RIP Robt Byrd

He was once Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops in the KKK, but he did far more damage in Congress, where he became a role model and set the standard as undisputed "Prince of Pork."

I think a fitting monument might be a hooded cyclops with a pig under each arm. Epitaph carved in the base:

Robert Byrd. He showed the way for so many who have followed, by making congressional office a permanent career, and by spending other people's money hand over fist, without conscience or limit.

Byron

Biden on jobs outlook

Biden: No way will we get the lost jobs back

Morrissey's analysis below is spot-on, except for no mention of the bad effects of government borrowing on interest rates and outlays for debt service. It's worth noting that even the Europeans are now abandoning Obama's "stimulus" policies. As a result, those economies are recovering faster than ours, in a reversal of all history. Obama wants to make us like the Europeans, and in that he's exceeded his own expectations by making us worse. Obama's a left-wing ideologue whose learning curve for economics is a flat horizontal line, straight across at zero. He didn't have a clue yesterday, he doesn't have a clue today, and he won't have one tomorrow, either.
Byron

Richardson

Lame duck NM Gov. Bill "Pay to Play" Richardson is encouraging Obama to fight the AZ immigration law. His blizzard of double-talk in the video below is absolutely classic. The poor fool must actually think he has some chance of grabbing a Washington slot in Obama's second term, so now he's out there doing the big suck-up. It's pathetic. I'm sure the other border state governors knew better than to didn't count on him as part of united front. Bill doesn't do teamwork.

Sweaty, shameless ambition, but going nowhere. That's our Bill.

A sickening read

I don't know about you, but this makes me want to see some of our decision-makers lined up and shot.

What a contrast

Compare this with Obama's vapid speech-making. Not a teleprompter in sight, either.

It's about competent leadership. Here we see the anti-Obama, everything Obama isn't, and vastly more inspiring than Obama's empty rhetoric.

What he says about New Jersey applies to the nation as a whole, obviously.

His close-up

The Unmasking of Barack Obama (Continued)
Peter Wehner - 06.16.2010 - 9:38 AM

President Obama is invoking pseudo-inspirational rhetoric that is disconnected from reality and from a road map.

Barack Obama is clearly more interested in the theater of the presidency than he is in governing. He is cut out to be a legislator and a commentator, not a chief executive. And when he spoke about seizing the moment and embarking on a national mission, as if he were trying to rise above the environmental catastrophe he looks powerless to stop, there was something slightly pathetic about it. He was trying to recapture the magic from a campaign that was long ago and far away. He is now being humbled by events and his own limitations. And he doesn’t know what to do about it.

The unmasking of Barack Obama continues. It is not a pretty thing to witness.

The question of the day is "If you have nothing to say, why give a speech?" The answer is that speech-making is the only arrow Obama has in his quiver. It's the only thing he as any experience at, and it's all he knows how to do. But the magic veil is dropping around his ankles, his words are evaporating into the ether. What's left is real enough: an economy in ruins, unspeakable levels of deficit and debt, a dangerously weak and unsteady foreign policy, and the spectacle of Obama endlessly dithering in the face of an unprecedented environmental catastrophe. Finally, confronted with the necessity to stand and deliver, he labors mightily and brings forth...another vacuous speech.

Wehner is right, it's pathetic to watch. Obama's beginning to remind me of former movie start Nora Desmond falling apart at the end of Sunset Boulevard, the camera focused pitilessly on her panicked eyes and the lines in her face:

We'll give another speech and another speech. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! ....All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

Byron

Doubts at the NYT

From lead editorial, Sunday New York Times:

If ever there was a test of President Obama’s vision of government — one that cannot solve all problems, but does what people cannot do for themselves — it is this nerve-racking early summer of 2010, with oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and far too many Americans out of work for far too long.

It certainly should not have taken days for Mr. Obama to get publicly involved in the oil spill, or even longer for his administration to start putting the heat on BP for its inadequate response and failure to inform the public about the size of the spill. (Each day, it seems, brings new revelations about the scope of the disaster.) It took too long for Mr. Obama to say that the Coast Guard and not BP was in charge of operations in the gulf and it’s still not clear that is true.

These are matters of competence and leadership. This is a time for Mr. Obama to decisively show both.

Don Surber:

The New York Times published this delightful little editorial in which a newspaper’s editorial board comes to grips with the reality that they bet liberalism on a fellow who never ran a pop stand. The inexperience is washing onto the beaches of Florida and the shores of Louisiana.

After 8 years of mainly unfair derision of George Walker Bush, liberals find a true elitist incompetent in the Oval Office: Their man.

Barack Obama’s leadership skills are not up to the task, and a liberal press that failed to press him on this issue in the presidential campaign has no right to expect him to suddenly sprout wings and fly.

Suber is right. It is unseemly for the liberal media to start feeling for the exits as Obama shows himself to be an empty suit; it was, after all, the very same media that refused critically examine Obama's virtually nonexistent record of experience and accomplishment, so intent were they on getting him elected at any cost. The NYT, among others, evaded their journalistic responsibilities, choosing instead to act as star-struck Obama cheerleaders and campaign flacks.

Having foolishly launched the Good Ship Obama, the NYT, et al., should finally show some integrity and nail themselves to the mast.

Byron

Gulf: Pricing risk

Government regulators capped offshore drillers' liabilities at the ludicrously low level of $75 million. That's nothing but a bad joke. If risk had been accurately priced, drillers would have been much more careful. With a liability cap of only $75 million, taxpayers were, in effect, forced to subsidize risky and irresponsible behavior by drillers. The excuse for the low cap was to allow smaller firms to engage in drilling. But if a company cannot pay the costs of the damage it may do, then it has no business being allowed to operate.

This pattern of nonsense is what you get when Government doesn't let the market price things; there is no other way to know what prices should be. The non-market "solution" is to rely on watchdog regulators, a supplementary step at best. (Google "regulatory failure" and see how many million links pop up.) Regulation is always behind the curve: it's rarely very effective in detecting violations, and when it is effective it stifles innovation. The recent Big Branch coal mine disaster in WV is a good example, with inspections always tipped off in advance, and then violations that were discovered left in place while the paperwork wandered in a bureaucratic purgatory. An operator who is liable for the full amount of damages will self-inspect and self-correct, because he knows he will have to pay the true costs of his own violations.

The point is made here, starting at 1:30

Byron

Tide turns

Don Surber sees Obama's base shrinking fast:

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/15543

This movement rose because President Obama chose to work with Democrats and Democrats alone — and to make radical changes as he pushed America toward a socialist state where the government runs entire industries — where the great and powerful Oz in Washington rewards failure (GM, AIG) and punishes success...the real leader of the Tea Party movement is Barack Obama. More than anyone else, The Won has made people join the Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party movement is one response to socialism. And the Code Pink implosion on the left is the other reaction to socialism. This is how it works. The producers rail against socialism while the beneficiaries want even more because enough is never enough.

The president’s policies are a failure and people on the left and on the right are angry over it.

I felt all along that Obama would hit the rocks when the focus shifted away from rhetoric and toward concrete policies and programs, away from rhetoric toward measurable outcomes. ObamaCare was interesting for the way the Dems fought to keep it diffuse and poorly-defined -- nobody knew what was in that amorphous, convoluted mountain of paper, nobody had even read it. Even now, surprising new aspects and implications of that legislation are coming to light every week, all of them bad. But it was that intentional vagueness that allowed for a cloudy rhetorical debate, and that was the only way that mess could have been passed.

That won't happen again. He's now talking about "ass kicking" over the Gulf, but that's just another obvious rhetorical ploy, and it's not going to work.

Obama is wonderfully articulate, and he's very good at speeches. Perhaps never in history has any politician gone so far on nothing but a meager handful of bad ideas. Obama is basically a talented salesman, a political Willy Loman, a shoeshine and a smile.

Byron

Call Ripley

Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics

Liberals don't understand economics! Film at eleven!

No surprise here, of course. Liberalism is a moral position, a matter of correct feelings, not of empirical fact. To have the right feelings, it's not necessary to actually know anything; in fact, the less you know, the easier it is. Marx's system of economics was such a mess he gave up writing the third volume of Das Kapital, unable to make it work. (His "labor theory of value" -- which he got from Ricardo -- was wrong, and so was his theory of the "declining rate of profit.") Others, unfortunately, tried it anyway, at enormous cost in human suffering. About all that survives of Marx is his moral critique of child labor in 19th-century British textile mills and some lefty T-shirts.

The answer to that fiasco was supposed to be the creation of a new-and-improved "leftist economics." The idea was to build a coherent theoretical system that would encompass everything from the Soviet-style command economy to Yugoslav worker-managed factories (a sentimental favorite on the left) to Keynesian pump-priming. In fact, the Soviet system was a monumental disaster on every level, worker management schemes all failed miserably, and we now see Obama's attempt at Keynesianism (stimulus!) falling on its face. (Maybe Obama will try worker management next.) If you want to understand why all this junk fails, the answers are to be found in real economics. The kind the left doesn't know much of anything about.

If Obama had cut taxes to stimulate aggregate demand, we'd be well on our way out of this recession by now. Instead, it's only a question of how much deeper we're going. Worst president ever.

Byron

Experience

Obama 2008: I ran a big campaign, so I can handle a Gulf emergency

Besides his campaign, Obama once had a paper route -- so let's please hear no more about his supposed lack of business experience! He's the complete package. Just ask him.

Note: On further review, it appears that he never actually had a paper route. The possibility that he had a sidewalk lemonade stand for two days when he was nine years old remains under investigation. He does have a law degree, but it's unclear why. As far as anyone can tell, Obama never appeared in a courtroom of any kind, criminal or civil, nor was he ever certified to do so. (See: http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/9328/why-getting-obama-disclose-his-legal-clients-pulling-teeth ) Whatever he was up to, it included a long-term relationship with slum lord Tony Rezko, which netted Obama a Southside Chicago mansion for $300k under the asking price. (See: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/353829,CST-NWS-rez23.article )

Our liberal media's attitude was strictly Don't Ask - Don't Tell, let's just get this guy elected!

How's that working out so far?

Byron

Fools in command

Harvard study shows earmarks cost jobs

Nobody is smarter than the market, but plenty of fools think they are. The Obama administration's "stimulus" debacle is only one more sad, costly example.

While we commend the Harvard researchers on their scholarship, we can't say we were surprised by the study's findings. You don't have to go to Harvard Business School to see that federal pork distorts the free market with unintended and unpleasant consequences, so encouraging more federal spending is bad economic policy. It is time Washington woke up to that fact.

In fact, going to the Harvard Business School is no help at all -- the Harvard authors describe their own results as "an enormous surprise." It just never occurred to them.

And good luck with waiting for Washington to wake to how markets work. Here's a prediction: Obama and his ilk are too stupid to EVER wake up to that. Might as well try to teach the multiplication tables to a pig. That's a bad analogy, really, because a pig knows he knows nothing about arithmetic; the people we're thinking about think they know something, but what they don't know is that everything they think they know is wrong. When they somehow get into public office, the results are what we are seeing right now -- awful.

Byron

Perfection of a kind

HEADLINE OF THE DAY:

Deficit Reduction Commission Seeks Increase in its Budget.

The country’s in the very best of hands . . . .

(Posted at 10:57 am by Glenn Reynolds}

I would never have believed I'd say this, but I'm ready for Biden to take over.

Compared with America under Obama, Gilligan's Island was a model of competent administration.

Byron

DC school reform

Breaking the Teacher Unions' Monopoly

This is the best news for a long time from the urban education front. Who would have imagined it would come from the execrable DC system?

“DC pulled off what other school districts only dream about,” said Kate Walsh

A fool at the helm

Business is looking down the barrel of higher costs due to health care reform, talk of the VAT will only get louder, the ridiculous cap and trade scheme refuses to die, the current tax cuts will likely expire, and cap gains tax rates are going up. That is the opposite a job-producing environment.

And, of course, it's doing the opposite of producing jobs. 95% of the disappointing job increase in May was phony-baloney Government temp jobs. And, as we learned from undercover video last week, even those are tainted by bogus inflation of hours worked and double-counting of hires. The unemployment rate dropped from 9.9% to 9.7% only because more people are giving up and leaving the labor market, thus no longer counted as unemployed.

Obama's disastrous "stimulus" approach has produced nothing but massive deficits and crushing multi-generational debt. The resulting increases in taxes and higher interest rates are the precise opposite of what's needed, and they will depress economic growth even further.

Has any president ever in our history done the nation so much damage so quickly? And the awful possibility remains that we ain't seen nothing yet.

Byron

Excellent!

Finally, a public official with the guts to tell the truth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksLlAi3iIc&feature=player_embedded