Eric Holder: “Excellent point. Now shut up!”

Attorney General Tries to Silence School Choice Ad

Well, sure. It’s not like we have freedom of speech or anything. Wait … turns out, we do! Huh.

Very odd. I mean, this is the Attorney General of the United States we’re talking about here. He knows about the Constitution, right? The rule of law? Stuff like that?

Also, exercising restraint when you hold a huge amount of power?

Respect for the guaranteed right of others to hold their own opinions and even advocate for them, in public? How scary is that!?

So very, very odd.

Because seriously, come on now, a President wouldn’t nominate a political operative for Attorney General, would he? A guy to do his political bidding, and oh-by-the-way, also run the entire Department of Justice, where he could direct thousands of attorneys and FBI agents to harass enemies of the President?

And even, you know, make idiotic demands in public that show his true colors, along with a disgusting lack of respect for free speech and how essential that is to our overall freedoms?

Nah! That would be a big conflict of interest. So we know that is completely off the table. Phew!

Obama is a Democrat. And we all know that Democrats don’t have conflicts of interest, or a lust for power, or a tendency to tell everybody else what to do.

Bullet dodged!

Pelosi and Reid: “Hey America! Don’t Like My Legislating? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT!”

“Of the People, By the People, For the People”? Pfffffft.

Sen. Orrin Hatch: “Democrats have decided they have to pass a bill no matter how unpopular it is.”

And by “Democrats”, he obviously means “Nancy Pelosi” and “Harry Reid”.

What a stunning time we live in. Harry Reid I can understand. The Senate is composed mainly of pompous pricks.

But the Speaker of the House? The House is the most democratic chunk of our federal government. Pelosi is a Democrat. Ostensibly, this is the party of the powerless, the man on the street, Joe Six-Pack. All House members face re-election every two years, so they have to at least pretend they care about what we think. Usually, anyway. Of course, they get behind closed doors and stab us in the back when it suits them, but at least they gave the impression of caring about what we wanted in the past.

And make no mistake, the public has made it very clear—via face-to-face meetings with elected representatives, and polling data—that they don’t like the expensive, mostly-hidden piles of crap being sold to us as “health care reform”.

Will the last resident to leave Michigan please turn out the lights?

While you were out … the state of Michigan has turned into an economic hell-hole.

It’s too bad. Michigan is a nice place, with a lot of natural beauty, and Great Lakes on three sides. But the place is slowly being destroyed economically, due to a deadly combination of too much reliance on a very sick auto industry, and high taxes, and big government, and excessive union power.

So those who can leave, do. Every 12 minutes, a family leaves the state of Michigan. 5 families per hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Do the math. That’s 840 families every week.

And it’s no wonder. Taxes are a strong disincentive to invest, to run a business, to work or raise a family. Raising taxes chases away the people who pay into the system but get very little out of it, leaving behind those who depend on that system–government largesse–for their livelihood. It’s a recipe for failure.

And Illinois, which is right now facing some big financial burdens, has the same tendency to “raise taxes first and ask questions later”. So does the U.S. government.

They might want to take a look at Michigan’s situation. And you might, as well. If raising taxes to address budget problems works so well, why do they have to keep doing it?

Assessing Chicago 2016 financial risks

Chicago learns next Friday, October 2, whether it will host the 2016 Summer Olympics. But if they do win the games, the taxpayers in Cook County won’t learn until much later just how big the bill might be.

There is a 12% profit factored into the $3.8M budget, but that pales in comparison to the potential cost overruns, as described in this eyes-wide-open article “Peeling back the coverage” at chicagobusiness.com.

For instance, while there is $1.1B of insurance promised, there is no insurance coverage (or not enough) for:

• “… the risk that private lenders won’t shell out $1 billion to finance construction of the Olympic Village”
• “… shortfalls in corporate sponsorship sales, which they predict will rake in $1.8 billion, two-thirds more than London expects to collect for the 2012 games”
• “… overruns on the construction of Olympics venues tops out at 10% over budgeted costs”
• “… $246 million in contributions from private donors, a source already tapped for $72 million to finance the city’s bid”

And that’s just the insurance piece of the pie.

Predictably, construction costs are key, with the main costs being the Olympic Village and the sports venues. The plan is to convince private developers to “transform the former Michael Reese Hospital into athletic quarters to be sold later as condominiums or rental housing”. I’m not quite sure if this means converting the actual buildings themselves–which seems sort of crazy to me–or if it means first tearing down the whole thing and building new.

As for sports venues, the 2004 Athens games went double what they budgeted. The 2010 Vancouver games are running 23% higher than projected. Chicago 2016 is only allocating a 10% overrun, plus another 10% in insurance on top of that.

Then we have concerns about revenue projections.

Just read the whole thing.

The money quote by Allan Sanderson, a sports economist at the University of Chicago: “Athens was three times over budget; London is four times over budget. I don’t see that happening here. But are they going to come in at $4.8 billion? No, I just don’t see it.”

Getting Wise Down Under

Good Beer and Demanding Evidence: Two Qualities to Admire in a Country

Australia, at least, is starting to ask serious questions about the “science” behind global warming. Heaven and Earth, a book by Ian Pilmer, is credited with starting that global warming backlash in Australia.

Quoting Rick Moran at the American Thinker piece linked just above:

Cap and trade is not about saving the planet. It is about enriching government at the expense of private industry. Obama expects that selling of carbon credits will bring in hundreds of billions of dollars that will finance his health insurance power grab and other schemes. They are not interested in the science. They are interested in the dollars.

And the American family – to the tune of at least $1300 in increased energy bills – will pay for it.

Exactly right. Same as it ever was.

Read the whole thing.

Our governments are lying to us and treating us like idiots while they prepare to forcibly take our money to pay for a “solution” that won’t work.

Putting aside for a moment all the highly-charged emotion about this … why would anybody want that?

Fight Back, or Get Used to Sending More of Your Money to the IRS to Slay Imaginary Dragons

In a stunning development, we have learned that Congress is right now crafting legislation that is not just useless, but dangerous and expensive too.

Which, like, hardly ever happens!

It’s called the Waxman-Markey bill. You might not know about it, but you should, because it is just the latest example of how government deceives you in order to take your money. It’s what they do.

It presumes a global warming crisis that is actually unraveling as we speak, as new, compelling evidence emerges nearly every week that we are now entering a historic cooling period.

It assumes that even if this climate crisis did exist, it is best fixed by … collecting money. Really. This is what Congress does: think up ways to waste our money on mostly ineffectual and sometimes downright dangerous “solutions”. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And even if you buy into all that silliness, the proposed solution hasn’t worked very well in Europe.

Summing up then:

1. A crisis that doesn’t exist,
2. used to coerce you and me into paying more money into our government,
3. to fund a solution that won’t work.

A perfect storm of pandering.

I know global warming is the current “hot button” issue of the day, and lots of people view it as a crisis that needs our attention. But it doesn’t take very long to discover that the “science” behind it is extremely shaky; in fact, it is not science at all. That’s why they use words like “global warming denier”: it’s a belief system.

Usually, investing your faith where it doesn’t belong is a pretty bad idea. Render unto Caesar, etc.

And we don’t need lies in order to pursue reasonable energy and environmental policies. There were already plenty of good reasons to support the “green” lifestyle. For years, I’ve supported recycling, fuel conservation, and research into new sources of energy. I could support things like wind farms if there was any hope that such a thing could work in a huge country like the United States. And we need to re-open drilling in places like ANWR in Alaska and offshore. The caribou and the godforsaken mosquitoes in ANWR  won’t mind, and other countries are drilling off our shores already, so what do we gain by sitting it out?

But what we don’t need is fear-mongering based on half-baked theories, and taxation that couldn’t fix it anyway. Plus, of course, the meddling in economic markets, which didn’t work out too well with the mortgages.

And even worse, all the social divisions created by all of it. You risk being called ridiculous names by “scientists” if you dare to question their methods and conclusions. Really?

Cute documentaries with polar bears is one thing; turning the junk science behind it into a demand for tax revenue is quite another.

We don’t need the Waxman-Markey bill, or anything remotely like it.

Global Cooling = Very Very Bad

While politicians and other silly people prattle on about global warming, the smart money is on disastrous cooling which could kill crops and people. But “green” is big business today, so that’s the important thing!

Read all of this excellent post at EU Referendum: The road to starvation.

The climate may be changing, all right, but not in the direction you might think.

We live in truly scary times.

Which line does CO2 get in to get it’s reputation back?

Another day, another debunking of CO2 as a driver of climate:

“Each successive cooling cycle has had an increase in the rate of CO2 growth over the previous warming cycle,indicating that there is no possible correlation of CO2 with global warming.” – How Many IPCC (and Other) Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?, icecap.us

Note that the data at the link doesn’t even allow a correlation model to be constructed, let alone a causation model.

It’s going to be pretty embarrassing to reel in all that talk about man-made global warming now, isn’t it? Especially since opportunistic politicians are trying to raise our taxes to pay for this non-existent risk?

There are so, so many really good reasons to completely ignore all this global warming hysteria, but the best one continues to be that there is no data to support it.

Things We “Know” That Aren’t True

Facts are stubborn things. By their very nature, they are immutable, unmovable, eternal. There is no equivocation with a fact. It just is, always and forever.

That’s why we like them. Their “truthiness” is an intrinsic good, with real value.

Then we have pop culture facts. Things we “know”, that aren’t really true. These are far less valuable, but we seem to uncover more and more of them every day.

Some of the best pop culture facts are “green” myths. For example, from a csmonitor.com green blog, a few of the Top Ten Green Living Myths:

• Green myth: Recycled paper is better for the environment than virgin paper. Fact: It depends!
• Green myth: Local food is always greener. Fact: It depends!
• Green myth: Washing dishes by hand uses less water than a dishwasher. Fact: It depends!
• Green myth: An electric car is best for the environment. Fact: It depends!
• Green myth: If you want to help alleviate global warming, plant trees. Fact: It depends!

But don’t worry. I’m sure all those *other* environmental crises are based on solid, true facts that you can take to the bank, instead of the pop culture kind.

And while you’re there, take out a bucketful of cash to help pay for all the new taxes that we’ll soon have to pay. In order to somehow stop warming that has already stopped.

Not only that, the dangerous warming has turned into dangerous cooling. Potentially historic cooling, the kind that kills crops. Which causes starvation.

Also, the silly idea that CO2 is dangerous and even toxic to our health seems to be losing momentum.

A bunch of pop culture facts we thought we knew. Turns out … a lot of it is b.s.!

Imagine that.

Deadspin Confuses It’s Readership with That of “The New Yorker”

This is just too rich.

A post at Deadspin laments the death of a literary sports magazine.

Not a sports ‘n boobs site. A literary sports magazine. As if there was a market for such a thing in the first place.

It even links to an essay in the magazine by David Foster Wallace, a writer of some intellectual repute who committed suicide a few months ago. I had never heard of him, for whatever that’s worth. I checked out of that intellectual literary world a long time ago. A little too prissy and impressed with itself.

And I do like Deadspin, most of the time. But let’s be honest: it is a cesspool of sports blogs. Snark on every post, sex whenever possible, taking the low road at every chance.

It’s not where you go when you want literary nourishment.

Yes, it is funny. “Married With Children” was funny too, in a very crude way. It also wasn’t high art, and it didn’t pretend it’s viewership wanted that, either.

And now that some hoity-toity New York sports magazine called “Play”—that few people outside that world ever heard of—goes under, this is supposed to cause Deadspin Nation to have a good cry, while they presumably enjoy a fine Bordeaux and a $24 cigar. In the study, surrounded by thousands of books, and wearing a smoking jacket. While waiting for Muffy and Biff to come back from prep school.

That is just about the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks.

Quote of the Day

Ann Coulter:

Start with the fact that the average Gitmo detainee has gained 20 pounds in captivity. There’s even a medical term for it now: “the Gitmo gut.” Some prisoners have been heard whispering, “If you think Allah is great, you should try these dinner rolls.”

From her humanevents.com column “Watching MSNBC is Torture”, May 6, 2009.

In that column, she makes vicious fun of clowns on MSNBC who—get this—actually thought they could compare Japanese conduct re: American prisoners of war in WWII with American conduct re: enemy combatants in the War on Terror, and come out ahead on that deal.

Q: If ignorant yahoos in the media ignore established historical facts, and run around with their hair on fire screaming at me about things I know are stupid and untrue, not to mention anti-American … do they make a sound?

A: Yes. They sound a little bit like little girls in pretty pink dresses playing hopscotch. But not as cute, and not nearly as bright.

Perceive This

The NBA has decided that the flagrant foul rules don’t apply in the last few seconds of a close playoff game.

No sir. Go ahead and smash the guy in the mouth with a closed fist!

There is no price to pay, other than a regular personal foul.

This is really good to know. So if tonight Paul Pierce gets mugged in broad daylight in that same situation, we won’t hear any complaints. Will we, Doc Rivers?

Because the NBA has now clarified this whole thing for us.

Please do not be confused by the fact that the NBA invented the flagrant foul rule to address this exact situation, where a player makes zero effort to play the ball and instead bashes some poor schmuck directly in the face.

You see, they’re also cool with the face-bashing, if the score is close, and the game close to over. And if the mugger didn’t wind up and/or follow through aggressively enough, apparently. So, you can relax, it’s all nailed down now!

Listen up, muggers! Just make sure you bash the guy really hard, with a closed fist, right in the mouth, with no windup or follow thru, so that he is so woozy he can’t see straight and is still swallowing blood when he tries to shoot the free throws. Tends to work a lot better, and hey, you won’t get nailed for it anyway, so why the hell not?

The perfect plan.

By the way, NBA, how is that “perception problem” with your refs going?

We’re From the Government, and We’re Here to Help You … Er, I Mean, Take Your Money by Force

Dustbury notes some problems with red light cameras in Georgia:

Where there are red-light cameras, says Georgia law, there’s supposed to be one extra second of yellow. Much of the time, though, there isn’t, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Cassville) wants to know why.

Like I posted in a comment there, it’s basically a tax on driving, at some point. An illegal tax, in this case.

In Illinois we have these red light cameras in some spots; I’m not sure about the law on yellow light times. Need to check on that.

And now some genius in our gubmint wants to implement traffic cameras all over the place to catch speeders.

I’m not such a big fan. 

1. Using technology to entrap de facto “normal” driving is a little too “1984″-ish for me.

2. Not only that, but lengthening yellow lights seems to reduce or even eliminate drivers running red lights.

3. Which, logically would seem to obviate the need for red light cameras in the first place.

4. Unless, of course, red light cameras are primarily a fund-raising tool, rather than a public safety measure.

As Instapundit says:

If all you care about is safety, then, you can accomplish as much by adding a second to the yellow light. If you care about revenue, though, you’ll shorten yellow-light times — as some places have done — even though that’s worse for safety.

Government and business colluding to screw taxpayers? That, like, hardly ever happens!

When Did I Wake Up in Hell, Economics Edition

You know it’s a crazy world when China gives free-market economic advice to the U.S.

And crazier still? It’s good advice.

Note to Obama and Congress:  government spending grows government, not the economy.

Plus, big business is not the enemy, despite lame attempts to offload anger at Congress onto AIG and the paltry amount of $165M … that Congress explicitly approved, and already knew about. Which means Obama and Geithner had to know, too.

Nice try, chumps. We may be dumb, but we aren’t stupid.

No Way!

Um, Way

Next time you hear anybody — say, a man on the street, your neighbor, the President of the United States — trying to blame the current financial mess on the Bush administration, tell them to look at this post at the great Doug Ross @ Journal:  Meltdown.

In fact, maybe you should read it too.

“Facts:  We R Stubborn.”

And from reading Doug’s post, you’d almost think Congress was corrupt or something!  Srsly!  Crazy, huh?

“Scientists”, “Journalists”, and other Useful Idiots

Someday, when sanity again rules the Earth, some may look back on today as the most ridiculous time in the history of mankind.

Why is that, you ask?  Because lots of otherwise-smart people today waste their time arguing about Artic Sea ice.

“Oh, look!  it’s shrinking!  What are we going to do?”

Here’s what I do:  pour myself a nice cold Manhattan, and flip on the TV.

Blame It On Quants, Don’t Blame It On Me

A few weeks back I wrote about our Economic Reckoning. I wondered how so much bad debt, in the form of credit default swaps backed by risky mortgage debt, could get rated in the AAA tranche by the various rating agencies.

I might have that answer now.

This article, Recipe for Disaster: The Formula that Killed Wall Street by Felix Salmon, explains the story of an industry deathly afraid of unquantified risk, that fell in love with a new formula, and bet the ranch on it.

And lost.

This new formula is called a Gaussian copula function, and it attempts to assign a discrete number X to represent a complete picture of the risk of insanely complicated financial instruments.

A simple, beautiful, and, in my mind, ultimately vain concept.

Impossibly, insanely complicated financial instruments.  Built on layers of other impossibly, insanely complicated financial instruments.  All with basically an unknown level of risk.  These had been confounding Wall St. for years.  But using this new formula enabled entire new markets to open up, which means more revenue.  Lots and lots of revenue.

Unfortunately, it was all based on a correlation model.

Even the credit rating bureaus, like Moody’s and Standard & Poors, bought into it.  A correlation model.

Turns out, there were flaws in that correlation model. Imagine that.

A Good Rule for Sportswriters: Stay Away from Politics. Or, Learn to Use a Search Engine. Either Way.

Hey, look! A sportswriter has stepped in it again, by writing about politics. Riffing on Bush, and slobbering all over Obama. Like we can’t already get *that* from the rest of the paper.

I’m starting to think sportswriters aren’t real well-informed.  Srsly!

Rick Telander, sportswriter, informs us that Obama is a Renaissance Man for the ages, and Bush is a drooling moron.

Plus, Obama plays pick-up basketball! How awesome is that? Coolest. President. Ever!

Mr. Telander knows what he’s talking about, too; seems Obama is a voracious reader, and has even read Telander’s Heaven is a Playground, a book about … pick-up basketball. Which means he is open-minded, and also great presidential material. Bask in the reflection of his awesomeness.

Bush, meanwhile, suffers from countless infirmities, such as not playing pick up basketball, and a “lack of inquisitiveness”.  The bad news for Telander:  Bush is a voracious reader too; he read 186 books in the last three years.

186 books.  That is a lot of frigging books.

Jerry Angelo Thinks We R Stupid

Recently, Bears GM Jerry Angelo held his end of the season press conference, where he offered this pearl of wisdom about the quarterback position:

“I think we have to have competition at that position. We have to keep an eye on that position, more than any. We have to get that position right. I know there’s going to be a lot of talk about a No. 1 receiver, but it starts with the quarterback. It’s all about the quarterback. You don’t win because of wide receivers. You don’t win because of running backs. You win because of the quarterback. We have to get that position stabilized. We’re fixated on that.

So, if you bring Tom Brady in, the Bears win the Super Bowl? Really?

Here’s what I think.

1. Great teams win the Super Bowl.
2. Great teams have no weaknesses.
3. The Bears have lots of weaknesses.

Just sticking to offense, and in approximately the order I’d fix them:

• old, slow, offensive line,
• bad, small receivers,
• no discernible fullback,
• a general lack of depth across all positions,
• mediocre position coaches,
• unproven quarterback who has never been given a real chance with a real offense.

Does bringing Tom Brady, or Drew Brees, or whoever else you like, fix all that, too?

Lovie Smith Thinks We R Stupid

Over the last two weeks, the Bears needed a whole bunch of teams to lose in order to make a wild-card spot: 4 of them last week, and 2 this week. All lost.

The Bears were missing just one thing:  winning their last game against Houston, which they lost 31-24. In the fourth quarter, they allowed a six-minute, 90 yard drive for a nail-in-the-coffin touchdown to make it 31-17.

The defense allowed 455 yards for the game. 4-5-5.

Greg Couch of the Sun-Times says “Lovie’s in denial”, because he thinks the Bears are “close”.

Close to what? Catching fire, from being torched so often? Barely making the playoffs, so they can be shown the door by the Atlanta Falcons? Is this how we measure success today?

Not in my world, it isn’t.