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Reason Hit & Run:

Inspectors working for the Stoke City Council in England have warned residents to remove welcome mats and potted plants from their porches. Officials say people could trip over the items.

The White House has released an advanced copy. They would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had a) released the advanced text earlier and b) not issued "study guides" to accompany it. The study guides were what redlined the concern over the possible politicization of the speech for purposed of proselytizing the kiddies.

Of course, we don't know what the speech looked like before the right side of the country hit the panic button.

But one takeaway Obama should take away from this, but probably won't, is that a very, very large segment of the American public does not trust him.

Trust is not given. It's earned. For those "leave me alone" type people like me, he has done nothing to earn my trust, and he's done a lot to make me mistrust him mightily.

For the sake of this country, I hope he figures things out soon. But I am not hopeful.

Released text of the speech after the "read more."

That's Mechelle Voepel, and Kay Yow.

Go. Read.

Barack Obama and the Democrat leadership seem hell-bent on reinforcing and extending the very government policies that made the Great Depression worse, prolonging it by seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

An increasing number of economists are warning of going down the old, tired, destructive, dangerous statist road that has lead us to this crisis in the first place. The latest are Charles K. Rowley and Nathanael Smith, who have published a a monograph titled Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government.

The monograph has been endorsed by Nobel Economics Prize winner James Buchanan, who is quoted in the UK's Telegraph newspaper:

"We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work."

How's that stimulus working out for you?

Mark Steyn:

Speaking of The New York Times, Jonah, in my weekend column I noted my rare appearance in its august pages (well, okay, September pages):

Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.

Tim Blair, the great Australian wag, has a round-up of those hardworking types at other publications whose concept of journalism begins and ends with seeing what's in The New York Times and passing it on. Tim missed a few, like The Sacramento Bee:

On Wednesday, Canadian-born writer Mark Steyn said on Rush Limbaugh's nationally broadcast radio show that Obama's ambitions to create a "cult of personality" were similar to those of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il or former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

And The Las Vegas Sun:

The New York Times quoted Mark Steyn, filling in for conservative radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh, as saying Obama was trying to create a cult of personality like Saddam Hussein or North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

"Quoted", eh? Actually, if you read the Times piece - by two reporters, no less - the striking feature is that there's no direct quote, is there? Not to worry. It's even been picked up overseas. Lara Marlowe in Ireland's newspaper of record, The Irish Times:

First prize for lunacy goes to Canadian commentator Mark Steyn, who accuses Obama of trying to establish a “personality cult” like Saddam Hussein or North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

And first prize for laziness goes to Irish commentator Lara Marlowe. For the record, here's the only thing I actually said about Kim and Saddam on Wednesday's Rush show:

Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the kind of Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. We have never been at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

If you believe the New York Times or any of its sycophants throughout the world's media about anything politics-related, then my friend you've been drinking too much Victory Gin.

Big Brother is watching you.

Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises institute posts these select quotes from the 1949 book Power in the People by Brookings Institution scholar Felix Morley.

And all I can say is amen to all of this--I really should save them all and make them Thoughts for the Day for the next month or so.

Maybe I will. But if you have ADD or are really bored, here they are, all in one bunch. (After the "read more" but well worth your time.)

The origins of today's economic problems can largely be found in FDR's New Deal, and the political philosophies which drove those programs.

Well, actually, he wants to go after Glenn Beck, Beck's producer/wingman Stu Burguiere, and of course Roger Ailes.

And no, this time I don't care to link to Daily Kos.

But something comes to my mind about stones and people living in glass houses . . .

A broken clock is right twice a day, I suppose. I'm sure the actual proposal will do just the opposite, but this Reuters story reports that President Obama might just have stumbled into a good idea:

Obama, in his weekly radio and Internet address, said the government would enact rules making it easier for small businesses to let workers automatically enroll in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and 401(k) retirement plans.

Of course, if individual accounts and investment plans are a good idea for retirement, why aren't they good ideas for the foundation of the long-term funding of individuals people's health care?

The Heritage Foundation:

Government expenditures are not free. Economists know this and most others recognize it when they take the time to think about it. Unfortunately, it seems not everybody takes that time.

In a story fit for satire in The Onion, a renewable energy research group, bankrolled by a $1.1 billion subsidy from the Department of Energy, concludes that huge government subsidies for renewable energy don’t reduce employment after all. However, their reasoning works only so long as the subsidies don’t come out of anybody’s pocket—a practical and theoretical impossibility.

Two environmentalists at the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC (see ASE brag about the billion it gets from Uncle Sam, here ) on contract to the National Renewable Energy Labs authored a research paper that tries to undermine the widely circulated research from a Spanish think tank.

The Spanish research, directed by economist Gabriel Calzada, at King Juan Carlos University, analyzed the subsidized expenditure necessary to create the green jobs in Spain. It compared those funds to the private expenditure needed to support the average conventional job. Supported by other data as well, they conclude that each subsidized green job in Spain eliminated over two conventional jobs.

Emphasis mine. Hey, a two for one deal! Oh, wait, it's a one for two deal? Hmm. That's not quite gonna "save or create" a jillion jobs now, is it?

"Opportunity cost" is a really, really simple concept. It's what you can't buy when you spend money on something else. Spending wisely generally means minimizing the opportunity cost--meaning what you are spending money on is the "best and highest use" of the money you can find. Spending stupidly generally means that you are getting less for your money than the money would otherwise be worth.

Destroying two jobs to create one is a perfect example of spending money stupidly. We should not do this.

Unless your goal all along is to destroy Western industrial civilization. At some point, you have to wonder . . .