Over Reaction

It can fairly be concluded that no response by Israel to the rocket attacks by the Hamas terrorists wouldn't be considered an overeaction by the loony left both here and in Europe.

The auto bailout

There could well be something wrong with this math, but here is what it looks like at BestView. GM has a market cap of $2.4 billion. That means you can buy all the shares in the company at the present stock price for this amount. The company has 96,000 employees. If we gave each employee a tax free $1,000,000 this would cost the government $9.6 billion. So, the total cost would be $12 billion and this is close to what Bush gave as a down payment to tide them over until Obama can come in and really bail the union out.
Once this is done, the government could sell the assets of the company and give the procedes to the existing retirees at GM. I suspect he UAW would take the deal if all the workers at other plants didn't kill the deal because they weren't included.

Automobile math doesn't add up

1.GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

2. Honda and Nissan make a pretax operating profit per vehicle of around $1,600; Ford, Chrysler and GM make a loss of $500 to $1,500.

Given these numbers, who is surprised the federal government decided to invest our money in the Detroit mess?

Guess the party

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann used his campaign account to bankroll home repairs and family vacations, according to a newspaper review of state investigative reports.

You can read the entire article here, but you won't discover he is a democrat. Must not be important. It is amusing to remember what some journalists say when asked why they are so quick to identify the GOP affiliation and so hesitant to mention that dems are involved in scandals like this. The explanation is the Republicans are hypocrits on corruption and the dems seldom make it a moral issue.

Inaugural Poetry

In the preceding post I wondered what Obama's inaugural poet was saying about her contribution to the festivities. Since then, I ran across an example of her "poetry" and I think I now know just how much she can offer.

This is a segment from an Alexander poem titled “Neonatology.”

“Is

“funky, is

“leaky, is

“a soggy, bloody crotch, is

“sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,

“is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is

“postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.

Say What?

Obama is going to have a poet at his inauguration. Her name is Elizabeth Alexander and she was recently asked what poetry added to the inaugural. Here is her answer, but don't ask me to explain what the hell she said:

"Poetry, because it is language distilled and because it is also such intensely precise language, provides us with a moment of respite and meditation, moments where we have to stop and listen very carefully to every word. We aren't listening for a message but rather listening for we don't know what exactly, but we're allowing ourselves to be stirred in some kind of way."

A sad Bush farewell message

President Bush went on TV yesterday to explain why he was taking 17.4 billion of your money and giving it to 2 failed automobile companies in Michigan. About everything he said was BS, but the most irritating thing to BestView was his assurance that if by March 31, 2009 the companies didn't have a plan to survive, they would have to give us back our money. He will be on his ranch in Texas, but if anyone wanted their money back in 2009 they would have a better chance getting it from my dog Bailey than from GM. You can go out right now and buy the entire company for less than $3 billion. Sad to see Bush completely sell us out.

The Rick Warren kerfuffle

Nothing could expose the loony left mind-set better than their reaction to Obama's decision to allow Rick Warren to offer up a prayer at his inauguration. A good summary is given here.
This snippet really sums up the situation, in all likelihood.

"I've left aside that they shouldn't really even have a religious invocation at the inaugural because it's become a tradition now. But my friend Capt. Fogg left an excellent comment that I urge to read in full. The main point being, "Religious rituals have no place at all in government. It's the law. Belief in God or gods is not part of public policy: that's the law, and if no religious test may be imposed for office, which is the law, why then are we asking a president to demonstrate his private religiosity in public, as part of his inauguration?"

A new disaster to worry about using tax money

A blue-ribbon panel of scientists is trying to determine the best way to detect and ward off any wandering space rocks that might be on a collision course with Earth.

"We're looking for the killer asteroid,'' James Heasley, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, last week told the committee that the National Academy of Sciences created at Congress' request.

Congress asked the academy to conduct the study after astronomers were unable to eliminate an extremely slight chance that an asteroid called Apophis will slam into Earth with devastating effect in 2036.

Apophis was discovered in 2004 about 17 million miles from Earth on a course that would overlap our planet's orbit in 2029 and return seven years later. Observers said that the asteroid — a massive boulder left over from the birth of the solar system — is about 1,000 feet wide and weighs at least 50 million tons.

After further observations, astronomers reported that the asteroid would skim by Earth harmlessly in 2029, but it has a one in 44,000 probability of slamming into our planet on Easter Sunday, April 13, 2036.

Just wondering

If the idiotic Bush outfit sees fit to defy the people, the people's representatives in Congress, and common sense to bail out the Detroit car makers, do competitive manufacturers like Toyota have the makings of a law suit for preferential use of the nation's assets? If they sue, BestView wants to be on the jury.

Liberal Solution Predictable

New York is facing a $15 billion budget deficit. Governor Paterson's solution is tax and fee increases. There is no thought of budget cuts, but there is much anguish about not being able to increase things. Other states like South Carolina are also facing budget deficits and are cutting spending rather than raising taxes in a recession. It is difficult to imagine why people in liberal states like New York, Michigan, and California don't take the fastest road out.

How did Blagojevich become Governor?

Michael Barone offers this explanation which BestView found enlightening.

How did he become Governor? Family connections: “Blagojevich is the son-in-law of 33rd Ward Democratic Committeeman Dick Mell. Ward committeemen are hugely important in Chicago politics: Dan Rostenkowski and his father had been the 32nd ward committeemen from 1935 to 1995; the ward committeemen from the 11th ward since some time in the 1940s have been Richard J. Daley, Richard M. Daley and John Daley; the 13th ward committeeman Bill Lipinski, retiring suddenly from Congress in 2004, was able to get the Democratic nomination for his son Dan Lipinski from a group of ward committeemen despite the fact that Dan Lipinski was a political science professor at the University of Tennessee and hadn’t lived in Chicago for years.”

New way to pad a bra

Federal investigators say this photo shows a Massachusetts lawmaker stuffing bribe money into her bra. The picture came from the New York Times and if you read to the last part of the article you will see that this bribe and several other on-going political scandals in the home state of Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank are all involving democrats even though the article does state that when Republicans controlled the state 100 years ago, it too was corrupt. Pretty funny.

Bad year for unions so far

A nonprofit organization founded by California’s largest union local reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose — to develop housing for low-income workers — during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show.

The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings. Charity watchdogs say that nonprofits should never have zero program expenses in two successive years and that well-performing charities direct at least 70% of their annual spending to their charitable purpose. “Of the 5,000-plus charities we’ve looked at, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that didn’t spend anything on its charitable programs,” said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, an online rating service.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Blagojevich

O.K., here we are. We know how much Blagojevich valued the senate nomination. Today we learn that Jesse Jackson, Jr. spent 90 minutes in the office of the good governor on Monday of this week talking about his superb qualifications to be Obama's replacement and absolutely nothing, in all that time, came up about a quid pro quo. On Tuesday, Blagojevich was arrested. Raise your hand if you believe the story ends there.

The Obama factor in Illinois politics

BestView is doubtful that the arrest of the Illinois governor for attempting to raffle off Obama's senate seat could have occurred without our President-elect knowing anything about it. It is also tempting to speculate that the arrest was made early before the good governor had the chance to appoint someone who could have been further connected to Obama. We already know Obama was tight with Rezko and his criminal enterprise, so credulity would be sorely stretched in order to conclude the President-elect was not involved to some extent. The sad part is the character of our first black President is and forever will be called into question. There is no way a completely clean politician can come out of Chicago or Illinois.

Burn Baby Burn

Evidently the public is not supporting liberal made-up crap in the Big Apple and the New York Times is in deep doo-doo. Read it here. BestView considers them guilty of treason in some of their selective publications of classified material. Here's hoping they go belly up.

Crooked Politicians

The voters were able to get rid of "Deep Freeze" Jefferson, the New Orleans Congressman who took so much bribe money he had to store some of it in his freezer where the FBI found it. Unlike the Republicans who have had to expel several crooked Congressman in the past few years, the dems hold on to theirs until the voters do their job for them. The problem is we are left with Senator Dodd of Connecticut, Charlie Rangle of New York, and Senator Reid of Nevada. In the vernacular of the current fiscal situation, they are too big to fail, it seems.

Just wondering

If ten terrorists with hand-held weapons could kill hundreds at hotels in India, what could a like number do in the U.S. on New Year's Eve on Times Square? At a football game? A concert?

Jobs Plan

The unemployment problem in the country is real. The solution is obvious, but is not likely to be used by the Obama administration. We can look for the next Congress to throw money at make-work projects which will be addressed inefficiently and most of the money will be wasted. People will be hired into jobs for which they are not qualified and in which they are largely unhappy. Since most jobs in this country are created by small businesses, it would be highly desirable for the government to cut their taxes so they could hire more people into long-lasting position which are more desirable. It is not expected that will happen.

Fascinating Question

Victor Davis Hanson in IBD has posed a fascinating question as we watch the Obama administration slowly take shape. "Will Obama decide that Bush's anti-terrorism architecture shredded the constitution and should be largely repealed or did it help keep us safe from attack for seven years?"

A Financial Review

Well, let's see where we stand. Congress is going to bail out the union-infested car manufacturers based in Michigan and as a condition for this use of tax-payer money, the geniuses in Washington who have never done anything in the private sector are going to dictate how the companies must be restructured in order to survive. This should be fascinating to watch. Barney Frank the industrialist.

How science works

Here's a fascinating little story from the Wall Street Journal.

Scars on the surface of the Moon record a hail of impacts during what is called the Late Heavy Bombardment. The Earth would have received an even more intense bombardment, and the common thinking until recently was that life could not have emerged on Earth until the bombardment eased about 3.85 billion years ago.

Norman H. Sleep, a professor of geophysics at Stanford, recalled that in 1986 he submitted a paper that calculated the probability of life surviving one of the giant, early impacts. It was summarily rejected because a reviewer said that obviously nothing could have lived then.

That is no longer thought to be true.

"We thought we knew something we didn't," said T. Mark Harrison, a professor of geochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. In hindsight the evidence was just not there. And new evidence has suggested a new view of the early Earth.

This, of course, is how science actually works. All scientific knowledge is tentative, subject to constant challenge by new hypotheses and new evidence.

Keep this in mind every time a global warmist claims that the "scientific consensus" about "climate change" is unchallengeable.

Just wondering

There was one terrorist captured in Mumbai last week and the Indian government is "questioning" him. Wonder if the ACLU would approve of the methods used?

Politicians know best

A recent poll by CNN shows that 61% of Americans are against the bailout of the auto makers in Detroit, but the Congress is going to do so anyway. Look for a giant dose of obfuscation to accompany the political cave to the unions. The gut feel of the public is right in this instance.

Economic Basics

The current government bailout of various failing entities can be summed up as follows:

We are going to take the money from those of you who are competent and did not create these financial problems and we are going to give it to those who are incompetent and created problems for all of us and ask them to fix the mess that they are responsible for in the first place. If they find progress is not being made in their fixing efforts, more of your money will be printed, given to the same incompetents, and put on the debt your children and grandchildren will have to pay. It is all very simple.

Watch for liberal states to come begging

The big liberal states like New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California which have the highest taxes and spending and the fattest union members will be the first to come squealing to Washington begging for the rest of us to bail them out. They will plead for our money like the automobile companies in the high tax, big union states in the upper Mid-west and expect those of us in the rest of the country with car plants but not unions to pay for the bailout.

It is enough to trigger another secessionist movement.

Early Obama Grade

So far, so good. At least relative to worst fears. About the best we can hope for is the liberals will be as disappointed in Obama as conservatives like BestView were in Bush.