Sadly, not Kidding

Are you Kidding #2?

Are you Kidding?

The First Black Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton is sometimes (not sure if it's so much anymore) referred to as the 'first Black President.' I never did quite understand this for reasons beyond the most obvious, but then again I could have lived for 8 years without Bill Clinton and been perfectly fine.

As I read this today I was struck that perhaps we've found in the man that could actually truly become the first Black President, a man that also could be the first Black Bill Clinton:

There’s nothing wrong with being a socialist. I called myself one for the better part of twenty years. Millions of people have and many still do. But there is something very wrong with hiding who you are or who you were from the electorate—especially if you want to be President of the United States. Yet that seems to be a habit of Mr. Obama’s, with the collusion of the press. To my knowledge, no one in the mainstream media has begun to inquire into the details of Obama’s curiously unreported years at Columbia and Harvard, although much could be relatively easily ascertained. Obama himself has not been remotely forthcoming about them.

The inescapable conclusion is that Barack Obama is a highly deceptive, often dishonest individual. Again, many would say this is standard operating procedure for politicians in our culture (and most others too). But Obama presents himself as something different, a new kind of post-modern politician above the conventional dirty dealings of backroom politics.

Sounds awfully familiar...

Differing Skill Sets

John McCain's economic adviser says Palin not ready to run a large corporation. She then goes on to say:

"But that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things."

Which, if you're going to display any bit of integrity on this point you must agree is true. And that is why businesspeople run large corporations and politicians...do what they do.

Gas, Hurricanes and Managing your Inventory

This is a marvelous post from Tennessee blogger Rich Hailey about reports of spiking gas prices in the path--and areas surrounding it--of Hurricane Ike. It's simple econ 101 but most people don't know it so they don't get it:

It's been more than a few hours, and shortages are already here.

So the price of a gallon of gas is skyrocketing, even at stations, like Pilot, that have enough gas to get through the interruption without going dry. So why are they raising their prices? Aren't they gouging?

Nope. If you've been out in Knoxville at all today, you've seen long lines of cars at gas stations. You've seen people filling up cars, trucks, motorcycles, lawnmowers and gas cans. They are in a panic mode, and they're buying more gas than usual. Even though Pilot has enough to get through the crisis at normal levels of sales, there's no way they can sustain sales at the rate they are going. So what do they do? They raise prices. By raising prices, they discourage people with brains from buying more gas than they need. They discourage people from driving more than they need to. In effect, they are encouraging conservation by using market forces rather than governmental coercion.

And it will work.

Consider the opposite case, where gas prices remain low, and everybody fills every container they can get their hands on with gas, and the stations run dry for the next three days. What happens when an ambulance needs to gas up? What happens when a fire truck needs fueling? What happens when you have an emergency and you need fuel but can't get any because everybody and his brother is hoarding it?

There are two ways to ration a short supply of a commodity. You allow the market to price it accordingly, and those who really need it will buy it, or you let the government come in and set the price. As a small government supporter, I favor the former. We're still dealing with the fallout of Nixon's wage and price controls from 40 years ago.

Anyway, that's what happened. Bulk storage facilities were acting to minimize the price of fuel and got caught short when the supply was interrupted. Barring major damage from Ike, supplies should be flowing again in a couple of days, and prices will resume their freefall.

The comments, for the most part underscore the basic point well. Something worth noting is this as it refers to 'motive':

I follow your explaination up to a point and the point is when you start ascribing altruistic motives to the gas companies - like helping us to conserve and saving enough gas for the ambulances and fire trucks. They just got the opportunity to sell their product substantially over cost and they pounced on it.

I look forward to the day that some technological advance is announced and the gas companies realize they can't sell all the product that they have on hand.

Gas station owners aren't acting altruistically, no. They are exhibiting the first and most profound of Adam Smith's observations: we directly benefit from the choices of others made in their own self-interests.

In this instance, the gas station owner has raised prices in anticipation of a supply shortage, in part at least, to maintain inventory. That act discourages what Hailey rightly describes as consumers engaging in "buying more gas than they need" and ultimately the more rational choice of conservation.

What are Seeps?

The Santa Barbara County board of Supervisors recently took up a symbolic resolution on the prospect of off-shore drilling along our stretch of the Central Coast. The measure passed. That and $1.50 will buy you a cup of coffee...

But it was an important vote symbolically. For too many years critics of off-shore drilling have cited the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel spill that decimated the South Coast as the ultimate example of why you don't want to drill for off-shore oil.

The Supervisors recognition that 40 years of technology make such a similar event very unlikely to ever happen again should put that argument to bed. But who knows?

While this article doesn't necessarily have much to do with that, it does take a look at some of the local politics involved in the issue. I especially liked the equivalent of the fact sheet at the end:

Oil and methane gas created in the heat and pressure under the ocean floor flows upward through faults and cracks in rocks.
Plumes of oil-coated methane bubbles reach the surface, creating natural oil slicks.

The natural seeps of crude oil and natural gas flowing into the ocean on and near the coast of California are among the largest and most active concentration of such seeps in the world.

Seeps off Coal Oil Point near UCSB put an average of 150-170 barrels of crude oil and 5 million cubic feet of natural gas into the ocean every day.

More than 1 million barrels of oil have seeped off the Southern and Central California coast since 1980.

Crude oil seeping into the sea from Coal Oil Point alone is equal to about 55,000 barrels of oil a year. About 1.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas is seeping annually into the atmosphere.

Seeps produce 122% more air pollution daily than all the motor vehicle trips in Santa Barbara County each day.

— SOURCE: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, U.S. Minerals Management Service, Western States Petroleum Association

The Kudlow Effect

The Kudlow Effect in action:

Since oil prices peaked on July 3 and started to head down, airline stocks have taken off, lifted by the promise of lower fuel prices. Of the 21 publicly traded airlines, shares of all but two rose from July 3 to Sept. 2. The major carriers had sharp gains: US Airways, up 268 percent; UAL, parent of United Airlines, up 222 percent; AMR, parent of American Airlines, up 138 percent; Continental Airlines, up 97 percent.

John McCain

I've changed my mind.

LOL

Spacedope...is that you?

At least somebody was able to come up with something that the Biden pick is good for...

Oh the Condescenscion we'll See

With apologies to Dr. Suess...

It was only 12 hours late, but we now know who the Democrat VP nominee is. Everybody's favorite blowhard, Joe Biden. On paper, in terms of experience, he's certainly helpful. But then after you start to really look you realize his mouth is a bigger liability than his experience is an asset.

Conservative/Republican reactions include the following:

From the "I wish I'd thought of that" category: One last thought before bed: Imagine McCain picking Gov. Bobby Jindal. First line at the debate, "Senator, before we begin our debate, let me clarify for you that I don't work at a 7-11."

Hugh Hewitt, never a Biden fan, shreds the pick: Rob Long asks "Isn't [Biden] sort of the stupid person's idea of the smart person's candidate?" Yes, he is. But that's not fair to stupid people. Even stupid people who watched Biden embarrass himself during the Alito hearings --remember the "I hate Princeton" moment followed by the donning of the Princeton cap?-- know that Slow Joe is all tenure and no talent.

I was worried that the Dems had pointed out to Obama that his serial gaffing had brought the campaign close to a break point and that he needed Hillary. I was worried he'd actually go find Anthony Zinni or Sam Nunn or someone of accomplishment and purposefulness in foreign affairs. Webb would have been hell on the stump. Kaine or Bayh would have put different states into play. Sebelius was a wild card.

Jim Geraghty again: Man, the attack ads on Obama featuring quotes from his own running mate are just going to be brutal:

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’”

Sen. Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.”
(ABC’s “This Week,” 8/19/07)

Picture the voice over: "If his own running mate has doubts about whether he's ready for the job... shouldn't you?"

The ever-wimsical Tom Maguire says of it: By way of the Ace we see this image hosted at the Obama website (I am not the most computer-savvy guy going, but I am satisfied this is no spoof.)

Coupled as it is with the Biden announcement, I can only infer that the Obamaites think they laid an egg (no dissent here).

I'll be saving a screen shot, you can bet.

Bigger Media says:

"The candidate of change went with the status quo."


If my pick were Biden...I'd wait until late Friday night to leak it, too. It seems appropriate to wake up to that and Saturday morning cartoons.

RELATED: No Biden bump. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll completed last night, three-quarters of voters said picking Biden would not sway their votes one way or the other.

Foreign policy experience? How difficult is it to follow the French?

This is gonna be fun...

Biden's mouth is going to do it's level best to talk McCain to a comfortable--landslide?--electoral vote victory. He's like most Democrats in that regard; he can't help himself.

It's 3 A.M., do you know where your President is?

We woke up to war yesterday, with pictures flooding CNN and Fox of Russian tanks rumbling through South Ossetia, a 'breakaway' province of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. And today things are seen escalating with Russia attacking the provincial capital of Tskhinvali.



Hugh Hewitt rightly noted yesterday the inherent danger of the situation--as have others since--with the apt reference to Hillary Clinton's '3 A.M.' ad. To the best of my knowledge, we haven't heard much out of Senator Obama's campaign on this subject...

Yes, Virginia, Republicans do have a Spine

This was great political theatre yesterday...

The Other -ism

I'm relieved to hear that the McCain campaign is not guilty of racism:

Republican candidate John McCain's presidential campaign is cynical, not racist, in its efforts to distract voters from real issues, Democratic rival Barack Obama said Saturday.

"In no way do I think that John McCain's campaign was being racist," Obama said in his first meeting with reporters since predicting that McCain and other Republicans would try to scare voters because Obama looks unlike "all those other presidents on the dollar bills" - most of them older white men.

"I think they're cynical," he said. "And I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues."

Did he let Big Media in on the secret?

What qualifies as 'Progress'...?

This, it would seem:

The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.

Steve Schippert at NRO certainly believes so:

Read the entire article, as it is perhaps the most important dispatch from Iraq yet. It will prove to be the seminal report affirming the decisive disintegration of al-Qaeda in Iraq and confirmation that the insurgency in Iraq has collapsed.

There are reasons to be quite optimistic that this report is (and will hold to be) accurate. Conditions on the ground in Iraq for al-Qaeda are undeniably bleak, with no visible window for turnaround. The surge, a strategy that brought lasting security to Iraqis within their neighborhoods, emboldened Iraqis to stand in their own defense — an act that had equated to suicide until U.S. forces left their garrisons and made camp among the populations. And Iraqis are growing exponentially more self-confident. Al-Qaeda's future in Iraq holds diminishing returns, a reality not lost upon bin Laden and the global leadership holed up inside Pakistan.

Not only are foreign terrorist influx rates down to about 20 per month, as the Post notes, but al-Masri left with 15 other al-Qaeda leaders. If he had left simply to discuss strategy with an angry bin Laden and return, he would not have sapped the Iraqi theater of significant leadership and appointed an "interim" commander (likely with little expectation the "appointee" will survive). But he did.

Schippert seems to get a little ahead of the Post's actual report but, generally speaking, it sounds like there's good reason to think the insurgency--at least as we've known it to-date--is all but done for.

And that is a good thing...

Give in to your anger...

In response to a good-faith argument about Iraq, what are you likely to get?

Well, in this case it's all about me and the rest of the rats...

Solid.

What should be a no-brainer...

Congress deadlocked over offshore drilling:

With a gallon of gas hovering at $4, energy prices are the No. 1 issue on voters' minds. But congressional leaders are increasingly deadlocked over what to do. In response, frustrated rank-and-file members on both sides of the aisle are stepping up efforts to find common ground.

Opt out

I really don't need to be saved from myself...

In a state that is desperate for more power, saddled with a sluggish economy and bearing the brunt of the 'housing crisis', it's nice to see the Governor tackling the big and urgent questions of the day.

I know you are but what am I!?

Nancy Pelosi says today of President Bush (not the Administration, but the President himself):

"God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.

"For him to be challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again -- at the end of the day, Congress will have passed its responsibility to pass legislation," she said.

It would be bracing criticism if not for the fact that Bush--the object of so much derision and ire--is more than twice as popular as Pelosi's 110th Congress.

A Challenge of my own

I've got a challenge of my own...can Al Gore stay away from microphones and television cameras for even one day?