the mystery of France is how a nation can witness what happens to countries that live beyond their means and yet insist on living beyond its means. France’s debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to 90% this year from 59% a decade ago. It spends more of its GDP on welfare payments (28.4%) than any other state in the developed world. It has an employment rate of 62.8%, as compared to Germany’s 76.5% or Switzerland’s 82.9%…Americans should also take note that we aren’t so different from France, either: in our debt-to-GDP ratio, our employment rate, our credit rating. Above all, both in France and in America there’s a belief that, as exceptional nations, we are impervious to the forces that make other nations fall. It’s the conceit that, sooner or later, brings every great nation crashing to earth.
Still, France looks relatively sane compared to some of the things that are happening in the US.
Is the tea party breaking up?…it appears that the tea party may well be a victim of its own success. In 2010, it proved its powers — beating establishment-backed candidates in Senate races in Delaware, Colorado, Florida, Utah and Alaska to name a few. The result? Candidates are far more wary of crossing the tea party this time around, moving to embrace it rather than stare it down. “The reason for the appearance of less tea party success is that the establishment candidates have moved markedly to the right this cycle,” said Jon Lerner, a Republican consultant. “As the establishment candidates have moved to the right, there is less of a gap for tea party candidates to exploit.” Hatch is a perfect example of that phenomenon. The six-term senator spent much of the past two years relentlessly courting the tea party wing of the Utah GOP and moving his voting record to the ideological right. (In 2008, Hatch was ranked as the 29th most conservative senator in National Journal’s vote ratings. By 2011, he was up to 15th.) Romney, too, moved to the right on fiscal issues in hopes of keeping any tea party revolt at bay. And if you needed an example of the influence the tea party’s no-compromise approach to fiscal austerity has had on the GOP, look no further than an August presidential debate in which all eight candidates said they would not accept a budget deal that included $10 in spending cuts to every $1 in revenue increases.
In a certain sense, just like the spoon, there is no tea party. The Tea Party is much more of a virtual phenomenon than some bricks-and-mortar organization or two. It’s similar to what used to be called the silent majority, though they’re not really silent any longer, since everyone is online. In the tea party election of 2010, the independents flipped by 33 points. We see no reason for that to change, and we are of the view that, generally speaking, conservatives would crawl over broken glass to vote this year — with the remaining Reagan Democrats not far behind.
The controversialist, Lord Monckton, gave a lecture at Union College:
“There’s a CONSENSUS!” she shrieked. “That, Madame, is intellectual baby-talk,” replied Lord Monckton. Had she not heard of Aristotle’s codification of the commonest logical fallacies in human discourse, including that which the medieval schoolmen would later describe as the argumentum ad populum, the headcount fallacy? From her reddening face and baffled expression, it was possible to deduce that she had not. Nor had she heard of the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appealing to the reputation of those in authority…
he proposed to begin, in silence, by displaying some slides demonstrating the unhappy consequences of several instances of consensus in the 20th century. The Versailles consensus of 1918 imposed reparations on the defeated Germany, so that the conference that ended the First World War (15 million dead) sowed the seeds of the Second. The eugenics consensus of the 1920s that led directly to the dismal rail-yards of Oswiecim and Treblinka (6 million dead). The appeasement consensus of the 1930s that provoked Hitler to start World War II (60 million dead). The Lysenko consensus of the 1940s that wrecked 20 successive harvests in the then Soviet Union (20 million dead). The ban-DDT consensus of the 1960s that led to a fatal resurgence of malaria worldwide (40 million children dead and counting, 1.25 million of them last year alone).
Even a NYT columnist agrees with the last point. Consensus!
It’s not difficult to construct a plan to add a million or more jobs in the US and stop sending the better part of $4 trillion a decade overseas, while at the same time adding to domestic security by making the Straits of Hormuz largely irrelevant to vital American economic interests. Since the President has made an issue out of Keystone and goes on about solar and algae and nonsense, should Governor Romney go on the offensive by announcing a serious ten-year plan for energy independence? (He could toss in a couple of paragraphs about green-this and green-that for the folks in the suburbs.) Of course the media will hate it, and the professoriat and so forth, but maybe that’s a good thing in this particular election cycle.
We probably have 1000 trillion cubic feet of shale gas alone in the US. We consume about 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, so exploiting our own resources is a no brainer, and there’s substantial opportunity to do so with this clean fuel. And this resource will last quite a while, at least until we’re flying around in cars powered by hydrogen and good vibes.
By the way, 1000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is the energy equivalent of around 167 billion barrels of oil (at a 6:1 ratio). Including ANWR, US oil and gas reserves total 130 billion barrels or so (though that estimate may understate US reserves by a factor of as much as 10x!). So, even granting that all of the various objections to shale gas are true (here and here, for example), shale gas appears to double US petroleum resources or at least take them much farther into the future. It is the height of foolishness not to be exploiting this domestic resource as quickly as can be accomplished profitably.
There are many reasons to move quickly. We import 70% of our oil, and that’s unhealthy when so much of the world market flows through an unstable region. It is irresponsible to ignore this issue. The cost of importing 10 million barrels a day of oil is $365 billion at $100 a barrel. That’s almost $4 trillion over the course of a decade. It’s ridiculous to send all that money overseas, especially given the unsustainable trade imbalances of the United States.
But the final issue that makes this an attractive campaign theme for 2012 is the jobs crisis in America. Why are we exporting good paying oil and gas, oil service, and support industry jobs (like some steel production) to be done by foreign workers? Question: how dumb is that as a government policy, given a 20% unemployment rate in a key demographic? Answer: about as dumb as a 7-year moratorium on offshore drilling.
First they claimed Republicans were waging a “war on women,” which seemed to be working for them until Democratic superstar Hilary Rosen declared her contempt for women who spend their lives raising children at the expense of more elevated pursuits like flacking for the record industry and BP.
Then the effort to shame Romney over his unusual treatment of a family pet went to the dogs when Obama turned out to have a canine tooth, and we don’t mean his cuspids. As a result, otherwise unrelated stories have become occasions for laughter at the president’s expense.
CBS News reports that Greg Stokes, one of the agents fired in the Colombia prostitution scandal, “was recently listed on the internet as the supervisor of the Canine Training Section of the Secret Service.” We hear they once asked Stokes to double as the president’s food taster, but he had to turn down the assignment because it would be a conflict of interest.
We don’t buy it that this is a close election. When you’re getting a Bronx cheer in Boston, things aren’t right. When MSNBC laughs at you, you’re doing something wrong. When gross mismanagement is page one in the friendliest of media, you’ve got a problem. We think that, if the election were held today, the outcome would be far worse than the shellacking of 2010. Of course there are ways to couterbalance these problems come November, but right now it looks about 60-40 to us, despite what they tell you in the media.
The line of polygamists in Obama’s family can be traced back generations in western Kenya, where it was an accepted practice within the Luo (pronounced LOO-oh) tribe. His great-grandfather, Obama Opiyo, had five wives, including two who were sisters. His grandfather, Hussein Onyango, had at least four wives, one of whom, Akumu, gave birth to the president’s father, Barack Obama, before fleeing her abusive husband. Obama Sr. was already married when he left Kenya to study at the University of Hawaii, where he married again. His American wife-to-be, Stanley Ann Dunham, was not yet 18 and unaware of his marital situation when she became pregnant with his namesake son in 1961. The line of polygamists in the Romney family traces back generations, when it was an accepted practice in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His paternal great-grandfathers, Miles Park Romney and Helaman Pratt, were born in the United States but lived for decades in Mexico. Pratt was a Mormon missionary there; Miles Park Romney left Utah for Mexico with a tribe of polygamous Mormons after the Mormon church broke with the practice of polygamy in 1890. Pratt had five wives. Miles Park Romney had four, and 30 children, one of whom was Gaskell Romney. The polygamy stopped at Gaskell, who had a single wife and seven children. One of the children, George, was born in a Mormon colony in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, although he was nonetheless a U.S. citizen. He was Mitt’s father.
the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has a large Democratic oversample (D+11), so his job approval is positive and fairly healthy looking at 50-45. Ditto the CBS News/New York Times poll that came out last night (D+8) at 48-42. On the other hand, Gallup, Rasmussen, Fox, and a few others consistently show a tighter spread between the two parties, thus making his job approval look worse. For what it is worth, actual election results over the last 10 years tend to reflect the latter batch of polls in terms of party ID, and no election in 20 years has had as outsized a Democratic advantage as what the ABC News/Washington Post or CBS News/New York Times polls regularly “find.”
60% of adults self-identified as Democrats in 1964, and that number has declined substantially since then. The most recent election featured equal numbers of D and R voters. We suppose the NYT and the WaPo think they are influencing opinion with such polling, but perhaps what they are really doing is lulling their readers into a false sense of complacency.
On MSNBC of all places. Recipes from a favorite eating Spot: yorkshire terrier pudding, mutt chop, Pekingese duck, bichon frisee salad, beagle with cream cheese, pure bread. HT: Ace and Ace
Egypt’s central bank reported that total reserves had fallen to $15 billion, but — more importantly — liquid foreign exchange reserves had fallen to only $9 billion, equivalent to just two months’ imports. Foreign exchange futures markets expect the Egyptian pound to lose half its value during the next year, and Egyptians have responded by hoarding diesel fuel, propane gas and other necessities. With half of Egypt’s population living on $2 a day or less, the expected devaluation would push a significant part of the population below minimum nutrition levels
Katrina vanden Heuvel: “our politics are failing to deal with the massive deep-seeded problems this country has…why do we have inequality akin to Egypt’s?”
The dominant narrative since the beginning of 2012 has been that President Obama has regained his footing after a rocky 2011 and is trending upward. Ask 10 political types who will win in November, and eight of them (or so) will say Obama.
The piece then goes on to discuss conflicting polls, including the flagrantly manipulated CNN poll the other day that had Romney losing by nine points. Meanwhile, a “new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 36% would choose the Democrat.” That is surely a significant data point.
It only serves Democrats’ interests to use phony samples and adults, not likely voters, if legacy media outlets control the narrative. Otherwise, it’s an unhelpful exercise in self-delusion.
Perhaps the problem is even worse than that. The NYT’s Tom Friedman: “Obama, who has a plan to cut, tax and invest — albeit insufficiently — could lead, but, for now, he seems preoccupied with some rather uninspiring small ball, preferring proposals like ‘the Buffett tax’ over comprehensive tax reform that would lower all rates, eliminate deductions and raise more revenue.” If even Mr. Friedman can see through the malarky that comes from this crew in Washington, things must be bad indeed.
Health-care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds…CBO and Medicare actuaries acknowledge the double-counting issue. “In practice, the improved [trust fund] financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions) and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from” traditional budget rules, Medicare actuary Rick Foster wrote last year. And in 2010, the CBO wrote that, absent the Medicare savings, the law would increase deficits by $226 billion through 2019 — instead of decreasing them by the commonly cited $132 billion. In arriving at his deficit figure of $340 billion, Blahous updates the numbers through 2021 and subtracts savings that would have come from another provision of the law: the CLASS Act, a long-term-care program that was supposed to have generated as much as $86 billion in new revenue through 2021. The administration acknowledged last year that the CLASS Act is unworkable and suspended efforts to implement it. “This isn’t just a persnickety point about the intricacies of budget law,” Blahous said. “If Medicare were going insolvent in 2016, you’d better believe right now there would be more pressure on lawmakers to do something about it. . . . It’s essential that there be a full public understanding of the most economically significant federal law in years.”
Response: “Administration officials dismissed the study, arguing that it departs from bipartisan budget rules.” It’s only arithmetic if we say it is! HT: IBD
On the morning of March 24, “Jim” emailed Ayers at his University of Illinois at Chicago address: “Jack Cashill’s new book makes an overwhelming case that you wrote ‘Dreams from My Father.’ In addition it recounts an encounter with a blogger, Anne Leary, in October 2009 at Reagan airport where you acknowledged to her that you wrote the book.” Jim continued, “Why don’t you just go public with a straightforward statement about your role?”…
Ayers responded politely to Jim an hour later, “As you note in you letter, I did indeed acknowledge that I wrote the book to Anne at Reagan, and over and over since then. So what more do you want me to do?” Ayers continued, “OK, I’ll try again, loudly: I wrote ‘Dreams from My Father,’ Jim!!! Please, please help me prove it -– you seem like a smart guy, and maybe you could find a smart lawyer –- and I’ll split the royalties with you! xxx Bill.”
Not that we care about the authorship issue at this point, but Mr. Ayers does seem genuinely ticked off that no one has sent him a check. HT: PL
On one of the Sunday shows (via RCP) a political adviser said this:
The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class, that gives people a chance to get ahead, gives their kids a chance to get ahead and an economy that continues down the road we’re on
We blame George W. Bush! This is such an interesting slip-up from so many angles. No wonder they want to change the subject, and are using outlandish narratives to energize the base and keep people distracted.
The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco…The bush — a Franciscan manzanita — was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.” Prior to the discovery of this “wild” Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years — extinct, that is, outside of people’s yards…
The agreement of Dec. 21, 2009 – Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Planning, Development, and Implementation of the Conservation Plan for Franciscan Manzanita – explains how, why, and when the bush would be moved and which agencies would be responsible for which aspects of the move….While the MOA did not detail all the costs for moving the bush, it did state that in addition to funding removal and transportation of the Franciscan manzanita, Caltrans agreed to transfer $79,470 to the Presidio Trust “to fund the establishment, nurturing, and monitoring of the Mother Plant in its new location for a period not to exceed ten (10) years following relocation and two (2) years for salvaged rooted layers and cuttings according to the activities outlined in the Conservation Plan…
the “hard removal” — n.b. actually digging up the plant, putting it on a truck, driving it somewhere else and replanting it — cost $100,000….The $100,000 to pay for the “hard removal,” the $79,470 to pay for the “establishment, nurturing and monitoring” of the plant for a decade after its “hard removal,” and the $25,605 to cover the “reporting requirements” for the decade after the “hard removal,” equaled a total cost of $205,075 for “translocating” this manzanita bush…
Contract for and provide funding not to exceed $7,025.00 for initial genetic or chromosomal testing of the Mother Plant by a qualified expert to be selected at Caltrans’ sole discretion…Provide funding not to exceed $5,000.00 to each of 3 botanical gardens (Strybing, UC, and Tilden) to nurture salvaged rooted layers…Provide funding not to exceed $1,500.00 for the long-term seed storage of 300 seeds collected around the Mother Plant
What’s striking about Rosen’s latest ideological sniper attack is that she is not some lone-wolf operative on the fringes of Beltway influence. She works with former White House communications director Anita Dunn at the D.C.-based strategic communications consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker. That’s the same company that promoted the anti-Palin smear movie “Game Change” and that represented liberal Georgetown law school student activist and manufactured War on Women poster woman Sandra Fluke. Smack dab at the intersection of progressive agitation and Democratic Party campaign-season maneuvering. White House visitor logs (which nonpartisan watchdogs point out are woefully incomplete) show that “Hilary B. Rosen” or “Hilary Rosen” has visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. at least 35 times, including several direct meetings with President Obama (5); White House senior adviser and consigliere Valerie Jarrett; senior adviser David Axelrod; senior adviser turned 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina; and a parade of communications/media team officials in both the West Wing “surrogate booking” office and the East Wing. Axelrod and Messina, who took to Twitter immediately Thursday night after the social networking site exploded with a conservative mom backlash, scrambled to disassociate themselves from their frequent visitor. POTUS and FLOTUS followed suit. But when you collect and connect the dots, Rosen’s role as a surrogate hit-woman for the White House is unmistakable.
According to the CBO, the Buffett rule would raise $3.2 billion a year (the WSJ says it will actually add to the deficit). 3.2 billion. That’s about a dollar for every word we’ve heard about this gimmick.
The electoral strategy at the White House has included large efforts, coordinated with the media, to shore up support and enthusiasm among key elements of the base. Hence the elaborate theatrical production called the War on Women, and the extended Law and Order episode that the Martin / Zimmerman case has become.
The problem is that the narratives are gross distortions of reality. Those on the Left don’t think so, they think that the narratives are real, that conservatives really are waging a war on women when they’re taking a break from waging their war on minorities. They really believe the things they say, as is clear when they won’t back off saying them after they have become a political liability.
The issue becomes time. You can make a spectacular and inflammatory charge once or twice, but it becomes hard to sustain over an extended period of time if it makes no sense. In the Martin case, even if the most lurid accusations are true, they stand for nothing as a generalization, since there are only 200 such incidents a year in a country of 300,000,000 people, and counterexamples abound. Likewise, using the War on Women cookie-cutter as a template to smear conservatives eventually winds up sounding absurd.
What happens next? We don’t know, but we observe that in some respects, the meta-story has become the story. The Zimmerman story is not an important national story. The contraception story was never an important national story. What both stories illustrate is just how far in the tank the media are for the White House, that they will resort to anything to advance a political agenda. The open and unapologetic corruption in the media is an important national story. We’ll just have to wait and see if it’s true that nature abhors a vacuum.
It is “arguable” that one of the single worst financial decisions a woman can make in this country is to become a mother. Regardless of whether she gets paid…Today’s cynical Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney “Gasp!” is nothing more than this week’s politically flavored sexist-media-loves-a-”cat”-fight. What is “working woman” versus “stay-at-home” code for? For the most part it is code for “what is a woman’s relationship to a man and what is his earning potential?” It’s a paternalistic, sexist framework that subordinates women either way. That’s why this is not about a mommy war. It’s about keeping women dependent
there is a deeper, philosophical reason for the left’s enmity toward full-time mothers, which the Bookworm Room explains succinctly: they are a critical counterweight to the power of the state: I am the counterweight to the state. Therefore, I am dangerous. I am subversive simply by existing. My love for my children is a dominant force that works its way into their psyches and that trumps the state-run schools and the state complicit media world. Some mothers, of course, are entirely in sync with schools and media. They happily reinforce the statist message. But those of us who dont are a powerful anti-statist force and we must be challenged.
