(Actually, not the real finale . . . just the articles I bookmarked through sometime on July 4th itself. Yeah, I'm playing catchup again.)

Meltdown: Democrats Teetering On The Edge Of Political Abyss -- If "saying it makes it so" like the Democrats believe, then I'm going to go hoarse using this as a mantra . . .

Obama Has Killed Recovery -- "Progressive" policies and Keynesian economics simply don't work--not without a large, robust economy, internationally (that has traditionally been the USA) or a large, robust, resiliant private sector (domestically) to suck the life out of. When the golden goose of free enterprise can't lay enough golden eggs to pay for the welfare state and Keynesian economic ignorance, then things fall apart--like what happened in the 1930's. Like what is likely to happen in the 2010's, unless the Democratic agenda is not only stopped but decisively reversed, across the board.

Baghdad and Kabul? No – The Most Dangerous Place in the World is Between the Teachers Unions and the Public Trough -- I'm not so sure we wouldn't be better off simply abolishing any direct funding of education by government, and just give people vouchers to use for whatever educational needs they have. It wouldn't be a totally free market (after all, those vouchers would still be government scrip of a sort) but I think it needs to be seriously considered as an alternative to the state-capture of education in this country. Separate Education And State! Free The Schools!

Elena Kagan: Well, That Looks Like My Handwriting On That Memo, But Gee I Don't Know What You're Talking About -- And with this, I come to the point where I do not believe I would trust this woman to walk my dog, let alone be a justice of the Supreme Court . . .

Sen. Coburn: Kagan 'Ignorant' of Constitutional Principles; 'I Wouldn't Rule Out a Filibuster' -- Actually, the Republicans' actually going ahead, finding some cojones, and shutting Washington down for the rest of the year would probably set off an economic boom all by itself . . .

Weather vs. Climate

The two most important boundary conditions (inputs) to seasonal forecasts are sea surface temperatures and soil moisture. No one has shown any skill at modeling either of those, so no surprise that The Met Office Seasonal forecasts were consistently wrong.

Note that the word "skill" in this context is a term of art, with a specific, technical meaning--the easiest way of understanding the term as used in statistical modeling is that a model that has "skill" if it can provably and repeatably predicting whatever it happens to be modeling better a prediction based on than random chance--i.e. flipping a coin. Models that have skill have some usefulness in understanding what may happen. Models with no skill have no value--other than, perhaps, as political totems.

And Justice For All

The salient thing about J. Christian Adams’s accusation that the Obama administration deliberately let off the New Black Panther Party after it engaged in voter intimidation is that, if true, it constitutes a pure exercise in the abuse of power. The other wrongs it represents — the perversion of the electoral process, the violation of civil rights — are secondary. The most serious allegation in the whole affair is that the certain officials countenanced a crime because they wanted to. The most concentrated expression of tyranny is malice in the service of caprice.

If Obama knew that this investigation got quashed--let alone ordering its suppression--I personally think it rises to the level of an impeachable offense. It's that serious.

Resolved: America Ought To Be Free!

Barack Obama Is Making Me Laugh

So I listened to his speech on immigration and chuckled as he lectured us, yet again, on what America is — as if he had a clue about what America is. His contempt for us is so palpable. As if he had any respect for what makes America great – free speech, individual rights, entrepreneurship, and privacy rights. As if he had a clue as to why legal immigrants come here — to escape tyrants and would-be tyrants like him.

Wile E. Obama, Genius.

Basic economic ignorance -- The left has talked themselves into believing that up is down, black is white, ignorance is strength, and foolishness is deep wisdom. They have detached themselves from reality and are floating freely in a delusion of their own creation.

More Anti-Christian Propaganda From ‘Law & Order’ -- Tired agitprop from aging leftist "creative geniuses." Illustrative of how the left has detached themselves from reality.

The Anti-Educational Effects of Public Schools -- Privatize all the "public" schools--including the universities. Abolish and make illegal andy and all government money transfers of any kind to any educational institution--subsidy, grant, salary, anything. Give every person--man, woman, child--an education voucher, the value of which is determined by the sum total of all "education" spending by government, divided by the number of legal inhabitants of the country. Put the money in named, numbered accounts for the exclusive use of the individual legal inhabitant.

Let people decide where--or if--to spend their money for education--and that education can be standard academic training, learning a trade or craft, or they can use it to fund another person's education, or fund research, if they choose not to use the money themselves.

We need to break out of the old ways of thinking. They are no longer adequate to the challenges of today. The old, 18th-century model of primary, secondary, and higher education is no longer serving us well. We need something new.

Let's invent it.

Sarah Palin: The Tea Party Hawk -- For the record, I think the USA should be armed to the teeth, bristling with weapons that can reach out and touch anyone, any time, anywhere in the world. My favored foreign policy is: deal straight and fairly with us, and we'll do the same with you. If not, understand that:
a) we are a nation made up of a bunch of mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know types who you REALLY do not want to piss off, and
b) no, really, REALLY, you do not want to piss us off, or we will hurt you very, very, very badly.

This foreign policy will, it is true and unfortunate, require the occasional loud, messy destruction of people who have successfully pissed us off (by, say, flying commercial airplanes into skyscrapers, or sawing off our journalists' heads, or kidnapping our citizens and holding them on trumped up "spying" charges--or possibly even sinking one of our most valuable trading partner's warships, or highly placed "elected" officials who consistently threaten the genocide of an entire religion, to which many of our citizens belong--things like that). This destruction will occur with our complete understanding that there will be some unfortunate collateral destruction of anyone else, guilty or innocent, who happens to be close enough to those who have pissed us off to be caught within the blast radius. What can you say? The real world is a bee-atch. This is quite cold-bloodedly intended to convince those innocent people near the guilty parties to give them up to us expeditiously to avoid any such regrettable collateral unpleasantness. (It is also, not coincidentally, almost exactly the observed foreign policy of, say, Russia--except for the "deal straight and fairly with us" part, which Russia seems to forget all to often.)

Who Pays the Taxes

Distribution of Federal Taxes

The federal tax system is progressive--that is, average tax rates generally rise with income. Households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution (with average income of $18,400, under a broad definition of income) paid 4.0 percent of their income in federal taxes. The middle quintile, with average income of $64,500, paid 14.3 percent of that income in taxes, and the highest quintile, with average income of $264,700, paid 25.1 percent.

who's paying their fair share again?

Contrary to Democrat spin, the poor are NOT getting poorer. Their income was going up--not as fast as the wealthiest, maybe, but still going up . . .

But their proportion of the taxes paid keep going down. Yeah. Let's talk about "fair."

The question is always framed as "the rich aren't paying their fair share." Well, what's fair? The only answer the "progressives" ever give is: "The poor pay less, and the rich pay more." That's an inherently unstable way to build a society--it ultimately leads to a permanent underclass--the ones without the money, and a permanent ruling class--the ones with the money. Eventually, the underclass catches onto the scam. Then you have revolutions.

Everybody needs to have some "skin in the game." When you have 50% of the population paying no income tax at all, you're starting to get into very, very dangerous territory, socially. That's where we are right now.

Who's paying their fair share again?

Libertarians write their own invitation to the party

First and foremost, libertarians like liberty, the idea that individuals have as much space as possible to make as many choices as possible (there’s a reason that Reason’s most recent anthology is called “Choice“). And unlike conservatives and liberals, who always fetishize some choices and demonize others, we’re pretty consistent. We generally like school choice and reproductive choice, for instance, and think you should have your choice of religion (including none at all) too, and drugs, and partners in life and business.

We recognize, too, that such a scheme is predicated upon tolerance and pluralism. Your right to boss me around should be as limited as my right to tell you what to do. There are legitimate areas where social consensus must be reached (defense, maybe courts, and a few other things) but since reaching that consensus is typically very expensive and ugly, those areas should be squeezed down to an absolute minimum. And if you make a mess, you’re responsible for cleaning it up.

More important, though, is the fact that libertarianism is not as rigid or programmatic as The Nolan Chart or your garden-variety Ayn Rand fan would have you believe. I like to think of it as an adjective rather than a noun. In any given situation, is your default position that people ought to have more freedom rather than less? If so, you just might be a libertarian (especially if you don’t find Rush—the band, not the bloviator—totally awful). Do you believe in decentralized, John Stuart Mill-like “experiments in living“ rather than top-down, command-and-control lifestyles (whether right-wing or left), then you might be a libertarian. Are you incredibly good-looking, witty and learned, the sort of man that women want and men want to be like (and vice versa)? Libertarian.

The only reason we have a rather clunky word like "libertarian" is that the anti-liberty forces (the "progressives") appropriated the term "liberal" in the late 1800's and early 1900's to mean "socialist." They do that a lot--take terms that people think mean one thing, and twist them to make them mean something else entirely.

Watch them. Watch how they talk. Watch what they actually mean when they say things like "fairness" and "freedom." They don't mean the same things that fairness and freedom mean to you.

To them, "fairness" means that people who go out and work hard and earn wealth by their sweat and wit should give some or all of that wealth to anyone who can imagine a grievance--now or any time in the past--against the person who has earned the wealth. It is not "fair" for people who work hard to have more than people who don't work hard. "Fair" means that everybody should have the same amount of stuff. Except, of course, for that elite who decides what level of stuff is "fair" for everyone else to have. That's "fairness."

And "freedom" means not freedom of action--which is what most people think when they hear the word. No--in the mind of a "progressive," freedom is a state of mind--it is a kind of nirvana--where a person's every need and whim is met. Of course, reasonable and rational people know that it is impossible to meet any one person's every need and whim, let alone the collective needs and whims of an entire nation. But "progressives," for all their bluster, blather, obfuscation, and rhetoric, are not reasonable, rational people.

This is something else which is critical to understand about "progressives." When you are discussing things with a doctrinare "progressive," you are not talking to someone who is capable of understanding rational argument. They are totally consumed by their emotional side--their feelings--and because of that, they are impervious to any argument, because they simply know that they are right and that you are wrong--an unfeeling, heartless bastard--for not instantly and completely agreeing with them.

And this is the key to understanding why "progressive" policies fail. It is because they are emotionally-driven, knee-jerk reactions to all of the various unfortunate situations which occur in this imperfect world. "Progressive" policies are never well thought-out, and the unintended consequences of those policies--such as the inevitable bankrupting of the country because of the expansion of Social Security and Medicare--never occur to "progressives" because they are totally focused on "helping people right now."

Don't get me wrong: most "progressives" are not really bad people. They are useful--perhaps even necessary--to a society as a control, a check, a conscience. But they should never, ever, ever be allowed to run things. They simply don't have the necessary intellectual tools to actually design and implement effective and truly humanitarian policies. When they are put in power, you get things like depressions, New Deals, Vietnam Wars, and Obama. Progressivism kills, but it kills in a way that it's easy for "progressives" to point the finger elsewhere and walk away whistling happy tunes.

Progressives aren't (usually) evil. They just can't ever be trusted with political power.

(If we ever get to the point where I need a similar rant against "conservatives," I'm sure I could whip one up. But conservatism hasn't been a major problem of Western civilization since . . . well . . . maybe the Spanish Inquisition? Or the European-African slave trade, maybe? Although the human slavery question tended to work itself out over the 17th and 18th Centuries in most of Western civilization without a lot of opposition, with the notable exception of the American Civil War, where it took a very bloody, messy, nasty war to finally decide the issue in the American South. But that's still 150 years ago now. Since then, conservatism has really not been an issue. And no, fascism is NOT a political philosophy with its origin in conservative/Christian thought. It's a mutant offspring of 18th Century Marxism/German social democracy/progressivism. That's just the historical fact of the matter. Go look it up.)

Thus endeth today's lesson.

Walter Lippmann on Progressivism -- The uncomfortable truth that all too many people want to ignore--and some use Beck's histrionics as an excuse--is that on the actual, factual grounds of history, Glenn Beck is correct.

Progressivism, a variant of the 19th Century German social democracy and political philosophy that also spawned Marxism and European 20th-Century fascism, took root in the U.S. in the late 1800's, and with the elections of Theodore Roosevelt (R) and Woodrow Wilson (D) gained a dominant foothold in American political thinking. It simply metastasized with FDR's "New Deal" into a peculiarly American form of socialism, which is now wheezing a death rattle, even as the "progressives" seek to give it larger and larger transfusions of our money. It will collapse--sooner or later--and that collapse will be a new birth of freedom, or the beginning of a dark age from which the world will be a long time recovering.

So, the failure of "progressivism" sooner--at the hands of the regular, common Americans who lately have called themselves "Tea Partiers," "Patriots," and other politically incorrect names--would be better, for everyone concerned. Everyone that is except perhaps those special interests most wedded to the existing system--large mega-corporations, labor unions, and the "intelligentsia" of government bureaucrats, university professors and think tanks, and Big Media who always seem prone to big ideas that centralize power and make power easier to grab and wield. The "progressives" aren't offering "new" ideas at all. Their ideas are old. They're wrongheaded, they don't work as public policy, and they're dangerous and corrosive to human morality and the human spirit.

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as “the overhead planning and control of economic activity.” This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

--Walter Lippmann, former "progressive", after seeing clearly for the first time, in 1937, what Franklin Delano Roosevelt was doing. The words ring 100% true today. But there is another way--one that in a little over one hundred years turned a wilderness into the world's most productive, prosperous, and powerful country. One that, when noticed at all, is either given lip service by the progressives, when it's not being derisively laughed at and belittled. That's why Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is as relevant now as when it was written in 1944--He grew up in Germany, and writing the book from England, saw the exact same things happening in England--and in the United States.

"History doesn't repeat itself. But it does rhyme." - Mark Twain

Which reminds me of another thought I've had: If the concept of "linear time" is so backward and unsophisticated, why is it that a key tenet of "progressivism" is a steady, inexorable march towards better life and better men, and why do the many of the very same people who look down their noses at a perception of "linear time" simultaneously believe in it so fervently in political practice? Perhaps people with the "progressive" mindset are not quite as smart as they think they are. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?

Know your Republican Heritage – QUIZ #1 -- Highly amusing, especially question #1. Click on the link for the answers:

Q. How many Democrats in Congress voted to abolish slavery?
127
95
34
0

Q. Which park was established by a future Chairman of the Republican National Committee?
Central Park
Griffith Park
Franklin Park
Lincoln Park

Q. Which former Republican presidential nominee declined a nomination for Chief Justice?
James Blaine
Wendell Willkie
Thomas Dewey
Bob Dole

Q. Who was the first Vice President to attend Cabinet meetings?
Levi Morton (R-NY)
Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)
Calvin Coolidge (R-MA)
Charles Dawes (R-IL)

Q. Which archaeological site was discovered by a future Republican U.S. Senator?
Angkor Wat
Great Zimbabwe
Machu Picchu
Stonehenge

First in a series of Irregular Whips, as Whipping will be irregular through the Independence Day holiday period:

Two faces of the tea party

if one traces the origins of progressivism, as Ronald J. Pestritto does in Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, one discovers the deep hostility of the progressives to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The progressives' hostility to the Declaration and the Constitution is rooted largely in nineteenth-century German thought.

It is an indisputable historical fact that "progressivism" and European 20th Century fascism are close intellectual cousins. And the American Left today are the direct heirs of the marriage of progressivism and Marxism. This is also an indisputable historical fact.

Sarah Palin may have an issue with comparing Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler. I don't. And the comparison is immediately above. No, I don't mean that Obama is going to round up the Jews any time soon and send them off to concentration camps and ovens, or suddenly decide to partition Canada between the US and Russia, or re-occupy and annex Cuba or the Philippines . . . he's actually more like Mussolini than Hitler, I think.

But for the angry activist Left, a Hitler is a logical next step, after they see that they won't get everything they want with Obama and today's Democrats. And they won't get everything they want, because their wants are unlimited. It's time for people who vote Democrat to take a long, hard, sober look at what their political party is advocating, and go back and look at the political platforms of the Communist Party of the USA over the years, and yes, even elements of the platform of the German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei of the early 1930's.

That's the road you've started heading down, folks. But there is still time to stop, reflect, and find a different road.

Night of the Yeoman

There are two Republican parties, and both had a candidate on the 2008 presidential ticket. John McCain was the candidate of the thin-blooded aristocracy, tired men who dislike certain elements of their nominal constituency far more intensely than their political opposition.
. . .
The other Republican party is young and vital. On the 2008 ticket, its banner was carried by Sarah Palin. It’s the yeoman wing of the party, composed of people with middle-class backgrounds and real-world business experience.

Repeal.

Reorganize.

Renew.

About the McChrystal Affair:

The man who should resign for dereliction of duty and insubordination is Barack Hussein Obama. Don't get me wrong--if I were President, McChrystal would already be out of a job for abject stupidity in how he and his staff dealt with the Rolling Stone reporter. The McChrystal Flap

So what if the Commander in Chief is an Idiot. -- He needs to be fired--in 2012, if not before.

Did Obama reap what he sowed with McChrystal? -- Obama's objective in appointing McChrystal was NOT to win the war, but to make Obama look good. That's a very, very bad way to try to manage . . .

Don't blame McChrystal, blame Obama -- The problem with the Afghanistan war effort is not and never has been McChrystal. It's been Obama.

Civilian press aide resigns amid flap over McChrystal's 'Rolling Stone' profile

Media Has Long Record of Supporting Military Insubordination... Under Bush, Of Course

McChrystal: “I’ve compromised the mission” -- Yes, General, you have . . .

Morning Bell: Obama’s Leadership Vacuum -- . . . But then, so has your boss . . .

Open thread: Obama announcement on McChrystal’s status; Update: AP says he’s gone, Petraeus back to the front; Update: Fox confirms -- Still waiting for Obama's resignation, though . . .

Downsizing The Federal Government -- Repeal. Reorganize. Renew.

Repeal Obamacare and the various other nightmare legislation the Democrats have passed.

Reorganize the entire Federal Government. No office, no employee is safe from the audit and the cutting block. The Federal Government is riddled with cancer--duplicated and ineffective programs, bloated bureaucracies, and improprieties small and large. Every single Federal agency gets an anal probe from truly independent auditors--both financial and legal--and all of the cancerous lesions that are found get cut out. It will hurt, but if we don't do it, it will hurt worse later.

Renew the Constitutional contract between the American people and their government, by returning the Federal government to its proper roles, and returning to the States those powers not explicitly delegated by the people to the Federal government.

Morals & the servile mind: On the diminishing moral life of our democratic age.

The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting—or “crowding out,” as the economists say—our moral judgments. Nor does the state limit itself to mere principle. It instructs us on highly specific activities, ranging from health provision to sexual practices. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by “freedom,” and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?

By “the moral life,” I simply mean that dimension of our inner experience in which we deliberate about our obligations to parents, children, employers, strangers, charities, sporting associations, and all the other elements of our world. We may not always devote much conscious thought to these matters, but thinking about them makes up the substance of our lives. It also constitutes the conditions of our happiness. In deliberating, and in acting on what we have decided, we discover who we are and we reveal ourselves to the world. This kind of self-management emerges from the inner life and is the stream of thoughts and decisions that make us human. To the extent that this element of our humanity has been appropriated by authority, we are all diminished, and our civilization loses the special character that has made it the dynamic animator of so much hope and happiness in modern times.

It is this element of dehumanization that has produced what I am calling “the servile mind.” The charge of servility or slavishness is a serious one. It emerges from the Classical view that slaves lacked the capacity for self-movement and had to be animated by the superior class of masters. They were creatures of impulse and passion rather than of reason. Aristotle thought that some people were “natural slaves.” In our democratic world, by contrast, we recognize at least some element of the “master” (which means, of course, self-managing autonomy) in everyone. Indeed, in our entirely justified hatred of slavery, we sometimes think that the passion for freedom is a constitutive drive of all human beings. Such a judgment can hardly survive the most elementary inspection of history. The experience of both traditional societies and totalitarian states in the twentieth century suggests that many people are, in most circumstances, happy to sink themselves in some collective enterprise that guides their lives and guarantees them security. It is the emergence of freedom rather than the extent of servility that needs explanation.

THIS is why government MUST be limited, restrained, and under the control of the people. The powerless, the poor, the least among us--they are the ones who MOST need to be shielded from the oppressive, suffocating embrace of an all-powerful government. They are the ones who will, as Benjamin Franklin feared, gladly trade their freedom for security.

Government power corrodes and corrupts the human spirit. The Founding Fathers understood this. Today's politicians, for the most part, do not. Barack Obama sure doesn't act like he does.

Why Are People Democrats? -- Because they either don't know any better, or they like the feel of having power over others . . . if you're a Democrat, which one are you?

The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)

If you knew it, you’d say, “Wait a minute. The decision I just made does not make much sense. I had better go and get some independent advice.” But when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer. And so we went on to see if this could possibly be true in many other areas. And to our astonishment, it was very, very true.
. . .
The notion of unknown unknowns really does resonate with me, and perhaps the idea would resonate with other people if they knew that it originally came from the world of design and engineering rather than Rumsfeld.

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance.

Which explains why trying to seriously discuss solutions to issues with Democrats is doomed to failure--they simply don't seem to have the cognitive tools to understand the disastrous effects of the policies they advocate. The concept that "we don't know what we don't know" is a very subtle philosophical thought, and I have found it actually much more common among people with right-leaning political philosophies than those on the left. The phrase "it was like talking to a brick wall" very succintly describes many of my attempts to explain reality to Democrats. Which is why I seldom bother any more, except here on this blog, where I still hold out the thinnest shred of hope . . .

N. Korea lifts restrictions on private markets as last resort in food crisis -- When all else fails, try freedom. This is how totalitarians--and "progressives" think. This is how the leaders of the USA think, too. Freedom is too dangerous for you, the little people, to be entrusted with. That's why the Wise, your rulers, the elite, must make these decisions for you--decisions like health care, like retirement, like what Internet provider to use, like how to power your car, like even if you should have a car in the first place, etc., etc.

Public Morality - Private Corruption -- More power to government means more corruption. Always. Everywhere. People in America are not inherently more moral than people anywhere else in the world (sorry to break that to you.) It's just that . . . until lately anyway . . . corruption was not the easiest way to make a lot of money. Thanks largely to the Democratic Party, this is changing here, as they doggedly arrogate more power to themselves through the government. And more power means more corruption.

Always. Everywhere.

Obama and the vision thing

There's a reason petroleum is such a durable fuel. It's not, as Obama fatuously suggested, because of oil company lobbying but because it is very portable, energy-dense and easy to use.

A replacement to hydrocarbons has to be better. Not "better" in an emotional, "green," squishy save-the-whales-and-bunnies way, but better in a clear-eyed, real, boots-on-the-ground engineering sense of a better fuel source to power our post-industrial society. None are yet, really, with the possible exception of nuclear fission (which of course we can't possibly consider using, because Obama cancelled the one place in the U.S. that was in any way suited to store the waste material. Heckofa job, Barry.

$7-a-Gallon Gas? -- Which we will pay, because we have no alternative. Which will further depress the economy. Which, in my darker moments, I think is the goal of Obama and the Democrats in the first place.

Jon Stewart on Energy Independence: "Why didn't it work? Why didn't we do it?" -- Because it was a happy, loopy, fuzzy-bunny idea, not a cold, rational, down-to-earth idea . . . it can be done, but not the way the "environmental left" wants it to be done. Of course, you can say that about most public policy issues . . .

Republican Candidate for Congress: Hey, Maybe BP and the Federal Government Conspired To Leak the Oil -- On the one hand, this is patently stupid. On the other hand, given ACORN, it has a certain conspiratorial plausibility in today's political environment. On the third hand, maybe BP is one of those companies that's become Too Big To Persist--and maybe the Federal Government has, too. Too Big To Fail is Too Big To Persist.

All about Sharron Angle: The background of the woman who’s taking on Harry Reid.

“I’ve seen government from many sides,” Angle says, smiling. “Legislator, school board, citizen in the initiative process. I have a multifaceted background in education. I’ve done public-school teaching, private school, homeschooling, and tutoring for juvenile justice. I’ve taught adults at community college.” So when she says that she wants to dump the entire Department of Education, she comes across as a warm grandma who’s fought the beast, knows it, and detests it, not as some anti-government demagogue.

“Look, the Department of Education is a policy machine that sends down one-size-fits-all rules that fit no one,” Angle says. “Education works best when you have all of the stakeholders involved and working toward the same commitment. That happens best at the local level. Anything bureaucratically, administratively, these layers and layers — that just diminishes the involvement of the stakeholder. They feel like their voice isn’t being heard because there is too much of a loud clamor from the top.”

See, the problem that the "progressives" have is that when they demonize people like Angle, they're demonizing people I've spent my entire life sitting across kitchen tables, school lunchroom tables, and college town bar tables from. The "progressives" have a wonderful line of BS that simply doesn't stand up to reality. And reality always wins, although sometimes it takes a while. The chickens are coming home to roost.

In case you had maybe forgotten what real political courage and leadership looks and sounds like:

The Future of Journalism & Washington’s War on Advertising -- If you want a look at the near future, look at the Catholic Church's attempts to keep control of the "narrative" in the 1500's, when printing presses became widespread. Hint: do the words The Reformation mean anything to you? As the saying goes, "the bell can not be un-rung." The Conservative New Media are the New Protestants, rebelling against the catholic belief in "progressivism." And so, ironically, the "progressives" actually are the conservatives, now, and the "conservatives" are now the radicals--the liberals if you will. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Gulf - It Is Worse Than We Thought -- So, tell me again how drilling in ANWR or off the coast of California within sight of the beaches would be worse than this? At least in those places, there would be a better chance of controlling and containing any such disastrous oil leak.

We're not going to be able to snap our fingers and get off of dependency on hydrocarbons for energy in one decade, or even two. The avaliable alternatives (primarily nuclear fission, quite honestly) are inadequate. The proposed "renewable" options are not yet available, AND won't be adequate to meet any foreseeable global energy demand. We're going to burn a lot of oil, gas, and coal before we're able to transition off of them to something else.

That's the cold, hard, inalterable fact that Obama and his ilk absolutely, positively refuse to even concede. That just makes them unreasonable and irrational.

Tennessee Dem on female Republicans: “You have to lift their skirts to find out if they are women” -- With every day, the deeply-held racism and sexism of the average Democrat--not just elected Democrats, but those rank-and-file voters who vote for these racist/sexist mouthpieces--becomes more apparent. To vote for a Democrat is to vote for a racist, a sexist, a socialist, an ultimately a thug. It drags the voter down to that level, if he or she is not there already.

If you are a Democrat voter who is not a racist or a sexist, you really need to open your eyes and ears to what the people you are voting for are saying--because they are speaking for you. Oh, the racism and sexism are most often cloaked in high-sounding words like "fairness" and "rights" and "equality" but the core of all of those concepts, in the mind of a Democrat, is a very, very ugly view of people different from the Privileged Class--the Class for which the Democratic Party truly works to maintain.

Don't like class-based politics? Don't like race-based politics? Don't like sex-based politics? Think that everybody truly should have equal access to law and opportunity? Think that people should progress based on ability, not on race, sex, class, or anything other than their determination and talent (and the usual little bit of luck?) Then you can't vote for a Democrat, because while they say things that sound kinda like they support those things, what they actually do is consistently, profoundly destructive of equality before the law and the concept that "all men are created equal."

Shocker: Government Subsidization of Movies Comes With Editorial Strings Attached -- I'm not sure why people keep putting the word "shocker" in front of post titles. So many outrageous things happen, how can you really be shocked any more? Disgusted, yes. Appalled, yes. Enraged, yes. Shocked?

Media gets low ratings from public -- I'd be OK with "shocker" in front of this title . . . for purposes of ironic humor . . .

The Pillars of Apathy

I refuse to believe government programs launched in the Forties, Sixties, and Seventies are indestructible features of our lives, immune to repeal or reform. I don’t believe a nation with a 234-year history of courage and industry is destined to suffocate in a shallow pool of nanny-state cement, poured only a few generations ago. It will be difficult for the American giant to rise again… but history unfolds in the space between difficult and impossible.

There is no such thing as eternal legislation. Even the Constitution can be amended. It’s only a question of how much willpower it will take for us to cast aside the intolerable acts of our political class. We are descended from men who showed great vigor in resisting intolerable acts.

I don’t believe the American electorate is a hopeless mass of imbeciles and parasites. Of course, we’ll always have plenty of both… along with a breathtaking population of hard workers, visionaries, and heroes. It’s terribly short-sighted to write off a populace that ignores its expensive media apparatus and fills the streets for Tea Party rallies – joining people loudly accused of racism to denounce a supposedly inevitable system of total State control, run by a man they were taught it was sinful to oppose. The allegedly stupid proletariat of the United States just made Friedrich Hayek’s 66-year-old masterpiece, The Road to Serfdom, Number One on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Our fellow citizens are thinking, and questioning. Questions are acid to statism.

Amen, Brother! We, as a nation, need to understand that almost all of "progressive" economic theory (either Marxism of Keynesiansm) is simply, utterly wrong. It doesn't work. It is "unsustainable." It is bankrupting us. The New Deal turns out to be a Bad Deal. Stimulating government spending is NOT the same thing as stimulating the economy.

The government is NOT the economy, and the government is NOT the answer to every social problem we find. Indeed, many of the social problems we have today are made worse--if not actually caused, by the kind of bull-in-a-china-shop government intervention and micromanagement of people's lives which is the hallmark of "progressive" political action.

Democratic Congressman Assaults College Student -- Oh, yeah. This one can't be linked enough. Democrat. Congressman. Assault. College student, the victim. This guy (the Congressman) should spend time in jail. Of course, most Congressmen should, actually.

IDLED OIL RIGS ARE MOVING TO BRAZIL Following Obama’s Drilling Moratorium -- It turns out that all the high-minded environmentalist blather boils down to NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard. We don't care if you drill for oil in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil--just don't do it within sight of an American beach. Because, you know, it's so unsightly to see an oil rig when you're trying to catch a few rays.

Of course, oil-covered pelicans are a bit more unsightly, but then the environmentalists decided that oil wells where they'd be almost impossible to maintain if something went drastically wrong--a mile deep in ocean water--was preferable to oil wells in a couple of hundred feet of water, where crews could still get down and actually work on with human hands of something blew.

Not "green." Just NIMBY.

The Great Democrat Embarrassment Continues -- I know it can't last (can it?) but the whole fiasco for the Democrats over their candidate for U.S. Senate from South Carolina, Alvin Greene, is just too damn entertaining for words . . . in a year where perhaps THE major issue is the demonstrated Democrat incompetence at actually governing (as opposed to just running for office, which Democrats are clearly very good at), the presence of Alvin Greene at the top of a state's Democrat electoral ballot speaks volumes.