BLIND FAITH AND IGNORANCE

Many years ago in a graduate math class I had a professor who attributed success to “main strength and awkwardness.” Today we have a governing class who appear to attribute success to blind faith and ignorance.

"We liberals are going to do what we've been itching to do for decades, and even though our policies will place greater burdens on the economy, retard economic growth, and cause the debt and deficits to further explode, we'll end up with a surplus anyway because we are so doggone virtuous with our liberal compassion that fate will have to reward us."

Change you can believe in.

HOW A RECESSION BECOMES A DEPRESSION

Scott Johnson is depressed “because the president of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty .... “

Yes.

SMART, REALLY SMART

From James Taranto’s “Best of the Web” (scroll down):

There are other indications that last week's fury [at Wall Street and particularly AIG] may be calming. The Wall Street Journal reports that "over the weekend, the White House worked to tone down its Wall Street bashing and to win support from top bankers for the bailout plan announced Monday." It seems the administration "has concluded that it needs the private sector to play a central role in fixing the economy." Brilliant, guys. We could have told you that.

Problem: "Weeks of searing criticism by politicians and the public had left bankers leery of working with the government." Isn't Obama among those who spent years arguing that President Bush's arrogant my-way-or-the-highway attitude toward foreign policy harmed America by alienating friend and foe alike? Whatever you think of that insight, did it not occur to the new president that it might have some applicability in domestic politics?

It looks that the Obama administration may be a little late “toning down its Wall Street bashing.”

GREEN JEALOUSY

Environmentalists are turning green (with jealousy):

For huge numbers of people in India the imminent introduction of the world’s cheapest car – the Nano – is a boon to families all over the developing world that currently speed around town on overloaded two-wheelers, often with an infant perched precariously on someone’s lap.

Environmentalists, however, have decried the Nano and its low-cost imitators as an impending disaster. ... Last year, the Nobel Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri, who is head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was quoted as saying he was “having nightmares” about the car.

How dare the poor have the effrontery to despoil their “pristine” environment!

IS BARNEY FRANK A HETEROPHOBE?

“After Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, admitted he feared a Supreme Court ruling on homosexual marriage because ‘that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current Court’, the associate justice called on all Americans to ‘have patience with Rep. Frank as he struggles with his heterophobia.’”

Scott Ott rocks.

REVISITING THE WIZARD OF OZ

After President Obama’s appearance on 60 Minutes, one feels he is the "anti-amalgam" of Dorothy’s sidekicks in the Wizard of Oz - no heart, no brain, no courage.

But he does have a diploma.

The interview highlights are here; the interview is here.

SOMETIMES PRAYER DOESN’T WORK

The headline: Crash pilot who paused to pray is convicted.

As the pilot who forwarded this link commented, “If praying was listed at the bottom of the EP [emergency procedures] then this would have been avoided.

I QUIT

This is what happens when the demonization of capitalism continues:

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

Read the whole letter; then ask yourself if the US is better off. Somehow I don’t think so.

IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Ed Morrisey thinks President Obama may have inadvertently endorsed the flat tax last night.

I don’t. I think it’s much worse. Here’s Obama on reducing the charitable contribution deduction for “the rich.”

People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. It just means, if you give $100 and you’re in this tax bracket, at a certain point, instead of being able to write off 36 percent or 39 percent, you’re writing off 28 percent.

Now, if it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether you’re giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street. And so this provision would affect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It’s just that they wouldn’t be able to write off 39 percent.

In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize — when I give $100, I’d get the same amount of deduction as when some — a bus driver who’s making $50,000 a year, or $40,000 a year, gives that same $100. Right now, he gets 28 percent — he gets to write off 28 percent. I get to write off 39 percent. I don’t think that’s fair.

His explanation is slick, glib – and wrong. Absolutely, flatly wrong.

Here’s what actually happens. If Joe Sixpack decides to give that marginal dollar to charity, what happens is this: Joe gives 72 cents and directs Uncle Sam (through the charitable deduction) to give 28 cents to the charity Joe specifies. The same is true for Jane Upscale: she gives 61 cents of her marginal dollar to charity and directs Uncle Sam to give 39 cents.

Now under Obama’s proposal, Joe Sixpack’s charitable contribution remains the same. But now Jane Upscale gives 61 cents, directs Uncle Sam to give 28 cents, and pays Uncle Sam 11 cents for his trouble!

David Copperfield would be proud.