Sheez! Lou seems to be quite the subject of lengthy magazine profiles these days. The latest comes from American.com, an article written by Luke Mullins. We were tipped off to it by MediaBistro-NY, with a title that grabbed our attention: “Lou Dobbs Once Tossed a Live Chicken Off a Balcony During a Movie.” If that’s not a grabber, we don’t know what is. Maybe we need to make our headlines a little punchier.

In any event, it’s similar to the last piece we linked to in that it’s a fairly exhaustive review of Lou’s upbringing and his life at CNN, the latter which has not always been met with zeal by his co-workers. Says Mullins, “CNN employees say that Dobbs has become increasingly controversial inside the network. His power is resented, and his extreme positions are mocked. His face on network monitors inevitably provokes jokes and eye-rolling from CNN staffers. ‘We all start banging our heads against the wall,’ one of them says.”

All we can say to these beleaguered CNN staffers is, “We understand.”

We understand.

Much news coverage of tomorrow’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA, in which environmentalist groups and a dozen states argue that the Executive Branch of the Federal Government has the authority to and therefore must regulate automobile emissions of carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

The NAM has joined several business groups in The CO₂ Litigation Group to file an amicus brief against the enviro-appeal. Background, our October new release and a link to the full amicus can be found at our Beagle law-research site here.

To its credit, the Reuters story linked above notes an often-overlooked point, that the opponents (joining the EPA) also include states: Michigan, Texas, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, South Dakota, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio.

Tom Bray, the Detroit News columnist, has written an excellent column available here, arguing that the suit demanding EPA regulation of carbon dioxide:

If regulators can act on the basis of scientifically speculative threats, based on computer models that are deeply hostage to the assumptions of the modelers, what can’t government do? Global warming is thus the mother of all environmental scares, justifying political intervention in the economy on a scale only a diehard Marxist would have dreamed of.

As Bray notes, cars are not the only — or even the major — producer of carbon dioxide in the modern, industrialized society. And we note: Living things exhale the gas!

A Supreme Court ruling on behalf of the litigating states — in thrall to the perfecting powers of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government — could mean regulation without end, accruing ever and ever in search of unattainable and unmeasurable goals.

What a warming thought.

UPDATE: Marketplace, public radio’s anti-business business show, in tonight’s broadcast made exactly the invidious omission mentioned above, the one about state participation in the appeal against the EPA: “Environmental groups are allied with the states.” Yeah. From the Marketplace Sustainability Desk. Everything sustained except accuracy.

Yes, yes: “Network Neutrality Imposed: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”

That classic satirical headline aside, Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens still offers an interesting take on network neutrality in the San Jose Mercury News.

Although the negative effects of network neutrality could touch everybody, Wilkes contends that the new regulations would limit opportunities for minority consumers in particular. Bottom line:

Experts predict that Internet data traffic will increase 500-fold by 2020 as demand increases for multimedia applications. Bernstein Research and other investment advisers estimate that deploying ultra-high-speed networks capable of handling this traffic will require an investment of up to $400 billion. But investors won’t invest, innovators won’t partner and new services won’t emerge, if the government mandates that incumbent Internet bigwigs be guaranteed the same business arrangements, at no cost to them, regardless of the inherent value of the service they seek to bring to the market.

The debate has been quiet lately. It’s good to see Wilkes and LULAC engage the issue.

Here’s a depressing story. New York lost 26% of its manufacturing jobs in the last five years. But wait — look at our Competitiveness Redbook, which ranks states according to 42 separate indicia and you’ll see that New York ranks second — behind only Hawaii — in the “Cost of Doing Business” index. That’s not good.

Last year, we asked one of our small and medium manufacturers based in the Empire State how his business was doing. He said, “It’s like that Frank Sinatra song.” We looked at him quizzically.

“You know the one,” he said, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” We had a good chuckle, but his point was well taken. The burdens on business in New York are right up there, even ahead of fourth-place California.

This, of course, is a microcosm for the world at large. We need to create a climate where manufacturing can thrive. We don’t do that by having a near 32% cost disadvantage vs. our competitors in such areas as legal costs, tax and regulatory burdens and energy costs. Within the US, manufacturers will locate where the tax and legal climates are the best. That plays out globally as well. Importantly, wages are less of an issue. It’s everything else that kills jobs. (Lou, are you listening?)

New York also ranks dead last in net state migration — 50th to California’s 49th, meaning people are leaving along with the jobs. New York ranks second (to California’s #1) in business taxes, and second (to Connecticut) in state and local tax burden.

All of this adds up to a state’s — or a Nation’s — competitiveness. New York is quite literally paying the price for creating a climate that just isn’t conducive to business. And according to these statistics, over 190,000 New Yorkers paid with their jobs.

Prior entries have been all about visits to the various islands in the Antarctic circle but today was different. Today was the day we would actually set foot on Antarctica for the first time. Its a balmy -1 degrees Celsius outside right now (about 30 Fahrenheit). Our first trip out this morning began at 9 a.m. with a visit to Brown Bluff. Upon landing, the first thing I did was get a picture taken of myself holding up seven fingers, one for each of the continents that I have visited. Our visit to Brown Bluff was another good opportunity to see some Adelie penguins in action and towards the end of the excursion we spotted a leopard seal.

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Here’s a lengthy piece from the New Yorker by Ken Auletta on our favorite non-journalist, Lou Dobbs entitled, “Mad As Hell – Lou Dobbs’s populist crusade.” He used the Tom Friedman bit (didn’t credit the blog, maybe he was at Yale for the lecture), and quotes Wall Street Journal deputy editor Daniel Henninger as saying of Lou’s career conversion, “Old admirers are aghast. It’s as if whatever made Linda Blair’s head spin around in ‘The Exorcist’ had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him with the brain of Dennis Kucinich.”

In any event, an interesting read, with some background on Lou and some thoughts on CNN’s turn away from news toward entertainment.

Thanks to Drudge for this item. He collected on his site a few articles, here, here and here, where folks predicted a worse-than-average hurricane season. This all ties into the global warming hysteria, remember.

But unfortunately for Al Gore and his amen chorus, it just didn’t materialize. What happened in fact was a much milder hurricane season than last year, thereby putting a crimp in the theory. Had it gone the other way, you can bet it would be front-page news. Hysteria sells, after all.

Don’t you just hate it when the facts don’t jibe with a really good scare? It ought to make us a little more skeptical of every scare we hear and read about these days.

If WaPo mentions are any indication of an issue’s vibrancy, then it would appear that Social Security is creeping back on the Nation’s agenda.

There was an article on the front page of the Business section by Lori Montgomery last week entitled, “Social Security Up For Discussion,” citing Treasury Secretary Paulson’s remarks to that effect. Today’s WaPo has a lead editorial, “Up From the Depths,” noting that yes, indeed, Social Security reform may indeed be back on the agenda. Accompanying the WaPo editorial is an op-ed by Sebastian Mallaby on the topic (he may have written the editorial, too, not sure), posing a middle way on personal accounts.

We don’t necessarily agree with all elements of all three pieces, but we think it’s an encouraging sign that one of the most nettlesome issues we face may be finding its way back on the agenda. As today’s editorial rightly points out, “A worker who is 30 can’t entrust her retirement to a program that will run short of money as she turns 70.” Decisions that will impact the long-term solvency of this key program must be made now.

Oh, and don’t forget to ask your Senators and Representative to sign the pledge.

UPDATE (By Carter Wood): The political buzz builds in D.C. newspapers. Today …at least. The Examiner carried an op-ed by Cato’s Michael Tanner arguing that reform is inherent in private accounts.

You know how when you take a vacation, it usually takes a few days before you really feel like you are on vacation? Then, something happens where you finally fall into vacation mode? Well, today that was that day, for several reasons.

Currently, I’m sitting in the back of the boat’s on-board movie theater watching — what else? — but March of the Penguins awaiting arrival at Brown Bluff, which will be our first official landing on the continent of Antarctica (up until this point it’s been the nearby islands).

Today’s adventures actually began very early when I suddenly woke up thinking I had missed breakfast only to look outside my window and see huge icebergs float by underneath what appeared to be an early sunset sky. It was actually 2:30 in the morning. At this time of year in Antarctica, there is no permanent nightfall, just a dim, yet colorful sunset. Now that I was awake, I quickly recalled the crew’s suggestion that if we were up at that time during the voyage to Paulet Island to head up to the observation deck and watch some amazing iceberg formations float past. To the average person, icebergs might be boring, but when you see one up close, and realize that any ONE of them could have sunk the Titanic, you quickly develop a sense of amazement.

Shortly after 9 AM, we boarded our zodiac boats and headed for Paulet Island to view our first penguin rookery. We didn’t have to see them to know they were there: we smelt them from afar. To ensure ensue that all passengers are accounted for, the exit door towards the zodiac boas have a wooden peg with a tag number corresponding to each guest. My cabin room number is 223, and I happen to be tag # 51. The tags serve a useful purpose to keep safe
track of the passengers should they want to leave the boat for any extended period of time.

They also serve as your online “bank account.” To buy drinks, souvenirs or anything else, simply provide the crew member with your tag number and settle your account upon conclusion of the trip.

Back on Paulet Island, our scientific guide estimated that there were 100,000 Adelie penguins present.

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We ran into one of our two loyal blog readers over the Thanksgiving holiday who told us about this story which we had missed. It shows that forest fires will have a cooling, not a warming, effect.

Yup, that’s right — a team of scientists has concluded that while the carbon released by burning high-latitude forests of North America, Europe and Russia will no doubt have a warming effect, it will be less than an unexpected cooling effect. The cooling comes from millions of new deciduous trees reflecting the sun’s light away from Earth with their light green leaves in the summer. In the winter, these trees lose their leaves, and white snow on the ground will reflect even more light.

Says one of the study’s authors, “The reflectivity effect in the long run is larger than the carbon effect.”

Just another speed bump along the route to declare the global warming debate over.