Huh?

Democrats hate Mickey Kaus. Every liberal accuses him of being a stealth conservative. Frankly, I sort of think he's a stealth conservative, too.

Posted by: Ace at 04:52 PM | Comments (115)
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So really we need to pass cap 'n tax as soon as possible to get the economy going again.

White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Monday winter blizzards were likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures, which are due to be released on Friday.

"The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it's going to be very important ... to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends," Summers said in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript.

How much you want to bet it will still be deemed an "unexpectedly" bad report?

Expect the unexpected.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (144)
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Either/or on those two specs -- the thing has four modes, ranging from all-electric to all-gasoline (performance) modes.

Genuine leather douchebag-shaped seat-protectors not included.

I want to droop my balls on it.

Thanks to rdbrewer.

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (96)
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Arizona Tea Partiers decline to endorse J.D. Hayworth over John McCain.

Not sure why -- yes, J.D. Hayworth sinned against small government, too, and yes, on Tea Partiers' core issue -- reducing spending -- John McCain isn't awful.

But he's awful in most other ways.

I suspect this has something to do with Sarah Palin's endorsement of McCain.

A lot of the blogosphere has been up in arms about Hayworth, calling him a "Birther." I disagree. He said that Obama ought to release his full birth certificate -- which is something a lot of non-Birthers, say too.

Maybe it's pandering. So? Are Birthers the only group on earth who shan't be pandered to? Are they guilty of such noxious beliefs that even a bit of innocuous pandering to them is beyond the pale?

Most politicians on the right side of things address this issue delicately, aware that maybe 1/3rd of the GOP vote believes in the birth certificate conspiracy to one extent or another. They try to come up with some formulation that doesn't commit them to birtherism, while also treating birthers respectfully. Gingerly, really.

Hayworth's formulation-- Obama should prove his constitutional eligibility -- is a good enough formulation, I think. If it panders too much -- well, that's up to people to decide.

I think it's fine. I say as much myself every time this issue comes up.

Let's not forget here that this is one of the few election cycles where we will ever have the chance to "trade up" for a more conservative candidate without risking the general election.

McCain was -- is -- a hero. He deserves respect. But there must be consequences to forever thwarting one's supposed constituents. We cannot afford to have a Senator from a red state perpetually selling us out to the left.

The Other Side: A reader argues:

JD Hayworth is f'ing terrible. He's an arrogant, loud-mouthed, corrupt jackass.

After he lost his House seat, he went around to GOP officials throughout the state and blamed his loss on...John Shadegg. Why? Because Shadegg's anti-earmark efforts throughout the state hurt Hayworth. Nevermind the fact that Hayworth lost because he chose to listen to the advice of Jack Abramoff instead of his constituents.

Sure, McCain sucks. But voting for JD Hayworth is not the solution. We don't need another corrupt big-spender tainting the GOP for years. We didn't get our asses kicked out of Congress because of McCain. We got the boot because the party turned into a big-spending circle jerk led by corrupt a-holes like Tom Delay. Let's not repeat history.

Honestly, while I knew that, I barely knew that, if you know what I mean. I have read (and promptly forgotten) Hayworth was a pal of Abramoff's.

Still. Look: Suppose we win in 2010 or 2012. Suppose we endeavor to repeal ObamaCare -- by reconciliation if necessary (which it probably would be).

I don't need the Hamlet of Arizona deciding that while Democrats used reconciliation to pass that abortion he's too principled to vote to use reconciliation to undo it.

McCain's big on showing off, ostentatiously, how "principled" he is -- and that's just the sort of jackass maneuver that would appeal to his ego.

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (257)
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I got a little pissed at myself last week for posting poll-post after poll-post. I wrote to Laura my funk is caused by their being less genuine news lately -- health care is basically now like Iran, as they busily continue building the bomb and we seem unable to stop them. And sort of have to just trust they're not completely insane.

I don't post stuff about Iran anymore because nothing has changed in this basic dynamic since the war in Iraq went sour and it became clear the American public had little appetite for any further warfare.

Anyway, health care sort of became like that. I thought the reconciliation thing was pure fan-service for the nutroots. Now I think they're really going to try it, with a real effort to actually succeed. (As opposed to "trying" with the starting intention of failing and saying, "Hey, we tried.")

Polling is sort of like that too. But here's a somewhat interesting if somewhat predictable twist on the polls:

Barack Obama now has a negative approval rating in every state he flipped from the Bush column to his in 2008. In each of those places his level of support is now in the 44-46% range. ItÂ’s probably a good thing he doesnÂ’t have to run for reelection this year. He can only hope things start turning around for him once the midterms are in the rear view mirror, much as they did for Bill Clinton.

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (173)
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Yes. We are weary of him.

In a year we've endured the sublime rhetoric of his awesomeness, his amazing ability to do absolutely nothing, his appointments, his speeches, his appeals to his mandate.

And we've already grown tired of him. We Americans I mean. In one year.

In my lifetime, I have not witnessed this particular type of popularity cratering since Jimmy Carter. When Carter actually began to govern, with his milquetoast "sweater" admonitions and style, the nation cooled to him faster than penguins on ice.

He is still appealing to his personality and amazingness, to pass the most godawful piece of legislation to hit the pike, perhaps even as a "hey Hillary, here's how it's done" ramshackle FU to the majority of Americans who want no part of this garbage.

Ace has mentioned my concern, that given this confluence of events, the opposition is taking the long view, and the long view is "pass this piece of shit, it secures our future".

I would like to be wrong. I've been wrong twice today.

Don't think I'm wrong about this though.

tip from the Man of Substance

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:43 PM | Comments (101)
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Booger treasure:

This may be old by now, but I haven't seen it before.

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (79)
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I say "fake" because I am very certain that this proposal is nothing but something that's supposed to sound all compromisey, while in fact being designed expressly to be unacceptable, to offer liberals the political cover to use reconciliation to pass the bill.

An offer designed to be refused.

"In a matter of days, we will have a proposal," Pelosi said, pointing to Obama's forthcoming bill. "It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill, because that's where we can gain consensus. But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable."

Melody Barnes, a top Obama domestic policy adviser, did not dispute Pelosi's characterization of the new plan as smaller in scope - and quite possibly in cost - than either the House or Senate health care bills.

"It's going to be matter of drawing on these different ideas and coming up with the right proposal," Barnes said in an exclusive interview with Fox. "That's what my colleagues are working on. That's what they're talking with Congress about. We'll see what it looks like when the proposal is sent forward."

Asked how White House staff is putting the new proposal together, Barnes said they are "borrowing" from conversations at Thursday's health care summit.

"We're going to be borrowing from those conversations...to come up with a bill that we hope can receive bipartisan support," Barnes said.

Supposedly malpractice reform and interstate competition for health insurance will be in there.

Based on this --

"But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable."

-- I'm guessing it will have some sort of Trojan Horse public option back in it, too.

Is This the Reconciliation Bill? Rocks thinks so--

I'm thinking this is the Reconciliation Bill. Of course it will be smaller and all compromisey and stuff because all it will contain is the changes to the Senate Bill.

It won't be a full fledged replacement.

Possibly, but from what I gather the reconciliation bill will have to make the Senate bill bigger in order to appease House liberals. Not smaller.

Hmmmm... jdub thinks it might be the reconciliation measure, too. He suggests it will barely smaller than the current Senate bill, just to comply with reconciliation's mission of reducing the deficit:

from what i understand, the new bill will have to have a smaller budget than the current version(s)... reconciliation can only be used to effect budget reduction, and those measures necessary to and inseperable from that budget reduction.

so, for example, cutting out the cornhusker kickback.

read hennessey's post about this, it's the best thing out there.

Right, well, fine, cut the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase and you have a nominally "smaller" bill.

But -- another thing they have to do is buy off the unions by exempting them from the "Cadillac Tax." I figure that will cost more than these provisions give back. And even more than that if the Cadillac Tax is eliminated for everyone, not just union members and government employees, as Obama's last proposal specified.

So.... if jdub is right, they'll have to fake up some more "savings" from elsewhere. Probably raid Medicare again.

And More: Rocks replies:

Ace by smaller I meant physically smaller. It won't be some huge bill.

The Senate Bill will be the fact acompli, this is just a little fixer.

"It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill, because that's where we can gain consensus.

Melody Barnes, a top Obama domestic policy adviser, did not dispute Pelosi's characterization of the new plan as smaller in scope - and quite possibly in cost - than either the House or Senate health care bills.

As far as cost it's only sure it will be smaller than the House bill. It's possible that it will be smaller than the Senate, but don't bet on it.

This bill will add tort reform and cross state selling. It won't have the Public Option but it will have the triggers, etc which if they aren't met will spring the Public opton. She gets the Senate with their Bill, She get the Blue Dogs with the tort reform, etc and the liberals with the trigger.

Hmm. Maybe. I bolded the part about it being "quite possibly" smaller in price because that suggests Rocks is right -- smaller in page count, and barely smaller (if at all) in costs.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (44)
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These teabaggers also attempted to murder their seven month old daughter.

She somehow survived.

Their two-year-old son was not so lucky.

Damn these Teabaggers, who shoot their own children due to fears of death panels global warming.

But their unnamed daughter cheated death after the bullet from her dad's handgun missed her vital organs.

Paramedics rushed her to hospital covered in blood when police alerted by worried neighbours discovered the massacre three days later.

The youngster is recovering in hospital in the town of Goya in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes, where doctors say she is out of danger.
Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.

Posted by: Ace at 12:11 PM | Comments (83)
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This thinking is simply wrong. It's the claim of archliberals and Obama cultists (the two are mostly overlapping groups) who wish to influence skeptics and moderates to vote in favor of political suicide.

Obama and the leftist partisans have been pushing ObamaCare on us for a full year now. The public has listened to the arguments and understands the basic parameters of the deal -- and has rejected it, not only by 60% majorities in polls, but by a watershed election in Massachusetts. Not to mention New Jersey and Virginia.

The public doesn't want this bill. Passing it would not be proof that Democrats can "govern." Passing it would instead by proof they can't govern-- at least not govern in a manner that the majority of the public finds acceptable.

When Bill Clinton was dealt a setback in 1994, he proved he could govern by pursuing a more moderate course, as he'd promised in the campaign but quickly forgot about after his inauguration. That was actually a stab at governing in a broadly-acceptable (if still left-leaning) manner.

This current notion -- that to "govern," a party must exercise pure transitory political power in the face of stiff resistance from the public -- has liberals all wild-eyed. They like this formulation because it achieves two things:

1) It allows them to continue cheerleading for their boyfriend-hero Obama without considering other consequences, and it does that by...

2) Positing that there are no trade-offs involved here. Liberals love pretending their are no trade-offs in life. It makes things so much simpler to claim that not only is torture wrong, torture also only results in false information. And so once again they come up with a fantasy formulation, in which Democrats not only vote the way their Liberal True Believers wish them to, but profit from it politically, because, somehow, the public becomes impressed with their ability to "govern," also known as "defying their clearly-expressed wishes."

Any rational person would conclude that passing this bill is politically disastrous, but Obama's SuperFans don't want to acknowledge that. They don't want to acknowledge that a "win" for Obama here means a big loss for liberals down the law. They are talking themselves crazy into buying the proposition it's pure win-win. (Or "Win-Win-Win," as Michael Scott says.)

It's bad enough that James Carville is now propagating this lunacy. Yes, Carville is a partisan liberal, but he's also a partisan liberal, if you know what I mean -- he's a pollster, and understands hard numbers, and should understand that ObamaCare can badly hurt the Democrats for years to come. He should be warning Democrats off this abortion.

But he's not. He says health care might be Obama's Waterloo, but phrases it in the win-win sort of way that leftist lunatics are so bewitched by:

On 'GMA' this morning, James Carville wasn't as optimistic as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not sure that Democrats have the votes to pass the President's plan, Carville is sure that failure will be the "Waterloo" predicted by GOP Senator Jim DeMint.

“If it goes down" Carville said, "it’s gonna be a simple statement: the Democrats can’t govern. They came in with a majority promising health care and they came away with nothing.”

They came in with a majority promising very vague health care reforms, and furthermore promising that such reforms would cost those with insurance nothing -- that it would even put money in the pockets of those with insurance, by reducing premium costs while increasing the standard of care.

That last part has been exposed as the lie it always was. Obama had a "mandate," to the extent he had one at all, to pass a purely fantasy have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too health care reform that delivered everything while costing nothing. That reform doesn't exist -- as it never existed. So what mandate does he have to pass a reform that does cost 80% of the public something in the form of higher taxes, higher premiums, or reduced care?

As I said: A partisan but rational liberal should be making the case against this. But Carville's not -- the liberal base is too passionate about giving Barack Hussein Obama his all-important "momentum" and his stupid America-wounding victory to care about long- or even (mid-) term consequences. He can't speak honestly about this, just as Lawrence O'Donnell said of liberals a month ago: They are not free to speak the truth; they would be punished too much for daring to tell liberals that No, they can't ram an unpopular bill down the public's throat and remain popular with the public.

I've also noticed this change in Chris Matthews. Immediately after Scott Brown's election, he was arguing with Alan Grayson that reconciliation was virtually impossible with this bill, and that he ought to think realistically about Democrats' precarious political situation.

But now he's back on Team Obama, arguing that the Democrats must pass this, damn the consequences, just to prove they can "govern."

Dangerous. I'm getting worried again.

"They're Driving Themselves Crazy:" That's how Bill Kristol characterized liberals' talk of becoming even more out-and-proud liberal after their defeat in the 2002 polls. They convinced themselves that the path back to power lay not in moderation, but in being more overtly, honestly, and passionately leftist.

They did in fact pursue that course, sort of -- liberals became more liberals. But they only won Congressional seats because they nominated a bunch of centrists who could compete in red and purple states.

And Barack Obama won in 2008 because he was, the media insisted, a moderate -- more moderate than Hillary Clinton, and even closer to the center than noted firebrand ideologue John McCain.

Nevertheless, when liberals get into political trouble, their third course of action is always to convince themselves they just need to be more liberal.*

And recent history shows this isn't just talk.

* Their first course of action is to blame their candidates and call them incompetent -- putting the blame on the messenger, not the message -- and the second course of action is to blame the public for being too stupid to understand what they were saying.

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (102)
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