I dunno, maybe the 'mainstream' media should ask a few questions...

This will raise an uncomfortable question. If Obamacare is so great, why are so many trying to get out from under it? And, more specifically, why are so many Democratic groups trying to get out from under it?

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/04/president-whatever-finds-things-not-going-his-way#ixzz1Jq9OTQ6N

She's baaaaaack! 2

Ann Althouse shot video of Palin's speech.  The salient characteristic is the booing and shouting from union thugs seeking to disrupt the rally.  These are our 'public servants', gang.  So how come they are trying to disrupt a lawful and peaceful political rally?  They seem awfully entitled to me.  And they seem to be losing.  Watch the whole thing.
I liked this comment:

Attempting to shout-down the free speech of others is the first tactic of fascists.

True.

She's baaaaaack!

John Nolte on la Palin's speech to Tea Partiers in Madison yesterday.  For the record:  I believe if she runs, she'll win.  And I hope she runs.

If Sarah Palin’s not running for president, what a terrible waste that would be of the single best stump speech I’ve heard since, well, Palin’s ’08 convention speech, which just happened to be the single most electrifying political moment of my adult life. … On this day, Tea Party tax-day, Sarah Palin walked into the heart of this nation’s battle, stared down a gallery of Leftist union goons with poise and grace, and articulated our message as well as anyone ever could. Let’s hope this is just the beginning.

The green reverse midas touch: everything they touch turns to...compost.

Walter Russell Mead on good environmental news:

That’s what happens when green Malthusian panic meets the political system.  At Rio back in 1992 I first began to dimly suspect what now seems sadly clear: that green political activists are afflicted with a kind of reverse Midas curse.  Whatever they touch turns to — compost.

Earnings season explained in one chart

The good news is that the real, largely un-subsidized, un-manipulated Energy, Technology and Industrial sectors are doing well.  Of course the best indicator for our long term economic health could be when the health care sector shows massive profit declines, even sectoral losses - that will signal a fundamental restructuring.....and that used Mercedes will be going for a song.

China: Princelings and the Goon state

China is an incredibly cruel and cynical place but remember:  pious egalitarian talk masking impunity and theft are also salient characteristics of the modern American state.  Hattip instapundit.

THE ECONOMIST: China’s new rulers: Princelings and the goon state. “Since the late 1970s, when China began to turn its back on Maoist totalitarianism, the country has gone through several cycles of relative tolerance of dissent, followed by periods of repression. But the latest backlash, which was first felt late last year and intensified in late February, has raised eyebrows. It has involved more systematic police harassment of foreign journalists than at any time since the early 1990s. More ominously, activists such as Mr Ai have often simply disappeared rather than being formally arrested.” The nomenklatura take their privileged position in the Workers’ Paradise seriously. God help anyone who actually wants equality or freedom. All the talk about that stuff is just for the rubes.

Dilbert's 7 keys to career success

I usually don't post lists but I like these.  I'll add an eighth:  Try.  Hard.

Combine Skills.

The first thing you should learn in a course on entrepreneurship is how to make yourself valuable.  It’s unlikely that any average student can develop a world-class skill in one particular area.  But it’s easy to learn how to do several different things fairly well.  I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The “Dilbert” comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people.  The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person.  That’s how value is created.

Fail Forward.

If you’re taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time.  The trick is to get paid while you’re doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later.  I failed at my first career in banking.  I failed at my second career with the phone company.  But you’d be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning.  Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.

Find the Action.

In my senior year of college I asked my adviser how I should pursue my goal of being a banker.  He told me to figure out where the most innovation in banking was happening and to move there.  And so I did.  Banking didn’t work out for me, but the advice still holds: Move to where the action is. Distance is your enemy.

Attract Luck.

You can’t manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you.  To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn’t work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else.  Luck finds the doers.  Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It’s not obvious to a teenager.

 Conquer Fear.

I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days.  That training was marginally useful for learning how to mask nervousness in public.  Then I took the Dale Carnegie course.  It was life-changing.  The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd.  Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically.  Over the years, I’ve given speeches to hundreds of audiences and enjoyed every minute on stage.  But this isn’t a plug for Dale Carnegie.  The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm.  Every entrepreneur can use that skill.

 Write Simply.

I took a two-day class in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words.  Simplicity makes ideas powerful.  Want examples?  Read anything by Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett.

 Learn Persuasion.

Students of entrepreneurship should learn the art of persuasion in all its forms, including psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design.  Usually these skills are sprinkled across several disciplines.  For entrepreneurs, it makes sense to teach them as a package.

 That’s my starter list for the sort of classes that would serve B students well. The list is not meant to be complete.  Obviously an entrepreneur would benefit from classes in finance, management and more.

Remember, children are our future, and the majority of them are B students.  If that doesn’t scare you, it probably should.

— Scott Adams is the creator of “Dilbert.” 

Poor Obama confronts a grueling day today

A brutal schedule of three, count 'em three fundraisers.  Even the LA Times is mocking  el Uno now.

It turns out that cynical but incompetent careerism has its consequences.

La Trahison des Clercs

CPI for the privilege of being schooled, because not much of what is taught in the modern college passes for education.  If ever a class of people has betrayed their country it is our 'scholars'.  Break it up, break it all up.  Read the whole thing.  Hattip Carpe Diem.

Why Pinch Sulzberger has a frowny...

....internet advertising passes Newspaper advertising, soon to be number one ad medium.

Why no council on Men and Boys? They're not a powerful Dem interest group...

Chicago politics are very simple: reward your friends and punish or at best, ignore your enemies. The public 'good' is just rhetoric for elections. Hat tip Instapundit.

IS THE WHITE HOUSE prejudiced against boys? “Two years ago President Obama created a committee by executive order to advise and focus exclusively on the needs and welfare of the American woman. Feminists cheered the creation of a White House Council on Women and Girls but others questioned, why – when women and girls are outperforming men by nearly every empirical measurement – create a council for women but not for men?”

Regressive consumption taxes: how Social Democracies get the money for 'compassion'

And of course it goes without saying that consumption taxes are brutally regressive.  The US has the lowest taxes on consumption and the highest taxes on capital in the developed world.  The Economist shows just how anomalous the US is.

And today our President called for higher taxes...on capital.  But the problem is this:  capital can run.  Social 'democrats' the world over have long understood this brutal fact of global political economy.  By contrast, the proles have no place to run to, therefore they fund their own compassion while hearing speech after speech from their 'leaders' about the evil 'rich'.

Our politics make cynicism look like Sunday School.

Budget deal riddled with fraudulent 'cuts'

This is going to end it tears for the Republicans.  It turns out that Messers Boehner, Cantor and Ryan are just as bad as the clowns they replaced.

We are so screwed.  Bust it up, bust it all up.

At Contentions, John Podhoretz sees this all going downhill for Boehner and the GOP in general very quickly: "Already there are indications that a great many House members are going to vote against the deal. What we don't know, or can't know, is whether grass-roots velocity has sped up to such a degree over the past several years that we could be looking at a major meltdown of support when the votes are cast, as Republican members honestly balk at the clear deceit of the negotiators in making non-existent cuts in federal spending -- and as they fear the wrath of the voters (particularly tea partiers). Meanwhile, Leftist Democrats who feel betrayed by Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might also decide to teach them a lesson by withholding support. And then, all of a sudden, there will be a shutdown. And no plan to end it. And make no mistake -- the public will blame the GOP."


Worst of both worlds: the grassroots think Boehner sold them out and the public at large getting increasingly frustrated with a government shutdown.


Hattip Jim Geraghty

Glenn Reynolds has come up with an intriguing elite revolving door repellent

SO OBAMA’S PEOPLE ARE TALKING TAX INCREASES AGAIN. Here’s my proposal: A 50% surtax on anything earned within five years after leaving the federal government, above whatever the federal salary was. Leave a $150K job at the White House, take a $1M job with Goldman, Sachs, pay a $425K surtax. Some House Republican should add this to a bill and watch the Dems react.

UPDATE: Should we also provide that salaries paid to former government officials aren’t deductible for corporations? Or is that going too far? I say: Put it in as a negotiating point!

Hattip Instapundit

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." Flannery O'Connor

HT Robbie Griggs

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad Federal Government

Four posts in a row from Instapundit illustrating just how broken our Federal overlord is.  Most parasites have inbred mechanisms to limit their damage so that the host stays healthy enough to feed them.  Our fascists?  Not so much.  Break it up.  Break it all up.

DICK DURBIN: Now seems like a good time for an Internet tax.

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds  

SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? US deficit up 15.7% in first half of fiscal 2011.

Posted at 7:57 am by Glenn Reynolds  

U.S. LACKS CREDIBILITY ON DEBT, says IMF.

Posted at 7:50 am by Glenn Reynolds  

WELL, IT’S A GOOD THING WE CHANGED MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS, THEN: Inflation Actually Near 10% Using Older Measure. “Inflation, using the reporting methodologies in place before 1980, hit an annual rate of 9.6 percent in February, according to the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter.” Because if we were using that old system, inflation would bereally bad. Thanks, measurement-system-changers!

Learning what it's like to lose....and win

It is the 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter.  People like to say that the US doesn't know what it's like to be occupied, to be humiliated.  But of course, the South does.  Glenn Reynolds makes some comments, quoting Walt Whitman.  Also be sure to read the Virginia Postrel link.

But American southerners know something that apparently a lot of other people seem to have trouble with: how to lose a war and not hold a grudge. (Much of one, anyway). The monument shown above illustrates that; it sits about a block from my office (click the picture for a bigger image; you can see a closeup of the inscription here if that’s too hard to read on your display). As late as the Spanish-American War, there was considerable doubt about whether southerners would turn out to fight for the United States. They did. (My great-grandfather was one of them).

There are a lot of reasons for that, but the American experience of reconciliation after one of the world’s bloodier and more divisive conflicts is one that perhaps ought to get more attention. It may be that, like so many things American, it is exceptional. But maybe not.

Meanwhile, with the Civil War in mind, reader Gregory Birrer points out that Europe never changes:

I have been reading a little book I picked up while in Gettysburg recently, entitled, “Memoranda During The War” by Walt Whitman. It is a compilation of his notes from about 3 years worth of visits to War hospitals in and around Washington D.C. from 1862 – 1865. Toward the end he inserts some interesting political commentary (mixed in with a variety of topics) that sounds as if it could have been written today. Here’s the piece:

Attitude of Foreign Governments toward the U.S. during the War of 1861-’65 -
Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864, or the latter part of ‘63: The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The Democratic Republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her Union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell’d to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great!There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the united States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember’d by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe, as governments. I think indeed it is to-day the real, heart-felt wish of all the nations of the world, with the single exception of Mexico–Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong, and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer.

Is it not indeed strange? America, made up of all, cheerfully from the beginning opening her arms to all, the result and justifier of all, of Britain, Germany, France, and Spain – all here – the accepter, the friend, hope, last resource and general house of all – she who has harm’d none, but been bounteous to so many, to millions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations – should now I say be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear and hatred?…….Are weindignant? alarm’d? Do we feel wrong’d? jeopardized? No; help’d, braced, concentrated, rather.

We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the world.

“Never again?” Apparently, we need to be reminded from time to time. European hopes for our descent were frustrated then by the greatness of the American spirit, which both ended the war and — more importantly — managed to build a great nation without bitterness. May it be so again. And may the Europeans who resent it continue to gnash their teeth.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel has observations.

No 'policy making', no subsidies, no 'leadership', no tax breaks: how can they do this?

Premium intercity bus service is exploding - at a fraction of the cost of Amtrak and with no involvement by the state other than the existing infrastructure.  How could this be?

Yet our fearless leaders want to blow $55Billion on capital subsidies and untold billions on operating subsidies on 'high speed' rail.  Insane.  Well not exactly insane - you see, the railroads are big government union shops, the bus companies?  Not so much.

From Bloomberg/BusinessWeek, a great story about the success of a new industry that has brought low-cost, dependable, convenient, market-based, Wi-Fi-enabled bus service to millions of Americans, despite rising gas and oil prices, and without any government subsidies, tax breaks or taxpayer funding: 

"After decades of decline, the bus is the U.S.'s fastest-growing way to travel, led by curbside service from Megabus, BoltBus, and others.

For bus travel as a whole, the number of daily departures increased by 6 percent in 2010, twice the growth experienced by air travel and 12 times that of Amtrak. The number of curbside passengers rose by at least 33 percent, with Megabus ridership expanding 48 percent. (Amtrak ridership grew by just 6 percent, and the airlines by 5 percent.) The company says growth, including the 20 routes it added last year, is an astounding 65 percent. Curbside buses now account for more than a fifth of all daily bus departures in the country. The American Bus Assn. maintains that traditional intercity bus service on Greyhound, Trailways, and others has even experienced a positive spillover—the group calls it "the Megabus effect."

Much of the recent success of the curbside business derives from its nimbleness. In February the Obama Administration unveiled some specifics of its long-term plan for high-speed rail, requesting $53 billion over the next six years to build and upgrade intercity service—a proposal that has already met opposition. By contrast, the bus simply uses existing roads, requiring no policy debates, government funding, or land management studies. It needs only a curb and a sign.

Bus companies are also able to gauge demand quickly, gather rider input online, then alter pickup locations or routes just by posting changes to their websites. While we're having coffee, Megabus CEO Dale Moser explains that since he's seen numerous requests on transit blogs for new service from Chicago to Memphis, he figures he might as well give the route a try. A couple of weeks later he has the buses up and running.

The curbside bus can also easily add and subtract departures. During Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2010, Megabus continued to sell as many tickets as were requested on its website, adding buses as needed. In Chicago, the buses were lined up all the way around the corner at the pickup location. "It's astounding how few constraints there are to its development and expansion," says Joseph Schwieterman, the director of DePaul's Chaddick Institute. "That's why it's an exciting product to watch. Adding two big hubs in six months—we just don't see that anymore in transportation."

The comparison with rail is revealing. Consider that even after the Obama Administration budgeted $10.4 billion in federal stimulus money to jump-start high-speed rail projects around the country, the states had to submit proposals, federal transportation officials had to select the most viable ones, and state and federal governments had to negotiate these plans with the freight companies that own most of the nation's track. After all that, politicians, citing budget shortfalls, ended up scuttling many of the plans."

MP: Perhaps this is another deflationary factor that is helping to offset rising oil and gas prices, and serves to moderate inflationary pressures. And it's a great example of a competitive, flexible, low-cost, consumer-driven, market-based solution to transportation, in contrast to government transportation options like Amtrak that are the opposite: non-competitive, inflexible, high-cost, politician-driven, and not market-based.  

HT: Paul Cerni 

Stay tuned for demands by Blue State politicians to 'regulate' these 'predatory' competitors.

Hat tip Carpe Diem

Redistributionists report being angrier, less altruistic than those opposed to redistribution - General Social Survey

This really doesn't surprise me - particularly the part about revenge.  It supports the notion that those who favor redistribution are seeking punishment of others rather than any neutral policy goal.  Envy truly is a green eyed monster.  Hat tip Tyler Cowen

In a recent paper, James Lindgren of Northwestern reports:

…compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework.

Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street.

This is much more to this paper.  For instance, at the U.S. national level, racists tend to be pro-income redistribution on net.  Anti-capitalist attitudes are associated with higher levels of intolerance.  I thank an MR reader for the pointer, I am sorry that I have lost the identifying email.

Eradicating manhood with poisoned carrots and nail studded sticks.

A friend at my Church is on disability.  He had some physical problems for a few years but 10 years later, he's still on the dole.  Runs every day.  Disability has become such a scam that upstanding church goers openly abuse it.  It's one reason that men's labor force participation has fallen so much.  "Disability" is one of the poisoned carrots dangled by the welfare state - enticing men away from their role as bread winner - except through pity and charity.

The other driver of male withdrawal from manhood is our uniquely cruel and merciless criminal justice system.   We imprison 8 times more (mostly male) citizens than Canada.  Almost four times more than Saudi Arabia (!).  Nearly 50 million Americans are convicted 'felons' - the vast majority men.

A society that drugs boys so that they will 'behave', strips men of their primary role and treats typical male behavior as 'criminal' or 'diseased' will reap the whirlwind.  Falling labor force participation is just a very small canary in this disastrous coal mine.

Hat tip Carpe Diem

The anatomy of a bubble: higher education

There's a crash coming and the wails of the entitled faculty and staff buried beneath its rubble will be pathetic to behold.  Peter Thiel:

“A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life. It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.

Barack Obama: incompetently and cruelly implementing the Bush Doctrine

Johann Hari in the Independent on the travesty of current US policy in Pakistan.  I have Pakistani partners and friends - in the past few years as President Obama has intensified Predator attacks ten-fold these affluent, English speaking western oriented people have turned against the US and its allies decisively.  They are enraged and humiliated by the evident indifference that our President shows towards the carnage in their country.  It is radicalizing the country so that the civilized elites can no longer keep control of the radicals.  All in a country with nuclear weapons and upwards of 200 million people, many of whom are technically advanced.

Imagine a distant leader killed more than 2,000 innocent people, and his military commanders responded to evidence that they were civilians by joking that the victims "were not the local men's glee club". Imagine one of the innocent survivors appeared on television, amid the body parts of his son and brother, and pleaded: "Please. We are human beings. Help us. Don't let them do this." Imagine that polling from the attacked country showed that 90 per cent of the people there said civilians were the main victims and they desperately wanted it to stop. Imagine there was then a huge natural flood, and the leader responded by ramping up the attacks. Imagine the country's most respected democratic and liberal voices were warning that these attacks seriously risked causing the transfer of nuclear material to jihadi groups.

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Surely, if we meant what we say about Libya, we would be doing anything to stop such behaviour? Wouldn't we be imposing a no-fly zone, or even invading?

Yet, in this instance, we would have to be imposing a no-fly zone on our own governments. Since 2004, the US – with European support – has been sending unmanned robot-planes into Pakistan to illegally bomb its territory in precisely this way. Barack Obama has massively intensified this policy.

His administration claims they are killing al-Qa'ida. But there are several flaws in this argument. The intelligence guiding their bombs about who is actually a jihadi is so poor that, for six months, Nato held top-level negotiations with a man who claimed to be the head of the Taliban – only for him to later admit he was a random Pakistani grocer who knew nothing about the organisation. He just wanted some baksheesh. The US's own former senior military advisers admit that even when the intel is accurate, for every one jihadi they kill, as many as 50 innocent people die. And almost everyone in Pakistan believes these attacks are actually increasing the number of jihadis, by making young men so angry at the killing of their families they queue to sign up.

The country's leading nuclear scientist, Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, warns me it is even more dangerous still. He says there is a significant danger that these attacks are spreading so much rage and hatred through the country that it materially increases the chances of the people guarding the country’s nuclear weapons smuggling fissile material out to jihadi groups.

So one of the country's best writers, Fatima Bhutto, tells me: "In Pakistan, when we hear Obama's rhetoric on Libya, we can only laugh. If he was worried about the pointless massacre of innocent civilians, there would be an easy first step for him: stop doing it yourself, in my country.

So this was the hope and change?  Incompetence combined with cynicism and arrogance is a deadly potion.  And because our extrasplenderifilous affirmative action President is doing it, no one even cares.  A tragedy...and a travesty.

It's not globalization, it's Americanization

“Globalization is a misnomer. The better word is Americanization." - Advertising/Marketing giant WPP Group CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell


US culture, and Anglo culture in general has been sweeping the world since at least 1776.  It is the longest, most consistent mega trend ongoing today.  I had a long conversation with an Emirati arab executive who spent many years in San Diego.  He vociferously denied that this was what was happening:  he argued that it was 'modernization', not westernization, much less Americanization.


But if that is the case, then why does all of the 'modernization' come from the west or its imitators?  And why is most of the new culture that his daughters were adopting American in its origin?


Around the world arrestees commonly ask for their miranda rights, even though Miranda is an American law - they've long since begun thinking of criminal justice in American terms.


Today, a Japanese wanting to get food 'just like home' in Paris will go to McDonalds and drink a Coca Cola.


Local elites hate this because it reduces their influence and power - they realize that their choices are limited - not only by their culture but by American cultural norms that have seeped in.  They realize that to get global support and respect, they must couch their aims in ways that the Anglo world can comprehend and support.  Many of them produce two narratives:  one in English to conform to the global norm and one in their local language that contradicts it.  But this only works so long as their publics have limited English.  The more English they have, the more they notice the incongruence.  


Just ask Hosni Mubarak.


No wonder the global elites hate us so much.  If I were in their shoes I'd be angry too.

Budget deficit continues to grow under Obama 'leadership'

Hat tip WAPO

Terrible news for President Obama: “The federal government’s deficit continues to grow, according to the latest numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).The government is expected to run a deficit of $830 billion in the first six months of fiscal 2011, a $113 billion increase from the same period last year, the CBO reported Thursday.” I guess he’s not really fiscally responsible after all. Who knew?

The left was enraged, energized, funded by national unions in Wisconsin against an elderly heretofore non-partisan justice....

....and they lost.  Hope!  Change!  HT Jim Geraghty at NRO

The Ace of Spades is downright giddy about the implications: "A lot of people have pointed out: This officially means Wisconsin is a purple state. It might even be reddish. Even if it had been an even split -- what the hell? We heard for weeks about how outraged the left was, how animated. Because I still get my news, even second-hand, from the media, I got the impression the left was roaring back. But they never bothered to report how animated the right still was, huh? They sort of wishcasted that all away, huh? So, at the end of the day, in an election the left poured money and energy in to, and had the media faithfully singing from their hymnals . . . we won. In Wisconsin. I don't know -- I think based upon this Wisconsin is officially 'Lean GOP' in November."

Never mind, they whispered....

....when it turned out that the 'right wing' justice won the Wisconsin supreme court race.  Now it's just another 'meaningless' event in a long string of 'meaningless' elections stretching back to right after BHO was elected.

WISCONSIN UPDATE: “Small, state-wide election with vital national implications soon to have no national implications whatsoever.”

Move along, nothing to see here.
Hattip Instapundit

Credentialed, not educated.

Me, I say that the average person with a Masters degree in Education is less qualified to teach (or do damn near anything else) than their less educated peers.  Union scam.  HT Instapundit.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Teachers in many states automatically get raises if they complete a master’s degree. The trouble is that those credentials do nothing to improve teaching competence, a new report shows.” Credentialed, not educated.

What does the state's legitimacy rest upon?

It rests up on law.  Without law and the respect of the people therein, the state is just guns and shackles and prisons, taking and bribing.  This is why it is so interesting to watch the left seek to put their partisan in the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the express purpose of reversing a constitutionally passed law that they happen to dislike.  Like with Roe and many other decisions, the statists make the mistake of tearing at the very thing that gives the state legitimacy.

For if there is no faith in the law, how can people support the state?  Why not just set up one's own set of gansters and call yourself the 'state'?

Althouse has more:

Wisconsinite law professor Ann Althouse sees no good outcomes from this: "This race has been so politicized that, whether Prosser or Kloppenburg wins, the public will lack faith in the work of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Every 4-3 decision -- assuming the winner of this election is one of the 4 -- will raise suspicion. The power of the court, in the end, rests on the faith of the people. It cannot balance the power of the other branches of government without the faith that this election has eroded. This is why I think a Kloppenburg victory will be a disaster. Her supporters and her opponents expect her to vote to undo the legislation of the Republican majority that won decisively in the November election. If she proceeds to decide cases that way, people -- including her supporters -- won't believe that her vote was properly judicial, and the decision against the legislation will look like the court abused its power. How then will the court retain its prestige? If the people do not believe that the court is a court, then we will not have a workable system of separated powers in our state government."

No s**t, Sherlock: Obama says businesses don't like uncertainty

Obama:

“Companies don’t like uncertainty and if they start seeing that suddenly we may have a shutdown of our government, that could halt momentum right when we need to build it up — all because of politics.”

Of course, when compared to the Obamachaos of the last two years, businesses and consumers may perceive a shut down as a confidence building gesture by our rapacious and incompetent federal beast.  "Look!  We're not wrecking anything today!  Aren't we just fabulous?"

Margaret Sanger: Feminist Heroine, Monster

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of it's infant members is to kill it" - Margaret Sanger

It's interesting just how many of our modern 'saints' when examined closely and without rose colored ideological glasses turn into the most frightful monsters.  Margaret Sanger is routinely praised by the great and the good of our elite culture - people like Hilary Clinton.  Says as much about them as about Ms. Sanger, doesn't it?

Well, at least they're trying....

Clusterstock points out that the Republican spending plan at least offers a path back from the precipice that our President and his party are pushing us towards.  Here's hoping that 1. It's doable and 2. The left won't simply sabotage it in pursuit of short term political advantage.

Cyberspace: the last frontier for the statists

The internet is unregulated and therefore the center of spectacular creative destruction.  Which drives the statists nuts:  they aren't collecting any rents from it.  Their solution:  elect a 'liberal' who will 'tighten' regulation to 'protect' ....well to protect the ability of rent seeking lawyers and their clients to get rich.  Obama's agenda was so predictable, simply from his hackneyed left wing rhetoric.

NEW PARASITE COALITION FORMS: Momentum building for online piracy legislation.

A recent list of legislative recommendations from White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel included controversial measures such as expanding federal wiretapping statutes to include copyright offenses and mandating longer prison sentences for offenders.

With leaders in both parties and the White House all marching in lock step toward the need for increasing enforcement efforts, the small but vocal opposition appears unlikely to gain enough traction with its warnings of potential censorship to derail the legislative momentum.

Hey, rubes: Is this what you voted for when you voted for change? Because it’s what you got.

Once again:  vandalism, not leadership.  Hattip Instapundit

From the 1961 Oxford English Dictionary: To Obambulate: to wander hither and thither

1961.  That, of course, was the year President Obama was born.

Hat tip Robert Morrisey.

The real problem with the statists

Hubris is always the greatest sin of rulers - and threat to those they rule:  the belief that they know best that which is unknowable.  Beldar:

No, the biggest problem is that Obama thinks he and, perhaps, a very small cadre of like-minded elites (an astonishing number of them either law professors or political hacks) are smart enough to know everything important. But as Ronald Reagan said: "[T]he trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." And a lot of what Obama and the lefties think they've got all figured out, and hence that they can competently manipulate at will, is actually stuff that no one is yet even capable of knowing.

So when, for example, Obama thinks he knows better than the free market how to allocate or price scarce resources, he's deluding himself and anyone who believes him. When Obama thinks he's going to use his intellect and his wit and his charisma to persuade China or Russia or Iran into doing something which their autocratic leaders don't think in their own best interests, he might as well have fallen off the turnip truck at dawn this morning.

Thus we have the free market bringing us increasingly fuel efficient cars, including hybrids and electric cars from Toyota and Nissan and Honda and even Ford that look quite promising — while Barack Obama and Government Motors are bringing us the Chevy DoltVolt at half again (or more) the price but only half the performance. (Reliable sources inform me that the next big General Motors idea will be the introduction of two new product lines, the Lada and its upscale cousin, the Zil.)

This is what corruption looks like:

Obama has now issued well over a thousand waivers to his supporters for Obamacare.  Nation of laws my foot.

Sure, ObamaCare is great for you. So great that the president is now offering 3 million members of his base ObamaClemency:

The Obama Administration has rolled out another 129 waivers to one provision of the new health reform law, with almost half of those new exemptions going to various union groups.   The extra waivers bring the total to 1,168. …The waivers now cover almost three million Americans, but the feds argue that is “less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance.

The waiver gets you out of “a portion of the law that in 2011 requires an annual benefit limit of no less than $750,000.” Sure beats a PBA card.

The left loves to perseverate on the threat to democracy posed by the top one percent of the country’s earners. Wonder if they’ll have any complaints about the two percent of Americans the president has officially exempted from obeying the law of the land.

We are deep in banana- republic territory here. The head of state forces an eccentric law onto his subjects and then lets his closest supporters get out of it so that they alone may continue to prosper. To call this more of the “same old” cynical Washington back-scratch machine is to underestimate the extent of the damage taking place before our eyes.

Hayekian Twittermania

Tyler Cowen is taking Hayek's Germanic sentences and Twitterpating them.   My fave:

When everyone is organized to force government to get them what they want, many will be left feeling that they have been treated unjustly.

In-effing-deed.

Bernard Lewis: Khomeini's Mein Kampf: "The NYT wouldn't touch it"

And that was the relatively conservative 'cold warrior' NYT under 'Punch' Sulzberger.  Now it's under looney left 'Pinch'.  Given that, how can we expect the NYT to be an honest witness to the events in the middle east today?  They're shills for the mullahs...

Professor Lewis has been here before. As the Iranian revolution was beginning in the late 1970s, the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was starting to appear in the Western press. "I was at Princeton and I must confess I never heard of Khomeini. Who had? So I did what one normally does in this world of mine: I went to the university library and looked up Khomeini and, sure enough, it was there."

'It" was a short book called "Islamic Government"—now known as Khomeini's Mein Kampf—available in Persian and Arabic. Mr. Lewis checked out both copies and began reading. "It became perfectly clear who he was and what his aims were. And that all of this talk at the time about [him] being a step forward and a move toward greater freedom was absolute nonsense," recalls Mr. Lewis.

"I tried to bring this to the attention of people here. The New York Times wouldn't touch it. They said 'We don't think this would interest our readers.' But we got the Washington Post to publish an article quoting this. And they were immediately summoned by the CIA," he says. "Eventually the message got through—thanks to Khomeini."

Now, thanks to Tehran's enduring Khomeinism, the regime is unpopular and under threat. "There is strong opposition to the regime—two oppositions—the opposition within the regime and the opposition against the regime. And I think that sooner or later the regime in Iran will be overthrown and something more open, more democratic, will emerge," Mr. Lewis says. "Most Iranian patriots are against the regime. They feel it is defaming and dishonoring their country. And they're right of course."

Iranians' disdain for the ruling mullahs is the reason Mr. Lewis thinks the U.S. shouldn't take military action there. "It would give the regime a gift that they don't at present enjoy—namely Iranian patriotism," he warns.

In the public sector union busting IS cost control

James Taranto quotes the Boston Globe:

Meanwhile, even the Boston Globe, a New York Times-owned newspaper that generally favors privileges for government unions, admits in an editorial that they can go too far. The paper explains a plan to shut down Boston's main public library on Sundays:

Even though the Copley library is busiest on weekends, labor contracts call for librarians and library aides who work on Sunday to receive overtime pay. Clearly, some library staffers should be working on straight-time Sunday-to-Thursday schedules. More weekend hours would be helpful at neighborhood branches, too, but this can happen only if city negotiators persuade librarian unions to tailor branch hours to the needs of users.

The Dispatch quotes a Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Dennis Murray of Sandusky, who describes the just-passed bill as "union busting masquerading as cost control." In the public sector, union busting is cost control. In the topsy-turvy world of contemporary liberalism, it's "progressive" to deliver less service to taxpayers at greater cost. Sooner or later, liberalism will collapse unless conservatives save it from the predation of the unions.

Do social media influence buying decisions?

A Goldman survey of consumers say no.  And in the sixties, all of the tie die and other accoutrement of 'flower power' had nothing to do with what one's friends were doing.  Right.

I think superficially the survey is true:  social media don't influence Coke vs. Pepsi decisions but they do influence cultural choices, such as 'healthy' drinks vs. 'unhealthy' ones.  Marketers need to figure out how  authentic relational endorsement can help them align the product that their customers perceive with the true underly value it represents.  This isn't a sales effort but a true, authentic marketing need.

And the ones, like Apple or Amazon who achieve it will change the world.

Obama and the False Choice argument

Ruth Marcus at Wapo points out that Barack Obama uses the 'false choice' argument in virtually every policy area to persuade.

President Obama has employed the false-choice device in assessing financial reform, environmental regulation, defense contracting, civil liberties, crime policy, health care, the deployment of troops in Iraq, Native Americans, the space program and, most recently, the situation in Libya.

On his South American trip, he pulled off a false-choice trifecta, citing “the old stale debates between state-run economies and unbridled capitalism; between the abuses of right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing insurgents; between those who believe that the United States causes all the region’s problems and those who believe that the United States ignores all the problems.” All three, Obama said, “are false choices, and they don’t reflect today’s realities.”
In his brilliant book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg points out that 'false choice' rhetoric is a form of argumentation very characteristic of fascism.  But of course:  BHO is a corporatist - which is simply a fascist without the jackboots.  Come to think of it, judging from the massive expansion of regulatory police powers and his ever expanding war scope, the jackboots are there too.


This isn’t a false choice — it’s a hard one. There are reasonable concerns about the implications of U.S. intervention and legitimate questions about the match between mission means and ends. To scoff at these as presenting a false choice does a disservice to the seriousness of those who do not come down precisely where the president proposes.

She also points out that Nixon (!) was an early false choicer.

The first presidential false-choicer I have found was Richard Nixon, who used the phrase appropriately in a 1969 commencement address: “Let us not, then, pose a false choice between meeting our responsibilities abroad and meeting the needs of our people at home. We shall meet both or we shall meet neither.”

The phrase, though, has been the particular province of Democratic presidents, with Bill Clinton the undisputed champion. The recent Republican usage has tended to involve a third version: false choice as wishful thinking. George W. Bush maddeningly pooh-poohed the “false choice” between tax cuts and deficit reduction, pretending not only that both could be accomplished simultaneously but that the former would produce the latter.

To truly govern honorably is to choose - between state power and individual power, between money for programs and money for individuals.  Fascists, whose goal is power, not effective governance, are constantly offering everything to everyone if we would only give them the power to decide.  In their world there are no trade offs so long as the center has all of the power.  This is how we've gotten Medicare, Social Security and $100 Trillion of unfunded, un-payable obligations.

It's a big army

Government employees and their families have always been the storm troopers of the statist apocalypse.  And now their numbers have grown to be overwhelming.  The left fascists knew what they were doing:  if everyone feeds from the government teat then the government becomes immensely powerful and impervious to change or even real control.  It has happened because in all of the tax producing sectors Americans become more productive every year.  In the government sector:  productivity declines each year.  The injustice of all of this 'social justice' is appalling.

TO A CERTAIN CROWD, THIS ISN’T A BUG, BUT A FEATURE: “More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.”

Hattip Instpapundit