Monday, December 08, 2008

Bill O'Reilly: Economic Ignoramus


As far back as 2005 Bill O'Reilly was demonstrating his utter ignorance of economics from his bully pulpit at Fox News.

Getting to the bottom of high fuel prices. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo. It's not easy. Last night we had an extensive discussion about the pricing of gasoline and the huge profits American oil companies are making. One thing struck me: after all the experts we've talked with, after all the research we've done, we still can't find out who exactly sets the price of a gallon of gasoline. Which human being in America does that?

...Every time I ask who sets the price I get "the market", "the Merc", "OPEC", and on and on. Well it's all B.S. Somebody tells your local gas station owner exactly what to charge. Somebody does that...

O'Reilly's three-year long rant against high oil prices seems to have hit a lull lately.

Perhaps he'd like to blame the oil companies for low prices now. Or the "speculators". Or the "price-fixers".

Oh, and maybe he supports a bailout for the oil companies too, since their profits have fallen so dramatically.

What an economic illiterate.

The Deadwood approach to fighting terrorism


The short-lived HBO Series Deadwood was based upon a series of real events in the old west town of Deadwood in the Dakota territories (now South Dakota).

The series is based, in part, on real events. It features a set of historical figures -- Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and George Hearst, to name but a few -- who actually visited Deadwood during the height of a gold frenzy that occurred in the 1870s.

No figure, however, was more colorful and feared in Deadwood than saloon-slash-brothel owner Al Swearengen. Swearengen was the de facto ruler of Deadwood, having founded the town and built its preeminent business: the Gem Saloon.

In real life, Swearengen "lured dozens of women to the camp by falsely promising good jobs in local hotels and promising to make them stage performers in his popular Gem Theater. Once they arrived, the women were virtually forced into white slavery or thrown into the street."

One of Swearengen's most trusted compatriots was an unlikely gentleman of Asian descent. Mr. Wu, while limited in English vocabulary, possessed a certain knack for disposing of bodies for those who crossed Swearengen.

The method Wu and his associates employed was ingeniously simple: they threw bodies into a massive pig sty and let the porkers feast on the remains. The problem of unsightly evidence was solved within hours.

* * *


The New York Times -- whose building incidentally just got hocked to raise cash -- today reports that the 9/11 detainees are daring the U.S. government to put them to death.

These are the same mass-murderers who incinerated 3,000 innocent souls in a single Tuesday morning.

...All five of the Guantánamo detainees charged with planning and coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked a military judge to accept their confessions in full. The request appeared to be intended to cut short any effort to try them, and to challenge the United States government to put them to death.

...If that indeed happens in the first days of the Obama administration, then Monday’s proceedings will have been the detainees’ last opportunity to challenge the widely criticized system here with guilty pleas that could yield them the opportunity for what they see as martyrdom.

Martyrdom, eh?

I think the Wu method might work for these subhuman murderers.

Hat tips: Prairie Pundit and Larwyn. Related reading: Deadwood Facts & Fiction. Scene from HBO's Deadwood (caution: language warning): YouTube. Linked by: Denny and Tall Cotton. Thanks!

Your daily digest of newspaper extinction news


Here's the latest HitWise news and media report (PDF). Notice anything interesting?

You've got it: only two legacy print media outlets appear in the top ten list of Internet news sites. That would be the fossilized New York Times (#7) and People Magazine (#10 and dropping).

• Meanwhile the Tribune Company has reportedly hired bankruptcy advisers. Tribune owns, among others, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and The Baltimore Sun. Some observers claim a bankruptcy filing for the company could come this week.

• McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper chain, is said to be exploring options for its flagship Miami Herald newspaper. With immense debt and a precipitous decline in ad revenue, a sale of the Herald could raise desperately needed capital for the company.

You may recall that McClatchy paid $4.5 billion in 2006 for Knight Ridder, much of it financed. I wonder how that purchase is working out for them?

• Finally, the Rocky Mountain News appears to be on life support. The Scripps company paper is on the block and unless a buyer time-travels here from the sixties, odds are low anyone will turn up to pay for the paper. Analyst Alan Mutter says its days are numbered and "the number of days probably is about 90."

To make matter worse, most Americans believe that the media is flat-out lying to them on a daily basis.

Related: Newspaper CEOs rearrange deck chairs in closed-door "Crisis Summit".
Linked by: Gateway Pundit, American Digest and Ninme. Thanks!

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Get your free Taxpayer Bailout Blog Widget and Stop Federal Income Taxes for 3 Months!


It's our sixth annual going-out-of-business sale! Free blog widgets for everybody!

Hey, here's an idea, Nancy Murtha O'Reid. How about you bail out the American taxpayer? Instead of swizzling around hundreds of billions in a fruitless central-planning exercise, cut federal income taxes to zero for 90 days. For every taxpayer. I can guaran-dam-tee that less mortgages will fall behind, more cars will be purchased, retail will go nuts, etc.

Copy the HTML code below and paste it into a blog post to express your support. The link goes to Newt Gingrich's wonderful Human Events article on the effects of a federal income tax holiday.


The concept is simple: instead of swizzling around hundreds of billions in a fruitless central-planning exercise, how about cutting federal income taxes to zero for 90 days and letting taxpayers decide what to spend money on? Want to bet that more cars will get purchased, less houses foreclosed upon, retail sales will go up, etc.?

Didn't President-Elect advocate a "bottom-up economy"? He can prove it by backing a 90-day income tax holiday for all American taxpayers.

Coming soon to an auto dealer near you





Related: Hank Paulson's DNA.

If you're afraid of heights, don't visit these tourist venues


The skywalk at the Grand Canyon...




This amusement park in Las Vegas...







This tennis court in Dubai...




Newspaper CEOs rearrange deck chairs in closed-door "Crisis Summit"


An invitation-only, closed-door "summit conference" was held in November in which 50 CEO-level newspaper execs pondered methods to revive their business models.

Some observers believe that they were just rearranging deck chairs after hitting the Internet iceberg.

Over at Publishing 2.0, Scott Karp quotes Seth Godin's mantra ("THe Market and the Internet Don't Care If You Make Money") and maps it to the dying newspaper industry.

First, one of Godin's key graphs:

The market doesn’t care a whit about maintaining your industry. The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before. What got hurt was Tower and the guys in the suits and the unlimited budgets for groupies and drugs. The music will keep coming. Same thing is true with books.

Next, Karp translates for newspaper execs.

When I read this, I thought immediately of many assumptions the newspaper industry is making as the decline of its business model accelerates:
  • There has to be a new business model to support journalism with the same profit margins as newspapers have enjoyed in recent decades.
  • There has to be a way for newspapers to “reverse” the declines.
  • Newspapers will eventually find a way to make their web operations as large and profitable as their print operations once were.
  • Newspapers can’t be permitted to die, because then journalism will die.

But the reality is that all of these assumptions may be wrong.

Why? Because the web and the market don’t care. The web is the most disruptive force in the history of media, by many orders of magnitude, destroying every assumption on which traditional media businesses are based.... But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watch dog role? (Ed: Heh.)

Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS... The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money...

Karp goes on to assert that legacy media companies simply can't create a viable business model for news and journalism by themselves.

Instead, he believes they'll have to collaborate and build a "giant network of much smaller pieces", which will be loosely affiliated.

Karp doesn't think too many folks will listen.

...the media company executives who read this blog will shrug and go back to trying to figure how to prop up their monopolies... And those monopolies will continue to crumble faster every day.

Of course, it doesn't help that many Americans believe that the media is flat-out lying to them each and every day.

Update: Ed Driscoll TV features the Red Queen's Race.

Related: Buh-bye, legacy media.

Ad o' the day: At the riverhead...


Tender and delicious.

Click the picture to watch.

Line o' the Day: Who should be slashing payrolls?


Randy Fardal at The American Thinker:

Perhaps it’s time for Congress to slash payrolls, sell off unproductive units, and design more efficient products. After all, they’re asking taxpayers for trillions to bail them out. Where’s their austerity plan?

Hey, here's an idea, Nancy Murtha O'Reid.

How about you bail out the American taxpayer?

Instead of swizzling around hundreds of billions in a fruitless central-planning exercise, cut federal income taxes to zero for 90 days. For every taxpayer. I can guaran-dam-tee that less mortgages will fall behind, more cars will be purchased, retail will go nuts, etc.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Always check your child's homework


Mommy actually works at Home Depot. And she was selling a shovel. Pervert.

Hat tip: Dave.

Two bytes are better than one: Vintage computer ads


Pingdom has the essential collection of vintage computer ads. One of these days I'll scan my Dr. Dobbs Journals from the seventies.

And the first issue of PC Week, which I still have in... poifect... condition.

Hat tip: LGF Quick Links.

Twelve Living Fossils


Behold: The Purple Frog, discovered just five years ago in western India.

Wired: Twelve Living Fossils

Update: Vanderleun: "153 scientists from 20 countries participated in the survey of Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific, scouring caves, mountains, reefs, shallows, and forests collecting species. Out of over 10,000 species collected, the researchers are predicting that as many as 2000 may be previously unknown to the scientific community."

"Mission Accomplished!"


President Bush needs a new sign.

I guess "Choke on it, liberal b***hes" was rejected.

Ever hear the real story behind the Mission Accomplished banner that the liberal left used to tar Bush? It was hung by the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln after Saddam Hussein was captured. President Bush had about as much to do with that banner as Tim Tebow has to do with Guantanamo Bay.

Update: Commenter Jones reminds me that the banner was hung to signify the end of the mission for the crew of the Abraham Lincoln, not the capture of Saddam.

The real Carter-Clinton legacy


In 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Redevelopment Act (or CRA) into law. As a result of "national grassroots pressure for affordable housing", it forced banks to underwrite risky mortgage loans in order to meet the needs of "the entire community."

In 1995 the Clinton administration strengthened the regulations of the Community Redevelopment Act. The CRA enabled consumers to secure mortgages with "no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; [and] no down payment."

As the mortgage industry grew, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government-sponsored entities, or GSEs) became a kind of "jobs program for out-of-work Democrats".

Clinton administration friends and staffers managed the GSEs including Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emmanual. This small group of executives paid themselves nearly $200 million in only six years' time.

The Democratic executives kept journalists and Republicans at bay by spending "close to $150 million on lobbying" in ten years.

Chris Dodd (head of the Senate Banking Committee), Barack Obama and John Kerry were the top three recipients of Fannie's money, together collecting around $360,000.

Over this same time-frame during President Clinton's tenure, the U.S. suffered through a seemingly endless series of terrorist attacks that were treated as "law enforcement" issues.

The attack on the USS Cole was the eighth consecutive unanswered terrorist attack on American interests during the Clinton administration.

The attacks culminated in 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in history. It smashed a United States blinded by the Clinton administration's artificially erected "wall" between the military and intelligence communities.

After the 1996 election, the Clinton administration also came under fire for accepting campaign donations from operatives of the People's Republic of China.

Persons who appeared to be agents of the Chinese government funneled contributions to the Democratic National Committee in direct violation of US election law.

The resulting investigation was hampered significantly because nearly 100 witnesses either refused to be questioned, pled the Fifth Amendment against self incrimination, or left the country altogether. Even so, 22 people were convicted for fraud or for funneling Asian funds into the U.S. elections.

Operative Johnny Chung, allegedly using money from the Chinese army, gave more than $500,000 to Democrats at the same time Clinton was approving a controversial transfer of satellite launch technology to China.

Let's not forget Clinton's 1994 veto of a bill that would have opened up a small segment of Alaska's ANWR region to oil exploration. At the time, Sen. Chuck Schumer said, "If we started drilling in ANWR today we wouldn't have a drop of oil for ten years." That was fourteen years ago.

Gee, that's quite a legacy.

Say a little prayer that President-elect Obama doesn't follow in the footsteps of this pair of mental midgets.

The Disastrous Daschle-Obama strategy to "fix" health care


Tom Daschle is President-elect Obama's choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. But what sort of Secretary would he be? What positions might he take on "universal" health care, malpractice and tort reform, and other issues?

Insights into Daschle's approach may be gleaned from his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, which was endorsed by Barack Obama. The details that emerge from a careful reading of the book are ominous at best.

Daschle first proposes the establishment of a board to set standards for health care. The board would be modeled after the Federal Reserve and the SEC, overseeing every aspect of care for public health systems. Thus the board would administer Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Health Administration, etc., or roughly one third of all health care in the country.

Apparently this board is desperately needed because there aren't enough bureaucrats overseeing medical affairs in Washington. And Daschle recommends the Federal Reserve-SEC central planning model, presumably because it's working so well to manage our current fiscal crisis.

On Page 179, Daschle writes, “The Federal Health Board (FHB) wouldn’t be a regulatory agency, but its recommendations would have teeth because all federal health programs would have to abide by them.” Although the FHB would have no official oversight of the two thirds of health care delivered through the private sector, Daschle asserts that Congress could easily change that aspect of the Board: "[Congress] could... link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board’s recommendation.”

Got that? Health insurance that doesn't comply with the Board's strictures would lose its tax-free status.

By doing so, Congress would utterly and completely destroy America's private-sector health care system because no health insurance program could survive if it were denied the tax deduction.

Thus, the FHB would effectively control the operation and practices of every doctor, every nurse, every drug company, every hospital, every health insurance company, every third-party administrator, etc.

On page 199 Daschle helpfully describes who the "losers" would be in his centrally managed system: "Doctors and patients might resent any encroachment on their ability to choose certain treatments, even if they are expensive or ineffectual compared to alternatives. Some insurers might object to new rules that restrict their coverage decisions. And the health-care industry would have to reconsider its business plan." Put simply, government bureaucrats would decide every aspect of their operations.

Daschle says that the FHB will force and end to the "technology arms race", which he asserts health care systems use "to attract aging baby boomers with the latest diagnostic imaging machines." These are, strangely enough, the same machines that Daschle says "help(s) doctors estimate the spread of cancer or the extent of cardiac disease without surgery." (Page 125)

Daschle believes those tests often lead to treatment; and there's far too much of that going on. To prove his point, he spotlights a study of 828 angiograms in which a third were likely to benefit patients, 50% might or might not, and 14% were not likely to offer a benefit. Thus 86% of patients might benefit, but Daschle claims the approach is too wasteful: "When the test revealed a narrowing of the artery, however slight, cardiologists couldn’t resist doing something about it." Isn't that what they're supposed to do, Tommy?

In other words, the Obama-Daschle plan proposes to have the Federal Health Board dictate to cardiologists -- and all other Doctors -- which treatments can be rationed to whom. I somehow doubt that Daschle and his cadre of FHB bureaucrats would ever be denied treatment, though.

Daschle also offers a stunning criticism of the current private sector health care system: "Many patients with insurance want any care that might do some good, and plenty of doctors will oblige them." (Page 122)

Anticipating a massive outcry over this Politburo-style approach, he recommends two legislative tactics for creating the Federal Health Board. First, the bill must be passed in the first year of Obama's presidency, when he is most popular. Second, the bill must omit any details of the program. It must be nebulous and vague: "[the] Federal Health Board should be charged with... filling in most of the details. This independent board would be insulated from political pressure.” By "political pressure", Daschle means our representative democracy should not be permitted to interfere with the Kremlin of Health Care.

By hiding the details of the program, the FHB will be unaccountable to the American people.

* * *

With the Obama-Daschle plan for nationalized health care, the same government bureaucracy that brought you the massively underfunded Social Security system and Medicare, as well as the disastrous Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will now be running an even larger chunk of the U.S. economy.

Three guesses how this magnificent approach will turn out. And the first two don't count. Just picture the Hindenburg exploding and you should have a suitable illustration of the future of health care.

Based upon: Tony Blankley's "Daschle-Obama health care possibilities". Hat tip: Mark Levin.