Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

Render unto Ceasar

In which Jesus doesn’t answer the question:

Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

But Jesus perceived their craftiness, and asked them, “Why do you tempt me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and inscription does it carry?”

They answered and said, “Caesar's.”

Then Jesus said to them, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's.”

The above passage has so many interpretations (literally hundreds, and those differences range back to the earliest days of Christianity) that I am not going to attempt one myself. Besides, I don’t really have one. I can explain the passage (which is what I hope to do here) but I do not grok its implications. Jesus at his cryptic best is a nut I cannot crack.

What has been called the Tribute Episode appears in the three synoptic gospels (at Matthew 22:15–22, Mark 12:13–17, and Luke 20:20–26) with a few minimal differences that I’ll explore where they arise. But a word of warning: I’m going to mix and match and I’m not always going to tell which Gospel the line is from. This is partially because too many verse notations makes for hard reading, partially because I’ll deal with a lot of verse fragments, and partially because they don’t matter. If you wish to look them all up, I’ve already said where they come from.

The scene is Jerusalem in the days immediately prior to Jesus’ execution, and right in the midst of a series of ‘hostile’ questions (e.g. by what authority do you do these things? And what of the wife with seven husbands?). The question of whether to pay tribute to Caesar is hostile because paying taxes to a foreign government, especially one led by a pagan and idolater, has already caused a number of uprisings in first century Judea and will cause more, including the one that finally results in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70ad.

The structure of the questioning is probably the most interesting part of the episode, so I’m going to explain it first. What we have here is an episode of what has been called “Rabbinical forensic interrogation” (that won’t be on the final) and was a well-known form of argument that runs essentially like this:

a. someone asks a Rabbi a question
b. If that question is ‘hostile,’ the Rabbi asks a counter question
c. the questioner answers the Rabbi, which exposes the weakness of the first question
d. The Rabbi’s concludes a teaching based on that answer

You can see it at work in Luke at the beginning of Chapter 20:

a. Priests: By what authority do you teach these things?
b. Jesus: Was the Baptism of John from men or God?
c. Priests: We will not answer you
d. Jesus: Then I won’t answer you, either.

There are going to be two parallels between this passage and the tribute passage: structure and the fact that in neither case does Jesus answer the question*.

The structure of the episode is easy to examine:

a. Priests: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?
b. Jesus: Whose image and inscription (is on the coin)?
c. Priests: Caesar’s
d. Jesus: Then give Caesar his things, and God His things.

But it’s the fact that Jesus does not answer the question that needs to be examined.

I mentioned that the setting was in Jerusalem. Jesus is teaching near the temple when he’s approached by a group of men. Luke calls them “spies,” Matthew and Luke both say they were Pharisees (or their disciples) and Herodians. The Herodians were partisans of Herod, the Roman puppet ruler, with all the Romanized attitudes that go with that. Their presences is what is going to set up the trap (“to catch him in his words”) that this group tries to spring on Jesus.

But they don’t start with the trap, they start with a bit of praise: all the writers note that they make the same claims:

They call Jesus ‘Master’
They say that he teaches Truth
They say that he does not ‘regard the person of men’ i.e. he does not pay respect to ‘greatness’

Now a lot of people think the questioners were just being slimy and sucking up or trying to put Jesus off his guard by saying those things, but they weren’t. Rather, those statements are part of the trap: By calling Jesus “master” they are forcing him to play rabbi** – this means that he will have to answer the question or be publicly humiliated. By saying that he teaches the truth of God, they are forcing him to rely on the scriptures for his answer (they will do the same with the word ‘lawful,’ by which they will limit his answer to Moses). And by saying he treats all equally, they are cutting off any “Caesar is special” arguments. Then they finally bring out the question: Is it lawful to pay tribute or not?

Herein lies the trap: The question is a yes or no question. Relying on the Law (capitalized) the answer is presumed by “society” to be no – there is simply nothing in Moses that authorizes paying taxes to a hostile power***. But if he says a flat-out no, he alienates the Herodians (the government) who will have him killed as a rebel. On the other hand, if he says a flat-out yes, he alienates the people who just proclaimed him king****. If he refuses to answer, he humiliates himself and shows that he is not a Rabbi. The trap is complete, and it is obvious to Jesus and to everyone around him: this is not a question of law, it is a battle of wits. Matthew says that Jesus perceived their wickedness, Mark says their hypocrisy, Luke their craftiness. Doubtless all were true.

Jesus responds by calling them hypocrites (Mark only) and asking to see a tribute coin. He then points to it or holds it up, and asks whose image and “superscription” was on the coin. This is the retort question to the hostile question, and by asking about those two specific things, he is alluding to the ‘lawful’ answer.

The image is the obvious thing. Jews were absolutely forbidden from making images, especially of gods, and they had rioted and forced the government to back down previously over statues placed in the city. They did not have images on their coins. Most did not even consider it lawful to carry such a coin through Jerusalem, and those coins were not permitted in the temple proper (thus the need for money changers in the Court of the Gentiles). The image on the front was of Tiberius; the reverse had Livia, the wife of the previous Caesar, Augustus. Both images were guaranteed to offend the Jews right down to their sandals. Ye shall make no graven images made the very coin itself unlawful.

The superscription is less obvious to us, but the Jews knew what it said. Obverse: “Tiberius, son of the god Augustus.” Reverse: “Pontifex Maximus” (or high priest). If the idea of the images were offensive and unlawful, how about the idea that Caesar was the son of a god, and that he was the high priest of all the people under his control? Paying taxes to Caesar admits the payer is under Caesar’s authority, but according to Rome, with that control comes religious duty. So did the Law of God, which forbade images and forbade the Jews from accepting a pagan high priest, allow them to pay taxes to Caesar?

On the other hand, the Denarius was minted in a mint owned by Tiberius out of silver owned by Tiberius. In short, this coin was legally the property of Caesar (which is why it was the only coin tribute could be paid in). That will play into Jesus’ ultimate answer. But I do want to point out one preposterous thing about the whole episode: here is the Son of God, the creator of the world and all the silver in it, holding in his hand the stamped image of a man who likewise claims to be the son of a god. How Jesus did not burst out laughing is beyond my understanding.

After the obvious retort that the image and inscription are Caesar’s, Jesus tells them to give Caesar what is his and to God what is his. And the people were amazed.

Now, why were the people amazed? Not because of the great wisdom of the answer itself (like us, they probably had little understanding of its implications), but because the answer a) avoided the trap, b) gave the Pharisees nothing to accuse him of, c) gave the Herodians nothing to accuse him of*****, d) avoided the humiliation of not answering, and e) exposed the hypocrisy of those who were not really interested in an answer at all. The crowd knew the game and the stakes, and they saw that Jesus pwned the Pharisees.

But how is it not answering the question? Because the question was one of taxes, and Jesus made it one of property. The coin was legally Caesar’s: so giving it to him was just. But if one gives to God what legally belongs to him, what is left for Caesar? Nothing, of course. The Jews belong to God and could in no way agree to the claims of Caesar represented on the coin. To know that it is a non-answer, one must only ask the obvious followup: what is Caesar's?

As I said, I do not understand all the implications of that, and based on the fact that there are so many interpretations, neither does anyone else. But it does help to at least understand what Jesus was *not* saying, which is usually what people say he was saying.

* Jesus was very adept at not answering the question (see: woman caught in adultery, the).  This is not because he didn't know the answers, but because the question was not asked honestly.  We should take that as an example.
** It is important to remember that they did not consider him a rabbi – that’s the whole point of all the questions about his authority.
*** Rome is a hostile power in Judea, on the order of the Chinese militarily occupying America. What kind of a quisling would pay them taxes?
**** he will also look the coward, but we should not make the mistake of assuming that he’s afraid of them. Remember, by the end of the week Jesus will be dead anyway. And what’s more, he knows it.
***** This did not stop them, of course. Luke, who is the only gospel writer to include that one of the reasons the Herodian came was "so they might deliver him to the governor" later notes that among the accusations of the Jews against Jesus was, "We found this fellow... forbidding to give tribute to Caesar" (Lk 23:2).

Something out here smells a lot like loser

Looking for Vietnam

I was kind of amused by the results of this poll this morning:

58 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan

6 in 10 Republicans support the war, but support drops to 40 percent among Independents and just 20 percent among Democrats

44 percent of the public believes things are going well for the United States in Afghanistan, down from 55 percent in March

So we have a Democratic president stuck in an unwinnable war, opposed by his own party, who cannot rely on the party that supports his war to support him*. Public opinion is breaking against him, yet he has nothing more to say than what has already been said, because nothing is changing but the number of young Americans killed and maimed.

Amusing comparisons aside, I'm still waiting for John Kerry, hitting the campaign trail to damage the electoral chances of his Democratic colleagues, to say: "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Afghanistan***." Just like every other empire does eventually.

* In other words, by disagreeing that it's a lost cause, they make it harder for him to get out. In this case (where Dems picked this specific war because it was 'easy'**) he opens himself to the 'quitter' moniker in a way that El Presidente Pasado would not have.
** And because we have nothing to gain there.  Liberals don't oppose war as much as they wish to make sure that our motives for killing other people are pure.  "No War for Oil" is about oil as much as it is about war.
*** I actually believe John Kerry when he said that he was talking about Bush being "stuck in Iraq." It was a roundabout, petty, snooty insult that made very little sense if taken literally and was open to multiple interpretations. In other words, it was classic John Kerry.

Surveilance IS Security

Teh Cortz get one right:

BALTIMORE - A judge threw out criminal charges Monday against a Maryland man who videotaped his traffic stop by a plainclothes state trooper and posted the video on YouTube.

Anthony J. Graber III had been indicted under Maryland's wiretap law, which requires the consent of both parties to record a private conversation. His video shows the trooper pulling his gun and telling Graber to get off his motorcycle before he identifies himself as a police officer.

Here's an interesting case - a plainclothes policeman pulls over a driver on a public road and then pulls a gun on him *before* identifying himself as an officer. The driver records the episode and posts it on Youtube. The police and county prosecutor then indict the man for violations of the Maryland wiretap law*, because, they argued, a public employee pulling a gun on a citizen on a public road is a "private conversation."

Obviously, no reasonable person could construe this as a private conversation. This is especially true when the government argues** that privacy does not exist in public places. It's not easy to make the argument that you can sneak onto a man's lawn and put a GPS on his car because he can have no expectation of privacy on his own private property, and then to turn around and argue that a government employee forcing himself on someone on a public road has that expectation.  What's happening here is prosecutorial harassment, pure and simple.

But prosecutorial harassment did not begin with the invention of the hand-held video camera - the handheld camera just made its existence obvious and incontrovertible.  That's why surveillance *is* security, and about the only security the people have. Surveillance of the police, that is.

* Maryland's wiretap law is the same one under which Linda Tripp was indicted for recording Monica Lewinski's cigar stories. But it's not happening only in Maryland.
** when it is convenient to them, of course.

UPDATE: Jozum's comment is worth adding to the front page:

As a former law enforcement officer all the plainclothes officer had to do was simply follow the motorcyclist until he had the assistance of uniformed troopers. IMO, this is simply a case of the "John Wayne Syndrome." i.e., "I have a badge, a gun and I am a badass."

Administrative leave pending an investigation whereupon he should be reprimanded for being stupid in a no-stupid zone. Unless said cyclist was endangering people's lives (highly doubtful) or was fleeing or attempting to flee a felonious crime, he had no reason to even get out of the car let alone remove his weapon from its holster. Again, imo the right thing to do would have been to follow him until uniformed troopers could have done the traffic stop and then approached with them.

But I used to take drunk drivers home. Ever met the spouse of a drunk driver suspect @ 3am? THAT is punishment no court could EVER duplicate. Or I would take them to the most expensive hotel in the area...with the keys given to the overnight clerk. MADD hated me. If the goal is to get the drunk driver OFF THE ROAD tell me where I was wrong? Good luck. My command staff could not tell me nor did the law state that I MUST arrest. Only domestic abuse law states that.

MADD = another "do gooder" organization that I have no use for.

Then again, I am an anarchist...

Well, at least it will solve the issue

One way or another:

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) warned Republicans will investigate President Obama's birthplace if they take over Congress.

Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, said Republicans will grind the government to a halt by issuing subpoenas against the Obama administration over a number of issues if they take power. He predicted that "gridlock" in Congress would "define" Obama's first term* if Republicans win the House...

Gridlock is, of course, the best of all reasons to vote Republican this year, and Clyburn is hardly scaring people by claiming that Hopenchange will come skidding to an end if they vote Republican. In fact, considering that only 38% of people think Obama deserves re-election, Clyburn is doing the GOP's heavy lifting. 

But his idea that the issuing of subpoenas itself somehow causes government to not work is just silly - Obama can just pull a Bush and ignore Congress.  Or, in the case of the President's birth certificate, it should take take about 5 seconds to make subpoenaing Republican birthers look like utter fools.  Should take. I wonder how long it will take.

* Wow, and here I thought ObamaCare and the Biggest, Bestest, Bitchinest Wall Street Makeover since FDR(™) were supposed to define his first term.  Now two years of nothing is supposed to? I guess those legislative accomplishments weren't that big after all.

Halfway there

Europe marks the middle of the great gold bull:

Europe’s central banks have all but halted sales of their gold reserves, ending a run of large disposals each year for more than a decade....

The shift away from gold selling comes as European central banks reassess gold amid the financial crisis and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

In the 1990s and 2000s, central banks swapped their non- yielding bullion for sovereign debt, which gives a steady annual return. But now, central banks and investors are seeking the security of gold.

Ah, yes, *now* central banks are seeking the security of gold. Rubbish, says I. Not because I don't believe what they say about gold, but because I don't believe they are learning anything new about gold today.

It's perfectly true that the day Gordon Brown dumped half of Britain's gold reserves on the market marked the bottom of a 20-year bear almost to the month. And it's true that Britain's financial press has been mocking him ever since.  It's also true that Central banks all over Europe sold half or more of their gold when the price was low, less than half the price it would command today.  Now that the price is high, they have stopped selling*. When the price gets high enough, they will start buying, which act will tell me that the great golden bull is on its last legs.

If the most obvious and successful strategy in investing is "Buy low, sell high," why is it that the bankers in charge of a nation's money buy high and sell low, consistently, and all across those nations that have central banks just like our own? It seems completely counter-intuitive, so you need to think it through, considering that for every seller there is a buyer. And he's usually a banker as well.

* Which tells me that we are halfway to the top, though whether that will be marked in dollars (+$1000 more), years (8 more), and multiples of the current price ($1300/$260 ~= 5), just as the 'bottom half' was, I don't know.

Ya big dummy

Don't you know you're supposed to vote Democrat?

A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan* rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

As painful for me as it might be - and despite the fact that he will backtrack on this if he has not already - allow me to defend Mr. Kerry here for a moment. We do have an electorate that doesn't always pay attention, and one that is influenced - I would say driven - by simple slogans. But Mr. Kerry is hardly the sort of person who should complain about that. Those attributes are precisely what keep his party in power.

After all, which is the party that relies most on celebrity, enthusiasm, and youth** in order to place its people in office? Which party consistently argues for including on the voter rolls those people who cannot be bothered to register in advance? Which works to insure that voters who appear at the polls need not have any form of identification? Which is constantly running voter registration drives, which by their very nature attempt to bring in those people who have neither the interest not the initiative to register on their own? 

Mr. Kerry is exactly correct that the voting population is filled with hordes of ignoramuses who are driven primarily by emotion and slogan.  He ought to know: liberals have worked for decades to ensure that is precisely the case.

* "Hope" and "Change" spring immediately to mind for some reason.
** Not that there's is anything wrong with any of those, but let's not pretend they are euphemisms for knowledge, wisdom, and careful consideration.

Stop making sense

Buh bye

Puffington Host describes a lovely love affair:

When [her stepson] was called for active duty he obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy, naming his father the beneficiary and providing temptation for Teresa Lewis.

Both men would have to die for Lewis to receive the insurance payout.

She met at a Walmart with the two men who ultimately killed Julian Lewis and his son. Lewis began an affair with Matthew Shallenberger and later had sex with the other triggerman, Rodney Fuller. She also arranged sex with Fuller and her daughter, who was 16, in a parking lot.

On the night before Halloween in 2002, after she prayed with her husband, Lewis got out of bed, unlocked the door to their mobile home and put the couple's pit bull in a bedroom so the animal wouldn't interfere. Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times with the shotguns Lewis had bought for them.

The state of Virginia killed Lewis last night, an act about which Lewis' lawyer said:

"Tonight the death machine exterminated the beautiful childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis."

And good riddance. Despite the ideological blinders worn by her attorney, it is difficult to reach the conclusion that Lewis' spirit was in any way either beautiful or loving*. Childlike, perhaps - in fact, that seemed to be the main argument against executing her - but being stupid is no excuse for being evil in my opinion.  There can be little doubt that she deserved her fate.

That doesn't make the death penalty good public policy. It seems to me that it should either be eliminated or vastly expanded. Taking 10 years to put an admitted murderer to death is bad enough, but justice ought to demand three chairs there, not just one.

* I was particularly touched by the fact that she prayed with her husband before she unlocked the door for his murderers. How thoughtful of her.

Priorities

NOW notes a real danger:

Women on college campuses are being paid $500 each to hand out [KFC] coupons while wearing fitted sweatpants with "Double Down" in large letters across their rear ends...

The nation's largest women's group doesn't like it one bit. "It's so obnoxious to once again be using women's bodies to sell fundamentally unhealthy products*," says Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women.

Now it's probably not fair to imply (as some commenters did) that NOW seems to have an opinion about everything except what really matters - that they're all about making sure girls with nice butts don't make money, and yet they have nothing to say about Iran.  Let the record show that do mention Iran on occasion, so long as some liberal male politician mentions it first**. The KFC kerfuffle is probably a case where the NOW folks did not have an opinion of their own, either. But they have to say something, even if it's something really stupid.

What is more fair to say that, as explained by the aforelinked press release, NOW is about 'echoing.' For example, they are opposed to 'corporate money in electoral politics' not because it has anything to do with women***, but because they are liberals, and that's what liberals believe. You will be hard pressed to find *any* position where they are in disagreement with other hard-left groups like Americans United or the MAINstream Coalition. These groups may appear to have a different focus, but when you get down to brass tacks, they all want exactly the same tacks.

One thing I admire about liberals is their ability to organize and to segment. They create 50 or so groups with marginally overlapping missions (but which all support the same specifics) so that when they find someone who hates the world because she's not pretty enough to sell chicken, they can fit that person into a group or 20 where suddenly she can be against corporate money and Israel and Sarah Palin as well. Saul Alinski strikes again.

* apparently it's fine so long as you're selling granola or fresh fruit.
** They are sure to walk 10 paces behind him, as well.
*** I have yet to figure out why, since corporations are considered evil, NOW so fervently wishes to have more women spending more time in them.

This may be the only time this blog will ever

Quote the New York Times without commentary:

WASHINGTON — It was billed as “Investing in America,” a live televised conversation on the state of the economy between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check.

But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters.

UPDATE: You knew it couldn't last. So anyway, I'm listening to NPR this morning and the President is talking about his health care law. I wish I could remember his exact words, but the essence of the statement was that a major part of health care reform is not what it does, but how it makes people feel: it gives them confidence and freedom from fear.

Even the Democrats' legislation is therapy.

Kill it!

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

Bad Grammar

Barack Obama was a salad dressing dude

and other lessons in Democrat history:

If voters keep burning with the throw-the-bums-out fever that animated so many primaries, Democrats would be likely to lose more than 40 House seats... Democratic candidates want to convince these voters that no matter how much they hate the status quo, they would be worse off under a Republican Party that hasn't learned from its mistakes and is lurching ever harder to the right.

"This needs to be a choice, not a referendum" on the Democratic-led Congress and Obama administration, said Erik Smith, a Democratic campaign adviser.

I wonder if it's Democrats who are stupid, or whether they think voters are stupid*. What Smith is saying is that the Democrats need to make this election not about Democrats, but about Republicans. Do you want us or them to rule you? But unless Obama and Biden are willing to resign if the GOP takes the House, thus making John Boehner the president, it cannot be as they say.  The Republicans can't rule**, because they can't win either the White House or enough Senate Seats to override a Presidential veto. In other words, it is impossible, no matter how well the GOP does, that they should find themselves in the position the Democrats are today.

Therefore the voters' choice is either a) continue the HopenChange, or b) stop the Hopenchange. They can affirm what the Democrats - especially that guy with arugula on his head - want to do, or they can stop the Democrats from doing anything. Those are the choices. In other words, thanks to the Constitution, this election is a referendum on Democrats.

But I did rather like the non-sequitir, or rather the oxymoron, that the GOP "hasn't learned from its mistakes" and is "lurching ever harder to the right."  I would say that the fact of the latter disproves the assertion of the former.  But then again, I've been wrong before - I used to think they were serious about shrinking government.

* If it's the latter I'm in full agreement, which is why I am in favor of large voter unregistration drives, Voter-ID laws, poll taxes, Native American rain-and-hail dances on election day, and anything else that keeps the casual voter at home.
** he said unnecessarily, considering all the whining about it I did.

They told me if I voted for Goldwater

We'd have half a million troops in Vietnam, too:

Had the Republicans taken control of Congress in 2008, the country would have sunk into a depression, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), told CNBC Thursday.

“If we had not won re-election and intervened, we would be in a depression,” said Pelosi.

That's true as far as it goes, because without the political asswhupping the GOP received, they might still be nominating men like John McCain to be their standardbearers* and they would still be voting for stimulus packages like those promoted by el presidente pasado. Since those things are not solutions to depressions, it follows that we would probably be in a depression if the GOP had won.

However, the Dems won re-election and 'intervened.' The problem is that we are still in a depression. The intervention didn't do anything to fix the problem - it was the same bad idea the GOP had, only bigger - nor did the Democrats change the very laws that Nancy blames for the depression-that-almost-was: Tax Cuts For the Wealthy(™) and the hideous 2003 Medicare expansion**. So even by her own admittedly lax standard, the Dems haven't done what might have avoided it. They have exacerbated it.

But that was not the interesting*** statement from her interview. I was actually amazed to hear her say this:

She added that she thinks Americans understand that they need to be more frugal now. “I think everyone has recognized there has to be a nest egg."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Keynesian fools have been trying to get the consumer spending again, government has been spending for the sake of spending to make up the difference****, and the Fed has dropped rates to all time lows to encourage a consumer-led credit-fed consumption orgy, and here comes Nancy with the perverse, dangerous, and perfectly true statement that Americans need to STOP FREAKING SPENDING?

She must have misspoken.  Those cannot be her words. The next thing you know she'll be saying that people are responsible for their own nest egg, and there goes Social Security and half the Democrats' constituency right out the window. All they will have left to scare voters with is the idea that the GOP will take away your Girlfriend Jill (Point 7).

And I do not want to see those TV commercials. Not even a little.

* What? He won the senate race in Arizona?  Maybe I speak too soon.
** Nancy gets full marks for voting against it, but it just proves that no program, even one blamed for a depression, ever goes away.
*** By which I mean "the singular something that was NOT a vague, trite, and cliched verbal substitute for thought."
**** "So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point. No, seriously. That's the point."
-- President Obama

Gloria Borger dubs the Maginot Line "a good plan"

If only the Germans had played fair:

[Following the last baby seal hunt, in which the GOP played the part of the seal, Republican] leaders went out of their way -- and it wasn't easy -- to recruit stellar, well-known, GOP candidates for Senate: a governor in Charlie Crist of Florida, a secretary of state in Trey Grayson of Kentucky, a seasoned* and popular congressman in Mike Castle of Delaware.

At the time, it seemed like a really good plan. And it got even better when President Obama and his jolly band of congressional Democrats shepherded through some controversial, and unpopular, legislation...

Ignoring for just a moment the fact that the GOP faithful dumped all three of these posers out their ears, in what way can this plan be considered anything but a case of the dim leading the dim? What good does it do a party, when their opponents are unpopular, to present candidates that mimic those unpopular positions? Castle, after all, voted for the very "controversial and unpopular" legislation that led to the Dems' present conundrum. Crist, after losing his primary, has turned his back on every Republicanesque position he ever held and seems hellbent on making Florida's three-man race a binary one: him against a Republican. It's not even assured that if he were to win, he would caucus with the party that recruited him. Grayson I can't speak of - being wholly ignorant of his policies - but the fact that Paul received 60% of the vote in a 6-man field leaves little doubt that the Republican voters didn't think he was any part of "a really good plan."

Borger goes on to expound about how the GOP has created a monster here: after all, they might not win** enough seats to garner a majority.  But whether these candidates win or not, they will matter. Lefty WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus actually gets something right*** in her understanding about the likely effects of O'Donnel's win:

But not as scary as reason number two: the ripple effect of victories such as O'Donnell's on other Republican lawmakers...They will be that much more watchful of protecting their right flank against a primary challenge. They will be that much less likely to take a political risk in the direction of bipartisanship. In this sense, it matters less whether O'Donnell will win the general election -- that doesn't seem likely -- than that she won the primary.

Maybe O'Donnell doesn't win, though there are few arguments to that effect that did not seem conclusive before yesterday. But even if she loses, her end around the party structure has shown the glaring weakness in their plan: even if a bunch of liberal Republicans hand the leadership of the Senate to the GOP, it doesn't mean that Republicans who are indistinguishable from Democrats are going to be acceptable to Republican voters forever.

* read: elderly. Castle was first elected to office the year this grandfather was born. The time of the gentleman from Delaware has expired.
** The fact that the Democrats are excited that they may hang onto a senate seat that Joe Biden had held since 1973 - adds a little perspective to their celebration. 
*** Other than admitting that she's scared. All liberals are scared by nature. That's why they are liberals.

No, seriously

That's what they called him:

(CNN) – Newly-minted Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell is picking her latest battle with Karl Rove, the former top Bush aide who said O'Donnell's surprise victory in the Delaware primary Tuesday does "little good" for the party...

I don't watch Fox News, but I did turn it on last night once the polls closed in Delaware just to see the GOP "leadership" lament the defeat of a Republican who voted for Cap-and-Trade, ObamaCare, and who is pro-gun-control and pro-choice. But he can WIN!*

But that's not the funny part**. The funny part was when Sean Hannity referred to Karl Rove as "The Architect," as if that was some sort of a title. The Architect. That would be The Architect of the "Permanent Republican Majority" that resulted in the baby-seal asswhupping the GOP received in 2006 and 2008. The Architect that put Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of Congress.  And he did it by convincing the GOP that if they acted like Democrats, people would have no reason to vote for the Democrats. In truth, they had no reason to vote for Republicans.

Conservatives might finally be learning the correct lesson, and not the one Rove is teaching. In truth, it doesn't matter if you get a Castle as your 50th vote, because you can't count on him.  He's only your friend when it doesn't matter. If Delaware is going to have a pro-choice, gun-controlling, cap-and-trading, ObamaCaring senator, he might as well be a Democrat, because then at least you can target him for next time.

But what about the committee chairmanships? What about the power that comes from a majority?  That's Rove's main argument, the party "leadership's" argument, and it's a good one. Except that it's too short-sighted for those who would rather do than be, because it makes chairmanships the end rather than the means. It makes power the end rather than the means. Yes, without a majority, Conservatives cannot get what they want. But with a majority led by Rove, Bush, and Castle, they won't get it anyway.

* Well, apparently not, but that's what they kept saying.
** That was just the part I enjoyed the most.

My dictator speech

My fellow Americans:

Doubtless some of you are concerned about the unusual, even unprecedented manner in which I assumed the Presidency. I understand your concerns; in fact, I share them. There have been times in human history when dictators have been called upon to “fix” a nation – the example of Solon in ancient Athens comes to mind – and there have been times when that strategy for cutting through the self-interest of party and class has worked. There have been many more times when it has not. But in every case, whether the solutions worked or did not, a nation had reached a point where the politics as presently constituted failed it. There came a point where the government could not govern. There came a place in which change needed to be made or the nation would die, a point at which the people had to roll the dice and hope they came up right. Many of those times, in our case as in Solon's, debt was to blame.

I am not going to lay blame for that debt, for our debt. But I am going to lay out the truth: we are broke. America is broke. Every American child is born some $40,000 in debt, and that number grows every year. Your government – just this federal government – owes $13 trillion dollars, dollars which will likely never be repaid. It spends two dollars for every dollar it brings in and borrows the rest or creates it from nothing. America is broke.

But America is not broken. We are in debt, it’s true. But our farmers still feed the world. We owe money, but Pike’s Peak still raises its proud head above our fruited plains. We have bills to pay, but we have 600 million hands in America that can work, that must work together. One of the first American flags featured the motto “Join or Die.” Our American challenge is not different today. Not a single real asset has been lost, not a single building has fallen - America is still here.

But as this dictatorship must go away – and as quickly as is practicable – in the same way the fix with which it is charged must be accomplished. The government is broke, and it is broken, and so to each of you, I lay out what I intend to do to fix it. And when it is fixed, like Solon did with his Athenian neighbors, I will leave it in your hands. What you pass to your children is up to you.

The two largest costs to our government presently are the military (euphemistically called “Defense”) and financial support for the elderly and disabled, which we call Social Security and Medicare. It is obvious that these programs cannot go away, but it is just as obvious that they cannot remain in their current form.

America can no longer afford to spend as much on its military as the rest of the world put together, nor is there any need for us to do so. We are a people blessed with a unique and fortunate geography – we have no enemy that can invade us. This is not an idle boast, but a fact of physics. Can North Korea or Iran mount up tanks and take Seattle? Can Cuba launch a successful amphibious assault on New Orleans? Of course not – no nation can physically move the millions of troops it would take to hold land in America across the oceans. If we maintain good relations with those nations attached to us – Canada and Mexico – that will be the best defense we can possibly design.

But to reduce the military we must reform it. Therefore the following plan will be immediately put into effect:

American troops are pulling out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea beginning at 4pm today. To the nations we defeated and then have defended for decades, I quote the words of Tom Petty, “everybody’s had to fight to be free.” We have preserved yours until today, now it’s your turn.

The Army will immediately cease recruiting in preparation for its downsizing by 60%. The days of tanks and straight lines are over – America’s tank corps are about to be eliminated in favor of BiMPs and attack choppers. Its infantry is going to be replaced by the National Guard. America is blessed with access to both oceans, and that is where we will project our power when we need to. But henceforth we will focus on building submarines rather than ships.

For each five men or three women eliminated, we will add a Ranger or a Green Beret. The Marine Corps, similarly downsized, will be rolled into the new army. Women will be “transitioned” out of the armed forces except in very limited capacities, and those capacities do not include officerships. America’s armed forces are not strengthened by sexual diversity, nor are they a jobs program – they are a training ground for teaching men to kill other men.

America’s armed forces are going to be smaller and faster, but mostly, they are going to be kept here. Let our enemies know, however, that we can be there in a matter of hours.

On the matter of old Age pensions and Social Security, the numbers are far worse than those of the military. America cannot (and never could) afford to pay someone for decades of not working. When Social Security was implemented 80 years ago, the average American’s life expectancy was less than 60 – and a full 5 years below the retirement age. Today, it is almost 80 (and for women it is over 80). As a result, what began as a safety net has evolved into an enormous transfer of wealth from the working generation to that which preceded it. But the boomers are too numerous – they simply cannot be paid.

Social Security is not going away, but it is going to change: early retirement at reduced rates is eliminated immediately. The retirement age will be raised from 67 to 70 immediately. Each year for the next 12, the retirement age will be increased by 2 months per year. Each year following, it will increase by one month until it reaches the average life expectancy of Americans. America will still be there for its elderly, but we will not force young women to find their value in the workplace so middle aged men can find theirs on the golf course.

On all other matters, the government is going to begin eliminating programs, beginning with the Department of Education. Every state already has a department of education – there is no need for one more. This will be followed by the elimination of all extraconstitutional departments. This will be followed by the elimination of most transfer payments, all business supports, and all subsidies. The specifics are not as important as the results. There is going to be a lot less government, and that which remains will be focused on a few well-defined duties.

Make no mistake, these changes are going to change America in real ways, and some people are not going to like it very much. So I leave you with these final words:

To all Americans, the tasks that the government used to do, it did because many of you wanted them done. They still need to be done. Go do them. President Kennedy told us to ask what we could do for our country. I instead ask what you can do for your neighbor. If each of you will do one thing – become a Red Cross volunteer, become a big brother or big sister, take in an unwed mother who is not related to you – the things the government was doing poorly will be done well and at almost no cost.

To the strong, I ask that you remember the weak. Our Christian heritage is founded by those who were strangers in strange lands, who were pilgrims, who were all but helpless in a hostile culture. I ask that you remember the stranger among you.

To that stranger, that immigrant - illegal or not - I ask you to remember that you are a guest in our home. If you cannot abide by the house rules, you will be asked, rather forcefully, to leave. If for some reason you cannot return to your nation of origin, we will happily find a South Pacific Island where you can live out your life in the sun.

To the poor, I warn you that you are about to receive the brunt of these cuts. I will also tell you what my predecessors would not: for most of you, the fact that you are poor is your own fault. You are poor because you make the kinds of decisions that lead to poverty. You are poor because you don’t work, because you don’t save, because you don’t think about the future. Most of you are poor in a land of blessings and opportunity because you are lazy and stupid. America spent trillions of dollars back when it had money because it believed that those who worked should not be poor. What she created was a land where the poor didn’t have to work. That is about to change. That trap is about to open, and you are about to experience responsibility in its full measure and freedom in all of its horror. Get a job.

Good night, and God bless America.

What's wrong with Islam

is what's wrong with all of us:

We have two powerful tools with which to bridge the chasm separating the United States from the Muslim world: faith in the basic goodness of humanity and trust in the power of sincerity and dialogue to overcome differences with our fellow human beings.

This faith and this trust are taught by all the Abrahamic traditions. They define the Abrahamic ethic, which lies at the core of our American Declaration of Independence, and America needs to rely more heavily on them, as do our fellow actors on the stage of history.

Imam Rauf has it exactly wrong: what's wrong with man is not that we lack faith in the basic goodness of humanity. Perhaps it is solely a Christian perspective - which would at least belie the statement that this faith defines the Abrahamic ethic - but part of our major problem as moderns is not that we think too little of our own goodness, but that we think too highly of it. But I don't think it's solely Christian, as the very Jewish prophet Jeremiah pointed out 2700 years ago, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

The first truth is that only God can know it. The second truth is that only God can fix it. It's not, of course, that we can do no good, that we can show no mercy, that we can never live in peace - of course we can do these things. We were created to do them. But the history of mankind, the wars and the evils which we have done, illustrate that while we were created to do good things, we do them far less than we do things that are not good. "Let us build a name for ourselves" is the heartcry, not just of modern man, but of all mankind going right back to Babel. Whether we choose to call it original sin or human depravity makes no difference - whatever it is is the most obvious thread connecting the great things Man recognizes in Man.  Why was Alexander great? Because he subjected an entire empire to the Greeks? Good things came of it - or rather God used it for good*- but Alexander's murderous rampage came about for the glory of Alexander, not God.  What of Julius Caesar, often recognized as the greatest man of the ancient world? He slaughtered the Gauls and the Helvetians to sell children into slavery to cover his bar tab. What of the "God, gold, and glory" for which the Spaniard conquered? It is hard to argue that those reasons are in the correct order. In fact, they are in exactly the wrong order. Great men - Christians and Muslims and Atheists and Shintos - have always built great kingdoms atop the mangled bodies of the weak, and they have done it for themselves most of all. Little men build little kingdoms, and they do it for themselves as well.

But this is the reason why, while I have said elsewhere that Islam is evil - by which I mean it does not conform to God's word or wishes and is thus His enemy - it is of little use saying the Muslim is evil. Of course he is, he's human like me. His human heart is the same desperately wicked one that beats in my chest. My mistake is not in recognizing the evil  of his acts, but in ignoring the same desires in myself. Islam is presently in a murderous rampage for what it considers truth, but it was not long ago that Christianity was in a murderous rampage for truth, as often as not against other Christians. Also as often as not, those internicene crusades were of mixed motives - the mixture of truth and self formed an alloy that was stronger than either, because it could hide the selfishness and excuse its evil. And while I think that only Christians, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, can overcome it, I would be a fool to think we usually do.  Paul himself asked who would rescue him from "the body of this death," in which sin and evil dwelt and which was constantly pulling him to do what he knew was wrong. Perhaps as only Christians can overcome it, it is we who have the most responsibility to do so. It is the most knowledgeable servant who is beaten with the most stripes, for to whom more is given, more is of him required.

Does this mean, as one commenter asked, we have to sit by while evil overtakes the land? Of course not. I need to live for the good, and I need to fight for the good. While I may be called on to die (and I must do so gladly, and believe God will give me that power) I may also be called on to kill** for the good. I may be called on to kill a Muslim (I may even be called on to kill a Christian), but I must not hate him even as I kill him. I may have to pull the trigger or open the bomb bay door, but I must not enjoy seeing his body parts fly. I must not collect his fingers as trophies of my own prowess. My hope for the Muslim is not that he be killed, but that he be converted, that he recognize the evil in himself as the Christian is called on to recognize the evil in himself. That he call out to Jesus Christ who died for the Muslim's hatred and wrath and selfishness, just as he paid the penalty for mine. That he receive from God the Spirit of Truth - in short, that he replace his loyalty for Allah with a loyalty to the true God.

If he will not, then we are enemies, because our loyalties are given to enemies, and my loyalties will not change even if my enemy would kill me for it. But my God says that I must love my enemy until that day when my God puts all enemies under his feet.

* For example, I would argue that the fact that the Greek language was spoken in large swaths of the Roman world was crucial to the spread of the Gospel.
** "Thou shall not murder," the command says, not that I must never kill.

Vicini, I hope we win

In busting the myth of the government shutdown:

While the President was laying out bipartisan solutions to continue creating jobs, this Republican Congressman was rallying his political base in favor of his preferred solution – simply shutting the government down altogether:

[Rep. Lynn] Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said his caucus – presuming it takes control of the House come November – aims to pass spending bills that Obama is likely to veto. He predicted Republicans would not be able to override such a veto, creating a standoff that could cause Congress to grind to a halt.

“If the government shuts down, we want you with us,” he said.

This is far from the first time shutting down the government has been put forth by prominent conservatives.

A funny thing happened on the way to the last shutdown - it never really happened. When the government shut down in 1995, were all the soldiers and sailors released from their posts? Did federal prisons release all of their involuntary guests? Did the borders open?* Did a million federal bureaucrats go hungry in the streets?  Of course not.  I think they shut down the national parks**, but that was about it. Hey, we don't even have a budget this year and the government is not shut down, will a budget impasse next year shut it down?

We can hope that most of it gets shut down, at some point - that may be the only way to save those legitimate functions of government in the face of the fiscal collapse which is coming. We can hope that the Department of Education shuts down and never reopens. We can pray that the Departments of Labor and Commerce go away. We could even pine for the Department of Homeland Security foregoing their business of harassing grandmothers in airports. Triage and amputation are far preferable to death.

I don't think the Republicans will do it, however: at least not in any meaningful form. The Republicans are not anarchists and they are certainly not libertarians. Last time they "shut it down" over a few percentages of how much government was going to spend on what it ought not do anyway and they won nothing of any lasting value while losing the public relations battle. If they have a battle plan, hopefully it will be far more focused this time - the first year they could "forget" to fund a handful of leftist projects like the NEA, the CPB, and any other program that does nothing but put government money in the hands of the left. They could make Obama justify government-funded television in a world of 500 channels. They could make him justify payoffs to public unions and ACORNs-by-any-other-name. In short, rather than shutting down "the government," they could shut those parts of the government that are most obnoxious and that will be most embarrassing to the Dems to defend.

Of course, this is just a little of the real battle: because of the non-acts of the Republicans when they *did* have the power to make real changes (e.g. 2000-2006), their job is that much harder today - they cannot balance the budget without eliminating those things that prior Republicans built. Even so, shutting down little bits of the government is marginally preferable to shutting down nothing, which is exactly what they will shut down if they do what Obama says they will: try to shut down everything. But it's not enough.

* well, any more than normal?
** government shutdowns are designed to inconvenience the most people in the most obvious ways, just like a fully operational government.

the press begins to understand

They created Terry Jones:

...a minor crackpot has, thanks to the miracle of the Internet and far-less-wondrous effect of cable television news*, managed to have a global impact -- and a potentially lethal one at that. ... Jones's kookiness is not about space aliens or the UN's black helicopters -- or even the evils of Jews or Christians. If it were, we would have never heard of him. Instead, it is Islam he is maligning -- and that explains both the reaction of the media and of statesmen from Obama on down.

Jackson Deihl of the WaPo gets a lot of things correct, and especially his closing note that most of the blame for "rage" in the Islamic world belongs to those "Muslim leaders who seize on any pretext to foment anti-Western violence." As I said elsewhere, those who do not wish to be mollified won't be; and Imams must thank Allah 5 times a day for idiots like Terry Jones.He makes their job much easier.

That said, Deihl still misses a couple of major points that tie in with his correct assertion that the press would not have paid any attention to this except that it dealt with Islam.  The lesser point is that the left (to which the press generally belongs) is really not afraid of Christians and Jews.  And there's good reason for that. Let's say that there are 200 million Christians in the US**. What percent of them taking gun in hand would it take to shut down the nation's 750 abortion clinics? The fact that one abortion doctor in the last 5 years has been murdered is proof that all the noise about "Christian Taliban" and the like is just leftist noise. They can ignore - or commit - offenses against Christians because they know Christians are not going to kill them over, for example, crucifixes in urine.  But the left does not know how to deal with Islam - which really does take gun in hand at such provocations - so they defer to it as much as possible.

But the second point is more important: the uber-smart left in America thinks of Americans generally as idiot racist trash. You heard about the rising tide of Islamophobia**** in America - it was in all the papers - yet   you might have wondered why you missed it in your own neighborhood. Well, you didn't see it because it's crap. It doesn't exist.  If there was anything remotely resembling a tide of Islamophobia, the 78.4% Christian population would wipe out the 0.6% Muslim population in about 5 minutes. That some people are upset about a mosque at Ground Zero is not a tide. That a cabbie got stabbed in New York City is not a tide. It's barely a ripple in a shot glass. It's not news.  But in order to make it news, the press made news of the first piece of idiot trash they could find, a pastor of a church of 4 dozen people, as an "example" of this rising tide.

The Press created Terry Jones. They created Terry Jones to illustrate racist trash America, and they convinced a Muslim population willing to believe it (or at least whose leadership is willing to use it) that there is a rising tide of hate here aimed at them. When a similar tide rolls over Christians elsewhere, or over American soldiers elsewhere, Terry Jones will have blood on his hands. But the press will be crimson up to their shoulders.

* Unlike the ultra-responsible Washington Post, which only has 45 articles mentioning him on their website.
** It's 78.4% of adult Americans***, to be exact.
*** plus Obama.
**** Though this article on CNN.com is to be commended as the exception that proves the rule.

I need Sarge to translate for me

(hat tip: Professor Hale)

It's not a stimulus*

It's a loophole combined with a tax credit meant to create spending, combined with direct spending, which will stimulate**:

In another move aimed at stabilizing the still-shaky economy, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will introduce a new $200 billion tax cut giving businesses across the country an incentive to buy new equipment in the short term...

The new tax cut will be in addition to a $100 billion permanent extension of the business tax credit for research and development, as well as $50 billion in new infrastructure spending included in a package that the president will officially unveil Wednesday during an economic speech in Cleveland, Ohio.

That these actions on the part of the President are as unimaginative as they are idiotic, and hearken back to the old Bush days where the plans came fast and furious: every day it was $200b for this or $100b for that, in a futile effort to overwhelm the consumer with a feeling of confidence from their ears right down to their tingling toes. Of course, it has the opposite effect. Bringing out a new plan every day, especially when it's precisely the same kind of thing you just announced and that didn't work (this is the "unimaginative" part), builds the opposite of confidence.

But the idiotic part is in limiting a tax cut to "new equipment." I'm all for tax cuts, but how much of that equipment is going to be made in the US? The machine tools will come from Germany, computers from Asia - in short, Obama's tax cut, the the extent it affects anything at all, is going to stimulate others' economies. If he wants to limit the stimulation to America, a tax credit for in-office catering would be far more effective.

But I really love how this was announced at a labor rally***. It used to be that big labor hated business, now they're cheering business tax cuts, and for labor-saving equipment no less. It used to be the Democrats who complained that companies paid too little in taxes rather than too much, now they want to extend tax credits, ensuring they pay almost none. I guess the ticks have finally figured out that smelly old dog might need to be kept around after all.

* This is the real picture accompanying this article on CNN.com.  It's the little things like that which convince one that the press' love affair with Obama is drawing to a close.
** which is not the same thing, according to a senior administration official who asked not to be named and who reiterated that the president is "a committed, mainstream Christian." 
*** A labor rally where he decried "special interests," no less.

I'll give you something to riot about...

The caption* reads "Sept. 6: Afghans burn an effigy of Dove World Outreach Center's pastor Terry Jones during a demonstration against the United States in Kabul, Afghanistan. Hundreds of Afghans railed against the U.S. and called for President Barack Obama's death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce the American church's plans to burn the Islamic holy book on 9/11."

Of course, that's not all that's burning in the picture. And so here we have a bunch of Afghans** so offended by the rumor of a plan to burn the Koran that they burn the US flag and call for the death of our totally-not-a-Muslim president. That's not very sportsmanlike.

UPDATE: General Petraeus has apparently waded into the fray now and said should the burning take place, that would doubtless be used by radicals to inflame the population, endanger the troops, all that fun stuff. But radicals are not reacting to the burning, they are using the burning.  Put another way: American colonists did not rebel against Britain because of the Boston Massacre, they used the Boston Massacre because they were rebelling against Britain. As there was nothing short of leaving Britain could do to mollify Sam Adams, there's little we can do for the people of Afghanistan***. Those who do not wish to be mollified will not be.

Of course, this can be used as an argument either way - don't burn the Koran or people will riot, or burn the Koran to illustrate that these people will riot over anything. So I guess my apathy toward the burning arises from a deeply-held belief that appeasement solves nothing: why should I care if the rioters are temporarily appeased or not?

* of immediate interest is the AP's refusal to call these people Muslims. One could gather that they were probably Afghans by the fact that the demonstration is happening in Kabul. But "Afghan" does not really explain the picture, which is what I thought a caption was supposed to do.
** or Muslims, whatever.
*** against whom I have no animosity and for whom my only wish is that they live in a country governed by people just like them.

Charts: the good, the bad, and the ugly

This one is the ugly:

h/t: Mish

One of the assignments for the "How to Lie" portion of my history class is to find three faulty charts and three misleading maps*. This is not one, it just reminded me of a Pelosi chart, which reminded me of an utterly fraudulent Democrat chart that will be part of my assignment, which reminded me of my assignment.

Which reminds me, if during the next month any of you sees a map or chart that looks a little misleading in a book, publication, or on the internet, could you let me know? "Go find a misleading chart" is turning out to be a more difficult task than it seemed at first glance.

* we could also find three misleading charts and three faulty maps, but that would not be as fun.

You think they're still safe to drink?

You know, I never got nearly as much use out of the pic on the right as I thought I would.  I really expected that the GOP had banished themselves to the wilderness for a dozen years following their well-deserved beatdown in 2006. Apparently they've had their sentence cut for good behavior*, because it's looking more like not only with the GOP take the House, they may take the Senate as well.  A lot of things have to go their way for the latter to occur, but a lot of things are going their way right now. Not the least of which is the epic incompetence of the Obama Administration.The Democrats can blame the GOP for nothing:  when White house economist Christina Romer heads back to Berkeley saying that the government needs to run bigger deficits to save the economy, it is clear that the Dems not only learned nothing from the past two years, but that they are incapable of learning.

But before the Dems imagine that pushing through this election, even beaten-but-living, means their troubles are over, remember this: In two years they will have to defend twice as many senate seats (20 to 10) as the GOP, and many of them are held by first-term senators. Even if the GOP does not win the senate this November, it's a virtual certainty that they will in two years.

They will likely take the senate and keep the house even if the GOP has no idea how to fix the problems they are asking to inherit (which they don't). And even if the GOP doesn't have a great agenda (which they don't). And even if they don't run a great presidential candidate. Which they won't.  Mitt Romney? Sarah Palin? Tim Pawlenty? Seriously. There are only two Republicans I can even imagine voting for**. I don't beleive for a moment that either of them can solve America's problems.

But the problem*** of the parties being whiplashed back and forth here is not a problem of parties as much as a problem of governance. After all, the reason that the Democrats have 20 seats to defend in two years is directly attributable to the epic incompetence of the prior administration, which happened to be that of the other party.  Perhaps the reason neither party can seem to govern the country is that, in its current form, the country is ungovernable.

If that's the case, it will be interesting to see if the first party that figures it out and has the courage to say it gets rewarded for it, or whether they get crucified. But hey, even if they get crucified, the pain apparently lasts only 4 years.

* Or the electorate is more forgiving than I, which is probably closer to the truth.
** The second being Haley Barbour.
*** if one considers it a problem, which I don't, really.

In the beginning there was nothing

Then it exploded:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.

Hawking says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.

Of course, I'm not a world-famous physicist, but I cannot be the only one who sees the self-refuting nature of the above logic.

Had wooden teeth, chased moby dick

What kind of rebel are you Your Result: George Washington   George Washington (February 22, 1732[1][2][3] – December 14, 1799) was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and served as the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797).[4]
Bartholomew Roberts
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Nathan Bedford Forrest
John J. Rambo
John Lennon
James Stark
What kind of rebel are you Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

They act like that's a bad thing

But it's a good thing:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As state and local funding for education dries up, schools around the nation are asking their communities to help them maintain their services and programming.

Many are increasing their use of volunteers, while others are boosting their fundraising efforts. Some are even turning to online auctions to boost reserves...

Actually, this story does a pretty decent job of avoiding the plaintive, "isn't it horrible that school districts can't afford to pay a union employee to hold a stop sign?"* And all the things mentioned in the story are good things.  School districts using volunteers? That's good. School districts raising funds from private individuals? It's better described as "voluntary taxation," and it's very good**. Selling stuff online? Even better if they avoid state sales taxes***. It is difficult to argue against the idea that community schools are better off for the community taking an active part in running them.

The normal press account of anything having to do with fiscal limits on government are generally tales of woe, and any "bright side" is presented as making lemonade from unemployed, downtrodden lemons. But the Great Recession is actually bringing a great number of things about that are, in and of themselves, very good:

1. Falling house prices. Ask your children if they would rather pay more money or less for a nice home. I suspect there will be very few with a burning desire to pay more interest than necessary. If you're worried about losing money when you sell yours, then give it to your kids when you die. Without a mortgage.

2. Falling state revenue. This is, of itself, a very good thing, because it forces that government to jettison those things done solely for funding (like spending money to get "matching funds") or because they have funding to do them and don't wish to lose it in next year's budget. We were talking to a social worker recently about the dearth of new foster kids entering the system and the increased number going home. She opined that the reason was, because of budget cuts, SRS is only removing from homes those kids who are in actual danger. That, my friends, is as it should be.

3. Debt reduction and default. We have spent 30 years deciding that we could have everything and pay later.  Now it's later, and we have discovered that paying for it is less fun than driving it home.  But lots of people are learning from the mistake, discovering the freedom inherent in being debt-free. Our bloated financial sector will, must, shrink in proportion.  

4. Falling or stagnant stock prices.  Nothing would be better for savers and investors than 20 or 100 years of stock prices going nowhere. Why? Because it removes the casino aspect of the market. Today's market is not used for raising money (companies mostly borrow what they need), it is used to bet on whether computer-manipulated numbers will go up or down.  It's no different than wagering whether the ball will stop on a black or red spot, except that Vegas is more honest than Wall Street.

To the extent that the recession promotes volunteerism, decentralizes decision-making, reduces government, and reduces the size of the financial sector, to that extent it is a pretty good recession. If a significant number of the unemployed decide to raise their own kids and take up gardening rather than working full time to pay for food and day care, it could be a great one.   

* They do have an inline link to one, however. So half-credit.
** I'd better hope so, it's what I do for a living.
*** Oh, was that out loud?

The issue is not combat

It's mission:

OBAMA: "Tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended."

THE FACTS: Peril remains for the tens of thousands of U.S. troops still in Iraq, who are likely if not certain to engage violent foes. Counterterrorism is chief among their continuing missions, pitting them against a lethal enemy. Several thousand special operations forces, including Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, will continue to hunt and attempt to kill al-Qaida and other terrorist fighters...

Sometimes you have to wonder why the press even bothers to run "fact checks."  I mean, it's obvious - based only on the fact that our soldiers carry guns rather than flowers - that the potential for American combat has not ended.  Obama never said that ended.  What he said was that the mission has ended.  From this point forward, 50,000 of our finest will sit in danger for no reason rather than for an unattainable one.

I've got a better non-mission.  It seems that the Feds have put up a bunch of highway signs in areas of Arizona warning Americans of the danger of smugglers and advising that they take another highway. I guess they are doing this because actually securing the border is too dangerous or we don't have enough men or a fence won't work or something. It's easier to tell Americans to drive somewhere else.

So why don't we take 50,000 Americans who are admittedly doing nothing in one desert and move them to a desert much closer to home? I'm pretty sure that a couple of "training exercises" by SEALs and Green Berets to recon a few specific hills would put a quick end to the need for those signs.

Then we could take all the money we are spending flying politicians to Iraq to get their pictures taken and spend it to fly those signs to Iraq.  Surely they will be just as effective in safeguarding lives and property no matter where they are erected.

Feb 9, 1878