When you lose MSNBC...

Click here for reaction to the President's address to the nation last night.

Chrissy "Tingles" Matthews: "I don't sense executive command".

Take heart, Chrissy, he is going to appoint yet another czar to oversee clean-up operations which will further muddy the chain of command there in the Gulf.

But we're puzzled by why Matthews seems perplexed. Exactly, who was it that he thought he was voting for? Someone with executive experience?

This is the sort of crap that gets us seriously thinking that someone like General Petraeus would possess the proper timber for the toughest job on the planet. We know nothing of the man's politics and quite frankly, at this point, we don't care.

Which got us to thinking, right now: what if someone ran on the platform of promising to do absolutely nothing for, maybe, their first year in office.

Think about it. 2013: a legislation-free jubilee!

A football stadium would look pretty good there, as well

Flying under the radar a bit here locally was a Proposition on the Chula Vista (South Bay) city ballot that would've banned that city from requiring union-only deals on municipal construction projects. Though the unions spent heavily against the proposition, it passed handily, 56 to 43 percent.

The citizens of Chula Vista remember well the Gaylord Industries debacle of just a couple of years ago, where Chula Vista's long-dormant waterfront was denied a face lift via a hotel and retail complex because the unions demanded 100% union representation on the construction project. Gaylord, as the developer, realized this would create an unsustainable cost burden upon them and attempted to negotiate.

The unions dug in their heels and refused to listen to anything other than an all or all deal. In three-way negotiations involving also the city, Gaylord finally washed their hands of the deal and the bay front acreage in Chula Vista still lies dormant and hundreds if not thousands of good-paying (many of them potentially union) construction jobs in a recessionary environment go unrealized.

In other totally related news, San Diego city councilman, Carl DeMaio, delivered 138,000 signatures on Monday in order to get a managed competition measure on the ballot. He, of course, was opposed by unions along the way as the increasingly irrelevant unions display their thuggery in increasingly bizarre ways. B-Daddy has the goods here.

Beating unions and particularly the completely unneeded public employee unions and their unsustainable pensions back into the box are central to getting control of state and local budgets. The word is out - people, like the good people of Chula Vista and San Diego have figured this out. It's time for the battle to be joined.

Conference realignment a' go-go Pt. II

That sound you just heard was the Pac 10's hopes for snagging Texas, Oklahoma and some others from the Big 12 South, crashing and burning. Looks like Texas and the others will be staying in a 10-team Big 12.

Shortly after Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott confirmed to The Associated Press in an e-mail that the University of Texas had declined an invitation to join his conference, the Longhorns put out a statement saying they would "continue competing in the Big 12."

Oklahoma and Texas A&M also say they will stay in the Big 12, which on Friday seemed in danger of falling apart after Nebraska and Colorado both decided to leave over the next two years.

So, why is Texas, the belle of the realignment ball sticking around? Why else?

Texas had a meeting Monday with the other remaining nine schools in the Big 12 about a TV deal included in a plan put together by Beebe that would keep the league intact with its current programs, according to multiple reports.

Based on a TV deal in the works that could pay upwards of $25 million per year, Texas leaned toward staying in a 10-team Big 12 for the foreseeable future, Orangebloods.com reported, citing sources familiar with negotiations.

Texas stands to earn between $20 million and $25 million annually in television revenue in the reworked deal, including money from its own network, according to Orangebloods.com.

Unfortunately, the article does not say what network is involved. A new Big 12 network? Or is this a re-working of standing deals with either ABC or Fox Sports West? No clue.

It was just a matter of days ago that the Pac 10 looked to be one of the big winners in realignment a' go-go. Now, they're left holding the bag... and Colorado that without Colorado's Big 12 heavies making the move west, an awkward arrangement.

If things stabilize here nationally, look for the Pac 10 to add one more team to even things out (Utah or BYU out of the Mountain West Conference?) for a 12 team conference and the opportunity to play a conference championship game. If realignment continues apace, however, look for the Pac 10 to start picking off more teams from the Mountain West.

For their part, the Mountain West did some wheeling and dealing of their own, picking off Boise St. from the WAC back on Friday. Great move. The MWC now has 4 solid top 25 football programs (Utah, BYU, TCU and Boise St.) in a ten team conference making the decision to rebuff a Pac 10 invite that much easier.

What looked like a radical re-shaping of the landscape of college football as recently as this past Saturday has cooled off dramatically to where we might see 2012 come around looking pretty much like 2010.

Blood for... lithium?

For those of us looking to wean this country off of reliance on electric power due, in part, to the environmentally dubious nature and expense of obtaining the rare earth elements and lithium central to "green" technology, this doesn't appear to be good news.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

Back in the day, we were told that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan because they coveted a warm water port (which would've entailed the small matter of invading Pakistan as well in order to access Karachi). Then, post 9-11, we were told it was a matter of quelling a nascent radical jihadist movement. Now... did the Soviet know something we didn't?


Opium, fruits and nuts, handwoven carpets, wool, hides and pelts, gems

Their main exports list is just about to get a whole lot sexier.

Reaction from the Left, here. Interesting timing by the Pentagon. Well, at least they're being consistent.

What? (UPDATED)

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (P.L. 66-261) is a United States Federal statute that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports.

Section 27, also known as the Jones Act, deals with cabotage (i.e., coastal shipping) and requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents. The purpose of the law is to support the U.S. merchant marine industry, but agricultural interests generally oppose it because, they contend, it raises the cost of shipping their goods, making them less competitive with foreign sources.

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We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed.

So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can't accept, and therefore don't ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.

Now, an exemption can be granted even to the Jones Act: by executive order, all the way to the top. This was granted, promptly, by the Bush administration, when it was organizing the rescue arrangements that responsible local authorities had failed to provide, at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Which was, incidentally, a vastly larger environmental catastrophe than the piddling oil leak that now commands the news.

This is almost too horrible to check. Standard variety faculty lounge bungling is one thing but if we're refusing foreign assistance including Belgian and Dutch skimmers containing the technology and capacity that we do not currently possess, as a sop to the unions, then isn't that fringing on criminal negligence?


H/T: Carpe Diem


(UPDATE #1):

Competence.

Four weeks after the nation's worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

"We'll let BP decide on what expertise they do need," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19. "We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments."

That time has come.

In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico's marshes and beaches, and it accepted Canada's offer of 9,842 feet of boom. The government is soliciting additional boom and skimmers from nearly two dozen countries and international organizations.

In late May, the administration accepted Mexico's offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway.

For possessing the smartest people in the world, this administration has failed to heed perhaps the largest domestic lesson learned from the previous administration and which derailed the Bush presidency to the degree that he was, by proxy, voted out of office when the Democrats won back the House and Senate some 14 months later in November of '06.

We don't like to get into arm-chair quarterbacking because often times it makes people appear smarter than they really are, so, instead we'll armchair quarterback on behalf of people who really are smarter than us. With that: Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? How the hell could this have happened? The biggest domestic take-away from the Bush administration was totally and completely lost on them.

One would think that at the mere mention of "oil spill", particularly in that region of the country, the smartest people in the world would've immediately gone all hands on deck and would've employed the environmental equivalent of the Powell doctrine, meeting the encroaching oil slick with overwhelming force.

Our initial assessment of this disaster was that the slow response was due as much to overcoming the inertia of the federal government as it was to whomever was in the Oval Office at the time. This latest revelation, however, may alter forever how we view this.

We're real sorry the administration has to deal with tedious and mundane crap like saving the entire Gulf Coast while they're busy transforming America, but sometimes you have to stoop to literal clean-up duty every once in a while.

So this is really what it's like to be governed by a bunch of left-wing academics.

Awesome.

June 14, 2010

Flag Day - In 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopts the the flag of the United States by proclamation.


U.S. Army - In 1775, the United States Army was established to defend our Nation. 235 years! Happy Birthday to the United States Army!

California - In 1846, Californios, as they were known then, declared their independence from Mexico thus paving the way for eventual statehood in the United States instead of remaining the domain of Mexico and suffering the fate of a third-world, socialist, kleoptocracy.


Not a bad day. Not a bad day, at all

Inevitable

New York Times editorial: Yeah, the President is having a rough go of it (thanks, Bush), so how about... some more stimulus?



Alternative headline of the day: Now is the time for inaction.

We've seen this movie before

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year's huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy's free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. "We must take these emergency measures," he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

The stimulus package that the President is referring to of course, is porkulus. Porkulus, remember, was not going to let unemployment get above 8 percent (currently at 10) and was going to do this by "creating jobs" via infrastructure projects and by propping up state and local governments to save the jobs of public safety workers and teachers.

And just back in February, a $15 billion jobs bill, son of porkulus, was passed which was to be a quick infusion of cash into the economy to save teachers jobs but in reality was a Congressional photo-op to prove to a skeptical public that while mired in a bruising fight over ObamaCare, the Congress and the President were still quite capable of flushing money down the toilet.

Which brings us to where we are today: a still sputtering economy that is wracked by high unemployment and where the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent through stimulus projects and Keynesian demand-side gimmickry have only delayed/prevented a true and robust recovery. And Congress really thinks this additional $50 billion is going to actually accomplish anything of lasting value or substance?

And remember that the requested $50 billion is on top of the original $800+ billion porkulus package which was designed to roll out most of the spending this year, an election year.

It remains a mystery to us that the lesson of not being able to tax and spend your way to prosperity let alone anything resembling a recovery is lost on so many people.

Quote of the day

File the following from Congressional Budget Office director Dr. Douglas Elmendorf under things that we would've liked to have known before ObamaCare was voted on:

Rising health costs will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond. In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure.

Keith Hennessey, using data provided by Elmendorf, comes to the following conclusions with respect to the eventual effects of ObamaCare:

1.those with health insurance will have less money available for other needs;
2.it will be harder for the uninsured to buy insurance; and
3.government spending on Medicare and Medicaid will break federal and state budgets.

Again, while the administration makes a huge gamble by purposely scuttling its reputation as cold-blooded, can-do pragmatists with their handling of the Gulf oil spill in order to divert the nation's attention from the inevitable train wreck that is ObamaCare, we here at BwD will be doing our best to stay on top of this situation.

Letting the mask slip Pt. VIII

One in a series designed to highlight the true intentions of those supporting ObamaCare after the legislation has passed.


It seems that Team O itself is proving irresistible to the truth serum that came with the passage of ObamaCare:

Over and over in the health care debate, President Barack Obama said people who like their current coverage would be able to keep it.

But an early draft of an administration regulation estimates that many employers will be forced to make changes to their health plans under the new law. In just three years, a majority of workers—51 percent—will be in plans subject to new federal requirements, according to the draft.

The Obama administration said the draft regulation is an early version undergoing revision. Nonetheless, the leaked document was getting widespread interest Friday in lobbying firms that represent employers and insurance companies and on Capitol Hill.

"What we are getting here is a clear indication that most plans will have to change," said James Gelfand, health policy director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "From an employer's point of view that's a bad thing. These changes, whether or not they're good for consumers, are most certainly accompanied by a cost."

Gelfand's point is well-taken. Government intervention never, never lowers the cost of anything.

While that damn hole down there in the Gulf may be a welcome diversion from the comprehensive money-grabbing, liberty-stealing awfulness of ObamaCare, we here at BwD will be keeping our eye on the ball and will continue to stress the importance of destryong this legislation by whatever means possible.

Tomorrow, we'll be back with some fairly stunning quotes from the director of the Congressional Budget Office with regard to ObamaCare. Well, stunning only if you haven't been paying any attention.

Who's up for a big fat abortion debate?

Is it a sign our country is going in the "right direction" when we can get back to conservative/libertarian internecine food fights? And in crisis times like these, does that necessarily mean we have to table social issues?

B-Daddy has a thoughtful essay on the matter, here