Remember when the Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush was feted by the media as a "folk hero"? Partly this was understandable, as there were many in Iraq to whom he became a folk hero; but the media went one better and clearly signaled its allegiance to that point of view.

Well, now Rupert Murdoch is attacked, and Contessa Brewer
says that the attack "encapsulates" what many in Britain are feeling right now.

Question: Should such an attack befall one of their fave raves, can we expect a similar "to some, he's considered a hero" treatment for the attacker?

Funny, I don't remember Joe Wilson getting the Hero Edit for saying "You lie." I seem to remember that being an awful, racist breach.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (120)
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Evil.

Police say that nightmare unfolded Saturday, when 17-year-old Tyler Hadley allegedly attacked his parents with a hammer. By the time it was over, both were dead, having suffered blunt force trauma to the head and torso.

Just as shocking as the alleged murders, police say the teen threw a house party just hours after the deaths, with between 40 and 60 people attending, apparently unaware the Hadleys' bodies were behind the locked door to the master bedroom.

After receiving an anonymous tip, police found the bodies of Blake, 54, and Mary-Jo, 47, Sunday morning, their bodies partially covered with books, towels and other household items. A 22-inch hammer, believed to be the murder weapon, was found between them, police said.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (179)
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Nina Totenberg is apparently stunned by the impudent suggestion -- that she needs some kind of evidence for anything Obama's cronies tell her in a leak.

Krauthammer wants to know the details of these supposedly-generous compromise plans Obama is pushing behind the scenes.

Totenberg doesn't have them.

Worth a watch.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (103)
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Could work, assuming Lucas was kept as far away from the project as possible.

You know what I'd insist on? No frickin' origin story. He's a badass. Okay? Period. No origin story, no hopes and dreams, no dead father, no wise martial-arts instructor.

No "How he got his armor." He bought it, okay? Or he got it as part of an army. Then he jury-rigged it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (236)
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Oh, terrific. It's been so long since I last heard from him how disappointed he is in me.

He may be commenting on the Gang of Six's $3.7 Trillion proposal, which involves some tax-loophole closings, but supposedly in the net it's a tax cut, as it fixes the AMT problem.

Apparently... the deadline is dire, but Obama wants to continue negotiating about a plan he says is "broadly consistent" with his own outlines for a plan. He seems to indicate he's going to need to negotiate it further to move it towards his original proposal.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (337)
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Had to update the headline; at first I thought he was punched, but he was hit with custard or foam.

An assault, yes, but important to note this wasn't a punch.

I'm getting sick of the left's glitter attacks and the like. And the judges who laugh it off.

...

His wife reflexively attacks the attacker. It's just a slap, but she was blocked by other people, and only could manage a slap from her position. I think if she had a clear shot she might have punched him. You can't teach instincts like that.

At any rate, the Hate Machine has been effectively stoked and now is nicely humming, isn't it?

Jammie Wearing Fool notes the American media loves this scandal, but is meanwhile utterly uninterested in Operation Fast & Furious.

I linked Janet Daley yesterday, but I should quote her some more.

After noting the British law requires "impartiality" in the reportage of televised news -- which means all would-be competitors must parrot the BBC's soft-left bias, which is deemed "impartial" -- Daley gets to the heart of it:

It is worth asking in both the British and American contexts why people who regard themselves as believers in free speech and liberal democracy can be so openly eager to close off – silence, kill, extinguish – different political views from their own. This is the question that is at the heart of the matter and which will remain long after every News International executive who may possibly be incriminated in the current scandal has been purged.

There is scarcely any outfit on the Right – be it political party, or media outlet – which demands the outright abolition of a Left-wing voice, as opposed to simply recommending restraint on its dominance (as I am with the BBC). That is because those of us on the Right are inclined to believe that our antagonists on the Left are simply wrong-headed – sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes malevolent but basically just mistaken. Whereas the Left believes that we are evil incarnate. Their demonic view of people who express even mildly Right-of-centre opinions (that lower taxes or less state control might be desirable, for example) would be risible if it were not so pernicious.

The Left does not want a debate or an open market in ideas. It wants to extirpate its opponents – to remove them from the field. It actually seems to believe that it is justified in snuffing out any possibility of our arguments reaching the impressionable masses – and bizarrely, it defends this stance in the name of fairness.

"Comedian:" The attacker was a comedian calling himself "Jonnie Marbles."

Is he funny?

Take a guess.

It's not quite Rupert Pupkin, but it's pretty close. The audience is mostly silent. The laughs are sparse, and I'd categorize most of them as "uncomfortable."

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (252)
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Good stuff from Wynn.

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I'm afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue.

...

And I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

...

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Yup. The GOP really needs to make this point. It is often said that the GOP loses when it's talking about spending cuts and the debt limit, because it's not talking about jobs, and Obama wants to talk about jobs, so he wins.

So, make the bloody connection. Keep saying you are talking about jobs, over and over again.

Obama's Debt is causing a panic, and panicked businesses and people go into hoarding mode.

Thanks to CDR M, in the sidebar. Also, forgot to H/t Ben for linking the Miniter/Democratic Doom piece, too.

Audio: Here.

Thanks to Chi-Town Jerry.

Posted by: Ace at 08:01 AM | Comments (92)
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I hate putting up blegs, but it seems to me this is pretty important.

The unions, of course, have a ton of money.

Wisconsin Club For Growth: They were big in running ads during the Prosser race, and a recent article names them as the biggest spending pro-conservative advocacy group.

You can donate to them here.

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 AM | Comments (30)
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We hear a lot of this sort of thing about the Republican Party -- that we're simply "running out of white people" to get to vote for us, and that the Hispanicization of the US will spell doom for the GOP, at least as we know it.

Richard Miniter says it's the left that's doomed. Not due to demographics per se, but due to having run out of the government money it needs to bribe all the members of its coalition to vote Democrat.

The long-term trends are almost all bad news for the left wing of the party.

This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies. Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, “entitlement” consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts. Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats.

Like it or not, Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev: a man forced to preside over the demise of a political system he desperately wants to save.

Democrat champions in the punditocracy confidently predict that the future of the worldÂ’s oldest political party is bright. But in fact, the coalition that is the modern Democratic Party is doomed. Every pillar upholding its heavy roof is crumbling.

The Democratic and Republican parties are structurally different.

The Democrats are a coalition, forged in the New Deal, of diverse interests that do not get along well. Imagine the deer-hunting union member sitting down with the vegetarian college professor and the lesbian lawyer and you will begin to see the trouble party leaders have holding the horde together. So far, money and government preferences have been essential. It is largely a party of unions, government workers and retirees, “green” industries, “entitlement” payees, professors, teachers and social-change activists — all of whom require government payments in one form or another.

Apart from the high-income Cultural Liberals, Miniter notes, every single other segment of the coalition depends on government largess. What happens when the tap runs dry?

That is, of course, why Obama is so desperate to raise taxes; he can't give people free money if he's not taking it from somewhere else. Not with government debt already at the tipping-point level of 90% of GDP.

On the other hand, as a commenter pointed out, we are currently at the point where 49% of the country pays nothing in income taxes; that may already be the tipping point satisfying the old saying, "Democracy works until a majority of the population realizes it can vote itself a raise by taking money from a minority of the population."

Interesting Wrinkle: Miniter notes that as SS and Medicare consume more and more of the federal budget, that's actually bad for the Democrats, as that restricts how much they can spend on the other members of the welfare coalition. Unless they cut seniors' benefits to give them to another segment of the coalition, of course-- which was already done, when Obama raided Medicare for $500 billion to pay for ObamaCare. But that will alienate the vote-iest cohort in the country.

If the GOP were purely political, it would simply promise to keep those benefits at current levels and take from every other hand-out account to pay them.

The trouble is, the GOP can't really do this, as those programs are unsustainable at current levels, pretty much no matter what you do. I suppose if you severely, severely cut domestic discretionary spending you could manage it, but there are a lot of middle and lower class Republican voters that like some of those subsidies, too. Like student loans, for example.

Posted by: Ace at 07:09 AM | Comments (165)
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"Come on, geezers of America: Take one for the kids."

Keith Hennessey summarizes the "cut, cap, and balance" plan being put forward by the GOP. Like Hennessey, I feel that while it has its bad aspects, it's actually a fairly good piece of legislation. Which of course means that it has no chance in hell of getting past the Democrats.

Improving our debt-to-GDP ratio may have unexpected benefits.

Larry Summers drops the hammer on FDR:

Never forget, never forget, and I think itÂ’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.

Protip: Don't threaten to kill 47 regulators and call them "“fucking corrupt piece[s] of shit!". They don't appreciate it, and a judge will probably want to have a severe word with you. Remember: gentlemen of good will may disagree and yet remain civil.

Uncle Sam, Sugar Daddy.

Richard Rahn asks, "Is this the end of progress?" Only if we allow it -- decline is a choice, not a destiny.

Thomas Sowell brings down the thunder on the "tax the rich" crowd: "Dissecting The Demagoguery About 'Tax Cuts For The Rich'". Sowell is the anti-Krugman -- a miracle of clarity, insight, and common sense.

Norman Ornstein doesn't like this talk of a balanced-budget amendment. The argument is the same tired and discredited Keynesianism we've seen a thousand times before: consumers aren't spending, so government has to step up and do it. Never mind the complete failure of Keynesian "stimulus" over the past three years -- this is yet another economist for whom theory trumps reality.

James Pethokoukis delves into Obama's tax-hike obsession. The liberal answer to every problem (both real and imagined) is "more government!". And it's never enough -- the government will never be big enough nor the cash-hoard vast enough to satisfy them. The liberal Utopia is not a paradise free from want and care; it is a dirty cave where everyone can sit together in the dark, starving. But at least they'll all be equal.

UPDATE 1: I think it's fair to say that Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, isn't going to renew his Obama Fan Club card this year. "And I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime." L'affaire, c'est fini.

UPDATE 2: From Kratos in the comments -- Downfall: Europe's failed political class.

UPDATE 3: Michael Barone (who is not prone to hyperbole): "Things are worse than I said." The crisis is now, not two or five or ten years from now. If we don't act now, we may not be able to act later.

UPDATE 4: What does 'poor' mean in modern America? It's much more pleasant to be poor now than it was back in the 1930's, and much much more pleasant than it was in any human age prior to that. There are very few genuinely "poor" Americans, compared to poor people in, say, Bangladesh or Zimbabwe.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:09 AM | Comments (200)
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