Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on August 10, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

“President Barack Obama is getting hammered on all sides for a stumbling U.S. economy and his uneven response to it, raising pressure on him to take steps to create jobs or risk being ousted in next year’s election…

“He received negative reviews from pundits for a speech on Monday that offered no new policy ideas and failed to cushion a steep sell-off on Wall Street…

“David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, said a host of problems is playing on Americans’ minds, from weak job growth, and slumping markets to the recent deaths of 30 American troops in Afghanistan, a war that is increasingly unpopular.

“‘There’s that feeling, that things are out of control, that we’re not on top of this anymore,’ Yepson said.”

***

“Gary Pearce, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina, a swing state Mr Obama is likely to struggle to retain in 2012, said: ‘Democrats are worried. He looks weak, he doesn’t say anything that grabs you, and people are looking for some kind of magic.’

“He said some activists were asking ‘do we need someone tougher to fight the tea party?’ ‘You see a yearning for a Bill Clinton-type approach and Hillary would reflect that. Obama is just a different political animal, he is a low-key guy,’ he added.”

***

“All that remains of the great hopes Americans and the world had pinned on Obama, inspired by his stirring campaign speeches about change and renewal, is a battlefield of unsatisfactory and contradictory compromises. Obama, who just turned 50 and was once a symbol of youthful change, suddenly seems old and worn out, as gray as his hair has become…

“The clash with the Tea Party has highlighted Obama’s shortcomings. His opponents have everything he seems to lack. They are loud, confident and uncompromising, sticking to their principles while he repeatedly hesitates and delays. In the US midterm elections, dozens of Tea Party candidates managed to get elected to Congress by capitalizing on the rage of people who Obama had failed to connect with…

“It is now clear that Obama is simply not the man to help conflicting parties out of entrenched positions or give new impetus to an alliance. He instinctively leans toward measured, often delayed reactions, leaving his promises of change to fall by the wayside.”

***

“‘We just wish he’d be more of a fighter,’ said one influential Democrat with a grimace. Another agreed: ‘You can’t blame him for everything. I just wish he would come across more forceful at times, but that is not the dude’s style. Detached hurts you when things are sour. You need some of Clinton’s ‘I feel your pain’ compassion.’…

“Obama’s response on Monday to Friday’s Standard & Poor’s downgrade and to the 22 Navy Seal commandos and 8 other soldiers killed by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan was once more too little, too late. It was just like his belated, ineffectual response on the BP oil spill and his reaction to the would-be Christmas Day bomber; it took him three days on vacation in Hawaii to speak about the terrorist incident when the country was scared about national security, and then he spent the next week callously shuttling from the podium to the golf course…

“His withholding and reactive nature has made him seem strangely irrelevant in Washington, trapped by his own temperament. He doesn’t lead, and he doesn’t understand why we don’t feel led.”

Continue Reading →

Tom Friedman fantasizes: What if Boehner joined forces with Obama and totally dismissed the tea party?

posted at 10:06 pm on August 10, 2011 by Allahpundit
printer-friendly

As bad as that sounds, you need to know that this column was written as a faux AP news article to appreciate its true horror. So desperate is the left’s intelligentsia to see Obama fulfill his promise as redeemer of liberal dreams that they’ve given up analysis and taken to fanfic instead.

This guy may very well have action figures of Obama and Boehner stashed away in his home.

    Washington (AP) — It was a news conference the likes of which the White House had never seen. President Obama stood in the East Room, flanked by the House speaker, John Boehner; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president asked Mr. Boehner to speak first:

    “My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies, but also a spirit of compromise and a recognition that both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group — liberal or conservative. I know that the Tea Party activists are true patriots and they will work with us as well. President Obama: Let’s fix the country together and then compete in 2012 over who can best manage a growing pie rather than a shrinking one.”

And so it came to be that John Boehner became a centrist Democrat and repudiated the core constituency that made him Speaker. After that comes a “warm embrace” between Obama and Boehner and a Grand Bargain very much along the lines of Tom Friedman’s (and Obama’s) own policy preferences before the column ends: “At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.” Apart from a few days in late 2008, when the Dow was insanely volatile due to the financial crisis and TARP, the biggest gain it’s ever made was 499 points. Such is the awesomeness of the Friedman platform that, if only congressional leaders would endorse it, we’d shatter the all-time one-day record on Wall Street in a burst of green, pro-ChiCom, “effective government” exuberance. They pay Friedman hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to write this stuff.

I almost feel guilty making you read it. Here, here’s a video of the greatest hitter of all time taking batting practice to try to redeem this post.

Continue Reading →

Video: When open-carry is your only option

posted at 11:25 am on August 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
printer-friendly

Reason TV takes a close look at the issue of handgun rights and carry permits in California, one of the few “may-issue” states left in the nation. County sheriffs may issue or deny permits at their discretion, and as the video states, they don’t usually approve applications from most law-abiding citizens. That forces people like Sam Wolanyk to carry unloaded weapons openly, which has the state legislature in a lather — and people debating the nature of the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, or in this case, bare arms

As most Hot Air readers know, I have a carry permit in Minnesota, although even some people in this state don’t realize that the permit doesn’t restrict me to concealed carry. I can open-carry if I like.  Normally, I don’t like, although I support those who do.  To me, open carry is unnecessarily provocative, plus it marks me as a primary target if, God forbid, I end up in a dangerous situation where it becomes an issue.  Police officers carry openly because it’s part of their job, and if carry permit training teaches anything valuable (it teaches many valuable lessons, of course), it’s that a carry permit is not a Junior G-Man badge.  I have it for my own personal safety, for specific as well as general reasons.

I’d take an even dimmer view of open carry of unloaded weapons — an unloaded gun provides all the provocation with none of the immediate defense capacity — but in this case, it’s instructive.  The state of California wants to ban a practice that presents no immediate threat, conducted by law-abiding citizens with no record, that has produced no shooting incidents.  Anti-gun advocates would rather waste time on this than, say, solving the massive budgetary and debt problems the state faces, as well as solving the problem by allowing law-abiding citizens to get concealed-carry permits with a “must-issue” law.

This reaches the point of absurdity near the end of the video, when the author of a bill to ban open carry of unloaded weapons,Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, tells Reason TV that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect property — which doesn’t include the person himself.  That’s actually backwards, even under existing lethal-force-in-self-defense laws.  People are not permitted to use lethal force to protect property in California, or Minnesota either, with or without carry permits.  (Neither can the police, by the way.)  They can only use lethal force of any kind when faced with an immediate threat in which a reasonable person fears for their own life or of “great bodily harm,” which roughly means losing a limb or an eye, not just getting beaten up.  All the carry permit allows is the ability to have the lethal force at hand if that situation arises; it doesn’t exempt the permit holder from laws defining lethal force in self-defense.  In most cases, and certainly in Minnesota, those laws require a victim to retreat first if possible rather than using the lethal force, sometimes even in their own homes.

It seems that Portantino doesn’t even understand current law in his own state.  Why should Californians trust him to amend it in ways that reduce their ability to defend themselves?

Addendum (previously published but still applicable): My late friend Joel Rosenberg literally wrote the book on carry licensing in Minnesota, The Carry Book: Minnesota Edition.  Unfortunately Joel passed away before he could complete an edition that looked at the issue nationally, but even if you’re not in Minnesota, there is a ton of good advice for those who want to pursue carry licenses and handle firearms.  My particular favorite chapter of the book is titled, “Cowardice 201: A PhD Seminar in Advanced Staying Out of Trouble,” in which Joel reveals that the true secret of karate is to run faster than everyone else.  Self-defense starts with keeping out of situations where you will likely find yourself threatened.  Joel’s book is a sobering read, literally and figuratively

Continue Reading →

Quotes of the day

“Former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., the GOP co-chair of President Obama’s deficit commission, told ABC News that ‘The American people are disgusted at both parties’ for not being able to agree on a measure to reduce the deficit…


“‘Reagan raised taxes,’ Simpson said. ‘We’ve never had less revenue to run this country since the Korean war.’

“Contrary to some Republicans expressing skepticism about the Aug. 2 default date, Simpson said that Treasury Secretary ‘Tim Geithner ain’t fooling.’”

***
“[M]any Congressional Republicans seem to be spoiling for a fight, calculating that some level of turmoil caused by a federal default might be what it takes to give them the chance to right the nation’s fiscal ship…

“Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Budget Committee chairman seen as the voice of fiscal authority among House Republicans, said that he believed an agreement leading to a debt limit increase would eventually be reached, but that the impasse could extend beyond the administration’s Aug. 2 drop-dead date.

“‘Let’s say we go past Aug. 2,’ he said in an interview. ‘As time goes on, the situation deteriorates, so I do believe there will be something.’ He pointed to ‘macroeconomic circumstances and credit markets — and also paying the bills — Social Security, Medicare, the troops.’

“‘I think there ultimately will be something,’ he said. ‘I really honestly don’t know what it’s going to be. I really don’t.’”

***
The hotter precincts of the blogosphere were calling [McConnell's proposal] a sellout yesterday, though they might want to think before they shout. The debt ceiling is going to be increased one way or another, and the only question has been what if anything Republicans could get in return. If Mr. Obama insists on a tax increase, and Republicans won’t vote for one, then what’s the alternative to Mr. McConnell’s maneuver?…

“The tea party/talk-radio expectations for what Republicans can accomplish over the debt-limit showdown have always been unrealistic. As former Senator Phil Gramm once told us, never take a hostage you’re not prepared to shoot. Republicans aren’t prepared to stop a debt-limit increase because the political costs are unbearable. Republicans might have played this game better, but the truth is that Mr. Obama has more cards to play.

“The entitlement state can’t be reformed by one house of Congress in one year against a determined President and Senate held by the other party. It requires more than one election. The Obama Democrats have staged a spending blowout to 24% of GDP and rising, and now they want to find a way to finance it to make it permanent. Those are the real stakes of 2012.

“Even if Mr. Obama gets his debt-limit increase without any spending cuts, he will pay a price for the privilege. He’ll have reinforced his well-earned reputation as a spender with no modern peer. He’ll own the record deficits and fast-rising debt. And he’ll own the U.S. credit-rating downgrade to AA if Standard & Poor’s so decides.”

***
“Most people don’t care about the deficit, much less the debt ceiling. They care about jobs and the economy–which is the real advantage Republicans have in the coming campaign.

“If McConnell actually proposes to pull an Emily Littella and say ‘Never mind’ about the debt ceiling, the President can pocket this inadvertent gesture of sanity, sign the debt ceiling extension…and then come right back with an economic package reducing the deficit $2.4 trillion over the next ten years, including the budget cuts that both sides have agreed upon plus the loophole closing revenue raisers–corporate jets, oil and ethanol subsidies, and hedge fund manager tax breaks–that 80% of the American people favor. Let the Republicans vote that one down, or refuse to consider it at all in the House of Representatives. Barack Obama would have a lovely issue to run on.

“But I don’t believe for a moment that McConnell is going to do this. He’s desperate, facing a deal that either includes revenue increases or doesn’t happen at all. He’s blinking as fast as he can.”

***
“There is no constitutional authority for the legislative branch to surrender its clearly delineated duty to write bills for raising revenue and borrow money on the credit of the United States.

“Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently employed a clever but easily falsifiable argument, which cites Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to claim that the president can override the separation of powers…

“McConnell’s enthusiasm for this unconstitutional gimmick is disheartening, but it does not change the law. Congress has no more right to give up its authority than the president has to confiscate it.”

***
“Despite intense lobbying of Congress by President Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and others in the administration about the economic urgency for raising the nation’s debt limit, fewer than one in four Americans favor the general idea of raising it. Also, Americans are significantly more concerned about the budgetary risk of giving the government a new license to spend than they are about the potential economic consequences that would result from not raising the debt limit. Both of these findings put Americans more on congressional Republicans’ side of the debate than Obama’s — at least in terms of political leverage as the two sides negotiate a deal.”

***
Via Verum Serum.

***
“I can guarantee you, Mark, that plan is going nowhere.” Click the image to listen.

Continue Reading →

Romney won’t sign Iowa group’s marriage pledge

Yes, the same one that Bachmann signed and for which she took so much heat that even Gingrich ended up backing away from it.

Thus far it’s just her and Santorum. Your move, Mr. Pawlenty.

When it was first circulated last week, the introduction to the pledge stated that African American children were more likely to be raised in two-parent households when they were born into slavery than they are today. The group struck that language and apologized after black ministers complained, but it said it stands by the rest of the document.

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, told The Associated Press in a written statement Tuesday that Romney “strongly supports traditional marriage,” but that the oath “contained references and provisions that were undignified and inappropriate for a presidential campaign.”…

Romney, who supported rights for gay couples in Massachusetts, was criticized in Iowa by some Iowa social conservatives during his 2008 campaign, when he finished second in the caucuses after aggressively courting Christian conservatives…

The Family Leader, an organization formed last year and positioning itself to be an influential player in the 2012 caucuses, said Tuesday they stand by the 14 policy positions listed under the promise to “defend and to uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman.”

Here’s a PDF of the pledge, which is all over the map politically. I’m keen to hear which parts specifically he thought were “undignified and inappropriate” for a campaign, especially now that the radioactive language about slavery has been dropped. As for the politics of this, it would have caused him more headaches to sign than not to sign. He’s all but given up on Iowa and he’ll never be social cons’ candidate of choice, so he’s better off using this to draw a distinction with Bachmann that he can reference later. Until someone threatens him in New Hampshire he’ll stay focused on the general election and his electability vis-a-vis Obama. This is one less thing the Democrats can use against him to knock him off-message from the economy.

Can’t wait to see what T-Paw does here. He probably has to sign to protect himself among social conservatives — it might finish him off in Iowa if he didn’t and he can’t afford that like Mitt can — but if he does then he’ll be dealing with this from now until election day, assuming he’s nominated. Tough call. Oh — incidentally, the AP claims that Romney’s the first Republican presidential candidate to reject the Iowa pledge. Not so.

Continue Reading →

“Sister Wives” clan to challenge constitutionality of Utah’s polygamy law

Who’s angrier about this? Traditional marriage activists, or gay rights activists who don’t want to see the debate about same-sex marriage dragged down the slippery slope when they’re trying to build on momentum from New York?

Nationally-known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the lawsuit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, former Utahn Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime.

“We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs,” Turley said in a press release. The Browns star in the TLC network show “Sister Wives.” There is no word yet on whether they will appear in a press conference scheduled for Wednesday…

The complaint to be filed Wednesday, Turley said, presents seven constitutional challenges to the state’s bigamy law. It is largely based on the right to privacy.

“In that sense, it is a challenge designed to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values—even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state,” said Turley, a member of the faculty at George Washington University.

If the distinction between decriminalization and state recognition seems confusing (which it did to me at first), it helps to know that Utah’s bigamy statute includes cohabiting with one person when you’re legally married to another. And in fact, this guy is only legally married to one woman; the other three are, er, “sister wives.” Basically, he’s arguing that he doesn’t care if the state recognizes them as legal spouses or not, just that he doesn’t want the cops to come knocking and lock him up when they find out. In that sense, his court claim mirrors the current legal regime in most states where gay marriage is banned but gay sex is constitutionally protected.

So, no lawsuit to legalize polygamous marriage — yet. But legal precedents have a funny way of building on each other:

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses…

The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while “you’d have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way” to recognize polygamy.

Professor Turley called the one-thing-leads-to-another arguments “a bit of a constitutional canard,” and argued that removing criminal penalties for polygamy “will take society nowhere in particular.”

Ah, but they’re not asking to change family law, just to take polygamy out of the penal code. The family law case will be the next lawsuit. FYI, the Supreme Court already upheld laws against polygamy — 130 years ago, rejecting a Mormon challenge based on the Free Exercise Clause. So there’s precedent here if SCOTUS wants it when it eventually hears a case along these lines. Two important footnotes, though. One: The Court’s language in Lawrence v. Texas, a decision authored by Anthony Kennedy, was famously broad in its implications (a point noted by Scalia in dissent at the time), so there’s no telling whether that earlier precedent is still good law. And second, Lawrence itself overruled a much more recent precedent in Bowers v. Hardwick to arrive at its holding. So yeah, there’s quite a fair chance that the Brown clan might pull this off.

Exit question: Speaking of people who aren’t eager to watch this court/media battle play out, how excited do you think Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are right now?

Continue Reading →

Report: DeMint, Jim Jordan nix McConnell’s debt-ceiling plan; Update: Dems are considering it, says Durbin

DeMint’s opposition isn’t confirmed yet but Robert Costa of NRO has it on good authority. That might not be an insuperable obstacle to passage in the Senate given the fact, per Bret Baier below, that Reid seems open to the idea. If he can bring the Dems into line then all they’d need is the usual suspects — Brown, Snowe, Collins, Murkowski, and a few others — and they’re golden.


But Jordan’s kiss of death in the House will make things hard for Boehner:

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, tells NRO that while he hasn’t review all the details of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R., Ky.) “contingency plan,” he doesn’t see much of a future for it in the House.

The RSC has 175 members. If all or most walk away, Boehner would need practically the entire Democratic caucus plus 50-60 Republicans who are willing to break with conservatives and lock arms with the left in the name of ceding control of the debt ceiling to Obama. They’d be doing it in the name of averting a default and boxing in The One as the candidate of debt next year, but I doubt that’d save them from primary challenges. How does Boehner get McConnell’s bill through the House under those circumstances? No wonder he seems so noncommittal about it; watch his reaction when Baier presses him on it at 1:30 of the clip below.

The key here, as is increasingly the case, might be Cantor. Whether there’s a rift between him and Boehner or not, he’s banked enough conservative cred by holding the line on taxes throughout the negotiation that he might be able to pry away some RSC members if he backed McConnell’s plan. Has anyone heard his reaction to it yet? If so, please tip us and I’ll update the post. I’ll leave you with a link to this brief but must-see vid (via NRO), which contains what must be one of the most ominous pauses in modern political history. No wonder McConnell’s thinking about Plan B.

Update: The Senate might be ready to play ball:

A back-up plan proposed by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell that would keep the U.S. government from defaulting on its debts next month is viable and under consideration by Senate Democrats, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber.

“We’re talking about it as one of the options, yes,” Durbin said in response to a question about whether the McConnell plan is viable.

Update: Still no word on Cantor vis-a-vis McConnell’s plan, but this quote from earlier today speaks volumes:

Across the Capitol, a closed-door caucus of House Republicans broke up with the leadership conceding that it’s frankly at a loss about getting the votes before Treasury’s Aug. 2 deadline.

“Nothing can get through the House right now,” Cantor said after the White House meeting. “Nothing.”

Continue Reading →

Street name “Seven in Heaven Way” upsets American Atheists

This summer, the city of Brooklyn renamed a neighborhood street “Seven in Heaven Way” to honor seven local firefighters who gave their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. A nice thought, right? Simple, symbolic, sincere. But sadly, the commemorative gesture has since generated controversy.



The New Jersey-based American Atheists, the same group that brought the country “God Less America” Fourth of July aerial banners, promptly objected to the street name.

“It’s improper for the city to endorse the view that heaven exists,” American Atheists president David Silverman said. “It links Christianity and heroism.”

Additional objections: Sept. 11 was an attack on “all of America,” so no memorial of it should “break” the Constitution — and, also, the street sign presumes to know what the seven firefighters themselves believed.

But, as The Heritage Foundation’s Jennifer Marshall points out, the group’s objections reveal a misunderstanding of freedom of religion.

Godless secularism – or a “naked public square” denuded of all religious references and symbols, as the late Richard John Neuhaus put it – never was intended to be the character of our American republic. Religious freedom, the cornerstone of all freedom, is freedom for religion, not hostility toward it.

Yes, the Founders wisely separated political from religious authority in our federal government, but they didn’t intend to divorce religion from public life or politics. They based the American model of religious liberty on a favorable view of religious practice.

Far from privatizing or marginalizing religion, the Founders assumed religious believers and institutions would take active roles in society, engaging in the political process and helping to shape consensus on morally fraught questions. …

Most nations are dominated, demographically anyway, by adherents of particular faiths. But every denomination – and the atheist camp as well – is a small minority somewhere on the planet. This reality underscores why religious liberty, not the radical secularist or theocratic systems at either end of the spectrum, should be precious to everyone.

But on a more practical level, the objections reveal an acute sensitivity that seems unwarranted in this situation. A street name with the word “heaven” doesn’t automatically imply an endorsement of Christianity — many other religions include a paradisal idea of the afterlife, too. Nor does it even necessarily imply an endorsement of the belief that heaven is real. Are no streets named for mythical places or fictional characters? Additionally, more than 400 New York City streets have been named for 9-11 victims and heroes. Clearly, the sign was named with the simple motivation of recognizing seven men who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Perhaps that’s why one First Amendment lawyer described the situation this way: “The area of religion is so complex and nuanced that you could argue nearly anything … But a [legal] challenge in this case would be far-fetched.”

--------
from: hotair

Continue Reading →

Obama: No, I can’t promise that Social Security checks will go out in August if we don’t reach a deal

See James Pethokoukis’s new graph for a response to this. There should be plenty of revenue in August to cover entitlement checks and interest on the debt if Treasury has the legal authority to prioritize payments,
which isn’t as clear as one would hope. Either way, the more voter angst O can create about default — and given the movement among independents, he’s doing a fine job — the more pressure there is on the GOP to make a deal and the more protected he’ll be politically if we hit X Day on August 2 without an agreement. Which, of course, is the point of McConnell’s gimmick today: If his bill were to pass, responsibility for keeping Social Security flowing coming would shift suddenly from those darned millionaire-hugging Republicans to the debt-loving Obama administration. You are willing to unilaterally order another $2 trillion in debt right before the election in order to keep grandma’s checks coming, aren’t you, champ?

If you’re looking for the case for and against the McConnell gambit, here’s Grover Norquist giving a thumbs up and Philip Klein giving a thumbs down. Norquist’s argument is straightforward: This debt-ceiling showdown has always been about politics for Obama, so let him choke on the politics of it. Force him to finally finally finally put his spending plan in writing after he and his party have ducked the issue for months. In fact, according to Roll Call, McConnell’s only question at yesterday’s debt-ceiling meeting was to ask how much the Biden plan would save in discretionary spending next year. The answer: Two measly billion. It’s time for Democrats to get serious, says Norquist, and this will force them. Au contraire, says Klein, there are lots of ways Obama can gin up phony savings to check the “deficit hawk” box for his campaign. Besides, he argues, the McConnell plan actually weakens the GOP’s ability to reach a real deal because O will read it as a sign of panic in the caucus and will press harder for concessions. I’m not so sure about that, though: To me it looks like a sign that McConnell and others in the caucus have more or less given up on making a deal, which strengthens the GOP’s hand insofar as Obama will either need to make new concessions to get them back to the table or start thinking about a Plan B like McConnell’s plan to avert a default.

I do think Klein was spot on with this post from April, though, about how the GOP promised the base too much in terms of what it could realistically achieve while sharing power with Democrats. For all the sturm and drang about the debt-ceiling deals under consideration, to my knowledge none of them — even the “grand bargain” — would actually reduce the debt over the next 10 years. Even the best-case scenario is merely a slower rate of growth. That’s not a serious solution, or even a half-solution, to such a cataclysmic problem, and yet it’s the very best we can do with the current occupants in Congress and the White House. We’ll have to shuffle the deck next year and hope for better; all McConnell’s doing is acknowledging the bleakness of the situation and trying to maximize the odds of a more favorable hand. Exit question: Given that McConnell’s bill would force Dems to own the debt hike, why would Reid allow it to pass the Senate without changes? And if it did, would Obama sign it or veto it?

Continue Reading →

Intern who helped save Gabby Giffords’ life to throw out first pitch tonight

Daniel Hernandez, the intern whose calm courage helped to save the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), will throw out the ceremonial first pitch at tonight’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Phoenix, the New York Post reports.

Hernandez, 21, was hailed as a hero after his quick thinking was credited with keeping Rep. Giffords (D-Ariz.) alive until paramedics arrived after she was shot in the head outside a Tucson-area grocery store in January.

After hearing the gunfire, Hernandez ran to Giffords and held her upright so she could breathe and applied pressure to her head wound. He had been hired by Giffords less than a week before the Jan. 8 attack.

Among those killed in the shootings, in which six people died and 12 others were wounded, was Christina Taylor Green, the daughter of Los Angeles Dodgers scout John Green and granddaughter of former Major League Baseball manager Dallas Green.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig invited the families of all of the victims to participate in the pre-game ceremony, KTAR.com reported.

Hernandez’ part in the tragic Giffords’ story has always impressed me, perhaps because I know just how terrified I would have been in the same situation, how tempted to run as far and as fast as possible. Perhaps such a terrifically human gesture as to immediately attempt to alleviate the suffering of another ought to be the norm — but is it? Certainly it’s more likely to be if, when someone does display loyalty and bravery, he receives recognition and gratitude. The chance to throw out a ceremonial pitch at an All-Star game seems in line with that.

Continue Reading →

Video: Sgt. Leroy Petry receives the Medal of Honor

The second living recipient of the Medal of Honor since Vietnam, just nine months after Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta became the first.
What kind of man are we talking about here? One who didn’t have to participate in the raid for which he was awarded the MOH but went voluntarily, had his hand blown off by a jihadi grenade during that raid after he picked it up and tried to toss it away before it detonated, thereby saving the lives of two of his men, and then reenlisted in the Army after being fitted with a robotic arm and went back to war. Total deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan: Eight and counting. He has four kids.

As usual, the Army’s done a bang-up job creating a Medal of Honor webpage for him. The Profile and Battlespace graphics are a must, but take time to read this Army news story too about his recovery and experience with his new robotic hand — all the way to the part where one of his kids names the damaged arm “Nubby.” An apt exit quotation from Obama: “What compels such courage? What leads a person to risk everything so that others might live?”

Continue Reading →

Quotes of the day

“President Obama made no apparent headway on Monday in his attempt to forge a crisis-averting budget deal, but he put on full display his effort to position himself as a pragmatic centrist willing to confront both parties and address intractable problems…



“Republicans dismissed his performance as political theater. But Mr. Obama’s remarks appeared to be aimed at independent voters as well as at Congressional leaders, and stood in contrast to the Republican focus on the party’s conservative base, both in the budget showdown and in presidential politics…

“Seeking to shed the image of big-government liberal that Republicans used effectively against him last year, he has made or offered policy compromises on an array of issues and cast himself in the role of the adult referee for both parties’ gamesmanship, or the parent of stubborn children…

“‘There was never a discussion of, ‘Let’s sit down and reposition ourselves.’ There were discussions of returning to first principles and the things that motivated him to run,’ said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior political strategist. ‘This is what he talked about all through the 2008 campaign — that we need to put solving problems ahead of scoring political points, and we have to think about not just the next election but the next generation.’”

***
“Groups such as Norquist’s and Greenstein’s serve as political and intellectual gatekeepers. They help determine which ideas and what rhetoric are acceptable to their partisans. The visions presented to their constituents are satisfying — but also selective, simplistic and, ultimately, false. This is one reason that budget debates have been so futile, and why the nation is now flirting with a potentially disastrous failure to raise the debt ceiling.

“Governing is about choosing, and in the budget debate, there are no popular choices. But the reality shaping them all is an aging society in which programs for the elderly are pushing the budget into growing disequilibrium. Until the political gatekeepers acknowledge this — meaning the left recognizes the need for genuine benefit cuts and the right accepts some higher taxes — public understanding and political agreement will remain hostage to partisan fairy tales. It’s time to deal with facts.”

***
“The bases on both sides view any deviation or compromise as blasphemy. The astute veteran political columnist Mark Shields likes to say that he would rather belong to a church that is seeking converts than one intent on driving out heretics. But that’s not the approach that many rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats in Congress are taking these days…

“My sense is that when members of Congress go back to their states and districts, they are staying more in their comfort zones than they did in the past. They are appearing before more predictably friendly audiences and, deliberately or not, eschewing those who disagree with them. Every lawmaker can point to an event where an angry constituent became confrontational. But those incidents are happening less and less, minimizing their exposure to hostile audiences and contrary points of view…

“Elected officials on both sides of the aisle become like Pavlov’s dogs when they spend too much time with friendly audiences. They come to instinctively know what listeners want to hear and will produce a political reward versus what will be frowned upon and could warrant punishment. They know what lines and arguments will result in smiles and heads nodding up and down in approval or frowns and heads shaking back and forth. Predictable audiences result in predictable responses. But members should try a little door-knocking and seek out audiences that don’t consist almost entirely of the party faithful. They might hear something very different, and get a hint of what may be coming down the road.”

***
“In a rational world, electorates would recognize the need both to reduce entitlements and to increase revenue. But indignation isn’t rational. The Tea Party position is that the deficit should be reduced without any increase in revenue, even the elimination of tax breaks and loopholes that all serious economists now define as ‘tax expenditures’ (because they essentially give revenue away to lucky special interests). At the same time, many Tea Party supporters appear reluctant to accept that cuts would apply to their own entitlements as well as everyone else’s.

“Even more self-contradictory is the readiness of young people in Europe to back the interest groups opposed to spending cuts. The recent demonstrations in London were essentially on behalf of teachers relatively close to retirement. ‘It’s for the future generations that we’re doing this,’ claimed one protester, ‘not just for ourselves. We’re doing it for everybody.’ Baloney. It’s the government that has the future generations in mind, not the protesters. The young people who join in such protests are suckers, demonstrating for the right to pay much higher taxes in the future.

“Today’s proponents of austerity are like toreadors, fighting the raging bull of debt. I can understand the vested interests throwing bottles at them. It’s the cheers of the Indignant that are bizarre.”

***
“I lived through this with President Carter, in which you start asking, ‘Does this guy have any idea what he’s doing?’”

Continue Reading →

Marine to Mila Kunis: Let’s me and you hook it up at the Marine Corps Ball; Mila Kunis to Marine: Okay

I’m trying to read this guy’s mind and figure out whether he cut the video as a goof, just messing around on a slow day at war, or whether this was actually part of a brilliantly clever scheme to make it happen. Step one: Film the clip, in full bad-ass uniform,
replete with a cutesy move with the shades. Step two: E-mail it out to friends and friends of friends and wait for it to go viral. Step three: Hope that some entertainment reporter stumbles across it and asks Mila Kunis about it — on camera, preferably.

If this guy really did game it out that way, he should be planning war strategy in Afghanistan. Jackpot:

After questioning her publicist if she knew about the invitation, the clearly flattered 27-year-old actress agreed.

“I’ll go, I’ll do it for you,” she said, turning to Timberlake. “Are you going to come?”

“They don’t want me! They want you,” Timberlake responded. “You need to do it for your country.”

Kunis nodded.

“I’ll do it,” she confirmed.

So get that limo reserved, Sgt. Moore!

Alternate headline: “Marine Corps recruiting up 800 percent.” The only problem? Obviously there’ll be other guys who follow his lead and the pressure will be on for other gorgeous young starlets not to say no. C’mon, Blake Lively: You do support the troops, don’t you?

Dude, this is so alpha, it should come with a content warning for beta males. Damn.

Continue Reading →

Snowe: No Social Security or Medicare cuts in the debt-ceiling deal

Via Think Progress, which asks a good question. If Snowe’s serious about a balanced-budget amendment, why rule out a deal on entitlements right now when there’s a tiny (emphasis on “tiny”)
bit of political momentum to make big changes to the budget? If she thinks Medicare’s too tough a nut to crack when we’re facing armageddon in three weeks, wait until millions more boomers are on the rolls and she has to deal with cuts every. single. year.

Another good question for you: Where does this leave us vis-a-vis the Lightbringer’s (alleged) proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67? That’s not a cut, strictly speaking, but the outcry will be enormous all the same. Is Snowe open to entitlement reform so long as she doesn’t have to call it a cut or is this a pure “hands off Medicare!” pander to seniors ahead of her reelection campaign next year? If it’s the latter, then any deal involving entitlements would start with just 46 votes in the Senate (assuming Collins and Scott Brown stick with the caucus, which is unlikely). How do they pick up 14 Democrats to beat the filibuster, especially when the DNC’s core campaign message next year will be, er, “hands off Medicare”?

Don’t look for members of Maine’s congressional delegation to support cuts in Social Security or Medicare as part of the debt limit legislation, but all four say a debt reduction package that includes budget cuts and new revenues is likely.

“There are solvency problems with both programs,” Sen. Olympia Snowe said in an interview on Friday, “They have to be addressed but not as part of the debt reduction talks.”

She said any debt reduction plan worked out by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders will still need the support of members of both parties and both Medicare and Social Security have strong bipartisan support…

She said she has no idea what will come out of the budget talks but she believes to get enough votes to pass it will have to have cuts in spending and additional revenue.

She wants to raise revenue by closing loopholes, not raising rates, a plan Collins agrees with. Does Collins also agree that entitlements should be off the table right now? The story doesn’t quote her to that effect but the lede sure makes it sound like it. (And it would be in keeping with her skittishness about Ryan’s Path to Prosperity.) If she’s out too, then we start with 45 votes in the Senate. And if Brown, who also opposes Ryan’s plan and is up for reelection, joins them then we’re at 44. What could go wrong?

Oh, in case you’re wondering how this afternoon’s debt-ceiling meeting went, Chuck Todd tweets, “The two sides are farther apart in debt talks than they have been for a while. Some in talks believe this is going no where. #stalemate?” If that’s the narrative in tomorrow’s papers, Wall Street should have an interesting day. ABC goes behind the scenes:

Boehner said at one point that “it’s clear to all of us how big this spending problem is. Congress keeps voting for programs we can’t pay for. But look, entitlement cuts aren’t easy for us to vote for either. Our guys aren’t cheerleading about cutting entitlements.”

“Your guys already voted for them,” the president said, referring to the budget offered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.

“Excuse us for trying to lead,” Boehner said…

During another exchange, Republicans were going through proposed tax increases as bad for jobs.

“C’mon, man!” Vice President Biden exclaimed, “let’s get real!”

Cantor’s proposal this afternoon totaled $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, including … $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid. Where that leaves us vis-a-vis Snowe, Collins, and Brown, I have no idea. The task now is to somehow get to $2.4 trillion, which is the amount they’ll need to raise the debt ceiling by to get through all of next year and beyond the lame duck Congress. Boehner has insisted that total deficit reduction be at least equal to the increase in the debt ceiling, so they need to find $700 billion somewhere. Interestingly, as part of his own Medicare proposal, Obama reportedly wanted $800 billion to $1 trillion in new revenue; if the GOP can get to $700 billion to make this deal, why not try for $800 billion and then call his bluff on Medicare? Make him own that proposal. If nothing else, it’ll be a hedge against Democratic Mediscaring next year.

While you mull, via Bryan Preston, here’s The One flat out admitting today that new taxes are on the way in 2013. Have at it, RNC ad team.

Continue Reading →

Quotes of the day

“Sunday evening’s much anticipated deficit-reduction meeting at the White House, involving President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, concluded after negotiations that lasted about 1 1/2 hours.


“When asked before the start of Sunday’s talks if a deal could be reached within 10 days, Obama told reporters, ‘We need to.’”

***
“‘You have to have a backup plan. If you are relying on Congress to avoid the possibility of an Armageddon, you can’t just bet on that,’ said Keith Hennessey, who headed the White House National Economic Council during President George W. Bush’s administration…

“As recently as June 21, Miller told a group of sovereign debt holders in London that there is no Plan B and assured them that the debt limit would be raised before August 2.

“Publicly, Treasury has maintained there is no contingency plan. ‘Our plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit,’ Geithner said late in May. ‘Our fall-back plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit, and our fall-back plan to the fall-back plan is for Congress to pass the debt limit.’”

***
“As the White House continues negotiations with congressional leaders over a budget deal this weekend, newly elected head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde says that she ‘can’t imagine for a second’ that the United States would default on its debt obligations, saying it would be ‘a real shock’ to the global economy if no agreement is reached…

“Lagarde, who previously served as France’s finance minister, said there could be ‘real nasty consequences,’ including rising interest rates, depressed stock markets, increased unemployment, and decreased investment if a deal is not reached by the Aug. 2 deadline facing the United States.

“‘It would certainly jeopardize the stability, but not just the stability of the U.S. economy, it would jeopardize the stability at large,’ Lagarde said.”

***
“Democrats need a lot more tax revenue to make their long-term budget plans works. This is why Obama has not offered a long-term budget plan. The need for massive tax increases would then be clear to all. In private, liberal economists all talk about a need for a value-added tax to raise the additional revenue.

“But a liberal think with close ties to the White House, the Center for American Progress, recently released a budget plan that goes out to 2035. It shows taxes as a share of the economy rising dramatically to nearly 24% of GDP vs. around 18-19 percent historically. And I am guessing they would go even higher if the table went beyond 2035. If Boehner and the Republicans don’t hold the line now on taxes, this is the American future.”

***
“The details of a smaller deficit reduction deal have yet to be worked out, but the collapse of the grand bargain leaves President Obama in a more favorable political position. If both parties agree to cut $2 trillion from the budget with minor tax increases, he’ll notch a bipartisan accomplishment. But he can also say he tried something more ambitious in putting cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table without facing the political fallout of actually slashing those programs. He went big and congressional Republicans — not to mention the noticeably silent 2012 Republican presidential candidates — didn’t. It will be Republicans who will have to justify bowing to the extreme wing of their party and walking away from a deal that included some ten times more spending cuts than revenue increases. Some things just aren’t too big to fail.”

***
“Anyone harboring any doubt over who is repsonsible for the failure of a “grand bargain” must consider Pres. Obama’s record. He avoided the debt before the election. After the election, he submitted a budget so absurd it got zero votes in a Democrat-controlled Senate. (Indeed, Senate Democrats have yet to submit a budget of any kind.) He has not moved from the positions he staked out in April. His position is not balanced, no matter how much the White House and the establishment media try to spin it as such.

“Furthermore, there should be no expectation that Obama will budge on the budget. Obama’s non-budget speech was a tacit admission that he cannot run for re-election on his record, but must demonize his opponents with class warfare and MediScare. He would be willing to entertain a GOP surrender on his terms, because he likely calculates that the liberals put off by any deal will be outnumbered by demoralized conservatives and libertarians, while he gains casual, low-information independents. Otherwise, he has already announced his intentions. He will do the only thing for which he has shown any talent: campaign. Whether he can run a negative campaign running from his record, as opposed to standing as the blank slate of Hope and Change, remains to be seen.”

***
“‘No matter the size of the cuts,’ a House GOP aide says, ‘I have major doubts that any kind of revenue raises could pass the House.’ Multiple Republican staffers suggest that Boehner faces as many, if not more, defections than the GOP did on the continuing resolution to keep the government running in April. Fifty-nine Republicans voted no on that deal; less than half of them were freshmen. Early on, Boehner called the debt-limit vote the first ‘adult moment’ for the new GOP majority, but the Tea Party’s mantra has been that the vote represents their greatest point of leverage to force the kind of draconian cuts the conservative grassroots wants. The sentiment only deepened in the wake of the April budget deal. Some, like freshman Republican Jeff Landry, are ready to risk the dire consequences of default to make a point. ‘If I don’t get exactly what I want, I’m not voting for it,’ Landry told Politico.

“Faced with the prospect of losing up to 100 members, Boehner will have to assiduously court Democrats without exposing his right flank, particularly as Cantor, his No. 2, lurks over his shoulder. Democrats are laying down their own markers, vowing not to support a deal that includes cuts to benefits in entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, though several have expressed a willingness to discuss these cuts separately. ‘Because of the dogmatic, know-nothing wing that is willing to discard the interest of the country…at the altar of Norquist purism,’ Connolly says, Boehner and Obama will ultimately find themselves needing a passel of Democrats to save a deal — likely more than the 81 Democrats who supported the CR in April. Connolly estimated some 100 Democrats would be required to thread the needle. ‘Triangulation isn’t going to work,’ Connolly says. ‘You need the Democratic caucus to pass this. And so does John Boehner.’

***
Via Mediaite.


object id="msnbc29d13c" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0" height="245" width="420">

Continue Reading →

Video: Hume: The Obama DOJ reminds me of nothing so much as the Nixon Justice Department

Last week, of course, was a big week in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, the international gunrunning scandal that Obama administration officials still refuse to clear up. Today, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume characterized the ongoing scandal perfectly:



“This Obama Justice Department reminds me of nothing so much as the Nixon Justice Department,” Hume said on Fox News Sunday. “You have the scent of high-level knowledge of serious wrongdoing and you have the smell of cover-up and I think the stench of cover-up on this gun-running operation is very strong indeed.”

Hume’s commentary comes after Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, last Monday gave secret and exclusive testimony to congressional investigators Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to the effect that ATF was not the only agency involved in the scandal, taxpayer money was used to finance the gunrunning and Department of Justice officials explicitly instructed ATF officials not to respond to congressional inquiries.

Continue Reading →

Pawlenty plays it safe — but smart — on homosexuality

GOP presidential hopeful and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said today he’s not sure whether homosexuality is genetic or behavioral. Political Ticker reports:

“As I understand the science, there’s no current conclusion that it’s genetic,” Pawlenty said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Saying he preferred to “defer to the scientists” about the issue, the former Minnesota governor said it was unclear if being gay or lesbian was a lifestyle choice.

“There’s no scientific conclusion that it’s genetic. We don’t know that. So, we don’t know to what extent it’s behavioral,” Pawlenty said. “That’s something that has been debated by scientists for a long time.”

T-Paw didn’t pass on the chance to reiterate his support for traditional marriage, however. He phrased his views positively, emphasizing that he is a proponent of marriage between one man and one woman and saying simply, “I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits in public employment as traditional couples.”

Political Ticker and other news outlets framed Pawlenty’s remarks as a “punt,” but, from where I sit, he answered the question the only way he could have. So far, science has not conclusively established homosexuality as a genetic predisposition. Given that Pawlenty presumably disapproves of gay behavior, what did he have to gain by either absolving gay couples of responsibility for that behavior or blatantly accusing them of poor choices?

Conversely, he did have something to gain by making a statement in support of traditional marriage — an institution his base likewise values and wants to see protected. (Keep in mind just 28 percent of Republicans think same-sex marriage should be legal and just 25 percent of conservatives hold that view.) Perhaps Pawlenty played it safe, but, primarily, he played it smart.

Continue Reading →

No “Hollywood victory moments” in the budget fight

On Friday, Governor Scott Walker signed a bill that made Wisconsin the 49th state to allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms. Walker had tried to get the bill passed for years while a state legislator, but his Democratic predecessor, Jim Doyle,
and Democrats in the legislature had stymied those efforts. This time the bill passed with bipartisan support and allows Wisconsin residents to get permits on a must-issue basis — meaning that the state cannot deny a permit application without justifiable cause, such as a felony record:

In one stroke, the legislation takes Wisconsin from being one of the final pair of remaining holdouts on concealed carry to having one of the more permissive bills in the country.

The proposal, which takes effect Nov. 1, joins other long-sought measures that Republicans passed this year, including requiring photo IDs from voters and making health savings accounts tax-exempt.

Signing the bill in Rothschild, near Wausau, Walker noted the length of the fight over the legislation, which he had once also supported as a lawmaker.

“By signing concealed carry into law today we are making Wisconsin safer for all responsible, law abiding citizens,” he said in a statement.

The measure includes provisions requiring training and permits, which were sought by both Walker and Democrats. Some Republicans unsuccessfully pushed “constitutional carry” bills that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns without permits.

Protesters shouted about the threat to public safety facing Wisconsin residents that has been seen in, er, how many carry states? Zero. In fact, most states see a decrease in crime after the enactment of such legislation, as Rep. Cliff Stearns noted in 2009:

Allowing law-abiding people to arm themselves offers more than piece of mind for those individuals — it pays off for everybody through lower crime rates. Statistics from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Report of 2007 show that states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate, 46% lower robbery, and 12% lower aggravated assault rate and a 22% lower overall violent crime rate than do states without such laws. That is why more and more states have passed right-to-carry laws over the past decade.

In 1987, my home state of Florida enacted a “shall issue” law that has become the model for other states. Anti-gun groups, politicians and the news media predicted the new law would lead to vigilante justice and “Wild West” shootouts on every corner.

But since adopting a concealed carry law Florida’s total violent crime rate has dropped 32% and its homicide rate has dropped 58%. Floridians, except for criminals, are safer due to this law. And Florida is not alone. Texas’ violent crime rate has dropped 20% and homicide rate has dropped 31%, since enactment of its 1996 carry law.

Another study makes the moral case for expanding and enhancing right-to-carry laws. A report by John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard of the University of Chicago released in 1996 found “that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths.” Further, the Lott-Mustard study noted, “If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly.”

Think about it. Nearly 8,000 of our fellow citizens have died between 1992 and 1996 because of the irrational fear that law-abiding Americans would abuse their right to self defense. In fact concealed carry permit holders are more law-abiding than the rest of the public. For example, Florida, which has issued more carry permits than any state has issued 1.36 million permits, but revoked only 165 (0.01%) due to gun crimes by permit-holders.

John Lott wrote about the dynamics of self-defense in his seminal book, More Guns Less Crime, which is in its third edition (and is available on Kindle now, too). Here in Minnesota, opponents also warned about the return of the Wild Wild West and blood flowing in the streets, and the scare tactics turned out to be entirely false. That’s because going through the training process provides a sobering douse of cold water on gun owners about the realities of using a firearm for self-defense. My late friend Joel Rosenberg’s excellent book on the subject Everything You Need to Know About (Legally) Carrying a Gun in Minnesota and his most recent effort The Carry Book gave an entertainingly dire warning to those who thought that a carry permit was the same thing as a Junior Deputy badge.

Law-abiding citizens who seek out and receive the necessary training to get the permit know exactly the stakes involved, which is why (besides the fact that they were law-abiding in the first place) these states don’t see increases in crime rates, especially in relation to permit holders. But having law-abiding citizens carry firearms may be why criminals suddenly take less interest in victimizing them, which may well be the reason for the drops in crime seen after adoption of carry-permit laws.

We’ll be celebrating Joel’s life and work at the MOB Day at the Range this Thursday evening, as well as raising funds for his family. Looks like we can also celebrate the fact that our neighbors to the east have won the right to protect themselves, too.

Continue Reading →

No “Hollywood victory moments” in the budget fight

Boehner didn’t cave on the budget deal this weekend, as some feared he would. The prior fears were not by any means inexplicable. Republicans in Washington are speaking mildly rather than trenchantly, and taking slings and arrows from the chattering class. There’s no Terminator-type trash talk coming from them. All the movement and fury seems to be on the Democrats’ side.


And that makes sense, because it’s the Democrats who occupy indefensible ground. Essentially, their position is that if Republicans won’t agree to raising the debt ceiling and raising taxes, the president will use his discretion to default on US government debt after 2 August. They don’t put it that way, of course, but that’s the reality. If Obama defaults on government debt, it will be because he decided to, not because he had to. He could be impeached for making such a decision.

The money will be there to meet out debt obligations; it just won’t be there to do that and continue to pay for all the other activities of the government. Obama could, equally, decide to cut expenditures in wildly unpopular ways like shorting Medicare reimbursements or leaving the troops without their pay, but Democrats in Congress wouldn’t let him get away with that either, any more than Republicans would. The real option after 2 August is to cut expenditures on other operations of the government, including the programs and subsidies that the Obama administration considers its highest priorities.

All of which is why it’s the Democrats who are most alarmed about having to face the choices after 2 August. The GOP position is not a precarious one. It’s a strong and meaningful position, and that’s why Obama and the Democrats are mounting a sustained assault, using every trick in the book to get the GOP to give up the ground it has staked out. Advertently or not, the Republicans have acted according to the strategic maxim of Bismarck’s military genius, Von Moltke the Elder:

A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.

Why doesn’t the GOP position look more tough and inspiring? For one thing, because our imaginations have been so conditioned to Hollywood productions and the 120-minute movie package that we think victories have to be signaled by the devices of video storytelling, or they aren’t victories.

But in real life, it rarely happens that way. Think back to January and the endless, annoying Cirque du Wisconsin with the runaway Democrats hiding out across the state line in the EconoLodge or wherever it was. There was no Hollywood victory at the end of that sorry episode. Eventually the Democrats just straggled back. On balance, the Wisconsin Republicans have been winning the peace.

But they looked, throughout the pitched confrontation, like a herd of deer caught in the headlights: bemused, a little shell-shocked, a little quizzical. A lot of conservatives wrote them off because they were just a bunch of modern legislator schmoes, doing modern legislature stuff. But while the Democrats and unions are still fighting a vociferous rearguard action, and it ain’t over yet, the momentum has clearly turned to the Republicans’ side.

Consider James Pethokoukis’ reference to Reagan and Reykjavik in 1986 (cited by Ed). Mikhail Gorbachev offered to raise the Reagan ante on strategic arms cuts, the best counteroffer ever presented by a Soviet leader, but Reagan turned it down because Gorbachev’s condition was that Reagan abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative.

This certainly didn’t resonate as a victory at the time. We don’t remember it today, but the Western media proclaimed an atmosphere of civilizational doom after the Reykjavik summit. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting an editorial containing the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” Even many of Reagan’s staunchest supporters wondered if the old man had finally gone round the bend. Reagan was defending territory he had staked out – territory so alarming to the Soviets that it drove them to act, maneuver, change their approach, move off of their position – and to the observers of the time, that looked like disaster.

What we do remember today, however, is that it was Reagan who got what he wanted in the end.

In politics, victory often comes on little cat feet. I won’t be surprised if the way a GOP budget victory looks to the public is a lot like how it looks in Wisconsin today. An interim solution rather than a grand bargain; a sense of tension maintained rather than the catharsis of a satisfying conclusion.

There will be work left to do, but a shift of momentum. An MSM counter-narrative will be retailed relentlessly, on the water-torture principle. Paroxysms of caterwauling will persist from the Democrats and their constituencies. From the GOP, no glory, no stirring speeches, no one-liners. No string crescendo, no pulsating beat. Nothing but a bunch of Republicans looking weary and dithery, like they just stumbled in from a windstorm – but haven’t forgotten what they went out into it for.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Continue Reading →

Video: Talking class warfare, Casey Anthony, and MN shutdown on Tom Sullivan Show

Earlier this week, I taped an appearance on the Tom Sullivan Show, which aired for the first time yesterday on Fox Business Channel. Tom put together a good panel, with Lauren Simonetti from Fox Business and economist Lindsey Piegza.
We went through two rather similar topics in the Minnesota shutdown, which comes at the end, and the ramped up class-warfare rhetoric coming out of the White House of late. We also debated whether cameras in courtrooms have become a problem in trials like the one involving Casey Anthony or whether the media is the problem:

I was happy to set the record straight on the Minnesota shutdown, but I missed the opportunity to rebut Lauren on the Canterbury issue. Yes, the lack of state inspections has hampered business at the race track, but that hardly impacts most Minnesotans. The bigger impact is certainly with people who regularly access state services. I wasn’t arguing that there is no impact, but that the impact has been barely noticeable for most Minnesotans. People here are annoyed by the inability of the government to resolve the issue, but the people getting most hurt are the state workers who support Dayton and suddenly don’t have any income. As more of the details emerge from this standoff, the worse it will look for Dayton, who deliberately waited until the session ended to veto the budget bills the GOP produced six weeks earlier — six weeks in which Dayton refused to negotiate on the bills separately so that state government could keep operating.

By the way, I mention that I’d been to a baseball game the day before, which is one reason I may look a little stiff (or more so than usual, anyway). I forgot the sunscreen and ended up with bad sunburns on my neck and legs, which made for an interesting morning with a necktie and long pants. Thankfully, the show asked for a makeup artist that blended down my neck and face, or I might have looked like a beet. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun with Tom, Lauren, and Lindsey, and hopefully I’ll get another chance soon to contribute.

Continue Reading →