Sen. John McShameless: "Complete The Danged Fence"
— DrewM

In other news, we have always been at war with Eastasia

I know I'm the heretic here for, preferring isn't the word, um, looking at McCain as the lesser of two evils in the GOP AZ Senate race* but this is really pushing it.

Is it too late for a 3rd GOP candidate to get involved?

*My problem with Hayworth is he's not exactly the poster boy for small government and on a tactical level, I'm not sure turning a sold Republican seat into a toss up is the way to go.

I'm glad I don't live in Arizona and have to make this choice.

Video via Ben Smith.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:40 AM | Comments (231)
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Gordon Brown Shakes Up UK Election Negotiations UPDATE: Conservatives Announce Their Final Offer
— DrewM

The opening bid for a Labour-Liberal Democratic coalition was always going to be Brown's head. He's now offering it up, in pieces over time.

Gordon Brown announced tonight that he is to step down as Labour leader but wants to remain in No 10 for a few more months as part of a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats.

Playing Labour's final card after an extraordinary weekend of post-election wrangling, the Prime Minister announced that the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had formally asked for negotiations to begin on a power-sharing deal with Labour.

Mr Brown said that he had agreed to the request, but thought that he did not think he should lead a coalition government for longer than strictly necessary and a new Labour leader would be in place by the end of September.

The announcement - Labour's nuclear option - came barely an hour after a meeting of Lib Dem MPs which stalled on a Tory power-sharing offer and asked for more details on the key issue of electoral reform.

The reason this didn't happen sooner is that all though as sitting PM, Brown had the constitutional right to be the first to form a government, Lib-Dem Leader Nick Clegg said during the campaign that the party receiving the most seats should have that opportunity. Clegg spent the weekend negotiating with the Conservatives and since that didn't produce a deal, Brown walked the plank. Albeit in slow motion.

Basically Brown resigned today as leader of the Labour Party but he won't be officially replaced until the Labour Party Conference held at the end of September. Once a new party leader is picked, Brown would turn over 10 Downing Street to that person. In the meantime, he stays as PM with a new coalition government.

Given that a Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition was seemingly insane on its face, this is the most natural alternative. It's probably not giving up much by Brown since most people assume there will be new elections by the end of the year, or within a year at the outside anyway. So Brown will stay PM for most of that time anyway.

The real question is, will the Lib-Dems buy this or will they stand fast on the demand the Brown go? If they really want him to go, I'm sure there are plenty of 2nd tier Labour types ready to push him over the railing to secure the deal and grab the PM post for themselves in the process.

Either way, looks like the UK is about to be governed by a coalition of the losers. Interestingly, a Lib-Lab coalition still only gets them to 315 (with 326 needed for a majority). That means some of the minor Scottish/Welsh/Irish parties will be part of the coalition, giving them even more power.

The Liberal Democrats with their 55 seats have become king makers. They want electoral reform which would make this a more regular feature of British political life, not less.

Again, all I can say is, thank you James Madison.

The interesting question is, would this be bad for Conservatives? Some tough decisions will have to be made on budgets and spending that aren't going to be too popular. Would they be better off letting the left do some heavy lifting before getting tossed out in the next elections which will be likely soon? The question is, would Lib-Lab government do too much damage, like going to proportional representation? That would be a death sentence for the Conservatives.

Also, would Cameron survive as party leader? On one hand, he just won a huge amount of seats but it wasn't enough to win and he lost a big lead.

High stakes poker in the UK!

UPDATE: Tory spokesman William Hague, just announced that they have offered the LibDems a referendum on an "Alternative Voting" system. This is a raise in the stakes from their initial offer of a committee to study options. The spokesman just said this is pretty much their final offer.

The line of attack based on this statement is, major changes in voting should be done through referendum, not an Act of Parliament. They are also fighting against the coalition of losers saying a second un-elected PM is unacceptable. This election is the first and only Brown has stood for as PM.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:38 AM | Comments (114)
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Kagan must be Filibustered
— Jack M.

Let's engage in a thought experiment:

The year is 2015. President Jim DeMint is offered the opportunity to name a replacement to the United States Supreme Court following the surprise health related resignation of aging jurist Antonin Scalia.

President DeMint nominates long time friend and current Solicitor General Gamey McCock, age 50. McCock is the current solicitor general, having been confirmed over the objections of 31 Senate Democrats who felt he lacked the experience to serve the administration in what is essentially a temporary job. Because Scalia is a member of the court's conservative wing, the McCock nomination is not viewed as likely to change the balance of the court.

Prior to his service in the DeMint administration, Gamey McCock worked in the George W. Bush administration, helping to shepherd nominees John Roberts and Samual Alito through difficult confirmation proceedings. He also spent a year as a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. From there, he worked for several years as the Dean of the Law School at the University of South Carolina School of Law. To top it off, he was also a paid advisor to Bear Stearns, a company currently alleged to be engaged in questionable, and possibly criminal, business deals that many feel accelerated the stock market crash of 2014. Bear Stearns also happens to be a major contributor of funds to President DeMint. As it turns out, Stearns currently faces criminal investigation, and the case could theoretically appear in front of the Court. more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 08:06 AM | Comments (291)
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60 day delinquent mortgages show (not so) "surprising" 1Q drop
— Purple Avenger

From the mental fissionist mega-geniuses at All Propaganda.

The rate of late mortgage payments dropped in the first quarter for the first time since 2006, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion.

The 60-day delinquency rate slipped to 6.77 percent, from 6.89 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. That was the first decline after 12 consecutive quarters of steady increases, TransUnion said.

The first-quarter figure still represents a substantial jump from a year ago, when delinquencies were at 5.22 percent. But FJ Guarrera, vice president in TransUnion's financial services business unit, said it's still good news.

"To see it turn down is a very, very strong sign," Guarrera said, adding that positive economic indicators like Friday's increase in job creation make the outlook even better...

Before these clowns get all giddy and start polishing each other's knobs, maybe they should consider that maybe, just maybe, this is kinda due to something worthy of a tad less euphoria? Perhaps something along the lines of more lenders finally pulling the trigger on foreclosures? Enough dead/written down/foreclosed mortgages just might, I realize this is a real long shot, just maybe, probably just crazy talk anyway, change the number of "late" mortgages still on the books making it go down?

But that scenario would kinda deflate the gestalt of this group lovefest now wouldn't it?

I know, its all crazy talk, a 1:1,000,000 shot that my scenario is true, and we got a better chance of finding a Stargate buried under home plate at Yankee Stadium tomorrow.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:11 AM | Comments (104)
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NBC News: Obama To Nominate Kagan For Supreme Court--- Bumped
— DrewM

Announcement is being made now.

Obama went on about Kagan's alleged commitment to diversity of thought. Then why exactly did she ban the military from recruiting at Harvard Law? This great champion of justice knowingly and willfully violated the Solomon Amendment.
So much for diversity of thought and commitment to law.

Obama also said the law is more than words on paper. A truly scary thought from a President.

Dave Weigel, the Washington Post's blogger focusing on that rare species of conservatives Tweets...

GOP approach to Kagan = otherize her as a troop-hating, gay-loving elitist who wrote a thesis about socialism, right?

That, along with her lack of experience and then they will vote yes (barring some sort of bombshell).

The 'lack of experience' line of attack will likely be met by Democrats with, "and the last justice without judicial experience was William Rehnquist".

Original Post:

The promised leak has been delivered.

Not that big of a surprise but looks like it's about to made official.

President Barack Obama will nominate U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, NBC NewsÂ’ Pete Williams reported late Sunday night.

Kagan, 50, served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009. Obama nominated her to serve in her current post as solicitor general early in 2009, and she won Senate confirmation by a vote of 61-31. She is the first woman to serve as solicitor general of the United States.

Initial thoughts...

The GOP should make a fight out of it just because the days of 90+ votes are gone thanks to the Democrats.

Baring some sort of unexpected revelation, there won't be a filibuster. She'll get beat up a bit over not allowing the military to recruit at Harvard Law during her tenure as Dean but it won't amount to much.

Kagan will play of the Sotomayor game of pretending to be a moderate who only interprets the Constitution when she'll be a run of the mill liberal vote on the Court.

The left will be disappointed that they didn't get an unabashed, in your face liberal. They want their own version of Scalia. Kagan ain't it.

Kagan is the safe pick. I really thought Obama was going to go for it here. What did he have to lose?

There's no guarantee he'll get another nomination, though you'd have to think Ginsburg might think about retiring next year, especially if Obama is still in bad shape. If he gets it next year, it will be with a smaller Senate majority and with some scared Senate Democrats. Will Obama want a fight then to rally the base going into '12?

Posted by: DrewM at 06:15 AM | Comments (471)
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Top Headline Comments 5-10-10
— Gabriel Malor

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:09 AM | Comments (84)
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Overnight Open Thread - Mom Day Edition
— Maetenloch

Happy Mother's Day all.

And it's not too late to send your mother a customized video naming her The 2010 Rising Mother of the year! It's pretty cool how they're able to work her name into all the videos and even create a virtual mom tattoo.

And here's a little video showing how love for mom can kinda overcome filial hate. (thanks to DPR VIII) more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:00 PM | Comments (746)
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Something That Needs To Be Said
— DrewM

And often.

Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear begins an auto review with a page out of Atlas Shrugged.

There was a time, not that long ago, when no one in this country ever spoke about how much anyone earned. I remember once being in a Swedish tank when all of a sudden the captain turned and asked: “Right. How much did you make last year?” I couldn’t have been more taken aback if he’d asked me how often I had anal sex.

Now, though, things are different. We are told, often, that the director-general of the BBC earns more than £800,000 and that this is an obscene amount of money. Right. I see. So what should he be paid? Half that? A quarter? Is £50,000 acceptable? To someone on the minimum wage, probably not.

Doubtless the bitter and the twisted looked at all those multi-millionaires in this newspaper’s recent Rich List and thought: “How can any one man possibly have a fortune of £1 billion?”

Why shouldn’t he? It is no skin off your nose. At the very least, you don’t have to sit next to him on a plane. And anyway, if the government took all his money away and distributed it evenly among the rest of the population, you’d be £16 richer and he’d be wondering why he spent his whole life working so damn hard.

He did. One thing IÂ’ve noticed over the years is that if you drive into London at 6am, half of the cars on the roads are Porsches and Astons. Whereas if you go in at ten to nine, theyÂ’re all Renaults. Simple solution, then. You want a nice car? Get up earlier and do more work.

This opinion no longer washes, though. I appear to be in a minority of one. People still want to be rich, but they donÂ’t want anyone else to get there first...

And there's a review of a Porsche I'll never own and don't care much about.

The first presidential candidate to run on this platform (and does one other thing) will receive the coveted DrewM. endorsement.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:13 PM | Comments (207)
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The Global Struggle Against "Imperialism and Capitalism"
— Dave in Texas

Is the illegal immigrant argument about race or politics?

Loaded question.

Consider this 2007 video from Sanchee H.S. history teacher Ron Gochez at a La Raza rally at UCLA.

"Stolen, occupied Mexico... at the forefront of a revolutionary movement, La Raza. Our commandante, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez", et. al. "40 million of 'our people' north of the Rio Grande." Most of whom have lived here for generations, as Americans.

The argument is not about immigrants. It's not about Hispanics. It's about whether said immigrants have the desire to participate in the culture and polity of the United States of America and the benefits that become possible with that assimilation, or whether instead they would rather be used by political groups who co-opt them to achieve their political goals, using racial divisiveness and hate-mongering to advance a political agenda.

I think this is largely what we find so offensive about the protests to Arizona's SB1070, and so many of these protesters displaying Mexican flags (not to mention kids getting hammered for wearing U.S. flag regalia on May 5). The protesters on the left and in the MFM play the race card against something that isn't racial, it's political, it's an ideological argument, for or against the concept of national identity and borders.

Gochez is an a idiot but he's an honest idiot in a way, he isn't crying racism so much as he's declaring you have a bit of a problem with supporting capitalism (the "imperialism" bitch rant is the dishonest part and he plays it like the racist card. I'll bet in his warped analysis of history he interprets U.S. sovereignty in the southwestern United States as "imperialism"). His goofy discourse of "history" will completely fail to recall the other nations that were on the stage, hello, Spain. Do not ask him about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo or the Gadsden Purchase, I doubt he studied his history that well.

via Rosetta at H2. Also the "race vs. politics" I gleaned from a discussion with co-blogger LauraW and another blog friend.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:17 PM | Comments (183)
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Obama: Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength
— Gabriel Malor

The so-called "intellectual" President is cribbing from a book every highschooler in America has read...and he's plagiarizing the bad guys:

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

Does the President of the United States really believe that technologies that put more information in the hands of the public (and the voters) impede "empowerment" and "emancipation"? I hope not, but let's face it; Leftism has always relied on a certain ignorance. Certainly his speechwriter must have seen similarities between these statements and the most well-known work of political fiction of the twentieth century.

Just this year alone, the President attempted (and succeeded) in rushing through healthcare reform without allowing the true costs to be told. And then they were well on their way to an inquisition of the major corporations who started mentioning the costs. He and the Democrats now face enormous backlash precisely because the technologies that he bewails—blogs and talk radio—empowered us to discover and share the costs of ObamaCare.

For Obama, the engines of argument have become as objectionable as argument itself. The President laments that technology "exposes us to all kinds of arguments", a curious complaint from someone with as much education as Obama. He says this is putting pressure on our country. But preserving "all kinds of arguments" was considered so important for the United States that the principle was enshrined in the First Amendment!

And this isn't some bogus call for civility, either. His call to quiet the "diversion" of arguments is just the same old call to curtail dissent that is common among Leftists. The president is not worried about the opinion pages of the New York Times distracting young minds. It's the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal he would like to silence. It's Glenn Beck and Ed Morrissey and our very own Ace.

Update: This is not the first time Obama demonstrated what a fearful and small-minded man he is. He has been complaining about Rush Limbaugh for over a year now. His war against Fox News similarly displayed an inability to deal with dissenting arguments. Even the White House press corps has complained about the pettiness that results from even the hint of criticism.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:16 AM | Comments (335)
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