jeffreymark

STIMULUS WASTE

Michael Ramirez once again paints a thousand words. (click on picture to enlarge)

SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE

Professor Bainbridge reminds us that Democrats are not serious about reform. Shazzam! Who would of thunk it:

Back in the old days (pre-1994), the House of Representatives was dominated by the “old bulls”—long-serving committee chairmen who held almost unchallenged power over their areas of jurisdiction. This had horrible policy consequences. Think of John Dingell using his chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce committee to protect Detroit for so many years, which led to all sorts of policy debacles and, paradoxically, ultimately left Detroit less able to compete. Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee (which oversees the CFTC), is determined to block any effort to merge the SEC and CFTC, as have generations of Democratic and Republican House Ag Committee chairs.
When Newt Gingrich led the GOP takeover of the House in 1994, he imposed term limits on committee chairmen. No longer would individual congressmen be able to build Dingell-like empires that held sway over vast areas and blocked reforms for decades.
Now, however, Nancy Pelosi is proposing to repeal those term limits.

Continue reading the good prof here:

PROTESTERS AND DEMOCRATS

I often wonder why hippie-dippie dope smoking,fried brain holdovers from the 60's and 70's demonstrate against their institutional lovers, the Democrats. Wise people know that Dems have catered to the wacko crowd for years. Former California governor Jerry Brown sealed the intimate relationship when he followed Ronald Reagan in Sacramento. Investors Business Daily editors offer some salient thoughts on the issue:

Funny how radicals are always more angry with Democrats than with Republicans, their theoretically ideological rivals. It seems to be the fury of lovers scorned. As with all such "love," however, it comes from closeness. This is probably the only explanation for why 4,000 self-described anarchists, revolutionaries, direct-action radicals and assorted wackos made their presence known at the Democratic Convention last week. For sure, a sizable contingent of weirdos was in town. Two of them from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals paraded around in pink pig suits, first in front of the Colorado Convention Center in the morning. After that, they did their part to clog traffic and spew exhaust by circling around in a convertible. Then there was a 9/11 Truther March, with a couple of dozen fire-eyed nuts parading down Denver's 16th Street promenade bearing a banner declaring "9/11 Was An Inside Job." Meanwhile, on a corner near the Hyatt, a clean-cut woman passed out fliers condemning bird-watching, with the bizarre claim that it was all "bird porn." As laughable as the weirdos were, there was a demonstrable continuum between them and the disrupters. An old lady in Pepto-Bismol tones from Code Pink stood on a street corner behind the Sheraton and tried to recruit Democratic delegates to disrupt the convention as "peace delegates." Trying to enlist IBD in a chance encounter, she explained she wanted to get Democratic delegates to do what Code Pink does — sneak into the convention, throw a tantrum on the floor about the Iraq War and get thrown out, mission accomplished. Other anti-war activists wore bandana face masks, trying to prove, as blogger James Lileks noted to IBD, they were big, important "revolutionaries." The shaggy, tattooed, unwashed protesters stank up the place with their vagabond protest show, plus taunted police who were stuck baby-sitting them. A disgusted upstate New York delegate told us she watched from her hotel window as the protestors yelled at the cops and slid their hands into their backpacks in unison to appear as though they were drawing weapons. It was an obvious bid to provoke the cops to shoot. The cops didn't. These protesters wanted to get thrown in jail. They wore T-shirts saying as much and obsessed about the police pens that beleaguered cops had to prepare for them. Though most Democrats didn't seem to warm up to them, some did. They created this culture, and now it's stuck to their shoes like gum.

RUN DOWN OF DEM'S BIG BROTHER HEALTH CARE

Health care concerns most Americans. They comprehend the real challenge of meeting rising costs in the market. Politicians, more particularly Dems, address those fears. In fact, Dems always hype the issues for their own selfish opportunism. A sea of information exists out there sure to keep voters frantically swimming and fighting to keep the sharks of confusion at bay. Benjamin Zycher of Investors Business Daily puts the microscope to the Dems' latest plans which he declares significantly hurt the consumer. He summarily suggests why government controlled health care is a disaster waiting to happen explaining:

And so the Democrat promise that those who prefer private coverage will be able to keep it, and that the health-insurance market would continue to enjoy the broader economic advantages offered by a private system, borders on the naive or the cynical. Why does this outcome matter?Because governments have interest groups, not patients, and thus face powerful political pressures to squeeze both providers and patients in response to the budget demands of others. The inevitable result is waiting lists, denial of coverage, underinvestment in medical technologies and the long-run degradation of health care quality observed under all single-payer systems. The more "universal" the coverage, the greater the budget pressures, and so the more powerful the forces yielding reduced health-care quality. That's why single-payer "universal" coverage is the enemy of health care, and it's the inevitable outcome of the Democratic proposals.

Continue reading IBD here.

TODAY'S DEMOCRATS ARE NOT YOUR FATHER'S PARTY

NRO's Kathryn Lopez interviews author Mark Stricherz concerning the future of the Democrat party. Stricherz authored a new book entitled Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party. Stricherz implies throughout the interview that the Dems must be revolutionized. Lopez asks why, to which the author replies:

Oh, let me count the ways. First, the presidential wing of the party has not been in the majority since the McGovern Commission. Its nominees have lost six of the last nine presidential elections; not since 1896 to 1928 has the party had a worst stretch. Also, only one Democratic nominee has received more than half of the popular vote. By contrast, three different Republican nominees (Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43) have reached the 50-percent plateau.

Second, the national party has done little for its constituents. It’s true that Democrats have prevented Republicans from de-federalizing many social programs and have decreased the likelihood of U.S. troops fighting overseas. But that’s about all that can be said of its Social Change coalition. By contrast, the party in its New Deal coalition phase helped create a mass middle-class, aided the poor and vulnerable, extended legal protection to black Americans, and defeated the Nazis.

Third, national party leaders have suspect motives and competence. No matter the cost, they fight hardest to prevent unborn infants from having legal protection. After the 2000 election, Stanley Greenberg wrote a post-election analysis in which he partly attributed Al Gore’s defeat to his unlimited support for abortion rights. So what was the first major event for the party’s candidates in 2004? It was a dinner celebrated by NARAL honoring the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. After the 2004 election, Greenberg wrote another post-election analysis in which he largely attributed John Kerry’s defeat to his unlimited support for abortion rights and backing of civil unions. So have the party’s top nominees run away from gay rights groups and the abortion industry? No, they attended events hosted by Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign.

Continue reading this insightful piece here.

PHONY CHRISTIAN COMPASSION

Phony soldiers, now phony Democrats, where will it all end? I call Dems phony Christians full of phony compassion, with phony lip biting, and Al Gore crocodile tears. Power Line posts the lineup of what they call phony Democrats.

DEMS MAY GET THE CHANCE TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP

Bill Murchison from Townhall ponders the "what if" question concerning the 08 elections. He proposes that a Dem victory might not send the country over the edge as many believe. Murchison opines:

I think if they do win, much of the creepy teeth-baring and chest-pounding they presently go in for will likely just . . . go away. Which could be one reason for electing the Democrats: to make them put up or shut up. To oblige them to quit griping about the President from Hell and start doing something. A reasonable guess (it seems to me) is that the Democrats believe 35 to 50 percent of what their congressional leaders and presidential candidates have routinely asserted for some time -- e.g., we need to run, run, run home from Iraq, as fast as our little legs can carry us; rich people are too rich, poor people are too poor; inequality is increasing; taxes should rise; free trade is destroying the workers; the U.S. automobile industry is helping ruin the environment; oil companies are evil -- or anyway evil-ish; communist Cuba has better health care than we do. And so on. Suppose the newly empowered Democrats got the chance in 2009 to act on these varied complaints. Would they? In fact, reality would set in, as it commonly (though not always) does when one acquires power, only to learn how many different and competing legislative visions have to be dealt with.

Thomas Sowell provides an implicit antithesis to Murchison. Comparing our relationship to Iran with France's domineering yet, apprehensive relationship with Hitler pre-WWII, Sowell poses a lesson from history:

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them. It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times. Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing -- and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him. Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today -- "negotiations." No leader of a democratic nation was ever more popular than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain -- wildly cheered in the House of Commons by opposition parties as well as his own -- when he returned from negotiations in Munich in 1938, waving an agreement and declaring that it meant "peace in our time." We know now how short that time was. Less than a year later, World War II began in Europe and spread across the planet, killing tens of millions of people and reducing many cities to rubble in Europe and Asia. Looking back after that war, Winston Churchill said, "There was never a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action." The earlier it was done, the less it would have cost.

Continue reading morally paralyzed here.

Baghdad Harry and Sir Edmund Hillary Clinton stand as modern day Neville Chamberlains. Their call for negotiations only promises to delay the inevitable. But, we never learn from history. Mr. Murchison, I don't want to give the Dems any opportunities. Better the devil you do know than the one you don't know. Frankly, their historical amnesia scares the bejesus out of me.