A trillion here, a trillion there...

...and pretty soon you're talking real money. The USA's triple-A credit rating is coming into question. Outfits like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, AIG, Citigroup, which once were beyond question, may now get sunk by terrible risk management.

When you consider that Obama. Reid, Pelosi and McCain have all beclowned themselves on oil prices plus the tax and spend dna of both parties in America plus the depressed currency, you do have to wonder whether it's time for a downgrade. It happened to Japan.

What's the nice way to kill a child?

The words Samir Kuntar became famous yesterday. They sound as a curse when you read what eyewitnesses saw him do to a father and his child.

What do you call someone who denies help to babies who survive abortion?



h/t Jill Stanek

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he be cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

h/t Jesus Christ.

Bada bing

At a fundraiser in New Mexico last night, McCain cracked this joke at Romney’s expense: “I’m appreciative every time I see Mitt on television on my behalf. He does a better job for me than he did for himself as a matter of fact.” Bada bing. If McCain can start joking about someone, you know they've made it into his mental inner circle. Romney may very well be higher on the short list than anyone realizes. The biggest roadblock for many in picturing a McCain-Romney ticket is McCain getting over his personal reservations about him. But joking about him is a start.

h/t The Corner

..and Romney would do a better job for McCain than McCain does for himself.

Drilling thru stupidity

If offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither,'' Obama's campaign said in a statement today.

What follows is so obvious that it makes my eyes bleed to say it: present oil prices are high because people project expectations back into the present. The expectation is that Asian demand and the stupidity of American government will expand faster than the supply of oil. Should present actions overturn the future stupidity piece of expectations, then present prices would drop.

An analogy for a would-be Commander In Chief is: imagine you are fighting a terror campaign against America and getting terribly beaten and expect to get terribly beaten in future, then you'd stop now. But suppose America told you that in 6 months it may retreat from the battlefield, then rather than stop, you'd murder as hard as you can now to encourage America to decide to retreat. Altogether now, children and Nominees for the Presidency: " Long-term expectations dictate present choices and present prices".

Update: Aaaargh!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on President Bush's announcement lifting the executive ban on drilling in protected coastal areas:

"Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil.

"The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas.

"If the President wants to bring down prices in the next two weeks, not the next two decades, he should free our oil by releasing a small portion of the more than 700 million barrels of oil we have put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Present supply of crude oil is not tight (eg prompt prices are lower than forward prices), so to release SPR crude oil onto the market will merely increase the expectation of government stupidity and probably raise prices. The bs about big oil sitting on government land (she means the right to explore which has been bought in competitive auction and which expires) is refuted here.

That explains a lot

McCain can't use the internet, so he can't do the type of rapid survey of facts and reactions which is second nature to most people interested in politics. That may explain his tone deafness and msm-reliance on issues like ANWR, global warming, immigration and other 'maverick' (ie anti-conservative) stances. I can see how it might be a good thing to to have an internet illiterate President, but the implication that he's merely doddery and intellectually incurious won't win votes.

He needs Romney badly.

Rest in peace, Tony Snow

What a great Press Secretary! His critique of Bush was pretty good tho. Eg:

On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries

Ultra-light blogging

I'm on vacation in a lakehouse in Maine...swimming at the bottom of the garden,boating,no sand,no sharks,cheaper than the Jersey shore,less sunburn.

At the Gates of Hell

- Satan. what is your wish list for the Supremes?
- Well...

I wish that unborn babies be denied protection from the Constitution and The People denied the right to protect them;

I wish that child-rapists be given protection by the Constitution and The People denied the right to execute them;

I wish that non-uniformed enemy combatants commanded by mass murderers be treated as US citizens in US courts;

I wish that the next President nominates judges who see my emanations and appreciate that evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person, ie child-rapists.

Vote Obama, vote for the right to life

...of child-rapists. The right to life of children in the womb - not so much. It doesn't matter whether Obama carefully demurs from the Supreme Court's perversion of the Constitution in the child-rape case. It matters which judges he'd nominate and which judges he has voted against.

Things I didn't know

General William Odom was military aide to Zbigniew Brzezenski, President Carter's National Security Adviser. He recently died and his obituary is pretty interesting, but this stands out:

Odom rang Brzezinski at 3am one morning to inform him that 2,200 Soviet missiles had been launched at the United States. Just before Brzezinski was about to call the President to order the launch of American missiles, Odom called back to say that it had been a false alarm – someone had mistakenly placed military exercise tapes into the computer system. Brzezinski did not wake his wife, reckoning that everyone would be dead in half an hour anyway.

Reckless politicking

'Reckless wagering' wrecks your pension, reckons McCain. I guess that's not true if your pension is long Exxon or a commodity index fund, but insofar as American policies cause higher energy prices, then the guilty ones are :

1. No new nuclear power stations.
2. No drilling offshore, Tx and La excepted.
3. No development of shale oil deposits.
4. No drilling in ANWR.
5. No new refineries.
6. Liberals' private jets from Gore to Google.
7. Liberal flatulence from Gore to Moore. Farting from either end>co2>Global Warming apparently>aircon.
8. Political pressure to grant mortgages to unqualified applicants.

1-7 are obvious, but why mortgages? Well, thanks to the housing bust, Fed interest rates are 2% below inflation, rather more were inflation truly measured. That depreciates the dollar and inflates the dollar price of assets seen as an inflation hedge - that means the price of commodities, especially the dollar price. Theory and actual inspection show that speculation tends to dampen volatility and indeed price by giving a market depth and bridging the supply and demand incentives of today's high price into the future.

To re-cap: Liberal/RINO policies are to blame for America's energy predicament and let speculation thrive!

The inversion of economic reality into economic demagoguery implying further economic masochism deserves a name. Let's call it McCainsianism.