A weak people will rally to a strong man on a horse, Mussolini's theory went.

Are we weak? Or-- are 51% of us weak?

Since when do elected officials get to decide that they are “done compromising,” as the president’s chief of staff asserted? Obviously, politics, which at its heart is the art of compromise, is too pedestrian, too . . . democratic for this administration.

In the eyes of the White House, the sham compromise on insurance payments was a sop to the serfs, granted by the magnanimity of the president, but in no way designed to derail the ideological objective of the policy. If we let this stand, if we buckle before such bureaucratic capriciousness, then we will have taken another significant step toward the imposition of government rule by fiat, and not by the will of the people. And once that victory has been secured, then the small steps will become larger and come faster and will not cease until liberty is defined solely by government officials. Or until they are opposed by a will just as strong and unyielding.

Anyway, this is my big fear with Obama. It has gone beyond the political, gone beyond policy, gone beyond preferences.

With a Republican Congress and an President determined to "win" By Any Means Necessary, as fellow radical socialist Malcolm X had it, Obama will resort to further and further tyrannical assertions of power.

No tyrant ever gets a taste of Rule Without Limits and decides he doesn't like it. No, they all drink more from the poisoned spring.

Via Monty, who's on twitter as @AoSHQDoom

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (248)
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Problematic for a Romney/Rubio ticket. Two Mormons on the ticket? That's not exactly a "balanced" draw.

I don't want to say it's disqualifying (at least as far as Romney selecting him) but I have to think it's actually disqualifying.

And I like Rubio. I've been saying for two years that we don't know who the presidential candidate will be but we know exactly who the vice presidential candidate will be.

Alas.

Not that it's a crime. Just that it precludes one particularly-strong ticket. Probably our strongest.

Rubio was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his family at around the age of eight, and remained active in the faith for a number of years during his early youth, family members told BuzzFeed.

Rubio spokesman Alex Conant confirmed the story to BuzzFeed, and said Rubio returned to the Catholic church a few years later with his family, receiving his first communion on Christmas day in 1984 at the age of 13.

I'm thinking a "number of years" means something like "1.5 years, from 8 to 9 1/2." In a story pushed by the liberal media, this becomes any number of years. From 1 to 100.

Meh. Darnit.

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (376)
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What an odd alliance. Made up of one person I loathe and another person I used to oppose. And now I'm okay with it.

Politics, bedfellows, etc.

Santorum says they're in cahoots.

"You have to ask Congressman Paul and Gov. Romney what they've got going together," Santorum said. "Their commercials look a lot alike, and so do their attacks."

"They've got something going on?" a reporter asked Santorum.

"You tell me," Santorum said.

Santorum's aides have long suspected that Romney and Paul have some sort of deal by which they attack other candidates but not each other. "Clearly there is a tag-team strategy between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney," top Santorum strategist John Brabender told reporters after the debate. "There've been 20 debates, right? Why don't you go back and see how many times Ron Paul has ever criticized anything Mitt Romney has done."

"Ron Paul has for all practical purposes pulled out of Michigan," Brabender continued, referring to next Tuesday's primary. "Anybody see him up in Michigan? And yet where is he running negative ads against Santorum? Michigan."

A few feet away, Romney aides dismissed the accusations as "whiny silliness."

Except it's not silly at all. From February 1st:

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul havenÂ’t laid a hand on each other.

They never do.

Despite deep differences on a range of issues, Romney and Paul became friends in 2008, the last time both ran for president. So did their wives, Ann Romney and Carol Paul. The former Massachusetts governor compliments the Texas congressman during debates, praising PaulÂ’s religious faith during the last one, in Jacksonville, Fla. Immediately afterward, as is often the case, the Pauls and the Romneys gravitated toward one another to say hello.

The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party.

Beyond the oddball friendship, what else do they have cooking?

Romney’s aides are “quietly in touch with Ron Paul,” according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking....

“Ron Paul wants a presence at the convention,” the adviser said — and Romney, if he is the nominee, would grant it.

When I read this, Paul's odd behavior with regard to Perry suddenly made sense. I didn't figure Paul would ride Perry that hard. Perry is, after all, a fairly "extreme" 10th Amendmenter himself. And certainly, from Paul's perspective, looking at just the politics of it, he ought to be more afraid of Romney-- and RomneyCare -- than Perry's relatively inconsequential deviations from Leave Us Alone type thinking.

But Paul savaged Perry, again and again. And never said a negative peep about Romney.

So there you go.

This conspiracy theory... is actually true.

Niche Protection. Romney also benefited from Michele Bachmann's decision to play attack dog for him.

Among grubby transactional reasons for playing Romney's pitbull -- I scratch your back, you make me VP -- I thin Romney has benefited from outsider/Tea Party candidates all savaging each other, because each of them constituted a threat to every other one's niche identity as Tea Party leader.

Competition tends to occur between people with similar appeals. The Goth Girl doesn't compete with the Cheerleader Queen. The Goth Girl competes hard against the Pretty Punk Chick.

To them, the Cheerleader Queen is in a whole different category, outside their niche. She's not a threat because she's a whole different animal, competing for different resources. (The dude who likes the Cheerleader Queen probably won't dig the Goth Girl (Hollywood movies notwithstanding). But the dude who likes the Goth Girl might just also like the Pretty Punk Girl, and hence the problem.)

Anyway, I think of series of candidates haven't minded losing as long as they lost to the Cheerleader Queen (Romney, in this analogy), but have bitterly resented losing to anyone else, anyone in their slice of High School America.

I have my own special Palin-Hating theory on this score-- she couldn't support Perry, for example, as he was way too close to her identity for comfort.

A Gingrich, on the other hand... Well that's different. Gingrich is intellectual, brain-trusting, urbane, cosmopolitan and, one strongly suspects, more secular in orientation than he might indicate in a Republican primary. Completely different animal than Palin. No threat to her position as Top of the Rural Religious Outsider Coalition.

And yes I know now she's pretty supportive of Santorum. Theories aren't typically 100% predictive or inclusive of all variables. (Edited: I initially wrote she "supported" Santorum, which isn't formally true. She seems to speak positively about him lately, now that Newt has fallen.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (330)
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Loose cable? Isn't that Step Two when you call Dell Customer Support -- Step One, have you pushed the On button, Step Two, have you made sure all of your cables are securely plugged in?

Further complicating matters, even the OPERA scientists couldn't yet explain why the neutrinos clocked in as fast as they did. Now, according to Science Insider, sources familiar with the OPERA experiment say a fiber optic cable connecting a GPS receiver and an electronic card in one of the lab computers was discovered to be loose. (The GPS was used to synchronize the start and arrival times of the neutrinos).

Tightening the connection changed the time it took for data to travel the length of the fiber by 60 nanoseconds. Because this data processing time was subtracted from the overall time-of-flight in the neutrino experiment, the correction may explain the seemingly early arrival of the neutrinos. To confirm this hypothesis, the OPERA team will have to repeat their experiment with the fiber optic cable secured.

You Say You've Discovered A Procedure For Cold Fusion, Involving the Loch Ness Monster and the Chevy Volt?

Are your cables securely plugged in?

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (132)
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Liberals who deny Obama goes around apologizing for America hit hardest.

"In the letter, delivered by Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker this afternoon in Kabul, the president also expressed our regret and apologies over the incident in which religious materials were unintentionally mishandled at Bagram Airbase ," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

As always, Muslims are far more concerned about their damn book than what their coreligionists do in the name of that book.

If anyone should be apologizing it should be Afghans who allowed their country play host to terrorists who killed 3,000 people on 9/11 and the over 1,700 Americans killed serving there.

Honestly, I'll be glad when we pull most of our troops out of there. If they want the Taliban back cutting off hands and executing people for not being sufficiently Islamic they are welcome to it.

Added: Not being protested in Afghanistan...the slaughter of thousands of Muslims in Syria. Priorities.

UPDATE: Hmmm.

A military official said the materials were removed from the detainee center’s library because they had “extremist inscriptions” on them and there was “an appearance that these documents were being used to facilitate extremist communications.”

Posted by: DrewM at 05:49 AM | Comments (432)
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Follow 'The Daily DOOM' on Twitter: @AoSHQDOOM.

$200,000 in debt per family, my groovy babies. This is His Majesty's most lasting monument: a towering mountain of debt.

Obama's corporate tax plan is a total bust.

Obama had no experience in the private sector before becoming president. The free market is a sort of theoretical construct he learned about in college. But Geithner should know better. HeÂ’s had lots of contact with all sorts of executives, both at Treasury and when he ran the New York Federal Reserve Bank. If he has any doubts about this plan, he should resign. And if he doesnÂ’t, he never should have gotten the job in the first place.

NPR's Prairie Home Companion is a high-brow Hee Haw, and Garrison Keillor has made a career out of his smarmy you-betcha radio persona. Less well known is Keillor's far-left politics and unpleasant real-life personality. He's also the foremost example of what a boring liberal mouthpiece NPR has always been.

He doth Reason Mistakkenly.

Sadly, the only difference separating Mr. Obama from the long-dead mistaken mercantilist quoted by Mokyr lies in how each spells and capitalizes words.

I am not an admirer of tattoos. Frankly, I find them vulgar, particularly on women. (Apologies to any of my beloved Morons who are sporting ink, but so it is.) Tattoos also have a lot of social signaling effects, many of which the tattooed person probably does not intend.

Teh Krugman once again fails to do basic research before spouting off, and gets called on it. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Teh Krugman to issue a correction or retraction.

To the Greek public sector: Er, you guys know that you're flat broke, right? (The fact that it involves workers in the Greek Social Security office would strike me as mordantly humorous but for the fact that it's long past being funny.)

"[F]rom here, bond market returns are about as attractive as following a plague of locusts across a field of corn."

Some background on the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). (The "Kansas City school".) I think it's junk, but hey, what do I know: I follow the Austrian School myself, and it's been the butt of jokes from mainstream economists for decades. Arnold Kling isn't a fan either.

The Greek CDS argument may not be over yet.

Is the European crisis over or just beginning? It ain't nowhere near over.

Peter Orszag's new nugget of folksy wisdom: You should be glad the economy is in the toilet because you'll live longer! The longer to savor our misery, I guess.

ALL IS WELL! The ass-kissing and ego-stroking on display in this article may actually cause you to vomit, so have a bucket handy if you choose to read it.

You may soon have to drop a hundie to fill your hoopty's tank if gas keeps going up.

US Postal Service warns of "potentially adverse reactions" as USPS employees receive word of which facilities are slated for closure. Unionized public-sector employees causing a ruckus? I've never heard such a thing! (h/t Gabriel).
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:36 AM | Comments (246)
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Happy Thursday.

After his trainwreck on No Child Left Behind last night, the Santorum camp wasted no time memory-holing his webpage on NCLB. Google Bing cache remembers all, Rick, though I'm not sure what was so objectionable there that it had to be deleted.

Obama is going to give a speech on rising gas prices in Florida, which will mostly be an effort to deflect from his awful record on energy. Flashback to 2008.

Those supposed faster-than-light neutrinos may have just been a problem with the measuring equipment. Which, is a big "no duh." On the other hand, did they ever account for the relativity of simultaneity? Meh. There were no faster-than-light neutrinos.

Huh. The post office is stepping up security at its facilities as it announces closures. They're worried about "adverse reactions" from postal workers.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:00 AM | Comments (200)
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If You Make Less Than $60,000 and Have Kids, Quit Your Job!

Because you'll actually live better on the dole:

You can do as well working one week a month at minimum wage as you can working $60,000-a-year, full-time, high-stress job.

My chart tells the story. It is pretty much self-explanatory.

This is in Mississippi but I'm guessing the numbers are similar in other states. The really depressing part is that if you work hard and double your income from $14K to $30K, you actually get poorer.

Update: Dead Parrot points out that this chart has been critiqued for using inflated numbers. I haven't calculated with the new numbers but I suspect that there's still going to be little incentive (maybe $600 more a month?) to work 4x the hours. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:32 PM | Comments (612)
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Please, SMOD. Make it stop!!!

CNN. 8pm. *** LIVESTREAM ***

The NRO Editors noticed that we shouldn't do 14,320 MFM-moderated debates next time around.

The semiotic search for the racism beneath Newt’s food-stamp line. The dismissal of “the Constitution” in haughty air quotes. The wasting of primetime minutes pondering which wife would make the best first lady. The obsessive deposing of Romney on the legality of condoms. The condescending identity politics of carting out a token Latino to ask an immigration question. The dings. The bells. The buzzers. The Google Chat notification tones. The frightful specter of Donald Trump’s coiffure lurking around the next corner.

These are just some of the lowlights of the umpteen Republican debates thus far. And with the exception of The DonaldÂ’s ill-fated quest to moderate, they were all brought to us by the mainstream media. ThatÂ’s the same media that daily carry water for the Obama administration, approach the tea parties as anthropological curiosities, and persistently skew the public discourse leftward in ways large and small, conscious and unconscious. So why on earth should conservatives trust them to play any substantial role in the selection of our presidential standard-bearer?

Welcome to the party, pal.

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 03:50 PM | Comments (581)
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Kind of hard to squre that with my immediate kneejerk impression of a Frat Boy who'd gone drunk with power with the publishing keys.

. They would see I used my vacation time last year to volunteer in the orphanages of Haiti. They would see how I ‘adopted’ an elderly Alzheimer’s patient and visited him every week for a year. They would see that every winter I organize a coat drive for those less fortunate in New Haven. They would see how I raised $10,000 for a friend in need when his kids were born four months premature. They would see how I have worked in soup kitchens and convalescent homes since I was a kid. They would see my actions speak louder than my words. They would see that these acts were not done for my glory, but for God’s. They would see that each day I live and will continue to live a life of joy and service…

A few commenters said they didn't even know "chink" was a racial slur. I have trouble believing that -- I know almost all the racial slurs, plus a few dozen I made up myself* -- but they have no reason to lie.

Hm.

Maybe some people just really do not know which words are considered insulting.

Certainly this guy seems to be a lot more substantive a person than my made-up imaginary version of him was. Seems hard to imagine that someone with a high degree of conscientiousness is given over to crude larks.

Just wondering, as Allah did: Did ESPN know this or did they just not care?

* Only "macacca" was a new one on me. I was positive it wasn't a slur, or else I'd've already heard of it.

Empire of Jeff Is Not Impressed.

Volunteer in Haiti orphanages = "underage sex tourism"

Adopting Alzheimer's patient = "Medicare fraud"

Fundraiser for premature kids = "human trafficking"

Working soup kitchens and convalescent homes = "inner-city drug dealing"

What a piece of shit this guy is.

Posted by: Ace at 02:50 PM | Comments (315)
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