Unions Now Viewed in a Bad Light

This is the first time in 72 years that they are looked at this badly.

As a result, unions are no longer just alienating Republicans. As Gallup points out, independents have now begun rejecting union activism in large numbers. A year ago, 63% of independents approved of unions, but that number dropped 19 points to 44% today. In contrast, unions lost 9 points among Republicans (to 29%), and even lost six points among Democrats, dropping from 72% to 66%. Moderates have begun questioning the labor movement�s goals and tactics.

The major problem that the unions have is that they are viewed as far-leftist thugs that perpetrate hate crimes on conservative blacks. They don't seem to help anyone but themselves at the expense of everyone else. You never see them talking about down-trodden workers and they are mostly portrayed as Brown-shirts smashing heads at town hall meetings.

Add to this the hypocrisy of them pushing Post Office health care for everyone else while they sit pretty with diamond studded health plans that no one could take away. You then look back at the auto bailouts and see that they now own a vast equity share of two out of the three auto makers in the US at the expense of bond holders. I think big labor may have inflicted wounds on itself that it will take decades to heal.

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Parents Push Back Against Obama Speech to the Children

It seems that quite a few people aren't so pleased that Obama is trying to get a speech out there asking kids to support his agenda.

Schools don�t have to show it. But districts across the country have been inundated with phone calls from parents and are struggling to address the controversy that broke out after Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals urging schools to watch.

I would love to see the truancy rate next Tuesday. It seems that everything Obama does is going to get this level of scrutiny and mistrust from here on in. This is what happens when you attack regular people coming to town halls to protest. Regular people sometimes push back.

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Conservatives Praise Obama on Afghanistan Support

I think there are some on the right that want to see the President succeed especially when it comes to our military commitment to engage with Al-Quida and rebuild Afghanistan.

"We congratulate you on the leadership you demonstrated earlier this year when you decided to deploy approximately 21,000 additional troops and several thousand civilian experts as a part of a serious counterinsurgency campaign," write the signatories to the letter, whose organizers include the Foreign Policy Initiative's Jamie Fly, Iraq surge architect Fred Kagan, authors Robert Kagan and Max Boot, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor.

The problem will be if Obama goes wobbly due to the far left attackers trying to cut and run from Afghanistan. If Afghanistan falls apart and becomes another terrorist enclave then it will be blamed on Obama and not on Bush. It is his war to win and hopefully he will be able to do it.

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White House Slow to Protect Truther "Green Jobs" Czar

It seems that Truther Van Jones may be shown the door before too long.

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs," issued a statement of apology on Thursday. When asked on Friday whether President Barack Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones "continues to work in the administration."

Gibbs then referred to Jones' own statement.

In other words he still works there for the time being but maybe not much longer. The White House should not be painted with the Truther brush in any way shape or form. Since "9/11 deniers" are fringe nut jobs that actually besmirch the office of the president.

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The Sheer Scope of ObamaCare's Changes

Now this really puts this thing into perspective in my mind.

The health care industry is worth $2.5 trillion a year, comparable with Britain's entire gross domestic product and larger than that of most European countries. Can you imagine Britain's entire economy being reordered by a few people working secretly in backrooms in a matter of weeks? What are the chances they could ever get that right?

Yup, now that this has been put into writing it is even scarier. I can see mighty statesmen of yore like Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt not being able to get a $2.5 trillion dollar reordering of 1/5th of the economy correct. Add to this the fact that it is all being rushed to meet unrealistic and arbitrary time tables.

Also remember that the people working secretly are inept far-leftists like Waxman and Pelosi. I mean they couldn't get a $1 billion dollar Cash for Clunkers to run correctly and they expect to run a program that is the entire GDP of Great Britain?

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Why Are People So Mad at the Town Halls

I think this picture from the Wall Street Journal sums up people's frustrations. Yes they are playing FreeCell during a Connecticut State House Budget Meeting. Yes, our tax money is paying their salaries in order for them to play video games while they are on the job. And they think people won't be hopping mad at them? This is just too funny.

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Obama Scales Back Indoctrination on Speech to School Kids

I encourage the President to speak to kids about staying in school but some of the course-material provided by the DOE was like something that came out of North Korea.

It appears there are two versions of the preparatory materials for the president's address to schoolchildren floating around, one with language urging teachers to have students write letters to themselves about how they can help the president, and a second changing that to letters to themselves about achieving their short- and long-term education goals.

How could I help the President? I'll give him some words of advice.

1. Tack to the center like Clinton did and throw Pelosi and Reid under the bus. Just don't mess with the interns and everything will be all right.

2. Get some sleep and tell your staffers to do the same. I think many of the missteps including the "police acted stupidly" in the Gates-affair can be chalked up to lack of sleep.

3. Try to refrain from being the news every day. In other words putter around the Oval Office, walk the Water dog, or play some golf with no reporters in sight. Part of the reason why you have 40% approval ratings is we see you everywhere we go.

4. Do not outsource anything further to Congress they cannot be trusted. You should have wrote the health care bill and the stimulus and gave Congress their marching orders. Having to sell something that Congress is making will always be a losing issue. The problem is that you take the heat when they fail and they will fail. Americans elected *you* to lead and not Pelosi and Reid.

5. Do something, anything to instill trust in government. That is why ObamaCare is failing and anything else you want will fail as well. Americans don't trust any of you and for good reason.

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Green Jobs Czar Van Jones a Lousy Truther?

At least it seems that way from a 2004 statement he signed.

Mr. Jones signed a statement for 911Truth.org in 2004 demanding an investigation into what the Bush Administration may have done that �deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.�

His name is listed with 99 other prominent signatories supporting such an investigation on the 911Truth.org website, including Code Pink co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans, comedienne Janeane Garofalo, Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and others. He's identified as the executive director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the statement, which he founded before going to the White House. The statement is available here. Mr. Jones is number 46.

I think there should be absolutely no place for a Truther in the Obama White House. Especially when his boss has all the secrets at his fingertips. If Bush did pull off 9/11 then Obama could just request the relevant top secret need to know documents (there is no way a conspiracy that needs 10s of thousands to pull off will have no documentation) and blow the lid off of everything. Since he hasn't done so that means that these documents do not exist. In any case being a Truther (like being a Holocaust denier) should automatically disqualify you for working in the same building as the President.

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A Whole Food Buy-Cott?

This seems like a pretty good idea and I will certainly be buying more stuff at Whole Foods.

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Very Interesting Analysis of the ObamaCare Fight Going Into the Fall

I love this sort of political analysis from people who have gone through the sausage making to craft bills in the Congress.

I will provide an overview of the legislative landscape, then walk through each path. What follows is highly judgmental, and I can prove none of it. It can and will change rapidly beginning seven days from now. My only defense is that over a 15-year period a President and two Senators paid me in part to do this kind of analysis. You get it for free.

The stuff about the reconciliation process (Path 3) is must read because I think that is what the Senate is going to try if there is no bipartisan bill. I think if the Dems take Path 3 they will be accused (rightfully) of ramming a bill down Americas throat and they will pay dearly for it in 2010. The rhetoric of forcing a majority of Americans to accept something they clearly don't want as if they were serfs will not sit well with millions of people. It will also make Obama a one term President as well.

• I presume House moderates will be pulling way back in September after getting beat up in August. Will they insist that the House bill be pulled more to the center, or will they instead prefer the bill to stay left so they can vote no? Can Speaker Pelosi get 218 votes for the deal agreed to by some Blue Dogs in committee in late July? (This is a risk on any path.)
• As a procedural matter this path has a slash-and-burn feel to it. Take all the substantive arguments you heard in July and August, add to them procedural unfairness arguments, and turn up the volume a few notches. The rhetoric will get even hotter.
• Assuming at least some moderate Democrats oppose the bill on this path, there will be bipartisan opposition to this bill. That makes it harder for Democratic leaders to hold nervous members voting aye, and will undermine the partisan attacks I would anticipate from the White House and Democratic leaders.

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Japan Rolls out a Solar Satellite Power Plant that Could Be Built in 4 Years

The thing looks like a death ray generator but it might be the wave of the future.

Mitsubishi and IHI are joining a research group containing 14 other countries to tackle the daunting task of getting Japan�s four square kilometer solar space station up and running in the next three decades. By 2015, the Japanese government hopes to test a small satellite decked out with solar panels that beams power through space and back to Earth.

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Probe Finds that SEC Screwed up 5 Times in Madoff Case

I hope these same people are not still trying to enforce securities laws at the SEC.

A summary of a report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Inspector General, released by the SEC, described five investigations the SEC launched into Madoff's business because of complaints dating to 1992, and said "a thorough and competent investigation or examination was never performed."

SEC examiners caught Madoff in contradictions about his investment business but failed to dig deeper for the truth, the inspector found. At one point, the SEC's enforcement staff "caught Madoff in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up" and accepted his explanations.

So they had been investigating this guy 5 separate times for 16 years and came up with no dirt? The funny thing is if not for the credit crisis they still might not have caught Madoff at all. He could have kept his Ponzi scheme going by going to the debt markets in order to keep paying investors while he raked in more people to fleece.

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Kabul Embassy Guards Run Like "Lord of the Flies"

Just what we need to guard our State Department people in Afghanistan.

Guards have come to POGO with allegations and photographic evidence that some supervisors and guards are engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates. Witnesses report that the highest levels of AGNA management in Kabul are aware of and have personally observed�or even engaged in�these activities, but have done nothing to stop them. Indeed, management has condoned this misconduct, declining to take disciplinary action against those responsible and allowing two of the worst offending supervisors to resign and allegedly move on to work on other U.S. contracts. The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security.

In other words fire everyone and have them tried if there was any wrongdoing. The last thing we need is some suicide bomber sneaking into the embassy because some commanding officer was drunk or fooling around.

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Dems Enter Defensive Crouch on ObamaCare

I think all the rancor at the town hall meetings is starting to scare the Dems strait when it comes to the government option. This is from the Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)

Clyburn, for his part, is advocating a �two step� approach in which the most widely supported health insurance reforms, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, go into effect immediately, while the public option is framed as a distant step � something that would go into effect in 2013, only after benchmarks and pilot programs are studied.

Clyburn has proposed setting up modest pilot programs for the public option in certain regions or states � an experimental way of seeing whether these health exchanges can actually work at the local level before they go nationwide.

That first thing if it is served up as a bill on its own and touted as insurance industry reform will get bipartisan backing I would be willing to bet you. If they add in a cap on malpractice lawsuits you will get the backing of hundreds of doctors in order to sell any other health care bills in the future. In other words wring the savings out of the system then implement the plan slowly with the ability to back it out if it is a dismal failure.

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Sandia Working on Right Sized Reactors

Now this should be the focus of environmental groups everywhere. This thing has the potential to phase out coal and oil power plants as well as replace old reactors.

Consistent aspects of Sandia's plan:
* Use super critical CO2 (SC-CO2) to make a smaller turbine to convert heat to electricity
* Factory Mass produced reactors in the 100-300 MWe range
* Costs in the $1500/KW and 5 cents per kwh
* Proliferation resistant and exportable
* This is where the global energy market is headed
* This will displace the natural gas reactors of the same size and cost

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