Here we are over two months after the blowout in the Gulf and there's no end in sight. BP's inability to cap the well is testament to the engineering challenges involved in deep water drilling and the folly of proscribing drilling in shallower waters. The Feds response to the cleanup challenge can only be categorized as a colossal cluster fock. All foreign offers of help in cleaning up were summarily, albeit politely refused. There was no waiver of the Jones Act which would have permitted foreign flagged ships from assisting. This was a clear move to protect Barry's loyal supporters in the maritime unions. Those ships that were allowed to participate were delayed until the Coast Guard inspected them for proper life preservers. Gov Jihndal of LA begged for permission to dredge up sand berms to protect the wetlands of his state, but the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers refused to sign off until their little pizzing contest was resolved.It makes one cringe when the realization that this is the same group that wants to "improve" our health care sinks in. The bumbling inefficiency and ineptitude of the bureaucracy pales in comparison to what we see from the political component of the gubmint. The problem there stems from the fact that the blowout is an engineering challenge and the cleanup is primarily a logistical project. Politicians have little if any expertise in either. Their forte is political answers, which are less than useless in this situation. They see more gain in perpetuating the problem than in solving it. As long as the crisis persisits, it can be used to mute opposition to the Team Obama agenda. The first thing they want to use the blowout as cover for is a permanent ban on all offshore drilling, restricting domestic oil production. Second, the Dems will use this to shove through their bait and switch climate bill, a certain job crusher which even if more effective than any proponent can imagine will not lower CO2 by any statistically significant amount. The third goal is to blow billions of dollars on subsidies for enormously expensive and grotesquely ineficient alternate energy sources. If Team Obama pulls off this political trifecta, look forward to economic decline in the form of a double dip recession, increasing dependence on foreign sources of energy, and no change in greenhouse gas levels, all of this so the Dems can massage their outsized egos.

The reflexive invocation of negotiation as the solution whenever conflict arises is a pathology of the left. There are certainly circumstances in which negotiation can be a valuable tool, but just like a skillful carpenter knows which blade to use in his circular saw, a competent President knows which diplomatic tool to employ. Unfortunately, leftists like Obama think that negotiating is the Swiss Army Knife of diplomacy. While our ditherer in chief spanks the diplomatic monkey, Iran continues unabated toward the development of nukes. Iran has singlemindedly committed itself to this purpose and uses negotiation as a tactic to provide cover to facilitate that pursuit. Maybe we should "rent" a Trident missle sub to Israel for a couple of days. They's provide AhmaGiantDickhead and the mullahs the Armageddon they fervently desire

To paraphrase, legislate in haste, repent at leisure. Whether it was the porkpalooza Stimulus, the medical system takeover, cash for clunkers, or the bait & switch climate bill, all had two things in common. First, each was a thousand plus pages of deliberate obfuscation that could only be deciphered by cunning lingusts with law degrees. The second was that each was rushed to a vote before it could be given even a cursory analysis. The reason is clear. The Dem leadership knows full well that if the American people knew what the effect of these boondoggles was, there would be hell to pay. Fortunately, for the first time, people are engaged in researching this stuff and the results are chilling. The most dangerous aspect of these bills is what's not in them. Each bill contains little specific information about how its mandates are to be accomplished. Rather, bureaucratic entities responsible for making the hard (read unpopular and unconstitutional) decisions are created and empowered. By doing this, Congresscritters gain the political holy grail of plausible deniability, meaning that when constituents are ready to string them up by the balls for Draconian regulation they can say "I didn't vote for THAT".

. UHC supporters aim to provide coverage to millions (12-47 depending on estimate). Using average premium levels of $500/month for single coverage neither bare bones or "Cadillac" this will cost $480 billion to just under $1.5 trillion per year. Where will that come from, the Money Fairy?
2. The pre-existing condition card is way overplayed. Under HIPPA, if you change jobs or coverage for any reason, all you have to do is provied your new carrier a certificate of creditable coverage from the old one to include those conditions. Adding coverage for pre-existing conditions for first time buyers could be done, but it adds to the cost. Where will that come from, the Money Fairy?
3. UHC proponents want to eliminate benefit caps, creating unlimited contingent liability for insurers. Once again, it's a case of follow the money. In Michigan, auto insurance companies must provide unlimited medical coverage for anyone injured in a traffic accident. The additional liability is paid for by an assesment on every auto policy sold in the state. Currently, that assesment is $142 per year per car. Eliminating benefit caps increases the risk pool, and the only source for that money is premiums. There is no Money Fairy.

Rationalization. This is how libs justify the meddling that they  do. They believe themselves to be altruistic, but their real motivation is born of an almost obsessive need for self-affirmation.

The so-called public option has been the Dems Holy Grail of health care for years. To justify it they break out the old class envy arguement of "the profit motive of the evil insurance companies". There are a number of flaws in that proposition. The first is the deception that insurance companies make millions of dollars in profit by denying claims. The dishonesty in this is that it cites absolute numbers but ignores relative figures. The relative figure that's important is that health insurance company profits average just over three percent of revenues. For example a company with $100 million in revenues will show a profit of  $3 million+/-, hardly a rapacious amount. The second is that there are non-profit insurance companies, the best known being Blue Cross, which in many states is the largest carrier. Fianlly, the idea that a government bureaucracy will be more committed to customer service than a private entity is ludicrous on its face. We've seen this in action not that long ago. After 9/11, there was a great hue and cry to federalize airport screeners,charging that the existing private contractors "only paid minimum wage" which implied incompetence. The cure prescribed, mostly by outfits backed by SEIU etc was to make the sccreeners Federal Employees, of course with no explanation of just how it would improve things. The result of this furror was the TSA. As someone who has flown before and after the start of the TSA, I don't feel one damn bit safer flying today then I did previously. I don't have to worry about being strip searched though. I'm not an 84 year old grandmother.

1. Markets are cyclical in nature, What goes up comes down and what comes down goes up. This has applied not only to the housing market, the oil market, the dot com boom, and don't forget Enron.
2.Decoupling risk from reward is dangerous. The primary reason mortgage brokers were so willing to sign people who they knew were not credit worthy up for liar loans was that they knew that the paper would be sold to someone else before the ink dried. Historically, the same institution that issued a mortgage held it until maturity. Nowdays, it's not uncommon for the mortgage to be sold multiple times and once the paper is sold, it's not my problem.
3. Govt meddling produces far reaching unintended consequences. Fannie and Freddie  backed a large number of questionsble loans with the full faith and credit of the US Gubmint. This made investors believe that the underlying instruments were safe from default. At the insistence of community orginizations like ACORN, banks were pressured into making risky loans. In order to aviod discrimination charges, banks made risky loans to people outside the target areas.
4. Changing the rules in the middle of the game can have disasterous effects. This is actually the pin that pricked the housing bubble. The SEC had allowed lending institutions to use a discounted cash flow method to value the mortgage backed securities on their balance sheets. The SEC changed the rules for asset valuation to a mark-to-market method which required any institution that held such securities to value them using the underlying asset value. The nature of these securities made it impossible from a practical standpoint to place a value on them. When banks were faced with the evaporation of a large chunk of assets, they had to scramble to meet reserve requirements and without adequate assets no bank can lend money. This became a cascading phenomenon which froze credit around the world.

The ultimate underlying principle is EXPECTING A SOLUTION TO ECONOMIC PROBLEMS FROM A POLITICIAN IS LIKE EXPECTING YOUR CAT TO BARK.

Walt Kelly's comic strip character was best known for saying  "We have met the enemy and he is us". Today, we have a president who thinks that his own country is the fount of evil in the world. First he goes to Europe on his America Sucks tour on which he tours Euro capitols groveling before groups of jealous, America despising elitist weenies begging their forebearance. Not only this, but he demonstrated a knowlwdge of diplomatic protocol that matches what my cats know about calculus. Yesterday, he spoke to the UN Gen Assembly. That speech had three primary themes. The first was that his predecessors in the White House (GWB in particular) were guilty of heinous atrocities against humanity. The second was that he was different. He claims to be an enlightened egalitarian who understands that the priorities of the world community trump those of any single nation(particularly his own and ours). He claimed that he would never apologize for acting in the interest of the US but turned around and subrogated that interest to the UN. The third theme was his plan to dismantle capitalism. The central parts of the plan involve damaging our economy by arbitrarily raising energy costs to the point where working people cannot afford to drive autos or heat their homes and total nuclear disarmament even if it has to be unilateral. The response to this tripe was utterly predictable. Lybian thug M Gaddafi proclaimed Obama to be a "Son" who he hpoed would rule for decades.

If you are looking for the Obama long-term plan for society, read Huxley's Brave New World. In the story, society is organized into five levels, alpha thriugh epsilon each with more limited intellect and less freedom. In short, the alphas are the elites who spend most of their time partying and congratulating each other on how brilliant they are, all under the influence of the drug Soma. Epsilons are the base class whose members do basically all the grunt work. What's really insidious is thet all reproduction is done using in vitro fertilization and artificial wombs. The classes are differentiated at this stage by exposure to increasing doses of radiation to produce the different classes. Watching Barry & Michelle with 100K date nights, shopping trips to Paris, and closing down 3 square blocks of downtown DC for an emergency trip to the farmers' market because the First Lady was out of certified organic Tuscan kale only cements their legends as self-absorbed narcissists who would be out of their depth in a puddle of dog pee.