Michael Barone:

The Obama Democrats, faced with a grave economic crisis, responded with policies appropriate to the Big Unit America that was disappearing during the president's childhood.

Their financial policy has been to freeze the big banks into place. Their industrial policy was to preserve as much as they could of General Motors and Chrysler for the benefit of the United Auto Workers. Their health care policy was designed to benefit Big Pharma and other big players. Their housing policy has been to try to maintain existing prices.

Their macroeconomic economic policy was to increase the size and scope of existing government agencies to what looks to be the bursting point.

What we see is Big Government colluding with Big Business and trying to breathe life into Big Labor.
...

The visibly flagging economy and the slapdash stimulus and health care bills have left most voters ready to take a chance on the still reviled Republicans. The still unanswered question is, will the Republicans have an effective alternative to Big Unit governance?

Read the whole piece.

On this day 80 years ago in 1930, the first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the United States was completed in 37 hours, as Capt. Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Bellonte of France arrived in Valley Stream, NY, aboard The Question Mark.

75 years ago, in 1935, a hurricane slammed into the Florida Keys, claiming 423 lives.

65 years ago today in 1945, Japan formally surrendered in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II; also on this day, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent republic.

September 2 ...

In 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out, claiming thousands of homes, but only a few lives. In 1789 the US Treasury Department was established. In 1864 during the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman's forces occupied Atlanta. In 1901 Vice President Theodore Roosevelt offered the advice, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. In 1930 the first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the United States was completed in 37 hours as Capt. Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Bellonte of France arrived in Valley Stream, NY, aboard The Question Mark. In 1935 a hurricane slammed into the Florida Keys, claiming 423 lives. In 1945 Japan formally surrendered in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II; also on this day, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent republic. In 1963 Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace prevented the integration of Tuskegee High School by encircling the building with state troopers. In 1969 North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh died. In 1985 it was announced that a US-French expedition had located the wreckage of the Titanic about 560 miles off Newfoundland. In 2004 President Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term at the Republican National Convention in New York.

John Tamny, in Forbes magazine: "High federal pay means less capital formation, lower wages and reduced innovation."

September 1 ...

In 1807 former Vice President Aaron Burr was found innocent of treason. In 1897 the Boston subway opened, becoming the first underground metro in North America. In 1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan entered Confederation as the eighth and ninth provinces of Canada. In 1923 the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 150,000 lives. In 1932 New York City Mayor James J. "Gentleman Jimmy" Walker resigned following charges of graft and corruption in his administration. In 1939 World War II began in Europe as Nazi Germany invaded Poland; also on this day, George C. Marshall became Chief of Staff of the US Army. In 1945 Americans received word of Japan's formal surrender that ended World War II. (Because of the time difference, it was September 2 in Tokyo Bay, where the ceremony took place.) In 1951 the US, Australia, and New Zealand signed a mutual defense pact, the ANZUS treaty. In 1961 the Soviet Union ended a moratorium on atomic testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion in central Asia. In 1972 American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, defeating Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. In 1979 the US Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to visit Saturn. In 1983 269 people were killed when a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner entered Soviet airspace. In 1985 the Titanic was found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint US and French expedition. The wreck site is located 963 miles northeast of New York and 453 miles southeast of the Newfoundland coast. In 2004 more than 1,000 people were taken hostage by heavily armed Chechen militants at a school in Beslan in southern Russia; more than 330, mostly children, were eventually killed in three-day ordeal.

American Forces Press Service:

The single biggest threat to national security is the national debt, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [said Thursday in Detroit] ... American taxpayers are going to pay an estimated $600 billion in interest on the national debt in 2012, [said] Navy Adm. Mike Mullen ... "That's one year's worth of defense budget," he noted....

August 31 ...

In 1864 Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launched an assault on Atlanta, GA. In 1886 an earthquake rocked Charleston, SC, killing up to 110 people. In 1887 Thomas A. Edison received a patent for his "Kinetoscope," a device which produced moving pictures. In 1888 Mary Ann Nicholls was found murdered in London's East End in what is generally regarded as the first slaying committed by "Jack the Ripper." In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act prohibiting the export of US arms to belligerents. In 1939 Nazi Germany mounted a staged attack on Gleiwitz radio station, giving them an excuse to attack Poland the following day, starting World War II in Europe. In 1945 singer and songwriter Van Morrison was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1962 the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago became independent within the British Commonwealth. In 1969 boxer Rocky Marciano died in a light airplane crash in Iowa, a day before his 46th birthday. In 1980 Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day-old strike. In 1997 Princess Diana of Wales died at age 36 in a car crash in Paris. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur were also killed. In 2000 President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have gradually repealed inheritance taxes. In 2004 Palestinian suicide bombers blew up two buses in Beersheba, Israel, killing 16 passengers; also on this day, a woman strapped with explosives blew herself up outside a busy Moscow subway station, killing at least 10 people.

In order to fix what ails us, it is first important that we diagnose the ailment correctly.

From The Economist's Democracy in America blog:

[Government policy to expand home ownership is not] a story about how income inequality caused the financial crisis. Rather, this is a story about how policies intended to reduce inequality had the unintended consequence of precipitating America's worst economic slump since the Depression. It's very important that we're straight on what the story is, since different stories may have very different implications for policy. If the story is that the level of inequality itself -- and not our ideas about or political reactions to it -- indirectly caused the crisis, then we may think that narrowing the gap is a matter of urgent necessity. But if the story is that an ill-conceived political attempt to reduce inequality -- and not the fact of inequality itself -- led to apocalyptic economic devastation, then we may well conclude that it is better to refrain from equalising initiatives unless we are quite certain they will not backfire. ... the idea that we must be alert to the unintended consequences of policies meant to reduce inequality is rather different, and rather more helpful, than the idea that inequality as such threatens the stability of the economy.

James Taranto on "Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting."

Taranto writes:

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.'

Read the whole piece.

August 30 ...

In 30 BC (on Aug. 30, by some estimates), the seventh and most famous queen of ancient Egypt known as "Cleopatra" committed suicide. In 1862 Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, VA. In 1905 Ty Cobb made his major-league debut as a player for the Detroit Tigers, hitting a double in his first at-bat in a game against the New York Highlanders (later known as the Yankees); the Tigers won, 5-3. In 1941 the World War II siege of Leningrad began as Nazi forces took the strategic railroad town of Mga. In 1945 Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan, and set up Allied occupation headquarters. In 1963 the "Hot Line" communications link between Washington and Moscow went into operation. In 1967 the Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the Supreme Court. In 1983 Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first black American astronaut to travel in space, blasting off aboard the Challenger. In 1991 Azerbaijan declared its independence, joining the stampede of republics seeking to secede from the Soviet Union. In 1995 the West pounded the Bosnian Serbs with artillery and air attacks in hopes of bludgeoning them into serious peace talks. In 2004 the Republicans opened their national convention in New York City.

The Orlando Sentinel's Marissa Cevallos reports:

... people who sit more than 6 hours a day are more likely to die earlier.

That's even for people who exercise regularly after long sit-a-thons at the office and aren't obese.

That's the sobering news from a new study that tracked more than 100,000 adults for 14 years. Researchers from the American Cancer Society in Atlanta followed 53,000 men and 70,000 women and asked them to fill out questionnaires about their physical activity.

Even after adjusting for body mass index (BMI) and smoking, the researchers found that women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours; for men, long-sitters were 17 percent more likely to die.

August 29 ...

In 1533 the last Incan King of Peru, Atahualpa, was murdered on orders of Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro. In 1632 philosopher John Locke was born in Somerset, England. In 1786 Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, began in response to high debt and tax burdens; the rebellion led many to question the efficacy of the Articles of Confederation, and subsequently led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which produced the US Constitution. In 1809 physician, writer, and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was born in Cambridge, MA. In 1877 the second president of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, died in Salt Lake City, UT. In 1898 screenwriter and director Preston Sturges was born in Chicago, IL. In 1915 actress Ingrid Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1943 responding to a clampdown by Nazi occupiers, Denmark managed to scuttle most of its naval ships. In 1944 15,000 American troops marched down the Champs Elysees in Paris as the French capital continued to celebrate its liberation from the Nazis. In 1957 South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (then a Democrat) ended a filibuster against a civil rights bill after talking for more than 24 hours. In 1965 Gemini Five, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Charles ("Pete") Conrad, splashed down in the Atlantic after eight days in space. In 1966 The Beatles concluded their fourth American tour with their last public concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. In 1981 broadcaster and world traveler Lowell Thomas died in Pawling, NY, at age 89. In 2004 Tropical Storm Gaston made landfall in South Carolina at near-hurricane strength; also on this day, protesters filling 20 city blocks peacefully swarmed Manhattan's streets on the eve of the Republican National Convention to demand that President Bush be turned out of office. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the US Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and costing over $100 billion in damage; it was the worst natural disaster in US history.

This is no surprise to anyone paying attention, but it bears repeating for members of the so-called 'open-minded' Left so incredibly mired in groupthink.

The Examiner's Mark Tapscott writes:

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

Disclosure of the heavily Democratic contributions by influential employees of the three major broadcast networks follows on the heels of controversy last week when it was learned that media baron Rupert Murdoch?s News Corp. contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

Read the whole piece.

On this day 55 years ago, in what is considered one of the singularly most important events that triggered the civil rights movement in the US, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black kid from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, MS, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman. He was found brutally murdered three days later. (Two men charged with Till's murder -- Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam -- were acquitted at trial. They later confessed in a magazine article to beating and shooting Till.)