Of all the reasons to hand Barack Obama a pink slip in November 2012, my favorite is the green energy/green jobs debacle.

Green energy—supposedly clean, cheap, abundant and a mighty job generator—is one of those fads beloved of progressives that promises to deliver something for nothing. Oh, sure, the taxpayers will be squeezed for the few hundred billion necessary to cover startup costs—but after that, here comes the sun…and the wind…and the ethanol…and the Volt…

One little problem, though: There is no free lunch. But progressives who view the economy through green-colored glasses are dismissive of that bedrock economic law. The idea that all economic decisions involve tradeoffs is anathema to them. If your heart is in the right place, if you’re on the side of trees and whales and the snail darter, the normal rules simply do not apply.

This is the mind-set that gave us Solyndra and a string of other green energy “investments,” all of which cratered at significant cost to the hard-pressed US taxpayer. Now another green energy company is on the ropes: A123 Systems, which makes batteries for electric cars and received a $249 million grant from Obama’s Department of Energy.

As Robert Bryce explains in this article for National Review Online, A123’s problem is fundamental: Its survival depends on sales of all-electric cars, and few people want to buy all-electric cars. (Fun fact: In March, Chevy sold 2,289 Volts at $40,000 a pop, while Toyota sold 28,289 Corollas at $16,000 a pop. Both vehicles get about the same highway mileage. You do the math.)

During A123’s initial public offering in September 2009, the company’s stock sold for $13.50 a share. Last Friday, it was selling for $0.93 a share and Bryce predicts that A123 will file for bankruptcy within eighteen months. Not much to show for $249 million, is it, fellow taxpayers? Thanks, Barry!

Posted by tmg110 at 8:50 AM EDT

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If this defense strategy flies, George Zimmerman has nothing to worry about.

"Norway killer admits massacre, claims self-defense: A right-wing fanatic admitted Monday to unleashing a bomb-and-shooting massacre that killed 77 people in Norway but pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, saying he was acting in self-defense."

Posted by tmg110 at 7:59 AM EDT

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Michael Moore, praising the Cuban healthcare system.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:47 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 15 April 2012 12:55 PM EDT

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A great sigh of relief went up when the special prosecutor in the Treyvon Martin case charged George Zimmerman with second-degree murder. But maybe people should have held their breath. For as Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, the charging instrument submitted by prosecutor Angela Corey in no way establishes probable cause for a charge of murder two.

Florida law defines second-degree murder in these words: “The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.” Dershowitz notes, however, that the prosecution’s charging instrument does not suggest probable cause to believe Zimmerman had a “depraved mind regardless of human life” when he shot Martin. On the contrary, the facts provided are entirely consistent with Zimmerman’s self-defense claim. Dershowitz suspects that the second-degree murder charge was a political move by Corey, an elected public official.

To call his suspicion is plausible would be a considerable understatement. I’m no lawyer, but I was quite startled when Cory came out with a second-degree murder charge. Her dramatic announcement of the charge led me to believe that the prosecution must have developed some pretty damning evidence against Zimmerman. But as Dershowitz points out, the charging instrument doesn’t even establish probable cause.

Treyvon Martin and his family deserve justice. So does George Zimmerman. But in a case like this, justice is probably too much to hope for.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:45 PM EDT

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Not the least amusing aspect of the Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney flap is that Rosen is a highly compensated expert on public relations and communications strategies—in fact, she's a partner in the political communications firm SKDKnickerbocker. (Incidentally, SKDK just happens to represent contraception crusader Sandra Fluke. Go figure.)

Think about that: Hilary Rosen, foot lodged firmly in mouth, crafting communications strategies for high-profile Democrats. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for one should definitely demand a refund…

Posted by tmg110 at 11:24 AM EDT

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Sign of the times: “A South Jersey man has come up with what he hopes is a solution to a controversy over the American flag that he flew in his yard—a flag bearing the image of President Barack Obama in place of the field of stars.”

Wes Kennedy’s neighbors in Lumberton, New Jersey’s Arcadia housing development apparently found the Barry and Stripes flag objectionable. “In Acacia, there are some angry, maybe even evil-minded people about Obama,” he told a reporter. He has since replaced it with two flags: the Stars and Stripes and a flag bearing Obama’s angelic visage. (Hat tip: CBS News.)

Two points:

(1) If it were up to me, Kennedy’s Barry and Stripes flag would still be flying. We do have the right to freedom of expression in this country, however unpopular a concept this may be in certain circles on both the left and the right. I'd remind my fellow conservatives how indignant we all become over stories of neighborhood associations that demand removal of the Stars and Stripes from someone’s property.

(2) The Cult of Barry is très creepy. Exactly what is going through the minds of people who display objets d’art like this?

     I think they’re saying: “I’d rather be in North Korea.”

Posted by tmg110 at 9:25 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 13 April 2012 9:46 AM EDT

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I had to laugh this morning as I perused the news about Democratic Party operative Hilary Rosen’s maladroit attack on Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann. Responding to the candidate’s comment that when he wants to know what’s on women’s minds, he asks his wife, Rosen sneered that the mother of five “had never worked a day in her life” and therefore cannot possibly have the first idea what’s going on with the average American woman.

Instant brouhaha!

Democrats scrambled to distance themselves from Rosen’s comments, as well they might given their recent claims that Republicans are waging a “war on women.” Now that one of their own appears to be waging a civil war on women who don’t fit the progressive feminist template, Democrats are shuffling their feet and clearing their throats.

In true leftie fashion, Rosen first refused to back off from her comments about Ann Romney and then, no doubt under pressure from a nervous Obama campaign, issued the standard non-apology. Her words were “poorly chosen,” you see. And just to underline the extent of her clueless idiocy, Rosen insisted on CNN that hey, Democrats had never, ever used the term “war on women”! Um, except for Nancy Pelosi, James Carville, Donna Brazille…

So clearly this woman, Hilary Rosen, is a dolt. What she said was not only offensive, it was stupid. But that wasn’t really the best part of the story. No, what really had me on the floor laughing was Rosen’s underlying implication: Ann Romney doesn’t know what American women are thinking, but I do.

Okay, let’s see about that. Here’s Rosen’s background (with a tip of the hat to Wikipedia):

Born and raised in West Orange, NJ

 

BBA degree, George Washington University.

 

1987 to 2003: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); served as president, then chairman and chief executive, officer, 1994-2003.

 

Took time off in 2003-04 to spend time with her partner, Elizabeth Birch, and their children.

 

2004-06: Interim director for the Human Rights Campaign, a GLBT lobbyist organization

 

2006: Founded a consulting firm, Berman Rosen Global Strategies, specializing in digital media and the entertainment industry with Jason Berman, former Chairman of the International Recording Industry Association (IFPI)

 

2007: Launched OurChart.com with business partner Ilene Chaiken, creator of the L Word. OurChart.com was a social networking and entertainment site targeted to lesbians and their friends based on the Showtime series, The L Word.

 

2008: Managing partner of the DC office of the Brunswick Group, a London-based PR and communications strategy firm.

 

Formerly Washington Editor at Large for The Huffington Post and the online site's political director during the 2008 election and was President of a start up website, OurChart.com from 2006 to 2008.

 

Currently a partner in the political communications firm SKDKnickerbocker.

In short, Hilary Rosen is a highly privileged elitist of the type quite common in progressive circles, and her claim to be channeling the wants and needs of American womanhood is, in a word, risible. And that’s a laugh!

Posted by tmg110 at 3:38 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 12 April 2012 3:42 PM EDT

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Incidentally, it appears that President Obama's millionaire/billionaire-bashing Buffet Rule, about which he's been making such a terrific fuss, would apply to no more than 4,000 taxpayers—this according a a Bloomberg analysis. I'd call that a sufficient commentary on the utter phoniness of Barry's class warfare campaign.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:03 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 12 April 2012 9:13 AM EDT

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I was totally on board with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie when he advised Warren Buffet to just shut up about being under-taxed. As Christie pointed out, if Buffet thinks he’s not paying enough, there’s nothing to stop him from sending an additional check to the Department of the Treasury.

But then I had a brain wave. If it’s really true that the nation is full of guilt-ridden rich people like Buffet, why not give them an opportunity to soothe their consciences without dragging other people into a higher tax bracket?

Under Tom’s Rule, any taxpayer with an anticipated annual income of $1 million or more could opt to pay taxes at a higher rate by signing a Fair Tax Contract with the IRS. This contract would be valid for five years and would be renewable at the taxpayer’s option. If the taxpayer’s income should happen to fall below $1 million for any year during the term of the contract, the normal, non-contractual tax rate would apply instead. Contracting taxpayers would receive a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by the President and suitable for framing, plus a four-color FAIR TAX PATRIOT bumper sticker.

Newt Gingrich never had an idea this good!

Posted by tmg110 at 12:21 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 12 April 2012 9:01 AM EDT

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Had he not been carried off by tuberculoses in 1950, George Orwell would have been 70 years old when Len Dighton’s Bomber was published. And I have no doubt that he’d have read the novel with interest, for one of its principal themes is class conflict in the wartime Royal Air Force.

Bomber makes few concessions to the rosy view of World War II as a heroic saga or a great crusade. Set in June 1943, it describes the progress of a Bomber Command raid on Germany over a period of twenty-four hours. Dighton, who served in the RAF in the late 1940s, has an eye for the small but convincing detail and an ear for the schoolboy jargon of the aircrew—many of them, as he notes, young men barely out of their teens. Some of these men are desperately tired, some are beginning to lose their nerve and all of them are aware that their chances of completing a tour of operations—thirty bombing missions—without being killed or wounded are slight.

Nor do the airmen of Dighton’s fictional bomber squadron constitute a band of brothers. Thanks to the peculiarities of the British class system, there exists a great divide between those who are commissioned officers and those who are enlisted personnel. In the US Army Air Force, all pilots, navigators and bombardiers in a bomber crew were officers. It was assumed that if you were qualified to perform such duties, you were qualified for a commission. Not so in the RAF, where a man could qualify as a pilot yet remain ineligible for a commission. The crew of Creaking Door, the Lancaster bomber that is the focus of the novel’s action, is composed entirely of enlisted men with the rank of sergeant. They regard most officers—their obsequious flight leader in particular—with narrow-eyed suspicion. For their part, many of the officers look down upon the enlisted aircrew as not quite proper chaps.

The raid itself, described by Dighton in great detail, goes badly wrong as a series of accidents and errors direct the attacking bombers away from their intended target—an industrial city in the Ruhr—toward a small, unimportant German town called Altgarten. Struck by 750 bombers, the town is utterly destroyed. (This fictional tragedy is based on several actual incidents, including the accidental bombing of a Czech insane asylum in 1943.)

Bomber portrays the Allied strategic bombing offensive as a simple campaign of mass murder—which of course it was. Having satisfied themselves that Germany’s cities and their populations were legitimate targets, the bomber barons set about destroying them with the single-minded fervor of true believers. Some Allied leaders, Churchill prominent among them, had doubts about area bombing but suppressed them. The airmen who flew the missions knew what they were doing and some experienced qualms, as does Flight Sergeant Lambert, Creaking Door’s pilot. But the machinery of murder rumbled on anyway, almost until the day of Germany’s surrender.

Orwell, touring Germany shortly after the war’s end, wrote that “To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilisation.” In its painfully detailed, minute-by-minute reconstruction of the means by which those cities were destroyed, Bomber raises a similar doubt. To defeat Nazi Germany was no doubt an absolute necessity. But the price was high.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:29 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 11 April 2013 9:47 PM EDT

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