Who is John Galt?

freedom

I went through the full text of Obama's address to Congress.  The word "freedom" was used exactly once, in a historical context.  Quite frankly, I'm surprised he even used it there.

Various forms of the word "tax," by the way, appear nearly twenty times.

prescient

Limbaugh mentioned this absolute must-read from The New York Times:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Now, bear in mind that this was September 30th, 1999, years before Barney Frank would assert before Congress that there was nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie, obstructing George Bush's attempts to rein in their risky lending.

february surprise

These are the Obama White House projected deficits:

2010    $1.17T 2011    $912B 2012    $581B 2013    $533B 2014    $570B 2015    $583B 2016    $637B 2017    $636B 2018    $634B 2019    $712B       = $6.97T!

Apparently, the first billion will be used to buy printing presses for the Treasury Department.  We're just about in the ballpark of doubling the national debt.

I call this the "February surprise" because there's no way in hell Obama would have gotten elected if these figures had been presented in October.  Right now, there are a lot of voters wishing they could have a do-over for November 4th.

stupid liberal hypocrites

Liberalism is full of hypocrisy.  Libs demand all sorts of sacrifices, but then they always find a way to excuse themselves.  Al Gore's jet.  Obama's Oval Office thermostat.  And look which America John Edwards built his own 28,000-sqare-foot house in.

But that hypocrisy is expected: Rationalizing that while sacrifice is necessary, elites themselves are too important to "the cause" to be inconvenienced by it.  It's a conservative principle that we are all more important to ourselves than other people are, and this form of liberal hypocrisy validates that principle.  Conversely, it's a liberal principle that people can be socially engineered to put society before themselves, so at the same time this hypocrisy demonstrates how foolish liberalism is.

yahoo: do markets have no faith in obama?

The question says it all. 

It's not unlike wondering whether God believes in atheists.  In fact, the markets do have confidence in Obama.  Specifically, the markets are confident that Obama has no faith in markets -- and they respond by shorting him.

A friend of mine quips, "I used to believe in the dollar.  Now I'm just hoping for change."

mars attacks!

As I watched Obama address Congress last night, I kept thinking of how much I enjoyed the movie, Mars Attacks!

A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.

Actually, the wealthy are the only class in this country who do invest in the future.  The problem is not that "the rich" are accumulating wealth, it is that everybody else has been consuming beyond their means.  And now, faced with an unstable economy, all at once everyone is desperately trying to catch up on their savings -- and the resulting slowdown in consumption is what is killing jobs.

Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector - jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.

We do not simply work for money and then go use the money to buy whatever we want.  It's not like we can all go down and dig ditches and then go to the store to buy big screen televisions.  If we're not building televisions all day, then there won't be any televisions to watch at night.

the age of accountability

I'm sorry, but there's just no way I'm going to hold an 8-year-old accountable for murder.  He could not possibly have understood the gravity of what he was doing.

I'm not so sure how to deal with this 11-year-old, however. 

Accountability is not something that springs upon you overnight.  And even though I'm sure you can't hold an 11-year-old accountable for everything, some rather severe punishment is in order -- and deserved -- for taking a life.  But what punishment is just?

primate ban

The AP reports that the House has voted to ban the transport of primates for sale as pets.  This is supposedly a response to 100 attacks on humans, by primate pets, over ten years -- or 10 per year.

Rumor has it that treatment for dog bites is provided on the order of 100,000 times per year.  Ten thousand times as often, including a lot of very serious, and sometimes fatal, attacks.

I submit that this primate act is in fact a response to only one attack. 

This is a good example of government in action: Ignore the larger problem -- dogs, for example.  Pass something meaningless to address a trivial problem (unless you honestly expect a wave of chimp attacks).  And do it all at the federal level, because apparently states can't be trusted to come up with their own laws.

Pure politics.  No value.  Who are these morons who constantly demand more government??? 

what to watch for next

This is Wikipedia's US National Debt chart.

The top graph shows the debt in adjusted dollars, while the bottom one descibes the debt as a percentage of GDP.  The black line shows what we would owe if the government were ever going to pay back debts it "owes to itself," like the Social Security lockbox. 

That's a nice accounting trick if you want to pretend that people have individual accounts with actual money in them down at the Social Security office, but in the end it's not real debt and nobody expects the government to ever repay it.  The red line is the real national debt.

The top graph already corrects for the fact that a current dollar is worth a lot less than, say, a 1950 dollar.  On this 2007 chart, past dates were all inflation-adjusted.  Even after measuring everything in the same dollars, the top chart shows that the debt is indeed larger.

But knowing the absolute size of the debt only tells us part of the story.  If there are twice as many Americans, for example, then the burden of a given level of debt is halved.  And everytime productivity doubles, a given debt could be paid off in half the time as well. 

The only meaningful measurement of the national debt is the lower graph, where debt is measured as a percentage of GDP.  Only this graph tells us how much productivity goes to servicing the interest on the debt, or how much Americans have to sacrifice to carry the debt or pay it off.

dow closes at 1997 levels

Buddy, can you spare some change?