Rally Check

Thanks.  I needed that.

4. We are outworking, outthinking and outbreeding our withered, hateful, failed opponents. They are defending the status quo, and who is happy with that? The trends go our way. Look at the loser they are wheeling out in 2016 – an elderly, hypocritical cryptolibfascist email-shredder reeking of corruption and decay, whose satyr of a husband will undermine her by nailing every tramp he can get his gnarled paws on from now until election day. Bring her on. Oh yeah, we’re ready for Hillary.

[Emily Litella Voice]"Never mind"[/Emily Litella Voice]

Hungry for follow up on another dangerous non-Muslim American terror group that the Obama administration warned us about?

I posted here a couple of years ago: Men Are Not Potatoes: I Know You Are But What Am I?

And checking back in, it seems that the case, of course, was overblown and yielded essentially nothing.


So we have a couple of morons with an illegal Class 3 and an unregistered other gun.  Stupid, but hardly a conspiracy.  Good job, FedGov.  Now let's work harder on those Muslim space initiatives for NASA.

Merry Taxmas?

When I first read this one yesterday, I really thought it was a spoof that had gotten through, like when people get up in arms about an Onion article. But as far as I can tell it's real.

Obama is the Grinch.

The Hot Air article pretty much says it all:

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

... but I just wanted to share it around. Almost makes me want to get fitted for a Wookiee suit.

Shut Down

Well, the MN state government is shut down, whatever that means. Dem Governor Dayton, pop-eyed crazoid that he is, refused to compromise with the Repub state houses and for the want of (last I heard) closing a $38 million dollar gap in plans, the vast Inefficiency Engine that is MN state government is shut down.

Basically it boiled down to Dayton wanting to increase spending (by ridiculous amounts) and raise taxes to pay for it, and the repubs wanting to close the state deficit and decrease spending to pay for it. The details are detaily but that's the gist of it. And of course, republicans are making their stand because they're bad people that want to do bad things.

I know it's early, but so far I'm okay with it.

If You Aren't Already A Libertarian...

Check out this transcript from the Ohio Supreme Court, in which it takes 10 pages of questions and answers for a clerk making 64k a year to admit if his office has a photocopier or not:

Marburger: During your tenure in the computer department at the Recorder's office, has the Recorder's office had photocopying machines?

Cavanagh: Objection.

Marburger: Any photocopying machine?

Patterson: When you say "photocopying machine," what do you mean?

Marburger: Let me be -- let me make sure I understand your question. You don't have an understanding of what a photocopying machine is?

Patterson: No. I want to make sure that I answer your question correctly.

Cavanagh: Dave, I'll object to the tone of the question. You make it sound like it's unbelievable to you that he wouldn't know what the definition of a photocopy machine is.

Marburger: I didn't ask him to define it. I asked him if he had any.

Patterson: When you say "photocopying machine," what do you mean?

Marburger: Let me be clear. The term "photocopying machine" is so ambiguous that you can't picture in your mind what a photocopying machine is in an office setting?

Patterson: I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.

Marburger: Well, we'll find out. If you can say yes or no, I can do follow-ups, but it seems -- if you really don't know in an office setting what a photocopying machine is, I'd like the Ohio Supreme Court to hear you say so.

 Go read the whole thing. It gets better.

When You Have An Empty Hole, Everything Looks Like A Congresscritter

So now that the Chilean miners don't need their hole anymore, I think we should just send an email to every Congresscritter telling them that at the bottom of the hole are

1) $1 million in untraceable donations
2) a photo of their electoral opponent with a hooker.

Wait a couple of days, plug the hole, and "I'll have a Coke, then."

His Congressman-Fu Is ... Weak

Well hello there, Mr. Soon-To-Be-Ex-Congressman! (Hat Tip to Breitbart's Big Government)

Near as I can tell he tried both his Congressman-Fu hand strike and his Congressman-Jedi Mind trick ("who are you?"), but neither one served to do anything but drain hit points from his election chances this November.

As blog-buddy Borepatch has coined - "The Dinosaurs smell change on the air, and roar their defiance."

But this should also serve as another brick in the ziggurat of warning We the People are constructing: Careful out there, pols - we are watching. We're ALL watching now, and we're watching ALL of you.

Slaughter on Reconciliation Hill

So let me get this straight:

First, Obama campaigns on health care (2008).

Second, soon after inauguration, he calls for passage of massive health care reform in a speech to a joint session of Congress.

Third, he tells Congress he wants a bill before their August recess. That doesn't happen.

Fourth, during the summer the actual legislators get in front of their actual constituents and catch holy living hell. The legislators are not amused, but then, neither are their constituents.

Fifth, the House passes their bill, which everyone hates, late on a Saturday night by a handful of votes, including one Republican.

Sixth, the Senate passes their bill, which everyone hates, on Christmas fucking Eve, on a strict party line vote - not a single Republican votes for it.

(Thieves in the night reference, anyone?)

Seventh, Obama and his sled dogs start whining that Republicans haven't put forth any of their own ideas. This is absolutely true except for the fact that it's absolutely false, seeing as the Republicans have at least three proposed bills they've put forward regarding health care reform.

(Lying sacks of crap reference, anyone?)

Eighth, Scott Brown (R) campaigns loud and strong in the Special Senate election in MA on being the 41st Senate vote to stop the current health care mess and wins handily.

Ninth, Obama says he wants a bill to sign by his 2010 State of the Union address, but that doesn't happen.

Tenth, as Spring claws its way out from under the snowpack and the Congressional Spring Recess approaches, during which legislators will once again be forced to suffer the indignity of being bothered by their constituents, Obama has once again signaled a deadline for health care reform - March 18th.

Eleventh, To meet this new deadline our Congressional betters have come up with a great idea - reconciliation:

Instead of using the standard rules of the House passing a bill, the Senate passing a bill, and then voting on a new bill that both houses agree upon, this pack of feral Antoinettes wants the Senate to use a budgetary rule to pass a non-budgetary bill with less than 60 votes in the Senate, and the House to pass the Senate's bill unchanged, trusting that they can attend to all the nasty details of disagreement "afterwards". All of which brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies: Rochefort in 1973's The Three Musketeers: "Once in the Bastille, there is no 'afterwards'."

House members are right to be wary of agreeing to temporary lodgings in the Senate's Bastille.

Twelth, the latest option that's floated to the top of the bowl had been proposed by Congresscritter Louise Slaughter (D NY) who, as Chair of the House Rules committee, proposed that the whole bill could be considered passed in House if the House merely voted to approve changes that the Senate proposed to make. In other words, you don't have to read the whole thing before you sign it, just the parts I rewrote. Now, that pig's anus of an idea was strangled yesterday in its crib by the Senate parliamentarian (The what? I asked myself - Who are these nerds?), but the fact that they would have considered it put them in the grand position explained over on the Corner yesterday:

Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it. Surely it’s time to start over.

Also, it shows just how desperate the Dems are, how inured from the public will, and how unwedded they are to Democratic principles. They want it, their leader wants it, so it's going to happen, natch.

I barely remember why I started this gambol through the splashy sewer pipe of "Health Care Reform, Or Else", but here I am a coincidental 12 steps later without a decent Alcoholics Anonymous joke and a feeling of sick ridiculousness pervading my being.

Do they really think we're that stupid? I think, Yes.

Are they really that stupid? I think, Yes.

Are they such committed leftists that they are willing to throw away a whole slew of careers, a presidency, and probable control of both houses of Congress over a nation-wrecking solution to a problem that doesn't exist? I think, Yes.

Yikes.

The Hell...?

Are they kidding? Doesn't "No" mean "No"? Trying to fuck this particular beachball has made these congresscritters insane. Absolutely insane.

Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt:

"Senator Jon Kyl relays reports --very reliable reports according to Kyl-- that Congressional Democrats have indeed decided to use reconciliation to resurrect the remains of Obamacare, despite Massachusetts, despite the public's continuing and still growing dislike of the bill, and despite the jam-down ultra-partisanship such a naked power play and perversion of Senate rules that such an approach entails. I will interview Kyl in the second hour, and a transcript will be posted shortly thereafter."

This has to be wrong.

Right?

With Bended Knee

So Squish-face thinks apologies are due? Really?

Asked if Wall Street executives testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday owe the country an apology, Gibbs said it seemed to him an apology was the least the executives should offer.

I'd ask, rhetorically of course, "who do these people think they are?" but I think we all know exactly who they think they are. Hopefully 2010 is the year we can hold the tide and prove to them exactly who they aren't.

Pay No Attention to the New Internationalist Man Behind the Curtain!

So Good King Hopenchange took a minute out of his busy schedule of kicking America in the nuts to Executive Order away the last restrictions on Interpol operating in the U.S.:

On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

But yeah, he's definitely not an "America second!" radical, nosirree.

(thank you, NRO's The Corner)

So Tell Me, Senator Cheap Date

If you aren't listening to me, why should I listen to you?

At least it's nice to know that the Dems are ideologically pure: sacrificing political careers willy-nilly for a hefty step towards wrecking the nation and turning it socialist.

And of course Ze Media will continue to ignore the particulars of a fetish-Senate that lurks in and out the back doors in the dead of night to pass their diktat, but I guarantee you that the first guy who drives his tractor into the middle of the Maine Senate House, or whatever, and demands redress from the Federal Kingship in the open light of day, will be a 24x7 poster boy for the radicalism of the right.

That Was Easy

Here in the not-potato fields, we sometimes fret and froth about that bugaboo of all bugaboos, taxes. No one truly likes to be taxed, but I think most folks realize that some levy is necessary to keep the Wheels of State crunching and grinding away. Personally, I'm okay with an income tax (I know, much like a dog that grows up with clipped ears is okay with them), and if left 100% to my own devices I prefer a 100% flat tax. So what would a federal tax look like in Smashtopia?

My team of experts would figure out what the magic # is for a flat tax rate. To keep it simple and round, let's pretend that the magic # is somewhere around 15%. I've read as low as 13% and as high as 20%, but the Federal Gubmint in Smashtopia would have rather less on its plate than the current one, so let's play at 15%. The tax structure would look like this:

Rate for "top" 10% of income earners: 20%

Rate for "middle" 80% of income earners: 15%

Rate for "bottom" 10% of income earners: 10%

All "second taxes" - cap gains, etc., are taxed at one tier lower (= zero tax on "second taxes" for "bottom")

Corporations play by the same rules.

And that's it. No exceptions. No exemptions.

"But Smasher, that's a progressive tax - it's not fair!"

That's right - it's a "flat, progressive" tax combo. But everyone pays, so everyone's invested in the idea of more efficient government, and the little bits of progressivism are blatant, unfair, and simple to see. And simple to calculate.

If states want to do something similar and throw in their own types of exemptions to encourage business, marriage, home ownership, whatever, then fine, have at it. But the Federal version stays simple and clean.

I like it.

Welcome to Idiot-Ville. Population: NPR

I heard this little gem last night on NPR when I was driving home. During a discussion of attacks on illegal immigration in Long Island, one of the interviewees claimed that using the phrase 'illegal immigrant' caused violence.

The story explains that Steven Levy, the Suffolk county chief executive is against illegal immigration.

Levy has taken a strong stance against illegal immigration, but he rejects efforts to connect those policy positions with acts of violence against Hispanics.

"It's a real disservice to try to say these things only happen in those areas where there might be a debate over the issue of illegal immigration," says Levy. "It's dangerous, because it gives the impression that if you don't have a debate over illegal immigration, Latinos are safe. That's not necessarily true."

Levy points out that even cities that welcome illegal immigrants struggle with crimes of racial hatred.

But Phil Ramos, who represents eastern Long Island in the New York State Assembly, says Levy does not appreciate that his words have violent consequences.


"If you say the word 'illegal' enough times as buzzwords in your speeches, these people cease to be human beings," says Ramos. "And that's what leads a group of six or seven young men to hunt an Ecuadorean man on the street like an animal, and just stab him and kill him."

Ramos was a police officer here for 20 years before he retired and ran for public office.

 Yeah, this makes sense -- there's now no difference between a man who claims "Illegal immigration is a violation of our laws and causes severe problems in our society" and a guy who says "lets beat illegal immigrants to death."

For what its worth, I'm against both illegal immigration AND beating innocent people to death.

Only a few moments later, the same program did a story on new breast cancer screening recommendations from a US Government task force. 

The message that breast cancer screening saves lives has taken root, and powerful breast cancer advocates who promote this message have earned women's trust. Perhaps that's why there's such a backlash against new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that advise against routine screening for women under age 50.

The task force recommendations were based on science studies that evaluated the effectiveness of mammograms. In one study, researchers determined that for every 1,900 women in their 30s and 40s who are invited to have a mammogram, one death from breast cancer was prevented.

When public health types look at these numbers, they conclude that it's not necessary to test every woman, every year — given the risks that accompany testing, including false positives, anxiety and scar tissue from biopsies.

But here's the rub: Individual women don't tend to think like public health folks. The 1 in 1,900 figure means little to a woman who has a sister, cousin or friend with the disease.

Nearly every woman interviewed for this story was profoundly hacked off, and I bet you that every single one would also be in favor of government run healthcare. Of course, nobody made the (to me) blindingly obvious connection that THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT RUNS HEALTHCARE.

I Hold These Truths to be Pretty Darn Clear (Even If Nobody Else Does)

While there is plenty to argue about today, these issues should not be on the list.
Afghanistan.
Somehow we confused fighting a war in Afghanistan with our national interest, which is keeping the US safe by killing terrorists. Since the Islamic fundamentalist insurgency is convinced the United States is fighting an global anti-Muslim war, could we find some way to fight them that doesn't hand them a propaganda victory every time we drop a bomb?

Iran
 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does say some crazy shit, but that doesn't mean his opponent Mousavi is a noble humanitarian. Mousavi was Prime Minister when Iran founded the Hezbollah, if that gives you some clue to his political leanings. 

I know lazy reporters call him  a reformer, but he just wants to make Iran a better theocracy, not turn it into the 51st state. If this guy was running the show in Tehran, the Flying Spit Index might dip, but other than that, we wouldn't notice.

Two more things from the bleeding obvious pile.
1) Iran's internal struggles are none of our business. Can we focus on their nuclear program?
2) Even if Mousavi was Thomas Jefferson come again, any support from the US would hurt him way more than it helped.


Back Home
The US is a not-particularly-ideological center-right country and that isn't going to change. What's new is we're now an angry center-right country. Gas prices are going nowhere good, the house is an unreliable ATM, people are getting laid off all over the place, and we're running two wars.

The defining political characteristic of 2009 is not a resurgence of racism or socialism*, but anger. The electorate threw Bush out of office, and is impatiently waiting for Obama to fix things.
The key to political victory in the next couple years is figuring out why the electorate is angry (not hard) and what to do about it (very hard). Will the voters give them chance? Angry people are tough to predict. Anyone sitting in Congress or the Oval Office should try very hard not to make them angrier.


*All the bloviating about racism and socialism is "fun", but ultimately pointless. Being nasty has a long and glorious tradition in this Republic. Go read what Benjamin Bache wrote about George Washington in the Aurora after the Jay Treaty was signed, if you don't believe me.

Also, most of the internet political readers ARE ideological and do have a clear political philosophy, so if you're angry about creeping socialism, and have proof, you may indeed be livid, but I'm not talking about you. You've probably been mad for a while.  We are hugely outnumbered by the not-particularly-ideological and we live in their world.

Stop That Pigeon!

Just a breaking wave of murky thought really, after some reading of various blog thingies and listening to various radio thingies for a week:

Congressional Term Limits. Now. Please.

Yes, I know it's not in the Constitution, and I know the Founders set it up so we'd get the government we deserve, but holy flippin' mackerel give me an Amendment petition I can sign or something.

Frank, Dodd, Kennedy, Voinovich, Byrd, and I'm sure a host of others from EITHER party (as well as past stars like Cunningham) are living proof that ten years or so is long enough for anyone to serve in either house of Congress. No matter what their intentions or goals, the system proves to be more powerful than their desires or backbones more often than not, and unless we take away the ability to gerrymander they will continue to be children deciding how many of our cookies to eat before dinner.

Enough.

Built for Suck

I was going to post this as a comment at Tam's blog in response to this post but I put it here instead.

Lately I have come to realize that the Founders set up a system that only runs as intended when it is filled with people who hate that very system.

In other words, you staff a curdled poop factory with people who really love curdled poop, and pretty soon it's running three shifts and buying up the land next door for another building.

The Electoral College and You

Continuing my recent habit of perusing old haunts and lifting posts of mine that I like, here we have an entry of mine in a thread that posed "the question that won't go away": Is the Electoral College past its prime?
=====================================

The EC is "better" than a popular vote because we already HAVE a branch of government completely determined by popular vote and that's the House of Representatives.

[pedantry]
I've said it a million times but some folks don't seem to grasp the simple reality that our system was DESIGNED, it wasn't stumbled upon.[/pedantry]

Legislative Branch

The House, the PEOPLES' House, is strictly proportional to population - the more you have, the more representin' you get. And its members are elected by direct and popular vote and serve 2 year terms. Bob Jones gets 85,000 votes and Jane Smith gets 85,001 votes? Say hello to Representative Jane.

The Senate is not propotional, it is uniform and "fair" - 2 Senators per state, 6 year terms, no matter how big or small your state is. Senators were originally appointed by the individual state Senates until the 17th Amendment. Now they are directly elected like Representatives.

Executive Branch

The President is elected to a 4 year term via a weighted system whereby appointed and elected Electors cast their votes as determined by popular vote within their states. The total number of electoral votes in a state is based on the sum of its Senators and Congressmen. Most states are "winner take all" states for their Electoral votes. The Legislative branch breaks ties.

Judicial Branch

Nine Supreme Court justices, appointed by the executive, serving life appointments.

If you take various parts of this system and make it based on popular vote where it wasn't designed to be such, it throws off the concepts of "checks and balances" that were originally set up with multiple branches subject to various and separate forces and fads for different lengths of time.

It's just a bad idea.

Another Member of the Reality-Based Community

Recently we've heard a lot of self-indulgent blather from the left wing on how 'free market capitalism is dead.' I've posted about this before, mostly because it presented an overwhelming temptation to call Arianna Huffington nasty names. And in principle, when tempted, I fall.

Anyway, Megan McArdle tackles this issue much better than I did:

Especially odd is the notion that the only tenable position, unless we are to go Marxist, is social democracy. Would we not have had a financial crisis if we'd had really super single-payer health care?

It is true that the belief in both tighter bank regulation and a larger welfare state cluster on the left, but if social democracy is some sort of preventative cure-all, how come the US economy is outperforming places like Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, not to mention the OECD as a whole? Why, if the problem is "American style capitalism", are the biggest GDP declines found elsewhere? I understand that the left finds it politically convenient to link the uninsured and the banking crisis, but this seems only very slightly less silly than blaming it on gay marriage--indeed, looking at the countries worst effected, the latter's correlation seems stronger.

Go read the whole thing.

We're From the Government, and We're Here To Rip You Off

So this AIG shit has me bemused. The government blew a wad of cash into AIG's mouth and now they're pretending to be outraged that AIG decided to spit instead of swallow?

Who cares? There were no rules as to how the money was supposed to be used, it's not really that much overall anyway, and if it was worth $150,000,000,000 to keep AIG unbankrupt then surely it's worth $150,000,000 to keep its key people paid? So I really don't have much respect for the people or the pols who are expressing real or fake outrage.

But just to show that there is no limit to how tyrannical at heart real lefties are, along come some nice people to "explain it to us":

Hat Tip Little Green Footballs.

"Recipients of these bonuses will not be able to keep all of their money," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in an unusually strong threat delivered on the Senate floor.

"If you don't return it on your own, we will do it for you," said Chuck Schumer of New York.

So, get paid money owed to you via legal contract? The Democrats will simply single you out and take it from you.

Govern a state and decide that you don't want to take a shot in the mouth of government cash? Ignore state law and simply bypass the governor.

Show the Democratic presidential candidate up for the socialist he is in public? You will be hunted and attacked by professional media outlets.

Disagree publically with the President's policies? You will be insulted and mocked by name from the podium of the White House Press Secretary.

I wonder, I really wonder, what is going on in the minds of the people who truly hate and fear and loathe President George W. Bush and who now hear the words and witness the actions of a truly thuggish and oppressive government. Do they feel emarrassment? Shame? Outrage? Fear? Or do they not care?

These people have stated clearly and without embarrassment that anything they feel they want to take from you, they will take. They will unashamedly pass laws to take it from you specifically. If you disagree with them or question them you will be mocked or insulted.

I sometimes regret that I never made the time to visit Soviet Russia. The last couple of months make me feel, just a little, like I needn't have bothered.