What “California comeback”?
The IPCC
Some interesting questions.
I don’t think they’ll deign to answer any of them.
ObamaCare’s Weakest Link
It’s the IT, stupid.
As noted over there, this whole mess started with Roosevelt’s wage controls during the war. But did they fix that? No, they triple down on the socialist stupidity.
The Wacko Bird Caucus
Are they winning the future?
The wacko bird caucus overlaps pretty well with the Tea Party. Besides Cruz and Paul, it includes such characters as Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). Despite meaningful differences among them, they all support cutting federal spending and taxes, and reducing regulations on business and other economic activities. Unlike many members of the GOP, they are critical of the national surveillance state and, at least in the cases of Paul and Amash, are principled non-interventionists who are quick to question the Pentagon budget.
At a time when a record high 60 percent of all Americans agree the federal government has “too much power,” the wacko birds are flying pretty high, especially when they attack their own party for its utter malfeasance during the Bush years. There’s every reason to believe that the future belongs to the wacko birds and their general, transpartisan message that government is too big and too powerful. The trend throughout the 21st century, reports Gallup, is increasing skepticism toward Washington, D.C. The trend is particularly pronounced among all-important independent voters, who make up a plurality of the electorate. In 2003, 45 percent of them thought the government was too powerful. Now it’s 65 percent. They will vote for candidates—and a party—pushing limiting government.
Let’s hope.
Also, related: opposition to the Tea Party is at a record low:
Considering the multi-year war on the Tea Party by Democrats, many Republicans, and the media, it is astounding that the Tea Party continues to stay more or less even in its support over the past two years. A 2% drop is hardly meaningful, and could just be variations within the margin of error in the poll, which was +/- 3%.
Also consider that half the electorate has no opinion one way or the other. So put it another way, almost 3/4 of the American electorate is not opposed to the Tea Party!
Think about it another way, if you were at a dinner table with four other people who represented the American electorate, one of the people at the table would be a Tea Party supporter. And two others would have no opinion.
This doesn’t bode well for the Democrats next fall. Which means it bodes very well for the Republic.
[Update a while later]
Will the Republicans be rejuvenated by the wacko birds?
Here we are, more than 20 years after the complete collapse of Marxism-Leninism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and we’re still having the same argument.
So how to end this — as end this we must if the survival of the United States of America as founded is to be secured? Remember that “fundamental transformation” is ostensibly meant to contribute toward a “more perfect Union,” but it of course does nothing of the sort. Under Progressivism — a combination ideological movement and criminal enrichment racket — the country is less united, less happy, less free. And, like any movement composed of True Believers, Progressivism brooks no opposition, ascribes no good motives to its opponents, and will impose its way in a heartbeat when given half the chance. The Democrats’ fierce, desperate contortions to sneak Obamacare through the Congress should stand as a monument to how the system can be abused and manipulated by a group of unscrupulous politicians — and care needs to be taken that such a travesty can never happen again.This doesn’t mean, as the Left would have you believe, that the choice is between Orwell’s Big Brother and Oliver Twist’s workhouse. I can’t name a single Republican senator who opposes some kind of healthcare “reform” (a misnomer, since the law has to do with insurance, not healthcare). But the reforms on the Right mostly concern the liberated operation of free markets across the country, not a top-down, imposed, statist solution that only aggrandizes more power and wealth in Washington while doing little or nothing about medical care. Only a child, a moron, or a Democrat could believe that you could take a system as complex as medical care/insurance, impose a collectivist solution to a non-existent problem upon it, and expect the markets to function as before, only this time cheaper.
A quick example. In in the old Soviet Union taxis were cheap and closely regulated by the central government. Result: almost no taxis on the streets of Moscow, anywhere. Instead, civilians freelanced as taxi drivers, and the way you got one was either by holding up a pack of Marlboros (the effective currency in the U.S.S.R.) or one or two fingers to signal how many packs you were willing to pay for a ride. Rarely did you have to wait more than a couple of minutes before a car stopped for you.
The revolution that Cruz and his Senate cohort are leading can win — but only if the GOP jettisons its current leadership (who do not believe in it, anyway) and adopts the tactics and techniques of the Left to put it across. (Gee, someone should write a book about that.) But this means learning how to seize and control the Narrative, to make the personal political, to turn the culture in the direction of the spin. How a political party cannot sell Freedom and Liberty and Leave Me Alone to a formerly free people is beyond me, but if anyone can’t do it, that would be Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch and John McCain. The sooner they all go the better, and clear the way for Cruz & Co. before they, too, become corrupted by the Beltway system, and while they still have plenty of fight left in them.
I sure won’t miss them.
Lerner’s Sudden Retirement
…only increases the number of questions about the “phony” scandal.
She needs to be given use immunity and put under oath. She was clearly rewarding political friends, and punishing perceived enemies, for years.
The Reply To “Bad Astronomer” About Climate Skepticism
…that Slate refused to publish:
The argument I made was that climate change has benefits as well as costs and that the benefits are likely to be greater than the costs until almost the end of the current century. I maintain that the balance of evidence supports the conclusion that up to a certain level of warming — about 2 degrees Celsius — the benefits of climate change will probably outweigh the costs. Plait admits that there will be benefits, but he assumes that they are smaller than the harm however small the warming and that I am somehow foolish for not sharing his assumption. He gives no source for this claim, which flies in the face of peer-reviewed sources.
Sadly, that’s Phil’s style. His claims are essentially faith-based.
[Update a few minutes later]
Climate moron David Suzuki doesn’t even know what the data sets are.
“Gun-Free” Zones
Kenya proves (once again) that they’re deadly.
The only solution to bad people with guns is good people with guns. Signs and laws are worse than useless.
If You’re Tired Of Budget Theatrics In DC
We need a new Senate, and majority leader:
Whatever else you can say about the House of Representatives and President Obama, at least these folks have consistently produced spending documents in rough approximation to legal requirements (to be sure, Obama’s latest offering, showed up two months late and $5.2 trillion long when it came to increasing deficits over the next decade).
In contrast and despite a solid one-party majority, the Senate has passed exactly one budget in the past four years and in most of those years, they didn’t even produce the necessary document as mandated by law. Instead, we were treated to journalistic valentines to former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the guy in charge of the Senate budget wonkery, by a pliant press.
As my colleague Ed Krayewski reminds us in his essential survey of “4 Washington Scandals That Still Matter,” the Democrats couldn’t pass a budget even when they controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House. It’s been the Senate all along that’s been the problem, at least since Sen. Harry “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” Reid (D-Nev.) has been running that godawful show.
And will for at least another year and a half, until we can fix the problem.
Another Body On The ObamaCare Trainwreck Tracks
Hey, it’s just a little “glitch.”
“Old spin: If you oppose ObamaCare it’s because you want kids to die! New spin: Hey, what’s a half-million kids in the scheme of things?”
One child’s loss of health coverage is a tragedy. Half a million of them is a statistic.