Say it ain't so......Paul

Lots of excellent material in McLean and Nocera's All the Devils are Here.  In addition to devils there are also a few skeletons: in 1990, for example, Fannie paid Paul Volcker to defend and endorse its low capital standards.  

Even the most 'honorable' and 'incorruptible' of our public 'servants' can be tempted by the incredible wealth and power that accrues to those who manipulate the rules of a continental empire. One more reason to break it up, break it all up.

Hat Tip Marginal Revolution

Boo! The divided government bogeyman

My good friend and principled liberal (as opposed to the Obami version) Ben Knoll says that he quite likes divided government.  I agree with him to a certain degree.  If we have Left Shift, divided government, Right Shift, then perhaps it's OK.  But if it is Left Shift, gridlock, more left shift than all we have is a left rachet.  That being said there is no doubt that the last era of quasi fiscal sanity in this country came under the fairly stable gridlock of Clinton and Gingrich.  Tom Sowell has more.

The fierce moral urgency of ........age

THE HILL: Room At The Top? Not For New Dems: “A younger generation of Democrats is chafing at being asked to stand aside and let a triumvirate of elders keep their leadership positions in the wake of a catastrophic midterm election result. Barring an unexpected shake-up, House Democrats next year will be led by a combination of Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Steny Hoyer (Md.) and James Clyburn (S.C.) — lawmakers who are 70 or older and have served in Congress for decades.” Well, the fierce moral urgency of change was the theme for the last election, not this one . . . .

Hat tip Instapundit

A sign of incipient civilizational collapse

There are few surer signs that things are going badly than a sudden scarcity (hence price rise) in a civilization's essential commodity.  Bacon serves that role in America.  Imagine how big the Republicans would have won had they ended every campaign ad with:  "And to top it off, the price of bacon has doubled!".  Gentlemen:  to your fallout shelters.

THE HORROR: “Has anyone noticed that the price of bacon is going through the roof?”

H/T Instapundit

Instalanche

I've seen these at other places but never had one happen to me.  Thanks Glenn!

To paraphrase Sally Field:  "You read me!  You really read me!"

Wait! I though OJT was the FIRST year of the 'Obama Reign'?

From a Dem insider (well from all of them, really):

“This guy swept to power on a wave of adulation, and he learned the wrong lessons from that,” said a Democratic official who deals frequently with the White House. “He’s more of a movement leader than a politician. He needs someone to kick his ass on things large and small, and teach him to be a politician.”

Well knock me down and make me eat peanuts!  I mean who would have thought that substantive political and executive experience would be a key predictor of success in the most difficult political executive role in the world?  I always thought the key was teleprompter proficiency and academic credentials.

Not greedy, just incompetent

Exonerated. “The chief counsel for the president’s oil spill commission said Monday that concerns about money didn’t drive key decisions made on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the April 20 blowout that caused a massive oil spill and killed 11 people. The conclusion is good news for BP, which has been widely criticized for letting concerns about the roughly $1.5 million a day cost of the drilling rig affect choices that might have prevented the blowout.”

At the end of the day it doesn't matter, yet the constant hysterical left refrain about corporate greed really is belied by the facts.  Indeed I would argue that consumer 'greed' and employee 'greed' and certainly government worker greed (no scare quotes needed) all wildly exceed the corporate kind if only because everyone focuses on the corporate knd.

Stunning but Typical

Green activists give out the figure of 93,000 for deaths attributable to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. The figure favoured by the recent UN investigation is 65.


Unbelievable.  I had to read a UK paper to get this datum.  Never going to hear it from the MSM here.  Read the whole thing on the Daily Telegraph.

This is why my conservative friends and I increasingly distrust the police

And of course the political lawyers who are bribed to pass such venal laws.  There was a time when to be Conservative was to be for 'law and order'.  Well that time has long since passed.  Our police: just bureaucrats with guns.  H/T Carpe Diem

Orlando Sentinel -- "As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend.

It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff's Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area.

In "sweeps" on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with "barbering without a license," a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years."

Josh Barro explains why this is a natural and inevitable consequence of the leftist regulatory state. 

And when everything is against the law, then everyone is a criminal. So this is how liberty dies, one job, one career, one freedom at a time. And we are nearer death than we can possibly believe.

If you like football, you've gotta like this

Another reason to put our political 'renters' in much smaller digs

Their tendency to goose the market with hot liquidity and spending in advance of Presidential election years to maximize the party in power's chance of retaining it.

More ambition checking ambition, more decentralization, less power at the center and less of this immoral (and incredibly unhealthy) binging we'll have.

Former top 10 bank CEO: US Bankruptcy a "mathematical certainty"

Hmm lemme see:  NPV of unfunded future liabilities and debt:  about a hunnert tril, annual income, 4 tril, annual expenses 5 tril, yup, seems about right to me.  Read the rest here.

H/T Al Colby

Manchin to flip?

Newly elected W Va Dem is being courted into flipping Republican.  I wouldn't be surprised if he, Jim Webb and Ben Nelson, all three facing brutal reelection tests in Red states don't flip as soon as they see the tide setting on BHO, in exchange for the forestalling of NRSC support for their challengers.

Well rats do flee sinking ships, don't they?  Hope!  Change!

Art Laffer: "The political class are like bad renters"

I was at a gathering of the Show Me Institute recently.  They were opening their gorgeous new headquarters set in a magnificent late 19th century West End Mansion.  Art Laffer gave some remarks and he said something that I found apt:  "The political class are like bad renters, not knowing if they'll be in power more than two years they spend everything at hand and then some, because to conserve it is to eventually bequeath resources on their adversaries."

The crop that have just been semi-tossed were particularly bad - they've been ripping out the copper plumbing and smashing the furniture for firewood.

It would be great if we could get the lot of them a much smaller, less damage prone dwelling.  How about a supermax cell?

Dick Morris: "Triangulation won't work"

What does he know?

What does he know about triangulation? Dick Morris argues that a "triangulation" strategy—moving to the apparent center by pushing off against both the congressional Dems and GOPs—won't work for Obama because "[t]oday's issues are different ... and don't lend themselves to common ground":

Obama's programs have been so far-reaching and fundamental that any compromise would leave the nation far to the left of where it's always been and wants to be. When he took office, government (federal, state and local combined) controlled 35 percent of the US economy—15th among the two-dozen advanced countries. Now, it controls 44.7 percent, ranking us 7th, ahead of Germany and Britain. So where's the compromise—leave government in control of, say, 40 percent?

And he would know - Speaking of Obama: "I never met such an arrogant man"

Who knew there was someone who could top Michael Bloomberg? “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was taken aback by President Obama’s arrogance, Rupert Murdoch said in an interview with an Australian outlet. Bloomberg described his conversation with Obama as ‘verbal ping-pong,’ Murdoch told the Australian Financial Review, and said he had a ‘pleasant’ day golfing on Martha’s Vineyard with the president. He came back and said, ‘I never met in my life such an arrogant man,’ Murdoch said.”

Interesting Experiment Brewing

Michigan, Illinois, California and New York are all large blue states in serious trouble.  Michigan flipped completely Republican while the 'Rich 3' became completely democrat.  Today, Michigan is the worst off of the four with NY being the healthiest.  What do you think the rankings will be 4 years form now?

I know who I'd bet on.  How about you?

The joy of excellence: eleven year old style

Funny, sad and true.  Read the whole thing.

It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-old boys with the fate of the democratic world, but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things.

My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.

He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could do better. My son, bless him, once remarked to me: “How are you going to play better if nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?” The coach just tells them how well they are playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat, he told them they’d played a great game.

And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place.

Privacy vs. The Internet

Think about it, turn it off

Turn it Off from Nigel Upchurch on Vimeo.

In the long run I'm afraid none of the Social Democracy stuff really works

This plan doesn't work.  We need to come up with a better one.  The level of social chaos created by our arrogant attempts to ordain outcomes is astounding.  We are both far more capable of managing our own lives and far less capable of managing other people's lives than we think.

JAMES JOYNER ON UNWED MOTHERHOOD: “I’m not sure what’s shocking: That the rate for blacks has tripled in my lifetime or that whites have now surpassed the level of pathology Moynihan described.”

Holy Tsunami, Batman, What hath Obama wrought?

“Republicans have more seats in state legislatures than at any time since Reconstruction.”


Wow. 

The rich profligate liberals....against the rest of us

Don't forget Chicago (Illinois), they're as unrepentant and bankrupt as they come.  I can't imagine how this is going to turn out well for the avatars of more 'blueness'.  H/T Instapundit

NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA: Indebted and Unrepentant. “Another division is likely to compete for center stage in the next two years: the split between, on one side, California and New York—two states, deeply in debt, whose wealthy are beneficiaries of the global economy—and, on the other, the solvent states of the American interior that will be asked to bail them out. This geographic division will also pit the heartland’s middle class and working class against the well-to-do of New York and California and their political allies in the public-sector unions.”

The Trash Kampung

When I was a boy I lived in Kebayoran Baru, Indonesia, a suburb south of Jakarta.  Our home was on the last street carved out of the urban village or 'kampung' that stretched seemingly forever.  The kampung was a melange of small but clean tin roofed, concrete floored cottages that were so close together that there were virtually no streets or open spaces to speak of.

Our home had a high wall around it.  In the front there was a part of the wall that was cut out with the wall coming in to form a 'c' shape that opened out to the street.  This is where we dumped our trash.  Our trash was valuable.  Even after our servants had stripped out anything that could be recycled:  cans, paper, cloth, the remaining garbage was prized by the local 'trash kampung'.   You see, the trash kampung 'owned' access to our trash dump and woe betide anyone that stole 'their' garbage.

My friends and I used to ride our bikes through the kampung.  We had fancy "Chopper" bicycles imported from Singapore that probably were worth more than a month's wages to our Indonesian neighbors.  Despite this we were never bothered.  Never even touched.  Sometimes we would ride through the trash kampung.  The 'trash' part of the kampung was a series of wood and tin roofed buildings that paradoxically encircled the only significant open space around.  In it was a large steaming, reeking trash pile upon which dozens of goats, cats and chickens happily scavenged food.  This mass of stench and decay was how they made their living.  And they guarded their access to our waste as if it were gold.

I sometimes think about the trash kampung and what is says about what's really important.  Things that I value such as status and honor and glory and comfort really pale into insignificance when I think about people who were just happy to get the stripped down garbage that 'rich' people and their servants didn't want.  The truth is that as far as I could tell, these scavengers were every bit as moral, honest, true and indeed happy as I.  Yet my trash was their life.

Something to think about next time you take out the trash.

The anatomy of a tragedy: how the left became pro abortion

The Roe V. Wade decision split both parties.  Here's a story of how the Democrats became the party not only of 'the right to choose' but as Daniel Moynihan famously said:  of infanticide.  Truly a tragedy for a party that always styled itself as fighting for the weak and powerless.  The story becomes particularly sad during the Obamacare debate when the last pro life remnant sold their principles for what turned out to be a mess of pottage.

“A generation or two ago, the Republicans were the pro-choice party and the Democrats were considered the pro-life party,” syndicated columnist Mark Shields, a pro-life liberal, told this reporter in a 2004 interview. Planned Parenthood, he notes, was a favorite charity of George H.W. Bush.

Many Democrats, especially Catholic ones, have long liked to portray themselves as guardians of the defenseless and voiceless, and so the pro-life stance seemed natural to them.

In the 95th Congress (1977-78), the Democrats had a 292-seat majority that included an estimated 125 pro-life Democrats. In 1976, then-candidate Jimmy Carter opposed public funding for abortions. Emerging leaders like Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson, Sr. were all originally pro-life.

Even the hard-left was open to a pro-life stance. The Progressive’s September 1980 issue featured dueling articles arguing both the pro-choice and pro-life positions. It also ran an editorial acknowledging deep divides over abortion: “The debate over current public policy toward abortion is one that divides the left, just as it divides others.”

“To pretend otherwise—or to maintain that there is no room for differences on this within the left—is to divide us further and to weaken us in what must be our common resolve to build a world in which freedom of choice and the right to life can coexist.”

The following month the Progressive reported receiving an “almost unprecedented” outpouring of reader mail. Many took the pro-life side.

"This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas."

Peggy Noonan talking about Obama in the WSJ.  When she's on, the lady is ON!

On to the aftermath of the election. On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.

Nancy Pelosi Minority Leader?

They really haven't learned anything, have they?

Seems to be that she’s in good shape. Ed Henry at CNN is reporting the White House will look favorably on her run.

And as to who will be the odd one out now that the Democrats have one fewer leadership spot, a senior Republican Hill staffer e-mails:

Steny, meet Bus.  Bus, meet Steny.
He has no base to turn to – they got wiped out.  Tuesday night clearly taught a lesson to House Democrats, but only to those who got beat.  Pelosi’s position within what remains of her caucus is stronger, as is Clyburn’s. . . Hoyer’s is far, far weaker.

Meanwhile, Pelosi is getting support from some strange places. Like, Rep. Patrick McHenry, Republican from North Carolina’s 10th, who tweeted: “I endorse Nancy Pelosi for Minority Leader.”

Melchior Payli and the roots of the Great Recession

One of the hardest things to do honestly in economics is to sort through all of the arguments and counterarguments about what 'caused' an economic crisis like the Great Recession.  Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that people confuse causes with conditions.  For example, one of the oft cited explanations for the crisis in the media was Wall Street 'greed'.  But I would argue that 'greed' is a constant, built into our very natures and as such cannot be an independent, causal variable in any model of economic behavior.  To argue otherwise is to argue that 'greed' has gotten worse over the past 20 years.  And of course when one makes that argument, I am forced to point out that over the past 20 years the voting and fund raising patterns of Wall Street have shifted from heavily Republican to heavily Democrat.  (Wait, of course Wall Street greed has increased, what was I thinking?)

The other really hard thing to do is to sort through all of the agenda driven ex-post analysis from both the left and right.  Everyone takes some facet of the crisis congenial to their worldview and on this narrow foundation, builds a theoretical castle in the air.  Now unlike Paul Krugman - whose intellect has apparently become completely detached from the beliefs and habits of mind that won him the Nobel - these economists are sincere.  But ex post analysis is fraught with this tendency to breathe one's own exhaust and become progressively more intoxicated by it.  Just ask Al Gore.

The only truly independent way to think about a problem like the Great Recession is to search for economists who made a priori predictions based upon what was known long before the crisis was upon us.  Developing theories and models and predicting the future outcome is a much better test of someone's handle on reality.  Did they get it right?  Why?  What did they get wrong?  Now my leftist friends might say "aha! then the greatest economist and predictor of all time was Karl Marx because he predicted this 'crisis' of capitalism over 150 years ago".  I disagree because I have two additional requirements of economic prognostication:  to make an a priori prediction one must be relatively specific about what is going to happen and how specific policy choices led to specific economic effects.  Secondly I require that the lifetime record of predictions by said economist be good - no lucky guesses.  Nothing that Karl Marx predicted has come to pass and there is no specific analytics to speak of in his work.  Essentially Marxian Economics (as opposed to sociology or psychology) is a black (and bushy bearded) box.

That's why Melchior Payli's work is so interesting.  Professor Payli was a (ahem) University of Chicago economics professor who made some very specific observations about the nature of risk in our banking system and from them made some predictions.  Predictions made seventy years before the crisis that turned out to be eerily accurate.  Here's a brief summary of the WSJ article from Marginal Revolution:

Decades before anybody had ever heard of a mortgage derivative, an economist named Melchior Palyi predicted key causes of the 2008-2009 financial crisis with precision that makes a modern reader's hair stand on end.

His warnings help explain why investors insist on trusting market gatekeepers they know to be fallible—such as policy makers, regulators and credit-ratings firms.

The seeds of today's problem were planted long ago, and its forgotten history holds important lessons. In 1936, as part of reforms under the new Banking Act, the U.S. government mandated that federally regulated banks could no longer hold securities that weren't rated investment-grade by at least two ratings firms.

...Mr. Palyi, then teaching at the University of Chicago, was a vocal skeptic from the outset. Looking back into the 1920s, he found that investment-grade bonds went bust with alarming frequency, often in the same year they were rated. On average, he showed, a bank that followed the new rules would end up with a third of its bond portfolio going into default.

The record was so unreliable that it would be "still more responsible," Mr. Palyi growled, to "stop the publication of ratings altogether." He was especially troubled that the new banking rules switched the responsibility for credit safety from bankers—and even bank regulators—to ratings firms.

"From there," he warned, it "will have to be shifted again—to someone else," presumably taxpayers. Liquidity, Mr. Palyi argued, was being replaced by what he scornfully called "shiftability," a new kind of risk that could someday "be magnified into catastrophic dimensions."

As they say, read the whole thing.

Stunning Video No Point

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Stunning Video No Point

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Bad news for open immigration advocates

Social trust and therefore social cohesion varies widely among ethnic groups even after living in the US for many generations. The groups that are most represented in today's immigration tend to be low trust.  The result?  Declining cohesion and increasing chaos in highly diverse interventionist polities.  More diversity=less trust=less effective 'social' decision making.  Texas becomes the default model in a low trust world.  Sweet.

The power of the Obami

A very deep recession is lasting forever.  Payback is that the Obami got crunched, but people are still hurting.

Republicans have stolen his "Mojo"

H/T Instapundit

DOUG BRINKLEY ON OBAMA: “The worst thing that happened to Obama is he’s lost a lot of his aura. Even his friends think he’s thin-skinned and a bit highfalutin.”

"Mojo? Yes, Mojo, his essence, his life force, his libido, his I don't know what"

Riiiiiigggghhhht

Evidently the NRCC is rootin' for the Democrat in this case.  Gentle people, start your checkbooks.  Just deduct what you would have given to the NRCC and instead give it to the recount effort.  People this obtuse couldn't possibly miss the money.

Yesterday, we appealed to the National Republican Congressional Committee for support, asking if they could contribute to help pay the costs of this recount. Their answer, unfortunately, was, No – that we would have to raise the money to pay for the recount ourselves.

I was afraid that would be their answer. Months ago, I went to Washington and asked the National Republican Congressional Committee and many conservative leaders to help my campaign. Many conservative groups – like the Susan B. Anthony List, Concerned Women of America, Freedom Works, and Sarah Palin’s Sarah PAC all helped, but the NRCC declined. Later, they did support other campaigns in North Carolina – which, unfortunately, lost – but we never received their support. In fact, their spokesman told the press “that the campaign wasn’t ready for prime time” – which actually made it even harder for us to raise money. So, I am doubtful we will get support from the NRCC to help with the expense of the recount.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/gop-establishment-more-of-a-liability-than-the-tea-party-ever-was-106747538.html#ixzz14QwzoOpX

The scientific basis for Comunicato social media endorsement

People get more information from their friends reaction/endorsement than from getting actual factual information about the event.  Therefore if you want to persuade someone of something it is far better to get someone who they know and who has experienced your service to endorse you than to share information with them directly.

Two experiments revealed that (i) people can more accurately predict their affective reactions to a future event when they know how a neighbor in their social network reacted to the event than when they know about the event itself and (ii) people do not believe this. Undergraduates made more accurate predictions about their affective reactions to a 5-minute speed date (n = 25) and to a peer evaluation (n = 88) when they knew only how another undergraduate had reacted to these events than when they had information about the events themselves. Both participants and independent judges mistakenly believed that predictions based on information about the event would be more accurate than predictions based on information about how another person had reacted to it.

Customer Segmentation by Browser - cool

Major consumer companies make different online pricing pitches to you depending upon which browser you use.  I guess there is segmentation based upon the differing browser demographics.  Vy cool.  Our product Ntrinsx has the opportunity to take this to a whole new level.

13 Dead at Fort Riley (sung to the tune of 4 dead in Ohio)

NOT GETTING MUCH MEDIA PLAY, but it’s the one-year anniversary of the Fort Hood Massacre.

Because our elites value those that shriek far more than those who serve.

How many more?

Cui bono works a lot better than Old Tired Categories

State power is always mobilized to benefit those who control the state.  The central genius of our founders was to recognize this truth and to structure our politics so that one group of greedy, cunning rent seekers was counterbalanced by another group with diametrically opposed interests:  States vs. the Feds, one enterprise vs. another.  The result of the erosion of our Federal Constitutional order has been a steady and recently accelerating accumulation of power and wealth at the center which of course has benefited the elites who control it.

Joel Kotkin (moderate Democrat and urbanist) uses this central insight to explain what has happened in our politics over the last two years.  Here's a sample:

These are the groups for whom Obama's persona and policies pack the greatest appeal. Since Obama took office, the prime beneficiary of fiscal and monetary policies has been Wall Street, which has seen a nice 30% rise in the market and record bonuses. Large corporations, which are largely financed by stocks and bonds, have seen their profits soar over 40%, in part due to access to easy money.

The financial boomlet is most marked in key creative class strongholds such as Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco, as well as their surrounding, super-affluent suburbs. The largesse benefits not only the traders, but the high-priced lawyers, accountants and publicists serving the financial elite. It has also benefited the high-end consumer industry, including the arts, which support much of the creative class. Not surpisingly, the Democrats scored well in these areas last night despite the GOP tide.

The creative class also has benefited from the lavish expenditures of public funds to major universities for research. This has lifted the prospects of the professoriate at the elite colleges from which Obama takes much of his advice. Finally the administration has rewarded its friends and funders among Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Once self-described paragons of entrepreneurial risk-taking, they increasingly search out government incentives and subsidies to pay for their large bets on renewable energy technology.

He shows that cui bono transcends ideological labels and 'power to the people' cliches.  The only way to minimize our looting by rent seekers of various flavors is to return to a constitutional order that sets them against each other.  In other words, to break it up, break it all up.  Must read internet.

Remarkably, profoundly, insanely stupid

Obama.  But I repeat myself.  Tunku V. on the Obami neglecting relations with our most natural super power to be ally:  India.  H/T Instapundit.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Obama’s India Problem. “Two years after Bush’s departure from the White House, India is still Bush Country—a giant (if foreign) Red State, to use the American political taxonomy. By that I mean that the political establishment and much of the non-leftist intelligentsiaa still looks back with dewy-eyed fondness to the time when India’s relations with the United States flowered extravagantly under Bush. It wasn’t just a matter of securing a mold-breaking nuclear deal with Washington; it was a case of India dealing, for the first time in the uneven history of its relations with the United States, with an American president who saw India as a partner-in-civilization. . . . Obama has let the alliance with India wither on the vine. This has frustrated India deeply, especially as a perception came to grip New Delhi that some of Obama’s neglect was payback to India for its closeness to his predecessor.”

I mean WTF? Are they really that obtuse? That petty? Do they really think that the long term civilizational mission of our nation should take a backseat to their petty resentments. Mr. Obama is a shallow, thin wisp of a man, isn't he?

Best post election quote

The people have spoken, the bastards.

California and Illinois shall now go bankrupt

Without the Federal checkbook both CA and IL are likely to beach like bloated disoriented whales.  This should be an interesting and salutary example of the 'benefits' of left governance.  Oh, New York, bailed to gills by TARP has but a momentary reprieve.  Its 'chock full 'o lefties' government will certainly destroy any advantage created by trillions of taxpayer cash flushing it's way.  Look how Bloomberg the so called 'moderate' has done.

I've got my popcorn.  This should be fun.

John Podhoretz is brilliant and so.....I agree with him

Knew him briefly at Chicago.  He's every bit as brilliant as his dad, Norman was.  He says (gasp) that Sarah Palin's formulation and thinking re:  the election was "brilliant".  I mean how could this rube who went to the wrong schools, has the wrong accent and definitely the wrong opinions be brilliant to a scion of NY intellectualism.  Fish flying, cats living with dogs, etc. etc.  Palin in her own words:

The meaning of the 2010 election was rebuke, reject, and repeal. We rebuked Washington’s power grab, rejected this unwanted “fundamental transformation of America,” and began the process to repeal the dangerous policies inflicted on us. But this theme will only complement the theme of 2012, which is renew, revive, and restore. In 2012, we need to renew our optimistic, pioneering spirit, revive our free-market system, and restore constitutional limits and our standing in the world as the abiding beacon of freedom.

She really is so much more sophisticated, accomplished and intelligent than Barack Obama.  And that's because she's had to earn her place while BHO just got the affirmative action slot.  He's a weakling.  If you don't realize that now, then you never will.

So where is all of the diversity fooferall?

I mean the Republicans elected a veritable James Watt gaffe of diversity:  Jews, Blacks, women, hispanics (don't know about any cripples).  Yet all of a sudden 'celebrating diversity' is off of the main stream media agenda.  Crickets:  although they are free range vegan crickets.  I have this feeling that all of this diversity blather is well past its sell by date.  H/T Contentions

Remember the “angry, racist Tea Party?” For months, that was the line pushed by Democrats, the NAACP and much of the mainstream media. Funny, though: The Tea Party-inspired wave that produced historic Republican wins also revealed a substantial diversity in the movement.

Two African-Americans — Tim Scott from South Carolina and Allen West from Florida — won election to the House of Representatives, the first black Republicans to serve there in eight years. In a victory showing how far his state has come, Scott’s road to Congress included a GOP runoff win over the son of the late Strom Thurmond — once the face of Jim Crow racial intolerance.

Those new office holders also include Nikki Haley, the second Republican governor of Indian descent and the first woman governor of South Carolina, as well as “America’s first Latina governor in New Mexico’s Susana Martinez; Nevada’s first Latino governor, in Brian Sandoval; Texas Rep.-elect Francisco ‘Quico’ Canseco and, yes, the breakout Tea Party superstar of the campaign — Florida’s Sen.-elect Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban exiles.” New Hampshire has a new woman senator, Kelly Ayotte. Republican Mary Fallin was elected Oklahoma’s first woman governor, and Jan Brewer was elected in Arizona.

You missed the cheering from MALDEF and the NAACP? You didn’t hear the howls from NOW when Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle were defeated by their male opponents? You see, “diversity” is only an election issue for the left when the right is short on it. And indeed, as with Justice Clarence Thomas and Miguel Estrada, these conservatives don’t really “count” as minorities, and the women aren’t “real” women in the eyes of the left; they are sellouts or worse. Because they don’t spout the victimology mantra and are not devotees of big government, they are not “authentic.”

Aside from helping to shed the GOP’s image as a “white male only” party, the election of these individuals – in addition to the views and attributes they will bring to their jobs — have performed an important service. They will, one suspects, mute the obsessive diversity chatter that treats candidates as representatives of racial or ethnic groups rather than of the people they serve. After all, Nikki Haley isn’t actual the Indian-American governor; she’s the governor of South Carolina. And that’s exactly as it should be. Unless, of course, the point is not diversity but the endless churning of racial grievances.

Money can't buy you love

No amount of money can overcome being wrong.  Dems who lost outspent Repubs who won.

In two-thirds of the House seats that Republicans picked up Tuesday, Democratic candidates had more money behind them, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission. Overall, Democratic candidates in the 63 races that flipped to the GOP had $206.4 million behind them, a tally that includes candidate fundraising and spending by parties and interests. That compares with only $171.7 million for their GOP rivals.

The pattern appears to contradict widespread complaints from Democrats that they were being unfairly overrun by wealthy Republicans, many of whom donated money to conservative groups to spend on political races — unencumbered by the limits and public-disclosure requirements that constrain most political fundraising. The data show that even in many races in which Republicans had more outside help, they still had fewer resources than their Democratic opponents.

The Tea Party is laying the foundation for long term dominance

Down ticket the Tea Party is taking over the states.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The Obami's overreaching incompetence is going to leave a mark that stings on the Left Party for a long, long time.

Who Knew? Saudi Crown Prince is Islamophobic

Opposes Ground Zero Mosque.  Boy those Islamophobes and bigots are everywhere.  Even in Mecca.  I guess "It takes one to hate one".

Or something like that, I don't know clichéd sayings.

George Will on why the Dems Lost

Money Grafs:

Responding to Alter, George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux agreed that interest-group liberalism has indeed been leavened by idea-driven liberalism. Which is the problem.

"These ideas," Boudreaux says, "are almost exclusively about how other people should live their lives. These are ideas about how one group of people (the politically successful) should engineer everyone else's contracts, social relations, diets, habits, and even moral sentiments." Liberalism's ideas are "about replacing an unimaginably large multitude of diverse and competing ideas . . . with a relatively paltry set of 'Big Ideas' that are politically selected, centrally imposed, and enforced by government, not by the natural give, take and compromise of the everyday interactions of millions of people."

This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power - are government commands and controls - superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."

Indeed.

Read the whole thing.

Beware the debt star

Wonderful perspective, never offered

Why isn't this discussed?
The US government (all levels) has 20% more resources itself than the largest economy in the world does yet it cannot take care of health care for the poor and chronically infirm? Where on the list of priorities must this really be? Is it ahead of mohair subsidies, sugar subsidies, windmill subsidies, funding for education schools, and so on? What kind of bizarre world am I living in? And I am being asked to sacrifice a little more just to see that we'll get it right this time?

I think he means the next largest economy in the world, but the question stands.  Of course the reason is power.  Those in power only use the 'healthcare' argument to get more.  I mean they obviously had the resources if they simply prioritized and got rid of the wasteful stuff which course they had filibuster proof majorities able to do so for 24 months.  Yet they didn't.  It wasn't because they couldn't, it was because they didn't want to.  

The key wasn't 'healthcare for all' which was obviously within their reach it was 'more power for them'.  

And they overreached.  God bless-em.

Too good to pass up

In terms of basic democratic process, California now sucks in comparison to Brazil

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.  Expensive, incompetent, stupid:  blue state governments suck so bad, don't they?
California takes five weeks to count all its votes, a vivid contrast with Brazil, which voted on Sunday, where all the votes were counted within five hours (what is wrong with this picture?).

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/some-random-thoughts-on-the-2010-elections-106597638.html#ixzz14H8q0RgT

State House Power - Sweet

As befits the party of Federalism, Republican power is strongest at the state level.  I know that Missouri has become a rather lopsided GOP franchise..for the first time in recorded history (we had no reconstruction).  I guess that's true of a lot of others.
HISTORIC GOP GAINS IN STATE LEGISLATURES: “Republicans haven’t enjoyed this much power in state capitals since the 1920s.”

More here.  The key point:  the Republicans haven't been a truly 'mass party' since the 20s, they are again.  It's the Dems who are now an 'elite' epi-phenomenon.

For example, at the bottom of the ticket in MO, the Dems have essentially been exterminated outside of their academic and inner city and inner ring suburban base.  2 to 1.  Everywhere.

Missouri's March Rightward Continues Apace

Basics from Missouri:
State Senate (only part run every time):  14-3 Republicans
State House (all run) 107-56 Republicans
Congressional Delegation:  6-3 Republican (1 net gain)
State Auditor - Republican Pickup
US Senate - Shift from a conservativish RINO to a more doctrinaire conservative Republican.
5th District:  The last MO blue dog is retired
3rd District:  the last Carnahan (D) gets less than half the votes and is clearly the playmate who will be left standing when the redistricting game of musical chairs is played next year.

Missouri used to be a purple state but has tinged pinker and redder with each passing year.  The redistricting will likely flip another handful of state senate and state house seats into the R column as well (can you say veto proof majorities?  I knew you could).

Jay Nixon (D) holds the governorship under sufferance - he has governed well to the right of the national Dems and this election will simply reinforce his strong survival instinct.

Watch Senator Claire McKaskill (D) suddenly find that she simply has no more time to be BHO's charming midwestern spokesperson.  What with all the apple pickin' and barn raisin' and glad handing chores she has  to do back in Missourah for the next two years.  And doggone it, she's just gotten so dang conservative in her old age.

Obama can expect no help from the Missouri political establishment.  They are busy locking doors, barring windows and laying in supplies for a long, long siege.

Chauncy Hussein Gardener

Jennifer Rubin observes that Barack Obama continues to be incredibly calm despite an economy slipping back into recession, an international situation getting worse by the day and the looming historic shellacking of the party that he leads.  It seems that like Chauncy Gardner of Being There fame this is his default behavior.  Many people have mistaken his calm demeanor for sagacity and thoughtfulness when in fact it's the way that a man who has risen to the top for "being there" rather than doing operates.  Let everyone else yell because he has the magic trifecta of race, Ivy pedigree and polished internationalism to always get him to the next level without sweating.

Maybe he has more in common with Peter Seller's greatest character role than we think?

Being there indeed.

Kafka's Lawyer

Pride goeth before the fall.  And boy do these cats have a long way to fall.

Last week, I asked a lawyer from a libertarian group for a copy of a brief it had filed in a First Amendment case. Sounding frustrated and incredulous, he said a federal appeals court had sealed the brief and forbidden its distribution.

“It’s a profound problem,” said the lawyer, Paul M. Sherman, with the Institute for Justice. “We want to bring attention to important First Amendment issues but cannot share the brief that most forcefully makes those arguments.”

The brief was filed in support of Siobhan Reynolds, an activist who thinks the government is too aggressive in prosecuting doctors who prescribe pain medications.

The Institute for Justice does not represent Ms. Reynolds, and it is not a party in the case. Its submission, made with a second libertarian group, Reason Foundation, was an amici curiae — or friends of the court — brief. It relied only on publicly available materials.

But it was sealed by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, citing grand jury secrecy rules. The court then denied the groups’ motion to unseal their own brief. That ruling itself is sealed, too, but I have seen parts of it.

Holy Republican establishment, Batman, RINOs try to rig Alaska for the Independent Candidate

I didn't think that Alaska really had a RINO establishment until I saw the following.  Read the whole ding dang dong thing.  RINO thuggery:  Reason 77 that we need a Tea Party.  H/T James Ta

They're Corrupt Bastards, but They're Our Corrupt Bastards 
The U.S. Senate campaign in Alaska was supposed to be a dull affair, with Republican incumbent Lola Palooza easily winning re-election. Instead, it has turned out to be the wildest race in a wild year. First, Palooza--opposed by Sarah Palin, who had beaten the senator's father, Francisco Franco, in the 2006 primary for governor--lost her primary to Joe Miller.

The loser then announced that she would stay in the race as a write-in candidate, notwithstanding the difficulty of spelling "Mikolajczyk." Result, as the New York Times reports: The Democrat, Scott McAdams, now has a better chance of winning this seat--albeit still a slim one--than any other one currently held by a Republican.

Then things got really interesting. As the Alaska Dispatch reports, the state's Division of Elections decided to give Misdirectski a boost by changing its regulations to provide for the distribution of lists of registered write-in candidates at polling places.

Dan Fagan, a conservative talk-show host, responded, the Dispatch reports: "About halfway through Fagan's show Thursday afternoon a caller phoned in to say he had just registered as a write-in candidate in the Senate race." Fagan urged his listeners to do the same, and, according to the Anchorage Daily News, "more than 150 people are now listed."

Meanwhile, the Dispatch notes, Fagan "has been yanked off the air." A spokesman for the Wakowski campaign "said they didn't have anything to do with it," but Palin, on her Facebook page, isn't buying it. She says the incumbent's lawyers threatened to sue Fagan's station "for allegedly illegal 'electioneering.' The station, unlike Blutarsky, who is flush with millions of dollars from vested corporate interests, does not have a budget for a legal defense. So it did what any small market station would do when threatened by Beltway lawyers charging $500 to $1000 an hour--they pulled Dan Fagan off the air."

Yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," Palin alleged that "corrupt bastards" at KTVA, the Anchorage CBS affiliate, had been caught on tape "saying let's find a child molester in the crowd as a supporter for Joe Miller, let's blast that. Let's concoct a [Rand] Paul moment there, let's find any kind of chaos so that we can tweet an alert saying "ooh, there's chaos. Joe Miller got punched, or vice [versa]."

Breitbart.tv has the tape and transcript (parts of which are noted as "inaudible"):

Female reporter: That's up to you because you're the expert, but that's what I would do. . . . I'd wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something. . . .

[Laughter]

Female reporter: Child molesters . . .

Male reporter: Oh yeah . . . can you repeat Joe Miller's . . . uh . . . list of people, campaign workers, which one's the molester?

Female reporter: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.

[Laughter]

Male reporter: You have to find that one person . . .

Female reporter: And the one thing we can do is . . . we won't know....we won't know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the. . . . "Hey Joe Miller punched at rally."

Female reporter: Kinda like Rand Paul . . . I like that.

[Laughter]

Female reporter: That's a good one.

"The recording is real," the station acknowledged in a statement, reprinted by Greg Sargent of the Washington Post. "The recording was the result of a cell phone not being hung up." Incredibly, though, the statement was not an apology. It began:

It's unfortunate that this recording has happened. It's unfortunate because it does not accurately reflect the journalistic standards of our newsroom and the garbled context will no doubt leave more questions than answers. The Miller campaign's analysis of the recording is incorrect in many material ways ranging from personnel involved in the conversation, the interpretation of conversation snippets and the reported transcript of the perceived garbled conversation. . . .

The perception that this garbled, out of context recording may leave is unfortunate, but to allege that our staff was discussing or planning to create or fabricate stories regarding candidate Miller is absurd. The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.

KTVA's denial of the conspiracy charge seems to us plausible. But the station does not even attempt to claim that its staffers conducted themselves in a professional or unbiased fashion.

Nate Silver's forecast still rates Miller the favorite, with a 68.5% chance of winning. Mancowski is at 26.1%, McAdams a distant underdog at 5.5%. If we were McAdams, we'd campaign on a promise to restore a shred of Alaska's dignity--but perhaps that's a lost cause not worth fighting for.

"A negative melange of historic proportions" - The Hill

This is a report that tries to assess what is said on social media and the national media and how it evolves and differs.  The narrative on Obama is striking.  But the whole think is interesting, particularly the huge disconnect between what is said on social media and what the national media reports.  It's hard to assess history but it seems there's seldom been a greater disconnect between what our elites are reported saying in public and what regular people are saying.  Which is bad news for those holding power.  Read the whole thing.

The final narrative for President Obama, 24 hours before the midterm elections has evolved into a negative mélange of historic proportions.  This was reported by the Global Language Monitor (GLM), which has been tracking the narratives that have dominated the perception of the administration and its handling of both its achievements and crises.  

The environmental impact of Hopium has been discovered

It kills Democrats but leaves the buildings standing.

Hmmm.

A newly conservative lesbian explains the left fascist impulse with startling clarity

Just saying 'newly conservative lesbian' is startling.  But liberty is a big tent, made bigger by the desire of people with widely ranging preferences to be left alone.   Now why is it so hard to just leave us the hell alone?  Funny you should ask because this lady explains.

Here's here take.  I like it.

Janet Daley sits in London and smells the whiff of.....revolution

She gets the number of centuries wrong and probably confuses the relationship between social and economic conservatism, but she does chronicle the neck snapping change in tone and the potential radical impact of middle-America's profound disillusionment with the overweening Federal State.  Must read internet.

Google kicking Canuck Butt

Some things never change.  Hosers.

Holy landslide Batman! Gallup says the Dems are going to get smoked!

Not just smoked but gutted, filleted and braised in a light Tea reduction sauce.

Republicans' 15-percentage-point lead among likely voters contrasts with their 4-point lead, 48% to 44%, among registered voters, highlighting the importance of higher GOP turnout to the election outcome. This wide difference between the GOP's margin among registered voters and its margin among likely voters is similar to the 2002 midterms, in which Democrats led by 5 points among all registered voters in Gallup's final pre-election poll, while Republicans led by 6 points among likely voters -- an 11-point gain.

There's hope for change.