The BHB Needs a Job Picking Lotto Numbers

The BHB has been accused of foretelling the future on occasion, and I suppose posts like this are the reason.

Case in point: As Bloomberg notes, things are continuing to go precisely as expected.

The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

“The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week.

Does it still count as "change" if it's the type none of us "hoped" for? This is a serious question.

In Rare Form

Finally some evidence regarding whether or not Sotomayor is racist or not:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor firmly denied racial bias Tuesday at her Senate confirmation hearing.

Oh, well I guess that settles it.

Sure, it's easy to lie to the Democrat Senate, but it's something else entirely to have them life for you.

Democrats were protective, occasionally offering her opportunities to counter her critics. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., noted, for example, that in 17 years as a trial and appeals court judge, Sotomayor had rarely been overturned by the Supreme Court.

And just to be clear: In the Obama Era, "rarely overturned" means OVERTURNED 60% OF THE TIME.

When Obama eventually appoints his dog to the Federal Reserve I can't wait to hear supporting arguments the Left puts together.

Also, can we get some kind of scale to demonstrate how terms like "rarely" relate numerically?

For example, something like this.

A Referendum

It's easy to dislike Sarah Palin, and this NYT article (predictably) makes it even easier. Even the LAT gets in on the act.

But I ask this: She is clearly unlikable, she is clearly underqualified (not that that is a deal breaker anymore, right Barack?), she is clearly unelectable -- so why the raging antagonism?

The level of wrath this also-ran continues to endure is not proportionate to her level of clout, accomplishments or foreseeable potential.

That leaves me to wonder what it is about her that makes so many people feel threatened. Historically, whenever a superpower begins to direct its might on a notably weaker party, it is a clear sign that the superpower is in decline.

In order to refute either of the last two sentences, Palin's opponents are forced to admit she's a force to be reckoned with, and I don't think anyone believes that.

It seems as if the critics feel she has somehow betrayed them. She was a woman with a great deal of local power and a chance at great national power, but she was a conservative. Granted a brainless, the-world-is-7000-years-old-and-dinosaurs-are-a-myth type of conservative, but politcally red nonetheless.

And it was as if placing a woman in office who refused to tow the line on pro-choice ideology and who talked voluminously about putting family and kids first was some type of betrayl. It was something akin to the reaction we would have seen had been J.C. Watts and not Barry -- but much, much angrier.

The vitriol aimed at an irrelevant factor like Palin has nothing to do with her political career at all, but it is instead a referendum on what the press and the Left see as the acceptable role of women in society.

It appears that there is far less tolerance than anyone suspected for conservative values female political actors, i.e. the pundits felt Palin was betraying them by rejecting the blood and sweat they had spent fighting for pro-choice laws, or that she was confirming the sexism causing gender-based wage discrimination by talking about how her first love was being a mom and her career came second.

And, thanks to her nasty habit of never finishing a sentence without mentioning God, Palin also confronted their ideas about the secular society and the emphasis placed on human-powered achievement.

The scathing referendum the media has held on Palin has amounted to a gaggle of teenage girls shouting "HOW DARE YOU!" at the insolent friend that has decided to controvert every bylaw of their clique.

This fact makes Palin amusing, if not quite charming. But, no, I never used the word "likable" or "electable."

According to Plan

There were some critics of the misguided economic stimulus plan who said that the plan was so fatally flawed that it seemed as if the president (and, specifically, his handlers) were purposefully creating terrible legislation.

When the economy got worse as a result of its implementation, this criticism was renewed, but, the pundits assured us, this continued meltdown was simply an unintended, unanticipated consequence.

So, who was right?

Helpfully, Barry-O settled the debate.

Bloomberg notes:

President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended.”

Fantastic.

07/11/09: Also Worth Noting

Quote of the week: "Sharpton has never met a conspiracy he didn’t embrace, and possibly grope."

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Casual Friday? How about My-Business-is-in-Your-Face Thursday? No thanks.

* * *

Years ago, when an accident like this took place, we called it natural selection. Now it's some kind of tragedy.

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Our president has been very busy at the G8 Summit. And by busy, I mean -- well, you get it.

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This movie

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If you ever are feeling lazy, this story will make you feel even lazier.

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A group of black teenagers attacked and mercilessly beat a white couple after a Fourth of July party while shouting "This is a black world!" Luckily for the teenagers, this does not qualify as a hate crime because the beating was handed out by minorities who, we're told, are not capable of being racist because, after all, racism is something that only white people are capable of feeling.

* * *

If you do have to die, there are worse ways than falling into an industrial vat of chocolate.

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Corny? Yes. But not the worst special effects you'll see this summer.

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Criticism that America's litigious nature has made a career in law enforcement unappealing is underscored by the training offered to new cadets in Philadelphia. On the day of their police academy graduation they attend a training workshop entitled, "What can get you fired?" Sure, they could be learning some additional law enforcemnt techniques, but no.

* * *

To understand how willing crazy people like North Korea and Iran are to obtain and use nuclear weapons, it helps to consider the sacrfices they are willing and eager to have their citizens endure to reach such a goal.

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As noted last week, this song is fantastic. Equally entertaining is the English translation of the lyrics. And the dancing of the backup singer on the choruses, of course.

Let the Games Begin

Every day the judicial philoshophy of Sotomayor becomes clearer, and it is not pretty.

In addition to her oft-boasted belief that judges can create laws and policy from the bench, she has shown an alarming eagerness to, in the words of one expert, "overstep the traditional role of appellate judges." I.e., change the decisions of lower courts as she sees fit.

This has meant that instead of hearing an appeal she has scoured the evidence of the case itself, in a sense re-opening a closed investigation, and come to her own (often biased) conclusions about the merits of the evidence, witnesses, etc.

Sotomayor and seven mostly Democratic colleagues voted to set free a convicted murderer who did not contest his guilt but had been tried on what the court called the wrong murder charge. In another, she joined an opinion that cited flawed jury instructions in throwing out a man's conviction for enticing someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl into sex.

And when she threw out a life prison term for a convicted heroin dealer, ordering that he be resentenced, Sotomayor wrote that judges should not show "slavish adherence" to the "literal terms" of then-mandatory sentencing guidelines.

One of her fellow judges rebuked this practice, noting that "appellate courts are not factfinders."

Although her liberal supporters in the legislature have no problem with creating erroneous law out of thin air, the White House should be prepared for a fight at her confirmation hearings.

After proudly ruining the careers of 19 firefighters without giving it a second thought, Sotomayor will have to face (likely for the first time in her life) the consequences of her bad decisions.

Republicans will call two New Haven firefighters to testify in the confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor next week, making clear the GOP's intent to place affirmative action at the center of the Senate battle over Sotomayor's nomination.

A Judiciary Committee press release lists Frank Ricci and Ben Vargas as expected Republican witnesses. Ricci was the lead plaintiff in Ricci v. DeStefano, the controversial case in which Sotomayor ruled the New Haven fire department acted constitutionally when it discounted the results of a qualifying test for promotion

The reaction to this is pretty predictable. Instead of a mea culpa for such a legal abomination, Sotomayor's supporters have another plan:

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize...firefighter Frank Ricci.

With all of this in mind, should this CNN poll surprise any of us:

Sonia Sotomayor will begin her confirmation hearings next week with some of the highest levels of public opposition of any Supreme Court nominee in the last two decades, according to a new poll by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation.

The Obama Era: Doing its Best to do its Worst!

Hackers vs. the BGM-109A

News out of D.C. reports an ongoing cyber attack staged against the U.S.

The US State Department said Thursday its website came under cyberattack for a fourth day running as it tried to prevent further attacks. [...]

According to computer security experts, a dozen US government websites, including those of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, were targeted in a coordinated cyberattack which also struck sites in South Korea.

South Korean lawmakers were quoted as saying Wednesday that South Korea's intelligence service believes North Korea or its sympathizers may have staged the attack.

I recall a quaint time in world history where an attack on a country was not ignored. It was a time when violence perpetrated by an enemy would be addressed in such a way that the enemy was no longer capable of perpetrating additional violence.

Now, however, we nicely (but firmly) ask them to "cut it out."

It's not difficult to determine where these attacks originate, and it's even easier to send a couple dozen cruise missiles to that precise location.

Also of note, among the attacked sites were whitehouse.gov and state.gov. How much sensitive information really exists on these sites? If these cyber warriors actually manage to crack Barry-O's password and login to the "Employees Only" section of the site, can they really get acess to launch codes or black ops manifests? It seems unlikely.

So let's focus on the cruise missiles.

Sinking Like a Rock

Oh noes!!!

Barry's approval numbers are at an all-time low, and his disapproval numbers are at an all-time high!

Who could have foreseen this completely foreseeable outcome!?!

Hint: The BHB.

A Strange End to a Very Strange Life

Michael Jackson's funeral marked the end of a sad, strange saga.

It is easy to praise his remarkable professional accomplishments, but impossible to ignore what he did recreationally. Both of these facets are pitched against the sad fact of a fatally injured psyche which produced the bursts of genius fueling the former, while also stirring a darkness which compelled the latter.

This sad conflict (which is not, by any means, unique to just him) was nowhere more apparent than his funeral, a spectacle accurately refereed to as a "macabre circus."

Jackson did not unite world culture or overcome racism like his eulogizers claimed, but he was a musical talent with very few peers. And incredible talent and achievement are things we ought to respect and admire, even while we are wary of those who bear it.

Perhaps one of the few balanced statements about his life is this: Jackson will be remembered as the most celebrated man you would never leave alone with your children.

When Many Types of Failure Can be Considered Success

In the midst a historic string of bad legislation, it's interesting to hear what Barry-O's supporters (the ones that can be honest about what's happening) have to say about it.

Unfortunately, there is a problem. This is not, as many Republicans argue, that neither issue requires forthright action. Both do. The problem is that the bills emerging from Congress are bad and Mr Obama does not seem to mind.

The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself. [...]

It creates a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences – and the bottom line for all that is business as usual. [...]

The president has cast himself not as a leader of reform, but as a cheerleader for “reform” – meaning anything, really, that can plausibly be called reform, however flawed. He has defined success down so far that many kinds of failure now qualify.

Please mark that last sentence as the official motto of the Obama presidency.

Saving Energy Will Cost You Money

The primary problem with the energy policies espoused by beloved scientist Al Gore and the angry four year old we call a president, is that they have very little to do with environment and everything to do with power and revenue.

The first evidence of this has shown up in Missouri, and you can be sure you'll see it elsewhere in very short order.

Some Missouri residents and businesses soon could see a new charge on their electric bills — a fee for using less energy.

Though it might seem illogical, the new energy efficiency charge has support from utilities, most lawmakers, the governor, environmentalists and even the state’s official utility consumer aadvocate. The charge covers the cost of utilities’ efforts to promote energy efficiency and cut power use.

Thus, if you actually do use less energy (like we're told we must, or the earth will explode), you must pay for the privelege of being responsible. And what are the odds that environmentalists are on board with this idea!? Afterall, it's not like these people have jobs, so you can understand their eagerness for a new revenue stream.

In case you're not aghast enough, there's another wrinkle to the story:

The commission last week approved a program in which St. Louis-based AmerenUE can offer credits to businesses that voluntarily shut down or scale back their electricity use during peak demand.

AmerenUE will be able to recoup the cost for the program that starts Thursday by increasing the rates it charges business customers.

Not only are people penalized for using less energy in their day-to-day life, they also get penalized again to pay for enegy-saving (i.e. money saving) upgrades made by the power plants to their own infastructure.

Peer into the future of a country powered by the Obama energy policy.

The Health of Healthcare

After looking to Hollywood for hundreds of millions of dollars, our president need look no farther than the Sunshine State to see a stunning example of why his healthcare plan is a colossal miscalculation.

Bloomberg notes,

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. [...]

Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s own economist, Martin Feldstein, spoke up when he felt that the Reagan administration was pushing the deficit too far. Where are the economists with such character today? Apparently, the job description for economists has transformed from recommending policies that are defensible to defending whatever policies that the political hacks in the West Wing dream up.

As bad as the California legislature has been over the years, it has never entered a fiscal crisis like the one that we face today and then doubled down with a massive spending increase.

The Obama Era: When ostensibly good intentions are all that really matter. Even when they're historically moronic.

Affirming Action

Our president, in a completely surprising move, doesn't think affirmative action is really such a big deal.

President Barack Obama says he's never believed that affirmative action is as much of an issue as it's been made out to be.

He later added, "But it certainly is helpful to have an institutionalized way to remind America of its racist past when you're running for president on the 'If You Don't vote for Me You're Racist' platform."

But if you really want to hear someone get mad about affirmative action, I direct you to this happy guy.

07/04/09: Also Worth Noting

If you dont like this song, I have no time for you.

* * *

Gary Coleman is at the center of a domestic violence case. He was not the one inflicting the violence.

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NYC, I am ashamed of you. Air guitar? Really?

* * *

I'm trying to think of something positive to say about inventing useless stuff just for the sake of inventing it. I'm sure it's helpful eventually, right?

* * *

The e-mails exchanged by the South Carolina governor and his girlfriend are pretty tame. I always imagined that if a corny white guy was cheating on his wife with an exotic Brazilian reporter, things would be a lot more exciting.

* * *

Once upon a time we waged a brutal, pitched conflict with the Soviets, and today we hammer out cyberspace treaties with our enemies. Remarkable. This seems like the right time to mention a remake of Red Dawn is in the works. I'm depressed by both developments.

* * *

Somewhere in this family-wide time lapse photography there is a joke, but I can't come up with it.

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If you aren't delightfully amused by this piece of political satire, then go back to your cartoons. Notice I didn't say "brilliant" or "accurate" or "rational" -- I said "amusing."

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Apparently the entire planet is one single ant colony. Not figuratively, but literally.

* * *

Japan is well underway with a project to create "super tuna" for eventual commercial harvest. Don't they recall what happened when they tried something similar with otherwise normal lizards?

* * *

I've seen a lot of people get beat up (for example), but never for this reason.

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This makes me feel safer: "President Barack Obama says he is 'not reconciled' to the idea of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon within a year." I can't wait to gauge his level of reconciliation when Tel Aviv or Boston is a smoking crater.

* * *

I know I've asked this rhetorical question before, but, I'll offer this querry again: Do you know what happens when you give clearly insane people an unlimited supply of money? This. It takes a lot for me to look at cake but still not be hungry.

* * *

If you enjoy The Soup, then you're probably as excited as I am for this show.

* * *

In an effort to remain solvent without needing to do anything absurd like cut spending, New Jersey has decided to increase taxes on the people who pay the most taxes to start with. It's a brilliant tactic that will, of course, cause all these taxpayers to leave. When you notice NJ for sale on e-Bay this October, you'll know why.

* * *

Sure, it's a time of mourning, but that doesn't mean Al Sharpton (the reverend, keep in mind) can't honor the memory of the King of Pop by grinding on some random skank.

You Wanted Change? You Got it.

He kept promising it, and he certainly has delivered: Obama is changing everything we've come to expect from the White House.

From his habit of glaring like an angry four-year-old when people say things he doesn't like, to mocking reporters and causing the rest of the press corp to giggle like fools.

The one change that was uncertain to get backlash, however, was his control/manipulation of the press.

Throughout the primaries and the 2008 election cycle, the press was all too willing to accept these machinations, but now, it seems, they have had quite enough.

At a press conference yesterday, during the daily press briefing, the White House press pool learned that the upcoming "town hall" meeting with the president would only contain pre-screened attendees and pre-approved, pre-written questions.

It's worth watching.

When cornered, our president's Joey Goebbels impersonator started giggling like a fool and (taking a cue from his classy boss) tried to make lame, snarky comments to deflect attention from the obvious problem he was hopelessly trying to defend.

Change, indeed.

Media Terrorism: Beware

Despite standing for things like peace, prosperity and other things he doesn't really care about, Hugo Chavez will not stand for dissent.

Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets holding separate protests to support and condemn private TV station Globovision, which leftist President Hugo Chavez has threatened to shut down.

Protesters aligned with the opposition called for "defending access to information." [...]

Caracas has stepped up its criticism of Globovision, the only anti-Chavez station still broadcasting on Venezuela's public airwaves, with the country's telecommunications regulator launching four different investigations into the channel for alleged violations.

What is it that protestors against the station have in mind?

As with all Left-leaning movements, their reasons are pretty clever.

Thousands of Chavez supporters also marched Saturday alongside "socialist" journalists. At their final stop before parliament, they handed a petition to the president of the national assembly, Cilia Flores, calling for "an end to media terrorism,"

What on earth is "media terrorism?" The forces trying to shut down Globovision cite outrageous behavior like reporting the occurence of a devastating earthquake before the government issued an official statement, or airing critical comments about government officials.

Please, America, just for a moment, peer into the future of Obama's second term.

Maghred Gets Tough

As anticipated (sort of), Al-Qaeda's North African franchise is calling for the destrction of France.

The group's stated reason for this fun new jihad:

"We will take revenge for the honour of our daughters and sisters against France and against its interests by every means at our disposal."

In the first draft of this message, the following sentence read, "Because if anyone is going to enslave our women and treat them like cattle, it's us."

Sub-Zero at the White House

Following official BHB projections, the Manchurian Messiah has now fallen from grace, then to zero, and now to below zero.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2.

What a tragedy.

Constructively Expressing Our Emotions

Our president is often criticized for being under-prepared, inexperienced or too-easily upset, but now it appears that all of this is simple to explain.

What does our president do when faced with comments or people he does not like?

He glares at them. Openly. To make sure everyone sees and dutifully notes it.

Our president is 5 years old.

Being Racist Proves You're Not Racist

The logic of the Obama Era is like no other. The finest example in recent weeks is the SCOTUS reversal of Barry's nominee for the bench.

Not willing to applaud the rectification of a racist ruling, the White House is instead celebrating the ruling using the logic that being racist proves you're not racist.

Spinning a Supreme Court decision in its favor, the White House said Monday that the justices' reversal of a ruling that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge proves that she follows judicial precedent.

The high court ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race.

Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said the ruling should put to rest claims by Sotomayor 's Senate critics that she's an activist judge.

What? Really? What is going on?

Somewhere, the Angels Can't Get their Wallets Out Fast Enough

While still mourning the loss of Billy Mays (I'm not beings sarcastic), it's worth noting the demise of one of his competitors -- an individual Billy was intent on destroying (as he hilariously noted on this radio show) in his final, tragically shortened, days.

I'm talking about the ShamWow guy.

It turns out Mr. ShamWow, aka Vince Shlomi, beats the living crap out of hookers. To see his handiwork, check out these mugshots (which feature both the punching bag and the puncher).

The story is that ShlomWow paid $1000 for the services of said punching bag, then things turned bad when she bit his tongue and wouldn't let go and the subsequent face beating began in earnest. You can read the arrest report here.

How does something this bizarre happen? My guess is that he tried to pay with ShamWows.

Somewhere, I'm sure Billy finds this amusing.

But he doesn't have time to gloat; heaven is a huge, untapped market for must-have household products.

Rest in peace, Billy.

JUSTICE! JUSTICE! JUSTICE!!!!

In an unexpected moment of justice, SCOTUS has overturned the miscarriage of justice perpetrated against the New Haven, CT firefighters.

The Supreme Court today narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court.

The city had thrown out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have qualified for promotions. It said it feared a lawsuit from minorities under federal laws that said such "disparate impacts" on test results could be used to show discrimination. [...]

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. [...]

The New Haven case, Ricci v. DeStefano, has become the ruling that Sotomayor's critics most point to for evidence that she lets her background influence her decisions.

Kennedy's opinion referred to the judgment of Sotomayor and the other judges only by noting the short opinion.

Kennedy said the standard for whether an employer may discard a test is whether there is a strong reason to the employer to believe that the test is flawed in a way that discriminates against minorities, not just by looking at the results.

In New Haven's case, "there is no evidence -- let alone the required strong basis in evidence -- that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city," Kennedy wrote. [...]

The case has drawn considerable attention not just because of Sotomayor's role but because of the sympathetic nature of the claim brought by the firefighters, who said they were discriminated against simply because of the color of their skin.

For years SCOTUS has existed as a way to correct the biased, inaccurate, misinformed, under-educated and blatantly wrong decisions made by lower court judges, such as Sotomayor (who has had SIXTY PERCENT of her decisions reversed).

By elevating her to the highest court, American citizens no longer have a source of respite or last resort from her pathological mistreatment of the law.

Regardless, I haven't been this happily surprised since Ramos and Compean were set free.

It's a great, great day in America.

A Second Try at Disaster

In a perfect world, the debate about who is responsible for the economy's meltdown would be over.

The people instinctively blaming Bush would have long since realized that the President had nothing to do with the Senate committees that set mortgage rate and banking standards. It'd be nice to point out that these committees were owned and operated by democrats, specifically Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

The only good to come out of this -- with confused blame or not -- is that the Senate, and especially those two senators, would never try something stupid again.

But, as usual, there is no end to the things the Left is willing to do wrong.

Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages. [...]

In a letter to the CEO's of both companies, Representatives Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner warned that a 70 percent sales threshold "may be too onerous."

I can't begin to wrap my brain around this. If ever there was someting indefensible, it is this.

Transformations Afoot

During the election, the Manchurian Messiah produced a comically long string of promises that no one bothered to question.

It was obvious he was lying, even, in all likelihood, to his most avid supporters, but no one seemed to mind.

When he wasn't lying about the future, he was lying about his past, and, when the dust started to settle, he lied about the facts behind his genuinely terrible plans for the country.

This problem has, once again, become clear in the run up to the "Let's All Get Unemployed" climate change bill.

More significant than the eight ostensible conservative GOP reps that voted for the bill, is the lengths the Obama Administration went to supress the facts about what this bill will mean to the economic interests of our country.

Note:

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington has obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama’s willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of “consensus.”

In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health “endangerment finding” covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin’s study didn’t fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn’t make the cut.

On March 12, Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study.

“There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency’s climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the “process” of ramming the EPA’s endangerment finding through. Truth-in-science took a backseat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from “a very negative impact.” [...]

The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) “is an individual who is not a scientist.” Neither is Al Gore. Nor is environmental czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi.

Carlin’s analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and, as he informed his colleagues, “significant new research” related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study, it spotlights EPA’s reliance on out-of-date research, uncritical recycling of United Nations data, and omission of new developments, including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior won’t be different than in the past.

Other pieces of legislation might have only destroyed the livelihoods and life savings of people who use electricity, drive cars or buy things from stores. But this bill will effectively make the energy you expend while jogging for 30 minutes a resource the government can regulate and incarcerate you for producing without a permit.

No, I'm not exagerating.

Legislation like this does nothing to benefit the lives of American citizens, but places immense, new, centralized powers in the hands of the Federal government. This fact is worth a moment's consideration amidst the self-congratulating press conferences at the White House and the House of Reps.

Speaking of this bill in the glowing terms of a co-conspirator, Commissar Pelosi noted, "We passed transformational legislation, which will take us into the future."

She's exactly right, but while she keeps the mansions paid for with her Starkist dirty money, the rest of us will get to enjoy the truly transformational future she's helping create.

Obama Reaches Zero

The Great Uniter is having some real problems delivering on those pipe dream promises to bring together a divided nation.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0.

This has come quite a way from inauguration day his approval index was +28 -- back when no one knew anything about him. Back when people still believed that a man with no credentials, no leadership experience, no tangible ideas, and no concrete solutions could lead a super power.

The BHB promises to never stop shaming everyone who elected this man.

But, of course, it's not like our other option was a real champ, either.

Intrawebs, Please Note: You've Been Warned

Cantankerous old men are delightful (as documentaries have noted), but perhaps none more than legendary American author, Ray Bradbury.

His love of libraries is commendable, but it is made especially enjoyable when he contrasts this passion with his vintage old-man distaste for the intrawebs.

Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read.

The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

I nominate this as the single greatest old man rant of the year -- possibly ever.

Hitting the Fairway, Hitting Rock Bottom

It's amazing how the Obama Era can even make a game of golf is suddenly sublime.

When criticism began to circulate about Bush's occasional golf outings, he responded like this:

In August 2003, Bush said he decided to stop playing golf to show his respect for the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” Bush said in an interview with Politico and Yahoo News on May 13, 2008. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

However, even giving up golf was met with criticism because critics stated (with some accuracy) that it seemed too little too late.

But now, the Manchurian Messiah's regular golf outings (each one recorded in loving detail by the press) despite the same war and an economic meltdown are a source of praise.

The Washington Post on June 9, 2009, staff writer Richard Leiby wrote. “The attraction seems to be simple. It’s a great escape; the game demands such attention that nothing else matters. It’s time spent with friends, an unhurried afternoon in loose clothing (shorts seem to be Obama’s preference).”

Leiby continued, “To some, Obama’s frequent outings reflect a cool self-confidence.”

As noted before, we have reached a stage wherein Obama could bring a reporters mother on national TV, hit her with a shovel while shouting homophobic slurs and then wakeup the next day to a glowing front page story about it.

Alas.

An "Open Election" in the "Completely Closed" Sense of the Phrase

As if giving the rest of the world yet another reason to not take it seriously, Iran has warned peaceful demonstrators outraged at a rigged election that they need to shut up RIGHT now.

Iranian police massing in force broke up a demonstration over the disputed presidential election just hours after the Revolutionary Guards said they would crush further protest. [...]

“The saboteurs must stop their actions” or face “the decisive and revolutionary action of the children of the nation in the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij and other security and military forces, to put an end to the chaos,” the state-run Mehr news agency cited the Revolutionary Guards as saying in a statement.

It's important to note that the protesters (who must be terrified to defy a country and leadership who do not value human life) destroyed nothing and sabotaged nothing.

It's also important to note that these "guards" sit in trees and shoot protesters in the chest.

In the meantime, members of the national soccer team have been kicked off the roster for simply voicing support for the opposing candidate.

But what, exactly, is it they are protesting?

Basic things like this:

The clerical Guardian Council, the top election body, acknowledged that the number of ballots cast in 50 districts surpassed the number of eligible voters in those areas.

World leaders are now forced to confront the unpleasant idea that these are the leaders they must bargain with if they choose a diplomatic resolution to Iran's ongoing problems. Faced with this realization, who can blame these world leaders for instead deciding to simply lob bombs into Tehran?

Furthermore, who could have guessed someone as ostensibly lovable as Ahmadinejad would be so evil?

I Will Buy this Baseball Card

If you don't know the name Bryce Harper yet, you should get familiar.

He's 16 years old, hits 570 foot homeruns, and, if things go as planned, will play in the MLB in 2010.


This cover story in Sports Illustrated is worth reading. Also, the cover is worth checking out, too.

The Presidency: Version 43.2

Because he totally has nothing to hide, Obama is keeping his list of (apparently creepy) visitors a secret.

This action is also known as "I'm G. W. Bush Part 2, and I can prove it!"

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present.

It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

Oh, Barry. Is there no end to how disappointing future generations will find you?

Also Featured: A Rotisserie Grill

As the BHB has noted before, at least when the network news outlets stop pretending to be objective, we can rest easy knowing who they really are.

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care.

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

Regardless, it is still mind boggling.

Biting Off the Hand that Enables You

Reason #3493 why dealing with radical Islam through diplomatic channels is unproductive: The single largest defender of militant Islam was in Gaza this weekend and they tried to kill him.

Hamas said it foiled an attempt by Palestinian terrorists to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter during his visit to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian sources told news agencies.

Yes, it was Hamas that allegedly "foiled" the assassination attempt, but that means that one radical Muslim group supported their favorite puppet, while an even more radical group couldn't stomach the idea of a non-Muslim slipping through their fingers with his head still attached.

Or, as Jimmy calls it, "progress!"

The Obama Era: Investigators Should No Longer Investigate

Obama is still paying off his debts.

Another of the Community Organizing groups Obama used to comb through cemeteries to find voters was investigated for corruption.

The solution? Obama fired the investigator.

An inspector general fired by President Barack Obama said Friday he acted "with the highest integrity" in investigating AmeriCorps and other government-funded national service programs.

Gerald Walpin said in an interview with The Associated Press that he reported facts and conclusions "in an honest and full way" while serving as inspector general at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

In a letter to Congress on Thursday, Obama said he had lost confidence in Walpin and was removing him from the position.

Here's a bit of translation: "Lost confidence" = "Preventing the discovery of a link back to me."

The president is also trying to find a way to fire him immediately rather than waiting for the mandatory 30 day period between notification and removal from the post of Inspector General.

This rule was installed to protect inspectors from being terminated hastily by politicians whose interests they may be investigating.

The 30 day notice was put in place by then-Senator Obama when he was hoping to dig up dirt on Bush 43.

But now things are TOTALLY different and this guy -- who has never been criticized in any of his previous investigations, his getting thrown out.

The role of the IG is defined "as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse." But, Obama complains, those are three of the four food groups!

If those are eliminated, he's only left with incompetence.

06/13/09: Also Worth Noting

A man in Nevada has been arrested "on suspicion of being naked near a high school." I'm no lawyer, but it seems that, barring a person being very hairy, there shouldn't be any uncertainty whether or not he is naked.

* * *

If there was any lingering question about how worthless parking enforcement cops may be, I offer you this story.

* * *

If you've never heard David Sedaris read his classic story, "You Can't Kill the Rooster," it is worth the 12 minutes. I get wistful for my childhood and my younger brother every time I hear it.

* * *

A ballpark in Michigan is offering a hamburger that clocks in at 4,800 calories. This may seem impossible, but, have you ever seen a photo of the average Michigan resident?

* * *

Gladwell hits another home run with this piece about how Davids beat Goliaths.

* * *

Stoned dogs!? Where will the laughs stop!

* * *

Citing statistics that it reduces the transmission of STDs, it looks like Los Angeles decided to use my tagline for their new pro-circumcision campaign: "Axe Your Junk, Avoid the Gunk."

* * *

As noted earlier this week: An impending, impossible to stop, collapse of the Evangelical Right? Is anyone else but me getting excited for this?

* * *

Some official from the Greek Orthodox Church prayed that our president will emulate Alexander the Great and "be able to cut the Gordian knot of these unresolved issues." Here's a quick history lesson for all the Greek clergy and Obama staffers reading the BHB: Alexander "solved" the Gordian knot by hacking it in half with his sword. How literally should I take this metaphor? I have plenty of ideas, and the efforts he has made to fracture our country make for some pretty vivid comparisons...

* * *

In a society that is trying to move beyond a racist past and embrace a future wherein no race-based boundaries exist, these brave entrepreneurs are willing to have none of it.

* * *

In a sign of his now-typical decision making acumen, Barry can't make up his mind about whether or not to release Guantanamo prisoners in the U.S. Let's break down this down: What should we do with a group of men who were captured while participating in a war wherein they swore to kill all Americans and/or non-Muslims? I know, let's set them loose in the suburbs!

* * *

Not only is it necessary to believe in global warming (because at this point, it really is religion -- no one can seem to prove or disprove it) these days to get elected, but you also have to believe in it to own a Burger King franchise.

* * *

Because Europe is a completely rational place, the "Pirate Party" has won a seat in Sweden's parliament. Their platform? "Deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet." We'll see how long these sentiments last when a competing party hacks their computer, steals all their data, and presents it as their own.

* * *

Obama continues stealing pages from "Chicken Soup for the Tyrant's Soul." Now he plans to demolish sections of cities where undesirable people live and herd them into centralized locations. I'm guessing he'll use cattle cars to transport everyone.

* * *

Sure, it takes doing some pretty dirty things during the course of your career and, in effect, being the legitimate front for the entire Russian mob, but having a boat like this is pretty sweet.

* * *

I can see how a device for tracking people who suffer from Alzheimer's and have a tendency to wander away from home can be valuable. But I can't imagine how to market it without sounding insulting.

* * *

A man in Alabama has been arrested for trying to buy food at McDonalds with a counterfeit $100 bill. Can you imagine how much terrible food you could buy with $100? You could single-handedly destroy the vascular systems of a small city.

* * *

Sales of the Prius in the U.S. are down 45% this year. That's bad news for Al Gore, but good news for the environment.

* * *

The annual scholarly convention dedicated to presenting scientific evidence that contradicts our beloved scientist Al Gore was held over the weekend. One of the few articles covering the event read, "Welcome to the third annual International Conference on Climate Change, a daylong session of speeches and scientific presentations that took place Tuesday just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Almost no media covered the event." It's worth reading this write up to review all the pros and cons of such events.

* * *

Remember when Obama was making promises about not letting corporate donors and big spenders influence his political decisions? Well, he just appointed four more donors (i.e. people with no governmental experience) as ambassadors.

* * *

After seeing their own economies melt down, countries in the EU parliament ousted vast numbers of left leaning and socialist (self-titled, I might add) parties. How much worse are things going to get in the U.S. before we start doing similar things? 2012 is a very, very far away.

* * *

This is shocking news: The crack team of proto-Marxists restructuring the economy just can't get along. What are the odds that a den of thieves and political vermin can't all see eye-to-eye -- and just months after they all gathered in Hyde Park to sing Kumbaya. Larry Summers would be well served to reflect on what eventually happened to Leon Troksky -- Lenin's former BFF and political ally -- once he ran afoul of the inner circle.

* * *

That one guy from American Idol has some breaking news: "The 27-year-old singer from San Diego acknowledges in an interview that he’s gay, and says it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone." Please note: It surprises no one.

* * *

Do you remember Pastor Bonkers, the long-time minister at Obama's church in Chicago? It turns out he and Barry haven't spoken since it became clear that a presidential candidate couldn't make it so obvious he believed all the things Wright kept saying. When asked if how long it had been since they last spoke, Wright replied, "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me." Classy.

* * *

Sure, America has its problems, but our instances of arms being ripped off by bread kneading machines is remarkably low.

* * *

Is there any story more boring or more indicative of America's weak military leadership (starting with the Commander-in-Chief) than the oft-reprinted story about closing in on Bin Laden?

* * *

In these difficult economic times, some people have begun renting closets rather than full apartments. People in NYC are familiar with this phenomenon by it's more common name, i.e. "Every apartment in Manhattan."

* * *

The Israeli military has created robot battle snakes. This is either: a) Awesome, b) Creepy, c) Armageddon, d) All of the above.

* * *

It's interesting to watch members of the Obama administration do things just to show their friends that nothing they do will be criticized -- no matter what it is. Case in point: Barry's scary wife went on a tour of London (at our expense) dressed like a rodeo clown on acid. And no one said a word.

* * *

Perhaps more than any other factor, China's continued massacre of Falun Gong practitioners is a sign that it is not yet a modern nation. No amount of industry and innovation can adjust for the fact that its leadership still responds to out-of-favor minority groups that like a 5th century tyrant.

* * *

If I were Michael Savage, I would have never responded to this. The BHB, for example, has been banned in China, Scotland, Azerbaijan and Canada for nearly 5 years.

* * *

Letterman's long descent into being entirely unfunny has finally, undeniably arrived. It's too bad. He used to be great. Perhaps Daily Gut summarizes it best, "Letterman still makes me sad. He’s an old, rich man relegated to choosing easy targets for cheap laughs. He has an entire bumbling administration to poke fun of - along with a conference room full of writers to do it for him- and he goes after the daughter of an Alaskan mayor. Letterman was a god in the eighties - now he’s just a mere, sad mortal driven by fumbling bitterness."

* * *

This is one of those articles (entitled: "How Obama Could Blow It") that is both interesting and really stupid.

* * *

Would you be less likely to eat fish if they were referred to as "Sea Kittens?" Not me.

* * *

Venenzuela has banned Coke Zero because it presents a danger to health. Or perhaps it's because Venezuela's president has never drank a diet beverage and doesn't want anyone else to, either.

* * *

It turns out America has its very own version of Stonehenge. I'm guessing there were less druids involved with ours.

* * *

On exactly what day did Congress destroy your county's jobs? Find out here!

* * *

I think it's important for all of us to regularly reflect on information like this.

* * *

It's been a rough few weeks for my younger brother.

"Progress" Has a Different Meaning in the Mid East

The Iranian presidential election is turning into a slugfest.

This article is really worth checking out.

Persian hip-hop thumps from car speakers and young hipsters—men with spiked hair and women in spike heels—dance in the streets. It's another night and another campaign rally-turned-party for their unlikely hero: a self-styled reformist from the early years of the Islamic Revolution who is now seen as their best hope to defeat hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But while Mir Hossein Mousavi generates the noise, passion and electricity in Tehran, Ahmadinejad has the backing of the powerful Islamic establishment and deep support in the countryside, leaving Friday's vote too close to call. [...]

What's left in the final days before the vote is a flat-out political end game that's fundamentally rewritten the rules of Iranian campaigns. This time, the attacks have been nastier, the crowds wilder and the media war more acute than any previous presidential race.

It's partly because of the moment. Iran faces some pivotal decisions, including whether to agree to international demands to suspend its uranium enrichment program, and how to respond to President Barack Obama's call for dialogue.

There's pitched excitement in the reformist camp, which lost the presidency at the end of President Mohammad Khatami's second term in 2005.

Its supporters are convinced now that Ahmadinejad is ripe to fall. Iran's economy is sinking under the twin burdens of widespread mismanagement and double-digit inflation despite vast oil and gas reserves.

There's a growing sense that Iranians are tired of the international snubs and denunciations from Ahmadinejad's provocative statements, including questioning the extent of the Holocaust and calling for Israel's destruction.

"A month ago, I would have said Ahmadinejad was a sure bet," said political analyst Sharif Emam Jomeh. "There was apathy especially with the youth. But now, until 3 a.m., they are out in numbers and they care ... Below the surface, something was boiling." [...]

The non-elected clergy around Supreme Leader Aytollah Ali Khamenei hold most keys to power and dictate major decisions over internal security, justice and foreign relations. There is little real possibility to chip away at their constitutional clout. The presidency is the closest the voters can get to altering the direction of the country. [...]

About a third of Iran's eligible voters were born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and grew up without direct memories of the early upheavals, such as the storming of the U.S. Embassy and the 444-day hostage standoff or the early years of the 1980-88 war with Iraq. Their views are often defined by the borderless world of the Web, which Mousavi tapped to build early momentum while Ahmadinejad relied heavily on state-controlled media. [...]

Part of Mousavi's appeal has been boosted by the popularity of his wife, former university dean Zahra Rahnavard, who has called for greater opportunities and rights for women. [...]

Asked about possible relations with the United States, she replied: "We are going to have good relation with any country who respect Iran. And we are going to have relation with them except Israel."

No matter how much revolution takes place, things, amazingly, stay the same.

A Columnist's Nagging Conscience

One of Obama's sycophants at Salon.com posted a stream of consciousness column earlier today and in it makes this surprisingly wise insight:

Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.

All the backtracking and spin doctoring in the world will not erase that major blunder, which made the new president seem reckless, naive and out of control of his own party, which was in effect dictating to him from Capitol Hill.

The GOP has failed thus far to gain traction only because it is trudging through a severe talent drought. But the moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate -- which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave.

She even weighs in on the Justice of the Peace he selected as the next SCOTUS Justice.

Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, seems like a shoo-in. But Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as "a wise Latina" trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment -- a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism.

There's nothing like a little bit of pseduo righteous indignation to make a journalist feel objective again.

Falling Sky and Private Jets

I never ceased to be amazed at how the ridiculously wealthy pretend they dislike their many creature comforts whenever the cameras are rolling and their legacy may be negatively impacted.

At least, this happens most of the time. Oprah recently noted,

-“It’s great to have a private jet. Anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isn’t great is lying to you.”

Somewhere on our rapidly cooling planet, Al Gore is preparing a heartfelt rebuttal. We're likely to receive it anytime since, after all, his private jet has internet access.

As USA Today notes,

If Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology [BHB: Or if Oprah is the world's role model for wealth], the planet is doomed. For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

But, as we learned during the Correspondents' Dinner, criticizing the President or his cronies is "treason."

Discovering a Whole Lot of Nothing

I seem to recall our president decrying past American foreign policy and promising not to dictate policy to other countries or demand things from our allies.

But, 2+ years of pandering from all corners can do a lot for what someone (especially if you're already an egomaniac) may expect to have happen whenever they open their mouth.

Barry discovered this over the weekend:

In defiance of US President Barack Obama's call on Israel to stop settlement activity, defiant settlers built a new outpost on Friday morning between Migron and Kochav Ya'acov.

At the outpost, which they named Oz Yehonatan, the settlers built a wooden structure they mockingly called the "Obama Hut," saying it was a sign of appreciation for the US president for his actions that had led to a dramatic rise in the number of outposts. [...]

One of the activists said of Obama, "He's an Arab Muslim and a gentile, he is fighting against the Jewish people and has declared that he will continue to do so. We already stated our intention to continue to build, no matter who is fighting us - Egypt, Germany or the US."

[BHB note: OK, that last sentence was a bit much.]

When I say "discovered," I mean, of course, that this reaction occurred, not that Barry noticed, acknowledged or will learn from it.

The Inherent Evil of Eye Color

On the ever-growing list of "Things that Were Said While Our President Sat Somewhere Obliviously Smiling," is this little gem that occurred during the BHB's hiatus:

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes.” […]

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”

It's a good thing that only white people can be racist, otherwise the crackpot leaders of Brazil would be in danger of getting labeled.

And, considering that making crackpot claims is the top way for a foreign leader to rise to international prominence, it’s interesting to consider what Mr. Silva’s motive is for this statement.

The FT also notes:

Brazil, which has long campaigned unsuccessfully to be given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council…

Ahhh, there it is. Nothing catapults a career at the UN quite like blaming America for your problems.

It’s kind of like the requisite global warming jargon you have to choke down in Hollywood, or the very loose relationship with the facts needed to write this blog.

Fire Bathing

I can understand the intense desire to have a son, but I also think I'd eventually resign myself to a fate of raising daughters after the fifth year of not bathing.

An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers reported.

Kailash "Kalau" Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a "fire bath" every evening when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.

"It's just like using water to take a bath," Kalau was reported as saying. "A fire bath helps kill germs and infection in the body."

Sure this sounds a bit weird, but if you doubt such a thing is possible, you have probably never met any of my college roommates.

The primary question coming out of this story is how he managed to produce this many children despite not bathing.

Maybe there's something to this whole fire bath thing...

Dropping Bombs

As is his practice, Romney is dropping truth bombs on a government that does not want to hear it.

In an interview this weekend, Mitt explains a detailed solution for restructuring GM that will limit the government's inevitable mishandling of the takeover.

Among other things, he proposes,

Romney suggested that the roughly 70 percent of GM that the government could own after it emerges from bankruptcy should be immediately distributed to taxpayers, and the 17.5 percent that will go to a UAW trust fund for retiree healthcare should be handed out to UAW members.

Taking the company back away from the government and then creating a way to pay for the crippling health care plan that supports thousands of aging retirees and their families?

It's a proposal that is much to rational for our current breed of politicians.

A column in The Atlantic there's even suggests appointing Romney as the head of GM during this period.

An alliance with Romney to save GM would give Obama and Henderson the protection they need to move briskly to shrink the company.

Why would Romney do it?

Maybe because the chance to renew an American icon, preserve America's manufacturing capacity, and save tens of thousands of jobs would mean something to him.

Maybe because it would give him a platform to demonstrate what an effective leader he can be.

Maybe because, along the way, it would allow him to save the Republican Party by proving that it stands for something besides...whatever it is that it stands for right now.

The problem with this is that Obama would never consider giving someone a chance to do something successful when there's no chance he could ultimately assume credit for it.

And, as we have seen on so many other occasions, Barry would rather do something poorly himself than a let a mere mortal do it well.

Hallmarks of the Obama Era: When the Laughable Laugh at You

Just days after Russia pointed out how Marxist he is, Hugo Chavez has made a note of how socialist our president is.

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right," Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.

But don't worry, Barry has only taken over about 70% of GM -- and, to hear him tell it, that's not such a bad thing.

And, besides, that's nothing like the madness Chavez has unleashed in Venezuela, right?

Reuters notes,

During a decade in government, Chavez has nationalized most of Venezuela's key economic sectors, including multibillion dollar oil projects, often via joint ventures with the private sector that give the state a 60 percent controlling stake.

I am without speech.

Coming to E3 in 2010: Grand Theft Brownie

So very often, the news is far more entertaining than the formulaic adventures churned out by Hollywood.

A former Ohio Girl Scouts leader has agreed to pay the organization $20,000 as restitution for stealing money from a cookie account and using it for vacations, groceries and other personal expenses.

Prosecutors say Tamara Jo Ward had access to a bank account the Dayton-based troop used to deposit cookie sales revenue that was to pay for the troop's recreational activities.

The 45-year-old Ward pleaded guilty in April to grand theft.

Where else can this story lead than the creation of the video game, Grand Theft Brownie.

Skimming money from the cookie fund will obviously be a part of the game, and I suggest adding features like:

-- Sending muscle to "clean up" the Girl Scouts who have camped in a prime cookie selling location in front of the Wal-Mart

-- After wiping out the competition, allowing others to operate on the turf for an exorbitant percentage of their profits

-- You get points by slashing the tires and ripping the handlebar tassels off of every bike owned by the rival Brownie troop.

-- Extra points are added for successfully obtaining and selling "cookies" from Venezuela.

-- Creating highly detailed cookie trails and boobie traps to distract the mailman while you search his truck for letters with credit card info.

-- Selling cheap knock-off cookies under the radar and not reporting the transaction to the National Girl Scouts of America, ultimately planning and ordering a preemptive hit on Kathy Cloninger.

I might actually play this game, and it's not like the development of the title is below the storied dignity of Rockstar Games.

Obama's Latest Leadership Tactic: When the Experts Fail, Send in a Novice

I'm not sure what I'll be up to at his age, but chances are it won't be nearly as impactful as what Brian Deese is doing.

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors Corp. and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite-graduate of Yale Law School who never stepped foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the US automotive industry.

I would be a lot more interested in this if it weren't so predictable that regardless of his bright ideas, the outcomes will all ultimately be determined by Obama's handlers in the private sector.

However, if there's some good news to be hoped for, it's this:

Deese’s role is unusual for someone who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries.

To understand why this is could news, consider that the people who would seem perfectly suited for this role are the ones who have caused the problem. As Krauthammer notes,

One could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-@ss MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

Perverse, indeed.

But the Obama administration's habit of applying fancy/press-friendly solutions to big problems has yet to return a similarly pleasing result.

Yet Another Good Reason to Skip Class

In "Surely, You Must be Joking" news, Richard Dreyfus is creating a K-12 "Civics" curriculum.

He expects the class will,

"Give our children real-world knowledge and hopefully wisdom about how to run this complex governance system."

It is pretty cliched to ask, but I have to: Is there no end to what celebrities think they can do for us beyond the movie theater? Or has his brain simply never left the set of "Mr. Holland's Opus?"

Furthermore, how excited are you for Richard Dreyfus to write a curriculum about civics, or, as he refers to it: "Don't call it 'civics'... Call it what it is: political power." I'm not making that up.

I imagine that this course could be the reasoned, insightful, moderate and thoughtful. For example, consider for a moment Drefus' own bipartisanship: You can review the last 100+ political donations he's made, dating back to 1979 here.

Hint: It does not include a single Republican or conservative cause.

The Fuzz

As House Democrats begin a concerted effort to blame the negative impact of the stimulus on the GOP (yes, you read that correctly), it's important to recall the remarkably fuzzy math the White House is using to show the "success" of the Pork Plan.

Despite setting a high bar for success and requiring states to report every job created, the White House is still figuring out how to answer those questions. [...]

Compounding the problem, said University of Chicago economics professor Steven J. Davis, is that Obama has invented a new standard to measure success: Jobs saved.

Measuring job creation is complicated but possible. Counting jobs saved by the stimulus is, if not impossible, murky.

"How do you know what a saved job is? How do you know what jobs would have been lost without this?" Davis said. "That was a clever political gimmick to make it even harder to determine whether this policy has any effect."

So far, the definitions the White House budget office has offered are circular: "Jobs created" means new jobs created or filled because of the stimulus. "Jobs retained" means existing jobs retained because of the stimulu

Considering how accident prone the GOP is, it's amazing (but true) that this can't be blamed on them.

Furthermore, even though the Manchurian Messiah keeps spouting about how his Pork Plan will rejuvenate the economy, the WSJ notes,

Americans are saving more of their paychecks than at any time since February 1995.

The turnaround reflects Americans' deep concerns over the weak job market, declining home values and volatility in the stock market. [...]

Americans' thrift puts the Obama administration in a quandary. On the one hand, it is preaching the need for Americans to live within their means and exercise more fiscal responsibility. But on the other, to get the economy back on firm footing, Americans need to return to spending, from large-ticket items such as cars to smaller impulse buys like perfume and chocolate. [...]

Unemployment, or the fear of it, restrains many Americans from spending and is forcing them to cobble together their own safety net.

What would you call the opposite of King Midas? Just calling him "Obama" is too obvious, so I'll work on coming up with something more clever.

Light Candles and Send Positive Energy

A stunned nation waits on the verge of panic, as one of its national heroes battles for his life.

Rapper Tone Loc, who performed the 1980s hits "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina," was released from the hospital Friday after collapsing during an outdoor concert in Florida, officials said.

A spokesman for the Escambia County Sheriff's Department told The Associated Press it appeared Tone Loc collapsed and had a seizure because of overheating.

While tragic, you can understand how this may have happened.

Tone Loc (onstage): Ahh, man! I am sweating so bad! Oh,
man...

Crowd: Yeeeeeeah!

Tone Loc: No, for reals y'all, I'm burning up...

Crowd: [Believing this to be a comment about smoking marijuana, they
begin to cheer]

Tone Loc: It's getting hot in here...

Crowd: [Singing] "So take off all your clothes..."

Tone Loc: [Collapses]

Crowd: [Believing him to be intoxicated, begins cheering]

I had the opportunity to watch him perform live in the early 2000s when he came to my college as a part of the "Back to the Old School" weekend. It was delightful.

Get well soon, Tone. You gave us Funky Cold Medina, and for that, you have our gratitude and best wishes.

Dumb and Angry: A Recipe for Success

The Manchurian Messiah's mission to see just how much incompetence one super power can tolerate is still running at full tilt.

His devotion, as noted earlier, is entirely understandable: She's racist, Marxist, and, even in the opinion of fellow liberals, intellectually inferior to her peers.

Thus, MM will stop at nothing. The AP notes

President Barack Obama pressed the Senate anew Saturday to swiftly confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, expressing confidence that efforts to scuttle her nomination will fail despite intensified scrutiny.

"I am certain that she is the right choice," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address in which he scolded critics who he said were trying to distort her record and past statements.

Odd how MM feels so comfortable scolding his political opponents. It was not not long ago, the AP notes, that "As a senator, Obama supported a failed attempt by Democrats to stall President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the high court."

BHB readers may recall that Alito had an impeccable judicial record (as opposed to Sotomayor's decisions being overturned 60% of the time by higher courts), showed a respect for precedent and the role of the court (rather than bragging about the ability of the court to invent its own laws), and didn't need anyone to beg the public to believe he was smart (unlike the current White House which is in panic mode about their nominee's fluff intellect).

Instead, in this clip (skip ahead to 4:15), network news anchors are literally asking, "Does it matter if the Justice is an intellectual powerhouse?" The second half of that statement reads, "...as long as they believe what we do?"

But, the most telling review of a jurist is her standing amongst her peers, colleagues and subordinates.

That's where the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary comes in.

Lawyers who have argued cases before Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor call her "nasty," "angry" and a "terror on the bench," according to the current Almanac of the Federal Judiciary -- a kind of Zagat's guide to federal judges. [...]

Of the 21 judges evaluated, the same lawyers gave 18 positive to glowing reviews and two judges received mixed reviews. Judge Sotomayor was the only one to receive decidedly negative comments. [...]

Although the same lawyers who chastised her temperament gave her high marks on her legal abilities, Judge Sotomayor was the only member of the 2nd Circuit to receive a universally negative review of her temperament.

"She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts," one lawyer told the almanac. Another said she "abuses lawyers."

What were the odds that someone who has used implicit threats of racism to cover for intellectual lapses might feel threatened by and therefore abuse those around her? That a career of being given position and accolades undeserved might make someone paranoid and therefore abrasive every time they encounter a mind that is the genuine article?

The aforementioned article notes,

Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen documented concerns from 2nd Circuit law clerks and New York prosecutors in a piece he wrote for the New Republic earlier this month.

In the piece, he quoted anonymous members of the New York legal community who described Judge Sotomayor as an intellectual lightweight and "kind of a bully on the bench."

And this is the reasoned, pragmatic, thoughtful person our President hopes to install in the Supreme Court.

The Impact of a Nearby Burning Ball of Gas

Although beloved scientist would never admit it, the single entity most responsible for climate change is that enormous ball of burning gas about 93 million miles away.

Despite all his worries about hybrid cars and glaciers, the source of our solar systems heat is the only thing that can be consistently linked to the rise and fall of temperatures on our planet.

That's why you won't hear him talking about this news:

An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. [...]

Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth’s atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract.

Even for someone who reports on the absurd so often, it leaves me speechless that the global warming hysteria has not been relegated to the laughingstock junk heap of history.

Even as New York offers freeze warnings for the month of June, this Chicken Little act persists. It's no accidents the people profiting from the craze swiftly rewrote their messaging to start applying "climate change" instead -- thus being able to point to cooling as evidence of the "problem" as well.

And, if that logic makes any sense, then you probably own a Prius.

But don't get me wrong, we should still probably get this cap-and-trade thing underway and send all our heavy industry overseas so we don't compound the enormous footprint already created by Al's mansion and private jet.

The Kettle is Calling the Pot... A Kettle

Pejorative terms like "Socialist" and "Marxist" get thrown at our President fairly often, especially by those who understand what those terms mean.

But it tends to always be Americans that do the name calling.

Now, at least, there are some experts applying those titles to our Manchurian Messiah.

Pravda, the largest newspaper in Russia, and, from 1912 to 1991 the government-sponsored newspaper of the USSR, has noted, with some awe, the arrival of a Marxist state in the U.S.

Let me be clear: The former Soviet newspaper is calling us Marxists.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

[The last 20 years have been used] to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics.

Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives.

They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights.

Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". [...]

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. [...]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.

His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts. [...]

These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

So let's recap (and attempt to rebut) all the accusastions the Russians are throwing at us:

Claim: We elected a Marxist and are now rapidly becoming a Marxists state.
Rebuttal: Obama has made no attempt to hide his Marxist leanings, whether talking about the need to use SCOTUS and legislation to redistribute wealth or his tendency to commiserate with fellow Marxists while in college -- and now he's nationalized banking and heavy industry. There's a name for the planned, government control of the economy. It's called Marxism.

Claim: The American people are hapless accomplices in this descent.
Rebuttal: Can you blame them when the network news keeps congratulating him on his mistakes and canonizing his mediocre "triumphs?"

Claim: The substandard American education system has prepared the U.S. population to accept anything it's told.
Rebuttal: In a sense, the Left deserves some amount of respect for pulling this off. Great debate surrounds which sectors of the government lean in one political direction or another, but education has long been the impermeable domain of the Left. They wanted sheep, and they got them.

Claim: Americans care more about McDonalds than the Constitution.
Rebuttal: More children recognize Mayor McCheese than George Washington (like these scholars for example, or these), and 55x more children can recite each of the last 71 Happy Meal toys than can name a president other than Obama.

Claim: In an attempt to rally a voter base, The Evangelic Right made broad swaths of the population stupider.
Rebuttal: The Evangelical Right has stooped to such a low common denominator (in terms of content, commentators and the intellectual rigor expected of members) that the opponents of Obama are 1) Too stupid and bigoted to do anything about his demolition of the country, and 2) So utterly backwards and ridiculous that satirizing and openly mocking them is all too easy. These two facts have effectively neutralized any of their arguments -- even the few rare good ones. In the meantime, the Evangelical Right ran away screaming from opponents that could have defeated Obama because they were scared of their religion, and instead nominated a corpse and a washed up aerobics instructor.

Claim: At its current rate of economic decline, the U.S. will soon resemble Zimbabwe.
Rebuttal: At the current rate of economic decline, being lumped in with Zimbabwe may soon be an improvement.

Claim: Our banking system is being "restructured" by the same thieves who demolished it.
Rebuttal: Not a surprise. Obama would be the first to admit that he has to let these people take control of the finance sector since, after all, their back channel contributions put him in office in the first place. Furthermore, how can he complain about the sub-prime collapse when he made a name for himself as a "community organizer" by suing Citibank to give loans to people that were not qualified for them (aka sub-prime loans). If that seems to bizarre to be real, you can watch a video of him bragging about it and read the official case summary here.

Claim: Obama and his cronies (both in the legislature and in the private sector) have surpassed the exploitative practices of the notorious Russian Tsars of old.
Rebuttal: To be fair, Obama has only done more damage than the Tsars because modern technology gave him more opportunity. Regardless of what Pravda is trying to imply it's, not because he's necessarily better or worse than Ivan the Terrible. A realistic estimate likely places them dead even.

So now we are left to consider if there is a single one of these claims that the Russians are throwing at us, on which we can claim innocence.

Once again, the Obama Era has hit a new low. Only morbid curiosity makes me wonder what the next drop on this precipitous decline will be.

Incompetence Breeds

In a completely unsurprising move, the least experienced politician in U.S. history has appointed the least-qualified Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

Despite having a long record of having her decisions overturned because she misunderstood basic elements of the law, 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor is now in line to carry on the Obama administrations fascination with incompetence.

Her credentials are certainly appealing (and strikingly similar) to the Manchurian Messiah.

For starters, she has gone out of her way to ban the free speech with which she personally disagrees, and she is directly affiliated with radical groups (in this case, La Raza, which actively seeks to annex Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California and Colorado back to Mexico -- wiping out white inhabitants and Jews in the process -- read more here).

And, similarly, not content to let her actions prove her racism, she's spoken out directly on the subject or her own race's superiority. Classy stuff.

Just to give you an idea of what she said, and to understand her point, examine the orginal statement, and then switch some key nouns.

Sotomayor: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Someone who would never be nominated to SCOTUS: "Obvioiusly, a smart white man with the inate sophistication of his whiteness would regularly reach a better conclusion than a some black that is incapable of clarity or logic."

To really ice the cake, she is on record as seeing her position as a judge as a place where "policy is made" and an opportunity for her to create laws.

Add to this the fact that she has used her race and the threat of racism to achieve ever post she has held despite being wildly underqualified, and suddenly it seems clear that the new Justice may just be Barry with a wig.

MM can't stop repeating the line that she is the "most qualified" Justice to ever be named to the Supreme Court.

He is not specific, however, on what, exactly, it is she is qualified to do.

Where is the outrage? Certainly not in the White House pres corp, all of whom are too busy laughing hysterically at everything they hear.

Outrage and Guffaws

No matter how long I restrain myself from exploding about the increasingly unpalatable political world, there are still gems like the Correspondents' Dinner that can arouse even the most dejected of Intraweb writers.

During the same weekend some angry little screech owl was ranting about evil white men inpugning the dignity of our country's most corrupt politician, a golf reporter in an obscure magazine told a lame joke about the utter disdain your average soldier holds for the legislative leadership.

The predictable result: A round of guffaws, and outrage -- respectively.

The President's own remarks, while predictable self-congratulating and constructed to feed an ego that has never known hunger, are occasionally amusing despite his near-constant inclination to laugh at his own jokes. If not delivered by such slime, they might even be enjoyable.

I suppose my own silence of late is as much to blame for this as anything else.

Plato noted, "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."

The Treasury Department Just Doesn't Care Anymore

Last week I read news of Russia and China suggesting a new global currency be created to replace the US Dollar. It was so laughable, I didn't even bother putting it in the weekly round up for a standard round of mockery.

Recognizing the outright insanity of this should have been my first clue that the Obama administration would be attracted to it.

Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is "open" to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China's central bank, which was widely reported as being a call for a new global currency to replace the dollar."

Later in his remarks he tried to backpedal away from this statement, but the question remains regarding whether or not there is a single bad idea Geithner isn't "open" to pursuing? After his dazzling job as Chief of the NYC Federal Reserve, and his electrifying few weeks as Treasury Secretary, I'm waiting for this memo to circulate from his office.

But that statement wasn't even the most interesting part of his bass-aackwards remarks. It appears that one of the reasons Mr. Geithner is so interested in China's new world currency is that he doesn't expect the American economy to survive the crisis he couldn't avert while Wall Street was running amuck under his nose, and whick he now can't fix.

The continued use of the dollar as a reserve currency, he added, "depends..on how effective we are in the United States...at getting our fiscal system back to the point where people judge it as sustainable over time."

So, instead of this idea being rejected as moronic, our Treasury Secretary thinks it's a great back up plan.

Geithner would be well advised to carefully rethink making the leap and working with China. They have a very unique way of dealing with government leaders who are bad at their jobs or are inclined to being bought off.

Taking Quick Action Takes Time. A Lot of it

A pair of intraweb videos are encapsulating both the angst and the source of the angst amidst the economic meltdown.

In a refreshing turn of events, parliamentarians in Britain are starting to say the types of things you wish someone in the Senate or House would stand up and say.

Follow that link and then ask why there isn't a single U.S. legislator of any renown with the testicular fortitude to stand up and recite these same remarks.

And while things continue to spiral out of control here in the States, our leader makes no attempt to hide his annoyance when asked why he has been so slow to react and/or condemn the the actions of his political benefactors.

His reason: He wanted to be sure who to blame or what to be upset about.

If it were my job and millions of people depended on it, I could learn to speak conversational Mandarin in two full days.

How long does it take to look at the culture of government-enabled and federally-mandated of thieves running Wall Street to grab a sycophantic microphone and say, "Yeah, this sucks."

The Obama turnaround time for pointing the finger at an obvious problem is two days?

If he'd been at the helm, we would have taken a position on WWII in the early 70s, and the Cuban Missile Crisis would be one of the things he'd be promising to solve with "Hope and Change" during his second term in office.

Get Your Popcorn Ready

Although never considered a box office commodity in the past, Hillary Clinton is now the focus of two very different movies.

The first is a biopic about the Lewinsky scandal written by the filmmaker who made The Deal and The Queen, and this film is considered the end of the trilogy.

Notes an obscure website:

Julianne Moore has been cast as Hillary Clinton in new film "Special Relationship".

The actress will star opposite Dennis Quaid -- who will play Hillary's husband, ex-U.S. President Bill Clinton -- in the movie which will show how Bill's 'inappropriate relationship' with White House intern Monica Lewinsky nearly ended his time in power.

A source said: "This is a big role for both of them. Playing Hillary, a wife who stands by her unfaithful husband, will be something she can get her teeth stuck into."

Dennis reportedly beat four other leading actors - Russell Crowe, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins - to win the role of Bill.

Obviously, I have a lot of questions.

First, Dennis Quaid? Really? Second, isn't a mouth-centric metaphor a bit crass when describing the plot of this film? Third, who chooses Quaid over Crowe and Hoffman? I don't care how good is hillbilly accent is. Fourth, Julianne Moore has the same odds of getting into this character as I do.

But the other Hillary movie -- one that is already made -- is enduring a lot more trouble. If you were suspicious, you might even call it retribution.

The film, Hillary: The Movie, is mercilessly critical of the former presidential candidate and allies within the government are now restricting the movie on the grounds that its highly critical content makes it a campaign ad and not a movie. Lawsuits have ensued.

SCOTUS heard the case yesterday.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned whether government regulation of a movie critical of former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton might also be used to ban books critical of political hopefuls during election season.

One justice warned that the future of the nation's campaign finance law could ride on their decision on whether the anti-Clinton movie was journalism or a political attack ad.

Government lawyers argued that conservative group Citizens United's 90-minute documentary "Hillary: The Movie" is a political ad just like traditional one-minute or 30-second spots and therefore regulated by the McCain-Feingold law, the popular name for 2002 revisions to the nation's campaign finance laws. [...]

But if the federal government can treat a movie like a political advertisement, then why not books, the justices asked.

The producer of the movie has been making the rounds on cable news and corny online news outlets, and he isn't a sympathetic character. The movie, afterall, is filled with angry people (see the trailers here), and there are not a lot of pros weighed alongside the cons. But this isn't to say the content isn't accurate.

The problem with this case is that if the film comes out on the losing end, it sets an ugly precedent for penalizing movies that people in power do not like.

The litmus test for the legitimacy of targeting this movie can be made by asking if a similar film about Bush 43 (who has done just as many loathable things as Hillary) would earn as much protection from the government.

My guess: No.

Limiting Risk

Another sign of how diseased this bailout has become: Headlines like this don't make us blink anymore.

U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms -- Goal Is to Limit Risk to Broader Economy

Of course by "limit risk to economy" the government means limiting the risk that anyone can do something to stop the installation of the new economy the Obama administration and its financiers have created.

I'm going to throw up.

The Future of Law Enforcement: Flash Cards

Typically, complicated or dangerous jobs mitigate their inherent risks by holding employees to increasingly higher standards of skill and professional routine. This is no longer the case, however, with Texas police.

Today, the Dallas Police Department moves to a new plain-language system that's supposed to make communications more universal and less complicated. No more of those distinctive radio codes or signals.

It's tough to tell now how this will effect law and order in the Lonestar State. Considering that the state's current sentencing guidelines for felonies often include the language, "take them behind the shed and hit them with a brick," the implications could be vast.

Also, consider that this procedural change has come about because the average Texas cop (and even some of the above-average ones, presumably) cannot handle memorizing a series of numbers and how they relate to a connected series of words. Considering the obvious "limitations" facing the police force in Dallas, they're only a few years away from officers using hand gestures and brightly colored flashcards to explain bank robberies.

Furthermore, I imagine that this means that future police radio chatter will sound a lot like this:

Cop: DUDE HOLY CRAP!!!

Dispatch: Roger. What's the nature of your emergency?

Cop: Ummm.... ALL KINDS of shooting and people going NUTS!

Dispatch: Roger. Can you confirm if this can be classified as "Totally bonkers" or "Off the [bleeping] charts, bro?"

Cop: Negatory, dispatch. This is "Mind blowingly not awesome."

Dispatch: Roger.

If I recall, I remember anticipating this same problem for surgeons receiving cut-by-cut instructions via text message.

Ichiro, You Have Made Us Proud

On behalf of the city of Seattle, we are all very, very proud.

Also, your commercials are delightful.

Scouring the Dictionary for a Word Scarier than "Nightmare"

The BHB fans over at Rolling Stone have echoed some of my finest sentiments and written the single best piece on the financial meltdown, surpassing even this round table discussion on the topic.

The entire piece is required reading, but here are a few critical elements.

Consider this opening and basic overview of the crisis:

It's over — we're officially, royally f#cked.

No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far.

It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second.

And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste.

Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. [...]

Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather.

He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

To explain just how specifically bad the crisis is, RS notes:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough.

The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état.

They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess.

And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

RS also has an interesting insight on what this crisis is and isn't, and its practical impact beyond the theoretical problems tossed around on CNN.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class.

But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

So how did this whole problem start?

Finally, some proper finger pointing!

The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG.

AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror.

This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders — people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground — and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his d#ck bigger.

RS examines Patient Zero of the worldwide meltdown: An AIG manager named Joseph Cassano, described as "a pudgy, balding Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead...a greedy little turd with a knack for selective accounting who ran his scam right out in the open, thanks to Washington's deregulation of the Wall Street casino."

Just as remarkable as the individual financial manager racing the problem to a tipping point, is the institutional machinery which was created to make real the wildest greedy imaginings of Wall Street come true.

The meltdown, RS spells out at some length, was facilitated by a financial tool called a collateralized-debt obligation which is basically a pile of different loans (cars, houses, credit cards, etc.) and sold to investors as a package. The banks then convinced the government to give the CDOs a AAA rating, meaning it could be considered an ultra safe investment. This rating then drew in the huge investors like pension funds and other banks -- institutions that were only allowed (by government regulation) to purchase ultra safe investments.

To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really were.

"They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who'd been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years," says one young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. "It was nuts."

Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and predatory lending.

In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages — read: enough unemployed meth dealers willing to buy million-dollar homes for no money down — to fill them all.

To make the purchase of this many bad CDOs possible (and, remember that the sellers knew they were terrible) a kind of insurance policy had to be created to give the buyers the illusion of safety.

To accomplish this, AIG's Patient Zero created something called a credit-default swap (CDS). The functionality of CDSs are even more boggling than CDOs. RS explains,

In its simplest form, a CDS is just a bet on an outcome.

Say Bank A writes a million-dollar mortgage to the Pope for a town house in the West Village.

Bank A wants to hedge its mortgage risk in case the Pope can't make his monthly payments, so it buys CDS protection from Bank B, wherein it agrees to pay Bank B a premium of $1,000 a month for five years.

In return, Bank B agrees to pay Bank A the full million-dollar value of the Pope's mortgage if he defaults.

In theory, Bank A is covered if the Pope goes on a meth binge and loses his job.

With this apparatus in place, Patient Zero was able to back up other people's money without necessarily having to demonstrate that AIG had the necessary money available to cover what the insurance was intended to protect.

When a $100 corporate bond is sold, for example, someone has to show 100 actual dollars. But when you sell a $100 CDS guarantee, you don't have to show a dime. So Cassano could sell investment banks billions in guarantees without having any single asset to back it up.

Cassano was selling so-called "naked" CDS deals.

In a "naked" CDS, neither party actually holds the underlying loan.

In other words, Bank B not only sells CDS protection to Bank A for its mortgage on the Pope — it turns around and sells protection to Bank C for the very same mortgage.

This could go on ad nauseam: You could have Banks D through Z also betting on Bank A's mortgage.

Unlike traditional insurance, Cassano was offering investors an opportunity to bet that someone else's house would burn down, or take out a term life policy on the guy with AIDS down the street.

With this charming system in place, Patient Zero earned countless billions for AIG, and over $280 million for himself. His 400 employees took home $3.5 billion.

But none of this could have happened if the government hadn't done its part. In the late 90s, Sen. Phil Gramm (who would later be one of the McCain campaign's top advisers) helpfully engineered "the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 A.D."

For years, Washington had kept a watchful eye on the nation's banks.

Ever since the Great Depression, commercial banks — those that kept money on deposit for individuals and businesses — had not been allowed to double as investment banks, which raise money by issuing and selling securities.

The Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Depression, also prevented banks of any kind from getting into the insurance business.

But in the late Nineties, a few years before Cassano took over AIGFP, all that changed.

What happened to these safety nets? The democrats got greedy.

The Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more "business-friendly."

Wall Street responded by flooding Washington with money, buying allies in both parties. In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, financial companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists.

They quickly got what they paid for.

In 1999, Gramm co-sponsored a bill that repealed key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, smoothing the way for the creation of financial megafirms like Citigroup.

The move did away with the built-in protections afforded by smaller banks. In the old days, a local banker knew the people whose loans were on his balance sheet: He wasn't going to give a million-dollar mortgage to a homeless meth addict, since he would have to keep that loan on his books.

But a giant merged bank might write that loan and then sell it off to some fool in China, and who cared?

The very next year, Gramm compounded the problem by writing a sweeping new law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities.

The long series of loopholes allowed Patient Zero's operation to be supervised by (wait for it...) an advisory agency of his choosing.

The one he chose was burdened with hundreds of other organizations and, a Government Accounting Office audit noted during this hay-making period, the advisory body "had only one insurance specialist on staff — and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer."

It wasn't just the outside organizations that weren't paying attention. AIG didn't' care either.

AIG might have been OK had it not been for a complete lack of internal controls.

For six months before its meltdown, according to insiders, the company had been searching for a full-time chief financial officer and a chief risk-assessment officer, but never got around to hiring either.

That meant that the 18th-largest company in the world had no one checking to make sure its balance sheet was safe and no one keeping track of how much cash and assets the firm had on hand.

The situation was so bad that when outside consultants were called in a few weeks before the bailout, senior executives were unable to answer even the most basic questions about their company — like, for instance, how much exposure the firm had to the residential-mortgage market.

Amazingly, the thing that eventually stopped him was AIG's own terrible internal accounting -- a series of errors that "trigger[ed] clauses in the CDS contracts that forced Cassano to post substantially more collateral to back his deals."

But by the time anyone noticed, Patient Zero could protect himself, and by the time enough people noticed it was too late, and around the time everyone noticed, AIG made a decision to keep paying him:

By the fall of 2007, it was evident that AIGFP's portfolio had turned poisonous, but like every good Wall Street huckster, Cassano schemed to keep his insane, Earth-swallowing gamble hidden from public view.

That August, balls bulging, he announced to investors on a conference call that "it is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions."

As he spoke, his CDS portfolio was racking up $352 million in losses.

When the growing credit crunch prompted senior AIG executives to re-examine its liabilities, a company accountant named Joseph St. Denis became "gravely concerned" about the CDS deals and their potential for mass destruction. Cassano responded by personally forcing the poor sap out of the firm, telling him he was "deliberately excluded" from the financial review for fear that he might "pollute the process."

The following February, when AIG posted $11.5 billion in annual losses, it announced the resignation of Cassano as head of AIGFP, saying an auditor had found a "material weakness" in the CDS portfolio.

But amazingly, the company not only allowed Cassano to keep $34 million in bonuses, it kept him on as a consultant for $1 million a month.

In fact, Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his f#ck-ups.

When asked in October why the company still retained Cassano at his $1 million-a-month rate despite his role in the probable downfall of Western civilization, CEO Martin Sullivan told Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to "retain the 20-year knowledge that Mr. Cassano had."

When the collapse finally hit AIG, it was -- amazingly -- a shock to the company.

What sank AIG in the end was another credit downgrade. Cassano had written so many CDS deals that when the company was facing another downgrade to its credit rating last September, from AA to A, it needed to post billions in collateral — not only more cash than it had on its balance sheet but more cash than it could raise even if it sold off every single one of its liquid assets.

Even so, management dithered for days, not believing the company was in serious trouble.

AIG was a dried-up prune, sapped of any real value, and its top executives didn't even know it.

One of the most wealthy companies in the world had been cannibalized by the very practice which made it rich. It was the grandest, most complicated con ever devised -- much less executed.

But it wasn't simply a get-rich-quick scheme. The types of people brilliant enough to create this scenario are smart enough to know there are things more valuable than truckloads of money during an economic crash.

So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people — to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major corporations like AIG — are too intimidated to even try to understand them.

That, combined with wise political investments, enabled the nation's top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry.

In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the passage of Phil Gramm's fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone — then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — collected $2.6 million in only five years.

The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards.

At this point in the story, RS makes an astute observation about where AIG's remarkable shortcomings ended, and the shortcomings of those in power in D.C. took over.

During the pre-bailout meetings with AIG, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, had been one of only 4 people present -- the other attendees being the CEO of AIG, the Chief of the Federal Reserve of New York (Obama's current Treasury Secretary), and Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson.

Three of those people make sense, but not the extra CEO. Why? RS has a pretty plausible theory, although it doesn't come out and say it:

Goldman jumped into the housing craze just like everyone else on Wall Street. Although it famously scored an $11 billion coup in 2007 when one of its trading units smartly shorted the housing market, the move didn't tell the whole story.

In truth, Goldman still had a huge exposure come that fateful summer of 2008 — to none other than Joe Cassano.

Goldman Sachs, it turns out, was Cassano's biggest customer, with $20 billion of exposure in Cassano's CDS book. Which might explain why Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein was in the room with ex-Goldmanite Hank Paulson that weekend of September 13th, when the federal government was supposedly bailing out AIG.

When asked why Blankfein was there, one of the government officials who was in the meeting shrugs. "One might say that it's because Goldman had so much exposure to AIGFP's portfolio," he says. "You'll never prove that, but one might suppose."

Market analyst Eric Salzman is more blunt. "If AIG went down," he says, "there was a good chance Goldman would not be able to collect." The AIG bailout, in effect, was Goldman bailing out Goldman.

Eventually, Paulson went a step further, elevating another ex-Goldmanite named Edward Liddy to run AIG — a company whose bailout money would be coming, in part, from the newly created TARP program, administered by another Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari.

Oh my...

Not only is all of this pretty creepy, but it was done entirely in secret. Not because it had to be, and not because it needed to be, but because a general lack of understanding made their jobs safer and kept the common folk from getting in the way. It is the same theory that led the Catholic church to (debatably) encourage its members to not read from the Bible so that the peasants wouldn't get any ideas about doctrine or the wisdom of allowing the local priests to have a hand in the regulation of day-to-day affairs.

The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street community aren't much for sharing information with the great unwashed.

Because all of this s#it is complicated, because most of us mortals don't know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the word "zero coupon bond" in a sentence without sounding stupid — well, then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them. [...]

This whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-@ss liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers.

In order to maintain this stranglehold without suffering a coup at the hands of people furious that no progress has been made on this problem, the financial sector has created a lot of "solutions." These solutions, however, are predictably impossible to translate into English.

A whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you've never heard of.

There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For good measure, there's also something called a Money Market Investor Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG.

And, of course, these programs send money in directions no one understands, to destinations no one knows about.

While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments).

Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy.

No one knows who's getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America's credit rating.

Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions are even temporary at all — or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders.

These programs were supposed to disappear after serving their purpose as a short-term solution, but each gets quietly renewed each time it is due to expire.

Every lawmaker who has stood in front of this freight train of greed and malfeasance has paid a price -- likely the reason many legislative critics speak in entirely unactionable generalities about "the problem" and "the crisis and "the problem with this crisis."

None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go f#ck itself — or so said the law.

When Stevens asked the GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950.

The relevant section, 31 USC 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include "deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters."

The exemption, as Foss notes, "basically includes everything." According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress.

Or by anyone else, for that matter.

Stevens isn't the only person in Congress to be given the finger by the Fed. In January, when Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida asked Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn where all the money went — only $1.2 trillion had vanished by then — Kohn gave Grayson a classic eye roll, saying he would be "very hesitant" to name names because it might discourage banks from taking the money.

"Has that ever happened?" Grayson asked. "Have people ever said, 'We will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it?'"

"Well, we said we would not publish the names of the borrowers, so we have no test of that," Kohn answered, visibly annoyed with Grayson's meddling.

Grayson pressed on, demanding to know on what terms the Fed was lending the money. Presumably it was buying assets and making loans, but no one knew how it was pricing those assets — in other words, no one knew what kind of deal it was striking on behalf of taxpayers.

So when Grayson asked if the purchased assets were "marked to market" — a methodology that assigns a concrete value to assets, based on the market rate on the day they are traded — Kohn answered, mysteriously, "The ones that have market values are marked to market."

The implication was that the Fed was purchasing derivatives like credit swaps or other instruments that were basically impossible to value objectively — paying real money for God knows what.

"Well, how much of them don't have market values?" asked Grayson. "How much of them are worthless?"

"None are worthless," Kohn snapped.

"Then why don't you mark them to market?" Grayson demanded.

"Well," Kohn sighed, "we are marking the ones to market that have market values."

In essence, the Fed was telling Congress to lay off and let the experts handle things.

If the CEO of Boeing or Ford talked to a Congressional committee like that, we'd all be riding bikes for the next 60 years. But the financial sector has no fear of reprisal. They've effectively created a system wherein they are a very scary law unto themselves.

When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary — a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. [...]

And the Fed isn't the only arm of the bailout that has closed ranks. The Treasury, too, has maintained incredible secrecy surrounding its implementation even of the TARP program, which was mandated by Congress.

To this date, no one knows exactly what criteria the Treasury Department used to determine which banks received bailout funds and which didn't — particularly the first $350 billion given out under Bush appointee Hank Paulson.

The situation with the first TARP payments grew so absurd that when the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with monitoring the bailout money, sent a query to Paulson asking how he decided whom to give money to, Treasury responded — and this isn't a joke — by directing the panel to a copy of the TARP application form on its website.

Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, was struck nearly speechless by the response.

The collapse of these massive banks, and their subsequent lack of remorse at the damage they caused (but it's hard to look sorry when you get a bonus), was an opportunity to reinvest in smaller banks -- the kind with straightforward ledgers and an incentive to be competitive.

But, not so much.

The lion's share of the bailout money has gone to the larger, so-called "systemically important" banks. "It's like Treasury is picking winners and losers," says one state banking official who asked not to be identified.

This itself is a hugely important political development. In essence, the bailout accelerated the decline of regional community lenders by boosting the political power of their giant national competitors.

Which, when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool of Bigger Fish. [...]

Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk.

In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses.

Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations.

In other words, it's AIG's rip-roaringly sh#tty business model writ almost inconceivably massive — to echo Geithner, a huge, complex global company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that's been allowed to build up without adult supervision.

This situation leaves us with a lot of unbelievably awful questions:

How much of what kinds of crap is actually on our balance sheet, and what did we pay for it?

When exactly will the rent come due, when will the money run out?

Does anyone know what the hell is going on?

And on the linear spectrum of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now?

Is there a dictionary word that even describes what we are now?

It would be funny, if it weren't such a nightmare.

What are the odds Obama is going to save us? You know things are bad when RS isn't too hopeful (excuse the pun) about our chances:

The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly complex. [...]

Most of Geithner's early moves reek strongly of Paulsonism. He has continually talked about partnering with private investors to create a so-called "bad bank" that would systemically relieve private lenders of bad assets — the kind of massive, opaque, quasi-private bureaucratic nightmare that Paulson specialized in.

RS wraps up with a series of sentiments expressed in the BHB many times:

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow.

By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates.

By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

And, after all this, RS bids the only farewell possible. Here's what we have to look forward to:

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of.

When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks.

Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your @ss in jail instead?"

But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It.

These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties.

Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season.

It is scary to consider just how scary this is going to get before it's over. And, when it's over, what will our frame of reference be to decide it's all back to normal?

Another Successful Faith-Based Initiative

One thing you have to admit about the global spread of radical Islam, at least they have the best interests of their people in mind.

Nowhere is this more true than the already completely sane country of Nigeria.

The AP notes:

In 2003, imams in northern Nigeria promoted a boycott of polio vaccinations, claiming they were a Western plot to make Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.

The result: The number of newly crippled children rose by more than double the following year, and there were fears that the disease would spread into a dozen neighboring countries. [...]

Last year's spike has raised fears that the disease could be exported again to surrounding polio-free countries and threaten a multibillion dollar effort to wipe the disease from the globe.

This seems completely rational.

The Madness: Day 2

My domination continues in the tourney.

I used to think that it was a little scary that Obama couldn't assemble a competent team of experts to fix the economy.

I'm equally disturbed he is getting spanked by a person that watched 3 college basketball games all year (but, granted, a lot of highlights).

It's Like a Franchise Operation for Afghanistan

I hate to take anything this guy says seriously, but this video is pretty... how do you say, less than wonderful.

The Madness: Day 1

After one day of dancing, I'm handily trouncing the leader of the free world.

Stranded in the Snow on a Hot Planet

The funny thing about people who conduct global warming research is their habit of getting caught in non-seasonal blizzards.

Three global warming researchers stranded in the North Pole by cold weather were holding out hope Wednesday as a fourth plane set off in an attempt deliver them supplies.

The flight took off during a break in bad weather after “brutal” conditions halted three previous attempts to reach the British explorers who said they were nearly out of food, the Agence France-Presse reported.

“We’re hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice,” expedition leader Pen Hadow said in e-mailed statement.

It's interesting to note that global warming researchers never get caught in oven-like conditions in early winter.

Go Sounders!

Let's give it up for major league soccer in Seattle!

In an impressive first showing the Seattle Sounders won 3-0 against the NYC Red Bulls.

Fact: I really don't care about soccer.

Fact: My current mild enthusiasm, combined with my general lack of previous interest, makes me a homer not a bandwagon fan.

Fact: This team is in Seattle, so it'd be awesome if they do well.

Fact: The second fact mitigates the first fact.

New Achievements in Slime Baggery

I really enjoy watching the Democratic party turn on itself. The West Wing articulated the sentiment that watching democrats fighting amongst each other is D.C.'s favorite bloodsport. Indeed.

No one ever placed the blame for the the current economic crisis at the very guilty feet of Senator Dodd, but he is finally being blamed for something -- helping the banks get rich off the bailout.

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill.

The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax. [...]

“I can't point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in,” Dodd told FOX. “I can tell you this much, when my language left the senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did.”

Well that seems odd. You'd think the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee would have more control over what he writes.

If I were the suspicious type, I'd assume that Sen. Dodd was looking us right in the eye and lying...

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.

Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision. [...]

Dodd had previously said that he played no role in writing the controversial language, and was not a part of the conference committee that inserted the language in the bill. As late as today, Dodd’s spokeswoman denied the senator’s involvement.

Like any proper slime bag, Dodd is pointing the finger elsewhere, of course.

He effectively used this tactic to avoid being blamed for the current financial collapse, so you can't blame him for trying again.

The surprising thing is who he's pointing at.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Obama administration asked him to insert a provision in last month’s $787 billion economic- stimulus legislation that had the effect of authorizing American International Group Inc.’s bonuses.

And showing their own ability for slime baggery, the White House has already responded.

An administration official said last night that representatives of President Barack Obama didn’t insist on the change, though they did contend that the language in Dodd’s amendment could be legally challenged because it would apply retroactively to bonus agreements.

So how did this even happen in the first place?

Who allowed the creation of the kind of laws that caused this mess, and who has allowed the creation of new laws to make them even richer amidst financial collapse?

Here's a hint: The top two recipients of AIG political contributions.

The Dude from the EU has an Announcement

Multi-national organizations have a long history of displaying extraordinary decision-making powers, and the EU is among the most impressive of all.

I had always figured the EU had set the bar out of reach when it tried to create a series of laws mandating the legal shape and curvature of bananas, but they may have outdone themselves again.

Using 'Miss' and 'Mrs' has been banned by leaders of the European Union because they are not considered politically correct.

Brussels bureaucrats have decided the words are sexist and issued new guidelines in its bid to create 'gender-neutral' language. [...]

This also means Madame and Mademoiselle, Frau and Fraulein and Senora and Senorita are banned.

What is the solution for this? Does the the EU just expect everyone to start referring to each other as "Dude?"

An Entirely Obfuscated Line

Because he is a completely serious politician, our president is appearing on Leno.

Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a late night chat show tomorrow when he is a guest of comedian and writer Jay Leno.

While most of the people on The Tonight show will promote a film or record, Mr Obama will be pushing his economic rescue plan for America.

Critics accused him of dumbing down the presidency and of blurring the line between politics and entertainment.

Blurring the line? That statement assumes Barry-O has ever believe the line existed.

Considering the bankrollers of his primary campaign and his guest list since taking office, I think Barry actually believes he is a movie star.

If that were the case we could all just pray for a casting change. We should be so lucky.

Wishing for a Bat Signal

As is the case with ever-growing regularity, the most successful businessman of our generation is the only one making sense when it comes to the economy.

Let me repeat that: The ONLY one making sense.

Yes, that seems impossible with so many "experts" out there, but Mitt is the only expert left who hasn't been bought.

Notes Mitt,

With consumer confidence plummeting to its lowest level in history and the stock market falling 20% since his taking office, it’s clear that something is wrong.

I believe it is that so far, Barack Obama has focused on the short term, on what I refer to as the first order effects of his policies. That initially plays well with some in the media and with the public at large. But investors are looking to see what the impact will be down the road. They don’t like what they see.

President Obama’s economic policies fail to take into account second and third order effects. [...]

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the President’s proposals is that they appear to be taking America down the very path of big government, big spending and big borrowing that got us in so much trouble in the first place.

By ignoring the second order consequences of his policies, the President is deepening and lengthening this recession. He inherited a recession, yes, but he is making it worse.

One by one, Mitt explains how each of Barry-O's plans to save the economy is categorically terrible.

-- Over-spending and over-borrowing = Bad idea.

-- Cap and trade = Bad idea.

-- Corporate tax proposal = Bad idea.

-- Mortgage bailout = Bad idea.

-- Healthcare overhaul = Bad idea.

-- Enormous government growth = Bad idea.

As citizens, we're no longer in the honeymoon-esque period wherein we can optimistically wait and see what Obama does right; we are now forced to consider how we can fix what he's already done.

There is still time to limit the damage caused by the President’s policies. Republicans and “blue dog” Democrats need to insist on fiscal discipline.

Expanding health insurance and improving education can be achieved without massive new federal spending. Taxes should not be raised. Energy policy must not penalize America. Entitlements must be reformed. And a half a trillion dollar deficit in four years, which rises every year thereafter, must be rejected.

It is unacceptable as a budget; it is unthinkable as a goal.

I wish there were some sort of Mitt Romney Bat Signal we could point toward the sky.

It'd probably the silhouette of his hair.

03/14/09: Also Worth Noting

Chinese stock market commentators are getting pretty emotional. Where is that old-world stoicism? There's no crying in finance!

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If you've been careful to lock your doors at night, it's entirely possible that serial killers are still wandering around your living room while you sleep.

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The Congressman from Michigan can bring the heat -- but in an enjoyable way.

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A recent meeting at HBO headquarters included the phrase, "How can we make a major world religion hate us forever?" I think they nailed it.

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How does a responsible world power deal with social unrest? There are a lot of good examples, and then there's China's way of approaching it. When the citizens of Tibet react against the anniversary of China invading and occupying their country, things get ugly.

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Stewart v. Cramer was amusing if not altogether conclusive.

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Who said local civil government can't be fun?

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Attention nerds who think all your online crap is so awesome: Peer into the future (or past).

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For anyone currently paying off student loans, this news will make your day: Our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has created a $1 million annual scholarship program for Palestinian students going to American universities. That's awesome.

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A recently released series of internal e-mails show that our humble Speaker of the House has spent the last several years demanding that military aircraft shuttle her, her entourage, her family and her friends around the country. I'm sure that was cheap.

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Seven employees of a state run hospital for the mentally disabled in Texas have been arrested for staging a "Fight Club" with various residents. It's unsure who the participants were due to privacy laws and the fact that "hospital for the mentally disabled" is a term often applied to Texas's public schools.

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Ann Coulter is one angry lady -- but pretty funny.

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Scientists are apparently getting closer to being able to read minds. And by "getting closer," I mean, "not at all." By the sound of it, we're actually closer to teleportation.

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Title 9 has really gotten out of control.

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The reason so many inner-city areas are resistant to being "healed" by the altruistic efforts of outsiders is that it's not a matter of economics or class, it's about terminally injured outlook on life. Consider this: "Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February. Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence." I'm not sure throwaway catchphrases ("Hope" and/or "Change," for example) are going to fix this -- but tossing around empty promises and then leaving must seem pretty effective at the time.

* * *

This legislation will get nowhere because its proponents will be too sleepy to mount an adequate campaign for it.

* * *

We're all happy to see Bernie Madoff go to jail -- but not nearly as happy as this guy.

* * *

If Bristol Palin and here babydaddy can't make it work, what hope is there for the rest of us?

* * *

As noted previously, Joaquin Phoenix is going totally bonkers. Totally. Bonkers.

Priorities

Yes, he's very busy, and, yes, he should be meeting with experts -- but our president has his priorities.

While publicly identifying with the nation's have-nots, the Obama administration has been cultivating the Beltway social elite behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration invited top editors of three of Washington's local luxury lifestyle magazines — Capitol File, DC magazine and Washington Life — to a meeting where they discussed, among other things, how President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama can embrace Washington's glittery social scene.

At this rate, the economy may rebound just on the sale of pitchforks and torches in the D.C. area.

Petitions vs. Power

In his recent WSJ forum appearance, beloved scientist Al Gore noted the 3,000 scientists from "various fields" (i.e., not related to climatology) who had signed a petition stating global warming was man made.

He failed to mention the 32,000 scientists who have signed a petition saying the exact opposite thing, or the additional 650 certified meteorologists and climatologists who have stipulated the same sentiments on the official website of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

So where does Al get his information? He talks about the UN quite a bit. Driessen notes,

The UN’s Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change claims to be the world’s “most authoritative body” on the subject. However, only “something on the order of 20%” of the panel’s scientists “have some dealing with climate,” admits a senior member.

Even the IPCC chairman is an economist, not a scientist. The IPCC... has “never seriously investigated” the possibility that climate change might be natural.

The IPCC sees only what it is looking for; it sees nothing it is not looking for.

But Al's disinterest in pursuing the facts regardless of where they lead is one problem, what he does with the available facts is quite another. For example, when discussing the change in atmospheric parts per million of CO2 (a topic that he knows most of his most viewers have no frame of reference for), Al makes it sound like a nuclear event.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have “soared” from 280 ppm to 385 ppm over the last century. But this represents an almost trivial rise from 0.03% of the atmosphere to 0.04% – the equivalent of an increase from 3 cents to 4 out of $100, or from 1.08 inches to 1.44 inches on a football field.

Similarly, his graph of rising temperatures notes only when it has gone up, not the equally numerous times it has dropped.

Planetary temperatures may have increased during the last century, as CO2 levels increased. But not in a straight line. They rose 1900-1940 (1934 was the century’s warmest year), fell 1940-1975, rose again 1975-1998, then stabilized and even declined slightly from 1998 to 2008.

But the problem goes well beyond Al. Sensing the opportunity created by the hysteria, political appointees have been willing to say what their appointers want to hear. Consider these impressively hyperbolic statements from people who are supposed to talk and think like scientists:

-- Energy Secretary Stephen Chu: “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

-- NOAA scientist Susan Solomon: “In ten years the oceans will be toxic, and all life in them will die.”

-- NASA astronomer James Hansen: “Death trains” are carrying poisonous fuel to “coal-fired factories of death.”

Yes, the debate is over amongst the people in a position to make the decisions, but not amongst those working in the field.

And that is pretty scary.

Unfortunately, There Will Not Be a Make-up Test

People who understand how money works and/or who own companies continue to criticize the economic policies of a president who has neither of those items on his own resume.

To make their distaste clear, economists from around the country have participated in a WSJ survey and assigned him and his clown-like Treasury Secretary failing grades.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner received failing grades for their efforts to revive the economy from participants in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey. [...]

On average, they gave the president a grade of 59 out of 100, and although there was a broad range of marks, 42% of respondents rated Mr. Obama below 60. Mr. Geithner received an average grade of 51. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scored better, with an average 71. [...]

The economists' negative ratings mark a turnaround in opinion. In December, before Mr. Obama took office, three-quarters of respondents said the incoming administration's economic team was better than the departing Bush team. However, Mr. Geithner's latest marks are lower than the average grade of 57 that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson received in January.

But, in his defense, Barry expected a different teacher to be grading his work.

Bringing the Fight to the Sharks

With great pride I offer Craig Clasen the "BHB Award for Excellence in the Pursuit of Greatness" for his victorious two-hour fist fight with a shark (seen here).

The life-and-death struggle took place off New Orleans when Clasen, filmmaker Ryan McInnis and two friends were hunting tuna.

Suddenly McInnis found himself cut off and the shark began circling. [...]

During the underwater struggle, Clasen speared the shark seven times and even attempted to drown it before finishing it off with a long-blade knife.

Congratulations, Craig. Your trophy now stands in the hallowed halls shared with squirrel-suit skydivers, bare-knuckled grizzly bear fighters, and people who race jets.

If You Don't Like the Law, Prosecute Those Who Uphold it

The problem with enforcing the law is that mentally handicapped members of the U.S. House of Reps may want you to be prosecuted FOR ENFORCING IT.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens.

Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Robert Scott (D-Va.) requested the investigation, and activists groups such as National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN launched petition drives and rallies in support of the probe. [...]

In a letter dated March 10, 2009, Loretta Smith, acting assistant attorney general at the DOJ, detailed what her department would be investigating:

"The investigation will focus on alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures conducted by the MCSO, and on allegations of national origin discrimination, including failure to provide meaningful access to MCSO services for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals."

Let's examine that last sentence for a moment.

Accusation: Discriminatory police practices.
Barf: Does this mean that the Maricopa Sheriff's department is deporting people that meet the criteria of 1) being Mexican, 2) not speaking English, 3) breaking the law in our country, 4) were caught climbing over or under a fence. None of the above is a crime -- it is law enforcement against an easily identifiable perpetrator. Let's be clear: Illegally entering the U.S. is a crime. Thus, illegally entering the U.S. makes you a criminal, regardless of your reasons for doing so.

Accusation: National origin discrimination.
Barf: The law says that if you come from another country and want to live in America you can do it if you follow an established process. That process does not involve climbing over a fence. If you choose the latter option, that makes you a criminal. A criminal in a foreign country. This is not an interpretation of the law -- it is THE law. Your nation of origin is not an issue of discrimination but incrimination.

Accusation: Failure to provide meaningful access for limited English proficient individuals.
Barf: I want to believe this was thrown in as a joke. The sheriff is expected to provide -- at all times, apparently -- translators for each cop rounding up the criminals caught entering the country? Do I have an expectation for encountering English-speaking cops the next time I get caught making trouble in Guadalajara?

What bass-ackwards criminal justice philosophy reallocates law enforcement resources to accommodate the needs of criminals?

Answer: Somoene who has never lived in a border area. Somoene (or a group of someones) who have never lived in Arizona -- a state that, thanks to the surge of illegal entry, has jaw-dropping rates of kidnapping, murder, human trafficking, and every vice that follows.

Yes, Representatives, let's shut down the operation in Maricopa; we'd hate to make any criminals uncomfortable.

And, of course, let's not forget that ACORN is behind this -- an organization that has consistently proven to have our best interests in mind.

How Badly Will the Government Mess this Up? Time Will Tell

Now that U.S. citizens are getting killed by illegal immigrants, Obama has been reluctantly forced to confront the issue.

I emphasize "reluctantly."

President Obama weighed in Wednesday on the escalating drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that he was looking at possibly deploying National Guard troops to contain the violence but ruled out any immediate military move.

"We're going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they would make sense," Obama said. [...]

Obama was cautious, however. "We've got a very big border with Mexico," he said. "I'm not interested in militarizing the border."

Not interested in militarizing? No crap -- the National Guard had better be careful; the government has shown a zero tolerance policy for any law enforcement official who tries to apply "law" or "enforcement" towards armed illegals.

Dinosaurs!

If you're traveling through Viet Nam anytime soon, keep an eye out for members of the Stegosaurid family.

Please -- on behalf the five-year-old version of me, I'd love to see this in person.

Global Warming Concerns: No Longer Buying it

Congratulations readers! The BHB is turning the tide of reasonless global warming hysteria.

According to Gallup:

Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated.

This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.

So who IS still buying this crap? The people young enough to believe whatever their teachers or a mentally ill former government official tells them:

Notably, all of the past year's uptick in cynicism about the seriousness of global warming coverage occurred among Americans 30 and older.

The views of 18- to 29-year-olds, the age group generally most concerned about global warming and most likely to say the problem is underestimated, didn't change.

Luckily, the data indicates that this changes over time.

By this time next year, I'd like to see the percentage pass 50%.

Some key ways to do this:

1) Don't let your friends use the term "climate change." This is a cop-out used by people like beloved scientist Al Gore to explain why his global warming theories are making the planet colder. Make them stick to the original concern over global WARMING.

2) Explain that deforestation and erosion are real environmental problems. The heat cycles of the sun are not.

3) Read them a child's dinosaur book. Page one typically reads, "In the era of dinosaurs, the world was a hot, hot place." Then ask them what was causing this terrible problem back when fossil fuel was still alive and well.

And... break!

Wall Street --> Main Street --> Your Street --> Sesame Street

The financial meltdown just got a lot uglier and more depressing.

Headline: Downturn hits Sesame Street

The recession has spread from Wall Street to Sesame Street. The home of Elmo and Oscar the Grouch announced on Wednesday that it would eliminate a fifth of its 355-strong workforce as market turmoil ate into its income and assets.

I could make quite a few jokes about which characters are going to be selling crack and which ones will be forced into the sex trade -- but that is even more depressing, and conjures some of the worst mental images imaginable.

A Security Council Member that Offers Neither "Security" Nor "Council"

How does a responsible world power deal with social unrest? There are a lot of good examples, and then there's China's way of dealing with it.

When the citizens of Tibet react against the anniversary of China invading and occupying their country, things get ugly.

Forbes Ranks Those Best Able to Stack Dat Cheese

Forbes' list of the richest people on earth is keeping it real this year. Very real.

Mexico's most wanted man Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, blamed for thousands of deaths in a drug war, has made it onto the Forbes Magazine list of the world's richest people with an estimated $1 billion fortune.

Guzman, who is just 5 feet tall (1.55 metres), escaped from prison in 2001 to set off a wave of killings across Mexico in an attempt to dominate the country's highly lucrative drug trade into the United States.

"He is not available for interviews," Luisa Kroll, senior editor of Forbes, said on Wednesday. "But his financial situation is doing quite well."

Now that the underworld is having their wealth compared equally to that of legitimized international businessmen (a creepy precedent, if you think about it -- and, arguably, a strange first step toward tacitly acknowledging acceptance of the drug trade), it's worth wondering how the personal fortune of Tony Montana or the Corleone family might have stacked up.

I'll be conducting a movie marathon this weekend to try to get some answers.

Yes You Can Storm the Gates!

Barry, things are not looking good.

Even the sycophants are getting upset.

Headline: Heads should roll.

Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection.

First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery.

Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration's weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?

Usually, when the blindly, hysterically loyal get disappointed enough times in a row, the hero worship turns to hero loathing.

Then all it takes is one clever person with a megaphone to stand up and say, "We are the coup d'etat we've been waiting for!!!"

Watch out.

Throwing the Book... Lash at Elderly Criminals

The Religion of Peace will not tolerate blasphemy. And by "blasphemy," I mean "allowing an old woman to talk to an alleged stranger."

A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives. [...] The newspaper Al-Watan said the woman met with the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread at her home in al-Chamil, a city north of the capital, Riyadh.

Pretty enlightened, right? And these are the people our country would rather buy oil from instead of drill offshore.

Levying the Stupid Tax of 2008

It's remarkable how very often terrible decisions come back to haunt you.

After ignoring a lifetime worth of financial savvy by voicing his support for Barry-O, Warren Buffet is paying -- literally -- for that mistake.

Billionaire Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. posted its worst results ever in 2008, said the economy “has fallen off a cliff,"...Berkshire’s shares have lost almost half their value in the past year as the bear market dragged down financial assets.

But, when you're worth billions, you can lose half your wealth and still have plenty to spare.

The real concern is if the other 52% of the country is ready to pay for their mistake -- and if the 48% who didn't are willing to pay for that mistake, too.

In every sense, putting Obama in office came with a penalty -- a Stupid Tax. And this burden must be borne by all of us, not just those as dumb as Warren.

One Trillion Dollars: A Visual Guide

It's remarkable what visualizing a problem can do for your understanding of it.

Regarding the multi-trillion dollar spending bill Obama is about to unload on the next four generations of Americans, a visualization of this much money is pretty helpful.

I'd like to think that taking a moment to think of a problem like this is one of those reasonable business practices our Executive should be applying to this problem. But he's never had a job. And he's never been responsible for money or ROI. And he's never been in charge of anything before. And he's never been confronted with an opposing fact he couldn't simply dismiss by calling it racist.

I wish I could just read him these words: An acre of double-stacked pallets of $100s.

They Found a That in the This: Dark Secrets in the Midwest

Living in Illinois is even grosser than you'd imagine.

Sure, your average sewer is filled with alligators, ninja turtles and other biohazards, but consider this:

Someone is disposing of placentas in a central Illinois sewage system and authorities want it to stop.

Workers in Urbana on Thursday found a placenta in a filter that keeps large objects out of the sewage treatment plant -- the third such find this year. So police have enlisted medical experts.

What is this, the 1740s? What modern town doesn't offer its citizens universal placenta removal services?

What dark secrets are afoot in central Illinois?

My first reaction upon reading this was, "I wonder what it sounded like when the dispatcher got this call?" Luckily, this reporter did her homework and found out:

"It was one of the weirdest calls I've ever received," said Julie Pryde, who heads the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.

Urbana Police Lt. Bryant Seraphin remembered: "She said, 'You found a WHAT in the WHERE?'"

It would appear, however, that there is a lot of guilt surrounding this topic in Champaign.

Whereas someone living anywhere else might react with shock, a city official immediately promises (a bit too emphatically) that there is no way this placenta came from her house.

Storm sewers and toilets drain to the system, so those seem to be the likeliest routes, Pryde said, "but I don't think my personal toilet at home would be able to flush a placenta."

Hmmmm... I'm not convinced.

For example, what kind of town needs this sort of public service announcement:

"It is never acceptable to put placenta into the sewer system," Carson said. "Never."

My recommendation: If you are traveling through the area, don't eat anything you didn't see cooked.

Harps, Fires and Big Parties: The Charming History of Autocracy

The history of Rome tells the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

Scholars believe that it was Nero who had the fires set on the night of July 18, 19 A.D., and they also point out it was a harp he played, and not a fiddle -- but the mental image is nonetheless a striking example of a depraved, narcissistic leader bemusedly watching the carefully planned implosion of a disintegrating empire.

Once the fire subsided -- having started in the prized Circus Maximus and wiping out 14 of the most affluent districts in ancient Rome -- Nero made a great spectacle of his efforts to help those effected. He opened his palace to the homeless, set up a refugee camp and levied a tax on the entire empire to pay for their relief.

No sooner had the money been collected then he evicted the homeless and seized the enormous funds gathered by the tax. Nero then cleared the hundreds of acres of burnt rubble and built himself a massive gold-plated palace named the Domos Aurea (Golden House), commissioned a 100 foot tall statue in his image, and dug out an expansive personal lake -- completely emptying the recently filled treasury.

Not only did he fiddle while Rome burned, he greatly profited from the destruction. His new palace became the epicenter for largess and entertainment in the civilized world.

The enduring notion from this period in history is how could a leader surround himself with concerts, galas and feasting while problems he had either caused, or was unfit to solve, raged all around him?

It has long been the paragon of the unthinkable.

Wouldn't Tacitus be amused to read the AP.

The White House is the place to be on Wednesdays.

Since the presidency changed hands less than six weeks ago, a burst of entertaining has taken hold of the iconic, white-columned home of America's head of state.

The stately East Room, where portraits of George and Martha Washington adorn the walls, was transformed into a concert hall as President Barack Obama presented Stevie Wonder with the nation's highest award for pop music on Wednesday.

A week before that, the foot-stomping sounds of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a female a cappella group, filled the East Room for a Black History Month program. [...]

The flurry of entertaining is in keeping with the Obamas' promise to make the White House a more open place for everyone.

How did Rome reverse itself from Nero's comically terrible administration?

A year after Nero's death, Vespasian rose to power, demolished the private estate and on the footings of the man-made lake, built the beloved Colloseum.

What is the practical application and/or interpretation of this story today?

I have no idea. But it's depressing.

You Paid For it!

And you thought Obama's spending spree was over.

You have no idea.

The $1 trillion dropped two weeks ago was just the warm up act for the real (this deserves a new word) ridiculitude of what comes next.

In addition to his plan to spend $634 billion on healthcare reform (by canceling tax deductions for people making over $250k), he has a plan to spend ANOTHER $1 trillion on ANOTHER spending bill.

This one -- if it's possible -- is just as ugly as the first one.

Congress went on a pork-a-palooza yesterday, approving a massive spending bill with big bucks for Hawaiian canoe trips, research into pig smells, and tattoo removal - all while the nation faces an economic crisis. [...]

Earmarks totaled at least $3.8 billion - a figure used by the House Appropriations Committee.

But the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense calculates that there are an astonishing 8,570 earmarks at a cost of $7.7 billion.

All Barry's talk about transparent government seemed like a good idea; now we learn that it means he's going to openly mock us with his corruption, rather than hide it like the last three White House occupants.

What is being bought with all this money? Just what you'd expect.

The bill, which critics slammed as larded with pork, has big bucks to combat putrid stenches in the heartland, with $1.7 million for "Swine Odor and Manure Management Research."

That's on top of $1.9 million in each of the last two years, or nearly $6 million over the last three years. [...]

Another earmark, by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) provides $200,000 for a "tattoo-removal violence-outreach program" in Los Angeles.

The funds would buy a tattoo-removal machine to help gang members erase signs of their past.

You know, all the essentials.

And, sadly, I've expected nothing more.

Dark Times for Our Beloved Scientist

It's been a rough week for beloved scientist Al Gore.

First, one of the NYT's science blogs noted a recent bit of embarrassment suffered at the hands of one of Al's insufferable slide shows. It turns out (brace yourself for this) that Al was flagrantly misusing scientific data to achieve ends that served his warped agenda.

Pick your jaw up off the floor, and read on:

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. [...]

Earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. [...]

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why. Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado.

Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters.

Dr. Pielke quoted the Belgian center: “Indeed, justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading.

Oh, dear. The soaring rhetoric of Al's very expensive speaking engagements does not withstand the scrutiny of actual scientists. I'm sure Al never anticipated that the D's he got at Harvard while pursuing a degree in journalism (and the one semester of law school before failing out) would be rendered defenseless when confronted with the intellects of those who have pursued and excelled in the hard sciences.

But it gets a little worse. An op-ed in the D.C. Examiner excoriated an article Al wrote in the Financial Times along with his accomplice, the Sec Gen of the UN.

In the Financial Times, on February 17, Gore, in an op ed co-authored with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, asserts that, "In the US, there are now more jobs in the wind industry than in the entire coal industry." But as Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado points out, there is something wrong there.

In November 2008, the coal industry generated 155 million megawatt-hours of electricity, while wind generated only 1.3 million megawatt-hours. If wind really does employ more people than coal, it is doing so at a huge cost to American efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness.

Of course, the wind industry does not employ more people. Gore and Ban were flat out wrong in their assertion. [...] As the Christian Science Monitor found out, the figure comes from an apples-and-oranges comparison. An environmentalist blog had reported that the wind industry employed 85,000 people and the coal industry just 81,000.

But the wind industry figure represented jobs as "varied as turbine component manufacturing, construction and installation of wind turbines, wind turbine operations and maintenance, legal and marketing services, and more," while the coal industry figure represented just coal miners.

Comparing apples to apples, the coal industry probably employs over 1.4 million people-and those workers are still over seven times as productive as the wind energy workers.

Al certainly has painted himself into a corner. He is either an opportunistic liar, or his beloved wind energy is a hopelessly inefficient means of power.

Something tells me, however, that Al is going to find a way to get around this.

Disgraced by Association

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.
--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

As Obama continues to do and say increasingly ridiculous things, the people who he most alienates will take increasingly stronger reactive steps.

His total lack of concern with national security is going to draw ire from the military, and his ongoing attempts to centralize government power within his office is going to run afoul of people who have read the Constitution or are familiar with the concept of state's rights.

Both alienated groups are already at work.

As reported by the mostly wacko WND.com, an officer currently serving in Iraq is defying the Army policy of not commenting on the merits of a Commander-in-Chief. He won't be the last.

Also, the state of New Hampshire is considering a bill that clearly stipulates that the state will be governed according to strict Constitutional principles -- even if that means defying White House laws/orders. Considering how much Barry likes being the boss, NH can expect a lot of trouble if this bill makes it onto the books.

The language of the bill is written in such a way that the State Rep who authored it hopes we'll think Jefferson himself handled the first draft, but it is interesting to peruse nonetheless.

Here are some key sections along with basic translations:

That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government...delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government

The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.

Translation: The Federal government is meant to serve the citizens of the U.S., not burden it with laws. The Constitution clearly states that the unique needs and governing principles of states are meant to be constructed by the states themselves. This bill, it's author asserts, is meant to keep the Federal government from assuming powers it is not granted by the Constitution, under punishment of a secession threat. If the government can suddenly start creating laws it doesn't have the legal authority to enact -- without any resistance from other governing bodies -- it will be able to cement and expand its power in unlimited ways. Thus, as the bill phrases it, "that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers." Said another way: Current governing trends will allow the President to create laws based on his interest in creating them, rather than any actual legal authority to do so.

And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory. [...]

That words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.

Translation: Much to our current President's dismay (and that of his recent predecessors), any law he enacts which violates the Constitutional principles outlined above are automatically void. This doesn't mean they are void once someone complains and tries to get a hearing with SCOTUS; this means that any law, program or bureaucracy which violates the Constitution is void before it is even enacted.

To take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this State is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth. […]

Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.

Translation: If and when the President seizes control of powers he is not entitled to, it is a tacit omission that his actions are not intended to create “peace, happiness or prosperity.” The only way to avoid this situation is to emphasize (via legislation like this bill) the fact that no governmental leader can be granted unlimited power – no matter how much he may want it. Sorry Barry.

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism -- free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go.

In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

Translation: The “jealousy” spoken of here is the postulated unwillingness of the American people to give someone total control. This jealousy is exhibited in our erstwhile system of checks and balances. Projecting total “confidence” in a leader would mean giving him control of the government without oversight or accountability -- something even the truest of believers hesitate to offer. Thus, the Constitution is literally a “chain” by which a President is restrained from the excesses his vanity might otherwise indulge. Just as a tether disallows a dog from running amuck in the neighborhood, the Constitution is our protection from the President -- a measure intended to “bind him down from mischief,” e.g. spending trillions of dollars he does not have.

That this State does therefore call on its co-States for an expression of their sentiments on acts not authorized by the federal compact...That they will concur with this State in considering acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government…that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government.

Translation: Frankly, the wheels start to come off the bill at this point -- but not entirely. According to the bill, if the President continues this governing philosophy it will be a clear signal (i.e. “undisguised declaration”) that the Constitution has been formally rescinded and is no longer being applied to matters of national governance. Such an action would revoke all the rights of states outlined in the document and, by process of elimination, put all national power in the hands of the President.

And, finally, the pay off:

That any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America.

Translation: The legislature of NH has an opportunity (albeit an unlikely one) of making itself very, very clear.

In this doomsday scenario, if/when the Constitution has been formally removed as the chartering, guiding document of this nation, the continental, unified nature of the USA is similarly dissolved, since the makeup and cohesion of the country is also stipulated therein.

Thus, NH reasons, President Obama is not charting a path of unchallenged power, he is also well on his way to dissolving the innate structure of the United States.

What will be left in its place? There are a few options.

Thoreau's sentiment remains: "How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

Considering Crazy Pills as an Antidote

You know things are really going badly when only the angry, hysterical and unlikable make any sense.

Whatever happened to the era of the classically trained, eloquent statesmen? The fairly depressing fact is that such an era never existed.

Out with the Old, In with the...Oh Crap

The editorial board of the WSJ is at it again, and they are still unimpressed with the stimulus plan. The primary complaint this time: The architects of the stimulus are the architects of the collapse.

How's this for a bright idea to boost home prices and goose the economy: Have two government-chartered entities exploit Uncle Sam's low borrowing costs to subsidize mortgage rates. Lower borrowing costs will make housing more affordable and increase demand for unsold homes. If this sounds hauntingly familiar, that's because it is.

Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose mortgage-rate subsidy helped get us into this mess.

Well, here we go again, though this time the Republicans are offering the free lunch. [...]

But even if this did happen, it's not clear why it should. These days even Barney Frank agrees that homeownership rates were artificially high at the end of the boom. Getting back to those levels would only presage another bust. That bust would be scheduled for shortly after this supposedly temporary program ended, assuming it ever does.

I can't begin to tell you how tired I am of writing about this stimulus package. For someone who spent their entire academic career avoiding numbers, it is a very painful process.

But most days it feels like it's just me, the WSJ and some clowns on AM radio complaining about this -- not exactly the posse you want to be seen with when you're out on the town.

Heroes or Child Abusers: America Picks the Wrong Side

Peggy Noonan has an incredible habit of bringing the ruckus on political topics that are entirely true, even though you wish they weren't.

She contrasts the actions of politicians and the public with two figures recently thrust into the news: The Hudson River pilot and the utterly gross Octomom.

Politicians keep saying, "People have to begin to understand we're in bad shape," and "People should realize it's a crisis." I think they know, Sherlock. Do you? Our political leaders are like a doctor who rushes to the scene of a terrible crash, bends over a hemorrhaging woman and says, "This is serious, lady, you can't take it lightly." She looks up at him: "Help me, do something, I'm bleeding out!" The doctor, to the local TV cameras: "I hope she knows she's in trouble."

There's a sense that everyone's digging in. President Obama has dug in on this stimulus bill: Pass it or see catastrophe. Republicans are dug in: Pass it and see catastrophe. The digging in is a way of showing certitude, and they're showing certitude because they're lost.

We hire politicians to know what to do about empty stores, job loss, and "Retail Space Available." But they don't, and more than ever we know they don't.

And there's something else, not only in Manhattan but throughout the country. A major reason people are blue about the future is not the stores, not the Treasury secretary, not everyone digging in. It is those things, but it's more than that, and deeper.

It's Sully and Suleman, the pilot and "Octomom," the two great stories that are twinned with the era. Sully, the airline captain who saved 155 lives by landing that plane just right—level wings, nose up, tail down, plant that baby, get everyone out, get them counted, and then, at night, wonder what you could have done better. You know the reaction of the people of our country to Chesley B. Sullenberger III: They shake their heads, and tears come to their eyes. He is cool, modest, competent, tough in the good way. He's the only one who doesn't applaud Sully. He was just doing his job.

This is why people are so moved: We're still making Sullys. We're still making those mythic Americans, those steely-eyed rocket men. Like Alan Shepard in the Mercury rocket: "Come on and light this candle."

But Sully, 58, Air Force Academy '73, was shaped and formed by the old America, and educated in an ethos in which a certain style of manhood—of personhood—was held high.

What we fear we're making more of these days is Nadya Suleman. The dizzy, selfish, self-dramatizing 33-year-old mother who had six small children and then a week ago eight more because, well, she always wanted a big family. "Suley" doubletalks with the best of them, she doubletalks with profound ease. She is like Blago without the charm. She had needs and took proactive steps to meet them, and those who don't approve are limited, which must be sad for them. She leaves anchorwomen slack-jawed: How do you rough up a woman who's still lactating? She seems aware of their predicament.

Any great nation would worry at closed-up shops and a professional governing class that doesn't have a clue what to do. But a great nation that fears, deep down, that it may be becoming more Suley than Sully—that nation will enter a true depression.

Our legislative and executive branches are filled with about 300 Suleys, six or seven Sullys, and avfew dozen clowns waiting to see what everyone else does first.

I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Park Ave. vs. Wall Street

The blame game for the economic crisis is getting more and more sophisticated.

Bloomberg.com ups the ante today by taking a look at whether or note Ivy League pansies are responsible for what went wrong.

Twenty or 30 years ago, it was common for the best and the brightest to be doctors or engineers. By the 2000s, they wanted to be investment bankers.

When Wall Street was run by people randomly selected from the population, it was able to survive everything. After the best and brightest took over, it died the first time real-estate prices dropped 20 percent.

Are the two facts related? In other words, did Harvard kill Wall Street?

Is it just a coincidence that so many superstar minds arrived on Wall Street just as it died?

Perhaps not.

How feasible/reasonable is question? I guess that depends on the academic makeup of Wall Street.

Wall Street is gone because its firms did a terrible job assessing the risks of the positions they took. The models these firms used to evaluate risks failed. But having a failed model brings a firm down only if the firm collectively buys into the model.

To do that, the firm must be run by people who have a great deal of faith in their models, and a great deal of faith in themselves. That's where Ivy Leaguers and MBAs come in.

What do you get from an MBA? One recent study found that MBAs acquire an enormous amount of self-confidence during their graduate education. They learn to believe that they are the best and the brightest.

This narcissism has a real career impact. Psychologists at Ohio State University studied the behavior of 153 MBA students, who were put in groups of four and asked to orchestrate a large financial transaction on behalf of an imaginary company. The psychologists observed that the students who had the strongest narcissistic traits were most likely to emerge as leaders.

According to Amy Brunell, the lead author, the results of the study had large implications for real-world settings, because "narcissistic leaders tend to have volatile and risky decision- making performance and can be ineffective and potentially destructive leaders."

Those of us who know people that went to Harvard can attest that this charge of narcissism is a bit unfair. And by "unfair" I mean, "entirely accurate."

But after all is said and done about narcissism, what is the impact?

The consequences of Wall Street's reckless brilliance in many ways parallel modern-day engineering disasters. If you travel through Italy, you can't help but notice the many Roman bridges that still stretch across that nation's waterways. How is it that the Romans could build bridges that would last thousands of years, while the ones we build today collapse after a few decades?

The answer is simple. Back then, they did not have the fancy computers required to calculate exactly how strong a bridge must be. So an architect made a bridge very, very strong. Today, engineers can calculate exactly how much steel they need to incorporate into a bridge to bear the expected load. The result is, they are free to make them weaker.

Another result is less wiggle room for design error. Hence, modern bridge's predilection for collapsing.

The same is true of the financial sector. Back when Wall Street was run by individuals without fancy degrees, they had a proper skepticism toward fancy models and managed their risks with a great deal more humility and caution. Only when failed models became canon did catastrophe strike.

Wall Street didn't die in spite of being run by our best and brightest. It died because of that fact.

Luckily, another Harvard grad is here to save us.

And by "luckily" I mean... nevermind.

Big Business and the Economy: The Good and the Bad

Maybe I've been reading too much Ayn Rand lately (conclusion: yes, and I am pretty bored with it), but I have no problem with a businessman, or a collection of them, playing a part in rescuing the economy.

In fact, that's likely the only thing that is going to fix this. Back before it was politically expedient, Obama admitted this critical fact.

An example of how a tycoon can do wonders for the economy can be seen in Mexican billionaire Carlos Helu Slim. However, Slim is also an adept embodiment of what is wrong with tycoons.

The IHT has written a largely positive profile on him (it was their "Thank you" gift after his bailout of their flagging parent company, the NYT), that notes this fact about his conditional benevolence.

Slim bristles at suggestions that he is not doing his part for Mexico. "I think it's perverse to believe that there shouldn't be strong companies in poor countries," he told the journalists who attended the media lunch last fall.

Behind the scenes, though, he deploys a team of lawyers to fight efforts by the government to enforce antitrust laws against him.

The country's Federal Competition Commission is looking into Slim's companies. But the agency is outspent and outmanned by Slim. His companies "spend more on a single case than our entire annual budget," said an official at the commission, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about agency matters.

So what's the solution? I keep coming back to Mitt's plan to let the market correct itself after 3+ decades of government meddling in economic affairs.

But this idea, like the haircut of its chief proponent, is too good to ever be widely adopted.

What Happens When Bad History and Bad Politics Collide?

The WSJ remains the single mass media outlet not excited about Obama's stimulus package.

Economist Bradley Schiller, writing in the weekend edition, is no exception.

Schiller -- apparently a regular BHB reader -- notes that not only is the stimulus package based on bad economic policy, it's based on a notably (aka purposefully) bad grasp of history.

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics.

It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate.

Schiller's sentiments can be tested in three distinct ways: Total job losses, unemployment rates, relative GDP, heavy industry production, bank survival rates and stock valuation. Let's examine each in order.

-- Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

-- The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That's more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%). You simply can't equate 7.6% unemployment with the Great Depression.

-- Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That's comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%

-- Auto production last year declined by roughly 25%. That looks good compared to 1932, when production shriveled by 90%.

-- The failure of a couple of dozen banks in 2008 just doesn't compare to over 10,000 bank failures in 1933, or even the 3,000-plus bank (Savings & Loan) failures in 1987-88.

-- Stockholders can take some solace from the fact that the recent stock market debacle doesn't come close to the 90% devaluation of the early 1930s.

So what's the real problem with what our Manchurian Messiah is doing?

Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous.

Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future.

In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup.

Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises.

A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.

But asking for this demands that we have leadership inclined to sacrifice their vacation time or dinner plans to help get things done.

And, apparently, we haven't elected anyone like that recently.

At least consumer spending hasn't fallen off yet.

Salary Caps: Not Just for Football Anymore

Obama's plan to really doom the Wall Street firms that received bailouts is just one part of the stimulus plan we'll someday look back on with disbelief.

His idea to cap executive salaries at $500k will drive talent from the firms that need it most. Is this greedy? Perhaps. But why not let these banks pay to have the best people on board when trying to get back on course?

The Manchurian Messiah's argument is that $500k is a ton of money, even though such an amount is spare change compared to the money he's received from mobsters and special interests over the years. I mean, this is the guy who personally made $100 million disappear during his brief time with the Annenberg Foundation -- 200 times his proposed salary cap.

What's it cost to live a investment banker's life in Manhattan? The NYT has some interesting insights:

Private school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet. [...]

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue. [...]

A new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston.

But don't get me wrong, no one at the BHB is crying too hard about rich kids suddenly going to public schools. In fact, it sounds like the premise for a Disney movie.

Just don't expect the already-struggling banks to rely on their stable of talent to drag them out of the muck anytime soon.

And So it Begins...

America's next 75 years has been decided.

It was decided by an assembly entirely unaware of what legislation they were passing.

If no other element is remembered from today, it should be these 36 seconds.

The key line: "1,100 pages that not one member of this body has read. Not one."

And that's the really scary thing: No one knows what this "plan" will look like. No one can guess at the full breadth of its ramifications. And the people that passed this legislation didn't care. Serving a master other than their electorate, the proponents of this bill took their orders along party lines without any thought for their constituents.

Part of the problem is that the media refuses to assign any real blame, preferring instead to speak in abstractions about problems and robber barons. TIME Magazine made a comically incompetent attempt to target the 25 people behind the meltdown, but, predictably, left the real culprits off the list. Probably because political contributions from TIME employees lead directly back to these champions of America.

With no idea what we're getting, can we guess at what it will look like? Perhaps.

It's likely we'll see a lot more people like this and criticism will be responded to with action like this.

What are the dangers of electing a paper tiger president?

Now we know.

Obama's Bailout: An Unnecessary Number of Kitchen Utensils

How bad are things for Obama right now?

The Financial Times’ op-ed page is wondering aloud (several weeks after the BHB started the trend) if his presidency is already a failure.

And for good reason.

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger.

Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much.

If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor.

The costs to the US and the world of another failed presidency do not bear contemplating.

But, to be fair, the Manchurian Messiah was elected under the “I’m not Bush or McCain” banner more so than “I’m Capable of Leading a Superpower” mantra. Only the most detached Obama supporters believed the latter, but 52% of the country scrambled at the ostensibly bright future promised by the former.

It would be easiest to excoriate MM for the requisite arrogance it takes to believe oneself capable of leading during a crisis despite never serving in an executive capacity before, but now he plans to simply rubber stamp whatever bill Commissar Pelosi and her friends dream up.

And, in a classic case of a Legislative hit-and-run, the Democrats have stretched the stimulus bill to 1,071 pages -- ensuring that the opposition won't have time to read and object to it before is pushed into law. Certainly this is a tactic used by both parties in the past, but not with a bill leveraging the finances of the next three generations, and certainly not with a president that campaigned on a platform of bipartisanship. As Krauthhammer noted, MM has regularly spoken about how we must use "hope over fear" -- until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

But wait -- why won't Republican legislators have time to review the bill? Because the Dems have reneged on their promise to allow their fellow lawmakers -- and the public -- review the bill for 48 hours before voting. This too ensures that opponents will have little time to draw attention to outrageous spending allotments, but also because it will limit the number of Democrats that get cold feet at the thought of passing such a "legislative abominiation."

The other reason for the rush: The Speaker of the House is leaving on a trip to Italy and doesn't want to miss her flight.

The biggest problem now is that Obama believes he is so smart that whatever he approves will simply be successful. If it’s not, he’ll accuse the suffocating national debt and rampant unemployment figures of being racist. You may think approaching a problem that way is absurd, but look where it’s gotten him so far.

The greatest current danger are the architects of this solution: A president with no leadership or financial experience, and the same senators (Frank, Dodd, etc.) who were brains behind the current fiasco.

In a recent article detailing the history of recessions, James Glassman notes that the biggest obstacle presented during crises like this are the "expert" opinions of those tasked with solving the problem.

On being presented the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, Friedrich von Hayek devoted his Stockholm lecture to acknowledging the severe limitations of his profession.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences—an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error.”

Government simply cannot know enough to direct an economy successfully, and when the President claims that his fiscal stimulus plan will create (or save) at least three million jobs, he is taking a wild, and dangerous, leap. Said Hayek:

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

But this kind of thinking – regardless of what kind of awards it has won – runs diametrically to the governing philosophy of the majority party.

This philosophy is the same one community organizers/leaders like Sharpton, Jesse and, yes, Barack, have used for decades: “You can’t be successful alone; only with MY help can you hope to overcome or suceed in life.”

This tone and this mindset serves only to expand the power of the figurehead and incrementally enslave those receiving their "help.”