Gingrich proposes, goofilly, that we'll have "Community Boards" to decide on whether or not illegal immigrants within specific communities will be granted amnesty or deported.

For starters, it is very odd to say that ordinary citizens will essentially be elevated to the position of judge -- without any sort of standards binding their decisions -- to essentially grant illegal immigrants an immunity from the operation of the law, or to order them deported.

That's a strange thing, to elevate citizens to essentially act as courts, imposing judgments and penalties, or granting government benefits, without some kind of court-like structure, procedure, and guidance in decision-making.

Newt would call this a "radical, transformative solution that shows a fundamental empowerment of the citizenry" or whatever. I call it daffy.

I also call it, in actual practice, amnesty for 95% of all illegal immigrants. Because only, say, 5% of illegal immigrants settle in red areas. 95% are either in sanctuary citizens -- dominated by liberals, which will then have liberal "Community Boards," which will then grant amnesty because they want them voting for liberals -- or liberal-leaning areas. Okay, probably less than 95% of illegal immigrants settle in liberal areas, but they will quickly move to liberal areas once they understand that "Community Boards" will deport them (conservative) or grant them amnesty (liberal).

And then, having secured amnesty, they'll move back to the red areas. Because now they're citizens (or at least have legal authorization to be present in the US) and are permitted to move freely about the country.

Newt intends this as some outside-the-box radical transformative solution or whatever blah-blah he applies to his supposedly "cutting edge" ideas.

In fact, it's as daffy as it appears at first. Maybe daffier.

At best, it's a dodge, permitting Gingrich to not really take a position on the matter, but instead punt the decision to his fellow citizens. He can claim this is some kind of transformative empowerment (blah-blah), but really he's abdicating his own responsibility for a clear articulation of his own position.

One of the most famous dodges in politics is to take no position on a contentious issue but instead announce support for a All Star Blue Ribbon Commission to study the issue and make decisions. Obama is quite fond of this, you've probably noticed.

Gingrich's proposal is the exact same dodge, except instead of one great big national blue-ribbon commission, he wants to punt the issue to 30,000 small, local commissions. Which might sound all federalistic and local-control-y but in fact they'd all be making wildly different decisions, without any consistent standards.

And, as I already pointed out, illegal immigrants would just game the system by moving to the blue areas where they know the Commmunity Boards would give them amnesty.

The knock on Gingrich is that he has ten ideas a day, five possibly good, five obviously bad, and can't distinguish between the two types. (Actually I'd complain differently: He has ten ideas a day, one possibly good, four that sound good on a superficial level but in fact are just campaign-trail chum without substance or usefulness, and five which are bad.)

This seems to be one of those bad ideas, and even though most people tried to tell him it was a bad idea months ago when he first started floating it, he still seems to think it's a great idea.

It's not. It's dumb.

It is, as they say, something so dumb only an intellectual could believe it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (241)
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The basics of this were covered by Drew, below, but this is Newt Gingrich himself saying it, from his own Twitter account.

Romney is pretty brazen about forgetting his myriad past positions. It's just odd to me that he attacks aggressively on an issue like this, when he himself has pro-amnesty statements in his very recent past. (So recent they are pop culturally relevant.)

It might be some kind of strategic decision that the best defense is a shameless offense, or a calculation that people can only remember the attack and not the counter-attack.

Or it could be that he is thinking -- with some justification -- that the base is going with various unknown quantities and, because they are unknown, they are blank screens upon which the base can project its own hopes (as Barack Obama observed about himself in 2008 ). Ergo, each candidate flies to the top of the heap because the base projects on to each newest blank slate a perfect (or near-perfect) conservative record. So Mitt's calculation may be "You all know I've flipped and flopped and am really not terribly conservative, but you don't know that each of your new Flavors of the Week have done similar things, so my mission is to bring each candidate's Romneyesque deviations from conservative orthodoxy to your attention. Then you'll see each is nearly as flawed on ideology as I am, and you'll pick me not on ideology, but on general competency, because if everyone's kind of a RINO in one or more important ways, you might as well pick the guy who's polling the best."

Maybe. But there's a real shamelessness here that gets off-putting. It's just not very honest for Romney to be so hard-charging as a Tough on Immigrants Sheriff Joe type.

There comes a point at which it does seem that he believes us to be stupid, or needs us to be stupid, at least.

I waver between thinking Romney's aggression and shamelessness are actually useful tools in the toolbox -- could use some of that against Obama -- and thinking they're liabilities. Sometimes stuff like this begins to undercut the central argument in favor of Romney -- he's smart, disciplined, and competent.

If he's making attacks like this, shamelessly ignoring his own past... well, is he those things?

via @lamblock.

Also Undercutting... the idea that Romney is a more elevated candidate than the various bumpkins who oppose him.

Some people want a more elevated candidate, one who doesn't feel the need to play dumb. I get that. Sometimes I get a little pissed off at the apparent necessity of reasonably intelligent men playing a little dumb, because some people seem to think dumb skews conservative.

But this shameless "These aren't the droids you're looking for" attack by Romney is, to me, yahoo-ish and bumpkin-ish. Certainly it's not elevated, and certainly the pitch being made here is not to the higher-function regions of my brain. The higher-function regions of my brain are kind of aghast at this.

Conceding, arguendo, that a smarty-pants candidate, a sort of elevated intellect, would be sort of a nice thing -- is Romney being that candidate here?

Or is he being low and cheap and dumb, and therefore exactly the sort of candidate that his supporter don't like?

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (225)
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Mitt's inability to keep a story straight is pathological at this point.

CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer opened the debate by asking candidates to introduce themselves. "Here's an example of what I'm looking for: ‘I'm Wolf Blitzer and yes, that's my real name.'"

Romney couldn't help himself in going for a quick laugh. "I'm Mitt Romney and yes, Wolf, that's also my first name," he said to dead silence from the audience.

That wasn't the worst of it: Romney's real first name is Willard — Mitt is his middle name.

We're really going to nominate this guy?

I thought the whole birther thing is nonsense from start to finish but I'm going to need to see Willard's/Mitt's original long form birth certificate now.

Jen Rubin emails to say, "Willard. Mitt. I don't care. He just so gosh darn dreamy and moderate!"

Story link via Greg Pollowitz.

Added: Ok, so plenty of people think having a little fun with serial flip-flopper Willard Mitt is off limits. How about comparing this quote to him on the subject last night? Is that ok?

Via Jamie Dupree

Posted by: DrewM at 06:59 AM | Comments (321)
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Gingrich had his first real hiccup in a debate at last night's CNN/AEI/Heritage event on national security and foreign policy. The topic was immigration and Wolf Blitzer began by reminding Gingrich that he voted for the Simpson-Mazoli amnesty bill in the 80's (that Ronald Reagan signed).

Here's Newt's initial answer (I've pulled out the whole exchange and put it on my little side blog so you don't have to search the whole CNN transcript).

BLITZER: Speaker Gingrich, let me let you broaden out this conversation. Back in the '80s -- and you remember this well. I was covering you then. Ronald Reagan and you -- you voted for legislation that had a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as you well remember. There were, what, maybe 12 million, 10 million -- 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States right now.

Some called it amnesty then; they still call it amnesty now. What would you do if you were President of the United States, with these millions of illegal immigrants, many of whom have been in this country for a long time?

GINGRICH: Let me start and just say I think that we ought to have an H-1 visa that goes with every graduate degree in math, science and engineering so that people stay here.

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: You know, about five blocks down the street, you'll see a statue of Einstein. Einstein came here as an immigrant. So let's be clear how much the United States has drawn upon the world to be richer, better and more inclusive.

I did vote for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Ronald Reagan, in his diary, says he signed it -- and we were supposed to have 300,000 people get amnesty. There were 3 million. But he signed it because we were going to get two things in return. We were going to get control of the border and we were going to get a guest worker program with employer enforcement.

We got neither. So I think you've got to deal with this as a comprehensive approach that starts with controlling the border, as the governor said. I believe ultimately you have to find some system -- once you've put every piece in place, which includes the guest worker program, you need something like a World War II Selective Service Board that, frankly, reviews the people who are here.

If you're here -- if you've come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home. period. If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.

The Creeble Foundation is a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don't get a pass to citizenship. And so there's a way to ultimately end up with a country where there's no more illegality, but you haven't automatically given amnesty to anyone.

Both Bachmann and Romney bounced on that answer saying it was amnesty that would reward law breakers and serve as a magnet for more illegal immigration.

Ironically given his troubles on the issue, Rick Perry had the strongest answer focusing on border enforcement as a national security issue.

Newt responded to each attack by repeatedly doubling down on the idea that long term illegals with roots in this country are never going to be deported so we need a plan to deal with that. He didn't say anyone who disagreed with him lacked a heart but he was inching up to it.

Team Romney went on the offensive following the debate. As you'd expect, they did so in the most weaselly way possible as the Examiners Philip Klein found out.

Is Gingrich's answer going to hurt his newly minted Not-Mitt/actual front runner status? Personally I've been leaning to Gingrich simply out of lack of a better option. I'm some what torn here because I think when all is said and done I come down close to where Gingrich is in general though not in specifics ("Red cards" and immigration boards are silly ideas). There's simply too many here already and as a practical political matter Gingrich is right, we'll never get anything done without some give from our side over a significant number of long term illegal residents who have deep roots here. Americans are compassionate people, there will be plenty of people we'll let stay here simply because to uproot them would be a penalty disproportionate to the crime.

The thing is, that's my end point, not my opening bid in the immigration debate. I want Perry's tougher border stance, Mitt's (for now) employer sanctions and shutting down other "magnets". Once we have a couple of years of that to demonstrate that we have a reasonable handle on the border and we've removed as many illegals as possible by attrition then and only then can we talk about what to do with long time, otherwise law abiding people. To open with Newt's position is to ensure another Simpson-Mazzoli fiasco.

I expect we'll be hearing a lot more from Gingrich about his ideas on border enforcement and how he favors English as the official language in the coming days. Still, when push came to shove, his first instinct was to talk passionately and in detail about someway legalizing a good number of illegals and not enforcement. That's going to be a problem for him. How big of a problem is yet to be seen.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:55 AM | Comments (256)
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PSA: This is the last DOOM of the week. Have a happy Thanksgiving and try to forget about the DOOM while you're spending the holiday with friends and family. DOOM will resume as usual next Monday.

The SSDI disaster. Just another reason among the multitudes as to why Social Security as a program is doomed.

GDP revised down to 2%. The productivity falloff in the past decade has been one of the great under-appreciated trends in modern economics, I think.

The CMEÂ’s reputation has been tarnished by this MF Global business, but there is also a lot of investor confusion and misunderstandings about just how regulated (and risky) the futures market really is. When investing in futures (or really any derivative), follow the same basic advice as you would when gambling: donÂ’t bet what you canÂ’t afford to lose.

Mark Steyn on the failure of the Super Committee:

Those who can do. Those who canÂ’t form a supercommittee. Those who canÂ’t produce a majority vote in a supercommittee sequester. Those who canÂ’t even sequester are telling the world something profound about American inertia.

Three scenarios where Uncle Sugar bails out the EU. No money? No problem! WeÂ’ll just print more!

And now for the next wheel falling off the Eurozone train...Belgium! (Who has been without a government for more than a year now, by the way.).

More terrifying chart-fu.

Back off, man, IÂ’m a scientist. (Always go to the classics for tasty quotes, that's my opinion.)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “We must re-establish the primacy of politics over the market.” This in a nutshell is everything that is wrong with the sovereign governments of both Europe and the United States (and China, and Russia, and...well, you get my point). The “market” is not a thing to be managed, or a process to be controlled. The market is just an aspect of the natural world, working on the creatures who move through it. Merkel’s comment reflects the combination of arrogance and ignorance that is at the root of so many of our economic problems.

UPDATE 1: Chinese manufacturing at a 32-month low. The signs of a Chinese economic downturn are multiplying rapidly.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:35 AM | Comments (137)
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If you're looking for last-minute ideas, there are some outstanding-sounding recipes in the Annual Thanksgiving Recipe exchange. Ya done good, morons.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (144)
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The Machine Gun That Would Not Die

In 1918 John Browning designed the Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun and soon afterwards it was adopted by the US military where it was designated the M2 Machine Gun and later became known affectionately by the troops as 'Ma Deuce'.

Today almost a 100 years later it's still in operation with the US Army and still being used quite effectively:

In 2003, U.S. Army SFC Paul Ray Smith used his M2HB mounted on an M113 armored personnel carrier to kill 20 to 50 enemy who were attacking a U.S. outpost, preventing an aid station from being overrun and allowing wounded soldiers to be evacuated, SFC Smith was killed during the firefight and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

So why has it persisted for so long? Well mostly because the Army has yet to find a cost-effective replacement that was as reliable, robust, and accurate with the same fire rate. John Browning really did get it fundamentally right 93 years ago.

So for now they've given up:

Three years ago, the U.S. Army gave up on getting a replacement for the nearly century old M2 machine-gun, at least not anytime soon. However, many of the current ones were wearing out, so the army began replacing over 80 percent of its 36,600 M2 machine-guns, a process expected to take five years, with new M2s. Numerous efforts to develop a replacement for the M2 have failed so far.

Meanwhile, a new upgrade for the M2 has been fielded, and Ma Deuce continued to rule the battlefield. The current M2E2 has a quick change barrel, flash hider and lot of small improvements. It is much in demand, but basically the same M2 of 90 years ago.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:00 PM | Comments (732)
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Just a quick update before the debate.

What About Libya?
Muletrain2016: 95
scott: 89
FMG: 88
Moochelle's Large Butt: 87
Graboid:86
Honey Badger: 86
Portnoy: 86
chemwonk: 86

Department of Energy
rd brewer: 83
Gabe Malor: 80
CDR M: 79
DrewM: 79
Russ from Winterset: 79
Ben:78
Andy: 77
DiT: 71

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:59 PM | Comments (8)
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Oh, and CNN. The topic is national defense and foreign policy. The winner is Not Mitt unless you're Jen Rubin.

8pm Eastern. Livestream here-ish.

Standard reminder: Your comments do not automatically display. So don't ask "Why aren't my comments displaying?" They don't display.

They're not posted comments a la chat room. Instead they go to queue, which the producers (cobloggers) read, and we post them, by hand, if we think they make a good point.

Liveblog thingy below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 03:56 PM | Comments (530)
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Alternate headline:

Distracted, Depressed President Endorses Rape, Cohabitation With Feces

Obama loves him some extreme fringe left-wing hate-promoting agitators.

Even now, with OWS unpopular and stinking up the joint, Obama has to curry their favor, because he is, was, and always will be one of them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (295)
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