Popcorn!

Major Garrett says Hoyer wouldn't make this official if he didn't think he already had it locked up.

Can you imagine if the Republicans were about to kick their top ranking black congressional leader out of his job? The MFM won't get into this but you can be the Congressional Black Caucus will not be happy.

The GOP isn't without its own leadership battle. Michelle Bachmann is looking to turn her support for tea party candidates and activists across the country into the number 4 GOP slot, Chairman of the Republican Conference (a job currently held by Mike Pence and his very presidential hair).

The Minnesota lawmaker, the founder of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, says everyone wins whether Republicans elect her or Texan Jeb Hensarling as chairman of the House Republican Conference, the party's No. 4 leadership post when it takes control in January.

"It isn't that I need to be in the leadership," Bachmann told USA TODAY. "It's the ideas and ideals of the Tea Party that are important and need to be represented at the table."

Incoming Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, is supporting Jeb Hensarling , who by just about all accounts is as, if not more, conservative than Bachmann.

Somewhat related, the House GOP is adding a new leadership spot to represent the incoming freshmen. Looks like tea party favorite Kristi Noem of South Dakota is going to get it.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:13 PM | Comments (87)
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It is unfortunate that these 'National Congratulations Cards' for Keef are undoubtedly going to be screened before delivery, but fun is fun.

Thanks to skinbad.

Posted by: LauraW at 11:51 AM | Comments (277)
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Political parties profit by telling swing voters they don't have to make binary decisions, that they can have it all, both guns and butter, both increased spending and reduced taxes, and all with a balanced budget.

They can't be permitted to live in this fantasy world any longer. The Democrats will continue to lie to them (lying hasn't hurt them yet), but Republicans must give it to them straight.

Here's how deficits are created:

The Republican Party has the following priorities, in descending order, as regards spending, taxes, and balanced budgets:

1. Taxes must be lowered, or, if that is impossible, at least kept at current rates and not raised.

2. The budget should be balanced.

The Democrat Party, meanwhile, has these priorities, again in descending order:

1. Social spending must always be increased, or, if that is impossible, at least kept at current levels and not reduced.

2. The budget should be balanced.

The deficit grows because each party is willing to champion its number one priority -- lowered taxes for the Republicans, increased spending for the Democrats -- by giving up on their number 2 priority (balancing the budget).

Republicans will agree to not make any real cuts in spending if they can have their tax cuts. See Bush 43. This results in a deficit.

Democrats will agree to not raise taxes if they can continue spending like government spending. See Barack Obama and every other Democratic president apart from Clinton in his Republican-influenced send term. This results in a deficit.

What happened in the early nineties with the rise of Perot and the Reform Party is happening again-- the public is asserting that balancing the budget must be pushed up to the top of the list of public priorities.

This means that one or both of the usual priorities -- increasing spending, reducing taxes -- will have to give way.

We can balance the budget (or at least come close to that, over several years). But the parties cannot keep agreeing to honor each other's top priority at the expense of ballooning the budget. It doesn't work. Cut taxes, increase spending, balance the budget: Select any two.

The public will not make this choice until and unless political leaders insist that they make it. One of three popular public goods will have to be abandoned. They will have to finally choose if they wish to continue putting off such decisions and shellacking their children with huge debt due to their failure to make serious decisions (an option, by the way, that is no longer economically viable); or if they wish to pay another 10-15% of their wages to the government; or if they are willing to see government spending, including spending on popular subsidies for the middle class, cut dramatically.

And on that last point, the middle class must be made to realize there is no such thing as a "subsidy for the middle class." They cannot come out of this transaction as net-winners -- the middle class is too big for the rich to subsidize them. There are 1000s of middle class households for every truly rich household.

Therefore, all "subsidies" for the middle class come out of their own hides. The government takes their money, bleeds a lot of it off in inefficiency, waste, and salaries for do-nothing federal employees, and then gives them back 65% of it in the form of a supposed "subsidy."

There is no subsidy. All that happened in the exchange is that the middle class lost 35% of its tax money to subsidize the poor and to further balloon the size of the federal bureaucracy.

These cuts must be made, and they will seem painful to the middle class: Until and unless they are made to understand that the middle class can never come out as net-winners in any subsidy deal with the government, because the middle class is where 90% of the taxpayers are (and therefore where the money is).

Every time the Democrats propose to "help" the middle class all they're proposing to do is take money from the middle class, subsidize the poor a bit, waste a bunch of it on pork and cross-subsidies for other members of the middle class, and then return a much-diminished amount to them. And call themselves heroes and champions of the middle class for doing so.

The middle class cannot win its dealings with the government. The mathematical deck is too stacked against them-- the numbers can never work out in their favor, even in principle. The government can never do more for the middle class than take its money, take a huge cut of it, and return a smaller portion of it back to them in the form of a government "grant."

The middle class' only path to victory in dealing with the US Government is to keep it as small and cheap as possible so that the smallest amount possible is coming out of their hides.

The public must be made to realize this. Or else the public must agree to raise taxes on themselves by significant margins. Either way, they must choose.

On ObamaCare: At least with this legislation, the middle class figured out the game, that they were being asked to give up some of their health care (and pay more for the diminished care they would have going forward) in order to subsidize the poor.

That may or may not be a virtuous transaction, but it is in no ways an advantageous one.

Every program "for the middle class" is rigged like this. They wind up subsidizing the poor. There is no such thing as a subsidy for the middle class. Middle class taxpayer A may receive Stafford loans for his college aged kids, but those are being subsidized by Middle class taxpayer B, who in turn takes money from A to pay for special education for his kid.

Neither party wins out (or at least net winners are so rare as to constitute a small special interest voting bloc, those few middle class taxpayers that do in fact come out ahead in the deal by qualifying for more subsidies than they're paying for).

ObamaCare may be useful in this regard: To instruct the middle class as to the fundamentally bad deals all government programs are to their bottom lines.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (296)
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He was right about Phil Griffin, I guess.

"Keith is furious about the way this has all been handled and insisted that MSNBC bosses apologize to him before he would agree to return," a network insider tells me. "Keith sees himself as the star of MSNBC, the person who put them on the map and discovered fellow network anchors Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell. To be treated like this by the network he helped shape, he considers disgusting."

...

"In addition to an apology, Keith is demanding that the rules be changed," an executive tells me. "Keith thinks it's unfair that FOX News anchors can make contributions and support candidates and he can't. It's his money that he has earned, he should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it.... If they think they can slap Keith's wrist and have him to return a few days later like nothing happened, they are wrong. They picked the wrong guy."

An Instapundit reader opines:

The act is not at all what Olbermann says it is. ItÂ’s a very old act: The fire and brimstone preacher.

The left has become horrifically sanctimonious. They have become what they hated in the right back in the 60s.

Every issue for the left is a moral issue on the level of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. So, their opponents are always wicked devils consumed with sin.

And, itÂ’s their job to save us from eternal damnation.

Olbermann is just the secular version of the fire and brimstone preacher.

Just nowhere near as attractive or moving.

Indeed, one can say this rise of fire-and-brimstone political pornographers is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. (How so?, you ask. I don't know. It's just what they say about everything so I thought I'd join in the fun.)

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (84)
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Apart from that troll Greg, I haven't banned anyone intentionally in months, so if you were banned, please let me know.

But --

Make sure you cut and paste the banning message into your email. It begins "Your IP (whatever your IP is) has been banned. If you think this is in error..." or words to that effect.

If you are not getting that message, don't bother telling me to unban your IP-- because it's not banned. There is some other problem, apart from a banning. It could be your security software or something with cookies.

It could also be that you're not including an email address in your comment. An email address is absolutely required; a comment will not post without one. (Your posts will "disappear," as it's been described.)

Note you don't have to supply a real email; a fake one will do. (I use "fakeemail@yahoo.com" for mine.) But it is absolutely 100% required that something having the format of an email address appear in that email box. I suspect that half of the non-bannings wrongly believed to be bannings are really cases of people failing to include something that at least looks like an email address.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (212)
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Keith Olbermann threatened to walk -- a silly threat, considering he's got nowhere else to go -- to get MSNBC management to drop its demand he apologize on-air for his breaking of the rules.

At Hot Air, MSNBC caved.

Olbermann will be tomorrow night, more unhinged than ever, as he knows that he can do whatever he likes without management taking any kind of action against him.

Suspend him? Heck, Bathtub Boy loves suspensions. He gets to cry his his bath and strike the pose of maligned martyr while doing so.

MSNBC says Keith Olbermann will be back on the air Tuesday, ending his suspension for violating NBCÂ’s rules against making political donations after two shows.

MSNBC’s chief executive Phil Griffin said late Sunday that after several days of deliberation, he had determined that two days off the air was “an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy.”

Most of the rightward commentary centers on whether this prohibition even makes sense in the first place, given that Olbermann donates a hell of a lot more than $2400 to Democrats every night in terms of partisan advocacy.

That's true enough. It's also an example of an effect written about by Glenn Reynolds.

One of the longest-lasting residues of Watergate is the vetting industry: a mountain of regulations, committees, consultants, and special prosecutors dedicated to detecting and/or eradicating something called the appearance of impropriety. But for all this effort, it's hardly true that people in government and business are more ethical than they used to be. That disconnection is the point of departure for this book. The problem that Peter Morgan and Glenn Reynolds address is that the notion that all this energy is directed toward--the appearance of impropriety--is horribly obscure (Is it a conflict of interest, Michael Kinsley once wondered, to have a second child?). It's also subject to political whims and fads and, most important, not all that connected to what we should really be bearing down on: actual impropriety.

"Ethics," in modern practice, basically consists of taking what the law would term mala in se offenses (bad in and of themselves; the sort of thing that people have a visceral, morality-based reaction to) and turning them into fairly minor mala prohbiata offenses (bad only because they're prohibited by state action).

More importantly, though, the nature of the prohibited behavior is seriously mutated: Don't be partisan, unfair, and biased in reportage becomes merely Don't get caught donating to a political party. And a clean bill of health on the latter is taken to be a clean bill of health on the former-- which, of course, it's not.

This is of course self-serving nonsense. "Ethics" in modern practice has simply become a method of evading actual ethical behavior by creating a checklist of Don'ts which are almost entirely unrelated to the actual ethical transaction; compliance with this silly list of Don'ts allows actors to violate the real ethics of the profession like there's no tomorrow.

The whole nomenclature of "appearance of impropriety" gives the game away-- only the appearance of impropriety is barred, while genuine impropriety is allowed (and, in fact, encouraged).

It is noteworthy that not only is actual impropriety encouraged, but they've now given up entirely on even policing appearance of impropriety, too.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (128)
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There's a lot of this going around but this story in Politico is as good a representative of the genre as any other.

Hispanic voters saved the Democratic Party Tuesday — buoying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, keeping California blue, playing an outsize role in preserving the party’s Senate majority and demonstrating a partisan loyalty Democrats didn’t exactly earn in two years of inaction on immigration policy.

But that support is anything but certain for 2012, and both parties face difficult and immediate choices when it comes to the Latino vote as they position themselves for the presidential election. Democrats face open demands from Hispanic leaders for a reward for their votes. President Barack Obama could erect a Western bulwark for his reelection campaign by — as Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) suggested to POLITICO — pressing for broad immigration reform in the lame-duck session. But immigration could also prove, like health care, a polarizing, impolitic detour from the economic issues preoccupying voters.

Republicans, meanwhile, were carried to power by a conservative base that is, if anything, even less open to compromise on immigration — or anything else — than was the last Congress. And they head into the 2012 election cycle risking the same pattern that sunk Meg Whitman in California: a primary campaign that drags candidates to the right on immigration, only to find that they can’t plausibly return to ask for the support of Hispanics in November.

Ok, let's take a look at those two races cited in the story...

Sharon Angle didn't lose because she didn't get enough Hispanic voters, she lost because she didn't get nearly enough white and women voters. She vastly underperformed with those groups compared to winning GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval.

Sandoval easily won his race against Rory Reid 53-41%. He won whites 62-32 and women 50-46. He lost Hispanics to Reid 64-33 (even though Sandoval is of Hispanic heritage himself).

Now take a look at Angle who lost to Harry Reid 50-45%. She won whites 53-41 over Reid but that significantly underperformed Sandoval's 30% margin. She lost women to Reid 53-32, again under-performing Sandoval by a significant margin.

When it came to Hispanic voters, she lost to Reid 68-30. Angle was more or less in the neighborhood of SandovalÂ’s vote with that group and in line with the 34% of the Hispanic vote Republicans won nationally.

What was more fatal to Angle, the white vote or the Hispanic vote?

Why no stories about how Democrats in Nevada have a 'white voter problem'?

A quick look at the California numbers shows that Whitman got about as much of the Hispanic vote as Firoina, which is to say not much at all (30 and 28 percent respectively). Funny but even with her “maid” problems Whitman still did better than Fiorina with that group.

California and Nevada Republicans did under perform the average but that alone doesn't explain their loses.

What hurt Whitman and Fiorina was the simple fact they were Republicans running in a deeply blue state (about 42% of the California electorate were Democrats and only about 30% Republicans).

I'm not saying Republicans don't have to figure a way to craft their immigration message in a way that doesn't turn off Hispanic voters, clearly that's a smart thing to do. Of course, they have to be careful not to lump all "Hispanics" together (Marco Rubio cleaned up with them in Florida but Cuban and Mexican/Central American are only lumped together by idiots but it's the metric that is used). Also, assuming Hispanics are motivated solely by talk of ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ is myopic at best and at worst simply wrong.

We should be careful however when our ‘friends’ in the liberal media tell us all out troubles (if you can call anything from last week troubling for Republicans) boils down to the need to adopt liberal programs. It turns out they don’t really have our best interest at heart.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:19 AM | Comments (223)
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Purple Avenger noted yesterday that the cable network-commissioned exit polls had some interesting results. Some of them will just make you say "huh." Others will bring out your Dr. Evil laugh. I'll just highlight two.

Here's a "Huh." Purple Avenger had the statistic that 31% of gay and lesbian voters voted GOP this time. That's up from 24% in the 2006 mid-terms. Interestingly, it also represents a greater shift toward the GOP than in the Hispanic, black, and young voter demographics. In other words, gay and lesbian voters disproportionately fled from Democrats, compared to other typically Democratic demos.

Now here's a "mwah-hah-hah."

Voters over 65 favored Republicans last week by a 21-point margin after flirting with Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections and favoring John McCain by a relatively narrow 8-point margin in 2008.

Concerned by changes to Medicare and compelled by a Republican Party that promised a return to America’s glory days, seniors played a crucial — and often understated — role in races across the country. They were unswayed by ubiquitous Democratic warnings about Republican changes to Social Security. And they put a series of campaigns out of reach for Democrats.

The shift in older voters was the most dramatic swing of any age group, George Mason political scientist Michael McDonald said, and it gave the GOP the “magnitude” of its victory.

I was most struck by the observation that Democratic scare-mongering related to Social Security didn't grip seniors, who have realized that their benefits are sacrosanct.

But Democratic counterattacks on Republicans who were on record in favor of Social Security reform or privatization failed to gain traction with older voters. Those attacks resonated best with middle-aged adults worried about their retirement. According to Lake, seniors didnÂ’t seem to buy the argument that GOP candidates were planning dramatic changes to Social Security.

“That third rail has been pretty well unplugged. Seniors know better. Nobody’s going to take it away,” said Martin. “They’ve been using that scare tactic since Goldwater days. It was a canard then, and it’s a canard now.”

The shift to GOP among seniors was the largest among the age groups compared to 2006. And there are more seniors voting now than four years ago. There will also be a larger pool of possible senior voters in 2012. If seniors aren't buying Obama's snake-oil, and it seems like they aren't, I'd say it's time to get your evil chuckle on.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:47 AM | Comments (231)
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Good morning. I was hoping to announce at least the House contest winner today, but there are a few possible GOP pick-ups too close to call. Sadly, the Arizona 8th is not among them.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:00 AM | Comments (87)
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No, this is NOT a Dallas Cowboys game update. The zombies in this movie might be dead, but at least they put up a fight before you put them down for good. At least the Packers better HOPE that sucking this bad isn't transmittable through contact. If 1967 was "The Ice Bowl", this one is "The Stink On Ice Bowl".

As usual, "spoilers" from the episode just aired will be in the comments and extended entry. more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 07:38 PM | Comments (282)
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