Thomas Sowell and Jumping in Pools

By Sam Foster

The boys at Jumping in Pools were on a roll last week, but before I get there, let me preface with a bit of the brilliant Thomas Sowell.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Thomas Sowell made a great case for why our economic recovery has been so stagnant:

It is not just free market economists who think the government can make a mess bigger with its interventions. It was none other than Karl Marx who wrote to his colleague Friedrich Engels that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis."

The history of the United States is full of evidence on the negative effects of government intervention. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal government did not think it was its business to intervene when the economy turned down.

All of those downturns ended faster than the first downturn in which the federal government intervened big time, the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Clearly channeling the theme Thomas Sowell opined, Jumping in Pools made a similar case regarding the Democrat take over of congress in 2007. Included was the Krugmanesque graph below depicting unemployment at the time various government intrusive bills were signed into congress.

JiP announces:

Claims have been bandied about that President Bush was at fault for the economic down-turn that began in late 2007. Until now, Democrats have pointed the finger at our 43rd President, stating that he single-handedly pushed our nation to the brink of economic collapse. That stops today. Examining unemployment, national debt data, and GDP growth, the truth becomes clear and apparent. President Bush was not at fault for the recession we are in. The Democrats who took over Congress in 2007 are.

It took ten years of government intervention during the Great Depression before free-markets were released from the fetters of FDR. One can only hope that Obama’s shackles will be spotted sooner.

JiP also makes an excellent presentation on how Democrats ran up debts and stagnated GDP growth. Please check it out here.

Rear View Mirror

by War Planner

There will be a day when we will look back on these (hopefully) four years as a diminishing nightmare. We will wake blearily, shake the cobwebs from our brains, slam down a couple of Alka Seltzer, and face the brave new dawn and the prospect of having an experienced grown up running this country. For the moment we must tough it out and watch The Pantload and his Clown Troupe make a mockery of government and our Constitution.

The latest puerile outburst on Labor Day, particularly the "bark like a dog" comment, has become symbolic of the mediocrity we endure. Over at Pajamas Media, the preeminent Dr Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in on that remark and the childish petulance that the POTUS is coming to engage in more and more.

Obama in just twenty months has developed a reputation for being petulant, unusually sensitive to the normal run-of-the-mill criticism. His latest pushback was his strangest so far: “And they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, it’s just — but it’s true.”

Given that Obama has previously called out talk radio critics by name — Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh — attacked everything from limb-lopping surgeons to vacationing at Las Vegas, and in condescending fashion tsk-tsked those who attend Glen Beck rallies, rural Pennsylvanians, and his own “typical white person” grandmother who raised him, his thin-skin touchiness seems inexplicable.

Surely the most powerful man in the world knows that when you elevate talk radio critics to near-equal adversaries, then one cannot complain that they press their now high-profile serial attacks even further.

Add that his team has indulged in invective like few recent administrations — whether Obama’s own slur against the stereotyping and stupidly acting police, Eric Holder’s collective denunciation of Americans as “cowards,” Van Jones’ various hysterics (e.g., polluting and mass-murdering whites, Bush in on 9/11, etc.), Anita Dunn’s attacks against Fox News, or the generic “Bush did it” chorus.

The wonder is not that Obama is angry at criticism, but why he is so surprised in a weird “how dare they?” fashion.

Not to discredit Dr Hanson's fine work and the [mostly] wonderfully literate responses, I grow weary of analyzing this pathetic charlatan. I mean, this sort of thing was de rigueur in the salad days of his tenure. We had to cling to something to assure ourselves he was a chimera, a cypher, an empty suit and NOT the second coming as his cohorts of sycophantic lib HopenChange leg-tinglers described.

But, at 20 months, it's old news. I get it. Move on.

Of course, I do not mean that VDH should abandon this line of essay nor everyone stop commenting. It's just that one longs for the time when this unaccomplished dolt of a POTUS will become insignificant.

I do not watch the posted videos of his speeches and remarks anymore, knowing them to be just more of same: clumsy, hopelessly inept, decidedly un-presidential. I just want to spare myself of the wave of revulsion that invariably ensues.

It is not the flailing that he does now on the eve the Democrat's purported bloodbath ~~ brought on largely because of his non-existent chief executive skills -- that are important. These are but appetizers for the real feast that is to come: what he says and does after the November holocaust.

Along with the incredibly over-reaching Pelosi and the terminally incompetent and bumbling Reid, he has constructed the morass that the Democrat party now dwells in. He is bereft of strategic ability and his tactical skills are equally non-existent. Even into the run-up to their supposed Armageddon, he remains clueless and reactionary. The knee-jerk proposal of blowing $50 billions of our cash on yet more "infrastructure programs" is nothing more than a thin broth of already failed, too-late talking points in a futile effort to save his party. The hip, too-cool for words, g-droppin' speaking style, shirt open at the collar is a cracking and fading veneer covering what the nation is increasingly coming to regard as a snake oil salesman, a carnival barker. Vaporware.

We are tired of him and will continue to do so.

His numbers -- at 41% today -- should consistently break the magic floor of 40% some time later this year or in January 2011. He will then enter into a vicious cycle of lip-flapping, gum-beating, coatless, tieless, g-droppin' appearances and we will be more and more underwhelmed -- causing him to redouble his futile efforts. to no avail.

..until he becomes an insignificant object rapidly diminishing in our rear-views.

-30-

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey Installs Condom Machines Inside San Francisco County Jail

by the Left Coast Rebel

This one gets filed in the "irreconcilable differences between us (common sense Americans) and them (mentally deformed adherents to moral relativism/liberalism). This story would only be possible in San Francisco, only in America, and only through the prism of thought, of the left:

(Fox) - Condom dispensers are the latest addition to San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

Authorities have installed 16 machines for the jail’s 750 inmates, one in each pod, despite sex among prisoners officially being illegal.

A safe sex program for prisoners began in 1989, where inmates were provided with condoms before they were released.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey told the San Francisco Chronicle that while their instillation may be controversial, the larger health education message was important.

Kate Monico Klein, who is directing the program for the city's Public Health Department, said that sex was already taking place without the machines.

This same 'sheriff', Michael Hennessey, is also responsible for harboring illegals and at the same time, breaking federal immigration law.

Yet Obama and the merry band of thieves are suing Arizona for enforcing federal immigration law. Don't forget Obama 'Justice' is suing Joe Arpaio too.

BREAKING: Terry Jones to Cancel Koran Burning if Contacted by White House, Gibbs Responds

by the Left Coast Rebel

Earlier today news broke that Obama personally requested that Terry Jones (pictured left) not burn Korans on September 11.

Fox News just broke the news that fringe, 50 member Dove Outreach Center "pastor" Tery Jones will cancel the "burn the Koran" event, "if the White House contacts him."

Robert Gibbs just responded at a White House press conference saying that, "there are discussions inside the government about the possibility of doing that (contacting Terry Jones), I don't know if a final decision has been made on that."

Discussions are taking place, do you think the Koran burning even will be canceled?

Updated: Samuel Gonzalez wrote an opinion piece today at Last Tradition on the Koran burning event:

Burning the Koran and Building the Ground Zero Mosque: A case of Cherry Picking Constitutional Rights

And to this day, those that want to build the GZ Mosque still stand on their Constitutional rights even though it may not be the right thing to do because it hurts so many people’s feelings.

But Constitutional rights suppose to trump hurt feelings, as far as the mosque planners are concerned.

So, now comes this tiny church in Florida with barely 50 members who plan to burn the Koran on the anniversary of September 11.

All of a sudden Muslims are outraged and offended. They say the pastor is being provocative.

Where have we heard this before?

That Florida pastor has just as much right to burn the Koran as the Muslin Imam has to the right to build the Ground Zero Mosque.

Read the rest.

Updated: Confirmed, cancelled.

A Fond Farewell to the Incandescent Light Bulb (and the jobs it created)

by Proof

What is the quintessential symbol for a great idea? Or enlightenment? Or discovery?
It's the light bulb that flashes on above someone's head! Now, thanks to the Nanny Staters in Congress, that symbol may be short lived.

WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs

What ever happened to being "pro choice"? When the Compact Fluorescent Lamps first came out, I bought a number of them, buoyed by the promise of long life and energy savings. It was my choice. I didn't need the government to make the cost/benefit decision for me, I made my own. Later, after having witnessed the built in ballast of one of these lamps short out, (you could tell that a lot of the "magic smoke" had gotten out) I decided that these were not the sort of bulbs I wanted to put in lamps on timers that might come on (and possibly short out) while I was away.

I still use a mixture of incandescent and CFLs, but it's my choice. Thanks to the Nanny State Congress, in just a few short years we will no longer have that choice.

The government that apparently knows best how many gallons of water (but not how many times) it takes to flush your toilets, has decided what consumer products you ought to buy. In the above scenario, if Mr. Edison's invention malfunctioned while I was away, I simply unscrew it, replace it with another and throw the old one in the trash. But, at least it was not as likely to burn my house down!

Disposal of these toxic marvels is a wonder to behold. Maybe the government could issue everyone a Hazmat suit for changing and disposing of old CFLs?

In the meantime, I'm with Rush on this one. I have a small stockpile of incandescent bulbs which they will have to pry from my "cold dead fingers"!

My sympathies to the 200 who are losing their jobs. Obama promised you "change". Welcome to Obama's new "Hooverville". Two hundred more jobs lost because of the actions of a Democrat controlled Congress.

Cross posted at Proof Positive