Why Not The Worst?

With Senator Spector jumping to the Democratic brand, we will have the legislative and executive branch firmly in the hands of the Democrats.  Unless, the Democratic leadership cannot trust it’s rank and file, the trillion dollar agenda that will beggar our grandchildren can not proceed unobstructed.  Won’t even be a need for the charade of “reconciliation” to push this agenda through.  And, most of all, Obama can shed the pretense that he is president and revert to this true calling as prime minister (or secretary general).  

Have it all!  Canadian-style single payer health care.  Cap and trade.  And, the next time Obama meets the king of Saudi Arabia, he needs not stop at a bow; go on, go all the way, the royal crotch was only another six inches away.  Chavez, Castro, Kim, Ahmadinejad, your reservation at the Lincoln Bedrooms awaits.

Spread the wealth?  Spread away.  Why stop at 90% AIG-style tax rates?  If you making $250K per year, you’re rich enough.  Everything above that belongs to the feds (and by extension ACORN).

And, we can all be greener than Kermit.  The folks out in Pennsylvania will now really have a reason to be bitter when our carbon-free future throws them all out into the unemployment line when their coal mines are shut down.  All they will have, then, is their guns and religion to cling to.

Torture “truth” commissions?  Why stop there?  Call up Robespierre and the Committee for Public Safety.  Why stop with some DOJ lawyers who nobody can remember?  How about Rove?  Heck, why not Cheney or even W?

Hyperbole?  Hopefully no, but stripping away some of the sarcasm, everything in this post has happened.  Obama did bow to a king.  Obama talked about more than cap and trade.  He talked about bankrupting new coal fired generation plants.  He talked about checking your tire pressure as an alternative to drilling for more oil.Pelosi is pushing for a “truth” commission.  

Ninty percent tax rate?  Such a thing existed from the 1930’s until the 1960’s.  The top marginal rate then remained at 70 percent until the Reagan tax cut of 1981.  The Obama, Reid, Pelosi trioka are just testing the waters.  They’re getting us used to the word “trillion.”  And, to banana republic economics; the ones that issue paper money that has the feel of Monopoly money.  First it was taxing away the AIG bonuses.  Again testing the waters to see if we’re ready for settling for the mediocracy of “free” health care in exchange for having everything over $250,000 taxed away since that’s rich enough.

But, there is a silver lining to all of this.  Now, Obama and the Democrats will be in complete, and I mean complete, ownership of this mess.  The high taxes, prolonged recession (?depression) and the hyperinflation.

 

 

Pelosi Motors, Inc. II

Here we wait, with baited breath, as to whether the Detroit auto makers will be bailed out or will have to file chapter 11.  If GM has any sense, it’ll take chapter 11.  Because if it doesn’t, it will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party.  

As things stand now, GM (I use GM as shorthand for GM, and Chrysler) is a welfare agency funded by the manufacture of expensive luxury cars, large SUV’s and trucks.  And, as a bone to be tossed to the environmentalists, also manufactures small cars at a loss.  It provides lavish health care benefits and pensions for a retired workforce that outnumbers the number of UAW workers actually on the production line.  Through the “job bank” it runs a de facto unemployment agency.  Essentially, GM runs a social security agency, a medicare agency and unemployment agency.  Car manufacturing is just a side line activity.

The whole shell game worked as long as there was cheap gas.  But, the environmentalists over-reached, when their nirvana of four-plus dollar gasoline hit last summer.  Then the whole game of selling large cars to subsidize small cars and a welfare agency fell apart when the environmental wing of the Democratic party decided, in the name of global warming, to declare a jihad on the internal combustion engine.

And, “bankruptcy is not an option” Pelosi is trying to have her cake and eat it.  She wants to prop up GM Welfare, Inc. as payback to Big Labor.  And, she wants to appease the green crowd with “fuel efficient” cars.  What this bailout will do, especially with a “car czar” in Obama’s administration will result in is subsidization of UAW membership, working and retired, and diktats for econoboxes that you’re going to have to give away.  The Trabant comes to America!  Maybe each should have a bust of Nancy as a hood ornament.  We could augment the Pelosi car lineup with the Lada and the Skoda.  Back in 1992, I drove around in a Skoda in Iceland; it had a manual choke.  Manual choke, like the one on your lawn mower.  Never saw one in a car?  I thought so.

And, all the assumptions that drive the green agenda are suspect to say the least.  Global warming is in the process of being debunked.  And, Dr. Chu, our new Energy Secretary, doesn’t impress even waving his gold bauble he got in Stockholm.  Also, with economic growth, jobs and a recession, possibly a depression, this green agenda is going to be a real loser at the polls come 2010.  

It’s not that GM makes bad cars.  They make good trucks, SUV’s and large cars.  These big cars are more comfortable, have greater utility and are safer.  You’re going to make ten trips in a smart car if you’re going to get enough groceries home to feed your family; I’ll pass on that fuel economy.  While you may use said car as a single passenger for a good deal of the time; there comes many a time when you indeed need the extra space for, say, the hockey team and their attendant massive duffles of equipment.  And, yes, I know.  Your not supposed to have a family because of each child’s massive carbon footprint.  ”Enlightened” Americans realize that abortion is so much more environmentally sensitive.  

Big cars are safer, because mass is greater structural rigidity.  You can put all the airbags in you want; add one hundred pounds of structural steel and it’s just safer.

And, given a choice most people prefer them to any tin bucket with pie-pan wheels. Start with Obama; he’s got an SUV for his family.  His new presidential limo is based on a Chevy 2500 chassis.  Also, watch, all of his Hollywood celebrity friends pulling up for the inauguration in their 10 mph limos (after arriving in their private jets).  You’ll see the typical elitist conceit that all of this “sacrifice” and “save the earth claptrap” is for other, lesser people.

Over in Europe, manufactures such as BMW and Mercedes Benz make very substantial cars for rich customer who can afford and otherwise don’t care about $9 per gallon gas.  Somehow, when given a choice, this claptrap of global warming, carbon footprints seem to go down the drain.

Any bankruptcy court will immediately see the value of GM and its American counterparts.  All three of these American manufacturers make light trucks and SUV’s that are very much desired.  Stripped of its money-losing domestic small car operations all three of these companies can make motor vehicles that will attract customers.  Also, there will still be a vast market for spare parts and service.

If Pelosi has any smarts, she’d best dump her green crowd since $4 per gallon gas is going to lose more elections than win them.  She’d also be well served to abolish CAFE standards and drill, drill, drill. 

Blagojevich and Chu

Blagojevich and Chu.  An unlikely pair, but the bookends that will define the Obama presidency.  For a while, I was impressed with some of Obama’s appointments.  Though unwilling, I was actually impressed that Obama may actually rule from the standpoint of a center-left coalition; that governing stance being forced by circumstances.  I very much believe, had the Democrats managed to rack up 60 senators, that Obama would have gone wild with his fondest left-left wet dreams.  

But, Obama’s real affiliations, proclivities and associations keep coming back; like Banquo’s ghost.  And, so we have the two sides of the true Obama represented in Blagojevich and Chu.  In the former, we have Obama, the loyal Chicago machine hack.  And, in the latter, we have the utterly disconnected academic; governance by midnight dorm room bull session. 

Blagojevich will define the seamy and corrupt side of Obama.  Obama isn’t clean; just cleaner than the average Chicago politician.  He has been a faithful foot soldier; and has been rewarded for that faithfulness.  He started as a ward heeler; er, community organizer.  His big test was the distribution of tens of millions of graft as a co-chair (the other was Bill Ayers) of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  And, spread graft he did with not an iota of academic improvement.  Perfect for Chicago.  Get money to your friends but don’t solve a problem that might risk having dependent constituencies actually having the means to improve themselves.

He then moved to the Illinois State House.  And, courtesy king making from the president of the Illinois State Senate, Emil Jones, Obama was elevated to the US Senate.  All along, Obama has toed the line.  Toed the line in supporting Blagojevich for election in 2002, then again in 2006.  And, when corruption shook the Cook County Board, a word from Obama might have been instrumental in electing a reform candidate to Cook County President.  But, Obama held firm in supporting machine candidate, Todd Stroger.

And, so, like Paul Henreid, Obama is shocked, shocked to discover his Senate seat up for sale to the highest bidder.  But, don’t be shocked, scocked to see scandal after scandal rising up from his past in the fevered swamps of Chicago politics.

Now we get to the other bookend.  Dr. Chu just appointed as the Secretary of Energy.  (And, by the way, just why do we have a department of pumping gas?  Can’t the Department of the Interior handle that?  All you have to do is hand out drilling leases.  There, problem solved and it didn’t even require me to fly to Stockholm to get a gold medal.) He’s got accomplishments, smart, a real multi-cultural Camelot best-and-brightest.  

But.  But, what does he know about our aging nuclear arsenal.  What’s he willing to do to maintain it, upgrade it and test it to see if it remains functional?  What’s he going to do to maintain our disappearing nuclear weapon infrastructure?  Freedom in the world rests on the America’s military and the cornerstone of our military is our nuclear arsenal.  This  is a guy who’s going to lecture us on preferring to spend $1000 on a granite kitchen counter top than on improving our home’s energy efficiency.  This is a guy who protested global warming by  climbing up a tree at the University of California at Berkeley for Vanity Fair Magazine .   Iran can give up it’s nuclear program because ours is going to rust away into complete non-functionality.

While this guy is brilliant in the laboratory, what experience does he have in taking these lab findings off the lab bench and out into the world.  Because, if he’s so set on freeing us from burning hydrocarbons, he going to have to do more than pose in a tree for a magazine.  

Because, making policy and issuing “environmentally friendly” diktats from Washington are going to run head long into the real world of economics and thermodynamics.  Realities that solar panels and wind power will not begin to address energy needs that hydrocarbons and nuclear power now handle so well.  Realities like $4 gasoline really matters to a lot of people who don’t have a six-figure sinecure in the California University system.  Realities that global warming is simply a humbug.  

Realities that we’ve had steam cars and electric cars from the day the horseless carriage came forth.  Railroad locomotives, for the last half century are powered by a diesel engine powering an electrical generator that then powers motors that make the locomotive move–a diesel Prius without batteries that runs on tracks.  There’s nothing new under the sun; it just a lot of engineers just as smart as Chu have already worked through all of these ideas.  Burning a cheap, plentiful commodity, oil, is the best way to get around.  

Back in the cold snows of Iowa, Obama commiserated over the cost of arugula at Whole Foods.  Now, we have a whole cabinet socked full the arugula-at-Whole-Foods crowd.  And, some of them, especially from Chicago, fund their arugula cravings by selling Senate seats.