Sure, I’ve never paid that much attention to the judiciary, figuring that, well, they’re probably more erudite than I. Other than rejecting the DoJ’s motion to dismiss in the VA ObamaCare suit, the headline-making actions of our nation’s judges raise the question of whether a judge can be impeached upon the basis of idiocy. Or, perhaps more gently, couldn’t these knobs go write screenplays or something, where the ripple effects of their vast creativity wouldn’t weaken societal institutions and security? Continue reading Foppish Munch-head’s Jacked-up Ruling: Annoying →
Gary Marx at TNR has a little picker-upper concerning Justice Kagan, the bullet points of which I’ll repeat, but RTWT:
This 63–37 vote was a victory for judicial conservatives.
The climate regarding judicial nominations has been radically altered.
Major interest groups that traditionally have not played a role in Supreme Court battles are moving toward the side of judicial restraint…
There were some surprising no votes.
Ultimately, the Kagan debate was about the size and role of the national government, and the role of judges within that government.
In summary, we have to hang in there and fight the good fight, even with an undesirable outcome. In a system full of compromise, making the downpayment on this fight affords a basis for subsequent victory. The opposition wants you to cry, punt, and let them complete the task of replacing our Federalist system with a crappy Socialist imitation that dishonors liberty.
To the defeatists we must say no, no, no, no, a thousand nos, and, again: get stuffed.
Uncoverage posts a startling article by ChuckDeVore.com that shows:
According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749. This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt. Voters with a propensity to elect politicians who burden future generations who can’t yet vote with huge debts voted for Obama while fiscally responsible voters generally voted for McCain.
Fiscal security is the only thing more important than border security. Social issues? What are they but distractors?
Hot Air comes at this point from the CA Prop 8 vantage, quoting a CA Republican Party chair:
“This election needs to revolve around five issues: taxes, spending, the economy, jobs and debt,” said Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party. “That doesn’t mean that other issues aren’t important — they are important — but the first issue on the minds of people is the economy.”
Things are so bad, that even the Queen of Cluelessness is starting to catch on that there may be some trouble a-brewin’:
The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. America always claimed to be, and meant to be, a nation that made little of class. But America is human. “The richest family in town,” they said, admiringly. Read Booth Tarkington on turn-of-the-last-century Indiana. It’s all about trying to rise.
Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn’t do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won’t be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.
Keep thinking, Peggy–you may beat Paul Krugman (h/t Insty) in the race to enlightenment. Past the finish line sit the Founding Fathers, who, in their pre-Industrial Revolution wisdom, saw that liberty was the goal.
Here is a great straight-to-YouTube Trifecta:
This Trifecta episode is a great tactical point, but, for all that, we have to understand that this November is a mere down-payment. Stand by. The new blood will get sworn into office, and discover just How Completely Frobnicated the whole situation is. If the leadership feels We The People have their back, there may, potentially, be some whacking of the Federal hydra in the 112th Congress. Historically, the professionals get accepted into the Ruling Class, and get their Sith Lord makeover.
If we merely light up a maduro and congratulate ourselves on the successful group blogger-bation, by 2012, the Tea Party energy will be the political equivalent of Springsteen’s Glory Days, and the Lindsey Graham and John McCain clones will continue to make patriotic noises while treating the Constitution with the affection afforded a urinal cake.
Remember, this hairball has been a century in the making, and will, at bare minimum, require a decade of your best effort just to get that hydra chopped down to something reasonably un-lethal. Incumbency is the enemy. We The People can either rule, or enjoy slavery.
Set against the backdrop of today’s headline – 67% of Americans don’t approve of Obama’s economic policies, the film takes a provocative look at our deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama and shows the marked contrast between Reaganomics and Obamanomics. The film contrasts two views of the role that the federal government should play in our daily lives using the words and actions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you; the other believes that the elite in Washington know how to best allocate your wealth. One champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and even daring to dream and build big. The other holds that there is no end to the “good” the government can do by taking and spending other peoples’ money in an ever-burgeoning list of programs. The documentary film I Want Your Money exposes the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state.
This could be good. I hope the film exposes the fact that the Federal Reserve is close to, if not the root of, all this evil. While it may be a stretch to End the Fed outright, and perhaps savvy politics for the GOP to be keeping a low profile about Paul Ryan, the GOP needs to quit being coy and step up to the Federalist plate now, now, now.
Spare the outrage. Elections have consequences. Pretty much everyone, through omission or commission, supported the 2008 election outcome. So pony up, ye bizatchez, and consider what we’re doing about this in three months and 27 months.
Critics say Handel is trying to have it both ways, hammering Deal for alleged ethical lapses and then crying sexism over a release from his campaign that labeled his female supporters “real women.” “There is some real hypocrisy,” said Orit Sklar, a 25-year-old Deal backer from Alpharetta, who had been a Fulton County organizer for another Republican candidate, Eric Johnson.
Sklar said that as a conservative woman she’s been feeling “some pressure to view the Republican runoff in terms of identity – in terms of gender – rather than issues.” “But I frankly think what Karen Handel is doing is unbecoming for someone who wants to be our governor,” Sklar said.
My friend Erick Erickson of Red State is backing Handel, who also got the endorsement of Sarah Palin. However, Orit is a protégé of the legendary Phil Kent and any friend of Phil’s is a friend of mine. Therefore, the choice is clear:
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that Jesus’s Golden Rule inspired him to vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested it would be a good thing for his Senate colleagues to also ponder Jesus’s words as they prepared to vote on Kagan.
What an insufferable twit! By the standard of the Golden Rule, we’re all theologically equivalent. Lindsey should, by this logic, be proud to confirm Lyndon LaRouche, should the POTUS, in some pique, see fit to nominate the gentleman.
“It is divine in its orientation, and it is probably something that would serve us all well if we thought about it at moments such as this,” Sen. Graham said on the Senate floor, as he pointed his colleagues to the Golden Rule and counseled them to look to the wisdom of “somebody far wiser than I am” as they cast their votes on Kagan.
You see, Senator Graham, the confirmation process is about getting people in place who understand and support the Federal Constitution. Starting from the document and its ideals, and moving on a path towards Elena Kagan, you should have realized that there was a “Bridge Out” sign on the road.
Maybe the people of your state hold you in some regard, but some asbestos knickers might be a good investment before you’re up for re-election.
Wow, these dudes make sense:The notion that the government, especially the federal government, should involve itself in marriage may need to be reviewed. I should not be imposing on these gentlemen to support my hyper-conservative views on baptism, and I appreciate that they are not asking me to justify their private practices.
The meaning of the word ‘marriage’ is as invariant as ‘illegal’. The notion that some prefix ‘marriage’ in their effort to render a constant symbol somehow mutable is tiring, tiring, tiring. Also, a distraction from actual threats to liberty.
So, kudos to these fellows for taking what is likely to prove the all-around least-worst compromise to the whole situation: spending less time minding each others’ business.
UPDATE III: I was unsuccessful in persuading Kate Obenshain to don the famous fedora, alas:
UPDATE IV: Wow, what a coincidence that I should run into a fellow Atlanta native here at the YAF conference:
Sarah Perkins, an alumna of Fulton County’s Westlake High, with Alyssa Cordova of the Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Sarah is now attending Smith College (an elite “Seven Sisters” school), and told me that her dad went to school with Herman Cain. How cool is that, huh?
