Obama to Ban Plastic, Makup, Asphalt and more

You probably heard that Obama wants to get us off the oil in 10 years. In his well-known, utter ignorance, he probably thinks oil only fuels our cars. He could find it interesting to learn that oil is also used for:
- everything plastic
- rubber and vinyls (used in clothing or carpetting)
- fertilizers, pesticides
- asphalt
- paints, glues, polishes
- some pharmaceutical products, including aspirin and antihistamines
- air flight (while we had alternative-power cars, like hybrids or electrics, so far no plane has flown on alternative energy)
- cosmetics

The last item suggest a solution: Ban makeup! This will surely get Nancy Pelosi to change her mind on drilling.

The Recycling Nonsense

Although most people refuse to admit it, it's widely recognized (by economists, not by politicians) that for most items, recycling costs more than producing them from raw materials. Now that some raw materials got a little bit more expensive, there are more items where recycling can be profitable, especially if you ignore the hidden costs.

Tim Worstall has an article in the Times, The Hidden Cost of Recycling.

And there's always the NY Times classic article, Recyling is Garbage.

Obama the Gaffe Machine

Since Inauguration gets closer, I'm looking back at Michelle Malkin's Best Of collection of Obama gems. Some of them deserve to be on YouTube next to that Miss America or Kellie Pickler:

"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." (The actual death toll: 12)

"Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."

"Thank you, Sioux City. ... I said it wrong. I've been in Iowa for too long. I'm sorry." (in Sioux Falls, S.D.)

"There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born." (the Selma march was in 1965. Obama was born in 1961)

"We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it's harder for us to use them in Afghanistan." (Speaking about translators. Iraqis and Afghanis speak totally different languages)

Thomas Sowell on Postponing Reality for the Car Industry

Thomas Sowell has an excellent article about the future of the car industry. He starts by drawing a paralel to the demise of the horse industry a hundred years ago, when the automobile became the main mean of transportation. Yes, plenty of jobs were lost, people supplying oats, saddles, horse shoes and buggies, but it was not the end of the world. It's what Schumpeter called "creative destruction", replacing non-efficient business with newer, modernized ones.

Of course, the end of thousands of years of horse business is not what's happening now, because there's no replacement for cars on the horizon. People are going to need cars in increased numbers, and if they don't buy them from GM or Chrysler, they'll buy from Toyota or Honda. That's why Toyota is building factories like crazy, because eventually someone will have to step in and supply the missing cars. As for the millions of jobs that are going to fall like dominoes: Dealerships will sell Hondas as well as they sold Chevys. And Toyotas still run on the exact same number of tires as a Buick. So again, it won't be the end of the world.

An Interesting Recession

There are a few things about the current recession that certainly haven't occured during the past ones.
Thanksgiving sales are up 3%, Thanksgiving weekend sales are up 19%, Cyber Monday is up, 15% housing affordability is at all time highs.
During the recession, the GDP grew at a healthy 2.8% in Q2!
And since NBER has a tendency to announce recession around the time they end, there's a big chance that the "official" recession will end within a couple of month.

Could fears of Obama-supported unions cause unemployment?

I was just wondering whether the threat of Obama empowering unions to force businesses to unionize could be a reason for the recent job losses and increase in unemployment numbers. If you werea business where there's a possibility of unionizing, wouldn't now be the time to fire those employees before it's too late?

Quote of the day: On war and peace

"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

- Orson Welles as Harry Lime in Graham Greene's The Third Man

This is in relationship to the current left's obsession with peace, every anti-American on Earth wants peace, every liberal radical group has "peace" in its name, even the church of global warming is rewarded with a peace prize. Like Samuel Huntington said in The Clash of Civilisations, it's weird how, while Americans usually love competition between companies as the only way to progress, they seem so repulsed by the idea of competition between countries.