In July the President said "the time for talk is through." In August, Harry Reid said their proposal would be ready immediately after the summer recess. And on September 22, Obama's OMB director, Pete Orszag, said that the goal was for Obamacare to be a law "over the next six weeks or so, maybe sooner." He bragged, "Prospects for broad-scale health-care reform have probably never been this good."

Today marks six weeks from his statement. At the time, he and the administration were still talking up the Baucus bill—you remember, the one that's been completely ignored after getting bottled up for two months with endless and ultimately fruitless negotiation. Harry Reid would have had his vote right after the summer recess, if it weren't for the Baucus bill. Those two months tore the Democrats to pieces and kept them from ramming through another anti-prosperity, anti-freedom piece of garbage like the spendulus. That was a small victory.

Orszag didn't just pick his six-week deadline out of the air. He knew—Obama knew—that if the healthcare bill passed in less than six weeks, Democrats as a party could go to the polls with something to show for the past eleven months. Lord knows, they haven't managed much else. Just Spendulus, Lily Ledbetter, and Sonia Sotomayor. Party disaffection—at the base—can be an insidious and dogged problem. It starts small.

Orszag also knew that if Obamacare hadn't passed in six weeks, Republican wins today would be nails in its coffin. Today, the Republican candidate for governor will win in Virginia, which voted for the President 52.62% to 46.33%. In today's election, a conservative candidate—a tea party candidate—manages to upset all of the planning and expectations of beltway Washington. These are small victories, but Democrats elected in swing districts are watching and they are doing the math.

So just missing another self-imposed Democratic deadline is a small victory. It starts with small victories in an off-off-election year. When you're out of power, small victories may be all you can manage. But they add up.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:13 PM | Comments (89)
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Wait, free enterprise works?

Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a "solidly profitable" 2011.

The automaker said Monday earnings were fueled by U.S. market share gains, cost cuts and the Cash for Clunkers program, which drew flocks of buyers to showrooms this summer. Ford's shares rose 68 cents, or 9.8 percent, to $7.68 in morning trading.

...The earnings came despite an $800 million revenue drop. But Ford said it cut costs by $1 billion during the quarter, accomplished through layoffs in North America and Europe, reduced pension and retiree health care costs and improvements in productivity and product development.

Chief financial officer Lewis Booth said the company took in $1.3 billion more than it spent in the quarter, an improvement over its $1 billion cash burn in the second quarter.

"That's a huge deal," Booth said.

Meanwhile, their government funded competitors are looking for a 3rd bailout of their credit arm.

Yes, Ford was helped by 'Cash for Clunkers' but that was open to everyone and it will be interesting to see how they fare when that artificial demand disappears.

One can only wonder how much better Ford would be doing it its competitors were forced to live with the consequences of their poor business choices.

*There's a discrepancy in the time stamp of this post with the time in the comments because I changed the blog time to reflect the end of daylight savings time. I manually changed this back to that new posts would show up at the right time. It was originally published at 11:59am

Posted by: DrewM at 08:26 AM | Comments (60)
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Not much else to do once the other candidate drops out.

Election officials declared Afghan President Hamid Karzai the winner of a new five-year term Monday, canceling a runoff election scheduled for Saturday just one day after Karzai's sole challenger quit the race. The decision ended weeks of political drift since a first presidential poll in August was found invalid because of massive fraud.

In the capital, a sense of relief was instant and palpable. Kabul residents honked horns and exchanged celebratory text messages as the news spread. American, European and U.N. officials rushed to congratulate Karzai and pledged to work closely with his new administration.

...Within two hours of the announcement, the U.S. Embassy issued a statement saying, "We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him, his new administration, the Afghan people and our partners in the international community to support Afghanistan's progress toward institution reforms, security and prosperity."

U.S. officials said privately that Karzai would clearly have won the runoff, and they maintained that Abdullah's voluntary withdrawal made it unnecessary to hold a new poll that would have exposed voters to the risk of attack by Taliban insurgents. Even after hundreds of thousands of votes were discarded as fraudulent in the August poll, Karzai won more than 49 percent to Abdullah's 30 percent.

That's got to be an Obama record for throwing someone or something under the bus. It wasn't all that long ago the Sen. John Kerry was hailed as a hero for getting Karzai to agree to the runoff. The second round of voting was deemed important to the legitimacy of the Karzai government and any effort to support it.

Now? Not so much.

It's almost as if this was just another stalling tactic by Obama to avoid dealing with Gen. McChrystal's troop request.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:27 AM | Comments (129)
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Come on, now, I couldn't not post it:

New EnglandÂ’s moderate Republicans, shoved out of power by two Democratic waves of anti-George W. Bush fervor, are scrambling to make a 2010 comeback, making early bids for congressional seats that GOP leaders say are critical to taking back majorities in the House and Senate.

[...]

“We aren’t going to win back the majority without fighting hard in the Northeast, and we intend to do it,’’ said Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who hopes to pick up a half-dozen or more seats in the region.

Since Republicans believe their losses in the region were largely due to BushÂ’s unpopularity, they see a greater opportunity to reclaim the seats. But a pushback from rank-and-file conservatives in the party, who are recruiting their own candidates, combined with a damaged national GOP image, is making the effort an uphill battle.

Sessions fell down, way down, on the Scozzawatver candidacy. But he's right that we'll never see a majority--and thus never see conservative congressfolk like Senator Coburn or Congressman Cantor setting the agenda--without winning back some lost seats. That means targetting purple districts, places that voted for President Obama, in New England, the Midwest, and the West.

Thanks to DrewM. Click over and read the whole thing.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:11 AM | Comments (174)
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The final PPP survey before the vote has Christie ahead by six. That's outside the margin of error and so, hopefully, tomorrow's vote will be firm enough to withstand a Democratic election challenge.

Interestingly, Daggett is now seen as spoiling Corzine:

Christie's advantage is due largely to his support from independents and because he has Republicans more unified around him than the Democrats are around Corzine. Christie leads Corzine 52-29 with indies, as Daggett's support with that group has declined to 16%. Christie is getting 82% of Republicans to Corzine's 72% of Democrats.

As the campaign concludes it seems like Daggett's presence in the race has actually ended up hurting Corzine more than Christie, contrary to the earlier conventional wisdom. 45% of Daggett voters say the incumbent is their second choice to 36% for the challenger. Daggett's backers report having voted for Barack Obama by a 67-23 margin last year.

New Jersey is a blue state that habitually reelects the incumbent. And President Obama sent his GOTV people to Corzine, who has been nothing but a puppet for the past two weeks. Yesterday I suggested that Corzine would pull out a bonafide win or a win via election challenge. It would be nice to be wrong.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:21 AM | Comments (110)
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There are depths, depths.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:37 AM | Comments (32)
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It's an ass-whuppin.

Compare and contrast. Texas: lower taxes, holding up reasonably well in a bad economy, growing. California: our toll booth operators are better paid than yours.

Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California. Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so. William Voegeli draws the sad but instructive comparison in the Los Angeles Times:

In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right. ...

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau's latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. ...

But what about improved public "services"? Better roads, schools...

Nope.

So what do Californians get for their higher taxes?

Better paid public employees, and more of em.

But those higher taxes in California must be going somewhere. Why aren't they benefiting those many thousands of citizens who are leaving the state for greener pastures?

In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

You know they're feelin good about that.

It's not a perfect contrast but it's a good one. For years states with higher taxes dismissed other states like Texas, Florida and South Carolina as ignoring the neccessity of of "excellent" public services like education and transportation. All bullshit of course, public services and infrastructure are no better or in many cases worse. Meanwhile policitians assaulted businesses as the "enemy" bled them with ever higher taxes and over-regulation, and the bureaucrats and the unions lined their pockets until the whole thing collapsed.

They say California sets the trend. I wish they were wrong. Whoever "they" are.

[via The Man of Substance]

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:38 AM | Comments (171)
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Good evening M&Ms. You got that extra hour last night so it's time to put it to good use.

Obligatory Video: Anvil Shooting
Personally I would have scooted further away before the launch but then I suffer from anvil-falling-on-my-head-phobia.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:00 PM | Comments (877)
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Someone most of us (including me) likely never heard of. Officer Leslie W. Coffelt gave his life fifty nine years ago defending the President of the United States.

Major Garrett of Fox noticed dozens of Secret Service agents outside Blair House this morning, at 6:30am, in the rain.

In 1950, Coffelt, 40, was a member of the White House Police Force, the fore-runner to the US Secret Service Uniformed Division. On Nov. 1, of that year, he was standing post with three other officers (Floyd Boring, Donald T. Birdzell and Joseph H. Downs). At the time, city buses dropped off passengers on Pennsylvania Avenue near Blair House.

The Trumans were living in Blair House during White House renovations. On the afternoon of Nov. 1, Truman was upstairs taking a nap.

Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, approached Blair House from opposite directions and opened fire. Coffelt, stationed inside a guard booth, suffered three gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. Coffelt rallied enough to exit the booth, brace himself against it and, from a distance of about 30 feet, shoot Torresola to death with a single shot to the head.

The last line of defense was another officer in the house, armed with a Thompson submachine gun. Because of Officer Coffelt's actions, mortally wounded though he was, the last line was not approached.

May he rest.

tip andylevy via Twitter.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:49 PM | Comments (46)
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Starting December 1, only government-sponsored displays will be allowed inside buildings on the Olympia Capitol campus. This will allow the annual state-sponsored "holiday tree" to go up in the Capitol rotunda, but prevent the kind of circus that developed last year. Displays will be allowed outside on the Capitol grounds during activities or gathering, but only on a temporary basis. Under the new rules they must be removed immediately after the activity or gathering ends.

I wrote about this here with background and here mocking the evangelical atheists who started it. But to quickly sum up: by the time things were done last year, the Capitol was playing host to a Nativity scene, an atheist placard equating religion with myth, two Christian displays mocking atheism, and a menorah, as well as the annual tree. Applications for a Festivus pole, a sign from Fred Phelps which said "Santa will take you to hell", and a Flying Spaghetti Monster were put on hold when the state put a moratorium on displays.

The atheist group which started the brouhaha by putting up the sign: "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." is declaring victory:

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, said she was pleased about the new rules but added that they don't go far enough.

"I don't think Nativity scenes belong on the outside of capitols either," Gaylor said.

She pledged to put up a large sign if a Nativity is allowed this year on the Capitol campus.

"We will match whatever they do," she said. "I don't think the public will be any happier about it on the outside than they would be on the inside. I encourage the state to avoid the entire debacle."

Whose fault is this really? I blame the Supreme Court for perpetuating such a ridiculous interpretation of the Establishment Clause.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:05 PM | Comments (231)
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