Revolutionary Nonsense is Dead.

Future updates on all subjects will occur at andrewjpatrick.com. If wish to know why, go here. Or just go to the new blog and check out that action.

It will remain here, and provide much ammunition for anyone who wishes to call me a scurrilous right-winging teabagging bitterclingeing RAAAAACIST.

But otherwise ...

Cain Bows Out

Most of the usual I'm-Proud-My-Campaign-Addressed-The-Issues, and he manages to 9-9-9 us a few more times, in case we had forgotten.

But he begins with a rather dull commonplace:

You’re not defeated as long as you never stop fighting.

Actually, you're defeated at the moment that your goal is no longer attainable at that particular point in time. You can keep fighting all you want, but it's not going to change anything. And that is why Hermann Cain is suspending his campaign now, rather than continuing to fight until the Republican Convention.

If the goal was to keep fighting, then yes, so long as you remain upright and defiant, you are not beaten. And sometimes, as at Valley Forge, such is the goal. But not in this case. In this case the goal -- a nomination for President -- was lost. Whatever happens afterwards, the reality of that defeat must be absorbed.

But whatever. It was fun having you in the mix, Hermann, and all carping aside, you did shift the campaign, by your bold talk of tax reform, and the hope you gave the party's base that we didn't have to bow to the Establishment Candidate this time around. I think when the history of this horse-race is written, you might just be remembered as the Guy who put the Knife in Romney.

Paul Krugman: The Media Keeps Not Doing The Left's Work For Them

Kruggie the Whale Issues Proggie Whine #46: That the Press Doesn't Scream Out "You Lie!" at Every Word a Republican Speaks, Including the "A's" and "The's"

All indications are, however, that Campaign 2012 will make Campaign 2000 look like a model of truthfulness. And all indications are that the press won’t know what to do — or, worse, that they will know what to do, which is act as stenographers and refuse to tell readers and listeners when candidates lie. Because to do otherwise when the parties aren’t equally at fault — and they won’t be — would be “biased”.

Goshers! It's almost as though Truth is more complicated than a single eschatologically-minded ideology can contain! Also, that Journalists are maleducated bobo twits who couldn't form a syllogism with two premises and a conclusion.

But you knew that. (h/t: Memeorandum)

Hermann Cain Might Could Endorse Gingrich

Stacy McCain hardest hit.

Protein Wisdom Celebrates Ten Years

And Why Not?

though it started as creatical.com, wore a pea-green backdrop, was comprised of “several” co-writers (all of them me, though I gave them loaded, tongue-in-cheek names like Dr. Ann D. Kaufmann; recall, at the time I had no readers and there was no such thing, as of yet, as a “blogosphere,” so the format for what a “respectable” political blog had to look like and operate as had not yet been set), and, believe it or not, got its first ever “Instalanche” not for some clever, pointed piece on the supposed racial overtones in the remake King Kong, say, but rather for a cartoon suggestive of breadstick masturbation.

He's still funnier than Ace. And I consider that praise.

Paul Krugman is Super-SMRT, And Other Observations: a Long-Promised Fisking

His Krugman-ness in the NYT:

Mark Thoma sends us to the new Journal of Economic Perspectives paper(pdf) on optimal taxes by Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez. It’s a tough read (I’m still working on it myself), but there’s one discussion that I think helps make a useful point about current political debate.

Useful to whom?

In the first part of the paper, D&S analyze the optimal tax rate on top earners. And they argue that this should be the rate that maximizes the revenue collected from these top earners — full stop. Why? Because if you’re trying to maximize any sort of aggregate welfare measure, it’s clear that a marginal dollar of income makes very little difference to the welfare of the wealthy, as compared with the difference it makes to the welfare of the poor and middle class. So to a first approximation policy should soak the rich for the maximum amount — not out of envy or a desire to punish, but simply to raise as much money as possible for other purposes.

I was going to say "optimal for whom?" but Paulie K. kindly spells it out: the "optimal tax rate" is the optimal tax rate for the government. It maximizes the revenue of the state, and it's ability to engage in "other purposes." That phrase, however, is not so clear: what are these "other purposes"? How well are they performed? How well is that performance even measured? If the people decide that the government no longer needs to perform them, can they get their money back?

We're Not Gonna Have Barney Frank to Kick Around Anymore...

...Unless of course, he gets prosecuted. As he needs to be.

Ladd Ehlinger reminds us of how awesome he is:

"We Will Control the Market"

And there you have it, really. (h/t Protein Wisdom)

For 100 years these hyper-instructed ne'er-do-wells have been telling that, given sufficient money and authority, they'll get everything under control. That the business cycle is theirs to command. That the incentives and motivations of millions of human hearts could be perfectly shaped by legislation. Despite watching their house of  jokers collapse around them, they believe it still.

Monty, at Ace:

The “market” is not a thing to be managed, or a process to be controlled. The market is just an aspect of the natural world, working on the creatures who move through it. Merkel’s comment reflects the combination of arrogance and ignorance that is at the root of so many of our economic problems.

Yes. And the only thing wrong with this statement is that every GOP candidate is not shouting it from the rooftops, all the time. Every quarter the GDP is "unexpectedly" less than envisioned, and yet the premise of progressive politics -- that a learned technocracy can manage the wealth of the land better than the people -- remains a truism in the minds of too many people. They will continue to believe it until the bottom drops out.

Whereupon, they will eulogize their fallacies as "noble".

Stop Newt Before He Gets THE CHILDREN

GET IN MAH BELLY!

When I was 15, I had a work-study job at my Catholic high school. Twice a week I cleaned up the art room. I didn't like it very much, but I did it.

Newt Gingrich basically suggested the same thing (h/t Protein Wisdom). Actually, he suggested something better, because the kid janitors would be paid in actual cash money. All I got for cleaning clay-wheels every week was a break on my tuition.

Naturally, proggies shriek in terrified indignation:

You are probably one of the most disgusting human beings I’ve never met!
I want my neighbors 9yr olds or 14 yr olds cleaning up behind my children while I focus my children onto focusing on their education and letting my children to be “KIDS”.
Everyone knows that you Repugnants wants to model our society after China and make everyone a slave to Corpratism. We get it!
I don’t mind working my fingers to the bone but………….CHILDREN…………Really???

We are constantly told that poor kids are forced into the drug trade or worse from lack of economic opportunity. I don't see how giving a kid a job that pays $8-16 an hour doesn't constitute an economic opportunity. Nowhere does Newt say that the child labor laws would be abolished; at best, they'd be amended. We're not talking about a 12-year-old working 40+ hours a week and missing out on school; we're talking about maybe 10 hours a week, before or after school and weekends.

Am I really to believe that a kid who grows up in a poor, dilapidated neighborhood, with one or more parents missing, getting no breakfast except what the school provides, marking time in a broken public school earning a diploma that won't be worth the paper it's printed on would be objectively HARMED by earning some money pushing a mop around?

Really?

The Greatest Trick the Socialists ever Pulled was Convincing the World They Didn't Exist...

And like that... they're gone.

The reductio ad Hitlerium is an irritating logical fallacy, which almost never serves to improve understanding or conversation. Calling the OWS crowd Nazis, or even fascists, is a stretch. That needs be said before anything else.

But pointing out what Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei means is a handy and fun way to irritate socialists, as Ladd Ehlinger has discovered. I've been round the block with lefties desperate to argue that nothing about the Nazi's was left at all (keep scrolling), so I sympathise.

It all comes to how the word "socialist" is defined. Typically, those on the Left prefer to define "socialist" as "one who favors ending private property." This allows anyone who hasn't gone that far left to escape the title of "leftist" altogether. By this and similar ellisions, the Left pretends to be the Center.

But I prefer to define "socialist" as "one who favors the use of direct political power to remake society according to principles of universal justice." I like it because it allows the myriad of squabbling social thinkers, from LeFebre to Lenin to Mussolini to Mao to be recognized according to their common traits. It puts all the tyrants who covered their tyranny in the cloak of True Justice in a single pot.

And it allows us to draw distinctions between them. We can see Progressives, Mensheviks, Trade-Unionists, Corporatists, Fascists, Nazis, and Communists as similar, but also note their wide and obvious differences. We can grant that your average "liberal" Democrat has no intention of carting anyone off in a boxcar, while continuing to point out that their calls for "unity" are code for "now stop arguing with us."

A few objections:

• But Nazis and Fascists (and no small number of Progressive Democrats) hated Communists. If Communists are Socialists; how can Nazis, etc. be Socialists?

Answer: Large political/philosophical movements engage in vicious infighting all the time. See also, Christianity in the 16-17th centuries. For that matter, the Communists hated and murdered other Socialists with great regularity. No history of the Russian Revolution is complete without tracing the roles played by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in the Bolshevik rise to power, and the cruelty with which the Bolsheviks repaid them.

• Isn't this just a cheap method of putting Progressive Democrats in the same boat as Fascists and Communists?

Answer: Not at all. In fact, it works within the way Progressives think of themselves: as sensible radicals who oppose totalitarianism. A Progressive who accepts my definition of "socialist" can still say "Sure, I want to see society change, and am prepared to use the law as a tool to bring that change about. But I'm not going to impose change at the point of a bayonet. I'm humane and have a conscience."

As evidence for my assertion, I invite anyone to read Section III of The Communist Manifesto, wherein Marx lists the varieties of socialism which fail to meet his standard of scientific materialism: Feudal Socialism, Petit-Bourgeois Socialism, German or "True" Socialism, Conservative Socialism, etc. If Marx could admit that numerous and mutually contradictory versions of socialism existed, why cannot we?

Gingrich: Comparisons and Myths.

I've always kind of liked Newt Gingrich for his brains and brashness. I've also often wondered about his judgement (having an affair while sticking it to Clinton over Lewinsky? Really?). Now that Hermann Cain has hit his first post-bounce drop, I'm prepared to lean toward him a little.

In the AmSpec, Jeffrey Lord compares Gingrich to Churchill. The parallels are interesting, but more interesting is this:

Not to be forgotten is what Fox News commentator Juan Williams, recently sitting next to Gingrich on the set of Special Report with Bret Baier, delicately referred to as the former Speaker's personal "baggage." By which Williams means the Speaker's three marriages, the extra-marital business and all the rest. The famous myth of the first Gingrich divorce is discussed here by Gingrich's daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman, who was present at the time. Surprise, surprise -- fact, says Ms. Cushman, is different than left-wing fiction. The first Mrs. Gingrich, a private person, is very much still alive, present and accounted for and not deceased as is the tale. The story runs roughly that the dastardly Newt took divorce papers to his dying wife's bedside when she had no idea a divorce was in the offing, shocking her as she lay dying. In fact Mrs. Gingrich, says her daughter, had herself requested the divorce long before Gingrich entered her hospital room. The story, says Cushman, is fiction from start to finish. Gingrich's political mistake was not understanding that such a personal moment would be distorted and used by liberal opponents. Out of such a moment perhaps comes the Newtonian understanding of the need for a political rapid response team whose sole purpose is to flag political untruths on the spot. Be that as it may, this tale shows the endurance of a political Bigfoot tale, the political equivalent of the fictional monster repeatedly spotted but mysteriously never actually captured because, of course, in fact it doesn't exist.

The art of political judgement differs not greatly from the art of the bloodhound. One must learn to tell false scents from true ones. If Gingrich isn't really as personally awful as legend has it, then maybe -- just maybe, he has mellowed, and like Churchill, knows what the hour demands.

Of course, not everyone is prepared to embrace this rise. Robert Stacy McCain seems more hostile to Gingrich than he was to Rick Perry, which is saying something. This I cannot understand. Preferring Hermann Cain to Newt can be defended on conservative personal and policy preferences. Preferring Mitt Romney to Newt smacks rather of taking one's ball and going home.

Bye-Bye, OWS

Marybeth Carragher, who lives in a building overlooking the park, said she and other residents were apprehensive about the city’s plan to let the protesters return, without their tents. “I think my neighbors and I are very thankful that the mayor acted,” she said, “but we remain completely outraged for having to endure this for nine weeks.”

My New Favorite Word for the Left...

Oikophobic. (This is why it pays to read Instapundit)

American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as--and may even believe themselves to be--superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as "un-American" for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.

Read the whole thing.

The Orwellian Inquisition Against Verbal Naughtiness

Katie Roiphe in the New York Times: (h/t Instapundit)

In our effort to create a wholly unhostile work environment, have we simply created an environment that is hostile in a different way? Is it preferable or more productive, is it fostering a more creative or vivid office culture, for everyone to vanish into Facebook and otherwise dabble online? Maybe it’s better to live and work with colorful or inappropriate comments, with irreverence, wildness, incorrectness, ease.
Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even a wanted sexual advance, truly our ideal? Should we aspire to the drab, cautious, civilized, quiet, comfortable workplace all of this language presumes and theorizes?

Naturally the comments section brims with bland, earnest objections, the bulk of which suggest that said anodyne drone is precisely the goal they seek to achieve. Asked and answered, then. But one fellow sums up the progressive contrition perfectly:

Hey, I'm no professional feminist, but I'd rather let people decide for themselves what they find acceptable. That might include humoring some people who indeed seem Puritanical and hypersensitive. Who am I to tell them where "the line" is?

It does not occur -- or is not said -- that "humoring" the seemingly Puritanical differs not at all from accepting their interpretations and obeying their diktats, and that this achieves precisely the opposite of the free-thinking, tolerant universe that the "Who am I to ... ?" mantra prays for. The (seemingly!) Puritanical and hypersensitive have no qualms about saying exactly where the line should be, not merely for themselves but for everyone else. And they suffer no guilt about enforcing this line with all the power of the law.

Do you possess a mind, capable of distinguishing between good and bad? Then you can say where the line ought to be. Any who attempt to silence you do not share your good will.

Baltimore: Nobody Votes, Everybody Pays

This is what ennui looks like:

Judging from the sparse turnout at the Fells Point school, there were probably lots of stickers awaiting voters that may never show up. The same scenario was expected at the city’s other 289 polling places. City election officials were predicting only about 10 percent of the city’s 370,000 registered voters would cast ballots. That would make the Sept. 13 primary election look like it was crowded. About 23 percent voted in that primary despite a contested race between Rawlings-Blake and rivals Otis Rolley and Catherine Pugh.

There's a Republican and a Libertarian voting, and neither party even bothered to make an effort to contest this election. A city in which 10% of the population vote in a general election is a city with votes for the picking. The GOP and Libs should start a Baltimore Protest/Reform Party, and march through the streets until someone pays attention.

Of course, all that requires money and moral courage, neither of which are in abundance here.

This Magazine's Offices Got Firebombed

It says "100 Lashes if You Don't Die of Laughter"

Take it and Post it. They can't firebomb all of us.

The New Depression is On, Y'all...

So sayeth Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, to CNBC (h/t: Ace):

“Our view is that unfunded guarantees are worthless. Raising resources to fund the EFSF and the associated SIV will require diverting savings – domestic European savings, for the most part, not Chinese savings, and not those kept on reserve at the IMF – from either domestic consumption or investment,” he said.Raising that money within the next year from European savers will have a major effect on jobs and incomes as output and demand drop sharply, according to Weinberg, who believes that Europe will be back in crisis sooner rather than later.“We predict a catastrophic contraction of GDP in Euroland in a combined monetary and real-economy event," he said. "The event we envision is much more akin to the Great Depression of the 1930’s than to any business cycle we have experienced in our lifetimes.”

And what happened after the Great Depression in Europe?

I say we let the Germans win this time. Help them out, if possible.

The Occupy Movement's Masturbation Rage

A few weeks ago I pointed and laughed at a genius who misspelled her lament at not being able to land a job with her expensive degree. I felt bad about it later (I actually didn't), but it turns out the young lady did not take kindly to being upbraided:

I recognize that I switched the i and the e in field. If you want to sit there and lie to yourself and say that you’ve never done that, go ahead. But I wasn’t going to go through all the trouble to take it down, rewrite the sign, re-upload it, and then still probably catch hate for people that center their lives around looking for it.

When people talk about how the younger generation has no concept of non-verbal communication, this is what they mean. Luv, if you can't take the time and effort to make sure your pedestrian rant at Teh Man doesn't make you look like a complete idiot, then you can't be surprised when people make fun of you. Because they don't know you. Because all you are to them is a piece of paper with words next to the kind of hangdog face that Sarah McLachlan uses to get donations for the ASPCA.

It's a hard cold cruel fact that I began to come to terms with about halfway through college: people judge you on first impressions, and that means appearance. It's human nature. It isn't going to change. If you're going to put your face out there in the big bad world, try not to give people a reason to throw shit at it. And if you can't be bothered, then your skin better be thicker than rhino horn, 'cause the Internet is a mean mean place.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Last night I attended a performance of Church by Young Jean Lee at Single Carrot Theater in Baltimore. Fine performance of a provocative play by a damn good troupe. I mean "provocative" in the best possible sense of that word: it provoked me to think about it's subject, that being organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. But it also gave me a wonderful phrase to hang about the Occupy Movement and its fellow-travelers: Masturbation Rage.

Everything about these clowns is a cheap facsimile of what they imagine the French Revolution was like. A bunch of people standing around waving signs and being obnoxious is not, in any meaningful sense, "occupying" anything. Sure, that's where things have to start: the Tea Party and the French Revolution began that way. But then you have to move on and organize, create a set of goals and attempt to carry them out. For the Tea Partiers, that meant expressing our distaste at our New Class overlords and using electoral muscle to hold the GOP's feet to the fire. Now, they may not succeed in that second part, but they're trying.

The Occupy Movement is a stunt. It's astroturf. It's waiting for fucking Godot to immanentize the eschaton. It's a loud pitched wail for Big Daddy White Boss to change your diaper and give you a sucker. When it ends, exactly the same players will be saying and doing exactly the same things, and the New York Stock Exchange will open and close as though nothing happened. Because nothing has. Ask this guy:

We will stack the bodies this high...

What's the difference between you and him? His maxim was that "political power comes from the barrel of a gun." When V.I. Lenin "occupied" something, that wasn't a demonstration of the possibility of occupation. It meant blood was going to flow. He didn't want the Tsar to provide jobs for the mis-educated; he wanted to kill the Tsar. Which he did.

The Occupy "movement" has legitimate complaints. Crony capitalism is a blight on a free society. The higher education industry has been shafting their customers for decades. But they can't see the extent to which they are the pawns of the institutions they claim to deplore. They have allowed themselves to be turned into useful idiots for a political class that exploits their misery to serve those same corporate and bureaucratic interests. In much the same way, Lenin exploited the suffering of the Russian people during WW1 to establish a regime that multiplied that suffering a thousand-fold.

Trying to prevent industry from corrupting government by giving government more money and authority is like trying to prevent rape with breast implants. All you're doing is making the victim more desirable.

The More They Tell Me Cain Can't Win, the More I Wonder if He Can

Despite everybody taking a shot at 9-9-9, he's still atop the polls.

And Rick Perry has issued his 20-20 plan, and Newt has said "Me, too!"

So it would seem that the man has fundamentally transformed the race.

So again, what do we need Romney for?

Herman Cain is Pro-Choice, and I Don't Care...

Vox Populi has the skinny.

I'm more or less in Santorum's wheelhouse on this issue. An abortion obtain for any other reason than to save your own life is a moral failure, and I don't have a problem with them being illegal. But I also don't have a problem with a GOP pres candidate who thinks differently, because abortion is not my #1 issue for the federal government to handle right now. It's not even Top Ten. In fact, I don't want the federal government to handle it at all, which is why I want the Supreme Court to rescind Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

But then, I haven't been burning incense to a little Herman Cain doll. I'm about ready to vote for Newt, just to see him tussle with Obama in the debates.

Kaddafy Killed

I guess that means we won.

What did we win?

Because the Only Way to Decrease Rape is to Rape More People...

Sheriff Joe Biden, the executive branch's most prominent FailBot, rides again.

Biden's reasoning -- that more rapes will undoubtedly occur if the federal government doesn't subsidize law enforcement -- doesn't pass the smell test. For that matter, I didn't know feminists were so approving of the way our law enforcement systems handled rape cases.

But these are difference that the reality-based community can surely paper over.

BY THE WAY: Biden's facts are wrong.

New Poll: All GOP Frontrunners Beat Obama

It's only one poll, but it begs the question:

If Hermann Cain can beat Obama, then what the hell do we need Mitt Romney for?

The New, Post-Racial America

When Democrats support a black Democrat for President, they are heroically redeeming America.

When Republicans support a black Republican for President, they are racists.

Because.

"Becoming President is a Narcissist's Dream...

...having to do the job is his nightmare."

More #OccupyWallStreetFail

Probably shouldn't have majored in Marxist Dance Interpretation, either....

The Wall Street Protesters in a Single Image

Behold, as the Honkies Gather on Wall Street

Via Instapundit, a collection of pictures of the Angry Vegan Brigade on Wall Street.

Notice the distinct lack of color at these gatherings. Why, surely if their ideas weren't racist, they could persuade others of darker hues to support them. Right, Angry Proggie Commentator?

Absolutely right, you teabagging bastard.

I mean, this is a white crew we got goin' here. How white are they? As white as:

• A Laurence Welk audience
• Dudley Do-Right's pasty rear end
• A sun-bleached copy of The Turner Diaries
• Warren Gamaliel Harding's taste in music
• The maiden aunt of that English chick who used to tell people they were the Weakest Link and then snap up an octave saying "Good-Bye"
• Anyone who's ever complained about people calling bandages "Band-Aids," because Band-Aid is a brand name!
• The cast (and audience) of How I Met Your Mother
• Robin Williams' sad, desperate attempts to act black

I'm sure Ace of Spades has something similar ginned up, as he did here and here, but it's hardly like Top Ten  Lists were his idea.

Bank of America: When Unintended Consequences are Ear-Splittingly Obvious

Consider the principle known as "blowback": that if you attack someone, you should reasonably expect that they will hit back. Thus, Machiavelli's dictum that if you must do an enemy an injury, do him one from which he will not recover.

Now, click over to Ace and read about why Bank of America is gouging me $5 a month for using a debit card.

What proggies consider obvious with regard to Islamic terrorists they consider a bizarre mystery with regard to American businesses.

But behold the Genius that is Barack Obama:

‘You don't have some inherent right just to – you know, get a certain amount of profit.

You don't? When you run a business you don't have the right to defray costs by charging value for service? Does this statement even have that level of thought?

Theorem: Centrists are the Real Conservatives

The problem with appealing to centrists is that you have to govern like one or they will abandon you, whilst proudly announcing their moderation vis-a-vis your reckless extremism.

Look at the conservative agenda: privatize Social Security, re-vamp the tax code, reform tort systems, all the while investing billions to insure that jihadis from the Kyber Pass to Cape Horn continue to explode.

Look at the progressive agenda: ramp up taxes, socialize health-care, go full-Keynes on a new Stimulus, all the while investing billions to insure that public unions from Sea to Shining Sea continue to feather their nests.

Either approach identifies problems and proffers radical solutions. Regardless of what one thinks of them, they have the virtue of ambition.

Centrists, on the other hand, pretend to want someone who will do bold and exciting things, but really want someone who will "get things done," i.e. let things get back to normal, so they can get back to their lives. Whatever is going on right now is what they want to continue, with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of important-sounding bromides. As with the governance of the EuroZone, nothing will be done but a great show will be made of doing it.

Occasionally, they will get furious with the general state of affairs and Demand Change. This demand will be stuffed like the skin of a sausage with thunderous denunciations of the current government and the awful mess they have made. Once that pack of fools are gone, however, so is most of the substance of their fury, leaving only a thin film of actual policy.

Centrists are easily panicked, easily browbeaten, and easily led astray, because the only thing they believe in with any regularity is that anyone who wants any real thing is dangerous. So anyone who more successfully pretends to want everything in general and nothing in particular wins.

The Frustrations of Being an Un-Read Blogger

A few months ago, I posted this:

Today, Glenn Reynolds posts this.

Head, meet wall. Meet him very quickly.

Wall Street Abandons Obama; the GOP Will Shift Accordingly

If this is true:

JP Morgan honcho Jamie Dimon, once a “fat cat” ally of President Obama, seems to have strayed to Republican contender Mitt Romney.
Dimon, a lifelong Democrat who was rumored to be on Obama’s short list for treasury secretary before he settled on Tim Geithner, met privately with Romney on Tuesday morning before a fund-raiser at Brasserie 8¹/2 hosted by Highbridge Capital, a JPMorgan-owned hedge fund.

 ...then the tide of independents and centrists are going to benefit Romney. People tend to view him as the most moderate of the real contenders for the Republican nomination. Which is a problem, as most of us deep-red radical-right-wing teabagging bitterclinging RAAAAACISTS view Romney as an economic heretic at best or a RINO at worst.

So who does that benefit? Herman Cain, fresh of his upset in the Florida straw poll. If centrists and bankers flood to Romney, then the GOP establishment has its Candidate of Gravitas and Experience. Which means the winguts and libertarians are going to need someone of minted outsider status who's demonstrated the capacity to win something. We thought Rick Perry was going to be that guy; so far he's shot himself in the foot and then shoved that foot in his mouth. Bachmann blew herself up going after Perry. Gingrich seems to be running for a Cabinet job (which he'd be good at).

That leaves Hermann Cain. For a guy whose candidacy has been declared dead to jump ahead in the polls as he has means a significant shift. It also means that the Tea Party vote is not bound up and sold to Sarah Palin. It also means that this race has just begun.

BTW, Chris Christie isn't going to run for President unless Obama wins. He's nowhere near dumb enough to think that he's conservative enough to satisfy the nationwide GOP base. He might be amenable to be someone's running mate, but that's it.

Sarah Palin's not running either. How do I know? Because she's not running. Her hesitancy speaks volumes about her own assessment of her own chances. Deep down, I don't think she really wants to run.  The dust storm kicked up by 2008 has cast her family into chaos and her out of a job. And that was as a Vice-Presidential candidate. She knows the real thing would be worse.

Teacher's Unions: Jumping on the Department of Education's FAIL

The White House Censors Ford Ad

The Detroit Free News has the details: (h/t: Is This Blog On)

On the one hand, Ford is not anywhere near as squeaky clean as it like to present. From the article:

Ford did seek a line of credit from the feds, borrowed billions under a government program to "retool" its plants and effectively failed first. That's why it recruited a superstar CEO from Boeing Co. and gave him some $23 billion in borrowed money to save the Blue Oval from bankruptcy.
Or it would have taken the money, too.

So their reticence about taking the money was circumstantial, not principled. And to an extent, the White House feels like they made things easier for Ford, too.

On the other hand, screw the whole ugliness of this. The day a car company can't lash out against its competitors because the President doesn't like it is not a great day for liberty. Because after all, Ford still doesn't have GM's gubmint-gay-run-teed advantages:

There's no help from American taxpayers to help lighten its debt load, giving crosstown rivals comparatively better credit ratings and a financial edge Ford is working diligently to erase all on its own.
There's no clause barring a strike by hourly workers amid this fall's national contract talks with the United Auto Workers — a by-product of the taxpayer-financed bailout that General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC retain until 2015.

Hmmm....the government legally disbarring a union from striking, to benefit a major corporation, for the "common good" of the whole country. There's a word for this...anyone, anyone?

The Political Genius of Barack Obama

Remember when Joe Biden was the Gaffe-o-Matic? (h/t: Protein Wisdom)

Here is what the president actually said, catching himself almost in time but not quite:
"If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that."
The president has been muffing lines all over the place recently. Last week, also peddling his jobs plan at a bridge that won't qualify, he hailed America's building of "the Intercontinental Railroad." You don't seem to hear much about these gaffes in the media for some reason.
Maybe in Saturday night's speech Obama was thinking about all those talks on Israel in New York.

Maybe. Or maybe Obama thinks that Jews are heavily represented in the sanitation industries. Or maybe as soon as the word "billionaire" is uttered, "Jews" pops immediately to his mind.

In any case, more than mere wingnuts were dissatisfied with the President's recent speechifying. Maxine Waters found it "curious": (h/t: Memeorandum)

She says Obama didn't address Hispanics in such a blunt manner and would never use that language in a speech to a gathering of gays or Jews.
...
In Saturday's fiery speech to the caucus, Obama told blacks to "put on your marching shoes" and "stop grumbling.'"

Never has an incumbent so masterfully gathered his forces for the campaign.

The Department of Education: Unsurpassed in their Achievement of FAIL

Throughout the 1980's every proggie worth his No Nukes T-Shirt used to sniff urbanely at the level of education spending versus the level of defense spending. "If we can spend this much on the military," went the refrain, or "for the cost of a B-1 bomber..." implying that if only the magic money spigot could be turned on, American education would return to the world's forefront.

The meme, repeated often enough, lodged itself in the collective unconscious, and behold: Federal defense spending now stands at 190% of what it was in 1970. The result?

Bupkis. (h/t: Protein Wisdom)

That's zip, nada, nothing. We've increased education spending by an order of magnitude and test scores remain as flat as a pancake pressed in a panini machine by a 2-dimensional hyperintelligent shade of the color red.

And when Reagan made large cuts to ed. spending in the early 80's? Nothing happened. When the GOP Congress made slight cuts in the mid-90's? Yet more nothing happened. 

So if the Department of Education vanished overnight, does anyone pretend that our educational output would change to any appreciable degree?

David Brooks Snaps Out of It; Says the First Worthwhile Thing In Years

He issues a series of mea culpas, for which most of the wingnut-osphere will return nothing but snarky contempt. Which is fine, as he's deserved it, but that's not what I'm interested in.

This is:

This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.

I have long been of the opinion that Democrats are going to regret putting Obama in the Presidency when he had exactly the right credentials to be the rightful heir to Ted Kennedy's mantle. He could have had as many terms as he wanted as the liberal "conscience of the Senate." Instead, he's flailing around because real life keeps not following the shooting scripts for The American President or Dave, where one honest, heartfelt liberal speech changes everything.

But he has no alternative to than to run as a fighting liberal, because he ran as a transformative President. Initially the transformation was to come from Obama himself, from his gloriously first-class temperament, his telegenically orotund orations, his finely creased pants. But somehow the Obama magic failed to set everything to right. Somehow political waves ignored his regal presence. So when the Mask slips, he reverts to type. Maybe he'll win re-election, maybe he won't. But it'll be the best shot Ted Kennedy could give.

Flat-Out Moronic: The Intellectual Pretensions of the Sub-Literati

Galileo was not brought before the Inquisition for saying that the earth goes around the sun. I'm going to repeat that in large font:

Galileo was not brought before the Inquisition for saying that the Earth goes around the Sun.


The Church punished Galileo for an error of theology: for stating that the observations of the eye were superior to the Revelations of Scripture. Also, for claiming that heliocentrism had been proven true when it had not, and mocking others who argued the contrary (including the Pope of the time) in print. His offense was relatively minor and possibly unintentional, so his punishment was light. But you cannot claim to be historically literate on the subject if you insist on repeating the old farcical lie.

And if you do so while mocking others for essentially, knowing more than you do, then you're claim of literacy is driven down to Kindergarten levels reserved for people who thought that the Boston Tea Party was in 1776.

Well When You Put it That Way, It Sounds Obvious

Glen Reynolds, riffing off the Chicago Tribune Solyndra Editorial:

“A nickel’s worth of business sense and a dime’s worth of caution might have saved Uncle Sam millions — and the Obama administration a heap of trouble.” Where are you going to find a nickel’s worth of business sense in an administration where there’s no private-sector experience?

It's Like the Guy's Unqualified or Something...

Had Enough Therapy?:

Yesterday Democrat Barry Sternlicht, CEO of Starwood Capital declared: “We elected a community organizer that’s acting like a community organizer.”

Who knew?

This gem sticks out of a a post that turns the Dem's Loss in NY-9 as a referendum on Obama's Israel policy. Which it may be. But the impression that I got was that the voters there were simply fed up with Obama's non-performance. As Ace put it, there's only so many times you can spin a bad situation as "not that bad" before people start demanding something that looks like progress. Especially when you sell yourself as the solution to all problems, as Obama has.

So Democrats are becoming as deflated and frustrated as Republicans were in '06 and '08. This anger at Obama will not translate into a primary challenge, because I think Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know that she'll be much better off running in '16 regardless of who wins this time, and no one else has the credibility to take on Obama's machine (which remains formidable).

But it's starting to dawn on Democrats that they got sold a Golden Dancer three years ago. I don't know how many of them are eager to buy more of the same.

It becomes more true every time I post it...

"When You Put Your Head in the Sand, Your Ass Becomes a Target"

Ladd Ehlinger reminds the California GOP that politics is a full-contact sport, and should be played accordingly:

Does your opponent live outside of the district and can't even vote for him or herself? Does your opponent have problems with a previous divorce? Does your opponent have a problem with coddling gangmembers?
Pound them with it! Pound them!
SCREW this meme that says "we should have positive campaigning only." You know who wants to have a positive campaign at all costs? Losers -- and YOUR OPPONENT!
There is no such thing as a positive winning campaign - because, unfortunately, it's "negative" to point out your opponent's many flaws. It's especially upsetting to your opponent. But highlight these flaws you must! Otherwise, no one will know that your opponent got rapists and murderers out of jail to rape and kill again!

Read the Whole Thing. I should mail a copy to the Maryland GOP.

Queen's Court of Alberta Legalizes Infanticide

Or something. (h/t Ace and NRO)

"Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant's death, especially at the hands of the infant's mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother."

Do they? I don't. Please lay out who put a gun to this woman's head and made her give birth to her newborn son, strangle him, and then toss him over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

Her lawyer, Peter Royal, asked the court to do away with the penalty or allow her to serve the time on weekends. It was "unjust" and "almost mean to incarcerate her" at this point, he argued.

Right. And we sure wouldn't want to be mean to someone who murdered an infant. That would be horrible.

But don't worry, the court isn't about to get all licentious on this subject:

In her judgment, the judge rejected arguments from the Crown that the single father and the grandparent also face "the same stresses of the mind" as a mother who kills her own baby.

Silly daddy, infanticide is for moms!

Paul Krugman Has Just Become Worthy of My Attention

I hope you noticed that I didn't write anything this morning that was critical of anybody on either side of the aisle. 9/11, in my opinion, ought not be a partisan affair. There is an obligation to avoid the usual push-pull of politics to mark the occasion. Yesterday, Barak Obama was not the figure of ridiculue I usually reduce him to; he was the President of the United States. That means something.

But Paul Krugman can't play by those games.

I normally ignore this clown, because he's, well, a clown. However smart he may be on the subject of economics, in politics he's a banal bridge-burning pile of paint-by numbers un-reflective leftism. And I can't say I find his prose worth the aggravation.

But since this jumped-up numbers nerd, this theory-slut, this galloping dunderhead who can barely contain his heartsick crush on totalitarianism, cannot keep his powder dry for a day, I'm coming after him. None of the fiskings I let fall on that pimple E.J. Dionne will be half of the slapping-around I intend to throw down on this ass. The time has come.

Year Ten at Ground Zero

The general theme of yesterday's memorials, one of grief remembered but honorably laid to rest, is one I willingly bow. Watching the MSNBC stock footage of 9/11 as it happened, I was struck by the strangeness of the tone; the confusion amid the birth-cries of a world we now know well. That was a different country, and I am a different man. When I wrote the following in 2003, I was newly discovering a truth I have since come to live with:

One year ago, we took stock in our classroom, and a teacher showed slides, and played some bit of ethereal melancholia in the background. I'd thought myself inured to the whole affair. The Taliban had crumbled and we were getting ready to put the move on Saddam; the situation had improved. But I found myself looking into the eyes of students who responded to the images with tears, and then I responded similarly. My voice choked, and all the sadness I never permitted myself to feel was upon me. I got through it, but at the end of the school day was in chapel, stifling sobs, asking God if this was what it felt like.

And at that moment I wasn't referring to 9-11 but every last 9-11 that had ever streaked its red trail across the earth. I thought of every last battle, every last raid, every invasion of the brutal onto the peaceful. Every bomber run. Every Rape of Nanking. Every Klansman riding out of the night.

Many people have bandied about the phrase "New Normal" in the years since. But the only normal thing about the New Normal is that it is always new. History, red in tooth and claw, came upon us again on 9/11/01, and it has been having its way with us ever since. We have launched wars, endured recessions, shouted in the streets, played spot-the-fascist, and come to question all the rules we thought were writ in stone. Bin Laden, then a fearsome, shadowy Nemesis, today molders in his watery grave, which all agree does nothing to end the war he began. Ten years ago, our politics consisted of already-tired grumbling that George Bush had been "selected, not elected" to the  Presidency. Today, its which side will bear the blame when (not if) our public finances collapse. Today, a black man of the Left governs from the Oval Office, as the Right parties like it's 1773. The Sudan has split; the Euro is eroding. The New Normal is No Normal.

So, with the shattered Towers transformed into watered gravestones for those eternally interred by them, we can at last put our grief and rage from memory into history. We have remembered, and we have moved on, through the light and shadow of a world born in fire. We make the best of that world to the extent that we feel that those who suffered at last have peace. Time will bury all wounds, but as the centuries pass, men and women will walk through Lower Manhattan and see the names of those martyred for being American.

NYT: Sarah Palin May Not Be Crazy

h/t: Insty

Anand Giridharadas sayeth the unsayable, and discovers the real class warfare behind the Tea Party:

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

Unfortunately, he ascribes this to Palin in particular, and not the Tea Party in general. But hey, baby steps.

The Keynesian Stimulus Ain't That Keynesian, or Keynes Was not a Moron.

From Reason, (h/t Ace)

If the federal government had a strong track record of responsible spending, it would mean one thing if it went into hock for a short period of time to goose the economy (again, whether this would work is open to question). It means something totally different when a government that spent all of the 21st century piling on debt and new, long-term entitlement programs responds to an economic downturn first by creating yet another gargantuan entitlement (Obamacare) and taking on even more debt in the here-and-now. This cuts in a Milton Friedmanesque, monetarist direction too. If the Federal Reserve had not been keeping money artificially cheap for the past couple of decades and it worked to lower interest rates and increase the availability of money in a given moment, that would mean one thing. Promising to keep rates low for the next couple of years - after years of loose money and statements that all those bubbles weren't bubbles at all - doesn't mean the same thing.

Insanity = Repetition + Expectation. RTWT

"We had to Pass the Bill to See What Was In It. Well then, Asked and Answered."

Jeff Goldstein discovers the wit of despair.

It's almost as though merely passing a law to give everyone health insurance does not, of itself, create new health insurance.

Religion is Bad. When Republicans Do It.

Via Other McCain, Ian Stanley of the Telegraph lays down the persistent media double-standard:

Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is a Mormon. Many readers probably won’t know that because the mainstream media oddly doesn’t talk about it. It’s okay to call Mitt Romney a polytheist with twelve wives, but Reid is untouchable because he’s a Democrat. And yet it’s reasonable to theorise that the leader of the Senate wears the magic underwear associated with Mormonism. Is his belief that Jesus walked on American soil, anti-science? Geographers and historians would probably object.
Democratic presidential candidates regularly visit black churches, Nancy Pelosi has invoked her Catholicism so many times you might think she was a nun, and Barack Obama was married by a pastor who actively hates America. Yet Krugman suggests that only the GOP uses and abuses religion every election. More sickening is the innuendo that there is a uniquely violent subtext to conservative faith, as if every Right-winger wants to shoot an abortionist. There is no comparison between fundamentalist Islam and Dominionism: one kills and the other doesn’t. The conflation of the two is ugly and deceitful.

It gets awfully damn tiresome to have to point these things out. And I don't mind Stacy McCain's "Welcome to the Party, Pal" response. But so long as there are people who refuse to admit that this is going on, it needs to be underscored. We need to say, as McCain does, that:

It would be great if we could have a reasoned, well-tempered discussion with the Left, but the typical Lefty cannot or will not engage in a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. Conservatives have inadvertently arrived at Abuse, instead of the Argument Clinic.

Although, in all honesty, the Argument Clinic kind of sucks, too.

"Jon Huntsman is a Moby. That is All."

The title comes from the comments of another Protein Wisdom rant at the feckless GOP establishment:

Tax reform. That’s the extent of Huntsman’s plan.
And that’s about all that establishment Republicans care about. Entitlement reform? Huntsman doesn’t deal with that.
Big government, ruling-class “compromises,” and lower taxes.
That’s what the GOP ruling class is. That’s all it is

Can't really argue with that.

Meanwhile, the Slapfight Over Evolution Continues

Carthago Delenda Est linked this amusing insistence that the Grand and Complex Theory of Evolution can be reduced to the tautology "Survivors Survive." The knife-point:

Richard Dawkins asserts that Darwin's theory allows one to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. As an example of the deep scientific insight provided by Darwin's theory, Myers notes that more successful replicators relatively more successfully replicate, and that birds that are better able to get food during famine are better able to survive.
Myers is an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Atheism is a small cup.

I should mention that I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm a Catholic, and the Catholic Church has for the most part wisely refrained from getting drawn into the weeds about evolution. The last Pope said the theory was "credible," and so long as the theory is not used as a springboard for atheism, the Church teaches it in its schools. So I don't really have anything to say on the ins and outs of evolutionary biology, and as long as the Grand Inquisitors of High Atheism leave it alone, so will I.

Why Democrats Can't Abide to Have Public Sector Unions Messed With

The image says it all...(h/t Ace)

So the next time someone loses their shit over hoe much the eeeevil Pentagon controls this country, just remember that labor unions dwarf defense contractors by an order of magnitude. In fact, shouldn't we be wondering where Jimmy Hoffa was when JFK was shot?

Thieves, Liars, Whores, Swine and Gilded Fools: A Four-Letter Dissertation on Politics

August is traditionally the time of vacation, down time, relaxing. I need such most greatly, for a variety of personal reasons. So this post may be considered my declaration of farewells, for the nonce. I've learned that for me, blogging is a cyclical activity.

But first, it is time to take stock of the inanity which has prevailed before us, of the Debt-to-GDP ratio hitting 1-to1, of the thousand manifold bottles of snake-oil that the New Class has sold us. Walter Russel Meade has a fine dissertation on "The Progressive Crisis" (h/t: Ace), which the usual suspects of the droit-osphere have linked approvingly to. He correctly points out what Ayn Rand pointed out 60 years ago: that there is an unspoken will-to-power in the Progressive Movement. Our Saviors are as corrupt and wicked as the rest of us, and the people know it.

Barack Obama is full of shit. Harry Reid is full of shit. Nancy Pelosi is so full of shit she could fertilize Death Valley. Now, as it happens, being full of shit goes with the territory of politics, because politics is shit. Hunter Thompson, who had a Ph.D in Being Full of Shit, nevertheless once wrote something in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about the profession of journalism that I quote approvingly:

Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo cage.

But a few shifts in nomenclature and metaphor would suffice to make this an utterly apt description of politics. Politics is a bunch of glad-handling buffoons, flannel-mouthed ward bosses, and dipshit crusaders. There's but a few of any rank anywhere in the City of Washington that the country would miss if they all spontaneously combusted tomorrow.

This is not a matter of replacing one group of swine with another. I still haven't decided whether John Boehner is full of shit yet (odds are, yes). The nature of the activity is inherently corruptive. To rule others, one can adopt one of two strategies: letting the traditions of your people guide your every action, or attacking every vested interest not on board with your self-aggrandizing agenda. The first is mere office-holding, the second is tyranny. Progressives of every stripe keep declaiming that they have found the Third Way, and more bodies have been littered in that fruitless Grail-Quest than frozen ships seeking the Northwest Passage. It is a fantasy: nothing more than tyranny in a velvet glove. Politics is shit. Inhale deeply.

And that is why I could never muster the anger at someone like Charlie Rangel or Robert Byrd. Rangel is a thief, and a racist thief at that. But I suspect that, in some deep-down, cameras-off world that neither you nor I will ever see, the son of a bitch knows he's a thief, and justifies his thievery on the same grounds that I have offered: he must swim in the same seas as everyone else. That he's a fat little fishy in a sea of shit does not change the odeur of the water one jot.

So sure, catch the fat little fishy if you wish, mount him to the wall. Send his ample ass to jail: why not? That oily bastard lives by our sufferance, which we the people, in our limited wisdom but unlimited sovereignty, can withdraw at any time we see fit. Just you remember: there are plenty of fish in the shitty sea.

No, I have no animus for the Rangles and Byrds of the world of politics. Thieves are thieves, and eventually they end up robbing themselves. I reserve my true hate for the ones who claim not to hunger for graft or power but for a Square Deal for all Americans, the ones who claim that it is time to put politics aside and do the People's Will. Proggies have been shilling that line for a century, and it's the biggest pile of dinosaur shit there is.

The People don't have One Will; that Rousseauist fantasy builds nothing but guillotines. The People are a multiverse of conflicting dreams, desires, and ideology. They have no Main Line from which silken-voiced princes with first-rate temperaments can eternally suckle. 40% of them hate Democrats, 40% hate Republicans, and the rest would rather everyone just play nice. You cannot claim a Mandate to do whatever the hell you please on the basis of winning 51% of such an electorate. It is a house built on quicksand.

The People's Will is a fantasy, and I hope that Obama knows it. Bill Clinton did. That man was as gifted a liar as politics has seen in a while, but he was a better whore. And whores know that it doesn't matter what the john wants if you get extra for the service. So if the john wanted to hear that The Era of Big Government was Over, then Billi would make that sound pretty coming out of his mouth. He knew the tricks; he knew the game; the People (or 60% of them) loved him.

Right now, 50% of the People are fucking sick of Obama, of his fecklessness, his emptiness, his inability to handle one thing with anything approaching success. What the Sam Hell are we doing in Libya? Who the hell knows? Who's in charge? What the hominy fuck happened with ObamaCare? Did Obama even read an executive summary of it? And precisely what about trillion-dollar deficits does this simple bastard love so much?

The worst of all politicians, worse than Thieves, Liars, Whores, or other Associated Swine, are the Gilded Fools: the Bobble-heads, the ra-ra true-believing priests of the Progressive Leviathan. Fools there are aplenty in Washington, and every state house and city hall for that matter. Dennis Kucinich is one such, as is John Edwards (Sarah Palin might be, as well). But these are more or less harmless, as they quickly up-jump their place and show their true motely colors. But sometimes, press or party takes a Fool and Gilds him, makes him shine brighter than the Sunne in Splendour, and the 20% that just wants everyone to play nice will swoon like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert (In Edwards' case, the gilding did not work, perhaps because a gelding was more in need). By such precise means did a junior senator with no executive experience and a middling legislative experience parlay a MLK-timbered voice into the highest office in the land. The story was too good. We just had to believe that he knew what the hell he was doing.



And now we sit, with a government broke and broken, about to fundamentally disprove Hamilton's postulate that a national debt could be a national treasure (or for those who know the context of that remark, fundamentally prove it). And we are shocked, shocked I say, that the warring tribes cannot negotiate with one another. We can't believe that there's actually a dimes worth of difference between the two.

Well, there is. The GOP has no shortage of Thieves, Liars, Whores, and Swine. Duke Cunningham was a Thief; Gingrich was a Liar, and the Maine Sisters (Snowe and Dukakis) consistently sell their virtue to whatever trawler comes by. But the GOP doesn't get to Gild many Fools, because the gang of fuckoffs and misfits don't usually let them. The rest may or may not actually mean what they say about shrinking the size of government.

Yet even Swine can find a truffle, and the gang of elephants has stumbled upon the reality that eludes the current Gilded Fool: We cannot afford the size of the government we currently have. Not even if we expropriate the wealth of the nation can we afford it. You can only loot Microsoft once. It won't be there to feed the current services baseline next year.

Robert Stacy McCain has a succinct phase for this reality: The State is not God. Get over it. The State can't do everything or satisfy everything. It has limits intrinsic to its nature, which are thievery, force, and lies. You can accomplish much with thievery, force, and lies. But you cannot uplift the human spirit with them. They do not nurture the true and good. They will not succor the middle class, or any other class. They will work only until there is nothing left to steal, no force left untried, and no lie still believed.

And on that note, I take my leave. I will leave Revolutionary Nonsense fallow for a few weeks, but will return by Labor Day at the latest. Enjoy the the Dog-Days.

More on Tax Uncertainty

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp has some testimonials underneath his creepy politician smile.

The Economy isn't Yours to Fix.

Now that the debt-ceiling kabuki is done, the usual suspects are huffing and chuffing about "the people's business." Observe this tidbit from RealClearPolitics (h/t Ace):

Outside Washington, constituents are clamoring about the economy -- or, as U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, interprets it: "Let us know when you guys are done with the bickering, so we can talk about fixing our economy."

Translation: Now that we've raised the debt limit, let's get to work spending the damn money stimmalating things, shall we? Campaign commercials don't write themselves.

This silly bastard doesn't care about the economy. The economy is nothing more than a source for talking points for him. The economy's in the shit because the Great Stimulus didn't work, just like it didn't work in the 1930's. Government doesn't put money into the economy, it takes money out, and when it's done feeding its own oxen, it flings some around haphazardly so it can put signs up that say "I' from the government and I'm here to help."

You want to get the economy going? It's simple...

1. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Tax uncertainty slows growth. Having this kabuki again does none of us any good.
2. Drop our corporate tax rates in half. Unless you WANT to give companies incentives to keep moving overseas.
3. In Fact, Reform the whole Damn Tax Code Already. What does the US Tax Code say? Whatever you can get a tax lawyer to make it say. The wealthy in this country already have the game rigged. A simplified tax code would reduce compliance costs on small businesses without ruining the hash of the bigger players.
4. Stop Getting in the Way of Energy Production. We need to drill for oil, coal, and natural gas if we want to have energy today. We need to get nuclear energy online quickly if we want to have energy tomorrow. Your wind farms and solar panels are cute, and harmless, I suppose, but they aren't a replacement for what works, and they never will be.
5. Let Things Take Their Natural Course. Recessions end. Depressions end. Businesses incapable of adapting to hard times end.  Other businesses batten down the hatches and ride out the bad times. They won't last forever unless we keep getting in the way of a recovery.

The economy isn't for Obama or the Congress to fix. In fact, the more they tinker with it, the more harm the will likely do.

"Federally Funded Condoms for Pre-Teens"

(h/t: The Other McCain)

Someone Has Been Hiding in the State Department for Two Years...

It starts.

It's the Spending, Stupid!

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips addresses the elephant in the living room. (h/t: Memeorandum)

I feel confident in saying that the Tea Party understands what so many in Washington seem to have forgotten: We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.

There's a word for having to explain something brain-blitheringly obvious to those who refuse to see it:

Alexis McGill Johnson Doesn't Know What Words Mean

Legal Insurrection: (h/t Protein Wisdom)

During a Great American Panel on Hannity tonight John Fund and Hannity were hammering the point that Obama doesn’t know how to negotiate in good faith. One of them mentioned Donald Trump’s criticism that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing because Obama’s never done a “big deal.”

Panelist Alexis McGill Johnson of the American Values Institute responded:

"He got bin Laden."

Leaving aside the rhetorical effectiveness of Obama's manful crowing about "getting" bin Laden, Johnson seems to have been unaware that Trump meant "big deal" in its literal sense: large-scale financial negotiations. Sending Seal Team Six to whack bin Laden has nothing whatever to do with finance or with negotiation, so far as anyone knows.

So either Alexis McGill Johnson lacks the contextual awareness to pick up on the ordinary plain meaning of words, or she's playing a desperate game of distraction on behalf of Emperor Golden Dancer.

Up to you.

Are We Going to Default?

Maybe.

If we do, will that suck?

Assuredley.

Am I panicking over it?

Oddly, I'm not.

There's a kind of cosmic justice to all of this, that our government is so fundamentally divided that it cannot agree on how to undo the mammoth debt we've accrued. America has been a house divided against itself for some time; with progressives hungrily constructing their Leviathan and conservatives desperately trying to find a magic bullet that will kill the beast. Eventually, so powerful a discord creates positions across which no bridge can span. Somebody's going to win; we're all going to lose.

It's a thing called hubris.

Women are Good at Blogging, Bad at Tech Conferences.

A while ago I stumbled upon a blog post by Susannah Breslin, Instapundit's new defaut link, found it reeking with female chauvinism, and took a big steaming dump on it. Of late, I've found her blog at Forbes.com pretty readable, for the opposite reason. She sticks it to the sisterhood, but recognizes that there's a lot more than what she sees. Most of the time, she focuses on writing and blogging and working in the digital age, and that's all to the good. Her How Not to Be Unemployed post is solid stuff.

Today, she writes a post, Why Women Shouldn't Go To Tech Conferences, which turns the post I first didn't like on its head. Which leads me to believe that I was reading that post, and especially the offending paragraph, wrong. Maybe I was confusing a strawman with an argument.

Or maybe I was just looking for something to piss on. In any case, apologies.

Just in Case You Were Wondering Why This Debt Ceiling Debate is Happening...

...this is why:

This is why those radical right-wing teabaggers are so insistent on spending cuts, on not raising taxes. This is why our debt-to-GDP ratio is at 100%. This is why, pretty much everything.

And whatever anyone has to say about what we should do now, anything that fails to address this basic fact is inherently inoperative.

Enjoy the kabuki.

I Can't Quit John Boehner ....

Every time I decide he's gonna sell us down the river, he gives us one of these: (h/t: Drudge)

“As I read the Constitution, the Congress writes the laws and you get to decide what you want to sign,” Boehner said, recounting what he told the president, according to two sources.

That sounds like a man who's sick of negotiating.

Is Married at Sixteen Really Worse Than Pregnant at 16?

RS McCain has been following Courtney Stodden's (who?) marriage, for reasons that I suspect have something to do with his Rule #5. I find caring about the lives of demi-celebrities (or even the real ones) difficult, because I have a life. But he makes a fine point comparing Stodden's decision with Bristol Palin's:

But let’s ask a hypothetical question: Suppose that your daughter was determined to have sex at age 16. Given the choice, would you rather her first time be . . .
A. Drunk on wine coolers in a pup tent with Levi Johnston, orB. On her wedding night, in a luxury hotel suite, with her movie star husband.

Somewhere along the way, we as a society decided that the worst thing a 16-year-old (or 18-year-old, or 20-year-old) could do was get married and have a baby. Never mind that 16-20-year-old bodies, male and female, are screaming to make babies; it's become the sin by which one falls out of the middle class.

But getting wasted and dumbly engaging in the act that makes babies? Normal Friday night fun, acceptable so long as one pops a pill or convinces the young swain to slap an uncomfortable piece of latex on his John Thomas.

Never made a lick of sense to me. But my mom dropped out of college to marry my dad and have me, and she's having their vacation house renovated as we speak, so it's possible I don't know what I'm talking about.

Christian Fundamentalist Behind Norway Attack

Because nothing is more Christ-like than "I'll Kill You All!"

The Other McCain has the skinny.

91 Dead. Jesus wept.