Extended Drunk or Intellectual Sabbatical

By the Editor
Inebriated Press
June 22, 2009

Inebriated Press columnist on break

All good things must come to an end, or at least take a break now and then.  Whether this is the end or a break I’m not sure.  I sat around with my scantily clad imaginary Inebriated Press reporters, columnists and pundits and debated just what this is.  Most of the time was spent arguing over whether we were going on an extended drunk or a sabbatical.  In the end the decision was to go on an extended drunk but call it a sabbatical.  You know, being politically correct and all.

Everyone needs a break and a beer now and then

Much is happening in my business and personal life right now (yes I’m forced to spend time in the real world; the one I occasionally rant about) and that squeezes my I-Press time pretty hard.  It seems best that I step away and focus on some other things right now.  Whether than means Inebriated Press will be back in a few weeks or not, is an open question.  I’ll leave the website up in any case, and you can use the search or category functions to turn up tabloid articles, old Op-Ed’s and rants against liberalism, and other silly stuff, just for drill.  lol 

Inebriated Press was two-years-old yesterday.  Pretty remarkable really.  My first post was on June 21, 2007: “Mad Cows Terrorize London“   For all I know they still do.

Not much else to say.  I’ll be around somewhere, and who knows, I may be back here.  It’s a tough habit to break.

Good luck and smoke’m if you got’em.

~ The Editor

 PS: Hang tough and live your beliefs.  Remember what Edmund Burke said:

Good woman with cigar; whiskey unavailable for comment

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

I’d add to that, “good women”.  I like good women.  And good whiskey and good cigars.  And I have a weakness for individual freedom and states’ rights.  I’m kind of simple that way.  Good luck with whatever you are.  :)

OP/ED: Live Free or Die

by Walter E. Williams
TownHall.com
June 17, 2009

“Live Free or Die” is the title of author and columnist Mark Steyn’s speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a Hillsdale publication that’s free for the asking. Canadian born, now living in New Hampshire, Steyn has had firsthand experience with socialist tyranny in his home country that is rapidly becoming a part of America. Commenting on one of his run-ins with Canada’s human rights commissions, Steyn points how it might seem bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of that alliance is pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists and the other half is homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Steyn argues what they have in common overrides their differences, namely, “Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.”

I doubt whether there are many Americans who think Congress has either the right or competency to choose where they live, what clothes they wear or what cars they drive. Yet many Americans stand ready to allow Congress to decide what doctors they go to and what treatments they receive. We forget that once we have government-sponsored health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on liberty. That’s the justification behind helmet and seatbelt laws. Britain is well along the road toward totally controlling health care. Steyn says, “Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of ‘lifestyle choices.’” Steyn adds, “Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his ‘lifestyle choices’ get a pass while theirs don’t. But that’s the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.”

In most of the developed world, the government has gradually taken over many of the responsibilities of adulthood from health care, childcare, care of the elderly and other responsibilities formerly seen as individual or family. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman suggests that American conservatives preaching “family values” is hypocrisy while Europeans live it. On the continent, Krugman says, “Government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff — to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family.” Steyn insightfully observes, “As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman failed to notice that for a continent of ‘family friendly’ policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America’s fertility rate is more or less at replacement level — 2.1 — seventeen European nations are at what demographers call ‘lowest-low’ fertility — 1.3 or less — a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks have upside-down family trees: four grandparents have two children and one grandchild.” Steyn asks, “How can an economist analyze ‘family friendly’ policies without noticing that the upshot of these policies is that nobody has any families?” My answer to Steyn’s questions is: the kind of economist that looks at the seen and ignores the unseen.

Mark Steyn provides us with a historical tidbit. “Live Free or Die,” which graces New Hampshire’s license plate, are the words of John Stark, New Hampshire’s Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words decades after the War when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being: “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” Steyn says these words should not be interpreted “as a battle cry: We’ll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it’s something far less dramatic: It’s a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.”

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

townhall.com

Seinfeld – The Fire – Kramer’s Pinky Toe Story

OP/ED: Cheering For a Massive Deficit?

by Brent Bozell
TownHall.com
June 17, 2009

A calm Sunday breakfast might have been ruined after a glance at The Washington Post’s front page on June 14. A chart below the fold explained that under Obama’s federal spending proposals, the United States would be required to borrow $9 trillion during the next decade. That’s $9,000,000,000. The Post compared that, in today’s dollars, to the financial burden of World War II: $3.6 trillion. That’s not all of Obama’s spending plan. That’s only the part that’s in the red.

Is it any wonder that a recent Gallup poll found more people disapprove rather than approve of Obama’s handling of the deficit? But we’ve only just begun. Now President Obama wants to add another enormous chunk of government health-care spending. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the latest Democratic bill in the Senate would add another $1 trillion to the budget over the next decade, and they suggest that’s only a partial estimate.

Remember when the Democrats and their media allies wailed about how the Iraq war wastefully drove up the national debt? The Post’s chart estimated that the Iraq war costs from 2003-2008 totaled $551 billion, a pittance compared to the massive load of debt the Democrats want to pass right now. And they want to pass it at breakneck speed, so just like the “stimulus” bill, it will become law before the public learns its manifold outrages.

Sadly, this Washington Post article notwithstanding, the news media aren’t questioning the new health “reform” drive. They are enabling it.

ABC News has announced plans to put Barack Obama in prime time again from the White House to push his health-nationalizing agenda for an hour — and then another half-hour on “Nightline.” ABC will broadcast live from the White House for “World News” and “Good Morning America,” interviewing both Barack and Michelle Obama.

It’s bad enough that NBC News just gave Obama two hours of fluffy promotion in prime time (followed quickly by two hours of prime-time fluff reruns). Now, ABC isn’t going to promote how Obama buys hamburgers for the staff and has a cute puppy. They’re going to help him sell his hard-left “Prescription for America.”

Forget participation. ABC isn’t allowing time even for any official Republican rebuttal. Republicans will have to hope they find a spot or two in the audience ABC News selects with the promise of “divergent opinions in this historic debate.” ABC also promises the participation of their medical correspondent Dr. Tim Johnson, who’s been a blatant cheerleader for a European-style “right” to health care.

This isn’t unprecedented. ABC handed over two hours of morning airtime after Columbine for Bill and Hillary Clinton to lament our country’s gun culture in 1999. In 1994, NBC News offered the Clintons a two-hour special to promote Hillary-care, paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major supporter of socialized medicine. The Democrats always seem “overprivileged” when they want to sell their programs on network news.

Skepticism is warranted when ABC promises “divergent opinions,” which probably means a debate between leftists, that people who want a single-payer socialist system will be granted the floor. If the past is prologue, if Charlie Gibson has any tough questions for Obama, he’ll be asking him to explain why our ultraliberal president’s too much of a conservative on health care. Gibson angered President Clinton during the 1999 Columbine special by insisting he wasn’t enough of a gun-banner. He said a friend of Clinton’s complained the Colorado high school shooting “seared the national conscience,” and yet “the president had a chance to roar on gun control and he meowed.”

More conservative White Houses have not been awarded a supportive network platform. Does anyone remember that ABC prime-time special that allowed President Bush to sell Social Security privatization in 2005? Or the two-hour 2006 prime-time Bush White House special promoting the War on Terror? Try not to laugh too hard at the impossibility of such a concept.

You can just hear the protests, can’t you? “Why, we can’t do that! We’re journalists!”

In prime time, Barack Obama is overexposed and under-challenged. If ABC wants to add any sliver of credibility to all this freely offered airtime, it will ask the president to defend adding $10 trillion to the national debt in the decade to come, and ask if the current government’s priorities should really require a deficit three times the “investment” of World War II.

Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.

townhall.com

OP/ED: Judging the Judges

A Supreme Court decision damages the tradition of democratically-elected state and local judges.

by Hans von Spakovsky
The Weekly Standard
06/11/2009 12:00:00 AM

In our political system, the best check on lawmakers is that they must run for office. In many states and localities the same thing is true for judges. Unfortunately, a recent Supreme Court decision may effectively neuter this traditional protection.

Here’s the background. The high court ruled recently (in Caperton v. Massey Coal Company) that if an independent person or group spends money trying to get a judge elected — even if the judge had no involvement in the political expenditures — the judge may have to recuse himself from any cases that could affect the group.

The Court’s holding that the “perception” of possible bias violates the due process clause won’t do anything to correct real bias in the courts. In fact, there wasn’t even an argument of “actual” bias by the judge in this case.

But by creating a new, constitutional claim (from whole cloth), the Caperton decision ensures a flood of frivolous claims will be filed anywhere judges are elected. This will add more delays and costs to a litigation system that already suffers from both ills.

Here’s how this particular case came to be: Caperton owns a mining company. He won a jury verdict of $50 million against Massey Coal Company, whose CEO is Don Blankenship. During the appeal process, Blankenship attempted to democratically unseat West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. As Justice Scalia noted in oral arguments, Blankenship thought McGraw was “an activist judge that was distorting the tort law of the State, all in favor of 
the plaintiffs’ bar.”

That’s entirely possible. West Virginia is rated as the worst “judicial hellhole” in the nation by the American Tort Reform Foundation because of its “anti-business rulings, massive lawsuits and cozy relationships between the personal injury bar, the state attorney general and some in the judiciary.” According to ATRF, the West Virginia Supreme Court “has a history of plaintiff-biased decisions, paying damages to those who are not injured rejecting long-established legal principles, and welcoming plaintiffs’ lawyers from other states to take advantage of its generous rulings.”

As happens in elections, another lawyer (Brent Benjamin), decided to challenge Justice McGraw. Benjamin had no relationship with Massey Coal and had never even met Blankenship, but the mine owner did contribute $1,000 to Benjamin’s campaign. Meanwhile, Blankenship spent $3 million in an independent campaign to unseat Justice McGraw. Blankenship’s campaign was not coordinated with Benjamin’s. As also happens in elections, an organization called Consumers for Justice (which notably received large contributions from the plaintiffs’ bar), spent at least $2 million in support of McGraw.

Benjamin won the election and replaced McGraw.

When Massey Coal’s appeal finally reached the West Virginia Supreme Court, the Justices overturned the $50 million verdict in a 3 to 2 decision. Justice Benjamin didn’t recuse himself and voted with the majority to reverse the trial court.

That was unusual. Not because Benjamin declined to recuse, but because he voted in Massey’s favor. Benjamin had voted against Massey Coal fifteen times, in cases that went against Massey’s financial interest to the tune of $317 million. Therefore no serious argument can be made that Benjamin was a “bought vote” for Massey Coal, and indeed counsel for Massey didn’t even try to claim any actual bias.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court majority opinion by Justice Kennedy keeps mistakenly referring to the “contributions” made to Benjamin’s campaign. Kennedy either overlooks or deliberately ignores the fact that Blankenship was running an independent campaign with his funds against a judge he did not like, and only directly contributed a nominal amount to the challenger’s campaign.

Obviously, if a judge has a financial interest that is affected by litigation, he must recuse himself. Thus, if Benjamin had owned shares in either mining company, he would have had to sit out this case. But he had no such financial conflict, and the only contribution he received from anyone involved in the case was for $1,000, a very small part of the $850,000 he raised for his campaign.

The majority is convinced that Blankenship’s independent expenditures had a “significant and disproportionate influence on the electoral outcome” even allowing him to “choose” the judge on his case. That essentially ignores the millions of dollars spent on the other side to defeat Benjamin. Besides, Benjamin won by a 7-point margin. Almost every newspaper in West Virginia endorsed him. The incumbent refused interviews, ignored debates, and gave a well-publicized speech that the West Virginia media characterized as “deeply disturbing” or worse. As happens in elections, the stronger candidate prevailed.

No one has claimed the West Virginia Supreme Court decision was legally or factually incorrect. Nor is there any claim of actual bias, financial impropriety, or anything resembling a quid pro quo. The only argument advanced (and swallowed whole by the majority) was that because Massey Coal’s CEO ran a totally independent campaign to get rid of an incumbent justice, there was an appearance of possible bias, violating Caperton’s right to a fair trial under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

This “standard” is so vague it will open up the courts to a flood of frivolous bias claims. As Chief Justice Roberts says in his dissent, it provides “no guidance to judges and litigants about when recusal will be constitutionally required.” In fact, Justice Roberts provides a list of 40 complex questions that courts will now have to routinely answer to determine if recusal is required. State and federal judges will be required to act simultaneously “as political scientists (why did candidate X win the election?), economists (was the financial support disproportionate?), and psychologists (is there likely to be a debt of gratitude?).”

This decision threatens Americans’ First Amendment rights to engage in independent political speech. Just spending money on advertisements criticizing (or praising) a judge could allow a litigant to get that judge booted off a case. Indeed, the majority’s theory of Due Process injury is so broad that it raises serious questions about whether Sonia Sotomayor, as a justice on the Supreme Court, would have to recuse herself from any case involving the same liberal interest groups that are spending money on independent ads or other political and educational activity to support her nomination.

This case endangers state judicial elections, since under the majority’s theory of bias, it will be next to impossible for a judge to be elected without receiving campaign support (in the form of donations or even independent support) that could force the judge to constantly recuse himself from cases. This is, in fact, the goal of liberal campaign “reform” groups backed by George Soros. They do not like the fact that citizens can vote liberal judges out of office when they do not adhere to the law and prefer undemocratic selection committees dominated by left-leaning bar association and trial-bar apparatchiks.

States already have the power to address ethical conflicts through legislatures, judicial authorities and bar associations. In cases of extreme misconduct, impeachment or indictment are always possibilities. Caperton, seen in that light, is not about ensuring fair trials and due process, but about altering the way that many states choose their judges. It “constitutionalizes” an issue which is not properly a “due process” concern, and will end up forcing judges to make up policy as they go along.

Chief Justice Roberts warns that the court will come to regret this decision because it will have far-ranging consequences that the majority does not foresee. As Justice Scalia concludes, this is an expansion of “a constitutional mandate in a manner ungoverned by any discernable rule.”

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Legal Scholar at the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org). He is a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department official.

weeklystandard.com

Library detective Mr. Bookman [Seinfeld]

OP/ED: How to Stop Socialized Health Care

Five arguments Republicans must make.

By KARL ROVE
OPINION | WALL STREET JOURNAL
JUNE 11, 2009

It was a sobering breakfast with one of the smartest Republicans on Capitol Hill. We can fix a lot of bad stuff President Barack Obama might do, he told me. But if Mr. Obama signs into law a “public option,” government-run insurance program as part of health-care reform we won’t be able to undo the damage.

I’d go the Republican member of Congress one further: If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state. To prevent this from happening, there are five arguments Republicans must make.

The first is it’s unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That’s competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 — nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition’s benefits.

Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay.

Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else’s health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It’s also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care.

Fixing prices at less than market rates will continue under any public option. Sen. Edward Kennedy’s proposal, for example, has Washington paying providers what Medicare does plus 10%. That will lead to health providers offering less care.

Third, government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance — 120 million Americans — will quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced onto the government-run rolls as businesses decide it is more cost-effective for them to drop coverage. They’d be happy to shift some of the expense — and all of the administration headaches — to Washington. And once the private insurance market has been dismantled it will be gone.

Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare — the purest form of a government-run “public choice” for seniors — will start exceeding its payroll-tax “trust fund” in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.

Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted. One reason is there’s no competition for these government-run insurance programs. In the same way, Americans can expect a public option to cost far more than the Obama administration’s rosy estimates.

Fifth, the public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, imagine what happens when government is the insurance carrier, with little or no competition and no concern you’ll change to another company.

In other words, the public option is just phony. It’s a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president’s goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama’s real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system.

Health care desperately needs far-reaching reforms that put patients and their doctors in charge, bring the benefits of competition and market forces to bear, and ensure access to affordable and portable health care for every American. Republicans have plans to achieve this, and they must make their case for reform in every available forum.

Defeating the public option should be a top priority for the GOP this year. Otherwise, our nation will be changed in damaging ways almost impossible to reverse.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

wsj.com

OP/ED: White House Offers Soft Math, Sleight of Hand

by Donald Lambro
TownHall.com
June 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — For a president who promised that his actions would be the most transparent in U.S. history, key details in Barack Obama’s economic-stimulus program have been frustratingly opaque.

Some might call them invisible or illusionary, certainly slippery, maybe even tricky.

“Does anyone really know how many jobs the stimulus has saved or created? Does anyone know how much stimulus money has actually been spent?” House Republicans asked Monday.

Not with any precision. President Obama and his administration throw out a lot of big, impressive numbers: We will spend $800 billion to “save or create” 3.5 million jobs. But it turns out the numbers and goals often come with a lot of mathematical caveats, definitional contingencies and narrowly proscribed, convoluted loopholes and escape hatches.

“The truth is, even the Obama administration isn’t able to say for sure how many jobs the stimulus is saving and/or creating,” ABC News bluntly reported last week.

“With its promises to ’save or create’” so many jobs, the news network said, “the Obama White House has set a fuzzy bar for itself; no one will ever really be able to say whether it’s been cleared.”

Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist Jared Bernstein says it’s impossible to say how many projects approved by the administration have really gotten under way because “it’s such a moving target.”

For example, take the jobs number. The White House said at the end of May that the program had saved or created nearly 150,000 jobs. But that’s almost impossible to verify because the jobs calculation is actually based on estimates of how poorly the economy and the jobs picture might have been if the stimulus had not been enacted.

And what about this so-called “saved jobs” concept? That’s a very tricky number open to all kinds of mathematical Ponzi-scheme configurations.

“The country has lost 1.3 million jobs since February, a figure the Obama administration says would have been far higher if not for the recovery effort,” wrote White House reporter Charles Babington of the Associated Press. Apparently, you can save all kinds of jobs with that kind of soft math.

So what about that 150,000-jobs number? It turns out that these are not necessarily long-term, full-time jobs. Many, if not most, will end when the public-works money runs out and the project is completed.

After last Friday’s unemployment numbers showed the jobless rate had jumped to 9.4 percent in May, and a Gallup Poll found public support for Obama’s handling of the economy slipping, the White House said it was going to speed up the stimulus expenditures. Just how it would do that was unclear, but officials said it would “save or create” 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days.

Not full-time jobs necessarily but temporary part-time jobs. Or as Jared Bernstein told CNBC Monday: “The 600,000 jobs are full-time equivalence, meaning that if there are two part-time jobs, they count as one full-time job.”

Then there is the question of how much of the $800 billion in stimulus money been spent so far? When pressed to come up with hard numbers, Bernstein told reporters Monday: “We’re up to about $135 billion in terms of obligations.”

“Obligations” sounded a bit too vague to NBC’s White House reporter Chuck Todd. “Obligated, not necessarily spent yet?” he inquired.

“Right,” Bernstein finally said. “Spent out is closer to $44 billion.”

So here we are at midyear, and the administration has actually spent a little over 5 percent of its stimulus money — a small fraction of what Obama said was needed to move the once-mighty $14 trillion economy out of its recession.

How much more will be obligated or spent this summer to meet the White House’s 100-day jobs goal? “We’re unable to make that estimate at this point,” Bernstein says.

Let’s return to Obama’s 150,000-jobs claim. Keith Hall, commissioner of the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics — whose job is to count the number of jobs there are in the economy — was asked at a Joint Economic Committee hearing last Friday if he could substantiate that claim.

“No. That would be a very difficult thing for anybody to substantiate,” Hall replied.

The very nature of spending-stimulus programs — and the reason why they never work — is that it takes a very long time for the money to travel through the government’s bureaucratic pipeline to the states and localities and through the bidding process before any jobs are created. Obama’s economists warned of this in policy position papers last year. By the time most of the money is “spent,” the recession will be long over.

Only a fraction of the $800 billion will be spent in this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Seventy percent of the money won’t be spent until the end of the summer in 2010 when the administration says the economy will be growing again.

But in the end, despite the administration’s belief it is creating net new jobs, each dollar it borrows or taxes out of the economy to create, in Joe Biden’s words, “make-work jobs,” is one dollar not available to the private sector to invest and spend on real, full-time jobs.

Donald Lambro is chief political correspondent for The Washington Times.

townhall.com

NASA to Bomb Moon, Woman to Skydive Topless, and US Public Wary of Deficit and Obama Governance

> US Space Agency Preps Missile for Moon Explosion in Water Search
> Barmaid with 36GG Bust to Leap Topless from Plane: “I like to live on the edge”
> WSJ Poll finds Americans Fear growing Budget Deficit and Government’s Economic Intervention

Inebriated Press
June 19, 2009

Less risky than Obama's budget?

Mercury News reported Monday that NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.  And the Lancashire Evening Post reported Wednesday that busty barmaid Charlotte Robinson is gearing up for a topless skydive.  Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Americans are increasingly wary of the growing budget deficit and the Obama administrations economic interventions.  Pundits are debating the benefits of blowing up the moon and the U.S. economy, while others consider leaping from airplanes without clothes on.

Someone named Charlotte

“I think that living on the edge is a hell of a lot of fun and a real rush.  I mean think about it, we’re in an economy that Obama is pumping trillions of dollars into, to remove L.A. tattoos, and build high-speed trains we don’t need, and study why pigs stink — not to mention his move to take over two of the Big Three car companies and nationalize them.  The value of the dollar will free-fall and inflation will go through the roof.  I’m jazzed up just thinking about it and that’s before I imagine myself free-falling at a couple hundred miles per hour with my naked boobs flapping as I plunge toward earth from an airplane.  This is life the way it’s meant to be lived,” said Charlotte Sunblok-Areola, an account executive at the Satin, Lace and Diesel Parts Company. “If it was left to me to blow up the moon I don’t think I could have a better year.  Oh I suppose maybe it could be better if I were able to get rid of a couple STD’s I have from risky sex, but what the heck, I like life on the edge and sometimes it stings a little.”

Someone named Karen

Not everyone sees it the way Sunblok-Areola does.  “The NASA moon bombing is a little weird but I suppose maybe its okay in the cause of science, I mean if they find water or something.  But this notion that pumping trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy on shit we don’t need and then call it ’stimulus’ doesn’t stimulate me at all.  How can anyone call irresponsible spending a responsible thing to do, its foolishness,” said Karen Cashin-Carrey, a fiscal conservative and ethical relativist who pastes disproportionate logic together as best she can, but lately has been coming up empty.  “And this idea that skydiving topless is going to be fun is as logical as government run national healthcare.  You’re not going to get what you’re expecting and it’s going to hurt.  You think the government can operate healthcare better than private industry?  It can’t run Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.  Why will it do a better job of keeping you healthy?  And skydiving topless will put your breasts out there with blowing dirt and bugs and leaves and shit.  You think it’ll be fun when those things smack against your nipples and breasts at several hundred miles per hour?  Hell no.  Wake up people, you’re not thinking straight.  Doing dumb shit doesn’t just sting a little; it hurts a lot, maybe not today but tomorrow and for a long time afterward.  This stuff doesn’t fix easily, even when you stop the stupidity and start the healing process.”

NASA's Big Bang

The Mercury News reported that in an unprecedented scientific endeavor — and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever — NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water. The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon’s south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA’s plans to restart human exploration of the moon. The plans are for LCROSS to separate from the Centaur booster less than 10 hours before impact and will be less than 400 miles above the moon when the spent rocket booster collides at a speed five times faster than a bullet from a .44 Magnum. NASA plans to stream a live view from LCROSS as the Centaur, followed by the spacecraft, plows into the moon. If all goes as planned it would hit the moon in the early morning hours of Oct. 8.

The Lancashire Evening Post reported that busty barmaid Charlotte Robinson is gearing up for a skydive with a difference. The 24-year-old, from Catterall in Garstang, will jump 14,000ft from a Turbine Porter aircraft – topless. The bubbly mother-of-one will be strapped to the front of an instructor and will freefall at more than 120mph before the parachute opens. She is hoping the jump, at the Black Knights Parachute Centre, Hillam Lane, Cockerham, will raise hundreds of pounds for the North West Air Ambulance. She said: “I don’t know if I’ll hurt myself – I might do because I’m a 36GG. I don’t know how the topless part came about. I’m just a bit mental really and definitely outgoing. I’m a bit nervous. The only other thing I’ve done is a bungee jump when I was about 12. But I do like to live on the edge.”

click to enlarge (stop spending to shrink)

The Wall Street Journal reported that after a fairly smooth opening, President Barack Obama faces new concerns among the American public about the budget deficit and government intervention in the economy as he works to enact ambitious health and energy legislation, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. These rising doubts threaten to overshadow the president’s personal popularity and his agenda, in what may be a new phase of the Obama presidency. “The public is really moving from evaluating him as a charismatic and charming leader to his specific handling of the challenges facing the country,” says Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducts the survey with Republican Bill McInturff. Going forward, he says, Mr. Obama and his allies “are going to have to navigate in pretty choppy waters.”

Nearly seven in 10 survey respondents said they had concerns about federal interventions into the economy; including Mr. Obama’s decision to take an ownership stake in General Motors Corp., limits on executive compensation and the prospect of more government involvement in health care. A solid majority — 58% — said that the president and Congress should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if takes longer for the economy to recover. Mr. Obama’s overall job approval and personal ratings have slipped, particularly among independent voters. His job approval rating now stands at 56%, down from 61% in April. Among independents, it dropped from nearly two-to-one approval to closely divided. When asked what the most important economic issue facing the country is, 24% cited the deficit, vs. just 11% who named health care.

In other news, the Telegraph reported Tuesday that a woman has cancelled her church wedding and country house reception after discovering her fiancé is a secret porn star. Haylie Hocking, 27, only found out that strapping 30-year-old fitness fanatic Jason Brake made adult films just weeks before the big day. A friend organizing her hen night searched online for a male stripper and spotted Jason with a woman in a porn movie. Now Haylie has called her vicar to cancel the wedding. She said: “There was no way I could marry an adult film star.” He told her he was a personal trainer when the couple began dating. After eight months, he proposed and bought her a diamond engagement ring. But Jason’s secret emerged when Haylie’s friend Lisa tried to book a stripper for a hen party. After Jason finally admitted he was earning money from making porn, Haylie called off the wedding. Haylie said: “I don’t know if I will ever be able to trust a man again.”  No word on whether she trusts politicians with her healthcare, or how she feels about NASA bombing the moon, but she seems pretty traditional so she probably has no plans to leap from a plane topless with her breasts pummeling her face and arms and being pummeled themselves.  But I could be wrong.  After all, Americans elected a president with no governing or business experience.  Sometimes rational people do irrational things.  Maybe there are times when the pummeling we get, we deserve.  But smart folks learn from their mistakes.  Here’s hoping Americans are smart folks.  Time will tell.

(C) 2009 InebriatedPress.com

Source articles:

NASA/Ames ready to explode one of the coolest space missions ever
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_12590357

Busty barmaid prepares for topless skydive
http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Busty-barmaid-prepares-for-topless.5372581.jp

Public Wary of Deficit, Economic Intervention
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124527518023424769.html#mod=testMod

Woman cancels wedding after finding fiancé was porn star
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5549158/Woman-cancels-wedding-after-finding-fiance-was-porn-star.html

OP/ED: The New Wage Controls

One more sign that the levelers are now in charge.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK | WALL STREET JOURNAL
JUNE 12, 2009

The U.S. “market” economy took another hard-to-believe turn this week with the Obama Treasury appointing a “compensation czar” to dictate wage controls on private companies that take taxpayer money and offer guidelines for every other U.S. publicly traded company. Can wage and price controls for everyone be far behind?

The Treasury says that’s not what it has in mind, but then much of what government has done in the past eight months would have been scoffed at even a year ago. Richard Nixon disavowed wage and price controls right up until the time he imposed them in 1971. The Obama Administration is hardly restrained as a matter of principle against such brute government force, and if prices start rising after our current Great Reflation, well, you read the warning here first.

What’s amazing is how little stir the new maximum wage edicts have created. Part of this is because Washington has the business class intimidated, and part is because much of the public thinks bankers deserve the retribution. “The financial crisis had many significant causes,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday, “but executive compensation practices were a contributing factor. Incentives for short-term gains overwhelmed the checks and balances meant to mitigate against the risk of excessive leverage.”

Mr. Geithner has a point, but his analysis also neatly avoids Washington’s own role in encouraging “the risk of excessive leverage.” Wall Street’s compensation model of big bonuses for big risks has been in place for decades. How do you think Robert Rubin and Jon Corzine made fortunes at Goldman Sachs in the 1980s and 1990s?

What changed this decade is that Washington’s housing policies and flood of easy money created a subsidy for credit, and especially for mortgage products, that encouraged bankers to take on even more debt and greater risks. The bankers were doing, in short, what Alan Greenspan and Barney Frank subsidized them to do. Blaming the bankers for making bigger money in the bargain is a political diversion.

Corporate boards and compensation committees could certainly have done a better job at any number of companies. But some of Mr. Geithner’s statement of principles on pay are little more than the bromides that every compensation consultant has loaded in his PC for a corporate business pitch. Everyone agrees that “compensation plans should properly measure and reward performance.” The question is how to do it. Government bureaucrats aren’t likely to do this any better than directors who at least have some insight into the business at hand.

Mr. Geithner also wants compensation to “be structured to account for the time horizon of risks.” Another terrific idea. But with some financial instruments having lifespans measured in decades, there are limits to that principle’s real-world application. Yes, some firms paid big bonuses to traders whose bets later blew up, but we doubt they need a “pay czar” to tell them that this wasn’t a great idea.

Treasury is also proposing more “transparency and accountability in the process of setting compensation,” which is the mother of all bromides. The SEC under Chris Cox recently rewrote the public disclosure rules on compensation on precisely these grounds. The Obama Administration wants to go further and is proposing nonbinding requirements to give shareholders a “say on pay” for publicly traded companies. This is supposed to align shareholder interests with those of the executives.

But can shareholders really offer informed opinions on whether, given the nature of a company’s business, prospects and competition, a particular executive deserves incentive pay with three-, five- or seven-year vesting periods; or whether the mix of restricted stock, options and other compensation is the “right” one? Say on pay is a hobby horse of the political left because it offers a platform to demagogue executive pay without doing anything about it.

Some in the White House may figure these measures will be enough to sate the political taste for revenge. But once you concede the principle that government should influence pay, it’s hard to stop Congress from actually setting it. Mr. Frank has already declared that the Treasury guidelines don’t go far enough, and one thing we know this Administration doesn’t do is stand tall against Congress. Recall the AIG bonus mob.

The new pay limits betray once again that Washington’s dominant impulse today is leveling and redistribution: Put caps on success, raise taxes on what you can’t cap, and then give the money to someone else. None of this will encourage the entrepreneurial spirits we need for a buoyant economic recovery.

wsj.com

OP/ED: FDA Approved Cigarettes

Covering Their Butts

by Jacob Sullum
TownHall.com
June 10, 2009

Tucked away in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which was passed by the House in April and by the Senate this week, is a provision that speaks volumes about the law’s impact. It prohibits manufacturers from making “any statement directed to consumers” that “would reasonably be expected to result in consumers believing” a tobacco product “is regulated, inspected or approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”

The bill, which President Obama supports, authorizes the FDA to regulate tobacco products. Yet it says, “consumers are likely to be confused and misled” if they know the FDA is regulating tobacco products. They might mistakenly believe that FDA regulation makes these products safer, for example, when the opposite is the truth.

It’s easy to understand why Philip Morris supported this bill. The market leader can expect to benefit from the limits on advertising and promotion, the regulatory burden on smaller competitors, and the ban on every “characterizing” flavor except the one it happens to use in some of its most successful brands (menthol). But the company may be wrong to believe that FDA regulation will allow it to pursue plans for safer cigarettes.

To introduce a “modified risk product,” a manufacturer has to convince the FDA not only that the product will “significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco-related disease to individual tobacco users” but also that it will “benefit the health of the population as a whole, taking into account both users of tobacco products and persons who do not currently use tobacco products.” Alternatively, if “scientific evidence is not available and, using the best available scientific methods, cannot be made available without conducting long-term epidemiological studies,” the FDA can let a manufacturer advertise reduced levels of certain substances in cigarette smoke, but only if the agency decides it “would be appropriate to promote the public health.”

This collectivist standard means the FDA can keep a product off the market even if it is indisputably safer than conventional cigarettes, based on fears that it will attract nonsmokers or smokers who otherwise would have given up tobacco entirely. That same hurdle applies to the promotion of existing products.

Consider snus (Swedish-style smokeless tobacco), which under the new law will continue to carry a warning that it “is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.” Although that’s literally true, since nothing is 100 percent safe, there’s no question that snus is far less hazardous than cigarettes. Yet the FDA is now empowered to prevent manufacturers from saying so, lest consumers make an informed decision to use smokeless tobacco rather than abstaining completely.

Such censorship would sacrifice the lives of current smokers for the sake of a tobacco-free future. Likewise the mandated reductions in nicotine content authorized by the law, which would be aimed at making cigarettes less attractive to nonsmokers.

The predictable result of reducing nicotine content is that people will smoke more to get the dose to which they are accustomed. They will take more puffs, inhale more deeply, hold the smoke longer or consume more cigarettes. Consequently, they will be exposed to higher levels of toxins and carcinogens.

The authors of the law are familiar with such compensatory behavior. It’s the reason they decided to prohibit the use of misleading cigarette terms such as “light,” “mild” and “low tar,” which are based on yields delivered to smoking machines rather than people.

Yet the attempt to mandate less addictive cigarettes would be even more dangerous than the industry’s practice of reducing nicotine and tar yields simultaneously, since it would increase the tar-to-nicotine ratio. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that the government’s involvement transforms a life-endangering fraud into a life-saving public health intervention.

Since FDA regulation is apt to make cigarettes more hazardous while impeding competition from safer alternatives, you can begin to see why mentioning it might give consumers the wrong impression. I won’t tell them if you don’t.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a contributing columnist on Townhall.com.

townhall.com

Obama upbeat on Change in Iran, “Missing” Man took Break from Wife, and Girl’s body Dug Up to be “Corpse Bride”

> President Obama concerned but upbeat on Iran
> Man reported missing says wife told him to “go away”
> Five men arrested for exhuming corpse to be “ghost bride”

Inebriated Press
June 18, 2009

Obama: things are looking up in Iran

MSNBC reported Tuesday that President Obama is concerned about the election in Iran but sees more “openness” in the country as some voters express dissent.  And The Oregonian reported Monday that a man reported missing by his wife last week was located Saturday. But he says he wasn’t missing — just following his wife’s wishes to go away. Meanwhile the Telegraph reported Monday that five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a “ghost bride” for a man killed in a car crash. Pundits debate the nature of hope and change as it’s reflected in Iranian dissent, husbands who go away, and the wedded bliss of dead brides.

Someone named Wendy

“The nature of cultural change is one of incremental development, often in an evolutionary sense and occasionally with a predisposition to growth and improvement based on hope and initiative.  This is exemplified in Iran with the careful rioting of the people and the governments thoughtful reaction of shooting them, and shutting down cell phone and Internet communications,” said Wendy Wontyou-Maybee, a nurse and part-time intellectual who believes that multidimensional space is subdivided by cats, but isn’t sure how.  “The ethereal nature of the dead being married to the dead is a spiritual connection and it’s enhanced for the wedding attendees by the actual digging up of the bodies, the sweat, the smell and the general fooling around.  The wandering off of a husband told to go away is also a sort of spiritual response filled with subtle meaning.  Barack Obama senses and understands all these things in a deeper way than mere mortals and that’s why he can speak intellectual teleprompter knowledge that transcends our brain waves to the extent that some people even think he’s absurd and almost stupid.  Barry’s genius exists at levels above the common people.  And no woman will ever tell him to ‘go away,’ because he’s a real hunk.  I say that in a metaphysical sense and with great meaning and nuance.  Nuance is so cool.  Sometimes I like to sit naked in a field and imbibe the ethereal nuance that is life. It’s really great except for the chigger bites.”

Someone named Ursula

Not everyone agrees with Wontyou-Maybee. “This is some twisted shit, let me tell you.  There’s no ‘nature of hope and change’ to talk about here.  Obama and the five Chinese are off the rails, I don’t know about the husband who decided to ‘go away’.  There is lots of nasty stuff behind all three of these issues if we’re open and honest about it,” said Ursula Twice-Plaid, a scuba-diving instructor and part-time post master who values silicon and leather but likes individual freedom and personal responsibility even more.  “I don’t really get into judging other cultures and stuff, but digging up a dead woman to marry a dead guy is morose. The Chinese may have invented fireworks, but this dead marriage thing isn’t one of their highest achievements.  And the culture of Iran isn’t changing because there are some people pissed-off in that country.  They’re always pissed-off.  That’s why the Shah is gone and Islamofascists are running the damn country today.  I’m not saying there aren’t some people who want to change their government and make it more peaceful, but I am saying that some people complaining in a Middle Eastern country is hardly a sea change, let alone a reason for optimism.  I mean come on, think about it.”

click to enlarge

MSNBC reported that President Barack Obama expressed “deep concerns” about the election in Iran and said the outpouring of political dissent signals more openness in that country. Republican Sen. John McCain urged more forceful condemnation of what he called a “flawed” election. Obama stopped short of saying the re-election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged. “I do believe that something has happened in Iran,” with Iranians more willing to question the government’s “antagonistic postures” toward the world, Obama said. Obama has said nothing about the declared winner, Ahmadinejad, or the pro-change challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi whose supporters claim the election was stolen. After deadly protests in Tehran on Monday, with demonstrators holding signs that read, “Where Is My Vote,” the clerical regime organized a counter-rally Tuesday. Ahmadinejad traveled to Russia on Tuesday after delaying a trip for a day but did not mention the Iranian election or unrest. Instead, he focused on a traditional target, the United States. “America is enveloped in economic and political crises, and there is no hope for their resolution,” he said through an interpreter. “Allies of the United States are not capable of easing these crises.”

Not missing, just fishing

The Oregonian reported that a man reported missing by his wife last week was located Saturday. But he says he wasn’t missing — just following his wife’s wishes to go away. William Peterson told police he and his wife had an argument and she told him to get out. So, Peterson spent the week fishing and camping in Bend. His wife, Pam Peterson, said that the argument with her husband happened months ago, and that she forgot about telling her husband he could always leave. Apparently, her husband had not forgotten, she said. Peterson, 53, was reported to have left his home on June 6. Pam Peterson, told police her husband left on an overnight fishing trip without saying where he was going. He had done that before, but when he failed to appear at work she reported him missing.  Cornelius Police Cmdr. Ed Jensen said the search for Peterson involved the U.S. Forest Service, as well as law enforcement officers from Linn, Lane and Marion counties. He estimated that thousands of dollars were spent on the search.

Dying to become a bride?

The Telegraph reported that five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a “ghost bride” for a man killed in a car crash. The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year, a newspaper in Xianyang in China’s Shaanxi province reported. In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased women to be ghost brides for young men who die single. Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband. Last year, a gang in southern China was arrested for strangling young women to sell as ghost brides when the supply of female corpses in their area ran short.

click to enlarge

In other news, MSNBC reported Tuesday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is defending her membership in an elite all-women’s club, telling senators the group doesn’t discriminate unfairly by gender even though men can’t belong to the club. She said the club “involves men” in many of its activities. No word on why a “wise Latina female” should be subject to such questioning when everyone knows that her very existence makes her more intelligent and more capable than most people, and white men in particular.  But perhaps some Americans are still struggling with the ethereal nature of “hope and change” based discrimination and haven’t adjusted to the finer points the new world Obama is making for us.

(C) 2009 InebriatedPress.com

Source articles:

Obama troubled by Iran but sees change
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31390176/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

“Missing” Cornelius man was taking break from his wife
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/06/missing_cornelius_man_was_taki.html

Teenage girl dug up to be ‘corpse bride’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5541242/Teenage-girl-dug-up-to-be-corpse-bride.html

Sotomayor defends women’s club membership
Judges’ code forbids joining groups that discriminate by sex, race, and religion
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31390593/ns/politics-white_house/