PJTV: Obama Confesses, “We’re Out of Money” … with Megan McArdle & Alison Fraser. On my new “InstaVision” show. Well, it’s really pretty much the same show, only with better graphics, and I’m going to branch out beyond political / economic subjects in the future.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Furor grows over partisan car dealer closings.
Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.
The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?
I hope the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice looks into this.
UPDATE: A reader notes something about “car czar” Steven Rattner: “Rattner is married to Maureen White, the former National Finance Chair for the Democratic Party.” The comment: “So one of the guys advising SecTreas on this thing is married to someone who used to be one of the people in charge of fundraising for the Democratic Party. This explains so much it’s scary.” Well, it bears a close look.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan McArdle notes some skepticism, and the Examiner piece has been updated with additional information that calls this into question. Also, somebody forwarded me an email from John Lott, who’s run the numbers and doesn’t think there’s much here. So don’t get carried away just yet.
ROBERT FARAGO: “The Associated Press called it: GM is set to enter popular parlance as ‘Government Motors.’ When the automaker files for Chapter 11, the nickname will stick, as the debate over GM’s future centers on whether or not the United States government should own a commercial enterprise. To which the only possible answer is no. . . . There are lots of reasons why ‘new’ GM is a bad idea. But here’s the most important impediment: Government Motors doesn’t have the vehicles it needs to survive. . . . As the New York Times recently asserted (welcome!), we can blame GM’s sclerotic corporate culture for their abject failure to create a complete line of compelling/profitable vehicles. The idea that the United States government will reform GM’s way of being and reverse the curse is completely preposterous. It’s like asking a cocaine dealer to sponsor a crack addict.”
UPDATE: TigerHawk: “Now that the One has staked his reputation and our dollars on the revival of General Motors, will college town academics and related hangers-on suddenly decide it is chic to buy and drive a Chevrolet? If not, why not?”
WENDY KAMINER on Sotomayor and Sisterhood.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Return of the Bond Vigilantes.
They’re back. We refer to the global investors once known as the bond vigilantes, who demanded higher Treasury bond yields from the late 1970s through the 1990s whenever inflation fears popped up, and as a result disciplined U.S. policy makers. The vigilantes vanished earlier this decade amid the credit mania, but they appear to be returning with a vengeance now that Congress and the Federal Reserve have flooded the world with dollars to beat the recession.
Treasury yields leapt again yesterday at the long end, with the 10-year note climbing above 3.7%, its highest close since November. Treasury yields had stayed low, and the dollar had remained strong, as long as investors were looking for the safest financial port amid the post-September panic. But as risk aversion subsides, and investors return to corporate bonds and other assets, investors are now calculating the risks of renewed dollar inflation.
They have cause to be worried, given Washington’s astonishing bet on fiscal and monetary reflation. The Obama Administration’s epic spending spree means the Treasury will have to float trillions of dollars in new debt in the next two or three years alone. Meanwhile, the Fed has gone beyond cutting rates to directly purchasing such financial assets as mortgage-backed securities, as well as directly monetizing federal debt by buying Treasurys for the first time in half a century. No wonder the Chinese and other dollar asset holders are nervous. They wonder — as do we — whether the unspoken Beltway strategy is to pay off this debt by inflating away its value.
I’m not so much wondering, as expecting.
UPDATE: Okay, unlike this guy I’m not “100% sure” of hyperinflation. But willl we see something like this for real?
NICK GILLESPIE: “Sadly, the Predictably Lame Arguments Against Gay Marriage Seem to be Working Quite Well. When it comes to recognizing gay marriage (which the polling compnay asking about in the mid-’90s), Gallup finds support slipping from a high of 46 percent in 2007 to 40 percent this year.” Actually, I think the behavior of those arguing for gay marriage has as much to do with the polls.
FORBES: Is Sotomayor Really Anti-Business? “The Didden decision is likely a red herring–not a ‘red flag.'”
UPDATE: Related: Comments from Jeffrey Rosen. More on Rosen here.
And is Obama pursuing a Harriet Miers strategy? There was a strategy with Harriet Miers?
THE CASE FOR TAXING EMAIL. Why not? They seem to want to tax everything else. Hope and change!
JAMES KIRCHICK: “Alongside not talking with your mouth full and wiping, one of the elemental lessons in manners that civilized societies teach their young is not to mock the physically disabled. Someone should remind Joe Klein, the ostensibly adult political columnist for Time magazine.”
WAR-GAMING an attack on North Korea.
BILL O’REILLY SMEARS HOT AIR. “Bottom line for me: if the O’Reilly Factor can’t figure out the difference between a blog post and a comment, they have no business opining about the Internet at all.” Indeed. O’Reilly should apologize.
UPDATE: Reader Juliette Akinyi Ochieng (who blogs here) writes:
About ‘Hussein’:
If the president had been born in Kenya, his name would be ‘Barack Hussein’ or he would have a Luo surname other than ‘Obama.’ My father–also a Luo–spells out the custom here–in short, Luo offspring do not take the last name of their fathers, but receive their own surname. But because he was born in the US, he has the surname of his father (a patronymic).
Same thing with me: because I was born in the US, rather than in Kenya, I have the same surname as my father. Had I been born in Kenya, my name would be “Juliette Akinyi.” (One more thing: I started using my entire name because Kenyans would hear “Juliette Ochieng” and look at me oddly: in the Luo tribe, male surnames begin with ‘O’ and female surnames begin with ‘A.’)
As is often the case, O’Reilly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
You’d think he’d get producers who could keep things like the difference between blog posts and blog comments straight, though. Unlike Luo nomenclature, that’s not exactly an obscure distinction.
ON NPR, my colleague Jeff Hirsch looks at Sotomayor’s 1995 baseball ruling.
A BUNCH OF NEW RELEASES on DVD and Blu-Ray.
STIMULUS! Home Sales in U.S. Stay Sluggish as Supply Soars. “The glut of unsold homes, fed by a new wave of foreclosures, could drag housing prices lower in the month ahead as the gap widens between supply and demand.”
SWINE FLU UPDATE: Possible Return of Swine Flu in Fall Has U.S. Health Officials on Alert.
As the H1N1 swine flu virus continues to wax and wane in different parts of the country, U.S. health officials said Tuesday that they were working as fast as possible to learn as much as they can about the novel pathogen before the return of the flu season in the fall.
The reason for the urgency: Some past pandemics were preceded by “herald waves” of a flu strain that surfaced at the end of one flu season, only to return with far greater consequences the next flu season.
It’s a good time for everyone — in and out of government — to brush up their preparedness plans.
OBAMA’S GREEN GURU CALLS FOR WHITE ROOFS. Obviously, he’s getting his ideas on how to deal with global warming from InstaPundit!
Meanwhile, I keep hearing Cream sing, In a White Roof, even though I know it’s wrong. Besides, you wouldn’t want black curtains if you were trying to save on cooling bills.
TREASURY SECRETARY TIM GEITHNER WILL MEET WITH THE CHINESE: “Perhaps the chief issue facing global markets is the extent to which China will continue investing heavily in Treasury bills. If China believes the dollar is going to decline in the future, given the ballooning United States debt, it could reduce its purchases.”
G.M. BONDHOLDERS: PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME. “The government is punishing one group of workers to reward another.” That’s the Chicago Way.
UPDATE: Reader Fred Butzen writes:
I’m a fourth-generation Chicagoan, and lifelong resident. There’s a lot here to like, and I have no plans to leave. But one thing that you have to understand about Chicago, which is the key to understanding Obama, is that the city’s political system is a kinder, gentler form of Leninism: government and business subordinate to the Party, and the Party subordinate to the dictator. There may occasionally be a coup, but never a lost election. Political influence is a second currency, more valuable, in some ways, than money. “Don’t send nobody nobody knows” is the system’s creed.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Obama’s vision for America is Cook County writ large. And we are fools if we let him do it.
Indeed.
MORE TREASURY BOND WORRIES: “I do want to point to two articles that point to a growing problem that the Obama administration has failed to address in any serious way: the exploding deficits, and the resulting need to borrow heavily. . . . Eventually the treasury has to roll that debt or pay it off, and if interest rates spike, that can prove catastrophic–just ask Argentina. The five year, seven year, and especially the thirty year auctions will tell us much more. If the longer-yield debt again registers weak demand, the administration is going to have to address this problem.”
But how can they do that? Tax increases to make up the difference are impossible — not only politically, but probably economically — and they seem sublimely uninterested in cutting spending.
Meanwhile, let’s run that graphic one more time, since I still hear Obamites blaming the problem on the cost of the Iraq war, etc.:
APOLLO XI: The Untold Story.
I THINK HE’S ENJOYING THIS TURNABOUT THING: Gingrich: Sotomayor ‘racist,’ should withdraw nomination.
Robert Gibbs, meanwhile, thinks people should be careful about what they say. Where have I heard that before?
UPDATE: Ah, Politico is remembering the same thing:
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a pointed warning to opponents of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination Wednesday, urging critics to measure their words carefully during a politically charged confirmation debate. . . .
In 2001, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer drew criticism in the press for suggesting Americans “need to watch what they say” in the overheated aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
But that was a scary threat of totalitarian censorship. Well, to Frank Rich, anyway.
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