No Runny Eggs

No, the Scramble has not returned, and probably won’t return in its previous form. However, since I’m feeling a bit lazy on a cloudly Friday, I feel the need to take a trip through the oversized feed reader for some ideas. Let’s start with an ObamaCard commercial from my sometimes-allies at the RNC (who seem to have “borrowed” from Fausta and me)…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJHKtLnT0Ak[/youtube]

• (H/T – Charlie Sykes – Gallup found that for the first time in the 15 years it asked the question, more people call themselves pro-life than pro-choice. While that’s encouraging, I have to throw some cold water on this. First, they’re not exactly voting their beliefs (see Obama, Barack). Second, the “secular powers-that-be” among the right-of-center crowd want to remove the difference between the two halves of the bipartisan Party-In-Government by adopting the death-on-demand ‘Rat position.
• Related to the first point immediately above, James T. Harris explains the problem – dependency.
• President Obama said that the long-term debt load is “unsustainable”. Somehow, I doubt he’s going to be cutting anything other than defense. Indeed, Robert McCain (who, IMHO, should have been the McCain on the ballot last year) explains why it’s a signal for massive tax hikes to make Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI, and my Congresscritter) predictions of a 40%-of-GDP federal spending rate true. Along the same lines, Stephen Green has the translation of the day – “I’m going to tax you bastards back to the Stone Age.”
• (H/T – Purple Avenger) The Washington Post found that Smoot-Hawley II Porkulus has kicked off a trade war, one that is even shuttering American factories because they use foreign raw materials that are not in general domestic supply. Those who don’t remember history, let me do the math for you – major economic downturn plus hyper-protectionism plus massive government spending equals a decade-long depression.
• The Heritage Foundation ran the numbers on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade-tax scheme between 2012 and 2035. Let’s see – an cumulative inflation-adjusted reduction of GDP by $7.4 trillion, a yearly job loss of 844,000 (with peaks of nearly 2,000,000), an inflation-adjusted increase in electric rates of 90% (how’s that plug-in car looking, GM?), an inflation-adjusted increase in gasoline prices of 74%, an inflation-adjusted increase in natural gas prices of 55% (how’s that CNG bus looking?), and an inflation-adjusted increase in the federal debt of 29% (which just speeds up the unsustainability of the debt). All this for a fraction of a degree in temperature change (and that’s using the faulty models that, had we stuck the numbers from 25 years ago into them, would get today’s climate wrong)?
• (H/T – Sister Toldjah) Speaking of liberals killing an economy, Dana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the Labor Department explains how a massive raise in the minimum wage in American Samoa, mandated by Congress 2 years ago, is killing the economy there. That just demonstrates the Law of (Un)Intended Consequences.