…that the Republican front runners should shamelessly steal from the also rans.
I agree that we have to do more than just repeal SOX and Dodd-Frank — we need real banking and finance reform. I’m not sure just what it would look like, but it wouldn’t look like either of those bills.
Why are they so awful?
I suspect that some of them have the attitude with regard to posting their prices that, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
[Via Geek Press]
Gee, they say that like it would be a bad thing. Interestingly, space transportation is one area that actually does have a legitimate federal role, as a result of the Outer Space Treaty and Liability Convention. But it could be an independent agency, as could the FAA.
Thoughts on the collapse of the Obama cult.
[Update a few minutes later]
The politics of “liberals” bashing Obama:
As I can fathom this August of discontent, it runs something like this: at best Barack Obama is too aloof, professorial and unable temperamentally or unwilling politically to mix it up with Republicans. Therefore he has compromised far too much on various budget deals, which in part explains his sagging ratings and the general laments in the American and European press that Obama lacks leadership qualities. The nearly $5 trillion in new debt since 2009 is a needed, if too timid, “stimulus”; and if it is seen by some as too excessive, it can be easily remedied by new taxes on the wealthy — something Obama talks about a lot but does little to enact, this buskin Theramenes who bends with the wind.
At worst, there is a sort of victimization that might be described as, “Obama mesmerized us and therefore we did not quite appreciate how inexperienced and unaccomplished he was until now when we sobered up — and when it is too late.”
…A number of us throughout 2008 and later were criticized for raising just these issues, both about Obama’s lack of experience and his Hamlet-like propensity of hesitation and his academic disengagement. But why this sudden about-face from former disciples?
They’re finally figuring out who the rubes were.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Not that it’s a shock that the president would lie, but it turns out that Joe Wilson was right:
There are between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens in the United States. The fact that immigration status will not be checked at these health centers means illegal aliens will be treated, at American taxpayer expense, and in contradiction to what President Obama said. He lied in the service of passing a bill that a majority opposed and which is helping sink the US economy.
Hey, the ends justify the means.
[Update mid morning]
The growing bipartisan consensus on Obama:
My favorite panegyric to Obama comes from the Times’s columnist David Brooks, recalling his first interview with then Senator Obama. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging,” says Brooks, “but usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense that he knew both better than me.” Brooks went on to make this invaluable observation, “I remember distinctly an image — we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, (a) he’s going to be president and (b) he’ll be a very good president.” What would this precious Washington insider have reported if Senator Obama had been wearing pantyhose?
There are several things that the president could do to save both the country and his presidency. In no particular order, they would be: 1) Agree that the health-care bill is both unconstitutional and a mistake, and offer to sign a repeal; 2) Do the same for Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley; 3) Come up with a serious proposal to reform Medicare and Social Security to put it on a sound footing; 4) Come up with a serious proposal to reform the tax code, eliminating subsidies, the AMT and flattening the rate structure; 5) Sign an executive order ending all federal restrictions on the exploration and production of energy — in the Gulf, in Alaska and in the Mountain West; 6) Rein in the Environmental Protection Agency on carbon emissions; 7) Conduct a serious review of federal regulations in general, using Iain Murray’s book
He could do those things, but he can’t, because he is too bound to his ideology. And so the country will continue to suffer another year and a half of his lack of leadership, and he will go down in history as a presidential failure on a monumental scale.
This looks like a pretty big breakthrough:
Just how fast are Rice’s single-celled chemical factories? On a cell-per-cell basis, the bacteria produced the butanol, a biofuel that can be substituted for gasoline in most engines, about 10 times faster than any previously reported organism.
“That’s really not even a fair comparison because the other organisms used an expensive, enriched feedstock, and we used the cheapest thing you can imagine, just glucose and mineral salts,” said Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and lead co-author of the Nature study.
Gonzalez’s laboratory is in a race with hundreds of labs around the world to find green methods for producing chemicals like butanol that have historically come from petroleum.
“We call these ‘drop-in’ fuels and chemicals, because their structure and properties are very similar, sometimes identical, to petroleum-based products,” he said. “That means they can be ‘dropped in,’ or substituted, for products that are produced today by the petrochemical industry.”
I wonder what the catch is, if any?
[Update a while later]
The man-made miracle of oil from sand. And as Glenn Reynolds points out, it’s “ethical oil,” not “conflict oil.” And we’re a lot farther from “peak oil” than many want to think.
Stories like this make baby Algore, their lord and savior, weep bitter tears.
Despite all their millions, they came up short:
…almost 350,000 people voted in Tuesday’s recall elections — and Republicans won 53 percent of the total vote. After blowtorching the state with negative ads and benefiting from a favorable timetable, the unions could still only get 47 percent of Wisconsinites to support their effort.
This should make the unions think long and hard about whether they want to embark on a mission to recall Gov. Scott Walker next year. Doing so successfully would easily cost them five times as much as they just spent — and even with their recent deluge of cash, most of the public still didn’t support them at the polls. Additionally, the extra time will also give Walker’s reforms more time to work — and once the public sees that schools can manage their affairs effectively without being hamstrung by union regulations, organized labor’s argument gets even weaker.
That’s a) in an off-year election where union turnout usually makes the difference b) in famously progressive Wisconsin c) after spending many millions d) with a nationwide media and organizing push e) when labor had a galvanizing issue in Gov. Scott Walker’s direct assault on the institutional collective bargaining power of public employees, which led to a dramatic walkout by Democrats.
They’re slow learners. Though when it comes to one of the unions, they’re slow teachers as well.
…by and for stupid people.
Hey, maybe the Obama campaign can hire them. It would be at least as smart as keeping Plouffe and Axelrod.
Al Gore is ranting in frustration that no one buys his climate BS any more.
[Mid-morning update]
Climate skepticism isn’t a fringe phenomenon:
CC. To what extent did you feel like you were standing alone in resisting the man-made climate change theory back in the 1990s?
“It was difficult. I knew that many of my colleagues at the Association of State Climatologists agreed with me. But many of them wouldn’t say anything because they were worried about losing their jobs or just plain having their professional lives made difficult. Frankly there’s a lot more money supporting the other side. Things would be easier if you just go along with them.”
CC. “You’d say that now there’s a lot more money supporting the man-made climate change side of the issue than there is on the side of the skeptics?
“Oh yes, it’s been that way for a long time.”
Yes, though you’d never hear it above the din of the screams about oil money.
[Update late morning]
Climate Depot responds to Gore’s rant.
[Bumped]
I hope so. They need to do something much more serious if they want to avoid further downgrades.
…of Widener Law School.
I think this should be a capital offense (i.e., the school should go out of business).