win”, tends to drive away your listeners once they catch you at it. It was an excellent post, until she got to her last paragraph. Then she babbled this

Think of the ridiculous debates over breast cancer and abortion, or the rear-guard action against climate-change science.

My response to her

The Earth’s been cooling for the last decade, we’re at a century low for sunspots, the AGW proponents still can’t come up with a computer climate model that works going backwards (and if you can’t predict the past, NASA’s recently released a study blaming Arctic Warming on the elimination of aerosol particle emissions starting in the 70s, why in the world would we think you could predict the future?), and yet you claim that it’s the opponents of the “climate change” / AGW fantasy who are engaging in a “rear-guard action”?

(All that setting aside the way proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming have switched to calling it “climate change”, since this “lets” them claim that any bad climate, temp up or down, is “caused” by CO₂ emissions.  Now that is an example of a “ridiculous” “rear-guard action”.)

Where exactly are you getting those drugs?

She really does need to occasionally get outside of the NY – DC – Boston corridor. 😦

This will be great, if Obama pulls it off

By way of  HotAir, I found this from IBD

It started Saturday, when he put himself next to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at lunch and then studiously exchanged notes.

Having listened to Uribe … Obama then seemed to realize that the long-stalled Colombia free trade agreement should have been passed yesterday.

The president announced that his team must find a way to pass the agreement.

Sweet.  The Democrats opposition to this agreement has made a mockery of Obama’s claims to oppose American “bullying” in Latin America, since their opposition was based on the wish to add requirements for Columbia to change their society to suit Democrat desires.  Since the treaty gives us the same benefits we’re currently giving the Columbians (in exchange for their anti-drug efforts), supporting the treaty is an “any-brainer” (i.e. anyone with any brains at all supports it).

It’s good to see President Obama supporting it.

The difference between Bush and Obama on spending

I think this graphic really says it all. Of course, when you add in the fact that Bush accumulated his deficits fighting and winning two wars against foreign enemies, and Obama’s accumulating his by making the Federal Government bigger, for no better purpose than that he wants the US Government to control more of our lives, it makes the comparison even worse.

Obama Deficit v Bush Deficit

Libertarians and Democrats

Nick Gillespie has a lovely post about good old BO, and hte people who voted for him, over at Reason. He wins the Cheap Shot of the Day Award with this aside

And btw, the one non-negotiable in a pet or a mistress for the Duke of Chappaquidick is swimmability; who says we can’t learn from our past mistakes?

But he also made a solid point here

Question to the folks, including some of the libertarian persuasion (you fools!), who were bullish on Obama back when the alternative was John McCain, the Terri Schiavo of presidential candidates: When are you going to admit that Barry O stinks on ice? That for all his high-flying and studiously empty rhetoric he’s got the biggest presidential vision deficit since George H.W. Bush puked on a Japanese prime minister (finally, revenge for that long run of Little League World Series losses in the ’70s!). If you’re the president of the United States and you’re talking about goddamn traffic jams and you’re proposing high-speed rail as anything other than an unapologetic boondoggle that will a) never get built and b) never get built to the gee-whiz specs it’s supposed and c) be ridden by fewer people than commuted by zeppelin last year, you’ve got real problems, bub. And by extension, so do we all.

He gets the usual commenters saying “where were all these Republicans complaining about TARP, and big spending, when Bush was President?” They’re not serious (defending BO’s spending because it was wrong that Bush spend half as much won’t get you very far, unless you’re a died in the wool Democrat willing to “justify” the spending on the grounds that “Republican Special Interests got to feed at the trough, and now it’s our turn”), but I have a serious response for them anyway:

You go, Nick.

I supported TARP, because I thought we were in a liquidity crisis, and thought that it would make things better.

I was wrong.

I oppose TARP II, etc. because “insanity is doing the same thing over again, and expecting different results.” I would have opposed it if McCain were elected, and I most certainly opposed it when Barack “any spending is stimulative, so we don’t have to worry about ‘waste'” Obama proposed it. That’s not “hypocrisy”, that’s “not being a mouth breathing idiot”.

Did I spend a lot of time complaining about Bush’s spending over the last 8 years? No. Did I support his domestic spending? Hell no.

But taking Democrats seriously when they complain about Republicans “spending too much” would be like taking Madonna seriously if she had complained that Britney Spears was too promiscuous.

No matter how bad the Republicans were, they were never going to be as bad as the Democrats. As BO, Pelosi, and Reid have spend the last three months conclusively proving. You want lower spending? Register as a Republican, and vote in the Republican Primary for the best “small government” candidate you can find.

Because “more Democrats” = “more Spending”. And “more Democrats” = “bigger, more intrusive, government.”

The Democrats are the party of the group over the individual. And they are the party that worships at the temple of big government. You may find Republican candidates that you just can’t support. Fine. But there’s no such thing as a Democrat candidate worth a libertarian’s vote.

Because a vote for any Democrat in the House is a vote for Pelosi, and Waxman, and Ringle, and all their ideological ilk. A vote for any Democrat in the Senate is a vote for Reid, Schumer, and Kennedy, and all their ideological ilk.

The Republicans have their problems <cough>Specter</cough>. The Democrats are nothing but problems. You want to vote for a Democrat? Fine, go right ahead. But don’t ever claim to be libertarian after supporting a Democrat. Because the two simply don’t go together.

I really hope this is a parody site

Because the depth of stupidity required to set up something like this for real is just too scary to imagine.

AMERICAN NETWORK MONITORING ANTI-OBAMA ACTIVITIES

A site dedicated for American citizens monitoring and reporting all anti-obama activities taking place on the world wide web.

A site dedicated to the preservation of truth, justice and the American way. Where true American citizens can monitor and report all anti-obama activities taking place on the world wide web.
This is a place where one can post and report on all activities, web sites and or blogs that would be considered erroneous, slanderous or detrimental to the newly elected President of the United States.

If it’s not a parody site, I hope they really grow to hate me.

More polution = less warming

I found this mildly amusing

People have blamed the retreat of ice in the Arctic on carbon-dioxide driven global warming.  However, new research at NASA suggests that environmental intervention in the 1970s could bear most of the blame.  The elimination of aerosol particle emissions have removed a cooling element for the northern hemisphere, which has reduced a natural balance in the climate on the effect of human activities:

New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s – particularly in the Arctic – may have resulted from changes in levels of solid “aerosol” particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level – of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.

Go there to read the whole thing.

President Obama: (Cheese eating?) Surrender Monkey

Gerald Warner says it better than I have

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you’d notice.

On to Nato and the next big objective: to persuade the same European evasion experts that America, Britain and Canada should no longer bear the brunt of the Afghan struggle virtually unassisted. The Old World sucked through its teeth, said that was asking a lot – but, seeing it was Barack, to whom they could refuse nothing, they would graciously accede to his wishes.

So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops – all of them non-combatant, of course – which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the less hazardous regions of Afghanistan.

Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l’il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.

“Rules must be binding,” declared Obama, referring to the fact that Kim had just breached UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718. “Violations must be punished.” (Sounds ominous.) “Words must mean something.” (Why, Barack? They never did before, for you – as a cursory glance at your many speeches will show.)

President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America’s missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun.

Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever. If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.

So now we know: Obama does not believe “Climate Change” is a problem

There’s one thing that’s going to be true about anybody who thinks that human activities are screwing up the planet: they’re not going to do the things that they think are screwing up the planet.  With this news report, we now know that President obama does not, in fact, believe that “excessive” carbon-based energy usage is a threat to the planet.  because if he did, he would ahve had the White house Cook make the damn pizza.

Obamas fly in chef 860 miles… just to make pizza

When you’re the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do – even if that means flying a chef  860 miles.

Chris Sommers, 33, jetted into Washington from St Louis, Missouri, on Thursday with a suitcase of dough, cheese and pans to to prepare food for the Obamas and their staff.

He had apparently been handpicked after the President had tasted his pizzas on the campaign trail last autumn.

‘It’s surreal, it’s a huge honour,’ said Mr Sommers, who owns Pi restaurant in St Louis.

‘It will be a casual lunch and hopefully we’ll have a chance to say hello to the president.’

Mr Somers was accompanied by this business parnter Ryan Mangilardo who will help prepare the dinner for 140 this evening.

Why Unions are Evil

I loathe unions.  The Federal Government unions are demonstrating why that’s the only appropriate feeling for those vile organizations:

Last month the Pentagon announced it would “review” a pay-for-performance system that now covers some 200,000 of its civilian employees, delaying any new entrants to the system. In short, merit pay for work well done.

Fugettaboutit. House Democrats are now pushing to freeze pay for performance across the entire federal government.

That’s the upshot of a letter sent by eight House Democratic barons to White House budget chief Peter Orszag asking for a halt on expansion of merit pay. “A well-designed performance management system can recognize and reward high performance without a linkage to compensation,” they wrote. Gosh, why didn’t the private sector think of that?

As the biggest merit plan in the government, the National Security Personnel System has been a prime target of federal employee unions since it was launched in 2006. Originally intended to cover three times as many employees, the merit system was whittled down to exclude blue-collar bargaining-unit workers. For the remaining segment, a nine-union coalition took the issue to court in 2007 arguing that the plan illegally limited collective bargaining. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals gave them no support.

According to figures released by the Pentagon in February, almost all of the employees in the merit system got raises or bonuses in 2009, with the average total reward of 8.35%. That dwarfs the 2.9% to 4.8% hike that most of the federal government’s General Schedule employees got for the same time period. Unions prefer a return to a universal General Schedule system, which compensates employees based on time served.

Decent human beings believe you should be rewarded based on the value of your work.  Unions are based upon the premise that individuals have no worth.  That doing good shouldn’t be rewarded, and doing bad shouldn’t be punished.

Vile, evil, scum.

Iowahawk is the best

Iowahawk got his hands on another discussion on Journolist.  The only sad thing about this parody is it’s slightly less pathetic than the real thing.  🙂

Why “liberal” is now a synonym for “dishonest”

A comment on OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen

In my opinion, some critics of her nomination have focused on the wrong questions — whether or not she is too “liberal”

In America today, to be “liberal” is to be dishonest. Once you’ve decided “the Constitution is a Living Document”, which is to say once you’ve decided that the Constitution means whatever 5 left-wing justices think they can get away with saying that it means, you’ve permanently forfeited any claim of being able to “provide an accurate and honest appraisal of applicable law”.

I’m sorry her confirmation is being held up. She should be testifying in front of Republican senators, who should be asking her:

1: What’s her position on the Constitutionality of the DC voting bill?
2: Should the OLC Opinion be released?
3: What’s her opinion of Holder doing an end-run around the professional staff of the OLC when they told him something he didn’t want to hear?

“Liberals” believe that any means are permissible when you are pursuing the “right” (which is to say their) ends. It’s time they received what they’ve been dishing out.

Sweet

I’ve been banned from Volokh. Ah, my heart bleeds. Here’s my other comment:

Wow, so every single member of the Iowa Supreme Court is incapable of telling the difference between a couple that can procreate, and one that can’t. Clearly Iowa needs to work on its sex education, when not one iowa Supreme Court member knows where babies come from.

Tell us, Dale, what’s it like knowing that the only way you can advance your agenda is through dishonesty? And what kind of person are you, that you’re willing to embrace that dishonesty, rather than working to change people’s minds so that you could win honestly?

Do you ever wish that you were a decent human being, rather than a fundamentally dishonest one?

My comment to “liberals”

The members of the Iowa State Supreme Court have decided that their oaths of office are meaningless, their personal desires are all important, and that therefore Iowa must now have Same Sex “Marriages”

I have posted the following comment at Volokh. It will probably be deleted. Even if it isn’t, it belongs here

Dale,

I couldn’t care less who or what you sleep with, or have sex with. I don’t care what kind of stupid little ceremonies you have with your sex partner du jour. Whatever fantasies you want to engage in, go right ahead.

I have complete, utter, and absolute contempt for you, as a human being, because of your willingness to cheer people on as they violate their oaths of office, and rewrite State Constitutions according to their (and your) personal desires.

<b>If it wasn’t explicitly put in there by the voters, then it’s not there.</b>

The reason why I’m not, and will never be, an American “liberal” is because American “liberals” are evil human beings.

You are not evil because of your policy disagreements with me. You are evil because you’ve decided that your beliefs are so “special” that the fact that you can’t win at the ballot box gives you the <b>right</b> to make the ballot box meaningless.

You are evil because you believe that 4 – 7 black robed thugs rewriting the Constitution to suit their personal beliefs is “justice”, and 6 million people voting to save their Constitution from the depredations of those thugs is “mob rule”.

I don’t know what lies you tell yourself so that you can pretend that your beliefs aren’t utterly noxious. I don’t know if it’s simply that you favor dictatorship over democracy, and think that honesty is for chumps. Frankly, I don’t care.

I do wonder, however, at the idiocy that leads you to believe that a small minority is <b>better off</b> by destroying the rule of law. Exactly what do you think will protect you when your opponents decide that you’re right, and the law simply doesn’t matter?