"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
The signs were grim. Actually, there weren’t any. Possible explanations for this heinous tableau:
The increasing fragility of the cheesehead breed is, itself, a source of major concern to be tackled by future Federal legislation.
From my latest American Spectator column:
A perception that the GOP establishment routinely rigs primaries in favor of the well-financed and well-connected is widespread among grassroots conservatives. Disillusioned by the political equivalent of insider trading, some idealistic Republicans are tempted to walk away from active participation in GOP politics, which would leave the party infrastructure even more controlled by selfish cynics and professional operatives.
One man who doesn’t want to see that happen is Doug Hoffman, the “Ordinary American” candidate whose third-party campaign last year in New York’s 23rd District became a national crusade for conservatives fed up with Washington, including the Beltway GOP. “The legacy of my [2009] campaign is that many Americans who had never been involved before saw that they could get involved and make a difference,” Hoffman told me in a telephone interview last week, after announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination in this year’s mid-term election.
Strange as it may seem, some Republicans still haven’t gotten the message. There are rumors in New York that the national GOP establishment is trying to recruit Will Barclay to run against Hoffman. Scion of a wealthy family, Barclay is a state assemblyman whose father was appointed ambassador to El Salvador by President Bush. The chief argument for the younger Barclay’s candidacy, as one Hoffman-supporting conservative told me last week, can be summarized in three words: “Money, money, money.”
Can such an argument prevail in a year when Republicans hope to capture the populist energy of the Tea Party movement? Although Democratic attack ads last year branded Hoffman a millionaire indifferent to working-class interests, he grew up desperately poor and his rags-to-riches success story was one of the major selling points of his underdog campaign. If the Republican establishment shoves Hoffman aside in favor of Barclay, it would do more than reinforce the Democrats’ traditional class-warfare message that the GOP is the “party of the rich.” It would also send a message to the party’s conservative rank-and-file that their loyalty to Republicans is strictly a one-way street, never to be respected in any instance where grassroots preferences conflict with the political ambitions of party insiders. . . .
by Smitty
Nice Deb asks the Olbermann-driven question about insufficient diversity at coffee parties. ND seems unaware of the Alinsky rule (4?) about holding the opposition to their rules only applies to the opposition, which is the Tea Parties.
But there is an antidote to the lack of diversity: The Zo. PJTV has his Dallas appearance available for great justice:
Had Keith Olbermann hair #1 where it mattered, Keith would have Zo on his show. Then again, contemplating the shredding Keith would take, maybe not.
Philip Klein of the American Spectator:
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, Democrats released a 2,309 page health care bill that will start the process of reconciliation — but don’t let that fool you, it’s not the actual reconciliation bill with all the changes you’ve been reading about. Instead, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee, explained to me last week, this is just the “shell” bill — the vehicle that Democrats need to get moving on health care. Once the bill gets approved (likely Monday), Democrats will send this phantom bill over to the Rules Committee, where it will be stripped, and then they’ll insert in all of the actual changes that they’ve negotiated. . . .
Got that? Here’s more:
The House Budget Committee on Sunday evening released text that will serve as the base legislation for the changes the House will seek to the Senate bill this week. . . . The measure posted online does not include the substantive changes to the Senate healthcare bill that House Democrats will seek. Those changes will be offered during the markups in the Budget and Rules committees, which the budget panel hopes to begin on Monday afternoon.
More at Michelle Malkin, Riehl World View, Da Tech Guy, Fire Andrea Mitchell, Another Black Conservative, Red State, Doug Ross, Sundries Shack, Melissa Clouthier and Memeorandum. Also see Paul Ryan’s op-ed column proposing a different vision of health-care reform.
This whole Pelosi procedure is nothing but a thumb in the eye of the Constitution. The House could merely have an up-or-down vote on the Senate version of the bill, but Pelosi doesn’t have enough votes to do that — she’d lose the votes of several Democrats who have principled objections to various measures in the Senate version — and so instead they’re going through this bizarre kabuki dance.
Nucking futz, and all of it, BTW, is because Scott Brown got elected in Massachusetts. Before Brown’s election, the Democrats had enough votes in the Senate to get cloture, so that a House-Senate conference committee could resolve the differences and the resulting final bill would be approved in both chambers.
But then Brown got elected as the “41st vote,” the Senate Democrats can’t get cloture now, and what we’ve seen for the past two months has been a desperate effort by Obama and Pelosi to escape the consequences of that election — essentially bypassing the Senate.
Anybody who thinks the Democrats are going to get away with this has got another think coming.
UPDATE: David Axelrod boasts:
“I am absolutely confident we are going to be successful,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
And Axelrod, who was a top strategist on Obama’s 2008 campaign, said he relished the prospect of Republicans campaigning on a repeal of the legislation in 2010. . . .
“Let’s have that fight,” he said. “Make my day.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Mr. Axelrod: The fight is not between you and the GOP. It is between you and the American people.
TUESDAY: STOP OBAMACARE 2.0! BE THERE!
(P.S.: Don’t compare this procedure to making sausage — that’s an insult to the fine sausage at Romano’s Market.)
Peter Graves is dead at age 83 and it’s odd that, despite his signature role as James Phelps, leader of the “Mission: Impossible” team, all I can think of is his later comic role as Capt. Oveur in “Airplane.”
Same thing with Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen, I guess. They made careers on their tough-guy images and then, with the aid of Zucker/Abrahams, got a second shot at fame by spoofing those images.
“Airplane” ranks with “Blazing Saddles” and “Animal House” among my all-time favorite comedies.
. . . you’ve got to wonder if Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) is really the best guy for the job:
Sen. Bennett had a difficult time with the automated phone system, well to tell you the truth … the man got pwned.
That’s Aaron Gardner at Red State. I’ve got friends who support Sen. Bennett for re-election and other friends who support his various GOP primary challengers, so I don’t want to get in the middle of this fight. However, as with his septuagenarian colleagues, Arlen Specter and John McCain, it’s hard to blame Bennett’s critics who say the 76-year-old Senator may have stayed too long at the dance.
On the other hand, I’m only 50 and not especially savvy with all this techo-gee-whizzery stuff myself, so I can’t condemn Bennett merely for getting pwned by the automated phone system. Whatever the hell “pwned” actually means, anyway . . .
by Smitty
A great interview conducted by John over at Power Line. The interview is excellent, covers a broad range of topics, and leaves the audience wanting a copy of Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.
What is KR up to? Fox News, WSJ, columnist for Newsweek, speeches, and low-level strengthening of center-right institutions, and a book tour. Appearance dates on the web site. Just missed him in McLean, VA. Ah, well, the interview was excellent, in any case.
by Smitty
Update: can overkill overcome oversights?
A great blog, with my favorite color as the main theme.
Following Stacy McCain’s How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year increased my traffic significantly, even though I’ve not hit the million mark yet. That’s not really the point here. What’s important is America has a voice, even the little people like me, and our voice is being heard ’round the world even while it is ignored by our elected officials in state governments and Washington, DC.
We’ll just have to see if we can get the Instapundit to let loose le linky love.