Welcome, one and all to the Flash Frozen edition of the most intense nightly read on the ‘Sphere: Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble
- The brass monkeys are circling the door with signs in their hands, protesting us, and screaming in their now high pitched voices. Gotta type to keep from freezing. It’s about 12 in Hotlanta, tonight and it’s 9 degrees here, -1 in Chigcao, which means the worst of our cold here is yet to come; we usually get Chicago’s storms, second hand. Damn global warming anyway. Chicago, particularly is saying it’s the coldest there in a decade. Wait a sec; Aren’t sunspot cycles 11 years long? Don’t tell our government. Ignoring the sun and it’s role in our environment, they’re still about blaming you and I for a problem that doesn’t exist. Maybe I oughta throw Al Gore to the Monkeys, and Henry Waxman with them. [1] That doofus is still telling everyone he’s about pushing global warming legislation through. He’s not the only one [2]. Why? Simple; Blame the problem on the sun, and you can’t redistribute wealth. Kinda hard to make the sun feel guilty about much, anyway.
- In the midst of all of this, comes word that Crazy Uncle Hugo is trying to make nice with American oil companies, again. [3] The IHT labels this “humiliation”, because his socialist nonsense requires petrodollars to make it float at all, much less well. And of course oil’s falling…($34/bbl at the moment [4]) Thing is, I think part of this is he sees a socialist brother entering the White House and so may not consider it so much of an issue, anymore. Particularly when the Democrats are about trying to shut off our own supplies of oil, again [5].
- I hope you don’t have Citibank Stock. [6] So much for the influx of cash solving the issues.
- Timothy Geithner is still in the news, as well he might be. Neal Boortz (who apparently vistied the President, yesterday… I wondered why he was in Washington…) makes a great point [7];
So Obama’s pick to head the Treasury – Timothy Geithner – made a little boo boo on some of his tax returns. Doesn’t bode well for the guy that, among other things, would have authority over the IRS. A few years ago, the guy failed to pay self-employment taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund. We are talking about $34,000 in taxes. But either way, the word in Washington is that this was an “innocent mistake.” Since when does the IRS acknowledge the concept of an “innocent mistake?” If this were John McCain’s Treasury designate he would be history.
Very true… all of it. Particuarly as regards the IRS not being a forgiving bunch. Unless of course, you’re a Democrat? Yessh. And there’s a trend, here, too [8]. OK, I know, I know…. conspiracy theory, yada, yada… but does anyone suppsoe that Democrats wouldn’t make such a charge were the roles reversed? You know better. As it is, it’s all ‘hiccups’, and no biggie, right? By way of James Joyner [9], I note James Toranto suggesting [10]:
We’re tempted to say America needs a Treasury secretary who is smart enough to figure out his own taxes. But such a cheap shot would be beneath us. Instead, we are going to make a serious point:America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out.
Well, trouble is, while unquestionably our tax system is far too complex for mere mortals and I think intentionally so, that only works if we assume Geithner tried to figure it out in good faith, and screwed it up. Thing is, I doubt that in the extreme. It seems to me far more likley that Geithner put in a hurry up payment only when he saw that NOT paying it was a roadblock to his attaining governmental power. And gee.. it’s not like Democrats haven’t established a pattern on this kind of thing [8]. More, Mikey Kaus [11]seems to think even a lot of Democrats are coming around to that way of thinking on the matter. (Of course, that means their defense of the man is an outright lie, doesn’t it?) The longer this plays, the more likely that Geithner will withdraw his name and we’ll hear Obama utter those now hackneyed words… ‘this is not the Geithner I knew’.
- Claudia Rosett [12] gives us example number 200,714 of why the UN is utterly useless:
To chair the 2009 governing board of the U.N.’s flagship agency, the multibillion-dollar globe-girdling United Nations Development Program, dedicated to promoting good governance and ending poverty, the U.N. has now picked-wait for it-the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Maybe the Israeli army has something, bombing the UN. I wonder if we can’t call in an airstrike on Turtle Bay? Think of the lives we’d save in the long run.
- Speaking of Israel and the UN, Gee.. so does it shock anyone that Hamas would use a UN establishment to launch weapons from? I mean, after you use hospitals and grade schools to launch attacks on Israel from, how much of a stretch is this? [13]