Everybody's in favor of cutting costs...until the cuts involve them. This is particularly true of social-welfare programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and so on. The main problem is that people stop thinking of these things as welfare (charity), and begin thinking of them as wages. Taking "wages" away amounts to theft in most peoples' eyes; hence the outrage when a discussion of benefits cuts is raised.

I've often said that this sort of thing crosses ideological and political lines. It's all well and good to think philosophically about the situation when your neighbor loses his job; it becomes a more practical and alarming matter when you are threatened with the loss of your own job. It tends to put your ideals and beliefs into rather brutal conflict with the pragmatic reality where bills must continue to be paid, and the family still needs to eat and maintain shelter. It takes real bravery and strength of will (and not a little ruthlessness, I think) to say "no" even when the wolves are at the door. Not many have this kind of strength. (I'm not sure I do, frankly.)

I am depressed at how many people put themselves into this kind of modern vassalage to the various governmental agencies, but it amounts to crying over spilt milk at this point. For better or worse, we now live in a "as long as I get mine" nation where no one will sacrifice their own welfare-check in service to a higher ideal. The whole situation will have to come to complete collapse and ruination before the scales fall from our eyes and we see the seductive lie of governmental welfare for what it was all along.

Posted by: Monty at 06:11 AM | Comments (243)
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This space is for comments on headlines and other stuff in the Top Headlines sidebar. It's also a place to suggest what you think are top headlines. A link to these comments is stickied at the top of the Top Headlines sidebar on the main page.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (356)
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I bring this up only because it echoes President Obama's statement, wherein he had to make up fictitious Muslim victims because he couldn't just admit that the New Years attacks were against Christians.

As I wrote then, it doesn't fit within the warped worldview of leftists to admit that Christians are being murdered by members of the Religion of Peace^TM.

Talks ended angrily when Italy accused Lady Ashton, the EU's foreign minister, of "excessive" political correctness because she refused to name any specific religious group as a victim of attacks.

Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, demanded an EU response on the persecution of Christians after a New Year suicide bombing at a Coptic church in northern Egypt in which 23 people were killed.

The Egyptian bombing followed attacks in Baghdad and fears, expressed by the Vatican, of persecution leading to a Christian exodus from the Middle East.

Mr Frattini, backed by France, said it pointless to issue statements defending religious tolerance without any references to the specific minority, Christians, that was under attack.

I can hardly believe it; Italy and France are the bulwarks of Western Civilization in the EU, defenders of Christendom? Maybe Western Europe is actually waking up after all.

The EU foreign minister's response:

The EU high representative said she would have to "reflect" further about how to "make sure we recognise individual communities of whatever religion who find themselves being harassed or worse."

"Harassed"? They were blown up while celebrating midnight vigil Mass before a holy day. This dhimmi would simply lay down for the sword.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:38 AM | Comments (48)
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Tonight's Special Guest Star: Leonard Nimoy!

And he finds you...highly illogical.

And did you know that Leonard Nimoy speaks fluent Yiddish and Hebrew, has a Masters degree in education, and was a Sergent in the US Army from 1953-55.

And then there are the more interesting facts about him.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:43 PM | Comments (714)
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Yeah, so, that's not happening per se. Instead Obama will attempt a backdoor non-stimulus by fighting to keep spending at bloated, post-stimulus unsustainable levels.

Two years ago supposed Republican presidential candidate Jay Huntsman said this:

On ObamaÂ’s $787 billion stimulus: ItÂ’s easy to criticize the bill and if you donÂ’t like it, you donÂ’t have to take the money. ItÂ’s pretty simple.

I guess in hindsight we can all say that there were some fundamental flaws with it. It probably wasnÂ’t large enough and, number two, there probably wasnÂ’t enough stimulus effect. For example, a payroll tax exemption or maybe even a cut in the corporate taxÂ…for small and medium-sized businesses for three years, for example.

We will take the money ... The size of about a trillion dollars was floated by Mark Zandi, whoÂ’s a very respected economist. I tend to believe what he is saying about the size of the package, which didnÂ’t necessarily hit the mark in terms of size.

Although I think Huntsman is automatically disqualified from serious consideration due to the fact he went to work for Obama (and has a bunch of moderate/liberal positions), I don't think parts of what he's saying are necessarily wrong.

If the stimulus was to work at all, it had to have been bigger. That's not the same as saying it should have been passed, but if you're going to bother trying, do it right. Which Obama didn't.

The second part of his remark is about the fact the stimulus was non-stimulative, just pissing away money on a bunch of dog parks and bike paths with some big money for the states (which didn't stimulate anything; it just went in lieu of additional borrowing). That's conventional conservative economics: If you're going to do a stimulus, um, make sure it stimulates. I myself thought if we're going to spend a trillion, well, spend it where it will do some good: Giving employers a two and half year holiday from paying payroll taxes. (Note: If you're going to spend that much anyhow.)

But on to the definitely wrong stuff:

It does seem like he's talking up the wonders of stimulus.

It's not just in "hindsight" that the "fundamental flaws" of the stimulus are apparent; they were obvious before the monstrosity was passed, and in fact noted over and over again by Republicans. I guess Huntsman, seeker of the Republican nomination, doesn't bother to listen to other Republicans, so things like this sneak up on him, listening only as he does to fabulous economists like Mark Zandi.

Lastly: I love that crack about it being easy-peasy for governors to refuse stimulus money when the citizens of their states have already been burdened by the debt from the stimulus money. That is, the refusenik position is no solution to the fact that the stimulus will burden us for years and years to come; refusing the money only means you take the burden of debt but none of the (trivial) benefit of the money being borrowed.

That's Huntsman's idea of easy-peasy solutions to Obama's backbreaking spending spree. It's "pretty simple," he says, to just not take the money if you don't like the stimulus. Huntsman took the money, so I guess he liked it.

This is the same deal as with Charlie Crist. Both of these guys seemed so damned ready to embrace Hope and Change -- by which we mean European socialism -- that you sense they said Finally! It's safe to admit it! when Obama was elected.

They bet big on Obama. They figured he was the End of History, as it's called, the last step in our evoluton towards a sensible, humane, socialistic politics.

They were wrong.

And in both cases they seek to be rewarded for being so very wrong.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (481)
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So it's like that, if there was any doubt.

“I was disappointed to learn that on or about Jan. 20, 2011, DHS’s Office of General Counsel instructed career staff in the Privacy Office not to search for documents responsive to my request,” Issa says in the Feb. 1 letter.

Correction: This was a formal request, not a subpoena. Apologies for the error.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (121)
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1 guts 2 moral purpose 3 a big curved knife.

Speaking of steel, I also got this from Instapundit: new very strong type of steel promises weight and cost reductions in car bodies.

And then, after telling us how awesome this steel is, they drop this at the end:

And yet, I've heard tantalizing whispers of the new breakthrough coming in aluminum. It's called covitic aluminum, where somehow they impregnate aluminum with carbon fiber.

Oh: Not related, but Charlie Sheen reportedly spent half a million dollars on women and drugs in the past half year alone.

His family is seeking to have a coservatorship declared over him.

Dead pool? Yup, looks that way.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (220)
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Shocker. Slightly more shocking is his argument in favor of tax hikes: Because of Egypt or something.

Citing the pro-democracy unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, Gov. Jerry Brown called it “unconscionable” that GOP legislators are vowing to block his attempt to ask voters to extend tax hikes to balance the budget.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (118)
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Update: More precisely, he will announce he won't stand for "election" later this year.

Sort of a decent compromise, permitting an orderly transition.

Of course, this isn't altogether good news.

A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel, according to the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist.

More coming.

Chris Hitchens has a piece that's worth reading on this topic.

A people blocked from democracy become infantilized. They are not trusted to manage their own affairs. Like minors. And like minors, they are protected from the consequences of their own preferred actions, since they're prevented from ever taking those actions. And so insulated, they can fantasize about how wonderful their blocked plans would be if only they could carry them through.

And they tend then to adopt the bad habits of minors, self-pity, scapegoating, fantasy, magical thinking, "rebellion" against reasonableness and wisdom, and so on. 90% of the Muslim world is infantilized in this way.

There's a lot of downside to Islamists coming to power, and certainly on the whole it's a bad thing we don't wish to see happen. But, if you're casting about for a bright side, it's this: Their crude, childish fantasies will be put the hard test of reality. Like an experiment, they'll be either proven right or, uh, much more likely, proven catastrophically and stupidly wrong.

But this, alas, takes years and years. The mullahs still control Iran. Hamas hasn't particularly learned from its constant errors and failures. Hezbollah just took over a country (having previously only owned half of it).

American foreign policy is always incoherent because we talk about democracy and self-determination while knowing, to a moral certainty, that there are good reasons the infantilized populations of many countries haven't been trusted with such a thing yet: They'll abuse it, kill a lot of people acting up and acting out their fantasies, and generally bring almost as much, if not more, misery than the bastard dictatorial regimes which control them until the point of revolution.

How much suffering and misery does it take to beat sense into people? I don't know. I'm thinking at least 30 and as long as 100 years.

So America kicks the can down the road, knowing that it will turn out badly, but, frankly, in most parts of the world, everything turns out badly no matter what you do, because the people there are just stupid and cruel and short-sighted.

Egypt will shortly be on the road to responsiblility. But like children, they don't grow up quietly, and you can expect a lot of fights and calamities along the process of maturation.

Note: Commenters emphasize this is just a report that only Al Aribiya has, which hasn't been confirmed by other outlets. That's true. I said it's a report; I should emphasize that it's unconfirmed.

But, having said that, I believe it, because we've been hearing this kind of chatter and it seems the only likely resolution to this.

Update: It seems to be the opinion of the Coblogger Brain Trust that Mubarak's generous offer to remain president until September is not generous and will not be accepted. Drew and Russ both agree that September is too far off, and the Finally Exploding Arab Street wants him gone now.

They view this as an attempt to negotiate from a position of almost no strength at all, and will be treated as such.

Democracy or Islamist Totalitarianism? Yes Please! A commenter asked what the Egyptians want, phrasing it as a one or the other.

What if it's both?

Byron York has a useful article on the utterly incoherent views of an infantilized people, where...

...the Pew researchers found that 84 percent of Egyptians favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion.

In another survey, Pew found that 90 percent of Egyptians say they believe in freedom of religion.

The Arab world tends to be childish about defining things, as children do, in terms of different rules for me and different rules for thee. If you read York's piece, the only reconciliation for all these plainly incompatible beliefs (and there's a welter of them) is that they mean things like, "I support freedom of religion, by which I mean my freedom to impose my religion on you," and "I support freedom of speech, by which I mean my own freedom to speak, and my further freedom to stop you from saying things I don't like."

That reminds me of the Muslim incoherence on bin Ladin just after 9/11. You had parades in his honor, with people carrying placards stating two things:

1. bin Ladin had nothing to do with 9/11; it was the Jews and the CIA.

2. bin Ladin is the hero of 9/11.

Makes no sense. Why are the Jews and the CIA not the heroes, then?

Didn't stop the Islamic Rage Monkeys from screaming both.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (286)
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Follow through.

Confirmed: McConnell will offer repeal bill today as amdt to FAA legislation

That's from NRO's Robert Costa.

A couple of things...

It will probably be ruled out of order since ObamaCare isn't germane to the FAA bill. But they'll be a vote on that, which McConnell and the Republicans will lose but it will be a proxy vote for everyone's stand.

Still, it's a great follow up to yesterday's court decision and keeps the ball moving forward politically. Plus, it will just piss off the Democrats.

Also it's a great sign that Republicans are serious about this and will use every opportunity they have to talk about the jobs killing plan and force Democrats to defend it.

You want to know if the Republicans got 'the message' of November? Here's another sign they did.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:29 AM | Comments (186)
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