Month: February 2010

(Hat tip: BF)

One of the weirdest aspects of TP ideology is that Obama deliberately created and facilitated an economic and financial crisis in order to allow the government to take over the entire economy to turn the US socialist. Bush, of course, did TARP – as any responsible president would have. A stimulus package which even AEI concedes help put a bottom on the economy and a bank bailout during a potential financial crisis that, if allowed to spiral down, could have begun a Second Great Depression: these are obvious, debatable but mainstream measures to cope with crisis. Somehow Tim Geithner does not come off as a Leninist to me. But the invaluable Weigel – a sane libertarian last time I checked – noticed something truly disturbing:

On Friday night, Andrew Breitbart introduced “Generation Zero,” a splashy documentary that argues that the financial crisis was deliberately engineered by radical 1960s ideologues.

Footage of dancing hippies and pictures of Saul Alinksy — the radical organizer who has become a household name among Tea Parties — were intercut with conservative writers like Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, historian Victor Davis Hanson, and Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald, explaining how left-wing theorists had long wanted to bring down capitalism and replace it with a socialist society. In a breakout session on immigration policy, Tancredo explained to Tea Partiers that Democrats wanted immigration reform in order to enfranchise millions of new voters to put them in perpetual power.

“Remember when Rahm Emanuel said ‘You never let a good crisis go to waste?’” said Lisa Mei Norton, a Tea Party activist and singer who opened the convention on Thursday night. “Now, what did he mean by that?”

Last week Douthat parsed Rep. Paul Ryan's moment in the sun:

[T]he size of Ryan’s proposed voucher could be increased, to accommodate political realities, without doing violence to his overall vision of what government should be doing, and where it could be cut. And that vision is more appealing, I think, than many liberals are giving it credit for. What Ryan is proposing, ultimately, is a comprehensive blueprint for a conservative welfare state.

A simplified tax code, consisting of a two-bracket income tax with a large standard deduction and a business consumption tax, would pay for a means-tested safety net, and a system of tax credits, risk pools and low-income subsidies would underwrite a free (or, well, somewhat freer) market in health care. In other words, Ryan would balance our books by shifting away from programs that shuffle money around within the middle and upper-middle classes — taking tax dollars with one hand and giving health-insurance deductions, college-tuition credits, home-mortgage deductions, Social Security checks and so forth with the other — and toward programs that tax the majority of Americans to fund means-tested support for the old, the sick, and the poor.

Paul Ryan is my new hero.

We all know that the US never tortured prisoners of war before Bush and Cheney adopted Gestapo and Khmer Rouge techniques in secret torture camps, kept from the Red Cross. That doesn't mean legal – and often frightening – ways to get people to talk were not very much part of the tool-kit. From an obit today from the days when America was a beacon of human rights:

Serving in Army intelligence in World War II, Mr. Trefousse interrogated German prisoners of war. In addition to his fluency in German, he had a means of persuading them to reveal vital information. “We used to tell the prisoners that we had two internment camps, one in Florida and the other in Siberia,” Professor Trefousse told the Brooklyn College alumni magazine last year. “I would hang a sign around the neck of a prisoner that said ‘Russia’ and send him out into the yard. He would ask a guard what the sign meant.

Nine times out of 10 the prisoner came right back in and told us everything we wanted to know.”

Bruce Bartlett offers a brief history of the budget:

Ironically, the portion of the budget over which Congress actually has meaningful control has fallen sharply over time. In 1970 the discretionary portion of the budget–those programs and operations subject to annual appropriations, was 61.5% of all spending. The rest consists of mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt that are not subject to annual appropriations. Their spending is automatic and cannot be reduced just by appropriating less money to them. In 2009 the discretionary portion of the budget was down to just 35.2% of spending.

Given all these changes in the budget process, the president's budget has been greatly diminished in importance. Whereas it was once the necessary starting point for all budget discussion, since that was the only place the numbers even existed, now it is just one proposal among many. Congress tends to rely exclusively on the CBO for all its budget numbers and analysis. Although departments and agencies are supposed to adhere to the president's priorities, they do so only half heartedly.

Johann Hari interviews David Cameron:

David Cameron is a hazy cloud of charm and platitudes: no matter how hard you peer into him, you cannot find anything solid to focus on for long. There are flickers of apparently real pro-gay feeling, but they are soon followed by excuse-making for some of the most anti-gay politicians in Europe. Which is the real Cameron? On this issue, I suspect even he doesn’t know. But over the next four years, we are all going to find out: the beaming lights of power will part this mysterious and contradictory fog.

I'm not so convinced he's going to win a real majority. The electoral math is very, very hard, given the way the constituencies are constructed. I side with WIlliam Hague on guarding against complacency. But read the whole thing. The Dish intends to cover the British election with almost as much scrutiny as an American one. Our British readership keeps growing – and the evolution of the Tory Party toward the pragmatic center might help bring the GOP back from its increasingly deranged brink.

The National Iranian-American Council notes a congruity:

Forgetting for a moment that it is the Congress, not the President, that is empowered with the authority to declare war, this is a pretty brash statement, even for Palin.  It is rare that a public figure would call for military action against Iran so explicity — and to call for such drastic action as a purely political ploy breaks an even stronger taboo in Washington circles. 

So it cannot be a coincidence that Palin’s advice to President Obama comes just days after prominent anti-Islam activist Daniel Pipes wrote nearly the identical thing in the National Review.  “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” was the title of the article, which my colleague Jamal picked apart well enough that I don’t have to here.  But I thought it interesting that Palin would so casually align herself on foreign policy issues — by all accounts her political Achilles Heel — with such a divisive figure as Pipes.

Interesting, but not surprising. Palin, however, attributed this idea to Pat Buchanan. Pipes and Buchanan are not exactly buddies. My view is that, until you understand the depths of Palin's Christianism – she explicitly called for "divine intervention" in her Q and A – you can't understand her foreign policy. It's about the End-Times. And how to follow God's will.

Continetti is still standing on the sinking ship:

"We are the loyal opposition, and we have a vision for the future of our country, too," Palin said. She repeatedly said the Tea Party movement does not need a leader. But is there an American politician who inspires such enthusiasm from her supporters (and her detractors)? And isn't that a unique strength in a polarized age in which the ideological stakes are so high?

Oh, yes, she'll end polarization all right.

Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel gets the Herzog treatment:

In case you missed Curious George, go here.