The big talking point on the pro-bailout side is that Chapter 11 is no an option because people won't purchase cars if they don't think their warranties will be honored, or they won't be able to get spare parts.

The latter part is simply stupid, as a lot of third-party companies already produce such spare parts, undercutting the the auto companies on price. (True, these companies themselves may also be in peril due to the UAW, but right-to-work state new entrants will spring up if they too fail.)

As to the former point, Romney suggest the government just guarantee the warranties should the companies go out of business -- an easy compromise, and not terribly expensive, given the alternatives.

But of course Jennifer Granholm invents some sort of goofy reason why that is unacceptable. (It has something to do with the "bond" people have, allegedly, with their automobile manufacturers.)

Granholm's real agenda is to avoid a necessary reality check being injected into the UAW's pay and legacy costs.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (60)
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Awesome, just awesome.

How has Granholm gone about creating this new green economy? With mandates and targeted tax breaks — just as Obama will likely propose. Granholm spearheaded a state Renewable Power Standard that mandates 20 percent of Michigan's energy come from wind power by 2020, and she has showered tax breaks on alternative energy companies. Watch for Obama to do both on the national level.

The result has been a Michigan economy that has drowned under Granholm’s watch, with unemployment tripling to a nation-leading 9.3 percent at the same time that Michigan’s debilitating economic fundamentals — high taxes and overgenerous concessions to organized labor — have gone unaddressed. Granholm, however, has missed few opportunities for photo ops touting the companies that have benefiited from her tax handouts or her road-construction spending.

And she has landed a key position in ObamaÂ’s transition team, where she and the president-elect apparently agree that Granholmnomics is AmericaÂ’s future.

Like FDR promised: Bold, relentless experimentation. Although when FDR boldy, relentlessly experimented with the economy, he had less evidence that his proposals had already been tried and failed disastrously.

Remember: Obama is smart. Smart people do stupid, futile, doomed-to-failure things. That's how you know they're smart.

Stupid, unimaginative people like Bush just "play it safe" with crap that's usually worked in the past. How unintellectual.

Under different circumstances I'd just say that Obama is proposing a wish list which he'll never get, but which will, of course, afford him CYA blame-shifting when things don't get better. After all, he can say, "Well, I didn't get what I wanted for my plan to work. So it didn't work. Not my fault."

But now Obama will be getting his ridiculous plans, little changed from his proposals.

No excuses. But the country will be paying a very steep price to learn a lesson, even if that lesson is important.

Thanks to Arthur.

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (67)
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Here's the money question. Literally.

The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"

I guess you can have your cake and eat it too, and there is such a thing as a free lunch after all. Or so the American public believes.

Take the Quiz: Here.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (113)
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Old, but new again. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (15)
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We are?

Ignore the 7.4 quoted by Hawkins below -- the article has since been updated to fix the number at 7.76 trillion.

The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

...The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $23 trillion, or 38 percent, of the value of the world's companies and brought down three of the biggest Wall Street firms.

...The money that's been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It's nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country's mortgages.

...Bernanke's Fed is responsible for $4.4 trillion of pledges, or 60 percent of the total commitment of $7.4 trillion, based on data compiled by Bloomberg concerning U.S. bailout steps started a year ago.

"Too often the public is focused on the wrong piece of that number, the $700 billion that Congress approved," said J.D. Foster, a former staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "The other areas are quite a bit larger."

This is scary. The government has now gotten itself a little bit pregnant eight and a half months pregnant and ready to drop pregnant with these bailouts, and has pledged so much in "backstop" funds that if things should companies slide even more badly, they'll bankrupt the government with them.

This was something I hadn't considered before. Stupidly. But at least if the government had kept away from bailouts, the government itself would still be in (relatively) decent shape after everything came crashing down, and ready to assist after the bloodletting was over. But now it's on the hook for all this money, which I have to think will most likely be lost, and it can't possibly meet those obligation except by revving up the printing presses and destroying its credit rating and effectively ending its position as lender of last resort.

The horses are going over the cliff, and rather than cut them free, we've lashed them more tightly to the coach. Either we're going to save those horses, or we're going down the chasm with them.

Michelle Malkin writes of the bailout of Citigroup, to the tune of $306 billion in federal pledges for this one institution alone. She is, as you might guess, not a fan.

Is it too late to cut the horses loose, or are we now bound to them too tightly so that if they go, we go, and there's no other alternative but to pull them back in? I don't know.

These scary quotes from Allah suggest we're in awful shape no matter what happens.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (83)
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This is that "INTP" type thing that I never heard of before I got online. I swear, I really want to stop hearing about it.

I hate to be sexist two posts in a row, but man, are women fascinated by the Myers-Briggs dealio.

But as far as the automated software: I think it's pretty accurate. I took one of these tests before and I think I was an INTP. Or at least some of those letters were in there.

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (54)
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He could read Democratic talking points like no one's business.

Morris is right -- Colmes is generally nonresponsive and nonconversational as a "host." Rather than accepting an opponent's premises and then crafting prosecutor-type questions which would exposes weaknesses in his claims -- you know, actually engaging in debate and argument -- Colmes consistently simply read off a list of Democratic talking points that more often than not were not even tangentially related to the point his "guest" was making.

Hannity is a meathead, too, of course, and it's pretty hard to move him off his prewritten talking points too.

The show had the predictably nonresponsive, nonsequitor pattern of every argument you've ever had with your SO (especially, um, if your SO is of the female persuasion):

"Dear, I'm very upset you chose to give $400,000 of my money to Nigerian scam artists."

-- "Well what about that time six years ago you canceled on coming to my parents' house at the last minute?!"

There was very little genuine debate on this supposed "debate" show. Instead, Hannity would just do five minutes of his one-sided, "Don't you agree with these points I'm reading?" radio show, and then Comes would do five minutes of his own one-sided, "Don't you agree with these points I'm reading?" radio show, and so forth for an hour.

Not sure if this is a result of the format and just getting lazy and overly comfortable with the job security the show provides or something fundamentally dunderheaded in both hosts... but I suspect the latter.

If someone who can think on the fly and actually engages in debate is nominated in Colmes' place, not only will the show be far more interesting, but Hannity will begin to have his ass handed to him, at least if he doesn't elevate his game.

The Trouble With Talking Points: Is that any news junkie, which I have to think is most of H&C's audience, has already heard all of them six or seven times (at least!) by the time H&C airs at 9 ET.

I suppose a fair fraction of the audience gets its political spin from H&C for the first time when they tune in, but even so, do the same points have to be read every single night?

Update: Hot Air updates to say Fox is leaning towards Hannity solo.

Allah asks, "Do you really want Hannity's America five nights a week?" Eh, hate the title (it's your America? Really?), but the couple of episodes I saw were decent red meat with a fair amount of thoroughness in summing up the case they were making. In other words, far better than Hannity & Colmes.

True, this makes nonsense of Fox's "fair and balanced" slogan, at least at night, but then, that's what MSNBC is doing, and CNN and the networks do it too, quite frankly.

The Difference Between Rush and Hannity, and Rush and O'Reilly: A very long time ago -- like when I was a kid, and Dan Rather was just replacing Walter Cronkite -- I read in TV Guide an analysis of how the two men presented themselves.

Rather had always strived to portray himself as a hero -- concerned, daring, crusading. Cronkite, on the other hand, had (mostly) cultivated a chillier, more distant persona.

Is that true? I don't know. I never watched Cronkite. I do know that Rather definitely did try to sell himself as a News Hero.

Limbaugh avoids (mostly) the self portrayal of hero via the distancing lens of irony. His boasts are so over-the-top they're funny (and meant to be). He undermines his own authority by poking fun at it, which has, as it turns out, the probably intended effect of increasing his authority.

On the other hand, Hannity and O'Reilly deliberately set out to portray themselves as heroes. O'Reilly's always famously "looking out for the folks" and "on your side." Hannity indulges too much in earnest caring and all-around good-guyism.

It's a bit too much, at least for me. It's oversold.

I prefer the self-mocking irony of a Limbaugh rather than the earnest crusading of Hannity or O'Reilly. O'Reilly does himself some good by noting his outsized ego, but then takes three steps back by his constant pose as Brave Defender of "The Folks." There's just too much transparent selling of himself along with selling of whatever position he's ranting about.

Limbaugh's selling himself, too, of course -- but doing it in a much cagier reverse-psychology sort of way. It goes down easier. I just can't listen to people always trying to sell me on what terrific guys they are.

Colmes Smarter Than Hannity? So one reader asserts. I don't think so.

I don't believe Colmes is any smarter than Hannity, and I think he might be a bit dumber.

Colmes self-characterizes himself as intellectual; Hannity doesn't. I think that's the only difference.

Colmes has as much claim to the intellectual label as a ficus. But that's never stopped anyone on the left before.

I think an awful lot of what is taken by the left to be the right's "anti-intellectualism" is in fact really anti-faux-intellectualism. I've never heard a conservative put down Thomas Sowell for "being too damn smarty-pants." Same with Hitchens, when he was on our side. Or even Andrew Sullivan, back when he was mistaken for 1) a conservative and 2) an intellectual.

"Intellectualism" is a pose favored by the left, a preferred method of self-characterization mostly unsupported by the facts. It's not intellectualism per se most on the right object to, but this pose of it, and furthermore, this unjustified equation of intellectualism to left-liberalism.

Some on the right are actually anti-intellectual, full stop, of course. But then, they've got those on the Democrat side too. All those bitter, clingy gun-hugging Jesus lovers in Pennsylvania, for example.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (95)
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Some Canadians got a pretty neat surprise on Friday.

Nobody saw it coming. Well, until they saw it coming --and OMYGOD! Last I heard, they were looking for pieces.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:26 AM | Comments (79)
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Direct from the Office of the President-elect:

"As a thought leader, Larry [Summers] has urged us to confront the problems of income inequality and the middle-class squeeze, consistently arguing that the key to a strong economy is a strong, vibrant, growing middle class," Obama said of Summers. "This idea is at the core of my own economic philosophy and will be the foundation of all of my economic policies." more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:10 AM | Comments (101)
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An important ruling for the War on Terror in In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies (PDF). One of the convicted conspirators, a U.S. citizen, claimed that a search of his residence in Nairobi, Kenya and electronic surveillance of telephone lines in Kenya should have been suppressed at his trial because the intelligence agencies involved failed to obtain a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment provides: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The issue was what part of of the Amendment applies overseas. The panel unanimously decided that the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness—but not the Warrant Clause—applies to extraterritorial searches and seizures of U.S. citizens.

There was a second part to the case and it may be of more importance. The district court here examined much of the government's evidence in camera and ex parte. That is, in chambers and without the defense ever seeing it. This was justified, says the Second Circuit, because of the "imperatives of national security."

Here's the N.Y. Times on the decision. (Sorry, they're the only ones with an article up already.)

Also: Lemme get it on the record; everyone is focusing on the Fourth Amendment issue here. By which I mean the Times' article and much of the coverage on the lawblogs hasn't even mentioned the second part of the opinion. But I think that second issue, a due process question involving secret evidence, will be more important in the long run. Defendants who never get to see the evidence against them? Whoa. Tread carefully, my friend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:41 AM | Comments (26)
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