I see the spin coming down the road in six months:

Obama's taught us all what's really important in life, and it's not grubby money. Obama be praised for teaching us again about the simple pleasures in life.

Just like Jesus, only cooler and with a better 3-point shot.

Much Better: A commenter wrote:

Obama "saved or created" 6730 +/- Dow points.

Spotted by Tom.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (126)
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She sucked down a frigging engagement ring without even feeling it in her throat?

Gee, I wonder why he wants to marry her.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (78)
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Threats of withholding donations. Terrific.

In case my point wasn't clear: This is simply not important enough for the Republican Party to go to war with itself over. Paper it over, let it pass, move on to important stuff.

It's not fair that the media demands that every conservative sign a Pledge of Loyalty to President God-King Obama and announce they wish him to succeed -- certainly there was no such Loyalty Oath circulated when Bush was president.

And no, I can't say I'm upset that Limbaugh got annoyed by this and chose not to play ball.

However, the media controls the public discourse. This is an issue because they want it to be an issue, and they want it to be an issue because... well, guess. Hint: It's not because it helps the conservative cause.

If everyone wants to bang on Steele for dealing inartfully with Limbaugh's own inartful remarks, and play right into the media's and the Obama Administration's (but I repeat myself) game of stoking a full-on civil war in the party rather than kissing and making up, fine. What can I do.

The media has made this an issue because it hurts us. Steele is scrambling among several not terribly good options to avoid the media's use of this against us. The media has fucked us -- and everyone buying into the Let's Burn the Party Down game is letting them fuck us even harder.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (332)
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Sweet shit in a bucket! In follow up news to my earlier post about giving AIG yet another bailout, AIG is suing us!

The insurer filed the lawsuit on Friday because of a dispute with the IRS over $306 million in taxes, interest and penalties. An AIG spokesperson explained, "AIG is taking this action to ensure that it is not required to pay more than its fair share of taxes."

Of course, that means we (the taxpayer) get to pay for their lawyers, and IRS's lawyers, and then whatever the outcome we will be either paying for or failing to obtain the disputed money.

It's MADNESS!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:17 AM | Comments (108)
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Some seem to be up in arms about this.

In an interview on CNN with D.L. Hughley, Steele assured that he, not Limbaugh, was in charge of the party before saying that he wanted to put the right-wing talker “into context.”

“Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer,” Steele said. “Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes it’s incendiary, yes it’s ugly.”

Steele’s comments, first noticed by NBC producer Chris Donovan, are sure to rankle Limbaugh in part because they validate the liberal critique of the conservative force: that he’s merely an “entertainer.”

That’s one of the phrases often used by Democrats who seek to diminish Limbaugh. MSNBC’s liberal talk-show host Keith Olbermann, for example, frequently mocks his broadcast adversary as “comedian Rush Limbaugh.”

Several points:

1) The American public does not share the zeal for partisan attacks that most partisans, such as myself and most of you, do. Politicians are political animals who savor such fights, mostly, but have to pretend they're above it and really would rather just make nice and work out compromises and give handjobs to unicorns. Steele shouldn't be slammed too much for a lie forced upon him by his job description.

1) a. This is especially true now, given we're in the minority and will suffer politically if we're perceived as opposing Obama just to oppose him. Hence, Steele's posturing as someone who'd really, really, really like to work things out with Mr. Obama, if only he had the chance.

1) b. Distancing oneself from bomb-throwers is part of that posturing.

2) Limbaugh is an entertainer. Not just an entertainer, of course, but he's appealing largely because he's so entertaining. And being entertaining often means making impolitic statements -- and not being gray, boring, bland, and inoffensive. Which is what most politicians and "serious" public intellectuals strive for. Again, I don't see the big deal on this. Part of what makes Rush listenable is that he's allowed to say things others in the public realm can't.

3) As great as Limbaugh may be, we're in serious danger if any criticism of any public figure on our side becomes forbidden.

Example: Most "moderates" are politically stupid. There are some well-informed moderates who simply do not fit well with either party and hence are moderates by choice.

However, most moderates are moderates by apathy and ignorance. They simply don't know much about politics at all. So "moderate" becomes the default choice. (Actually, a false moderation which is actually a media-promoted soft-liberalism calling itself "centrism" is the default choice, but whatever.)

Now, I can say that most moderates and centrists are really politically stupid and, in many ways, politically childish. They might be quite smart in other ways, but in this area, whether through lack of interest or lack of brainpower, they're dumb.

I can say that because I'm talking to a group of partisans who are informed and interested in politics.

Limbaugh can say that -- and indeed has said it -- for the same reason.

Michael Steele cannot say that.

He knows it, same as you. But he cannot say it. And if Limbaugh says something along those lines, of course he'll immediately have to say how silly that is and that Rush is just trying to be provocative and that he's incendiary and so forth.

Hypothetical: Suppose during the campaign it had come out that I was in communication with McCain's internet guys, and it became a two-day story that McCain was in communication with a homophobic, "eliminationist" Islamophobe and all that.

Now many of you like me and wish me well, and of course I'm deeply appreciative of that. It's a great feeling.

But, if, hypothetically, McCain had to denounce me, how much could you hold that against McCain? I mean, what's more important, getting a Republican president or my hurt feelings?

I feel the same thing with this whole Rush deal.

Vid: Courtesy of Darling.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (436)
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Like Windows, every new iteration of global warming theory is backwards-compatible.

And like Windows, it's often a little buggy and requiring of emergency patches.

The Earth has been cooling for a decade. While it may be true (or not, depending on whose figures one uses) that 1998 was the second-warmest year on record, and that seven or eight of the years since were in the top 10, no year since has been warmer than 1998 and nearly every one has been cooler than the one before it.

The trend is decidedly downward. Indeed, the drop in temperatures since late-2007 has been so precipitous --nearly a full degree Celsius-- that almost all of the global warming that has occurred since the late-1970s has disappeared.

...

When I wrote last year that this 20-year intermission in upward temperature trends bruised the credibility of global warming scientists and alarmist environmentalists, several of them wrote me to say they had never predicted steadily rising temperatures. No, no, they insisted, all along they had expected periods -- even some long ones -- in which temperatures would retreat before surging ahead again. So the currently cooling fit right in with what they had been predicting all along.

This, of course, was revisionist hogwash -- if only because the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed there was no doubt that disastrous manmade warming was already upon us. The IPCC further predicted temperatures this decade would rise 0.3C and by similar amounts every decade through 2100.

Read on. Now that the Arctic icepack is nearing record mass, the global warming cultists are claiming they never claimed that declining arctic ice was an important proof of their theory.

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (67)
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I didn't get to blog this as we were kicked off blogger's row an hour or so before he took the stage. I watched it from the bar. The reception was, well, supportive.

If you haven't seen it, it begins here and then proceeds through ten more parts. (It was about 80 minutes long.)

Rush kept making three jokes which worked every time. Mocking Obama, he applauded himself vigorously at the start of the speech (Ann Coulter had just pointed out how weird it was that Barack and Michelle Obama frequently applaud themselves); gave fist-bumps and/or "terrorist fist-jabs" after making a good point; and constantly referred to his speech as his "first national address," parodying the media for its overexcitement about Obama's similar "first."

Near the end of the speech, he also remarked he'd delivered it without aid of teleprompter, to the delight of the room.

One of Rush's main themes was this:

Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. [Applause] When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims. We don't see people we want to exploit. What we see -- what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don't think that person doesn't have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.

I liked that and had hoped Rush would use the opportunity of his "first national address" to really sell conservatism to the average American, as Arnold Schwarzenegger did so brilliantly at the 2004 RNC. ("If you believe [common sense principle X], then you're a Republican." ) He hit that, but too lightly for my tastes. He mostly spoke to the base.

I am baffled, however, by Rod "Crunch Con" Dreher's truculent critique. Addressing the Limbaugh quote above, Dreher writes:

This is a comforting lie. It is Rousseau conservatism: the idea that man is born innocent, but corrupted by society, or government. Remove the chains of government, and man will return to his natural, good state, which is one of limitless possibility. This denies two bedrock truths of philosophical conservatism, which are that 1) human nature is fallen, and 2) man must learn to live within limits. A conservatism that is not founded on a conscious recognition of those two truths is a false conservatism, and has a shaky foundation from which to criticize liberal utopianism.

This is silly, bordering on the stupid-silly. Limbaugh's point was to contrast two vehicles for getting to the Good Society: 1) freedom of personal action, relying on people's conscience and self-interest to mostly get them through, and 2) government coercion and instruction. Limbaugh was not postulating that people live in a state of natural grace -- he was making the point that people, left to their own devices, are closer to such a natural state of grace than they are under a government that attempts to bully and bribe them into such a state.

What would be the source of external moral instruction if not the State? Well, Limbaugh didn't address that, but for many Americans, it's religious faith. Had Limbaugh brought that up, I'm guessing Crunchy Non-Con would have had similar carpings.

One point Limbaugh made that Dreher doesn't address -- he noted that many conservative pundits would fall upon themselves to cut down their fellow conservatives in order to ingratiate themselves with the Obama regime and its owned-and-operated media messaging brigade.

There are honest disagreements, and then there is just posturing to demonstrate one is not one of those "bad conservatives" who do all sorts of evil and ugly things like force mortgages on the poor, deny health care to children, and believe in actual conservatism. The anklebiting, contradiction-for-contradiction's sake tenor of Dreher's critique seems to suggest that Rush's counter-critique might have hit too close to home.

Links via Hot Air.

Religious-Left Conservative-Socialism? Shep addresses the crux of the dispute:

What crunchy-con Dreher didn't like was that there was a solid, fusionist, Reaganite libertarian-conservative strain running through Rush's address. His very last line was something to the effect that "we want to make people better, but in the end, what they do behind the doors of their houses is no one's business," or words to that effect. What crunchy-con really means is I want to be a social conservative and control your private lives AND be an economic liberal and control your economic lives through green regulation, enforced health codes, &c., &c. Dreher's conservativism (like Russell Kirk's, in large part) is one essentially of statism and control. What Rush realizes is that what the Republicans need to do now to survive is to re-invigorate a freedom coalition, not succumb to the "moderate/reformist" statists like McCain and David Brooks, or to the alternate-adjective statists like Dreher. If Republican means freedom, personal responsibility, small government and strong defense, we win. If it means "our kind of nanny state instead of theirs," then the Republicans lose -- since who among us can be bothered to play that fool's game.

Perhaps that's right and Dreher isn't merely contradicting to contradict -- perhaps he does dream of strong Daddy Government instructing and bullying us as regards both personal and economic morality.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (142)
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Two years is an eternity in politics but it looks like Republicans in PA are finally sick of Senator Not Proven's act.

53 percent of Pennsylvania voters said that they would prefer to elect someone new to replace Specter in 2010, according to a Susquehanna Polling and Research survey released over the weekend. 38 percent of voters said they supported the long-serving Republican senator in his reelection efforts. Eight percent said they were undecided.

Perhaps more disturbingly for Specter, the demographic with the most desire to see someone new elected is not Democrats, but rather other Republicans.

66 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans said the state should elect someone new, while 26 percent said they supported Specter's reelection.

Personally, I'm one for being realistic about the kinds of Republicans some states are going to elect. If we limit Republicans in the Senate to the Jeff Sessions types, we'll never have a majority there. Pennsylvanian however can do better than Arelen Specter. Remember, Rick Santorum won two terms there not long ago and while he was blown out, it was in a very Democratic year (2006) and to a guy who was pretending to be a moderate while trading on his father's name.

This looks like a promising battle in the fight for the soul of the party.

RELATED: Pat Toomey says a possible challenge to Specter is "back on the table".

Posted by: DrewM at 07:38 AM | Comments (39)
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More indecision and waffling from the President. Anti-Semitic organizations continue to push him to participate in the United Nation's "anti-racism" conference to be held in Geneva. At the last one, held in Durban, South Africa, the delegates adopted a declaration condemning Israel as the only racist country in the world. The purpose of this year's conference, known as Durban II, is to implement that declaration and its anti-Semitic agenda.

On Friday Obama announced that the U.S. would not participate...unless we decide to participate.

Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire. On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation’s “anti-racism” conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to “re-engage.”

Durban II, scheduled for Geneva in April, is the U.N.Â’s attempt at a rerun of the 2001 global anti-Semitic hate fest held in Durban, South Africa.

After sowing confusion over the phone lines, the State Department chose late Friday night to put the real deal in print. Their release reads: “the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable,” and “the United States will not … participate in a conference based on this text,” but we will “re-engage if a document that meets [our] criteria becomes the basis for deliberations.” A new version must be: “shorter,” “not reaffirm in toto the flawed 2001 Durban Declaration,” “not single out any one country or conflict,” and “not embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.”

But don't worry. Obama is reaffirming his commitment to human rights by joining the UN Human Rights Council. But notwithstanding Obama's claims about the "troubling concept of 'defamation of religion'", that infamous council, whose predecessor the UN Commission on Human Rights included China, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, has approved at least ten resolutions on "defamation of religion" many of which specifically identify Islam as needing protection from blasphemers.

So let's sum up. The President won't go to Durban II unless it drops the concept of defamation of religion, but he's just fine with joining the UNHRC, which embraces the same concept. Talk about a mixed message.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:22 AM | Comments (23)
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And it can and probably will get worse:

Investors turned cautious again Monday as a staggering $61.7 billion in quarterly losses at insurer American International Group Inc. touched off fresh worries about the health of the nation's financial system.

Investors are fleeing financials after the government said it would give AIG another $30 billion in loans, besides the $150 billion it has already given the company.

Investors are worried about European financial companies, too. HSBC PLC, Europe's largest bank by market value, reported a 70 percent drop in 2008 profit and said it needs to raise $17.7 billion and cut 6,100 jobs.

"As bad as things are, they can still get worse, and get a lot worse," said Bill Strazzullo, chief market strategist for Bell Curve Trading. Strazzullo said he believes there's a significant chance the S&P 500 and the Dow will fall back to their 1995 levels of 500 and 5,000, respectively.

The "game-changer," he said, will be the housing market and whether it can stabilize.

In midmorning trading, the Dow fell 157.46, or 2.2 percent, to 6,905.47.

Yes, we can blame Obama. He is in charge and it's his budgets and his plans which are failing.

Posted by: Ace at 07:21 AM | Comments (89)
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