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Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Rescue
2. Stevens
3. Palin Stories
4. Goon Squads
5. Ulysses
6. Expires
7. Debate

1. Rescue. The proposed bailout rescue of the financial system ran into a roadblock Thursday when Barack Obama showed up at a negotiation session in the WH, was passed talking points from friends of Treasury Secretary Paulson, and promptly launched into a tirade against House Republicans. Of course, this blew up the meeting and nothing was resolved. The meeting was supposed to be set up such that Obama could take credit for whatever agreement was made. Note that the House Republicans do not have the votes to stop anything in the House, as they do not hold a majority. This forced the democrats and Obama himself to shift gears and blame everything on the House Republicans rather than his own incompetence. Observers also expected McCain, who had suspended his campaign and threatened to delay the debate Friday night to side with the President and his democrat friends in the Senate. Instead, he came out of the meeting arm in arm with House Minority leader John Boehner. This legislation is apparently hideous, with the phones into Washington DC lit up loudly in opposition. How bad is it? From Big Lizards, Saturday. Here are a few tidbits:

1. Long term extension of unemployment benefits
2. Creation of a housing trust fund that provide hundreds of billions of dollars to leftist voter fraud groups like ACORN in perpetuity
3. Salary caps on everyone who makes more money than members of congress
4. A restoration of a ban on oil shale development
5. Government ownership of banks, mortgages and government profits from their sales.
6. The government stands to make over two trillion dollars from the 5 million distressed mortgages. None of this will be returned to the economy. It will all be spent to grow the government.

It appears the conservative position on this rescue has boiled down to the following goals:

1. Repeal of Sarbanes Oxley, as its new accounting rules have created this crisis
2. Repeal of all capital gains taxes to provide new liquidity into the economy
3. Repeal of all corporate income taxes to provide new liquidity into the market. Note that the US now has the second highest corporate income taxes of any major industrial nation.
4. Set up a series of mortgage, investment, and banking instruments like the FDIC so that losses can be self insured by the corporations

Jim Cramer of Mad Money on CNBC described the problem midweek as being caused by only 5 million distressed mortgages, 60% of which were in California and Florida. This isn’t a particularly large number, as all the homes still exist, and the vast majority of homeowners are currently making some sort of payments. Something else is causing the problem, and you need look no farther than the new Sarbanes Oxley accounting rules for an explanation. Kill this bill. It is Stalinist in nature.

2. Stevens. The Ted Stevens (R, AK) trial started in Washington DC this week. Opening statements were significant; with the federal prosecutor attempting to make the point that Stevens had been in Washington DC too long not to be corrupt. Interesting argument, that. By weeks’ end, it appears that the $250,000 work that was done on his house in Girdwood was so bad that it had to be all taken out and redone by another builder. The grill and Viking stove appear to be peace offerings intending to keep Stevens from suing Veco into oblivion for unbelievably botching the construction job on his home. Last week also had the start of democrat anti-Stevens ads. These are almost exclusively dark, nasty, and playing the corruption card. In contrast, the Begich ads are light, nice, and easy on the eyes. Begich promises the sun, moon and stars to all Alaskans. Interestingly enough, Begich opened himself to a large caliber Stevens response in one ad which promised to solve all energy problems here in Alaska with renewable energy like wind, tidal and other green energy solutions. The implication was that Stevens was tied to the evil oil companies and not supportive of renewables. Of course, this is patently false, for Stevens has been pumping windmill money into the Bush for years, and was out within days of the Begich ads with clips of happy Alaska natives and spinning windmills across the state. If Begich is not more careful, he is not only gong to get beat in this election, but end up looking silly while it happens. Going after Stevens on renewables in Alaska was a stupid mistake, an unforced error.

3. Palin Stories. The Jawa Report last weekend reported that the majority of Palin smear stories were not bubbling up from the whacko left, but are instead orchestrated smears that can be traced back to a large PR firm with ties to the Obama campaign itself. The Obama loyalists were posting false blog entries, uploading professionally done videos on You Tube masquerading as amateur videos by activists, and pawning off the entire smear campaign to the nutroots on the left. Jawa uncovered ties to Obama campaign manager David Axelrod which included the guy who does voiceovers to Obama ads. Within minutes of Jawa’s release of the report, the Obama campaign started disappearing the videos, the blog postings, and all links. Jawa captured the takedown of all anti-Palin smears linked to the Obama campaign. Excellent reporting. Congratulations to the Jawa Report on this. Superb work.

4. Goon Squads. When you nominate a committed leftist who is a Saul Alinsky acolyte, you end up with classic Alinsky Stalinist methods during the campaign. The latest example of this comes out of St. Louis, where two democrat prosecutors are threatening to level charges against anyone who says anything about their chosen candidate, Barack Obama, that they deem as untrue or unproven. They will send law enforcement to arrest anyone so identified and are encouraging like minded prosecutors statewide in Missouri to do the same thing. So much for free speech in Missouri. Should Obama win in November, expect this sort of thing to become the rule rather than the exception. Hugo Chavez would be proud. Strata Sphere, Fri.

5. Ulysses. A NASA press release Tuesday reported that Ulysses, a probe that has been in solar polar orbit since 1992, found the weakest solar wind outflow at the solar poles over the last 50 years. The more active the sun is, the stronger the flow of the solar wind is. When the sun is not active, the less the solar wind flows. Why is this important? It is important because the solar wind tends to protect the solar system from external cosmic rays. The stronger the solar wind, the fewer cosmic rays get through. Last year, there was a paper that described the connection between solar activity and global warming and cooling. During periods of quiet solar activity, more cosmic rays impact the atmosphere, triggering cloud formation, which in turn reflect off more incoming solar energy and cooling the earth. Now that we have actually measured a significant decrease in solar win outflow, I wonder how long it will be before the greens blame that on mankind also.

6. Expires. Congratulations to the House Republicans. The congressional ban on oil exploration on the continental shelves is set to expire on October 1. Expect the greens and their supporters in the democrat party and among the trial lawyers to unleash the Hounds of Hell in a blizzard of lawsuits and complaints against any single company that would dare to drill for oil or natural gas offshore. This is a step and the House Republicans, the most conservative part of congress (which is the opposite of progress these days) are to be congratulated for their hard work. We ought to reward this diligence and effort by electing more of them and retaking the majority in the House so that they might do something about the rest of the impediments to a goal of national self-sufficiency in energy production. This nation ought to be a net exporter of energy rather than an importer. If we can get the greens, the lawyers, the leftists out of the way, we may just be able to get there from here. And recapturing the House majority is the first step.

7. Debate. A couple thoughts about the debate before signing off this week: The first was that Obama was lying through his teeth the entire night, particularly when describing his previous positions on most issues. McCain gave him a pass on most of these statements. The second thing was that Obama said that he agreed with McCain’s foreign policy positions no less than eight times. McCain appeared to be getting under his skin and irritating him, something McCain is particularly good at. I don’t know how this will work out, but the Frank Luntz focus groups after the debate on FNC were not particularly positive toward McCain.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.