Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Criticizing Obama Becomes Mainstream

The Bloom, it is off the rose:

The former state senator may, in fact, be slaving away on 18-hour policy days. But much of that is closed out of sight. So the public is left to focus on Obama's frequent vacations, golf outings, celebrity gatherings and proclivity to give a speech at the first whiff of trouble.
This was a point that I made during the Bush years, that 90% of what the President does happens away from a TV camera. So I don't attack Obama on "image" stuff. Things like Air Force One buzzing Lower Manhattan or Obama's devotion to his teleprompter look bad but are only tangentially involved with the duties of the executive. However:

It's one thing to launch a war against Libya while packing up your wife, daughters, mother-in-law and her friend to tour South America.

It's another to wait nine whole days to bother explaining the unexpected combat to a puzzled nation. Or nearly two months to arrange an Oval Office address on the country's worst environmental disaster ever.
More to the point, these things even getting a mention in the LA Times means that the same people who thought Bush an imbecile based on how he seemed on TV are now wondering about Obama's basic political competence based on the same thing. That means something.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Wonkette, Snarking Sarah Palin Right into the Oval Office

Instapundit is wrong. Wonkette's Trig Palin-flameout has nothing whatever to do with the lack of Ana Marie Cox's steadying hand. It's always been exactly that lame:

Her blog is fun for a day or two until you realize that she doesn't have anything to say. It's all schoolgirl giggling and taking joy in the word "tits." Nothing wrong with that in small doses, but absent anything of greater substance it becomes as interesting as bathroom stall graffiti; if one didn't know otherwise, one would swear it was scripted. I can't be the only one who made the "how appropriate" eye-roll when I discovered that her last name was Cox.
Steven Crowder, on the other hand, is right on the money (h/t: Hot Air):



It's actually kind of annoying to have to constantly defend this woman, by which I mean constantly object to the tasteless, spittle-flecked rage with which progressives berate her. And if you imbeciles keep it up, you're going to unite the GOP behind her, and possibly enough independents (who most object to politics when it gets tasteless and dirty) to retire Emperor Golden Dancer to the lecture circuit early.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Trains Are For Nerds, Redux

George Will:


Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money.
California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower.

Read the whole thing, and then marvel at how effortlessly George's arguments coincide with mine.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

I am Cinna the Poet! Cinna the Poet!

As it turns out, yelling "Koch Brothers! Koch Brothers" can get death threats sent to anyone named Koch.

I look forward to the learned gentleman who posted this to express his displeasure. I'm making myself quite comfortable in the meantime.

Well, That's the End of Trump...

Thank God. I was beginning to worry that we would actually nominate this clown. But no one who's a fan of the Kelo decision is getting the GOP nod:

The Right’s love fest with Donald Trump is coming to an end. But will the media’s love affair with him ever end? The MSM isn’t known for vetting their own, so they’re likely to only give Trump the harry eyeball if he wins the nomination. Don’t forget, John McCain was the MSM’s second favorite candidate out of the entire 2008 field. And we know how well that ended.
Read the whole thing.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Congresswoman Who Went Out in the Cold

News reports about politicians "snapping" are always a letdown. Most of the time, they're a highly exclamated account of an "outburst" that would not strike anyone outside the political world as being particularly noteworthy. Of course, I thought the same thing when Dick Cheney invited Pat Leahy to attempt self-fornication, so my perspective may be a touch jaded.

So my real purpose in linking Le Scandal(!) of Nancy Pelosi's speaking curtly to snapping at White House economic counsel Gene Sperling cannot be to gasp at her viciousness. Rather, I'm pointing out just how far out of the process Pelosi is: enough that she's complaining about it in a meeting "in the midst of an active but largely cordial meeting."


With Nancy, cordial means you retain all your precious bodily fluids.

Which, as we may surmise, is politician-speak for "the old battle-axe let us have it." So it would appear that Obama has thrown the House Minority Leader under the bus. Which is odd, given that he seems to be rapidly running out of friends.

Emperor Golden Dancer

A number of stock phrases serve the pundit's need to lament a disappointing politician. "Empty Suit" comes to mind, as does the converse clothes-less emperor. Roger Simon eschews these in discussing the tedium that is Obama:

But what is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say. He is a boring person, the quintessential “hollow man” in the T.S. Eliot sense. He is kind of a socialist, kind of a liberal, kind of a multi-culturalist, kind of an environmentalist, kind of globalist, kind of a budget cutter — but none of them with any real commitment. Basically, he’s a vague and uncommitted person pretending to be otherwise. He is the man that voted “present,” now in the presidency. The fact that he never specified the targets of “hope” and “change” during his election was far from a campaign ploy and more typical than we ever dreamed. There never was a there there. And now, I strongly suspect, there never will be.
"Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect-seeming—all gold, with purple spots—look behind the paint! And if it’s a lie—show it up for what it really is!"

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

April 12, 1861

Stacy McCain has a column in the AmSpec about the silence which greets the anniversary of our nation's most momentous event. It's a good column, without animosity North or South, so a gentleman ought let it pass without comment.

Howsomever, I'm a Good Old Yankee, as the song doesn't go, so I find myself recollecting the issue as Lincoln did:
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

But these issues are a-moulderin' in the grave, as the song does go, so let us offer the gallant salutes that the belligerents of that fateful day offered each other:



"The cannon and the rifle are the most approved weapons of warfare, and the musket will have to yield the pole to them." Prescient words, as are the admission that the rifled cannon hardly fired for want of shot: such plagued the Confederates for the duration.

P.J. O'Rourke on Atlas Shrugged.

I had begun to consider ol' P.J. a bit of a relic, semi-retired like Lord Kitchner before WWI. But of late he's been doing yeoman's service, first deftly cutting Amy Chua off at the knees:

You might think that Amy Chua is a fascist pig. She wrote a previous book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, so she is.
And now, he updates Ayn Rand more successfully in a few sentences than, one suspects, the filmmakers will two movies:

An update is needed, and not just because train buffs, New Deal economics and the miracle of the Bessemer converter are inexplicable to people under 50, not to mention boring. The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they’ve shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative. Even the most left-wing politicians worship wealth creation—as the political-action-committee collection plate is passed. Partners at Goldman Sachs go forth with their billions. Steve Jobs walks on water. Jay-Z and BeyoncĂ© are rich enough to buy God. Progressive Robin Hoods have turned their attention to robbing ordinary individuals. It’s the plain folks, not a Taggart/Rearden elite, whose prospects and opportunities are stolen by corrupt school systems, health-care rationing, public employee union extortions, carbon-emissions payola and deficit-debt burden graft. Today’s collectivists are going after malefactors of moderate means.

The Inner Party always has privileges. This is a point that we wingnuts need to make louder over the coming year: that progressivism primarily benefits those who can afford to pay for it.

There's life in the old boy yet.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Koran-Burning in Iran.

From what I'm given to understand, these are two Persian boys who consider the Koran a document foisted on their people by Arab invaders. I'm guessing this makes them Zoroastrians, some other religious minority. But non-Muslims make up just 5% of the population, according to the CIA World Factbook, so maybe they're just  Muslim apostates.

They don't get it lit until about the 4:50 mark, but when they do, it burns quickly. Notice that they throw their prepared speech into the flames as well: a necessary precaution in a religiously-minded state.



I'm of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, there's something indescribably sad about a book burning; the poetry of the Koran does not deserve to be treated this way.

On the other hand, it's worth noting that antipathy to radical Islam is as broad as the wide world, even in what an American considers the dark heart of enemy territory. So there it is: watch it if you've the stomach.

Preach, Brother.

Over at Ace of Spades, they've been preaching Jeremiads on the DOOMED Debt cycle for some time. It has of late crossed into the mainstream. In the WaPo, Robert Samuelson tells it like it is:

We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
When the end comes, we will lose things that we like. We will lose benefits we have come to depend on, tax breaks that we treat as our due. The fact that we were fools for ever trusting Caeser in the first place will not make it hurt the less.

Read the whole thing.

Budget Popcorn: Butter or No Butter?

If the GOP was going to follow-up the Budget deal with some real cuts, they'd get right to it, wouldn't they?

Behold:
“This is about making the right decisions now,” Cantor said. He touted Rep. Paul Ryan’s, R-Wis., budget proposal — a plan released last week that contains about $6 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years — and suggested Republicans would fight for at least a chunk of that plan as a condition of their support on the debt limit vote.
Cantor said a portion, and I think a portion is all he and Boehner expect to get. Which is what any sane person would expect when the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Shutting down Pelosi (notice how absent she's been from these debates?), and hemming in Obama and Reid are about what Boehner can do. And I can tell that it's working, because:

“It’s totally unbalanced,” Van Hollen said. “He ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors. … They’ll have to eat all of the rising costs of health care, while they provide big tax breaks for millionaires and the corporate special interest."
This is what those triumphant donkeys of 2007-2010 are reduced to; muling and fussing about grampa's pills. Their backs are up against the wall, and they've got nothing to do but point to a weak-tea, half-assed version of the Ryan plan that the White House is going to offer.

So don't fret, wingnuts. Boehner and company are fighting the good fight.


UPDATE: The WSJ chimes in:
[T]he Obama-Pelosi Leviathan wasn't built in a day, and it won't be cut down to size in one budget. Especially not in a fiscal year that only has six months left and with Democrats running the Senate and White House. Friday's deal cuts more spending in any single year than we can remember, $78 billion more than President Obama first proposed. Domestic discretionary spending grew by 6% in 2008, 11% in 2009 and 14% in 2010, but this year will fall by 4%. That's no small reversal.

The budget does this while holding the line against defense cuts that Democrats wanted and restoring the school voucher program for Washington, D.C. for thousands of poor children. Tom DeLay—the talk radio hero when he ran the House—never passed a budget close to this good.
Indeed.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Bill Maher Gets Something Right.

It was bound to happen.


“What it comes down to is there is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them and they say, ‘Look, we are a religion of peace and if you disagree, we’ll fucking cut your head off,’ and nobody calls them on it. There are very few people that will call them on it. You know, it’s like if dad is a violent drunk and beats his kids,” Maher said. “You don’t blame the kid because he set dad off. You blame Dad because he’s a violent drunk.”
He even quotes Bush approvingly:

“Bush used to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he said. “That’s what this is. When you say, ‘Well this is what the Muslims are going to do, you burn a Quran, they’re going to fucking kill the people – that’s bigotry.”


I do, George. I do.

Relax: the Budget Battle is Just Beginning.

I'm not going to comment on the "Shutdown"-avoiding budget deal that Boehner and Reid cobbled together on Friday night. If you consider $38.5 billion in budget cuts too little, you're right. If you think Boehner showed spunk in dealing with the Senate and White House, you may be right. If you think the GOP has sold us all down the river for not getting $eleventy-trillion, you might need to take a breath:


The accomplishment set the stage for even tougher confrontations. Republicans intend to pass a 2012 budget through the House next week that calls for sweeping changes in Medicare and Medicaid and would cut domestic programs deeply in an attempt to gain control over soaring deficits.
And the Treasury has told Congress it must vote to raise the debt limit by summer — a request that Republicans hope to use to force Obama to accept long-term deficit-reduction measures.
Now we have a complete year's worth of budget to make the kind of gigantoid cuts that the Tea Party wants to see. And yeah, a good bit of that won't make it through the Senate, and it's anyone's guess as to whether Obama will sign it if it does. But Boehner has demonstrated that he can get Reid to cut more than he wants to, and that Obama will be largely irrelevant to the procedure.

So keep the popcorn warm and the powder dry. The real show is about to begin.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

83 Cents on the Social Security Dollar? Where Do I Sign Up?

Alex Pollock has crafted a plan to un-screw Social Security so simple, straightforward, and obviously beneficial that there's a virtual guaruntee that Congress will never consider the measure. It begins with a sound statement of reality:


If a debt cannot be paid, it will not be paid—at least not paid in full.
Everyone who has ever declared bankruptcy or dealt with a credit counseling firm knows this to be true. There is a point where liabilities stretch beyond future earnings. We have either hit this point already or sailing in full-steam, damn-the-torpedoes mode towards it.

Here's the plan:

You could stay in Social Security as it is. Or you could elect to settle for 83 cents, paid in U.S. Treasury inflation-indexed bonds, which you would own outright. These bonds, with all future interest payments on them, would constitute true retirement savings, protected from inflation.6 In exchange, you would forego formula benefits equal to the value of the bonds you received divided by 0.83. You would have made up your own mind about the chances of such promised Social Security benefits actually being paid.
I'd take it in a New York minute. So would most people, and every time that happens, Uncle Sugar finds his liability decreased. The essence of trade: both sides benefit.

So what's to stop it from happening? The greed of politicians for control over the lives of its citizens; the hunger to be seen as the cornucopia from which all good things flow. Why, if people have their own assets, we don't need to save them from themselves! Then what the hell are we going to do?

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

The Ryan Plan Sucks. We Still Need To Do It.

Nothing a politician does, however intelligent or well-meaning, will be without unpleasant or unintended consequences. This is so true as to be axiomatic. Thus, whatever benefits we will get from the Ryan Plan, people will be unhappy with it. People will have problems in their lives as a result of it. It doesn't go far enough for the libertarians, and it will cause the Left to howl like it's face is being ripped off with a sandpaper-bedecked spoon.

Whatever. This is the last chance our government will have to put its fiscal house in order. After this, we face 1 of 2 options:

  1. Euro-style stagnation, complete with monstrously high taxes, permanent double-digit unemployment, and gradually collapsing demographics.
  2. Civil War II: Bloodshed Bugaloo.
We don't want either, and I suspect the first will lead to the second rather quickly.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Let's Be Honest: The Man is a Fool.

For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.  -Machiavelli
Obama has gone to war with Libya without Congressional authorization, without a plan for achieving his goals, and he is likely to fail. Like many a man who festoons himself with the title of Man of Peace, he has refused to study war, and so has allowed himself to be hoodwinked. He believed the rebels in Libya, who believed, like the rest of the world, that Gaddafi was Mubarak in silly clothes. He did not consider that Gaddafi was a soldier by training, that he fought in Chad for seven years to control that poor country, or that he went to war with Egypt in 1977 more or less on a whim.

Such a man does not flee like Ferdinand Marcos or Baby Doc from popular discontent. He does not fear his palaces being blown up by cruise missiles. He will not surrender to maintain his wealth. He will give up his control over the country at the same moment that his body gives up his spirit.

Obama should have known this, or at the very least, inquired as to the nature of the man whom he had decided "must go." But we should not be surprised that he didn't. Conflict and the resources needed to win it have always been above his pay grade.