Nightly Ramble:The Gone with the Wind Edition

Welcome one and all to the most intense Nightly Read anywhere on the ‘sphere…Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble

This is the “Gone with the Wind” edition.

As I was driving into work this morning, I was getting reports from all over Ohio that they’d had lots of win, and power outs, trees and wires down, schools closing and so on. Wind started up our way around 10-10:30. Snow with it.

• Over at Pajamas Media, Tom Blumer points up that Obama and the Democrats are responsible for much of the pain we’re in, just now… even when history is ignored:
  

  .In his Saturday address that followed this news, President Barack Obama was correct in pointing out that 3.6 million jobs have been lost since the recession, at least as “defined” by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), began. The recession, as normal people define it (“a decline in gross domestic product [GDP] for two or more consecutive quarters”), began in the third quarter of 2008 and became official late last month when the fourth quarter came in negative.

  What Mr. Obama “somehow” forgot to tell us is that almost 1.8 million of those seasonally adjusted job losses have occurred since his election, when his non-stop economic no-confidence game went into high gear, and that 2.8 million jobs have gone away during the seven months that began in July 2008, the first full month of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy..

  It gets worse, of course, when history gets added, but Tom stays on the recent numbers. The evidence is in my view overwhelming that the Democrats are the prixmate cause of our current troubles… on many fronts.

• That’s not the brakes, that’s the gas pedal, you idiot:There’s an awful lot of chatter about how more government is the answer, that we’ve had too much freedom for our own good. Megan Mcardle over at The Antlantic… points out the falicy in that statement. (I”m amazed she got picked up over there, frankly)
  

  New York City’s main industry lies in ruins; its finances are in peril; its housing market is falling. What does the city need? That’s right, tougher rent controls!
  In times like this, it’s easy to believe that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. But here’s one of the things that basically everyone, left to right, agrees on: rent control is the surest way to destroy a city’s housing stock short of aerial bombing, and one of the major culprits behind New York’s painfully low vacancy rate. Rent control allows some people to stay in artificially cheap apartments, but only by forcing the people who would have rented them into some other, less desireable place. Those people bid up the price of the uncontrolled housing, so that you essentially end up with two housing markets, one with rents above the natural market price, and one with rents below it. There is no way to ensure that the deserving middle class folks you want to see stay in the city end up in the latter, and indeed, many of the owners of rent stabilized apartments were notorious for finding the richest tenants they could. Rich tenants rarely get behind on the rent, and move sooner than people who can just barely afford their below-market place.

  The principles that are driving this can be used to exemplify so very much of what the left offers us today. Government isn’t the solution… it’s the problem.  And yet, the left offers more government.

•  $13? That’s the tax break that Obama promised.  What do you suppose Obama would say a few years ago if Bush has offered $13/wk? You know the answer to that one, don’t you? Oh… and ignore that Obama has effectively increased taxes on new car purchases and on homes. This helps the economy how, exactly?
• I’ve been chatting up the bit with John Murtha. Clarice Feldman is, too. She says the law may be closing in on him at last.
• Normal:  No, Ann, this isn’t incredible. It’s exactly as we called it. 
• No experience needed: Leon Panetta will attempt to run the CIA, after all. A short time ago, we were all worried about Bush’s appointee to FEMA didn’t have a whole bunch of emergency management experience. Now we’ve got someone running the CIA with no intelligence experience.  Complaints about that? Are you kidding me?
• Priorities: I’m convinced that more people keep closer track of American Idol than they do what’s going on in the government.  There’s a lot of reasons being offered, but the one that makes the most sense is that normally, ostensibly, government isn’t supposed to be making choices about people’s lives.  Problem; That’s not true, recently.
• It’s over, already: Retail sales are up for the first time in seven months. But don’t worry, if FDR is any example, the current government will make the resession last for 10 years.
• Another addict in the making: Derb points out that Iowahawk is addictive.  He’s right, of course. Another reason why is here.
• 67 nuke lab computers missing? Hmmm. What’s Obama plan to do on this one? 
• I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m an avid RV’er. So this Steve Gill article is near and dear to my heart.
• Side note to Billy.   Normally, I’d drop this in your mail, but I’ve no doubt your mailbox is full.  I figure you’ll see this here on the trackback. As I’ve told you in the past, Zappa was never my thing, so I’ve really got nothing to bring to this party. I will say thought that it’s endlessly amusing watching people argue opnion as if it were fact. The entire discussion proves my long held point;  Music being the supremely subjective experience it is, cannot be properly discussed in an objectve framework, and particularly not with people who can’t tell the bleedin’ difference between the two. Your comment about ‘ever good mind” is exactly my reasoning in maintaining the fight here as I do. But it strikes me that the fight could be better directed toward productive pursuits in some corners.