IAIN MURRAY: Deregulation Now!

Regulations cost the economy $1.75 trillion each year. It is regulation that is dragging us back to recession.

The president should instantly upbraid his cabinet members and agency heads for the derisory responses to his call for deregulatory efforts, which will barely scratch the surface of the problem. He should demand total regulatory relief to the tune of at least $500 billion a year, and make it clear that it’s just a start. His agency heads have so far found a sum two orders of magnitude smaller than that, a clear sign that they don’t understand what’s wrong with the economy.

Send ’em a copy of this piece by Steve Carter.

MARK STEYN ON WEINERGATE: “It’s the political class doing all this relentless “work for the American people” that’s turned this country into the brokest nation in the history of the planet, killed the American Dream and left the American people headed for a future poised somewhere between the Weimar Republic and Mad Max. So, if it’s a choice between politicians getting back to work for the American people or Tweeting their privates round the planet, I say, Tweet on, MacDuff. Tough on our young college ladies. But, as Queen Victoria advised her daughter on her wedding night, lie back and think of England. Download and think of America.”

IN WISCONSIN, a “Walkerville” fail. Are they suffering from protest fatigue?

CHANGE: Stocks Post Fifth Straight Week Of Losses.

KENNETH ANDERSON: A Book Length Account of Fannie and Freddie and Their Role in the Financial Crisis. “Homes were seen as a way of inducing savings for a generation that was starting to see retirement down the road. Home ownership would develop equity, assets, things that would see a generation through to the end. There was a deep problem with that logic, of course, called supply and demand.”

THOSE AMAZING GURKHAS:

A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen.

Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, described how he was spurred on by the belief that he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint in Afghanistan. . . . The soldier fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to thwart the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, last September.

At one point, after exhausting all his ammunition, he had to use the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant who was climbing the walls of the compound.

(Via Blackfive).

A BLOG REPORT on the Sturbridge tornado.

SURVIVING A TORNADO in a Kevlar bunker. “Swenson said her shelter, made by the Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont Co., didn’t budge, even as the twister blew a hole in the garage ceiling above. . . . Swenson stayed inside that shelter until the tornado passed. When she exited, unlike her shelter, her entire neighborhood was demolished. More than 130 people in her town were killed.”

AT AMAZON, the Blu-Ray Deal Of The Week: James Bond.

IF NOMINATED, I WILL NOT RUN. IF ELECTED, I will not serve.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Bank Of America Padlocked After Homeowner “Forecloses” On It. It was actually a default judgment for unpaid legal fees and court costs after BoA foreclosed on a homeowner with no mortgage, but close enough. “Sheriff’s deputies, movers, and the Nyergers’ attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller’s drawers. After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.”

ROGER SIMON: Rahm Emanuel, Waterboy. “Who actually is Rahm Emanuel and why is he saying these things? More precisely, why is a putative Zionist, someone with deep family and personal ties to Israel, carrying water for Barack Obama on this matter?”

RATHER A LOT, REALLY: What Will A Nuclear-Free Germany Cost? Economic suicide by policy-fad? “Blackouts are a near-term concern because, under Merkel’s plan, Germany’s eight oldest reactors—seven of which she ordered offline for safety inspections in March, and another undergoing maintenance—would never run again, and ramping up supply from other sources could prove difficult. Germany’s Federal Network Agency has determined that southern Germany, which stands to lose five reactors producing 5,200 megawatts, could run short of power this winter. During cold snaps, demand for power is at a peak, and output from Germany’s more than 17,000 megawatts’ worth of solar capacity is also at a minimum. Electricity imports are also harder to come by during the winter, as neighboring countries confront their own power peaks.”

Give the Obama Administration credit for avoiding such flightiness.

UPDATE: Reader Robert L. Crawford writes:

Economic Suicide is exactly it, and the first case I’m aware of by a dynamic western democracy. Communist 5-year plans, starving the kulacs, Great Leaps Forward, etc., can be explained considering the sources, but for Germany in 2011? They are sacrificing their economic future and standard of living for political correctness. Stunning.

Indeed.

I PREFER MINE AGED IN OAK BARRELS: Company that transforms garbage into ethanol attracts big investors.

WHY YES, YES IT IS: 1 Gbps for $20 a Month? That’s Cheap Broadband! “In the U.S., if you want a 50- to 100-Mbps connection, it is going to cost you plenty: about $105 with a triple play plan. On the other side of the planet, however, you can buy a 1 Gbps broadband connection for $20 a month, as long as you sign-up for a 24-month triple play contract with Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited, a division of local Internet service provider, City Telecom.”

JAMES TARANTO: All The News That’s Fit To Scrub. “In fairness to Abramson, this didn’t happen on her watch, which doesn’t begin until September. Still, if she turns out to be as gaffe-prone as this incident suggests, her tenure at the Times will be a lot of fun for us.”

NEW YORK POST: Airbrushing History At The New York Times. “‘As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing kind of gives me the creeps.” Indeed.

HUFFINGTON POST: Pollster Stan Greenberg Warns Democrats To Face ‘The Real Economy.’ “There is a real economy out there, that’s not changing.”

IN THE MAIL: From Christopher Anvil, Rx for Chaos.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: “The US has killed Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al Qaeda’s most dangerous military commanders and strategists, in a Predator airstrike yesterday in South Waziristan.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Death Of The American Dream, Part II.

One way to summarize the kind of change we need. During the farm era the focus of American domestic policy was to create the most favorable possible environment for millions of ordinary Americans to launch flourishing small businesses. Rather that focusing on home ownership, American social policy should probably be looking at small business formation as the key to mass middle class prosperity in the next fifty years.

The American Dream is not in the last analysis a farm or a home and a good job. It is the dream that through hard work and good choices the average American can be prosperous and independent, and that ordinary people with these life experiences can govern themselves wisely and well without the ‘guidance’ of their ‘betters’.

As always, read the whole thing.

WELL, WHY IMPORT OIL FROM A STABLE FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR, ANYWAY? The Hill: Administration Blocks Restart of Massive Oil Pipeline Citing Leaks. “The order comes at a politically sensitive time for TransCanada. The company is seeking federal approval to expand its Keystone pipeline to carry Canadian oil sands from Alberta to Texas. The proposed project, known as Keystone XL, is currently undergoing a multi-agency review that is being headed up by the State Department. Comments on the project’s latest layer of environmental review are due by Monday. Environmental groups have mounted a campaign against the Keystone XL project, arguing that it puts the country at risk of major oil spills and noting that oil sands production results in more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional oil production.” I smell something, and it’s not carbon dioxide.

TIMOTHY DALRYMPLE: Battle Of The Bulge: Is The Weiner War Worth It? “The comic value alone is priceless.”

I think there’s an important point in the comic value: The people who think they’re smart enough, and morally superior enough, to run everyone else’s lives are risible. They’re not smart enough to run their own lives competently, and they’re actually, overall, morally inferior — I mean, John Edwards, DSK, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barney Frank, Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, just go down the list — and mocking them is inherently valuable. They pursue power, and they exercise power, as much for deference as anything else. Deny them that, and make it painful for them whenever possible. That’s my take.

UPDATE: Reader Walter Oster writes: “You talk about the moral inferiors and incompetents who want to run our lives. I recently re-read Atlas Shrugs and was saddened by the incredible parallels. Geithner and Frank and those guys are James Taggart and Wesley Mouch. I agree that comic value is important but man, is it sad.”

LOOKING AT Germany’s Energy Incoherence. If carbon’s as bad as they say, it’s crazy to be abandoning nuclear power. So what does it mean that Germany is abandoning nuclear power?

SALE, TODAY ONLY: Pirates Of The Caribbean Trilogy on Blu-Ray.