I’m gone for the rest of the day and most of the evening, possibly checking comments a couple times in the interim.

If anyone sees a press report calling a revised 5.5% drop in annualized GDP a positive or encouraging sign for the third full quarter of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, otherwise known as the POR Recession As Normal People Define It, I’d like to know about it.

Even given the press’s Obamalove, that doesn’t seem likely. That’s because, in a barometer I generally don’t look at much, weekly unemployment claims rose to 627,000. That only seems significant because I thought there had been a slight downward trend in previous weeks. The apparently Obama kool-aid-free Reuters link says that the news “deflate(s) labor rebound hopes.”

In 1963, from his Birmingham, Alabama jail cell, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the following:

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

I love how that true, prophetic paradigm has transcended time. I also love that there is no hesitation there, simply “good” and “bad.”

I have worked behind the scenes in politics for over a decade and in no other realm have I seen man’s most desperate and absolute need for redemption. Oh, not because of the blatant, gratuitous depravity of “the bad people” (on both sides), but rather the appalling silence and/or fall from grace of “the good people” (on both sides). And it is inescapable because not one among us is perfect.

While “bad” people for the most part don’t care about anyone but the lowlife in the mirror, it is true that “good” people can do “bad” things.

Governor Mark Sanford for instance is now in the company of many men. No points are given for circumstances; right is right, wrong is wrong and he has stated as such.  Let’s see, there’s Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Elliot Spitzer, (first name here) Kennedy, and suddenly I am reminded of the “socialization” argument against home schooling to which I respond “Do not be misled: bad company corrupts good character.” (1 Cor 15:33). I believe this goes to the heart of Dr. King’s statement and is one of the main reasons for this country’s lack of leadership.

Don’t misunderstand, Governor Sanford’s actions are his own and he will have to deal with the personal and political consequences (unlike any of the Kennedy boys who thought having an “affair of the month” was a country club requirement). That said, there is a tendency in politics to think that anything goes and as such, opportunities for corruption and/or reckless behavior are presented, taken and then start getting categorized, compared & contrasted. After all, isn’t Spitzer’s prostitution ring scandal small potatoes compared to Ted Kennedy driving a Capitol Hill secretary off a bridge, leaving her to drown, then complaining about water-boarding 40 years later?

So should we care if elected officials make uncontrolled, detrimental judgments in their personal lives? Absolutely…especially if those judgments evolve into or reveal an existing pattern of behavior. In general, if an elected official consistently makes decisions that will devastate the family he or she [ostensibly] loves for momentary gratification, how much more consideration do we think they’ll give to how their decisions affect we the people? My guess is not much.

Additionally, from that perspective, it’s not surprising to have some politicians vote the wrong way on a crucial piece of legislation for the temporary satisfaction of getting an “atta-boy” from the extortionists. Bad company corrupts good character. Tough to see true leaders emerge from that environment.

For the record, I don’t think that the last two paragraphs represent Governor Sanford’s situation, nor do I think that he makes the “Top Ten Worst People in Politics” list (closest he’d get on his worst day is # 536). Some could even argue that this situation may not hinder his ability to lead or be effective in the future. Generally speaking, Sanford’s politics are on the money and it is unfortunate that one, bad, personal decision will take many years to heal everyone involved, including the Governor himself.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”  ~MLK Jr.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Words missing from President Obama’s press conference on Tuesday include “liberty” and “self-determination.” The closest he got to unqualified “freedom” was “freedom of speech” a couple of times, and once each for “free speech,” “freedom of assembly,” and “freedom of expression.” Also missing: Any form of “hospitals,” from which injured protesters are being pulled by Khamenei’s thugs, or “bullets,” which Khamenei is having fired at peaceful demonstrators.

Obama told us twice that we have to respect Iran’s “sovereignty.” Why?

Then there was this: “The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future.”

Really? Is that what this is? (Warning — gruesome footage; HT Threats Watch via Mark Levin; direct YouTube):

Some “debate.”

Update: Though he gives the President more credit than he deserves (another thought: Where’s the righteous anger? Is that only for Republicans who oppose reckless spending?), Ryan Mauro at PJM has some concrete suggestions for the President. Two of them are “to specifically and frequently mention the death of Neda, and immediately react to each new crackdown with condemnation and a call for the release of political prisoners and the allowing of dissent.”

Good ideas, considering that Obama didn’t even mention Neda’s first name at his press conference (an interesting oversight, given that Alinsky said to make it personal), and considering that there has been, as far as I can tell, no direct reaction to the vid above.

_____________________________________________

Commenter dscott brought to my attention the graphic to the right showing the relative economy-stimulating effects of tax cuts vs. government spending based on historical experience. It’s part of a presentation at the National Center for Policy Analysis identifying good and bad ideas for recharging economic growth, which stopped occurring with the onset of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy a year ago.

The source is a 2007 study (“The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks”) done by Christina and David Romer.

Christina Romer is the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, which has given us the less-effective historical $1.40 version of stimulus on a time-delayed basis — and that’s only on portion of it that represents true government investment, and not simply increases in transfer payments. As NCPA notes, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that less than 40 percent of the proposed infrastructure spending in the stimulus bill will be spent within two years.”

Ms. Romer’s relative silence on what the administration is doing is pretty pathetic.

_____________________________________________

Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom, in a brief digression at  a very good post — “It is interesting to observe the Left that was positively apoplectic over the Patriot Act enabling the government to monitor overseas telephone calls of suspected terrorists, but now has no worries about the Feds having every medical decision between you and your doctor at its immediate fingertips.”

_____________________________________________

Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey seem bound and determined to start a cap-and-trade trade war.

_____________________________________________

I’m with Michelle Malkin on Mark Sanford. It’s also good to see that there’s a spouse who won’t just sit there and take it — “Unlike other self-esteem-lacking wives of cheaters, Jenny Sanford shows real courage, class, and dignity in her statement to the press — and in her decision NOT to stand by her adulterous husband at his public confession.” Update: Rose has more.

From Daggett County, Utah:

It was a modern twist on the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale as a 9-year-old lost hiker who had been separated from his family on Saturday used techniques he saw on the television reality show “Man vs. Wild” to leave clues for searchers who eventually found the boy Sunday morning.

A trail of clues left by Grayson Wynne, who was lost in the woods in Daggett County overnight Saturday, led to his successful rescue Sunday morning by two searchers on horseback, said Karen Peterson Daggett County Sheriff’s office spokeswoman.

Grayson, a resident of Heber City, became separated from his family while on a 4-mile hike to Daggett Lake Saturday afternoon.

“I was really scared,” Grayson said Sunday night. “But ‘Man vs. Wild’ tells you how to survive all different terrains.”

Searchers were called out Saturday evening, including the Daggett County Search and Rescue team, Uintah County sheriff’s personnel and volunteers on horses, mules and on foot. Teams searched through the night without success and were joined Sunday morning by a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter and a Daggett County bloodhound team.

Using survival strategies shown in the show, Grayson said he tied pieces of his rain parka to trees as he hiked hoping they would help someone find him more easily.

Grayson’s mother, Kimberly Wynne, said her son had been hiking back to the family’s camper with a cousin when he fell behind and strayed onto a different trail. When family members noticed Grayson was missing, they began a search, but once dusk neared they contacted emergency personal for help.

“I climbed a pine tree to see if I could see anyone, but I didn’t,” Grayson said. “So I just kept following the river.”

In a statement released Sunday, Peterson said the first clue in the search — a granola bar wrapper — was found Saturday night about 300 yards from the trail the family had been hiking. Early Sunday morning, a small footprint was discovered near a creek about 400 yards from the spot where the wrapper was discovered. Farther up the stream, searchers found the black backpack the boy had been carrying.

Kimberly Wynne said that when rescuers found the backpack, she and her husband were devastated.

“He had his sleeping bag, snacks and an extra jacket in his backpack,” Kimberly said. “It was cold out and we worried how he’d manage without it.”

Peterson said the boy, who had spent the night under a log, had cold, wet feet but was in otherwise in good health and spirits when found. ….

Go here for the rest of the story. Some commenters at the link are suggesting that the boy should have stayed where he was, and they are probably correct.

Really, of all the dumber than a box of rocks ideas Ted Strickland has gotten behind, “high-speed rail” — especially the Ohio portion of it, which should be called “car-speed rail” — is among the very worst.

I’m copying the Buckeye Institute’s Executive Summary from its full report (“Why Ohio Should Not Build High-Speed Rail”; a 2.2 mb PDF), because I haven’t had a chance to rip into this particular pet peeve, and it deserves the thorough thrashing The Institute administered (bolds are mine):

In February 2009, Congress dedicated $8 billion of stimulus funds to high-speed rail projects. In April 2009, President Obama released his high-speed rail “vision” for America, which includes 8,500 miles that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had identified as potential high-speed rail routes in 2001. In June, the FRA announced its criteria for states to apply for high-speed rail grants out of the $8 billion in stimulus funds.

Yet the FRA has no estimates how much high-speed rail will ultimately cost, who will ride it, who will pay for it, and whether the benefits can justify the costs. A realistic review shows that high-speed rail will be extremely costly and will add little to American mobility or environmental quality.

The best available data indicate that the FRA plan will cost about $90 billion, or roughly one-fifth the inflation-adjusted cost of the Interstate Highway system. This plan will provide trains with average speeds of 140-150 miles per hour (mph) in California, 75-85 mph in Florida, and moderate-speed trains averaging 55-75 mph in Ohio and 30 other states.

The average American will ride these trains less than 60 miles per year, or about 1/70th as much as the average American travels on Interstate freeways. In fact, most of the taxpayers who pay for high-speed trains will rarely or never use them.

Because of a premium fare structure and downtown orientation, the main patrons of high-speed trains will be the wealthy and downtown workers, such as bankers, lawyers, and government officials, whose employers pay the fare.

A true high-speed rail system, with average speeds of 140-150 mph connecting major cities in 33 states, would cost well over $500 billion. Meeting political demands to close gaps in the system could bring the cost close to $1 trillion. At twice the cost of the Interstate Highway system, such a true high-speed rail system would provide less than 1/10th the mobility offered by the interstates.

These costs include only the projected capital costs. States that decide to build moderate- or high-speed rail may be responsible for cost overruns, operating losses, and the costs of replacing and rehabilitating equipment about every 19 years. Upgrading the 450 miles of Ohio tracks in the FRA plan to run trains at 110 mph would cost taxpayers close to $1.6 billion, or nearly $140 for every ohio resident. Subsidizing passenger trains over those routes will cost more than $30 million per year. Yet the average Ohioan will take a round trip on such trains only once every 17 years.

Far from being an environmental savior, high- and moderate-speed trains are likely to do more harm to the environment than good. In intercity travel, automobiles are already as energy-efficient as Amtrak, and the energy efficiencies of both autos and airliners are growing faster than trains. The energy cost of constructing new high-speed rail lines will dwarf any operational savings. As the state of Florida concluded in 2005, “the environmentally preferred alternative is the No Build alternative.”

To add insult to injury, the administration is likely to require states that accept high-speed rail funds to regulate property rights in a futile effort to discourage driving and promote rail travel. These regulations will deny rural landowners the right to develop their land while they make urban housing unaffordable and disrupt neighborhoods through the construction of high-density housing.

For all of these reasons—high costs, tiny benefits, and interference with property rights—Ohio should not attempt to provide high-speed rail service. Instead, it should use its share of the $8 billion stimulus funds solely for incremental upgrades, such as safer grade crossings and signaling systems, that do not obligate state taxpayers to pay future operations and maintenance costs.

The idea of almost-empty trains rumbling along at the same average speed as a car, with most passengers getting to and leaving from their pick-up and drop-off points in, um, a car — and dressing it all up as environmental improvement — should be fodder for late-night comedy. Instead, our governor takes it seriously.

Urban mass transit in “vertical cities” like New York and Chicago makes sense. As to high-speed rail, there are some parts of the country where it might work. LA to Frisco may be one, but that’s because that corridor probably has five times as many people as Ohio’s 3C corridor, and I believe much higher potential speeds.

Here’s a better idea, President Limos for Ice Cream and T-Shirt Ted: Instead of wasting untold millions for years to come in Ohio on car-speed rail, make I-70, I-71, I-75, I-80, and I-90 at least three lanes in each direction throughout the entire state, and raise the rural interstate and limited-access highway speed limit to 70. Those two steps would actually do something to promote efficiency and commerce, something a state with a 10.8% unemployment rate could sort of use — in case you guys really care about that.

There may be no limit to how far establishment media reporters will go in their attempt to prop up the public perception of failing state-run health care programs.

The latest example comes from Massachusetts. The Bay State’s CommonwealthCare (aka RomneyCare, so nicknamed because Governor Mitt Romney, rumored to be a Republican and pictured at right, championed the legislation’s passage and signed the bill in 2006) continues to implode — as anyone with a brain could have predicted, and as many, including yours truly (fourth item at link), did predict.

Despite deep cuts, which essentially amount to large-scale rationing of care and cash-starving of providers, the Boston Globe’s Kay Lazar, in an allegedly straight news story, felt compelled to describe the state’s health care arrangement as “trailblazing,” and to characterize a 12% budget cut as “trimming.”

Here are key paragraphs from what amounts to Lazar’s lament, with “rationing” tags added by yours truly for emphasis:

State cuts its health coverage by $115m
Board to slow enrollment in Commonwealth Care

Overseers of Massachusetts’ trailblazing healthcare program made their first cuts yesterday, trimming $115 million, or 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents and is the centerpiece of the 2006 law.

….. The largest share of the savings will come from slowing enrollment. (rationing) An estimated 18,000 poor residents who qualify for full subsidies, but who forget to designate a health plan, will no longer be automatically assigned a plan and enrolled and thus could face delays in getting care. (bureaucratic rationing)

The board also eliminated dental coverage for the poorest residents enrolled in Commonwealth Care, roughly 92,000 people who currently are the only ones in the program who receive that care. (rationing) Regulators said that would save $10 million. Dental coverage was retained in the budget approved by lawmakers last week, and now it falls to the governor to decide its fate.

Also hanging in the balance is the health insurance status of 28,000 legal immigrants whose Commonwealth Care coverage was dropped in the budget lawmakers approved for the fiscal year that begins July 1. (rationing) Governor Deval Patrick has until Monday to decide whether to veto any of that budget, which set aside $116 million less for Commonwealth Care than he proposed.

….. But Kirwan said the $115 million in cuts the Connector Authority board approved yesterday were merely to deal with shrinking state revenues and the rapid growth in enrollment in Commonwealth Care, which has 177,000 members and was projected to grow to 212,000 in the next year.

….. Patrick Holland, the Connector Authority’s chief financial officer, said enrollment spiked during the last three months, from 165,000 to nearly 177,000 members, because so many workers are losing their jobs and, with that, employer-provided health insurance.

The progress of the Massachusetts healthcare initiative is being closely watched in Washington, where Congress is crafting national legislation to extend coverage to more Americans. The Massachusetts law, cited as one model in the national debate, requires nearly everyone to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

….. Leaders of Health Care for All, one of the state’s largest consumer groups, said the changes will be especially hard on residents whose first language is not English and who have difficulty understanding the complex enrollment paperwork. (bureaucratic rationing)

….. Much of the rest of the $115 million in savings, $32 million, comes from slowing payments to the managed-care health insurance companies that won bids to offer insurance through the Commonwealth Care program.

“Trailblazing”? How about “earth-scorching?”

When’s the last time anyone in the establishment media described a 12% cut in a government program as “trimming”? Much smaller cuts, or even reductions in projected spending that are actually increases, have usually been accompanied by descriptive adjectives like “slashing,” “stripping,” “slicing,” “gutting,” etc. But there is apparently no cow more sacred than state-run health care, so a 12% cut is only “trimming.”

Two other points:

• The $32 million in “slowing payments” looks like a cash-flow gimmick that saves no long-term dollars. But it does reduce capital available at the managed-care companies, who will have to consider how cavalier the state is about paying its bills on time when quoting premiums for future coverage.
• We can only hope that Ms. Lazar is right that “The progress of the Massachusetts healthcare initiative is being closely watched in Washington.” If it is, people will reject what President Obama and Congress are proposing, which in many ways, including the odious penalties for not buying insurance, mimics the Massacusetts mess.

One of the litmus tests today and tonight at OBC — er, I mean ABC, where they’re getting quite testy — will be whether anyone dares to cite the train wreck in Massachusetts, and whether anyone in the administration is forced into a coherent explanation of how the federal program will somehow work out differently. If it comes up, I’m afraid the answer will be on the order of “Poor little Massachusetts, they’re trying to do something as one state that will only work when managed nationally. We’ll do it right.” Horse manure.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

From the Federal Housing Finance Agency (PDF) — “U.S. home prices fell 0.1 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis from March to April, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s monthly House Price Index. The previously reported 1.1 percent decline in March was revised to a 1.4 percent decline. For the 12 months ending in April, U.S. prices fell 6.8 percent. The U.S. index is 11.2 percent below its April 2007 peak.”

Hmm. I seem to remember CBS MarketWatch’s Rex Nutting sending me scary graphs telling me that the housing bust was going to be as bad as NASDAQ’s 75% plunge in the early 2000s. Not exactly. I thought prices would drop 5% to 10% at worst. I’m a bit closer.

The fact is, it’s still pretty bad, it’s just not Rex Nutting, Dutch tulips bad. The shame is that if it weren’t for the Democrat-inflicted, electoral victory-motivated, country-be-damned onset of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy a year ago, the worst of the housing mess would be in the rear-view mirror.

But it’s not over, and as long as this administration thinks that time-delayed, historically ineffective and comparatively ineffective government “stimulus” is the way out, it won’t be over, or it will at best continue to drag out over several years.

___________________________________________

Michelle Malkin is calling Michelle Obama “First Crony.” The shoe fits.

A few days ago, doing work the establishment media won’t do, Malkin noted that “Michelle Obama’s installation as the face and voice of the government volunteerism boondoggle only deepens suspicions about the role she and her staff may have played in (Gerald) Walpin’s sacking. So does Michelle Obama’s past exploitation of the “community service” mantle to reward Chicago politicos (see “The Obama horror story you won’t hear“).”

_______________________________________________

Unemployment rate prediction watch — President Obama moved from saying it will hit 10% on June 16 to “unemployment will end up going over 10 percent” in yesterday’s press conference.

At least on that one one, he’ll be right no matter what, even if the rate goes to 11%, or 12%, or 13% ….

Link:

Media Bistro broke it Tuesday morning, and gave us all of the details shortly after noon. The news: CBS and ABC’s evening newscasts both came in with record low viewerships during the week of June 15.

ABC’s fall to less than 6.5 million total viewers is probably more of a surprise than CBS’s plunge below 5 million. Is there a health care propaganda backlash?

But the biggest news, as usual, is the combined audience drop, this time to barely 19 million. As usual, Media Bistro didn’t note that.

Here’s a chart comparing the overall and 25-54 demographic audiences during the week of June 15, 2009 to those of the previous week, January 26, 2009 (a combined high-water mark during the first week after Barack Obama’s inauguration) and June 16, 2008:

Media Bistro charitably notes that Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric were on vacation, and that the transition to digital TV may have been a factor. The digital TV claim actually makes a bit of sense, because the previous week-over-week percentage drops in the 25-54 demo have usually been larger than the overall audience declines. This time, the overall drop was larger than the 25-54 demo drop. But if some older folks have lost the use of their TVs, how sure can anyone be as to the percentage that are going to come back? The next few weeks will determine whether the two excuses just named are valid.

CBS’s fall may be a bit of a milestone, in that its June 15 weekly average audience was less than the 8 PM combined cable news channel audiences of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and CNN Headline on Monday, Tuesday,Wednesday, and Thursday of that same week. That may very well be a first-time-ever occurrence.

There are plenty more hazy, lazy, crazy weeks of summer remaining. All-praise-Dear-Leader, all-the-time doesn’t seem to be working out very well at the Big 3 Networks.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s redundant to refer to a Victor Davis Hanson piece while suggesting that you “read the whole thing,” but …. read the whole thing.

Here’s a small snip:

So why speak out louder? (Does not Obama see that the world has been given a rare chance, thanks to brave Iranians—as if the German people had risen up in 1938 in fear of what was on the horizon)

1) It is the moral and right thing to do to support the brave and idealistic (the Congressional Democrats mostly get this. And, after a week of embarrassment, the “I worship whoever runs the White House” pundits are not far behind and scrambling to retract and revise last week’s obsequious columns.). The dissidents in fact can win in this new age of private instant communications, in which global news is not predicated on elite correspondents and news desks editors, but can flow globally and instantaneously, unfiltered, with unforeseen consequences.

_______________________________________________

UPDATE: This AP report, notably from Cairo (“Iran stiffens stance against protesters”; time-stamped June 23 at 10:18 ET when seen), has little encouraging content.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Not a lot scares Chuck Norris. But, as is the case with Lou “God Bless Him” Pritchett, Barack Obama does (also at WND, HT Oxpecker).

_____________________________________________

Larry Kudlow (HT Instapundit) engages in what I hope is not premature e-celebration while making a strong point — “It looks like President Obama’s big-bang health-care reform is going down to defeat. This is good. But my question is why do we need it at all? According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?”

Because, of course, it’s not about happiness, or better service delivery, or any of that other self-evident blather easily exposed as nonsense when looking at the experience of other countries. It’s about control.

_____________________________________________

More posturing economic sludge – “Obama wants new council to help auto industry.”

Haven’t you guys tired of ruining the auto industry and the rest of the economy yet? This is simply more bureaucracy that will pretend to deal with the problems created by the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy a year ago.

As I said in my Pajamas Media column, posted at BizzyBlog earlier this morning, “…. they (and their party) sowed the seeds of a serious economic decline. Now they, and sadly we, are reaping the whirlwind.”

_____________________________________________

I’m finding the self-congratulatory “revolution is being televised, YouTubed, and Twittered” observations being made in various quarters more than a little hard to take.

Of course, it’s important that images, video and on-the-street reports are escaping from Iran. But it’s incredible that alleged leaders, and some pundits who should know better, seem to actually be thinking that the exposure will be enough to topple an evil regime, and excuses them from their moral obligation to speak out and act.

Maybe “the whole world is watching” so-called “strategy” will be enough this time. But if so, it will only be due to extraordinary luck. It didn’t exactly work at Tiananmen, did it? Though there were fewer tools 20 years ago, there were enough of them to matter; we saw and knew what was happening.

Michael Ledeen has it right when he sadly observes (at PJM’s home page) that “the brave Iranian people are right to believe nobody in the outside world will help them. They’re on their own,” and concludes his column by noting that it “is indeed a great pity, and a terrible stain on our national virtue.” In 1981, Poland wasn’t on its own (HT Mark Levin).

We had a virtuous leader then; the jury’s deliberating on the current one, and it’s not looking good.

Note: This item originally appeared on Sunday at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog that same day.

_________________________________

The VP in effect admits that his Party risked the economy to pander for votes.

_________________________________

Vice President Joe Biden broke form and did everyone a favor during his June 14 “Meet the Press” interview when he told the country that “No one realized how bad the economy was” in the run-up to February’s passage of the so-called “economic stimulus” package that nobody read.

The former presidential candidate and proven serial plagiarizer (far beyond the infamous Neil Kinnock incident) is still the best reason for hoping that President Barack Obama, for all his very considerable faults, has an ever-vigilant Secret Service detail.

As long as Obama’s protection is in place, Biden can continue to be the gaffe-prone politician who has almost surely piled up more flubs and follies since his August 2008 selection as VP than the thirty Dan Quayle allegedly accumulated in four years. At least Quayle could count to four (Biden has shown that he can’t) and knows the difference between a plus sign and a minus sign (Biden doesn’t, at least when talking about Louisiana). As long as the president is safe, we can relax knowing that Biden’s ego-aggrandizing rewrites of history will be of no significance beyond their entertainment value.

Economically speaking, as long as he is kept away from serious future duties, Joe Biden will be best remembered as the alleged “friend of the little guy” who, as Senator from MBNA – er, I mean Delaware –supported 2005′s one-sided, creditor-financed, consumer-hostile effort known as bankruptcy “reform” that did virtually nothing to rein in abusive lender practices. At the time, columnist David Broder accurately noted that “the Senate…. shot down virtually every attempt to separate the sheep from the goats and carve out protections for the average family trapped by circumstances.”

But let’s get back to the Vice President’s “Meet the Press” comment. There’s a reason the White House didn’t appreciate how bad the economy was early this year, and it’s simply this: They didn’t realize how much damage they had done to it going back to June of last year.

At that time, in the name of electoral victory, and with the help of their party, the architects of what I have for the past year been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy –Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Harry Reid — deliberately took positions and actions that were destined to take down the economy, seriously underestimating the harm they would do to its fragile-but-decent condition.

They thought they could gain votes by promising, almost gleefully, to severely tax the nation’s most productive people, increasing their marginal tax rates by up to 17% (12.4% Social Security plus 4.6% federal income tax), so they could redistribute individual amounts that are relative pocket change to everyone else. Even as it became clear that the economy was struggling, Obama irresponsibly ramped up the rhetoric further. Days before the election, he accused those who opposed his tax increases of wanting “to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

They thought they could gain votes by repeatedly telling the electorate of their intent to dramatically reduce and ultimately abandon the use of fossil fuels, seemingly regardless of whether viable replacement energy sources exist. Obama shamelessly (or ignorantly?) peddled the absurd notion that “we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling — if everybody was just inflating their tires.”

They thought they could gain votes by capitalizing on the housing and mortgage-lending mess when it came to a head in September, falsely framing the situation as a greed-based regulatory failure. Last time I checked with the eminent Thomas Sowell, “Lenders did not spontaneously begin to lend to people who would not have qualified for loans under the traditional criteria that had evolved out of years of experience in the market.” Instead, it was the Democrat-inspired collection of mandates, otherwise known as “regulations,” that had threatened or forced financial institutions into these unsustainable lending arrangements.

In sum, Team Obama underestimated in January 2009 how much they and their Democratic cohort’s pandering for electoral advantage trashed the economy during the final seven months of 2008. They underestimated how many businesspeople, entrepreneurs and investors engaged in anticipatory downsizing during the second half of 2008 as a result of the rhetorical horrors they witnessed from their country’s likely and then victorious leaders.

Well, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid got their precious votes. In the process, they sowed the seeds of a serious economic decline. Now they, and sadly we, are reaping the whirlwind.

After the election, it only got worse.

Democrats cheered in December when a lame-duck president expanded the bailout effort to the auto industry. It had Obama’s strong encouragement – never mind the “who’s next?” uncertainty it injected into the entire economy.

Once at the controls, with the serious recession they caused already going strong, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid ignored options to reverse it that have historically worked (tax cuts, opening up domestic exploration and drilling, etc.) in favor of an inherently time-delayed, ineffective “stimulus” plan that, like its predecessors in 1930s America and 1990s Japan, hasn’t stimulated anything, and is well on its way to becoming the Mother of All Boondoggles.

Thus, in the one-year anniversary month of the POR Economy, now the POR Recession as normal people define it, the carnage continues. The White House predicted that unemployment would peak at 8% if the stimulus plan passed, but it’s already at 9.4%. Obama has conceded that it will hit 10%. Odds are that once again he’s underestimating.