President George W. Bush seems to regert the $700 billion Wall Street bailout:
I went against my free-market instincts and approved a temporary government intervention to unfreeze the credit markets so that we could avoid a major global depression.
Damage done, apology too little and too late. And without mentioning Barack Obama by name, Bush rails against the big government he was only too happy to participate in himself:
I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and go na-na-na-na until you're done talking, 'cause I just don't want to hear it. That seems to be the attitude of some at Purdue University about library prof. Bert Chapman's provocative blog post on "the economic arguments against homosexuality."
Shame on the residents of Fishers for voting to spend more money on education, complicating things for everbody else in the state. So says the Richmond Palladium-Item:
Officials in Fishers say the referendum approval will spare them having to cut at least 60 teachers in the faces of property tax caps and a worsening economy's slowdown of tax revenues.
People are freaking out over revelations that the Lucas Oil Stadium's food service has been cited 42 times and fined $3,900 for, among other things, the presence of mice and mice feces.
The disaster film "2012," based on all the hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, prompted this, 10 end-of-the-world predictions that, well, didn't turn out. I call your attention to this one, since Pat is still around and apparently not even a little bit embarrassed at having been so wrong:
If I tried to rank the worst Supreme Court decisions in my lifefime, Kelo v. City of New London, which more or less put the last nail in the coffin of private property, would be right up there. And what came of it? Nothing:
Getting beyond the "political correctness" argument for what happened at Fort Hood:
The most-heard reason for the possible failure is political correctness. No doubt. But Sen. Lieberman's committee should avoid making this its main line of inquiry, because that is a problem without a policy fix. It minimizes the real problem.
If I get the flu, I should stay home so I don't infect my co-workers. But if I do that, I might make my cats sick:
EVANSVILLE, IN (WFIE) - A cat in Iowa has the H1N1 flu, most likely caught from it's owners. The cat is recovering, but as 14 News found, viruses are spread much easier between pets and their owners than most people think.
[. . .]
Hoosiers are just a bunch of anti-tax yahoos. We dare not give them the power of a referenum and actually let them vote on scool building projects or big tax increases -- nothing would ever be approved again!
Voters in Indiana's fastest-growing community have overwhelmingly approved a referendum giving its school district an extra $5.5 million a year in property tax revenue for the next seven years.
So, the government's stimulus plan has created or saved how many jobs?
"Stimulus" is in the process of turning a nasty recession into a genuine depression. The evidence is in the "Employment Situation" report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on November 6th. The "headline" unemployment rate shot up to 10.2%, the highest in more than 26 years. But the report was much worse than most people realize.
[. . .]
Some insightful Veterans Day thoughts:
My father came out of World War II with decidedly mixed feelings about war: that some times it was necessary and that most of the time it wasn't. He was never particularly political, but he was outspoken that no child of his would ever serve in any war that wasn't clearly and brutally necessary to defend the United States. "I'd break both your legs first," he would say while watching war movies and documentaries on TV.
From Rand Simberg, who says the problem isn't that Obama doesn't spend enough time on the economy, it's that his philosophy isn't capable of stimulating growth, this sounds about right:
But something he could have done — that would have cost nothing at all — would have been to not scare the bejesus out of business in the first place during his campaign.
Congratulations to the City Council. It got this one right:
A gas station and mini-strip mall appear to be on their way to the south side of downtown Fort Wayne after City Council approved the rezoning of about two acres at 3230 Fairfield Avenue.
So, next year, Mark Souder is going to face a primary challenge from somebody running to his right:
. . . to hear Phil Troyer tell it - it's time to lower the curtain on a supposedly conservative politician who has forgotten his roots.
Is Mark Souder, who just this week blasted a possible government takeover of the health care industry, really a liberal? Troyer, who announced his candidacy for Souder's 3rd District congressional seat, seems to think so.
Is Elkhart noisier than all other Indiana cities, or are they just obsessed about the issue?
Drivers in the northern Indiana city of Elkhart may want to think twice about pumping up the volume on their car stereos.
The city is aggressively enforcing its noise ordinance, which carries a fine of up to $2,500 for repeated violations. More than 1,100 citations have been issued so far this year.
Hey, just in case you were worried about the old Memorial Stadium not having a useful future:
INDIANAPOLIS -
Hundreds of vehicles destined for the scrap heap are filling what once was the outfield of the former minor league baseball stadium in Indianapolis.
Ah, those crazy Californians, they just kind of make up the law as they go along:
Oprah's TV efforts have always seemed just a heartbeat away from being a freak show, and now she dives into the slime bucket head first:
WESTVILLE -- A month from the day he is set to be executed at the Lakeside Correctional Facility, Matthew Eric Wrinkles will appear on national television, confronting the family of his victims and Oprah Winfrey.
Jenny Kephart, the woman with the "How dare you not do your duty to keep me from hurting myself" lawsuit, keeps plodding along, and her case against the casino that took her for $1 million will be heard by the Indiana Supreme Court. UPI dug up a professor who says there must be something about the case that distinguishes it from similar cases in which the casinos have won. But it sounds like the same old "everybody's fault but mine" argument to me:
I suspect this is one of those cases in which the city feels it has to fight to the bitter end in fear of setting some kind of precedent. God knows what trouble in might get in if it got the reputation of being soft on back-pay issues. But it does not seem to be in a very sympathetic situation:
