Breaking:

The official said the alleged plan was directed by elements of the Iranian government and involved a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

In Pre-Obama years, this would be an act of war, and the reply would be serious punitive airstrikes against Iranian military and government sites.

Now, it'll just be soft-pedaled.

I Don't Really Question the Timing: There are some cynical remarks flying, like this is Eric Holder's new operation, "Forget Fast and Furious."

This is a variation of the I Question The Timing! claim that the left made 63 million times under Bush. The left's claim was that virtually every Bush anti-terrorism arrest was "timed" for political impact.

Well, that's dumb to begin with. It's a kneejerk method of denigrating an actual success, isn't it?

But if someone is going to make the I Question the Timing claim, he really must, as a first thing, establish that the particular timing of the announcement is especially good, and would be better than other plausible windows for the event to be "timed" to coincide in.

An assassination bust, I trust, is generally "timed" to occur when the police think they have enough evidence to make a case (but they are hurried along by the prospect of the attempt occurring sooner than they expect, or the suspects catching on that they're being followed and therefore fleeing).

But let's say there's some wiggle-room here -- you could let the surveillance proceed for a couple more weeks, then make the arrests near November. Or maybe you could have cut the surveillance short a few weeks, and made the arrests mid-September.

I'm not really sure that either of these timing-windows is "better" for Holder and Obama with regard to Fast and Furious. As the case is still not getting the media coverage it deserves, perhaps the best "timing" would have been next month-- maybe by next month, the media would have stopped protecting Obama and started reporting on the case more.

I really don't see any evidence for the "timing" of this announcement being especially good for Holder. Last month, such an announcement would have helped him. Next month, it also would have helped him.

In December, it would have helped him.

In all possible universes, this would "help" him, because busting up an Iranian assassination plot is inherently a good thing.

I think the whole "I Question the Timing" kneejerk reaction is a way of avoiding the obvious -- this is good for Holder -- by way of making some half-considered charge of political gamesmanship.

This is a good thing for Holder. Does it mean he shouldn't be removed from office? Of course not. It's just doing his job.

And besides, Holder had nothing to do with this. What, was he one of the investigators? Of course not.

Holder's sin is attempting to grab up credit he hasn't earned. Eric Holder had about 1% more involvement with these arrests than me.

Like Obama, charging to that microphone to announce that he personally plugged bin Ladin.

But timing? Meh. When would a major foreign assassination plot bust be poorly timed?

I Question The Convenient In/Out of the Loopiness: Why is that Eric Holder knows absolutely nothing about covert operations that end in disaster, but is presenting himself as a details guy in a covert operation that ended successfully?

Kind of convenient that he's involved in the successes, but cannot for the life of him even remember the mere existence of operations gone awry.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (370)
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Game changer? Probably not; more than half of Christie's supporters probably had Romney as their number two, anyway.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (324)
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What the hell is it with the left and this same internet stunt?

They did this before with the "Thank you" stuff from, at that time, the 52%. Same schtick -- snap a picture of yourself and post it online. Which is narcissistic attention-getting.

And shoot the picture while holding a sheet of your grievances and/or miseries. The confessional style is also narcissistic attention-getting, of course. People interested in policy speak about "economic pain;" people interested in narcissistic self-promotion speak about "my economic pain."

I think this is a major stylistic difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives prefer to keep it impersonal, while the left really likes the "politics is personal" thing. It's just a coincidence that you can become an Internet Star! using the picture & confessional mode of political expression, I'm sure.

Anyway, here are some perfectly absurd tales of woe from the 99%.

One very common thing here: They are all white and mostly college-educated. Some have multiple degrees. However, they mostly chose the degrees you're not supposed to choose unless you are some kind of standout or come from a rich family -- psychology and the other degrees that don't immediately scream out "Job prospects!"

Why did they do that?

Who knows. But they ignored advice to think practically about their future earning power and now find themselves lacking earning power.

So what they want is for the government (that is, you) to step in and make them whole, immunizing them against their own choices, giving them the earning power they believe is due them.

I don't see one goddamned accounting or engineering degree in the tales of woe.

Sorry, you lose.

We do see "Classical Studies" majors suddenly panicking at the idea of entering the job market.

This isn't entirely their fault, of course: Their colleges lied and lied and lied to them, encouraging to "explore themselves" and take whatever courses they thought interesting, rather than actually building towards some kind of hirable skill-set.

But none of the whining is directed at their teachers and provosts, of course. It's directed at you, because you don't have any use for a Classical Studies major.

This Confused Woman... is mostly complaining that 32% of her salary is going towards taxes.

So what does she demand? "We need help...," and she seems to mean "from the government."

A gallon of irony spilled but not a drop splashed upon her.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (366)
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Between Romney, Perry, and Cain, someone is going to win (or lose the least).

Perry can right his ship and begin building back up to front-tier status. Or he could stumble again, and consign himself to also-ran status.

Cain has had a problem handling questions that can't be answered with the numbers 9-9-9. He's said some constitution-scorning things about Muslims, and he has been baffled about elementary knowledge (the Right to Return) or major issues he really needs to have some kind of a position on (continuing the fight in Afghanistan).

In addition, he hasn't often been challenged, as he was viewed as a nice guy of virtually no threat to win the nomination. So none of the contenders challenged him. They were all playing nice, to curry favor with his supporters.

Given that Cain is now in second place, that should change. Whether Cain rises or falls might be the storyline of the night.

And then there's Mitt Romney. As Romney makes few actual mistakes, whether Romney "wins" depends on whether Perry and Cain both lose.

As boring as these things are, tonight's might actually be important. It's also supposed to be almost exclusively on the economy.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (311)
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The neatest thing about this remains the fact that they did it at all. They built a six or eight year business plan on the idea they'd make some movies about Marvel's second-tier properties, with an eye to doing the big team-up in The Avengers. No one's ever done that before.

I think it's just going to be a standard comic book movie, when everything is said and done, but still, it's neat to see the heroes interacting, as they always do in the comics and never do in movies.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 07:27 AM | Comments (157)
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A fact that might have had some legal relevance in 1998, eh?

In addition to Clinton's many other talents, he is known for having a near photographic memory.

The term gets tossed around a lot, but to actually have the ability is quite rare. According to an article from the Washington Post, Clinton "stunned a friend visiting the White House by saying, 'Let's call your parents!' and then reciting a number he hadn't dialed in more than a decade." When Clinton spoke with Oprah about his autobiography, he said had no trouble remembering "what happened to everyone's children and grandchildren," a talent that came in handy while writing his life story.

And yet a talent which failed him entirely when questioned during a deposition.

I guess this post is a little off-base, because Clinton's claim wasn't that the forgot, but that he defined things differently than most people. Asked point-blank if he had ever been "alone" with Monica Lewinsky, he said, sworn to the truth, that he had not been.

When it was revealed he'd done all sorts of things with her, he said "I guess we were alone, but I never thought we were."

Just talking from personal experience-- people are generally alone when they're doing the Disappearing Cigar trick.

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge.

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (95)
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Obama continues attempting to whip the opposite party. And yet it's his own party that needs whipping.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are scrambling to avoid defections on President ObamaÂ’s jobs package, which appears headed for defeat on Tuesday.

A lack of Democratic unity on the presidentÂ’s bill would be embarrassing for the White House, which has been scolding House Republicans for refusing to vote on the measure.

Obama has been touring the country, aiming to put pressure on the GOP to act. But Senate Democrats have indicated they are feeling some heat. Last week, Democratic leaders revised ObamaÂ’s bill, scrapping his proposed offsets. Instead of raising taxes on families making more than $250,000 annually, Senate Democrats lifted that figure to $1 million.

Despite the changes, the legislation still does not enjoy the support of all 53 senators who caucus with the Democrats. A handful of Democrats are undecided or leaning no on the bill.

The three Democrats most likely to cast Nay votes are Tester, Manchin, and Nelson, all of whom are up for re-election in states that typically vote for Republicans.

Even if these guys do vote for the "jobs" bill, isn't their reluctance to do so a sign that this isn't a good bill? Will the media conveniently forget that these three, plus Mary Landrieu and Claire McCaskill, were once pretty strongly opposed to it, and only buckled out of a purely political need to "show unity"?

Posted by: Ace at 06:36 AM | Comments (65)
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You know why ObamaCare is so similar to RomneyCare? They were designed in part by some of the same people.

“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”

Romney has forcefully defended the Massachusetts law he signed, but says he is adamantly against a “one-size-fits-all national health-care system” imposed on all 50 states. “I will repeal Obamacare,” he has said. “And on day one of my administration, I will grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states.”

...

Another Romney administration adviser consulted by the White House was Jon Kingsdale, a health-care expert who was appointed in 2006 by one of Romney’s Cabinet secretaries, Thomas Trimarco, to serve as executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority — the state agency charged with implementing the new Massachusetts health-care law.

The White House records show Kingsdale attended three White House meetings on health care in 2009. Another expert who attended four White House meetings on health care was John McDonough, who also had played a leading role in shaping the law signed by Romney. As the head of a health-care advocacy group in Massachusetts, McDonough was named by Romney aides as a “stakeholder” to represent consumer interests on the health-care law. McDonough later shared an “innovator in health award” with Romney and 11 others — including several top lawmakers and business leaders — given by NEHI, a leading New England health-care research group, “for their collaborative efforts in achieving Massachusetts health reform.”

Expect a fresh round of attacks on Romney in tonight's debate. Since it's on Bloomberg TV, no one will see it.

I'm pretty skeptical about how much impact this will have. As I've said all along, if people have decided to support Romney, they already know he's awful on health care ( some of us have even said it's a disqualifying defect). Is this going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and sends them scurrying to vote for...someone else? I'm not sure why but I guess it might.

Of course for it to really hit home, someone will have to be able to make the case against him effectively in person. Tim Pawlenty whiffed when he had the chance, Rick Perry stumbled last time he tired and so far Herman Cain hasn't focused much fire on Mitt.

Tonight Perry gets a second chance but given how things have gone for his thus far, he'll probably have a killer debate...and no one will see it.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:56 AM | Comments (176)
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Obama's economic illiteracy underpins much of his failure on domestic policy. He compounds the problem by being intellectually arrogant: he's wrong, and the record proves he's wrong, but he cannot admit it to himself or anyone else. It becomes very wearying to enumerate all the ways in which this President is completely unfit for his job.

Here's a good example of how Obama's grand plans to revive the economy have failed: the $30 billion small-business loan package passed last year. It's been a complete failure, mainly due to the sloth and incompetence of the government, and misplaced priorities of the banks who received the money (they mainly used the government money to pay off their TARP loans -- in essence, giving Uncle Sugar's money back in a different wrapper).

Idiot manchild Ezra Klein experiences a blinding gimpse of the obvious, but having seen the light, he proceeds to misinterpret it as a call to even more and larger government intervention. (He also takes a half-hearted shot at Republicans, but that's simply a basal reflex for Klein.) Dumb as a bag of hammers, this guy.

Thomas Sargent, the newest Nobel laureate in Economics, is a surprising (to me) critic of both Keynesianism and Teh Krugman. Even in academia, the wheel turns.

The pre-post-employment economy. My friends and I used to ponder what people would do with their time if we ever achieved a Star Trek-like replicator technology and no one actually had to work for a living -- would we spend our time creating art, expanding the frontiers of science, and advancing civilization; or would we sit around all day watching TV and eating Cheetos out of a big tub?

One of the universal assumptions of industrial society — axiomatic to its capitalist, socialist, and hybridized variants — is that everybody, more or less, works. Not only does everybody work; everybody has a job. Either through judicious state planning or the benevolent invisible hand of the market, there is a job for anyone who wants or needs one and who is willing to do the work.

It is generally assumed that the overall economy will grow over time (again, either through planning or market evolution) and that this yearÂ’s batch of of available jobs will support a higher standard of living for the working populace than was made possible by the batch from a decade ago.

These assumptions are considered obvious. They are rarely stated, because they are considered to be a given.

So the question is — what if these assumptions are wrong?

More "green" FAIL, this time with GMÂ’s slow-selling Volt.

From unemployed to unemployable. The jobs are out there, but the skillset of the current workforce is badly-matched to the high-tech needs of the workplace right now. Retraining is rarely an option -- itÂ’s not easy to go from being a bricklayer or a truck-driver to being a database administrator or a software developer, and young people lack the experience that businesses seek. This kind of problem is deep-rooted, and will take many years to rectify. It's not a problem we can fix quickly.

Signposts on the way to municipal DOOM: cash-strapped Topeka will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases. I suspect that this is a variant of the old “we’ll have to lay off firefighters and cops!” ploy that cities bust out when they want to raise taxes, but in any event, as the finances of municipalities continue to degrade unpleasant choices like this will become more common.

I guess Governor Brown figured that since California doesnÂ’t have enough money to cover the educational obligations they already have, and since the ocean of red ink shoes no sign of receding any time soon, he might as well commit to a whole new boatload of educational debt since his state already boned beyond recovery.

Merkel and Sarkozy assure the chumps that they have every intention of possibly having some kind of plan pretty soon, maybe.

Meanwhile, Greece's deficit miss to be re-re-revised again. It's almost as if they're lying, or don't know what the hell they're doing. Incompetence or perfidy? (Though there's no reason it can't be both, I suppose.)

ChinaÂ’s financial foundation is showing a lot of cracks. Dear debt-loaded Western nations: China will not save you. They may not be able to save themselves.

Just a reminder in case your forgot: the Occupy Wall Street people are neither particularly smart, clean, nor self-aware. These people do serve an important purpose, though: they serve as useful object-lessons on the wages of clueless arrogance mixed with stupidity. You can show your children pictures of these ill-bred, oblivious twits and remind them that this is what becomes of people with no skills, no shame, and no sense of responsibility.

Protesting: not a bad gig if you can get it. This falls under the “there are markets in everything” rubric.

Crisis management, Euro edition. A fairly long read, but very worth your time.

You know, most people know this intuitively: ignorance can lead to financial ruin.

Merit pay for teachers a bad idea? I tend to agree, mostly because it would inevitably be gamed by the teachers and their union. Arnold Kling has the right idea: get the government out of the education business entirely, and let the competitive marketplace do its work.

Is a trade-war with China justified? Given our dependence on trade with China, I doubt it -- we can threaten and bluster all we want, but come down to it, we and the Chinese need each other. If we are serious about punishing China, then the solution is simple -- stop buying stuff from them. Pay off the enormous debts we owe them. If we threaten them and fail to follow through, it will damage us more than if we had done nothing. If we go the tarriff route, we open a box full of demons we are in no way prepared to handle right now. (And as Douglas Holtz-Eakin points out, we could do a lot for our competitive posture by reforming our badly-designed tax regime.)

In other great news for the economy, the battering in the financial sector is taking its toll: Wall Street may lose up to 10,000 jobs by 2012. And given how much the state, county, and municipality of New York depend upon the tax revenues generated by those jobs, I'd be feeling some significant alarm if I were a politician there.

So-called "Progressives" -- spreading the misery.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:05 AM | Comments (93)
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Happy Tuesday. In addition to Vic's (and others') links below and the links in the mainpage sidebar, you can find links on terrorism, crime, war, civil rights, Congress, Admin, and other news on my twitter feed most weekdays, including today, between 9AM and 11AM Eastern.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (191)
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