Fla Tourism v. America

This idiot was on CNBC the other morning looking like a fool. Maybe idiot is too strong a word. At the very least, she's a short sighted, pandering politician. She couldn't have looked more uncomfortable knowing that she held an untenable and increasingly unpopular position. But if you're a Florida Dem I guess you have to kiss up to the lefties to keep those re-election bucks flowing.

Her argument was that drilling off the Florida coast would hurt tourism. To quote her, the Florida tourist industry "is much more important than the problem we're talking about here" which was the high price of oil. The Fla tourism industry more important than the price of oil for the rest of the country? You've got to be kidding.

What's going to hurt Florida tourism is no one being able to afford the gas to drive to Disney. And no one being able to afford the airfare to fly to South Beach. And the airlines canceling all the flights to all the piss ant airports in the Sunshine State bc. they can't make a profit.

Vote for Neculai

As noted here before, I always wanted to vote for a dead guy. There's something so wonderfully irreverent there.

Well . . . . in a village somewhere in Romania, a majority agreed with me and re-elected the recently deceased Mayor Neculai Ivascu. Good for them.

As I generally say to wifey and the kids when they want to make an unnecessary purchase: what's wrong with the old one?

Loser candidate Dobrescu evidently was not reading the focus group reports from his pollster. Everyone knows that the only thing voters want in 2008 is "change".

Tax Big Food?

The Carpe Diem blog has a great graph of the profits of Big Oil v. the profits of Big Food. From '05 to '07, profits for Exxon Mobil are up 12% while profits for Monsanto are up 289% and for ADM up 107%.

So why are Congress and the press on Big Oil's back but not Big Food's?

Politics.

Focus groups hate Big Oil but have never heard of Big Food. There are more farm states than oil states, more farm states represented by Dems, Dems control Congress and can demagogue the issue. For Presidential candidates (except McC), the Iowa caucus rules out any attacks on Big Ag. and, therefore, Big Food. The environmentalists hate Big Oil. They run the Dem Party, which controls Congress and can demagogue the issue. Folks who don't do the grocery shopping have no idea how bad food inflation has been. But those who don't do the grocery shopping do buy gas every other day.

I Guess It Is Against the Law

Back in my teaching days I used to tell kids that being dumb is not against the law. You can't go to jail for that.

Evidently, Massachusetts wants that to change. H&R Block made some mortgage loans to people without requiring a down payment. Other loans--often called "liar loans" and for good reason--required no verification of employment. Now that's dumb. But is it against the law?

Massachusetts is suing H&R Block demanding that all foreclosue preceedings againt HRB borrowers be halted "to give local authorities time to review each mortgage". The new twist is that giving such loans was racist.

Obviously HRB learned its lesson: it no longer makes mortgage loans after losing a billion dollars and selling its mortgage unit.