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It’s Just This Little Chromium Switch

I’m writing this on the “real” Blue Crab Boulevard - the original .com domain. If everything I have done today worked, the .net domain will shut down and the .com domain will go live when I flip the switch.

If it doesn’t, well, I am out of ammo. This was a last resort kind of effort.

Interesting

Maybe this is just a coincidence. Then again, I can’t recall three nominees for positions in an incoming administration (or two nominees and a rumor) all withdrawing on the same day before.

Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, has told network officials will not leave his television career to become the U.S. Surgeon General, according to sources familiar with his decision.

Gupta, who had been described as the leading candidate for the public health post, withdrew his name even as President Obama hosted a health care summit at the White House today that Gupta did not attend.

The decision means that the often low-profile job will not get a mass-media jolt from appointing the well-known television celebrity. Gupta, a neurosurgeon who continues to practice medicine, has become ubiquitous on CNN, where he hosts a half-hour show called “House Call “and appears on numerous other programs.

Gupta was never officially nominated, so he is the rumor. Now, what to make of this:

Two candidates for top positions at the Treasury Department have withdrawn from consideration, according to people familiar with the matter.

Annette Nazareth, who was expected to be tapped as deputy secretary, has taken her name out of the running, these people said.

In addition, Mr. Geithner’s pick for undersecretary for international affairs, Caroline Atkinson, has also withdrawn.

One has to wonder about this. People are, apparently, disassociating themselves from the Obama administration. Maybe it is just a huge pay cut for Gupta as the first article implies. Maybe it is just the protracted vetting process as the other article implies. Maybe it is just a coincidence.

On the other hand, the best way to avoid being accused of deserting a sinking ship is to avoid getting on it in the first place.

Via Memeorandum

Popularity Contests

Peter Wehner, writing at NRO, points out an interesting tidbit of data. Obama is actually less popular at this point in his presidency than George W. Bush was at a comparable stage.

Here’s an interesting data point comparison: Barack Obama’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll today is 61 percent, with 28 percent disapproving (the Real Clear Politics aggregate of polls has his overall job approval rating at 59.8 percent). A March 5-7, 2001 Gallup poll found President Bush’s job approval at 63 percent as well, with only 22 percent disapproving. So George W. Bush, at a comparable time in his presidency, was in marginally better shape than Barack Obama is right now, at least based on the Gallup Poll survey.

Not that these types of popularity contest polls mean a lot this early on in any President’s tenure. But it is an interesting bit of information. The press is spinning - hard - about how popular Obama is. This casts their spin in another light.

I wonder what Carter’s numbers looked like at this stage.

Glad They Passed That Amendment

During the last election, the voters in Iowa passed an amendment to their constitution that struck certain language from the Constitution. The clause banning an “idiot or insane person” from voting was removed. Which is a good thing. Since it allowed the Iowa legislature to pass a change to a department name in their government.

Lawmakers in Iowa on Wednesday raised some eyebrows when they voted to rename a department that deals with seniors, allowing it to carry the acronym DOA.

DOA is a term that stands for dead-on-arrival.

“You can’t have an acronym like this when you’re referring to elderly people,” Rep. Dave Heaton, 68, said after both houses of the legislature voted to change the name of the Department of Elder Affairs to the Department on Ageing (DOA).

I once attended a department reorganizational meeting where changes to the engineering department I worked in were announced. In order to respond to plant operational concerns faster, the powers that be signed off on creating a group who would have the sole responsibility for meeting emergent problems.

They - and I am completely serious - stood at the front of the room and announced the Fast Action Response Team. They figured out that they had made a mistake about one second after revealing the overhead for that one.

(I blame the slow response on an early meeting and not enough coffee.)

And yes, they changed the name to the Rapid Response Team. But they were still routinely called by the original acronym when I left that company.

Childishness

Jay Cost over at Real Clear Politics has this one exactly right. He’s writing about the latest, all-out Democratic smear campaign against Rush Limbaugh and, by extension, against Republicans. I never listen to the man, but have called out ridiculous attacks on him in the past. This time, the smearing is being directed right from the White House itself. Cost takes exception:

What’s the political payoff here? It’s simple. By assigning Limbaugh - who “wants the President to fail” - as the leader of the Republican Party, the White House can make it look like congressional Republicans hope the President fails, and that their opposition to his budget is rooted in this sinister desire. It’s an easy way to misrepresent Republican opposition to the President. Just as his Republican opponents wanted to do nothing in the face of economic collapse, they oppose the budget because they want the President to fail.

I understand why Democrats in Congress, the media, and the DNC are doing this. Frankly, that doesn’t bother me at all. That’s the way political games are played, and GOP politicos have certainly done their fair share of this over the years to deserve all that they get. But I am deeply disappointed that the President himself is playing this game - not just because he is the President and this kind of nonsense should be beneath him. It’s also because he is the President in part because he promised he wouldn’t do this stuff! And yet, we’ve seen this kind of immature nonsense quite a bit from an administration that has only been in place for a month.

Cost refers to this piece from The Politico that tells the inside story of the coordinated smear campaign. He also points to this particularly bad performance by Obama toward Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Britain.

The murmurs began when President Obama returned to the British Embassy the Winston Churchill bust that had been displayed in the Oval Office since Tony Blair lent it to George W. Bush.

The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs, announcing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to the White House, demoted the Churchillian phrase “special relationship” to a mere “special partnership” across the Atlantic.

And the alarm bells really went off when Brown’s entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday night. Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn’t grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations’ flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps.

Still, Brown kept a stiff upper lip as he sat in the Oval Office yesterday as Obama, skipping the usual words of welcome for his guest, went straight to questions from the news services. Brown didn’t get to speak for six minutes, after Obama had already answered two questions.

A President who has lots and lots of energy to direct attacks at a talk show host but projects coldness toward one of our longest, strongest allies. Amateurish doesn’t begin to describe this. The title of the post comes closer.

That Sinking Feeling

There appear to be at least some members of the media falling off the Obama bandwagon. In an unsigned editorial, the Detroit News blasts the carbon tax proposed by Barack Obama as a dagger aimed at Michigan’s heart.

The carbon tax will be paid by energy companies, manufacturers and public utilities, who will pass the cost on to their consumers. Michigan will be especially targeted. It gets 60 percent of its electric power from coal plants, and the state’s economy is still reliant on heavy manufacturing such as car and truck assembly and auto parts production.

Michigan will lose as carbon tax money is shifted to states with a greater presence of high-tech and service businesses.

The proposed tax would take effect in 2012 and has the very real potential to throw the nation back into recession, if indeed the expected recovery has arrived by then. It’s impossible to raise costs for such basics as manufacturing and energy production by more than half a trillion dollars over a decade and not have the effects felt across the economy.

No, the effects cannot be avoided. They will be drastic. This is nothing more than a huge tax increase that will be devastating on the economy and on the people of this country. Worse yet, the effects of this massive tax hike will be particularly harsh on those who can afford it the least. It is regressive at its very core.

Even the Detroit News sees the one important truth - or lie, depending on how you look at it - of this massive carbon tax: The companies will not pay the cost of it. We will. Each and every one of us who buys, consumes or uses pretty much anything.

Tech Things

Yeah, I’ve been nonexistent with posting for a few days. There are a number of reasons. I have had no luck whatsoever in getting the main site up and running - I am not a programmer and the folks I have contacted have either not responded or been unable to help. I am now at the point of having to call the hosting company and seeing if they have any ideas for getting the .com site back on line.

On the home front, I have been fighting with my daughter’s Vista computer. That required a total reinstall of her operating system. I’ve also restored a couple of other home computers from a free trial of Windows Home Server (WHS). For about $100 you can get the OEM version of WHS and turn an old computer into a home server that automatically backs up your other Windows computers. (Windows XP, Vista and 7 all work.)

The WHS saved me a lot of time on the reinstalls. It also has a long free trial of 90 days. They have also dropped the price recently. I think I see a pattern. I suspect that when Windows 7 debuts, the push from Microsoft will be “buy a new Windows 7 computer and turn your old computer into a home server.” (That’s how I’d do it.)

Yeah, this is a rambling post.

Worsening The Crisis

The Wall Street Journal charges that the Obama administration is deepening and widening the financial problems the country now faces.

As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

I heard an Obama sound bite today dismissing the stock market drops as little more than noise. I don’t think they are. There is real damage being done here. Capital is trying to find a refuge from the announced redistributionist policies of the Obama administration. The economy will suffer. So will the people.

The economic recovery is bound to be damaged by the new policies of the Obama administration. When the energy prices average people pay in this country skyrocket as a result of the Obama cap and trade scheme, the economy will take another hit. When the administration finds that the “rich” don’t exist in enough numbers to fund their plans the “rich” will, inevitably, be defined downward.

I think the WSJ has this one called out right. We are in for a severe - and lasting - economic downturn.

What Has Eight Arms And Floods?

The answer: An escape artist California two-spotted octopus. Workers at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium were a bit dismayed to find that the octopus in question had flooded the outside of the aquarium, so to speak. They walked in and found a flood.

For one dexterous octopus, an attempt at a great escape turned into a great flood Thursday at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California.

The female California two-spotted octopus swam to the top of her tank, disassembled a valve with her powerful arm, and released at least 200 gallons (757 liters) of seawater into nearby exhibits and offices.

Obviously, the escape plan involved waiting for a sufficient amount of water to build up, then to surf back to the sea when the door was opened.

Illusions

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the illusions that Barack Obama is selling. Taxes, according to Obama, will only rise for the “rich”. The Journal points out the absurdity of that claim:

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and “the wealthiest 2%.” Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That’s about 7% of all returns; the data aren’t broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% — about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 — paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Note that federal income taxes are already “progressive” with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He’d also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won’t come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.

But let’s not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

The Journal also points out that the carbon cap and trade scheme is nothing more than another - brutal - tax that American taxpayers will pay. That tax is completely regressive. It will impact the less well off much harder. All energy will cost more. You and I will pay for all of that.

Do not be confused here. The word “rich” will have to be defined downward in the coming years. Eventually, anyone with a part time job at a fast food stand will be considered a plutocrat.

Gore Effect Reaches Space

The Gore Effect, heretofore observed only on the surface of the earth has reached space. A NASA satellite designed to monitor global carbon dioxide crashed into the Antarctic Ocean when launched today.

Nasa scientists were left red-faced today after a £190 million rocket carrying a global warming satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was the agency’s first attempt to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space and was designed make climate change models more accurate.
But minutes after the launch at 9.55am GMT, the rocket failed to separate properly and plunged back to the Earth.

NASA, like our government, has turned inward rather than outward.

O-Bingo!

I wish I’d thought of this. For tonight’s much ballyhooed Obama speech, Americans for Tax Reform has come up with handy-dandy O-Bingo cards, so you can play along at home. They have a handy key to what the words mean:

“Since the Great Depression” – The economic one, not the feeling you’ve had since he signed the “stimulus” bill.

“Save or create” jobs – Obama’s new metric whereby he can claim credit for the outcome no matter what happens (how exactly does one determine the number of “saved” jobs?)

“Crisis” - Excuse to hike taxes and grow the government per Rahm Emanuel’s theory: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

“Stimulus” – The 1,000 page Pelosi-Reid-Obama pork bill rushed through in the dead of night with no transparency and that not a single member of Congress who voted for it actually read.

“Hope” – The optimistic expectation, against all evidence that this government will be the first in the history of time to succeed in spending its way out of economic problems.

“Change” – Take-home pay of future generations due to massive spending increases and government expansion.

There are, of course, more definitions at the link, along with multiple versions of the cards so you can play with family or friends. Personally, I suspect that the speech will consist (other than the buzz words and phrases that will surely get shouts of “O-Bingo!”, if you’re playing at home) of several things:

Bragging, job-destroying tax increases, Federal spending sprees, self back-patting, onerous regulations, tax increases, more government spending, self-congratulations, expensive regulations that cripple job creation, tax increases, extra-special spending, self-praise, tax increases and a few extra tax increases and draconian regulations leading to further job loss, Congressional waste and tax increases for good measure. Ending on some praise for his leadership and a final tax increase.

O-Bingo!