TWO PROCLAMATIONS TOO POOFY

Just in case you thought the second one was, er, well, anomalous (as in deviant):

Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by two parents, a single mother, two mothers, a step-mom, a grandmother, or a guardian.

 -- Barack Obama, Mother's Day Proclamation, May 7, 2010 (available here)

Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian.

 -- Barack Obama, Father's Day Proclamation, June 18, 2010 (available here)

OBAMA EMBRACES STALIN'S UNIQUE DESCRIPTION OF WWII

Finally, I would simply add that the new partnership between our people spans the spectrum, from space to science to sports. I think, President, you're aware that recently I welcomed to the White House a group of young Russian basketball players -- both boys and girls -- who were visiting the United States. We went on the White House basketball court, and I have to admit some of them out-shot me. (Laughter.) They represented the hope for the future that brings our countries together.

Those were the same hopes of another generation of Americans and Russians -- the generation that stood together as allies in the Second World War -- the Great Patriotic War in which the Russian people suffered and sacrificed so much. We recently marked the 65th anniversary of our shared victory in that war, including that historic moment when American and Soviet troops came together in friendship at the Elbe River in Germany.

 -- Barack Obama, June 24, 2010 (transcript here)

"The term is not generally used outside the former Soviet Union" (Wikipedia, here), except, apparently, by aficionados.

GDP REVISED DOWN FOR Q1 2010 TO 2.7% FROM 3.0%

According to The Associated Press:

Gross domestic product rose by an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the January-to-March period, the Commerce Department said Friday. That was less than the 3 percent estimate for the quarter that the government released last month. It was also much slower than the 5.6 percent pace in the previous quarter.

ON TRADITION

"The development of a tradition is as unthinkable without some initial innovation as the progress of an innovation is apart from its regularization in one."
      -- Imam John

THE LEADERSHIP WE DESERVE

CONGRESS OF IDIOTS BAILS OUT THE STUPID

My favorite line from the following is "but it will help keep . . . I slightly above poverty level." Just how people who talk that way end up accumulating such large sums is something of a puzzle.

From "Retroactive Nonsense" by Thomas Brown, here:

[S]ometimes a proposal is so idiotic, so misconceived, and so harebrained that it’s impossible to ignore. In Washington yesterday, House and Senate conferees on the financial regulation bill agreed on one such nutty item, when they voted to make retroactive the increase in the FDIC’s insurance limit, to $250,000 from $100,000, back to January of 2008. . . .

What can these people be thinking? Congress’s move yesterday—which essentially bails out 8,700 ex-IndyMac depositors who were stupid enough to have more than the then-FDIC limit on deposit there—aren’t poor downtrodden souls who’ve been screwed by the system. They’re rich. Each has more than $100,000! Some of them, a lot more! They’re so wealthy, in fact, they could afford to let that much money languish earning passbook rates. In the long and unseemly line of bailouts that have happened as the credit crunch has progressed, these are the last people—the very last people—who should be granted a special, surprise place at the federal trough.

But instead, our idiot representatives feel sorry for them. Is there no minimum level of personal responsibility Congress won’t insist that people, or at least wealthy people, accept?

Apparently not. Meanwhile, if the group the Los Angeles Times talked to yesterday is any indication, the beneficiaries of this new windfall are a bunch of pathetic fools.  “It’s nothing to the government,” one of them, a retiree name[d] Craig Phinney, rationalises, “but it will help keep my wife and I slightly above poverty level for a couple of more years.” Uh-huh. Actually, the move will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund around $200 million. And Mr. Phinney, if you’re really so concerned about staying above the poverty line, why not take a moment (and it won’t take much more than a moment) to learn about how federal deposit insurance actually works? It’s pretty common knowledge that there are limits to coverage. Nor was it any secret that IndyMac was a shaky institution before it was finally seized. If you’re so close to the poverty line, why did you have so much money at IndyMac in the first place?

In the meantime, the moral hazard that Congress’s move yesterday creates is not unsubstantial. I can’t imagine why large depositors won’t be more willing now to shop for yield at institutions they know are less than completely sound. Then, when one fails, depositors will point to the precedent set yesterday and demand that they, too, be made whole. So at the margin, the conferees’ vote yesterday will make the financial system less strong rather than more so. This is reform?

You’re thinking that I’m being too tough on Congress and the hapless depositors it’s helping. No. The government has bailed out the automakers. It’s bailed out big banks. It’s shoveling stimulus money in order to bail out the states. Now it wants to bail out people who have so much money already that their bank balances exceeded FDIC limits? It’s insane.

WHERE BANKS' BAD PAPER GOES TO DIE

The taxpayer-backstopped Fanny and Freddie, of course:

The Obama administration is continuing one of the more horrific policies of the Bush administration: Using the GSEs as a back door bailout for the rest of the banking sector: These banks are selling their garbage to the GSEs — and according to some anecdotal evidence, are getting pretty close to full boat (100 cents on the dollar) for these bad loans.

Hence, Fannie and Freddie have become a dumping ground for all manner of bad bank loans.

The GSEs have had their own problems over the years — accounting fraud, recklessly chasing market share, lowering loan quality, etc. — but they have now become . . . the last stop for every crappy mortgage ever written.

Ritholtz has more here, on the story from Bloomberg.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: "OBAMA . . . IS DOING WORSE THAN BUSH"

From the takes one to know one department, 79 year old Daniel Ellsberg is saying Obama is deceiving the public.

After the 89 year old Helen Thomas caused a kerphuffle just days ago with some choice words for the Jews, it's starting to look like Demented Geezer Eruption Week. Trouble is, Ellsberg is on to something: the dissimulation that lies at the heart of everything about this president.

From Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about Afghanistan? Isn't that a justifiable war?

Ellsberg: I think that there's an inexcusable escalation in both countries. Thousands of US officials know that bases and large numbers of troops will remain in Iraq and that troop levels and bases in Afghanistan will rise far above what Obama is now projecting. But Obama counts on them to keep their silence as he deceives the public on these devastating, costly, reckless ventures.

Read the rest, here.

HOW TO PLUG THE OIL LEAK IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

H/T Theo

GDP FOR Q1 2010 REVISED DOWN TO 3.0% FROM 3.2%

For the story, go here. An additional and final revision is still forthcoming.

Growth of 2.5% is necessary, according to widely reported statements by the Federal Reserve chairman and others, to maintain the status quo in employment and absorb the new workers who are added to the population every year.

In other words, there is no growth engine presently at work effectively providing jobs for 8.5 million people sidelined by the recession, not to mention millions more involuntarily part-timed by the downturn. 

GOLD AND THE U.S. MONETARY BASE, THEN AND NOW

Interesting stuff from Brett Arends two days ago at The Wall Street Journal:

Dylan Grice, a strategist at SG Securities in London, thinks global conditions today could unleash another gold boom like the one in the 1970s. ... Mr. Grice calculates that even at today's prices, the bullion that the U.S. government holds in places like Fort Knox is still only worth enough to back 15% of the U.S. monetary base. That is near a record low.

At the peak of the gold mania in 1979-80, gold prices rose so far that the backing exceeded 100%. How far would gold rise if that happened again? To around $6,300 an ounce, Mr. Grice says.

Read all about it, here.

OUR DISLOYAL ANTI-AMERICAN PRESIDENT

From Jared E. Peterson at The American Thinker:

Over the past week we witnessed presidential and congressional disloyalty without precedent in American history, events that should be indelibly imprinted on the American electorate's collective memory. For the first time (at least to this writer's knowledge), a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president's implicit but obvious public support for that invasion; and that same foreign leader spoke to Congress and received a standing ovation from its Democrat members' for his country's war on America's borders.

Read the rest here.

UDAY AND QUSAY ARE 'BY NATURE' EADAY

Not only can no one spell in the United States, they're having trouble with the Greek Sigma in the word "by nature" from a line from Aristotle on the new glass door at the Department of Classics at the once venerable Cambridge University.

So far George Bush hasn't been blamed, but Mary Beard may yet get around to it, when she's done blogging about buggering in Catullus.

32 STATES OWE FEDS NEARLY $38 BILLION FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BORROWING

The billion dollar hitters include twelve states:

California       6.9 billion

Florida            1.6 billion

Illinois            2.2 billion

Indiana           1.7 billion

Michigan        3.9 billion

New Jersey     1.7 billion

New York        3.2 billion

N.C.                  2.1 billion

Ohio                 2.3 billion

Penn.               3.0 billion

Texas                1.0 billion

Wisconsin       1.4 billion


The data were reported here.

FEDS RELENT: HUTAREE MILITIA RELEASES BEGIN

"Three of nine members of the Lenawee County-based militia charged with attempting to overthrow the government were released yesterday from Detroit-area jails," reports The Toledo Blade today. Defense attorneys do not seem to know why the government suddenly changed its mind about the conditions of release stipulated by Judge Roberts earlier in the month.

They have to wear electronic tethers, live with relatives in a weapon and ammo-free environment, cannot get gun permits or passports, drink booze, use drugs, listen to police scanners, and can't go out except to the doctor, to church, court and law appointments, and to work, among other restrictions.

The other six remain jailed pending decision on their release, presumably until similar arrangements for them are in order.

Read all about it here, here, and here.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU SHOOT A TERRORIST?

Recoil.

"Politics Is Like A Cookbook Where The Recipe For Everything Is To Fry It"

Everyone should be so lucky to have advice from the inimitable P. J. O'Rourke. A couple of years ago he offered some of the bad kind to new graduates, which appeared in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. The excerpt on politics is rich. Well, maybe greasy is a better description:

Politicians are chefs, some good, some bad. The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the food. Or let me restate that: The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the cookbook. The key ingredient of politics is the belief that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. The pinot noir is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer. This is no way to cook up public policy.

Politics is greasy. Politics is slippery. Politics can’t tell the truth. But we can’t blame the politicians for that. Because just think what the truth would sound like on the campaign stump, even a little bitty bit of truth:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding or teachers’ unions or a lack of vouchers or an absence of computer equipment in the classrooms. The problem is your kids!”

Read the rest. You won't be disappointed.

Pew Poll Says Americans Overwhelmingly Support Arizona Immigration Law

A new poll from the Pew Research Center on the recently passed immigration legislation in Arizona shows that Obama and the Democrats, who vehemently oppose the law, are wildly out of step with 73% of the American people:

The public broadly supports a new Arizona law aimed at dealing with illegal immigration and the law’s provisions giving police increased powers to stop and detain people who are suspected of being in the country illegally.

Fully 73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them. Two-thirds (67%) approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status, while 62% approve of allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally.

I wonder what percentage of the American people would like Obama to produce his papers?

Beware Of Greeks Defending TARP

James Pethokoukis of Reuters actually defends the fact that American politicians have ROBBED the taxpayers, always the last in line for money, to rescue the bankers, who are always first:

Of course, voters should be skeptical of paying for other people's financial mistakes. But it seems short-sighted for them to penalize politicians when they actually do something that's unpopular but right. And the TARP bailout does seem to have been the right thing. Despite its high sticker price, the final cost to American taxpayers will likely be a fraction of that thanks to speedy bank repayment of government capital injections.

Yeah. Speedy repayments. Sort of like GM's with TARP funds. If they could do it so quickly, maybe you overestimated the gravity of the original problem, and discount now how banks' profits are made possible by capital from the taxpayers.

Maybe it's because of what Spengler has recently observed about the Greeks, James:

[C]orruption pervades Greek society to the point that to purge it would destroy the social fabric: all political and social relations are premised on corruption.

You may be willing to justify theft, but the voters in Utah don't accept accommodation with corruption, throwing out Senator Bennett in the Republican PRIMARY. And now the voters in West Virginia have joined them, throwing out Representative Mollohan in the Democrat PRIMARY. All this after Germans just voted against Angela Merkel last Sunday after agreeing to bail out the Greeks.

Do you see a trend here, James?

Better get used to it.

The Fault Is In Ourselves . . .

. . . that we are underlings.

-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II