Like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford who is urging President Bush to stop the bailout mania.

In a letter sent to the White House on Monday, the Republican governor says Bush would be committing a "very great mistake" that would "open the floodgates to federal monies for every distressed industry across this country -- and there will be many in this economic slowdown."

Sanford, a potential 2012 contender for the GOP nomination, is siding with the anti-bailout wing of his party that is furious with Bush for trying to prop up the Detroit automakers and help distressed banks. He also is siding with his fellow Southern politicians who have sparred with Northern Republicans who hail from manufacturing states that are heavily unionized and have a significant Big Three presence.

"And I believe we are at a tipping point in moving from a market-based economy to a politically-based economy, wherein one's success can be determined not by good decisions and hard work, but by the size of one's voice and connection to Washington," he said.

The full letter is better than the excerpt but I can't find a version I can copy. A scanned pdf is here.

Between Sanford, Jindal and Palin, it looks like the 2012 conservative bench might not be as empty as the 2008 one was. Of course, that's a long, long way from now.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:52 AM | Comments (25)
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This time it's the Wrotnowski suit which had nothing to do with the birth certificate matter. This guy claimed that because Obama's father wasn't a US citizen, no matter where or when Obama was born he can't be considered a 'natural born citizen'. The court did not decide the case on the merits but simply refused to hear it without offering any reasons.

That said, Wrotnowski's argument is more breathtakingly stupid than a lot of the other stuff that's out there.

"The law has always been understood to be, if you are born here, you're a natural born citizen," said Thomas Goldstein, founder of the Scotusblog.com Web site and a lawyer who has argued numerous cases before the high court. "And that is particularly true in this case, when you have a U.S. citizen parent like Barack Obama's mother."

For those of you scoring at home, this line of reasoning goes back to 1898 and a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark which among other things holds.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that

all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,

contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution. Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization.

See? Two types of citizenship only...birth and naturalization, there's no third choice according the Supreme Court. If you accept that Obama was born in the US, then he's eligible.

Now there are some who don't accept the 'short form Certificate of Live Birth' that Obama has offered up and want to see his original 'vault' version. Well, at the moment there may not be a way for him to do that according to Bob Owens.

Some will argue — as I did earlier in the week — that Obama should, of his own volition, ask the state of Hawaii to release his long-form vault copy birth certificate to settle this matter once and for all. While the state doesn’t presently have a procedural mechanism in place to make the long-form copy available, it is merely a procedure, not a law, and the proper officials could waive procedural norms for this specific issue of national importance. Once produced, the singular, above-and-beyond release of Obama’s original birth certificate would eliminate all doubt of his citizenship from rational minds.

So unless they change the rule or Alan Keyes wins his lawsuit, it looks like it's going to have to suffice.

Now, I'm not trying to argue every point of this case here. You may not like that the media is incurious about this whole matter or that his letting Factcheck.org see the COLB is enough but those are different issues.

According to Owens, it appears that as of now it appears Obama has offered up what he can get. And who exactly is he supposed to show it to at this point? No court has asked to see it and as far as know neither has any state Secretary of State, elector or member of Congress.

I haven't seen anything on lately on the Keye's case, which Ace has argued is the case that should succeed at least in meeting the standing requirement. Short of something developing there, it looks like the this is a dead issue in the courts.

There's no doubt however it will live a good long time on the intertubes.

(Thanks to Slublog for the tip on the Owens piece)

Posted by: DrewM at 09:05 AM | Comments (36)
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First, let me just say what a sad reflection on the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans it is that I have to specify which bailout I'm talking about. Okay?

The real story is that the executive pay limits which were part of the financial bailout turned out to be worthless:

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts. In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future.

This isn't the tragedy that Democrats will make it out to be. The bank bailout flopped because Treasury was just making a wild-assed guess as to what to do. The executive compensation limit was the type of populist penalty that make Democrats (and many Republicans) feel good, but never was going to be the crucial element of the bailout that pushed the accounting back into the black. It was simply a form of civil punishment on executives (many of whom weren't involved in riding these banks into the ground).

More importantly, these companies are never going to fix themselves without real, fully-paid executives. There's just too much personal liability attached to helming one of these companies. If you want to attract real talent, you have to pay for real talent. This is patent, but comes up against an obvious response: we already paid for "real talent" and look where it got us.

Fair enough, but think of it like this. We paid for high-quality executives and they turned out to be not so high-quality. What makes you think that if we pay executives a middling salary we'll get any more than middling-quality work from them?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:31 AM | Comments (46)
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No new information on the Bentley freeway shooting.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:00 AM | Comments (26)
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This comes under the heading "Morally Questionable, But Not Illegal" and I'm not sure it should be made illegal. It certainly is an interesting system, designed to prey on those who don't know any better.

I was fascinated to discover the auction hybrid site swoopo.com (previously known as telebid.com). It's a strange combination of eBay, woot, and slot machine. Here's how it works:

• You purchase bids in pre-packaged blocks of at least 30. Each bid costs you 75 cents, with no volume discount.
• Each bid raises the purchase price by 15 cents and increases the auction time by 15 seconds.
• Once the auction ends, you pay the final price.

I just watched an 8GB Apple iPod Touch sell on swoopo for $187.65. The final price means a total of 1,251 bids were placed for this item, costing bidders a grand total of $938.25.

So that $229 item ultimately sold for $1,125.90.

[...]

But wait -- it gets worse! Swoopo also offers

• Penny auctions, where each bid only increases the price of the final item by 1 cent, while still costing you 75 cents.
• FreeBids auctions, where the item up for grabs is Swoopo bids. Near as I can tell, this is swoopo printing their own money.
• 100% off auctions, where the "winner" (and I use this term loosely) pays nothing for the final item, regardless of what the final price is bid up to. Imagine the bidding frenzy on this one at 75 cents a pop.
• Cash auctions, where you win actual real money at the end. It's like they're not even trying to pretend they don't run a gambling site with these.

It's not clear that Swoopo even has the items they auction; they appear to sell first, then use the money they gain from the completed auction to buy and ship the item.

Swoopo started in Germany in 2005, then extended itself to the UK, Spain, and---in September---the U.S. and Austria.

As Jeff writes, it's more of a lottery than an auction. For each user, a single losing bid isn't that costly. But they can really build up fast and at the end all folks who made losing bids end up with nothing. As long as the winning bid is one sixth of the retail price, Swoopo breaks even (*you may want to check my math). But many users are going to be willing to bid the price up higher than a mere sixth of retail.

From a legal standpoint, this is a contract for services---the privilege of participation in the bidding---rather than for goods. Ergo, this is not an auction and no one has a right to complain about anything. Swoopo has done even more to protect itself from legal challenge by giving each winning bidder an "unconditional" right to cancel (which actually has conditions on it; heh) the so-called "order" and return the merchandise.

I don't object to lotteries because there is no coercion involved. For the same reason, I don't object to gambling or casino-ventures. But even if I did object, that doesn't mean they should be made illegal. What do you guys think? more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:11 PM | Comments (75)
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Thanks to the power of the international dateline, tomorrow's news today:

President George W. Bush said on Monday an announcement on a auto industry rescue was not imminent, leaving the industry's fate clouded in uncertainty for a little longer.

"We're not quite ready to announce that yet," Bush told reporters on Air Force One during a flight from Baghdad on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan.

He had been asked when he might make an anticipated announcement about tapping a $700 billion financial industry bailout fund to aid General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC.

Asked whether he was leaning toward using financial bailout funds, Bush said: "I signaled that that's a possibility."

Bush said a decision would not take long. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said earlier that she had no timetable for a decision.

Boy, it sure would be nice if we could just tell the auto companies to "prepare themselves." As long as Congress and the President keep stringing them along, they have no reason to begin the work necessary to file for bankruptcy. I'd like to say that they are putting off the inevitable, but there's no telling what President Obama with the help of a new Congress will do in January.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:26 PM | Comments (34)
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They don't let reporters run a booze tab.

...What's surprising is that the bar stayed in business, considering its low-wage clientele. "The storyline goes that the press club has stayed in business for 100 years because they decided early on not to allow reporters to run up a tab," Smith says...

In other news: Al Gore has apparently doomed Canada to 5 years of frigid ice age temperatures by predicting that the polar ice cap will vanish within 5 years. [vid below the fold] more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:54 PM | Comments (42)
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Apparently Mr. Paul Anka isn't the only one who slices like a fuckin' hammer.

According to the police report, Anna allegedly hurled a piece of ice at Paul that hit him in the head. Paul went to the hospital to get the resulting wound closed up with two staples, then later returned home to find no sign of Anna.

Better straighten out those goddamn cutoffs.

tip: stan the addy caddy.

Link to the original audio here, if'n you ain't never heard it.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:20 PM | Comments (28)
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Fixed for now.

Also, any NHL teams out there interested in Dallas' sloppy seconds?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 11:43 AM | Comments (120)
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This is probably as close to a victory celebration as the President is likely to get.

Slipping out of the White House over the weekend, Bush flew secretly to the Iraqi capital to hold talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and address a rally of U.S. troops.

"Bush has come to meet Iraqi leaders, thank the troops and celebrate the new security agreement," a White House official said.

Bush arrived first by helicopter at the presidential palace for talks with President Jalal Talabani and his two vice-presidents. He planned to meet later with Maliki.

Bush's trip -- his fourth to Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion -- follows approval of a security pact between Washington and Baghdad last month that paves the way for U.S. forces to withdraw by the end of 2011.

Unlike previous visits which were so secret that there were no official welcoming ceremonies, this time there were.

Sadly, the host of the Iraqi version of Countdown was on hand and tried to attack the President.

The president's appearance was interrupted by a man, apparently a journalist, who leapt to his feet and threw his shoe at the president, who ducked and thus narrowly missed being struck. Chaos ensued. The [man] threw a second shoe, which also narrowly missed the president.

...
The president was at no point injured and he brushed off the incident. "All I can report is it is a size 10."

The pool's Iraqi colleague said the man shouted, "This is a farewell kiss, dog."

Apparently the man and his family were arrested, his wife raped in front of him and then the entire family was thrown screaming into a wood chipper. Oh sorry, that's what would have happened if this brave Iraqi patriot had tried this during Saddam's reign.

No one likes to have their country invaded and patrolled by a foreign military, even if it's for a their own long term good but maybe this guy should think about why he suddenly is so courageous and who made that possible.

Meantime, no doubt many on the left are cheering this asshat. The world turned upside down my friends.

UPDATE: Gee, I wonder why this part was left out of the earlier reports:

Some Iraqi journalists stood up to apologise.

The White House said Bush ducked to avoid the first shoe, while the second narrowly missed the president.

Bush said: "Thanks for apologising on behalf of the Iraqi people. It doesn't bother me. If you want the facts, it was a size 10 shoe that he threw".

Playing down the incident, the president later added: "I don't know what the guy's cause is... I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it."

This is the the second classiest way for Bush to have handled it. The classiest way? Bush pulls a dagger out of his waistband and flings directly into the guy's heart and shoe chucker is dead before he hits the ground (which incidentally is exactly how Dick Cheney would have handled it).

Posted by: DrewM at 10:38 AM | Comments (179)
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