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.

Is there a Debt-Limit Deal?

No.

There isn't a deal until there's a deal.

Until the President and the Speaker say "We Have a Deal" (Reid and McConnell will do as they're told), we do not have a deal.

And since we do not have one until it exists, its pointless speculating about what's in it. We will not know until we can see for  ourselves who has stood, and who is screwed.

Smitty Fisks E.J. Dionne, So I don't have to...

His Tea Party paranoia grows apace.

Convenient text-table format, too.

Bill Maher Pretends to be Above it All...

For a guy who "doesn't care" about religion, he can't seem to shut up about it.

The worst thing about religious debates is the way people (of whatever camp) act like they know what they're talking about when they don't. The Cosmos is too large to be conntained in anyone's head. This is all conjecture with hand-selected facts. None of us "knows" anything about what drives the universe.

Arguing with people, making claims of knowledge that do not stand up to dispassionate observation, this is all a waste of time. People are not reasoned into faith or apostasy; faith is a gift of the Spirit. We respond to religion on a spiritual level or don't. I did not arrive at the Truth of Catholicism by argument and then drag my heart to church. Rather, my heart from boyhood loved it, and I sought for ways to bring my intellect to line with it.

To atheists, this is the antithesis of reason, "magical thinking" and the like. I submit that they are more subject to it than they know. Did they really abandon God because they examined the evidence dispassionately? Or did they want to abandon Him all along, and jumped at the first boat they thought would carry them?

In any case, we shall one day discover who is lost at sea.

Hey, Rubes!: Republicans for Obama Edition

A bunch of "Republicans" who chose Obama over McCain, because of that dirty Palin woman, are upset that he didn't turn out as he promised.

Pundette invites them all to get stuffed: (h/t Insty)

Cry me a river. They looked at Obama's Harvard law degree and that sharp pant crease and thought he was one of them, or at least more so than that uncredentialed piece of Wasilla trash, with all her vulgar "you betchas" and excessive children, including that embarrassing baby she doted on. And these snobs, instead of apologizing for contributing to the downfall of America, have the nerve to complain about "class warfare."

One has to wonder why these people bother to register as Republicans. Isn't being able to decipher MSM smears and fixes a prerequisite?

Democrat Try to Take Allen West "Into the Woodshed"

Racists (h/t: Instapundit)

This stands as another demonstration of the fact that protected identities are a boon granted only to leftists. No Republican would ever dare suggest that Elijah Cummings or Charlie Rangel needs to be taken to the wooshed, because RAAAAACISM! But Gwen Moore can suggest it of Allen "Uncle Sambo" West, and it's all good in the hood.

Allen West, of course, was a fellow disciplined in Iraq for interrogating a prisoner with a pistol. Somehow, I don't think the Congressional Democratic Caucus scares him.

The Gang of Six Plan is a Joke

Which is why it will probably pass. It does one or two useful things, one or two not useful things, and dicks around with the most needful thing, which is cutting spending and reforming entitlements.

Dan Mitchell has the details. (h/t: Protein Wisdom)

"Forget lifeboats. We need to rearrange these chairs!"

UPDATE: Ezra Klein tries to spin the thing, and it remains as stationary as a Soviet monument: (h/t: Memeorandum)

Then the Budget Committee is charged with drawing up legislation to extend the caps on discretionary spending — which cover both defense and non-defense, and, if I understand this right, cut more than $1 trillion from projected spending — until 2021, and to draw up an enforcement mechanism that will kick in if deficit reduction isn't on track come 2015. Come 2020, federal health spending is put on a global budget, with growth not to exceed GDP plus 1 percent. Finally, once all that's passed, the Finance Committee is asked to produce legislation making Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, and their product is assured certain procedural advantages. There's very little in the way of specifics here, but there's an odd line suggesting that if this effort fails, then the vote on the whole deficit-reduction plan is invalidated.

In other words, most of the big savings come from telling the Senate Finance Committee to find said savings later on, and pinky-swearing that they'll make it easy for them to do so. The $500 billion up-front savings come mostly from some accounting tricks, including a reduction in Social Security's COLA adjustment.


And how is that markedly different from the House GOP's "Cut, Cap, and Balance" plan? A few ways:

1. Raising the Debt Ceiling is contingent on a Balanced-Budget Amendment. The BBA outlaws deficit spending and requires a two-thirds vote for tax increases.
2. The Up-Front Savings come mostly from non-defense discretionary spending. Such spending is reduced to FY2008. The actual number of savings is less, $111 billion to $500 billion, but the savings are more real.
3. This is acknowledged as the beginning of fiscal sanity, not the end of it. Obama has been touting a "big plan" so he can say that he "made hard choices" during next year's campaign. He wants to pretend that our nation's fiscal health can be tied up in a pretty package with the word "DONE" on the label.

In other words, CCB requires making actual spending cuts, while GO6 requires pretending that we have already made them.

JFK was No Arthur...

...and his presidency was no Camelot. (h/t: Other McCain)

This should be read because it punctures the Assassination Conspiracy Myth: that Kennedy was killed because he was going to withdraw our forces from Vietnam. The truth is exactly the opposite: Kennedy wanted Vietnam to be his "splendid little war," an opportunity to show the world American strength and resolve. Had he lived, he almost certainly would have done exactly as Johnson did, and his reputation would today be vastly different.

The Cuban Missile Crisis on Twitter

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. spares none of the principles.

As a Kennedy hater, it fills my belly with warm, sticky snark.

I am the Wrecking-Ball Right

There's a good line in the movie L.A. Confidential, after the second-plot-point fight between Sgt. Bud White, played by Russell Crowe, and Guy Pearce's Lt. Edmund Exley. Exley has discovered that the three black men he arrested for a shooting at the Nite Owl restaurant, in which an ex-cop was killed, were innocent. He recieved a promotion for his work on that case, but now he wants it re-opened.

"The Nite Owl made you," says White. "You want to tear that down?"

"With a wrecking ball," replies Exley. "You want to help me swing it?"

And the enemies become allies.

I've thought of nothing else since I looked at Robert Reich's "The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right". Most of the article is but strawmen assembled by anecdote, but the closing paragraphs sums up the basic meme that many on the left have been and will be adopting this coming election season:

Bachmann is not Palin

Diary of a Wimpy Catholic (great name) explains why (h/t: Insty):

In contrast to Palin’s approach, Bachmann hasn’t swung back or made any serious attempt to rally her troops and keep the story going. When called on her misstatement that the Founding Fathers had “worked tirelessly” to end slavery, she smiled serenely, cited John Quincy Adams who had been “a young boy” during the nation’s foundation years, and who worked to end slavery as an adult. For her, that counted. Knowing he was licked, George Stephanopolous moved on to the next question. Like the kid said in the Connect Four commercial, pretty sneaky, Sis.

Nancy Pelosi is Incredibly Stupid

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco... you know the rest. (h/t: The Other McCain)



Just for the record, this is what Job suffered:

• Reduction to poverty
• Loss of his workers
• Death of his children
• Boils and Sores
• His wife's nagging

This is what Obama has suffered:

• Having to listen to people who disagree with him
• Having to take seriously the suggestions of people who disagree with him
• Having to meet with people who disagree with them and treat them respectfully

In other words, Barack Obama has had do do things that come with the job description of being President of the United States. What's next? Does Obama get compared to Elijah for taking trips on Air Force One?

Hopefully, it was a snack flight

Most of the Book of Job, in fact, is Job arguing with his three friends about God's justice and mercy. If St. Nancy of the Catholic Cafeteria had actually ever read it, she'd know that comparing someone required by dint of his office to listen to opposing viewpoints with Job is not merely an egregious exaggeration; it's spectacularly inapt.

Meghan McArdle Discovers That Spending Cuts Means Cutting Spending

Actually, she yells that the sky is falling, and blames the Republicans. For wanting to cut spending. (h/t: Memeorandum)

The GOP will have taken a chance at meaningful entitlement reform and a mostly-spending budget deal, and thrown it away for literally no gain.

What chance at meaningful entitlement reform was that? The one where Obama mocked Paul Ryan? The One where Obama offered a budget that the CBO said was ungradeable? The one where the Senate Democrats ignored the budget that the House passed?

Does that mean that I'm shilling for the Democrats and saying you can never cut spending?  Hardly.  But you cannot cut spending by 40% in the middle of a recession.

I'd take a 2% spending cut in real dollar terms. If Obama offered that, instead of magical next-year spending cuts that will never actually cut spending, there'd be no debt-ceiling argument. Eric Cantor suggested that, and Obama stormed out of the room like it was his party and he'd cry if he wanted to.

So yeah, Megan, that makes you a shill for the Democrats who never permits cutting spending. Because as soon as the possibility of actually cutting spending appears, you squeal like the angels are busting open the seals.

And then women will be forced to back-alley abortionists,
human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together...

What Did I Just Do?

I changed the name, the template, and everything else.

Why? A couple of reasons:

1. The old name: The Essayist, reflected a desire to be above the fray of partisan politics, an to blog a weekly column instead of a daily pot-shot. That has not happened.
2. Another gentleman on blogger is using the name.

So now the old blogs I used before walking away from blogging in 2007 (only to return two years later) is gone. It's a bold new world.

So get used to seeing a lot of him.

If You Think Gay Marriage Will License Polygamy, You're Crazy

You're also right.

And all the proggies will not only not prevent it, they will work themselves over to first countenancing, then supporting, then calling you a bigot for disagreeing with it.

And they will have forgotten the fact that anyone ever predicted this chain of events.

It's what they do.

UPDATE: Right now, on Red Eye, Marc Lamont Hill is embracing "live and let live" towards polygamists.

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. is Pissed

And he has a right to be:

While good people in California were fighting their hearts out to try and stop Janice Hahn (including the former Democrat Zumadogg, who switched parties because of this race!), conservative media was having a party.

They were having a party the whole time.

While people like Stacy McCain, DaTechGuy, Ace Of Spades, Penguin Pundit and others were working their hearts out to shine a light on the corruption of Janice Hahn, these guys barely touched the subject. A tweet from Breitbart, an article on Big Journalism, a couple of retweets from Stephen Kruiser. Meh. I'm grateful for that but. Pretty lackluster, when it wasn't downright zombie-like or just plain treacherous. Fox News? Don't even get me started.

I don't care who you are. There were all sorts of ways to tackle the story, and with a dancing stripper and rappers thrown into the mix, there's just no damned excuse for ignoring it, and everyone knows it.

Some of these people I had drinks with. Some of these people I thought were at least cordial colleagues. Did any of them take a moment to notice the aforementioned death threats? Cyberhacking? Psych-ops? Anything? Buehler? Buehler?

I'm kinda perplexed myself. Why would anybody on the right fail to take this story and broadcast it long and loud? It's the Obama in miniature: feckless professional politician, in bed with unsavories, screwing the people she's supposed to be serving. What's not to trumpet?

Ultimately, all politics are local, and this election was lost when Craig Huey decided not to use the ammo that had been offered to him. He didn't have a campaign, he had an After-Party Planning Commitee. But where was the goddamn cavalry?

Consider this.

That ad got more hits from Huffpo than any conservative blog. I got more media interviews from liberal rags like Slate and Salon than any conservative media.

Secession of Southern California

The usual write-up in the LA Times (h/t: Memeorandum):

Accusing Sacramento of pillaging local governments to feed its runaway spending and left-wing policies, a Riverside County politician is proposing a solution: He wants 13 mostly inland, conservative counties to break away to form a separate state of "South California.''

This occasionally happens on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and for much the same reasons.

"Secession proposals are just ways of thinking about California, and are also ways for people who feel neglected get the attention that they deserve," said USC historian Kevin Starr, who has written extensively on California. "It's never passed, and it will never pass. It's been up to bat 220 times and struck out every time.''

Ah, but it only needs to work once.

It's Still 2008.

Over at the City Journal (h/t: Ace), Nicole Gelinas argues that the recession has been prolonged because the cause of it has not been dealth with. To wit: the mortgage-backed toxic assets that 2007's Super SIV (Structured Investment Vehicle) and 2008's TARP are still there, and they're ready to wreak havoc as soon as the Fed tries to do anything with them:
That’s what started to happen just a few weeks ago, when the

Fed gingerly tried to declare victory. Because the central bank figured that markets were returning to health, it decided to sell some of its AIG-related securities. After the Fed made its move, an index that tracks this type of securities plummeted, after having doubled in the previous two years. The Fed panicked and made an unusual announcement that it wouldn’t try for sales again any time soon. The index then rose by double-digit percentage points.
These are not signs of a healthy financial market. Those toxic assets are still there, and they’re spreading their poison into the rest of the economy. Private businesses have no idea what will happen when the Fed pulls away all its support—or what will happen if the Fed doesn’t pull away its support. So companies hoard cash rather than create jobs. People, too, hoard cash. Stuck with the bubble’s hangover of private debt, they have no idea how they’re going to pay for their kids’ education or their own retirements. Even employed people without much debt are terrified that they’ll lose their jobs and won’t get new ones—so they don’t spend money, further depressing consumer spending and killing more jobs.

Obama's trillion-dollar Stimulus is utterly beside the point: it was merely the Illusion of Action, miles away from the actual source of the problem. Which means that he not only doubled-down on Bush's initial mistake, he added a new one. When the market isn't allowed to do its job, the market becomes bloated and stagnant.
Read the whole thing.

The Economy is Hosed.

Just let Vodkapundit tell it:

• 30% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, 2005.
• 60% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, 2010.
• 180% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, CBO estimate, 2035.
• 0% — odds of current path being sustainable.

That's just the last part, so Read the Whole Thing, and when you're done giving Stephen Green a high-five for the obscure-but-amazingly-apt Douglas Adams reference, please remember just which feckless blowhard it was who found our financial house burning down and proceeded to throw napalm on it.

Al Gore Ruins Everything

Even Simcha Fischer's Marriage (h/t Insty):

MY KIDS: Ooh, a lamp! Let’s kick it until it’s dead!
LAMP: Smash.
ME: (lying on the couch dying with morning sickness): . . .I didn’t hear anything. . . [promptly manages to actually forget about everything]
LAMP: I guess I’ll just lie here and bleed poison all over your house, you dirty breeders.
KIDS: Yay, let’s throw stuff around!
HUSBAND: Hi, I’m home! Hey, there’s broken glass all over the room. There’s mercury mixed in with the six bags of winter clothes you were sorting, and it’s all over the portacrib. Okay, well, you lie there, I’ll take care of it.

This is going to be the tip of the iceberg. When the incandescent ban becomes fully felt, ManBearPig is getting the blame. And people will say "Bush did some crazy things, but he didn't fill my house with mercury."

And the 2000 election will finally be over.

Yeah, Marriage isn't Changing At All. Nope. Totally the Same.

Except now it's "nonmonogamous." (h/t: Insty)

But gay marriage totally won't open the door for polygamy. Nope. Preposterous.

Janice Hahn Fails

In case you had forgotten, Janice Hahn is the Democratic Candidate for CA-36 who got called out by Ladd Ehlinger for putting gangsters on the public payroll as part of a bogus gang-pacification campaign.

He did so using a hilarious attack ad that offended all the right people. Hordes of them poured into the comments section of the link waving the bloody shirt of Honky Offendedness:



Everyone told Ladd he was wasting his time. They were wrong. How can you tell that Hahn is now realizing this is a problem?

Her attorneys sent Fox11 a cease and desist letter forbidding them from pursuing this story.

 She may as well have paraded her dog in front of the camera and told everyone she is not a crook.

Tax Rates are Not Lower. Tax Revenues are.

The new meme issuing from the White House is that tax rates are at historically low levels (E.J. Dionne burbled this in his last idiotic column). As the Washington Examiner points out, this is hogwash (h/t: Insty). What's low is tax revenues as a percentage of GDP.

And why?

But the AP went on to report that the recession and tax loopholes, not lower tax rates, were the cause of the revenue drop: “The poor economy is largely to blame, with corporate profits down and unemployment up. But so is a tax code that grows each year with new deductions, credits and exemptions.”

So the Democrats are using the current degraded state of the economy as justification for continued reckless, ineffective spending. And are now prepared to waste the nation's time in a fruitless game of whack-a-loophole instead of reforming the tax code.

Hope. Change.

Alan Dershowitz Explains the Casey Anthony Verdict

He does so rather too well, in my opinion (h/t: Had Enough Therapy?):

Even if it is "likely" or "probable" that a defendant committed the murder, he must be acquitted, because neither likely nor probable satisfies the daunting standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, a legally proper result—acquittal in such a case—may not be the same as a morally just result. In such a case, justice has not been done to the victim, but the law has prevailed.

I say "rather too well" because it brings up that yawning need for justice, and then puts it aside. It names "reasonable doubt" to be a daunting standard, and then fails to tell us just what that standard is. It begs the question: what is "reasonable" doubt?

We say we it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to incarcerate one innocent man. But is that what the system does? Or does it let ten guilty men who can afford lawyers go free, and incarcerate ten innocent poor men? And if it does, then whom does the system really serve?

I bet Alan Dershowitz knows, even if he ain't sayin'.

"White Girl Bleeds a Lot"

Over at Other McCain, the blunt truth of "youths" engaging in mob violence yields another:

“Liberals believe ‘racist’ is the antonym of ‘Democrat.’”

Indeed.

EJ Dionne Doesn't Know What the American Revolution Was About...

Because, if he did, he'd know that if we were back in Boston in 1773, he'd be a Tory.

The American Revolution was not merely directed against monarchy. In the 169 years that the Thirteen Colonies existed, not a single monarch ever set foot in any one of them. No monarch ever made himself personally noxious to the American people.

What the American Revolution attacked was arbitrary authority, those "multitudes of new offices" that act beyond the scope of any public consent. That we have an elected Congress does not instantaneously legitimize whatever that Congress may decide to do. That is what the Founders understood, and what the Tea Party understands: that any government becomes illegitimate the instant that the people so decide.

The levels of taxation do not matter if the people no longer wish to pay them. Vague, self-serving remonstrances about measures for "the public good" do not matter if the people consider them contrary to their their own good. Popular rule does not mean merely elections, it means a government in the role of a servant, not a parent. As soon as those in office start believing they know the public good better than the public, then they have exceeded their brief, and it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish said offices.

Because a little Revolution every now and again is a healthy thing.

2012: Year of the "RAAAAACIST!"

Over at Is This Blog On, the owner gets called a Klansman for suggesting that Michelle Obama isn't as toned and healthy as everyone says she is.

No, really.

Here, his response, wherein you can read my comment.

Is it just me, or is this the only rhetorical hill they have left to die on?

California Tries to Make Amazon to Collect Sales Taxes...

...Amazon says "No thanks."

It's like Sacramento has a Death Wish or something.

Walter Russel Mead on Al Gore

Read the Whole Thing, but here's the Knife Point:

The green movement’s core tactic is not to “hide the decline” or otherwise to cook the books of science. Its core tactic to cloak a comically absurd, impossibly complex and obviously impractical political program in the authority of science. Let anyone attack the cretinous and rickety construct of policies, trade-offs, offsets and bribes by which the greens plan to govern the world economy in the twenty first century, and they attack you as an anti-science bigot.
To argue with these people about science is to miss the core point. Even if the science is exactly as Mr. Gore claims, his policies are still useless. His advocacy is still a distraction. The movement he heads is still a ship of fools.

And that's where environmentalism fundamentally errs. They cannot trust that humans, left to their own devices, will solve a problem. They insist on slapping some make-up on the Hegelian God-State, that it might fix it for us.

I Hate HOA's...

...and this is why. In fairness to them, they're not denying the guy the right to fly the flag, just to have a flagpole, because they have rules about that sort of thing.

And that's the problem.

Who's goddamn business is it if a man puts a flagpole in his yard? How does that affect the property values of the nighborhood? It doesn't. It's just another example of how HOA's, and their architectural review boards, have turned into petty bourgeois soviets.

Neighbors have the right to insist that a man keep his his house in good order. They don't have the right to tell him how he may decorate it. To insist otherwise is to claim the right to enforce your own aesthetic -- and a boring, uptight, nerdy one at that -- on others.

The suburbs are never going to be perfect. There's always going to be that one family that paints a faux-Tudor bright canary yellow and replaces his front yard with a basketball court. The idea that I should do any more than shake my head at this, so long as he mows his lawn, is deeply offensive to me. I don't have the time to get that involved in the lives of others, and I deeply distrust anyone who does.

So all you prickly little turds who so busily furrow your brow anytime someone adds a privacy fence, who insist on saying "we have rules" to govern every aspect on home maintenance: Fuck. You. I pray earnestly for the Lord to deliver upon you a plague of silverfish and septic tank bursts unto the fourth generation.

Europe Points the Way

Netherlands abandoning multiculturalism

At some point, two peoples occupying the same land either blend, or fight. Looks like the Dutch just figured out which one was happening.

Carville's Razor

"Forget red and blue states in the next election. The real divide might be between fossil fuels states and the states still trying to break wind for their energy and economy."

That there's funny, I don't care how broke you are. Oh, and read the whole thing.

The New York Times on Freedom and Equality, 1860 edition

This post at Protein Wisdom, about the bipolar interpretations of the Constitution (Shorter Fareed Zakaria: If a document ever changes, then any change is a good one), brings up the old canard, that "The Constitution said blacks were three-fifths of a person." In the comments, dicentra points out this:

Three out of five SLAVES were counted for apportionment.
Free blacks in the north were counted normally.
Important distinction

This led me to Google "free blacks in the south" to see what popped up. I found a few historyish web sites that made various claims (free black property owners in some northern cities could vote, free blacks in the South lived in fear, but a few became plantation owners) without showing their evidence. But then I stumbled upon this February 17, 1860 editorial in The New York Times (interesting to note just how old the New York Times is). As an expression of a thoroughly middleground viewpoint between slaveholders and abolitionists, it fascinates.

Here, the beginning:

New York Republicans...

...are apparently even more impotent than the Maryland variety, which put the kibosh on gay marriage this past winter.

Equality Über Alles, New York

Yeah, that should stop the demographic slide.

49 States Permit Concealed Carry! Except They Don't.

Everybody's all excited that Wisconsin passed its Concealed Carry Law, with the accompanying statistic that it joins 48 other states, leaving only poor Illinois the ugly girl at the party. As Frank Fleming puts it:

Not surprising that Illinois is the last total hold out on conceal carry. When you have whole cities run by criminals, last thing you want is honest citizens being armed.

Unfortunately, like most statistics, this one is hogwash. How do I know this? Because I live in The People's Republic of Greater Baltimoria Maryland, where concealed carry is marginally more legal than medicinal marijuana.

Here's the skinny:

The "may issue" is more often "no way". The categories for "may issue" are: making deposits; receiving money or cash flow; professional activities like doctors or pharmacies; correctional officers; former police officer; private detective and personal protection. For personal protection there must be documented evidence of recent threats, robberies, and/or assaults, supported by official police reports or notarized statements from witnesses. This state also requires permits for body armor.

For all practical purposes, that means no concealed carry. Let's not get all worked up in our triumphalism, shall we?

Frank Fleming Asks the Hard Afghanistan Questions

I’m confused on what the Democrat narrative on Afghanistan is now. The war in Iraq distracted from fleeing Afghanistan?

For more, see here.

E.J. Dionne Brims with Sound and Fury on Voter ID Issue, Signifies Nothing

I promised a Fisking, and yeah, a Fisking I shall deliver:

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

Right. Because when the corrupt regimes of "emerging democracies" steal elections, they do it by requiring people to identify themselves as residents and legal voters. Boss Tweed and Saddam Hussein loved that ruse.

Although I certainly consider the Left's whining on this subject to be "barely a whimper."

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

EJ Dionne Warms Up The Wasserman-Schultz Narrative

Clearly this is becoming a thing. I may have to fisk Dionne again.

Althouse: "he himself propagates racism in the form of an assumption that black people have trouble performing the simplest task."

Welcome to the party, pal!

I Always Liked Lamar Alexander...

Niche tax breaks targeted; Senate kills ethanol credit

Alexander was instrumental in bringing this subsidy down. Quoth he:

“At a time when we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend, it is a good time to take a hard look at unwarranted tax breaks, and one appropriate use of those funds is to reduce the deficit,” Alexander said Thursday.
“I am looking at energy tax breaks. I am opposed to permanent subsidies for energy as a general matter. I am in favor of jumpstarting new technologies such as electric cars, helping the next few nuclear plants get off the ground, but I am opposed to, for example, a permanent ethanol subsidy and a permanent subsidy for windmills,” Alexander added.

If it needs a subsidy, then it doesn't work.

How's that "Reset Button" Working Out, Obama?

The Czechs are now withdrawing from our missile-defense compact. Appeasing Russia tends to make Eastern Europe nervous. Who knew?

Knife point:

“I’m not surprised by the decision,” said Jan Vidim, a lawmaker in the lower house of the Czech Parliament. “The United States has been and will be our crucial strategic partner but the current administration doesn’t take the Czech Republic seriously.”

The man who promised to heal our international relations is now losing us allies that the Dum Cowboy gained for us.

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. Remains Awesome

His attack ad:



Before you call racism, note all the honky criminals, such as Capone and Manson, whose pictures float in an out whilst the gangbangers bang their gong.

Before you call sexism, the content is no different from what routinely played on MTV, back when MTV played videos. Most of that content is defended on the grounds that it is at least partially tongue-in-cheek. As Chuck D put it "When a man says 'nigga buggin'' he's saying a lot of things beside 'nigga buggin''." As the whole point of this ad is to take that content and hold it up to ridicule, the defense should apply even more. So who're the real sexists? The people who mock gangsters and the way gangsters treat women, or the people who celebrate them?

And before you punt and call this ad "Willie Horton on steroids" be ready to have the facts at hand. It's not 1988 anymore; the Internet exists.

How Not to Be Crazy

Frank Fleming schools the net loons. Plus this dig:

If you want a role model, try to be more like Andrew Sullivan. When it was revealed in 2008 that Bristol Palin was pregnant and thus couldn’t physically have given birth to Trig Palin, even the most hardcore conspiracy theory nuts gave up on that one, but not Sullivan. He stuck with it despite it being “the government is concealing the fact that 2 + 2 = 5!” crazy. And yet he’s still treated by many as a serious pundit because he has the discipline to make it so it’s not blatantly obvious to a casual reader that he’s Kleenex-boxes-for-shoes, the-squirrels-are-spying-on-me, kung-fu-fighting-invisible-ninjas crazy.

Sarah Palin: Inching Closer to the White House, One Media Attack at a Time

It's getting so bad, even Ashton Kutcher has had enough.

Now some of this is due to the fact that Kutcher is a celebrity and has, at best, an ambiguous relationship with the media: he needs them and despises them at the same time. But we all have our tipping points. How long before the relentless determination to unmask this woman makes her candidacy an inevitability?

Here's What I Don't Understand About NOW...

Look, nobody likes throwing an ally overboard. I get that. But when even his fellow congressional Democrats are calling for his resignation, why does the local NOW chapter keep supporting him?

“But he happens to be one of the best politicians out there, so we’re in a bad position. We’re trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Is it really so hard to find another person in the NY Democratic Party (or the NY Republican Party) who'll be a reliable abortion vote?

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Didn't Mean What She Said, And She Totally Meant It

She walks back the Jim Crow label, and then proceeds to repeat the substance:

I don't regret calling attention to the efforts in a number of states with Republican dominated legislatures, including Florida, to restrict access to the ballot box for all kinds of voters, but particularly young voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Because young voters, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans don't have/can't possibly be expected to verify their identity. Except of course, when they drive, drink, open checking accounts, start jobs, or do anything else.

But Republicans are still racists. Because, shut up.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is a RAAAAACIST

She's going to have fun being the bete noire of the rightosphere. She's got the silly name, and she put her foot in her mouth so far during WeinerGate that she swallowed her own knee Game On.

Is This Blog On has the skinny:

About 25 percent of African-American voters don’t have a valid photo I.D. I mean – and – and the reason it’s similar to a poll tax is because you’ve got the expense. You’ve got the effort.The – there’s difficulties for s- many people in getting photo I.D. So, you’re literally just throwing a barrier in the way of someone who’s trying to exercise their right to vote.

Now it would seem that W-S is speaking on behalf of African-Americans, which would seem to preclude all accusations of racism. But such childish remonstrances will not deflect from the obviousness of Debbie's White Privilege. I will prove it five ways, one for each of the A's in "RAAAAACIST":

The Hypocrisy Defense.

Ace, his Ewok-mouth still dripping with the gore of Anthony Weiner's reputation, launches into the inevitable Hypocrisy Defense of MSM scandal-bias:

For one thing, look, idiots: Every politician in this country, including your precious Democrats, runs on a platform of helping families. Show me the politician who doesn't. Since something like 65% of the country is part of a current family (I just made that up, shut up) it would be insane not to make promises to such a huge swathe of voters.

And if you claim otherwise, show me the Democratic politicians running expressly on an anti-family platform. Okay, that's too much; how about show me one who's running on a family-neutral platform?

And that's just the beginning. Read the whole thing.

Weiner didn't resign because Democrats don't go down for things like this. Republicans do. And it's not just because of the MSM's twisted logic. It's because Republican voters really do care about their elected representatives personal morality, and Democratic voters basically don't. So sins that would have brought down Eisenhower or Reagan leave Clinton or Gore virtually untouched. Now if Anthony Weiner had said the N-word...

Obama: I Fixed the Economy, But It's Not My Fault.

Daily Caller:

“Recovering from that [Bush-era] body-blow will be uneven… there are going to be times where we are making progress, but people are still skittish and nervous and the markets get skittish and nervous, and so they pull back because they’re still thinking about the trauma of this two-and-a-half years ago,” he said.
Then he suggested the drama-seeking media has a negative role too.
“Economic data that in better times would pass without comment, now suddenly people wonder well are we going to go back to this terrible crisis and all that affects consumer confidence; it affects business confidence; it affects the federal markets,” he said.
However, the White House’s task is to rise above the daily drama, Obama said, as he returned to the standard themes of his stump speech.

The economy is all your fault, America. If you people would just stop losing your jobs, the economy would be fine. I mean, did you look in your other pants?

“And so our task is to not panic, not to overreact, to make sure that we’ve got a path forward as how we make our economies competitive, making sure that we are with dealing with the structural issues and basic fundamentals that will allow us to grow and create a good, sound business environment so America for example, the need for us to get a handle on our debt and our deficit is going to be important. Making sure that our investments in education and clean energy and infrastructure and how we are going to do that.”

That's right, we're not going to do something panicky and ill-thought, like spend a trillion dollars. We're going to do something forward-thinking and robust, which will help us get our debt under control, like spend another trillion dollars.

GOP Applies the O'Rourke Circumcision Precept

"You can take 10% off the Top of Anything."

It would be nice if they were going to slice everything quickly. It would also be nice if they were ready to slice whole departments from the executive branch. But I'll take half a loaf.

If you don't get the reference, you need to read Parliament of Whores. Or any O'Rourke for that matter.

Krauthammer and Will Earn the Animus of Other McCain's Commenters

They are snobs, elitists, slide-rule minds in a Twitter world. And why?

They don't much care for Sarah Palin.

I'm not going to be impressed with Palin until her defenders can do something other than wave the bloody shirt like they were defending Acre from Saladin. If she is in fact, good enough, smart enough to be President, how's about forwarding some evidence to underscore that assertion?

Or you know, just keep doing this.
Worked like gangbusters for Christine O'Donnell.

Anthony Weiner: The Stupid Continues UPDATED

Another woman comes forward with Weiner pics.

That line about being hacked pranked joshed with sure is workin' out for ya.

UPDATE: And another... 

AND ANOTHER: Game Over. 

Palin's Hokey-Pokey

I've never quite bought the premise that Sarah Palin is best suited to "that space between celebrity and conservative rabble-rouser." Her fame comes entirely from being a politician martyred by the Right's bete noire, the MSM. At some point, she's going to have to put her whole self into the Presidential Race, or her whole self out. If she chooses the latter, the spotlight's glare will finally turn away from her.

Mad Anthony Wiener

Had Enough Therapy proffers an insightful evaluation of the unfortunately surnamed congressman:

As it happened, Weiner felt neither regret nor remorse. He actually tried to justify his appalling behavior on the grounds that he felt so strongly about the topic that he simply could not control his emotions.

Thereby, Weiner was falling back on an excuse that has been enshrined by the therapy culture.

That culture tells you that you should not repress your emotions. Thus it encourages and values the full and open expression of emotion, come what may.

Do not fear offending people; do not fear being overly dramatic. If you feel very strongly about something, let fly, let ‘er rip, give ‘em hell.

On that fateful afternoon on the House floor Mad Anthony did just that.
As the slightly dated vernacular would have it, he let it all hang out.

The nickname of "Mad Anthony" is likewise too good to pass up.

European Disunion, Commonsense Political Thought

New Blogrollery:

Insty linked the Blog of the Hour:

One of the fundamental problems with politicians is their ability to conceive ideas above their station, to take on vague challenges and ill-considered objectives that, humans being what they are and the world being what it is, are simply impossible to achieve. Modern political discourse is filled with such ideas: the abolition of poverty, the ending of racism, complete egalitarianism in race, colour, and creed. The only thing these goals have in common is that they are all equally unattainable, from a purely realistic standpoint. To achieve them you'd have to do nothing less than completely subvert human nature; and not even the Soviet Union could do that.

Indeed. His nom de plume, Gallowglass, refers to the warriors of ancient Ireland, who threw out the Vikings at Clontarf in 1014. I salute both.

Commonsense Political Thought did me the courtesy of linking my fisking of Lynne Mucken after excorciating it himself. I like to return such favors.

Quiet Progress in Afghanistan

A tonic to the general cries of doom and gloom in the graveyard of empires: (H/T: Chequerboard)

The United Nations Security Council, who has issued almost 40 quarterly reports on the situation in Afghanistan since 2001, most recently reported in March that "the number of districts under insurgent control has decreased.… As a result of the increased tempo of security operations in northern and western provinces, an increasing number of anti-Government elements are seeking to join local reintegration programs.… In Kabul, the increasingly effective Afghan national security forces continue to limit insurgent attacks."

If current trends continue, the Invincibility of Insurgency will take another, hopefully final, blow.