My Echo Chamber

The Corner - National Review Online: "“Christie is a guy who appeals to Reagan Democrats,” King says. “We need more of that. He doesn’t look like a Hollywood star. He comes across like your neighbor down the street — smart and tough . . . He was a successful lawyer, a successful U.S. attorney, and he was elected governor in a blue state against a well-financed opponent.”"

America is fat. Christie is fat. Why not have a President who looks like Americans?

Add in Mike And Molly, a sitcom about two fatties, and you have the environment set for the public to get used to seeing fatsos.

Republicans use violence to protect individual rights. Democrats use violence to take them away.

Stimulus: The Good News, and the Bad - BusinessWeek: "...people who are hired with stimulus funds tend to spend their pay and create secondary employment."

That is the crux of the argument. I wonder why not sending the checks directly to everyone wouldn't do the same? Give me $25,000 and I'll hire a contractor to put in a new front door. I'll spend, spend spend on electronics and clothes for the family. Then i'll save some in my local bank who can then lend ten times that amount to small businesses.

Economic View - How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off - NYTimes.com:

"A further problem is “mandate creep,” which we’ve seen at the state level, as groups lobby for various types of coverage — whether for acupuncture, alcoholism and fertility treatments, for example, or for chiropractor services or marriage counseling."

This is probably the biggest concern.

Fair Game - Wall Street Follies - The Next Act - NYTimes.com:

“I think actually what’s changed is in the other direction,” the refreshingly candid Mr. Barofsky said. “These banks that were too big to fail, are now bigger. Government has sponsored and supported several mergers that made them larger. And that guaranteed that implicit guarantee of moral hazard. The idea that the government is not going to let these banks fail, which was implicit a year ago, its now explicit.”

Elect someone whose social theory beliefs seemd to have stopped in the early 70s....

How Michael Osinski Helped Build the Bomb That Blew Up Wall Street -- New York Magazine:
"Default models were the rage. Throw some epsilons and thetas on a paper, hoist a few Ph.D.’s behind your name, and now you’re an expert in divining the future."

U.S. Rejects G.M.’s Call for Help in a Merger - NYTimes.com:

"The Detroit companies employ more than 200,000 workers in the United States and provide health care and pensions to more than one million Americans. The companies are also a lifeline to thousands of dealers and countless suppliers."

The U.S. automakers are dead men walking.

The End of Journalism by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online: "The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.

Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret."