From the Telegraph:

Advert for ‘reliable workers’ banned as discrimination by Jobcentre Plus

The boss of a recruitment firm said she was told she could not place an advert for ”reliable workers” because it discriminated against unreliable people.

Nicole Mamo, 48, wanted to post an advert for a £5.80-an-hour domestic cleaner on her local Jobcentre Plus website.

The text of the advert ended by stating that any applicants for the post ”must be very reliable and hard-working”.

But when Ms Mamo called the Jobcentre Plus in Thetford, Norfolk, the following day she was told that her advert would not be displayed instore.

A Jobcentre Plus worker claimed that the word ”reliable” meant they could be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers.

I would say that words fail me, but this sort of thing is becoming depressingly commonplace over in England. Even though Aldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote their dystopias more than half a century ago, they clearly saw something in the roots of British culture that worried them.

Hat tip to my old friend and fellow skydiver, Matt Yuen, who posted this over at Facebook.  ..bruce w..

Eric S. Raymond, author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“, has a thoughtful post on his blog this morning on how the current recession is impacting his circle of friends, two in particular. Here are the key paragraphs:

When I look at these guys, though, I can’t buy the explanation most people would jump for, which is that they simply fell behind in an increasingly skill-intensive job market. Thing is, they’re not uneducated; they’re not the stranded fruit-picker or construction worker that narrative would fit. Nor does offshoring explain what’s happened to these guys, because their jobs were the relatively hard-to-export kind.

No. What I think is: These are the people who go to the wall when the cost of employing someone gets too high. We’ve spent the last seventy years increasing the hidden overhead and downside risks associated with hiring a worker — which meant the minimum revenue-per-employee threshold below which hiring doesn’t make sense has crept up and up and up, gradually. This effect was partly masked by credit and asset bubbles, but those have now popped. Increasingly it’s not just the classic hard-core unemployables (alcoholics, criminal deviants, crazies) that can’t pull enough weight to justify a paycheck; it’s the marginal ones, the mediocre, and the mildly dysfunctional.

In other words, established ‘liberal’ policies actually hurt those whom the liberals would most like to protect. Read the whole thing.

Wayne Holder, a high school friend and my boss at Oasis Systems/FTL Games nearly 30 years ago, talked once about how he was a radical liberal through college, then turned hard-core conservative once he started his own business and had to hire people. He complained about the increased costs and legal/regulatory consequences of each new person he hired — and this was back in the 1980s! I can only imagine what it’s like today.  ..bruce w..

Companies are born, live, thrive, dwindle, and then often die or are absorbed by other firms. Being 56 years old, I’ve seen a lot of that first-hand and have worked for several firms that no longer exist. Over at 24/7 Wall Street, Jon Ogg and Douglas McIntyre have picked ten brands that they think will go away one way or another in 2010. Here’s their list:

• Newsweek
• Motorola
• Palm
• Borders
• Blockbuster
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• Ambac
• Eastman Kodak
• Sun Microsystems
• E*Trade

I worked (on a consulting/contract basis) at two of the companies above — Sun and Fannie Mae. I enjoyed my time at both locations, but I’m not surprised at the struggles that either firm is having. In fact, I’m not surprised at any  of the firms on the list, though some are doing worse than I thought. The whole article is worth reading.  ..bruce w..

Big Government offers this chart of unemployment trends in post-WW II recessions.  Nice to see that the massive deficit spending on ‘stimulus’ has paid off so well.  ..bruce w..

Nothing to see here. Move along.

. . . and things are already getting interesting.

ITEM: Obama throws the Dalai Lama and the entire country of Tibet under the bus (emphasis mine):

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been “drop-in” visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’s highest civilian award.

There were rumblings about this some weeks back, but I couldn’t track down a firm source and so didn’t post about it. I swear, Jimmy Carter — at least, the 1970s version — is looking better by the minute.

ITEM: You know how Obama is going to pay for Obamacare by combating waste and fraud in the Medicare program? It looks as though he may be throwing Granny under the bus after all:

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The nation’s nursing homes are perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services — possibly even closing — because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say.

A Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated $16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years was enacted at week’s end by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — on top of state-level cuts or flat-funding that already had the industry reeling.

And Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part of health care reform.

Add it all up, and the nursing home industry is headed for a crisis, industry officials say.

Move along folks, no rationing or cutting of services here.

ITEM: Meanwhile, if Obama is serious about cutting waste and fraud, maybe he should start with the Pentagon:

The agency, which last year was responsible for ensuring that taxpayers got good value for more than a half-trillion dollars in defense contracts, revised audits to curry favor with contractors, promoted a supervisor responsible for such revisions to a top position and rushed through other audits out of fear that the work would be outsourced if employees took too much time, the GAO said.

“Unbelievable problems at Def Contrctng Agncy [sic],” Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, wrote on her Twitter account just before a recent hearing on the report. “Top of my head is about to pop off.”

“I read a summary of the GAO report last night and quite frankly got sick,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, adding that he would not use all his allotted time for questions because he was “a little bit too upset to go where I really want to go.”

Oh, wait — this is the organization that was supposed to be preventing waste and fraud.  At least this seems to be something that both parties can agree upon.

ITEM: The TARP Inspector General, Neil Barofski, issued a report saying that US TreasSec Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke were less than forthcoming during the bailout last year:

BFederal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating “unrealistic expectations” about the companies and damaging the program’s credibility, according to a report by the program’s independent watchdog.

Not exactly earth-shaking news, but something to keep in mind as the Obama Administration tries to assure us that their economic strategy is sound and working well. To quote from Raiders of the Lost Ark: “We have top men working on it. Top men.”

ITEM: On the other hand, misleading the public about the soundness of these institutions may have been just the right thing to do, if I read the always-excellent Robert Samuelson correctly:

Something analogous happened over the past year. Scholars will debate which interventions — the Federal Reserve propping up a failing credit system, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, Obama’s “stimulus” plan and bank “stress test” — counted most. Regardless, they all aimed to reassure people that the free fall would stop and thereby curb the fear perpetuating the free fall. Confidence had to be restored so the economy’s normal recovery mechanisms could operate. This seems to have happened. By last month, the consumer confidence index had rebounded to 53.1. Housing prices had stopped falling. By the Case-Shiller index, they’ve increased for three months.

Read the whole thing — it’s not an apology for the Administration but rather an analysis of just how close we may have come to a full-blown economic depression.

ITEM: Still, there are plenty of jobs available — they just require skills different from those held by the folks who have been laid off:

It’s become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training — like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms — struggle even more to fill jobs.

The trend has been intensified by the speed of the job market decline, Koropeckyj said. The nation has lost a net 7.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Yet it can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work.

“So we have this army of the unemployed” without the necessary skills, Koropeckyj said.

This is a constant issue in the modern economy, as some sectors dwindle and others continue to expand. But it’s a lot harder to deal with as unemployment approaches 10%.  Happy days are here again!  ..bruce w..

"The stimulus is changing the trajectory of our economy." -- Joe Biden, September 3, 2009

Don Surber zooms in on the relevant portion of reality vs. hope-and-change. Obama and the Democratic Congress sold us on a horrific “stimulus” package with the threat of 9.0 % unemployment if they failed to act. They acted, and unemployment is now approaching 10% and may hit 12% next year. In the meantime, the national deficit has exploded and will be massive for years to come.

The sad thing is that for less than half the cost of the “stimulus” package ($304 billion vs. $787 billion) , the US Government could have simply suspended all corporate income taxes for an entire year. For another $20 billion or so per year, the US Government could have suspended the dividend and capital gains taxes indefinitely. Those two changes would have done more to create actual jobs and revive the economy than all the make-work “shovel ready” projects that the Obama Administration touted (but is now strangely silent about — except, of course, for Joe Biden, but nobody is paying much attention to him these days).

If unemployment really is in double-digits next year, then look for the Republicans to take control of the House and make modest gains in the Senate. ..bruce w..

We're coming for you.

MORNING LINKS

ITEM: Speaking of swine flu hysteria, this may be a good time to invest in pork belly futures – there may be a shortage soon.

ITEM: Yet another way in which Western Europeans are looking for the US to help them financially.

ITEM: Here’s a slideshow of items from the Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch auction. Some interesting, some amusing, some downright creepy. Hat tip to the Drunk Report.

OVERNIGHT LINKS

ITEM: With rising panic over the swine flu, here’s a statistic to keep in mind: about 36,000 people already die each year from flu right here in the US.  It will be interesting to see how many actual swine flu deaths we have here in the US. Bet it won’t be 36,000.

ITEM: Or should I say “H1N1 flu deaths“? Just trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? Kind of like “man-caused disasters”. Hmm…maybe “porcine-induced disaster“? (For SK fans out there: yes, ‘trips’ was deliberate.)

ITEM: What is most telling about Arlen Specter’s party switch is not the move itself; it’s his blatant hypocrisy after denying such a switch just five weeks ago and proposing changes to Senate rules back in 2001 after Jeffords’ defection. But here’s the real kicker: Joe Biden talked him into the switch. It’s one thing to be persuaded by the charisma and rhetoric (if a teleprompter is handy) of Obama — but Joe Biden?  It doesn’t say much for Specter. Of course, neither does this.

ITEM: The economic collapse has made wildcatters of us all:

In 1993, Chevron Corp. gave up the ghost and turned the field over to the city. “We go for big oil fields,” a Chevron spokesman says, and Whittier just “wasn’t economical.” Whittier, for its part, saw its legacy in President Richard M. Nixon — who attended college here when he couldn’t afford Harvard — and the city was glad to be rid of the pumps.

But then last year, as tax revenues plunged and oil crept up toward $150 a barrel, Bob Henderson, the town’s mayor, had a revelation.

“I was sitting at home, just idly thinking about this possibility of oil drilling and suddenly thought: ‘Oh, my God, when I purchased the old Chevron property, we demanded they give us the oil rights.’ ”

The demand was made so Whittier could convert the area into a wilderness preserve. Says Mr. Henderson: “It’s home to an awful lot of animals — bobcats, coyotes, hundreds of birds.”

Goodbye Bambi, hello oil rigs. Cha-ching!

ITEM: And pirate attacks have made heroes of us all:

Tayler and the others rushed to the railing and also saw what he described as five or six men sitting in a roofless pirate boat. One started climbing a rope to the deck beneath them. “He was already halfway up,” says Tayler. One passenger screamed: “Pirates!”

Without hesitation, passengers began to grab whatever they could find around them. “We immediately began throwing tables and deck chairs at the rope,” said Tayler. One hit a pirate scaling it. He fell off and the boat turned around, Tayler recalls.

The skirmish between the passengers and the pirates lasted for several minutes, he says. Suddenly, the pirates opened fire — Tayler says he counted three salvos of 25 to 30 rounds each.

Again and again, the pirate boat would approach the ship and disappear under the stern, only to reemerge. Tayler and his fellow passengers continued to throw chairs despite the gunfire. One passenger was shot in the leg and one bullet grazed the head of a crew member. The armed security staff finally turned up six to eight minutes into the skirmish, passengers claim.

Good for them.

ITEM: And the continuing market in credit default swaps (CDSs) may yet again make paupers of us all:

Wall Street looks to be quietly making gains in its attempt to keep regulatory interference to a minimum in a $30 trillion derivatives market at the heart of the financial crisis.

The fact that I haven’t even mentioned the name of the market yet speaks to one of the main reasons Wall Street is winning: it is benefitting from the fact that Main Streeters and their representatives in Congress are too bored by the topic to do anything about it.

Credit default swaps, or CDS — there, I said it — are a really geeky business. They are essentially promises by one party to pay another, if some third party should fail to pay its debts.

ITEM: Quick, which car manufacturer do you think will be #1 in global new car sales ten years from now? I’ll bet you weren’t thinking of this one.

ITEM: Speaking of manufacturing, here’s one of my all-time favorite SNL commercials. The best part is watching Sam Waterston struggle to keep a straight face.

ITEM: And finally, this is just too cool for words:

One man, living his dream.

Thanks for stopping by!  ..bruce w..

Up in the air, Junior Birdmen!

MORNING LINKS (Yeah, didn’t feel like doing overnight links last night)

ITEM: The photo above says more than a thousand op-eds on how unseriously the Obama Administration is taking the threat of terrorism. While the White House is scrambling to distance Obama himself from this idiotic stunt, a lot of people had to sign off of this. This isn’t a “Let’s get a group together out on the White House lawn” photo shoot. We’re talking about a very large passenger plane flying low and slow outside of normal air traffic corridors while trailed by military jets over frakking Manhattan. And, oh, by the way, let ‘s not tell anyone — including the Mayor of New York — ahead of time! And all this for (in Laura Ingraham’s wonderful phrase) “glamour shots” of Air Force One. You’re telling me there aren’t enough file photos of Air Force One?

What are they going to do next? Buzz the Pentagon? Or south-eastern Pennsylvania?

ITEM: One of the earliest and most famous dicta about the Internet was coined by John Gilmore: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” A formerly jailed dissident in China explains just what that meant for him:

With the censorship here, my essays can only be published overseas. Before using the computer, my handwritten essays were difficult to correct and the cost of sending them was high. To avoid the articles being intercepted, I often went from the west side of the city to the east side where I had a foreign friend who owned a fax machine.

The internet has made it easier to obtain information, contact the outside world and submit articles to overseas media. It is like a super-engine that makes my writing spring out of a well. The internet is an information channel that the Chinese dictators cannot fully censor, allowing people to speak and communicate, and it offers a platform for spontaneous organisation.

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: A doctor immigrated from Russia to America ten years ago to escape socialism in general and socialized medicine in particular. Hear what he has to say:

His overall summary of Russia’s culture of authoritarianism is that “They do not value human life.” This was his introduction to the subject on which he was most passionate: socialized medicine. A major part of the reason he left Russia was because socialized medicine is just as intolerable for doctors as it is for patients.

Socialized medicine, he stated flatly, “doesn’t work.” Why doesn’t it work? He explained that a doctor works for the state—not for his patients. So he spends much of his time filling out forms. “As long as the forms are filled out, no one cares what the patient says,” how he is doing, or whether he survives.

He then went out of his way to point out that the current administration wants to move us toward socialized medicine. “If they move us just a little bit, it will not be so bad. But if they move us a lot, it will be a disaster.” Keep that in mind during the coming debates over President Obama’s plans for the de facto nationalization of our medical system.

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Woman-on-Fire Megan McArdle dissects — or is that vivisects? Or maybe…waterboards? — the latest financial restructuring plan from General Motors, and the results aren’t pretty:

GM has released its latest never-never financial plan for an imaginary future where the bondholders evaporate into clouds of fairy dust, while American consumers mob its dealerships, begging for a piece of the GM dream.  The company is apparently planning to ask a bankruptcy judge to enforce the same bond exchange terms it’s currently offering its bondholders.  If GM gets its wish, the bondholders will do better by settling out of court, because they won’t have the administrative costs of a bankruptcy, which are typically high.

ITEM: Speaking of auto manufacturers going down the tubes, if the United Auto Workers ends up with 55% of Chrysler stock as a result of the financial restructuring, does this mean that the UAW will have to ask itself for concessions? I’d love to sit in on those negotiations.

ITEM: Speaking of triage, Here’s an important announcement that has a bearing on the current concerns over swine flu:

There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall. The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of the flu. In 1918 a half million Americans died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.

– F. David Matthews, secretary of health, education, and welfare (Feb., 1976)

Yep, 1976. Remember the massive swine flu epidemic of 1976 with a million dead Americans? No? That’s because it never panned out. Patrick Di Justo over at Salon takes us back to the Swine Flu Panic of 1976 that may well have cost Pres. Gerald Ford re-election. Read the whole thing.

ITEM: In the meantime, you can track reported swine flu cases (here in 2009) on this Google map.

Updates as the day goes on.  ..bruce w..

We're from the Government, and we're here to help!

[Here are Wednesday's links as well]

MORNING LINKS

ITEM: USA Today has an outstanding article debunking the various myths about the Columbine shooters who killed just over a dozen of their fellow students 10 years ago:

They weren’t goths or loners.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver’s Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren’t in the “Trenchcoat Mafia,” disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn’t been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and “fags.” . . .

“These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation,” psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. “These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems.”

How many TV shows and movies in the last decade have reinforced the stereotype of the “goth/loser/excluded” student shooter? Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Oopsie! You know those evil Wall Street executives who took “shameful” bonuses while receiving federal bailout money? Well, one of them is working in the Obama Administration — as a Deputy Secretary of State, no less.

OVERNIGHT LINKS

ITEM: The grandstanding out of Congress and the Obama Administration continues to have consequences:

Businesses, already struggling to survive the perils of an economic downturn, are starting to push back against a growing public perception that business travel is wasteful and unethical.

Government efforts to curtail corporate travel by companies that receive federal bailout funds have demonized the meeting business and harmed the nation’s hotel and travel trade, industry leaders say.

As with the brain drain on Wall Street, it is unclear whether these consequences are desired or unintended. The classic dictum, of course, is “Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.” The problem is that with Congress, it’s really hard to separate the two.

ITEM: Creeping socialism/fascism alert: Faced with piracy, an unstable and dangerous border with Mexico, and a direct threat of a White House attack by the Taliban, the Department of Homeland Security has zeroed in on — “rightwing extremist activity” within the United States:

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” saying the economic recession, the election of America’s first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

And just in time for the Tea Parties on Wednesday, too. I will cheerfully bet $1000 that during the Obama Administration, we will never see a report out of the DHS that uses the adjective “leftwing”, much less “leftwing extremist.” Any takers?

ITEM: From the New York Times, more details on the Navy’s rescue of Captain Phillips. Initial reports indicated that Phillips had jumped from the lifeboat just before the SEALs fired, but that was not the case; he was “tightly bound” and in the lifeboat at the time.

ITEM: Meanwhile, the “Barry and the Pirates” meme continues to spread, while others speculate that the Somali pirates will become the Left’s newest useful idiots. However, people elsewhere in the world are taking note — in some cases, favorably — that the US did what no one else has to date: intervened with force rather than succumb to ransom.

ITEM: And while Obama keeps talking about the “inherited Bush deficits” (which aren’t Bush’s at all — they are from the Democratic Congress that’s controlled spending for the last two years), he hasn’t said anything about the inherited Bush military, other than he plans to change it.

ITEM: Obama is losing “the legal Left“:

A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.

“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

ITEM:  Obama is also losing India, mostly for claiming the existence of something called “the moderate Taliban”. Yeah, where are those folks? Meanwhile, losing India is not a good thing at all.

ITEM: Obama continues to lose the American public, with his Rasmussen Presidential Approval index down to just +2 (after being as high as +8 just last week). I wonder if the approach of Tax Day has anything to do with that?

ITEM: Meanwhile, the global warming menace continues and will only get worse.

ITEM: This New York Times article, “Last Voyage for the Keeper of the Hubble“, reads like something out of a Heinlein short story.  It’s a great article and a great story; go read it.

ITEM: Yep, that stern letter from the UN Security Council to North Korea about its failed missile launch had a real impact, all right. Peace and security are just around the corner!

ITEM: Asinine opening paragraphs of the week:

Drivers have long wondered how size affects safety in car crashes. Many small cars perform well in safety tests but appear, intuitively at least, to be at a disadvantage in collision with larger vehicles.

Now a series of crash tests indicate the disadvantage is substantial, even when small cars collide with vehicles that don’t seem that much larger.

The only drivers who have ever “wondered how size affects safety in car crashes” are the stupid ones. One does not even need high school physics to know that a larger car is safer than a smaller car, especially if the two collide. Commentators have been noting for decades that the push for greater fuel efficiency through smaller, lighter car designs comes with an increased risk of injury and death. This “new study” is a bit like confirming that snow is cold or rain is wet, or that the sun comes up in the morning.

ITEM: Expect to see a lot more of these — “Oregon Sues [Oppenheimer Funds Inc.] Over Risks Taken In Its ’529′ Fund“.  Key grafs:

Oregon charges that Oppenheimer Core Bond fund, which was in the state’s 529-plan options billed as “conservative,” became significantly more risky starting in late 2007 or early 2008. The fund lost 36% of its value in 2008, but its benchmark index, the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index, rose 5.2%.

“The Core Bond Fund was no longer a plain bond fund,” the complaint says. “It had become a hedge-fund like investment fund that took extreme risks.”

The complaint says the fund veered into credit-default swaps and other derivatives, which the state called “high-risk bets that were plainly inappropriate for those saving for college.”

ITEM: Headline redundancy award: “Distracted Congress Loses Focus on Credit Freeze“. Collectively, Congress has about a 5-day attention span.

ITEM: Howard Jacobson talks about the rise of public anti-Semitism in Britain. I fear that may be a precursor to a similar rise here in the United States, especially given the Left’s constant ranting about “neocons” and “the Israeli lobby”.

ITEM: In local news, the Colorado Legislature is draining $500 million from the state’s workers comp insurance fund — paid by state businesses over the years — so they won’t have to cut the budget elsewhere. That, of course, leaves the question of just how Colorado is going to pay workers compensation claims. Expect to see more acts like this around the country.

That’s it for today; in the meantime, here are Monday’s links.

P.S. For those of you who moused over the poster image above, here’s what “the Spanish Prisoner” refers to.

Into the deep blue...

OVERNIGHT LINKS

ITEM: Why newspapers are dying — note the lead headline for the online version of the Denver Post:

And in other breaking news....

ITEM: Speaking of animals, this story of a dead whale on the beach at Del Mar brings up memories of one of Dave Barry’s funniest columns and the video that inspired it.

ITEM: Y’know, articles like this one — from the Washington Post on Bush’s post-Presidency life — should be clearly marked “analysis” rather than “news” (that is, rather than just filed in the “Politics” section). The snark is so thick you can cut it with a knife:

The presidency that is remembered on Daria Place bears little resemblance to the one that most of the country continues to blame for its problems. Bush left Washington on Jan. 20 with two-thirds of Americans disapproving of his job performance — one of the worst ratings ever for an outgoing U.S. president. In his return to private life, he has maintained tranquility by adhering to a basic philosophy:

He lives squarely in the remaining 33 percent.

Yeah, that’s real journalism.

ITEM: Two years ago, the US Federal deficit for the entire year of 2007 was $162 billion. Note carefully that 2007 was the last year for which the US Federal budget was set by a Republican-controlled Congress; the Democrats took over starting with the 2008 budget.  Now the US Federal deficit just for the month of March 2009 is $192 billion. Yeah, blame that on Bush.

ITEM: And speaking of deficits, be prepared to have your state and local governments find new ways to squeeze money from you.

ITEM: Alan Reynolds points out what the mainstream media — and the G20 leaders — conveniently ignore: the rest of the world was already in deep financial trouble before the subprime crisis hit the US. In fact, the rest of the world has been counting on the US to prop up the global economy for several years now.

ITEM: Eric Alterman, recognizing that a government bailout of newspapers isn’t likely going to happen, suggests they become non-profit institutions instead (i.e., exempt from taxes). I would say that most newspapers are so far from making a profiit right now that this may be too large a step up.

ITEM: OK, it’s hard to get through this over-the-top paean to Michelle Obama with a straight face.But I will grant one thing: right now, I think that Michelle would do a more competent job as President than her husband. In all honesty, I felt the same way from time to time about Laura Bush, on occasion I felt that way about Hillary Clinton, and I definitely felt that way about Barbara Bush. Nancy Reagan, no.

ITEM: Speaking of Hillary Clinton — Iran boasts of its increased ability to enrich uranium; Clinton responds, “We don’t know what to believe about the Iranian program.” Well, Secretary Clinton, a good place to start would be: Iran is building a nuclear bomb and wants to use it on Israel.

ITEM: So, how’s that wind power working out?

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

ITEM: OK, the title was so obvious — at least for anyone of a certain age — that I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it first: Barry and the Pirates.

ITEM: Why the US Marines are the world’s most effective fighting force (hat tip to the Daily Brief; emphasis mine):

“On July 21 Gustafson was manning the turret of the lead vehicle, a mine resistant ambush protected vehicle, or MRAP, during a four-vehicle mounted patrol riding through the streets of Shewan, Afghanistan…

The patrol came under heavy fire from machine guns as well as rocket-propelled grenades from hidden insurgent positions.

One of the RPGs hit Gustafson’s MRAP, piercing its armor, rendering the driver unconscious and partially amputating Gustafson’s right leg.

Despite his injuries, Gustafson remained vigilant on his M240B machine gun, locating and accurately firing on several insurgent positions, some as close as 20 meters from the vehicle.

He remained in the turret, reloading twice and firing over 600 rounds, while Lance Cpl. Cody Comstock, an Anderson, Ind. native, applied a tourniquet to his leg.

After regaining consciousness, the driver, Cpl. Geoffrey Kamp, an Indianapolis native, put the vehicle in reverse and pushed the disabled vehicle behind them out of the kill zone.

Not until both vehicles were safe from the heavy insurgent fire and all the Marines had evacuated the burning vehicle did he allow himself to be removed from the turret for medical treatment.”

Hoorah, indeed. Full disclosure: my son Jon and my nephew Darren are both Marines; Jon’s already done a tour in Iraq; Darren’s on his way to Afghanistan, and Jon may be there by year’s end.

ITEM: Courtesy of Blue Crab Boulevard comes this video of the first GM car produced under US government ownership:

Barring some major development, this is for the weekend — a peaceful Easter to all and sundry. ..bruce w..