Home Run!

Megan McArdle, my favorite libertarian Obama supporter, hits one out of the park. The text below is formatted as a quote and I am not certain of its origins. But somebody is taking a marvelous whack at the University of Chicago professors who are protesting the Milton Friedman Institute:

"Many would argue that they have been negative for much of
the world's population... weakening ... struggling local economies"

I can think of lots of words to describe what's going on in, say, China and India, as well as what happened previously to countries that adopted the "neoliberal global order" like Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Billions of people are leading dramatically freer, healthier, longer and more prosperous lives than they were a generation ago.

Of course, we all face plenty of problems. I worry about environmental catastrophes, and their political, social and economic aftermath. Many people are suffering, primarily in pockets of kleptocracy and anarchy. Life's pretty bleak about 5 blocks west of the University of Chicago. In my professional life, I worry about inflation, chaotic markets, and their possible death by regulation. There is a lot for thoughtful economists and social scientists to do. But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their "local economies," trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death.

This is just the big lie theory at work. Say something often enough and people will start to believe it. It helps especially if what you say is vague and meaningless.

Read the whole (very short) thing. Hat-tip: Instapundit

Worst. Campaign. Ever.

I had once suggested (I'm too embarrassed to provide the link) that -- in spite of his philosophical faults -- Senator McCain might be a good candidate/president because he was a good communicator, specifically that he could express the importance of the war in ways that President Bush has been unable.

I'm not alone in being disgruntled with the McCain campaign, but I thought I was being harsh in starting to remember Dole-Kemp '96 with fond nostalgia... But I think Dan Henninger puts things in perspective today. In his weekly Wonderland column on the serious WSJ Ed Page, today’s is titled: Is John McCain Stupid? The answer is not encouraging.

This week, Senator McCain delivered differing statements on payroll taxes about which Henninger says "This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation." He called Speaker Pelosi "an inspiration to millions of Americans." About VP Gore's certifiably insane energy Jeremiad:

Recently the subject came up of Al Gore's assertion that the U.S. could get its energy solely from renewables in 10 years. Sen. McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." What!!?? In a later interview, Mr. McCain said he hadn't read "all the specifics" of the Gore plan and now, "I don't think it's doable without nuclear power." It just sounds loopy.

As Shakespeare said, "Sounds loopy? Nay, Sir, is loopy." Senator Obama's flaws are sufficient that McCain still has a chance, but neither Henninger nor I see many hopeful signs.

Thou Shalt Not Criticize the Obamessiah!

Racist attacks are coming -- just you wait:

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare voters by saying Sen. Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

A pedant's first thought is "Was he referring to President Hamilton or President Franklin?" But I guess I am just a racist. As Ludacris would say "paint the White House black and I'm sure that's got 'em terrified."

I could not be more disappointed with the lengthening list of topics that are "off-limits." (Chris Muir nailed it in a Day by Day cartoon.) I have cut some slack because it has been done mostly by subordinates and because it is too effective a tactic to expect them not to use.

But this is a direct statement by the candidate, making post-dated charges of racism, and I think it is time that we all called "Bullshit" on it.

UPDATE: I have been out pedanted -- er, pedanticized -- er, Glenn Reynols is worse:

Er, all those other presidents? Isn't there just one President on the dollar bill?

He has lots more on this.

Dear Mr. Ludacris

I read the lyrics to your new rap song for Senator Obama, and caught the audio on YouTube.

I'm back on it like I just signed my record deal
yeah the best is here, the Bentley Coup paint is dripping wet, it got sex appeal
never should have hated
you never should've doubted him
with a slot in the president's iPod Obama shattered 'em
Said I handled his biz and I'm one of his favorite rappers
Well give Luda a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer
Better yet put him in office, make me your vice president
Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant
Jesse talking slick and apologizing for what?
if you said it then you meant it how you want it have a gut!
and all you other politicians trying to hate on my man,
watch us win a majority vote in every state on my man
you can't stop what's bout to happen, we bout to make history
the first black president is destined and it's meant to be
the threats ain't fazing us, the nooses or the jokes
so get off your a ss, black people, it's time to get out and vote!
paint the White House black and I'm sure that's got 'em terrified
McCain don't belong in ANY chair unless he's paralyzed
Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped
Ball up all of his speeches and I throw em like candy wrap
cause what you talking I hear nothing even relevant
and you the worst of all 43 presidents
get out and vote or the end will be near
the world is ready for change because Obama is here!
cause Obama is here
The world is ready for change because Obama is here!

Pretty good stuff, "Luda." It's not really my genre, but you really do seem to have an exceptional gift at making things rhyme. The bit about the Bentley is particularly inspired. I write, however, to correct a small factual error. In the end, discussing President Bush you intone:

cause what you talking I hear nothing even relevant
and you the worst of all 43 presidents

I'm certain you realize that there have not actually been 43 US Presidents. President Cleveland served two discontinuous terms, grabbing both the 22nd and 24th ordinals. But it is more correct to say that there have been 42. I realize it screws with your otherwise exemplary meter, so I suggest these two lines as replacement:

The polity you propose, sir, will not likely engender economic growth
Of all the forty two, sir, you really are an oaf
The world is ready for change because Obama is here.
cause Obama is here...

Your devoted fan,
jk

Hat-tip: K-Lo

The Probability Broach

I mentioned this book in a comment a few days ago. I had heard about it from Dale Amon at Samizdata.

A commenter mentions its being serialized online.

Originally. I conceived The Probability Broach in the mid-70s as a summary of all I'd ever learned about libertarianism, and, more importantly, the promise it offers of a better, more peaceful, more prosperous world than our authority-battered species has known for the last 10,000 years.

I know, it sounded boring, even then, like a political tract. So I determined to make it a political tract as full of sex, violence, and general silliness as I could cram in between the serious bits. And it worked. Although I'd never sold anything before except a handful of gun magazine articles, the novel was picked up by the first publisher that read it, and the rest, as they say, is history...

That's the original author, L Neil Smith. The book has been released as a graphic novel, and that is available online.

It looks pretty interesting. Besides the libertarian premise, it has some Colorado hooks. The story opens at the corner of Colfax & York (I rented an old house a block away from there to use as a rehearsal studio in the early eighties). And on page 7, we meet "Propertarians."

Guys Who Can Pronounce 'Schadenfruede'

Terri at I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err links to an article in Der Spiegel that might be the worst article ever. Who else could marry smug Eurotrash socialism with dimwitted American populism? "We've combed the whole world to come up with the worst economic advice!" (It sounds better in German).

The article is dated January 8, 2008, so the Washington correspondent can reference the Democratic primary and have a perfect tie-in for economic nonsense.

Just in time for the recession and widespread layoffs many economists fear the American economy could face this spring, the presidential campaign has suddenly found its new hot-button issue: the dark side of globalization. The mortgage crisis, declining real wages and the fear that companies could even accelerate their outsourcing activities in a recession have relegated explosions in Iraq to the role of political background noise.

Huh? No Abu Ghraib? Well, we're talking NAFTA, specifically the theft of a bunch of good jobs assembling televisions in Tennessee to a plant in Juarez. Juarez, we are to believe was some sort of lovely, desert paradise until NAFTA.

In the United States, the city has come to symbolize a system of international trade that benefits only a few and harms the overwhelming majority, a system as detrimental to the wages of American workers as it is to moral standards.

Nein, danke, Herr Steingart, I seriously doubt many people think of Juarez as a "symbol of international trade." I'm thinking that "smelly, scary, dirty border town" would poll substantively higher.

Seriously, I went to school in New Mexico and financed one semester by driving to Juarez and smuggling back some not-quite-legal-in-the-US-yet tequila. Good stuff with a worm and all. This was more than a decade before NAFTA, and you will trust me that Juarez was a scary place. I got shot at once. Even doing the tourista parts several years later in daylight disturbed me. Sorry to contradict the good folks at the Ciudad Chamber of Commerce, but I'd suggest you pay the extra $100 and go a little further on to Puerto Vallarta or Acapulco or somewhere.

To Der Spiegel, poverty in America is caused by our past devotion to free trade. And poverty in Mexico is the fault of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, George W. Bush. Who is compared to a famous German Totalitarian Tyrant (nope, not that one):

The border crossing, in its coarseness, is reminiscent of the East German side of the former border between the two Germanys, except that the face on wall posters is that of George W. Bush and not of the former East German leader Erich Honecker.

Of course, the real problem with America and Mexico is that we have not embraced GDR Socialism:

The gap between rich and poor has grown by leaps and bounds in America, far more so than in countries like Germany. One-fifth of Americans earn more than half of all wages and salaries. Ten percent of the population owns 70 percent of all assets. This is what presidential candidate John Edwards calls the "two Americas."

Trade bad. America bad. Das ist alles.

This Doesn't Happen Here

My string of jokes about non-existent editors at ThreeSources (which a real editor would have spiked) have to come to a close. ["come to a close?" how about "stop?" -- ed]

Giles Coren is mightily pissed off. I can tell because he starts his Guardian piece "I am mightily pissed off."

It seems an editor for the Times Magazine removed the word "a" from his article. Coren makes a lengthy and family-inappropriate explanation of why this was wrong.

Hat-tip: Galley Slave Jonathan V Last who says "There are few things in the world as silly as a pretentious writer. Man is a vain animal, but writers have their own special sort of vanity. For exhibit 1,116, I submit this newspaper writer's tirade against a copy editor for removing an indefinite article--an "a"--from his copy."

Day By Day

Too long since I have stolen a Day By Day strip:




Mondo-heh! I am starting to wonder if -- in a reverse-uncertainty-principle -- Senator Obama might actually not exist unless there are cameras or crowds to observe him. If so, how would you prove it? If not, is he Constitutionally eligible for the presidency?

Best. Scrappleface. Ever.

Congress to Halt Closing of Unprofitable Starbucks

“These people can’t just walk out of Starbucks and get a job at a grocery store or a factory,” said House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. “They would need ESL classes and cultural training to learn how to relate to ordinary Americans and function in society.”...

“This is just another one of our heroic Democrat efforts to protect Americans from the impact of the Bush economic policies,” said Rep. Pelosi. “Under this president, America has become a cold and desolate place where corporations cut unprofitable activities to focus on increasing the bottom line, and returning value to shareholders. When Democrats retake the White House next year, we will reverse that trend.”

Read the whole, awesome, thing! Hat-tip: Mankiw

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Warming

Professor Reynolds links to a Popsci.com story Global Warming: Not So Bad. The piece questions the D in DAWG, showing that many people and species are helped by warmer temperatures.

A 47-year study of one population of great tits—garden birds about the size of sparrows—is providing hope that some animals can adjust quickly to environmental change. University of Oxford zoologists have found that the birds are laying their eggs earlier in the spring to time the hatching of their chicks to the earlier emergence of caterpillars.

Talk about burying the lede! I'd've headlined the article:

"Great Tits Love Global Warming!"

UPDATE: An emailer is moderately offended and I'm moderately pleased that somebody expected better of me. Sincere apologies all 'round.

JOHN!

Why should I vote for McCain over Obama? I've been reading a spate of those articles and posts in libertarian leaning magazines and blogs. And while you can paint me as one of the well documented less-than-enthusiastic McCain voters, my pragmatic side is starting to kick in pretty hard. I've long championed his foreign policy ("win") and trade policy ("yes.") Last week, I linked to a great OpEd of his on Freddie and Fan.

Today, I will add "EDJUKASHUN!" to the list and link to the lead WSJ editorial which offers a stark contrast. Here is Senator McCain:

"When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

Senator Obama:

It's well known that the force calling the Democratic tune here is the teachers unions. Earlier this month, Senator Obama accepted the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. Speaking recently before the American Federation of Teachers, he described the alternative efforts as "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don't need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the "kids at the bottom."

A visitor to Mr. Obama's Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren't waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.

One more issue where the liberty minded can feel good about pulling the 'R' lever in November. The editorial closes: "When the day arrives that these two candidates face off, we hope Senator McCain comes prepared to press his opponent hard on change, hope and choice in the schools."

An Olive Branch from One America to the Other

John Edwards' greatest legacy in American politics may be in revealing the existence of "Two Americas" that uneasily coexist with each other in the same time and space on this continent. I propose the following olive branch, from one of those Americas to the other:

"You let us legalize drilling for oil and we'll let you legalize pot."

Now that's what I'd call a real kumbaya moment.

Paul Krugman is Off Today

So endeth the editorial...

I hope the NYTimes faithful were not too disappointed in getting David Brooks instead. I bet they were, for Brooks was on a tear. He admits that when he first Senator Obama's soaring [C'mon people now] rhetoric [smile on your brother] in Iowa [Everybody get together] "I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign."

The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

Yet, now, the paucity of substance is becoming problematic:

But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.

If Senator Obama's view of the past does not quite mesh with reality, is it any surprise that his view of the future is similarly clouded?

The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid.

Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has grown fiercer, Russia has clamped down, Iran is on the march. It will take politics and power to address these challenges, the two factors that dare not speak their name in Obama’s lofty peroration.

Now that's a quote of the day: "It will take politics and power to address these challenges, the two factors that dare not speak their name in Obama’s lofty peroration."

Hang on Timesers, Krugman will be back soon. I am certain of it.

Hat-tip: Tom Maguire

Bringing Light to the World

Yes! Yes! Y-E-S! I have been waiting for such a column.

Gerard Baker writes in the Times:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The rest is below the fold (lest The Times comes calling).

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Obama-as-President

Mike Littwin, a liberal columnist for the Rocky Mountain News had this Obama cheerleading piece in today's Rocky. Forget the column, which is mostly fawning pap. The nut graf says it all:

If the idea of this trip was to let Americans see Obama as a would-be president, it was a grand success.

And, judging by Obama's performance, his presidential proclivities can be summed in a single word: feckless. Obama took strong stands for everything over which he will do nothing: Darfur, Zimbabwe, AIDs in Africa and the unification of Jerusalem. (Does anyone think that he will really send troops to any of these places?) On issues that he must tackle, such as winning in Iraq, he turns tail and runs like hell. While simultaneously admitting that the Iraqi surge worked and maintaining that it was a mistake, he calls for a similar surge in Afghanistan. Guys like Littwin lap it up - what a country!

The press also makes much of Maliki's "endorsement" of Obama and his 16 month plan. Assuming we can take this at face value, one must ask oneself why Maliki would prefer Obama in the White House. Could it be that he would rather negotiate with a relatively weak president than a relatively tough one?

Quote of the Day

Sen. Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived as a campaign event when his visit was to show his appreciation for our troops and decided instead not to go. -- Obama adviser, Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret.)

From Jake Tapper. Apparently, it would be inappropriate to visit the troops as a campaign stop, but it's fine to have a "citizen of the world" campaign rally in Berlin.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

It's Like a Culture of Corruption!

Professor Glenn Daltry would say "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Kim Strassel's Potomac Watch column today is a grim reminder of just how corrupt our Congress really is.

The corporate world got an early taste of this last year, when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer used his majority status to take advantage of his home-state financial industry. It works like this: Mr. Schumer steps up to protect hedge funds and private equity from his own party's threats of taxation. In return, a grateful industry writes enormous campaign checks that Mr. Schumer, as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is now using to increase his party's majority. Somewhere, Mr. DeLay is whistling in appreciation.

In private, and public, Democrats are telling companies they're frustrated with what they view as too slow a shift in the political makeup of lobby shops. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez recently quipped that if companies didn't start sending friendlier faces, they might find it "a little difficult at the end of the day for them to achieve the success they want." North Dakota's Byron Dorgan (who apparently has read the ethics law) clarified: "It's not about how many Democrats are hired. It's about how they weigh in on issues." Got that, corporate America? You can still employ Republicans, just so long as they act like Democrats.

She's sadly right that Republicans were no better, and that these pages were ripped from the Hammer Handbook. And she is right that there is a double standard on press outrage. What I cannot understand is why so few people care that these banana republic tactics (Mmmm. Bananas) live on in Washington.

John!

We've been a little hard on the GOP nominee around here. It's worth pointing out when he does something right. Larry Kudlow links to this Op-Ed and has some kind words for Senator McCain:

Senator John McCain hit a grand-slam homerun today with an op-ed piece (“Take taxpayers off hook for rot at Fannie, Freddie”) that debunks the federal worship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and takes off the table the possibility that these GSEs will get a strong dose of steroids if he is elected president. This is a dramatic statement that completely differentiates his view from the go-along, get-along policy of Sen. Obama.

I think McCain is probably right that some intervention will be required. And more right to call for reform in exchange for exercising the Federal put.

What should be done? We are stuck with the reality that they have grown so large that we must support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the current rough spell. But if a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested, the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.

Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street's bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I'll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away. I will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.

That's a good start!

The Denver Convention

If I were a dirty hippie, I would still not breathe easy.

Denver officials expect to spend more than $18 million on police equipment for the Democratic National Convention — but the purchases apparently won't include high-tech weapons that use sonic waves to incapacitate protesters or goo guns to immobilize them.

That information, provided by the city to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an agreement to delay a public records lawsuit, marks one of the most detailed looks yet at the super-secret efforts to provide security for the convention, scheduled Aug. 25 to 28.

The ACLU sued Denver in May under the state's public records law after city officials refused to provide documents showing how they were spending millions of dollars on police equipment.

I guess that still means fire hoses and dogs are still budgeted.

Great Read on Hayek

Samizdat Jonathan Pearce pens a long and thoughtful post, in response to a left-of-center journalist who wrote: A civil, but still flawed look at Hayek from the left He discusses Jessie Larner's piece in Dissent Magazine: what he got right, what he missed. Both pieces are well worth a back-to-back read.

Public-Private Partnership

I was going to give WSJ Ed Page Editor Paul Gigot a quote of the day, for this little bon mot:

My battles with Fan and Fred began with no great expectations. In late 2001, I got a tip that Fannie's derivatives accounting might be suspect. I asked Susan Lee to investigate, and the editorial she wrote in February 2002, "Fannie Mae Enron?", sent Fannie's shares down nearly 4% in a day. In retrospect, my only regret is the question mark.

Reading the rest of the editorial made me realize that this needed a little more coverage. Long time readers of the WSJ Ed Page have followed the battles with Fannie and Freddie -- if you're behind, they have compiled them here.

Gigot takes the unusual step of writing a bylined editorial on his own page, and I strongly suggest that you read the whole thing. He and his staff were on the front lines against this perverse hybrid of government and private power. He has certainly earned a few I-told-ya-sos, but he uses the space to expand and discredit the whole idea of mixing government power with private enterprises.

The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

It is germane not only because we are bailing out Fannie and Freddie today, but also because Senator Obama, and to a lesser extent, Senator McCain both have a soft spot for this "third-way" model, Public-Private Partnership. It's all Kumbaya all the time, until you realize that you have created an un-reformable, undefeatable monster.

UPDATE: Great article by James Surowecki (other than cartoons, the reason to read New Yorker) on the GSEs. Professor Mankiw links and points out that it is one more thing to thank LBJ for:

It wasn’t until 1968 that Fannie was privatized....The main reason for the change was surprisingly mundane: accounting. At the time, Lyndon Johnson was concerned about the effect of the Vietnam War on the federal budget. Making Fannie Mae private moved its liabilities off the government’s books, even if, as the recent crisis made clear, the U.S. was still responsible for those debts. It was a bit like what Enron did thirty years later, when it used “special-purpose entities” to move liabilities off its balance sheet.

Jeez, them Enron boys were pikers...

Letter to a Young Lefty

A family member (uh-oh) sends a link to a short New Yorker piece on Senator Obama's "Flip Flops." The Flop of the Flip has been the buzz in my family. I wondered whether the far lefties who share my parents (maybe they're adopted...) were disturbed by the Senator’s move to the center, "At this rate," I told my brother, "by election day he will be calling Phil Gramm a Communist and calling for privatizing the Post Office."

A niece caught up on the thread and asked what I thought of Hertzberg's New Yorker piece. It's a pretty sympathetic scoring of Senator Obama's post-primary changes As I said in the thread, the flip flop accusation is overblown and overused. But it is curious that an unknown quantity like the Junior Senator from Illinois cannot define himself more forcefully on his signature issues. But I am not going to not vote for him because he changes positions -- I will not vote for him because most of his positions are so bad.

The article enumerated each supposed flip flop and scored it. I was interested in his views on NAFTA (which did not merit a mention) and on DC v. Heller. Here is Hertzberg, writing to the New Yorker faithful, on SOF² (Senator Obama's Flip Flop) on the District of Columbia gun ban:

For twenty years, nominal support for the death penalty and its partner in crime, “gun rights,” has apparently been mandatory for any Democrat wishing to have a serious chance to be elected President.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Had he worked in support for child labor, and maybe blood-libel, I think we'd be talking Pulitzer! I'm working on my response. It happens that even the Republicans in my family are pretty squeamish on guns. I have to be careful not to overstep. I'm thinking of:

Dearest Babbolooshka,

I know you don’t get to hang out with a lot of liberty minded people, but let me say one thing – and I bet about all the 9% that make up the liberty voters will agree. To lump in capital punishment with "gun rights" -- scare quoted or not -- is inappropriate and sloppy.

1. The right to bear arms is stated explicitly in the Constitution and it exists as a protector to all of our other rights. I will steal a great line I read last week: "I will use my Second Amendment rights to defend Mr. Hertzberg's First Amendment rights, even though he will not use his First Amendment rights to defend my Second Amendment rights."

2. Support for capital punishment is individual and subjective. Most libertarians do not trust the government to wield such power. I personally feel that there are sufficient protections and appeal opportunities afforded to defendants that it should continue in states that choose to allow it. I'm not an enthusiastic supporter of capital punishment by any means, and the people I know cover the whole spectrum. I have no serious opinion on Kennedy v. Louisiana.

I could not consider anybody to be liberty minded who did not support gun rights, yet even my squishy support of capital punishment pushes me toward the conservative and populist regions of the right, and would get me kicked out of any good libertarian gathering.

A free person does not look to the state to be the ultimate protector of his life, property, and liberty. Societies that do not trust a citizen with force are societies that operate in loco partentis. Government is not my mommy, and I like the idea that -- should they try to take away any of the rights we possess -- they will have to take them from millions of armed citizens. I am extremely cool with that. I saw a great bumper sticker many moons ago that said "The 2nd Amendment Ain't About Duck Hunting." I had to grow into an understanding of that.

DC v. Heller was the first substantive reading of the Second Amendment since the bill of rights was passed. The decision was of extreme interest to the liberty minded, and the opinion of a man who calls himself a law professor, who may well nominate several people to the Supreme Court is not Briefs vs. Boxers. A guy I blog with would vote for the Devil to head up a health care panel if he could demonstrate sufficient support for gun rights.

Senator Obama's changing and conflicting answers betray that this is an issue he'd like to see go away. He is not willing to take a stand on an important civil rights issue. That's a "substantive tweak" to Herzberg, but that's a flip flop to me.

Makes Me Question Their Climate Advice...

John Tierney with more mad, libertarian ravings in the New York Times:

Why does the [American Heart Association] continue to insist that saturated fat should be avoided, if these trials repeatedly show that high saturated fat diets lead to better cholesterol profiles than low-saturated fat diets? And how many of these trials have to be done before the National Institutes of Health or some other august institution in this business re-assesses this question? After all, the reason the food guide pyramid suggests we eat things like butter and lard and meats sparingly (and puts them high up in the pyramid) is that they contain saturated fat. This is also the reason that the A.H.A. wants to lower even further what’s considered the safe limit for saturated fats in the diet.

Could we -- maybe -- have the government NOT take our money to give bad diet advice? I see the new food pyramid PSAs when I'm watching the tour. They've co-opted Disney's Jungle Book characters to tell kids to go to a government website to get [bad] diet advice. I hate to see Louis Prima abused so.

I was raised on the 4 Food Groups, which had the virtue of being a blatant advertisement for the four big ag lobbies. You knew if M&M/Mars ponied up some dough, that Snickers® could have been the fifth. Nobody really pretended it was science -- though it was probably better diet advice than when the government took the job seriously.

The first food pyramid (all-carbohydrates, all the time) would have been a target for malpractice lawsuits were the government not protected. I don't know what the new one is about. But does anybody doubt that there is a robust private market in research and products for dieters? I ridiculed government involvement in dieting in May of 2003:

The guidelines and all the new posters and the new “Healthy Kid” logo on the menu (you can see it already, can’t you?) will all highlight low fat, high carbohydrate foods. I should take consolidation that nobody will pay much attention to these, but some people will and their health will be worse because of government intervention.

Let the marketplace decide on nutrition, it’s what works. If you think I am crazy for bucking conventional medical wisdom and following Dr. Atkins, fine. That can be discussed, just like my preference for Mises over Lord Keynes. But let’s not allow the feds to give us one side, and then use threat-of-lawyer to force their advice on everyone.

Not sure my writing ages too well, but the ideas do. The government’s advice has been:

• Sold for money (four food groups)


• Health-threateningly wrong (food pyramid)


• Hopelessly outdated (saturated fats)

In short, it displays all the flaws of top down, command and control structure. I wonder if this would not be a good target for a little-l libertarian attack. I think you can convince people that federal nannyism in food is counter-productive, liberty eroding, and supra-Constitutional. I think conservatives and liberals might come together. That's change I can believe in.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

"The Obama Effect"

From www.hypemovie.com:

To roughly paraphrase Rush Limbaugh today, "Obama demonstrates how it is that totalitarianism can take hold. Not that Obama is a totalitarian but that he uses the same emotional appeals that bring tyrants to power."

Hat tip: johngalt's dad (again)

Yet Another DAWG "Denier"

As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" If your name is Albert Gore Junior, you ignore those facts.

Dr. David Evans, self-described "rocket scientist" and "important and useful" government funded scientist "working to save the planet" chooses not to ignore facts. (Well, whuddaya know... a scientist who actually practices... science!) Dr. Evans now writes, "When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it."

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Read it all. Particularly the other three "most basic salient facts" of which the above is number four.

Finally, this:

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

Duh!

Hat tip: johngalt's dad, who also emailed it to Bill O'Reilly today. We'll see if he picks it up.

Don't Know What You Got 'till It's Gone

Famed political philosopher Joni Mitchell nailed it with that one. She was spouting green-wacko-enviro-nonsense at the time, but the sentiment has applications today.

I breathed a sigh of relief when none of my favorite Starbuckses were on the Seicento Guasti (dead 600) list. Some others were not so fortunate. The Wall Street Journal tells the sad tale of Kate Walker, a facilities manager for software company SunGard Financial Systems who recently learned of a store closing in New York City.

Now that it's going away, we're devastated.
[...]
Ms. Walker is in charge of consolidating 525 people from seven of her company's New York offices into a new building in January. The Starbucks inside that building, at Madison Avenue and 44th Street, "was something that we were using to psych people up" about the move, she said.

Her hopes were dashed last week when Starbucks released the list of the stores it plans to close. She jumped on the Internet to find a phone number for the company's main office so she can ask officials to reconsider. "Knowing Starbucks, there's probably [another] one within a few blocks," she said. "But that's probably two blocks too far."

"Paved paradise and they put up a parking lot..."

This link comes from a post by Tom Smith: Admit You Like Starbucks. Tom is a man of my own heart and bean. You try to tell these kids today, who are way too cool for Starbucks, what life was like before the white and green curse:

First, remember what coffee was like before Starbucks. Some of you (though I doubt it, with the readership of this blog) may have cut your teeth on micro-roasted craft coffee shipped straight from Kona or that African critter's butt to your grinding burr in Seattle. But most of us drank the usual American swill to be found in law firm coffee rooms and frat house kitchens. Akk. Dreadful stuff and I know because I drank enough of it. "I just made it" meant it had been sitting there getting foul for less than an hour. "It's OK" meant you could drink and not die immediately. I grew up in a house where my Mom drank 20 cups of coffee a day, not one of them not worth forgetting until, you guessed it, Starbucks came along and taught people about coffee the way everybody discovered wine in the 1970s. So yes, Starbucks is not as good as PetePeet's. Well, excuse me while I play the grand piano. No it isn't. But the point is, it's not Maxwell House.

Then there is the whole concept of espresso. It's not the same thing, but I discovered good coffee in New Orleans, I think when I went there for my brother's graduation from Tulane Law School. I was never able to recreate it precisely but I tried, scalding milk and using New Orleans style coffee with chicory. Espresso is a similar deal. You get more of the good stuff out of the bean and less of the bad. Americans discovered coffee did not have to taste like year old battery acid. They began to explore. In many instances this led to vice, such as caramel mocha fraps and chai tea in any form. But this is inevitable. There will always be those who take a good thing too far.

I have never been too proud for Starbucks. There is a Peet's in Boulder and it is wicked good. There are several indie places I love. But last week, I had the common experience of going to a new indie joint that was cute and sunny and cozy and had a really nice barista and attractive decor and was a really nice place. My Cappuccino was not dry enough to deserve the name (my wife's latte was the exact same weight). Worse still (yeah I hear your eyes rolling -- poor guy's cappuccino wasn't dry enough!!!) they had not pulled good shots and what I got was coffee flavored milk. I kind of like it the other way 'round.

Starbucks may never be the best coffee in town, but it is always way above the mean. Mmm coffee. Bye.

UPDATE: Taranto links and says "World Ends, Etc.":

Cafe closings hit minority areas
Starbucks lists 18 shops in, near city.

The humanity...

I'm Not His Demographic

I'm not really a "Daily Show" guy. Politically, I might me more a "Colbert Report" guy, but as I've said, the whole concept of faux news is rather creepy to me. I know a lot of people who get their news from Mister Stewart. I ignore this and live a pretty happy, satisfied existence.

Until Greg Mankiw posts this on his blog:





Yeah, there are some funny bits, but it seems very slow to me, speaking as a comedy critic and not a political critic. You kind of know every joke before it happens. I don't know. The Bush/Bernanke clips are well assembled and I did laugh out loud at the Fannie/Freddie graphics. I'd call it 45 seconds of laugh-riot comedy jam packed into 7:55, but you probably saw that gag coming.

As for the politics and as for the substitution of Stewart's program for news, I fear for the Republic. Ben Bernanke is "an economic expert" when he disagrees with the President. I wonder how many other officials appointed by the administration are held in such high esteem? I'm sure all the ones who repent are.

The Indymac bank failure is implicitly attributed to Bush in a happened-on-his-watch way. Kind of funny that the funny man wouldn't take a jab or two at Senator Chuck Schumer (D - NY) who <john stewart sarcastic screaming voice>I don't know, actually caused it???</john stewart sarcastic screaming voice>

End with the accepted truth that the President mislead us into Iraq.

Nope, no need to wipe any nose coffee off my keyboard after that. I'm not sure what Professor Mankiw appreciated enough to post it.

The New Graeme Frosts II

(This is a long update to the post below, "The New Graeme Frosts.")

I wondered how long it would take to see the "bloggers are mean to the overweight" meme. Eidelblog links to a Kevin Hayden post dated 7:16 last night.

In the process, they neglect to consider the high percentages of Ohio families reporting similar financial difficulties, even those with family incomes between $40K and $79K. Paying for gas, getting a good job or getting a raise, paying for healthcare or insurance has grown difficult for between 1 and 4 and 1 in 2 Ohioans in that middle class income range.

They neglect to mention that the daughter seems motivated to work and to educate herself, while refusing to get pregnant to gain more assistance.

Leaving aside the unclaimed abstinence medal, there really are two stories here. Perry is right to focus on "state worship" as enabling these people to make bad decisions with little or no consequence. I'm equally interested as a media story. NPR wanted to run this story so very badly. I'm sure they advertised for someone to feature. And I am sure they were delighted to get Angelica and Gloria.

I am pretty uncomfortable piling on those two women, because -- unlike the Frosts -- they didn't put themselves up (Does NPR pay? I hope so in this instance.) And their plight is pretty sad. I will not agree with the commenters on Gateway Pundit who claim these two live a princely life because their percentage of fixed payments to income is low. I flatly condemn the cruel sexual comments.

My complaint is with NPR. Hayden has a point that it is more difficult to assemble a healthy diet on less money. They can't really afford a health club and personal trainer, and starchy, high carbohydrate foods are the cheapest. BUT THAT WASN'T THE STORY! Had NPR done a feature on those who find it hard to eat healthfully in Bush's Amerikkka, that would have been an option, and Ms. Nunez and Ms. Hernandez would have been great "gets."

But NPR was sworn to show starvation. That supports their call for more government help and puts the current administration’s policies in a bad light. So they comb the Buckeye State for a family to feature and these are the best they can find. Hayden tells us that a quarter of Ohio families are in that predicament -- so why did NPR choose Nunez and Hernandez?

I suggest that perhaps there are not millions of starving families in Ohio and that NPR had to scrape pretty far down the barrel.

The New Graeme Frosts

I assume many of you saw this, but I think everybody has to.

NPR profiled the plight of this family that has had to cut down on food. The headline on the NPR site is For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach. I'm sure the story was quite touching on the radio. I can almost hear the dulcet tones of the NPR announcer du jour, and the well produced transitions with acoustic music in the background.

Low-income families in Ohio say they are particularly hard-hit by the changes in the economy, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, The Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health.

In the blogosphere, however, the story has a different vibe because it includes a picture of Angelica Hernandez and Gloria Nunez, the "starving" family:



Now I hate to be cruel. I have been heavy most of my life and could certainly use to drop 20 pounds right now. But only NPR could present these two as suffering from a lack of food. (Okay, I'll be cruel: the headline "Meat out of reach" is apropos because none of them can lift her arms! -- Sorry.)

Like the Frosts, the family that starred in the Democratic Radio address to support SCIHP, maybe these people have -- I don't know -- made some bad choices, or have perhaps done something slightly wrong that has kept their income from keeping up with inflation?

Nunez and most of her siblings and their spouses are unemployed and rely on government assistance and food stamps. Some have part-time jobs, but working is made more difficult with no car or public transportation.

Yet the high prices have hit them hard as the accompanying graphic shows:



They're not hit by high gas prices because they don't have a car. They've cut back on food (no more ice cream!) so they are saving money. Their energy costs at home are subsidized and unchanged. Why were they chosen by NPR to support this story premise? Because they were the only family in Ohio that claimed they were eating less because of food prices. And because there are no pictures on radio.

Chain of hat-tips: Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, Moonbattery.

UPDATE: Mean-spirited photoshopping from Snapped Shot: Mondo-Heh!

Pretty Funny!

Conan is a little past my bedtime, but this clip made me laugh:





Senator McCain has a good sense of humor and sits through the bad jokes pretty patiently. Senator O is starting to make Nixon look like a laugh riot. (Are we rioting in the streets yet over the New Yorker cover?)

Another Grim Milestone

James Freeman, assistant editor for the WSJ Ed Page, has a guest editorial on the, um, WSJ editorial page. It starts with some stark news:

Is the great American financial engine that gave the world Intel and Google grinding to a halt? Last quarter marked the first time in 30 years that not a single company backed by venture capital went public in the U.S.

He admits that markets are off and that there are other, exogenous factors. But a drought is a drought, and I find this a brutal reminder that while the market system is extremely durable, individual markets can be quite fragile. America's dominant capital markets have plenty of competition. And these competitors lack SarbOx and Spitzerism.

This is bad news for the U.S. economy. Does anyone think that we would be better off if Bill Gates and Michael Dell had sold out to corporate behemoths early in their careers, instead of leading their firms for years as public companies? Would consumers enjoy the same vibrant market in Web services if Yahoo had gobbled up a nascent Google? How powerful would our computers be if Intel had become an IBM subsidiary, instead of going public in 1971?

That golden goose is not immortal. This long without a venture IPO is a bad sign. A worse sign is that the American government is talking about more punishment: cutting back on Golden Goose Chow® when we need eggs, and [this metaphor has been terminated by the Editors]

I'm not sure more taxes, additional regulation, higher energy costs, and a Rube Goldberg cap and trade plan will bring capital back to the markets.

Naked Shorts Bother You?

I cringed when SEC chief Christopher Cox moved to prohibit naked shorts against Fannie and Freddie. And not just because my inner Beavis and Butthead heard Cox, naked, shorts, and Fannie in the same sentence.

In my mind, a naked short is a pure derivative play that allows a trader to bet on a stock's going down. I'm a dull, broad-index, ETF guy myself, but I believe pure option plays provide more efficient price information and get risk in the hands of those who can best handle it. This call from a sharp GOP administration official like Cox sounded like blaming oil prices on "evil speculators."

To my surprise, Donald L. Luskin strongly criticized the practice on Kudlow last night. I just sent a letter to Mr. Luskin suggesting that he expound on it. (Heh: just got a response, he says "Done." While I was typing this he answered and posted a response.)

"Naked" shorting and "naked" option-writing have nothing to do with each other, except for the coincidence of the term "naked." In the case of option-writing, the "naked" writer is simply taking a short position in a put or a call without a risk-offsetting position in the underlying asset (usually a stock). I have no problem with that at all. A short option, whether "naked" or not, is simply a contract to sell (in the case of a short call) or buy (in the case of a short put) at a fixed price by a fixed date. No issue there.

However, "naked" shorting is an entirely different matter. When you sell a stock short, you are selling something you do not own. Yet the buyer requires that you deliver to him the thing he bought from you. Normally you accomplish that by arranging to borrow the shares from someone else who owns them. You sell the borrowed shares, and deliver them to the buyer in exchange for the buyer's cash. Ultimately, you expect to buy back the stock at a lower price, and replace the borrowed shares. In "naked" shorting, you sell to the buyer without any intention of borrowing stock to deliver. So on settlement day, your trade fails. You cannot deliver what you do not have. Yet when you made the sale, you were implicitly promising to deliver. After the fail, you can cure the problem by buying stock and delivering it, hopefully at a profitably lower price. But shat amounts to fraud -- in very much the same way that kiting checks amounts to fraud. It doesn't matter if you ultimately deliver. At the time of the sale, you had no intention or capability to deliver.

The WSJ Editorial page today is a little closer to my position. They're not full-throated endorsers by any means:

Not that the SEC's emergency order to bar naked short selling is quite the disaster proclaimed by some traders. It's possible that it won't do much harm, and this is a titanic achievement for any policy coming out of Washington these days. At the end of the day, the order is not a ban on all short selling, which is a bet that a stock price will fall and is a critical ingredient for efficient markets.

Will the SEC rule prevent the 19 designated financial firms from reaching the valuations that investors would otherwise assign to them? Probably not. The only certain result is that Wall Street trading desks and IT departments will spend time and money scrambling to reconfigure their transaction systems by 12:01 a.m. Monday when the order becomes effective. This is sand in the gears of our financial markets and at the margin may slow down vital price signals, given the extra step required to lock down the shares before shorting them. In that way it may not benefit the firms it is intended to help because it will reduce liquidity.

I am on vacation, so I have some time to ponder Luskin's response. I understand the technical difference but I am not sure I grab a philosophical difference that makes one side a legitimate play and the other the equivalent of kiting checks. I'm keeping an open mind.

"I am a small eye poet."

If my posts seem more trivial than usual, I am on vacation this week. Grinding, tedious partisan hackery will return in full force next week.

But today, I got an email from a niece of mine that made me chuckle. There's a T-Shirt at Café Press:

EVERYTIME YOU POST WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON, e e cummings kills a kitten.

Following a link in the comments, I found this. Norman Friedman of the English department at Grand Valley State University (Go Lakers!) makes a good case that mister Cummings's name should be typeset with conventional case.

I always use lower case for my two character sobriquet (which adds three keystrokes to keep MS-Word® from auto-correcting it). Without ee, I am losing academic support.

Dodged a bullet

The Wall Street Journal reports that Starbucks has released the locations of the 600 stores that will be closed in their restructuring, complete with a list of the ill-fated locations.

There are only nine in Colorado; none is a regular haunt of mine. In fact, I think I've only been to one of them. My regular drive-thrus are spared. Whew!

Why are we in Iraq?

"Joe from Denver wants to know, 'Why are we in Iraq and how will we know when we've won the war?'"

Listen to Bob Schaffer, Colorado's Republican candidate for the US Senate, explain it.

In politics this is what's known as a direct hit.

Quote of the Day

It's a photo caption:

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid walks from his Chevrolet Suburban (left) to attend a news conference on energy efficiency Wednesday in Upper Senate Park. Reid rode in the sport utility vehicle from the Capitol to the event, which was across the street.”