Why So Compartmentalized?

The Real Threat to America - NYTimes.com

Back during the Bush administration, the fish rotted from the head, and every piece if even imaginary invasion of privacy was a clear example of "the radical loss of freedom and rights due to fear mongering intended for Bush to hold power ... maybe forever". Isn't it interesting that "Hope and Grope", and "Bend Over: Here Comes Change" are nowhere to be found as the indignities of the TSA roll out. It is all completely fire-walled in TSA, not a hint of blame rolls up to the office of the President. Cool

Think a bit more deeply about what we are experiencing however and what is even included in this article:

What is not in doubt is an old rule: Give a bureaucrat a big stick and a big budget, allow said bureaucrat to trade in the limitless currency of human anxiety, and the masses will soon be intimidated by the Department of Fear.

I agree -- with the NY Times no less. Why do they believe that this "old rule" is isolated? Give a bureaucrat a big stick to deal with Corporate America ... and ??? Of course the NYT doesn't like Corporate America. How about give a bureaucrat a big stick to deal with health care in America ... and??? Guess what, just what the Tea Party says -- power is STILL going to corrupt!!!

Why exactly do folks on the left believe that what has happened at the TSA hasn't and isn't happening a the IRS, Czar dejour, and will happen in every case where we allow the government to bloat??

There is NO REASON AT ALL ... in fact, since more people travel than get sick, there is MORE scrutiny by the travelling public!! It is enough for the NYT to take an anti-government position (all be it carefully compartmentalized).

Visions, Conflict, American Decline

Hiding From Reality - NYTimes.com

I'm willing to suffer the pain of reading Bob Herbert to attempt to understand how the elite looks at America. The fact that I "agree" with his last paragraph shows the importance of shared premises:

"America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to begin resuscitating the dream."

A favorite joke on shared premises problems is from Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar (it's better in the book, but this is shorter):

"An old cowboy goes into a bar and orders a drink. As he sits there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sits down next to him. ... She says, 'I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. ...' A little while later, a couple sits down next to the old cowboy and asks him, 'Are you a real cowboy?' He replies, 'I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.'"

My view of the problems with America today is that Bob and I don't agree on WHAT the trouble we are in is, who and what the shared sacrifice is, the definition of decline, nor the definition of the American Dream. Bob doesn't even know what my definition is (or care) -- even though I think I pretty much understand his.

His definition is massively higher taxes on earners, massively larger amounts of government spending, regulation and intrusion into the daily lives of more and more Americans. Bob saw the "peak" of America in maybe "1975" ... or maybe even '79, but since Reagan, we have "been in decline". He saw Democrats being elected in '06 and BO in '08 as "the right direction", and he is now depressed because he sees any reduction in the march toward larger government as "hiding from reality". He sees no other positive future reality other than "The United States of Sweden for 300 million people".

Bob and my realities don't match. My America was founded in 1776, not 1932 with FDR ... or maybe 1900 with TR. My America was exceptional -- it had no interest in being "like Sweden, Germany or France". There already is a Sweden, Germany and a France -- and even a Cuba and a Venezuela. There is no reason to build another. If you want one of those, you can just move there.

My America has been in decline since at least 1900 and in some ways since the Civil War. The measures that usurped states rights for secession were probably legitimate for the special case of a group of states withdrawing to protect the institution of slavery, but much like the draft only being instituted when required for national emergency, the rights of the states and the people should have been returned once the conflict was ended.

Arizona defending it's borders, states deciding against BOcare, or even states deciding to legalize drugs -- or prohibit alcohol, or a host of other "difficult things" are the kinds problems that liberty entails. We have mortgaged broad swaths of our liberty to the federal government for supposed security, convenience and order. Bob sees that as "progress" (thus the term "progressive"), and I see it as decline -- and thus my term "REgressive". I see the transfer and rapid increase of centralized government power as a LOSS of liberty, and therefore movement toward tyranny that the country was founded to LIMIT!

I could go on and on ... I see the massive unions of teachers and other public workers as the one of the key killers of our ability to innovate, compete and improve -- in education and in broad swaths of modern life. Bob sees any threat to the salaries and benefits of the public workers now 2x the standard private sector jobs as "decline". I see the cozy relationship between the government and public workers as corruption, heavily contributing to our decline -- Bob sees it as something we ought to increase.

**THE** major problem with left and right is just that. "A conflict of visions". We disagree on the premises -- what the current reality is, and what the objectives are. Bob thinks that "progressivism" is "settled social science", just like Anthropogenic (human caused) Global Warming -- AGW. Bob see's the government taking and controlling pretty much "half" of everything as "half full" -- with the objective being more toward full! I see it as "too full already", with the objective being "15-20% or so", **NOT ZERO** as Bob would tell you anyone who disagrees with him believes.

While my America has been declining a lot, it has had long moments of relative sunshine -- the '80's with Reagan, even the '90s with Clinton triangulating to the reality of a Republican congress and at least paying lip service to the idea that "the era of big government was over". Bush was way too progressive -- prescription drugs were bad, the level of deficit, even taking 9-11 into consideration was too high.  Post '96 however, with the Democrat takeover of congress and then BO, it has been nothing short of disaster.

Our task in America is very large because Bob and I can't agree on the most basics of basics -- what ARE the unique and special principles of America? Are we really the same as a host of other countries now in existence? What is the American dream? Is risk involved, or is it all about security? Again, this list could go on -- something like 20% of the country--  Bob, the elites, the hard left have one vision, and something like 60% of the country quietly believes roughly what I do, but the elites are rapidly shifting that by bringing in immagrants to vote with them,  buying votes in general, unionizing all the government workers, and running all the media.

In my mind, the CORE problem is that Bob and his 20% are the chattering classes, and they refuse to be honest with the 80% about what their goals really are. If they were, their power would dwindle to nearly nothing because it would be very clear that their values were NOT American values -- in the sense of 1776, liberty having priority over security, etc. They are slicker than that however -- they intend to keep chipping at those liberties in the name of progress and security until enough feel that they are too dependent on the government behemoth to risk having an alternate opinion.

And then my America will die and Bob will continue to complain of all the "damage" that is caused by the last vestiges that fail to succumb to his vision. The free speech of the liberals means your right to yell the old "7 dirty words" at the top of your lungs in any forum you desire. Freedom to espouse your ideas that are not in agreement with them? They believe you have no freedom of that sort whatsoever!

A Tale of Two States

California Suggests Suicide; Texas Asks: Can I Lend You a Knife? - Joel Kotkin - New Geographer - Forbes

The idea of the US was for our states to be very autonomous -- much more like the European Economic Union than like the current situation where the "Commerce Clause" has been stretched to cover nearly everything. No matter, difference still shows through, and TX and CA are nearly as good a study in what works and what doesn't as the old East and West Germany comparison used to be.

Don't expect liberals to take notice of easy to glean facts however -- if they couldn't understand the difference between East and West Germany, they are very unlikely to understand the difference between current TX and CA, but it certainly isn't because the evidence would even allow one to come to the wrong conclusions if there was any interest in looking.

Just read it. Short, sweet and very clear.

Buried Failure

Landmark terrorism trial ends in acquittal on all but 1 count - CNN.com

Remember when any sort of ruling that allowed any terrorists to get extra rights and potentially make the justice department and of course BUSH look bad was paraded from the front page and top story of every MSM outlet in the land? Well, those days are officially gone. You have to dig to the very bottom of CNN politics and even then, other than the "Landmark" designation -- the media doesn't want to be up front with how you ought to think about a "landmark case" in terror jurisprudence ending with acquittal on all but one count. This is a defendant that CONFESSED to getting the explosives that killed 224 people!!!

Couldn't he just slip on the soap in the shower "accidentally" or something? How "mass" does mass murder really need to be these days?

I'll give you a clue. If they can't spin it as some sort of "victory" for the hapless BO and his merry band of misfits, then they want you to try to figure it out yourself, and most likely in these times of short attention spans, you won't even find the article.

That is good, because if too many folks find this sort of thing, people will realize that BO makes Jimmuh look like a super competent great man, and even though we have some control on him now with a Republican Congress, there is truly no cure for malfeasance and incompetence at the BO level.

The White Vote

Hey, Michael Moore! Clinton, Gore and Kerry Lost the 'White Vote,' Too - Larry Elder - Townhall Conservative

Lots of talk about racism being a primary reason for people "turning against" BO. Larry is black, so he is allowed to talk about race in the current America. From the way it has been reported in the MSM, it is somewhat surprising that no Democrat running for President has won the "white vote" since '64 ... and Kerry lost it by more than BO.

Seems to me like Elder makes a pretty good case that there could be significant ideas causing people to make different voting decisions other than race.

Gee, I wonder what those might be? Maybe spending, entitlements, taxes, national security, jobs ...

Calling someone a racist is far easier than going into those however!

Obama Zombies, Jason Mattera

Read this little ditty on the cruise. Light stuff, the reason I bought it was the fact that it was written by a "20 something"-- somebody pretty pissed off because of the way his generation had become in his words "Obama Zombies".  He writes in the somewhat cute idiom of his generation:

"Evidence, logic, thinking--those are liberalism's gravest threats."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to invest your energy in, say, core values, not a man? Isn't that after all the American way?"

Very very true, and one of the cores of my beef with BO. We used to be a nation of ideas and laws, not of men. It is one of the big things that keeps us from being taken over by the "fearless leader type" -- we are supposed to have a strong sense of angst over the demagogue. What the heck happened to vast swaths of our country, and especially our youth in '08? Yes, yes, it looks like we have woken up the AM after and said "I'm never falling for hope and change again", but it is just plain scary to see a nation fall for the kind of clear Bozo that BO was right from the start.

"Diversity is, um, irrelevant. The best thing about multiculturalism is the food."

Profound! We are a country where all were supposed to be EQUAL -- that was one of our "exceptional things"!

JFK dreamed of putting a man on the moon. 

Ronald Reagan dreamed of a world without the Berlin Wall. 

Barack Obama and his minions dream of .... a world built with straw homes?

Honestly he goes into a Global Warming handbook that sounds pretty wacko, but his point is that the policies espoused by BO are "regressive" -- they seek to move us not forward, but backward.

The late, great economist Milton Friedman had this axion: Nobody spends somebody else' money as wisely or frugally as he spends his own. Only in Disney movies does redistribution of wealth work. 

Well, it CAN be moved ... the problem is that what one ends up with is less wealth for all.

Look, if government spending were a magic bullet, the Soviet Union would never have fallen; it would have been an economic juggernaut, a model for our success. Moreover, Cuba, Venezuela, and every other socialist tyranny around the world would be be economic nirvanas. 

Indeed.

Very easy read, not really deep enough to convince very many of his truth, but an entertaining work that may reach some of the young who sorely need it. Sometimes the message has to fit the right tone or it just isn't going to get across.

Learning from Japan

RealClearPolitics - Learning From Japan's Mistakes

Just as I indicated in the '80s when EVERYONE wanted to "be like Japan" that the US is NOT Japan, that advice still holds. One need not completely ignore examples however. I especially like the last paragraph ... some truth is universal, and I think that private firms, making economic decisions with a minimum of government interference or creation of uncertainty is a the base of any successful economic policy.

Economic success ultimately depends on private firms. The American economy is more resilient and flexible than Japan's. But that's a low standard. Neither the White House nor Congress seems to understand that growing regulatory burdens and policy uncertainties undermine business confidence and the willingness to expand. Unless that changes, our mediocre recovery may mimic Japan's.

Bringing on Class Warfare

Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich? - NYTimes.com

As I read through this I'm very struck with the fact that both greed and envy are deadly sins. For those more concerned with morality than money, they would even be very equivalent.

I can't imagine that Rich makes less than the entry price to what he calls "super rich". News at 11, $250K in INCOME today's world is a LOONNNNG way from "super rich". For many in that class, it is much closer to "paycheck to paycheck". Why? When you add the CURRENT (Rich thinks much too low) tax rates for Fed, State, FICA, etc, that $250K couple pays something north of $100K in taxes, plus, a dollar is not worth what it used to be -- in fact, it has lost 90% of it's value since 1900. $150K today is like someone making $15K in 1900! Not precisely "Super Rich".

Rich certainly knows this ... I suspect he is far richer than that, with maybe a few million in ASSETS. Now if one has say $2-4 Million in assets, PLUS an income in excess of $250K, we are getting to what is actually the "doorway to basic wealth", the point at which one no longer NEEDS to work to support their life. I guess once you have yours, trying to cut out any of the other riffraff from getting in must be good sport.

Seriously, I think what is afoot here is a more sinister version of  the end of the Cold War problem. There certainly were a lot of Cold-warrior conservatives that cast about a bit for something to do. If the left was rational, then looking at the "poor" in America today vs 1900 would tell them "the war on poverty is over, and we won". They would be wrong of course -- free market capitalism, or at least a still tiny bit free capitalism "won" it the old fashioned, but hated by liberals way; "trickle down and raising all boats". 

What we see the truth in however is liberals hate the rich and really don't care about the poor. They want to tear down the wealthy because they are the example of what is possible in America, and not nearly so much in other systems -- the person that has a special skill, idea, drive or vision and makes good. A person that exemplifies a basic goodness inherent in the American psyche, that is anathema to the liberal collectivist leveling view of nirvana.

Somehow Frank seems to think that anything bad that has happened to poverty, income growth, or employment is BECAUSE of whatever happens at the $250K+ level. Causality is always difficult to even reasonably postulate, let along prove, so a lot of the assertions in this column must be based on that old fixed economic pie view (if they are based on anything at all) -- the pie is only so big, what the "rich" are getting is something that is "taken away" from someone else. So patently not so that a C student in economics 101 understands that is completely false.

Unless one is simply insane, is dedicated to the destruction of the country, a congenital liar, or some combo of all and who knows what other malady, it seems impossible that lefty after lefty pundit could keep talking of $700 Billion in "cost" while utterly ignoring the $3 Trillion "cost" that holding on to the rest of the Bush cuts entails. Whatever the reason, they keep doing it and doing it.

Does Frank REALLY think that allowing people to keep a bit more of what they earn is the equivalent to them "grabbing everything that isn't nailed down?"?

We used to have GROWTH in our economy. GROWTH is what you need -- it is the magic genie that makes a bright economic future possible. So do the roots complain of the "cost" of the corn stalk growing? Do the leaves bitch about the "expense" of the tassel or the ear? Is it "fair" how high that tassel gets to be while those poor roots are stuck in the dirt? Perhaps they should go on strike -- or force the tassel to donate to the fund to allow the corn stalk to be uprooted and planted tassel down to "make it fair".

Somehow, I think that is basically what Rich has in mind. Even if the economy must be utterly destroyed to arrive at what is "fair", it could not happen too soon for his taste!

Trust No Media

Fox-o-Phobia - Bill O'Reilly - Townhall Conservative

Some nominal readers of my Blog or casual acquaintances assume that I must get all my information from Fox news. For your average liberal or left leaning moderate it is a pretty simple sort of equation; conservatism is ill-informed, people with conservative leaning views are being fed their shallow misconceptions by Fox News and talk radio, if they would expose themselves to REAL news and information, if the conservative's "problem" is simple misinformation ... assuming that their problem isn't the also prevalent liberally viewed conservative malady of low intellect.

Actually, my Fox News quota would rarely hit an hour a week, and my talk radio quota is zero unless I travel through AM radio country (areas with poor NPR or classic rock FM coverage!) on some rare occasions. Being busy, my standard media diet is short and simple:

1. A scan of the CNN page on the web to see what the top stories are and to make sure the other world isn't coming to an end today or something. Be a shame to do a bunch of wasted e-mail work if the end was that near.
2. NPR while driving around on my minimal short trips of the day -- to the office, to the health club, etc. Somewhat a "random sample", but again I tend to hear a top of the hour news show for some local MN flavor, plus the lefts view of reality.
3. Real Clear Politics. A sampling of the hot opinions of the day, left and right -- I do my best to read 50/50.
4. Powerline if I get a chance -- the Blog that blew the lid off from Rathergate, based out of the Twin Cities, just up the road. 
5. A scan of the local paper and Op Ed page for a local flavor
6. RARELY a little news channel surfing of Fox, CNN, MSNBC in the evening

Here is Bill's offending quote from Milbank;

"Immediately after the votes were counted, the incoming fire began. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that Fox News held "a victory party" for Republicans on the air. Milbank then stated: "To be fair and balanced, Fox brought in a nominal Democrat, pollster Doug Schoen."

Not so bad -- completely untrue or course, how about Juan Williams? Geraldine Ferraro? Mara Liason? ...  What is deeper however is what I hear from a lot of youth and the left "Oh Faux News, they just ...". Normally they can't think of ANY specific examples of bias, they just KNOW that Fox is extreme. My take is that it IS "extreme", but only in the sense that it is an "outlier" from the  NYT, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC or NPR, it is just that of the widespread media, it is the ONLY media voice that considers conservative opinion to be anything more than some malady of low intellect or failed study. THAT is what makes it "extreme", certainly not the level of it's bias -- in fact, it always presents the liberal opinion as well, it just doesn't present it without exploring potential problems or arguments against that opinion.

 What is effective in shaping the opinion of the many is the drumbeat -- the steady onslaught of standard message, often very easily and very demonstrably false as it is in this case, but never ending -- fake proof after fake proof is mixed with the much rarer example of a real case of conservative bias on Fox ( I DO admit they have a bias ... as do I, and as does every other person and media outlet), and the eventual effect is the desired across a broad set of Americans. They are polarized against whatever news is reported by Fox -- for them, Fox has been successfully demonized, marginalized and trivialized so that even the mention of any person that would be willing to appear there is met with approbation Ultimately, that is true bias, and it's counterpart prejudice. Whatever the message, it is lost in the attack on the source.

The sad state of affairs is that the left in this country is afraid enough that they seek to remove thought alternatives and a freedom of speech beyond just the freedom to agree with their view.

ONLY Extend Bush Cuts for > $250K

RealClearPolitics - A Stunned and Dispirited Base

Remember when the Bush tax cuts were just purely bad and all the money went to the rich? Let's look at a little math.

In the linked and despondent article, far lefty Robinson says the following:

Let's examine this issue a little more closely. Making the tax cuts permanent for the wealthy would increase the deficit by $700 billion over the next decade. Which party claims to be urgently, desperately concerned about the deficit? The Republicans, of course. So which party is prepared to bust the budget, if that's what it takes, to serve the interests of the rich? The GOP. And which party, to get its way, refuses to approve desperately needed tax relief for the bruised and battered middle class? Once again, the Republicans.

Interesting, what he DOESN'T say is:

Liberal leaders contend their plan is fiscally more responsible. The Democratic proposal would add about $3 trillion to the deficit during the next decade, while the GOP plan would cost $3.7 trillion, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

Hmm, how much have we heard the terrible Bush tax cuts lambasted as "all going to the rich"? Well, if one reads slightly between the lines of the liberal lies, they get backed into telling us the truth.

Cost for folks < $250K, $3 T
Cost for folks > $250K, $.7 T

Which seems larger to you? Apparently, if you are a liberal, the second number does.

On average, which group do you think is likely to make the most productive use of extra money to advance the economy? C'mon, be honest -- who is most likely to blow it on a flat screen, and who is most likely to invest it in "The next Google??".

Do most liberals even KNOW how to be honest? After 10 bleeping years of hearing how "unfair" these Bush tax cuts are (I know, this is a projection ... but I saw the old numbers, the ratios were the same), they can't even utter the truth when it is staring them in the face.

For the good of the country, for the good of the deficit, for more jobs, we would be FAR better giving the tax cut to ONLY the people that make OVER $250K!!!! That is if we cared about results, having a productive growing nation and leaving our kids better off than we are. But at least Democrats STILL don't care about any of that. They only want class warfare.

But, STILL, after the last election, the even the vast majority of the people DON'T GET IT, because the MSM is too darned biased to admit the truth directly. It has to be weaseled out from around the edges!!

A large part of our problem is simply that Americans are being sold the bill of goods that 99% of them can get more out of the government piggy bank than they put in and the top 1% are so stupid that they will pay for it.

It is the top 5% are the people that are overtaxed!!!!

The following from http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $159,619), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation's adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

We are penalizing our MOST PRODUCTIVE ... this is like forcing the top sports stars to play with weights on their wrists and annles. The net effect is a giant drag on our economy that prevents us from being nearly as competitive as we could be in the world -- maybe moving our "bottom" up from just having cell phones, flat screen TVs, high speed internet and weight problems, to maybe having trips to Disney and Cruises while still being poor. Were we to continue to allow the American economy to be unleashed as it was in the '80s, we may be close to the point where our "poor" would need better advice on the proper wine to go with camembert. Remember, SOMEONE will ALWAYS be in the bottom 20% of that income bracket!!!

Ok, Greed is bad, but SO IS ENVY -- especially when it allows us to make stupid decisions with the most powerful economy on the planet. BO is an anti-colonialist that wants to see America "cut down to size"!!! Get it, deal with it, and let's ignore him as much as we can and get this nation moving again!

Even a Democrat Can See

Requiem for the Pelosi Democrats - WSJ.com:

Good little column of a fairly unbiased inside view of the Democrat Congress meltdown. Baird saw it coming and decided to go ahead and leave on his own. I found the following to be pretty clear on what everyone really ought to know. This financial meltdown was PRIMARILY caused by the unholy public private confusion with Fannie and Freddie. The Bush administration tried to reign them in as early as 2002 but there were was just TOO MUCH MONEY -- when you combine the assets of the Federal Government, race pimps like Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangle IN the government and groups like ACORN on the street with the chance for everyone from Wall Street to low income home owners the chance to cash in at the casino, is it any surprise it comes to a bad end?

It ought not to be -- and guess what, blaming Bush doesn't help one bit when even a DEMOCRAT notices that the vaunted BO / Democrat financial reform fails to address Fannie and Freddie, which EVEN A DEMOCRAT realizes were the core of the problem.

Please, please, please forget about government "helping the little guy" -- ONLY as an accident of buying votes that typically cost FAR more in lost jobs, lost GDP, increased business uncertainty and the general corruption of our political, financial and legal system than ANY amount of money would be worth!!!

"Although he voted for it, he says he was troubled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the entities at the heart of the housing meltdown, weren't addressed. They have clearly exercised undue influence on Capitol Hill, he notes. 'When I was first elected I was puzzled why they were holding events in my honor as a mere freshman. I asked myself, why is a federal entity so involved in political activity?'"

Daniels '12 (not Jack)

The American Spectator : Mitch the Knife:

While I think the Republican mission needs to be Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, we are in definite need of a solid anti-BO. Mitch is my pick at this point -- the whole article is good, the excerpt is a key. We MUST bust the government employee union - Democrat corruption nexus or it will strangle us as it has strangled Europe!

"Once elected, Governor Daniels started cutting right away. On his first day in office, he rescinded his Democratic predecessor's executive order allowing collective bargaining by government unions. As conservative journalist Conn Carroll later wrote, 'The decision has not only cost the left's perpetual dependence machine millions in taxpayer-funded union dues, but also enabled the state to cut costs by instituting a ‘pay-for-performance' personnel system.' Daniels trimmed the state payrolls by 14 percent and Indiana now has fewer state employees than it did in 1982."

EJ Perspective

RealClearPolitics - After Setback, Dems Must Not Retreat

First, here is something that EJ and I mostly agree on:

The most politically potent attack on the health care effort was not on the plan itself. It was the argument that Democrats should have spent less time on this bill and more on job creation. Every moment the Republicans devote to destroying this year's reform opens them up to exactly the same criticism.

Republicans have to focus on JOBS FIRST and only repeal the most onerous aspects of the health bill -- fines to people not buying health insurance, reporting of every transaction over $600. Meet with chamber of commerce and business leaders and try to remove the most job killing aspects of the bill. Don't give in to just "kill it all" without having specific reasons for the parts killed and solutions that are better than the parts that are potentially salvaged.

Execute on a reasonable plan, be prepared to deal with even unfair charges of "ideology over people". Some will be unavoidable -- there really isn't any free lunch, and we can't have all that we might like. But be VERY clear -- on some of the aspects, "Would you rather have unemployment under 6% or would you rather have a lot of health care goodies"? Your job or provisions x, y and z? The persistence of high unemployment should be enough to clue in all but the true left ideologues on what the real trade-off is.

In 2008, the largest number of voters in American history gave the Democrats their largest share of the presidential vote in 44 years and big majorities in the House and Senate. 

How did Republicans react? They held their ideological ground, refused to give an inch to the new president, and insisted that persistent opposition would eventually yield them victory. And on Nov. 2, it did.

"Yes BUT" ... Democrats NEVER said what they were going to do. People voted for "Hope, Change, Yes we Can" and if you REALLY believe in fairy tales, "the end of Business As Usual politics". In some ways, the last was more true than many realized -- BO governed as "compromise is you doing it my way, otherwise, you are obstructionist". So the electorate was handed the hardest left turn since Johnson and told it was moderate. The electorates view and answer to guys like EJ was fortunately "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining".
Now on to EJ's summary:

Give Republicans credit for this: They don't chase the center, they try to move it. Democrats can play a loser's game of scrambling after a center being pushed ever rightward. Or they can stand their ground and show how far their opponents are from moderate, problem-solving governance. Why should Democrats take Republican advice that Republicans themselves would never be foolish enough to follow?

Egads. Bush was completely progressive rather than conservative. Remember prescription drug? remember the deficit spending? remember "uniter not divider"? The stupid thing is that he actually tried, where BO gave some options for some RINOS to sign on to exactly what he wanted and when none were available, he went to stiff arming the few remaining near-left vs far left Democrats to fall on their swords and go his way. Bush lost control of the Senate in his first term and barely eeked out a majority in '02 that held until '06. His administration was an orgy of compromise -- with his own party and recalcitrant Republicans, where BO's to date was an absolute fascist "my way or the highway" (although cleverly disguised with Nancy and Harry being the "bad cops" to BO's good act).
The "middle"? Where would that be? Germany? I think EJ sees the options as left of Sweden being desirable -- if not Cuba, Germany being "middle" and maybe Ireland  being "far right". What a difference perspective makes.

Judicial Independence

Political Judges - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative


Solid column by Thomas -- worthy of full read, but this is the core.

As for judicial "independence," that does not mean being independent of the laws. Being a judge does not mean being given arbitrary powers to enact the liberal agenda from the bench, which means depriving the citizens of their most basic rights that define a free and self-governing peop

I'll Take Kevin

Kevin Rubs It In - NYTimes.com

I regularly (painfully) read Mareen. She often laments of the HORROR of having come from an unwashed conservative family that remains unenlightened. I chuckle as largely I remain the reverse black sheep of my unrepentant lefty clan (with slight apology to my brother ... who maybe sensibly seems to kind of go with the current general tide).

While Mareen nearly never has anything that I much agree with to say, I gotta admit that she has great taste in brothers. I do strongly compliment her for never rising to levels of snobbery where her poor family had to be "Un-familied.

The whole thing is good, but "France without the food" is an excellent description of what the liberal target America is:

The voters left no doubt about their feeling for his super-nanny state where the government controls all aspects of their lives and freedoms. Warning signs were up in the three elections held in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey and with the noisy birth of the Tea Party. But the president, swathed in the protective cocoon of adulation and affirmation from the media and his own sycophants, soldiered on in his determination to turn our country into just another member of the failed European union — France without the food.

Poor Mareen ... a bad election loss for her makes T-day a real test. I'm pretty sure that 2004 was one of her saddest laments. Perhaps there is more news from what I'm sure I would find to be her wonderful family to share with us!

If only the NYT would pick up Kevin and fire her! I think she could produce a column almost as good as Kevin once or twice a year.