To find someone else to blame (hint: ChevronTexaco, et.al) for the increase in gasoline prices while the crushing economy and job market hammers Americans.

Short version if you don't feel like listening to it: Obama makes a meaningless announcement while the other wheels of obstruction to domestic energy production gear up to prevent any new production. Who has standing to sue and prevent the actual production? Every damned environmental organization that has been suing to shut down production and refinement for the last 30 years, that's who.

Here's a little arithmetic reminder from some of my past posts on the topic, the price of oil is approximately 55% of the price of a gallon of gasoline. Most other costs, delivery, refinement, marketing and distribution, are pretty much fixed.

This announcement from Obama is worth exactly what his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class is worth.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:18 PM | Comments (164)
Post contains 164 words, total size 1 kb.

-An ongoing series examining the intellectual acumen of members of the House of Representatives or "Why the Senate laughs at you".

The Hill reports that, in questioning Admiral Robert Willard about the Navy's proposed relocation of 8,000 service personnel and their families to the Island of Guam, Rep. Hank Johnson (D- 4th District of Georgia) expressed an important objection.

Noted PhD and Mensa Chapter President Rep. Hank Johnson asserted that his "fear" is that the influx of people to the island would cause it to "tip over and capsize."

Let it be noted, that Rep. Hank Johnson, noted geologist and acclaimed expert on continental drift and plate tectonic theory, voted in favor of Obamacare. He knows better than you about things and stuff.

I especially like the way Johnson used his hands and the lean of his body to illustrate the Island's impending list. I hear James Cameron was so impressed that he's offering Rep. Hank Johnson (D- Obama makes the earth move under my feet) the title role in the Atlanta Little Theater's Off-Off Broadway rendition of Titanic.

I contacted Rep. Hank (D-Goin' down for the third time) Johnson's office and asked them if the good Representative had any other fears he wished to share. I was told that Rep. Johnson also fears:

-Future missions to the moon will cause Earth's satellite to "go all crazy and spin out of orbit"

-Drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge will mean "heavy drilling equipment will cause the poles to shift and Kansas City will end up as the new North Pole"

-Excessive use of the office microwave will cause "the oxygen in the oven to interact with the atmosphere, making it overheat and burn away."

Posted by: Jack M. at 05:51 PM | Comments (472)
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

Good evening and happy Hump Day all.

The Top 160 Arnold Lines Stitched Together
Which makes about 10 minutes of awesome. And no it's not a tumor. So get to da choppa. Then get your ass to Mars.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:27 PM | Comments (806)
Post contains 468 words, total size 5 kb.

Yeah, wowzers. A burlesque club. Your grandfather's idea of having a rowdy dickens of a time, right up there with driving around their auto-cycles with a flapper in the sidecar shaking their mitts at layabouts and rapscallions and vowing, "Why I oughtta...!"

But -- oh! -- at one point PORN STAR JENNA JAMESON!!1!!eleventy! had a birthday party there that very year, so... you know.

[O]ne of the fundraisers, held in 2007, was at a Vegas burlesque club, Ivan Kane's Forty Deuce. FEC papers show Pete PAC spent $5,378 at the burlesque club, which also that year hosted porn-star Jenna Jameson's 33rd birthday party.

Our old pal Mary Ann Akers who writes the Sleuth column for the Washington Post's website also wrote about another more low key event at a racy Vegas club called Tao held in February 2009.

Tao is racy? Tao attracts a young party crowd, but what, exactly, makes it "racy"? Its Asian fusion menu?

It's one of the biggest, most popular and most imitated nightclubs in Vegas. It's not a goddamn key party.

Pete Sessions' fundraiser was most assuredly not taking place on late Saturday night/early Sunday morning when a bunch of out-of-towners are there Red-Bulling off their drunk and getting photographed for Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

It was just held at the place, for God's sakes. Because it has a racy amount of square-footage and offers a racy competitive price for catered affairs and racy complimentary Ginger Wasabi Salads for parties of 50 or more.

Behold the Narrative -- from now on, all places Republicans may gather are presumptively "lesbian-bondage themed."

Posted by: Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (388)
Post contains 283 words, total size 2 kb.

When last we left the NY 20th congressional district, the Republicans waged and lost a lackluster campaign to replace Kirsten Gillibrand, who had just been named to the US Senate to replace Hillary Clinton.

One of the biggest differences in that race was candidate selection. The Republican establishment picked one of their own, a long serving state assemblyman who was all about old style bringing back the bacon type politics. It took him two weeks to announce how he would have voted on the so-called “stimulus” bill, even knowing all Republicans in the House had voted against it months earlier.

Well this time the county organizations went a different way and selected a novice politician and recently retire US Army Colonel, Chris Gibson.

Based on his kickoff speech, heÂ’s just about everything a conservative could hope for.

(Sorry about the shaky video in parts, the AoS video budget is not close to the RNC bondage club budget)

A couple of notes from being on scene (yeah, I schlepped down there just for this)Â… more...

Posted by: DrewM at 02:00 PM | Comments (84)
Post contains 657 words, total size 5 kb.

On hyperpartisan archliberal Matthew Ygelsias' site:

Several points:

1) Yglesias is always on hair-trigger for a pretext to accuse a conservative of being a racist. See, for example, this BloggingHeads segment, in which he answers the question "Is it okay to call your political opponents racist?" with an emphatic "YES!!"

Why the reluctance, then, to call out one of his own readers? Is it because his reader is a Liberal in Good Standing, or is it just because he needs the hits and can't afford to alienate racist liberals?

2) The comment was posted at 10:00 am. It has now been up for seven hours. In comment 12, one commenter noted the comments were "like a sewer" and tells Yglesias to monitor them --but still no redaction. And it's not until comment 125 that someone specifically takes "Michael Steele" to task.

This was Comment Number One. Not exactly hiding there, now is it?

The liberals on Yglesias' site seem to take this in stride without comment, as if it's standard operating procedure and normal course of business. This seems to underlie their claims of being oh-so-concerned about racism, doesn't it?

Also note how abusive lefties are to Obama, due to the fact he's taking a stance they don't like. For example, Comment 4:

Barack Obama Says:
March 31st, 2010 at 10:05 am
pree emptiv konsesshunz in reeturn for nothing wurked so well four helth car, im shur thell wurk
eevun bettur four enviruhmenntul polissee.

IÂ’M A REEL SMART PREZIDUNT!!!!!1!!11!

Now, were that on a right-wing blog, Yglesias and the rest of the assholes would claim it's "race-baiting" and "in ebonics." Hell, a New York Times reporter might claim it's in a "Chris Rock Voice."

But here there is no comment upon it. It's accepted as quite normal. Again -- is this because those on the left are ipso facto incapable of being racists? The guy who drops the n-bomb in comment number one would seem to disprove that thesis.

What does Yglesias intend to do, precisely, to get his toothless teabagger commenters under control?

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (172)
Post contains 360 words, total size 2 kb.

2.5 : 1, actually.

This president sure does transcend petty politics and show that there is no red America nor a blue America but just the United States of America.

First: The idea behind the $787 billion stimulus bill is that, if the government spends money where it is the most needed, it will create jobs and trigger economic growth. Hence, we should expect the government to invest more money in districts with higher unemployment rates.

Controlling for the percentage of the district employed in the construction industry, a proxy for the vulnerability to recession of a district, I find no statistical correlation for all relevant unemployment indicators and the allocation of funds. This suggests that unemployment is not the factor leading the awards. Also, I found no correlation between other economic indicators, such as income, and stimulus funding.

Second: On average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122,127,186,509 vs. $46,139,592,26 . Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. (The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.)

Of course, there are more Democratic districts than Republican districts in the Congress. So I checked for the correlation between political indicators and stimulus funding. I found that with the exception of the districtÂ’s party affiliation (whether the districtÂ’s representation was Republican or Democratic), political variables had no effect on stimulus funds allocation.

The good news here for Republican districts is (as Veronique de Rugy finds) that the stimulus funding was pretty useless anyway, costing $286,000 per job "saved or created (or funded)."

Thanks to StarChamberMaid.

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (115)
Post contains 311 words, total size 2 kb.

Kind of weak, really, that only around half are willing to say he's earned moderate blame for an economy he's presided over for 14 months (and an economy whose major spending bills he all voted for as Senator before), but this represents positive movement (for us) on the question. Remember, the public has generally wanted to blame Bush for the economy.

Americans anxious about unemployment and the economy increasingly blame President Obama for hard times, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, amid signs of turbulence in November's midterm elections.

...

In the survey last Friday through Sunday, the president gets tough treatment:

• Obama's standing on four key personal qualities, including being a strong and decisive leader and understanding the problems Americans face in their lives, has dipped. For the first time since the 2008 campaign, he fails to win a majority of people saying he shares their values and can manage the government effectively.

• Twenty-six percent say he deserves "a great deal" of the blame for the nation's economic problems, nearly double the number who felt that way last summer. In all, half say he deserves at least a moderate amount of blame.

The blame directed at his predecessor, former president George W. Bush, hasn't eased, however: 42% now give Bush "a great deal" of blame, basically unchanged from 43% last July.

• By 50%-46%, those surveyed say Obama doesn't deserve re-election.

Hmmmm... less than a majority says he "shares their values." As I was remarking in that Letterman post, that's a big problem for The One.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (38)
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

Decline?

It is an alarming, jaw-dropping conclusion. The U.S. standard of living, says superstar Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon in a new paper, is about to experience its slowest growth “over any two-decade interval recorded since the inauguration of George Washington.” That’s right, get ready for twenty years of major-league economic suckage. It is an event that would change America’s material expectations, self-identity and political landscape. Change in the worst way.

Now itÂ’s not so much that the Great Recession will morph into the Long Recession. More like ease into the Great Stagnation. As Gordon calculates it, the economy will average only 2.4 percent annual real GDP growth over that span vs. 3 percent or so during the previous 20 years. On a per capita basis, the economy will grow at just a 1.5 percent average annual rate vs. 2.17 percent between 1929 and 2007.

That might not seem like much of a difference, but it really is. Over time, the power of compounding would create a huge growth gap measured in the trillions of dollars. To look at it another way, assume you had an annual salary of $100,000. If you received a 1.5 percent raise each year, you would be making $134,000 after 20 years, $153,000 after 40 years. But a 2.17 annual raise would boost your income to $153,000 after 20 years and $236,000 after 40 years.

The culprit, he says, is reduced productivity. The internet/computerization increase in productivity that grew the economy through the 90s and 00s is now at the point of greatly diminishing returns, and Obama's agenda isn't aimed at wealth creation, but merely wealth protection and wealth redistribution.

The thing is, few foresaw computer/communications technology goosing productivity for 20 years before it happened. There may well be some innovation we're not fully utilizing yet, or which has yet to be discovered, which will push productivity back up again.

Or: Maybe there isn't.

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (117)
Post contains 349 words, total size 2 kb.

I've had it with "someguy," myself. But I don't want to get all Charles Johnson here. I'll leave it up to you.

On one hand, he's a humorless, useless, brainless sanctimonious troll who has nothing to do all day but bitch and crow about how he and he alone is a True Conservative greatly concerned with Winning Back Our Freedom, primarily by being a 24/7 asshole in the comments.

On the other hand, Warden and other commenters had an awful lot of fun parodying his rhetorical style (read his initial comments at the beginning of the thread, then check down to post 75 where Warden and others mock him).

So -- should I ban him? more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (681)
Post contains 134 words, total size 1 kb.