Do You Like Your Planet Hot or Cold

Is humanity sitting on a ticking time bomb? Is global warming a crisis?

Or will greenhouse gases stave off a long, big chill? Read The New York Times, Dot Earth: Will the Next Ice Age Be Permanent?

Confused yet?

UPDATE: Read The New York Times, Dot Earth: More On Whether a Big Chill Is Nigh.

No More Bailouts Until . . .

Now everyone wants a generous bailout. Companies are being chartered as banks. When will it end.

Before anymore government money is handed out, establish a clear and transparent process -- call it preemptive reorganization. And make it tough to discourage future thoughts of government bailouts.

Any company that wants a government bailout should be forced to reorganize like a company in bankruptcy and all executives and directors should be fired.

There should be no auto industry bailout until Congress reads this article, The New York Times, How to Fix a Flat. And if the U.S. auto industry wants a bailout, the Michigan governor and congressional delegation should also be forced to resign.

Any other ideas?

Dems Thank FOXNews

Did Obama win because FOXNews and talk radio, a constant source of right-wing fantasies, promote obsessions that are not the issues that are important to American voters? Read Washington Post, You Report, We Marginalize. The column, written as a letter to Roger Ailes, President, Fox News, states in part:

"The election has left the Republican Party reeling, its base shrunk to those Southern, Plains and Mountain West states where rural cultures still predominate. The party's smarter strategists are arguing that the worldviews of the social conservatives and free-market extremists who dominate the GOP are either irrelevant or ridiculous to voters in the middle of the political spectrum. "We can't be obsessed with issues that are not the issues that are important to American voters," Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida GOP, told the New York Times.

But Fox has won its viewership precisely by promoting such obsessions.

During the campaign just completed, you guys focused on Barack Obama's allegedly Muslim and alien roots and socialist ideology; meanwhile, in the real world, unemployment rose, foreclosures soared and Wall Street went flooey. Over the past eight years, you beat drums for such causes as state intervention in the Terri Schiavo case. You demonized undocumented immigrants (okay, CNN's Lou Dobbs gave you a run for your money on that one). You fed the Republican base with a steady diet of bile -- and now that bilious base is the biggest impediment to the Republicans' repositioning themselves so that they can win elections again. . .

You're not alone in reinforcing those beliefs that marginalize the Republican right, of course. You've got plenty of help from Rush and all the little Limbaughs who dominate talk radio. But together with your allies, you haul truckloads of troglodyte garbage to your flock. . .

And rather than present these voters with a picture of a complex, changing world, you guys at Fox serve chiefly to reinforce their fears, to paint people who hold different viewpoints as alien and threatening.

In that sense, your work remains dangerous and disintegrative to the nation. But it is also, more narrowly, tactically, for now, a great gift to liberals and Democrats. You ensure the ongoing Palinization and marginalization -- electorally, the terms are synonymous -- of the Republican Party.

And to think that you're doing all this not on the Democratic National Committee's dime but on Rupert Murdoch's."

It is an interesting theory, and if true, the Dems don't need the fairness doctrine.

What do you think?

The Future of the Republi-con Party

Is it a battle between 'Traditionalists' (who rally behind Rusty, Sheeeephish and Diva and say that they will cut government, cut taxes, and restrict immigration) and 'Reformers' (who "propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety")? Read what one conservative thinks, The New York Times, Darkness at Dusk.

In the short term it doesn't look very promising for the GOP.

Barack's House

Barack's House, a parody of Brick House by The Commodores.

I thought it was cute. I hope nobody thinks otherwise.

Run Baby Run

Who should be the Republican presidential candidate in 2012?

One polls says Republicans want Palin in 2012.

Vote in the NoBullU poll.

Let Them Go Bankrupt

The bailout is running out of money. I explained over a month ago why the bailout won't work and suggested a solution that would be less expensive for taxpayers. Here is an update.

It is time to let these companies go bankrupt. Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows companies to continue to operate while they reorganize, and it cost taxpayers nothing. Of course, Goldman Sachs, Treasury Secretary's former company and the source of his wealth, might lose $20-40 billion when AIG goes bankrupt. This explains why the government continues to prop up AIG. Japan tried to prop up sliding stock and real estate prices at the end of the "Japanese asset price bubble" of the late 1980s, and the effort resulted in a decade of stagnant economic growth. Bankruptcy is much quicker and cheaper for the taxpayers.

(The bailout was also used to make a tax change favorable to Fat Cat banks and the A.I.G.’s of the world, but that is a story for another post.)

Bankruptcy laws also should be amended to temporarily allow bankruptcy courts to reform the terms of loans secured by primary residences. This would reduce the number of foreclosures, again at no cost to the taxcpayers.

Let them go bankrupt.