Miscellaneous 116

1) When Peter Orszag stepped down as President Obama's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, that was a pretty major loss, I think. The dude quite literally was one of the few straight shooters in all of D.C. and I really despair whenever I see people like that cash it in.............2) Mr. Orszag's input was especially valuable during the lengthy cap and trade debate. While Democrats in Congress wanted to give away (mostly to corporations, mind you) 85% of the emission permits for 2012 and only auction away the remaining 15%, Mr. Orszag countered with this little piece straight medicine, "If you didn't auction the permits, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States. All of the evidence suggests that what would occur is that corporate profits would increase by approximately the value of the permits." Unfortunately, Mr.s Waxman and Markey didn't listen to Orszag and decided to lard the bill (which is currently stalled) up anyway.............3) For those of you who think that what Jeremy Lin has been doing the past couple weeks is somehow a miracle, think again. I just heard a couple of stats from ESPN (their science guy, specifically) and the fellow has in fact supreme talent. The first one has to do with quickness; the fact that he can go from 0 to 10 miles per hour in less than a second. The second one has do with release time on his shot; the fact that he can get off his shot in .6 seconds (faster even than all-time three-point shooter, Ray Allen). If the fellow can somehow cut down on his turnovers, he just might end up being a legitimate star after all.............4) I've never seen a bunch that could lose the upper-hand the way that these Republicans can. President Obama clearly overstepped his mandate with this whole thing about forcing religious organizations to provide birth control. Advantage Republicans, right? But then when he made the compromise, exercised damage control, etc., that clearly should have been the end of it. The Republicans should have simply declared their victory and mosied on. But they didn't. Nope. They malingered and turned it into some troglodytic birth-control issue. And NOW...THEY look like the unreasonable ones. Absolutely unbelievable, those people.