George Rebane

– British PM blows socialism’s cover
– The AB32 bamboozle under full steam
– What if tornadoes were earthquakes?
– Obama does something right?
– The Dixon Cruickshank Celebratory Fishfry

The new British PM David Cameron today announced “drastic cutbacks” in Great Britain’s budget.  This is the first revelation by a leading British politician that socialism is not sustainable in that island nation, and by implication it points a finger at all the other leading European nations that are trying to figure out how to spill the beans to their own citizens.  The biggest unsustainable in the budget is, of course, their National Healthcare Service.  Cameron’s message was that if no cutbacks, then the Greek experience comes next.   Our leftwing has loudly touted the NHS for years as the nationalized healthcare model that the US and all civilized nations should adopt.  Since they’re pretty resilient to reason, for all I know they may still be touting it now that Obamacare is the widely lamented law of the land.

[9jun2010 update] To underline PM Cameron’s announcement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel today echoed the European awakening by stating that Germany will cease ‘stimulating’ its economy since only the ideologically blinded still think that taking money from the efficient sector of the economy and going into more debt while giving it to the inefficient sector will do anything but impede recovery.  In essence Merkel took a twist on von Mises strong dictum (‘Do nothing, sooner!’) to misguided governments by saying ‘Do nothing, finally!’

Meanwhile, the Fed’s Bernanke continued to mix a little realism into his kool-aid with the implausible claim that government remedies will neither reduce the deficits nor help the job market, but he still expects the economy to grow 3-4% this year because invstors will rush in to put more money at risk under much higher tax rates arriving on 1 January.  Beyond bizarre, but read it here. [end update]

It never ceases to amaze me why there is always some idiot fighting to get into a dark cave full of hungry bears while having to dodge all the people who are running out of it.

November’s AB32 Initiative bamboozle is now coming at us full steam under the guidance of California’s Attorney General Moonbeam Brown who has renamed that job saving effort as the (I kid you not) “SUSPENDS AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAWS REQUIRING MAJOR POLLUTERS TO REPORT  AND REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THAT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING UNTIL UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS BELOW SPECIFIED LEVEL FOR A FULL YEAR” on your ballot in hopes that the attention deficit voters will give up trying to read/understand its title and just vote no.  Russ Steele of NC Media Watch who writes a regular column in the CABPRO Report has the full story here.

Did Obama finally do something right?  The WSJ reports (here) that the President “wants NASA to outsource cargo and astronaut transportation to the international space station through at least the next decade.”  After cutting back manned space exploration monies for the space agency, Obama seems to be pushing for private industry to step into the breach.  Now if he only understood the relationship between entrepreneurial risk and reward, he might reflect that in his new tax policy.  Maybe then Space Exploration Technologies Corp, who successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket with a crew capsule payload into low earth orbit, would have an easier time getting still needed VC and debt financing.  Nah!

Yesterday’s spate of tornadoes through another part of the mid-west left its usual trail of death and destruction.  A good third of the lower 48’s land area is subject to these fearsome funnel clouds.  We Californians often hear from these hardy residents that they wouldn’t consider living out here because of “all the earthquakes” we have.  Two things come to mind whenever I hear such reasoning.  First, how many people would actually stay/live in California if year-in-year-out we had proportionately as many killed and as much property damage as occurs regularly east of the Rockies?  And aren’t we lucky that so many of them back there believe that way?

Finally, we had us a great fish feast last night at Russ and Ellen Steele’s house thanks to our Florida friend Dixon Cruickshank.  Dixon, a longtime and loyal reader/commenter on RR and NC Media Watch, is a fisherman extraordinaire, and sent us a mess of very delicious grouper and cobia that he had taken on Friday.  We invited friends Martin (of CABPRO fame) and Erica Light to complete the hungry horde.  Everybody brought something, and Russ and Ellen executed Dixon’s recipes to a tee.

The accompanying picture taken by Jo Ann shows the layout a moment before we got our fingers greasy.  A careful inspection will reveal that platters of both fish have somehow wound up within easy reach of your faithful commentator.   My, oh my, those critters did not die in vain.  Thank you Dixon!