Metrocons in a nutshell

Stickin' With the Hockey Mom

Experts, you see. And at nothing are they more expert than evading responsibility, a task that requires scapegoats. So the unpopularity of the Republican Party has nothing to do with the policies the experts urged and the politicians the experts supported. Rather, it's the provincial hockey mom who is to blame.

"Cakewalk Ken" and Fukuyama have now declared their support for Obama, citing Palin prominently among their reasons. Brooks and Will have not (yet) declared themselves acolytes of Hope, but have made clear that they view Palin as an unalloyed dead weight on the GOP.

Experts in Washington think themselves infinitely more important to the Republican Party than mere voters in Pennsylvania who stand in line to see the Alaska hockey mom who sent her oldest son to fight the war the experts once urged.

The illogic of the Obamacons

Powerline has it exactly right:

An Obama administration would almost certainly be to the left of the Clinton administration. It might well be to the left of any U.S. administration ever. A person who votes to bring on that administration may be admirable in many respects. He or she may have been a conservative recently. He or she may become a conservative soon, and should be welcome in that event. But if the term "conservative" is given its ordinary, contemporary meaning, how can he or she be considered a conservative now?

Just sayin'

Phillies Beat Rays, 4-3, to Win World Series

The last time the Phillies won the World Series was 1980. Which was also an election year. And the GOP candidate did much better than pundits expected.

Palin in Pennsylvania

R. S. McCain was at Hershey and Shippenburg yesterday. He reports on what he saw here:

'Stand Up and Fight'

'Nothing is inevitable here'

A new book on the JFK assassination

This one looks at the Cuban (i.e. Castro) connection. Here's an eye-opening review by Dale Myers:

Brothers In Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder

Getting ready for 2012

ROMNEY ANTI-PALIN

Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. "Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012," says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin. "The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney. He's in charge on November 5th."

Quality fade still plagues TMQ

It what is becoming a disturbing trend, Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback (ostensibly a football column) is more filler than NFL meat.

What makes it really bad is that he insists on devoting huge chunks of bits and bytes to college basketball and the NBA. The NFL is the most popular sport in America. The NBA is a niche sport. Why is he wasting our time on something most football fans don't care about?

The whitewashing of Ayers and Dohrn

Three must read items on Chicago’s favorite terrorists.

"Prairie Fire"

Just a Little Genocide

Prof. William Ayers, Ph.D., Model Scholar

The joke is on us, but I can’t help noting that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn stole two pages out of Nixon’s Watergate playbook. Lucky for them, they were much more successful than Tricky Dick.

Nixon’s men tried to dismiss the DNC break-in as a “third rate burglary” of no great importance. Ayers and his apologists now claim that he and his Weathermen crew were not real terrorists because they were inept and bungling. Their murderous intent is ignored, or even excused, because they mechanically inept.

The happy couple have also showed the world the right way to do a “modified limited hangout”. They tell us that they renounced violence while they were living underground. Few in the MSM have challenged those assertions. No one is willing to dig into those years. Armies of reporters are moving heaven and earth to get to the bottom of Palin’s shopping habits. Few stand ready to challenge Ayer’s convenient “truth” about his life on the run.

Yet, both Ayers and Dohrn readily admit that they have never told the whole story. (Once again, Dohrn went to jail rather than tell what she knew about the Brinks robbery and the people who carried it out.) For some reason, the relentlessly skeptical MSM finds these two ex-terrorists trustworthy and uninteresting.

SOS: Same old Steelers (coaches)

A smart guy once declared that it is the mark of insanity to repeat the same failed actions while expecting a different outcome. After watching the Giants’s game, it is clear that the Steelers’s offensive coaches belong in the loony bin not on an NFL sideline.

We entered the season with question marks about the offensive line. The Eagles’s game showed that aggressive pass rushing teams can get to our quarterback and shut down our passing attack. Yet against the Giants we saw the same failed plays that did not work against the Eagles and Ravens. For some reason, Tomlin, Arians, et. Al. believed that these plays would work against the team that stopped the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Please-stop the insanity!!

The shame of it all is that this brain-dead offensive brain trust squandered an outstanding effort by the defense. The Steelers’s D gave the team multiple opportunities to win against the Super Bowl champs.

View from inside

Michael Malone pulls no punches:

Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

Patterico back in business

His old domain got hijacked. His blog is now here.

Let's talk football

Big Ben vs. Eli: Complete & Unabridged

I disagree on one point. While Eli has the better signature moment, it is not true that Roethlisberger has no signature moments. The tackle against Nick Harper in the 2005 playoffs saved the season (and kept Jerome Bettis from becoming Scott Norwood or Joe Pisarcik) should count. I'd also add the block he threw in the Superbowl that sprang Randle El to complete the option pass to Hines Ward for the clinching TD.

But that's Big Ben. Show me another QB with passer ratings in the 90s who also helped his team win a championship with a block and a tackle.

Sportswriters have forgotten just how bad the Steelers were when Roethlisberger came on board. They finished 6 and 10 in 2003. In the game before his first start the Ravens conducted a textbook beatdown on Pittsburgh and won 30-13. The Steelers went 14-0 from that point on with #7 as the starting QB.

MSM operative confesses

Newsweek Reporter Outs Himself as a Hack

If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite what they tell themselves, it’s impossible to both be a part of the action and report on it objectively.

Irony

The Harvard Business School is celebrating it centennial.

The timing is not so hot. For one thing, Bush is the only president ever to graduate from the HBS. His performance offers no reflected glory for the Harvard MBA.

For another, one scholar argues that the financial crisis grew out of the theories taught and promoted by the school.

A Financial Crisis Fifty Years in the Making?

A new book on Lincoln as war leader

Here's a review from the Times:

Crisis Manager

This is not a book about White House table talk, the president’s spiritual values, his relations with Mary Todd or even his deep-seated opposition to slavery. It is about how Lincoln led the nation to victory: his formulation of the country’s war aims; his mobilization of public opinion; his diplomatic and economic leadership. Above all it is about his oversight of military strategy, in short, his duties as wartime commander in chief — duties that Lincoln defined and executed for the first time in the nation’s history.

I contrasted Bush's failures with Lincoln's success in this post from 2006

When you look at the functions listed for wartime C-in-C, it is pretty obvious that GWB has done a woeful job in Iraq. I'm not sure he deserves passing marks on any one of them.

Where did they go?

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I knew there was something missing this election cycle. I just now put my finger on it.

I have not seen the establishment pundits writing/commenting on the joys of divided government.

You know, like in 1996 when they suggested that the country would benefit if Democrat Clinton balanced the Republican congress. Ditto 2000 and Gore.

Or the positive aspects of Reid/Gephardt/Pelosi reining in President Bush.

Just one of those things that make you go "hmmmm."

See also:

Notes on the current crisis

Taking Peggy Noonan to the woodshed

Ace: more than just the funny

This comment has the sociological insight that is supposedly David Brooks stock in trade.

Ross Douthat is whining that 'grassroots' need "elites." by elites, of course, he means himself, or people like him, even though he's a blogger and very minor author.

I actually do not mean that with much disrespect -- i respect he's written a book.

But my point is, ross douthat lables himself an elite. except for his education, he just is not.

When people say "elites,' they mean ESTABLISHMENT. Northeastern Ivy-ish establishment. But not actual elites-- most of them are not terribly elite at all.

they merely ape the tastes and policy preferences of the upper class northeastern set.

Why Steyn is the best

Cocoon: The Return

That's why the metropolitan sneers about the size of Wasilla were extremely ill-advised, and not just because of the implication that the mayors of, say, New Orleans, San Francisco or Detroit are therefore more qualified to be in the White House. If it weren't for small towns, suburbs and rural districts, there would be no conservative government at all. With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), "blue states" mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive - the kind you might want in the White House - can only come from flyover country.

So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he's mocking conservatism as it's actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter .

Taking Peggy Noonan to the woodshed

Over at Ace's joint.

Peggy Noonan's relevance (what little she has left) comes from her association with Reagan. Yet, she was hardly a major Reaganaut. On election night 1980 when conservatives finally emerged from the wilderness Peggy Noonan had no association with the conservative movement, the GOP, or the Reagan campaign.

She was in the studios of CBS News. She worked for CBS as a writer for Dan Rather. She jumped on board the Reagan train late. Very late. Long after the bleak hard work of the election was done.

Even then, she was hardly a loyalist. Her first book on RR was surprisingly critical, snide, and often dismissive. It came out before the final verdict was in on Reagan's successes (especially the Cold War victory). When the Gipper left Washington in 1989, all the smart people knew he was just an amiable former actor who somehow charmed the American people. Noonan did little to challenge that assertion.

Her role as Reagan's hagiographer did not start until even the smart set had to admit that he was more than that.

Noonan always stays on the right side of conventional wisdom in DC and Manhattan.

Bill Ayers, Boy Scout?

Check out Beldar:

Bill Ayers, Eagle Scout from Hell

Boy Scouts salute the American flag, and learn how to raise and lower and fold it with proper reverence. I was my scout troop's bugler. As a junior high and high school student, I played "Taps" at many military funerals during the Vietnam War. I watched many an American flag — indistinguishable from the one Bill Ayers proudly trampled in 2001 while posing for magazine cameras — carefully folded and handed to grieving family members. During those years when I was a Boy Scout bugler in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Bill Ayers was trying his best to create more military funerals.