As J. Jonah Jameson might say about Spider-Man, "EPA! Threat or Menace?" Looks like the EPA is aiming for both with a new regulation that would be an ICBM aimed right at America's economy.

"Surely you jest", you say. Again, stop calling me Shirly! Here's what's coming up.

The EPA wants to adjust their regulation on allowable Ozone levels. (one amazing aspect of this is that we're talking about an modification to an existing regulation - not even a new reg.) Old level was 75 ppb (parts per billion or 0.075 ppm) - they want to lower that to the 60-70ppb range.

Is that a big deal?

According to an analysis conducted by the Business Round Table, 66 out of 736 counties nationwide do not meet the EPA’s current ozone standard of 0.075 ppm. However, if the EPA lowers the acceptable concentration down to 0.060 ppm, then the estimated number of non-attainment counties would skyrocket to 628 (out of 736) according to the Business Roundtable. That means fully 85 percent of the nation would be in non-attainment. The EPA’s own analysis is even more pessimistic, predicting that up to 96 percent of monitored counties would be non-attainment with the stringent 0.060 ppm threshold.

Oooh. And would it be expensive to meet the new limits?

...during the years 2020 to 2030, the annual compliance costs would exceed $1 trillion (in 2010 dollars). That cost works out to 5.4 percent of GDP in 2020. Total job losses by 2020 could reach 7.3 million by 2020, which represents an estimated 4.3 percent of the total labor force that year.

In other words, tack on 4.3% to the unemployment rate.(this is not the EPA's estimate. But they're not the only ones who are allowed to do math). I've heard a number thrown out on talk radio lately. Somebody is saying the cost of regulatory compliance in the US is 1.5 Trillion a year. And here just one modification to one regulation would be an extra Trillion.

But hey, what about the upside. Health!

Even the EPA’s own statements on the issue should give Americans pause: It has claimed the new regulations could save up to $100 billion per year on healthcare expenditures by 2020, yet the EPA also acknowledges that the compliance costs to business could be as high as $90 billion by 2020.

Are the standards realistic?

... the proposed 60 parts per billion standard is so strict, that even areas of Yellowstone National Park may not be in compliance. To the extent that some areas will be affected by ozone emitted elsewhere (even outside the United States), it may prove literally impossible to comply with the draconian new regulations.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:00 PM | Comments (14)
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Yesterday, discussing Michelle Obama and her "Let's Move" initiative, I wrote something like, "As far as I know this hasn't changed the law, but if it has, let me know."

Well, people let me know. In fact the law was changed.

In signing a new law today to improve the quality of school lunches, President Obama paid joking tribute to its most prominent supporter: first lady Michelle Obama.

"Not only am I very proud of the bill," the president said, "but had I not been able to get this passed, I would be sleeping on the couch."

Mrs. Obama, whose major issues include fighting childhood obesity, laughed and said, "let's just say it got done, so we don't have to go down that road."

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a $4.5 billion measure, provides more free school meals to the pool, and gives the government more power to decide what foods can offered in those meals, as well as in school vending machines and fundraisers during school hours.

I'm not sure how I missed this, but I did. I have no memory of this. My guess is that the reason I didn't read it is that one of the able cobloggers posted it. And as you know, no one reads this blog.

I actually want to explain this, how I miss the cobloggers' postings about half the time. Half the time, I read them. Half the time, I skim them. The reason for this isn't that I don't think they're good bloggers -- I think they're great bloggers; that's why I asked them aboard -- but to me the question is always "What has to be covered? What's the next post?"

When I see something's been covered, I assign it a check and move on to looking for something else.

People might wonder why I read Hot Air more than my own stupid blog. Simple -- if it's on this blog then it's covered and I need to find something else.

And not to knock Hot Air, but I mostly read it for the headlines, that is, I use it for its news aggregation. It's a good news aggregator.

So, in fact, is the sidebar of this site, which I have been raiding a lot for main posts recently.

This isn't to knock Hot Air, again. It's just that my main thing during the day isn't to read blog entries but write blog entries, so I'm usually not reading blog posts, I'm reading news headlines. At night, when I'm not posting, I then actually read the damn blog.

The dirty secret is that very few of the newsday-cycle bloggers read any other blogs. I just talked to James Joyner a couple of months ago He had no idea what I was writing about that very weekend (WeinerGate! he had no idea!); I had no idea what he was writing about. When most bloggers say "I read your blog," they mean they've heard of your blog, and maybe stole a headline from you, which one of their readers posted in a comment.

Okay, back to Michelle Obama: My belief was wrong. Still, the reason I keep trying to defend her is that the anger directed towards her seems out-of-proportion to her actual political influence. Yes, she's annoying. Yes, she's liberal. Yes, the press keeps talking about her "well-sculpted thighs." Yes, she was never proud of America before America decided it might make her First Lady.

An annoying creature, but I think the actual venting at her goes too far. After all, she didn't pass that dumb law-- Congress did, apparently (USAToday says) with "bipartisan support."

About the other correction: I have to correct that post I did knocking the Gellar/Spencer claims that Rick Perry is a dhimmi. I wanted to let you know this now, in case my error there is embarrassingly publicized before it goes up. I'm actually writing the correction, but its a longer post, and it's not done. The cobloggers can tell you, if you ask, a long incomplete post is already in draft.

It's not ready, but I do have a correction to make there, and a clarification, and an argument that this is still, despite the correction, crazy.

To brief it for you: I was wrong to write that that lesson plan I posted and quoted was "the curriculum." It wasn't "the curriculum," as in "the only curriculum, the curriculum taught by all teachers." It was "a curriculum," taught by one teacher who had attended the dhimmi-izing seminars.

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (80)
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I have addressed this in the comments before, because she's claimed this before. I never did a post about it, because it's too inside-baseball and personal crap. For a comment, fine. For a post? Um, I don't think so.

Plus, the schtick here (which I know people don't buy) is that I am some kind of out-of-control madman or something. Everyone knows this is false -- I'm a shy, RINO-ish shut-in -- but it is the schtick people pretend to believe, so previously I figured, "Hey, if she wants to play into that schtick, fine."

But Pam Geller is repeating the tale of how I, upon first meeting her at CPAC, said "Nice jugs" or something.

Didn't happen.

Here now the actual story.

It's long. But here it is. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (681)
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You work and work for years and finally get that big promotion to the Number 2 guy in the organization and then BAM. All those years at Jihadi-U down the toilet.

l-Qaida's second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat, U.S. officials said Saturday.

The Libyan national had been the network's operational leader before rising to al-Qaida's No. 2 spot after the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May.

...

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to summarize the government's intelligence on al-Rahman, said al-Rahman's death will make it harder for Zawahiri to oversee what is considered an increasingly weakened organization.

"Zawahiri needed Atiyah's experience and connections to help manage al-Qaida," the official said.

No official word on how we got him but the story says his death coincides with a previously reported drone strike in thee Waziristan region of Pakistan.

Stephen Hayes says, if true, this is a BFD.

As we get closer to the 10 anniversary of 9/11, I can't think of a better way to commemorate that day and honor the dead than by smoking as many of these bastards as possible between now and then. And then the day after and the day after that.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:33 AM | Comments (126)
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Dagny mentioned a book in that nutrition thread (nutrition is always a surprisingly big comment draw) that I'd been thinking about getting anyway, Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taube, who kicked off the Atkins craze in 2004 or so with an article in the New York Times magazine heavily promoting low-carbohydrate diets.

Anyway, I downloaded it from Amazon. (Did you know you can read Kindle-ized books on your computer, without any Kindle? I didn't. But you can.)

Anyway, here is my question. For liberals. Who are on Atkins. Or some variant.

The interesting thing about the low-carbohydrate diet from a political point of view is that it is outlaw and fringe. The entire medical establishment lines up to denounce it as dangerous and ineffectual.

Despite these facts:

1. Prior to 1960 or so, it was accepted as conventional wisdom that high-carb foods -- pasta, bread, beer, and of course all sugary things -- were the uniquely fattening ones. It was only around 1965 (or so) that this conventional wisdom was abandoned -- with little evidence -- and the establishment suddenly just reversed all of its prior beliefs to denounce high-fat foods, rather than high-carb foods, as the drivers of overweight.

2. I have to stress the "with little evidence" part of this. A consensus of experts quickly dropped one orthodoxy and adopted a brand new one without a lick of dispositive evidence that the previous orthodoxy was in error. (You might see where I'm going with this...)

3. Although I haven't seen this in Taube's book yet (just started), I have read Atkins suggesting there was a certain amount of cash-money incentive for experts to join the prevailing orthodoxy. Many experts who promote the orthodoxy actually have their own weight-loss centers and such, and their actual livelihoods depend on being rated by their fellow experts as "expert." (Surely you see where I'm going with this now...)

4. The fat-is-bad orthodoxy is non-predictive, or, at least, does not seem to result in actual good results. The consensus of experts continues pushing an orthodoxy -- calorie in/calorie out energy balance, fat-is-bad -- that actually has virtually no empirical evidence to support it, no positive results reported anywhere. Meanwhile, a heretical view of the situation -- carbohydrates are uniquely fattening -- actually has a great deal of evidence to support it, but the consensus of experts ignores that.

Okay, you see where I'm going. When I read t Gary Taube and others rail against the orthodox "experts" who absolutely refuse to look at real-world evidence and continue propagating a theory which has zero positive results and is sustained only by the typical pressures to conform to the orthodoxy all social groups experience -- I just have to wonder, Can we imagine that perhaps a similar state of affairs has arisen in the nonsense science of global warming?

So here at last is the question for liberals who actually subscribe to these heterodox beliefs. If you believe these heretical propositions, then you yourself have decided in your mind that the "consensus of experts" is utterly bunk, utterly wrong, utterly failed and utterly harmful. You have decided that you don't much care what a "consensus of experts" has to say, because you can see from real-world empirical tests (like, in the case of your own diet) that the vaunted "consensus" is utterly non-predictive (does not promote the results it claims will flow from its recommendations) and that the outlaw, denounced-as-fringe heretical take actually does predict the future (in as much as when it says "You'll lose 20 pounds in three or four weeks" you will in fact lose 20 pounds in three or four weeks).

So if you've already decided the "consensus of experts" in one field simply do not know what they are talking about and promote bad advice not based on testing and evidence but based on a religious devotion to the Wisdom of Past Sages, why are you so dead certain the consensus of experts in Global Warming has things straight?

If something can happen, it does happen; and if something is known to have happened once, you can bet a great deal of money that it has happened more than once and you will walk away wealthier.

I don't see this as an argument likely to convert anyone on the spot. Rather, I think, it should inject what is surely needed with regard to "Global Warming" -- the proper modesty that should accompany scant evidence, and a healthy amount of doubt and skepticism -- which is entirely lacking in this area among liberals.

They don't have to look at the evidence or the counter-evidence because they know. The science, you've heard, is settled. And there is a great and growing consensus that says no one should look at the evidence.

Well, maybe you should not just take people's words for it that the evidence strongly supports this theory.

Because you've heard that before, and you know -- at least one time -- it was wrong before.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (323)
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I'm trying to find someone with an embedable video but we've all seen it...a reporter standing on a wind and rain swept street or beach telling everyone else how stupid it would be for them to be out in this stuff. Apparently the reality of the disconnect between what they are doing and what they are saying never hits them. Occasionally a piece of flying debris does hit them but never reality.

Well, you know who you have to thank for this particular genre of "reporting"? Dan Rather.

Rather's career moved to a national level thanks to a terrible tropical storm. In September 1961, Hurricane Carla headed toward the American coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. It hit at full force near Galveston, Texas, and became one of the worst storms ever to reach the U.S. mainland. Rather and his team were the only live television news source broadcasting from Galveston when Carla hit, and he delivered one of his reports by hanging onto a palm tree. Rather also persuaded the director of the local weather-reporting station to let his crew put a television camera in front of the radar screen, which tracked storms from high above Earth's atmosphere. "That day," noted Cartwright, "viewers saw something they had never seen on live television: the image of a four-hundred-mile-wide hurricane superimposed over a map of the Texas Gulf Coast. The coverage spurred a mass evacuation of the coast and probably saved thousands of lives."

Rather's fearless reporting earned the attention of CBS executives in New York City and forever earned him the nickname "Hurricane Dan" among his professional colleagues in the media. Shortly after Hurricane Carla, he was promoted to serve as the network's national news correspondent for its southwestern bureau, which included several southern U.S. states as well as Mexico and Central America. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) was assassinated

I don't have much of an update on Irene. I am watching the local Norfolk, VA station and they are saying the storm is basically stalling over them. That's really, really bad news for them obviously.What little forward movement they are seeing there is pretty much due north as opposed to the expected east of north. Now that the storm has made landfall, we'll see how the tracking models hold up or are modified.

If you're anywhere in NY State, you can check out this large, slow loading (you've been warned) but helpful map of watches/warnings/evacuations.

Don't get cocky if it looks like the storm is getting weaker or moving away...it's still plenty big and strong enough to kill you dead. Stay safe morons.

This is also a cool site that lets you track the storm and warnings.

Via Tami in the comments...not a hurricane story but definitely a weather related stupid reporter trick. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 09:04 AM | Comments (81)
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I don't think they exist.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:40 AM | Comments (163)
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Good morning, Morons and Moronettes, and our vigil continues...

There isn't much new to report... Irene went ashore near Cape Lookout, NC, this morning. Irene made landfall officially as a Category 1 storm this morning, which is fairly typical. Partially as a function of physics (friction, in particular), tropical cyclones lose some of their punch as they interact with land in any way. To give you some idea, just prior to Katrina interacting with shore, the winds were up around Category 4. By the time the storm was on shore, it was down to a Category 3 storm.

More below the fold... more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:33 AM | Comments (165)
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Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Money Ball, Liar's Poker) has a typically long and typically brilliant article in Vanity Fair. It's about the European financial crisis, Germany's role in it, the sub-prime catastrophe and the German bank's role in that.

Normally, I'd just link it in the sidebar but there's a paragraph I want to highlight. This is in reference to what Germans did during the boom period before the bottom fell out of the sub-prime market.

"There was no credit boom in Germany," says Asmussen. "Real-estate prices were completely flat. There was no borrowing for consumption. Because this behavior is rather alien to Germans. Germans save whenever possible. This is deeply in German genes. Perhaps a leftover of the collective memory of the Great Depression and the hyperinflation of the 1920s." The German government was equally prudent because, he went on, "there is a consensus among the different parties about this: if you’re not adhering to fiscal responsibility, you have no chance in elections, because the people are that way."

And my point?

Recall day 10 of After America Blogging.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:23 PM | Comments (211)
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Read this obese simpleton's words carefully.

Listen for the anti-Hispanic dog whistle.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall at a Reagan Library event. But when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry. He's coming up in Psycho Talk. Stay with us.

...

SCHULTZ: And in Psycho Talk tonight, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He's on the attack against the Big Three. Now Rubio is an early favorite to take the number two spot on the Republican presidential ticket next year thanks to his Tea Party ideology and his pretty boy looks. But his policies are downright ugly.

Ugly? Psycho? Attack?

Gee, what's he trying to put in our minds?

Could it be... notorious Hispanic serial killer Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez?

Is that what you're trying to say, bigot? Your racist sack of failure, do all Hispanics look like psychopathic killer Richard Ramirez to you?

You dirty racist son of a bitch.

Gee, maybe old ladies like Mrs. Reagan should lock their doors tight because Marco "The Night Stalker" Rubio might be creeping at their windows, huh?

You filthy hick shit-kicking bigot.

I call upon Ed Shultz to apologize for this racist smear.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 PM | Comments (74)
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