-- Remember how awful we were told "outsourcing" is -- the sending of jobs abroad? Well, sending federal money abroad apparently is not so bad. Nearly half the $2.4 billion in federal money awarded August 5 to stimulate the U.S. economy and promote the production of hybrid and electric cars went to six companies with strong ties to -- let's see -- China, Russia, South Korea and France.
-- Last spring, Social Security's trustees issued their annual report saying the system's outflow to recipients would begin exceeding inflow in 2016. The latest estimate -- from the Congressional Budget Office? Deficit payouts will put Social Security in the red beginning in the 2010 fiscal year just begun. This year. Maybe D.C.'s bevy of beautiful Democrats should set to cleaning Social Security's Augean Stable before messing with the nation's health care.
-- Global warming? Energy Secretary Steven Chu believes. Recently he scolded the public as though it were an insolent adolescent -- for failing to embrace the urgency of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. "The American public," he said, "just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is." Right. And it doesn't matter if those lima beans taste like cardboard. Eat them.
-- Senate Democrats have a filibuster-proof 60 votes for ObamaCare -- now that the Massachusetts legislature, in a nod to the late great Teddy Kennedy, has changed state law so the governor could name a dutiful Democrat to Kennedy's seat. But now West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd is ailing to the point he may not be able to vote, so the Dems are waltzing with Maine's ever-reliable liberal Republican Olympia Snowe. If she votes aye on ObamaCare, not only will the Democrats get their bill. They also will add (and you can put money on it) their coveted word, bipartisan.
-- Virginia has an off-year gubernatorial race that will be decided next month. The Democrats have tried to make a big deal of several regrettable things contained in a thesis written many years ago by the Republican nominee. The nominee released the thesis, and there was a12-minute hoo-ha. How interesting that many of the same Democrats who last year adamantly opposed release of collegiate ramblings from the collected works of Barack Obama -- deeming them insignificant -- term them crucial in Virginia's gubernatorial race now.
-- What's this -- Starbucks getting into instant coffee with its new product, Via? That's almost like, well, you know -- a rallying cry for coffee snobs everywhere to man the barricades.