With such a crowded field... how did we let this go for so long?

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We’ve drifted away from the practice for the last 2 or 3 years but we had previously been in the habit of awarding the truly horrible journalism the Walter Duranty Putridity in Journalism Award, in honor of the eponymous Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter and Communist sympathizer.


So bad was the column by David Brooks a couple of weeks ago, we have decided to resurrect the award and reprint our blog response to it below. Congratulations, Brooksy, for taking home the not-so-coveted Walter Duranty Putridity in Journalism Award for 2013:

When shilling for an autocracy is so much easier than swallowing your pride

We've all been there. We read something or listen to someone and your jaw hits the floor with the simultaneous thought, perhaps voiced out loud, "Where has this guy been?", or "What planet is this dude living on?"


David Brooks (pictured), employing what is now a cottage industry in political punditry: decrying gridlock and/or a "dysfunctional" Washington D.C., gave us that moment in his latest column titled "Strengthen the Presidency."


To be fair, Brooks does bring up some valid points. Yes, there are too many K Street lobbyists. Yes, moneyed interests skew legislation to the benefit of just a few. We know all this but Brooks' solution to the problem, as strongly suggested by the title of the column is both dangerous and foolish.


First, though, some false assumptions by Brooks:

"... it is possible to mobilize the executive branch to come to policy conclusion on something like immigration reform. It’s nearly impossible for Congress to lead us to a conclusion about anything.

It's "reform" and "reform" is inherently good, right? No. Not really. You can dress up that pig and call it anything you want and it's still just a pig and the current amnesty plan not to mention Dodd-Frank Fin-Reg and, of course, the mother of all reform pigs, the Affordable Care Act are all proof of that. And please note how easy Brooks can assert singular executive action as a preferable course all in the name of "doing something" whatever that "something" is.

"Fourth, Congressional deliberations, to the extent they exist at all, are rooted in rigid political frameworks. Some agencies, especially places like the Office of Management and Budget, are reasonably removed from excessive partisanship."

Good. We'll keep saying for as long as we have to, but in our constitutional republic, passing laws is supposed to be and is necessarily designed to be difficult... at least it used to be. The Senate's sobriquet as the most deliberative body on the planet was, we thought, a point of pride. Again, this notion that Congress must do “something” is simply wrong-headed. Mere activity of Congress does not equate to beneficial nor productive legislation. There are far worse things than “legislative inactivity” and “legislative activity” would be one of those.

Fifth, executive branch officials, if they were liberated from rigid Congressional strictures, would have more discretion to respond to their screw-ups, like the Obamacare implementation. Finally, the nation can take it out on a president’s party when a president’s laws don’t work. That doesn’t happen in Congressional elections, where most have safe seats.

Now, Brooks is just talking wacky. When he says "respond" does he mean the blizzard of waivers, delays and exemptions the administration has rained down from on high since ObamaCare became law and which has served only to add confusion to an already overly-complex and byzantine law and served only to reinforce the perception of utter incompetence of this administration? Is that what he means by "respond"? God help us. We're bordering on banana republic territory as it is and Brooks appears blissfully unaware that his "respond" mechanism of the executive branch is the main reason why.

And about those safe seats… Tell that to the scores of now-former congressional Democrats that got swept out of office in that 2010 midterm shellacking which was a direct result of the electorate's "response" to ObamaCare.


But, believe it or not, Brooks isn’t done… not by a long shot. Here’s the paragraph justifying more concentrated and constitutional republic-shunning power-grabbing and which is tied directly to his fifth point above:

This is a good moment to advocate greater executive branch power because we’ve just seen a monumental example of executive branch incompetence: the botched Obamacare rollout. It’s important to advocate greater executive branch power in a chastened mood. It’s not that the executive branch is trustworthy; it’s just that we’re better off when the presidency is strong than we are when the rentier groups are strong, or when Congress, which is now completely captured by the rentier groups, is strong.

Insane. Simply insane. Brooks lays out exactly why it’s such a bad idea to give the executive branch more power and then doubles down by advocating exactly for that.

And let’s take a quick moment to disabuse ourselves this notion that somehow the executive branch is more insulated from special interests than Congress. For one, the Department of Energy green loan program has been nothing but a pay-off to administration cronies, bundlers and campaign donors.

And the absolute lack of accountability in the scandals involving the IRS, NSA snooping, Fast and Furious and Benghazi are all indicative of responding to political pressure from like-minded political interests. Whether its K Street or within the vast federal leviathan, what does it matter?

If you think that the most powerful office in the world is somehow more insulated from the pressure of interests groups than a congressman, we believe you’d be sadly mistaken.


Poor David Brooks, the center-right columnist of America’s paper of record. Pride is a tough thing to swallow and since he’s been an Obama apologist for years now, it’s probably the easiest path now to double down on proposing the executive branch power grabs for his boy that has already been happening for years. Power grabs that are completely at odds with the ideals of a constitutional republic but it’s apparent that brushing aside political inconveniences trump any fidelity to separation of powers and checks and balances.


Brooks’ assumptions that this can all be justified because of the fundamental decency of one man is that of foolishness and shortsightedness.


Exit question(s) for our liberal friends out there. Sure, it’s all good because of the unsurpassed righteousness, benevolence and wisdom of Barack Obama. But he’s only going to be in office for a little over 3 more years. What then? The executive orders and unilateral actions that had you all so exorcised during the Bush years and that you either turned a blind eye towards or actively cheered during the Obama regime… What now? All those assumed and accrued powers will be turned over to someone infinitely less-saintly than the current occupier of the Oval Office. What will you say then?


We're not holding our breath waiting for an answer.

(end of article)



And we do have a video category for this award for the first time. Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC… come on down and get your hardware while the rest of us enjoy the this montage of the 5 dumbest things you said this year.



It’s no surprise that Fox News skews right and blonde but we’ve got to hand it to the folks at MSNBC for stretching beyond the widely-held standards of common sense and graciousness to achieve previously-thought unimaginable levels of poor taste and derangement. An atta boy all around to that entire network.




That's it, gang. Have a safe and enjoyable New Year's and we'll see you all in 2014.

Old and busted?

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Oh yeah. Leave it to the New York Times to wait for the last day of the year to come up with the worst Op-Ed of the year. The title tells you all you need to know:

Let’s Give Up on the Constitution



Right?

Our own alternative headline: Constitutional law professor really frustrated with a document that isn’t hip to the times.


We won’t do a paragraph by paragraph fisking but we will point out one particular portion:

The deep-seated fear that such disobedience [to the Constitution] would unravel our social fabric is mere superstition. As we have seen, the country has successfully survived numerous examples of constitutional infidelity. And as we see now, the failure of the Congress and the White House to agree has already destabilized the country. Countries like Britain and New Zealand have systems of parliamentary supremacy and no written constitution, but are held together by longstanding traditions, accepted modes of procedure and engaged citizens. We, too, could draw on these resources.

(italics, ours)

There’s a couple of problems with that: yes, we could and did draw upon British common law but we were a new nation. It was incumbent that we hammer-out something iron-clad that would propel our nation forward as a nation of law rather than that from which we revolted and claimed independence; the very Great Britain and its tyranny which he cites as an example of how things were done better.

Besides, as it turned out, our nation going forward did not enjoy the homogeneity of Great Britain nor New Zealand from which these longstanding traditions could be drawn. As we are constantly reminded, we are nation of immigrants and, as such, many of this nation’s new citizens came from parts of the world where concepts like freedom of speech, freedom of religion and property rights were totally, no pun intended, foreign. Yes, we attracted those foreigners and continue to do so precisely because of enshrined concepts laid down by those dead white men over 220 years ago.

We needed and continue to need a stable document that established the institutions we depend upon that rose up out of the Constitution. Scrapping the constitution is only an invitation for tyranny.

And merely surviving as a country from all the past abuses to the Constitution… how does that excuse those abuses and how does that make the Constitution any less relevant? The struggle over interpretation of the Constitution doesn’t mean you scrap it. That’s the whole idea. We all have our different interpretations and just because you believe all these different interpretations have led to all the acrimony and vitriol in politics these days, is far from any legitimate reason to scrap the Constitution.

And please try telling my parents who were rearing a young family about acrimony and vitriol as they were doing it amid protests, upheaval and assassinations in the late 60s and early 70s. What we are currently experiencing is nothing compared to what this country went through 40-45 years ago.

That column was just a thinly-veiled whine because this supposed Constitutional law professor wasn’t getting what he wanted out of politics.




And just kicking it around BwD headquarters today allowed us ample opportunity to Tweet our reaction to this wretched article:

#NYTimes doesn’t like the #Constitution, except for the parts it likes. Got it.

If you don’t like the #Constitution then garner support, consensus and votes to change it. It’s been done before. #Amendments

Newspaper that endorsed a man who granted himself the powers of indefinite detention w/o cause thinks we are too obsessed w/the #Constitution.

Political set of people who ripped previous President for shredding the Constitution now say we have an unhealthy obsession with it.

With President set too extend/expand warrantless surveillance, NYTimes thinks it’s time to scrap the Constitution. This is not a coincidence.

Those that question the individual right to bear arms also claim #healthcare is a universal right. This is what passes as statist logic.

Please feel free to expound upon those parts of the Constitution you no likey. Seriously. Give some specifics.

And our boy JD @Psudrozz replied thusly:

The font selection was horrible. 225 years ago the framers couldn’t envision the proper font. Should be scrapped.

And this from @hale_razor:

We’re at the point where liberals say the constitution is optional but Obamacare is mandatory

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Sorry to wrap this up this so curtly but a hearfelt congratulations to the New York Times for sneaking in just under the wire and offering up the worst op-ed column of the year.

Someone actually wrote this

(We extracted the below from our Quickies post yesterday as we wanted to give it a little broader circulation)

From the New York Times:

It’s so ironic, people. The national electorate is totally turned off by partisan standoffs. You can almost hear the public imploring, will you guys please just make some back-room deals? And, at that same moment, the Republican candidates are being pushed into being more and more intractable.

(italics, someone)


That someone is Gail Collins, columnist for the Times.

Can we officially stick a fork in Hopenchange? We knew it to be a farce all along but America's newspaper of record is, in print, championing business as usual.

What's ironic, Gail, is that Obama's two greatest legislative accomplishments were fashioned in the manner for which you are pining. Porkulus (aka: the American Recovery Act) and to a much greater degree, ObamaCare, were epitomized by back room deals, bribes, kick-backs and business as usual politics.

How sad that the Hopenchange set has been reduced to supporting the most shamelessly cynical politician in our lifetime.

If Bill Clinton was shamelessly cynical, and he was, he at least had the political sense to realize that to build his legacy he would have to work with the opposition party to achieve legislative goals that were popular with a majority of Americans (see: welfare reform and NAFTA).

If the current occupier of the Oval Office wins a second term, will he have a similar instinct? At this point, we have seen nothing in his behavior pattern that would suggest he is anything but a hard-line ideologue. Intractable, to use Collins' words.

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.


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First up, in Garden Grove, CA, gun-wielding jewelery store owner frightens off... the Keyston Cops?

Seriously, check these guys out.





0:34 : You would not be mistaken if you at first thought that the robbers were scared off by the dog on the counter.






Someone actually wrote this:

It’s so ironic, people. The national electorate is totally turned off by partisan standoffs. You can almost hear the public imploring, will you guys please just make some back-room deals? And, at that same moment, the Republican candidates are being pushed into being more and more intractable.

(italics, someone)


That someone is Gail Collins, columnist for the New York Times.

Can we officially stick a fork in Hopenchange? We knew it to be a farce all along but America's newspaper of record is, in print, championing business as usual.

What's ironic, Gail, is that Obama's two greatest legislative accomplishments were fashioned in the manner for which you are pining. Porkulus (aka: the American Recovery Act) and to a much greater degree, ObamaCare, were epitomized by back room deals, bribes, kick-backs and business as usual politics.

How sad that the Hopenchange set has been reduced to supporting the most shamelessly cynical politician in our lifetime.

If Bill Clinton was shamelessly cynical, and he was, he at least had the political sense to realize that to build his legacy he would have to work with the opposition party to achieve legislative goals that were popular with a majority of Americans.

If the current Occupier of the Oval Office wins a second term, will he have a similar instinct? At this point, we have seen nothing in his behavior pattern that would suggest he is anything but a hard-line ideologue. Intractable, to use Collins' words.







What we've been tweeting...

So, this Olympic trampoline business... The Man Show, right?

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Headline from CNBC:

Get used to the 'New Norm' of 6-7% US Jobless Rate


Memo to CNBC: In case you haven't noticed, the jobless rate has been above 8% for 41 straight months. There would be nothing normal about a 6-7% jobless rate.

This tack is notable in two ways: 1) softening the expectations going into the heat of the presidential campaign. The President can't talk about the economy so his water-carriers will in the form of lowering the bar and 2) it's sickening. The most innovative and hard-working people on the planet are being told to just get used to the 'new malaise' of the 'new norm'. That's not the American exceptionalism we'd heard about from our parents and some of our teachers while growing up. We're not taking this laying down - will you?



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For all of you yacking about the do-nothing Congress: rejoice! They did something even if it meant further curtailing of free speech rights.

99.999% of Americans can agree that there are no more dispicable humans that blight this country of ours than the 7 or 8 members of the Westboro Baptist Church, but guess what, gang? There rights need to be protected as well. Congress, evidently, felt otherwise.

Westboro Baptist Church protesters will soon be severely limited in their ability to disrupt military funerals, after Congress passed a sweeping veterans bill this week that includes restrictions on such demonstrations.

According to “The Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012,” which is now headed to President Barack Obama’s desk, demonstrators will no longer be allowed to picket military funerals two hours before or after a service. The bill also requires protestors to be at least 300 feet away from grieving family members.

This aspect of the legislation was introduced by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who, at the urging of a teenage constituent, proposed new limitations on military funeral demonstrations as a response to a 2011 Supreme Court case that ruled such actions were protected under the First Amendment.

Yep. Your tax dollars spent on legislation that was already struck down by the Supreme Court.

And even more importantly: we would need no 1st amendment if we all spoke and thought the same. The whole concept of free speech is to protect that which you may find offensive. That's what this big ol' experiment of a constitutional republic is all about. Looks like we have some elected officials charged with stewardship of this experiment, however, that are not so mindful of this.




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This must be some more of that "new civility" I've been hearing so much about.

Think that the Chick-fil-A "kiss-in" on Friday as a counter to the "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" was largely a bust but that didn't prevent some meaningful exchanges from the two camps.

Anne Sorock, blogging at Legal Insurrection was at a Chicago event. Here's what she heard and saw:

I attended Friday night’s “Kiss-in” protest outside the only Chick-fil-A location in Chicago. The small group of between twenty to thirty protesters gathered outside the restaurant around 7pm. A few same-sex couples took the opportunity to kiss in public, as the protest organizers encouraged attendees to do on their facebook page.

I asked many of the protesters whether they agreed with Alderman Moreno’s actions; the reactions were mixed. Some agreed — one woman told me she took a “European view” of our Constitutional Rights — while others felt he was in the wrong despite agreeing with him in a general sense.

While there, a group formed around an elderly African-American homeless man, who was reading his bible while seated along a fence rail off to the side of the protest. Some in the group confronted the man, who was reading the bible aloud, and engaged him in theological debates. A few others took the opportunity to mock the man, which I captured on video:

Nearing the end of the protest, someone from the group wrote on the sidewalk in front of the homeless man, “He’s Really Gay Deep Down,” with an arrow pointed to where he was seated.

(italics, ours)

A "European view" of our Constitutional rights, huh? Kind of like, the constitution means whatever the hell we want it to mean? Looks like that whole tyranny of the majority thing is catching on.

But why do those little boys have to behave like such mean girls?


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OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.


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The President, combating terror and the paper of record

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Alternate headline: How he stopped worrying and learned to love the drone.


Lengthy but fascinating read regarding Obama's, eh, evolving views and actions with respect to combating the war on terror in today's New York Times.

The Times goes to significant lengths to shade and nuance things... a treatment that we're positive would not be extended to the previous administration if a similar piece were to be written. To wit, behold the headline of the article: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will. Puffery to follow?

Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

We suppose it's good to be the king but we don't know how comfortable we are with the Commander-in-Chief being so cavalier with respect to a life and death decision of a U.S. citizen.



The article sneaks in this paragraph before darting off in another direction:

His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.

Wait, what? Did they just suggest they manipulate the body count to produce lower civilian bystander numbers? That's pretty much how we read it.


Later in the article they get around to how this was accomplished?

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.

“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

We don't want to go off on a tangent but this fairly represents the hypocrisy both in the media and the President's water-carriers public and private. There is a legitimate discussion to be had regarding the legality and ethics of what's going on here but no one wants to have it. Where Bush and Cheney were seen as power-mad war-mongerers, Obama is seen as edgy but shrewd and cagey.


And dig this paragraph regarding his failure to close Gitmo:

It was not only Mr. Obama’s distaste for legislative backslapping and arm-twisting, but also part of a deeper pattern, said an administration official who has watched him closely: the president seemed to have “a sense that if he sketches a vision, it will happen — without his really having thought through the mechanism by which it will happen.”

That pretty much sums things up, now, doesn't it?



And not being able to close Gitmo has perhaps driven lethal drone policy:

Yet the administration’s very success at killing terrorism suspects has been shadowed by a suspicion: that Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into American custody, and the president has balked at adding new prisoners to Guantánamo.

“Their policy is to take out high-value targets, versus capturing high-value targets,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the intelligence committee. “They are not going to advertise that, but that’s what they are doing.”

We've suspected all along that the President doesn't want the hassle of actually capturing suspected terrorists and interrogating them and would just rather wack them instead.

Here's Ann Althouse on the matter:

Is there really a paradox here? He has chosen not to close Guantanamo, but to make it a low-profile political issue by never sending anyone there, and to build his reputation as tough on terrorism by regularly blowing somebody away. The careful "moral calculation" in the individual cases isn't reexamining the general policy; it's about the risks of screwups.

More rubble, less trouble.


The tone of the article is starting to grate on us now. Read this:

The care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets, and their reliance on a precision weapon, the drone, reflect his pledge at the outset of his presidency to reject what he called the Bush administration’s “false choice between our safety and our ideals.”

But he has found that war is a messy business, and his actions show that pursuing an enemy unbound by rules has required moral, legal and practical trade-offs that his speeches did not envision.

Oh for cryin' out loud. Even any implicit criticism of the President is pawned off on an abstraction related to the man.


We're running long so we'll try to wrap this up with some closing thoughts. The article touts Obama's professorial and lawyerly approach to the war on terror in order to preserve his principles but 3 years on, we are wondering just what his principles are. Remember, this is the man who wanted to try KSM in civilian court but when asked what would happen if KSM was actually acquitted, Obama assured us that, regardless, KSM would never see the light of freedom. Huh? I believe the term of art for that is "show trial".

Also, this is the same man who wants to confer the same legal rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens upon monsters like KSM but signed into law last November provisions that would give him the power to indefinetely detain U.S. citizens without cause and also the power to kill U.S. citizens overseas without traditionally recognized due process. How one goes about squaring these circles is beyond our comprehension.

While we do appreciate that the President realizes combating terrorism on a global scale is not for the dainty or meek of heart (somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling and/or having a bemused chuckle), there are some glaring inconsistencies with respect to policy that lead us to believe that the President is playing politics with his tactics just as much as anything else.

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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.









One would think that during winter hibernation and reflecting upon all the unsanitary, assault-y and rape-y shenanigans of their Occupy camps from last year, these ass-hats would've come up with something cogent, relevant and productive. Nope.

Another #Occupy Fail:





Because nothing speaks to the 99% like making their morning commute that much more difficult and chaotic.

What was the point of this anyway? Isn't being crammed into the shiny metal boxes of mass transit the very epitome of statist social engineering?

God bless ya, #Occupy... if nothing else, you have provided a never-ending stream of blog fodder for this humble little neighborhood blog.








Cave.

Charles Krauthammer on the President's hot mic problem:

"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it's important for him (Putin) to give me space.... This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility."
— Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, open mic, March 26

You don't often hear an American president secretly (he thinks) assuring foreign leaders that concessions are coming their way, but they must wait because he's seeking re-election and he dare not tell his own people.

Not at all, spun a White House aide in major gaffe-control mode. The president was merely explaining that arms control is too complicated to be dealt with in a year in which both Russia and the U.S. hold presidential elections.

Rubbish. First of all, to speak of Russian elections in the same breath as ours is a travesty. Theirs was a rigged, predetermined farce. Putin ruled before. Putin rules after.

Obama spoke of the difficulties of the Russian presidential "transition." What transition? It's a joke. It had no effect on Putin's ability to negotiate anything.

As for the U.S. election, the problem is not that the issue is too complicated but that if people knew Obama's intentions of "flexibly" caving on missile defenses, they might think twice about giving him a second term.
After all, what is Obama doing negotiating on missile defense in the first place? We have no obligation to do so. The ABM Treaty, a relic of the Cold War, died in 2002.

"Flexibly". That would be one term for it. Read the rest of the dressing down at the link.






B-Daddy grabs ahold of one our favorite subjects: California's high speed choos-choos and the most massive public works boondoggle in the history of western civilization which it represents. It would appear that before even laying down a single mile of track somewhere out in the middle of the central valley, it is running afoul of its bond provisions.

B-Daddy writes:

It seems that all the changes being made to this boondoggle are violating the terms of Proposition 1A. Some provisions that can't be met and would violate the law:

Any initial segment has to use high-speed trains. Instead, the rail authority has agreed to run fewer trains at slower speeds on tracks shared with commuter rail systems.

Passengers must be able to board in Los Angeles and arrive in San Francisco without changing trains.

The system is supposed to run without taxpayer subsidies. I can't stop laughing at that requirement.

The system running without subsidies is some sort of sick joke. And running fewer trains at slowers speeds? That's called AmTrak. And anyone who has seen a proposed map of California's choo-choo routes knows that there has always been a handful of stops between San Francisco and L.A. Say, a proposed map like this:

This whole thing is a mockery of a travesty of a sham and we will admit to taking a huge degree of glee in watching this whole miserable house of cards come down in rather slow-motion fashion.






Sir Charles of Doo Doo Economics has more on the faith-based global-warming set and their continuing truthiness problems.






What are you waiting for? Click here to vote for Leslie Easterman as Circle of Moms Top 25 Political Moms competition. Currently, #35 with a bullet.











... we said get over there and vote, already. sheesh.






Glenn Reynolds on the Solicitor General's dreadful performance this week in defending ObamaCare before the Supreme Court and why, perhaps it is such a daunting task for which Donald Verrilli should not take such a bad rap:

So last week's Supreme Court arguments over Obamacare weren't exactly a smashing success for the Obama administration. How bad was it? Bad enough that Jeffrey Toobin called the event "a train wreck," Mother Jones called it a "disaster," and constitutional law professor Ann Althouse, amid terrible reviews of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's performance, wondered if Verrilli had taken a dive, deliberately throwing the argument so that the Obama administration would no longer be tied to the increasingly unpopular health care bill.

But I think that people are being too hard on Verrilli. He may have coughed and stammered a bit, but his real problem wasn't about performance. His real problem was that he was tasked with defending the indefensible.

Indeed.







Object Lesson #592 on why it is you don't mess with this regime:

Today I received a letter from the IRS that my 2007 tax returns are being audited. Less than one month after launching TaxCheatStamps.com.

There's a list of "proposed changes" they want to make to my 2007 return that would require me to pay almost $14,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest. All the "discrepancies" they list are bogus and I have documentation to prove it. I keep meticulous records and always pay every cent I owe to Uncle Sam. We're going to talk to a lawyer ASAP.

There is no doubt in my mind that my family is being politically persecuted for making a mockery of our new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the Obama administration.

Honestly, we're scared. We haven't done anything wrong (and I've got the documents to prove it in storage) but now the IRS is coming after us and they can destroy our lives with a flick of their pen. I don't want to sound like a coward, but I'm so scared I'm literally shaking. We've got a seven-week-old daughter.

I suppose it's a sort of honor to be persecuted like this. I'd really appreciate it if people would blog about this and link to this post. (And a prayer wouldn't hurt.)

Donations and prayers welcome at the link.


Related: Years ago, our old boss, Bob Kinsella, President and CEO of the 5 employee team at San Diego Tug and Barge asked me to order a "Bullshit" stamp as he could not find his. We asked how it was we were going to get that order filled on the up and up. "Simple", he stated. "It's not a "Bullshit" stamp, per se, rather "Ballast Under Load Line - SHip In Transit".










Change.

As a young labor organizer in Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa worked for the city’s teachers, honing his political skills in the fight for a good contract. The union loved him back, supporting the Democrat’s election to the State Assembly, City Council and, finally, the mayor’s office he occupies today.

But now, Villaraigosa, a rising star in the national Democratic party, has a different view. He calls the teachers union “the one, unwavering roadblock” to improving public education in L.A.

Villaraigosa is one of several Democratic mayors in cities across the country — Chicago, Cleveland, Newark and Boston, among them — who are challenging teachers unions in ways that seemed inconceivable just a decade ago.

We've long been of the opinion that because of the realities of big city politics, Democrats were far better positioned to effect any real and meaning full change/reforms within our public education system (the crappiest school systems are almost exclusively the domain of Democrat/Union dominated cities). Also, any Republican mayor or governor who goes messing with the status quo is a knuckle-dragging enemy of the people whereas a reforming Democrat is viewed far less hostily.

No matter. If Democrats are willing to stick their necks out on this one, they have our full support.






No one saw this coming. No one:

Angry lib talking head breaks with channel no one could find.

David Brooks of the New York Times whines about Nathan Fletcher going independent after not receiving the San Diego Republican Party's endorsement for mayor.

Fletcher is tall, good-looking, smart, polished (maybe too much so) and moderate. An article in The Sacramento Bee touted him as a rising Republican star, the kind of Republican who could get elected statewide. It didn’t hurt that his wife has worked for George W. Bush and other Republicans.

The next step was obvious: Run for mayor of San Diego. The city has a tradition of electing pragmatic center-right Republicans. Fletcher ran on some conservative ideas — pension reform and fiscal conservatism — and some less conventionally conservative ones — open space, bike paths and environmental policies. He’s also for comprehensive immigration reform.

He was endorsed by Paul Jacobs, the chairman and chief executive of Qualcomm. Both Mitt and Ann Romney, who have a place in San Diego, maxed out to his campaign, giving $500 each.

But as Scott Lewis of voiceofsandiego.org has detailed, the San Diego Republican Party has moved sharply right recently. A group of insurgents have toppled the old city establishment. As Lewis wrote, “The Republican Party has gone through a fantastically effective effort to enforce conformity around its principles.”

Brooks describes Carl DeMaio, who did receive the party endorsement as "the more orthodox conservative". One wonders if Brooks did any research at all regarding DeMaio, the first openly gay city coucil person and the man who has been at the forefront of public employee pension reform, an issue that has resonated greatly with the voters of the city. If this makes DeMaio the more orthodox conservative and which also represents an enforcing of conformity, then so be it but perhaps Brooks should pause to consider that at 3,000 miles away, he has zero feel for the political ground game here in San Diego before he puts fingers to keyboard to bellyache some more about the extreming of politics in this country.





OK, gang... that's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.


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Here's some more of that new civility we've been hearing about

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The Trayvon Martin shooting down in Florida continues to descend into a sad spectacle of unhinged leftist hatred.

Perhaps, fortunately, for George Zimmerman, this lynch justice mob couldn't organize a rock fight...

Filmmaker Spike Lee tweeted the wrong home address for George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Fla., man who many are claiming should be arrested for shooting and killing Trayvon Martin. The tweet could have potentially put the woman who actually lives at that address in danger.

The Washington Times’ Kerry Picket went to the address that Lee tweeted as members of the New Black Panther Party were offering a $10,000 cash reward for Zimmerman’s capture, “dead or alive,” and others were demanding his arrest.

“[T]he Edgewater Circle address Mr. Lee re-tweeted out is not part of the gated Retreat at Twin Lakes where the shooting took place and where Mr. Zimmerman lives,” Picket reported. “The area is not even a gated community.”

“In fact, I took a drive to that Edgewater Circle address that so many on Twitter re-tweeted and cursed, and I discovered through a neighbor, named Tim, who lives across the street from the address, that not only does George Zimmerman not live at the lakeside house but a woman by the name of Elaine does,” Picket added.

Picket also said several news agencies have showed up at the address looking for Zimmerman, which – with the crowds the Panthers, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have whipped up into a frenzy – may have put the woman, Elaine, in danger.

It’s unclear specifically which news agencies trekked to the address Lee tweeted and why they failed to report Lee’s inaccuracy.

Nice work, Spike.


And there is a very simple reason why news agencies didn't report Lee's inaccuracies. It stems from the same mentality whereby the New York Times uses the term "white Hispanic" to describe George Zimmerman. We're voracious consumers of both print and electronic news media and we've never heard nor seen that term before. Extraordinary lengths one must go, then, to perpetuate the narrative of racial and class oppression here in this country.


And while there is indeed racial oppression in this country, it does appear to be rather inward-directed. From Victor Davis Hanson:

While it is natural that African-American activists need answers as to why the armed assailant Mr. Zimmerman was not charged in the shooting, they also cannot explain why their attention is not in commensurate fashion focused on the far greater number of young black males gunned down, many just last week in Chicago, by other black males. Nor can they explain to the non-African-American community why the far greater instances of black-on-white violent crime supports any such notion of a supposed war on young black males.

The net result of the demagoguery will be more racial polarization, as African-Americans believe that young black males are unfairly stereotyped by society and treated less fairly by police, while non-African-Americans will only be further convinced that the African-American leadership is not concerned with the vastly inordinate rates of black violent crime, given the small percentage of the African-American community within the general population, much less the much higher rates of black-on-white crime – and as both sides argue either for more money to be invested in social programs, or that too much has already been spent in counter-productive fashion.

So far all that is clear is that there is a growing anger among African-Americans about a failure to immediately arrest the shooter that in turn is provoking an even greater backlash against the antics of Al Sharpton, the creepy bounty offered by the New Black Panther Party, and others who inflame for their own careerist advantage, and no one — not the president, not the media, not the civil rights leadership, not the politicians — seems willing or able to call for a time-out until all the facts are reviewed and released. We have collectively regressed to the days of Rodney King and the L.A. riots and the O. J. Simpson trial — or to something far worse. Hope and change came and went

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It's becoming all too apparent as the days roll on that the media, the establishment left and the race-based grievance industry (not that there should be too great a distinction drawn between them) learned no lessons from the Duke Lacrosse rape case. Again, why let the wheels of justice grind away and the facts to sort out when there are agendas to advance?


Any violence or breaking of the law that results from this whole sorry affair, for it, we have no choice but to blame the inflamed rhetoric and hateful speech emanating from the left-wing media and cultural institutions in this country. The blood will be on their hands.

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Quickies

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A round-up of articles, news items, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.

Quote of the week:

Government cannot make the slow run fast; they can only force the fast to run slower. That’s how government creates equality, how it levels the playing field.

Barry at Word Warrior of SoCal has a great roundup of tax-payer subsidized green technology failures... plus a Milton Friedman reference. Who can pass up Milton Friedman?








Smack of the week: Sarah Palin on Bill Maher, Barack Hussein Obama and "dirty money".

“I don’t know how anyone can sit in the audience of a commentator like Bill Maher and chuckle and laugh and think that’s entertaining. I think it’s disgusting. And this dirty money that he has now provided Barack Obama’s campaign – I don’t know how Barack Obama can sleep at night if he really thinks about Sasha and Mahlia and the treatment of some women today, how he can accept that dirty money. Granted Barack Obama has never been seen in the conventional, traditional way of one we who describe a man of valor, so it shouldn’t surprise us that Barack Obama would accept that dirty money.”

(italics, ours)

That is what is known in Placentia, California as lacking core values and principles.

Look, Palin may be spot on with respect to her assessment of the President's character but she has bought into the distraction. Instead of talking about violations of conscience and religious beliefs, we are talking about locker room language, what differs between a "private" and "public" person and gotcha politics. The advocates for religious liberty and limited government have been derailed. Time to get back on track, gang.





One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter?

The Treasury Department’s counterterrorism arm is investigating speaking fees paid to a long-time Democratic Party leader who is among the most vocal advocates of an Iranian opposition group designated as a terrorist group by the State Department.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell told The Washington Times that Treasury investigators last week subpoenaed records related to payments he has accepted in exchange for public speaking engagements.

Mr. Rendell is among a bipartisan group of prominent former officials - including Cabinet-level Republicans - who have accepted payment in exchange for speeches calling for the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long called for the overthrow of the Islamic theocracy in Tehran. The group, which engaged in terror attacks on Iranian government targets in the 1980s, has been on the terrorist list since 1997, when President Bill Clinton put it there in an attempt to improve relations with Iran.

Mr. Rendell and others argue the MEK should be removed from the list because it has not engaged in violence in more than two decades and shares a common enemy with the United States.

Here's an idea: if the concept of freedom for the Iranian people is so important to Rendell and other D.C. pols, perhaps they can take up the cause pro bono. We suppose that maybe freedom really isn't free after all.







Fair and balanced:

MSNBC host Al Sharpton held a rally today, reenacting the famed civil rights march from Selma to Birmingham. "[I]nstead of protesting Jim Crow segregation and police brutality, he's opposing voter ID laws, right-to-work laws, and the Alabama illegal immigration bill," the Washington Examiner reported. It was a political rally, with Sharpton preaching the platform of the Democratic party.

And in fact the political rally was broadcast on cable television. Sharpton's speech was aired on MSNBC, Sharpton's employer.

That the network employs an unapologetic race huckster like Sharpton, speaks volumes.






Good news: San Diego mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio receives the GOP endorsement. Here's what DeMaio had to say about who he perceives as his toughest opponent:

I don’t see this as a race of me against these three other candidates. My campaign is the same campaign I have waged since becoming a taxpayer watchdog years ago: to clean up the mess at city hall.

My real opponents are the government employee unions and powerful downtown interests that benefit from the cozy system at City Hall at the taxpayers’ expense. They know I will end their taxpayer-funded gravy train, and that’s why they are doing everything they can to defeat our grassroots campaign.

And here's B-Daddy (linked above) on the matter:

This also speaks to my long time complaint here in San Diego, that our political choices have been between government that favors big business or government that favors big labor. We need government that favors the taxpayers and average citizens, whether or not that favors particular businesses. An even playing field will ultimately make our city a better place to live.

Frankly, we're a little surprised the endorsement (at 71%, even) went to DeMaio. Our bet would've been on Nathan Fletcher, the more establishment of the two. Our guess: current Mayor Jerry Sanders' willingness to champion public employee pension reform tipped the scales to DeMaio. We welcome other theories.






When you lose the New York Times...

Conveniently tucked away in the Saturday Op-ed section:

President Obama, who came to office promising transparency and adherence to the rule of law, has become the first president to claim the legal authority to order an American citizen killed without judicial involvement, real oversight or public accountability.

That, regrettably, was the most lasting impression from a major address on national security delivered last week by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.

There were parts of the speech worth celebrating — starting with Mr. Holder’s powerful discussion of why trying most terrorists in civilian courts is best for punishing them and safeguarding America. But we are deeply concerned about his rejection of oversight and accountability when it comes to killing American citizens who are suspected of plotting terrorist acts.

A president has the right to order lethal force against conventional enemies during conventional war, or against unconventional enemies in unconventional wars. But when it comes to American citizens, there must be compelling evidence that the threat the citizen poses is imminent and that capturing the citizen is not a realistic option.

Giving credit where credit is due, kudos to the NY Times for finally acknowledging this constitutional inconsistency. Now, how about some of the same treatment from the rest of Obamabot Nation? We won't be holding our breath.






W.C. Varones on the student loan debt scam:

The third point, student loans as welfare, is new to me, but not surprising. Making "student loans" that prop up consumer spending but will never be paid back is just a way to do more stimulus spending without it showing up in the deficit. That debt will be forgiven by taxpayers decades from now, when the miscreants in power today have retired to a private life of luxury.

Allow us to add a fourth point: Student loan debt can be used conveniently as a class warfare/political issue as this President has done with the assistance of his lackies in the Obama's Whining Squatters set.







Folks, meet Karen Bass, freshman congresswoman from L.A.'s Westside so you know that it would totally be in form for her to state the following:

“The environment is much more important than jobs”.

Leslie at Temple of Mut has more on the background and agenda of yet another Team O economic illiterate.





And finally, Sarah Bond of Lipstick Underground regarding the Kony 2012 video:

At the end of the day I really only have one genuine criticism of the video and campaign: it glosses over the fact that is is going to take military action and violence to find and capture Joseph Kony. Most of the early supporters of Invisible Children and and Kony 2012 are peace-nicks. Do they realize that to ‘arrest’ Kony, someone is going to have to shoot their way through his human shield of child soldiers? If we’re going to insert ourselves into someone else’s problem for the greater good, let’s try to be honest about the cost.

Oh, and finally Pt. II: Sarah gets quoted in a front page San Diego Union-Tribune article on rising gas prices.

Sarah Bond and her husband bought their home in Valley Center, about one hour from downtown San Diego, so their two young children could grow up close enough to nature yet not too far from their favorite destinations. But with gas prices soaring, they just don’t get out as much.

“It’s no more going to the beach, no more taking drives to the mountains. It’s school and groceries and what we could do at home,” Bond said. “We might as well live in Oklahoma for what it’s costing us.”

Bond, co-founder of the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition, said she’s frustrated with lawmakers and the president for not making energy more accessible, “not exploiting our natural resources in the clean, environmentally sound way that only Americans can do,” she said.

Atta way, Sarah!


And from the other side of the aisle:

Hugh Moore, treasurer­ for the Green Party of San Diego County, said he hates that people have to pay more for gas because oil companies are raking in more profits, “but the truth is we should be paying considerably more for every gallon of gas.”

The intellectual inconsistency is stunning. The guy necessarily wants high gas prices but doesn't want the gas companies to profit from it. Sorry, Hugh, can't have it both ways. And since he does indeed want higher gas prices, why doesn't he have the courage of his convictions and actively champion the cause instead of displaying his false sympathy for his fellow citizens at the pump.

No wonder the Green Party never gains any real electoral traction outside of agitation and litigation.



OK, gang, that's it for today. See you all tomorrow.



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Bill Keller has a very important message for you

The New York Times former editor-in-chief and now, uhh, current Op-Ed columnist did some heavy thinking over the weekend to come up with the reasons for the decline in Obama's political fortunes.

You may be shocked to find out that the person of George W. Bush leads off Keller's gang of four, followed quickly by those diabolical saboteurs that have taken over the Republican party:

Another toxic legacy of the Bush years is an angry conservative populism, in which government is viewed as tyranny and compromise as apostasy. The Tea Party faction has captured not only the Republican primary process, but to a large extent the national conversation and the legislative machinery. In Congress the anger is pandered to by Republicans who should know better, since their nihilism discredits not only the president they have cynically set out to make a failure, but their own institution. Voters are frustrated by this — Congress has the approval rating of bedbugs — but it remains to be seen whether the electorate will punish the real culprits or simply reward the candidates who run against that bogeyman, “Washington.”

That first sentence is confusing: Is that angry conservative populism a result of what the legacy media perceived as the hyper-conservatism of the uncouth Texas-bred Bush or is it as a reaction to what many conservatives and libertarians saw in Bush as too willing to play fast and loose with privacy rights in the name of the War on Terror and perhaps more importantly, the antithesis of fiscal restraint with his spending and what turned out to be his corporatist/bailout ways at the onset of the financial crisis of 2008? Given what we know about the legacy media, we imagine know it is the former.

But beyond that, this paragraph is simply unreal. Prior to the 2010 midterms, Democrats held solid majorities in both the House and the Senate for four years and for the last two years prior to the midterms they held the Oval Office as well. Precisely what was it about the electoral landslide of 2010 as a repudiation of the Democrats' failed statist policies does Keller not understand? Did he think that the turnover of parties in the House and the six seat pick-up by the Republicans in the Senate was a sign that the electorate wanted more of the same failed statism? What did he not get about the 2010 midterm results?

It's called a representative republic and every two years, the country gets to grade, in a sense, the performance of those they sent to Washington. And in 2010, the personnel of that D.C. line-up and what they implemented policy-wise, everything from Porkulus to ObamaCare, got a spectacularly failing grade. The public figured Keynesian gimmickry didn't work with the economy and taking away more autonomy in personal health care decisons and doing so in series of crass and cynical backroom deals, bribes and kickbacks was not the direction they wanted to take the country.

Keller moves along to disenchanted liberals before arriving at Obama himself. Well, not really Obama himself, rather your perception of the man.

To be disillusioned you must first have illusions. Some of those who projected their own agendas onto the slogans and symbols of the Obama campaign were victims of wishful thinking — fed by Obama’s oratory of change. Anyone who paid attention while candidate Obama was helping President Bush pass the 2008 bank bailout should have understood that beneath the rhetorical flourishes Obama has always been at heart a cautious, cool, art-of-the-possible pragmatist. When he sees that he lacks the power to get what he wants, he settles for what he can get.

Yeah, he wrote that. The former HMFIC of the nation's paper of record and which was at the forefront of the shameless bootlicking and hagiography of candidate Obama wrote that. Is there any sort of critical self-assessment with these people at all? At all?

There was more about Obama being a "shape-shifter" and not being able to define himself (in Placentia, California, that's translated as not having any core values) and how Keller actually prefers a little ambivalence in his President as opposed to the "blinkered certitude" of he who was not named as the implied axe-grinding would've made it wholly redundant but we stopped because we just couldn't take it any longer.

That Keller may not like conservatives and/or disagree with conservative policies is one thing, but to appear completely clueless as to the reasons for the President's dismal political fortunes is entirely another.

What is wrong with this guy?

On a day of remebrance, reflection and unity, here is what the New York Time's Paul Krugman decided to put down on his blog yesterday:

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

In Krugman's alternate universe, the solemnity of yesterday's commemorations had less to do with the loss of life and the shock and horror of an attack on our nation's soil, the likes of which have never been seen, and more to do with what Krugman perceives as a tacit acknowledgement of bad behavior in the wake of 9-11. Uhh, yeah.

"Fake heroes"? Who was calling these men heroes to begin with? Regardless of what you think of these convenient-to-be-Republicans, it was generally agreed that those men provided a healthy degree of much-needed and steady-handed leadership in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 to where even a wing-nut like Rosie O'Donnell was singing President Bush's praises before reverting to default Truther wing-nut form.

But "heroes" is a grossly misleading straw man since most everyone agrees that showing strong leadership in a crisis situation does not qualify for "hero" status rather knowingly putting yourself in harm's way even at the risk of death in order to come to the aid of another.

We imagine Krugman knows this all too well, which makes his attempts to air partisan grievances on 9-11 all that more pathetic.

How sad. On a weekend where most of the nation was enjoying late summer/early fall weather and reveling in the first full weekend of college and professional football and yet also taking in very somber and moving 9-11 commemorations, Krugman decides to set finger to keyboard to generate that blog post. Contrast that with the grace and dignity that both President Bush and President Obama (who visited all 3 attack sites yesterday: Shanksville, PA, Washington D.C. and Ground Zero in New York City) handled the ceremonies yesterday. What a sad, bitter, little man Krugman is.

Won't get fooled again: Redux

Consider this a companion piece to yesterday's post regarding the amnesia suffered by the New York Times editorial board regarding what it will take to recover from the Great Recession which was essentially a call for more Keynesian tomfoolery. It would appear that Times columnist Paul Krugman was the ghost writer for that piece as the following is the money paragraph from his latest column:

For example, we could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads — which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt. We could have a serious program of mortgage modification, reducing the debts of troubled homeowners. We could try to get inflation back up to the 4 percent rate that prevailed during Ronald Reagan’s second term, which would help to reduce the real burden of debt.

Always cracks us up that progressives look back to the Great Depression as the good ol' days. Stands to reason, though, as dependency upon government programs was at an all-time high and is looked upon today as the panacea for all that ails us. Funny... we thought that $800 billion stimulus package passed in the initial stages of this administration and that is now conveniently slipping down the memory hole was supposed to kick-start the economy and keep unemployment under 8 percent.

And still with the mortgage modification programs. Taking your money to prop up bad risks hasn't been working out so hot lately as front page headlines in papers across the country will attest.

And who isn't up for paying more to put food on the table? What might be for economists like Krugman isn't going to cut it for working families dealing with real world issues and isn't going to make the reality of the debt burden magically disappear.


Again, it's as if the past 2 or 3 years never happened such is the manner of reasoning and logic currently being applied to this slump which is only entrenching us further and prolonging the agony.

What some would have us forget, others still have been paying attention.

New York Times: Won't get fooled again

Michael Barone notes just how unexpected more bad economic news always seems to economists and Big Media as a whole.

Unexpectedly!

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word “unexpectedly,” or variants thereof, keeps cropping up in mainstream-media stories about the economy.

“New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed,” reported cnbc.com May 25.

“Personal consumption fell,” Business Insider reported the same day, “when it was expected to rise.”

“Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month,” Reuters reported May 25, “worse than economists’ expectations.”

“Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall,” headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

“U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April,” wrote the Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

So, what gives? Are the economists and econ beat writers a) hopeless cheerleaders for the President who will go to any lengths to give him cover or b) do they really believe the Keynesian gimmickry employed by Team O will work this time around or c) are they just abjectly terrible at what they do?

Since the 3 are definetely not exclusive to one another, we'd go with a combination of all 3 by varying degrees depending upon the individual or media outlet.



And right on cue, here's the New York Time's lead editorial from Tuesday's paper:

A month ago, when an initial gauge of first-quarter economic growth came in surprisingly weak, many policy makers and economists expected the bad news to prove fleeting. But when revised data were released last week, the growth estimate remained stuck at an annual rate of 1.8 percent, compared with 3.1 percent at the end of last year.

More troubling in the latest figures, consumer spending — the largest component of the economy — was especially slow. Stagnant wages and higher prices for gas and food are squeezing family budgets, while falling home equity hurts consumer confidence. That suggests more bad news to come.

OK, then - they've gone on record as stating that when more bad news rolls down the pike, it certainly won't be unexpected.

And America's paper of record should know well enough because they are advocating for much of the same statist Keynesian hocus pocus that has been tried already. After bashing the Republicans, here are the big ideas championed by the Old Gray Lady:

The White House has offered sounder ideas, including job retraining, plans to boost educational achievement and tax increases to help cover needed spending.

(ed. note: Can someone please give us a precise operational definition of "retraining"?)

The sinkholes in the economy should be obvious. Most prominently, the housing market is still awful, and state and local government budgets are still a mess. Conditions apparently have to get worse before deficit-obsessed policy makers will be ready to address them, including with bolstered foreclosure relief and more fiscal aid to states. More delay would only imperil the recovery, such as it is. And without a strong recovery, it will be even harder to repair the budget. Continued hard times means low tax revenues and high safety-net spending.

The administration could work to ease the rules for refinancing mortgages owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage giants. Easier refinancings would lower monthly payments for potentially hundreds of thousands of borrowers in good standing, and in that way, free up spending money to boost the economy.

(italics, ours)


Unreal...


It's like the Times editorial board had just awoken from a near 2-1/2 year slumber and thought that the crap that either landed us in this mess in the first place or had been prolonging the agony represented bold and fresh thinking. Do they not read what they print before going to the presses?


So, yeah... not forcing states to deal with their own self-made fiscal messes, taking your hard-earned scratch to string along poor-risk home-owners so that Fannie and Freddie represent a giant national mortgage methadone clinic, soaking the rich who will merely alter their behavior to avoid these taxes (happens every time, folks) and, you know, retraining, are all the big ideas put forth from the economically illiterate Rip Van Winkles at the Times.

At least they won't be caught off guard when their terrible ideas produce the very results they themselves are expecting.

H/T: Roger Hedgecock

Here's some more of that new civility everyone is talking about

A tea party rally in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend and pro-union counter-protesters booing during the national anthem?





To be all fair and balanced, here's Ann Althouse who has been doing great work covering all that has been happening on the ground in Madison over the past couple of months:

I'm seeing some assertions about this on blogs and in YouTube videos, and it's wrong if not unfair and deceptive. I don't have my own video, because I mishandled the button on my camera, but I was right behind the Tea Party crowd amid anti-Tea Party protesters who were making a lot of noise trying to drown out whatever was coming from the podium. They were, in fact, succeeding in their purpose so well that they could not hear when the national anthem began.

I started walking forward and it took a while for me to recognize the anthem. My observation was that those who could hear it were not booing. The "rockets red glare" line seemed louder, and there was a noticeable hushing that extended back into the anti-Tea Party areas of the crowd.

Perhaps. In the video, however, we're hearing plenty of the national anthem, loud and clear, as well as plenty of booing and cat calls until the towards the end of the anthem when the pro-union types seem to get a clue.




Oh, and check this out (via Lee Stranahan):





That's not "I strongly object to your political values and principles" - that shrieking, caterwauling, that ululating... that's just pure hatred.


But it's all good because Paul Krugman has now come out and said that being uncivil is like patriotic or something. Good to know because whatever thin veneer of post-partisanship still claimed by the back-bencher currently residing in the White House, the same post-partisanship he campaigned upon, has officially been laid to rest by the grand poobah of statist punditry.

We're glad it's over. All that new civility balderdash was really crimping our style.

Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our attention from this past week.





David Harsanyi of the Denver Post: Hey, let's not get all freaked out about China.




Gawker TV has a round up of the 65 top videos of the week, here.

Included is what apparently what broad swaths of the East and Midwest are doing for entertainment and their high school physical science classes.







On the 50th anniversary of the event, E.J. Dionne fondly remembers JFK's inaugural speech:

And Kennedy advisers Harris Wofford and Louis Martin won the insertion of six words and helped change history.

In the original draft, Kennedy declared that the new generation for which he spoke was “unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.”

To which Wofford and Martin got Kennedy to add, “at home and around the world,” thus marrying the struggle for freedom abroad with the cause of domestic civil rights. There would be no turning back.

Perhaps I should acknowledge that I fell in love with this speech when I was young, purchasing a long-playing record of Kennedy addresses for 99 cents at the supermarket and listening to it over and over after Kennedy’s assassination.

You might say that I still hear its trumpet summoning us again. And when Kennedy said, “I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation,” I knew — millions of others felt this way too — that he was speaking for me.

David Brooks weighs in on the hot cultural topic du jour: Amy Chua is a wimp.

Her critics echoed the familiar themes. Her kids can’t possibly be happy or truly creative. They’ll grow up skilled and compliant but without the audacity to be great. She’s destroying their love for music. There’s a reason Asian-American women between the ages of 15 and 24 have such high suicide rates.

I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

A little bit more on China: saw this article and the closing paragraph addressing human rights in China.

And China typically defines human rights in terms of improvements in quality of life such as higher incomes and better living conditions, rather than civil liberties such as freedom of speech that define such values in the West.

We don't think it's coincidence that the American and international left view human rights in a very similar fashion as China, though they more often refer to it as "social justice".





The Pardonater's shameful exit interview:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is pulling no punches in his first formal interview since leaving office, claiming that the highest office in the state left him “addicted” to its power.

In a recent sit-down the former governor granted to the Austrian newspaper Krone, Schwarzenegger estimates that his seven years as governor cost him about $200 million – $70 million of that in lost movie roles.

Schwarzenegger also laments the fact that Hollywood salaries have dropped since he left the business.

He said his abysmal popularity rankings were “just a snapshot” and that “they would have rocketed to the top” had he not been forced out of office by term limits.

Nowhere in the transcripts from the interview posted on the newspaper’s website did Schwarzenegger face any questions about alleged favoritism in his decision to grant clemency to the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Too bad he wasn't addicted to competence as well. Pathetic.




We hesitated even providing a link to this guy's article as it was that atrocious but in the interest of, you know, fairness and context somebody named Joe Lambiet provided his take on the Tucson shooting with this particular insight with respect to the political leanings of Gabby Gifford's surgeon's parents:

Ironically: Among their favorites are some of the very people whose controversial rhetoric and campaigns are said to provide fertile ground for Jared Loughner who allegedly injured Giffords and killed six others in Tucson.

(italics, ours)

"... are said..."?

Nothing like a firm stand on journalistic integrity, huh?

Congratulations, Joe. It's still way early but you have established yourself as a front-runner in BwD's absolute worst column of the year contest.




B-Daddy has a nice round-up of what has been a very busy first two weeks for the 112th Congress, here.



And finally, the most e-mailed 'New York Times' article ever:

It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog to use an iPad.