One other point about Obama's prime-time oil-spill speech: The conclusion was heavily (some might say heavy handedly) Christian. Here is the final passage, with the religious references bolded and a few annotations by me in brackets:
It's a faith in the future that sustains us as a people. It is that same faith that sustains our neighbors in the Gulf right now.
Each year, at the beginning of shrimping season, the region's fishermen take part in a tradition that was brought to America long ago by fishing immigrants from Europe. It's called "The Blessing of the Fleet," and today it's a celebration where clergy from different religions gather to say a prayer for the safety and success of the men and women who will soon head out to sea -– some for weeks at a time. The ceremony goes on in good times and in bad. It took place after Katrina, and it took place a few weeks ago –- at the beginning of the most difficult season these fishermen have ever faced.
The new William Kristol-Keith Hennessey think tank Economic Policies for the 21st Century has posted a new article by the think tank's managing director, Christopher Papagianis, who was special assistant to domestic policy to President George W. Bush. He writes:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that aggregate under-collateralization in the OTC derivatives market is likely to be between $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion. The IMF estimates that the five largest U.S. bank holding companies have roughly $500 billion in under-collateralized derivatives exposure, while the five largest European banks owe $600 billion more to counterparties than they've posted in collateral. This is an enormous capital hole at the very heart of the financial system and an obvious source of systemic risk.
Some thoughts on President Obama's televised Oval Office address last night on the Gulf oil spill (a transcript of the address is here):
"I've authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast. These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, they're ready to help clean the beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims -- and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible."
"France To Raise Retirement Age From 60 to 62" -- headline over Associated Press article on NPR Web site. From the same article: "On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people marched through Paris to protest the plans. Larger protests and strikes are likely starting in September, once much of the country returns from summer vacation." You can't make this stuff up.
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on the call by "Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jeff Immelt of General Electric, John Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and others ... to triple government funding for energy research to $16 billion a year from about $5 billion today."
President Obama will probably talk tonight about "clean" energy. One thing to remember is that while it may be clean, environment-wise, the very act of the government picking and choosing energy firms and technologies to favor opens the door for favoritism of a sort that doesn't exactly bring to mind the word "clean."
New Rasmussen Poll: "Sixty-six percent (66%) of U.S. voters describe themselves as at least somewhat angry at the media, including 33% who are Very Angry....It's important to note, however, that the question did not in any way define media or differentiate between media outlets such as CNN and Fox News."
J.M. Bernstein proves that you can be "University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of five books," a contributor to the New York Times, and nevertheless totally clueless. The guy writes a 2,000 word piece on the Tea Party movement for the New York Times without any indication that he ever attended a Tea Party or even interviewed someone who did. He concludes, "There is indeed something not just disturbing, but frightening, in the anger of the Tea Party." Maybe it was too frightening to go to one?
Professor Bernstein's research on the Tea Party movement seems to have consisted of reading an essay on the Tea Party movement in the New York Review of Books by another professor who teaches at Columbia and who also gives no indication of having been to a Tea Party.
As of this morning Professor Bernstein's piece was high on the most e-mailed article list on the Times Web site.
Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new Forbes column suggesting that the rules of soccer be rewritten to make the game more like basketball or ice hockey.
Samuel Adams makes an appearance in a campaign commercial for a congressional candidate, Rick Barber, in an Alabama district, Politico reports. The ad will strike some as a bit violent, or at least open to misinterpretation, but, as the author of a Samuel Adams biography, I'm happy to see the man getting attention.
A columnist is speaking out against the government's plan to subsidize plug-in cars and electric vehicles made by only some automakers. "It smacks of favoritism when the government decides who can get the subsidy and who cannot.... Automobile manufacturing is a highly competitive industry. Government favoritism can prop up an automaker for awhile, but cannot make it more competitive in the long run."
Reason magazine or the Wall Street Journal on the Obama-Bush auto bailout or the Department of Energy subsidized loans to automakers? Nope, that is Yang Jian, managing editor of Automotive News China, and, as we noted here earlier, a writer with a highly developed sense of the limits and contradictions of state capitalism.
The Claremont Review has a long article by William Voegeli explaining the Tea Party movement in part as a rebellion against educated elites. "Our new meritocratic masters have been more conspicuously smart than wise. They know a lot, but don't know what they don't know." President Obama, the article observes, "is a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School, married to a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law. His mother had a doctorate in anthropology, his father was a Harvard-trained economist, and the grandmother who raised him in Hawaii was a bank vice president."
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