CAP AND TRADE is only mostly dead.
Archive for 2010
July 24, 2010
A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE ON Mystery Science Theater.
KRUISER CONTROL: Stephen Kruiser Answers Some Questions from Danika Quinn.
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DAVID HARSANYI: Was this a teachable moment on race?
NEW BLOOD FOR SOCIAL SECURITY? Should public-sector pensions shift their workers to Social Security? “Unlike private-sector workers, who are required to participate in Social Security, state and local governments have been given a choice. In a number of states workers aren’t enrolled in Social Security and instead rely on their own pension plans. But as public-sector pensions have become more clearly underfunded, some policy makers are considering shifting workers into Social Security.”
DENGUE FEVER showing up in Central Florida. Well, there’s no DDT now. I’ve been told that we don’t need it to control Dengue Fever. Let’s hope. . . .
CHARLIE RANGEL’S FADING FRIENDS: “Just one day after learning that he will face a House Ethics Committee trial on multiple ethics allegations, it looks like Rep. Charlie Rangel is starting to turn toxic for fellow Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — who’ve been among Rangel’s staunchest defenders during the committee’s two-year probe — issued terse statements conspicuously lacking in political support.”
MOE LANE HAS questions for the Pennsylvania press. The non-JournoList part, anyway.
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS DAVID FRUM THINKING? “So, which is worse: Breitbart’s failure to investigate enough to determine that the clip he was sent was misleading, or Frum’s linking to a series of posts and excoriating the authors for not mentioning Breitbart’s role when, in fact, they did? Did Frum link to the posts without reading them, or was he trying to mislead his readers?” Does he write his own stuff, any more, or is it farmed out? Because while I don’t like joining in the semi-annual Frum pile-ons, he seems to be trying to live up to his critics’ worst complaints.
NEW DEFICIT NUMBERS, LOOK WORSE, NOT BETTER. “According to the White House, things are getting worse: The deficit in FY2011 will be $150 billion larger than predicted in February . . . . This is bad news for the American people, not only because more deficit is bad and unemployment remains high (even Krugman is down), but also because the administration and the Deficit Commission are already setting the stage for increased taxes in the future. The narrative goes like this: The deficit is getting worse because of a lack in tax revenue, and while we don’t have recommendations about how to cut spending, we can tell you right now that we need more taxes. The truth is that we are in this situation because we overspent, made excuses for it, and lied about it.”
SOCIAL PRIVILEGE: Paul Campos sounds like Angelo Codevilla while writing about the career of Elena Kagan. “The relative ease with which Elena Kagan is being confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court illustrates the extent to which Establishment America believes that a member of the club in good standing – someone who has gone to the right schools, and gotten the right kinds of jobs, and befriended the right sorts of people – can be counted on to do the right thing, even though her own legal and political views remain largely unknown. Naturally, from the establishment’s perspective, the right thing is to do nothing that might seriously disturb any of the social arrangements that continue to serve its interests so well. And in the end, Obama’s faith in Kagan is most likely based on a well-warranted belief that, as a Supreme Court justice, she will prove to be as acceptable to that establishment as Obama himself.”
ROMANTIC (PERHAPS) BUT DEFINITELY IMPRACTICAL: A Chocolate-Covered iPad.
July 23, 2010
CNN HOST CALLS FOR crackdown on bloggers. Of course.
UPDATE: Reader Eugene Heim writes:
I think you got to this point much sooner than I, but my reaction to that story is:
Who do these people think they are that they seek to determine what I should be able to read or hear? I am better educated, have seen and done things that they can only pontificate about (military, private sector, federal employee), and -going out a limb here- am more intelligent than these people who wish to regulate what I can know and think.
I hope I speak for many when I say, I might be late to the game, but I am awake and taking the field.
I think a lot of people feel this way.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Nancy Lynn Hargis says she has just two words for Big Media folks criticizing bloggers as irresponsible: “Richard Jewell.”
MORE: Ann Althouse says not so fast.
THE AL GORE SEX SCANDAL just got a little juicier. The big problem is this: “I need some more evidence before I pass judgment, but I’m not going to be happy no matter how this turns out. Either Gore abused his position of power to harass these women and scare them into keeping quiet. Or they’re all lying and trying to tarnish his reputation for some cash and their 15 minutes.” As with Bill Clinton, there’s tension between the “women don’t lie” and the “Democrats don’t do that” memes . . . .
PAUL RYAN: GOP Playing Politics By Ignoring My Deficit-Reduction Roadmap.
UPDATE: Reader Stephen Clark writes: “The Ryan Road Map would be a solid policy framework around which state Tea Party organizations could rally. It makes sense at the state level in so far as the exploding costs of Medicaid, and the unknown but likely enormous additional costs as unfunded mandates in the health reform act, will have disastrous effects on state budgets. Building state parties around this conceptual framework and holding aspirants to public office to its tenants would turn a movement into a serious political force.”
OKAY, I LINKED THIS STEPHEN GREEN COLUMN EARLIER, but this bit is worth quoting on its own:
Candidate Barack Obama ran as a moderate. He promised a “net spending cut.” Health reform was not, we were assured, intended to take over the insurance industry or feature an individual mandate. Taxes would go down for anyone making under $250,000 a year. “Too big to fail” was to be a thing of the past. Our nation was to become post-racial by the long-awaited election of a black man to the White House. And so it goes.
Instead, we got… more of everything. Taxes, spending, regulating, mandates, racial division — the entire liberal waterworks turned up to the max and pretty much all at once.
Indeed. And those broken promises are Obama’s biggest weakness.
ED DRISCOLL: Shirley She Can’t Be Serious.
Related: Shirley Sherrod, Behaving Badly.
NOW, A liberal tax revolt?
Kudlow has thoughts.
EARLIER, I MENTIONED JAMES WEBB’S PIECE ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND RACISM, and a reader from Virginia emails:
What you’re seeing from Webb is the beginning of his 2012 re-elect campaign. He knows he won in 2006 for one reason: macaca. If not for Allen’s fateful stumble, it wouldn’t even have been close. Since then, he’s managed to vote for ObamaCare, Cap and Trade and a ton of other things that are hugely unpopular in Virginia.
A colleague of mine got a 20 minute live-operator poll from Webb last week, testing different messages related to Cap and Trade. Webb knows which way the wind is blowing, and he’s afraid that Obama will be a huge boat anchor in 2012. Add in the fact that Allen is considering running again, and it’s little wonder he’s beginning to say to eye-opening things.
It’s a matter of survival.
Well, especially now that the press has concluded that using embarrassing video without the full context is some sort of breach of journalistic ethics. . . .
Meanwhile, reader Bruce Goldston writes: “Let’s not get so worked up over Sen. Webb’s comments on race and affirmative action programs. Its very likely that his Op Ed was calculated by the White House as an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of white voters and to bring enough of them back into the democrat party’s fold to rescue their candidates in November.” Hmm. Possibly, but I have to say I find the first explanation more convincing.
UPDATE: Moe Lane predicts disaster: “Senator Webb seems to have forgotten that he has a ‘D’ after his name these days, which effectively means that this entire article is thoughtcrime that will pretty much guarantee him a messy primary in 2012. Progressives do not appreciate thoughtcrime, particularly in their converts: they bought Jimmy Webb in 2006, and they expect their purchases to perform as expected.” If they expected loyalty from Webb, they weren’t paying attention. . . .
THE HILL: EXCLUSIVE: House Democrat calls on Rep. Charles Rangel to resign. “In a major development, Rep. Betty Sutton (Ohio) on Friday night called on beleaguered Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to resign. Sutton’s statement comes one day after the House ethics committee charged the 80-year-old Democrat with multiple violations.”
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Wait, this is the guy who’s always talking about shoving people through plate-glass windows? Really?
UPDATE: Run away! Run away!
JONAH GOLDBERG: “Shirley Sherrod, who didn’t know who Andrew Breitbart was 72 hours ago, now knows him well enough to say that he wants to put all blacks back into slavery. If I were David Axelrod, I’d be calling this woman and beg her to stop talking. And, yes, she does owe Andrew an apology.”
UPDATE: Reader Bill Ernoehazy writes: “Glenn: At this point I think it’s worth asking: Did someone on Vilsack’s staff push for a panicky ejection because Sherrod had a _reputation_ for race-baiting? In less than three days she’s castigated the President, and now Breitbart, on nakedly racial grounds. What did Vilsack’s staff know, and when will WE know it?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Dave Price. “And remember — the Obama admin now owns Shirley Sherrod. There’s no way for them to look good on this anymore. If they fired her, then apologized and offered her a promotion on a flimsy ‘context’ argument, then found out she was someone whose wildly inflammatory accusations make Reverend Jeremiah Wright look like the soul of racial unity and reasonable dialogue… the already oil-drenched competence myth is now taking a slash to the jugular.”
ON DVD AND BLU-RAY, the best releases of 2010.
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