In order to get rich, you have to know how to "sell high." But you also have to do another thing first, and that's "buy low." People often forget that part, and end up buying high and hoping to sell higher.

Buying low is a bullish thing to do. But it's also a risky thing to do, too. And with a country and an economy in a justifiably sour mood, people aren't taking the risks they used to.

So what's the case for optimism? Over at a fine economics blog, Calafia Beach Pundit (hat tip: Mark Perry) has put together an immensely cheering collection of 20 bullish charts. Here's his take:

Pessimism is rampant, and most of the articles and commentaries I see have some doom-and-gloom flavor to them; indeed, many pundits are already claiming to see a double-dip recession either in progress or as imminent. I think the "conservative" bull case—that the economy is growing at a sub-par trend rate of 3-4%, which will leave the unemployment rate uncomfortably high for some time to come—is not getting its fair share of the news.

And here are two of my favorite charts from his excellent post -- though I really suggest you click over there and see them all.Here's one for US Industrial Production from 1997:

And here's another one, the HARPEX Shipping Index, which I love because I'm a container ship groupie:

Pessimism is easy. Optimism requires maintenance. And being bullish means putting down some money. How bullish are you?

The British Parliament does it, why can't we? Rob and Peter (Lileks is at the Minnesota State Fair this week) answer your questions -- when Peter is not answering his wife's phone -- and later, talk to author, columnist, and all around smart guy Shelby Steele. He's got some fascinating insights about Obama and what the future may hold for him, and us.

And now, let's hit the links:

• The Krugman in Wonderland blog is here.
• Lileks' coverage of the Minnesota State Fair. His own blog is a must read.
• Peter's wife is an Animist?
• While you were watching Jersey Shore, Peter was reading Dostoevsky's Devils.
• Shelby Steele's A Bound Man.
• George H.W. Bush checks the time during a debate.
• The transcript of Barak Obama's immigration speech.
• Rob's post on the Democratic Party's Power Point presentation.
• Fox News pundit Juan Williams gets emotional on election night 2008.
• The Ricochet debate on net neutrality is here.
• Harry Shearer on IMDB.
• The floorwalker from The Jack Benny Show.

Music from this week's episode:

• Wake Up by Arcade Fire
• Don't Ask Me Questions by Graham Parker & The Rumour

Play this week's episode. Subscribe here. Direct link to the audio file.

Of all the things that the media does that make me laugh, the faux "fact check" is my favorite. I actually laughed out loud when I read the Associated Press' fact check on the Park 51 mosque. It began:

A New York imam and his proposed mosque near ground zero are being demonized by political candidates — mostly Republicans — despite the fact that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood. And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.

As I wrote elsewhere . . . when composing something that you’re trying to pass off as an independent judgment of “facts,” lay off the non sequitirs, politicking, loaded phrases, red herrings and unsubstantiated statements.

The St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact had another howler this week. Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner, where my husband works, had written:

"Obama’s stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion more."

Is this not true? Well, the PolitiFact machine cycles out paragraph after paragraph after paragraph explaining that there is a lot to consider here. They concede that the "facts" and "data" support Tapscott but they quote other people saying that maybe the numbers offered by official government sources don't tell the whole story. Now, they don't wonder whether the stimulus numbers are correct -- those apparently come from the hand of God. But the other numbers could, conceivably, undercount the full cost.

The final verdict? "Barely true."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Barely true. That's awesome. So it is true . . . but only barely. That was a close one.

I wonder if the fact checker judged his wife only "barely pregnant" when she provided him with proof.

Next Thursday, September 2, we invite Ricochet members to join us in San Francisco for drinks and something decidedly different: live, face-to-face conversation! Among the contributors we’re expecting are Peter, Rob, James, Diane, George, and Claire.

We’ll start at 5:30 and end at about 7:00. No speeches, no rancorous exchanges about the Third Amendment, and no punching bags (right, Claire?). Just some drinks, maybe a bite or two to eat, and a chance to meet each other.

Ricochet members can find the location here, and we’ll keep a reminder (visible only to members) at the top of our home page until the event’s over. Going forward, we’d like to confine these messages to people in the relevant geography, but we don’t have this capability just yet.

We hope you can make it!

Maybe. Cristomania may be a ways off but listomania has long been upon us. And the Rolling Stone of the present era has never been afraid of stooping to click-baiting gimmicks to shore up whatever's left of its credibility as a, y'know, music magazine. But if it's cred you want, here's my list of Top 10 Beatles songs that didn't make the cut:

1. Cry Baby Cry

2. Hey Bulldog

3. Rain

4. I'm Only Sleeping

5. Lady Madonna

6. I Want You (She's So Heavy)

7. Revolution

8. And Your Bird Can Sing

9. Yes It Is

10. Sexy Sadie

I don't know and don't ask the religious views of most of my doctors. But I have always attempted to ascertain the world view of my OB/GYN. I've had friends whose doctors pressured them hard to abort their children who were not "perfect." One of my friends actually had to find a new practice mid-way through her pregnancy because of how awful her doctors were when they found out her son was likely to be born with Down Syndrome. It was horrible. My own doctor, who has seen me and my friends for over a decade, is a no-nonsense woman from Jamaica who will pray with you if you miscarry or are having other trouble. I have repeatedly trusted her with my life and deeply appreciate her.

But this study suggests that questioning my other doctors might be worthwhile, too:

Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who is terminally ill as doctors who are deeply religious – and doctors with strong religious convictions are less likely even to discuss such decisions with the patient, according to Professor Clive Seale, from the centre for health sciences at Barts and the London school of medicine and dentistry.

"If I were a patient facing end of life care, I would want to know what my doctor's views were on religious matters – whether they are non-religious or religious and whether the doctor felt that would influence them in the kinds of decisions they were looking at," said Seale.

One of my best friends went to high school debate camp and roomed with a girl who responded to my friend's statement that she was a libertarian by saying "Yeah, I'm a liberaltarian, too." The mistake was proof that she didn't know what a libertarian actually was. Many years later Brink Lindsey, a libertarian with seething animosity toward the cultural right, began something he called liberaltarianism. He wanted to form an alliance between progressives and libertarians. It never really got going and this week word got out that CATO, where he served as a VP, no longer had any use for him besides. Slate's Dave Weigel asked if it was "a purge." And if you consider the departure of two people a purge, it definitely was.

But Examiner columnist Tim Carney says that President Barack Obama is to blame for the purge:

Lindsey's project - building political alliances between libertarians and liberals - is (or was) a bold one, and not impossible in theory. Cato and the Left generally agree on constraining federal surveillance powers, reforming detention of terror suspects, and humanizing our criminal justice system. Gay marriage, abortion, and embryo research also provide common ground. Lindsey coined "liberal-tarian" in 2006, and many Beltway libertarians vocally supported Obama in 2008.

But then Obama's presidency happened. Obama immediately passed the largest spending bill in history, and then he fired an aide who was trying to close Guantanamo.

He nationalized General Motors and stuck his hands into Chrysler's bankruptcy while escalating the war in Afghanistan. Obama required every American to buy health insurance and increased government control over health care. He's increased federal control over finance, mortgages, tobacco and food while fighting to get his hands on political speech, energy, and manufacturing. Obama is the greatest enemy of economic liberty most Americans have ever seen.

The fact that the liberaltarians continued to defend (however lukewarmly) President Obama despite this made the entire movement seem like a joke. And Carney points out other problems, comparing this "purge" with David Frum's exit from AEI. Very interesting read.

In theory, the alliance with liberals was a great idea. In practice, it never came about. That probably says much more about progressives than it does about libertarians. But it is also true that when building a coalition, you don't neglect other key parts. And the liberaltarian cheerleading for Obama and derision of the tea parties, etc., probably turned off a lot of non-liberals off of libertarianism in the process.

It is considered lunacy to suggest that the United States military in Iraq, despite the well recorded blunders and lapses, along with the diplomatic shortcomings—and in comparison to past military campaigns—waged an especially effective campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, stayed on to foster consensual government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, and defeated al Qaeda and its epigones in Anbar province. But that is about what happened—as attested by the Obama administration's sudden adoption ("greatest achievement") of that Sen. Harry Reid's formely "lost" war.  

Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner posted this chart and the following data points:

• Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.
• Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.
• Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.
• Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.
• Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.
• The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).
• During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

By conservative standards Bush was profligate in spending and sponsoring new programs without sufficient funding; but compared to the alternative, that is, what we have seen from 2009-10, he was almost frugal. Such statistics on deficits, the war, and borrowing will in time tend to rehabilitate Bush's reputation, and remind us that the real problem are entitlements.

Note also that the return to the Clinton-era income tax schedules, this time will not result in balanced budgets, since there will be no comparable break on spending as once imposed by the Republican-led congress. So this time, we talk not of 40% on the top incomes leading to balanced budgets, but entertain thoughts of desperate additional taxes on inheritance, capital gains, new health care surcharges, lifting caps on income subject to social security payroll taxes, and a possible VAT--all at a time when states and municipalities are raising their own taxes. The level of the spending increases are simply staggering; on the rock-bottom interest rates on that soaring debt have for a brief moment given us a reprieve.

I try not to go out of my way to pick on the New York Times. I enjoy scanning it daily, I love the stable of reviewers (of cars and movies especially, if not always books), and I know and respect good, sharp people at that paper. But obviously none of them were on hand for this unintentionally absurdist story on the epic failure of Hugo Chavez to secure a good life for the people of Venezuela. In fact, he is doing his level best to ruin it. But the Times wants a mystery to ponder, not a judgment to pass, and so we get this:

A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer.

If only a greater proportion of rich people were murdered. This is all about the structural inequalities of class, right?

scholars here describe the climb in homicides in the past decade as unprecedented in Venezuelan history; the number of homicides last year was more than three times higher than when Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998.

Oh. You mean...Mr. Chavez might be a contributing cause of his country's problems? Yikes!

Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say.

Phew -- for a minute there, I was worried.

While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.

Police salaries remain low, sapping motivation. And in a country with the highest inflation rate in the hemisphere, more than 30 percent a year, some officers have turned to supplementing their incomes with crimes like kidnappings.

Such grim data points. What does it all mean? With the experts hamstrung, perhaps the eccentrics must be consulted:

But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.

Mr. Chavez's government itself? Meaning...Mr. Chavez himself? Inconceivable! Quick, intrepid reporter, dance away from this dreadfully final conclusion. Dance as you've never danced before!

But the government says it is trying to address the problem. It recently created a security force, the Bolivarian National Police, and a new Experimental Security University where police recruits get training from advisers from Cuba and Nicaragua, two allies that have historically maintained murder rates among Latin America’s lowest.

Ah. That's it. Feel your breathing return to normal. Wipe away that cold sweat. Mr. Chavez is making the best of a bad hand. A brand-new state-controlled police force is coming, trained by none less an expert than Castro. What a fresh, bold experiment in national security! I always knew Mr. Chavez was a pragmatist, deep down. A pragmatist with ideals:

The national police’s overriding priority, said Víctor Díaz, a senior official on the force and an administrator at the new university, is “unrestricted respect for human rights.”

New Jersey Governor Christie’s already solid reputation for good sense spoken plainly is strengthened even further in this video. Explaining and taking responsibility for a clerical error that cost his state millions in federal funds, the Governor also takes the Obama administration to task for its inane bureaucratic arrogance. Question: Wouldn’t New Jersey, or any other state, benefit more if their education dollars stayed at home first, rather than doing a few laps around the Beltway with only a portion of them making their way back home later?

As the November elections approach, magazines, newspapers and political websites are becoming filled with stories about how the GOP is moving too far right and risking its lead in the polls. There are also gleeful reports of a “Republican Civil War” and how the primary election victories of “radicals” over establishment types is a hopeful sign that voters discontent will harm both parties instead of only Democrats. It’s fun to watch a set of talking points drift into the media mainstream.

It’s desperation time on the Left. There will be a political bloodbath this fall as voters react to a government that's moving much to far to the left, and, yes, it does affect Republican candidates who are deemed to be too comfortable with that move. But trying to turn any of that into good news for Democrats is a gymnastic effort worthy of the finest Cirque du Soleil performer.

The frequency and shrillness of these stories will increase as Democrats march slowly to the electoral guillotine. It’s all they’ve got. I titled this post “Dems Whistling Past the Graveyard,” but that might be minimizing the situation. They’re belting out arias.

I still believe it exists, because I do remember I was there only a few days ago. Here's a piece I just wrote for Standpoint about why the world's perception of Turkey is often so distorted:

Turkey's Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials as the AKP, came to power in 2002. Journalists struggle to find the right catchphrase to describe the nature of this party, usually settling on something like "mildly Islamist" — to which the party's critics reply that this is like being mildly pregnant. The ensuing theological debate quickly crowds out what is perhaps the more important observation: whether this party is mildly Islamist or gravid with a mullahcracy, it is in its instincts, and in keeping with Turkish tradition, profoundly authoritarian. It is no different from other Turkish political parties this way. But the intersection of authoritarianism and Islamism, no matter the degree of the latter, is not giving rise to a sterling candidate for EU membership, whatever David Cameron might think. The fate of the Turkish media since the AKP came to power illustrates this point.

When Western journalists note in a casual aside that press freedom has experienced certain setbacks under the AKP, they are failing to do justice to the severity of this calamity and its ramifications for Turkey and the region. The calamity is exacerbated by the tendency of the foreign media to repeat, without scrutiny, the very idiocies peddled in the Turkish press, where the range of opinion on offer has become severely limited. The result is the growth of a grossly distorted and dangerous consensus about Turkey, here and abroad — to wit, that Turkey under the AKP has become more democratic and politically healthier, even if it is a bit up the duff with Islamism.

From the great Walter Olson's Overlawyered site, comes news that a Las Vegas man is suing a local attorney for $38 quadrillion dollars -- a sum that apparently exceeds all the money in the world. Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but trial lawyers routinely make outrageous demands in the hope that they can manipulate a jury to agree with them.

I'm all for tort reform, but I think we need something more radical: let's abolish the civil jury. We'll keep the jury for criminal cases (and possibly for defamation cases which depend on community standards), but for all other cases we'll stick with judges. This is the system that virtually every other English speaking country has adopted, without noticeable injustice and without lawyers being tempted to sue for McDonald's coffee burns. I know, we'll need a constitutional amendment, which makes it difficult, but it's still the right thing to do.

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I've never had quite so emotional a homecoming before. Maybe it's the jet-lag, which has been unusually severe this time--I've been overtired and wired at the same time, like a little kid up way past her bedtime on her birthday. Or maybe it's just that the past year in Istanbul has been so bizarre, with the whole Mavi Marmara business and the sense I've had that Turkey has entered some lunatic Weimar Republic twilight zone. But whatever the reason, I've been walking around feeling a sense of flooding relief to be back in America, and this passionate, almost sensual love for my country--as I wrote to Ursula last night, I've been feeling that I want to talk to everyone, ask everyone I meet what they think about everything I've been reading about on the Internet about America--the bellboy at the hotel, the taxi driver, the guy at Starbucks. And in fact I have been, which resulted in the surprising discovery that the bellboy here at the hotel seems to have connections to the Turkish intelligence service, but that's another story.

I'm flooded with giddy delight every time someone does something normal, like speak to me in English, or make a joke I understand, or express a political opinion with which I agree, or even one with which I disagree but that doesn't involve a massive conspiracy of Freemasons, Jews and the Soros Foundation. (We'll leave my suspicions about my publisher out of this.)

I had a great lunch at City Journal yesterday. I finally met the best editors in the world, Brian Anderson and Ben Plotinsky. I also met Nicole Gelinas. I was surprised, because her work is so authoritative that I reckoned she was, I don't know, about twice my age, severe, forbidding, and wielding a cane for the thumping of miscreants. She's actually a petite, gentle, and very approachable young woman--although just as authoritative and impressive about economics in person as she is in print.

The thing that struck me at that lunch is that just as it's obvious to me that no one in the United States is truly grasping the details and nuances of what's going on in Turkey, I've been failing just as much to grasp the details and nuances of what's been going on here--especially at the level of state politics, about which I now know very little. I'm also now missing, as I feared, a lot of pop culture references. I need to spend a few days here getting reacquainted with YouTube.

Anyway, thank you for the great lunch, City Journal. Even the sandwiches were terrific--when I saw them, I was suspicious; they looked like something the Obama Administration might favor, what with labels boasting of roast pepper aioli and grilled Tuscan goat cheese (what happened to pastrami on rye, I thought?) but these were, I had to admit, delicious--I don't usually sneak back after a meeting to eat all the leftovers, but I couldn't just let them go to waste.

Jonathan Gilbert was literally a great sport, whisking me off to Muay Thai class afterwards, at which I nearly perished of jet lag. I still had a good time. That said, I don't know why the instructor kept telling Jonathan that he should just "relax and have fun." As I hissed to him throughout, that was socialist nonsense: His honor, Ricochet's honor, and the honor of Margaret Thatcher herself were on the line, and if he quit, I would post it on Ricochet.

I can report with pride that he did not quit. He is, as Margaret Thatcher would say, one of us.

Okay: You can catch me today at:

10:30 AM Eastern Martha Zoller Show

1:35 PM – 1:53 PM Eastern Fred Thompson Show

2:00 PM Eastern Dennis Prager Show

And then I'm back to Washington for Grandma's 100th birthday.

That's the case being made in the LA Times by the directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It's not an implausible take. Yet I can't help but think that haggling over how much money legalized pot will net the State of California is a horrible way to make this decision. Even at the national level, the problem with the drug war isn't that it costs a lot. It's that it's a failure.

It's an unenviable situation, and the cognitive dissonance is on full display at Politico:

Indiana Rep. Joe Donnelly, a second-term congressman from South Bend, is airing a new TV ad in his South Bend-area district pointing out that he voted against “Nancy Pelosi’s energy tax on Hoosier families.”

“The Donnelly ad is who he is,” said Parker. “He’s independent.”

It’s a spot that is strikingly similar to one Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire is running, which features supporters praising the second-term Democrat for “stand[ing] up” to Obama and Pelosi.

[...] “Hopefully, we can rally the base and turn people out,” said Jamie Franks, chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party, who predicted his party will retain control of the House.

How to turn out the base by running like the wind from the President and the Speaker? Easy:

“We want to elevate John Boehner,” said a senior Democratic aide involved in party strategy. “We want him and his ideas to be in the forefront.”

Maybe easy's the wrong word for it.

This is a video my friend Ned Rice wrote and produced for the Heritage Foundation's Heritage for America initiative. It's hilarious. And I hope prescient.

As Ed Morrissey put it over at Hot Air:

After the midterms, that last line may become the new catchphrase on Capitol Hill: “Who’s the new guy?”

One last thought: it's cheering, really, to see some of the -- ahem -- older think tanks on our side start to get creative about framing the issues, inspiring voters, and connecting to real people. White papers and conferences have their places, of course. But the fact that the folks at Heritage partnered up with Ned is a sign that our side is starting to get it.

At The Corner, Daniel Foster passes along the kind news that makes you go hmmmm: "a 'source within the Murkowski campaign” is telling [the] Daily Beast" that

they know of one possible legal option to pursue a third-party run. If Murkowski is not victorious when the absentee ballots are counted and decides to wage an Independent party bid, they might consider using this option, which the source wouldn’t describe, but did confirm they were seriously looking at.

“We are going to take a look at them and see whether the option is there or not, but it’s a decision she (Murkowski) has to make,” the Murkowski camp source said. “There is an option I know of.”

Of "the obvious options," Foster writes, neither "looks good: Murkowski could either run a write-in campaign, which despite her general popularity in Alaska would be an uphill battle, or she could run on the Alaska Independence Party ballot. It has been done before, but the problem with the AIP is in the name: it’s a secessionist party."

Whereas secession is a political theoretical issue that won't stay dead, 'independent' general election campaigns by Republicans primaried out by their own party's preferred candidates seem to betoken a zombified longing for higher office. It's way too early to pronounce Cristomania the Year's Big Trend, and oh how I hope I never have to do so. But it would be remarkable indeed if the marginalized group in the GOP itching for third-party independence turned out this year to be the establishmentarians.

The temptation of the would-be Crists of the world is to style themselves as the Sane Adults soldiering on in the face of an upsurge of unprofessional kookiness on the right. That's a big mistake. Not only does it distort the truth about the candidates who defeated them -- it looks mighty transparent at a moment when the careerism of the so-called 'political class' rankles, for good reason, many a sane and adult voter right, left, and center.

On one of my favorite blogs, Krugman in Wonderland, economist William Anderson regularly explains the pathology of the NYTimes' flagship economics columnist.

Here he is, in an open letter to Paul Krugman, taking apart one of his recent columns, arguing for the repeal of the Bush Tax Cuts:

In your column today on extending the lower tax rates that now exist on the highest levels of income, you justify your point on two levels:

1. The government needs more revenue and the state needs to take as much property as possible from private owners;
2. Wealthy people are unlikely to spend every penny of their income immediately, so it is important for the Political Classes to get their hands on those funds, as governments will spend freely in the short run.

Thus, from what I can tell, you believe that it is the Very Duty of Everyone to spend everything quickly, and since you are advocating such beliefs publicly, I would like to challenge you to practice what you preach. Here are some suggestions...

He goes on to recommend that Krugman impose his own tax rates on himself; spend 100% of his current income; dump his investments; and refuse to buy commodities. He winds up this way:

I realize that you might be objecting by now. After all, why should you be the fall guy? However, as I read your words, you are claiming that there not only is an economic problem with paying less taxes, saving money, and abstaining from some personal spending in order to save for the future, but also a moral problem, then I would hate for you to be forced to act both unprofessionally AND engage in immoral behavior.

Holding the left accountable for its nutty philosophies? Nicely done.

In college, one of the best courses I ever took was “Public Economics.” We studied distortions in the market caused by boneheaded political schemes, determined whether it was more advantageous to get married on December 31 or January 1 (it can make a big difference in your taxes!), and memorized sections of the tax code. At the end of every lecture, the professor flashed a PowerPoint slide with the phrase “Incentives Matter.” If we remembered nothing else from the class, the professor insisted that we never forget that incentives really do affect behavior. If you want more of something than exists at market equilibrium, incentivize or subsidize it. If you want less of something, tax it.

What if you want fewer people?

One solution – China’s solution – is to impose a steep sin tax on the production of people. Since 1979, the Chinese government has enforced a policy

requiring couples from China's ethnic Han majority to have only one child (the law has largely exempted ethnic minorities).

Depending on where they live, couples can be fined thousands of dollars for having a supernumerary child without a permit, and reports of forced abortions or sterilization are common….Those who volunteer to have only one child are awarded a "Certificate of Honor for Single-Child Parents."

On the other hand, as India is discovering, fines and forced abortions might not be the only way to slow fertility rates. The New York Times reports on India’s ingenious experiment:

The program…in Satara is a pilot program — one of several initiatives across the country…trying to slow down population growth by challenging deeply ingrained rural customs…In Satara, local health officials have led campaigns to curb teenage weddings, as well as promoting the “honeymoon package” of cash bonuses and encouraging the use of contraceptives so that couples wait to start a family.
[T]he district government…pay [s] 5,000 rupees, or about $106, if the couple wait[s] to have children.

But what if you want more people?

Much of the Western world must contend with the threat of extinction. Russia, for example, with its anemic fertility rate of 1.41 children per mother offers cash prizes amounting to 250,000 rubles (about $9,200) to women who give birth to a second child. Is $9,200 enough of an incentive to increase Russia’s fertility rate? Yes, but only marginally. In the four years since the cash for babies policy was implemented, Russia’s fertility rate has risen from 1.28 to 1.41 children per mother.

A more creative solution for all parties involved? India could use its cash-for-waiting budget to subsidize a Russian advertising campaign that entices young Indian families to move to Russia with promises of land grants (Russia’s got plenty of land east of the Ural Mountains). As deal sweeteners, the Russian government could take its cash-for-babies budget to buy each transplanted Indian family a yurt, a cow, and a set of parkas. The result? India decreases its population; Russia increases its. Win-win! Incentives matter!

Attention Ricochet Podcast fans: This week, we're going to try something a little different. Peter and Rob will be opening the floor to questions, suggested topics, and comments. Ask them here in comments or tweet them to us at @Ricochet. We'll be recording tomorrow morning from 8AM to approximately 9AM Pacific and we'll be checking this post and our Twitter stream continuously during that time. And yes, at some point in the near future, we will occasionally live-stream the podcast and be able to take questions in real time. But not tomorrow. Baby steps, people.

Edit: We weren't going to have a guest this week, but we're happy to announce a late-breaking booking: author and columnist Shelby Steele. Submit your questions for him below.

While playing my new favorite lost Cheap Trick classic on YouTube, I was confronted with this sidebar ad:

Bush? Where's Bush? Better yet, where's Jerry Brown?

The Bush Administration wisely stayed away from UN-sponsored "human rights" events, which invariably end up featuring a bunch of dictators lambasting the US, the UK, and Israel for alleged failures. But this administration can't get enough of this stuff. The State Department has just submitted a self-assessment of America's human rights record to the UN Human Rights Council, for scrutiny by such paragons of human rights as Cuba, Angola, Gabon and Bahrain. The report finds, predictably, that the US has plenty of shortcomings like high minority unemployment (which under international law is a "human rights issue).

Okay, but can the Apologizer-in-Chief actually say something nice about the US human rights record? You bet! Here are some examples of the progress cited by the State Department:

• We now have an African-American President
• That President is "committed" to repealing Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell
• That President has enacted health care reform.

As Michael Cannon at Cato notes, for the Obama administration “legislation that threatens U.S. residents with prison if they fail to purchase health insurance" is somehow evidence of progress on human rights.

I'm for Mitch Daniels for President. I may have mentioned that once or twice around here.

Slight snag: he isn't running. Yet, anyway. But he isn't ruling it out. From the Lousiville Courier-Journal:

In an interview with The Courier-Journal Editorial Board on Wednesday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he is not taking any steps to run for president and is not particularly interested in holding the office.

“This is nothing I have started, encouraged,” said Daniels, a Republican in his second term. “People have asked, ‘Please don’t absolutely close your mind’ and I have said I’ll think about it.”

There has been increased speculation nationally and within the GOP that Daniels might seek the nomination for president in 2012. But Daniels pointed out that he’s not raising money for a campaign and is not campaigning in Iowa or other early primary states. He said that shows he’s not actively seeking the office.

“It’s nothing I’m going to do anything about,” Daniels said. “If it’s still an interesting subject in a few months, ask me then.”

And then there's this tantalizing tidbit:

Daniels said that he remains worried “about the condition and direction of the country and I’m a lot more worried even than I was a year and a half ago.”

He said Republicans need to offer voters a clear alternative and a positive agenda in this fall’s campaigns and the 2012 race.

I'd rather not wait a "few months." I'd rather stand outside his bedroom window, like Lloyd Dobler in Cameron Crowe's great movie, Say Anything, and play something inspiring on the boom box until he agrees to run. Which song should I blast?

Okay, I need a Ricochet reality test here. We thriller writers do spin scenarios from time to time and I look at Obama now and feel we're living through an old Fletcher Knebel novel. I see a narcissist whose delusions have been confirmed all his life by a left wing environment in which he operated without effect and therefore without consequences. It would be as if, instead of writing, I described my novels to my wife while she told me I was greater than Dickens. (But enough about my sex life.) Now, he's suddenly tossed into the real world at the very top... and it turns out all his brilliant ideas don't actually work. In fact, the USSR proved socialism was misguided; Europe's vaunted soft socialism was underwritten by American capitalism; and, oh yeah, 9/11 put paid to multi-culturalism. The whole agenda is schoolhouse rot! Obama looks to me as if he's reacted by going into some sort of dissociative daze, utterly divorced from reality. Am I making this up? Tell me I'm making this up. Hey, Fletcher Knebel's dead: I could put the plot to good use.

Read Jason Kuznicki's withering attack on Cash for Clunkers. If destroying cars really generated wealth, he writes,

the appropriate course would be to generalize, and to destroy all goods in exchange for government scrip. Then we could play Monopoly, I guess, for what all good the money would do. But we’d have to scrape a board in the dirt to do it.

That’s because money isn’t wealth. Money is at best a measure of wealth, which actually consists of goods. Money retains its value as long as there are goods to be traded for it. When the goods disappear, the economy grows poorer, regardless of how the money is shuffled around.

And the payback isn’t long in coming — today’s used car prices are soaring owing to reduced supply. (This link gives even more dramatic numbers, but I’m less sure of them. h/t Radley Balko.)

See how that works? You can’t get something for nothing. Cash for Clunkers turns out to have been a highly inefficient wealth-transfer program, that is, one that destroyed a bunch of wealth along the way. It gave wealth to those already relatively wealthy people who did the government’s bidding (that is, those who could afford to part with a used car and buy a new one). And now it’s taking wealth from those relatively poor people who need a used car today — in the form of higher prices.

Along the way, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of cars — that’s the real wealth these poor people don’t have access to anymore, because the scrapped cars aren’t a part of the economy.

Jonah has more:

That Washington is shocked by the news that Americans like getting free money shows how thick the Beltway bubble really is.

Like the drunk who only looks for his car keys where the light is good, Washington can only see the economic activity it has created, not the activity it has destroyed.

One of Ronald Reagan’s great legacies is that states count.  We’ve had some devolution of power from the Federal Government back to the states.  So it matters who the governor of each state is.  Firstly, it matters who the governor is because states are most often responsible for generating new and appropriate public policy.  Look at California – if that state’s policies were different, it would be in much better shape.  

Secondly, and very importantly, the governors who are elected this year will preside over redistricting.  Having the census this year means that we must reapportion and redistrict both the U.S. House and both houses of the state legislature over the next two years.  Thirty-nine governors have a role in reapportionment.  Suppose Republicans gain 45 seats in the House this year, which would give us a five-seat majority, and then we get gerrymandered out of 30 seats in redistricting.   Governors can veto the redistricting plan – that matters.  

It also matters who the governor of a state is during a presidential election.  If you have an attractive, aggressive, hard working Republican governor in a state, it’s worth a couple of points in the presidential election of 2012.  

Finally, very rarely do you get a new Republican senator elected in the place of a Democrat, if the same day you lose the governor’s race in that state.  That’s hardly ever happened in the past 17 years.  Twenty-seven states this year have both a governor’s race and a senate race.  

This November, thirty-seven gubernatorial elections will take place across the country.  It is of paramount importance that we elect the right candidates for these offices.

Home sales are down. Way down. Maybe that's because the sentimental attachment to the idea of the home as an investment -- and as a good investment -- is fading away. From the NYTimes:

“There is no iron law that real estate must appreciate,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for the real estate site Zillow. “All those theories advanced during the boom about why housing is special — that more people are choosing to spend more on housing, that more people are moving to the coasts, that we were running out of usable land — didn’t hold up.”

Instead, Mr. Humphries and other economists say, housing values will only keep up with inflation. A home will return the money an owner puts in each month, but will not multiply the investment.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimates that it will take 20 years to recoup the $6 trillion of housing wealth that has been lost since 2005. After adjusting for inflation, values will never catch up.

Stung by a collapsing market, a lot of potential home buyers are waiting for prices to bottom out. But in the meantime, rental vacancies are way up (thanks to the income-property speculation boom of the past decade) which means rents are low. From Business Insider:

With nationwide vacancy rates now well over 10%, it is extremely difficult for a landlord to even consider raising rents. Since roughly 25% of all home sales are currently going to investors paying cash, large numbers of homes will continue to be thrown onto the rental market.
The one major market where there is apparently a shortage of nice 3-4 bedroom rental homes is Phoenix according to the Cromford Report. If this claim is accurate, it is due to thousands of former homeowners who have lost their house to either foreclosure or a short sale and are looking for an attractive home to rent. The supply is down because, as I have reported in a previous article, banks are withholding most repossessed homes from the market.
...the attractiveness of renting will be a serious impediment to the return of potential buyers to the housing market.

I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. Why is home ownership seen as such a universal good? Why not become a nation of renters?

At The Weekly Standard, John McCormack breaks down last night's primary elections.

On McCain/Hayworth: "The death of Hayworth's campaign may have actually occurred on June 21, when an infomercial of Hayworth hawking free government money surfaced."

On Miller/Murkowski: "Miller leads Murkowski 51.1 percent to 48.9 percent--or 45,909 to 43,949 votes. But the election isn't over quite yet. The Hotline's Reid Wilson writes that there are 8,000 absentee ballots to be counted beginning next Tuesday. But, assuming Miller maintins his 1,960 vote lead as the final two percent of precincts are counted, Murkowski would need 5,000 of the 8,000 absentee votes break in her favor to overtake Miller."

Plus there's Florida, where Marco Rubio has delivered his victory speech. (Not the last, one may hope.)

Finally, McCormack also has a helpful primer on Joe Miller, Alaska's Palin-boosted dark horse (papa grizzly?).