THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: US ‘sham’ bank bail-outs enrich speculators, says buy-out chief Mark Patterson. “The US Treasury’s effort to stabilise the banking system through the TARP programme is a hopelessly ill-conceived policy that enriches speculators at public expense, according to the buy-out firm supposed to be pioneering the joint public-private bank rescues.”

JIM LINDGREN ON Obama’s halving of Chrysler’s advertising budget: “This cut might be a sound executive decision or it might not, but I think it should be made by Chrysler management and the bankruptcy court.” But where’s the fun in that?

U.S. NEWS: 100 billion stimulus dollars for education, and it’s not clear what we’ll get for it.

AT THE PJTV GRILL: Sonja Schmidt offers a healthy portion of reality for Elizabeth Edwards’ book tour.

STIMULUS BILL IGNITING A trade war with Canada? It’s been a long time since I was a trade lawyer, but I’ve been wondering about a lot of the stimulus / bailout stuff in the context of subsidies and trade conflict, and I suspect we’ll see more complaints from other countries. These will either fall within the WTO framework and ignite legal action — or, worse, fall outside it and ignite trade retaliation.

WELL, I AGREE WITH THE PRESIDENT: Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’.

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

Gee, you don’t say. I wonder how things could have come to such a pass? Good thing Obama’s on the job paring our debt. Oh, wait:

And as the article goes on to note, things are moving in the wrong direction even compared to these estimates:

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.

So how about quit throwing trillions down a rathole? Just a thought. Also, maybe sending checks to dead people is a bad start.

This week, thousands of people are getting stimulus checks in the mail. The problem is that a lot of them are dead. . . . Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He’d been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the United States for a seven-month visit in 1969.

The Santopadres are not alone.

There’s not much evidence of prudent fiscal management out there at the moment, despite Obama’s talk.

UPDATE: Indeed:

Will someone please remind the president that the time to deal with deficits and reckless spending is before the horses leave the barn–which they do when Obama plants his John Henry on an outrageous liberal spending bill.

Will someone also please alert the president to the fact that one million American patriots gathered at “Tea Parties” on April 15 to express their grave concerns about the financial Armageddon that will result unless run away spending and budget deficits are addressed?

Remind the president that, although members of his administration dismissed Tea Party participants as “right wing extremists” engaged in unhealthy disagreement with government, the fact is that the Tea Parties fostered healthy debate among citizens who really care about the well being of future generations of Americans.

More Tea Parties will follow and perhaps the president should pay attention?

Perhaps he should.

REALLY? Washington Post: “Troubling new questions” about Nancy Pelosi’s credibility.

UPDATE: Hmm. They’ve edited the story and now instead of “troubling new questions” it’s “some questions” about Pelosi’s credibility. So does this mean the Post has decided that they’re not troubled? Or that questions about Pelosi’s credibility aren’t new? Either way, I hate it when people edit stories that way, making my quotes obsolete.

YEAH, LIGHT BLOGGING TONIGHT. Went to a retirement dinner for my dad, who closed out 40 years as a professor of Religious Studies, and only had a couple of posts scheduled for the evening. Lots of reminiscences about his confrontation with Billy Graham and Richard Nixon (more on that here), his founding of the Journal of Religious Ethics, and an amusing message from Stanley Hauerwas. Plus, more affectingly, lots of people talking about how he started or boosted their careers in academia. As an academic, your life is like George Bailey’s, affecting people in ways you often don’t fully realize, except, on rare occasions like a retirement dinner, when they tell you.

UPDATE: Posing with an admirer, afterward.

And addressing the crowd:

GEORGE WILL: Tincture of Lawlessness: Obama’s Overreaching Economic Policies. “The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”

JERRY POURNELLE’S latest column is up.

A BIG SALE ON Tag Heuer watches. Get them now before the hyperinflation sets in!

YOU DON’T SAY: Survey: U.s. Newspapers Fear The Effects of Cutbacks.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: Some defendants are less equal than others.

REASON TV: Hasta la vista, Arnold.

KARL ROVE: Nancy Pelosi Was An Accomplice to ‘Torture.’

Plus, Joe Lieberman weighs in.

ED DRISCOLL: Parachuting From Space. Video at the link.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF from ATM skimmers.

TIME FOR AN INSTA-POLL!

TARP UPDATE: Documents Confirm Treasury Bullied Banks.

STEPHEN GREEN, HOWEVER, IS STILL AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME: Move Over Frat Boys: “Cyber Millennials” Are Drinking, and Working Out, More Than You Are. It’s part of living like a college student into your 30s and 40s.

AUDACITY: World’s Biggest Borrower Tells ASU Students Not To Live On Credit.

HOW TO MAKE A BREAKFAST BURGER. Mmm. Breakfast and burgers.

MARK STEYN: Live Free Or Die.

HEH: Palin Links Topless Beauty Queen Scandal to Obama. “’What I find so remarkable is that these politically-motivated attacks fail to show that what Carrie and I believe is also what President Obama and Secretary Clinton believe — marriage is between a man and a woman,’ Palin said.” Yes, but when Obama believes it, it’s not bigotry.

OKAY, I’M FEELING VERY CHEATED HERE: Vitamins can undercut benefits of exercise?

About forty healthy young male volunteers took part in the study, which involved four weeks of identical exercise programs. Half of the volunteers were already in athletic training, and half weren’t. Both groups were then split again, and half of each cohort took 1000 mg/day of vitamin C and 400 IU/day vitamin E, while the other half took no antioxidants at all. So, we have the effects of exercise, plus and minus previous training, and plus and minus antioxidants.

And as it turns out, antioxidant supplements appear to cancel out many of the beneficial effects of exercise. Soaking up those transient bursts of reactive oxygen species keeps them from signaling. Looked at the other way, oxidative stress could be a key to preventing type II diabetes. Glucose uptake and insulin sensitivity aren’t affected by exercise if you’re taking supplementary amounts of vitamins C and E, and this effect is seen all the way down to molecular markers such as the PPAR coactivator proteins PGC1 alpha and beta. . . . I think that there’s enough evidence to go ahead and say it: exercise and antioxidants work against each other. The whole take-antioxidants-for-better-health idea, which has been taking some hits in recent years, has just taken another big one.

Well, crap. Coming soon: Whiskey and cigarettes — the best things for you!