That this comes from the Onion makes it all the better.  ..bruce w..

Dana Loesch over at Big Government has a great roundup of the most underreported stories of 2009. Anyone reading this blog is probably familiar with most of the ten (10) stories she lists. Those who rely upon traditional network news (i.e., anything other than Fox) or newspapers are unlikely to be aware of any of them, except in the most passing and dismissive sense. Go read the whole thing — but first, try to guess what they are. ..bruce w..

Remember that old saying about never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel? It applies even more with someone with as solid a ‘net reputation as Michael Yon. The British Media Ops over in Helmand Province (where my nephew, USMC CPL Darren Green, is serving) ended Yon’s embed with the British Army in an effort to shut him up.  Wrong move:

The Major said again that Lt. Col. Nick Richardson demanded that I leave RC-South, and that Media Ops would forward my satellite and night vision gear that was in transit.  Before the Major had stomped out, I said that I was not leaving Camp Bastion until those packages were in my hands.  I told him to call Lt. Col. Nick Richardson at Lashkar Gah—a nearby base—and say that if Richardson wants me gone, he’d need to call the Royal Military Police (RMP).  The satellite gear is crucial to the operation and the night vision gear is expensive.  I was not going to leave without the gear unless under arrest.  I had heard the Major arrogantly tell a correspondent how a soldier had punched another correspondent and “knocked him on his ass.”  Bullying apparently had been working for him; he was still doing it.

“Go ahead,” I said, “Call the RMPs right now.  Have them come down and flex cuff me and put me on an airplane out of here.”  I waited for the RMP’s to arrive and arrest me.  At least they would be professionals.

There is the maxim that a customer can judge the cleanliness of a restaurant’s kitchen by the restroom.  After much experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have discovered another: Soldiers always treat correspondents they way they treat the local people.  When soldiers treat correspondents badly, they treat local people even worse and are creating enemies.  Those troops who brag about how they mistreat or detest correspondents are abusing and resentful of the local population, and they cannot win this sort of war.  The people will kill them and the media will bash them and they will blame the people and the media.  When a soldier alienates sympathetic correspondents, he has no real chance against mortal enemies such as the Taliban and al Qaeda, and they will defeat him.  Yet there is subtlety: for “the people,” in the case of Media Ops, is you.

Be sure to take the time to read the whole thing. If there were any sense and/or justice in the world of journalism, Michael Yon would have received the Pulitzer Prize several times over.

And while you’re at it, go support Yon. He’s entirely self-funded. I don’t subscribe to any news magazines or newspapers. But I pay $10/month via my PayPal account to keep Yon out in the field.

Worth every penny.  ..bruce w..

[UPDATED 09/05/09 -- 2311 MDT]

Hey, I was right, mostly. He resigned Saturday evening, and the White House did their best to bury the news by releasing it after midnight (ET).

[UPDATED 09/06/09 -- 0627 MDT]

And I was exactly right about this statement at the end of my original post: The real question is whether the first mention in the actual print editions of the WaPo and the NYT will be to cover Jones’ departure:

• Washington Post:   “Embattled Obama Aide Resigns“
• New York Times:  “White House Advisor on ‘Green Jobs’ Resigns“
• and for good measure, USA Today: “Obama Advisor Jones Resigns Amid Controversy“

It’s a bit scary how predictable it was, and how much the mainstream media is still carrying water for the Obama Administration.

[UPDATED 09/06/09 -- 0950 MDT]

John Haft (Gateway Pundit) — who was responsible for tracking down many of the details about Van Jones — notes that ABC’s “This Week” gave a grand total of one minute to the Van Jones story this morning. Buried, buried and buried.

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg has further analysis of how the Jones story was downplayed and dismissed on the Sunday news shows and by the Obama Administration itself. Quoth Jonah:

Compare this to the controversy over Lani Guinier, President Clinton’s nominee to run the civil rights division at the Justice Department. When her views came to light, president Clinton disavowed her. “This has nothing to do with the political center,” Clinton insisted, “This is about my center.” Who would have guessed that there’s a case for saying Bill Clinton’s center had more intellectual integrity than Barack Obama’s?

[END OF UPDATES]

Given White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ rather underwhelming vote of confidence for Jones (“He continues to work for the Adminsitration.”), it’s pretty clear he’s on the way out. I suspect it will be within 24 hours, or in other words, by late Saturday afternoon. Why?

First, he has to be gone before September 8th, when everyone comes back from the Labor Day weekend and Pres. Obama has not one but two major (and somewhat controversial) speeches to give: to most of the nation’s schoolkids on the 8th and to a joint session of Congress on the 9th.

Second, he really has to be gone before the Sunday morning talk shows. On the other hand, I could make a very Machiavellian argument that the Administration could let this drag out so that these same shows have less time to talk about the twin Obama speeches, giving them more freedom to be whatever they happen to be, but I still think they’d prefer not to have Jones be a point of discussion.

Third, he has to be gone before the mainstream media can no longer ignore this issue. As Byron York point out, as of about 11:30 am Friday morning, there was no discussion of Jones at the Washington Post, the New York Times, or on the ABC, NBC, or CBS Evening News. That’s changed a bit with Jake Tapper of ABC News — one of the few MSM reporters out there who actually acts like a journalist at the White House press briefings — raising the issue with Robert Gibbs (as noted above), but that’s no guarantee that it’ll show up on ABC this evening.  Likewise, one of the blogs on the WaPo website is discussing it (but it’s very buried on the website; tiny font and near the bottom of the web page). The real question is whether the first mention in the actual print editions of the WaPo and the NYT will be to cover Jones’ departure.  ..bruce w..

Gateway Pundit has this wonderful but unsurprising video of an HCAN organizer handing out signs for a health care town hall meeting and explaining how to shout down and block media coverage of those raising questions about Obamacare. Here are some of the things the organizer says:

Be civil but block. So if they stand up and start asking questions, and you’re in that area, simply stand up and start chanting, “Health care now! Health care now!”

The idea is keeping the camera away from them, so they can’t be seen by the camera. . . .

Simply stand up and, “Health care now! Health care now!” until they get frustrated and take their cookies and go to bed. . . .  [Is he talking about seniors here?]

It’s your meeting. Hold onto your meeting.

Yep. Sounds like a real commitment to a dialogue on the issues.  ..bruce w..

I'm from the government, and I'm here to tax you.

OVERNIGHT LINK (note the singular)

ITEM: The Onion has become so much better than Saturday Night Live at video humor:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

Well, that’s probably it for the day. I have work to do.  ..bruce w..

But wait! Pollution may actually _cool_ the earth!

MORNING LINKS — such as they are

ITEM: Warmists are realizing that when you’re losing the data debate, the  scientific debate and the popular debate — you should just change the terms of the debate!

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

Which underscores the fact that the warmists’ real concern is not global warming per se — it’s being given the money and power to reshape civilization to what they think it should be (which generally means reducing the standard of living as well as the absolute number of humans).

ITEM: Creeping socialism/fascism update — Remember when the mainstream media fretted over the power of the Presidency? I guess you can have all the power you like if the journalists worship like you.

ITEM: Speaking of fascism, remember that link about the Egyptian government ordering the slaughter of all pigs due to swine flu? Well, it turns out to have nothing to do with the flu at all:

For some time now, part of the modernization and continued corruption of Egypt by the Mubarak dynasty, they have wanted to take away that work from the Zabaleen and give garbage contracts to corporations that will do the service for a price.  Trucks sold by European companies, contracts, charges etc.  Of course the reasons used are sanitation, public health.  Instead, they should be looking for a way to help the Zabaleen enter into modern methods and sustain their way of living.

So, what an excuse, the swine flu.  Now the Egyptian government wants to slaughter the 300,000 pigs owned by Zabaleen for the prevention of the swine flu.  The original decree was that the Zabaleen would be compensated for the pigs, but now they are saying that since they can sell the pigs, they will not be compensated.

The Zabaleen sell pigs one by one.  They are not butchers and have no refrigeration or a system to sell the pigs.  So, it’s impossible to sell pigs slaughtered en masse.  Not to mention the danger of cholera.

Read the whole thing. Hey, as the US White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel likes to say, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Hat tip to the Drunk Report.

ITEM: Speaking of the White House, Glenn Reynolds has the latest Hope-and-Changiness update. Plus my own bold prediction: “Hope and Change” will come back to haunt President Obama in the 2012 Presidential election pretty much the same way that “Read my lips: no new taxes!” did for Pres. Bush the First.

Gotta work today; more links if I get the time and opportunity.  ..bruce w..

Mayday! Mayday!

ADMIN: Yeah, I know today’s post title doesn’t rhyme with the others — but here’s a quick test of your own nit-pickiness: did the difference between Monday’s title and the rest of the week bother you?

MORNING LINKS (and these are likely the only link you’ll get today).

LINK: Speaking of workers, I’m going to be tied up all day today. So for this glorious morning, let us remember, courtesy of Amity Shlaes, the true efforts and consequnces of the New Deal:

As for President Hoover, his tenure was marked not by laissez faire or respect for private property–indeed, Hoover had labeled property a “fetish” before he became president. The Great Engineer was in fact the Great Intervener, meddling in multiple areas, raising taxes and backing tariffs, to the economy’s detriment. Mistrusting the stock market as unreal, Hoover berated short-sellers and exhorted businesses to keep wages high when they could ill afford it.

International, monetary and banking factors all played a role in creating the Depression, but the counterproductive Hoover mattered as well. As economist George Selgin has noted, the most absurd of the Hoover increases was a 2% levy on checks, which caused people to further drain money out of their bank accounts so they could pay their bills, untaxed.

Roosevelt, for his part was indeed courageous, and his call to action did inspire. FDR’s free-trade moves and some of his regulatory moves–the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal deposit insurance–helped to stabilize the economy. But the argument that FDR saved the U.S. from fascism is an exaggeration. And, like Hoover and his interventionists, FDR and his New Dealers did much to hurt the economy.

Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, created in 1933, pulled wages up when perishing companies could not afford it; come 1935, the Wagner Act gave unions more bargaining power, forcing further wage increases on companies. Roosevelt’s multiple tax increases caused businesses to postpone investment. Especially counterproductive was FDR’s “undistributed profits tax,” which punished firms for being cautious and forced them to disgorge cash at the worst possible moment.

Read the whole thing, as they say. Then go out and by Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. It’s now in paperback, and we have massive deficits as far as the eye can see, so it really behooves you (so to speak) to do so.

ITEM: Speaking of inappropriate steps, can you imagine the reaction if back during the 2000 recession, Laura Bush made a public appearance in a $540 pair of sneakers? I’ll be it would have appeared in far more places than the New York Daily News. (Hat tip to the Drudge Report.)

Some links sometime on the weekend, I think.  ..bruce w..

P.S. Behooves — Hoover — get it?

Federal budget go boom!

MORNING LINKS — yeah, I’m up early

ITEM: Jim Lindgren over at the Volokh Conspiracy does the simple investigation that no news organization (except possibly Fox) seems willing or able to do. His finding: states with the highest unemployment rates have high tax and unionization rates, while states with the lowest unemployment rates have low tax and unionization rates. Like the fact that small cars are less safe than large cars, this is not a big surprise to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds, yet it is almost never discussed in the mainstream media and the mere suggestion of this obvious connection makes liberals’ heads explode.

ITEM: Jennifer Rubin points out the reasons for buyer’s remorse on Obama among independent and conservative voters. And it’s not like the Left is exactly happy with him, either.

ITEM: “Why is venture capital under assault?” I raised that same question two weeks ago. It still makes no sense.

ITEM: I wasn’t aware that the Obama Administration was doing this much micromanagement of GM. Calling John Galt, calling John Galt . . .

ITEM: An article on why the tea party protests will continue:

Here is an interesting set of facts. If the government increased the top tax rate from the current rate of 35% to 100% (yes, that’s right 100%), it would only collect an extra $400 billion this year. In other words, confiscating all the income that is currently taxed at 35% would not raise enough revenue to cover any of the annual deficits projected in the next 10 years. There is no way that tax hikes on the rich alone can pay for proposed spending in the current budget.

Hence the photograph above.

ITEM: The Sun labored mightily and brought forth a tiny sunspot yesterday, which is vanishing even as you read this. And the overall trend is quiet. Too quiet.

ITEM: Speaking of idiots and science, I wasn’t aware that the latest Dan Brown movie, “Angels and Demons”, posits a terrorist group with a kilogram of antimatter. As the poster points out, if you’ve got that, you’re already wildly rich, so there’s no need to threaten anyone. Of course, given the historical idiocies in The Da Vinci Code, I shouldn’t be surprised at scientific idiocies in Brown’s other works.

OVERNIGHT LINKS — I stay up late browsing so you don’ t have to.

ITEM: Keith Hennessey uses some simple examples to show the bogus nature of the “savings” that Obama is projecting over the next several years, making the actual deficits worse than the projected ones:

Suppose I bought an iPhone yesterday for $500.

Suppose I argue that I will save $2000 this week, because I intend to refraining from buying an additional iPhone today, nor will I buy one this Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

Suppose I plan to buy a new flat screen TV tomorrow for $1500.

Can I claim I that have paid for my TV by cutting other spending, and that in addition I will be saving $500 this week?

This is what the Administration has done with war costs in their budget.

ITEM: Speaking of budget problems, public universities — dependent upon help from now-declining tax revenues – are looking at substantial tuition increases, while private universities — more subject to market forces — are looking at some of their lowest tuition increases ever. However, this article doesn’t address the issue that Glenn Reynolds keeps raising: has the high availability of Federal student loans and grants for years created a “higher education bubble”?

ITEM: In the meantime, the US Treasury under Tim Geither keeps giving what can only be described (charitably) as conflicting information regarding banks and bailouts. After letting it be known over the weekend that banks could only repay bailout funds “if such a move is in the national interest“, Geithner now says that the Treasury Department is “depending upon banks to return $25 billion of the bailout funds they received last year.”

Isn’t that called a “squeeze play“?

ITEM: Speaking of Treasury, it appears that firms participation in the PPIP toxic asset program “may be subject to executive compensation caps after all.” Megan McArdle things this means the end of PPIP — after all, who in their right mind would accept the Federal government setting compenstation levels (possilbly after the fact) in exchange for being allowed the privilege of buying toxic assets? As McArdle says,

There is clearly enormous regulatory risk for anyone who chooses to get involved with any of these programs.

ITEM: Speaking of economics, Sen. John Kerry (D-France) he wants to hold Senate hearings on how to save the newspaper industry, or at least his home town paper, the Boston Globe. On the other hand, Dana Milbank reports that the House Judiciary Committee (wha…?) held hearings on the same subject, and they were less than productive:

The dominant sentiment of lawmakers was indifference; most of the 14 subcommittee members didn’t show up. The task of leading the hearing was left to Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who chairs the relevant subcommittee but seemed not entirely prepared for the job. He twice misidentified the ranking Republican member and introduced a panel of witnesses by saying, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. . . . Come forward and assume the position.” Johnson then directed reporters in the room to stand but assured them that “you will not have to assume the position.”

At one point, Johnson asked whether there were “any spies” in the audience. “Don’t forget that torture was once ruled legal,” he said. And he alarmed attendees when he asked if someone would “call the physician’s office . . . because we have several people who have developed a sudden case of colorblindness.” (Eventually, people realized he was referring to witnesses ignoring the red light on their time clocks.)

Kinda gives you confidence in the future of America, doesn’t it? Jeff Jarvis, however, gives Sen. Kerry his own opinion on “saving newspapers”:

Senator, thank you for inviting me to speak at these hearings. But, with respect, I believe you are investigating the wrong issue from the wrong angle and in any case, I am not sure what role you and government should have in this matter.

Newspapers are going to die. That is wrenching, of course, for employees – not just journalists but the rarely mentioned pressmen, drivers, and classified ad takers – who will lose their jobs, and the stock- and bond-holders who are losing their investments in these failing and over-leveraged companies.

But this upheaval is no different from that overtaking automakers, auto dealers, retail chains, banks, airlines, music companies, and soon other media sectors that are suffering and dying in a reshaping of the economy that is more profound than a mere financial crisis and more fundamental even than a recession or depression. We are undergoing a millennial transformation from the industrial, mass economy to what comes next. Disruption and destruction are inevitable.

ITEM: Speaking of journalism, in a move reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the unjust steward, the Society of Professional Journalists has decided to oppose any attempt to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

ITEM: And speaking of Sen. Kerry, he must still be smarting from not getting the Sec’y of State position he was anticipating: he’s visited Pakistan and is now criticizing the Obama Administration’s approach:

Just back from a visit to Pakistan, Sen. John Kerry says the Obama administration’s plan for that volatile country, rolled out last month with great fanfare, “is not a real strategy.”

“Pakistan is in a moment of peril,” Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during a session with USA TODAY reporters and editors. “And I believe there is not in place yet an adequate policy or plan to deal with it.”

The real pain for Kerry probably wasn’t Hillary Clinton getting the job he wanted; it was likely hearing that Joe Biden had been offered that slot as well.

ITEM: Kerry is not the only one critiquing the Obama Administration. Former Sec’y of State Henry Kissinger spends several paragraphs acknowledging Obama’s “kumbaya/mea culpa” diplomacy before making his real point:

Proliferation is perhaps the most immediate illustration of the relationship between world order and diplomacy. If North Korea and Iran succeed in establishing nuclear arsenals in the face of the stated opposition of all the major powers in the U.N. Security Council and outside of it, the prospects for a homogeneous international order will be severely damaged. In a world of multiplying nuclear weapons states, it would be unreasonable to expect that those arsenals will never be used or never fall into the hands of rogue organizations. A new, less universal approach to world order would be needed. The next (literally) few years will be the last opportunity to achieve an enforceable restraint. If the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia cannot achieve this vis-à-vis a country with next to no impact on international trade and no resources needed by anyone, the phrase “world community” will become empty.

North Korea has recently voided all concessions it made in six years of talks. It cannot be permitted to sell the same concessions over and over again. The six-power talks should be resumed only if Pyongyang restores the circumstances to which it has already agreed, mothballing its plutonium reactor and returning international inspectors to the site. When those talks resume, the ultimate quid pro quo must be the abandonment of the Korean nuclear weapons program and the destruction of the existing stockpile in return for normalization of relations at the end of the process. Since the outcome affects all neighbors of North Korea, and since the Korean nuclear program threatens them more than it does the United States, calls to place the emphasis on bilateral Korean-U.S. talks amount to a call for isolating the United States.

You tell them, Henry.

ITEM: Speaking of nuclear terrorism, even David Ignatius — no arch-conservative he — thinks that Obama’s approach to the so-called “torture memos” has done damage within the CIA:

Sad to say, it’s slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer, “hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway.” President Obama promised CIA officers that they won’t be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don’t believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.

The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard.

Yeah, that will help us when “rogue organizations” get their hands on nuclear devices from Iran or the Norks. Keep that photo at the top of the post in mind.

ITEM: And speaking of repressive regimes, Fidel Castro rose from his deathbed to set the record straight on Obama’s conversation with his brother Raul:

Fidel Castro said Tuesday that President Barack Obama “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s sentiments toward the United States and bristled at any suggestion Cuba should free political prisoners or reduce official fees on money sent to the island from the U.S.

Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind of speculation that the U.S. and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw in nearly a half-century of chilly relations last week, when he said Cuban leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners on the island.

I think this is Fidel’s way of saying “I’m not dead yet.”

ITEM: Broke? Unemployed? Your mortgage underwater? Try looking for gold underwater instead:

Not since the Great Depression have so many hard-luck people been lured by prospecting, hoping to find their fortune tumbling down a mountain stream. The recession and high gold prices are helping to fuel the latest gold craze, especially among workers who have lost jobs.

“I guess there’s always hope. At home, I don’t have any right now,” said Steve Biorck, a concrete finisher who headed west because construction work dried up in Tennessee. Now he spends days standing knee-deep in an icy creek coaxing gold flakes from a swirling pan of gravel.

ITEM: We all know — or should know — the difference between causation and correlation. But it should give one pause for thought that (a) the Earth has been cooling down for nearly a decade now and (b) the Sun is very, very quiet:

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares – and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

Of course, the AGW proponents rush to say that there’s no link between the sun and climate change.

ITEM: Speaking of buffoons, New Hampshire State Democratic Chair Ray Buckley called last week’s Tea Party demonstrators “an unhinged mob.” Trust me, Ray — you haven’t seen unhinged yet.

More links as the day goes on, maybe.  ..bruce w..

Why so serious? It's only money.

[For those coming in from Ace of Spaces, here's the link to the "Atlas Shrugged" review]

MORNING LINKS

Item: I swapped e-mails this week with “S. Weasel” who runs one of my favorite blogs. She and her significant other (now husband) recently moved to England; she loves it there, but in her e-mail to me, she talked about her propensity to use the term “Orwellian” in describing her observations there, in spite of her efforts not to. However, reports such as this one explain her difficulty:

In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Mark Steyn ties the current economic crisis to the looming problems of world demography, and the results are not encouraging:

So now consider it from a German banker’s point of view. To whom do you lend money? With age distribution on your turf heading north relentlessly, there’s not enough young people close to home. So you go further and further afield. Not crazy further, not Sudan or Rwanda. But far enough that you’re operating in markets where your traditional forms of risk analysis don’t apply, even if you were minded to apply them. To western bankers, Eastern Europe didn’t seem that different or dangerous, if you steered clear of the more psychotic oligarchs. Alas, the post-Soviet east is even further down the demographic death spiral than you are, and the Continental lenders’ exposure is such that the Eastern European downturn could bring about the collapse of the entire Western European banking system.

So, from the individual homeowner with no-one to sell his home to, and the business that’s run out of domestic market, and the bank frantically loaning to jurisdictions it barely comprehends, nudge it up one last stage – to the state. In recessions, government is enjoined to spend – to go into deficit, ramp up the national debt in order to “stimulate” the economy. Adding to the national debt presupposes that there’ll be someone to pay it off. But what if there isn’t?

ITEM: In the meantime, over in the Golden Fool’s Gold State, the state unions are pushing a ballot initiative to allow the state government to loot the lottery fund:

Prop 1C is called a lottery “modernization” measure that allows the cash-starved, and preternaturally corrupt state government to cull out up to $5 billion. It is supposed to be a loan. But, does anyone, anywhere think that the folks in Sacramento will ever pay back this “loan”? If anyone does, they are dumb as the day is long. No, what is far, far more likely is that if 1C passes, another $5 billion in revenue will disappear into the maw of the California State House never to be seen again… and worse, never to go for anything useful.

This simply underscores the common description of state-run lotteries: a “stupidity tax”.

ITEM: First it was Texas; now North Dakota is talking about the 10th Amendment and states’ rights.

ITEM: On the other hand, Massachusetts is now attempting to levy taxes from businesses in New Hampshire.

ITEM: And, yes, as per the link I posted yesterday, the New York Times really is in deep kimchee (hat tip to Hugh Hewitt; emphasis mine):

The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as the newspaper publisher’s advertising revenue plunged 27 percent in an industrywide slump that is reshaping the print media. Its shares dived Tuesday.

The owner of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 15 other daily newspapers said Tuesday that it lost $74.5 million, or 52 cents per share, in the opening three months of the year. That compared with a loss of $335,000 at the same time last year, which was break-even on a per-share basis.

The results in the most recent quarter included charges totaling 18 cents per share to cover the costs of jettisoning employees and other one-time accounting measures.

Even with those charges stripped out, the loss was much worse than analysts expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted the New York-based company would lose 4 cents per share.

Ouch.

OVERNIGHT LINKS

ITEM: Gibbs fiddles while Rome burns:

Link:

ITEM: And AP burns Obama on his administration’s weak effort to appear thrifty:

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital’s attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

By the way, there is an aspect of Obama’s “$100 million” savings that makes it much worse: as far as I can tell, the goal is not to save $100 million this year much less every year, but simply one time over the next several years (emphasis mine):

Some of [the budget cuts] will take many years to play out.

The Agriculture Department, for one, will move 1,500 employees from seven leased locations into one place in early 2011, saving $62 million over 15 years.

So Obama is not talking about saving $100 million per year; he’s talking about saving just $100 million over more than a decade, the same period where he will run up nearly $10 trillion in deficits (or 100,000 times the hoped-for savings).

ITEM: Even Paul Krugman, fiery liberal economist at the New York Times, thinks the $100 million in savings is bogus (hat tip to Derek Thompson).

ITEM: Speaking of heat and hot air, the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scare continues to lose ground to scientists willing to point out the obvious about the Emperor’s New Clothes (hat tip to Jerry Pournelle):

ITEM: Meanwhile, the Onion presents the US Treasury’s newest effort to solve the massive deficit problem:

Treasury Department Issues Emergency Recall Of All US Dollars

ITEM: Nope, no corruption to see here, just move along:

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.

ITEM: More on the troubles of Russia — this time, the demographic collapse:

Since 1992, Russia’s human numbers have been progressively dwindling. This slow motion process now taking place in the country carries with it grim and potentially disastrous implications that threaten to recast the contours of life and society in Russia, to diminish the prospects for Russian economic development, and to affect Russia’s potential influence on the world stage in the years ahead.

ITEM: Speaking of troubles, David Paul Kuhn points out Obama’s troubles in his “idealistic” approach to world relations:

Candidate Barack Obama was dogged by charges of naiveté. President Obama has done little to disprove the accusation. He has been championed as a realist. But he has acted the ungrounded idealist.

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Remember that Obama would only “tax the rich”? Well, apparently anyone who buys over the internet will now be classified as rich. Yep, it appears that Obama and Congress can no longer keep their hands off the ‘net.

That’s probably it for the day.  ..bruce w..