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Stuart Taylor says Card-check will deny employees free choice.

I don’t know whether it would be good for employees, or for the country, if millions more were unionized, as will eventually occur if Congress passes the Obama-backed Employee Free Choice Act, now the subject of a titanic lobbying battle focused on a handful of moderate senators.

I am pretty sure that it has become unduly hard for workers to embrace collective bargaining if they choose, in part because the penalties for employers who fire and intimidate pro-union employees and stall unionization elections are too weak to deter such misconduct.

But I am very sure that the radical changes that the proposed law would make in long-established labor laws are overkill. The most publicized “card-check” provision would essentially end use of the secret-ballot elections that have been required (at the option of employers) for more than 60 years to determine whether a majority of employees want to unionize their workplaces. Even more alarming to some employers is another provision that would empower government arbitrators to dictate contractual terms when unions and management cannot agree.

These measures are not necessary to remedy the employer abuses of which unions complain. They would probably be bad for employees and employers alike, and they might kill countless jobs at a time when unemployment is already soaring. …

Washington spends more and more on education. National Review says most is wasted.

In his first address to Congress, President Obama called it every American’s patriotic duty to enroll in post-secondary education, repeating the thesis, long discredited by careful research, that maximizing university attendance creates large economic benefits. “That,” the president said, “is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

While challenging young people to achieve their potential is praiseworthy, the president is mistaken on two important points. First, the goal of leading the world in college graduation is neither achievable (because of our demographics) nor particularly worthwhile. Far greater economic and social benefits would accrue from boosting high-school graduation and encouraging hands-on vocational and technical training. Second, spending tens of billions of additional federal dollars on grants, loans, and tax credits is unlikely to boost college graduation much anyway — though it may well boost attendance, and thus revenue for the colleges.

The Obama administration is certainly committed to the spending part. …

… Much of this agenda is deeply misguided. Unfortunately, much of it is also popular. Millions of Americans are either saddled with big student debts, struggling to pay tuition for current college students, or worried that they won’t be able to afford the tuition when their younger children grow up. Many will welcome another political promise that help is on the way — but when universities raise their prices again to capture most of the new federal aid, these voters won’t know to blame Obama and the Democratic Congress. …

We have a piece from Forbes Magazine about the collapse of Harvard’s endowment. What is surreal about this, is they are months away from knowing what the endowment has really lost. That is some serious sophistication; financial instruments that cannot be priced.

Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard’s Cambridge, Mass. home, the start of a grand expansion that was to eventually almost double the size of the university. Budgets were plump, and students from middle-class families were getting big tuition breaks under an ambitious new financial aid program. The lavish spending was made possible by the earnings from Harvard’s $36.9 billion endowment, the world’s largest. That pot was supposed to be good for $1.4 billion in annual earnings.

Behind the scenes, though, a different story was unfolding. In a glassed-walled conference room overlooking downtown Boston, traders at Harvard Management Co., the subsidiary that invests the school’s money, were fielding questions from their new boss, Jane Mendillo, about exotic financial instruments that were suddenly backfiring. Harvard had derivatives that gave it exposure to $7.2 billion in commodities and foreign stocks. With prices of both crashing, the university was getting margin calls–demands from counterparties (among them, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs) for more collateral. Another bunch of derivatives burdened Harvard with a multibillion-dollar bet on interest rates that went against it.

It would have been nice to have cash on hand to meet margin calls, but Harvard had next to none. That was because these supremely self-confident money managers were more than fully invested. As of June 30 they had, thanks to the fancy derivatives, a 105% long position in risky assets. The effect is akin to putting every last dollar of your portfolio to work and then borrowing another 5% to buy more stocks.

Desperate for cash, Harvard Management went to outside money managers begging for a return of money it had expected to keep parked away for a long time. It tried to sell off illiquid stakes in private equity partnerships but couldn’t get a decent price. It unloaded two-thirds of a $2.9 billion stock portfolio into a falling market. And now, in the last phase of the cash-raising panic, the university is borrowing money, much like a homeowner who takes out a second mortgage in order to pay off credit card bills. …

Speaking of ephemeral assets, Hernando De Soto has some suggestions how we can prevent creation of toxic assets next time.

The Obama administration has finally come up with a plan to deal with the real cause of the credit crunch: the infamous “toxic assets” on bank balance sheets that have scared off investors and borrowers, clogging credit markets around the world. But if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to prevent a repeat of this global economic crisis, his rescue plan must recognize that the real problem is not the bad loans, but the debasement of the paper they are printed on.

Today’s global crisis — a loss on paper of more than $50 trillion in stocks, real estate, commodities and operational earnings within 15 months — cannot be explained only by the default on a meager 7% of subprime mortgages (worth probably no more than $1 trillion) that triggered it. The real villain is the lack of trust in the paper on which they — and all other assets — are printed. If we don’t restore trust in paper, the next default — on credit cards or student loans — will trigger another collapse in paper and bring the world economy to its knees.

If you think about it, everything of value we own travels on property paper. At the beginning of the decade there was about $100 trillion worth of property paper representing tangible goods such as land, buildings, and patents world-wide, and some $170 trillion representing ownership over such semiliquid assets as mortgages, stocks and bonds. Since then, however, aggressive financiers have manufactured what the Bank for International Settlements estimates to be $1 quadrillion worth of new derivatives (mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps) that have flooded the market.

These derivatives are the root of the credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other property paper, derivatives are not required by law to be recorded, continually tracked and tied to the assets they represent. Nobody knows precisely how many there are, where they are, and who is finally accountable for them. …

In the trench war of the American Episcopal Church, Fred Barnes is a foot soldier. He reflects on it for the WSJ.

In 2007, my wife Barbara and I left The Falls Church, which we had happily attended from the time we became Christians a quarter-century ago. It’s a 277-year-old church in northern Virginia well-known for its popular preacher, the Rev. John Yates, its adherence to traditional biblical teachings and its withdrawal in 2005 from the national Episcopal church. Our three grown daughters and their families stayed behind at The Falls Church.

We didn’t leave in anger. We didn’t have political or theological anxieties. Rather, we left for a new church because our old church wanted us to. The Falls Church has become entrepreneurial as well as evangelical. It’s in the church-planting business. And we were encouraged by Mr. Yates to join Christ the King, the church “planted” near our home in Alexandria. We were a bit ambivalent about the move, but when Christ the King opened its doors in September 2007, we were there. ..

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Abe Greenwald has an interesting post on the Iraq problems Obama doesn’t have.

Imagine for a moment that you are George W. Bush. You switch on 60 Minutes last night and there is Barack Obama telling Steve Kroft, “Sometime my team talks about the fact that if you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq . . .”

Which brought to mind Bret Stephens WSJ piece on the strategic importance of a democratic Iraq.

Imagine yourself as Barack Obama, gazing at a map of the greater Middle East and wondering how, and where, the United States can best make a fresh start in the region.

Your gaze wanders rightward to Pakistan, where preventing war with India, economic collapse or the Talibanization of half the country would be achievement enough. Next door is Afghanistan, where you are committing more troops, all so you can prop up a government that is by turns hapless and corrupt.

Next there is Iran, drawing ever closer to its bomb. You’re mulling the shape of a grand bargain, but Israel is talking pre-emption. Speaking of Israel, you’re girding for a contentious relationship with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, the all-but certain next prime minister.

What about Israel’s neighbors? Palestine is riven between feckless moderates and pitiless fanatics. Lebanon and Hezbollah are nearly synonyms. You’d love to nudge Syria out of Iran’s orbit, but Bashar Assad isn’t inclined. In Egypt, a succession crisis looms the moment its octogenarian president retires to his grave.

And then there is Iraq, the country in the middle that you would have just as soon banished from sight. How’s it doing? Perplexingly well. …

Yesterday’s market increase has been attributed to the latest bail-out plan. Pickerhead thinks much of the euphoria comes from the increasing realization Obama’s budget is dead on arrival because a number of centrist Dem senators have announced reservations. In addition, this was the weekend when the NY Times had seen enough of the kid president. Peter Wehner has the story.

The New York Times carries a good deal more weight in Obamaland than it did within the Bush Administration. (It was a Times editorial that convinced Senator Daschle to withdraw his nomination as HHS Secretary, for example.) And so, as Politico.com pointed out, yesterday could not have been a good day for President Obama and his aides, particularly given the fawning coverage and commentary reserved for Obama in the past. …

Joe Nocera’s article in Saturday’s NY Times has received a lot of attention. Mark Steyn is first with his comments. Also from the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford.  Jennifer Rubin too.

Even the New York Times has figured it out. Well, at least one columnist. Joe Nocera writes:

By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction. Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news. …

Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn post on the White House Whiner.

We hear a lot about narcissists these days. Pickerhead is guilty of using the word as a substitute for Bubba (aka Bill Clinton). Slate has a scientific piece on the subject.

The narcissists did it. Some commentators are fingering them as the culprits of the financial meltdown. A Bloomberg columnist blamed the conceited for our financial troubles in a piece titled “Harvard Narcissists With MBAs Killed Wall Street.” A Wall Street Journal op-ed on California’s economy suggested that Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desire for voter’s love (“It’s classic narcissism”) helped cause the state’s budget debacle. A forthcoming book, The Narcissism Epidemic, says we went on a national binge of I-deserve-it consumption that’s now resulting in our economic purging.

This is the cultural moment of the narcissist. In a New Yorker cartoon, Roz Chast suggests a line of narcissist greeting cards (“Wow! Your Birthday’s Really Close to Mine!”). John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.) New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote of journalists who Twitter, “it’s beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism.” And what other malady could explain the simultaneous phenomena of Blago and the Octomom? …

… Those involved with someone with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) frequently say they feel as if they are interacting with a kindergartener. In some way they are. According to a study in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatments, narcissists are stuck with the emotional development of 5-year-olds. It’s about at age 5 that children start realizing their feelings are not just the result of other people or events but occur within themselves, and that they have control over them. But this understanding does not take place for the narcissist, who continues to see all internal states as having an external cause. Because of narcissists’ inability to control their own emotions, they unconsciously experience the world as constantly threatening—thus the tendency toward inexplicable rages, the wild overreactions to the slightest perception of criticism. …

Speaking of narcissists, Newser’s - Off the Grid posts on the Leno appearance.

Sheesh, this guy’s so Jimmy Carter. …

… It’s instructive and humorous to remember that Carter ran a brilliant campaign that succeeded largely because his voice was new. Simple, direct, basic, human. And then, of course, he turned into a sad-sack twit.

What happens when you move into the White House?

Well, shit, of course. The true secret of the power of language is in quickness. Barack Obama can’t keep up. He evidently needs too much preparation. …

Couple of items today on the Kindle. First Roger Simon.

As some may recall, I bought Sheryl a Kindle for her birthday this year, just before the new version came out (typical of me). So to make it up to her – and so I could have one for myself – we purchased a Kindle II for Sheryl and I took over her Kindle I, reregistering it in my name. The new one arrived the other day and it’s obvious the Kindle 2 is better, especially in the important area of page advancement. Nevertheless, I have been ploughing through Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man on my Kindle I and am already a convert. (I know – beware the convert, but read on.)

Reasons? Let’s start with that other important area: book-shelving. It’s almost a given that every time you either buy, or have built, new bookshelves, they are not enough. …

Then Jacob Weisberg at Slate.

I’m doing my best not to become a Kindle bore. When I catch myself evangelizing to someone who couldn’t care less about the marvels of the 2.0 version of Amazon’s reading machine—I can take a whole library on vacation! Adjust the type size! Peruse the morning paper without getting out of bed!—I pause and remember my boyhood friend Scott H., who loved showing off the capabilities of his state of-the-art stereo but had only four records because he wasn’t really that into music.

So apologies in advance if I’m irksomely enthusiastic about my cool new literature delivery system. …

Club for Growth has a good post on U-Haul Economics.

A long time ago, I blogged about how U-Haul reservation rates can help identify which states people are leaving from and which states they are flocking towards. Today, I used Dallas as an anchor in the following examples. It’s a large city in the very low-tax, business-friendly state of Texas. I then picked large cities from high-tax, business-hostile states. …

Borowitz reports Bernie Madoff will help sell the toxic assets.

News Biscuit says Wildebeests are tired of being portrayed as victims.

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The Guardian, UK gives us a view inside Moscow. There is a picture below of a woman begging on the street outside of GUM, the indoor mall on Red Square. It reminds Pickerhead of similar scenes when he travelled there in the early 90′s. Then it was on Gorky Street, just up from the Kremlin, where bent old women offered things for sale. They stood in the lee of buildings stamping their feet, snow collecting on their clothes, while they offered pathetic things like a fork or a bar of soap. Meanwhile over on Arbat Street, young Russians attracted by the scent of hard currency, proclaimed themselves “businessmean” in an eerie prophesy of what was in store for Russia.

… Russia‘s dependency on oil is pushing the country’s economy into a tailspin. Oil peaked at $147 a barrel in July but has since plunged as low as $35 a barrel. As a result of the plummeting oil price and the global financial crisis, gross domestic product shrank by 8.8% in the 12 months to January, the rouble has lost one-third of its value since September and unemployment is expected to rise to 10 million by the end of the year. The Kremlin has spent more than $200bn of its reserves to cushion the devaluation of the rouble and avoid public panic.

Neil Shearing, emerging Europe economist at consultants Capital Economics, believes the situation is going to get much worse. “The news from Russia has gone from bad to worse in recent weeks. The economy looks likely to contract by 5% this year, which would be close to the drop in output witnessed during the 1998 rouble crisis,” he said, referring to the year when the government defaulted on its debts, sending shockwaves through the global financial system. “In contrast to the 1998 crisis, a weak external environment makes a sharp bounceback in growth unlikely.”

“The situation is worse than at the beginning of the 1990s,” said Ilya Roytman, president of IBR Consulting in Moscow, which helps companies such as Nestlé set up shop in Russia. “Before it was just in Russia. Around Russia there was a stable economic climate which helped us. But now there is a global economic crisis and because many governments have protectionist values it will not be possible to borrow resources.” …

The London Sunday Telegraph’s DC correspondent writes on Obama’s troubles. It is surprising to see the press turn on him so quickly. Most of the home team media has too much invested in him to start so soon, but the Brit press, especially after the gift gaffe, is pouring it on.

Barack Obama’s gaffe mocking the disabled by comparing his (inept but improving) 10 pin bowling skills to the “special Olympics” illustrates the problem he now has in communicating with the American people.

Obama seems incapable of balancing the need to be a national leader and his childish desire to retain his image as the uber cool dude he so clearly believes that he is.

The fact that he felt the need to go on Jay Leno at all to sell his stimulus plan, budget and banking bailouts shows that he has communications issues. The public are not buying his spending splurge, or his administration’s confused attempt to kill off executive bonuses.

Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei at Politico wrote a characteristically insightful piece on Thursday that began: “Of all the pitfalls Barack Obama might face in the presidency, here is one not many people predicted: He is struggling as a public communicator.” …

Richard Epstein writes on the problems caused by powerful public sector unions.

Each new day brings further evidence of a financial breakdown that stems in large measure from the inability of the federal and state governments to live within their means. Unfortunately, the endless attention focused on the ongoing Congressional spending orgy shields from scrutiny the intolerable budgetary pressures that face many of our states, most notably California and New York, which risk entering into bankruptcy on the installment plan.

Much of their distress is attributable to the rich labor contracts routinely extended to public employees as an ostensible quid pro quo for their giving up the right to strike. But the collective bargaining negotiations mandated under state law are always an unfair match. The state, county and local government officials don’t face the certain wrath of shareholders. Rather, they operate in uncertain political waters that allow them to escape voter wrath by granting public employees highly favorable, but less visible, pension packages that become payable only down the road. …

Forbes gives us some examples of the pensions that will bring state and local governments to their knees.

Don’t let anyone tell you the American dream has faded. the truth is the U.S. is still minting lots of millionaires. Glenn Goss is one of them.

Goss retired four years ago, at 42, from a $90,000 job as a police commander in Delray Beach, Fla. He immediately began drawing a $65,000 annual pension that is guaranteed for life, is indexed to keep up with inflation and comes with full health benefits.

Goss promptly took a new job as police chief in nearby Highland Beach. One big lure: the benefits.

Given that the average man his age will live to 78, Goss is already worth nearly $2 million, based on the present value of his vested retirement benefits. Looked at another way, he is a $2 million liability to Florida taxpayers.

“When I got the job at 21, I knew it was a dangerous profession but that I’d be rewarded on the back end,” says Goss. Even so, he adds, “The benefits back then weren’t anywhere near what they’ve become today.”

The problem with this picture is not Glenn Goss. By all accounts he was a good cop. The problem is that there are millions of Glenn Gosses from Highland Beach to Honolulu. So many that they pose a vast, debilitating burden to state and local finances. …

The Economist reports on advances in LED lighting.

“INCANDESCENT” might well describe the rage of those who prefer traditional light bulbs to their low-energy alternatives. This week, the European Commission formally adopted new regulations that will phase such bulbs out in Europe by 2012. America will do so by 2014. Some countries, such as Australia, Brazil and Switzerland, have got rid of them already. When a voluntary agreement came into force in Britain, at the start of the year, people rushed out to buy the last 100-watt light bulbs. Next to go are lower-wattage bulbs.

But what will replace the light bulb? Although obtaining illumination by incandescence (ie, heating something up) goes back to prehistory, it was not until 1879 that Thomas Edison demonstrated a practical example that used a wire filament encased in glass. Modern bulbs, the descendants of that demonstration, are cheap (around 50 cents) but inefficient, because only about 5% of the energy they use is turned into light and the rest is wasted as heat. A typical bulb also has to be replaced every 1,000 hours or so.

Without changing light fittings, the cheapest direct replacement for an incandescent bulb at the moment is a compact fluorescent light (CFL). These use up to 75% less power and last ten times longer, but they cost around $3 each. That price puts some people off, which explains part of the hoarding of incandescent bulbs. But others object not to the price but to the quality of the light, which has a different spectrum from the one they are used to. …

… The most promising alternatives are light-emitting diodes (LEDs). …

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David Warren writes on the first 60 days.

… we would be wrong to think of Mr. Obama as an ideologue. I think he was perfectly sincere in denying that he was anything of the sort, and in claiming that he would be looking for bipartisan consensus. I also think he is sincere in proceeding with an agenda — on bail-outs, the environment, Medicare, life issues, foreign policy, etc. — that leaves most Republicans, and quite a few of the more conservative Democrats, utterly aghast.

How to explain this apparent contradiction? I’m afraid it is easy. As I mentioned during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was seriously unqualified for the job of president. He had no practical experience in running anything, except political campaigns; but worse, his background was one-dimensional.

All his life, from childhood through university through “community organizing” and Chicago wardheel politics, through Sunday mornings listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the left side of Democrat caucuses in Springfield and Washington, he has been surrounded almost exclusively by extremely liberal people, and moreover, by people who are quick and clever but intellectually narrow.

He is a free soul, but he is also the product of environments in which even moderately conservative ideas are never considered; but where people on the further reaches of the left are automatically welcomed as “avant-garde.” His whole idea of where the middle might be, is well to the left of where the average American might think it is. To a man like Obama, as he has let slip on too many occasions when away from his teleprompter, “Middle America” is not something to be compromised with, but rather, something that must be manipulated, because it is stupid. And the proof that it can be manipulated, is that he is the president today. …

Taking a cue from a Yuval Levin Corner post today we will examine the recent Fed move.

Yesterday’s announcement from the Federal Reserve should be getting a lot more attention than it has amidst the AIG circus. …

Levin linked to a series of items. Larry Kudlow is first.

… The Obama budget raises tax rates on investors and businesses, and supports a cap-and-trade tax, universal health care, and various regulations for unionization. Meanwhile, a spate of trade protectionism is breaking out with Mexico and China. All of these are anti-growth policies. And now the Fed is ramping up its monetary pump-priming. So the obvious risk is too much money chasing too few goods producing a stagflationary recovery.

The dollar is out the window. Monetizing debt is back in style.

I go back to Art Laffer’s four prosperity killers: inflation, higher tax rates, re-regulation, and trade protectionism. You can put a check mark next to each box. …

And from Contentions, Francis Cianfrocca.

The Federal Reserve announced a momentous shift in policy yesterday. Its import was easy to miss because, as always with the Fed, it was written in a jargon only superficially resembling English. But its intention is to take actions that will deeply shift the policy landscape, probably to a much greater extent than Congress’s various stimulus plans.

The Fed announced an American version of what has been called “quantitative easing,” or QE. The Japanese have done this before, and the British got into it a few weeks ago. You can think of it, with no loss of accuracy, as inflation. …

Jack McHugh from The Big Picture.

… After months of threats, the Fed finally pushed the monetization button. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the rest of the FOMC decided today to embark upon the one strategy central bankers have always considered the dreaded last option — Quantitative Easing. It’s one thing for the Fed to push the “Easy” button and lower rates or temporarily inject reserves into the banking system, but to push the “QE” button (creating currency out of thin air with which to purchase assets) is an action reserved for only the direst of circumstances. If such a device truly existed in the Board room of the Eccles building (Fed hdqrters), it would be a red button under glass with a “Press Only in Case of Emergency” warning stenciled underneath. That market participants responded to this monetary jolt by buying stocks, bonds, and precious metals while thumping the dollar is not a surprise. How investors react over the longer term to these actions and the inevitable unintended consequences will be far less easy to predict. …

Tyler Cowen from Marginal Revolution.

… The more the Fed takes on its balance sheet, the more the long-run independence of the central bank is damaged.  Monetizing so much government debt is what Third World nations do.  Draining the new money from the system will someday be a problem. …

WSJ Editors also express concerns about Federal Reserve independence with “Secretary of the Fed.”

In case there was any residual doubt, the Bernanke Fed threw itself all in this week to unlock financial markets and spur the economy. With its announced plan to make a mammoth purchase of Treasury securities, the Fed essentially said that the considerable risks of future inflation and permanent damage to the Fed’s political independence are details that can be put off, or cleaned up, at a later date. Whatever else people will say about his chairmanship, Ben Bernanke does not want deflation or Depression on his resume.

It’s important to understand the historic nature of what the Fed is doing. In buying $300 billion worth of long-end Treasurys, it is directly monetizing U.S. government debt. This is what the Federal Reserve did during World War II to finance U.S. government borrowing, before the Fed broke the pattern in a very public spat with the Truman Administration during the Korean War. Now the Bernanke Fed is once again making itself a debt agent of the Treasury, using its balance sheet to finance Congressional spending. …

IBD editors close it out.

… As for those who argue a major cash infusion is desperately needed to end our “credit crunch,” we’d only note that credit, while tight, isn’t close to being in a crunch. Consumer and business loans are running 7.7% ahead of last year, and total commercial bank lending is up about 4.8%.

In short, money is being lent, and the economy is perking up even without benefit of a federal bailout effort that could add $9 trillion or more to our national debt over the next decade.

It may be that Bernanke, a good economist, is tired of waiting for Congress and the White House to do what needs to be done and is moving to do what he can. If so, we applaud his courage and leadership. We just hope we’ll be able to applaud the results.

We broke our AIG bonus vow of silence for David Harsanyi last week. We do it again for Mark Steyn.

Are you outraged by these AIG bonuses?

No, no. For Pete’s sake, you’re an A-list congressional big shot. Try to get a bit of feeling into “outraged.” The president’s teleprompter puts it in italics, bold, capitalized and underlined: OUTRAGED !

That’s better. Don’t forget to furrow your brow and fume. No, not like a camp waiter when you send back the arugula salad drizzled in an aubergine coulis. We’re looking for primal, righteous anger: You’re outraged, OUTRAGED  that bonuses are being handed out at companies the American taxpayer is bailing out. Yes, to be sure, the bonuses were specifically provided for in the legislation, but, like all busy senators and congressmen, you don’t have time to read every footling trillion-dollar bill before you vote in favor of it. And yes, true, the specific passage addressing these particular bonuses was, in fact, added to the bill in your name, but that was nothing to do with you – you just did that because the White House asked you to, and just because their people called your people and some intern in your office drafted some boilerplate with your name on it is no reason for you to be denied 10 minutes of grandstanding on MSNBC. It’s an outrage to suggest you’re anything other than outrageously outraged! …

And Charles Krauthammer starts with the bonuses and morphs to the omnibus spending bill.

… That bill, we now discover, contains, among other depth charges, a Teamster-supported provision inserted by Sen. Byron Dorgan that terminates a Bush-era demonstration project to allow some Mexican trucks onto American highways, as required under NAFTA.

If you thought the AIG hysteria was a display of populist cynicism directed at a relative triviality, consider this: There are more than 6.5 million trucks in the United States. The program Congress terminated allowed 97 Mexican trucks to roam among them. Ninety-seven! Shutting them out not only undermines NAFTA. It caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade coming out of 40 states.

The very last thing we need now is American protectionism. It is guaranteed to start a world trade war. A deeply wounded world economy needs two things to recover: (1) vigorous U.S. government action to loosen credit by detoxifying the zombie banks and insolvent insurers, and (2) avoidance of a trade war.

Free trade is the one area where the world indisputably turns to Washington for leadership. What does it see? Grandstanding, parochialism, petty payoffs to truckers and a rush to mindless populism. Over what? Over 97 Mexican trucks — and bonus money that comes to what the Yankees are paying for CC Sabathia’s left arm.

Speaking of trade wars, Club for Growth lists some of the tariffs newly applied by Mexico.

David Harsanyi, upon learning GW Bush signed a book deal, had this to say.

When news broke this week that former President George W. Bush planned to pen a book exploring the tough decisions of his presidency, my initial thought was: Who cares?

But then I remembered that this kind of assault on our intelligence never ends. And it is not confined to a political party or ideology, and no creed, race or religion is immune from the generic dullness of books authored by politicians. ..

… The most obnoxious of all these books, though, have to be the ones where elected officials give you advice about the real world. A perfect example of this is Nancy Pelosi’s most recent offering: “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.” The only thing this book taught me is that men are all-powerful chauvinist pigs who spend their time trying to impede the progress of women — well, except women who are third in line for the presidency, I guess.

Then again, the less consequential your political career, the more books you get to write. Jimmy Carter is the author of dozens of books. …

Borowitz reports Cheney will write W’s book.

… A spokesman for Dick Cheney said that he would finish writing the memoir in 2009 and would finish redacting it in 2010.

Mark Steyn Corner posts.

More from the blog of Barack’s teleprompter.

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John Stossel starts us off with a good news piece. He contrasts Barbara Ehrenreich’s downer of a book Nickel and Dimed with Adam Shepard’s Scratch Beginnings which was first reviewed in Pickings April 3, 2008.

… “I read ‘Nickel and Dimed,’” Adam Shepard told me. He was assigned her book in college and decided to test Ehrenreich’s claim.

He picked a city out of a hat, Charleston, S.C., and showed up there with $25. He didn’t tell anyone about his college degree. He soon got an $8/hour job working for a moving company. He kept at it. Within a year, he told me, “I have got $5,500 and a car. I have got a furnished apartment.”

Adam writes about his search for the American Dream in “Scratch Beginnings“. It’s a very different book from “Nickel and Dimed.”

“If you want to fail, go for it, ” he said. …

For some more good news, we go to a Peter Wehner Contentions post on the war in Iraq.

… Iraq ceased to be a popular war long ago. But the American military continued to do its duty, with tremendous valor and skill. So, in fact, did many brave Iraqis. This journey has been longer and harder than we had hoped, and the future of Iraq remains uncertain. But it is light years more hopeful than before. Iraqis now have a peaceful, self-governing nation, if they can keep it. And despite the cost, one can now argue that American interests will have been served in a war that critics once called the worst foreign policy mistake in our history. Thankfully, blessedly, they were as wrong as wrong can be.

More good news comes from a Forbes column by Bjørn Lomborg making the case for free trade. It is good news to have Lomborg’s clear thinking on areas other than the environment.

… Politicians can spend a fortune reducing temperatures ever so slightly within 100 years–or they could spend much less helping the world’s most vulnerable people today. The financial crisis makes it especially imperative that we get our priorities right. Trade reform should be right at the top of our list.

It is hard to ignore the AIG bonus blather. At least we have David Harsanyi making sense of it.

Here’s an idea: If you stop nationalizing banks, there will be no need to engage in phony-baloney indignation over bonus payments anymore.

This cockamamie populism in Washington really hit its stride when Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley suggested that AIG execs who earned bonuses should “follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

C’mon. If suicide were a proper penalty for piddling away taxpayer dollars, the National Mall would look just like Jonestown after refreshments. …

Peter Wehner also comments on the piece by Charles Murray we featured yesterday. David Brooks has a column with a similar theme which is up next. Wehner contrasts the two.

… Murray seems to believe we are at a key historical moment, and perhaps a hinge point; Brooks less so. Charles believes government policies can profoundly damage what has made America rare, and even unique, throughout the centuries; David believes the habits we have acquired will snap back, as they have in the past. Both are extremely knowledgeable and well-informed men and clear, gifted writers. My hope is that Brooks is right; my fear is that Murray is; and my hunch is the reality is somewhere between the two. …

Here’s the piece by David Brooks.

Over the centuries, the United States has been most conspicuous for one trait: manic energy. Americans work longer hours than any other people. We switch jobs more frequently, move more often, earn more and consume more.

This energy was first aroused by abundance, by the tantalizing sense that dazzling wealth was available just over the next hill. But it has also been sustained by a popular culture that celebrates commercial ambition. From Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, through Horatio Alger and Norman Vincent Peale, up until Donald Trump and Jim Cramer, popular figures have always emerged to champion the American gospel of success, encouraging middle-class people to strive, risk and make money.

This gospel gets dented during each of the nation’s financial crises, but it always returns with a vengeance. …

And the Economist comments on Obama’s endless campaign.

IN 1980 Sidney Blumenthal published a book entitled “The Permanent Campaign”. One of the main reasons that Barack Obama beat Mr Blumenthal’s favoured candidate, Hillary Clinton, was because he promised a new kind of post-partisan politics, supposedly above all that continual warfare. Now that the election is over, however, he is proving to be just as keen on the “permanent campaign” as anybody else in politics. …

Jennifer Rubin has a few things to say.

David Brooks mentions almost in passing (perhaps it is best this way so as not to bring on another horde of presidential spinners):

Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway. This is an administration that has many lawyers and academics but almost no businesspeople in it, let alone self-made entrepreneurs. The president speaks passionately about education and health care reform, but he is strangely aloof from the banking crisis and displays no passion when speaking about commercial drive and success.

This strikes me as an very apt explanation for why the Obama team is so tone deaf and so ineffective in dealing with their main task: economic revival. Their tone veers from hysterical despondency to giddy optimism. They bash industries, threaten executives and then fail to exercise rudimentary oversight with the firms they have supported. Virtually nothing has been proposed to encourage private economic investment and hiring, but the proposals to burden business (e.g. card check, cap-and-trade, capital gains tax hikes, national health care) keep piling up. The president dismisses the stock market as a poll – and then offers stock advice.

All of this is frankly amateurish and unsteady, and belies an ignorance of, if not contempt for, how markets work and investors and businesses plan. …

Barack’s teleprompter has a blog. Here’s the first post.

… So why am I going public now, when for the past two years I’ve let others do the talking? Well, this is a thankless job, and I sure don’t want to take the fall for communications missteps. But more important, I expect you’ll be seeing a lot more of me over the next few months and years. Barack and I don’t go anywhere without each other; we even complete each other’s sentences … well, more mine than his, but let’s not split hairs. …

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The Mexican Ambassador writes on the problems when congress and the president let labor unions run the country. Pickerhead reminds readers it was labor unions that created apartheid in South Africa, and it was labor unions seeking to protect members from competition from southern blacks that created laws like Davis-Bacon here in the US.

Nobody can argue that Mexico hasn’t worked tirelessly for more than a decade to avoid a dispute with the United States over Mexican long-haul trucks traveling through this country. But free and fair trade hit another red light this past week. The U.S. Congress, which has now killed a modest and highly successful U.S.-Mexico trucking demonstration program, has sadly left my government no choice but to impose countermeasures after years of restraint and goodwill.

Then and now, this was never about the safety of American roads or drivers; it was and has been about protectionism, pure and simple. Back in 1995, the U.S. unilaterally blocked the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s cross-border trucking provisions, just as they were about to enter into force. In response, and after three years of constant engagement, Mexico had no alternative but to request the establishment of an arbitration panel as allowed under Nafta. A five-member panel, chaired by a Briton and including two U.S. citizens, ruled unanimously in February 2001 that Washington had violated the trucking provisions contained in Nafta, authorizing Mexico to adopt retaliatory measures. Yet once again, Mexico exercised restraint and sought a resolution of this issue through further dialogue. …

Today’s Pickings contains a 5,000 word essay by Charles Murray derived from an address he gave upon receiving the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute. Peter Wehner in Contentions introduces us to Murray and his talk.

Last week Charles Murray received the American Enterprise Institute’s highest honor, the Irving Kristol Award, and delivered a lecture, ”The Happiness of the People,” a title taken from James Madison’s phrase in The Federalist Paper #62. Murray’s lecture began with his assertion that President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalents of Europe’s social democrats. According to Murray, the European model is fundamentally flawed because it is not suited to the way human beings flourish. The goal of social policy should be to ensure that the institutions of family, community, vocation, and faith are robust and vital; the European model, Murray argues, enfeebles every single one of these institutions.

Beyond that, Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. While some worry the European model will be embraced here in America, Murray argues there is reason for strategic optimism, based on discoveries in neuroscience and genetics. According to Murray, these discoveries undermine two premises about human beings that are at the heart of the social democratic agenda: “the equality premise” (in a fair society, different groups of people will naturally have the same distributions of outcomes in life, and when that doesn’t happen, it is because of bad human behavior and an unfair society) and “the New Man premise” (human beings are malleable through the right government policies).

Murray concludes his lecture with a reflection on American exceptionalism, and he argues, …

The new administration created a committee of 18 that would oversee the auto industry. Turns out only 2 of those owned American cars. Charles Murray addresses the problem of the American elites who have fallen out of love with all the things that make this country unique.

The advent of the Obama administration brings this question before the nation: Do we want the United States to be like Europe? President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats. There’s nothing sinister about that. They share an intellectually respectable view that Europe’s regulatory and social welfare systems are more progressive than America’s and advocate reforms that would make the American system more like the European system.

Not only are social democrats intellectually respectable, the European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted when I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. When I get there, the people don’t seem to be groaning under the yoke of an evil system. Quite the contrary. There’s a lot to like—a lot to love—about day-to-day life in Europe.

But the European model can’t continue to work much longer. Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.

So let me rephrase the question. If we could avoid Europe’s demographic problems, do we want the United States to be like Europe?

I argue for the answer “no,” but not for economic reasons. The European model has indeed created sclerotic economies and it would be a bad idea to imitate them. But I want to focus on another problem. …

… I have two points to make. First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish—it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that 21st-century science will prove me right. …

… Earlier, I said that the sources of deep satisfactions are the same for janitors as for CEOs, and I also said that people need to do important things with their lives. When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t. I could give a half dozen other examples. Taking the trouble out of the stuff of life strips people—already has stripped people—of major ways in which human beings look back on their lives and say, “I made a difference.” …

… I use the word “elites” to talk about the small minority of the population that has disproportionate influence over the culture, economy, and governance of the country. I realize that to use that word makes many Americans uncomfortable. But every society since the advent of agriculture has had elites. So does the United States. Broadly defined, America’s elites comprise several million people; narrowly defined, they amount to a few tens of thousands.

When I say that something akin to a political Great Awakening is required among America’s elites, what I mean is that America’s elites have to ask themselves how much they really do value what has made America exceptional, and what they are willing to do to preserve it.

American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I’m thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it. That’s quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America—by and large, Americans celebrate others’ success instead of resenting it. That’s just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism—the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree. No other country comes close. …

… Why do I focus on the elites in urging a Great Awakening? Because my sense is that the instincts of middle America remain distinctively American. When I visit the small Iowa town where I grew up in the 1950s, I don’t get a sense that community life has changed all that much since then, and I wonder if it has changed all that much in the working class neighborhoods of Brooklyn or Queens. When I examine the polling data about the values that most Americans prize, not a lot has changed. And while I worry about uncontrolled illegal immigration, I’ve got to say that every immigrant I actually encounter seems as American as apple pie.

The center still holds. It’s the bottom and top of American society where we have a problem. And since it’s the top that has such decisive influence on American culture, economy, and governance, I focus on it. The fact is that American elites have increasingly been withdrawing from American life. It’s not a partisan phenomenon. The elites of all political stripes have increasingly withdrawn to gated communities—“gated” literally or figuratively—where they never interact at an intimate level with people not of their own socioeconomic class.

Haven’t the elites always done this? Not like today. A hundred years ago, the wealth necessary to withdraw was confined to a much smaller percentage of the elites than now. Workplaces where the elites made their livings were much more variegated a hundred years ago than today’s highly specialized workplaces.

Perhaps the most important difference is that, not so long ago, the overwhelming majority of the elites in each generation were drawn from the children of farmers, shopkeepers, and factory workers—and could still remember those worlds after they left them. Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never even having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, never having had a boring job where their feet hurt at the end of the day, and never having had a close friend who hadn’t gotten at least 600 on her SAT verbal. There’s nobody to blame for any of this. These are the natural consequences of successful people looking for pleasant places to live and trying to do the best thing for their children.

But the fact remains: It is the elites who are increasingly separated from the America over which they have so much influence. That is not the America that Tocqueville saw. It is not an America that can remain America. …

“Man-caused disasters? Mark Steyn tells us what they are.

Mark Steyn notices the latest teleprompter problem.

Which leads us to Maureen Dowd’s column. After the pull quote, the column goes downhill.

Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the president spoke a bit of Gaelic, dyed the White House fountains green and talked about his distant relatives in the tiny Irish town of Moneygall, aptly named since money and gall are the two topics now consuming him.

But Mr. Obama is still having trouble summoning a suitable flash of Irish temper at the gall of the corrupt money magicians who continue to make our greenbacks disappear into their bottomless well. He’s got to lop off some heads.

As he watches the fury of ordinary Americans bubble up at those who continue to plunder our economy, he should keep in mind one of my dad’s favorite Gaelic sayings: “Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.”

His lofty team of economic rivals is looking more like a team of small forwards and shooting guards. At the White House on Monday, the president read reporters some tough talk from the teleprompter …

Jonah Goldberg posts on President Burgundy.

Scrappleface says Pelosi is concerned now that newspapers are cutting back on printing we will be overcome by forest growth.

… “The primary role of newspapers for the past 50 years or so has been to control the tree population,” said Rep. Pelosi, D-CA. “Without street editions of these papers, we’ll see unchecked multiplication of the worst sorts of pulp-producing species.” …

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It might seem like splitting hairs, but Christopher Hitchens is not happy with the media’s “dissident” designation applied to terrorists.

… The term describes only attitudes and not actions, and it is most famously associated with the intellectual opposition to Soviet totalitarianism. (Prior to that usage, it was principally applied to those religious people of conscience who refused allegiance to the established Catholic and Episcopalian churches, which ironically would perhaps qualify the word dissident as being “overwhelmingly Protestant.”)

Plainly, something has been lost when such a historic term of honor and respect is loosely applied to homicidal thugs who shoot a Catholic policeman in the head and use pizza delivery workers as human shields. But in a media world where Bin Laden’s murderous surrogates in Iraq can be given a homely moniker, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As a novel about the Nazi era has recently reminded us, the Furies of antiquity were so much dreaded that they were sometimes apotropaically named “the Kindly Ones,” or Eumenides. If you want a quick definition of euphemism, this would do: It consists of inventing nice terms for nasty things (perhaps to make them seem less nasty) and soft words for frightening things (perhaps to make them seem less scary). We should have learned by now that this form of dishonesty is also a form of cowardice, by which some of the enemy’s work is done for him. We have seen through propaganda terms like collateral damage and ethnic cleansing. Let us not put up with homegrown for something vile and alien, or the abuse of the moral term dissident for something that is both cruel and coercive.

Christopher Booker in the Telegraph, UK reports on the climate conference you won’t hear about.

Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world’s politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed. Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker. …

Bill Kristol has advice for the GOP. Don’t allow a Dem administration to go to waste.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” chief-of-staff-designate Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times the Sunday after Barack Obama’s election. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

Emanuel deserves points for candor. But perhaps not for perspicacity. His assumption was that the economic crisis was and would remain Bush’s crisis and that the opportunities were and would remain Obama’s opportunities. But what if the crisis becomes Obama’s crisis? Then the opportunities can be Republican opportunities.

The first two months of the Age of Obama haven’t turned out quite the way Emanuel and Obama’s legions hoped and expected. The early momentum is flagging. …

Thomas Sowell comments on the GOP civil war.

As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.

At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.

New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s cheap shot at Rush’s program as “ugly” set off the latest round of in-fighting. That is the kind of thing that is usually said by liberals who have never listened to the program.

Regular listeners to the Rush Limbaugh program or subscribers to the Limbaugh newsletter know that both contain far more factual information and in-depth analysis than in the programs or writings of pundits with more of a ponderous tone or intellectual airs.

Why Michael Steele found it necessary to say such a thing— except as a sop to the liberal intelligentsia— is one of the many mysteries of the Republican Party. Steele has since apologized to Rush but you cannot unring the bell. …

Debra Saunders says it is amazing to hear Obama talking up the economy.

How the tables have turned. In September 2008, when GOP presidential nominee John McCain said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” unemployment was 6.1 percent, the credit crunch had yet to reach the point that prompted President George W. Bush to propose a bailout, and Team Obama proclaimed that an out-of-touch McCain “just doesn’t get it” on the economy.

Now with unemployment at 8.1 percent, the $700 billion-plus Bush bailout has been followed by the $787 billion Obama stimulus package, and some D.C. Democrats already are arguing for another stimulus package because the first Obama stimulus bill didn’t do the trick. Yet top Obama economic adviser Christina Romer told “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “Of course, the fundamentals (of the U.S.) economy are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology.” (Those qualifying statements sound a lot like the McCain explanation for his positive diagnosis of the economy – “that the workers of America are the fundamentals of the economy.”)

President Obama himself said last week, “If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy … then we’re going to get through this.”

If Obama is confident about the soundness of the U.S. economy, does that mean he “just doesn’t get it?” …

Interesting Corner post on the quality of the armies in our Revolutionary War.

Scrappleface says Dodd and Obama are outraged over the cash AIG gave their campaigns last year.

… President Obama and Sen. Dodd were the two largest recipients of campaign contributions from the beleaguered company, and the only politicians to garner six-figure amounts from AIG in 2008 — $103,100 for Sen. Dodd and $100,332 for presidential candidate Obama. …

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Obama re-opened a trade war with Mexico. WSJ’s O’Grady has the story.

When G-20 finance ministers met in England over the weekend to discuss a way out of the global financial crisis, the group pledged to eschew trade protectionism.

That sounds good. But some of the governments represented at the meeting aren’t walking the walk on global commerce at home. Instead they’re taking the side of special interests that want to weaken foreign competition. One culprit that comes to mind is the U.S.

In violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. last week again closed its southern border to any Mexican trucks additional to those with existing permits. It did so on the usual grounds that Mexican trucks are unsafe, even though that hoary claim has been demolished by extensive testing. But Congress and President Barack Obama are catering to the Teamsters union, which has spent more than a decade lobbying to keep Mexican competition off U.S. highways.

Candidate Obama ran for president as a protectionist, with a special emphasis on a promise to block ratification of U.S. free trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia. Big Labor was a big giver to Mr. Obama’s campaign and he owes it big time. Last week he began paying up. …

Michael Goodwin says more and more people are having Obama doubts.

Not long ago, after a string of especially bad days for the Obama administration, a veteran Democratic pol approached me with a pained look on his face and asked, “Do you think they know what they’re doing?”

The question caught me off guard because the man is a well-known Obama supporter. As we talked, I quickly realized his asking suggested his own considerable doubts.

Yes, it’s early, but an eerily familiar feeling is spreading across party lines and seeping into the national conversation. It’s a nagging doubt about the competency of the White House. …

The White House continues to think their attacks on Limbaugh are very clever. Now Power Line has the story of the anti-Rush billboard.

The Democrats’ strategy of diverting attention from their failures with attacks on Rush Limbaugh continues. They have been holding a contest among the party faithful; the Democrats intend to erect an anti-Rush billboard “where Rush can’t miss it,” which I assume means near his home or studio in Florida. Today the Democratic Party sent out an email saying that they have received “tens of thousands” of submissions. These are the five finalists: …

And Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the finalist.

The Democratic Party has to do something to distract people from the parade of flopped nominations in the Barack Obama administration, the botched diplomacy of Hillary Clinton, the Wall Street meltdown, and the insane spending spree of the Democratic-controlled Congress.  Rather than have people actually pay attention to what Democrats do, the party has decided to hold an anti-Rush Limbaugh contest — to gin up a slogan for a billboard near the Excellence in Broadcasting studios in Florida.  My friend Tommy Christopher reports that they’ve picked a winner: …

Morrissey also posts on the most offensive idea to surface from the fever swamps of the Obama administration.

If the Obama administration wanted to come up with the most politically offensive policy it could imagine, within the bounds of reason and reality, what elements would it have to include?  Insulting veterans and looking like cheapskates in a time when massive government outlays to private industry would certainly help it along.  Comes now Hero of the Anti-War Left, retired General Eric Shinseki, who wants to save a few bucks at the Veterans Administration by making men and women injured in the service of our country pay for their care:

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance. …

Since he’s on a roll, let’s look at Ed Morrissey’s post on the latest personnel problem for the kid president.

And Andy McCarthy tells us how that turned out.

As a third top Treasury nominee withdraws from consideration (see Mark’s item, below) and Vivek Kundra, President Obama’s Chief White House Information Officer, takes a leave of absence following the FBI’s raid on his former office, the administration announces that attorney Tony West, who volunteered his services to represent John Walker Lindh (the so-called “American Taliban” convicted after making war against his country), is the president’s choice to lead the Civil Division at the Department of Justice. …

And McCarthy has another great appointment. The secret service is going to be very busy protecting Obama from the people that work for him.

I was remiss last night in not adding the news that the White House has announced President Obama’s selection of ”social justice” activist Van Jones as his “special adviser on green jobs” according to U.S. News & World Report.  This appointment’s a doozy.  Here’s a description of Jones from a 2007 interview by Campus Progress: …

Power Line reports another Obama nominee has bit the dust.

Claudia Rosett comments on the DVD set and the Reset Button.

Over the weekend, Mark Steyn had some fun at the Corner. First he picks on the Economist. That’s always popular with Pickerhead.

I don’t agree much with The Economist on anything, although I’ve always admired their ability to pluck callow youths off the streets and get them writing unsigned editorials in that snotty-Brit house-style in nothing flat. But I must say this piece dismissing the views of yours truly and others on the Europeanization of America is pretty lame: …

And Steyn posts on the administration’s desire to drop the phrase “enemy combatants.”

Maybe Connecticut will get a new senator next year. Now the London Times is reporting on Chris Dodd’s real estate transactions.

A holiday home in Connemara is at the centre of a growing row in America involving a prominent Democrat politician, a convicted insider trader and the former president Bill Clinton.

The purchase of the home by Senator Christopher Dodd is being examined by the US Senate ethics committee after allegations that Edward Downe Jr, a businessman convicted of insider trading, acted as a “middle man” in the deal.

Eight years ago Dodd, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Barack Obama, lobbied Clinton, the then president, to grant Downe a pardon. This has prompted further questions about the financier’s involvement with the Galway house. …

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Mark Steyn welcomes the ‘brokest generation.’

… I had the pleasure of talking to the students of Hillsdale College last week, and I endeavored to explain what it is they’re being lined up for in a 21st century America of more government, more regulation, less opportunity and less prosperity: When you come to take your seat at the American table (to use another phrase politicians are fond of), you’ll find the geezers, boomers and X-ers have all gone to the men’s room, and you’re the only one sitting there when the waiter presents the check. That’s you: Generation Checks.

The Teleprompter Kid says not to worry: His budget numbers are based on projections that the economy will decline 1.2 percent this year and then grow 4 percent every year thereafter. Do you believe that? In fact, does he believe that? This is the guy who keeps telling us this is the worst economic crisis in 70 years, and it turns out it’s just a 1-percent decline for a couple more months, and then party time resumes? And, come to that, wasn’t there a (notably unprojected) 6.2 percent drop in GDP just in the last quarter of 2008?

Whatever. Growth may be lower than projected, but who’s to say all those new programs, agencies, entitlements and other boondoggles won’t also turn out to cost less than anticipated? Might as well be optimistic, right? …

Jan. 4th Pickings was introduced with these words; … Pickerhead has grown very tired of the media’s over use of “team of rivals” suggesting there is some prairie wisdom in Obama’s picks. Seems like we will have chaos instead, since our new president is a rather unformed immature 46 years old. Is there any guiding thought or idea that lies behind his quest, other than narcissism and change? We are likely to see a president who agrees with the person who last spoke to him. … Cafe Hayek posts on the present confusion in Washington with excerpts from Andy Grove of Intel and Howard Fineman of Newsweek. From Fineman;

… But, in ways both large and small, what’s left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.

They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president’s character: he’s not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He’d have made a fine judge. But we don’t need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.

Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. …

Pickings believes the adage that Jews are the “canaries in the coal mine” and that anti-Semitism is a leading indicator of problems in a society. The Charles Freeman nomination is more than the latest Obama personnel debacle. Freeman’s intemperate farewell on the Foreign Policy website make it plain we dodged a bullet when he withdrew. But he exposed the real problem, which is; how the hell did he get nominated? Wesley Pruden has some thoughts and then, as is her style, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post goes into some detail about the Washington thinking exposed by this nomination. She doesn’t say it, but certainly believes, it is time for Israel to take things in their own hands, and destroy the Iranian nukes.

Wesley Pruden disposes of Charles Freeman.

… Mr. Freeman, to put a fine point on it, does not like the Israelis very much. … … Mr. Freeman doesn’t like anybody who makes trouble for China very much, either, particularly if they’re demonstrating for democracy at Tiananmen Square or Tibetans struggling to get their country back.

Fortunately, it occurred to a few key Republicans and several Democrats that he was a very odd choice for the job. The Republicans were mostly Christians, the Democrats were mostly Jewish, and it’s a shame this is important but Mr. Freeman’s friends on the left are trying to make this a religious issue. It’s time to blame the Jews again, this time for ruining poor Mr. Freeman’s new career as the chef in charge of cooking the intelligence served in the Oval Office. …

Caroline Glick with more background on l’affaire Freeman.

Ill winds are blowing out of Washington these days. On Thursday, The Washington Post headline blared, “Intelligence Pick Blames ‘Israel Lobby’ for Withdrawal.”

The article, by Walter Pincus, described how former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles “Chas” Freeman is blaming Israel’s Jewish American supporters for his resignation Tuesday from his post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

In a diatribe published on Foreign Policy’s Web site on Wednesday, Freeman accused the alleged “Israel Lobby” of torpedoing his appointment. In his words, “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency… The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views… and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”

He continued, “I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the State of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.”

The Washington Post’s article quoted liberally from Freeman’s diatribe. It also identified the Jewish Americans who wrote against Freeman’s appointment, and insinuated that AIPAC – which took no stand on his appointment – actually worked behind the scenes to undermine it.

While it described in lurid detail how one anti-Freeman Jewish blogger quoted other anti-Freeman Jewish bloggers on his Web site, Pincus’s article failed to report what it was about Freeman that caused the Jewish cabal to criticize his appointment. Consequently, by default, Pincus effectively endorsed Freeman’s diatribe against the all-powerful “Israel Lobby.” …

The GOP doesn’t want you to know who the biggest earmark pigs were. Slate’s Tim Noah has the story.

… No fewer than six out of these 10 senators are Republicans, including the two top earmark hogs, Cochran and Wicker. Cochran, Wicker, Bond, and Shelby at least had the decency to vote for the bill after they stuffed it with earmarks. Vitter and Grassley followed McConnell’s hypocritical lead, inserting earmarks but then voting against the final bill, knowing it would pass anyway. …

Charles Krauthammer ruminates on the stem cell signing ceremonies.

… That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part — the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making” — would have made me walk out.

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not. …

David Harsanyi wants in on the stem cell debate too.

This week, President Barack Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for stem-cell research that destroys human embryos — and instantly one of most intellectually deceitful debates of the past decade was re-ignited.

The president claimed that from now on we would “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.” Others dropped inane phrases regarding the “proper role of science” and the need to “remove politics from science,” as if science existed in a vacuum.

To begin with — though I disagree with the position — opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is not the equivalent of opposition to “science.” Opponents have an ethical position that concerns policy. They are not alone.

Many liberals oppose the expansion of nuclear energy or genetically modified foods, to offer just two examples. Why would they stand in the way of science? Well, I assume, they hold some principled reservations about the repercussions of those activities. …

WSJ editors comment on the success of the HBO original film ‘Taking Chance” which was reviewed in these pages in Pickings of March 1st. The schedule for the rest of the month is below.

It’s been widely observed that movies about the Iraq war have tended to bomb at the box office. One newspaper report speculated that films like “Home of the Brave” and “Stop-Loss” failed because “the audience might prefer a longer interval before viewing events as troubling as war.”

“Taking Chance” refutes this notion. When it debuted February 21 on HBO, it became the network’s most-watched original movie in five years, drawing two million viewers — especially impressive given that it aired on Saturday, traditionally not a big TV-watching night. An HBO spokesman estimates that another 5.5 million have watched subsequent airings of the film, and that doesn’t count DVR viewers. …

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Karl Rove discourses on the White House attack on Rush.

Presidents throughout history have kept lists of political foes. But the Obama White House is the first I am aware of to pick targets based on polls. Even Richard Nixon didn’t focus-group his enemies list.

Team Obama — aided by Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg — decided to attack Rush Limbaugh after poring over opinion research. White House senior adviser David Axelrod explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh.

Was it smart politics and good policy? No. For one thing, it gave the lie to Barack Obama’s talk about ending “the political strategy that’s been all about division” and “the score-keeping and the name-calling.” The West Wing looked populated by petulant teenagers intent on taking down a popular rival. …

Forbes has a piece on the rosy economic scenarios.

… The forecast is rosy from the get-go. The budget forecasters assumed that the economy would grow at a 3% annual rate starting in April and that real GDP would fall just 1.2% in 2009 from 2008. Then, from 2010 through 2013, the administration assumes that real GDP will grow at a 4% annual rate. To put this in perspective, that is twice as fast as the economy’s 2% annual rate of growth between 2004 and 2008. This is not impossible, but the only other periods that came close to this 4% growth rate for such a prolonged period of time were in the late-1990s and mid-1980s. Forgive us for pointing this out, but both of these periods followed major shifts toward freer markets and tax cuts, not bigger government and tax hikes.

There is no period in U.S. history where tax rates and the size of government both increased, and yet real GDP growth accelerated as sharply as the Obama team forecasts. …

And Obama fan Megan McArdle posts on the economic forecasts.

Our sister publication (National Journal) asks analysts whether the administration’s economic forecasts are too optimistic.  They would have gotten a more interesting discussion if their query had been “Is the Pope Catholic?”  Of course they’re too optimistic.  In fact, the word optimistic is too optimistic.  A better choice might have been “insane”.  Like Greg Mankiw, I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration’s predictions.

Having defended Obama’s candidacy largely on his economic team, I’m having serious buyer’s remorse.  Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. …

David Harsanyi thinks working on the economy should have come before the far-left agenda.

… Obama, who promised not to raise taxes during a recession, now plans to raise nearly $1 trillion in new taxes directly from the investor class. He plans to raise capital gains (a disincentive to investment), corporate taxes (for you, the consumer, to ultimately pay) and on the “rich” (which the non-partisan Tax Foundation estimates will affect 1.3 million small-business owners).

This recession already has passed the 15-month threshold, the historical average for downturns. Most presidents helped ease us out of these tough spots by easing the burden on Americans. Obama has engaged in the opposite. That’s his gamble.

And most polls show the president’s approval rating around 60 percent — similar to other modern presidents at this point. But now that Obama has used his political capital to further ideology rather than economic growth, one thing is clear: He owns this mess.

Ed Morrissey wants to know why Treasury is neglected.

President Barack Obama’s handy excuse for all sorts of goofs and missteps is that he’s too busy working on fixing the economy.  In order to do that, one might expect that Obama would concentrate on building his economic team at the Department of the Treasury, where most of those efforts would originate and get managed.  Instead, as noted earlier today, phones go unanswered at Treasury — and our allies and trading partners have begun complaining about the lack of effort in the White House.

Reports have floated around that “dozens” of positions remain unfilled at Treasury, most recently in the New York Times’ profile of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: …

New Ledger.com reviews the vetting process.

… 2009 is the anti-2008 for Team Obama. Whereas, last year, the Obama campaign was able to demonstrate its supreme competence at running a campaign, raising money, and using technology to further Barack Obama’s political goals and personal ambitions, once Team Obama moved into the White House, it seemed that its hold on managerial competence disappeared. Thus, we have a Treasury Secretary whose tax delinquencies were not discovered by the Obama vetting system, and who is Home Alone at the Treasury Department because the White House can’t get its nominees confirmed quickly enough to provide the Treasury Secretary the personnel support he needs to deal with the greatest economic crisis since the recession of the early 1980s. …

If you are wondering what to think of the Freeman fiasco, James Taranto has a good backgrounder.

A year ago, Barack Obama was running for president and people were starting to pay attention to his “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright. Obama tried to have it every way: He claimed he had no idea about Wright’s crackpot ravings, which of course he did not agree with, but he proclaimed his personal loyalty to a man he portrayed as merely eccentric and avuncular. Months later, when this approach was no longer political tenable, Obama threw Wright under the bus, as the vivid campaign metaphor had it.

The pattern has repeated itself, and because Obama is president, now his choice of associates really matter. Charles Freeman, described by our colleague Bret Stephens as “Obama’s national intelligence crackpot,” met the bus’s underside yesterday, withdrawing from consideration to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

As Stephens notes, Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, heads an outfit called the Middle East Policy Council, “generously funded by Saudi money.” Freeman has “amply repaid” this generosity, Stephens writes–among other things by parroting the Saudi line that American support for Israel provoked the attacks of Sept. 11. Freeman’s bizarre views aren’t limited to the Middle East: He criticized Red China after the Tiananmen Square massacre–not for brutality but for being, as he put it, “overly cautious.” …

A welcome change of pace comes from a NY Times article on a cross country Amtrak adventure.

… Almost every veteran conductor I talked with on the trip lamented that something of train travel’s former magic had slipped away. Yet I witnessed something very precious that remains.

Mr. Kinsinger, the Amish butcher, had remarked in astonishment: “I met a man who said he spent 12 hours on an airplane, sitting right next to someone, and they never said a word to each other!” A former New York City cop-turned-massage-therapist from Oregon, who had ridden the Zephyr with her husband, carried cards printed with their contact information, and the headline: “There Are No Strangers on a Train.”

Abraham Lincoln’s idealism about the first transcontinental railroad’s forging national unity may have been bound up in political pragmatism and economic ambition, but a core sentiment remains true: as a train crosses borders, the boundaries between its riders dissolve. Those crosshatched lines on the map stitching the country together are also a metaphor. I witnessed community and saw everybody cherishing it.

At least for now, train travel remains in what the former flight attendant I met called an “age of innocence,” by which she meant that you can keep your shoes on to board. It is a relapse into a simpler time.

With some cash, Amtrak could add modern amenities like Wi-Fi and still preserve that slower pace that makes train travel a salve for our modern psyche, the perpetual motion lulling the rider to stillness, like a rocking cradle, and that hushing sound: choo-k-choo-k-choo-k-choo-k-choo-k.

SPECTACULAR TRIPS ON 2 RAILS …

Mark Steyn Corner post on controlling cow flatulence starts the humor section.

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