Never Saw This One Coming

Sarah Palin will resign her office as governor of Alaska within weeks.

WASILLA, Alaska — In a stunning announcement, Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday morning she will resign her office in a few weeks.

Speculation has swirled for weeks, perhaps months that Palin would not seek re-election in 2010 as she pursues a political career on the national stage. The former vice presidential candidate has long been rumored to be considering a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Palin did not address those rumors at the press conference at her Wasilla home, during which she did not take questions from reporters.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated as her successor at the Governor’s Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Sunday, July 26, Palin said.

Wow. This is stunning. Is this a prelude to her running in 2012 or is she sick of all the circus acts going on in the media? We’ll have to wait to find out apparently.

Driving Away Your Cares

Cheerfully filched from The Anchoress.

It would be funnier if it wasn’t so close to being true.

Presstitution Ring

(Late to this story since I am still lucky enough to have a job.) The Washington Post has apparently recrossed its legs and decided not to offer full access to itself, its reporters, staff, members of Congress and assorted Obama administration officials to any and  all well-heeled lobbyists.

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive “salon” at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to “those powerful few” - Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that “a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do.”

The flier stated the goals thusly:

“Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth … Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders…..

One assumes the promotion went astray by failing to appear more as an upscale bordello instead of like a streetwalker near a lamppost.  

Whatever they were trying to do was simply pay for play. No matter how they try to dress it up.  One is reminded of the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “We’ve already established what you are, ma’am. Now we’re just haggling over the price.” Only they appear to be haggling over the presentation of the wares, not the money.

UPDATE: The Post’s ombudsman reports that the Post has only committed to canceling the first bordello “salon“. Apparently, the “repackaging” will commence “Post”-haste. Perhaps a nice “personal Services” ad on Craig’s List.

This was more than a public relations disaster. This is several notches above that and well into “apocalypse” territory. The cancellation of just the one event pushes it past that line.

About Those Green Shoots

It turns out the green is just mold. Growing on the by-now ludicrous claims made in the past few months that the economy is turning around. 467,000 people lost jobs last month. The much-massaged unemployment rate inched up to 9.5%. (Whereas when the number of unemployed who have simply given up looking for work or who are taking whatever part-time jobs they can get are factored in, the unemployment rate now stands at an all-time record of 16.5%). In other words, this is bad and getting worse, not better.

Nearly 3.4 million jobs have been lost during the first half of 2009, more than the 3.1 million lost in all of 2008.

“It’s not the catastrophic numbers we saw earlier this year, but they’re still pretty damn lousy,” said Keith Hembre, chief economist with First American Funds.

The job losses don’t tell the full picture of the pain the labor market either. The average hourly work week fell to 33 hours from 33.1 hours in May, a record low in readings that go back to 1964. Average hourly wages were unchanged, so the shorter week shaved $1.85, or 0.3%, off of the average weekly paycheck.

The so-called underemployment rate, which counts those who are working part-time jobs because they couldn’t find a full-time position as well as discouraged job seekers who have stopped looking for work, rose to a record high 16.5%.

Those who have been out of work for six months or more, many who have run out of unemployment benefits, climbed to nearly 4.4 million, also a record high.

There are the usual raft of administration officials assuring everyone that the stimulus will kick in at any moment and everything will be all wonderful. Ponies for everyone! These would be the same liars optimists who swore that unemployment would stop at 8 % if the “stimulus” was passed. We are, in fact, worse off than the Obama administration predicted without a stimulus. By a rather large margin now.

The same incompetents people are also now assuring us that just as soon as they spend even more, everything will be even better than it is. Rational people shudder at the thought.

Here’s the fact: if something is supposed to stimulate the economy rapidly, it must be applied rapidly. The fact that most of the wonderful promised effects haven’t kicked in yet indicate that the “stimulus” was nothing more than a bloated spending plan, not meant to really do what it was supposed to but only to give out favors to friends.

That is one big reason things are going downhill as fast as they are. This is also why the administration makes nebulous claims of having “created or saved” 150,000 jobs, but can only name a dozen or so at any one time.

We have lost 3.4 million jobs in just the first half of the year. Versus 150,000 supposed saved or new jobs. You have to be completely unable to do math to not see the problem here. In which case, you would be perfectly suited to a job as an economic adviser to the current administration.

Hey! They created a job!

Indulgences

Robert Zubrin in Roll Call:

On June 25, the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate stabilization act, which would institute a cap-and-trade system to restrict Americans’ carbon emissions. While proponents of the bill have sought to argue that the costs of such a system would be negligible, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the bill proposes a massive and highly regressive tax on the U.S. economy, and could potentially cause not only extensive business failures, unemployment and privation within our borders, but starvation among poorer populations elsewhere.

To understand this, it is only necessary to look at the numbers. According to a report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in April, by 2015 the price of carbon emission indulgences required by the bill for industries to operate could be expected to run between $13 and $17 per ton of CO2 emitted. It may be noted that this estimate was made by an Obama administration agency highly favorable to the bill and that it did not take into account the very real possibility that speculators might act aggressively to buy up all the available indulgences and then, acting like ticket scalpers, force industrial users to purchase them at greatly inflated prices. So these EPA figures for carbon emission costs should be viewed as minimal. That said, let’s stipulate the $15/ton midrange of the EPA estimate, and see what it implies.

The United States emits about 9 billion tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, at a rate of $15/ton fee for emission indulgences, the bill would impose a tax of $135 billion per year on the nation. Divided by the U.S. population of 300 million, that works out to a cost of $450 per year levied on every American man, woman or child, or $1,800 for a family of four. While for wealthy individuals like Al Gore such an impost might represent a mere pittance, for working families struggling hard to make ends meet it would be a very significant burden.

The whole scheme of the Marxman-Wacky bill hinges upon the sale of what Zubrin calls, repeatedly, “indulgences”. This is quite apt, since that is exactly what the carbon warrants - or whatever they term these fictitious instruments - are.

This is nothing more than a handout to “green” speculators to make money by trading “green” credits to rake in lots and lots of green “dead presidents” for themselves. And to pass the high costs of the trading in indulgences on to the people of this nation. We will all pay the price for the buying, selling and trading of these indulgences. Some will pay more - those who can least afford it.

Everything will cost more - and more and more - to pump money into the pockets of the “green” speculators. The numbers don’t add up to anything more than an opportunity for well-connected speculators to make money off the poorest, weakest members of this society. This is a brutally regressive taxation scheme, passed by Democrats who portray themselves as champions of the poor and weak.

It is the sale of indulgences, nothing more. To make money for Democrat-allied speculators. 

Someone had a few things to say about the sale of indulgences quite a few years ago:

The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it. - Martin Luther, Thesis 52

Those words were written almost 500 years ago now. They are no less true today.

Go read the whole thing to see how bad this bill is. It is very, very bad. I am calling it Marxman-Wacky for good reason.

Via Memeorandum.

42 to 19

That’s percentage of people who think the Marxman-Wacky bill will hurt the economy rather than help it. A new Rasmussen poll shows a two to one disparity between the two groups:

Americans have mixed feelings about the historic climate change bill that passed the House on Friday, but 42% say it will hurt the U.S. economy.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% believe the climate change bill passed by the House on Friday will help the economy. Fifteen percent (15%) say it will have no impact, and 24% are not sure.

A majority of both Republicans (56%) and adults not affiliated with either major political party (52%) think the bill will hurt the economy. Among Democrats, however, 30% say it will help the economy, 23% that it will hurt and 21% say it will have no impact.

That is not a strong showing even among Democrats. The numbers are disastrous for Democrats unless the economy recovers between now and election day 2010. But with the current unemployment, this appears unlikely.

An awful lot of Democrats have left their political throats exposed with this one vote.

Flunking Basic Math

Forbes on the Marxman-Wacky fraud bill:

Electricity is a good thing. It powers your computer, drives economic growth, transmits images from Tehran streets, keeps preemies alive in hospitals, prevents meat from rotting and enchants and cools you in movie theaters.

Yes, electricity is a good thing. Where does it come from?

In the U.S., electricity is produced from these sources. If you are reading this on a handheld and can’t read Wikipedia’s wonderful pie chart, here is the breakdown:

48.9% — Coal
20% — Natural Gas
19.3% — Nuclear
1.6% — Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called “evil” energy–that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based–to almost 90%.

The remaining sources of U.S. electricity, the renewables, are, by comparison, tiny players:

7.1% — Hydroelectric
2.4% — Other Renewables
0.7% — Other

Hydroelectric accounts for 70% of renewable energy in America. But, of course, hydro is mostly tapped out. Almost every dam that could be built has been built. Ironically enough, political opposition to building more dams comes from the same crowd of tree huggers who oppose coal, gas and uranium.

Do you see where I’m going?

The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House on Friday by a 219-212 margin will punitively tax energy sources that contribute 90% of current U.S. electricity (or 71% if you want to leave out nuclear). The taxes will be used to subsidize the 10% renewable contributors (but really just 3% after you leave out hydro).

I’ve pointed out before that wind energy is a bad bet. Yet this is deemed to be the future of this nation. Marxman-Wacky dooms the United States to a future of rapidly-rising energy costs and a much lower standard of living. On top of the, it hammers the economy while we are still in serious economic trouble. 

On top of that, the “science” this is based on is more faith than fact.

Start calling your Senators and help stop this monstrosity.

A Break With Tradition

Quite often, the winner of the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, held annually at the Sonoma-Marin County Fair tends to be from the “Chinese Crested” breed. (Which, we suspect, is actually a huge, complicated practical joke on the part of the Chinese.) This is because the good looking Chinese Crested dogs can make a grown man cry for his mother.

However, there has been a break in the tradition this year. Enter a dog named Pabst:

A new champion has emerged in the competitive world of ugly-dog exhibitions. Pabst, a 4-year-old boxer mix, was crowned World’s Ugliest Dog at the annual event held at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in northern California on Friday.

Pabst, like many of the event’s competitors, is a rescue dog — owner Miles Egstad of Citrus Heights, Calif., adopted him from a shelter three years ago. He’s named for the well-known cheap adult beverage because, Egstad said, he had a “bitter beer face.”

Pabst’s win was something of an upset for the competition, now in its 21st year, which often appears to favor members of the Chinese crested breed. “Hairless” Chinese cresteds (which aren’t truly hairless, as tufts of fur sprout from their heads, feet and tails), with their tendency toward dental issues that cause their tongues to stick out, are typically World’s Ugliest Dog shoo-ins. (Chinese cresteds also come in a coated variety known as “powderpuff,” and hairless and coated puppies can even be born in the same litter. Understandably, however, the powderpuffs aren’t the regular victors in the Ugly Dog competition that the hairless dogs are.)

Pabst took the championship away from - wait for it - a Chinese Crested - who won the purebred category.  There hasn’t been this much excitement since Elwood - a Chinese Crested - won. (Well, ok, we didn’t post about last years winner, so we don’t have a lot of history to go on. Hey, we’re short on staff here.)

We will however, point out that Pabst looked very familiar when we first saw the picture of him. Then it hit us. Pabst looks distressingly like a gym teacher we had in junior high school. In fact, on close inspection, we are not at all sure that it is not the same creature.

Honduras

Go read Fausta, she has it all put together.

What is of concern here is that Obama, who ignored, belittled and reluctantly supported Iranian dissidents jumped right out to support a guy who was blatantly trying to destroy his country’s Constitution.

But Wait

There is no more. Billy Mays has died:

Internationally known TV product pitchman Billy Mays, who rose to the top of his profession with a boisterous persona that touched consumers and helped create more than $1 billion in merchandise sales, was found dead in his South Tampa home this morning .

His wife Deborah woke up and found Mays, 50, in bed and not breathing, Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.

He was dead when Tampa Fire Rescue arrived at Mays’ house at 2853 Bowen Daniel Drive, where he was with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. The time of death was reported as 7:45 a.m.

My youngest boy actually told me about this. Personally, I do not watch a lot of television, but even so, I knew who Billy Mays was. I think that’s a pretty good epitaph for a TV pitchman.

Rest in Peace.

Target: Scientists Unwilling To Support AGW

The world’s left wing has a slightly different agenda focus than the US left:

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 - as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues - but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction - until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: “it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition”.

Please go over and read it all. It speaks volumes that the people pushing AGW are trying to shut down any dissent. People secure in their science have no need to do so.

The “science” of the AGW true believers, however, does not actually constitute science.

For example, there is, indeed, a loss of ice cover at the North Pole right now. But it is completely negated by the addition of ice at the South Pole. Net result for the planet: zero. 

Not that you’d read that in the MSM.

Via Memeorandum.

Target: Democrats

By the left:

In the high-stakes battle over health care, a growing cadre of liberal activists is aiming its sharpest firepower against Democratic senators who they accuse of being insufficiently committed to the cause.

The attacks — ranging from tart news releases to full-fledged advertising campaigns — have elicited rebuttals from lawmakers and sparked a debate inside the party over the best strategy for achieving President Obama’s top priority of a comprehensive health-system overhaul.

The rising tensions between Democratic legislators and constituencies that would typically be their natural allies underscore the high hurdles for Obama as he tries to hold together a diverse, fragile coalition. Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of “true health reform,” but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.

In recent days — and during this week’s congressional recess — left-leaning bloggers and grass-roots organizations such as MoveOn.org, Health Care for America Now and the Service Employees International Union have singled out Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) for the criticism more often reserved for opposition party members.

“Will Mary Landrieu sell out Louisiana for $1.6 million?” says one Internet ad that suggests a link between contributions she has received from the medical industry and her reluctance to back the creation of a government-sponsored insurance option.

Why the full frontal assault on Democrats? Simple. If Harry Reid can muster a simple majority, the leftist Democrats plan on blasting this health care “fix” (it is not) through, bypassing the normal rules of the Senate.  

What they are not calculating, I suspect, is that should they do so, they will own - wholly - the ire of those people who are forced off their private health insurance because their employers decided it was cheaper to pay than play in a rigged game.

If I were one of the targeted Democrats, my back would be up right now. I sincerely hope this effort by the likes of MorOn.org accomplishes exactly the same result as their attacks on the surge in Iraq: the opposite of what they intended. 

I’ll just point out that MorOn.org is very, very loud and knows how to grab left-leaning media attention. But in terms of actual strength, not so much. So the targeted Senators have no real reason to fear the sliming from such groups.

Via Memeorandum.

Lies, Damned Lies And Low, Low Medicare Administrative Costs

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics:

In fact, President Obama has made this claim several times. This statistic about Medicare’s low administrative costs has become one of the linchpins in the argument for a “public option” on health care. The only problem, not surprisingly, is that it’s hogwash.

The explanation is really quite simple, and it’s provided here by Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation. The statistic cited by Alter and Krugman uses administrative costs calculated as a percentage of total health care costs (For Medicare it’s roughly 3 percent and for private insurers it’s roughly 12 percent).

But here’s the catch: because Medicare is devoted to serving a population that is elderly, and therefore in need of greater levels of medical care, it generates significantly higher expenditures than private insurance plans, thus making administrative costs smaller as a percentage of total costs. This creates the appearance that Medicare is a model of administrative efficiency. What Jon Alter sees as a “miracle” is really just a statistical sleight of hand.

The fact is, on a per person basis, the government plans simply costs more in terms of administrative costs than competently run private sector insurance. Anyone who has ever dealt with any Federal agency knows that intuitively. Bevan calls this oft-touted statistic “hogwash”.

I’d call it an outright, intentional lie.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Nancy Pelosi said last night before the Crap and Tax bill passed that there were four words to remember about passing the bill. Those would be the four words in the title of this post:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) followed Mr. Boehner to close debate, but spoke only briefly to urge passage. “Just remember these four words: Jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said, reinforcing her party’s portrayal of the bill as good for the economy.

As you may recall, we were assured that millions of jobs would be “created or saved” if only the “stimulus” bill were passed. Unemployment, they swore, would not exceed 8%. Well, we are at 9.4% now and that number is expected to climb. Many states, in fact, are already well into double digit unemployment. Then there is the latest from the US Department of Labor:

Employers took 2,933 mass layoff actions in May that resulted in the separation of 312,880 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer.  The number of mass layoff events in May increased by 221 from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 41,654.  Over the year, the number of mass layoff events increased by 1,232 and associated
initial claims increased by 132,322.  Initial claims rose to its highest level on record, while events matched the peak level from March 2009, with data available back to 1995.  In May, 1,331 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in
165,802 initial claims.  Over the year, manufacturing events and initial claims more than doubled.  (See table 1.)

During the 18 months from December 2007 through May 2009, the total number of mass layoff events (seasonally adjusted) was 37,059, and the number of initial claims (seasonally adjusted) was 3,811,307.  (December 2007 was the start of a recession as designated by the National Bureau
of Economic Research.)
  
The national unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in May 2009, seasonally adjusted, up from 8.9 percent the prior month and from 5.5 percent a year earlier.  In May, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 345,000 over the month and by 5,366,000 from a year earlier.

By the yardstick of the “stimulus”, Pelosi’s repetition of the word “jobs” like a mantra indicate that we would all do well to, indeed, remember jobs.

As in remember when there were any jobs at all. 

Because the trade war that the House bill would touch off will sink this nation’s economy completely.

Nothing Times Eight Is Nothing

Via AllahPundit at Hot Air:

Update: 219-212, with eight Republicans - the difference between passage and defeat - defecting to vote yes. The boss is already hunting around for their names. I hope they got a sweet deal from Pelosi because talk radio is about to make their lives very, very difficult.

Update: Inhofe predicts cap and trade will die in the Senate, which is probably true. I wonder if that made the bitter pill easier to swallow for those eight Republicans.

Update: The boss has the names:

Bono Mack
Castle
Kirk
Lance
LoBiondo
McHugh
Reichert
Smith (NJ)

For the eight I promise nothing. As in I will not contribute one thin dime to the Republican party if a fraction of a cent of party support goes to any of those eight. I will contribute, cheerfully, to any primary challenger for any of the eight.

But for the eight, nothing. Nothing at all. Exactly what they deserve. Exactly what they are to me.

That is also a warning to the party. You have a problem if you support any of these nothings.