It’s Thursday, May 24th, 2012….and before we begin, a quick note of appreciation to Team Tick-Tock on behalf of the man who made the only triumph of The Obamao’s first term possible:
Pakistan hands 33-year sentence to doctor who helped CIA track bin Laden
Forget the feigned indignation over Dr. Afridi’s conviction; inquiring minds want to know exactly how Pakistani authorities learned of his involvement in the first place, let alone how American journalists were allowed to publicize his involvement.
With friends like Team Tick-Tock, who needs enemies….not to mention who’s going to stick their neck out for us in the future?!?
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, courtesy of Speed Mach, ABC News‘ Matt Negrin offers this incredibly slanted requiem for his Missiah:
In Memoriam: The Old Obama, Who Wanted to Bring People Together
The 2004 version of Barack Obama, who captured the nation with a dazzling speech about unity and went on to win the presidency on a message of hope, died on Monday. He was 8 years old. The cause of death appeared to be a bitter realization that he needed to win reelection in an increasingly partisan political environment, a cancer that he had been battling for months if not years.
Obama’s illness got the best of him late Monday, as he announced that his campaign for four more years in the White House would be based not on optimism, but rather the shady corporate record of his opponent, Mitt Romney, who ran a private-equity firm that few Americans knew about before this year.
Note that even while recognizing his Anointed One’s false divinity, Negrin cannot help but blame The Obamao’s faults on others, i.e., “an increasingly partisan political environment” (created almost exclusively by Barry’s incredibly partisan political agenda) and inaccurately noting the “shady corporate record of his opponent”, which hasn’t prevented The Dear Misleader from accepting millions in campaign contributions from equally “shady” individuals.
Here’s the juice: a significant portion of the Left, along with a sizable segment of the Dims’ shills in the MSM, are just now coming to the realization they have sacrificed their reputations and credibility in the service of a fraud. And since recognizing you have a problem is the first step to a cure, it’s only natural admitting they allowed themselves to be scammed will take a little more time.
In a related item, Jason Riley, writing in Political Diary, diagnoses….
Obama’s Southern Discomfort
Don’t say nuthin’, jus’ do it!
Vice President Joe Biden said that it was understandable why an imprisoned felon got 40% of the vote in the West Virginia Democratic primary two weeks ago. People are “frustrated” and “angry,” he said. And apparently, West Virginians aren’t alone.
The Republican primaries held Tuesday in Arkansas and Kentucky were won handily by Mitt Romney, as expected. But they were less significant because he’s the presumed GOP presidential nominee and can’t seal the nomination until the Texas primary on May 29. Yesterday’s results will have no bearing on whether the president will be his party’s nominee, either, but they do reveal how unpopular Mr. Obama remains in the South.
In Kentucky, where the president didn’t even have an opponent, he won just 58% of primary voters; 42% voted for “uncommitted.” In Arkansas, Mr. Obama also won 58% of the vote, while 42% went to John Wolfe, an attorney from Tennessee who wants to repeal ObamaCare. This was a low turnout election, and the president is not expected to compete in either state (or West Virginia) in November, but that doesn’t mean that Team Obama can dismiss Tuesday’s outcomes.
“Although the results haven’t stopped Obama’s march to renomination,” reports the Washington Post, “they remain an indicator of not-insignificant pockets of unrest within his party.” The president’s defenders say his poor performance can be explained by the fact that white Southerners are reluctant to vote for a black candidate. But former Congressman Charles Stenholm, a Democrat from Texas, told the paper that the president’s main problem in the region is his ideology, not his race. “The most significant factor is the perception/reality that the Obama administration has leaned toward the ultra-left viewpoint on almost all issues,” he said.
That….and the fact, like most Americans possessing even a modicum of common sense, Southerners know The Obamao’s ultimate goal is to use their hard-earned money to buy votes while they bend over and….
….all the way to Socialism’s ultimate destination: shared misery.
Which brings us to our next item, a capitalist primer of sorts, courtesy of Paul Rubin writing in the WSJ:
A Tutorial for the President on ‘Profit Maximization’
Profits provide the incentive for firms to do what consumers want.
In justifying his attacks on Bain Capital, President Obama argues that “profit maximization” might be an appropriate goal for a private-equity firm, but not for more general public policy. This argument ignores one of the most basic premises of economics.
We economists assume that firms always maximize profits, and that profit maximization by firms (all firms, not just private-equity ones) is a very good thing.But this is not because profits are in themselves good. Rather, profit maximization is good because it leads directly to maximum benefits for consumers. Profits provide the incentive for firms to do what consumers want.
Consider what contributes to profit maximization. In simple terms, profit maximization means producing the products earning the highest returns, and producing these products at the lowest possible cost. Both are socially useful behaviors that benefit consumers.
Which products produce the highest returns? The answer is the products that consumers want and are currently underproduced. If there are excess returns (profits) to be earned in some market, that is because consumers are willing to pay more for those products than the current cost of production. (The opposite result, we might add, of Big Government.)
Profits are earned by producing more of these products—that is, by satisfying unmet consumer demands. Profit maximization means doing the best job of satisfying these unmet demands, and so providing benefits to consumers. If the unmet demand is for a currently nonexistent product that consumers will value when it is produced (Facebook, the iPhone, Google search), then of course even more profits can be earned.
A firm such as Bain that is involved in investing capital can only make money if it succeeds in satisfying consumer demands. Of course, its goal in deciding where to invest is to maximize returns for its investors, but that is a detail. It will only succeed in this goal if it does a good job of identifying and satisfying consumer demands for products.
The second trick to maximizing profits is to reduce costs as much as possible.(You know….like The Obamao closing hundreds of auto dealerships during his takeover of GM and Chrysler.) This may involve eliminating some unneeded resources, which may translate into unemployment in the short run. It may involve recombining resources into more productive configurations, or restructuring governance of the firm.
The immediate purpose of reducing costs is to increase the profits of investors, but the ultimate result is to benefit consumers. In the textbook ideal of a purely competitive economy, cost reductions will immediately translate into lower prices for consumers. But in any market structure—competition, monopoly or oligopoly—profit-maximizing behavior translates reduced costs into reduced prices for consumers.
Consider the converse: What if a business does not maximize profits? Then it is either not making the products that consumers want the most, or it is not producing its products at the lowest cost.(Not to mention out of business, at least in the case of any entity outside of government.) In either case, consumers are harmed. Any argument against “profit maximization” is an argument against consumer welfare.
Maximizing consumer welfare is the ultimate justification for an economy. Consumers are of course also workers and voters. Contrary to President Obama’s claim, skill at profit maximization does translate directly into skill at governing the economy. Failure to understand this simplest and most basic point is probably itself enough to disqualify someone from the presidency when economic issues are paramount.
Obama’s Permanent Emergency
How to disguise a spending binge.
“Obama Spending Binge Never Happened,” announces the headline of a column by MarketWatch.com’s Rex Nutting, which the president’s supporters have received gratefully and eagerly. The Hill reports Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, has favorably cited the column, which claims: “Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an ‘inferno’ of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. . . . But it didn’t happen.” (MarketWatch, like this website, is part of Dow Jones & Co.)
Nutting’s contention that the Obama years have not seen “a massive increase in federal spending” is literally accurate, at least if one construes “massive” in relative terms. He produces a bar graph that shows during fiscal 2006-09, which roughly corresponds to George W. Bush’s second term, spending grew at an average annual rate of 8.7%. During 2010-13, the rate of increase is projected at just 1.4%.
“The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress,” notes Nutting. The most obvious objection is addressed in his chart, which “reassigns” to Obama “about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children’s health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009.”
The less obvious but more pertinent objection is hinted at in this paraphrase of Obama’s I-inherited-this-mess mantra: “Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.”
That would be the Troubled Asset Relief Program, enacted in October 2008. It accounted for much of the enormous spending increase (to $3.52 trillion from $2.98 trillion, or 17.9%) in fiscal 2009. Thereafter the rate of change was much smaller: Spending fell 1.8% in 2010, rose 4.3% in 2011, and is expected to rise 0.7% in 2012 and fall 1.3% in 2013.
But TARP was a one-off, a temporary response to an emergency. By itself, it would have caused a bump in spending–that is, a sharp increase in 2009, followed by a sharp decrease in 2010. As James Pethokoukis notes, “Obama chose not to reverse that elevated level of spending; thus he, along with congressional Democrats, [is] responsible for it.” Obama spends as if the 2008 emergency were permanent.
Or, to put it another way, he’s like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded and proceeds to give up run after run.
Or, as the always-acerbic Ann Coulter puts it….
Figures Don’t Lie: Democrats Do
It’s been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: “Federal spending under Obama at historic lows … It’s clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we’ve had in 60 years.”There’s even a chart!
I’ll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on …
This shocker led to around-the-clock smirk fests on MSNBC. As with all bogus social science from the left, liberals hide the numbers and proclaim: It’s “science”! This is black and white, inarguable, and why do Republicans refuse to believe facts?
Ed Schultz claimed the chart exposed “the big myth” about Obama’s spending: “This chart — the truth — very clearly shows the truth undoubtedly.” And the truth was, the “growth in spending under President Obama is the slowest out of the last five presidents.” Note that Schultz also said that the “part of the chart representing President Obama’s term includes a stimulus package, too.” As we shall see, that is a big, fat lie.
Schultz’s guest, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston confirmed: “And clearly, Obama has been incredibly tight-fisted as a president.” Everybody’s keyboard OK?
On her show, Rachel Maddow proclaimed: “Factually speaking, spending has leveled off under President Obama. Spending is not skyrocketing under President Obama. Spending is flattening out under President Obama.” In response, three writers from “The Daily Show” said, “We’ll never top that line,” and quit.
Inasmuch as this is obviously preposterous, I checked with John Lott, one of the nation’s premier economists and author of the magnificent new book with Grover Norquist: Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. (I’m reviewing it soon, but you should start without me.)
It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama’s entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush. That’s not a joke.That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in … Bush’s column. (And if we attribute all of Bush’s spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn’t spend much either.)
Nutting’s “analysis” is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama’s spending. And he’s testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama “is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill.”
Nutting acts as if it’s the height of magnanimity to “attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush …” On what possible theory would that be Bush’s spending? Hey — we just found out that Obamacare’s going to cost triple the estimate. Let’s blame it on Calvin Coolidge!
Nutting’s “and not to Bush” line is just a sleight of hand. He’s hoping you won’t notice that he said “$140 billion” and not “$825 billion,” and will be fooled into thinking that he’s counting the entire stimulus bill as Obama’s spending. (He fooled Ed Schultz!)
The theory is that a new president is stuck with the budget of his predecessor, so the entire 2009 fiscal year should be attributed to Bush.
But Obama didn’t come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush. This included a $410 billion spending bill that Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009. Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch’s Nutting says that’s Bush’s spending.
Obama also spent the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). These were discretionary funds meant to prevent a market meltdown after Lehman Brothers collapsed. By the end of 2008, it was clear the panic had passed, and Bush announced that he wouldn’t need to spend the second half of the TARP money.
But on Jan. 12, 2009, Obama asked Bush to release the remaining TARP funds for Obama to spend as soon as he took office. By Oct. 1, Obama had spent another $200 billion in TARP money. That, too, gets credited to Bush, according to the creative accounting of Rex Nutting.
There are other spending bills that Obama signed in the first quarter of his presidency, bills that would be considered massive under any other president — such as the $40 billion child health care bill, which extended coverage to immigrants as well as millions of additional Americans. These, too, are called Bush’s spending.
Frustrated that he can’t shift all of Obama’s spending to Bush, Nutting also lowballs the spending estimates during the later Obama years. For example, although he claims to be using the White House’s numbers, the White House’s estimate for 2012 spending is $3.795 trillion.Nutting helpfully knocks that down to $3.63 trillion. (Hey, what’s $130 billion between ideological soulmates?!?)
But all those errors pale in comparison to Nutting’s counting Obama’s nine-month spending binge as Bush’s spending. If liberals will attribute Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus bill to Bush, what won’t they do?
Nothing….absoLUTEly nothing!
Or, to put it another way:
And in the Environmental Moment, courtesy of Bill Meisen and the educated idiots on the LA City Council….
Ban on plastic bags at L.A. markets is approved
Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation Wednesday to approve a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a major victory to clean-water advocates who sought to reduce the amount of trash clogging landfills, the region’s waterways and the ocean. Egged on by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and an array of environmental groups, the City Council voted 13 to 1 to phase out plastic bags over the next 12 months at an estimated 7,500 stores. Councilman Bernard Parks cast the lone no vote.
“Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, who has focused on efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River. Council members quietly backed away from a more controversial plan to also ban use of paper grocery bags, which was first proposed by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Wednesday’s vote kicks off a four-month environmental review of the bag ban, followed by passage of an ordinance putting it into effect. Larger stores would then have six months to phase out plastic bags and smaller markets a 12-month phase-out period. For paper bags, retailers would be required to charge 10 cents per bag starting one year after the plastic bag is enacted.
Councilman Paul Koretz, who pushed for the ban, said city officials would conduct a study in two years to determine whether the prohibition should be expanded to include paper. “My hope is that so few paper bags will be used as a result of this measure that the formal ban … on paper bags may not even be necessary,” he said.
The plan drew strong praise from environmental activists, who had long argued that L.A. needed to follow in the footsteps of San Jose, San Francisco and Long Beach and dozens of other municipalities. “Plastic harms our environment. It is a threat to the coastal economy. It is a danger to marine life and it is an unconscionable burden to taxpayers who have to foot the bill for cleanups year after year,” said attorney H. David Nahai, a former top executive at the Department of Water and Power. (Now THERE’S an authority!)
Employees of plastic bag manufacturers, wearing T-shirts reading “Don’t Kill My Job,” pleaded unsuccessfully for council members to change course, saying they feared they would soon be unemployed. “My family depends on my job and my benefits, too,” said Alejandro Ortega, a 10-year employee of manufacturer Crown Poly.
Environmentalists had tried unsuccessfully for four years to get the plastic bag ban through the council. But the proposal languished in a committee that handled environmental matters. In the meantime, dozens of other cities and counties up and down the state adopted similar bans.
Villaraigosa’s appointees on the five-member Board of Public Works voted last year to embrace a ban on all single-use bags, saying that paper bags lead to deforestation. But some environmentalists said they were not troubled by the council’s decision to back away from the paper bag ban.
Los Angeles County’s 10-cent fee on paper bags has led to a 94% reduction in the use of those bags, said Jennie R. Romer, the founder of www.plasticbaglaws.org. “There are times every once in a while when there is a need for a paper bag, so having that option is great,” said Romer, who has advised cities throughout California on bag laws.
Gee….logic was never our strong suit, but could it be the reduction in the use of paper bags was only effective while plastic was an option?!? And who’s going to foot the bills when LA has to shell out millions as a result of the inevitable lawsuits the first time….
Reusable grocery bags traced to norovirus infection outbreak
On the Lighter Side….
Next up, James Taranto
A Piece of the Pie
Springwise.com reports on one of the worst marketing ideas we’ve ever heard of:
Teaming up with the Food Bank Foundation, the [ONIRIA/TBWA advertising] agency persuaded the “two most important pizzerias in Asuncion [Paraguay’s capital]” to accept delivery requests from customers, advising them that the food would arrive within 45 minutes. Feigning bad service, all the pizzas were delivered much later than this specified time frame, prompting angry calls from those who had placed an order.However, when the food finally arrived, each box came with a note explaining: “When you’re hungry, you understand hunger.” Couriers then told each customer that the pizza was free of charge, but any money they did give would be donated to the Food Bank Foundation to help those for whom hunger is a genuine fear, rather than an irritation. The idea behind the concept was to help those who can afford takeaway food to put their complaint into perspective.
So the pizzeria failed to deliver what it promised and was more interested in making its customers feel guilty about their success. Is this a true story or a parable about the Obama administration?
Finally, we’ll call it a day with another sign the apocalypse is upon us, courtesy of our alma mater:
Notice the third couple from the left; no….it’s not a joke. And not only is John Paul Jones rolling over in his crypt, but the U.S. Naval Academy’s seen the last of our hard-earned cash….not to mention 11th Company alumnus must be so proud.
This is a sad day for the Academy, the Navy and the nation.
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