Same Old Square Dance

Mark Steyn on the futility of trying the same, tired ideas and expecting different outcomes:

President Barack Obama was supposed to be “cool.” But he isn’t. He’s square. Not just mildly so, but embarrassingly square. He’s squaresville squared. It’s like you’re having a party with your friends, and he’s the cringe-making middle-age parent who wants to show he digs where the young people are at by grooving around in the middle of the dance floor all night long.

How do I know? I’ve been there, and I’ve been square. By “there,” I mean I’ve been in places that have tried all the cool Obama dance moves and eventually wised up to what utter clunkers they are.

A week ago, the House of Representatives passed some gargantuan “cap-and-trade” bill designed to “save” “the environment.” Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, accused those Neanderthals who voted against the bill of committing “treason against the planet.” By that standard, most of the planet is guilty of treason against the planet. I don’t mean just in the sense that China, already the world’s No. 1 CO2 emitter, and India and other rising economic powers have absolutely no intention of doing what the Democrats have done, no way, no how - because they don’t see why they should stay poor just because New York Times columnists think it’s good for them.

No, I mean that most of the developed world has already gone down the paved road of good intentions and is now frantically trying to pedal up out of it. New Zealand was one of the few Western nations to sign on to Kyoto and then attempt to abide by it - until New Zealanders realized they could only do so by destroying their economy. They introduced a Dem-style cap-and-trade regime - and last year they suspended it. In Australia, the Labor Government postponed implementation of its emissions-reduction program until 2011, and the Aussie Senate may scuttle it entirely. The Obama administration has gotten to the climate-change hop just as the glitter ball’s stopped whirling, and the band’s packing up its instruments.

It’s like watching the four millionth rerun of Saturday Night Fever expecting it to end differently. Folks like Paul Krugman are demanding even more “stimulus” spending even though the “old” stimulus has been increasing unemployment instead of producing jobs. Expecting different outcomes is a specialty of the left.

Out of control spend and tax programs beget new, bigger spend and tax proposals. Yet the song remains the same, the tired, dated dance steps go on endlessly under the strobe lights and the glitter ball. It ends the same way every time the movie plays.

The outcomes remain the same. Rapidly rising deficits. The only growth is in a bloated Federal bureaucracy needing ever increasing feedings of tax dollars. Tax dollars that are just not there as more and more people lose jobs as the economy spirals down, crushed under the increasing load of debt and the looming financial disaster all this spending will bring about.

Over and over and over, the same, tired, statist ideas that only lead to more statist ideas.

Go read the whole thing.

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.

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.

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.

Seven Votes

The House has passed the Crap and Tax bill by a whopping margin of 7 votes. 44 Democrats declined to support the bill. Roll call is here.

Well, Then, We Now Know Two Things About ObamaCare

If you are old, you’re screwed and the plan is not good enough for Obama to actually submit himself or his family to.

First the old thing:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don’t unthinkingly approve “additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care.”

He added: “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

Anyone who has read Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (at least in the later editions that contained the novella  You Can Never Go Back) know that Haldeman predicted this. In that story, the main character’s mother becomes ill and cannot get any health care at all. She is old, after all. Therefore, she is useless to the government. So, she dies, a squalid and miserable death.

Don’t for a moment think that you will have any voice what is done to you or to your loved ones, either. The Federal bureaucrats, safely exempt from the rules they set for you and yours, will simply take away any option but the pills.

They will be the only option. Cost/benefit, don’t you know. (I told you this was coming.)

The second revelation by Obama, that ObamaCare is certainly not good enough for him and his is even worse:

Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push. Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:….

…..Oopsie! So ObamaCare for thee, but not for me? Hope and change, baby!

There’s video of the exchange.

Congress is planning on exempting itself and all Federal employees from the plans they have for you, the taxpayer. Obama just personally exempted himself and his family from ObamaCare and has no plans to submit to what he deigns to force on you.

Your private health insurance will simply vanish as employers drop their plans and you will be cast upon the “mercy” of what the (fully exempt) Federal Bureaucrats will allow you to have for treatment.

Plus you get to pick up the trillion dollar plus cost of all this.

How’s the hope and change?

That Vast Sucking Sound You Heard Last Night….

Was ABC News’ credibility AND audience going down the drain.

President Obama’s town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening.

The one-hour ABC News special “Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America” (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour (against NBC’s “The Philanthropist” debut and a repeat of “CSI: NY” on CBS). The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

Gee, I was right on then.  

The All Barack Channel managed to grab a mighty 1.6% of the population of the United States to watch the propaganda-fest.

I get the feeling that the absurd cult-of-personality, wall-to-wall media coverage is beginning to backfire. Rather rapidly. You heard wall-to-wall coverage about how the White House was mobilizing its mailing list minions to agitate for his health care program. Remember that?

Heard anything else about it since the raucous media cheering and fawning?

Just like you heard within days of the salvation (for one year) of the jobs of a few police rookies in Toledo because of Obama’s stimulus plan.

Heard about any other triumphant job saves or creation? Other than claims of same with no actually proof thereof?

Crêpes. Light, thin, airy and small. Not much there at all.

Weakness As Change

Anne Bayefsky in Forbes:

 A week later there were multiple casualties, injuries and threats, and 46 million voters wrenched away from that doorway to freedom that had opened–if only a crack. But when the president was asked Tuesday: “Is there any red line that your administration won’t cross where that offer [to talk to Iran's leaders] will be shut off?” He answered: “We’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out.”And when asked again, “If you do accept the election of Ahmadinejad … without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?” He answered: “We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places.”

And asked again: “Why won’t you spell out the consequences that the Iranian people…” He answered: “Because I think that we don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out.”

And yet again: “Shouldn’t the present regime know that there are consequences?” He answered: “We don’t yet know how this is going to play out.”

Yet earlier today, unnamed Obama officials (my personal bet is that it was Axelrod) were trying to claim that Obama inspired the demonstrations in Iran by his very words. No, really, they were:

One senior administration official with experience in the Middle East said, “There clearly is in the region a sense of new possibilities,” adding that “I was struck in the aftermath of the president’s speech that there was a connection. It was very sweeping in terms of its reach.” The adviser said that “there is something particularly authentic about those who are carrying out these demonstrations,” citing the fact that some are carrying symbols of the 1979 Iranian revolution as they march for new elections, including photos of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 ”The more you keep this in Iranian terms, the better the chances of change,” the adviser said.

Read the Bayefsky piece and see where the “adviser” is completely - utterly - clueless.

I pointed out last night that the Obama administration is, rather obviously, notably short on attention span. Their reactions to various world crises since taking office have been a few words, then off to something else. The only thing they have focused on is grabbing private companies and giving them away to unions.

When did Obama last say anything about Pakistan? Afghanistan? North Korea?

Only when the issues are hot in the press is Obama interested in “intervening” with a few fire-and-forget words. Then his “advisers” grab lots and lots of credit from a supine press for the few moments of attention.

Then its off to looting another company or bleeding the nation to pay for another grandiose plan of the week.

Or is that “Plan of the Weak?”

Resign

Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, today admitted that he disappeared from his state and his elected duties to visit a woman he was having an affair with in Argentina.

Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, said he had conducted an extra-marital affair with a woman in Argentina, ending a mystery over his week-long disappearance that had infuriated lawmakers and seemed to put his rising political career in jeopardy. He apologized for the affair and the deception surrounding his trip in a rambling, nationally televised news conference Wednesday afternoon.

Governor Sanford, 49, admitted that he had been in Buenos Aires since Thursday, not hiking on the Appalachian Trail as his staff had told reporters.

In revealing an affair that had gone on for about a year - and which he said he had disclosed to his wife, Jenny, five months ago - he said: “This was selfishness on my part.”

Mr. Sanford announced on Wednesday that as a result, he was resigning his position as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. The association soon after announced that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour would become chairman.

Frankly, there is another job Sanford should resign from immediately. That of governor. Not because he had an affair but because of his demonstrated inability to put his duties ahead of his personal interests. That is unforgivable.

The ones to feel sorry for here are Jenny Sanford and the Sanford children.  They are the victims of all of this.

Time to retire, Sanford.

Lack Of Attention?

I don’t think this piece in The Politico proves exactly what it thinks it does. Oh, it proves some things, just not what they are fawning over.

A couple of surprising words were missing from President Barack Obama’s 55-minute news conference on Wednesday: “Iraq” - and “Afghanistan.”

Also MIA: “Korea,” “Pakistan,” “soldiers,” “surge” and “war” - as well as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The omissions were partly a result of the short attention span of the press, which did not ask about those topics after the president did not mention them in his opening statement.

But the silence on those subjects also provides a striking illustration of one of the singular differences between Obama and his predecessor.

Whereas President George W. Bush invoked his status as wartime commander in chief so often that it seemed like a crutch, Obama has much more of a domestic focus, and resists rhetorical calls to arms like “war on terror.”

It’s the Mars and Venus of the 43rd and 44th presidencies.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said the president’s aides have never had a conversation about balancing the role of commander in chief with domestic-policy priorities.

“He feels equally comfortable on each role,” Axelrod said. “His focus isn’t just solving the problems as we find them, but hopefully forestalling some for the future.”

What is painfully evident in Mike Allen’s report is that the media - including Allen - is not  much interested in any of those crises. Nor is Barack Obama. What has been focused on by the White House and the media is the seizure of automobile companies, the passage of massive spending projects and a few hastily thrown-together fire-and-forget words on other events which are then ignored. 

 There has been a focus on traveling to Muslim nations, much fawning by the press over the speeches made in those places, then pretty much nothing else. A few days at best of attention on anything going on in the world - or really on anything in the rest of the nation - outside the few focus areas.

By either the press or Obama.

John Kerry was branded with the nickname “Waffles”. I rather suspect Obama and his team - and the media, now - have earned another title. Not waffles but crêpes. Light, thin and airy. Nothing much to them at all.

About Face

This is really no surprise to anyone who has been watching Barack Obama’s regular reversals on campaign promises, routine double-speak and outright hypocrisy on subject after after subject. But today he carefully executed a tight little pirouette and completely reversed himself on what is probably one of the most important promises he made during the campaign that had a lot to do with getting him elected.

Instead of the oft-repeated promise that people would get to keep health insurance they are happy with, Obama firmly announced that the government would force them to switch. Which is completely dodging the fact that the government’s perverse incentives would make companies opt out of offering any health insurance. This has always been the danger of the Democrat’s big plans.

Every bill now being drafted in Congress would establish a “pay or play”-type choice for employers: Employers must either offer government-approved coverage to workers (”play”) or pay a tax to the government instead to partially cover the costs of their premiums for insurance secured through a new “exchange” system. For years, Democrats have argued that this construct would ensure that reform “builds upon” the employer-based insurance system. But, in fact, the Democratic approach to reform would have exactly the opposite effect. Employers would get burdened with new costs and insurance requirements, even as the government used price controls to offer a government-run insurance option with artificially low premiums and provided new subsidies for coverage only for workers getting insurance through the “exchange.” That’s a recipe for dismantling job-based insurance. The Lewin Group has estimated that, assuming certain plausible specifications, some 119 million people would end up leaving job-based coverage for a government-run plan as employers opted to “pay” rather than “play.”

Faced with incontrovertible evidence that he and his allies have no intention or ability to fulfill their commitment to Americans regarding their current coverage, President Obama decided today at his press conference to try to redefine the promise. What he meant, he now says, is that the government wouldn’t force people out of their health-care plan. If tens of millions of people get pushed out of their current coverage, it would be because firms chose to drop their insurance plans - never mind the fact that they would do so based on the financial incentives the government put in place.

As I see it, based on what little is being leaked at this point, the very first victims to lose their health coverage will be those who retired from companies before the age of 65 and who have “bridge” health care coverage until they reach aged 65. Then it will be employees of companies that simply make the calculation that it is cheaper to pay than it is to play - especially since the falsely low cost government option will inevitably drive up the cost of playing.

The left knows full well - as does Obama - that a government option will destroy the private health insurance market. They also know that a lot of people will, indeed, lose the coverage they like. They simply do not care.

Add to that the fact that Congress will exempt itself and Federal employees from the rules they will impose on the rest of us and you should be able to see where this is heading. It is not going to be pretty and there will be a lot of very unhappy voters in a very short period of time after they find out what has been done to them.

But your private, employer-based insurance? Gone. Bet on it.

The. Lowest. Requirement. Of. Respect.

A follow up on something I posted the other day. You may remember that a Senator from California berated a brigadier general for answering her questions with the honorific “ma’am”. Said Senator demanded that the general refer to her as “Senator”. A note from Blackfive on the matter:

As a former Army Officer, if one of my soldiers called me “Lieutenant”, instead of “el-tee” or “Sir”, I would know that he found me lacking. Calling me by my job title or rank is only done because it is the lowest requirement of respect.

The. Lowest. Requirement. Of. Respect.

If one of my soldiers called me “Captain”, without using my last name behind it or “Sir”, I would know that he found me substandard.

BG Walsh was showing Barbara Boxer respect by calling her “Ma’am” instead of “Senator.” Believe me, the title “Senator” does not really hold a whole lot of credibility in the US military. It’s a job, and a Corporal leading a team in Baqubah has more honor than most of those holding that title.

Do read the entire thing, including the suggestion for sending a letter to the senator. The only thing I would suggest would improve the entire letter-writing campaign would be to address the letter to “senator or current occupant”. Please note the lack of capitalization. 

Which will henceforth be my chosen form for addressing anything the senator or current occupant says or does for the remainder of her time in office.

After she leaves office, it will just be “occupant”.