…and the case for repeal grows. I really think that we could have figured this out without having to pass it, if there hadn’t been such a rush to pass it. And if we had been allowed to read it.

A risk worth taking. Five-dollar gasoline will cause people to come to their senses, I suspect.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Time for some perspective:

From an environmental perspective, off-shore oil drilling is far safer than Mother Nature. As the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday, oil that seeps naturally from the ocean floor puts 47 million gallons of crude into U.S. waters annually. Thus far, Deepwater Horizon has leaked about three million gallons. That sounds like a lot of oil, and it is. But the Exxon Valdez leaked 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. Even those figures are dwarfed, according to the Economist, by the amount of oil spilled in man-made disasters elsewhere around the world. Saddam Hussein’s destruction of Kuwaiti oil facilities during the Gulf War dumped more than 500 million barrels of crude into the Arabian Gulf. The 1979 blowout of Mexico’s Ixtoc 1 well resulted in 3.3 million barrels being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. In short, Deepwater Horizon is an environmental crisis, but not the apocalypse that alarmists claim.

Unfortunately, perspective, and logic, aren’t politicians’ strong suits.

Thoughts on the Wall Street Democrats:

…every time the president accuses Republicans of trying to “block progress” or of defying “common sense,” as he did that night, he is executing a dangerous tightrope walk. His party’s electoral fortunes depend on his making forceful calls for reform of our banking laws. His party’s fundraising fortunes depend on his ensuring that no serious reform—of the kind that endangers the big banks’ size and power—ever happens. That may be why the Democrats’ strategy of painting the Republicans as obstructionists on finance reform has gained little traction. By the same token, if Republicans ever did get serious about reforming the banks—and even about breaking up an industry that has turned into a Democratic war chest—they would put Democrats in mortal peril. There seems no chance of this. Obama’s taunts show a confidence, verging on certitude, that Republicans’ hypocrisy is as deep as his own.

Sounds like the Republicans suffer from false consciousness. I still think that low marginal rates are a good idea, though.

California is the worst state in the country in which to do business. I can believe it.

It’s a tragedy what the vandals in Sacramento have done to such a beautiful and naturally wealthy place.

An interesting discussion (at least to me) on the power and limitations of government regulation.

Our noble leaders in Washington were shorting America while they wrecked the economy.

Abolish it.

One of the major tells of The One’s socialism was when he said in that debate that he’d increase the rate, even it it hurt the economyreduced government revenues, out of “fairness.”

Most people think that government spending hurts the economy. You have to be an economic dolt to think otherwise. Unfortunately, we have a lot of those, some of whom are currently running the country. Not to mention making fools of themselves in my comments section.