The Irish Miracle

We had to hear about Sweden from lefties all through the 70s. It is only fair that we now tell the story of Ireland. Stephen Moore in Political Diary:

The other day Paul Krugman of the New York Times once again attacked supply-side tax cutting ideas and snarled that "Reaganomics was oversold" and its successes were "shortlived." We won't fight that fight again, but it is interesting that for all their attacks against supply-side economics and all their prophesies that high tax rates don't hurt, the one thing economists and politicians on the left cannot explain is the Irish Economic Miracle.

In the 1970s and '80s Ireland had one of the highest percentage of its citizens on welfare or collecting unemployment benefits, and the country of four million people was losing population each year. An estimated one million Irish-born immigrants were living in America -- many of them illegal aliens, and many of them their country's best and brightest.

Starting in 1989, Ireland's politicians began cutting tax rates, and now its corporate tax rate is 12.5% -- by far the lowest in Europe. The highest personal income tax rate came down to 41% from 58%. In the following years, Ireland's growth rate soared to 8% per year, more than twice the U.S. growth rate and nearly three times Europe's. Ireland is now the continent's third-richest nation on a per capita basis. Over the last 18 years the nation's employment has increased by an astonishing 75%.

A key element of John McCain's platform is cutting taxes on corporate profits to 25% from 35% -- bringing America's corporate tax rate closer to the average of our European and Asian competitors. In selling his plan, Mr. McCain might talk not only about what Ireland has achieved, but what it means for U.S. competitiveness. An Intel executive confided recently that his company builds most of its new plants offshore because of the high U.S. tax on corporate profits. According to Barry O'Leary, head of the Investment and Development Agency of Ireland, a U.S.-based plant would have to grow profits by 45% a year "to achieve the same [after-tax] income available in Ireland. He adds: "Our tax cutting has made Ireland the highest growth nation in Europe over the last decade. We are importing firms and workers."

Meanwhile, Senators Clinton and Obama are peddling the idea that the U.S. can tax its ways to prosperity in the competitive global economy. If one of these two wins in November, Ireland is going to get richer than ever.

And, for the record: Sweden seems to have learned more than her apologists. Henry Olsen, writing in The American Magazine:

So Americans might be surprised to learn that “Old” Europe is actually ahead of us in tackling many of the most vexing domestic policy challenges. Without much fanfare, Sweden, Holland, and other countries known for their social-democratic welfare states have adopted innovative, market-based reforms on issues such as pensions, transportation, and education. What’s more, while U.S. politics remains paralyzed by partisanship, European parties on the left and the right have teamed up to implement free-market policy ideas that are criticized by the American left as extreme.

The start up I was involved with headquartered in the Republic of Ireland for tax purposes. Sadly, we did not take advantage on the 0% rate on IP-generated capital gains. But before we ran out of Euros, we provided several man-years of employment to Irish software developers, plus frequent travel to and entertainment in Dublin, and the contracting of Irish accountants and legal counsel. Incentives matter.

Obamagoguery

It's Goolsbee?

I love to bash the Democratic front runner as much as the next guy, but I did not think that the CTV story had legs. CTV had claimed that an Obama advisor told the Canadian Government to ignore Obamagoguery as campaign rhetoric, just a workin' man tryin' to pick up a few Buckeye State delegates.

Today, the chatter is that it is Austen Goolsbee, the Chicago wunderkind and Obama economic advisor. If this is true, this story is serious. People in the know were all wondering when or whether Goolsbee was going to reign in Senator Obama's protectionism. If he was complicit in an orchestrated lie, this will not go away.

Unless Goolsbee does. And Goolsbee is the Senator's last tether to real economics. A lot of centrist bloggers threw their support to Obama early on, based on the Goolsbee connection. The nutroots are not gong to leave him, but center left libertarian types will lose their comfort.

HotAir is on this story without really appreciating who Austen Goolsbee is (they don't collect Economist Trading Cards over there). Jake Tapper has ABC confirming a refusal to deny:

ABC News' Jennifer Parker spoke to Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economics professor, Thursday who would not confirm or deny that he had a conversation with Georges Rioux, the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago. Rioux, in meetings this week in Ottawa, would also neither confirm nor deny any conversation took place. Both men did say that they know each other.

Both Obama and the Canadian Embassy have denied that the CTV story is true.

If you're not having fun, you're not paying attention.

Self-Indulgence

Hillary Clinton whines:

"Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field," she said, "but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there."

Ah yes, if only she were a black man, things would be so much easier.

Obama Foriegn Policy

(Like everything else, barely distinguishable from Senator Clinton's)

1) Bomb sovereign allies without approval;
2) Abrogate commitments in the Middle East;
3) Piss off trading partners;
4) "Restore America's Standing in the World!"

Daniel Drezner notes that Canada and Mexico are not so keen on "renegotiating" NAFTA, and links to an FT story:(WARNING: British spelling)

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the US, told the Financial Times that the US, Canada and Mexico had all benefited from Nafta and warned against reopening negotiations.

“Mexico does not support reopening Nafta,” he said. “It would be like throwing a monkey wrench into the engine of North American competitiveness.”

Mexican diplomats believe a renegotiation could resurrect the commercial disputes and barriers to trade that the agreement itself was designed to overcome.

Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister, also expressed “concern” about the remarks by the Democratic candidates.

“Nafta is a tremendous benefit to Americans and perhaps the [candidates] have not had the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the benefit to Americans and the American economy of Nafta,” he said.

Senator Clinton assured, in a recent debate, that "the world will breathe a sign of relief when George Bush leaves office." I'm not sure that's as universal as her health care mandates.

Waiting for the Libertarian WFB,Jr.

A new play by William Beckett: fractious and zealous thinkers fight each other like Monty Python's "Judean People's Front vs. People's Front of Judea" while collectivists accrue more money, power, and influence.

In the shadow of the New Deal, Godot did show. The WSJ Ed Page remembers "When liberalism was dominant but hidebound in the second half of the last century, [William F. Buckley] pioneered a new direction that transformed American politics."

These achievements might not have happened without Buckley, who was uniquely suited to preside over the often-feuding factions of the early political right. He liked arguments over principle, but he also had an uncommon talent for adjudicating disputes and building coalitions. And though Buckley had bedrock beliefs, he had a conservative's distrust for systems and grand theories; his politics were pragmatic. His thinking and prose were governed by a critical-deliberative style that emphasized contingency and complexity. More than anything else, Buckley wanted to promulgate what he often referred to as "a thoughtful conservatism."

Waiting...

Way Worse Than Waterboarding

The Meow Mix commercial, Neil Diamond, Eminem -- okay! I'll talk!

Mother Jones (we don't link everyday) claims a list of songs used in interrogation and sleep deprivation.

Hand me that waterboard, will ya? Hat-tip: BOTW

Requiescat in Pace

America has lost one of its finest writers and thinkers. Bill Buckley was one of the great founders of the modern conservative movement. He brought conservative thought into the political mainstream, and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America's victory in the Cold War and for the conservative movement that continues to this day. He will be remembered for his principled thought and beautiful writing — as well as his personal warmth, wit, and generous spirit. His legacy lives on in the ideas he championed and in the magazine he founded — National Review.

He jovially countered his opponents with ideas and language. The conservative movement’s greatest years were under his active vision. He brought the movement out of the crazies and I fear it will lapse back to them in his absence. RIP, Mr. Buckley.

Brrrrrrrr!

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Obviously, we're all going to die. I love the two assertions that it is "anecdotal," obviously it is. I'm just struck that a tornado, hurricane, or the meteorological phenomenon known as "a really hot day" are never caveated as anecdotal.

Hat-tip: Instapundit. And I must point out it is beautiful on the Colorado front range today.

Bitter Hillary

As the likelihood of a Hillary presidency slowly fades into the abyss, she has revealed her true self -- bitter, antagonistic, and elitist. At tonight's debate, Hillary saw fit to reference the SNL skit I tried to post earlier (it's now below the fold...). There is nothing that I enjoy more than watching the Clintons complain about the media (what goes around, comes around).

Spirit of '94!

Thank you for your reconsideration, Rep. Shadegg:

Politics is so full of stories of pressure groups tearing elected officials down or trying to defeat an idea or bill, it's noteworthy when a large group of activists spontaneously join to try to keep a good person in the public arena. It's even more noteworthy when they succeed.

That's what happened last week when Rep. John Shadegg, a noted conservative from Arizona, reversed his decision of ten days ago to retire from Congress. Instead, he announced he will stand for re-election.

Instrumental in his decision was a letter from 146 of his GOP House colleagues urging him to stay, along with a similar letter from the heads of 33 conservative organizations echoing the need for him to continue to provide a voice for smaller government and individual empowerment. As we noted in PD last Tuesday, his friends in the House especially look to him for leadership on entitlement reform.

But Mr. Shadegg said there other voices that meant as much in his rethinking. Literally thousands of conservative voters contacted his office urging him to stay and fight for their cause. When he arrived at the Phoenix airport at 5:30 one morning last week, a security guard suddenly turned to him and simply said: "Run again." A shocked Mr. Shadegg could only respond: "Thanks."

One advantage of having Mr. Shadegg remain in Congress is his expertise on health care, where he is the lead author of a bill to allow people to purchase individual health care policies across state lines, opening that market to needed competition. Should either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton end up in the White House, you can bet that those fighting a government takeover of health care will be glad to have the Arizonan on their side in that debate. -- John Fund, Political Diary

The Democratic Debate

Socialized Medicine

That right wing rag, the New York Times, has published an article that is clearly designed to slow the adoption of universal health care. It seems that a 47 year old British Woman would like to purchase Avastin.

One such case was Debbie Hirst’s. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.

By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.

“He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ ” Mrs. Hirst said in an interview.

“I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ ” — in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.

Patients “cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs,” the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.

I remember the original HillaryCare's having a $1,000 fine to people who paid for private treatment. I watched the debate the other night and she still assures the Democrat faithful that her plan was killed by the HMOs and special interests. I seem to remember the $1000 fine.

Speaking of health care utopias, I hope everyone looks at Michael Stastny's pictures from Cuba.

Hat-tip: Mankiw for the NHS/Avastin patient and Megan McArdle guesting at Instapundit for the Cuba pix.

UPDATE: Samizdat Philip Chaston links to the Inter-Faith Gown. The NHS cannot provide or allow the purchase of modern medicine -- but they can cater to 7th Century sensibilities "to preserve the modesty of patients whose culture or religion requires them to be more modestly clothed."

Clinton Tests Out Populist Appoach

That's not my headline, that a bylined story in the Washington Post.

Blasting "companies shamelessly turning their backs on Americans" by shipping jobs overseas and railing that "it is wrong that somebody who makes $50 million on Wall Street pays a lower tax rate than somebody who makes $50,000 a year," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton increasingly sounds like one of her old Democratic rivals, former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Not to kick a dolly when she's down, as Drusilla would say, but this woman has planned to run for President for decades, and she is now on her sixth theme. I am not amazed at pandering, that's the nature of the beast. But I am surprised at the "throw it all out there and see what sticks" message creation.

UPDATE: Larry Kudlow speculates:

Now I’m no psychiatrist, far from it, but I think a simple answer is that Senator Clinton could be depressed. She seems deflated. Down in the dumps.

Look, depression is a serious problem. It’s also a multibillion-dollar business. Three of the more popular drugs in the market today to treat it are Pfizer’s Zoloft, Eli Lilly’s Prozac, and GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil. Maybe Hillary’s taking meds, but they’re just not working for her? Could that be why she’s always attacking Big Pharma?

Worthy Donation

I hope you all got a chance to see Ezra Levant's defending himself from the Alberta Human Rights Commission. It's entertaining to see a pugnacious instead of submissive response to a tinhorn bureaucrat.

Blog Brother Cyrano emails a recommendation too support Levant against lawsuits.

Over the past month, the public’s reaction to seeing their government interrogate a journalist has snowballed into a national discussion about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of mosque and state. What started out as an issue reserved to the blogosphere and talk radio has jumped into the mainstream media, and even into Parliament. To my delight, the Canadian public – across the political spectrum – has been overwhelmingly supportive of free speech and critical of these Orwellian commissions, and groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists and PEN Canada have recently weighed in, too, and very vigorously.

We’re winning in the court of public opinion – and I say “we”, because it was the blogosphere that moved this story from the “undernews” to where it is today.

Well, now I’m being threatened with a lawsuit because of our campaign for freedom.

Not a bad way to spend a few bucks, if you can. The way I see it, you're either with Levant or you're with the 7th Century fanatics who cannot weather a cartoon.

Top Gear is Back!

Give (American) politics a rest for an hour tonight. Top Gear's season premier is on BBCAmerica at 8:00PM Eastern.

Private Research

I applauded the FDA last week, I might as well give a shout out to Archer Daniels Midland Corp. ADM is a private company, but I always smell their filthy corn-infested hands behind farm subsidies and ethanol mandates. Rightly or wrongly.

There was a fun story in the Wall Street Journal today on Steve Bytnar who develops more effective compounds for melting ice on roads. He uses byproducts from ethanol distillation. He was launched by some forward thinking by ADM:

Mr. Bytnar, 37 years old, plunged into the field of de-icing in the mid-1990s after Minnesota Corn Processors, a cooperative where he worked as a researcher was acquired by Archer Daniels Midland Co., Decatur, Ill., gave him free rein to experiment.

"I saw it as a way to separate myself from everyone else," he recalls. "They said don't lose $2 million and blow the plant up, but otherwise do what you want to do."

One of his first projects: finding a way to turn the Hungarian discovery into a commercially viable product. The result was "Ice Ban," a brown blend of magnesium chloride and residue from ethanol distillation. It attacked the ice-and-pavement bond more effectively and at lower temperatures than sodium chloride did, he says, allowing highway managers to cut their salt use.

Quote of the Day

Isn't it ironic that, just as Cuba is on the verge of freedom after a half century of brutal Communist dictatorship, it has become illegal virtually everywhere in the United States to smoke cigars in public?

I'm just asking. -- Rick Sincere

Obama As Libertarian

I like Megan McArdle's writing in the Atlantic. That's one big name blogger they were wise to pick up.

She's guest blogging at Instapundit this week, and she's still leaning toward pulling the lever for the Junior Senator from Illinois.

In the general? I might not vote for Obama; I will not vote for McCain. There are some things more important than the economy, and free speech is among them. Yes, I don't like Obama's stance on the Second Amendment, but the difference is, the president has little wiggle room right now on the second, while McCain might do serious further damage to the first, or the fourth. I dislike the steps Obama is willing to take in order to achieve his goals of economic equality. But these are as nothing to the notion that citizens have to be protected from information because Big Daddy John thinks we'll get bad ideas in our heads.

I conclude that Ms. McArdle is not a Prosperitarian. She gives this paragraph in response to an absolute thrashing of Senator O by Michael Tanner at CATO.

And it's not just businesses that would feel the regulatory hand of an Obama presidency. Consumers too will have to pay, as he imposes new costs on products ranging from homes to automobiles and appliances. In almost everything we do, Obama sees a need for the government to intervene.

A President Obama would mean a much bigger, more intrusive, and costlier government. Indeed, when considering his policies, one searches in vain for any break with liberal orthodoxy. Personal accounts for Social Security? Entitlement reform? School choice? Obama rejects them all, calling such proposals, "Social Darwinism."

I'm not too keen on McCain-Feingold, but it pales in comparison (read the whole CATO piece).

Hooray for the FDA!

There's a headline you were not expecting in ThreeSources. Certainly not from me.

But they passed -- mirabile dictu -- the moral test I linked to the other day.

Going against the recommendation of its advisory panel, the Food and Drug Administration cleared Genentech's Avastin, which is already approved for treating lung and colon cancer, based on findings that it slowed tumor growth.

The agency has traditionally approved drugs for late-stage cancer if they extended, or improved the quality of, patients' lives. Avastin showed neither, according to Genentech's application.

This is excellent news. Too bad all three major candidates still in the running consider the biotech and pharma sectors to be evil.

I beat up on the FDA enough, however, I owe them some public approbation when they get one right. Well done, gang.

Advice

"Be wary of giving advice," begins an old saying, "wise men don't need it and fools won't heed it."

There are not too many wise men or women in the race for President this (or any) year, but John Stossel offers them all some advice, cribbed from Hayek: Presidents Can't Manage the Economy

The candidates see the global economy as an arena in which countries compete against one another -- an economic Olympiad with winners and losers. Politicians love to promise they will keep America No. 1, as if that matters in a worldwide marketplace.

America as a nation does not compete against China or South Korea or Japan. American companies compete against companies in other countries, but that's something else. The purpose of production is consumption, and American consumers prosper when foreigners compete successfully with American companies.

A president who sees the global economy as a competition among nations will be tempted to intervene on behalf of the "United States" and create "good American jobs." That's how governments mess up economies.

The wise man here is Rep. Ron Paul (who says I never say anything nice about him?) and the fools are, well, everyone left who has a chance, and Governor Huckabee.

It's a great and succinct piece worth reading in full. Hat-tip: Everyday Economist

Simpler Times

Happened to come across this...

Jet powered railroad commuter cars.

The company borrowed a 13-year-old Budd RDC3, a self-propelled diesel commuter coach, from an Eastern line and towed it to Cleveland, where its motors and passenger seats were removed and replaced with more than 50 instruments to measure speed, stress, bearing temperatures, and ride characteristics. Small radio transmitters were affixed to the front axles and electronic sensors studded other parts of the locomotive. Real-time data was written to magnetic tape, displayed on oscilloscopes, and recorded by direct-writing oscillographs. Remote-controlled cameras made a visual record; track irregularities were recorded digitally.

While this may seem very high tech for 1966, the basic idea for such a real-time rolling laboratory had been used by the New York Central since the 1930s, when instrumentfilled baggage cars tested locomotive and track performance. No other changes were made to the Budd RDC3; the axles, wheels, and frame were the ones the commuter car had been born with. The total cost of the experiment was officially $35,000; the actual figure was probably several times that. (The company boasted that the project did not use a cent of government funds.)

Read that last line again.

Now they'd be looking for a check from the government (any government) before anything even got started.

Repairing America's Global Standing

I never tire of that promise from our Democratic friends. President Bush has inculcated such antipathy for our blessed nation. The world hates us. And Obama/Clinton/Edwards will repair the damage.

I'm sure your average BBC reporter or Guardian columnist will be happier on Day One, but this argument is specious on so many levels, anybody who says it -- or listens uncritically -- has just not been paying attention. Even Bob Geldof likes him!

The WSJ Ed Page brings up a good point as well. In addition to wooing the chattering classes on the European Continent and deciding whom and whom not to bomb, it seems that the President of the US has some pretty significant effect on foreign policy through trade. And Senator Obama will not be using this tool to "bring us together." At least not when the Union vote is up for grabs.

President James Hoffa bestowed the powerful union's [Teamsters'] blessing on Mr. Obama yesterday, not so coincidentally only days after the Senator declared his opposition to the pending U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. In a statement inserted in the Congressional Record last week, Mr. Obama said he believes the pact doesn't pay "proper attention" to America's "key industries and agricultural sectors" like cars, rice and beef. Opposition to free-trade deals is now a union litmus test, especially for the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union, which endorsed the Senator last Friday.

To be fair, I don't think anybody campaigning on "repairing the damage" has any more liberal view on trade. But that's how you make friends.

Forty Thousand Deaths a Year

Some 40,000 women died from breast cancer in 2007. Almost unbelievably, the federal government may block one of the disease's more promising therapies for no other reason than the Food and Drug Administration's obsolete, even antimodern, regulations and approval models.

You can -- and I do -- complain about marginal tax rates, tariffs, free trade, and civil liberties. But at the end of the day, no intrusion on our freedoms matches that of the FDA. Locke and Jefferson both put life first when enumerating our birthright liberties.

These 40,000 might have wanted to try Avastin. Certainly the people at Genentech would have loved to sell it to them. Yet our government, with the thinnest Constitutional purview, forbids the sale of lifesaving drugs. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page calls it "A Moral Test for the FDA"

In February, Genentech also released the preliminary findings of a more rigorous follow-up study, including the FDA's "gold standard" of randomized and placebo-controlled clinical trials. It again confirmed that Avastin improves progression-free survival, though the full results have not yet been made public.

In other words, dying patients live nearly twice as long on average before their disease gets worse, and maybe longer. It translates into an improvement in quality of life by delaying the onset of symptoms. But only in a few isolated contemporary cases has the FDA deemed progression-free survival as a relevant "end point" for approval. There's no reason besides the FDA's complacency and archaic procedures; a recent review by the agency's own Science Board concluded that "evaluation methods have remained largely unchanged over the last half-century."

Extending life is the FDA's acid test for any anticancer agent, but studies designed to prove it take years and thousands of patients to get large average effects. In the Avastin study, women lived slightly longer, a median of 26.5 months compared with 24.8 with Taxol alone. But those results weren't proved statistically significant to FDA satisfaction.

It works. It helps. It just doesn't work they way we like it to work well enough. So we will proscribe its sale. Next year's 40,000? Drop dead.

Remember This Guy?

Like Andrew Sullivan, the great Chris Matthews still peeks his head out (of where?) on occasion. Megan McArdle posted this on Instapundit.

That's all you need to know about the election this year.

O-Mentum

My first hope for a bitter Democratic race and convention, and my second hope for the less charismatic Senator Clinton to prevail, were dealt severe blows on the icy tundra of Lambeau Field last night. John Fund wraps it up in Political Diary:

Exit polls in Wisconsin paint a grim picture for Hillary Clinton. Some 53% of Democratic voters thought she engaged in unfair negative campaigning, and fully 35% said they would be unhappy if she were the Democratic nominee. Such findings will certainly have an impact on the superdelegates who are likely to ultimately to decide the Democratic nomination and who believe electability is Job One for any nominee.

Almost as disturbing for Mrs. Clinton was her collapse among key demographic groups that supported her in earlier primaries. She only tied Mr. Obama among white women in Wisconsin, while losing white men 59% to 38%. She lost voters without college degrees and lost every age group except senior citizens. Mr. Obama won a staggering 71% of voters under the age of 30, a group that turned out in record numbers for a primary.

Apply that template to the upcoming March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas: Mrs. Clinton looks likely to lose both of those states, which would severely diminish her chances of swaying superdelegates into her corner with an argument that she can win the crucial big states in the fall.

Even if Mrs. Clinton recovers and does well from here on out, she would have to win 65% of the remaining delegates in order to regain the lead from Barack Obama. That near-impossibility effectively means that any superdelegates who ultimately support her would have to do so in full knowledge that they are voting for the candidate who was not the first choice of Democratic voters.

Barack Obama's "New Idea"

Barack Obama made a rousing speech in front of 20,000 Houston supporters last night. It went something like this:

'This is a crucial moment in the history of mankind!' Gerald Starnes [Barack Obama] yelled through the noise. 'Remember that none of us may now leave this place, for each of us belongs to all the others by the moral law which we all accept!'

Well, not really. That is a passage from the collectivization of the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Part 2, Chapter X of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

We had just voted for the new plan and we were in an edgy sort of mood, making too much noise, cheering the people's victory, threatening some kind of unknown enemies and spoiling for a fight, like bullies with an uneasy conscience. There were white arclights beating down on us and we felt kind of touchy and raw, and we were an ugly, dangerous mob in that moment.

This is today's Democrat party, at least amongst the Obamaniac youngsters.

What he really said was more like,

"We're spending nine billion dollars a month for a war in Iraq we should never have been in. (...) We are at a defining moment in our history. (...) We can't afford to wait. We cannot wait to fix our schools, we cannot wait to fix our health care system, we cannot wait to put an end to global warming, we cannot wait to bring good jobs with good benefits back to the United States, we cannot wait to end this war in Iraq, we cannot wait. (...) Every child is our child. (...) I'll do whatever it takes to defend this country."

Anything? Really? What if, hypothetically of course, it really DOES take a war in Iraq to defend this country. [Everyone knows it doesn't, of course, but just "what if" - would you spend 9 billion dollars a month to do it? Yeah, OK, maybe "anything" is too strong.

But this one really pissed me off...

When a CEO makes more in ten minutes than a good worker makes in a year there's something wrong in this country!

Because being a CEO is just another job, right Mr. Obama? And being President of the United States is just another exercise in "organizing."

Listen carefully and you'll hear that Barack is asking us to accept the same moral code that Gerald Starnes did. "I am my brother's keeper," says Barack. What does that code get us? Continue reading.

"Well, there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it, too, and everybody—almost everybody—voted for it. We didn't know. We thought it was good. No, that's not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need. We—what's the matter, ma'am? Why do you look like that?"
"What was the name of the factory?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
"The Twentieth Century Motor Company, ma'am, of Starnesville, Wisconsin."
"Go on."

"We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't too clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut—because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives—from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe there's some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the plan—and what we got, we had it coming to us. You know, ma'am, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through the four years of that plan in the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that hell is supposed to be? Evil—plain, naked, smirking evil, isn't it? Well, that's what we saw and helped to make—and I think we're damned, every one of us, and maybe we'll never be forgiven.…

"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six—for your neighbor's supper—for his wife's operation—for his child's measles—for his mother's wheel chair—for his uncle's shirt—for his nephew's schooling—for the baby next door—for the baby to be born—for anyone anywhere around you—it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures—and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end.… From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.…

(...)

"It didn't take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure, he hated to smoke a nickel's worth of tobacco or chew a stick of gum, worrying whether somebody had more need for that nickel. He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary night of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat, to be a sucker, but not a blood-sucker. He wouldn't marry, he wouldn't help his folks back home, he wouldn't put an extra burden on 'the family.' Besides, if he still had some sort of sense of responsibility, he couldn't marry or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, promise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble, they dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra 'disability allowance,' they got more sicknesses than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes—what the hell, 'the family' was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in 'need' than the rest of us could ever imagine—they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed.

"God help us, ma'am! Do you see what we saw? We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it—for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness? We were a petty decent bunch of fellows when we started. There weren't many chiselers among us. We knew our jobs and we were proud of it and we worked for the best factory in the country, where old man Starnes hired nothing but the pick of the country's labor. Within one year under the new plan, there wasn't an honest man left among us. That was the evil, the sort of hell-horror evil that preachers used to scare you with, but you never thought to see alive. Not that the plan encouraged a few bastards, but that it turned decent people into bastards, and there was nothing else that it could do—and it was called a moral ideal!

"But his sister Ivy was worse. She really did not care for material wealth. The alms she got was no bigger than ours, and she went about in scuffed, flat-heeled shoes and shirtwaists—just to show how selfless she was. She was our Director of Distribution. She was the lady in charge of our needs. She was the one who held us by the throat. Of course, distribution was supposed to be decided by voting—by the voice of the people. But when the people are six thousand howling voices, trying to decide without yardstick, rhyme or reason, when there are no rules to the game and each can demand anything, but has a right to nothing, when everybody holds power over everybody's life except his own—then it turns out, as it did, that the voice of the people is Ivy Starnes. By the end of the second year, we dropped the pretense of the 'family meetings'—in the name of 'production efficiency and time economy,' one meeting used to take ten days—and all the petitions of need were simply sent to Miss Starnes' office. No, not sent. They had to be recited to her in person by every petitioner. Then she made up a distribution list, which she read to us for our vote of approval at a meeting that lasted three-quarters of an hour. We voted approval. There was a ten-minute period on the agenda for discussion and objections. We made no objections. We knew better by that time. Nobody can divide a factory's income among thousands of people, without some sort of a gauge to measure people's value. Her gauge was bootlicking. Selfless? In her father's time, all of his money wouldn't have given him a chance to speak to his lousiest wiper and get away with it, as she spoke to our best skilled workers and their wives. She had pale eyes that looked fishy, cold and dead. And if you ever want to see pure evil, you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who'd talked back to her once and who'd just heard his name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance. And when you saw it, you saw the real motive of any person who's ever preached the slogan: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'

"This was the whole secret of it. At first, I kept wondering how it could be possible that the educated, the cultured, the famous men of the world could make a mistake of this size and preach, as righteousness, this sort of abomination—when five minutes of that should have told them what would happen if somebody tried to practice what they preached. Now I know that they didn't do it by any kind of mistake. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. If men fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice—it's because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell. And we weren't so innocent either, when we voted for the plan at the first meeting. We didn't do it just because we believed that the drippy old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the guff helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something that we'd be ashamed to admit otherwise. There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about the men below who'd get unearned benefits, too. He forgot about all his inferiors who'd rush to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted—that was the truth of it—but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Chelsea's Job

Sen. Hillary Clinton took a swipe at her daughter's profession today at an economic roundtable discussion at a restaurant in Parma, Ohio, suggesting wealthy investment bankers and hedge fund managers on Wall Street aren't doing real 'work.'

The former first lady's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, works for New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group. She previously worked in New York for McKinsey & Company, her first job after graduating with her master's degree from Oxford University.

Amusing. Well, Chelsea has stated that she isn't happy with her health care plan, maybe she can look for a "real" job with a better plan.

We're Gonna Miss This Guy

William McGurn has a guest editorial in the WSJ today, recounting his experience on both sides of the Press Corps vs. White House contretemps. McGurn says in three years "You see who's a straight shooter, and who's full of snark. You see who's smart, and whose outrageous behavior would have made its way to Drudge had it involved White House staffers instead of White House correspondents." He chooses three things where President Bush was right and persevered.

Of course, if you are one of those experts who reassured us that a "well managed defeat" in Iraq was the way for America to go, you don't like hearing the president use plain words like "win" and "victory." Then again, you're not the audience George W. Bush worries about. During one of my first meetings in the Oval Office, the president told me and my fellow speechwriters that we must always be mindful of how his words would sound to the enemy -- and how they would sound to the young Marine risking his life against that enemy in some dusty town in Afghanistan or Iraq.

President Bush hasn't always been right. But he's been right on the things that matter most, and he's been willing to take the heat. I, for one, admire him for it.

I have had my differences with W over the years (fewer than most around here) but think we will all recognize, as Jay Nordlinger said, we are going to miss this guy.

Obama is not a libertarian

Okay, okay. I know that the title of this post will provoke laughter from fellow ThreeSourcers, however, wonkish liberals love to paint their candidates as the real libertarians in that they are for individual rights by ignoring issues such as economic freedom and the right to bear arms. Jeffrey Rosen is the latest to attempt to paint Obama as the libertarian.

Of course, David Weigel looks at the evidence and concludes:

Obama is a civil libertarian, except when he is not.

Adios, Fidel

... after 49 years, we hardly knew ye.

Oh wait.

We did.

Castro Update

CNN is reporting the Fidel Castro has resigned as president. While I am a bit surprised that this announcement precedes that of the announcement of his death, I sincerely hope that this will result in a free Cuba in the near term.

How Can She Be Proud?

MILWAUKEE -- So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” she told a Milwaukee crowd today, “because it feels like hope is making a comeback.”

By being proud of this country, is she not endorsing slavery, the propping up of foreign dictators, and the genocide of the indigenous population? No doubt life has completely sucked for the Obamas up 'till now, but let's not go overboard, Michelle.

Hat-tip: K-LO at The Corner.

Too Rich

I try not to laugh. Keep in mind, political parties are private businesses -- they may make and keep any rules they wish. But the Democratic Party, Whoooo boy! WaPo:

The Texas Puzzle: System Worries Clinton Backers

What Clinton aides discovered is that in certain targeted districts, such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa's heavily Hispanic Senate district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates. At the same time, a win in the more urban districts in Dallas and Houston -- where Sen. Barack Obama expects to receive significant support -- could yield three or four times as many delegates.

"What it means is, she could win the popular vote and still lose the race for delegates," Hinojosa said yesterday. "This system does not necessarily represent the opinions of the population, and that is a serious problem."

The disparity in delegate distribution is just one of the unusual aspects of Texas's complex system for apportioning delegates. The scheme has been in use for two decades but is coming under increased scrutiny because the March 4 presidential contest is the first in years that gives the state a potentially decisive voice in choosing the party's nominee.

It's The Secondhand Drowning...

This Telegraph blog post has to be read in full, so I have "nicked it:"

Bottled Water is Immoral

Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser.

"We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the Government's [natural] resources commissioner.

Bottled water generates up to 600 times more CO2 than tap water

Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water "borders on being morally unacceptable".

Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and water providers have started a campaign against the £2 billion industry.

A BBC Panorama documentary, "Bottled Water: Who Needs It?", to be broadcast tomorrow says that in terms of production, a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a litre of tap water.

Y'know breathing outputs quite a bit of CO2. These are the people Karl Popper warned us about. They want to send us back to the caves.

Hat-tip: Samizdata. Perry DeHavilland says "Very telling, no? People deciding to spend their own money on something 'borders on being morally unacceptable'. Let me what you what is morally unacceptable: that force addicted control freak tax parasites like Phil Woolas have the gall to tell people how to spend their own damn money. 'Immoral'? You do not know the meaning of the word, Woolas."

Chuck Schumer and ThreeSources

I thought it was just me. I was watching Senator Chuck Schumer on Meet the Press yesterday. And he used the word "internecine" about 11 times in three paragraphs. And he pronounced it funny.

Today I see Ann Althouse noticed as well. She found his sudden use of less-than-common words more nefarious than benign.

Clearly, he came to Tim Russert's table ready to use the word "internecine" to fend off efforts to get him to debate what the right rule is about the superdelegates and the Florida and Michigan delegates. I'm suspicious of people who suddenly start using and reusing a word that people don't normally say. Schumer didn't even know how to pronounce it.

To be fair, Miriam Webster gives five different pronunciations and the oleaginous Senator's is on the list. All the same, I found myself expecting Senator Durbin to say "stunning exegesis."

More important than language, it represented two contentious -- dare I use it -- ˌin-tər-ˈne-ˌsēn debates on two Sunday talk shows. Schumer and Durbin are apparently housemates (I am hoping not in the James Buchannan - William Rufus King sense) but they were offering little quarter. Unless either Senator Obama or Clinton can run away with the Democratic race here, there will be 49% dispirited Dems after Denver.

Less civil was FOX News Sunday's square off between Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. They were civil, but both were drawing lines and preparing for a fight. I don't want to make fun of a man with a disability -- but is Governor Strickland okay? He appeared to be having a seizure during the more acrimonious parts of his debate. (I'm really not kidding. Here's a YouTube of the interview. The whole thing is worth a watch, but Gov. Strickland seems to have problems starting around 4:00 crescendoing at 6:00.)

Obama's forces (Durbin and Doyle) are saying that votes should count; Clinton's (Strickland and Schumer) that you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. This could be fun.

All Politics is Local...

On "Super Tuesday" johngalt and dagny caucused in Weld County, CO for Mitt Romney since Fred Thompson had previously abandoned the campaign. At that caucus jg threw his name in the ring as a delegate to the district meeting 2 weeks later and was elected as one of 4 alternates to our 4 delegates. That district meeting was held yesterday morning and although jg was only an alternate he was still eligible to stand as a delegate nominee for the Colorado GOP State Convention. After nominating himself he stood in front of the 27 assembled neighbors, said a few kind things about John McCain and Fred Thompson, disparaging things about Boulder County and the Democrat candidates, and got himself elected again - this time as a full fledged credentialed delegate.

Having been caught flat-footed at the caucus when policy ideas were solicited for consideration as planks to the party platform, and in support of HB's lament that 'The Republican Party Has Left Me,' johngalt hereby creates a new subcategory to 2008 race called "GOP Planks." He invites suggestions from all corners. The first idea on the list has to be jg's comment from 'Let the Libertarians Go' earlier today:

Huckabee and his staff are not conservatives, because they do not hold private property rights as an absolute. His Christianity-inspired egalitarianism and altruism tell him it is morally justified to take one man's property and give it to another, as long as the first man has more to start with. That puts him on a par with the Edwardsesque rhetoric we all tired of through the early primary campaigns.

As an "economic libertarian" I appeal to my Christian brothers to examine the teachings of their faith and recognize the difference between two like intentioned but fundamentally different processes: One one hand, individuals (and their voluntary congregations) doing charitable works and on the other hand, the heartless, soulless, ignorant servants of government attempting to be charitable with the conscripted wealth of others.

Governor Huckabee doesn't seem to recognize any distinctions between these two methodologies, but economic libertarians do.

H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y

Charles Barkley believes that all conservatives are "fake" Christians because they pass judgement on others. This is true, if conservatives read the Bible, they would realize this right is reserved for God and Charles Barkley.

Obama's Achilles Heel

As the "O-mentum" rolls on approaching Hillary's "firewall" states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania I'm taking this opportunity to reveal the secret to derailing Barack Hussein's support amongst the affluent white Democrats he so famously holds in his spell. While Barack shrewdly disclosed the vast majority of his personal shortcomings and past indiscretions in his own autobiographical book prior to seeking national political office, there's one important skeleton in his closet that none of his opponents has yet capitalized on. I can only conclude that they aren't aware of it for it is so completely devastating, without being a "negative personal attack," that it could make Obama's campaign literally go up in smoke. You see, Democrats pride themselves on their tolerance of the personal choices made by others but there are exceptions, and this is one of them. It is understandable that Mrs. Clinton's campaign is not yet aware of it since the story appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Should Hillary fail to secure the nomination by properly employing this critical information against Obama we can count on John McCain doing so in the general election campaign. The source of the scoop was not anonymous, it was the candidate's wife Michelle Obama. Perhaps it was her political naivete that kept her from realizing she should never let something like this slip - but she did. And now, to Barack's personal detriment but possibly also preventing an international embarassment for the United States, we know that a leading candidate for President of the United States is ... shhhhh ... a smoker. From the February 11 WSJ, page A1 (above the fold):

With the Democratic presidential race wide open, Mrs. Obama, a 44-year-old Princeton- and Harvard Law-educated hospital executive, is assuming the same dominant role in Sen. Obama's public life that she has in his private life. At home, she expects a lot of every family member, from having her 6- and 9-year-old daughters set their own alarm clocks to insisting her husband pick up his dirty socks. Her most recent directive to him: Stop smoking.

It's a Democrat political ad makers dream!

I also found something to be personally concerned about in this article:

On a conference call to prepare for a recent debate, Barack Obama brainstormed with his top advisers on the fine points of his positions. Michelle Obama had dialed in to listen, but finally couldn't stay silent any longer.

"Barack," she interjected, "Feel -- don't think!"

AAAAAARRRGH!

Let the Libertarians Go

According to Joe Carter, who has worked for the Huckabee campaign, lower taxes no longer attract voters. What they really want is (and I am paraphrasing) mythological government-created and facilitated growth and good schools. To me, that sounds more like the message of many Democrats. Similarly, he could care less about those of us lonely libertarians:

“If you let the libertarians go over to the Democratic Party while the Republicans win the votes of entrepreneurs,” he says, “you’re talking about a new majority party.”

What?!

The Reagan coalition has worked for almost 30 years. Economic libertarians have been a strong part of that coalition. Why do the Republicans insist on fixing something that isn't broken?

Theme Songs

Hillary chose "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey after it was featured on the Sopranos. It fits. The Clintons are sort of like the mob of the Democratic Party, so it makes sense to pay homage to the Sopranos. Also, the song is outdated and overplayed, which sufficiently summarizes Hillary and her campaign.

However, the greatest theme song for any candidate would be if Barack Obama chose "Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr. I admit I got this idea from Rush Limbaugh when I was stuck in traffic, but nevertheless check out the lyrics and tell me they don't fit:

Who can take a sunrise,
Sprinkle it with dew?
Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two
The candyman, the candyman can,
The candyman can 'cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

Who can take a rainbow,
Wrap it in a sigh?
Soak it in the sun and make the stra'bry lemon pie
The candyman? The candyman can
The candyman can 'cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

The Candyman makes
everything he bakes
Satisfying and delicious.
Talk about your childhood wishes.
You can even eat the dishes!

Who can take tomorrow,
Dip it in a dream?
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream,
The candyman? The Candyman can, the candyman can
The candyman can 'cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good
And the world tastes good
'cause the candyman thinks it should

Utter nonsense, just like his campaign.

We are all for hope. We are all for the future. We are all against the idiots in Washington. Try some substance.

Trade Goood!

Trade better than wheel! And fire!

Political Calculations has a good and brief explanation of Comparative Advantage, complete with a tool to calculate savings from specialization: Why Cavemen Love Free Trade

A Green Hero

Free market deity, T.J. Rodgers, is bringing Moore's Law to Solar Power. He wants to save the world and make a pile of cash. What a guy!

I had a brief and very unsuccessful stint in my younger days selling ad space for "Photovoltaics Magazine." My problem was that I was not a good closer; the PV industry's problem was that it competed for Silicon with the likes of Intel and Texas Instruments. One sold a square inch for $300 and one sold 4 x 8' sheets. You get the idea.

Rodgers saw a similarity others did not: Moore's Law. It was a semiconductor industry and the advances in chip fabrication would pay off in solar power. He bought a power company with his own money when his board would not go along and now "SunPower is rapidly becoming a more important business to Cypress than semiconductors themselves."

So, it goes without saying that when the word "green" comes to mind, T.J. Rodgers, the ultimate free market libertarian, is probably the last person you'd ever think of. And yet, here he is, at the absolute epicenter of the Green Revolution, helping lead the charge that will likely very soon make solar power as inexpensive as other sources of electricity.
[...]
The story of how T.J. got to this point is one of the great untold business stories of the new century. And it should serve as an object lesson to those who wish to change the world by fiat, rather than by market forces.
[..]
The husband of a woman I grew up with has worked for T.J. for many years in international sales. It's been a good job, so when I heard a few years ago he was being transferred to SunPower, I felt sorry for him, figuring it was a demotion. These days he's adding new wings to his house

These are from a great piece by Michael Malone on abc.com. Read it all and send a copy to your favorite Democrat.

Hillary v. Putin

Hillary loves to talk about how President Bush has ruined our reputation in the world and is far from diplomatic. She talks about it so much, she must have come to like W's alleged attitude, as she claimed a month ago (how did I miss this?) that Vladamir Putin "doesn't have a soul." It's great to see that our diplomatic relations will not succumb to the cowboy flippancy any longer.

Oh, and for the record, this was Putin's response:

At a minimum, a head of state should have a head.

Hooray for Partisanship

Now that the GOP primary contests are settling down (even though Governor Huckabee could close that 4-1 delegate gap anytime...) I am getting my partisan, pragmatic mojo back.

Like other ThreeSourcers, I am wedded to ideas over party. There is nothing special about the letter 'R' to me except that, for my adult voting life, those with the R brand were at least a little bit better at keeping the freedom we enjoy. It is dammed easy to enumerate a dozen things President Bush did that you don't like, but I cannot imagine any ThreeSourcers would like to turn back the clock and elect President Gore or President Kerry.

I am told that America cries out for post-partisanship and I see examples at the margins. But our structure of government (Madisonian Democracy, 2,010 have called it) fosters (mmm, Foster's...) two-party conflict. Right now, the game is about Democrats vs. Republicans. And today, we see the stakes:

Democrats voted yesterday, for the first time in decades, to hold two White House officials in contempt of Congress. Hours later it emerged that Ms. Pelosi has apparently decided not to vote on the warrantless wiretap bill passed by the Senate days ago. This means that the Protect America Act -- which conferred Congressional support to wiretapping suspected al Qaeda terrorists -- will expire at midnight today.

We admit to wondering earlier this week whether Congress's interrogating Roger Clemens was the best use of the Representatives' time. On the evidence, the country will be safer if the House takes up tilting at windmills.

This is from a WSJ editorial. The bill has passed the US Senate and everyone knows that it has the votes to pass the House.

Yet Speaker Pelosi will not bring it up for a vote. Everyone who voted for a "Blue Dog" Democrat because that particular candidate was good on guns and reasonable on security -- this is what you get. You may have voted for a great person, but you put a San Francisco lefty in charge of the House and a Searchlight Socialist in charge of the US Senate.

Leader Reid came around, but Speaker Pelosi is willing to let this bill expire. Thanks, Blue Dog voters. There are not too many days that I am proud to be a partisan hack. But today is one.

VP Bloomberg?

There is a lot of talk that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will run as a third-party candidate. However, I have a different theory: Bloomberg may be the vice presidential nominee of Barack Obama. They had a highly publicized meeting a couple months ago and despite his harsh criticism of the goverment's stimulus packages, Bloomberg has recently praised Obama for his plan to rebuild infrastructure.

Just a thought.

I'm A Chevy Man Now!

ThreeSourcers have tended toward being Mopar-heads. AlexC has his Hemi, JohnGalt his 'Cuda, and I have fond memories or ripping out the "tiny" 318-cubic inch V8 in my 1968 Sport Satellite in favor of a 440. You could pretty much pin global warming on me.

But now, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz tells a few journalists that Global Warming is a "Total Crock of S**t"

I am stupefied! Next thing you know, BP will stop apologizing for selling us fuel. It could happen.

Anyhow, this doesn’t mean that GM isn’t serious about building the Volt, of course—just that global warming isn’t the reason. And that’s fine. GM doesn’t have to have noble intentions as long as it delivers the fuel-efficient cars it’s been promising. According to D, Lutz says he’s excited about the Volt because “it’s the last thing anybody expected from GM.” But you have to wonder how statements like this affect public perception of the Volt project. Because right now, if you ask a car geek about the Chevy Volt you’ll get one of two responses. The most predictable: “Total vaporware, it’ll never happen.” A cautiously optimistic few, however, will admit that General Motors really does seem serious about building the Volt. After all, they’ve staked the reputation of the company (which lost $38.7 billion dollars last year) on their ability to start producing this extended-range electric car by the end of 2010.

Amen, Bob. Build a car because people might want to buy it. Let Hollywood save the world.

Hat-tip: Insty

Steroids?

A little comment fodder: Does anybody in ThreeSources Land think Congressional investigations of Roger Clemens are valuable or legal? I know that you can make an anti-trust argument. But I think it is insane if not illegal.

Larry Kudlow has some strong feelings on drugs and last night "crossed the aisle" to side with Secretary Robert Reich over Steve Moore. But I am with Moore. I think it is an embarrassing waste of time. Let Major League Baseball sort it out.

No fair pointing out that wasting Congress's time keeps them from doing more damaging things. It may indeed be true but I'd counter with "First they came for the Hall of Fame pitchers..."