The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

CBO: Stimulus Cost More, Did Less

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

Recovery bummer:

After nearly all the stimulus money has been spent, the Congressional Budget Office now admits it cost more than advertised, did less to boost growth and will hurt the economy in the long run.
In its latest quarterly report on the economic effects of the Obama stimulus, the CBO sharply lowered its “worst case” scenario while trimming many of its upper-bound estimates for stimulus-fueled growth and employment.
The new report finds, for example, that the stimulus may have added as little as 0.7% to GDP growth in 2010 — when spending was at its peak — and created as few as 700,000 new jobs. . . .
So in other words, the CBO now says it’s possible that the stimulus had virtually no meaningful effect on growth and employment despite its massive price tag. . . .
All this comes after the CBO increased that price tag to $825 billion from its initial $787 billion — a 5% hike.

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Category: Economics

Journalist Says She Was Molested in Custody by Egyptian ‘Security’ Forces

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 8 Comments

Is this a logical sequel to the “Arab Spring”?

The US-based Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been released, according to her personal Twitter account, after 12 hours in detention at the hands of Cairo security forces. A later tweet from the account @monaeltahawy said that she was sexually and physically assaulted while being held inside the interior ministry in Cairo, in the early hours of Thursday morning. . . .
At 10:30am on Thursday, the former Reuters Middle East correspondent who has been lauded for her recent coverage of the Egyptian uprising, began tweeting that she had spent 12 hours in detention under the authority of interior ministry and military intelligence officials and that she had suffered a serious sexual assault by up to half a dozen members of the Egyptian security forces. She also said that she had been kept blindfolded for hours and also posted a picture of her severely bruised hand and then both her arms in casts.

A few more “Arab Autumn” headlines from Memeorandum:

Egyptian Generals Apologize for
Bloodshed but Reject Calls to Leave Power

U.S. urges Americans
to leave Syria “immediately”

Leaked UN report reveals torture,
lynchings and abuse in post-Gaddafi Libya

A few weeks ago, discussing Libya on Red Eye, Kevin Williamson used the phrase “desert savages,” which is politically incorrect, but when we see savagery like this, who can say it isn’t also accurate?

Category: Egypt, Libya, Syria

An Article So Excellent You Use A Blog Post As A Sort Of Bookmark For It

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Yuval Levin at the National Review Online:

But the Tea Party has been very unusual for an American populist movement. It has not been focused on soaking the rich, as left-wing populists always have been. It has not even been primarily focused on reducing the tax burden on the middle class, as right-wing populists usually are. Rather, the Tea Party has focused on restraining government. It originated in outrage about federal bailouts, and has directed its energies toward pulling back the cost and reach of the state. It has asked for fewer government giveaways, not more. It has even given voice to a tight-money populism, criticizing the Federal Reserve for inviting inflation — a far cry from populists of old. And the Tea Party has also been intensely focused on recovering the U.S. Constitution, and especially its limits on government power (and therefore on the public’s power) — another very unusual goal for a populist movement.

Read the whole thing, contrasting the Left’s flailing for the last three years with the Tea Parties and the Founders in a scholarly way, with a number of historical references I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read yet.

Thank you very much for this, Mr. Levin.

Category: Tea Party

#Occupy Black Friday?

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 15 Comments

“Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America’s heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world.”
— cover blurb for Sam Walton: Made in America

Among the many things we should be thankful for this Thanksgiving, despite our current economic woes, is the free enterprise system. But guess who doesn’t like capitalism?

Occupy protesters want shoppers to occupy something besides door-buster sales and crowded mall parking lots on Black Friday. . . .
In Seattle, protesters are carpooling to Wal-Mart stores to protest with other Occupy groups from around Washington state. . . .
Protesters say the movement shouldn’t take away money and seasonal jobs from the working-class majority it says it represents. The corporations, not the shoppers, are the focus of any protests, they say. But organizers hope their actions drive people to reconsider frenzied bargain shopping at national chains and direct their attention to small, locally owned stores.

We know Occupiers are stupid, but the fathomless depth of their ignorance simply amazes me: How do you demonize “corporations” but exempt from your criticism the shoppers whose purchases supply revenue to those businesses? Aren’t the customers and employees — by their voluntary cooperation in the capitalist enterprise — as guilty as the corporate CEO? And why do the Occupy protesters think Wal-Mart is evil, while the local mom-and-pop store is OK? The Associated Press asked some economists about the “shop local” mentality:

Shopping only local neglects economies of scale, job specialization and other pluses that big, multi-state retailers offer, said George Mason University economist Russ Roberts.
“Don’t punish yourself by not shopping where you can get the best deal; that’s foolish,” Roberts said.
And, fair or not, small businesses aren’t necessarily the best employers in terms of wages, benefits, opportunities for advancement and other measures, said John Quinterno, principal at the public policy research firm South by North Strategies in Chapel Hill, N.C.
He calculates that small mom-and-pops, which he defines as businesses with fewer than 10 employees, account for nearly 80% of employers in the U.S., but only about 11% of the jobs.
“Sometimes we romanticize small business — and I say this as a small business owner myself — so that it skews some of our debates about economic and labor policy,” Quinterno said. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t important. It just means that larger businesses tend to create a lot more value-added per job.”

Look: Mom-and-pop businesses have to compete in the marketplace, and the existence of gigantic retailers requires small entrepreneurs to be innovative, to work harder and smarter to find a niche in which they can compete successfully. And in most cases, the giant corporations that Occupiers hate began as tiny local businesses: Sam Walton started out as the owner of one store in Arkansas.

While we’re at it, why should Occupiers focus on Wal-Mart? Why not Sears, Best Buy, Target, Costco, or Dollar General? Aren’t all of those “corporations”? Aren’t they offering Black Friday specials? Aren’t the stockholders and executives of those companies as avidly in search of profits as Wal-Mart? Isn’t it only Wal-Mart’s spectacular success that makes them an especial focus of anti-capitalist rage?

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy flash mob fails to impress Walmart workers.“A two minute ‘flash mob’ by members of Occupy’s Santa Ana contingent left some Walmart employees feeling disrespected and confused.”

Why Wal-Mart? Because the Occupiers are ignorant, that’s why. Their arguments against capitalism appeal to the worst emotions — envy and self-pity — of people who fail under the free-enterprise system because they haven’t made the effort to understand the free-enterprise system.

You know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see FreedomWorks, Media Research Center, Accuracy in Media or some other conservative group send out groups of activists armed with video cameras and a sack of books: Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics.

Imagine the video footage as the free-market activists ask the Occupiers, “Hey, have you read Basic Economics? . . . Have you ever heard of Thomas Sowell? . . . Well, here, I’ll give you a free copy of this book, by one of America’s most famous black intellectuals . . .” Read more

Category: Amazon, Economics

America’s Stupid Future

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 28 Comments

Zombie remarks: “Look deep into her eyes: Is she the stupidest person on Earth, or does she actually know what she’s advocating?” (The death toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution is estimated from 1.5 million to 20 million.)

Her name is Colleen. She’s a 20-year-old student from Vermont — 95% white, where the unemployment rate is a relatively low 5.6%.

She attends Johnson State College, where in-state tuition is a modest $8,568 a year. We may therefore dismiss as implausible any idea that Colleen is part of an oppressed group whose plight justifies “revolution,” cultural or otherwise. So why was she in Zuccotti Park last week? Dunno.

It’s the romanticization of victimhood. Liberalism teaches kids to identify so profoundly with “victims” that, no matter how comfortable or privileged their own circumstances may be, they have to protest on behalf of the downtrodden, the exploited, the oppressed. Otherwise, they feel inauthentic, full of guilt about being un-victimized. See: “Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It.”

At Occupy L.A., a protester who complained that the movement was being controlled by Communists found himself confronted and shouted down by . . . Communists.

Category: #Occupy, Progressivism

Ezra Klein: The Wetness At Your Ankle Is Progressive Flooding

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

In this sense, we mean:

Progressive flooding is the additional flooding of spaces which were not previously assumed to be damaged. Such additional flooding may occur through openings or pipes as indicated. . .progressive indeed

Ezra, the Juice Box Mafioso and Senate Democrat Briefer, outdoes himself in today’s exercise in Not Getting It. Or maybe he does, and just phones in today’s attempt to flog the Republican wing of the sinking ship’s bridge.

Klein offers up two paragraphs of context for his point, that the GOP has a ‘dual trigger nightmare’, before touching on the Blame Bush theme in para 3. Para 4 gives us:

So now there are two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on…January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That’s far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It’s distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing.

Congress has been doing nothing like its job since 2008, Ezra. It’s not even worth worrying whether the ship of state has been on the current course as a diabolical plot or due to incompetence: she’s stacked up on a sea mount and sinking. The Stupor Committee was dead on arrival this Spring; the only real improvement is that we can now chuck the corpses overboard an allusion to The Camp of the Saints. Further along:

So the GOP is not without options. But the Democrats are in the driver’s seat. Gridlock means a deficit deal that they could never have imagined getting any other way. Basic negotiating theory would suggest that whatever the Republicans offer them must somehow be better even than that. And yet, that’s not how either party is acting. Republicans don’t seem particularly worried about the triggers and Democrats don’t seem particularly interested in pressing their advantage. At least for now.

Basic negotiating theory would be predicated on having something to negotiate about. The stock market is capsizing, the economy is parked on the sea bottom, and you want to discuss the finer points of negotiation? Congresscritters have eleven more months before the next election. Look for them to be more worried about stock scandals and inflating their rubber duckies.

You want to know what Congress is going to do about tax reform, Ezra? No more than it already has. The Constitution, that ancient document you don’t think anyone understands, has performed its essential task of slowing tyranny, with a restraining order in 2010. And we’re less than a year from another round of help arriving. With some more exceptional, patriotic American effort, we can (a) remove you and your ilk to a safer distance from the controls and (b) set about doing useful damage control. Eventually, we’ll float ‘er again and get back on our proper course toward liberty.

But thanks, Ezra. It’s always a source of an inspirational pep talk to peer into your twisted little mind. You always seem to be the guy who thinks himself too smart, knowing all of these Important People, and standing too close to the problem. In short, Ezra, your column might be better titled ‘Wankbook’.

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Democrats

Born That Way: The Strange Sisterhood Of Meggie Mac And San Fran Nan

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 21 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Young Miss McCain is in the news again, pouting that Newt isn’t taking her seriously. This is just common sense on the former speaker’s part. No Republican, much less conservative, with two functional brain cells regards the daughter of Stacy’s Crazy Cousin John as anything but an object for derision and mockery. Like other wannabe pundits in her age group, she expects to be treated as a respected pundit despite a track record of behavior that doesn’t qualify one as Republican, much less conservative. And why this expectation? Because she is, after all, the daughter of a Senator prominent in the GOP, one who was recently nominated as its presidential candidate.

Never mind that the father has spent decades teaching his daughter by example by sticking his thumb in the eye of conservatives; never mind that Miss McCain has produced no works showing evidence of coherent thought or cognition. She demands respect; she is Republican by birth and theoretically prominent in the younger element of the GOP. One wonders whether she’d actually be welcome among real live Young Republicans or the Young Americans for Freedom.

Turning now to the former Speaker of the House and supposed Catholic Nancy Pelosi, who lately insisted that Republicans were determined to see women dead on the floors of doctors’ offices on account of their opposition to Federal abortion funding, I see in the news that Pelosi has been called out on the obvious conflicts between her religion and her political actions. Pelosi claims to be a Catholic, and one of the notable policies of that religion is a staunch opposition to abortion. This is not some muddled policy paper produced by lay staffers and signed by fuddled bishops, but a declaration from Pope after Pope from the Chair of Peter. It is no more debatable than the divinity of Christ or transubstantiation. For the ex-Speaker to opine that “Catholics of good conscience can disagree with the Church’s position on abortion” is not only wrong, but given her position, actively damaging to the Church since she is in a position of public influence and highly visible. Pelosi was born Catholic, and seems to follow the rituals by habit, but in practice she is no more Catholic than Meggie Mac is actually Republican.

Neither Catholicism nor Republicanism are ethnic groups or tribes. You can’t simply be born into them. There are basic doctrines that must be conformed to if you want to be taken seriously. If you don’t, you confuse people about what the Church or the GOP stand for, and those of us who are serious about our politics and our faith are obliged to oppose you. In the case of Nancy Pelosi, it’s incumbent on both the hierarchy and lay members of the Church to call her out on her wishful thinking; it the case of Meggie Mac, it is incumbent on all right-thinking Republicans and conservatives to mock, deride, taunt and ridicule the young airhead until the stops being such a public spectacle and somehow finds a clue. Or, as Tammy Bruce suggests:

Category: Abortion, Catholics, Democrats, Meghan McCain, Republicans

#Occupy Ignorance: Elizabeth Who?

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

Aleister at American Glob was yukking it up over the stunning incoherence of these idiots at Occupy Boston interviewed by Holly Robichaud of the Boston Herald:

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.”
— Elizabeth Warren, referring to Occupy Wall Street

“In 1996, Warren was the third-highest compensated employee at [Harvard] university. Warren and her husband now live in a $1.7 million Cambridge home.”
— Sam Jacobs, The Daily Beast

Christmas Gift Idea: Zippo Lighter Classic, $18.65

 
 

Category: #Occupy, Massachusetts
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