Feb
22

Whodathunkit

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Eat the rich, maaan, tax them all to Hell and gone. Go ahead. See what it gets ya.

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

Only a statist idiot could be surprised by this. Which brings us to this:

Oopsie! It turns out that the wealthy can find ways to shelter income when government drives the cost of taxes high enough to make it worthwhile. If that means taking their money and going where the tax laws are more welcoming to investment, then this particular population has fewer barriers to making that solution work than most of the middle class. Instead of gaining more revenue, the UK will end up losing revenue, and not just from the sheltering — but also in lost economic growth as the wealthy have to put that capital to sleep rather than make it work in the economy.

Obama’s plan to hike capital-gains taxes to 20% and push a surtax on higher earnings will produce the same result here. The capital that might have gone to work in the US will go to work somewhere else or not at all, which will not just kill the direct revenues expected in static tax analysis from the hike, but also discard the revenues that would have occurred had the capital been put to work here. That’s the lesson from the British face-plant on surtaxes, and hopefully the US learns that lesson the easy way.

I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you, Ed. You can drag a Lefty dumbass to the truth, but you can’t make him think.

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Feb
22

Protecting and serving

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Whatever would we do without our conscientious, watchful overlords out there taking care of their hapless flock?

Then there was the stunning victory last week of the massive federal government over a little Amish farmer in Pennsylvania who was intentionally and maliciously caring for cows, milking them and then selling the fresh milk produced by the cows he was caring for to willing customers eager for fresh milk.

This, of course, is strictly illegal.

The only way the federal government allows for milk to be sold is if it is cooked, processed and hauled halfway across the country in a giant, silver tanker and normally sold under a luminescent glare in the aisles of a giant grocery store with jingly music piped in.

A man buying a quart of fresh milk from Daniel Allgyer, a farmer he trusts? Well, that is just evil and a threat to proper civilization under thefederal government. It is downright subversive.

The cooking and processing and hauling, of course, generally require a big dairy operation where thousands of cows at a time are fed antibiotics to combat all the diseases that are rampant among animals crammed into assembly lines. It also costs a lot of money, which keeps small, menacing Amish farmers with their fresh, great-tasting subversive milk from competing in the milk market.

So last week, after more than a yearlong sting operation including a pre-dawn armed raid — I am not making any of this up — the federal government finally prevailed and the taxpaying, job-providing farmer went out of business. No longer will Big Dairy need to worry about this dangerous merchant of fresh milk.

And that’s the heart of it: crony socialism providing for all the needs of the industries and corporations who can afford to get their snouts into the federal trough.

Update! Yet more crony socialism:

General Motors and General Electric are two companies that have been in the political crosshairs lately. GM stands accused of “crony capitalism,” while GE is under fire for paying no Federal income taxes in 2010. The two companies share more than that though, with GE placing an order for 12,000 Chevy Volts and other hybrid vehicles.

A memo leaked to Green Car Reports lays out GE’s plans for their new fleet of Volts, and as expected, it has some people crying foul.

The memo, sent to employees of GE Healthcare Americas team explains that all sedan, crossover, and minivan purchases in 2012 will be replaced by the Chevy Volt. Only field engineers are excepted from having to drive a company Volt.

GE will offer estimates for installation Level 2 Charging Stations, though all-gas use will be allowed when there is no electric option. Any employees who opt out of the Volt program will not be compensated for their expenses. Those who do choose to drive the Volt will be reimbursed for public charging and home charging costs, in addition to gas uses.

As Doug says, General Electric and General Motors are now pretty much indistinguishable from FederalGovCo. Which, of course, is the ultimate point of the whole exercise. Hey, people, all those crappy, useless, and overpriced half-a-cars ain’t gonna sell themselves, you know.

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Feb
22

It’s working, by gum!

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Combating evil Americans’ evil addiction to evil oil, one bankruptcy at a time:

If Democrats had their way, after all, we would be enjoying the economic results of cap-and-trade policy these days — a program designed to increase the cost of energy by creating false demand in a fabricated market. As the theory goes, if you inflate the price of fossil fuels, the barbarians might finally start putting thought into how peat moss might be able to power a toaster.

In 2008, Steven Chu, Obama’s (and, sadly, our own) future secretary of energy (sic) lamented, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” The president, when asked whether he thought $4-a-gallon gas prices were good for the American economy, said, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.”

How gradual? Like, what, four years? Or is it eight?

Yet in the end, high gas prices are part of the plan. This is what the administration wants.

Yes, it is, right down the line. Hey, see if you can guess who said this: “For the well-off in this country, high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they’re a huge problem, bordering on a crisis…(high gas prices are) one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced.”

Well, they’re one of ‘em, at any rate. Which would make people like Barky and the Democrat Socialists who favor those high gas prices…what, exactly?

When it comes to the havoc wrought by Democrat Socialists and their wet-brained policies, the Goldfinger Maxim applies: once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.

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Feb
21

GREAT news for Barky: economy finally collapsing but good!

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What a weaselly, lying little shit our Pretend pResident is.

Obama thinks the current run up in gas prices is a good sign, evidence that the economy is improving. Except, in 2011, the global economy slowed down while oil and gas prices were rising along with a broad range of other commodities including gold even while domestic consumption was declining. Additionally, just last month, the International Energy Agency has cut its projections of the growth of global oil demand for 2012, and Saudi Arabia is once again lowering its production this year. With oil traded in dollars, that all indicates inflationary pressures and a weak dollar are moving prices, not increased demand.

In addition, last year, another part of the run-up in prices was the Libyan crisis. This year, the Iranian crisis is in effect, with the U.S. and Europe placing de facto embargos on Iranian oil exports. This too has an effect.

Then there is the domestic regulatory environment that makes these price spikes all the more acute here in the U.S. The nation’s refining capacity is declining along with continued restrictions on domestic oil production. We simply lack the domestic capacity to increase output when we experience these price shocks. In fact, we have declined from producing 9.6 million barrels of oil a day in 1970 to little more than 5.5 million a day now.

Overall, these huge run-ups in oil and gas prices are not good for the economy.

Well, no shit, Dick Tracy. But they’re sure good for Obama and his merry marauders, in all sorts of nefarious ways that add up to disaster for the rest of us. And with their willingness to use fraud and chicanery to win “elections”–combined with their ability to continue to deceive most of the halfwits who were stupid enough to keep him within the Democrat Socialist margin of election fraud last time, and a bootlicking media establishment not just willing but eager to help carry his worthless ass over the goal line again–they don’t seem much worried about the possible political ramifications. Draw your own conclusions.

Via Jeff, who says it for me: “@$3# you. Liar.”

Oh, and by the way?: that Keystone Pipeline debacle? All Republicans’ fault. Just so’s you know.

My God, but the balls on these heinous sons of bitches.

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Feb
21

Catch the feeevah!

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Barky needs a new campaign slogan; apparently, “This time for sure!” wasn’t working for him. Leave it to the Moron Horde to come up with some real doozies, among ‘em:

Obama 2012: Change Is Expensive
Obama 2012: Because Queen Elizabeth Really Wants A Skateboard
Obama in 2012 – Because somebody, somewhere, still works in the private sector

Obama 2012: All These Vacations Aren’t Going To Take Themselves
Barack Obama: Smell The Embarrassment
Obama: oppression has a new face

Obama 2012: You still can’t use my middle name
O’12: Because you’re racist, that’s why.
Obama 2012: At some point you’ve voted enough
O’12: Admit it, you want to find out what comes after a Trillion

There’s more, and they’re good. Ross has compiled the cream of ‘em here, the absolute tops of which, in my opinion, is this one: “Obama/Biden 2012: America was dressed like a whore.” Just says so much, y’know? Plus, you know she really enjoyed it anyway.

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Feb
21

My thanks…

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To Stephen. He knows whaffer. Every time I try to e-mail ya personally, Stephen, it bounces back to me. But be that as it may, thanks again, buddy. You’re too kind.

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Feb
21

RIP Gary Carter

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A great one gone; McLaughlin remembers him well.

Update! Bonus via Dan: May Vin Scully never leave us.

In the March issue of Golf Digest, Dodgers broadcaster (and former CBS golf announcer) Vin Scully talks about his love of the game and of just being out on the course. “The crack of the bat in baseball is a gorgeous sound,” he tells Guy Yocom. “But you don’t quite get the full effect unless you’re very close to the field, because the roar of the crowd often gets to you before the crack of the bat does. In golf, there is all that delicious silence, so the sound of a top pro hitting the ball is so pure. The feeling the pro gets—that sweet sensation that goes through the hands, up the arms and into the heart—the sound gives the fans a taste of that.”

There might be something out there I care less about than golf, although I’m sure I don’t know what it could possibly be. But Scully’s description–”through the hands, up the arms and into the heart”–could almost make me reconsider. Almost. And it works every bit as well as a description of what playing guitar does to a guy like me, too.

I haven’t followed baseball in years now, and not having Scully on TV calling the balls and strikes every Saturday afternoon definitely makes that an easier decision to stick with.

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Feb
21

Another silly question

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Jenny asks it:

It’s hard to find gas for less than $4 per gallon in my neck of the woods, and the experts are telling me that I should enjoy this low price while I can, because rates are only going to go up. Please excuse me while I curl into a ball on the floor and weep openly. If only tears could fuel my SUV, I’d be good to go.

Gasoline fuels my vehicle, as it fuels every other vehicle out there (even the coal-powered cars use some gas). Petroleum is a basic necessity in our modern world — it’s used in practically everything. We need oil to keep the wheels of our economy turning, so why is President Obama so eager to restrict our access to it by making it cost-prohibitive?

Because he’s a commie cocksucker who intends to grind those wheels to a halt in service to the larger project of getting more people under the sway of the Almighty State, and who intends to use his crippling of what little remains of free-market capitalism as a talking point against free-market capitalism itself–as if the fault were anybody’s but his own, and his misbegotten ideology’s. In sum:

As more nations industrialize and develop a need for oil, it becomes more and more important that we increase our supply. We have plenty of oil — tons of it. We just have to get it. Right now, our president is standing in our way. It’s a good thing it’s an election year, because if Barack Obama won’t get out of the way in making America energy independent, we’ll vote someone in who will.

Well, we’ll see about that, I guess. If there were any justice, &c. But I don’t know that there really is anymore. One look at the mostly idiotic comments on Jenny’s post should sap any sanguinity you may still have on that one.

(Via Insty)

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Feb
21

What a Progressivist-tyranny military looks like

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Weak. And kind of sad. And, frankly, pathetic.

Back in the Reagan days, the phrase “personnel is policy” revealed an insight on how Washington works. Any administration is more likely to succeed if it hires the best people who are ideologically oriented to its goals. If your agenda is radically-liberal, as Obama’s is, you would choose someone like Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, to be your Navy secretary.

Navy Secretary Mabus, like Obama, believes that our armed services are political tools, playthings to be splashed about like toys in a toddler’s bathtub. Yes, they are all too willing to bask in the glories of DEVGRU (aka, SEAL Team 6), but the credit for those achievements is JFK’s, not theirs.

Under Mabus and Obama, our Navy has shrunk to World War I levels, women are serving on submarines and we are spending untold millions or billions on “greening” the navy. The Marine Corps is about to be cut massively and the navy’s shipbuilding program is being delayed, resulting in a force that may be over-stressed or even incapable of doing its job in the next crisis.

Right now we have more admirals than ships. The fleet stands at about 285 ships, down from the Cold War level of nearly 600. We have about 336 admirals. And some of them are interesting picks.

“Interesting” in the sense of the old Chinese curse, methinks. But none of you Army partisans out there need snicker. You have weeping of your own to do.

CAMP ZAMA, Japan – The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Sgt. Michael Braden, a helicopter crew chief who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, said he was less than enthusiastic about taking part.

“I didn’t want to do it,” said Braden, 29, of Everett, Wash.

The 78th Aviation Battalion mechanic said he was ordered to do the training even though he doesn’t have any female soldiers in his unit and doesn’t see himself as the right sort of person to run the aerobics classes that make up a large portion of the PPPT training.

…Prout, who is single, said he hoped the PPPT training would help him relate to his future wife when she gets pregnant.

“A lot of people when their wives get pregnant just say, ‘good luck,’ but I will be able to be there step by step,” he said.

And hey, isn’t that what being a po-mo PC soldier is really all about? Like I said: interesting. Interesting as hell. Steyn says it with a quote: “As the Duke of Wellington remarked in another context, I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.”

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Feb
21

Good show!

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Well, I’ll definitely be checking this one out.

Imagine a television comedy about an American who moves to an exotic foreign country. He utterly refuses to assimilate, flouts the local laws, beats up people who offend him (including, in a scene that shocked even me, a Muslim who simply refused to shake a woman’s hand), acts in pretty much every way as the stereotypical Ugly American, and yet comes out as a sort of a hero?

And imagine that this series was produced, not by some jingoistic American company, but by people from that very foreign land?

And what if most of their countrymen loved it?

That’s the peculiar phenomenon we contemplate in Netflix’s maiden exclusive series, Lilyhammer, which set viewing records on Norwegian state television, and whose full first season of eight episodes is now available to subscribers.

It features Steve Van Zandt, who was so good in The Sopranos it almost hurt. And that’s reason enough to get me interested in this one.

Nevertheless, one has to wonder about the subtext. Wherever Johnny goes, he is dumbfounded by the naïve assumption every Norwegian seems to share, that all problems are simply caused by misunderstandings, and that if you’re nice enough to people, they’ll be nice as well. Johnny (who we must never forget is essentially a scumbag) is at least wiser than his neighbors in this — he knows that some problems transcend good manners.

There’s also the question of masculinity. Johnny is ugly and crude, but he’s unmistakably a man, and not the least ashamed of it. Wherever he goes in Norway he seems to encounter (with the exception of some bikers and criminals) emasculated males. One acquaintance, a stay at home father, confesses to him, weeping, that he went so far as to get a vasectomy, but his wife still keeps popping out babies (!). Johnny’s girlfriend’s son, clearly hungry for a male role model, adores Johnny, who confidently instructs him on how to deal with bullies (it involves a mitten full of rocks), and how to overcome his shyness with girls (“Think of them as food”). I suspect it’s not accidental that the lensman, the local police authority, in Lillehammer is a middle-aged woman.

Lilyhammer is far from a masterpiece, and certainly does not rate as wholesome entertainment (lots of profanity, some nudity, and violence).

Okay, that does it. I’m sold.

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Feb
21

Santorum tells truth, gets slammed

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Well, he would; he doesn’t have a “D” after his name in all the papers. Of course, if he did have, telling the truth wouldn’t ever be an issue; he’d be constitutionally incapable of it anyway.

On Saturday, surging Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum attacked President Barack Obama’s governing philosophy: “It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology–but no less a theology.”

Perfectly correct. Just because Leftists react to what is traditionally thought of as religion–well, excepting Islam, which Shall NOT Be Questioned, or even examined critically and honestly–as vampires do to garlic doesn’t mean they aren’t religious.

What Santorum has done is to push back against the persistent religious hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and the left in general, who habitually raise false alarms about Christian encroachments on the constitutional separation of church and state while manipulating religion to suit their own political ends. Under Obama, Democrats have become ever bolder in substituting left-wing revisionism for traditional religious doctrine.

There are three essential elements in the so-called “liberation theology” of the American left. The first is the creed of social justice–the notion that it is our job to perfect the world by removing wealth and power from some and giving it to others. The second is the institution of the state–that the government is the ultimate source of moral virtue. And the third is the Prophet Obama Himself–the messenger and interpreter of the true faith.

Well, sure, but that’s diff’runt, see. And as usual, the context is deliberately obscured by all the screaming:

The comments came at an event in Columbus shortly after the former senator from Pennsylvania said efficacy and safety improvements in oil drilling technology are considered by the president to be “a dangerous technology.”

“It doesn’t fit his pattern of trying to drive down consumption, trying to drive up your cost of transportation to accomplish his political science goal of reducing carbon dioxide,” he said.

Obama, he continued, is not motivated by “your quality of life.”

“It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology,” Santorum said. “Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology. But no less a theology.”

The White House hopeful held a press conference later in the day, where a half dozen questions centered on the topic.

He added that liberals on “the left” have been imposing their own moral code on Americans for quite some time.

“You can call it a theology, you can call it a moral code, you can call it a world view,” he said. “They want to impose [that] on everybody else while they insist and complain that somehow or another people of Judeo Christian faith are intolerant of their new moral code.”

Again: all perfectly correct. It’s just that they can’t afford to have you realize it. Again: of course, and as usual.

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Feb
21

Celebrating Black History Month

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With a useful little history lesson.

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Feb
20

Back up and running

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SO. I gots a recommendation for you folks: Clear Wireless. Got set up with ‘em over the weekend, received my refurbed Motorola modem (all of twenty, count ‘em, 20, bucks) just about ten minutes ago, and here I am, back in the saddle. It’s blazingly fast, and their personnel (I’ve so far spoken to two of ‘em over the phone) have been courteous, knowledgeable, very damned helpful, and seem very happy indeed to have my business. No, they’re not paying me to say it, but I will anyway: for anybody considering ditching the cable company in your area, these guys seem like one damned fine way to go.

Got paying work to catch up on here, so regular pissing and moaning resumes later this evening, most likely. Thanks for your patience, gang.

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Feb
17

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

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My internet connection is still sketchy and unsteady, and it now looks as if it’s going to be Monday before I can expect it to be fixed. But I just had to get this in while I can: a good summation of the damage wrought by Ogabecare from Krauthammer:

Consider the constitutional wreckage left by Obamacare:

First, the assault on the free exercise of religion. Only churches themselves are left alone. Beyond the churchyard gate, religious autonomy disappears. Every other religious institution must bow to the state because, by this administration’s regulatory definition, church schools, hospitals and charities are not “religious” and thus have no right to the free exercise of religion — no protection from being forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state.

Second, the assault on free enterprise. To solve his own political problem, the president presumes to order a private company to enter into a contract for the provision of certain services — all of which must be without charge. And yet, this breathtaking arrogation of power is simply the logical extension of Washington’s takeover of the private system of medical care — a system Obama farcically pretends to be maintaining.

Under Obamacare, the state treats private insurers the way it does government-regulated monopolies and utilities. It determines everything of importance. Insurers, by definition, set premiums according to risk. Not anymore. The risk ratios (for age, gender, smoking, etc.) are decreed by Washington. This is nationalization in all but name. The insurer is turned into a middleman, subject to state control — and presidential whim.

Third, the assault on individual autonomy. Every citizen without insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law. This so-called individual mandate is now before the Supreme Court — because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.

This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.

In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet two years later, as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes, the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition argument.

Worse, it also constitutes a perhaps bigger failure on the part of a populace long inured to the outrageous offense against liberty and self-determination represented by Leviathan’s continual expansion–said populace now having been reduced in large numbers from citizens to subjects, and from formerly free men and women to somnolent sheep.

Which, of course, has all gone according to the Progressivist plan. And it won’t change until the so-called “opposition” party–or, more likely, a new one–can bring itself to openly admit the truth about who and what it is they’re opposing, and get serious about providing some leadership in actually opposing it, instead of enabling it.

The contraception mandate is an undercard bout, pretty much meaningless except as a bitter foretaste of what’s to come. The main event is Obamacare itself; as long as it stands as the law of the land, the fight over this or that mandate will remain ultimately meaningless–because any reprieves or exemptions will be temporary, to soothe the nervous bleating of those most directly affected, and get the flock calmed down and back asleep.

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Feb
15

Publick announcement

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I’ve had a spotty, unreliable, damned near nonexistent internet connection the last few days around here, hence my absence from this joint and just about everywhere else on the Intarwebs. Hope to have it all fixed up again sometime tomorrow. Fingers crossed on that one…

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Feb
13

“Bold colors, not pale pastels”

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Palin electrified ‘em yet again, bless her little heart, and there’s much discussion of it out there, both hither and yon.

Palin will not accept that future because it is an un-exceptional one. An un-American one, to say the least.

“We are the heirs of patriots who cast off the chains of tyranny, of immigrants who braved the seas, of pioneers who pushed into the great unknown, of soldiers who stormed foreign shores, of farmers and workers laboring in field and in factories from dusk to dawn,” Palin said. “They toiled so their children would have a better life. That is America. And that is freedom. And that is why we are exceptional.”

Palin repeatedly said the door was open for a conservative victory, but the door that seemed to be open the widest was the one to her political future as the leader of the conservative movement and as heiress to the Reagan legacy.

It was her Party on Saturday, and it could be for the foreseeable future.

If only. More:

No one in their right mind would go on-stage after Palin’s political palaver. People who dislike or fear her are incapable of seeing or admitting it. But that doesn’t diminish the reality that Palin is a rare political celebrity and, therefore, an unharnessed power to be reckoned with within the GOP for the foreseeable future.

We’re not talking about her running for any office. We’re talking about her influence, her enduring proven ability to attract and then ignite a crowd — even before anyone sees her. The CPAC buzz was electric all-day. Impatient “Sar-ah! Sar-ah!” chants broke out during preceding speakers.

She has the ability to speak about issues that profoundly bother the audience in common ways and words that listeners instantly recognize and wish they had thought to say just that way. Watch in the video below of her full CPAC speech for how this church-going mother of five mocks Obama’s Winning the Future program with an almost off-color aside. And prompts shared laughter, not shock.

She gets immense unspoken credit for withstanding an amazing amount of abuse and keeping on ticking. Palin punches have power, like her elbows beneath the basket in high school athletic days. One supporter said to me, as if it was the highest contemporary compliment possible, ”She fights like a girl!”

Most politicians these days talk to their audiences or, worse, at them. Even the Real Good Talker, who made his name on a 2004 convention speech and has been giving too many ever since. Governing is hard work. Campaigning is tiring, but much easier. So, he has been and will be campaigning, blaming others as usual.

Instead, instinctively Palin doesn’t speak at or to audiences. She speaks for them.

Well, she damned sure does for me, I’ll say that much. Given how the GOP nomination process has descended into tired, enervating farce–with a dishonest phony having come all too close to securing the nomination (with the obnoxiously presumptuous support of a lot of folks who should know better, along with plenty who will never get it), and a hold-your-nose field of also-rans nipping at his heels, thereby dispiriting just about everybody in a year that should have seen the slam-dunk denouement to the Tea Party shellacking of 2010–it’s actually, literally tragic that she didn’t run. But JE Dyer has an explanation for that that makes sense to me:

Six or eight months ago, the sea change in the voters’ sentiments and propensities might have been foreseeable, but it hadn’t happened yet. Those who think Palin could have won lots of primaries on the basis of pre-primary voter sentiments are wrong, I think. After all, the business-as-usual approach – Karl Rove tells everyone how bad a candidate is, the media magnify his or her every quirk or mistake, the media and some (not all) of the other candidates pile on with allegations that range from hostile spin to outright falsehood – has so far felled our most conservative candidates.

But in the process, the voters have been changing. That’s what Palin saw before others did. Do I think she is counting the days to a brokered convention? No. There is no one who could reasonably adopt that as a “plan.” She won’t run this year; that’s my rational assessment as well as my gut feeling.  (I could of course be wrong, although I think some big conditions will have to change more for that to be the case.)

But if she does run, it will not be because she has changed, but because we have. There are political conditions in which she could run successfully, and conditions in which she couldn’t. The latter have constituted our political environment up until the last couple of months.

If the conditions are changing now, I believe that is largely because voters are having to wise up to the flaws in our own thinking by going through this ugly spectacle. We already knew that the media have no intention of giving our candidates a fair shake, and that many in the GOP leadership want to submarine the small-government conservatives.  What many voters didn’t understand is that if we want to select leaders of character, we have to graduate from high school, and overlook the vicissitudes of “presentation” that sometimes make good people look like buffoons to those who see without humility, mercy, or discrimination. We have to see with better eyes. We have to think independently of the jeers embedded in the media narrative. We have to be wiser citizens, placing in political leadership only the hope that is appropriate to free men and women.

We can’t have a candidate who sounds like Mitt Romney, but will lead the way a small-government conservative would. That’s not an option. What we’re doing in this primary season is coming to grips with that reality. I think Palin knew instinctively that we would have to, before it would make sense for her to jump back into the electoral fray.

Like I said, makes a lot of sense to me. And not only does this analysis strike me as pretty wise, it also speaks volumes about Palin’s own natural, instinctive wisdom–a crucial part of her almost preternatural appeal. Could be she’s been misunderestimated yet again.

No wonder all the right people hate her so viciously.

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Feb
13

Nemo goes fishing

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And catches some big ones.

Sweetened beverages, or so-called “sugary sodas,” have acquired a nasty reputation as major contributors to child — and adult — obesity. But the damage they cause is not confined to that alone. Sugary sodas, experts warn, also play a significant role in climate change, pollution and in income distribution inequity.

Be sure to read the comments, wherein it will all start to make sense–and wherein Nemo is called not only a “douche” but a far more insulting slur: “journalist.” This will explain things in full.

Well played, sir. Well played indeed.

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Feb
13

ATTACK WAAAATCH!

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Snitches get stitches.

President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign announced early Monday that it is launching a new site to enable supporters to promote Obama’s successes and “hold Republicans accountable.”

The new site incorporates the AttackWatch brand, which was met by ridicule from the GOP when it was announced last year, and encourages Obama supporters to “report” attacks from Republicans.

“The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama’s record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives,” said Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter in a release.

They’re also setting up Truthiness Teams of Imperial Stormtroopers–a/k/a union goons–to make sure that any Enemies of the State caught telling the truth about His Royal Majesty understand the penalties for lèse majesté. See you in the camps, folks!

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Feb
13

The enemy Part the Second

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We have met him, and he is us. Well, some of us.

We often hear the Democrats cited as the reason we’re in this mess today, but that’s a cop out. The right in the guise of the Republican party are just as guilty as the Democrats. In fact, I’d argue they’re more guilty. The reason we’re in this mess today is because over the years the Republicans have accommodated the Democrats by compromising their principles.

The most recent examples are Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind – two huge government programs one of which put a new entitlement in place and the other which increased federal control of education (at an equally huge cost).

This wasn’t a program supported just by the left, folks. This was negotiated, passed and signed into law with the blessing of a Republican President.

THIS is why we’re in the mess we’re in. THIS is where the precedent for ObamaCare was set.

As much as the other candidates want to hit Mitt Romney on RomneyCare (and they should), one should remember that Rick Santorum voted for Part D (although he now says that was a “mistake”) and Newt Gingrich lobbied for it.

It is those sorts of compromises and accommodations which have put us in the mess we’re in today. The party of smaller government has consistently caved in to larger government programs all the while hollering about the left.

This is one reason there’s so much disgust on the right with the party, at least among activists and Tea Party types.

If ObamaCare becomes law, we’re sunk.

It HAS become law already, it IS law. And even now, bureaucracies are being built, rules are being established, drones are being hired, and programs are being developed that will prove all but impossible to root out, no matter who is elected in the fall. The answer is, as Steyn has argued, not to put our faith in this or that part of it being thrown out by a Supreme Court previously proven to be all too capricious, and quite damned sanguine about seeing “rights” where they don’t actually exist, floating about like will o’ the wisps among the fog of emanations and penumbras. The only possible answer is to repeal the thing entirely, as Gingrich promised to do (NOTE: I should make clear that of course I know Gingrich can’t repeal it himself; see this for clarification).

Tinkering around the edges of one of the Superstate’s programs, as the GOP is wont to do, just won’t cut it with this one. But as long as the GOP remains the GOP, that hapless, ineffectual tinkering is exactly what we’re going to get.

Good and hard.

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Backtalk

Feb
13

The enemy

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Of honest journalism, of Constitutionally-limited government, of liberty, of truth and integrity itself.

Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.

Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media.

Founded by Brock in 2004 as a liberal counterweight to “conservative misinformation” in the press, Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in Democratic politics. The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country. Brock, who collected over $250,000 in salary from Media Matters in 2010, has himself become a major fundraiser on the left. According to an internal memo obtained by TheDC, Media Matters intends to spend nearly $20 million in 2012 to influence news coverage.

Donors have every reason to expect success, as the group’s effect on many news organizations has already been profound. “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

You’re going to see this one linked all over the place the next couple of days, and you need to read it all. Media Matters is an integral part of the Leftist propaganda machine, one the usurper in the Oval Office has used to great effect to advance his tyrannical machinations. They are a clear and present danger to everything America is supposed to stand for.

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Backtalk

Feb
13

Obama is winning the War On America

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And we face one of the many costs of defeat every time we gas up.

The Obama administration has been tightening the grip around the collective necks of the fossil fuel industry. The goal is of course to kill it and nowhere is this more self evident than with oil exploration.

The most recent example is the studying to death of the Keystone pipeline. Allegedly, the Obama administration needs more time to determine the feasibility of such an undertaking. It is not as if we do not have tens of thousands of miles of pipeline in this nation, this one needs to be studied over and over. As we know, the review is an attempt to kill the project through delay.

In battling the fossil fuel industry, the Obama administration is employing a tactic that is usually used by unions in disputes with their employers – the rule book slowdown. The concept of a rule book slowdown is simple; follow the rules as exactly written, down to the last detail, and by doing so one’s work cannot be performed in a timely and efficient manner. It is in the nature of bureaucracies to micromanage every detail of work and if you literally follow the rules as written, you cannot perform your job; thus using the rules as a weapon. That following rules can be used as a job action is an indictment of our society in general but it is nothing new on the labor front. What is new is our government adopting this tactic as a weapon against a segment of our economy, which in the end will not only destroy the industry but hurt us all. The assault on the Keystone pipeline is just building upon the template employed against deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Deep water drilling was stopped by the Obama administration in the wake of the BP oil disaster. A moratorium was declared which was subsequently challenged in court. Although the courts rescinded the ban, the Obama administration in response instituted a rule book slowdown. A six month moratorium has turned into nearly two years, with no end in sight.

Prior to the BP disaster, the government approved approximately seven deep water permits a month. Now, it is down to two and just getting a permit does not guarantee that a platform will be up and running any time soon as more rules must be complied with. Our bureaucracy is being used as a weapon. Byzantium has nothing on us.

Which is why the Founders included protections against the building of such bureaucracies throughout the Constitution. The real problem is, as always, that we’ve allowed the Constitution to be tossed aside, if not outright trampled underfoot.

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Backtalk

Feb
13

Catholics get a look at the iron fist

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Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, they’ve decided to fight the wrong battle.

Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?

Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”). The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

A bigtime GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You’ll roll it back — like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel ’n’ dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: “Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?”

Indeed. Look at it from the Dems’ point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health-care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That’s a huge prize, and well worth a mid-term timeout.

The whole contraception-mandate dustup–call it the Great Condom Crisis–is a sideshow. The real offense against the Constitution and freedom of every kind is Obamacare itself. And the Church was all for it at the time. They, like many others, just refused to take notice of the gun aimed at their own heads, since the King granted them all temporary exemptions and promised them he wouldn’t pull the trigger in exchange for their support in ramming it through. Now they’ve learned what the promise of a despot is really worth.

As Steyn says, Obamacare was never about health care at all; it’s about government. And now the Church is finding out that special dispensations from an all-powerful Superstate can be revoked at the tyrant’s whim, and that getting in bed with him in the first place will inevitably leave one soiled and humiliated in the morning. The battle must be joined for principles’ sake by all of us who still care about the Constitution, but none of us should have any illusions about the Whore-of-Babylon nature of some of our faithless and collaborationist allies.

Update! The Prof notices something a little funny about all this: “It’s almost as if Stephanopoulos got the memo first. Unless, of course, you believe in coincidences.” Not with Progressivists. Ain’t no such thing.

Updated update! Great line from Jeff: “when is a coincidence not a coincidence? When a journalist isn’t a journalist.”

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Feb
13

“Send the rest of the conservative movement a case of whatever it is Andrew drinks”

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He fights. Forget the conservative movement, they’re fine; better send a few pallet-loads to the GOP “leadership.” Or a couple of shipping containers’ worth.

Aww, never mind. Whatever it may be that Breitbart’s drinking, there ain’t enough of it in the world to stiffen spines that aren’t there in the first place. You gotta build ‘em from scratch.

(Via Insty)

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Backtalk

Feb
10

Pseudo-science laid bare

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Well on the way to being refuted, as always, by science. This is a longish and in-depth sort of article, so I’ll content myself with one brief excerpt, involving a lamer-than-usual “debunking” by a global-warmening shaman:

I don’t know what I find more amusing about this quote: the fact that he is directing scientists not to draw conclusions from data, or the fact that he then proceeds to assert his own interpretation of the data, that “cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” Well, no, if Svensmark’s theory is right, it is not “only one of many,” it is the central factor, far more important than human emissions of carbon dioxide. But thanks for telling us all ahead of time what we’re supposed to think.

Go ye and read of it, and the next time some AGW dimwit starts running the blockhead catechism on ya, just laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

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Feb
10

“I’m sorry, do you smell something?”

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I do indeed, and it’s Teh Funny: Obama/Volt 2012!

He damned well ought to have to run with it. If not as a running mate, then as a millstone around his scrawny neck. Or, say, a weight tied to his ankles before he’s chunked into the Potomac.

(Via Ace)

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