Wednesday Morning News Dump
— Open Blogger

• Scott Walker Has 1 Billion Dollar Budget Surplus
  
• How Can An Airliner Just Disappear?
  
• House Releases Report On Lois Lerner's Role In The IRS Scandal
  
• Goldberg: Bossy BS
  
• Randolution
  
• John McCain Is A Dick Bag, Never Forget
  
• Slow-Motion Anschluss
  
• US Electric Grid Inherently Vulnerable To Sabotage
  
• Market's Hold Breath As China's Shadow Banking Grinds To A Halt
  
• Chris Matthews Blooper
  
• Ukraine Won't Intervene In Crimea
  
• Agencies Failing At FOIA
  
• Frozen Honest Trailer (autoplay video)
  
• France's Reckoning, Rich And Young Leave (autoplay)
  
• Texas Man Wearing Cookie Monster Onesie Arrested For Theft
  

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[Note: Don't blame Ben for the late post. Blame Ye Olde Blog that doesn't have the newfangled scheduler technology -- Andy]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:05 AM | Comments (162)
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Calling SNL Unfunny and Biased is Incomplete.
It's Also Racist.
— Ace

Oh yeah, I forgot, that "Jewelry Party" sketch that just attacked traditionalists had no jokes in it... except for a Step-n-Fetchit version of a Latina character.

I don't know if I'd call this racist or not, but I know SNL would call it racist were it to come from anyone else but SNL.

More than racist, it's hack. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been goofing on this hack sort of impression forever. Dee, an aspiring but not particularly funny comedienne, has been working on her "characters" for years; almost all of them are just Bad Hack Ethnic Stereotypes.

One of them was Dee's "Crazy Patty" Irish stereotype, which Charlie did not find funny at all, so he improved upon it with some witty physical comedy.

Another, embedded below, was a hack Latina stereotype -- "Martina Martinez" -- which Dee explicitly says they'll just love on Saturday Night Live.

The show intended this to show that Dee was deluded; she was so delusional about her talent that she thought a hack stereotype impression would wow 'em at SNL.

Joke's on Always Sunny, though. This sort of thing plays at 30 Rock.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (196)
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Midday Dump
— Ace

Sean Trende estimates an 80% chance that the GOP will take the Senate.

The CIA allegedly spied on Congress' viewing of documents.

That leftist Frank Thomas I mentioned earlier marks the passing of Harold Ramis by calling his comedies some sort of crypto-fascist Reaganite propaganda or something.

This is part of the reason I try to put the brakes on going too far with cultural rejectivism. At some point, one just sounds absurd. No one listens to anything someone says once the speaker has been characterized as "just plain ol' silly."

Obama is appearing on every tv outlet he can. Alas, he even showed up to introduce Cosmos, thus immediately politicizing the very thing (science) which the show is attempting to depoliticize.

Obama talked a good game about our shared national commitment to exploring the planets, to fulfilling our deepest dreams as humans. I guess he forgot to mention he's cutting funding for that. Of course, when the government spending is now up to 70% direct wealth transfers -- that is, 70% of its spending is just taking income from one citizen and writing a check to another -- you're just not going to have very much money for those shared national commitments to fulfill our deepest dreams as humans.

Mostly you're just going to be arguing about expanding the "risk corridors" for socialized insurance corporations.

Finally, Nancy Pelosi has a Republican "friend" (or "colleague") who tells her secrets.

I asked a Republican friend why his party remains so opposed to extending the vital lifelines for struggling families and really hungry children. This colleagueÂ’s response was telling in its blunt nature and itÂ’s stunning in its honestly. What he said was to the Republican caucus, these people you are talking about are invisible, and the Republican caucus is indifferent to them. Invisible and indifferent. This is just plain wrong. That is not the leadership the American people deserve and it is up to us to demonstrate clearly how Democrats are different.

@ConArtCritic will be starting his election coverage a little later for the Florida 13th special election between Alex Sink (D) and David Jolly (R). It's viewed as a bellwether, an early indicator of each party's relative strength going into November.

So he'll be on later to cover that, with some new bells and whistles.

Until then, Open Thread.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (169)
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Ron Fournier: President Obama "Blinded by [Self-] Righteousness" on Foreign Policy
— Ace

It's not the flaws we know of that are usually our undoing. It's the flaws we hide from ourselves and call virtues.

Days before Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine, National Security Adviser Susan Rice dismissed suggestions that Russia was about to pounce. "It's in nobody's interest," she said. Days later, President Obama declared the invasion to be illegal. "In 2014," he said, "we are well beyond the days when borders can be drawn over the heads of democratic leaders."

Two things strike me about those quotes. First, they were right. From the viewpoint of the United States and its allies, invading Crimea made no sense, legally or strategically. Second, it didn't matter: Putin plays by his own set of rules, and it's dangerously naive not to realize that.

I have no idea what Fournier is talking about here, as far as invading Crimean making "no sense." It is a standard goal of nations to hold militarily-advantageous ground, and a warm weather port is a classic example of such.

I certainly don't wish to say Putin was justified to invade a country in order to play his Empire Games. But anyone who says that standard imperial behavior "makes no sense" ought to read a history book.

Any history book. Any single one of them will do.*

Fournier is here attempting the old game of mixing criticism with Obama with an embarrassing level of sycophancy towards him.

Ukraine is illustrative of a flaw in Obama's worldview that consistently undermines his agenda, both foreign and domestic. He thinks being right is good enough. From fights with Congress over the federal budget and his nominations, to gun control, immigration reform, health care, and Syria, the president displays tunnel-vision conviction, an almost blinding righteousness. I'm right. They're wrong. Why isn't that enough?

With such certitude, Obama finds it hard to see why anybody would oppose him, which makes it almost impossible to earn new allies. He's also slow to realize when some fault lies with him. The result is Obama's legacy of "Right, but Â…" moments.

He then goes on to list Obama's strategic errors, both domestic and foreign, in which, per Fournier's thesis, Obama has acted as if merely Thinking The Right Thing was enough.

Spoiler alert: Fournier basically agrees that everything Obama thinks is in fact Thinking the Right Thing.

Interestingly -- or perhaps inevitably -- Fournier maybe exposes more of the left's worldview than he intends with this criticism. Perhaps the left should not be credited (as they credit themselves) for merely Thinking the Right Thing.

Perhaps they should be required, as humans have throughout history, to also act the right way, and achieve positive results.

Perhaps the cult of "Thinking the Right Thing" -- with no particular urgency on the left regarding, for example, undertaking charitable efforts to help the poor -- is a petty vanity that excuses failure to match words with deeds and justifies bad results.

Or: Nah. I'm sure "Thinking the Right Thing" is all that's really required.

Obama, meanwhile, is underwater in public polling on both the Ukraine and Russia, generally.

Meanwhile, in Crimea, the local parliament may vote to secede and then join the Russian Federation.

One odd little historical detail: There's an old, old treaty that says Crimea can't be part of Russia. Russia signed it with Turkey (well, the Ottoman Empire).

I'm sure this treaty "makes no sense." Empires never consider things which other empires may control major strategic ports.

* We talked about this on the last podcast with Matthew Continetti -- the press seems addicted to a narrative that excuses Obama on the Ukraine, by claiming, variously, "no one could have predicted this," "Putin is a madman and the new Hitler," "this makes no sense," and the like.

I hate to point this out to the media but the Dreaded Sarah Palin predicted it.

It's in fact not terribly hard to predict that dictators with expansionist appetites will take their meals where they can find them.

Funny Commenters:

40 Once again, I have failed Him.

Posted by: Reality

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (399)
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More Carriers For The US Navy? Not Anytime Soon.
— DrewM

Mackenzie Eaglen and Bryan McGrath make the case that not only shouldn't the Navy be reducing its carrier fleet but should be expanding it.

The Navy has been trying to keep three aircraft carriers forward deployed in two operational hubs with ten carriers, accomplishing this through lengthening deployments and deferring maintenance, both of which are symptoms of approaching hollowness. People and platforms wear out more quickly, and short-term gains come at the cost of long-term availability.

In spite of these measures, the nation has been caught without aircraft carrier presence in the Mediterranean several times in the past few years, raising the need to once again fill a third deployment hub there.

No American aircraft carrier was in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the conflict inLibya.  Nor was a US carrier in the Mediterranean when our Ambassador to Libya and three others were murdered. No American aircraft carrier was in the Mediterranean when Syriastepped over President Obama’s “red line” and attacked its own citizens with chemical weapons. And while international conventions would ordinarily limit a carrier’s presence in the Black Sea, the complete absence of one in the Mediterranean surely helped further embolden Mr. Putin in Ukraine.

I spoke with McGrath about this a bit during our podcast a few weeks ago and have written in the past about why I think shrinking the carrier fleet is a bad idea. That said, we're not increasing the number of carriers we buy anytime soon. Not simply because there's no political will to spend the money (which would be an enormous amount, $12 billion or so to build, not to mention millions more to equipped, operate and crew over 50 years) but also because the lead time to build a carrier is so long.

Realistically, there's no help on the horizon in terms of numbers (assuming you can fend off the calls to cut the current force size). So what's the solution?

One question I'd ask is, why do we have to have two carriers in the Persian Gulf at all times? We had two carriers there for well over a decade to enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq. Well, the no-fly zones are gone and yet two carriers are still routinely stationed there.

Yes Iran is still there but so what? It's been clear for quite sometime that we're not going to attack Iran. We might but as supporters of the carriers rightly point out, one major benefit of a carrier is it's mobile. You can take it out of the region but put another one back in if you need to.

Maybe there's some deep reason to keep two carriers in the Gulf forever and always but before asking the nation to make the kind of investment a new carrier would represent, the military needs to make that case. This is especially true given that reducing our presence in the region was one of the supposed side benefits of the Iraq war.

One extra carrier doesn't buy you the third hub Eaglen and McGrath argue for but it's better than nothing and you can get the flexibility/operational relief in a much shorter time frame than any new build will provide.

Instead of advocating for a carrier presence in the Mediterranean that isn't going to happen, advocates of a greater US role in that region are going to have to come up with something else. At the risk of playing armchair admiral, perhaps a combination of increased surface combatants, expeditionary strike groups, and increases in land based aircraft is a more realistic set of possible alternatives. But even these options require greater expense that a majority don't seem to support.

I understand why proponents of a muscular defense posture (especially sea power) are troubled by the direction our politics have taken but it's a necessary state of affairs. The financial path we are on as a nation is unsustainable. Should defense be at the head of the line? Yes, I believe that. But the American people in their wisdom have come to a different conclusion.

What's needed now is a realistic evaluation of what we are willing to pay for and what missions and operations we are willing to forgo. We must also be clear and honest about the risks these choices will entail. Some will say this is accepting a lesser America, I prefer to think of it as a more realistic America.

In the long run I think forcing this kid of choice on the American people will be for the better. Yes there will be costs associated with it (as there are with all choices) but we have to decide what we value as a nation. "Everything" simply isn't an option any longer. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can we can deal with things the way they are, not how we'd wish them to be.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:26 PM | Comments (306)
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Glenn Reynolds: Maybe It's Time To Return To Having A "Well-Regulated Militia"
— Ace

Interesting... and provocative.

Probably the most libertarian position one can take -- pushing the idea that even the armed forces ought to be made up of "the people," and hence, not necessarily at the command of government.

This is such a scary idea to statists (and, frankly, even libertarian-leaning people like myself) that I doubt it will get traction.

But it's interesting, and interesting things ought to be discussed.

Reynolds begins by noting the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment-- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- and then considers the implications.

If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then where is ours? Because if a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, it follows that a state lacking such a militia is either insecure, or unfree, or possibly both.

...

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions).

As Amar writes:

Like the militia, the jury was a local body countering imperial power — summoned by the government but standing outside it, representing the people, collectively. Like jury service, militia participation was both a right and a duty of qualified voters who were regularly summoned to discharge their public obligations. Like the jury, the militia was composed of amateurs arrayed against, and designed to check, permanent and professional government officials (judges and prosecutors, in the case of the jury; a standing army in the case of the militia). Like the jury, the militia embodied collective political action rather than private pursuits.

Reynolds goes on to trace the decline of the militias -- the militias balked at being sent into Mexico in 1912 (they said it was outside their constitutional duties), and the government worked to federalize and professionalize the militias, which ultimately evolved into the "state" National Guards (which are really under federal authority, ultimately).

BTW: Apologies, I'm under the weather, and I'm just going to be throwing up links today, pretty much. I may even conk out and just leave some thread open for some hours.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (266)
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