Who's Extreme?

(via Hot Air)

It's been too long.


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"America's Comeback"

I like the emphasis on state and local solutions to the problems we face.

This is the perfect answer to the Democrat Party's takeover of 1/6th of the economy through the healthcare monstrosity.

(via Hot Air)

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Massa-Freakin'-chusetts Elects Republican, Scott Brown, To The Kennedy Family Senate Seat!!1!!eleventy!!!

Never thought I'd see the day.

A year ago, in the darkness that was the winter after the armageddon of the 2008 elections, all us lonely conservative, John McCain-voting people commiserated and said we'd be back and hopefully sooner than people predicted.

No one predicted this quick of a turnaround.

Nope. Gotta give credit where it's due.

First, I'd like to thank President Obama for deferring to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on his legislative agenda.

Second, I'd like to thank Martha Coakley for running a bad campaign.

Ditto New Jersey governor Jon Corzine & former Virginia governor-hopeful Creigh Deeds.

Thanks also to Reid & Pelosi for their own special brand of incompetence and idiocy. Couldn't have done it without you two.

2010 is shaping up to be a good year for conservatives & Republicans generally. It is poetic that the cause of liberty vs. tyranny was taken up, once again, in MA--the site of the original tea party.

Obama, Reid, Pelosi, the nutroots--none of them understand what happened last night. They still think people hate GWB and will vote for them accordingly. You know what? I hope the remain in their ignorance. The longer they believe they have all the answers, the longer they'll continue their lemming-like march into irrelevance and the better chance Republicans will have of winning big in November.

Indeed, maybe "dirt moving" Clint Didier has a chance vs. Patty Murray in the Washington Senate race after all.

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Leftists Say We're Crazy Lunatics For Thinking The Country Is Headed In A Socialist, Freedom Reducing Direction (UPDATED)

But then they write health care "reform" legislation that will throw people in jail for not purchasing insurance. Something that wasn't "illegal" behavior has suddenly become something punishable with prison time.

Stone: Do you think it’s fair to send people to jail who don’t buy health insurance?

Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.

Look, folks, there are different paths to collectivist, socialist, repressive, Orwellian states, just because the United States isn't on the exact same one as, say, the former Soviet Union, doesn't mean that what the current group of leftists (including our President) is doing isn't of a piece with what was done elsewhere to limit the freedom of individual Americans.

This is how it's done in Nanny States. 20 years ago, the social democracies of Western Europe (including the UK) didn't look like they do now. Now, per the Telegraph, new environmental regulation could result in carbon rationing cards for subjects of the crown (remember, they're not citizens).

An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with "extravagant lifestyles" would be affected by the carbon allowances.

He said: "A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out."

However, some have criticised the move as "Orwellian" and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.

Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: "This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about. It's Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business."

Under the Climate Change Act, Britain is obliged to cut its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. This means annual CO2 emissions per person will have to fall from about 9 tonnes to only 2 tonnes.

Do you have an "extravagant lifestyle" as defined by the Holy Church of the Environment & Mother Gaia?

Prepare to have your unrighteous behavior curbed.

My friends here in the UK don't even know to be upset about most of these things. Like a frog in a pot of water, with the temperature slowly increasing, they're lives are managed and regulated to the Nth degree and they don't even know it.

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid 2009 alone have shown their government control-loving, liberty-reducing in just the last 10 months. Card check to take away the secret ballot and sneak unionize wherever they can. Cap & trade to regulate 1/6th of the economy. Health "reform" to control another 1/5th or so. Takeover of domestic automakers. Takeover and regulation of the financial sector. Am I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something.

The shocking thing about this is that I had no idea how wide reaching their grasp for power was until I started typing it all into this blog post.

My liberal-leftist friends are always convinced of the power of ever-greater reform and policy tweaking and technology and other knowledge advancement to bring efficiency to the inherently inefficient government bureaucracy.

But here's the thing, you cannot efficient-ize the government enough to make up for the concurrent loss of liberty.

UPDATE 14 November 6:17p BST: Ryan Decker's comment from the Facebook thread:

You could have ended the sentence thus: "you cannot efficient-ize the government." Even if the liberty/efficiency tradeoff did exist the point would be moot because government is not capable of increasing efficiency. Policymakers simply face the wrong incentives, lack the competence, and cannot process the information required to increase the efficiency of anything.

So there's no trade-off in which government policy could somehow increase efficiency at the cost of liberty. If they're taking your liberty, they're doing it inefficiently.

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You Know How Pres. Obama & The Liberal Propagandists Said Conservatives Were Deluded About Government Funding Of Abortion?

They lied to you.

President Obama and other "fact checking" groups explicitly stated that the President's plan (really, whatever Speaker Pelosi put forward) didn't and wouldn't fund abortions. They wrote long articles and gave speeches about how conservative, right-to-lifers were wild eyed and deluded--that abortion was one of the "myths" of the Obama plan that wasn't really true.

You know, that it was a myth just like the death panels were a myth.

Fortunately, there are some life-loving, honest Democrats in the House of Representatives--63 of them, to be exact.

For months, the Michigan Democrat has been threatening to bring down any health-care bill unless the House was given the opportunity to vote to extend the ban on taxpayer dollars for abortion to the new federal programs being created. On Saturday night, Mrs. Pelosi caved and Mr. Stupak prevailed.

The result is one of the few, real up-or-down votes we ever get on abortion—and the only part of the health-care mess that shows any bipartisan consensus. In the end, 63 Democrats and Mr. Stupak joined all but one Republican on an amendment that does two things: prohibits federal funds for an abortion or for abortion coverage; allows (notwithstanding pro-choice propaganda) private insurers to offer abortion coverage so long as tax dollars are not involved.

Not that the press ever noticed. Up until almost literally the 11th hour, Mr. Stupak's push for a vote was treated as a sideshow. Nor was President Barack Obama ever called to answer for his flatly contradictory public statements on the place of abortion (the preferred term is "reproductive health care") in any health-care reform.

Mr. Stupak has just changed all that. On Sunday, the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, sent out an action alert asking supporters to tell Mr. Obama to "make good" on his "promise to put reproductive health care at the center of [his] health care reform plan." She should know: She was standing next to Candidate Obama in 2007 when he declared that "reproductive care is essential care, it is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose."

Unfortunately for Ms. Richards, during his recent appearance before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama promised something different: "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

Notwithstanding the president's promise, page 110 of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill authorized the secretary of Health and Human Services to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. All Mrs. Pelosi's preferred "compromises" left this undisturbed, using what in effect would be a money-laundering scheme to cloak the reality of a federal agency paying for abortion.

But Mr. Stupak stood firm, and Mrs. Pelosi realized something would have to give if she wanted to get a health-care bill passed. So she gave Mr. Stupak his vote—and his victory.

Big ups to Bart Stupak and his 62 fellow, pro-life Democrats.

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Harry Reid's Nuts 4

A report on the contraction, not the possessive.

Would the voters of Nevada get rid of this guy already? I'm just glad I don't share my alma mater with him. He's an SUU & Utah St. guy. So there's that.

His memoir was just released in paperback form (not that I was waiting for the Amazon price drop or anything) and Mark Hemingway has posted his review at NRO.

I've recently become fascinated with the "blurbs" publishers or authors or whoever choose to put on their books from amongst the many reviews of their books. One that struck me as funny and not at all flattering was on the cover of the Ken Follett novel I'm reading at the moment. The New York Daily News called it "quick-paced." Wow. When that is the type of praise your book is getting, you've got problems. Fortunately, Follett was able to redeem himself with other, better books. Somehow I don't think Reid will get another shot.

Anyway, here's Hemingway on the reception/review of Reids memoir:

Every other major media outlet has been standoffish. Take this blurb from the Washington Post, proudly emblazoned on the back of the paperback edition: “Recounts fights with everyone from classmates to the man who would eventually become his father-in-law, preparing him for a senatorial life of battling the Bush White House and Republican filibusters.” Beware the value-neutral blurb: In fact, the Post never reviewed the book — the quote comes from a gossip column published a month before the book’s release. One of the most powerful men in Washington published a book, and the entire journalistic establishment’s reaction seems to have been, “If you can’t say something nice . . . ”

So he's been a belligerent cuss from day one, eh? Does that really surprise anybody?

A couple of years ago, Reid gave a speech at BYU as a part of one of their forums. Ostensibly, it was to appease all the haters who thought BYU was being partisan by having Vice President Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney give a talk at commencement (President Bush couldn't make it).

VP Cheney didn't say a single thing that could have been construed as partisan. Whereas Senator Reid, given his turn, made a complete fool of himself by giving what amounted to one of his usual senatorial rants against President Bush, Evangelical Christians, etc. He was his usual, classy self.

The best example (or worst) of Reid's classiness from his memoir is pointed out, per usual, by DrewM @ Ace:

While no one expects Reid to praise George W. Bush, the degree to which he is judgmental and catty regarding the former president pretty much speaks for itself. Three pages in, after lamely trying to establish his bipartisan bona fides by talking up George H. W. Bush, Reid shares this charming anecdote about his early days in the Senate: “[Former Texas senator and vice-presidential candidate Lloyd] Bentsen went on and on effusively about what a quality man President-elect [H. W.] Bush was. Then he paused and said, ‘But watch out for his wife; she’s a [witch].’ I have never had anything against Mrs. Bush, but guided by Bentsen’s crude advice, I’ve always said that our forty-third president is more his mother than his dad.”

What’s the purpose of recording for posterity a bit of hearsay defaming a woman Reid admits he has no cause to dislike? Is Reid really so petty as to insult someone’s mother? Why yes, yes he is.

On the one hand, I'm extremely put off by Reid's antics. On the other, I'm incredibly amused by the damage he and his partner in crime, Nancy Pelosi, do to their party. It's a commentary on the party leadership as a whole that these two are the leaders of the Democrat party in Congress.

Bravo, Democrats, bravo.

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Save The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

I thought about entitling this something like, "Democrats Love Unions More Than Kids," because honestly, that's what it looks like.

Washington DC's schools are notoriously bad--as in, worst in the country bad. A few years ago, a few brave souls started the Opportunity Scholarship program which allows a few thousand students the chance to escape the downward spiral at their local public school and attend the same private school as President Obama's kids.

Teacher's unions, whose self interest lies with preserving the jobs of its members, rather than teaching kids, adamantly oppose school choice. Whether it's a charter, corporate scholarship, or a voucher, they will do whatever it takes--by hook or crook--to stop it.

Sometimes that means donating huge amounts of money to Democrats who will hide their killing of Opportunity Scholarships in Omnibus spending bills. They just hope you're too stupid or scared to notice--it's all apart of Rahm Emanuel's plan to take advantage of crisis and get crazy liberal stuff done while you're paranoid and not paying attention--you know, the type of fearmongering the Leftists accused President Bush of doing for years.

Well, now their fearmongering is going to kill the DC area Opportunity Scholarships. And President Obama is a willing, if not complicit, participant. How can he and his liberal Democrat friends (and, incidentally, damn Mike Crapo (R) from Idaho. For shame, Crapo, for shame. I expect this kind of thing from Arlent Specter & Olympia Snowe (certifiable idiots), but you? Please resign.) deny poor, mostly minority kids the same education enjoyed by their children?

Ask yourself that question--how can they do this?--as you watch the youtube clip these kids put together for President Obama. These aren't a bunch of rich white kids asking for tax cuts so their parents can afford a new G5 to take them on a class trip (I'll leave that to Nancy Pelosi), these kids either get the scholarship and go to a good school or they attend failing public schools.




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Bi-Partisanship Is Overrated

Early Monday morning I finished Dickens' Great Expectations. I was interested to see that he used the term "overrated."

Apparently it's a term that's been percolating for longer than Barack Obama's political career.

My bad.

Today I received an email from Matt P. I hadn't heard from Matt P. for a long time so I was glad to read what he had to say about the Spendulous bill currently being considered in House/Senate conference.

Here's Matt P.:

Your most recent blog post mentioning our new "post-partisan" era made me think of an email I received from my quite liber... err... very liberal uncle recently. He asked "Why... is the majority party permitting the bankrupt policies of the elephant party to dominate so much of the discussion surrounding the stimulus package? They don't seem to value bipartisanship, why should the Democrats?"

To me the answer is quite clear, even when accepting the premise that Democrats are not partisan and that the minority party had a huge say in anything that happened with this stymie-ulus bill. My answer, in part:

"From a purely political standpoint, if this can be portrayed as a bipartisan effort, it can be claimed as such, which would drastically reduce the overall risks of such a bill failing while maintaining the positive political upside if it were to succeed. "If we hadn't reached out the Republicans, this wouldn't have failed." Or, "If we had reached out [to] the Republicans more, this stimulus would not have been as effective."

From an ideological standpoint, I don't think that either party should place such high value [on] bipartisanship as it's much over-hyped in its importance. If you truly believe in something, you should make every reasonable effort to bring it about, especially on something as important as this. It's about making sure that the application of principle does not pull you away from that core belief. If you believe that this is our economic armageddon and the only way to avoid that is to either borrow the money or make nearly a trillion dollars out of thin air, then bipartisanship is a non-issue."

That being said, I can't stand this thing for a host of reasons, but I don't have the time to go into that.

The Spendulous was always going to pass. Regardless of its particular impact if/when it comes to pass, the economy will, eventually, recover. Democrats can then claim (in a partisan, rather than post-partisan or bi-partisan way) to have effected the recovery by passing out free condoms and building dog parks and whatnot.

They just have to hope that things are looking better in 2010. Sure, they will still be able to blame Bush, but they will be less able to. Additionally, you should not conflate Obama's popularity (now off its historic high) with the Democratic Congress'. Throughout this process, Obama has cleverly positioned himself to be able to cast off the Democratic detritas (read: Reid & Pelosi).

If something bad happens, it's because they didn't pass the bill he wanted. He'll say, 'I signed it because it was the best I could expect from those idiots.'

Incidentally, I wouldn't disagree with his characterization of Pelosi & Reid.

2012 will roll around and by then all the money he will have paid out to unions and ACORN will have filled their ranks with the real-employment-averse, but Obama-politically active, recent college graduates. This modern-day force of Obama brown-shirts will then, by hook or crook, get their man elected, again. Folks, his election team is working in the off-season.

The Spendulous is about fulfilling every liberal's spending dream of utopia and of creating a perpetual Obama machine.

It's like the water cycle we learned about back in elementary school: Vote Democrat, Democrats pass trillion dollar bill with billions of dollars for unions and "community re-organizing" groups who then contribute money and manpower to re-elect their Democratic patrons.

To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with this cycle is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend.


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FDR: Not An Economic Genius

And if, (like the liberal academics I listened to last night at a lecture on the 2008 Presidential election at UCL) you think Obama is going to be the second coming of FDR or JFK (BHO, anyone?), maybe this will give you pause.

UCLA economists concluded that FDR's policies exacerbated and lengthened the duration of the Great Depression. That's certainly not what my history teachers taught me.

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

Liberal Democrats in Congress are hoping for a New New Deal with BHO and they just may get one.

Whether he's the one (The One) who actually pushes it through or it's the abominationional (Obamanational?) love child of Harry Reid (who's nuts) and Nancy Pelosi, it doesn't really matter.


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House Party: What Happens When Democrats Go On Vacation

... And the lights go out.

This is why we love politics.
(h/t: M. Lybbert)

via Politico's blog, The Crypt, an blow by blow report on the Republicans refusal to go home after Democrats (you know, the party of the people--the party that will actually get something done--the party that will lower your gas taxes) closed down for the summer recess.

You see, Democrats went on vacation without passing a single piece of legislation. It's the first time that's happened since 1950 something. If the last, Republican controlled Congress was a do-nothing Congress, what does that make these guys?

Pelosi's Politburo. We can't take credit for the name--give it up for Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.).

Nancy Pelosi and her faithful sidekick, Harry Reid, didn't even allow debate or discussion about drilling because they knew moderate Democrats would vote with Republicans and they would lose.

What do you do when you know you're going to lose? Don't talk about it. And don't have a vote. Sound familiar? Yup. Just like the former Soviet Union. Or China or any one of the other backward totalitarian states.

One of the stars of the Republican show is John Shadegg. He's been a conservative favorite of this blog for some time. He and fellow Arizona congressman Jeff Flake are the type of conservative Republicans everyone wishes were running the party. Per Politico:

Also, Republicans can thank Shadegg for turning on the microphones the first time. Apparently, the fiesty Arizona conservative started typing random codes into the chamber's public address system and accidentally typed the correct code, allowing Republicans brief access to the microphone before it was turned off again.

"I love this," Shadegg told reporters up in the press gallery afterward. "Congress can be so boring. ... This is a kick."

Seriously, folks. If you like politics at all, this is the best kind of political showmanship and comedy you'll ever get. This kind of thing never happens. Click the link and keep checking back for updates. You can't make this stuff up.


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