*entry should be read while humming "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to get the full effect*

Yeah, now that newspaper stocks are about as valuable as those stocks in buggy-whip companies your great-grandfather invested all his money into, it's a sure thing that we'll be seeing more of this. Leftist reporters pretending to be interested in "flyover issues" like tax cuts, taking Marxist indoctrination out of public schools, and bacon.

I for one, encourage you to resist their advances. Get all your bacon-related updates from people who agree with your political opinions and let these pretenders go on their merry way into the dustbin of history. If you encourage them to reach out, before you know it they'll have entire sections of their paper devoted to naked pandering towards NASCAR, religious issues, "how to" guides to lighting flatulence without igniting any of your clothing, and selecting the right firearm to defend your home and family.

I know I can count on you, because there are approximately 98 and a half hours remaining until the commencement of the "Second Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival" in Des Moines, Iowa, which shall be covered by yours truly. Tell the LA Times to stick to what they do best (misquoting interview subjects and taking cheap shots at Patterico?) and LEAVE. OUR. BACON. ALONE.

(thanks to reader Murph for the hot tip)

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 04:27 AM | Comments (28)
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(You can haz whatever topic you wish, as long as it's about macrame. Quilting and needlepoint are acceptable, but undesirable subjects. No talk of scrap-booking since WickedPinto always takes over the thread when that happens.)

ESPN, a a very smart military blog has come up with an interesting idea/futile and stupid gesture : The Mount Rushmore of Sports. But they were kind enough to break the Mt. Rushmores down by state, in case you feel like going out and carving one this weekend:

”SportsNation nominations carved the faces of 191 people onto the 52 Mt. Rushmores of Sports.”

“Among the greats memorialized for each state, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., is the father-son combo of Archie and Peyton Manning, the only relatives among the honorees.”

(Also, “George Orwell” introduced us to a new catch phrase last night: “Ass Pirates.” Please, whatever you do, don’t use that phrase in a comment…this is a family-friendly blog...in a Manson Family sort of way. That would break my heart.)

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:38 PM | Comments (81)
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Here is the most ignorant reporting you'll ever see on carbon trading schemes (at least until tomorrow, I bet). Julian Glover, chief lead writer at the Guardian, doesn't understand carbon trading, but he's sure worked up about it:

Set up to price pollution out of existence, carbon trading is pricing it back in. Europe's carbon markets are in collapse.

[...]

That there exists something called carbon trading is about all that most people know. A few know, too, that Europe has created carbon exchanges, and traders who buy and sell. Few but the professionals, however, know that this market is now failing in its purpose: to edge up the cost of emitting CO2.

A year ago European governments allocated a limited number of carbon emission permits to their big polluters. Businesses that reduce pollution are allowed to sell spare permits to ones that need more. As demand outstrips this capped supply, and the price of permits rises, an incentive grows to invest in green energy. Why buy costly permits to keep a coal plant running when you can put the cash into clean power instead?

All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst's diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don't need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so.

The bolded portion is where he goes right off the rails. The market for emission allowances was not created to increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide, nor was it ever intended to. All it does is incentivise a desirable activity: getting carbon producers to emit less carbon dioxide than they have allowances for. The reduction in carbon dioxide isn't caused by the market, but rather by the cap on allowances. The market is just used to more efficiently allocate the limited supply of allowances and to do it without an even greater bureaucratic market intrusion.

Glover has all the facts, but he reverses cause and effect when it comes to carbon trading. For example, in the first round of allowances issued under the EU emission trading scheme, many governments gave out more allowances than producers of carbon needed. It was no "cap" and all "trade." As a result, carbon emissions rose. The low, low price of carbon allowances wasn't the "fault" of the carbon market. Nor was the emissions increase caused by low price of carbon allowances. In fact, both were caused by the EU governments' failure to actually cap carbon emissions.

All that was supposed to be rectified in the second round of allowances. Glover points to the high price of carbon allowances as evidence that it was working. But it wasn't working because the price of carbon allowances was high. It was working because the cap had been set more appropriately. As a consequence, the price of carbon allowances rose.

Now, because of the recession, businesses are discovering that they need fewer allowances than they had thought. So more are willing to sell their unused allowances and the price has fallen. But the crucial point is that THE CAP HASN'T CHANGED. Glover frets that now, because prices have fallen, "anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so." Well, yes, but that shouldn't be cause for alarm at all, because it doesn't matter. It's like this:

Scenario 1: The government gave me two carbon allowances and I was going to use them to produce two widgets of carbon. My brother got zero allowances, so he doesn't produce any widgets. At the end of the day, total carbon widgets produced = 2.

Scenario 2: But now because of the recession, I've realized I don't need two widgets of carbon, I only need one. So I made one widget and I sold one of my carbon allowances to my brother (sucker). And he took it and made his own carbon widget. Total carbon widgets produced = 2.

It's a Christmas miracle! We have more polluters, but the same amount of pollution. This is not a market failure, as Glover writes and as numerous other idiots claim. This is exactly what we expect and want to happen. We have more efficiently allocated carbon allowances than the government did (remember, it gave me two and him none). And we did it without government intervention. Now, I've produced what I wanted and, this part is key, he got to produce what he wanted. Our little economy thrives...and I'm tired of this metaphor, it's time for dinner.

Moral of the story: journalists iz dum.

Tip o' the hat to Instapundit for the link.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:31 PM | Comments (84)
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Martyrs for Mortgages:

Police in Baltimore today made what is believed to be the first arrest in a civil disobedience program aimed at supporting homeowners who refuse to vacate their foreclosed homes.

An activist with ACORN — the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now — faces criminal charges after breaking into a home in southeast Baltimore on Thursday to protest the foreclosure crisis sweeping the country.

"This is our house now," ACORN member Louis Beverly reportedly said after cutting a lock with bolt cutters at the home.

Beverly will be charged with fourth-degree burglary, according to Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Baltimore Police. Attempts to reach his attorney, Justin Brown, were not immediately successful.

Donna Hanks, who owned the home since 2001, lost it in September when she couldn't make her $1,995 mortgage payments. It was not immediately clear whether Hanks re-entered her home last week, but she was not expected to be arrested, Guglielmi said.

Other police departments contacted by FOXNews.com said arrests would be made if an individual is determined to be residing at a foreclosed home illegally.

"If they're trespassing and it's not their property, absolutely, there'd by an arrest," a police source in Boston said. "If they were told to leave the property and they didn't, they'd be charged with disorderly conduct."

More on Donna Hanks at Michelle Malkin.

Thanks to J.

Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (89)
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And the age of plenty continues. Remember when people thought 8,000 was the likely floor? Yeah, that was some time ago, wasn't it?

Investors unable to extinguish their worries about a recession that has no end in sight dumped stocks again Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 251 points to its lowest close since Oct. 28, 1997, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index logged its lowest finish since April 11, 1997.

All the major indexes slid more than 3 percent. The Dow is just over 100 points from 7,000.

"People left and right are throwing in the towel," said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services.

Investors pounded most financial stocks even as government agencies led by the Treasury Department said they would launch a revamped bank rescue program this week. The plan includes the option of increasing government ownership in financial institutions without having to pour more taxpayer money into them.

Although the government has said it doesn't want to nationalize banks, many investors are clearly still concerned that this could be a possibility as banks continue to suffer severe losses because of the recession. They're also worried that banks' losses will keep escalating as the recession sends more borrowers into default.

I'm not even going to pretend to have a clue about any of this but it's clear that either in name or reality there will be some sort of bank nationalization. We're only in the last week of February and already both Citi and Bank of America have lost almost 70% of their value. Mind you, I'm not arguing for this, I'm just saying the reality is there's no way the government is going to let those two institutions simply disappear.

Given the terms of TARP, the government could simply convert its existing warrants into shares that would control about 75% of the company's stock, it's hard to say at some level it hasn't already happened.

What comes next? I have no idea but then again, neither does anyone else really. The only safe bet is it won't be good.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:55 PM | Comments (274)
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The sick bastards at This ain't Hell have forced me to post the following, with commentary.

Arizona Daily Star

VA reviewing policy against transsexual
surgery

By Carol Ann Alaimo

"You people don't exist."

Air Force veteran Diane Steen, who was born male and had surgery to become a woman, still gets steamed when she recalls the comment from a staffer at Tucson's veterans hospital, where Steen is a patient and a longtime volunteer.

The remark came, she said, when she asked the staffer, who had a military background, how much training he had received about people like herOfficially, transgender patients barely do exist in the Veterans Affairs health care system.They often are denied treatments that experts say could help them most.

National Department of Veterans Affairs policy — now under review — specifically forbids veterans hospitals to perform or pay for "transsexual surgery." It also does not provide for the related health care that experts recommend, such as psychotherapy, hormone treatment and other measures

TSO provides this useful link. and Jonn had this to add.
"Now we know what the IAVA and IVAW mean when they talk about "fully funding the VA"

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 11:08 AM | Comments (83)
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It's just a cartoon running by a humorous piece about the study that found out that women were turned on by images of bonobo apes mating.

But they've apologized for any offense. In advance.

Because they don't want Al Sharpton, noted healer of racial wounds, siccing the FCC on them.

Incidentally, even Maureen Dowd is crying "enough" on the racial grievance industry:

CNBC reporter Rick Santelli struck a populist nerve with his screed about the unfairness of responsible homeowners picking up the tab for irresponsible homeowners — following the unfairness of taxpayers who are losing jobs, homes and savings propping up the exact same bankers and carmakers whose greed and myopia caused the economy to crash.

He spoke for those who want a pound of flesh. With the Wall Street bailout, Mr. Obama at least gave bankers a bit of the belt, and capped their pay. But homebuyers who wanted more than they could afford seem to be getting a free ride.

Yet Obama is oozing empathy compared with his attorney general, who last week called us “a nation of cowards” about race.

Eric Holder, who showed precious little bravery in standing up to Clinton on a pardon for the scoundrel Marc Rich, is wrong. We have just inaugurated a black president who installed a black attorney general.

We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we donÂ’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.

In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that.

Besides, the president has other issues that demand his passion.

Although liberals congratulate America (for the first time in their adult lifetimes, I'm sure) for having demonstrated their lack of racial prejudice by electing a black man president, I'd like to point out that in fact America has been terrifically non-prejudiced for quite some time, just as many conservatives have long contended. Electing a black man is president is hardly the start of an ethos of racial tolerance; rather it is one of the last steps demonstrating commitment to such an ethos.

Liberals shouldn't be praising America now for being non-racist. They should instead be apologizing to America for having so long branded them in malicious error as racist.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (75)
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Usually, I steal my material from Hot Air, but I'm not too proud to steal from the headlines sidebar here at the HQ. ESPECIALLY when it's a bacon-related story.

Related bacon-centric news here. And here.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 10:34 AM | Comments (32)
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Well, he'll definitely be a bear on spending that billion-plus earmark for Amtrak.

President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.

Obama announced his decision before the National Governors Association in Washington on Monday, saying Vice President Joe Biden will help ensure the distribution of the money is not just swift, "but also efficient and effective."

"The fact that I'm asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right," he said.

Biden, in his new role, would meet regularly with key members of the Cabinet, governors and mayor to make sure their efforts are speedy and effective. He is expected to make regular reports to the president that will be posted online at www.recovery.gov.

With Biden at the helm, $15 billion from the recovery package will be freed up Wednesday for the health care programs, Obama said.

Gird your loins. A man who's never seen the inside of a private business is about to fix your economic woes.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (94)
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This is a crisis the likes of which we have never seen. Which will last for another 6 months.

It seems like a while since any forecast for the U.S. economy included the words “above trend.”

But thatÂ’s what the National Association for Business Economics expects next year, according to their latest survey of forecasters released Monday, even though the recession that started in December 2007 is expected to drag on a few more months.

“Following a sharp 5.0% (annual rate) contraction in the first quarter of this year and another 1.7% drop in the second quarter, NABE forecasters expect real (gross domestic product) to rise at a sub-par 1.6% rate in the second half,” said Chris Varvares, president of NABE as well as the forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers.

“The good news,” Varvares added, is the economy in 2010 “is expected to see modestly above-trend growth of 3.1%.”

A combination of factors should fuel the 2010 recovery. For one, an end to the drags on housing, consumer spending and business investment should add to growth, as should inventory building. In addition, the recently enacted fiscal stimulus package should boost the economy, although NABE economists were divided on just how much juice it will add.

Note the stimulus is the last factor mentioned, and forecasters divide on whether it will even be a factor at all. And yet we're spending $1.3 trillion for it.

While natural forces and corrections are predicted to fix the economy on their own.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (96)
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