A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE on this Sirius/XM vehicle radio. Hey, you can use it to listen to PJM Political!
Archive for 2010
September 16, 2010
I SIGNED UP, BUT ALL I’M GETTING IS BULLSHIT SPAM, NOT THE PROMISED INFO ON HOW TO ORDER ONE: Who’s ordering the Nissan Leaf? Bill Nye, Alyssa Milano, wealthy baby boomers and perhaps even you. Really, it’s pathetic.
UPDATE: Donald Sensing writes: You are going to buy the new Nissan Leaf whether you want to or not. “Taxpayers will subsidize this car to about one-third of its sale price. Every time you see a Leaf drive by, you’ll know someone else is driving it thanks to you. Once again, a technology and product that has no natural market is being favored by the political class at the expense of the rest of us.”
So instead of one of those Honk If You’re Paying My Mortgage bumperstickers, I’ll need one that says Honk If You’re Paying For My Car!
CHRISTINE O’DONNELL, JOYCELYN ELDERS, AND MASTURBATION. “President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, fired Jocelyn Elders in 1994, after people freaked out when she said that young people should ‘perhaps … be taught’ about masturbation, because it is ‘is part of human sexuality’ and useful in keeping them from doing riskier sexual things.”
Well, I’m on the record as being proudly pro-sodomy, so you can probably guess where I stand. But I’m not angling for a political job, either. . . .
UPDATE: Or a job at the National Science Foundation.
SIGNS AND PORTENTS IN THE SKIES: “Three employees at a veterinarian’s office in Egg Harbor Township, NJ say they saw a man fall from the sky on Tuesday, sans parachute. An exhaustive search has turned up nothing. This is pretty disconcerting!”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: Seats For Boeing Spaceships To Go On Sale.
HEARTS SEEM TO HEAL SLOWEST for grouchy pessimists.
I BLAME THE ADMINISTRATION’S EXTREMIST, ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: “A Madison man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a bomb threat Sunday afternoon that disrupted a town Republican fundraiser featuring Senate candidate Linda McMahon.”
IN THE MAIL: From David Drake, What Distant Deeps.
RANDY BARNETT ARGUES FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT that would let a 2/3 majority of state legislatures repeal any federal statute or regulation.
INSTAVISION: MAD AS HELL: PART TWO OF MY SCOTT RASMUSSEN INTERVIEW. (Bumped).
And I highly recommend his book (written with Democratic pollster Doug Schoen), Mad As Hell: How The Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System.
By the way, if you like this kind of thing, please subscribe to PJTV. It takes viewer support to do this.
THE ENTITLED CLASS: Rick Boucher buys himself a new car with campaign donations. “The Congressional gift ban doesn’t allow any contribution over $50- and even then it must be unsolicited. But I guess it is perfectly legal for a Congressman to hit up special interests to max out to their campaign account and then buy themselves a brand new car with that (untaxed) money? Unbelievable.” Taxes are for the little people.
UGH: “One in eighty-four homes in Nevada received a foreclosure notice last month! Elsewhere around the country, foreclosures are at an all-time high but experts say the banks are still holding off in an effort to manage their inventory of bad loans.”
More here, where it’s clear that the problem isn’t just in Nevada.
JOHN KERRY ATTACKS TEA PARTY. RESPONSE: “I think the Tea Party couldn’t ask for any better publicity than to be denounced by a millionaire who dodges paying taxes on his yacht.” Couldn’t have said it better myself!
UPDATE: Politico: Tea party gains clout for 2012.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Bailey writes: “So, a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage libertarian is the new conservative?”
That’s how far we’ve progressed! Float like a gadfly, sting like a bee! Er, or something.
WHY WOMEN PREFER “CHILL” GUYS. This explains my history of success.
TAD DEHAVEN: The Something-for-Nothing Quandary.
Most of the debate over extending the Bush tax cuts has focused on whether to extend slightly lower marginal rates for higher earners who already bear a huge burden. But at the other end of the income spectrum, a growing share of Americans don’t pay income taxes. Indeed, the Bush tax cuts increased the share of U.S. households that pay no income taxes. . . .
As the price of something drops, the demand increases. For a growing share of Americans, government services are effectively “free,” so they are demanding even more and policymakers are giving it to them.
Everyone — at least, everyone who votes — should pay something and that something should go up or down with federal spending. Some earlier thoughts on that here.
CHRISTINE O’DONNELL’S HISTORIC NOMINATION: “If she wins, she’ll be the first female Senator from Delaware.”
STEVE CHAPMAN IS learning to love the Tea Party.
CITY OF AIRHEADS: VILLARAIGOSA DISMANTLES L.A.’S LIBRARY SYSTEM. They told me if I voted for John McCain we’d get politicians who . . . oh, hell, this is too easy.
On the bright side, L.A. now has an all-bacon food truck, so they’ve got that going for ’em, anyway.
I’M GUESSING THAT MY LUNCH TODAY won’t be quite this “heavenly.” On the other hand, I am planning to eat something other than a sandwich at my desk, which for me is a big deal. . . .
COLLATERAL DAMAGE: “The emotion generated by O’Donnell’s upset win has brought out the worst in many politicos and pundits — from the Left, the Right, and the GOP establishment.” Yes, it has. Try to avoid the personal infighting. People forgive disagreements, but they never forget personal insults, and it makes it harder to work together in the future, even on things where you agree. That’s quite damaging to a party or movement over time.
But there’s also this: “Were Republican voters as well behaved as Frum would like, Senate seats in Washington, Wisconsin, California, and West Virginia would not be within reach. Without the enthusiasm ginned up by the rowdy conservative populists, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina would not look as good for Republicans as they do now.”
UPDATE: Related thoughts from Roger Kimball. “That’s the thing that scares people about the tea party. It operates outside the jurisdiction set down by the other parties, be they Democratic or Republican. All those sources of patronage, wells of political preferment, reservoirs of prestige, perquisites, and power: That’s what politics as usual is about. It has built up an impressive institutional structure. It’s worked, more or less, for many decades. And now this decentralized, grass-roots organization (in so far as it is an organization) threatens to upset the whole apple cart.” But read the whole thing.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bill McConnell writes:
Reading Steve Chapman’s article this morning and several others in the same vein, I am amazed that so many pundits come so close to an important take on all this but never actually say it. That is regardless of the outcome of the election, both the winners & losers will understand the peril to their political careers of going to Washington now and returning to business as usual. That is the major effect that the Tea Party has had and will have.
Perhaps you should be the first to say it.
Actually, I think you were, Bill . . . .
Plus, from Ed Morrissey: “The GOP is in danger of becoming the Sore Loser Party and destroying its credibility with grass-roots activists in the process.”
Plus this: “The primaries are the manner in which voters hold candidates accountable for their records. After the voters make their choice, though, the debate is supposed to be over. The GOP has demanded loyalty from various constituencies at the end of the process, in which incumbents or anointed candidates such as Castle almost invariably win. Suddenly, though, those rules don’t apply to the GOP establishment — or at least the establishment seemed ready to reject them yesterday. That’s precisely the same kind of elitist attitude that Americans get from Washington DC, and why the Tea Party exists in the first place.”
YEAH, THE SITE WAS DOWN FOR A WHILE THIS MORNING: Sorry about that. And thanks for all the emails from people saying they missed their morning InstaPundit fix!