POPULAR RESISTANCE:

Now soak that in for a moment. It is a coin flip, at best, for the president as to whether his signature achievement, his only achievement, will fail. It will be repealed in essence by a popular referendum: The mass refusal of people to go along with Obama’s top-down, compulsory system that was set to transform a sixth of the economy. That possibility should traumatize and probably is traumatizing the White House. Same goes for any Democratic lawmaker who spent time thinking this through. The political implications of this are almost too enormous to calculate.

It’s called “Irish Democracy:” what the public does when institutions don’t represent them. In calculating the implications, I recommend James Scott’s Two Cheers For Anarchism. In it, he writes: “One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called ‘Irish Democracy,’ the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”

UPDATE: Busted link before. Fixed now. Sorry!

TAX PROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 193 — Now with Obama-mocking SNL sketches! Video at the link.

IF? What Happens If ObamaCare Fails?

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED/OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS: Colorado State Pension Fund Lowers Expectations.

Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association voted to lower its expected rate of return on investments to 7.5 percent, down from 8 percent.

The Denver Post reports that the fund has $23 billion in unfunded liability (http://bit.ly/1eWZNXz). That’s money it owes to current and future retirees over the next 30 years but does not have in its account today.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton has urged the board for three years to lower its rate of return, warning of an eventual collapse and bailout of the pension system for 300,000 teachers and state workers.

Stapleton estimated that Friday’s vote means the pension fund’s unfunded liability will increase by about $6 billion to $29 billion.

And 7.5 percent is still unrealistically high.

THE LIFEBOAT FOUNDATION FOLKS write that their Bitcoin endowment fund has done so wall that they’re skipping their end-of-year fundraiser and instead asking for suggestions on what to do with their money. Of course, they’ll still accept donations, and they don’t have to be in Bitcoins.

TYLER COWEN: Getting Rid Of Old Regulations Is Much Too Hard. Yes, it is.

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THAT CLINT EASTWOOD EMPTY CHAIR SKETCH WAS SPOT-ON, WASN’T IT?

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right. And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

Reflect on that for a moment. The President of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office day after day. The West Wing is stuffed with high power aides. His political appointees sit atop federal bureaucracies, monitoring the work of the career staff around them. The President has told his core team, over and over, that the health care law and the website rollout are his number one domestic priorities.

And with all this, neither he nor, apparently, anyone in his close circle of aides and advisors knew that the website was a disaster. Vapid, blind, idly flapping their lips; they pushed paper, attended meetings and edited memos as the roof came crashing down. It is one thing to fail; it is much, much worse not to see failure coming. There is no way to construe this as anything but a world class flop.

And just one of many from this administration. Like I said, Clint was spot on. And much as I love Walter Russell Mead, I note that he voted for this guy, and blandly assumed that an Ivy League pedigree was some sort of assurance of competence. Not so much. And it’s not as if the signs weren’t there, for those able to see them.

Plus:

As more people reflect on the President’s extraordinary press conference, the public sense that the President and his team just aren’t up to the job will inevitably grow. It was a jaw dropping moment of naked self revelation, and the more one reflects on it the more striking it becomes. The President of the United States didn’t know that his major domestic priority wasn’t ready for prime time—and he thinks that sharing this news with us will somehow make it better. It is moments of this kind that give epithets like “Carteresque” their sting.

That’s unfair to Jimmy Carter, whose style ran more toward micromanagement than to obliviousness.

UPDATE: More competence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: National Journal: President Obama and His Gang That (Still) Isn’t Shooting Straight: Incompetence, deception and lack of accountability still hound White House and health reform. “Incompetence, deception and lack of accountability doomed the Obamacare rollout. That’s old news. What’s new? The nagging durability of the White House’s incompetence, deception and lack of accountability.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Despite “Recovery,” Income Gap Worsens.

PETER INGEMI: You know when playing “follow the leader” with a political party is a problem? When that leader lies through his teeth and you mimic him.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: All of a Sudden Students Have Stopped Paying Their Loans, Again—Why?

MORAL HAZARD: ObamaCare vs. The Self-Sufficient. Like the song says, they’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

OKAY, ANOTHER ONE OF THESE: Flashback: Why Judge Kozinski Supports Internet Privacy.

Excellent quote: “I know what it’s like to always be on your guard,” Judge Kozinski said in an interview. “Everything you say or do will be judged or reported, and you’ll have to explain yourself for things that are really innocent.”‘ Is it just my imagination, or has the United States gotten more like this in the last couple of decades? Kozinski is a breath of fresh air in the increasingly bureaucratized and mediocre federal appellate judiciary. (Yes, I said mediocre. I’ve just completed a project that involved reviewing all the lower court decisions on the commerce clause for the past year. Doctrinally, some are okay and some aren’t. But an appallingly large number are just bad: conclusory, sloppy, or just plain wrong. A particularly common and annoying habit is citing cases for things they don’t say, or ignoring more recent Supreme Court opinions in favor of older circuit precedent).

Sigh. Some things haven’t changed.

JFK: CASUALTY OF THE COLD WAR. “Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who idolized Castro and hated America.” And the cognitive dissonance that created has made the left crazy for the past fifty years.

ANOTHER LEFTY IDEA FAILS? Canadian Test Shows Income Guarantees Don’t Work. “People respond to incentives.”

IT SURE WOULD BE HANDY IF CLARK AND SUBIC WERE STILL THERE, THOUGH: Pentagon insists typhoon won’t open door to Philippine presence.

NASSIM TALEB: “Even Keynes would not have encouraged quantitative easing . . . . There is no excuse to accumulate debt on the grounds of growth.”

WHILE LOOKING THROUGH THE EARLY ARCHIVES OF INSTAPUNDIT for an item on Doris Lessing and the War On Men, I ran across the originator of the Obama Administration’s debt strategy. Future historians take note.

YA THINK? Obamacare Debacle Derails President’s Credibility.

President Obama’s personal image has also been tainted: now a majority (52 percent) of Americans do not find the president honest or trustworthy, the highest level since Quinnipiac began asking the question. Just two years ago Obama enjoyed a +32 advantage on trust (63 to 31 percent). Moreover, most Americans (56 percent) also lack the confidence in Obama’s leadership ability to effectively implement the new health care law.

Public confidence has waned not just for the president but Obama’s signature health care law as well. Gallup finds support for the law is now underwater by 15 points, with 55 percent who disapprove and 40 percent who approve, the highest disapproval and approval gap since Gallup began asking the question. Perhaps one reason for this decline is that nearly six in 10 Americans believe the Obama administration purposely tried to deceive the public regarding the health care law.

Again: Ya think?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Data on Stealth Law Faculty Layoffs.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The Other Huge Obama Disaster of the Week. It’s hard to keep track.

GOP ESTABLISHMENT 0, DUCK DYNASTY 1: Newcomer McAllister Wins Special Election in Louisiana.

BUT IT’S AN ONLINE SPEECH, SO IT’LL PROBABLY GO 404: Obama rallies supporters Monday evening to save Obamacare.

SECRET TREATIES: Law Professors Call for Public Process for Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Chapter. I’m pretty sure that makes them terrorist anarchists or something. Maybe racists, too.

THIS ADMINISTRATION CAN’T RESIST MAKING RACIAL ATTACKS ON ITS CRITICS: Arne Duncan: ‘White suburban moms’ upset that Common Core shows their kids aren’t ‘brilliant.’

To me the interesting thing about the Common Core debate is that the opposition comes from a broad political spectrum, and that any policy that can only be defended by making racial attacks on its critics is probably a policy that can’t really be defended.

But wait, it gets worse:

The Common Core was designed to elevate teaching and learning. Supporters say it does that; critics say it doesn’t and that some of the standards, especially for young children, are not developmentally appropriate. Whichever side you fall on regarding the Core’s academic value, there is no question that their implementation in many areas has been miserable — so miserable that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a Core supporter, recently compared it to another particularly troubled rollout:

You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse.

Now that hurts. It’s almost enough to make you give up on government schools in general. . . . .