Doctors in the Senate = Better Soundbites

After last night's election, I am adding a shiny new quote to the "Freedom Quotes" section (right sidebar) of this blog:

America is exceptional, but it is not inherently so.

That subtle, insightful, and powerfully-true observation comes courtesy of Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky).

No mountains, no plains, no hymn, no eagle, no star-spangled banner makes us great.  Only the carefully-crafted protections of the Constitution and the perpetual fight to maintain freedom as our highest ideal keeps us the most prosperous nation in history.  Here's hoping Paul & Co. have the necessary verve to escalate that fight in Congress.

I've Got Google™, a Cell Phone, and Confirmation Bias. What More Does a Journalist Need?

[UPDATE added below]

I have potentially devastating -- for Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway -- information in my possession, and I did everything possible to corroborate it. But I failed, and instead what I have is a rumor. So, sadly, rather than this post being about the facts of a major national development, it is a journal of my unsuccessful attempt to fit together pieces of gossip into a certifiable account of events. Once again, I must be clear that none of this information has been confirmed by a second source or by documentation. I encourage skepticism.

Last week, a trusted source intimated to me that Ky Attorney General Jack Conway had deliberately impeded a police investigation into Conway's own brother by exposing an undercover police informant. My source's details were thus:

Louisville (Ky) Metro Police were using an informant to gather information on Conway's brother, who is suspected to be involved in illegal narcotics. In June or July of 2010, LMPD Detective Roy Irons* placed an unsanctioned call to Attorney General Conway's office to alert Conway to the investigation, and Irons specifically communicated that one of Conway's brother's associates was a police informant. Conway then called and warned his brother. The informant later complained to LMPD that someone had tipped Conway off, and an internal investigation was opened. Detective Irons was moved to the LMPD Property Room pending the investigation, but the investigation itself was to be shelved until after the November 2010 US Senate election.

The first phonecall of my own investigation was to the LMPD Property Room. I called on a Saturday and when a woman answered "Hello, Property Room" I replied, "I am trying to reach Detective Roy Irons. Do I have the right number?" The woman answered, "Yes, but he's not in today. He should be here Monday." With that, I thought I was actually on to something, since under normal circumstances, a detective would not be assigned to work the Property Room.

But shortly thereafter, my Woodward and Bernstein days were over. Calls to the LMPD Public and Media Relations Department and to Internal Affairs were met with a professional stonewall, and I discovered that LMPD is not under any public obligation to acknowledge an internal investigation even exists until that investigation is concluded, which in this case is part of the issue. An investigation that began in July should have been over long ago.

My next step was to try and co-opt an actual working journalist. I chose to contact a writer with the Louisville Courier-Journal who had an impressive history of investigative pieces on the LMPD. That writer indicated that not all of my information was entirely new, but without a primary source or physical evidence, the story was doomed to the "interesting rumor" file. He tried his best to arrange talks directly with my original source, but that individual declined to escalate his/her involvement for myriad reasons. I can only assume the Courier-Journal is also chasing the story on some level.

Two corroborating documents exist, but my efforts to access them were also dismal failures. One is an obligatory letter from a high-ranking LMPD officer -- most likely Chief Robert White -- informing Det. Irons that he is being investigated. This letter would not include any details of the investigation and would certainly not implicate the Attorney General's office, but it would lend credence. The second document would be an official transfer report showing that Det. Irons had been re-assigned to the Property Room. It also would not detail the investigation. If any part of this story is true, both of these documents would be carefully protected.

Ultimately, there are only three people who could truly confirm the juiciest bit of the allegations involving a justice-obstructing phonecall that put a police informant at risk: Attorney General Conway, his brother, or Det. Irons. An official internal investigation may eventually deduce the truth, but if such an investigation even exists, it is unlikely to be concluded before Election Day.  Motivations to procrastinate abound.


*Pending additional evidence, this name has been changed to protect the innocent.

UPDATE: Looks like the Courier-Journal was hot on the trail after all. The important part:

Jack Conway’s office said in an e-mail to the newspaper Thursday that his only involvement was to advise his brother to obtain legal counsel.

...

Although he was asked to discuss his knowledge of the investigation involving his brother and the meeting with Adams, Jack Conway’s statement did not address either issue.

When the newspaper renewed its request for elaboration, Allison Gardner Martin, communications director for the attorney general’s office, said Conway “does not deny” that Adams met with him and his brother. But she declined to address what Conway knew about the decision to have Adams visit White.

It'd Be a Real Shame if Something Were to Happen to One of Them...

So I've got a case coming up before the local judge. Everybody says I'm going to lose, and that I better prepare for the worst. But I'm not so sure. As I explained to a reporter yesterday about the judge in my case:

"He'll see - maybe he will see the light of day. Maybe he will have an incident and he'll change his mind over night - you know, going to and from work."

You know, an incident.

OK, so that wasn't me. Even if it was me, it wouldn't be credible, seeing as how the closest I get to the city's underbelly is that one bar where the bartenders are a little surly. But it's actually a little scary when it comes from the head of Chicago's Machine himself, Richard Daley, talking about the freaking U.S. Supreme Court.

Later in the press conference Daley got tired of insinuating, or at least hoping for, violence and "jokingly" threatened to shove a bayoneted rifle up a local reporter's butt and also to shoot him with it.

Obama's War on Terrycloth

Want to see what truly chickenshit trade policy looks like? Then hop on board this crazy train.

The US pays out an estimated $3 billion annually in subsidies to improve American cotton growers' ability to under-price foreign cotton producers, including Brazil. The World Trade Organization determined Brazil had a legitimate beef with this practice, and authorized sanctions against the US. So the US, rather than considering suspending or eliminating the subsidies, instead plans to pay out an additional $150 million annually, directly to Brazil, to help offset the unfair trade policy.

Not angry yet? Follow that money train again: US farmers can't compete with Brazilian farmers, so we give them tax money. This puts Brazilian farmers at a disadvantage, so we give them tax money, theoretically to get us back to where we were before we spent 3.15 billion dollars.

If you believe in protectionism, great; be a protectionist. If you believe in globalism, great; be a globalist. And if you're one of those wacky free-marketeers like me, double-great; we'll hang out, eat some foie gras, and shoot the poor with bullets made of compressed money. But throwing away billions of dollars pretending to be all three and achieving the goals of none is politics at its worst, and it is exceptionally cowardly.

Hat tip to "Ryan", who really should be working.

Coffee? Tea? Diet Ski?

A quick timeline:

• November 2008 - Social/foreign-policy liberals, angry at social/foreign-policy conservatives, elect Barack Obama as the 44th President. Optimism ensues.
  
  
• February 2009 - Fiscal conservatives, angry at fiscal liberals, form the Tea Party Movement and help elect Scott Brown as a United States Senator. Optimism ensues.
  
  
• April 2009 - Social/fiscal liberals, angry at all the anger, initiate the reliable Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo offense, normalize network-television references to testicles being put in people's mouths.
  
  
• February 2010 - Social/fiscal/foreign-policy nihilists, angry at the anger over all the anger, form the Coffee Party. Their platform (not to be confused with kindergarten curriculum) includes hugs, sharing, and following the leader.
  

Clearly, grassroots political organizations are the new black, and for once I intend to finally be on the inclining end of the graph. Therefor, I am proud to announce the formation of the Scotticus Finch Diet Ski™ Party.

For those of you who have never been in a situation where it was necessary to purchase a beverage from a service station out of a foam bait cooler labeled "POP - 50¢", Ski is like Mountain Dew infused with Ted Nugent's sweat. In 2005, Diet Ski changed its slogan from "Ain't Y'all Thirsty?" to "Sip it with Supper!", and in 2008 they celebrated the first confirmed purchase of Ski by a black person. But I digress.

There are three major planks of the Diet Ski Party platform. First, we demand that the Federal Government finally take responsibility for forcing NBC to cancel Bonanza after a mere 14 years. (And just when Little Joe was beginning to get into his stride as a character!) Second (as envisioned by blogger Pro Libertate), we will create a (budget-less) Office of Skepticism headed by James Randi, whose only responsibility will be to shame superfluous governmental agencies into voluntarily disbanding. Lastly: Congressional term limits, measured in "hours remaining" and continuously displayed on an LED lapel tag.

The symbolism is appropriate. The Diet Ski Party, like Diet Ski itself, is just another knock-off of the two major brands that are, themselves, practically identical. Despite the fact that it's a cheap imitation of a branch of a branch of a branch of a major brand, thousands of yokels would inevitably become Diet Ski Party fans, create Diet Ski Party Facebook groups, organize Diet Ski Party marches, and blog endlessly about the tragic underexposure-treatment the Diet Ski Party is getting from Big Media, which is of course snugly in the pocket of every party except the Diet Ski Party. The point is that Internet connectivity and 24-hour news cycles lend a misleading implication of ubiquity to even the silliest of communities. Some of us have learned that "revolutions" most often... aren't.

I appreciate anything that puts a bee in the bonnet of either major party, but to affect real change it's going to take something with a lot more kick than tea.

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 2

[Catch up with Volume 1 here.]

Election finance is a minefield. My campaign fund-raising sources consisted entirely of people who had once tussled my hair and/or used their thumb to wipe chocolate from my face, and I still narrowly escaped a $5000 fine for late paperwork -- the third consecutive required pre-primary finance report showing that I still had an operating budget of $0 for the primary election in which I had no opponent.

So I welcomed the navigational assistance of a sitting City Councilman, even after it became abundantly clear that he was certifiably insane.

Brother-in-Law Links™

• Canada is now the world's number-one importer of American-style paranoia.
  
  
• It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... OK, frankly, it's a dick.
  
  
• Seven-year-old child looks on as police officers forcibly enter home, fire seven rounds into his two dogs (including a corgi), and confiscate a misdemeanor amount of pot from Mom and Dad. Now guess which characters in this story are charged with child endangerment?
  
  
• Nothing more after the link, but check out this survey from a 1970 issue of Detective Comics:
  
  
  

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 1

Years ago, I ran for City Council in my hometown. There was no primary challenger, so had I won the election, I would have represented roughly 35,000 constituents. [SPOILER ALERT] I lost. But before the last of the dimpled chads had even been scrutinized, thousands upon thousands of you began filling my inbox, begging me to recount my tales from the campaign trail.^{[citation needed]}

That din of adulation can no longer be ignored.

With an operating budget that would dwarf the average garage sale, my most effective commodity was shoe-leather, which is unfortunate because I am naturally very lazy. Plus, I don't particularly like people. One example why:

On a sunny Wednesday evening in October, I eked a hesitating path toward a beige-ish one-story on a dead-end street -- one more of a hundred houses I'd approached since five o'clock. An elaborate zigzag of a homemade redwood wheelchair ramp consumed the grassless front yard on its way to an unhinged aluminum screen door, and the roof over the front stoop sloped under the weight of a large dead tree limb that certainly hadn't dropped there recently. Standing there in the yard, propped against one corner of the ramp, a messy-looking fellow dragged deeply from a filterless cigarette, then stared daggers into me as he exhaled through his nose like an angry cartoon bull.

"Evenin'," I said, in my most condescending faux-folksy drawl.

Smoking Bull tugged his lips in over his dentureless gums, then spit heartily onto his own shoe. "Shit," he said, before scraping at the spot with the sole of his other foot. The shift in weight distribution wrecked his entire world, evidently, since he immediately flailed his arms and grabbed at the railing to keep from falling backward. By the time he'd re-situated and located my face again, I had a pretty good idea of just how drunk he was.

"I'm running for the City Council this year," I plowed on despite the fact that his entire head had acquired a slow sway, and one eyebrow seemed to be stuck in the 'surprised' position, "and I'd like to know if you've decided who you're going to vote for." (Insert thousand-watt insincere smile here.)

"She's a sonuvabitch...," Bull managed. Despite the odd gender confusion, I assumed he was talking about the incumbent, which was promising for me. "She voted for the... the smoking bans."

"That's true. Now if I'm elected, one of the things I'd like to--"

"She passed the smoking bans and we didn't get trash picked up like... like she promised." Bull drew his sleeve mightily across his nose, then gestured with his cigarette. At this point I could no longer determine if he knew I was still there. "Branches from... branches from the... sat out on the curb for a month."

"You mean after the big storm last summer?" I asked, but I might as well have invited the wheelchair ramp to prom. Bull -- more Wild Turkey than man -- was having a conversation to which no other human being had been invited.

"And I called... Mom called and all she... She didn't even return the call." After two or three attempts, Bull's cigarette found his lips. Drawing again, his limbs seemed to settle a bit around him as each toxin fought for dominance.

I sensed my opportunity, and pounced. "So then I guess I can count on your vote in November?" (And yes, the question feels just as desperate the thousandth time as it did the first.)

Bull seemed to notice me again. Then, somewhere in his mind, swizzled as it was with sour mash and nicotine, he dug deep and drew upon a faith more stalwart than any religion: party loyalty.

"I'm voting for her... same as I did the last two times," he told me. "She's the Democrat."

And that was that.

I Don't Think All "People" Are Idiots, But All "Homo Sapiens" Are

Thankfully, President Obama is attempting to follow through on his 2008 campaign promise to repeal the ridiculous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy regarding gays serving in the US military.

Despite the fact that DADT is a Bill Clinton political brainchild from the go-along-to-get-along days of the early 1990s, the push to scrap it has mostly come from the political left, whose insistence that all homosexuals aren't necessarily shaved Chupacabra brings some sanity to one of America's fiercest debates.

Or at least that's what I thought. Turns out, though, that liberals are just as irrational as conservatives when it comes to Adam and Steve sharing a foxhole. Look upon these poll numbers and weep:

79% of Democrats support allowing gay men and women to serve openly.
43% of Democrats support allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

That is not a typo. I checked.

Sixty years after the Mattachine Society, forty-one years after the Stonewall Inn raid, thirty-three years after Anita Bryant, and seven years after Lawrence v Texas, there is a thirty-six percentage-point difference in what employment liberals think "homosexuals" should be allowed to pursue versus "gays".

Whence comes the discrepancy? We can speculate that the term "gay" elicits a much friendlier (literally) image than the taxonomic "homosexual", but doing so insinuates such an immense level of epidemic puerility that even my epic misanthropy won't abide it. In order to prevent the impending voluntary collision between my head and the nearest brick wall, I'm going with "transcription error" and calling it a day.

Shape up, folks. If anyone wants to start his own army that won't allow gays, or blacks, or Jews, or even homosexuals (!) to serve, then I'll help him pick out snazzy uniforms. The right to set up whatever backward, bigoted clubhouse that revs your engine is inviolate, but the United States Armed Forces -- a public institution -- has no more right to bar qualified homosexuals than they have to bar Catholics or Jersey Shore fans.

How to Win Friends and Influence Peasants

Check out this fascinating collection of North Korean propaganda art.

Seldom seen by the outside world, North Korea's propaganda art colors the cities and countryside with vibrant images of brave soldiers, happy and well-fed peasants, and a heroic and compassionate leader.

You think Coca-Cola ads get inside your head? Imagine living every day within a totalitarian state ruled by a fighter-plane-flyin', 38-under-par-golfin', opera-writin' despot.


The Korean text reads: "Do not forget the US imperialist wolves!"

Copenhagen Special: Two Nights for the Price of Six

CBS News has a story on the just-released Congressional Expense Report (pdf) from the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark that illustrates the clueless, obtuse attitude among our very own ruling class.

First, the costs:

For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day...

Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000.

Flights weren't cheap, either. Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.

I know, I know. Stop the presses; government is wasting money. But look at the reactions to reporters' questions about the excessive expenditures:

Last week, we asked [Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.,] about the $2,200-a-day bill for room and food.

"I can't believe that," Rep. Waxman said. "I can't believe it, but I don't know."

Waxman thinks CBS News is making shit up again, I suppose, despite the fact that his name is right there on the report. And how about House Speaker and stalwart swamp-drainer Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.:

The group expense report was filed by [Pelosi]. She wouldn't talk about it when our producer tried to ask.

The "Run away!" approach. Nice. I'll try that tack next time Mrs Finch asks me about fishy charges on the MasterCard. But, in fairness, it's not as if our representatives wanted to pay such high prices:

Pelosi's office did offer an explanation for the high room charges. Those who stayed just two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five-star Marriott. One staffer said they strongly objected to no avail.

See? They strongly objected. So, in summation, the folks we sent -- at a cost of more than a million dollars -- to negotiate a global climate treaty between 194 nations was hoodwinked and pig-ironed by the cast of Fawlty Towers.

Well done, America.

Decimating Diversity

As a member of a cushy ethno-socioeconomic majority, my capacity to empathize with the deep, victorious feeling of pride that Barack Obama's election must have elicited among many blacks is limited. Given the tumultuous year that followed, though, how is this possible:



Over the time period covered by the poll, Obama's approval is down among Republicans (unsurprisingly) by 24 percentage points. Among Independents, his approval is down 18 points. Among young people: down 13. The elderly, females, Midwesterners, college graduates, married people -- Obama's approval is down at least 16 percentage points in each group. In fact, the President's approval rating is down in every single category Gallup looked at, including liberals and Democrats.

Except among blacks. Though it is within the poll's margin of error, Obama's approval actually increased among blacks between February and November, maintaining an average of 93% approval for the year.

In the entire scope of politics, religion, philosophy -- or toothpaste preference for that matter -- where would anyone expect concurrence exceeding nine out of ten? In a separate poll about abortion by the same polling company, only 52% of respondents categorized themselves as "pro-life" when the question was asked exclusively to Catholics. To put it in another context, the percentage of blacks who disapprove of Obama as President is identical to the percentage of people who ranked car salesmen as "very high/high" in honesty and ethics, and the same percentage of self-identified Christians who say they don't believe in God.

A generations-long (and continuing) struggle for equal opportunity has got to make it difficult to admit you backed a turkey, but blindly supporting a President because he looks like you is every bit as dangerous as blindly opposing him just because he doesn't. Not all of Obama's support is blind, obviously, but approval approaching unanimity in one group simultaneous with near-universal disappointment outside that group displays a disturbing lack of ideological diversity.

Wholesale Healthcare (and Eunuchs)

Over at Hit & Run, reliable commenter P Brooks sums up Obamacare quite well:

And- goddammit!- if you make it mandatory for everyone, and prohibit risk-based pricing, it's not actually "insurance" anymore. It's a "buyers' club" for medical services.

Obviously, a buyers' club is great if you're an unemployed 50-year-old base-jumping, gator-wrestling smoker with diabetes and chronic dry eye; not so much if you're a healthy, risk-averse person forced to participate.

That's all I've got. Celebrating the birthday of the non-denominational Holiday Infant has evidently quelled my indignation.

If you absolutely must have something else today, hop across the virtual pond and read about Pakistani eunuchs winning the right to be recognized as a distinct third gender.

Man Outruns 12,000-Foot Tall Elephant, Makes Movie

Al Gore's advocacy film about the potential dangers of global climate change won an Academy Award.

Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy, being called "the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted [in the struggle against climate change]" by the Nobel committee.

Al Gore recently appeared on the cover of Newsweek as a 21st-Century Isaac Newton and was called an "Eco-Prophet" and "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man".

And Al Gore thinks the temperature at the center of the Earth is "several million degrees":

Conan O'Brien: Now, what about ... you talk in the book about geothermal energy...

Al Gore: Yeah, yeah.

Conan: ...and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth...

Al: Yeah.

Conan: ...to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?

Al: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot...

National Review Online blogger John Derbyshire goes ahead and tidies up the science for us laymen:

The temperature at the earth's core ... is usually quoted as 5000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.

To illustrate the enormity of Gore's wrongness, his claim is mathematically identical to saying the average height of an African Elephant is 12,000 feet, or that the fastest a human has ever run a mile is 0.223 seconds.

Did I know off the top of my head that the center of the Earth is actually around 5000 degrees? Of course not. But the spot on my mantle where there isn't an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and a framed copy of Newsweek serve as my excuse.

What's Al's?

Check out the whole Conan clip at YouTube here.

You'll Have my Story as Soon as the White House Writes it for me, Chief!

I’ve been meaning to blog about this fantastic Glenn Greenwald piece (originally posted October 6 at Salon.com) for awhile now. It deals with the media’s use of unnamed sources and specifically skewers Washington Post stenographer-as-journalist Anne Kornblut.

First, here is The Post’s own ombudsman:

The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. ...News organizations can pay dearly if they're not vigilant about sourcing. At minimum, credibility can suffer. At worst, a damaging journalistic transgression can occur. ...

Post policies say that readers should be told as much as possible about the quality of a confidential source ("with first-hand knowledge of the case," for instance). They also say "we must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence."

Now, here is Greenwald taking Kornblut to the woodshed:

The Post depicts Obama as heavily and heroically engaged in disrupting the alleged Najibullah Zazi domestic terrorist plot and -- repeatedly highlighting that success -- claims "the White House has been charting a delicate course as it attempts to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies," whereby "the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." Here are all of Kornblut's cited sources for the article -- every last one of them -- in the order she cites them:

Obama aides pointed ... administration officials said ... a senior administration official said ... officials said ... a senior administration official said ... senior Obama officials stressed ... a senior administration official said ... aides said ... officials said ... one senior administration official said. ...one senior official said. ...The official said ... a senior administration official said ... a senior administration official said ... administration officials said .... a senior official said.

Not a single named person is cited, and there's not a syllable of quoted dissent in any of it. Virtually every sentence in the long article does nothing but praise Obama and depict him as stalwartly safeguarding America's civil liberties ... even as he protects us from the dangerous Terrorists, so why is anonymity needed for that? It's nothing more than what [White House Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs is eager to say every day. Nor is there a hint of who these officials are, what the basis is of their knowledge, or why The Post granted anonymity....

...The Post's article ... doesn't even claim that these anonymous officials have any knowledge at all -- first-hand or otherwise -- of what actually happened (are they national security officials, press people, political advisers?). The article doesn't even pretend to justify why anonymity was granted (there's not a word about that).

...[W]hat happened here is obvious: the administration wanted to issue a Press Release exploiting the fear surrounding the Zazi case to justify Obama's Bush-copying civil liberties policies ... while depicting Obama as our careful yet forceful protector. So they dispatched an official (or officials) to dictate the sanctioned administration line to Anne Kornblut. She then unquestioningly wrote it all down (after granting them anonymity) and The Post uncritically published it as a "news article."

The whole piece is worth a read. (It goes on to point out that in addition to being a lapdog, Kornblut is also dead wrong in her assertions.)

Kornblut's piece in question is not an editorial or opinion column, mind you. It appeared in the National News section of The Washington Post. Remember this lazy, irresponsible work the next time someone tells you that the death of newspapers will be the death of “real” journalism, or when you hear the White House declaring who is and is not a news organization.

Jeff Flake: The Fozzie Bear of Congress

Don't get me wrong. I would rather Congress spend 100% of its time writing bills to congratulate Super Bowl-winning teams and whatnot, than slopping together more consequence-ignorant, corporate-welfare, nanny-state, liberty-reducing laws.

Still, to see Representative Jeff Flake's (R-AZ) response to HR 784 is just plain fun. The bill was introduced to "honor[] the 2560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognize[] his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought." Seriously.

Flake's response, which accompanied his vote against the bill:

He who spends time passing trivial legislation may find himself out of time to read healthcare bill.

At press time, it is unconfirmed if he followed his statement with a hearty "Wokka wokka!"

Check out Flake here.

We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself the Ghost of John Henry

So there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security this year.

Except that there will be.

For those keeping score, this:

Obama said he would not allow the money to come out of the Social Security trust funds, which would further erode the finances of the retirement program.

counts as a lie, since the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist.

Furthermore, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is this:

Thursday's announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

Retired railroad workers? Why not retired calligraphy tutors? Why not left-handed Civil War history enthusiasts? Why not grumpy super-powered bloggers?

Your humble correspondent decided to go straight to the source and find out what’s so damn special about retired and veteran railway employees.

Well, crap.

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help: Update!

On Friday I posted a graph showing how actual unemployment numbers resembled the White House estimates on Cialis. Today, via Veronique de Rugy and The American, we see that as the stimulus has been spent, unemployment has actually accelerated.

Give us money, and we’ll give you jobs. That was the promise President Barack Obama made when he asked Congress for a $789 billion stimulus bill back in January. The cash, the administration said, would create millions of jobs over the next two years.

Here was the argument as presented in the January report by the Council of Economic Advisors' Christina Romer and chief economist to the vice president Jared Bernstein, called “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”:

The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million … even with the large [stimulus] prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.

Based in part on this argument, President Obama got his money. So what happened since then?

Using data from the president’s website Recovery.gov and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this chart shows the monthly increase in the unemployment rate in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending.

Note that these are not promised dollars and estimated unemployment numbers; this is stimulus money that has been already been spent, and actual unemployment.

Bastiat Surrenders, Goes to Work for GM

In the long history of minor-league sports, no fan has ever planned to go to the ballpark because they heard it was Mini-Bat Night or Bobblehead Night. If the giveaways are limited, people may show up earlier than if there had been no handouts (say, fifteen minutes after the first pitch instead of sixty), but their decision about buying a ticket was un-phased. So rather than serving as a small cost by which overall revenue increases, the prizes amount to a fun bonus for people who were coming to the game regardless.

New numbers on the government’s Largesse for Lemons program proves it was one giant, $3 billion Bobblehead Night for car dealerships.

Consider the numbers via Bloomberg.com’s report:

GM’s September deliveries tumbled 45 percent, while Toyota dropped 13 percent, both worse than analysts had estimated. Ford slid 5.1 percent, and Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler Group LLC plunged 42 percent.

Honda Motor Co. posted a 20 percent decline, and Nissan Motor Co., which like Honda is based in Tokyo, said sales fell 7.1 percent.

The larger problem, though, is that the C4C program is being heralded as a success, and a model for future government interventionism. Never mind that the program’s biggest beneficiaries were Japanese and Korean carmakers, or that C4C served as a very effective poke in the eyes to the poor by increasing the median cost of used cars, or that the whole scheme was one tragi-comic lesson in Bastiat’s broken window fallacy.

Reason Online web editor Tim Cavanaugh sums it all up:

The evidence was there going in, and now the evidence is there going out: As soon as the government turned off the current, the corpse stopped twitching. But everybody in the lab saw the corpse twitch. So if GM survives, the history will read that while free market extremists objected to the Cash for Clunkers program, even they came around when they saw how successful it was at saving U.S. auto manufacturers.

In the interest of full disclosure, the Guardianmobile is an Aston Martin Lagonda. Red, white, and blue of course.

I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Help

The day may come when Wyatt -- after watching Mary Poppins, perhaps -- will ask me for $9 to go buy an umbrella. Deep in his little heart, he will be convinced that for only $9, he can achieve his dream of flight (or perfect pitch, or whatever aspect of Poppins inspired him), and I have no doubt I will indulge him. The lesson and the adventure will be a bargain at $9.

Not so much, when the lesson costs $787 billion.



President Obama's words at the ARRA signing ceremony eight months ago:

...today does mark the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.

Chart via Don Surber. Link via Hit & Run via Instapundit. Sheesh.