John McCain Gets His Queeg On

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“Bitter”? “Unprincipled”? “Self-pitying”? Gosh, it’s a shame Newsweek didn’t notice this stuff back in 1999:

Many of the GOP’s most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. “Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” . . .
His dramatic shifts raise several questions: How much of his maverick persona over the years has been real and how much simply tactical? . . .  Is the anger people sense in him anger at Obama, or the American electorate, or fate, or himself? . . .
Something about John McCain leaves people, on both left and right, feeling betrayed and disappointed. . . .
Yet catch McCain off guard—or off script—these days, and he can act authentically put-upon and self-pitying. His former champions in the press are picking on him, writing hatchet jobs, he suggests. . . . As for those pleas to bring back “the old John McCain,” it’s a familiar refrain to him, code for saying he’s unprincipled. The old John McCain, the current one insists, hasn’t gone anywhere: any changes in his positions are readily explainable tweaks rather than anything systematic or nefarious. He bristles at charges that he’s bitter.

“Ah, but the strawberries — that’s where I had them! They laughed at me and made jokes . . .”

J.D. HAYWORTH FOR U.S. SENATE

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Bad to Worse for Sorry Charlie Crist

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Even a liberal Republican like Rudy Giuliani endorses Marco Rubio:

On a conference call today with bloggers, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani discussed his endorsement of Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate, saying his endorsement goes beyond “whether Charlie Crist broke his word with me on several occasions — he did — that’s the reality, that’s the truth, he did break his word.”

(Background: Giuliani had counted on Crist’s support in the 2008 Florida primary, only to get a knife in the back when Crist endorsed John McCain instead.)

Giuliani described the movement of Congress and the Obama admin[istration] as one attempting to “move us toward becoming a European Social Democracy.” He praised Rubio, calling him “new blood” and “the future of our party.”

Well, Marco can probably survive praise from Rudy, but what else is left for Sorry Charlie? Delusions of adequacy:

Crist’s base in the GOP is virtually nonexistent, according to one Florida veteran campaign watcher I spoke with recently. Since much of the governor’s job approval over the past year has come from Florida Democrats, an Independent bid aimed at weaving together a coalition of moderate Republicans, Democrats and independents doesn’t seem impossible, at least at first blush. . . .
Crist doesn’t yet believe that he will lose the Republican race.
“Charlie still doesn’t think he’s in trouble. He thinks this is just a phase in the race, and he and his people believe that with the stuff they have [on Rubio], they can turn it around.”

Tim Mak at Frum Forum pours cold water on that silly idea:

Rudy’s endorsement is powerful because it strikes to the core of Crist’s already-dwindling support. It tells moderate Republicans that they should give Marco Rubio a second look. This endorsement could be the point in this campaign where Rubio’s ascendancy to the Republican nomination becomes inevitable.

What is truly sad, of course, is that John Cornyn and the NRSC still haven’t rescinded their endorsement of Sorry Charlie, and thus the Not One Red Cent campaign against the NRSC must continue.

Progress On The Long March Through The Institutions

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by Smitty

Gramsci counseled his side to begin a “long march through the institutions,” by which he meant the capture of the cinema, theater, schools, universities, seminaries, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and courts.

Look at what Gramsci’s intellectual offspring have achieved: “a supposed example of the nation fighting the war for commercial purposes.”

Follow up at USNI Blog and see who very righteously replied:

To think that a teacher, at the high school level, would stoop to the level of spin and rhetoric and confuse her pupils about the reason and history of our efforts at Iwo Jima where over 6000 Marines, Navy and Army died and over 16,000 were wounded is unconscionable. All died in a battle against the Japanese Imperial Forces that had first attacked us at Pearl Harbor.

In defense of the teacher, the level of brain bleaching required to attain that level of rank propaganda was likely more than an overnight effort.

The sad news is that the recovery from the Gramscian Damage will take a couple of generations. Think of our intellectual debt as being comparable to the national debt, on some abstract scale. Moses required two generations to recover the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. Technology may hasten that of the US.

Who Is Ken Buck?

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He’s the district attorney of Weld County, Colo., and a Republican Senate candidate who won last month’s precinct caucuses:

In the aftermath of his narrow win in the recent Republican caucuses, U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck told south metro business leaders that his grassroots campaign can take the credit.
“It doesn’t look like a landslide on its face, but if you look at the dollars spent per vote, it was a landslide,” he said. “My opponent spent $500,000 in the last three weeks before the caucuses.”
Buck, Weld County’s district attorney, is challenging former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton and former Douglas County state legislator Tom Wiens for the Republican nomination. While Norton is favored within the party establishment, Buck is a favorite among more populist Tea Party activists.
The prosecutor defeated Norton in the March 16 caucuses by six tenths of one percent. The modest victory may mean little in the long run. Populist, less-funded candidates are often favored by caucus activists in both parties. The nomination will be formally decided in August’s primary election.

It’s an Establishment vs. Outsider battle for the GOP nomination, another chance to kick John Cornyn in the knee. Ken Buck’s campaign site is here.

More Economic Reality

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President Obama’s biggest obstacle? Arithmetic:

The increase in jobs highlighted in the nation’s most recent unemployment report carried the sound of economic promise, but Obama administration officials said Sunday that the public shouldn’t expect any dramatic improvement in the jobless rate, largely because of the effect of thousands of “discouraged” unemployed people who have resumed their search for work.
Some economists assert that the unemployment rate, which held steady at 9.7 percent in March, is likely to be driven higher as many more such people are lured into looking for work by signs of recovery.
The number of people looking for jobs rose by more than 200,000 last month compared with February . . .
But the supply of new jobs — 162,000 in March, the biggest monthly increase in three years — will accommodate only a fraction of the unemployed. Some economists say the jobless rate will not recede to pre-recession levels near 5 percent for four more years. . . .

Meanwhile, the Senate went on their Easter recess without extending unemployment benefits — from my perspective, a very good thing, since the only way to extend the benefits is more deficit spending, but probably not viewed so favorably by those counting on an unemployment check.

The idiotic suggestion that the U.S. economy has “turned a corner” and is now in recovery — that we are on a glide-path to an unemployment rate at “pre-recession levels near 5 percent” by 2014 — requires us to ignore several potential impending catastrophes. The first of these is a likely wave of bank failures resulting from the implosion of the commercial real-estate market, possibly a financial meltdown as bad as the 2008 crisis caused by the bursting of the housing bubble.

The second looming catastrophic impact is the government “debt trap” that’s already struck Greece and now threatens Great Britain:

One of the world’s most powerful investment houses has given notice that Britain’s cherished AAA credit rating could be lost within a year, with disastrous consequences for the public finances and the stability of the financial system.
Scott Mather, the head of global portfolio management at the world’s largest bond investor Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco), also said the eurozone’s potential joint bailout of Greece with the International Monetary Fund would be ineffective.
On Monday, there was a marked sell-off of Greek government debt and an auction of bonds on Tuesday went badly. The spread between the yield on Greek bonds and German Bunds soared again to 340 basis points. Pimco has previously said that Greece’s “initial conditions and demographics are abominable”.
Pimco is reducing the weight of UK, US and European sovereign debt in its portfolios. “Miracles are needed in the next six months in order to keep economic growth in the developed world,” Mr Mather said. Pimco stated last month that it was keeping its negative outlook on British gilts because of fears of inflation and a further deprecation of sterling.

The bond market does not recognize Hope and Change as legal tender.

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Alex Giannoulias and the Chicago Way

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Guy Benson at National Review:

Alexi Giannoulias is a young, exceedingly ambitious politician with extensive ties to the very worst elements of the sordid Illinois Democratic machine. (With impeached/indicted former Governor Rod Blagojevich and convicted felon Tony Rezko in the mix, the TV commercials practically write themselves) . . .

The Chicago Tribune:

The family bank of Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias loaned a pair of Chicago crime figures about $20 million during a 14-month period when Giannoulias was a senior loan officer, according to a Tribune examination that provides new details about the bank’s relationship with the convicted felons.
Broadway Bank had already lent millions to Michael Giorango when he and a new business partner, Demitri Stavropoulos, came to the bank in mid-2004. Although both men were preparing to serve federal prison terms, the bank embarked on a series of loans to them. . . .

You won’t be surprised to learn that Giannoulias is actually leading in the polls. The main cause of political corruption in Illinois isn’t the mobsters, it’s the voters.

As If the Media Needed Another Reason to Hate Sarah Palin

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She’s now getting rich in their line of work:

[S]he has tunneled her own route into the public consciousness and gone into the Sarah Palin Across America business. And what a business it is.
She was paid a $1.25 million retainer by HarperCollins. Her book, “Going Rogue,” has sold 2.2 million copies, according to its publisher, and she has another [booki] tentatively scheduled for this fall.
She now has an actual television career, including appearances as a pundit on Fox News, her gig as the host of “Real American Stories” four times a year, and a coming eight-part series on TLC called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which will cost, according to some media reports, $1 million an episode . . .
Other people have crossed the border from politics to media to very good effect — George Stephanopoulos, Patrick Buchanan and Chris Matthews, to name a few — but the transition was far more gradual. Ms. Palin turned on a dime and was a ratings sensation from the word go: her first paid appearance, as a commentator on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Jan. 12, was good for an extra million viewers.

You know that has to burn. Imagine you’re one of those White House correspondents who has scored a $100,000 deal for a Barack Obama book. You’re at the top of the heap, as D.C. journalism is reckoned, and then you turn on Fox News and see Sarah Palin — smiling, cheerful and paid a lot more than you.

Burn, burn, burn!

UPDATE: New York Times Correction of the Day:

Note: an earlier version of this column had an item about a blog post by a personal-injury lawyer, Eric Turkewitz, announcing that he had been appointed the White House law blogger. Blogospheric chatter indicates a high likelihood that this post was an April Fool hoax.

Burn, burn, burn!