A Very Small Factoid That Says A Lot

From today's WSJ, in an article about how art critics used their positions at New York newspapers to further their own careers, there's this snippet, which seems to come from another planet:

In 1940 there were eight daily newspapers in New York, most of which employed full-time classical-music critics.

The amount of remedial education we would need to be able to even understand a newspaper article about classical music!   And that was a country coming out of a deep Depression, where very few people went to college, much less graduate school.   Yet it was a country where the "popular" culture included classical music, and a country where to be acceptably middle-class required a functional vocabulary in discussing serious art and music and, usually, required your children to take years of piano lessons.   Amazing!  

Of course, they didn't have TV and video games and the Internet.   Hmmm... I wonder if there's a connection. 

Three Notes on Solyndra

Congressman Brian Bilbray (R - Cal.) made the following key points during the Solyndra hearings last week, as related by Andrew Stiles in NRO.   All of the points go, not to the potential corruption of the deal, but to the sheer stupidity of it:

• "Why did the government choose to invest in Solyndra’s 'thin-film' solar-panel technology in the first place, when it has historically proven to be one of the most complex, and therefore riskiest, forms of solar technology?"   By contrast, China is subsidizing its solar industry, but betting heavily on the polycrystalline variety, which is not as efficient as thin-film but is less risky and vastly cheaper to produce.

Answer:  because the White House "deciders" are political animals, not businessmen.   Risk doesn't enter into their thinking, nor does profitability; the only thing that matters is the "optics" of the deal.   For Obama and his ilk, "thin-film" solar sounds cool, so let's invest in it.   Using other people's money, of course.

• Why build a new plant in California?  "Electricity costs in California are twice as high as in Midwestern states like Ohio, and nearly four times as expensive as in China.  On top of that, California has some of the strictest state and local regulatory regimes in the country in regard to air quality, water quality, storm runoff, occupational safety, hazardous-waste generation, and so on.   Yet Solyndra proposed to build on 30 acres of virgin farmland in Fremont, Calif. (in the Bay area), on a site that was classified by the EPA as a 'non-attainment zone,' meaning that air quality did not meet certain federal standards."

Answer:  Here's where the corruption comes in.   California is a "blue" state, and the Bay Area is the bluest of the blue.   California is also a key source of campaign funds.   That's why you build a plant in California, regardless of the costs or bureaucratic impediments, if you're Obama.   After all, again, it's other people's money. 

• Why build a plant at all when you could lease space or buy a vacant building?    "Bilbray is astonished that no one appears to have second-guessed the decision to build a new facility in the first place, which he calls 'absurd.' With the number of Bay-Area start-ups constantly in flux, and with businesses 'fleeing the state' in search of more favorable economic conditions, there is no shortage of facilities available to be rented or retrofitted to accommodate even high-tech companies like Solyndra."

Answer:  because making that kind of rational business decision doesn't give you a chance to subsidize the local construction industry, a two-fer that would have been attractive to the union-dependent Obama administration.

Bilbray is doing good work getting to the bottom of this.  But what I fear is that Solyndra is not an isolated scandal, but simply an example of how business gets done in Washington, and how far we would have to go to get back to a truly free market.

Ponzi? You wish!

Robert Tracinski has a powerful article up today arguing that Social Security is actually much worse than a Ponzi scheme (Rick Perry's description).   Here's the peroration of the piece, but read the whole thing:

[W]e have a system that is fraudulent and unsustainable in its design, which suppresses capital accumulation for individuals and economic growth for the economy as a whole, and which reduces a self-sufficient majority to supplicants of the state. The whole system is intellectually dishonest, economically destructive, and morally corrupting.


A mere Ponzi scheme? We should be so lucky.

Obama the Bore

"Obama the Bore" is (or should be) the new meme, and I suspect it will soon be received wisdom across the country, largely because it's so true.   Here's George Will with the inside-the-beltway verdict:

He went to Massachusetts to campaign against Scott Brown; Brown is now a senator. He went to New Jersey to campaign against Chris Christie, who’s now governor. He went to Virginia to campaign against Bob McDonnell, who’s now governor. He campaigned for the health-care plan extensively, it became less popular. He campaigned in 2010 for the Democrats, they were shellacked. He began, in a sense, his presidency flying to Copenhagen to get Chicago the Olympics; Chicago was the first city eliminated. There is no evidence that the man has the rhetorical powers that he is relying on.

Girl of the Day - More MM, Please! (Marilyn Monroe)

I happened upon a site that had some obscure, beautiful photographs of Monroe, so I thought I'd share them for a couple of days.   Weirdly, until I started doing this "Girl of the Day" feature on the blog, I never really thought much of Monroe's looks.   But when you search the web for photos of Hollywood stars of years gone by, it doesn't take long before you realize that she was easily -- and I'm not sure it's very close -- the most photogenic Hollywood actress ever, which is a roundabout way of saying she was the most beautiful.  

Girl of the Day - Baby, It's Cold Outside (Marilyn Monroe)

Fall is in the air here in Wisconsin.   Great day to watch the Packers, and a great day for a little bit of lost summer magic from an oldy, but a goody:

That's hard to beat.

Solyndra as Criminal Fraud

Andrew McCarthy, writing in NRO, makes the essential point about Solyndra:  that is was a crime.  

The criminal law... is not content to assume the good faith of government officials. It targets anyone — from low-level swindlers to top elective officeholders — who attempts to influence the issuance of government loans by making false statements; who engages in schemes to defraud the United States; or who conspires “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose.” The penalties are steep: Fraud in connection with government loans, for example, can be punished by up to 30 years in the slammer.

Although Solyndra was a private company, moreover, it was using its government loans as a springboard to go public. When the sale of securities is involved, federal law criminalizes fraudulent schemes, false statements of material fact, and statements that omit any “material fact necessary in order to make the statements made . . . not misleading.” And we’re not just talking about statements made in required SEC filings. Any statement made to deceive the market can be actionable. In 2003, for example, the Justice Department famously charged Martha Stewart with securities fraud. Among other allegations, prosecutors cited public statements she had made in press releases and at a conference for securities analysts — statements in which she withheld damaging information in an effort to inflate the value of her corporation and its stock.

That’s exactly what President Obama did on May 26, 2010, with his Solyndra friends about to launch their initial public offering of stock. The solar-panel company’s California factory was selected as the fitting site for a presidential speech on the virtues of confiscating taxpayer billions to prop up pie-in-the-sky clean-energy businesses.

As they say, read the whole thing.

***

Oh, by the way.   LightSquared may be worse.  

We've seen political scandals before (Watergate).   We've seen national security scandals (Iran-Contra).   We've seen sexual scandals (Monica Lewinsky et al.).   But we haven't seen this kind of sheer you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours corruption in a long, long time.   

Preference Cascade Update

According to a new poll out yesterday from CBS News/New York Times -- hardly a conservative pollster -- President Obama's personal favorability numbers have now, for the first time, gone underwater, with only 39% of Americans viewing him favorably, while 42% view him unfavorably.   Personal favorability is usually thought of as a ceiling for a Presidential candidate's ultimate vote, since while people will vote for people they don't think have done great jobs if they still like them personally, they won't vote for anyone they do not like personally.    Obama's incompetence at his job has dragged his job approval numbers down already, but his personal favorability has always been higher.   Not anymore.

Why has this happened?   Well, it's not simply the economy.   To me, Obama has increasingly become a bore, strident, mean-spirited, blaming others, not taking responsibility, not admitting mistakes, vilifying enemies, lying about and caricaturing political adversaries, etc.   As Dennis Miller said this week, "Obama doesn't like me, and half the country."   So why should we like him?  

In short, I think his real character as a narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole is starting to come out.   Not sure how his handlers can put that genie back in the bottle.  

Birthday Today - Mrs. Robinson Version (Anne Bancroft)

It's Anne Bancroft's birthday, as she turns 80 today.   Bancroft, one of our finest actresses over the past 50 years or so, was most famous for her great turn as Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967), which was probably the first "adult" movie I saw when I was a kid.   (She's also been Mrs. Mel Brooks for a long time, which marks her down as a good egg in my book.)   Anyway, here she is as Mrs. Robinson with, of course, Dustin Hoffman, in the movie's famous seduction scene:

Girls of the Day - More Pin Ups, Please!

Having found a web-site with a source for 1940s pin-ups -- paintings that were cover art for "girly" magazines -- I thought I'd favor my Regular Readers with a few more, this one from artist Billy Devorrs:

And here's one (a little more racy) from Gillette Elvgren:

Finally, here's one from Peter Driben:

I suspect that this genre does not exist anymore, and that's a pity.  We've grown so literal, and we've lost the sense that allure is more a matter of imagination than gratification.   It makes us less romantic, less classy, and, I think, less fulfilled in the end. 

LightSquared - A New Scandal

A new scandal is brewing involving a company that received favoritism from the Obama Administration.   The company is LightSquared; it's in the wireless broadband industry, and its majority owner is Philip Falcone, a former hedge fund titan who's also a big Democratic Party donor.   The allegation is that someone at the White House leaked testimony from General William Shelton, head of the U.S. Space Command, to the company in advance of the General's Congressional testimony, where he was going to say that the LightSquared network could have a bad impact on the military's satellite communications.    The White House, it is allegged, also pressured Shelton to tone down his criticism.  Some other nuggets from this story at Pajamas Media:

• At one time President Obama was a personal investor, with $50,000 of his own money.
• FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee about the political patronage in the granting of fast-track waivers for the company. But Genachowski refused to appear.
• LightSquared employs an army of eight high-powered lobbying firms, including one headed by former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2011 alone, LightSquared spent $720,000 on lobbyists.
• iWatch, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, has conducted an exhaustive investigation of LightSquared and its high-level Obama connections.  They found that in addition to the president, Donald Gips — Obama’s former personnel chief — had $500,000 invested in LightSquared. Gips raised half a million dollars as a “bundler” for the president’s 2008 campaign, and now has the politically coveted position of U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
• iWatch also had harsh words for Genachowski. Genachowski also was one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $500,000 for Obama’s presidential run. Under his chairmanship, the FCC granted special rulings and waivers to allow LightSquared to operate.
• Falcone and his company also made major contributions while his case was pending before the commission. In September 2010, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja made a $30,400 contribution to the Democratic Party, the maximum donation allowable by law. Falcone twice gave the maximum allowable.
• iWatch traced LightSquared payments to contacts within the administration. On September 22 Ahuja met with James Kohlenberger, Obama’s chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology. A day later Ahuja gave $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. A week later, on September 30, Falcone and his wife reportedly each gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
• In two separate rulings, the FCC favorably approved LightSquared requests: on March 26, 2010, and on January 26, 2011. The rulings allowed the company to switch from a satellite company to a wireless system based on 400,000 towers. The tower system could interfere with many GPS signals.
• GPS proponents have been dismayed by the quick FCC rulings. “The whole process has been highly unusual,” said Dale Leibach, a spokesman for the industry group Coalition to Save Our GPS . “The FCC typically doesn’t act quickly on matters before them, and they acted with great haste and lightning speed” on LightSquared.

This stinks even more than Solyndra, if that's possible.  

Obama Administration Ignored Solyndra Warnings

That's the headline of an article today from the Associated Press (hardly a conservative outlet).   This story is metastasizing.   You know how I know?   Last night Jon Stewart ripped Obama about Solyndra.   It's getting out, and it's burning fast, like a Texas wildfire.  

Anyway, somewhat buried in the AP story is this nugget:
Here, the feds were selecting companies that the market had already decided were losers and pretending that, if Obama sprinkled his magic unicorn dust on them, they could somehow be transformed into winners.  

As Glenn Reynolds would say at Instapundit, we're in the very best of hands.  

A 2009 report by the Energy Department's inspector general warned that the DOE lacked the necessary quality control for the loan guarantee program, which was created in 2005 to support clean-energy projects that could not obtain conventional bank loans due to high risks.

Forget about the later warnings that the DoE ignored.   And forget even about about the 2009 inspector general's report and the lack of quality control.   The premise itself beginning in 2005 -- let's back companies that the market (the commercial banking industry) has already decided are not credit-worthy because their business plans are too risky -- is ridiculous.   It's one thing for the government to try to select winners to back financially with our money.   I think that's stupid too, and not what government ought to be doing, and not something that the government does well.   But at least you're starting off with a chance of picking a winner.

Birthday Today - Henry V

Henry V, King of England, was born today in 1386.   Henry V is, of course, best known for his great victory at Agincourt, lionized in Shakespeare's great trilogy of plays, Henry IV, Part One, Henry IV, Part Two, and Henry V.   The greatness of the plays, to me, is the interplay between Prince Hal (Henry IV) and his friend, the fat drunkard, Falstaff.   Falstaff is one of the great literary creations -- a liar, a drunkard, a thief, and yet a true friend and an embodiment of the comic energy, the joie de vivre, that makes life worth living. 

Anyway, here is the speech I read to the Regular Son in the middle of the night when he was just weeks old, stupidly thinking that hearing my voice would calm him down.   (It still doesn't work.)

Girls of the Day - 1940s Pin-Ups from Girlie Magazines

I don't know about you, but the fact that these relatively tame illustrations from 1940s "girlie" magazines passed for racy in the 1940s for men returning home from World War II tells me as much as anything how much we've fallen as a culture.   Here's one from Alberto Vargas:

Now, Edward Runci:

Finally, here's one from Earl Moran:

They're actually quite beautiful, I think.   But, man.... what a different world we live in.  

Black is White, Up is Down

We have been told for the past three years how brilliant Obama is.   How educated, how erudite!   Why, he went to Columbia, don't you know, and Harvard Law, and he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.   

Meanwhile, we've also been told that President George W. Bush was a dunce, a man who lacked curiosity.   Uncurious George, they called him.   He didn't read, he didn't think, he couldn't understand.  

But how does that square with the following picture from a liberal journalism professor, Walt Harrington, writing in The American Scholar?

  

He certainly enjoys reading and talking about books. And his friends know it. On his desk is a stack of books that have come as gifts: All Things Are Possible Through Prayer; Basho: The Complete Haiku; Children of Jihad; and Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. To the pile, I add my own gift, Cleopatra by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stacy Schiff. Right now, Bush is reading Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life, a biography of the first president. “Chernow’s a great historian,” Bush says excitedly. “I think one of the great history books I read was on Alexander Hamilton by Chernow. But I also read House of Morgan, Titan, and now I’m reading Washington.”

He mentions David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter, a book about the Korean War that he read before a visit last year to Korea, to give a speech to evangelicals. “I stand up in front of 65,000 Christians to give a speech in South Korea … ,” he says, “and I’m thinking about the bloody [battles] fought in the Korean War.” Halberstam’s book—coupled with earlier readings of David McCullough’s Truman and Robert Beisner’s Dean Acheson, a biography of Truman’s secretary of state presented to him by Bush’s own secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice—gave the event deeper resonance. The decisions of the unpopular President Harry S Truman, he realized, made it possible for a former U. S. president to speak before freely worshipping Koreans 60 years later. “So history, in this case, gave me a better understanding of the moment, and … put it all into context—the wonder of the moment.”

I tick off a partial list of people Bush has read books about in recent years in addition to Washington, Truman, and Acheson: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Huey Long, Lyndon Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Mellon, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ulysses S. Grant, John Quincy Adams, Genghis Khan.

“Genghis Khan?” I ask incredulously.

“I didn’t know much about him. I was fascinated by him. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by larger-than-life figures. That’s why I’m looking forward to reading Cleopatra. I know nothing about her. … But you can sit there and be absorbed by TV, let the news of the moment consume you. You can just do nothing. I choose to read as a form of relaxation. … Laura used to say, ‘Reading is taking a journey,’ and she’s right.”

Meanwhile, and please take this with a grain of salt, here's a description from an anonymous (and potentially fictitious) "White House insider" about Obama's reading habits:

So let’s look through the eyes of someone heading into Barack Obama’s upstairs office at the White House to give him a briefing.  Maybe it’s on national security.  Maybe the economy.  Energy policy. Whatever – doesn’t matter.  The scenario being played out these days is pretty much the same regardless of the particulars.  You knock on the door – it’s always closed.  Always.  Often you have to knock for some time before being given approval from inside to enter.  The big screen will be on – the volume loud.  You can easily hear it from outside the door.  The sports channels are the ones most commonly playing, though sometimes the channel will be set to music, or Fox News.  Sometimes Valerie Jarrett might be there, but most often it is just the president and his personal aide.  A large leather chair will be facing the television – it’s well worn.  Not part of the White House furnishings but something the president must have brought in from back home.  That’s where you’ll most often find the President of the United States – the most powerful man in the free fucking world.  He often sits with one leg draped over one of the chair’s arms and the other leg stuck straight onto the floor.  Shorts, sweats, a t-shirt, and like I said, no shoes or just those sandal things that so many of the younger people like to wear these days.  And that leg that’s draped over an arm of the chair will be bopping up and down, like…like someone with  a lot of nervous energy.  Like a kid does.  And there’s the smell of smoke hanging on the president.  The guy never quit smoking – that was all bullshit.  I told you that already.  In fact, there’s one of those smokeless ash trays on the desk in there.  And that desk, it’s a mess.  Magazines spread out all over it.  Stupid shit too.  Real low brow reading material the president is into.  People.  Rolling Stone.  Lots of those tabloid things.  The most common thread with this shit is it’s about the president.  If it’s about him, he’s gonna read it.  Good or bad – doesn’t matter.  If somebody is talking about him, he’s reading it.  He’s watching it.  Whatever.  The guy’s self-obsession is off the f**king charts.

Again, maybe this stuff isn't true.   Maybe "Ulsterman" at newsflavor.com is just making it all up.   But it rings true to me.  

Now, compare and contrast the two men.   Who exactly is the smart one and who is the dummy?

Can't Anyone at The WaPo Do Long Division?

Here's the lede paragraphs from a story in the Washington Post today:

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.

The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.

While I appreciate the attention -- post-Solyndra -- to the epic fail that is Obama's green energy boondoggle, this would be a much more telling analysis if the Post simply did a little long-division.   It's a $38 billion dollar program; they've given out roughly half of that amount in loan guarantees; that makes $19 billion in government funds.   They've created only 3,545 new jobs.   Let's do the math.   Hmmmm, $19,000,000,000 divided by 3,545.... that's $5,359,661 per job!    I think anyone would understand that to be an "epic fail" better if you put it in those terms.  

But consider:   even on its face, the original program, if it had done what Obama said it would do, would have spent $38.6 billion to "create" 65,000 jobs.   Thus, even if successful, the program would have spent $593,846 per job.  

Does that make sense on any level?   Would you start a bakery with start up costs of $3 million to employ you and four friends?   Of course not.

Simple arithmetic makes a lot of government "jobs" programs look very silly.   Too bad we don't seem to be able to apply simple arithmetic very often, at least not among our liberal elites, such as those at the Washington Post or, for that matter, at the White House.

Solyndra, Solyndra, Solyndra

Let's call this movie "Scenes from a Business Model Built to Fail":

In a July 13 letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations obtained by this newspaper, Harrison [Solyndra's CEO] wrote that he wanted to "ensure" that the subcommittee had "the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding Solyndra." Harrison then wrote: "Solyndra's revenues grew from $6 million in 2008 to $100 million in 2009 to $140 million in 2010. For 2011, revenues are projected to nearly double again."

Now wait a minute.   You had a total of $240 million in revenue from actual business sales in 2009 and 2010, years in which you borrowed $535 million from taxpayers?   Meanwhile, you had 1,100 employees.   There is literally no way any business could pay 1,100 employees salaries and benefits off revenues of $120 million a year, and still pay for its building, utilities, equipment, taxes, marketing, legal compliance costs, etc.   Can't be done.  So this is a business model that, on its face, isn't working.   It's a Potemkin Village of activity by employees, but not a profit-making enterprise.

Meanwhile:

One former employee, Mohammed Walahi, who began working as a process technician for Solyndra in 2005... lashed out at his former employer, saying Solyndra manufactured solar panels that often contained imperfections that had to be thrown away.

"At least $100,000 a day was thrown away," Walahi said. "If they are wasting $100,000 a day, how much is that a month or a year? Of course that's going to lead to bankruptcy."

Now, I'm no math major, but $100,000 a day for a year would be something on the order of $30 million right there in losses tied to quality control.    On only $120 million in sales.   That's extraordinarily bad for any manufacturing plant.   Again, this is a business model that isn't working.   How come no one seemed to notice?

This is a scandal on a lot of levels.   There's the direct corruption, where a company connected to Obama donors got special treatment.   There's the stench of good money thrown after bad in a "green technology" delusion that in turn flowed from the "global warming" delusion of our elites.  

But perhaps the most important and obvious lesson to be drawn from the scandal is simply how poorly the federal government does at "investing" our money.   The people doing the "investing" are, at the highest levels, professional politicians (Obama), not business people.   And yet we've created a "business model" for America, Inc. that permits politicians with no business experience to invest hundreds of billions of dollars using really just their own whimsical sense of what might be a "cool" investment.   So we get "green technology" start-ups with no viable business plan financed with our money.  

The real scandal is that we never learn.

The Slippery Slope to Perdition

Mark Steyn is all over this example of state-sanctioned infanticide in Canada:

From the Court of Queen’s Bench (the appellate court) in Alberta:

The Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman convicted of infanticide for killing her newborn son, was given a three-year suspended sentence Friday by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

Katrina Effert was 19 on April 13, 2005, when she secretly gave birth in her parents’ home, strangled the baby boy with her underwear and threw the body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard…

Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.

Indeed. As Judge Joanne Veit puts it:

“While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes… “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Gotcha. So a superior court judge in a relatively civilized jurisdiction is happy to extend the principles underlying legalized abortion in order to mitigate the killing of a legal person — that’s to say, someone who has managed to make it to the post-fetus stage. How long do those mitigating factors apply? I mean, “onerous demands”-wise, the first month of a newborn’s life is no picnic for the mother. How about six months in? The terrible twos?

And the twin tracks of our descent as a culture -- the corruption of language and the normalizing of barbarity -- continue apace.  

Thomas Sowell on the Virtue of Doing Nothing

Thomas Sowell gets this exactly right, but I fear he's a prophet who will be unheard and unheeded in his own time:

The grand myth that's been taught to whole generations is that the government is "forced" to intervene when there is a downturn that leaves millions of people suffering. The classic example is the Great Depression of the 1930s. What most people are unaware of is there was no Great Depression until after politicians started meddling in the economy.

There was a stock market crash in October 1929 and unemployment shot up to 9% — for one month. Then unemployment started drifting back down until it was 6.3% in June 1930, when the first major federal intervention took place. That was the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which more than a thousand economists across the country pleaded with Congress and President Hoover not to enact.

But then, as now, politicians decided they had to "do something." Within 6 months, unemployment hit double digits. Then, as now, when "doing something" made things worse, many felt the answer was to do something more.

Both President Hoover and President Roosevelt did more—and more, and more. Unemployment remained in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade....

What about the track record of doing nothing? For more than the first century and a half of this nation, that was essentially what the federal government did — nothing. None of the downturns in all that time ever lasted as long as the Great Depression. An economic downturn in 1920-21 sent unemployment up to 12%. President Warren Harding did nothing, except for cutting government spending. The economy quickly rebounded on its own.

The problem with doing nothing is simple... doing nothing does not provide employment to the millions of members of the governing class who meddle in our lives to make their own livings.    I'm not sure Tocqueville said this, but I know he would have understood it:   when the number of people in government employment reaches a certain critical mass, it becomes its own constituency, and the opportunity to restrain the size of government without upheaval is lost.   We're long since past the critical mass for the size of government in America.

Girl of the Day - Rosemary Clooney

Not a great beauty, of course, but holy cow, what a voice!   Smooth, smoky, sophisticated, mellow.... the perfect voice for singing jazz standards in the post-war night club (which was maybe the high point of American popular music as an art form, with the descent into rock and roll only a decade away... as an aside, man, do I sound like my Dad now).  

And I still love her in White Christmas: 

Quarterly Estimated Tax Day

Must.   Print.   Vouchers.   

Just another day when the burden of supporting our governing class in the lifestyle it's grown accustomed to becomes tangible.    There's some assistant to the administrator for human resources in the Department of Administrative Bureaucracy living large somewhere in a Maryland suburb of D.C. on my nickel.  

Comes the revolution....

Solyndra Update - Why Would a Democratic Congressman Not Want to Issue Subpoenas?

By now, everyone knows what really happened with Solyndra.   This is actually a simple story:  the government has hundreds of billions of dollars to spend in "stimulus."   Pigs will inevitably line up at that trough, and some of those pigs are dirty.   Solyndra was a dirty pig, a Potemkin village of a company that had a big new  building and lots of employees but not very many sales of its solar power technology.   Essentially they defrauded the U.S. of more than half a billion.   But, of course, you can't cheat an honest man.   The Obama administration needed Solyndra too, as a photo-op for the President's "green jobs" mantra.   So you had a flim-flam man on one side, and a pie-in-the-sky lottery-ticket-buying President on the other.    What could go wrong?

So why exactly would Congressman Ed Markey (D - Mass.) not want to issue subpoenas to investigate this mess?  

****

Here's an equation for you:  

Solyndra + Gunwalker + Low Approval Polls = Evan Bayh

Can You Hear the Whispering?

Prediction from the Regular Guy.   Start listening for the name "Evan Bayh."   Bayh, a two-term governor and a two-term Senator from Indiana, is the exact kind of centrist, business-oriented Democrat that could pull the Dems chestnuts out of the fire.   He "retired" from the Senate in 2011, but he had a $13 million campaign war chest, and he had formed exploratory committees in 2008 (before bailing because he expected Hillary Clinton to win).   He was also floated as Obama's VP, so he was vetted, and he might also have a chip on his shoulder because Obama picked Biden over him (undoubtedly because only Biden could make Obama look like a Sun King... Bayh would have been too obviously a smarter and stronger figure).

If we are really at a "tipping point" for Obama -- and I think we are -- the Democratic Party powers-that-are aren't going to let the party self-immolate without a fight.

File This Under "If Obama's Lost X, He's A Goner" - Part IX

OK, so liberal columnists and activists and voters might bail on Obama.   But would Senate Democrats who would be necessary to pass Obama's jobs bill really bail on him too?

You bet they would:

“Terrible,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) told POLITICO when asked about the president’s ideas for how to pay for the $450 billion price tag. “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. … There are other ways to get there.”

“That offset is not going to fly, and he should know that,” said Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu from the energy-producing Louisiana, referring to Obama’s elimination of oil and gas subsidies. “Maybe it’s just for his election, which I hope isn’t the case.”

“I think the best jobs bill that can be passed is a comprehensive long-term deficit-reduction plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), discussing proposals to slash the debt by $4 trillion by overhauling entitlement programs and raising revenue through tax reforms. “That’s better than everything else the president is talking about — combined.”

How can Obama's plan to run against a "do-nothing" Republican Congress work if the Senate, which is in Democratic hands, doesn't want to do what he wants them to do either?

Paul Ryan May Not Be Running for President...

But he's the de facto leader of the Republican Party.   And here's why:



He's real, he's persuasive, he comes across as a nice guy, and he's really, really smart.   He needs to be the face of the Republican Party going forward (along with Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal).  

Birthday Today - Hal Wallis

Hal Wallis, born in 1898, was one of Hollywood's greatest producers, with his best films being films about American heros and tough guys.   His films included Sergeant York, The Maltese Falcon, They Died with Their Boots On, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and True Grit.   Here's a great scene from one of my all-time favorites, Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper:

Still More on Solyndra

This timeline is damning:

March 2010 : PricewaterhouseCoopers issues a report that raises serious doubts about Solyndra's future. From the audit: “The Company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

May 2010 : President Obama visits Solyndra, touting the company as a symbol of progress to cheers from workers and California leaders. “The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” he said.

So the White House -- which, believe you me, vetts every speech and every appearance by the President (and, really, any President), knew that there was this PWC report out there questioning the viability of Solyndra.   But the President went there anyway.

What did Obama know?   When did he know it?

***

Also, according to Politico, "one OMB reviewer pointed out that a credit-rating agency predicted that the project would run out of cash in September 2011."

As a blogger on Ace of Spades notes today, "it sounds an awful lot like the risks were known. Did the Obama White House disagree with the risk assessment or just not care?"

What did Obama know?   When did he know it?   Ask the damn question!

File This Under "If Obama's Lost X, He's A Goner" - Part VIII

If Obama's lost the New York Jewish vote, he's really a goner.   Here (finally) is CNN's reporting on last night's Republican victory in NY-9 in the race to replace Anthony Weiner:

In a huge upset that few would have predicted just months ago, a Republican won a special election in a heavily Democratic district in New York for the seat of former Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Republican Bob Turner won the special election Tuesday in 9th Congressional District, defeating Democrat David Weprin after a heated, summer-long race that ignited Democratic fears of a quiet election morphing into a referendum on the party and President Barack Obama, ahead of next year's elections.

"We've asked the people of this district to send a message to Washington, and I hope they hear it loud and clear," Turner said at his election party in Queens with a packed room, many of them Orthodox Jews.

"Mr. President, you are on the wrong track."

Turner took 54% of the vote to Weprin's 46%, with 100% of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results from Valerie Vazquez, communications director for the New York City Board of Elections.

At his victory party, Turner stood on a stage with Israeli and American flags behind him -- a reminder of one of the central issues in the race: U.S. policies toward Israel.

"We lit one candle today, and there's going to be a bonfire pretty soon," Turner said in his victory speech, just after midnight.

The district, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens, is one of the strongest Jewish districts in the nation.

On Ace of Spades a couple of days ago I called this the first "preference cascade" election, where it would become obvious that the electorate has concluded that Emperor Obama has no clothes.  I was right.   Now, Obama won't lose New York, no way, no chance.   Too Democratic, too liberal.   But if he loses Jews nationwide he could lose some otherwise close states, including, most importantly, Florida.   And, if Rick Perry is nominated and chooses Marco Rubio as his running mate (a dream ticket for many on the right), the Hispanic vote could be up for grabs too.   This is getting way ahead of myself, but this could be, more than a preference cascade, a preference "avalanche," or even a preference "tsunami."

I also predicted that the margin of victory would be greater than the last polls showed.   I was right there too.   The last poll on NY-9 had Turner up 50-44; he actually won by 54-46.    The last poll on NV-2 had Republican Mark Amodei up 50-37; he won by 58-36.   The late breakers were all for the Republicans.  

Preference Tsunami:  Catch the Wave!

Solyndra Update - What Did He Know? When Did He Know It?

UPDATE:  Bumped to the top.   Apparently two Solyndra executives who were scheduled to testify today are begging off.   Their explanation?

In a statement, Solyndra cited “legal complexities arising from last week’s activities and the urgency of the bankruptcy proceedings,” as the reason for the postponement.

Hmmmm.... "legal complexities."   Sounds like they want more time to get their stories straight.   If I were the Congressional investigator, I'd want to know who they or their lawyers spoke to in the interim.   Anyone from the Obama Administration?  

In other words, are we watching obstruction of justice happening in real time?

***

The Solyndra scandal continues to metastasize.   Today there's this report that newly uncovered emails show the White House closely monitored the Energy Department's deliberations over a $535 million government loan to Solyndra, the solar energy firm that recently went bankrupt and is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Well, of course.   George Kaiser, a major bundler for Obama's campaign, was also a major stakeholder in Solyndra.   Naturally the White House wanted to make sure that no one down the food chain in government -- some lifer at the DoE -- would screw the pooch for a big donor.   That's the Chicago Way, after all.

Now, when will someone from the White House press corps ask the $535 million questions:  What did Obama know and when did he know it?

All the News That's Fit?

So I was checking in on CNN last night to see what they had to say about what, to me, were the two big stories from yesterday:  Congress' investigation into the Solyndra scandal; and the likely Republican victory in the special election in NY-9 to fill Anthony Weiner's vacated seat.   Weird, then, that at 8:15 PM CST, fifteen minutes after the polls closed in New York, there was literally nothing on CNN about the NY-9 election, and nothing about the Solyndra hearings.   Weird.   They had a story about American hitchhikers in Iran being freed, and about the new movie Contagion.   Weird that they seemed to be hiding the hard news.

Or, maybe not so weird.   I mean, it doesn't help Obama, does it, so it can't be news.