Leaf Day comes to Franconia Notch

It's here. I have green leaf buds showing on all the trees. About time too.

Arguments we don't need to have

Cover story on Commentary "What kind of socialist is Barack Obama". I don't know, and the answer really depends upon what your definition of socialist is. Change your definition of socialism and you change the answer to the question. I don't care if you call Barack Obama is a Fabian socialist, a rightist Burkharin deviationist, a pure Marxist, or a democratic socialist. They are just labels.
Let's talk substantive issues, such as Can the US economy survive the costs of Obamacare, or Did the Porkulus do anything good for the economy, or Should the Obama Administration allow Iran to build nukes and if not what should be done about it. But arguing over the label to apply to Obama's policies is a waste of time in my humble opinion (IMHO).

Used cars cost more after Cash for Clunkers

I'm so glad to contribute my tax dollars to the destruction of perfectly good used cars. Prices for used cars have skyrocketed. I'm in the market for another car, trusty Caddy has the rear axle just about rusted off. Combination of New Hampshire potholes and road salt has eaten up the sheet metal of the unibody where the rear axles attached. Does not look repairable.
So, much cruising of internet car sites. We have acres of boring econoboxes. Slathers of pickup trucks and SUV's which I don't need. There are a few full sized sedans left, Ford Crown Vic, (and Mercury and Lincoln which are the same car with different grills) and Cadillac. And Buick. Nothing else. For used, pricing on Caddy is about the same as Ford and Buick, and Caddy has a better engine.
Drove down to Manchester to look at a 99 Caddy with only 38K miles on it. It was good looking, but the 38K miles was suspicious. For a one owner 11 year old car, that means the previous owner only put 3500 miles a year on it. That's low. Or someone has figured out how to roll back the electronic odometer. Wear on brake pedal and plastic headlight lenses was heavier than my current 125K mile Caddy.
So, I will keep looking for new wheels.

Supression of religion, Judge made law style

The first amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion o prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
Modern judges interpret this as preventing bible reading in school, prayer at school assemblies, creches on town property, ten commandment monuments in courthouses and other rulings that have given offense to many good citizens.
In actual fact, the establishment clause says no such thing. Establishment of religion means the sort of deal King Henry VIII gave the English church, namely, you churchmen all work for me, the king, and you no longer work for the pope. After a controversial attempt to return England to Catholicism, it was required that all English kings and high officials be members of the Church of England. Catholics, Quakers, Puritans and Presbyterians need not apply. The Church of England was "established", the dissenters were out in the cold. In fact, belonging to these unestablished dissenting churches was a reputation destroyer, as bad as belonging to the communist party in current day America.
Dissenters set up colonies in North America, Puritans in Massachusetts, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland. Lots of Presbyterians came over too but didn't set up a special colony for themselves.
Naturally when the Constitution was written, each American church feared that one of their competitors might become "established" with all the benefits and perks that the Church of England enjoyed back in England. And so, a compromise was placed into the Constitution, namely that no church could be established.
This compromise worked very well up until the 1960's when judges highly trained in nit picking and ignorant of American history decided that "establishment of religion" meant any religious expression.
Today the TV is alive with stories of a federal judge ruling that a national day of prayer (how harmless can that be?) is unconstitutional.
The country would be better off if law school required two credits of American history for graduation. Morison and Commager would be a good text.

Financial regulation, need therefore Part III

Tim Geithner was on Meet the Press this morning talking up the financial reform bill. Geither kept talking and talking about regulation, without ever saying what the regulations might be. Presumably guv'mint bureaucrats will be given authority to give orders to the banks. That's a lot of power for a bureaucrat.
Geithner did say he favored an exchange for "derivatives" by which he meant credit default swaps.
I suppose an exchange would keep records, from which regulators could figure out how much money the banks had wagered on the swaps. Me, I think financial regulations should outlaw swaps completely. Credit default swaps don't grow the economy, instead they divert money from useful investments into high stakes gambling. Credit default swaps killed AIG , Lehman, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns. These are clearly dangerous gambling games with the power to crush mighty brokerages with a single email.
Geithner stressed that "his" regulations would protect taxpayers from future Wall St bailouts. He didn't say how. The bill has a $50 billion bailout fund built into it, but that's chicken feed. TARP was $750 billion, 15 times as much, and it wasn't enough.
We need to put the fear into Wall St. Every trader making risky bets should fear losing his job, loosing his house, loosing his life savings, loosing his reputation, and going to jail if the bet doesn't pay off.

Is the Tea Party full of wierdoes?

A TV newsie reported that 58% of tea party members have guns in their homes and that 60+% of them watch Fox News. Obviously a sign of dangerous radicals.
Most Americans do have firearms somewhere, and most of them do watch Fox News. That makes the Tea Party people main stream Americans.

John Yoo on Justice Stevens

Interesting op ed piece in the Wall St Journal today. John Yoo, the author, is the Justice department lawyer from the Bush administration who dared to give written guidance to CIA about the difference between legitimate interrogation and torture. Yoo provided useful and clear cut guide lines as to what was legal and what was not. For this service Yoo has been vilified by democrats and his guide lines denounced as torture memos.
Yoo tells the story of way back during WWII, John Paul Stevens was a Navy intelligence officer who was in on the Yamamoto operation. American code breakers intercepted and decyphered Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's travel schedule. A squadron of P-38 fighters was dispatched to intercept Yamamoto's plane. The mission was successful, the Betty bomber carrying Yamamoto was shot down into the jungle. Yamamoto was killed in action by P-38 machine gun fire.
Sixty years later, the now Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens opined that "The targeting of a particular individual with the intent to kill him was a lot different than killing a soldier in battle and dealing with a statistic".
Wow. Stevens believes knowing the enemy's name makes some kind of difference in the morality of killing him. There is some difference between the hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers killed by Marines who didn't know their names, and a high ranking navy officer killed by Air Force pilots who did know who they were gunning for?
Far as I am concerned, killing uniformed enemy in war time, although distasteful, is necessary, legal, and moral. Certainly more moral than nuking enemy cities. That a US Supreme Court justice fails to understand this is appalling.
Could Obama nominate a replacement with better sense?