Reading this, I get annoyed that he's not running in 2012 (he can't -- New Jersey's problems would not nearly be solved by then, so he be abandoning the state to someone just not up to the task).

But even so: what an asset to have give the keynote speech at the convention.

I'll just quote some of his funny stuff (and this really is top level comedy from a politician) and some personal stuff.

“The argument you heard most vociferously from the teachers’ union,” Christie says, “was that this was the greatest assault on public education in the history of New Jersey.” Here the fleshy governor lumbers a few steps toward the audience and lowers his voice for effect. “Now, do you really think that your child is now stressed out and unable to learn because they know that their poor teacher has to pay 1½ percent of their salary for their health care benefits? Have any of your children come home — any of them — and said, ‘Mom.’ ” Pause. “ ‘Dad.’ ” Another pause. “ ‘Please. Stop the madness.’ ”

By this point the audience is starting to titter, but Christie remains steadfastly somber in his role as the beseeching student. “ ‘Just pay for my teacher’s health benefits,’ ” he pleads, “ ‘and I’ll get A’s, I swear. But I just cannot take the stress that’s being presented by a 1½ percent contribution to health benefits.’ ” As the crowd breaks into appreciative guffaws, Christie waits a theatrical moment, then slams his point home. “Now, you’re all laughing, right?” he says. “But this is the crap I have to hear.”

I'm just imagining that rendered in Glenn Beck's fetus-writing-to-the-NYT voice. I don't think he does that. Would be funny if he did.

Christie's political instincts:

There was little in Christie’s uninspiring campaign to make anyone think he would address these issues with more tenacity than the governors who preceded him. A U.S. attorney whose only overtly political experience entailed serving on the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders (seriously, they still call it that), Christie had only a fraction of Corzine’s public exposure or personal fortune. About the only thing he had going for him was that Corzine was pervasively unpopular. And so rather than come up with a lot of actual ideas, which Corzine would then be free to oversimplify and distort in a barrage of television ads, Christie simply offered up a bunch of conservative platitudes and tried to make the campaign a referendum on the Democratic governor. (When we talked during the campaign, Christie could articulate little by way of an agenda, except to say that he would “get in there and make it work.”) Even a lot of Republicans thought Christie was underwhelming as a campaigner.

Small target.

Truth-telling:

Leaders of the teachersÂ’ union, meanwhile, are apoplectic about ChristieÂ’s proposed changes to their pension plan, which they say will penalize educators for the irresponsibility of politicians. After all, they point out, it wasnÂ’t the unions who chose not to fund the pension year in and year out, and yet itÂ’s their members who will have to recalibrate their retirements if the benefits are cut.

When I made this same point to Christie, he simply shook his head. What’s done is done, he told me, and it’s time for someone to tell these workers the truth, which is that the state is simply never going to have the money to make good on its commitments. “Listen, if they want to travel in the Michael J. Fox time machine and change time, I guess we could try that,” he said. “We could get the DeLorean out and try to go back there. But I think realistically that that was just a movie and make-believe. So we’ve got to live with what we’ve got.”

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (212)
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By law, virtually nothing gets shut down -- only one in four federal workers are furloughed. The courts, the military, Social Security, the Post Office -- all essential services keep running. (Which makes one wonder -- what are the other services, and why do we have them?)

It's a big nothing, really.

Honestly, the GOP has to be willing to risk this big nothing. If nothing else, it saves money during the non-shutdown shutdown.

Thanks to momma.

We need to think like Honey Badger.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (362)
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Breaking out the barricades, which I'll explain after the excerpt:

Agencies throughout the government are scrambling to figure out how to handle a government shutdown, with a potential closure as soon as March 5 prompting a review of which activities are essential and which aren't.

Editorial Board Member Steve Moore on the prospects of a government shutdown.

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said federal departments have been exploring issues raised by a possible shutdown, including which operations are crucial and how employee furloughs would work.

"It would be irresponsible not to have that, and so we do," Mr. Goolsbee said. "That's not in any sense like we're planning for a shutdown in a strategic way. I don't think there's going to be a shutdown."

A survey of DC GOP insiders find they are all scared by this prospect.

I know little of labor negotiations, but I do know something. I was working in a law firm when a labor lawyer (generally representing management) explained to me what his job was: His job was to negotiate while ratcheting up threats, and what he said always stuck with me. Because he was the kind of guy who sounded in control when he explained his tactics:

"We tell them of course we don't want a lock-out; that would be horrible. At the same time we start putting up barricades around the plant. When they ask 'why are you putting up barricades, are you planning a lock-out?' we say no, of course we're not planning that, that would be awful; then we start putting heavy chains around the plant doors. When they say 'why are you chaining the doors, are you planning a lock-out?,' we say no, don't worry about that, we're absolutely not planning a lock-out, that would be just awful, and then we inform our clients that supplies will be disrupted for six months. When they say 'why are you telling clients supplies will be disrupted, are you planning a lock-out?,' we say absolutely not, that is the most horrible thing we can imagine, no one wants that, and then issue a shareholder alert that profits will be down but also the cost of labor is about to fall to near-zero."

Anyway, this guy really sounded like a Hollywood negotiator tough-guy explaining this tactic. As far as I can tell, the idea is to keep saying there will be no lock-out while taking every conceivable action to bring about a lock-out; this convinces the opposition you're verbally lying but telling the truth with your actions, which scares them, and fixes their mind on six months without a paycheck, and brings them to the table in a more conciliatory mood.

Now, this guy was like 30 at the most so I doubt very much he's the only guy in the world who knows about this tactic. I'd say he's probably one of one hundred thousand, and I'm pretty sure that all of Obama's labor negotiation buddies have hipped him to the tactic.

I can't help noticing that that's exactly what Obama is doing. And that the GOP is falling for it.

I say falling for it because the party that wins this showdown is the party which convinces the other party that they're less afraid of a shut-down. Now, that doesn't actually have to be true -- the guy who explained this to me was using this tactic to conceal how very afraid of a lock-out he was -- but the winner will be the party that can convince the other that they are willing to bring things to a standstill.

The GOP isn't even showing up for this showdown. Obama's running a textbook, if old, game on them and meanwhile they are confessing, "Yes, we're really afraid of a shutdown and think it will destroy the party." They are taking no efforts at public education or positioning; they are doing nothing to place blame for the shutdown on Obama.

Ergo, they plan to fold, and ergo, they of course have no negotiating position whatsoever and will wind up caving in to whatever Obama wants. Oh, Obama will toss them $5 billion in cuts to make it "look good." And also to make Obama look a little better; he wants credit for cutting spending, even if it's a trivial amount; by doing this, he will enlist the whole GOP in defending the ridiculously trivial $5 billion in cuts as "substantial" which will help him with moderates while utterly alienating the base.

Cute, huh? Obama's about to force an awful deal on the GOP and have them sell it to the independents and base as not a cave-in but a "good start."

I don't get the Stupid Party sometimes. I know about this and my only experience with labor negotiations was spending 20 minutes with a young lawyer who just felt like showing off a little to an even younger one.

We're deathly afraid of the lock-out and we have no plan whatsoever to even conceal this fact.

Terrific.

Now, maybe that's not fair, because Boehner says he does have a plan:

Once the House passes this short-term CR near the beginning of next week, House Republicans will be able to say theyÂ’ve passed a seven-month CR, and a two-week CR, either of which would keep government open. The pressure should be on Senate Democrats and the administration to accept the short-term CR or come up with a reasonable alternative to avert a government shutdown. Even liberal media are going to have a hard time blaming Republicans if Senate Democrats and/or the Obama administration drop the ball.

That's all well and good but it does not work unless you convince your opposite number you are willing to actually pull the trigger on a shut-down. Boehner hasn't convinced anyone of that. Even his plan, bragged on to William Kristol, is all about avoiding the horror of a shutdown.

Show your cards much?

Is It Possible The GOP Is Being Smart? Buzzion reports that Rush has a different take:

Rush was just talking about this. And how during the 1994 shutdown it was the Republicans that were basically agitating for a government shutdown. This time around its pretty much the democrats pushing for one.

So maybe that is the tactic the Republicans are taking, though maybe not perfectly. "We don't want to shut down the government, we're trying to keep it open, but Obama and the Democrats are stonewalling our efforts."

Okay there's some truth in that kind of positioning -- but I still don't see how you can win on the point unless you convince the other side you are willing to play the brinksmanship game.

Goolsbee's playing it. He's preparing, more in sorrow than anger, for the shutdown.

It's possible that the game Goolsbee is playing is old (Hell, it was old when I heard it), and the GOP is playing a new-style game which is better.

But I still do not see how you prevail in a negotiation without, in the end, being able to walk away from the table with no deal in place.

The party in a negotiation willing to do that (or at least which has convinced the other party they're willing to do that) always winds up winning the negotiation.

It seems to me that convincing the other side you are weak when in fact you actually are willing to walk away from the table substantially increases the chances of a shutdown, as the other party will misread its own strength and assume they can walk away themselves. And I don't believe the GOP is actually trying to shut down the government; so why would they send confusing signals like that?

Gingrich: If Stopping Obama From Spending Us Into Our Fiscal Graves Requires A Shut-Down, So Be It: This, on the other hand, is more what I'm sayzzin'.

It was President Bill Clinton's veto of our budget in December 1995 that closed the government. The White House knew that it could use the power of the presidency and the support of liberal media to blame us.

So, we faced a choice. We could cave in and be accepted by the Washington establishment, or we could stand firm for a balanced budget for the American people.

We decided to stick to our principles through a very contentious and difficult period. Our attempt to balance the federal budget was distorted in the news media as an effort to ruin family vacations, frustrate visitors to the nation's capital and prevent government employees from going to work. For the Republican leadership, the effort to hold together the House and Senate caucuses while negotiating with the White House became extraordinarily exhausting.

Nonetheless, the ultimate result was the first four consecutive balanced budgets since the 1920s, paying off more than $450 billion in federal debt.....

Those who claim that the shutdown was politically disastrous for Republicans ignore the fact that our House seat losses in 1996 were in the single digits....

Neither these historic achievements nor this historic win would have been possible had Republicans not stood firm and showed the country that we were serious about keeping our commitments.

The lesson for today's House Republicans is simple: Work to keep the government open, unless it requires breaking your word to the American people and giving up your principles. Becoming one more promise-breaking, Washington-dominated, sellout group is a much worse fate - politically and ethically - than having the government close for a few days.

Commenters have pointed out that our losses in the House in 1996 were tiny. I rebutted that that is largely because the GOP actually caved; that is, the political damage that was done to them during the shut-down was mostly healed up (by the act of caving) by election time.

But that makes no matter: Gingrich's statement, while perhaps misleading, is very useful. We must certainly act as if we believe losses from a shutdown will be trivial and acceptable. We cannot act as if we're a bunch of chickenshits afraid to lose even a few seats from our supermajority.

Maybe we talk about how awful this will be for us behind closed doors. Fine, if it stays behind closed doors. Publicly, this is a matter of principle and we're willing to take the hit to the save the Republic.

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (208)
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After 60 hours of debate, the state Assembly passed Governor Walker's Budget Repair bill, which among other things limits the bargaining rights of Wisconsin's public sector employees.

The vote ended three straight days of punishing debate in the Assembly. But the political standoff over the bill — and the monumental protests at the state Capitol against it — appear far from over.

The Assembly's vote sent the bill on to the Senate, but minority Democrats in that house have fled to Illinois to prevent a vote and say they won't return unless Republican Gov. Scott Walker agrees to discuss a compromise. Republicans who control the Senate sent state troopers out looking for them at their homes on Thursday, but they turned up nothing.

...Democrats launched a filibuster, throwing out dozens of amendments and delivering rambling speeches. Each time Republicans tried to speed up the proceedings, Democrats rose from their seats and wailed that the GOP was stifling them.

Debate had gone on for 60 hours and 15 Democrats were still waiting to speak when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, opened the roll and closed it within seconds.

Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time.

Republicans immediately marched out of the chamber in single file. The Democrats rushed at them, pumping their fists and shouting "Shame!" and "Cowards!"

The Republicans walked past them without responding.

I love the idea that any Democrat can call a Republican a coward while praising state Senate Democrats who ran away and hid rather than exercise their sworn duties.

While this is the first hurdle for the plan, the Senate still can't act on major portions of the bill so the focus remains on forcing Democrats to do their constitutional duty and actually to the jobs they were elected to do.

Meanwhile for practical and possibly political reasons, Walker is still opposed to splitting the the collective bargaining measures (which doesn't require the presence of Senate Democrats) from the budget cuts (which does).

I still think itÂ’s important to keep it intact. Because one [part of the bill] goes with the other. If you fail to get one, it makes it hard to balance the rest of the budget. So our hope, our focus is still on trying to figure out a way to make it possible for those state senate Democrats to get back.

Meanwhile, our new Golden Age of Civility continues. The networks simply refuse to report on Democratic Congressman who called for union violence, as if they need someone to tell them to do that. .

Posted by: DrewM at 07:50 AM | Comments (210)
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Meet Millie.

A woman who has worked as an escort since the end of the Second World War is still earning £50,000 pounds a year from her sex services - at the age of 96.

Artist's Rendering

Millie works two days a week and claims to have clients far younger than she.
And like most elderly women, she has a critical word for today's young ladies.

She told a magazine: 'Nowadays, the girls have vast boobs and skinny bodies and parade around half-naked.

'In my day, we would call those girls trollops. The industry's become mucky.

'At least I am maintaining standards. I always dress elegantly and my clients are gentlemen.'

No, they're not, Millie. But you tell 'em anyway.

Slushop thanks to Slushop Industries, Ltd. Hong Kong/ New York/ Bangor

Posted by: LauraW at 06:21 AM | Comments (207)
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FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:39 AM | Comments (395)
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Sorry to step on the overnight threads, but I suspect you'll be seeing lots of slides and quotes from this document in the days to come. Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers -- one the best known and most successful venture capital firms in the country -- has issued a report, "USA, Inc.", that analyzes the US Federal Government as if it were a business.

The results are not pretty, as the diagram above shows. And the report goes on like this for 266 pages (most of which are PPT slides with either charts, tables, or bullet-point summaries).

Now, to the extent that the Kleiner Perkins partners have political leanings, they are decidedly moderate to liberal; Al Gore is one of the partners there, and John Doerr, the best-known partner at KPCB, was in the group that met with President Obama last week. Which is what makes this documents so fascinating, since it makes it very clear that the US cannot sustain its current economic path, particularly with regards to entitlements:

You can download the PDF version of the report or read it online at the link given earlier. You'll find lots of fodder to whack your Keynesian friends over the head with. ..fritz..

P.S. I have to wonder if Doerr gave a copy to Obama at that meeting -- and, if so, whether Obama ever bothered to look at it.

P.P.S. Hat tip to Jordan Dea-Mattson, a friend who posted the link over on FB, which is where I first saw it.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:28 PM | Comments (74)
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So What Is This 'Internet' Thing?

In between smart military stuff and pr0n links we do try and occasionally be educational. So sit back and watch this video and then you'll understand why all the kids are into the 'Internet' these days.

And in unrelated news here are the Top 10 Reasons We Should Revive the Dark Ages.

Sure it sounds a lot better than you'd expect and might even be a step up for some. But I'm still not convinced it's time for a Dark Ages 2.0. Mostly because of the hygiene thing along with plague and witchcraftery.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:28 PM | Comments (749)
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rdbrewer noted it already, and STS-133 Discovery made it's successful launch today.

Well and good. But bittersweet, at least for me.

I'm the old man around here, but I also have ties to NASA that go back to my childhood.
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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:28 PM | Comments (40)
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Based on the fact that Charlie Sheen is insane. And more coked up than a Columbian soft drink machine.

Hollywood Reporter claims he made an "anti-semitic attack" on the show's creator but the extent of that seems to be calling him "Chaim Levine" instead of his real name, Charles Levine, or his stage name, Charles Lorre. I suppose there's some kind of Jew-baiting there, a little, but I don't really think you can call that an "anti-semitic attack."

It is odd that a family/kid's show stars this out of control lunatic Dead Pool draft-choice.

I prayed earlier that they'd take his show away so he'd be forced to do what he was born for -- embarrassing basic-cable celebrity reality shows. I hope that we'll finally get to see his talent in that venue, before he dies, I mean.

If You're Wondering... why I'm posting about Charlie Sheen, it's because he's a Truther. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:44 PM | Comments (239)
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