His defense?

It's an homage.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (52)
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Reuters can't help from wistfully revisiting 2008, picturing Obama with a golden halo.

"And to that effect, I hereby propose to the General Secretary a series of plagues for Egypt,
beginning, as your briefing materials show, with frogs...

Absolutely shameless.

Gibbs, meanwhile, clarified that Obama did in fact intend to demand that Mubarak begin the process of transferring power now...

Last night, Obama issued a brief public statement that included just one line about a prospective deadline for Mubarak's exit from power: "My belief is that an orderly transition must be meaningful, must be peaceful and it must begin now," Obama said.

But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was more explicit Wednesday.

"'Now' means 'yesterday,'" Gibbs explained. "When we said 'now,' we meant 'yesterday'... that's what the people of Egypt want to see," Gibbs said, adding that a process that begins one week, one month, or many months from now won't suffice.

This is the sort of statement that makes sense if you are 100% certain the dictator is on his way out and want to get in good with the incoming, inevitable new regime.

But how can they be that certain?

At HotAir, reports that plainsclothes secret police bully boys are breaking heads, and in some cases, that seems to mean army officers pretending to be "pro-stability" civilians.

There is a pretty good chance that the army winds up siding with Mubarak and crushing the resistance, and then Mubarak installs a puppet replacement as president. That may not be the most likely scenario but I can't see how it's not a plausible one.

What's Obama going to say to Mubarak if that should come to pass?

I guess I have a different take than Drew... I'm having trouble understanding why this guy supported Ahmedinejad throughout the Iranian uprising (oh, after the regime murdered some young girls, they did bother themselves to urge "restraint") but now is so forward-leaning on Egypt.

It seems like he's trying to contrive a foreign policy public relations "win" he can take to the American people in 2012. So he can say, "Hey, I was the guy who called for Mubarak to be deposed when it was clear he would probably be deposed, you're welcome," and we're supposed to be grateful.

But it's not as if we were all super-invested in seeing Mubarak deposed.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (97)
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Above the post update:

The vote on the McConnell amendment (which was technically a vote to waive a budget point of order and required 60 votes to pass, see below) fails . All 47-51. Republicans voted for repeal, straight party line vote for Democrats as well.

No word yet on if this will be an ongoing effort by Republicans or a one off. Part of it will come down to whether or not Harry Reid continues to allow an open amendment process or not.

Original Post:
They are voting now on one of two 1099 repeal proposals, then they are on to Mitch McConnell's complete repeal amendment.

I suggested yesterday that the amendment would be ruled not germane to the underlying FAA re-authorization bill. I've subsequently been told by someone who works in the Senate that there is no requirement amendments be germane prior to a cloture vote.

What the Democrats will do is raise a budgetary point of order against it saying repeal will increase the deficit. In order to waive the point of order, repeal supporters will have to muster 60 votes. That's not going to happen but the point will be made.

Meanwhile, John McCain calls bull on the CBO process that claims repealing ObamaCare would increase the deficit.

"So what I'm saying is, garbage in, garbage out," McCain said on the Senate floor.

McCain cited two examples of how the CBO's estimate is not properly taking into account the true costs of the healthcare law. First, he noted that the repeated increases in reimbursement levels to Medicare physicians, and the failure to repeatedly let cuts to those payments happen, are estimated to cost $208 billion over 10 years. "Nowhere is that put into the equation," McCain said.

He also criticized the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act, a long-term care insurance program that was part of the law. While the program allows for employees to contribute to it, many Republicans believe it will have to be funded by the government at some point, and that this assumption is not being taken into account by CBO.

Will any Democrats flip and vote for repeal? Ben Nelson of "Cornhusker Kickback" and double digit deficit in his reelection bid fame was a candidate to flip but he saysreform not repeal.

Update:

First 1099 repeal effort, the Levin Amendment, failed.

Second 1099 repeal amendment passes 81-17. Funny but a lot of those 81 votes came from Democratic Senators who voted to include it last year. Guess you have to pass the damn thing to find out what you need to repeal less than a year later.

Now voting on the budget point of order against the McConnell full repeal amendment.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:41 PM | Comments (45)
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It's a little after 11 in Egypt and clashes are breaking out in Cairo. No camels yet but shots being fired into the air, Molitov Cocktails being thrown back and forth.

I understand that Obama was trying to engineer a soft landing here and I actually supported that. But...with regime backed violence breaking out against pro-reform/freedom forces, the US simply can not sit back and pretend to be even handed.

$3 Billion a year for 30 years should have bought us some influence here, especially within the military. It's time to play what cards we have and do what we can to get Mubarak out and get some sort of interim government (probably featuring an Army leader at its head) set up. One without Mubarak playing any part in it.

Along those lines, John McCain says time's up.

Regrettably the time has come 4 Pres. Mubarak 2 step down & relinquish power. ItÂ’s in the best interest of Egypt, its people & its military.

I have more than a few problems with McCain but I'd rather him in charge at times like this than Obama.

On the upside, Obama has a history of following McCain's lead on things like this.

MORE: Robert Gibbs gave his daily briefing today and it was a disaster. He was equivocal and vacillating throughout. I get that this is a complex situation and the administration was trying to walk a fine line on policy and between public and private action. If you're going to do that, your communication strategy has to be spot on and in this case it's been anything but.

Gibbs was asked what the President thought of the images of the clashes this morning. The answer was he found them "outrageous and deplorable". He left it at that. If the President of the United States finds the actions of one of it's main allies "outrageous and deplorable" then something, some action has to follow. It hasn't. That's simply a failure of leadership.

Also, note the sequence of events. Mubarak gave his "I'm staying until September" speech, he and Obama spoke for 30 minutes, Obama gives a statement saying the transition has to start now and the next day...the regime in Egypt unleashes violence on its people. What an amazing rebuke by Mubarak to the President of the United States of America.

The ability of the US to influence, let alone control events like these are far more limited than we'd like to admit. There are no guarantees about how this is going to turn out but every crisis has a turning point, a moment when you simply have to pick a side, even though all available options are bad and fraught with peril. That moment is here for the US. We have to make a move and manage the consequences as best we can as they arise. It seems to me as dangerous as it will be to deal with what comes next in Egypt, it's simply untenable for the US to go on backing Mubarak after this. What's Obama going to do?

Posted by: DrewM at 12:13 PM | Comments (330)
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Hey, if we must increase the debt ceiling (I know we don't have to, but many take this as an assumption) then let's get jiggy with it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (111)
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The academy offers two reasons for getting a four year degree: 1, the experience of college life and the intellectual growth it offers (offers, note: many don't bother to take that offer. I didn't, not really).

Add into this the stuff they don't say but everyone knows like "it's easy to get laid in college.")

2, actual preparation for a good-paying career.

1's a nice reason but it basically amounts to a four year vacation. If the goal is to prepare people for a career, we really need to do things differently. So sayeth Harvard.

The U.S. is focusing too much attention on helping students pursue four-year college degrees, when two-year and occupational programs may better prepare them for the job market, a Harvard University report said.

The “college for all” movement has produced only incremental gains as other nations leapfrog the United States, and the country is failing to prepare millions of young people to become employable adults...

Here's one bad thing about propagandizing for college: It creates the belief that intellectual growth can only happen in college. Like, only if a professor assigns you a book can you read it and think about it. Like, only if you're in a seminar can you discuss intellectual type stuff.

So millions of people think they're incomplete if they don't go to college.

Plus, people leave college and sort of say, "Well! All done with that!" As in, I will never attempt intellectual growth again. I sorta did that, too.

All this emphasis on college, where immature minds learn the very basics of stuff. What about adulthood, where people already know a bit more and have a bit of wisdom behind them?

I can sort of imagine a salon/seminar/book-club sort of culture taking root in the United States. Barely; I mean, it's improbable, but it could happen. And if that should happen -- why shouldn't people pursue this sort of thing as a devotion or genuine interest their whole lives? Where did we get this idea that learning begins freshman year of college and, by implication, ends senior year (or, realistically -- junior year)?

If people have the yearning for this sort of thing, they can have it, and they don't need to be in college for it. A mechanic who likes reading can join a book club, can't he?

I realize this sort of thing does exist, but most people don't take advantage of it. And, anyway, since the idea becomes that learning only happens in college, it's sort of devalued as "just a hobby" or whatnot, whereas in college it's "real."

Well, it's not particularly real in college. For some, maybe, for most, no, and in any event, I don't think that vocational preparation and intellectual growth are related endeavors for most people -- for most occupations, they're tangentially related or not at all. Only for top-level thinking-type professions are they closely related.

So why are the two concepts joined in our minds? This model makes sense for 15% of the population but not for 85% of it. And the model seems to retard learning for many (again, gee, can't learn unless you're in college) as well as actual vocational preparation.

Actually... It's likely that that is precisely why the internet and blogs and discussion fora have taken off -- because this is an easy way (no driving, no scheduled meetings, etc.) to have a sort of salon-type thing going on. We do it here with politics, and of course pretty much every single possible area of interest has its discussion fora, from model railroading to wannabe physics geeks.

So, I guess, to some extent, the internet has facilitated exactly what I'm talking about. But it's not a physical-presence thing so that maybe people don't consider it to be a sort of salon.

I read, forget when, that the Germans were just queer for clubs, and every German belonged to several of them, from professional type clubs to intellectual interest clubs to hobbyist clubs to boardgame clubs. Americans I don't think ever matched the Germans for club-joiningness, and certainly since the 60s, when that sort of structured community society seemed to become passe or reactionary or Ozzie and Harriet or whatever, it's declined further.

Although it's a FACT that Germans Are Weird, I always wonder if Americans wouldn't be better off if that sort of institutional, formal parallel civil society weren't in existence here.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (334)
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Ever watch a crime show where they endlessly enhance and/or filter and/or apply Zapruder Algorithms to mine additional visual information?

Ever wonder, as I do, that if all these ordinary crap cameras are capable of displaying that level of fine detail, how come they don't, you know, display that level of fine detail when you take a picture?

Anyway, here's a parody of the Enhance and Zoomify thing you have probably seen too much of on cop shows. Mild language warning for a few f-bombs and such. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (174)
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Before rejecting him as a complete RINO, bear in mind he gets high marks for being strongly pro-life. He says that as governor, "he doesn't talk about the pro-life issue, he just advances it.

What's behind this tactic, then?

Well, if he could make it through the primaries and win the nomination, he would be in a golden position to win the actual election, as his entire appeal is on The Issue of the moment (debt, spending, fiscal sanity) and he'd be giving voters very few reasons to disqualify him on other issues.

But the problem is that if. I don't think he can, and the fact that he thinks he can leads me to doubt his judgment. Rudy Giuliani attempted a similar sort of gambit (although he actually was on the liberal side of things), and we all saw how that turned out.

He also seems to believe that the social issues are highly damaging to conservative candidates -- they're really not. The gay marriage issue is a net-winner (even in California) and around 50% of the country now calls itself nominally pro-life so where is the major damage here?

Can Daniels really rely on his basic message of "You know who I am, you know where I stand, based on actions, not talk" even while repeatedly calling for and end to talking about it (and also, implicitly, and end to action on that front)?

His tactic seems more geared to avoiding a massive campaign of recriminations and invective from the Ruling Classes, which in turn would, in theory, leave his negatives on the low side for a conservative candidate; but does he really think that anything a conservative does can possibly avoid the ritualized outpouring of hatred we see every two or four years?

I don't.

So I don't get it. I guess in final analysis I don't think this is politically savvy, which makes me question his feel for things, his instincts. I guess then the only possibility is that He means this; he's arguing for it because he thinks it's the right thing to do, given the fact that America is on the edge of armageddon and must be saved before returning to conventional politics, which is a sentiment I can get behind, but I don't think social conservatives can.

By the Way: Sometimes people claim that anyone injecting the idea of "But can he or she win an election?" is just resorting to RINO obfuscation. As if only RINOs should be interested in critical questions of strategy.

And the suspicion seems to be that this RINO-talk about electability is really just a snow-job, a stealth manner of advancing a moderate/liberal agenda without having the guts to directly advocate it.

But it's not. I do not like moderate/RINO unelectable candidates any more than I like socially con/archlibertarian unelectable candidates. Unelectable is unelectable; doesn't matter which way you swing politically.

I cut Rudy Giuliani loose, who'd I been a supporter of since I was in college (when he was a US Attorney, well before his mayoral years), when he proved himself unelectable by insanely declaring himself pro-choice. I have a lot of respect for Daniels, but can't get behind him, for similar reasons.

The winner of an election will always be a figure who can unite both his base, with at least a fair amount of enthusiasm, and the persuadable independents and moderates. Always. Any candidate whose appeal is to only one side or another is going to lose. Period. Always. (Barring a very weird situation where his rival also has the exact same limitation, in which case I guess it's a toss-up, advantage Democrats, because they control the media.)

My problem with Sarah Palin is not and has never been that she's a strong conservative. My problem with her is that she seems to have no ability to persuade those critical swing voters we can get in a winning year.

That's why I was big on Pence, before he announced he wasn't running; in theory, on paper, he seemed like he could get the conservative base and maybe also get the right-leaning independent voters too.

Any winning candidate has to do both. I grow frustrated by conservatives who encourage candidates to continue pitching their message only to the base. Why? To what end? So that Barack Obama can be reelected?

Posted by: Ace at 09:23 AM | Comments (311)
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This is actually sort of useful, as it's a good demonstration of why agencies need to be sharply limited and checked.

Which is important, as Senator Barosso is introducing a bill to ban all federal agencies from regulating greehouse gases.

Posted by: Ace at 08:32 AM | Comments (167)
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|UPDATE: A good piece from The American Thinker, "The Story of the Egyptian Revolution". Via NRO's "The Corner".

Yeah, it's really not funny. The Egyptian situation is getting more confused and violent by the hour. (Camel picture on Drudge; hence the lame joke.)

Posted by: Monty at 07:12 AM | Comments (307)
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