Sanford and more

"What you're doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don't have and send it to different states, we'll create jobs," he said. "If that's the case, why isn't Zimbabwe a rich place?"

I'm impressed. Romney/Sanford or Romney/Palin in 2012 works for me. If Sanford has the knack of reducing complex clusterfucks to simple truths, then let's not wait for 2012. Let Romney, Palin, Sanford act together right now like a loyal opposition, loyal to the USA, the City on the Hill, rather than loyal to Harvard Law School. Talk about a toxic asset; Harvard Law School, take a bow. You're in the spotlight riding a unicycle and the wind's blowing.

Afterthought: I'd also be happy with Palin top of the ticket. She is a natural leader. I think of her tonight with the news that her eldest daughter, a new mother, is breaking up with the father. In our multi-choice answer culture marriage is an act of will anyway. It's a little harder with multitudes sneering and gossiping.

Here's an averagely repulsive piece of sociology:

"Within her base, I think this will just increase sympathy and support," said Gary Alan Fine, a Northwestern University professor of sociology who studies political reputations. "It will make her seem more like a person who has to confront the challenges of life, and this is one of them. If you're a fundamentalist or a devout Christian, you don't believe you're living in a world without sin, you don't believe people don't make mistakes."
And for those who love to hate Palin, this is another arrow in their quiver.

"It just adds a kind of frisson of joy, a little pleasure," Fine posited. "It confirms the kind of Beverly Hillbillies aspect, the lower-middle-class qualities that people saw in Sarah Palin."

The professor knows what he's talking about in the latter case, but when he characterizes Palin's support as fundamentalist and devout Christian, he's projecting his own fantasy onto the world outside the academy.

Action, reaction, punchline

Action:

Morning rant #5

Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel Hezbollah apologist with financial ties to the Saudi government and the Chinese government was nominated to head the National Intelligence Council. Obama's not to blame as Freeman was nominated by someone who reports to Obama. Obama is only the ceo. Then Freeman withdrew in the face of Senate opposition, blaming the Israel lobby. The immediate scandal is that Obama's 2nd tier appointments are a disgrace. The long-run scandal is that this Obaman rabble have fubarred everything they've touched. Has anything been well executed? Anything? The head of Britain's civil service says of his US counterparts that:

Downing Street was finding it "unbelievably difficult" to plan for next month's G20 summit in London because of problems tracking down senior figures in the US administration. "There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,"

Fifty days after President Obama was sworn in, every senior post in the US Treasury Department remains vacant, with the exception of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, who should have 17 deputies.

In Buffett's phrase this is America's economic Pearl Harbour and the metaphorical war is being commanded by a Harvard Law Graduate who has never run anything. What will happen when He and his tenured turnips face a non-metaphorical war? America has the finest military it's ever had run by a matinée idol without so much as a cub scout's badge. Whoops, there goes Tel Aviv. Whoops, there goes Delhi. Whoops, there goes Seoul. Whoops Apocalypse. It's hard to credit the nightmare and farce we're living thru. Obama makes Biden look presidential. Et tu, Newsweek ?

Caption your own Obama poster here.

The Manchurian Candidate

You are what you do, not what you think of yourself while you are doing it. 'His motives were good' may excuse a child who lights a match from curiosity. The fault that the house burnt down belongs to the adult who allowed the unqualified child access to matches. So, yes, if you never grow up, how you feel about yourself trumps all outcomes other than dying in the fire.

Kevin Hassett:

Obama is giving us the War on Business. Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

The column continues by fleshing out how a sophisticated enemy might wreck America:

He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.
...
you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.
...
No More Deferral

On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.

Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.

End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.

If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.

But it's ok, his motives are good:

It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.

Actually it's not clear that Obaman motives are good. 'Feel good', yes; 'save the world at others' expense', certainly; 'look cool', tick; 'bring in a Brave New World', uh huh. But in the Obaman mind these are good motives, a magic mix of pseudo-science, group-identification, superstition and Robin Hood. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the signs on the road are 'hope' and 'change' and 'look at me.'

Amen, sister!

The New York Times interviews Ann Coulter:

Do you consider yourself as speaking for the conservative movement, or just someone who has attracted many conservative fans? Something else?

I THINK I SPEAK FOR ALL AMERICANS WHO THINK NEWSPAPER EDITORS WHO PRINT THE DETAILS OF TOP-SECRET ANTI-TERRORIST INTELLIGENCE GATHERING PROGRAMS ON PAGE ONE IN WARTIME SHOULD BE EXECUTED FOR TREASON.

"The Reader"

I'd gleaned that this movie had sex and Auschwitz, so, despite the say-so of a liberal Jewish acquaintance, I didn't see it. This Powerline post - The Oscar For The Worst Excuse For Sex In A Film - reinforces my instinct that leveraging the emotional power of atrocities into jejune books, films and politics is one of the more disgusting traits of those who lead wholly protected lives.

I put up a quick slideshow from Auschwitz for this post.

Sinister and foggy

Venice pix:

I rented an apartment from a lady from Ohio on VRBO.com .

It takes a village idiot

One of my young American children is learning 'affirmative names' at public school, eg 'Wonderful Wendy', so her generation may be responsive to therapy-speak in power politics:


Is 'Hilarious Hillary' affirmative? Let's hope Vulpine Vladimir feels the same way about relationships.

I've thought for a while that the sheer jaw-dropping awfulness of this mob - Obama, Biden, Hillary, Geithner, Reid, Pelosi. Frank. Rangel and a vast cast of clowns, morons, moronic clowns and clownish morons - is a gift from God. If this can't inoculate America against what they represent, then nothing will.

Hot Air:

Can we get a re-set button ?

It occurs to me that the Administration got their gifts mixed up. The DVD box-set of American Classic Films was meant for Russia, but the re-set button was meant for the UK. 'Re-set, limeys; we believe in relationships, just not the Special Relationship.'

Afterthought: Cute -

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.
The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."

You know what, he's right. It isn't Britain and America now that have a relationship. It's British Obamans and American Obamans as opposed to British adults and American adults. The thing is while the Obamans work thru their infantile journeys of self-gratification, self-congratulation, libertinism, nannyism, socialism, authoritarianism, atheism, superstition and the culture of death....the world still turns and Auden's lines on the fall of Rome sound ever more sinister:

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

Notes from Venice

I'm here on a chess, whisky and photo trip with an old friend who is a Brooksian moderate squish who used to call himself variously 'conservative' and 'libertarian'. He calls me 'right-wing extremist', ideologue' and 'tosser', oh and now 'spawn of Sarah'. Naturally an old man's thoughts in Venice in the spring turn to US politics. My friend voted for Obama so I'm grinding him into dust with every tick of the stock market and every game of chess. That's the local colour. Now a couple of thoughts:

1. I guess that the market will bottom at about 4,800. It's hitting new lows now at 6,645, down about 46% since Obama permanently took the lead in polls last October.

2. Billary must be grinding their teeth that Hillary accepted SecState. That's gagged Bill. His cutting commentary on Obama was a pleasure of the Nomination contest. If the Harvard Law School dismantling of America goes on much longer, then Hillary would be favourite for Nominee in 2011 except that she's part of the wrecking crew.

Morning rant #4

Not one of mine, alas, but I do feel his pain; Jimmy Cayne, the former Bear Stearns CEO, on Geithner:

The audacity of that p—- in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan,” he said. “Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a h—-o-, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’ This guy thinks he's got a big d—. He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I’m not a good enemy. I’m a very bad enemy. But certain things really—that bothered me plenty. It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit? Who the f— asked you? You’re not an elected officer. You’re a clerk. Believe me, you’re a clerk. I want to open up on this f—-r, that’s all I can tell you.

This was before Geithner's elevation to Tax-Cheat-In-Chief.

In Venice

The view from my room: