Thoughts on Recent New Items

Ambien CR Commercials:

Doesn’t everybody go to bed with lip gloss on? Particularly light sleepers and insomniacs? After all, who knows when they could get “lucky” and meet a strange Rooster?

Guantanamo POW Base

Guantanamo is our 100 year leased naval base in the Caribbean; we need that base. It is now used to house terrorists that we have captured in firefights, skirmishes counter-insurgency actions, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are other there captured by our allies that we have taken control of, and more of those overseas in friendly countries.

The main point is that these ARE Prisoners of our Declared War on Terrorists, whose leaders are Al Qaida, whose proxies are the Taliban and 4 or five other similarly motivated groups.

We owe no apology to anyone for our treatment of these terrorists. The fact that they don’t wear uniforms makes them no less soldiers; makes the fights no less fatal to our soldiers; makes our absolute justification for responding to terrorist attacks no less important for the time and distance necessary to punish those people.

In fact, we should repatriate these prisoners to the countries from which they were taken; they should be imprisoned there under the Geneva Conventions. They should be released when the war is over, or when the host country  determines. We can help control unjustified releases with agreements with the hosts.

Oh, and I don’t care about those who bemoan that some other country’s sense of justice is less considerate than ours; these people are terrorist soldiers, they did try, and in many cases succeed in killing Americans, over three thousand just in Iraq, Three Thousand in September 11 attacks, Somalia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and on and on.

Chrysler and General Motors Bailouts

Forcing an illegal,Constitutionally prohibited Bankruptcy Settlement on Chrysler and General Motors ,favoring Unions over Secured Creditors is just wrong. I hope the Pension Funds succeed in blocking the Bankruptcy package that allows the Fiat takeover. I hope Chrysler undertakes a different bankruptcy according to the law. I suspect the reason that they didn’t is because Chrysler would be liquidated, not reorganized. No other company wants the labor and other legacy issues associated with a second class auto manufacturer. (Whither the politics of hedge fund lobbying?)

In General Motor’s case, it’s a bigger version of the same thing, perhaps though General Motors and it’s surviving brands have a chance. But, there are enough venture capital funds to finance the deal in a normal bankruptcy, just not one that tries to save union jobs, union benefits, and other restructuring participants that shouldn’t be saved at the expense of pension funds and other bondholder investors who trusted the system to preserve their status. The unions and GM’s management are justly compared to the Wall Streeters who engineered bad financial products, sold them to their shareholders and outside investors, and now are looking around saying “Who? Me?” to explain or excuse their behavior.

America’s free market system can absorb the effects of even major bankruptcies; there’s plenty of capital available for the opportunities in restructuring.

Let’s give capitalism a chance, but not at taxpayer expense.