Not a big news item — just House Minority Leader John Boehner doing what he needs to do to keep his name in the papers and pretending that he’s gunning for GOP control on actual platform (more on that on Trifecta this week). But my reaction to it made me laugh. Anyway, here’s the lede:

WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (Reuters) – U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner on Tuesday called for the resignation of President Barack Obama’s embattled economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers. [Emphasis added]

At first glance, I thought that said “embittered.”

Well, if not now, then soon.

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Mr. President, are you sure we shouldn’t try putting it in R? That couldn’t be much worse than this:

Sales of previously owned homes plunged 27.2% nationally in July — payback from the expiration of a popular federal tax credit that had fueled the market for much of the year.

The big drop, which was worse than what many analysts had expected, sent stock markets tumbling Tuesday morning as investors feared a double dip in housing.

“Worst than what many analysts had expected.” Who are these analysts, and why, after 18 months of expecting Keynesian voodoo to work, do they still have jobs?

Fire some of those people, and maybe some decent people can start finding work again.

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It’s hard to get solid news out of North Korea. About the only news we get is when the Ministry of This r That makes some threatening pronouncement of impending world conquership under the unyielding hand of Dear Leader — which is hardly solid news. But StrategyPage has this item, which you might find interesting:

Since June, at least two additional combat divisions have been camped outside the North Korean capital. No official explanation was given for this troop movement (which required using a lot of scarce fuel.) All is speculation in the north, because intel agencies in South Korea, the United States and China are reluctant to release any solid information, lest they risk exposing the few good sources they have up there. But the current rumors indicate that most of what’s going on up north these days is driven by efforts to keep the government going. This is difficult, because supreme leader Kim Jong Il is apparently dying, or at least believes he is. The big problem is that his chosen successor is his youngest son, an able enough young man in his 20s. That’s too young for a place like Korea, where people like their leaders elderly. Kim Jong Il is trying to convince his elderly associates to honor his choice of successor, and apparently not everyone is convinced.

And so… the People’s Democratic Republic descends further into unvarnished military dictatorship, as People’s Democratic Republics must.

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Hair of the Dog: Learn how to do the Economy Pivot, the dance sensation that’s sweeping the nation!

And, as always, random cruelty and the world’s lamest segues.

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It’s That ’70s Economy! Really — stagflation is set to make another comeback. Jeff Harding has the sharp analysis:

In economic terms, buying Treasury debt is called “monetizing” debt. In plain English it means that the government prints money to pay for its debts. This policy has been the downfall of many governments who destroy their currency through hyperinflation.

As soon as unemployment starts to go up again, and I believe it will, the politicians will be all over the Fed to “do something.” That “something” will be massive QE. I’m quite sure that the Fed hasn’t figured out how much QE they’ll need, and that they’re unsure of its impact on the economy.

I have a pretty good idea of where it will all end up. Since they’re not dealing with the underlying problems, this papering over of the problems will lead to inflation and economic stagnation, a phenomenon we saw in the 1970s called “stagflation.”

Of course, Keynesian theory holds that you just can’t have stagnation and inflation at the same time — which is why anyone who’s spouted that nonsense even once since about 1978, should be ridiculed, and mercilessly.

Let’s start with Paul Krugman, shall we?

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Wall Street has probably received more bailout dollars per person than anywhere else in America. And yet still, here come the job losses:

The weak economy, volatile markets, regulatory upheaval and changes in how traders and investment bankers are paid are starting to trigger job cuts that could reverse a recent rebound in overall employment levels at banks and securities firms.

The news isn’t all grim, however:

Some firms say that the recent job cuts are routine and that they will continue to hire people for roles that are especially important.

But here’s what we need to know: Are these “especially important” jobs wealth-creating jobs? Or will firms be hiring more wealth-sucking “compliance officers” and the like to deal with all of Obama’s new regulatory burdens?

Stay tuned.

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How did I forget to link to this week’s PJM Political? And how did you forget to listen? Because we have lined up for you Glenn Reynolds, Arthur C. Brooks, Jennifer Rubin, James Lileks, the Front Page crew, Joel Kotkin, and… me!

How could you miss all that?

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Rand Paul: Pr0n King of Kentucky! At least to hear the AP tell it. Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington explains:

Kentucky senate candidate Rand Paul is being partially bankrolled by the porn industry, apparently. At least that’s the story that the AP’s Bruce Schreiner is pushing today. This is what appears to be the AP’s most recent hit job on Paul. Schreiner in particular has been accused of subtle bias (compare the headline to the text) in his Rand Paul reporting even before this story today.

What’s the evidence for today’s story? Zivity cofounders Cyan Banister and Scott Banister made personal donations to the Rand Paul campaign totalling $4,800. The Paul campaign has raised a total of over $3.5 million. Donors must state where they work, so they wrote down Zivity, says Cyan.

Despite the fact that the donations weren’t from Zivity, and that Zivity would barely fall under the definition of pornography, people are calling for Rand to return the money.

Earlier in the week, Fred Barnes wrote that the Democrats would be using silly personal attacks in local races to sort of denationalize the November election because “in the Democratic game plan, the economy and national issues are taboo.” Barnes added that the Government-Media Complex would surely play along since they just “can’t help themselves.”

Bruce Schreiner’s desperate little AP story is a great example of just what Barnes was talking about. And as Arrington writes:

Schreiner himself seems to have little knowledge of Zivity either. By phone yesterday he asked me if I could tell him more about the site. He had not, apparently, ventured farther than the home page.

The reporter reporting on the reporter did more reporting than the reporter reporting on the politician running for public office.

Keep calling them on their BS. And while you’re at it, keep canceling those subscriptions.

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Inconceivable! Barney Frank is now to the right — well to the right — of President Obama on basic economics. Larry Kudlow has the report:

For years, Frank was a staunch supporter of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government housing agencies that played such an enormous role in the financial meltdown that thrust the economy into the Great Recession. But in a recent CNBC interview, Frank told me that he was ready to say goodbye to Fannie and Freddie.

“I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie,” he said. Remarkable. And he went on to say that “it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford and couldn’t really handle once they had it.” He then added, “I had been too sanguine about Fannie and Freddie.”

Welcome to something closer to sanity, Congressman Frank. I hope you’ll stay awhile.

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President Obama loses the Los Angeles Times as even popular Democrats take a step away, possibly patriotic pole dancers, and the RNC finally gets one right — all on another exciting episode of… The Week in Blogs!

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I know we’re not supposed to get cocky and all, but it’s really, really hard when Vice President Biden goes spouting off about how the Democrats are “going to keep Congress.”

I mean it’s really, really, really hard.

UPDATE: Admiral Ackbar warns, “It’s a trap!”

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Flash is dead. It will not be missed.

I think the nicest thing I ever said about Flash was when I compared it to “a toothless vagrant who sits in the backseat, screaming.”

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And I’m not talking about the Fab Five, either — but I do miss those guys.

Anyway, CATO sums up the “panic” in the White House over Obamacare’s failure to gain any traction with the public, based on a confidential memo from the Herndon Alliance. Now I haven’t read the whole memo, just the bits that CATO and Politico excerpted. But of those bits, here’s the one you won’t believe:

The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college educated women, and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly, many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House’s all-out communications effort.

This President wouldn’t leave my damn TV alone for a year — Obama took to the bully pulpit time and again to sell this monstrosity. He spent his first year in office trying to get this thing over on us, like a drunk high school boy working a bra, but with less finesse. Then there were the endless summits. The endless speeches (over 100). Pelosi and Reid’s primetime trickery for four solid months from Thanksgiving until they schemed its passage through in March, the legislative equivalent of a bought jury. And since then, all the talk about the “historic achievement,” with the mainstream media doing a propaganda job that would make the folks at Pravda blush.

And yet — did you read that line? — somehow, “many are unaware that the legislation has passed.” That’s not some “astonishing shortcoming.” That unadulterated incompetence, elevated to fine art. By “fine art,” I mean, the art of Christo: Mammoth, public, shameless, useless — and with any luck, quickly fleeting.

Very, very quickly fleeting.

UPDATE: Sometimes, the obvious explanation isn’t the first one you think of. But instead of incompetence, let’s instead suppose that all that sales effort went to waste simply because people stopped listening to their President, bare months into his term?

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Let the rumors fly:

Apple is internally testing the first material update to its iOS 4.0 mobile operating system against a handful of new devices, including next-generation iPod touches, an iPad revision, and an “unknown” product, AppleInsider has discovered.

[SNIP]

…most intriguing, is a previously undiscovered mention of a mysterious device listed only as “unknownHardware.” Although the configuration files tag this device with a unique Apple product ID of 20547, it’s textual descriptor is similarly listed as “Unknown- Add device descriptor info for this device.”

Much as I’d like one for The Boy™, the mystery device is almost certainly not the much-discussed 7-inch iPad. Why? Because that smaller screen (the current iPad is 9.7″) creates two many problems problems.

Shrink the pixel count along with the screen size, and you get all kinds of app compatibility issues — as anyone who has ever run iPhone apps on the big iPad screen can attest. If you hate that pixel-doubling effect, wait’ll you get a load of the pixels-reduced-by-a-third effect.

Alternately, you could pack the smaller screen with the same number of pixels, which would look really, really sharp — just like the iPhone 4. But that would be a costly undertaking, defeating the purpose (presumably) of selling a 7″ iPad for less money than the current model. If iSupply and others are right, Apple already “enjoys” smaller profit margins on the iPad than on most anything else they sell, so it’s doubtful why they’d want to introduce a product that would cannibalize iPad sales for even smaller margins.

And, if for no other reason, Apple won’t sell a 7″ iPad because Steve hates SKUs.

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And it’s a very strange column from Eugene Robinson, in which he catalogs President Obama’s “winning streak.” Here’s the streak:

Last U.S. Combat Troops Leave Iraq.

Thus fulfilling a status-of-forces agreement brokered by the Bush Administration.

General Motors to Launch Stock Offering.

Let’s see how much money GM raises in its IPO. Also, let’s not forget that GM will continue to receive subsidies, so that it can sell an overpriced economy car to preening greenies, most of whom could afford to pay the unsubsidized (and outrageous) sticker price. And when will GM’s bondholders get a bailout, after having been screwed out of the protections they would have gotten through a normal Chapter 11 proceeding?

Gulf Oil Spill Contained.

By the end of the show, even Maxwell Smart would finally get his man. But getting there involved a lot of useless, clumsy hijinks.

President Wades into Mosque Controversy.

Robinson ought to reword this one to read, “President costs his party two or three more marginal House seats.” It’s a slight rewording, but I think it gets the message across a little better.

That’s the whole list, the big winning streak. That’s all Robinson could come up with. He had nothing to say on Iran, Porkulus, Obamacare, the economy, the half-million jobs we were supposed to be gaining each month (but instead lost last month — a million-job deficit).

It’s not too early to declare: This is a failed administration.

UPDATE

Brad comments:

Nice Maxwell Smart recall!  That is a very apt description of any “success” that could ever be attributed to Obama.  Hopefully, 2012 we’ll bring down the Cone of Silence on him for good! Does that make We the People the Chief?

The American people are always The Chief. It’s just that sometimes we forget it.

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Ed Driscoll presents… the quotable Harry Reid.

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Bonds — the next bubble?

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Coast to Coast Tea Party: Today I talk with Nicholas Sanchez. He’s an economist, a professor, an escapee from Castro’s Cuba, and author of the new book, Destined for Failure: American Prosperity in the Age of Bailouts.

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North Carolina GOP congressional candidate Renee Ellmers, who I got to interview on C2C a while back, just got the Sarah Palin nod — and her opponent, Bob “The Manhandler” Etheridge, is on the attack.

But wait’ll you see Renee’s counterstrike…

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From NRO, by way of Instapundit.

Ouch.

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Trifecta: In which Scott unearths some dirt on our Founding Fathers and… well, we always have fun talking about the Founders. And who doesn’t love some good dirt?

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We’ve been wargaming the coming Congressional shakeup for a few months now, but today let’s do something a little different — make it visual. Courtesy of 270toWin, here’s what the current Congress looks like.

(Click to Embiggen)

There’s an awful lot of blue on that map, especially given that the Democrats get a disproportionate amount of their support from tiny, densely-packed urban districts. But that’s what happens when you have a 255-178 majority.

Next, let’s wipe the map clean. And instead of predicting the outcome of each race, let’s take the poll-averaging data from Real Clear Politics and color in only the Toss Up races.

(Click to Embiggen)

What might shock you is, when Congress have approval ratings barely in the double digits, that there are only 31 super-competitive races. Such is the advantage of incumbency. And there is one speck of GOP red on this map — IL-10, the only Republican-held seat rated as a toss-up. But it’s this next map that ought to shock you.

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Trifecta: Bill Whittle has Scott Ott and me doing the Full Glenn Beck as we take a look at soldier’s coming home videos. This is one you won’t want to miss.

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Trifecta: I’d planned to bring Scott Ott and Bill Whittle on board for a light-hearted episode where we would — once again — make fun of the President for his latest unforced error.

But when the topic is the Ground Zero Mosque, I learned, it’s impossible to keep this crew from tearing down the set.

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As a devoted Amazon customer — they send me hand-written thank you notes, I kid thee not — and a dedicated Friend of Steve (Jobs), I can tell you two things with utmost confidence. First, Amazon cannot and should not try to put the Kindle up against the iPad. It’s a fool’s errand at best, and Amazon’s new Kindle pricing indicates that Jeff Bezos got the memo long before I did. Second, Amazon can and should kill Apple’s iBooks in the crib.

And I know exactly how to do it, too.

I love the iBooks app, and find it generally superior for reading. Apple’s kerning is far less aggressive, and iBooks has more of the gee-whiz usability thingies you expect from an Apple product. But the iBooks Store has a meager selection, and even those few titles are tough to find and unpleasant to browse.

This is where Amazon needs to pounce: On selection and the online shopping experience, where they hold temporary (?) advantages; and on price — which is where Amazon can snuff iBooks out, out, out.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present… Kindle Prime!

“Amazon Prime” members — I’ve been one since its inception — already know where I’m going with this. The rest of you, listen up.

Pick an attractive price point for above-average book buyers. Let’s say, $120. Give Amazon that much money up front, and Amazon will treat it as a gift card for Kindle Edition books. And as soon as they have your money up front, Amazon will send you, at no extra charge, the latest and greatest 7-inch Kindle (WiFi only).

Let’s think about this.

Amazon already sells its base Kindle for $139, presumably for a modest profit. Factor in the economy of scale for giving them away, and the $120 price point becomes attractive for wavering consumers and for Amazon, too.

You, the consumer, would get the new Kindle for free. And Amazon would get your $120 as the low end of your annual book purchases. The lock-in factor would almost assure Amazon that you’d buy more books for your Kindle (which you could also read on your iPad) and that you’d have fewer reasons to buy much at all at the iBooks Store.

Keep in mind, of course, that Apple can’t compete on price with the iPad. Apple is in the business of selling widgets — any content sales they might make through iTunes, iBooks, or the Apps stores is at most a secondary concern. Apple wants to sell you the widgets.

Amazon is new to this widget business, but they know better than anyone else how to sell content.

So, for Amazon it makes perfect sense to follow King Gillette’s formula, and give away razors to sell razor blades.

And over time, as hardware components fall in price, Amazon can use its marketing muscle to shut out other rivals. At $120, Kindle Prime only makes sense to people who buy ten or more more hardcovers (or twenty or more paperbacks) each year. But as costs come down, Kindle Prime might go for $80, or even less.

The best part? It’s an annual subscription. At the end of the year, keep your old Kindle and do with it as you will. But if you pony up another annual fee, Amazon would, I’m sure, be happy to send you at absolutely no added cost, the very latest and greatest base Kindle model. Give the old one to your kid — who will use it to buy even more Kindle books.

Apple, please keeping making great widgets. But I’m going to keep going to Amazon for the great content — if they can be smart enough to keep winning my business.

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Hair of the Dog: Meet President Zero Effect, find out what David Gregory dodged on his summer vacation, and learn what makes Dana Perino’s head spin.

UPDATE: to those who asked, and you know who you are, I cut the line where I claimed the new This Week theme by Chris Botti sounds like Herb Alpert on a double dose of demerol.

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