Category: Politics

I don’t think there’s been a political issue lately that’s attracted more gas-baggery than the filibuster deal. A typical example would be the hard-edged rant of Michelle Malkin on who’s a bigger hypocrite.

Hypocrisy in politics isn’t exactly news, and accusations of hypocrisy are rarely covered for that very reason. The issue with filibusters is one of long-term effects. If the Republicans get their way right now and are able to confirm the judges they want, they’ll do so at the price of a tool that’s been used more frequently by their side than the other, and given the fact that they’re headed for minority status in the next election or two, I don’t think it’s wise of them to be so insistent on it.

And assuming that the judge deal turned out the way they plan and they got a Supreme Court that was willing to overturn Roe v. Wade, the abortion issue would simply return to state legislatures and we’d have an outbreak of federalism on the Supreme Court.

That doesn’t bode well for the party of Schiavo intervention, so it’s a case of “be careful what you wish for because you might get it.” If Frist and his colleagues have thought this through, they’re bluffing about the filibuster, and if the Dems have thought it through so are they.

This leads me to believe that a compromise is the most likely outcome.

To be successful in national politics, it’s necessary to be “all things to all people”, at least to some extent. And in the era of instant communication it’s hard to say one thing to one group and a different thing to another as politicians have traditionally done. So it’s become difficult to appeal to diverse groups.

But technology gives us the means to solve this problem, as Karl Rove has divined. I think I’ve cracked the code on this as well, but I don’t want to go into detail just yet.

How would you package a politician so that he (or she) appealed to diverse constituencies? You might have a better idea.

The New York Times should read Mossback Culture more often. This blogger did a study of the dissemination of the Huffington Gas-Bag Report and found it here 18 days before it got to the Paper of Record:

The earliest blog posts I find about it is April 3 on the left-wing Mossback Culture, April 4 on the Right Wing Death Beast and April 4th on Uncorrelated.

Aren’t y’all glad to know you’re reading the left-wing blog with all the newest news?

The evil Instapundit notes a Cathy Young/Prof. Bainbridge set-to:

CATHY YOUNG dismissed conservative claims of religious bigotry yesterday, producing this response from Stephen Bainbridge, which produced this reply from Young. I agree with Eugene Volokh that Young gets the better of the exchange.

Bainbridge doesn’t seem to realize that by invoking disparate impact he proves Young’s point that the right is aping the victim politics of the left.

Chile has private retirement accounts. New York times columnist John Tierney compared their performance against American Social Security and found it pretty excellent:

After comparing our relative payments to our pension systems (since salaries are higher in America, I had contributed more), we extrapolated what would have happened if I’d put my money into Pablo’s mutual fund instead of the Social Security trust fund. We came up with three projections for my old age, each one offering a pension that, like Social Security’s, would be indexed to compensate for inflation:

(1) Retire in 10 years, at age 62, with an annual pension of $55,000. That would be more than triple the $18,000 I can expect from Social Security at that age.

(2) Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $70,000. That would be almost triple the $25,000 pension promised by Social Security starting a year later, at age 66.

(3)Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $53,000 and a one-time cash payment of $223,000.

American Democrats don’t want us to have this much money when we retire – prosperous people vote Republican.

The resignation of San Diego mayor Dick Murphy opens up a slot on the list of the three worst big-city mayors in the US.

I nominate Portland’s Tom Potter, the terrorism-friendly mayor who doesn’t want the FBI looking for bad guys in his town. Here’s what the local paper said about his hissy-fit against the FBI:

“We have a population of extremists who engage in criminal behavior in our community,” Foxworth wrote the mayor. “Nonsupport of the JTTF would cause long-term damage to our reputation and credibility within the law enforcement community. This will likely weaken our relationships with remaining law-enforcement partners and break down lines of communication.”

Translation: Portland’s withdrawal from the task force would only help to disconnect the dots. And that’s chilling. As we all remember, the intelligence failure that enabled the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to succeed was a failure to share and synthesize information.

Portland, as a crucial member of the FBI task force, second only to the FBI, is a key dot. Its withdrawal would only diminish the effectiveness of FBI anti-terrorism investigations. The mayor and the Portland City Council should do everything in their power to keep those dots tightly connected.

And they endorsed him.

Check out John Cole on Jeff Goldstein’s radio show today at 3:00PM EDT. John is the spokesman for rational conservatism, meaning those of us who oppose tyranny and aren’t god-botherers.

UPDATE: He did well. There has traditionally been conflict between conservatives and libertarians in the Republican Party, the conservative overreach on Schiavo, judges, and creationism has brought it to the surface again. Unfortunately, most (religious) conservatives have very little respect for the rule of law when it means their religion has to recede into the background.

Republicans aren’t all crazy. See Sayanora, Credibility on Balloon Juice for proof.

So it turns out that Mike Allen was right on the substance of the Terri Schiavo talking points memo, but wrong on some of the details. Power Line has egg on its face once again.

Here’s a quick link from Roger Simon quoting Marty Peretz:

If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others.

This strikes me as about right, although some of Dubya’s critics have begun to admit he was basically right about that whole democracy thing, as in “yes, Virginia, even brown people want to be free.”