I guess with the shenanigans of Craig, Vitter, Spitzer, Paterson, and the rest, some people might say why not?

A registered sex offender collared in an Internet sting four years ago is running for mayor of a small Dallas suburb.

James Brian Sliter says he’s sorry and needs to prove he can be an asset to his community. The 42-year-old was arrested after arranging sex with someone he met on the Internet who he thought was a 15-year-old girl.

Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea.

Current Mayor Don Hudson says a sex offender serving as mayor will put a stigma on the city.

Ya think?

Most of us who do not spend our spare time dawdling in the dismal science of macroeconomics and global financial markets have a hard time grasping exactly why a small percentage of high-risk mortgages in the USA could have triggered the current liquidity crisis on Wall Street.  David Leonhardt, of the New York Times, has written a simple and clear primer on the subject. He does answer my questions which are why this has happened now and why it has never occurred before.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

I’m here to urge you not to feel sheepish. This may not be entirely comforting, but your confusion is shared by many people who are in the middle of the crisis.

Additionally, Dr. Tyler Cowen, George Mason University economist, tries to clarify things about alleged “Federal bailouts” and the misapplication of that label:

If you’re a critic of bailouts, you can’t have it both ways. If the Fed or Treasury is guaranteeing loans, yes that does put taxpayer dollars on the line. But if you think the system can hold up, as do most bailout critics, those guarantees are unlikely to cost very much. The Fed or Treasury may even turn a profit. If you think the system cannot hold up, the bailout is probably necessary even if costly. So you can’t claim: “The bailout isn’t needed” and also “The bailout will burden taxpayers.”

Is Barack Obama nothing more than a silver-tongued racist? One wonders: His wife’s only recently discovered pride for the nation, his pastor’s “rich white devil” sermons, and the Senator’s own comments.

Earlier this week, Obama threw his white grandmother under the Race-Talk Express while attempting to explain away his Pastor’s heated sermons.

I can no more disown [Pastor Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

“So long, Gramma, you ol’ racist!”

Yesterday Senator Obama “clarified” that speech.

610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, she doesn’t, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”

At this point, as a “typical” white person, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Senator Obama for opening my eyes to my inherent fear and racism. All these years I had wondered what was wrong with me, and now I know. In fact, the revelation was so powerful that I awoke this morning in terror to discover that I had married a woman with skin much darker than my own. Imagine my horror, fear, and loathing at being in such close proximity to one of “those people.” You see, I can’t help it because I’m just a “typical” white person.

Thank you, Senator Obama, you silver-tongued healer of racial iniquity. I feel so much better now.

And I think that, like me, you’ll decide she’s the best choice for Harris County DA. The runoff has gotten ugly, with both sides going negative. Interestingly, Ms. Siegler hasn’t taken that route - her supporters have. I think that they are missing out on a great opportunity to not only win the runoff but to have people excited about voting for her in the general election.

Her story is the classic small town American success story. Graduating at the top of her 44 person high school class, working hard to be the first person in her family to graduate from college (UT in 3 years) and becoming an attorney. Then sticking with the prosecutor’s office because “they help people”. It’s a shame her supporters would rather focus on her opponent.

So, I’m going to help them. Watch this first video to see her working the polls on election day, it will give you a sense of her work ethic and philosophy. (video produced by the Houston Chronicle)

Now watch her passion as she defends her office and her profession. This clip is from a debate sponsored by KHOU.

Tell people about her strengths and I think she’ll take this election in a cakewalk.

It seems that presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain is continuing to feed the Big Green Monster of global warming junk science:

International responsibility also means preserving our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. Americans and Europeans need to get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand over a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need to reinvigorate the US-European partnership on climate change where we have so many common interests at stake. The US and Europe must lead together to encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.

I have introduced legislation that would require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but that is just a start. We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner.

Meanwhile, back on Earth:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

“There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. “Global warming doesn’t mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming.”

In other words, “We don’t have a clue what’s going on but let’s go ahead and bankrupt our economy trying to fix an environment that’s not broken.”

There are real environmental problems we could be focusing on instead of funding fat professors with billions of research dollars to practice pseudo science. In 5-10 years all these buffoons will be yammering about some other made-up environmental catastrophe. I’m with that Weather Channel guy, let’s sue Al Gore for fraud.

Why is this man smiling? 

 

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