Washed Out - Feel It All Around

Weird video, good music:

Washed Out is the stage name of the American chillwave musician Ernest Greene (born in 1983, Perry, Georgia).

Toro y Moi remix:

Hugo Chavez's Daughter's Fistful of American Dollars

Cross-posted from the Left Coast Rebel

Drudge has a link up at the Daily Mail, "Daddy won't be pleased... Hugo Chávez's daughter sparks outrage in Venezuela after posting picture with U.S. dollar bills."

The report claims that native Venezuelans under the totalitarian thumb of Hugo Chavez are "seething" that his 14-year-old daughter Rosines had access to American dollars and was flaunting her stash on the 'net:

If anything I find it fascinating that the teenage daughter of a brutal communist despot is fascinated with what is still perceived as the symbol of freedom and capitalism across the world -- the American dollar (I see there's some 2-dollar bills in there, kind of strange).

Scrolling through the comments, I caught this from a Daily Mail reader:

In 2009, I visited former Soviet/Eastern Bloc countries. I did not realise it was possible to visit old KGB headquarters (now terror museums) and if I learnt nothing new (e.g. torture chambers, execution rooms), the experiences were upsetting and, of course, testimony to what happened under communism; as were the views of locals who told of how they queued for everything whilst the communist elite lived well. So, it was pleasant to relax and visit the churches of Tallin (Estonia) where I fell into conversation with an exiled Venezuelan. After I'd expressed concerns re: Chavez (he'd just tried to change the constitution to allow him indefinite re-election), she replied, and I quote from my diary, 'We, the young people, voted him in. Yes, change was vital, but, what have we done? He thinks he is Fidel and we live in a police state that tolerates no opposition'. A privileged elite + fear? As someone once said, 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.

Fascinating words of wisdom. Why is it that young people fall for statist pipe-dreams that turn entire nations into prison camps? For some reason, young people gravitate to the utopian ideals that socialism, communism, progressivism and statism of all stripes represent (or are sold to the masses as representing). Think about it: much of the pain we are feeling in this nation has taken hold due in a large part to the fact that young people fell for socialism-lite in America -- Hope and Change.

The problem with collectivism is that the downside -- the cause and effect of loss of individual freedom -- is never considered as the certain part of the equation that it is.

Gordon Hodson: Conservatives Are Innately Inferior...

...but we shouldn’t stigmatize these racists, because they were born that way -- right?

Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology...

...lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies ... we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice.

Gordon Hodson, Michael A Busseri, Brock University*

Few will have the opportunity to scrutinize Hodson's report because the deficiencies of this poorly-designed retrospective study are hidden behind a paywall (update 2.1.2012: now available to the general public), but politically charged "science" should always be viewed with skepticism.

Ironically, the science of intelligence is usually an anathema to progressive intellectuals. (Perhaps this is true because the heritability of intelligence poses a threat to the politics of radical egalitarianism).

But I digress.

Celebrated progressive scientists have insisted that it’s racist or stupid to take seriously the mountains of data that show differences in IQ between human populations, and they believe that "general intelligence" is not a valid concept. But IQ research suddenly becomes valid when it's construed to tell progressives something they want to hear about racism, giving them justification for bigoted attitudes against conservatives.

The mind-warping hypocrisy and willful ignorance is astonishing.

**UPDATE: A more thorough discussion of Hodson's report here.

"Some of his best friends are conservative."

Gordon Hodson

Phone: (905)688-5550 ext.5127

e-mail: ghodson@brocku.ca

*Emphasis added

Addendum: James Taranto sums it up very well...

So IQ tests are racist, except when they're used to "prove" that people with "socially conservative ideologies" are racist and intellectually inferior.

Update II:

Low IQ & Liberal Beliefs Linked To Poor Research? (for M. Scott Veach)

Update III:

Criticism from from Razib Khan.

John Hawkins' Take on Mitt Romney's Electability

Maybe we should just ask Mitt: Are you electable?Graphic c/o ExposeMittRomney.com

Cross-posted at the Left Coast Rebel

"Let's be perfectly honest: Mitt Romney excites no one except for Mormons, political consultants, and Jennifer Rubin...To everybody else on the right, Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama would be a "lesser of two evils" election where we'd grudgingly back Mitt because we wouldn’t lose as badly with him in the White House as we would with Obama. That's not the sort of thing that gets people fired up to make phone calls, canvass neighborhoods, or even put up "I heart Mitt" signs in their yards."

--John Hawkins, Townhall.com, December 27, 2011: "7 Reasons Why Mitt Romney's Electability is a Myth"

I would add neo-conservative liberal flake A.M. talker Michael Medved to Hawkins' short list of fervent, unflappable Romney-bots.

Hawkins' seven-point list on Romney's unelectability is spot-on (I missed it with the busy holiday); here's a synopsis and my take on each point from his article (his words in italics):

1) Likeability (Mitt's lack thereof). I tell friends that Mitt Romney reminds me of that opportunist fraud of yesteryear -- "Tricky Dick" Nixon. I don't know what others see (that steady 20% primary voter); I see Romney as stiff, cold, robotic and unlikable. So does Hawkins; Hawkins thinks voters in January, 2012 will too.

2) Mitt's a loser. Writes Hawkins, "There's a reason Mitt Romney has been able to say that he's "not a career politician." It's because he's not very good at politics. He lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994. Although he did win the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he did it without cracking 50% of the vote." No analysis needed on my part. Again, just why is ultra-liberal Mitt "inevitable"?

3) He's too liberal for the South in the General. My heart is in the South, as opposed to the Left Coast where I hail from, and I agree, he's too Northeast-liberal.

4) The "inevitability" establishment canard won't play for poo-poo in the General. Hawkins writes, "Yet, every one of those advantages disappears if he becomes the nominee. Suddenly Obama will be the more experienced candidate in the race for the presidency. He will also have more money and a better organization than Mitt. Moreover, in a general election, the establishment and beltway media will be aligned against Romney, not for him. Suddenly, Romney will go from getting a free pass to being public enemy #1 for the entire mainstream media." I'll add to this: and because he's a liberal, the conservative grassroots won't coalesce around him, even given the stakes. I saw this dynamic with my own eyes with John McCain's "Maverick" run. Conservative voters in the GOP bastion of San Diego just stayed home.

5) Bain. I don't necessarily agree with Hawkins that Bain is Romney's albatross. But, his lack of defense for his record is certainly suspect. Voters can sniff out a fraud. And Romney's likely tepid support for his capitalist record will sink his ship. And given the choice between even a socialist -- Obama -- and a fraud (Romney) they will unfortunately choose... a socialist. It happened in 2008 after all. Plus, the Obama $1,000,000,000 Machine will absolutely roast Romney with Bain.

6) Mormonism. Hawkins thinks religious bigotry will play against Romney. Not sure about that, who knows? My opinion has always been that Romney is bad because he's a statist, not because he has a certain faith.

7) Flip-flopper. This also dovetails into 5) above, when voters face a choice between a fraud (flip-flopper) and the real socialist deal, they will likely choose the real deal. Mitt's flips and flops beg the question -- even from a political junkie like me -- what does he believe? What does he stand for? What's his core. Answer: nothing but the status quo. And we all know where the status quo is heading for in this country.

Read Hawkins' Townhall.com piece and debate it out in the comments.

Updated: Brilliance from Dr. Milton Wolf @ the Washington Times:

“Mitt Romney is masterful at defending Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich is masterful at defending conservatism... Mr. Romney is like the Apple app store for candidates: Got a problem? There’s an app for that. What’s your tax plan? There’s an answer for that. Flip-flops? There’s an answer for that. Romneycare? Bain Capital? There are answers for those. Job plan? There’s a 59-point answer for that… When given opportunities to defend conservatism with questions about his tax returns and hunting, Mr. Romney stammered through painful answers and defended only himself, not conservatism.”

Stuff Libs Say

Is There a "Real" Romney?

Speaking from his heart?

"I love this land, I love its Constitution, I revere its founders, I will restore those principles, I will get America back to work, and I'll make sure that we remain the shining city on the hill."

Check, check, check, check, check ... and check.

Are we to believe that these are the thoughts that run through Romney's mind when he lays his head on his pillow at night?

Is there a "real" Romney hidden somewhere, waiting to be unveiled? It's time to bring him out.

If Romney can't be authentic, he will continue to struggle in the primaries. But if the authentic Mitt Romney is revealed, will Republican voters like what they see?

Maybe these questions lead us to Romney's own Catch-2012.

Rick 1, Mitt 1, Newt 1

I'm surprised Newt won so big in SC. Intrade had his probability of winning at about 7% as recently as a week ago. I seriously considered buying up all of Newt's shares at that point, but I never expected Newt to crush Romney like this.

There's a lot of discussion in the conservosphere about how and why Newt's debate performance has impacted his momentum. But almost everyone agrees that the debates have been the decisive factor.

I think the take home message is that the "Not-Romney" sentiment is still very strong, and that sentiment has coalesced around Newt as a consequence of Newt's forceful repudiation of the abusive anti-conservative media establishment.

That said, I still think it's Romney's nomination to lose. This might be the last Not-Romney win for quite some time.

As I noted earlier, the next five contests will be in Romney-friendly territory. Newt has an advantage in the south, but we're going to be out of the core southern states for a while now. Florida is up next, but Florida is more of a regional hybrid with swing state tendencies, and Florida's Jeb Bush, a popular ex-governor, is expected to endorse Romney soon (update).

Addendum: Good insights from The Other McCain:

...Mitt’s “inevitable” mojo spell is now decisively broken, and the questions now are multiple: Can Mitt get his mojo back? Will Newt be able to avoid further “drama”? Can Santorum get the financial resources to stay in the race, hoping to be the last man standing if Newt auto-destructs?

Read the rest...

Update II: Good insights from Red State:

Newt Gingrich Wins. What It Means...

The base is revolting because they swept the GOP back into relevance in Washington just under two years ago and they have been thanked with contempt ever since...

Read the rest...

Update III: DON'T MISS THIS:

Conservatives (accurately) perceive the media mainstream to be a de facto organ of the liberal left, and by extension, the Democratic Party - and they understand that conservative governance is absolutely impossible unless that organ is defeated or co-opted. On the latter count, ask President John McCain how his co-option efforts went. When Newt Gingrich crushes a hapless journalist, he isn't just tossing up a parlor trick: he's demonstrating an indispensable prerequisite to conservative governance today.

Read the rest...

Cuba Drilling off Key West; Keystone Pipeline's Obama-Directed Demise

Their man listened. Photo credit: TarSandAction/Flickr

Cross-posted at the Left Coast Rebel

Mission accomplished, Barry:

(Washington Post) President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States. For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign oil.

Finally, Obama’s decision forgoes all the project’s jobs. There’s some dispute over the magnitude. Project sponsor TransCanada claims 20,000, split between construction (13,000) and manufacturing (7,000) of everything from pumps to control equipment. Apparently, this refers to “job years,” meaning one job for one year. If so, the actual number of jobs would be about half that spread over two years. Whatever the figure, it’s in the thousands and thus important in a country hungering for work. And Keystone XL is precisely the sort of infrastructure project that Obama claims to favor.

The big winners are the Chinese. They must be celebrating their good fortune and wondering how the crazy Americans could repudiate such a huge supply of nearby energy. There’s no guarantee that tar-sands oil will go to China; pipelines to the Pacific would have to be built. But it creates the possibility when the oil’s natural market is the United States...

Read the rest.

Zero Hedge has the political-societal implications of Dear Leader's move:

But it is not only crude. Wonder why no jobs are being created? Wonder why despite record low mortgage rates there is no bottom in sight for housing? Simple - nobody can plan one month, let alone one year ahead for any US-based venture or business. The political risk is simply too great - whether it is contract law (see GM and Chrysler) or simple solvency (see record high levels of cash hoarded by companies), it is there, and as long as it is there, there will be no hiring, no capex spending, no growth, and no real improvement in the economy, the real economy, not that defined by where the Russell 2000 closes on any given day.

On a related note, as our nation languishes, guess who's taking advantage of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? If you guessed communist Cuba, you guessed right. It gets worse, though. Not only are the red-communist Cubans now drilling just miles (60-70) off of Key West, Florida, they are doing so from a Chinese-manufactured oil rig under the guidance of Repson, a Spanish oil firm. Plus, we are barred from buying the oil from the Cubans which are estimated to be sitting on several billion barrels of reserves (they say 20 billion, the U.S. government says it's closer to 5 billion).

Truly the only way to stop madness like this is to drastically scale back the power -- money -- of the Federal Leviathan. Starving the beast is the only way we will finally heal this nation and get us off this national suicide trajectory. And that doesn't mean slashing taxes while not cutting spending, Republicans.

Which presidential candidate today has the gravitas and track record to usher in such a scaling back?

Protecting Obama With Juiced-up Sex Stories

Once again, Newt uses his jujitsu against a partisan media attack:

"I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

(Transcript)

Newt did the viewers a great service by forcing John King out of left-wing hack mode and into the role of humble moderator.

One of the four men in the debate could become the next president of the United States, but instead of discussing issues of national importance (which might make Barack Obama look bad), CNN was launching partisan attack, wasting valuable time on old tabloid gossip.

Newt changed the tone for the better, for the rest of the debate.

Newt hasn't earned my coveted endorsement, but I think he won the day.

Fixed It: Obama's New Campaign Ad

Obama has released his first ad for the 2012 presidential campaign. There were a few small problems. I took the liberty of making some adjustments:

You're welcome, Mr. Obama!

Original propaganda here.

Update:

Near the end of the video, Obama points to a quote from Politifact from January 21, 2009: "kept a campaign promise to toughen ethics rules." A couple of observations:

1. Does this have anything to do with his energy policy? It looks like this quote is almost completely unrelated to the main theme of the video.
2. This is an old quote. Has Obama been as "tough" with lobbyists as he was the day after inauguration?

Update II:

The Lonely Conservative: Obama Can’t Run On His Record, So He’s Making One Up

Update III:

Obama takes credit for things he didn't do and he fabricates the rest. Even the Washington Post can't swallow these lies:

...figures are correct, but they are also not tethered to anything Obama has done.

...the Energy Department cited a host of reasons why foreign oil imports have declined, noting the main reason was “a significant contraction in consumption” because of the poor economy and changes in efficiency that began “two years before the 2008 crisis”—ie, before Obama took office.

Then, in bold type, the ad proclaims: President Obama “kept a campaign promise to toughen ethics rules” and it cites: “PolitiFact, 1/21/09.”

Politifact did write that on Jan. 21, 2009, but then it almost immediately changed its ruling as Obama began granting waivers to his ethics policy...

The suggestion that Obama was responsible for the 2.7 million clean-energy jobs or the decline in foreign oil imports is bad enough... We have more trouble with the citation of PolitiFact.

Update IV:

Obama's First Ad Riddled with Falsehoods...

Politifact: “We Rate Obama's ‘Revolving Door’ Policy For Former Lobbyists His Biggest Broken Promise...”

Solyndra, Obama’s Poster-Child For “American Ingenuity And Dynamism,” Declared Bankruptcy...

Obama did not create 2.7 million green jobs...

This is a bad way to start a presidential ad campaign, even by Democrat standards.

Schooling Ron Paul on Taliban History

Image via Conservative Daily News

Some excellent points from Big Fur Hat at iOwnTheWorld:

Ron Paul keeps repeating his same old false information and his Hot Pocket Basement Brigade keep lapping it up with their 40 year-old virgin tongues...

"The relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda was one of the hot topics of Monday night’s presidential debate. Candidate Ron Paul downplayed the dangers of the Taliban, declaring the 'Taliban used to be our allies when we were fighting the Russians… The al-Qaeda wants to come here to kill us. The Taliban just says we don’t want foreigners.'

"The Taliban came on the scene in Afghanistan in 1994, several years after the Soviets departed. Taliban (which translates to “students”) were made up mainly of Afghan refugees who had grown up in Pakistan during Soviet rule in Afghanistan and attended Deobandi religious schools, where they learned a strict, puritanical form of Islam. While some of the current Taliban may have previously fought on the same side of the U.S. during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, it is inaccurate to say the Taliban as a movement was ever an ally of the United States."

Ron Paul's radical interpretation of Taliban history is disturbing enough, but let's back up and look at his quote again:

“The Taliban just says we don’t want foreigners.”

Yeah, who could blame them? The Taliban live in a paradise on earth!

Note how easily Paul relates to Taliban xenophobia. Peas in a pod.

Preserve the Status Quo?

Heads, they win. Tails, we lose:

South Carolina, please choose wisely.

Via i-am-john-galt

Romney's Bain Helped Obama With Auto Bailout... UPDATE: Story Retracted

Here's your free-market capitalism:

Revealed: Bain & Company advised Obama on auto bailout, recommended cutting dealerships...

Does it matter that Romney hasn’t worked for Bain & Company in nearly 20 years or are the optics of this one bad enough to make it newsworthy regardless?

...The NYT reported recently that to this day, as part of the deal he negotiated when he left, Romney still gets a share of Bain Capital’s profits.

Uhm, let's see... Romney's cronies at Bain (a company Romney co-founded) worked with Obama on Obama's fiat-market, counter-capitalist, union-appeasing, jobs-killing auto bailout. Does that look bad? Why yes, yes it surely does.

Call it the Obamney Bailout.

x-posted

Update:

...this is what really ticks me off. We're told what a great capitalist Romney is and if we attack him, we're attacking capitalism. So, then why did his firm engage in so much socialism and still manage to screw up businesses, after pocketing tons of cash for themselves? This doesn't sound like the kind of capitalism I believe in. The taxpayers often took part of Romney's risk, or bailed out his mistakes, as with a pension fund, but he always managed to feather his own nest pretty damned well. This is what's wrong with America, not what's worth defending...

Stay tuned...

UPDATE:

STORY RETRACTED

Senator JimDemint on the Daily Show

Senator Jim DeMint speaking in Iowa. DeMint image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Cross-posted at the Left Coast Rebel

Over at Memeorandum, Think Progress thinks they have a juicy a-ha moment concerning Senator Jim DeMint. DeMint was on Jon Stewart's Daily Show and countered Stewart's argument for the goodness and federal-wonderfulness that is the fed education program Head Start.

Why doth the Think Progress troll protest so much against this:

The problem we have is from the federal level, it’s very hard to do things well. I mean, you don’t find too many federal programs that are working…When we politically manage the programs, the money is not distributed well and there’s no evidence — I mean we spent trillions trying to help poverty in America. But we don’t cure poverty, we subsidize it when we make people dependent on the government and make it harder for them to get up the ladder.

The clincher here -- and the truth -- is that the War on Poverty actually makes it harder for poor and lower-income Americans to move up the economic ladder. It takes away their drive, their spirit and eventually their life-meaning and humanity. How is that liberal? And, how is that compassionate, conservatives republicans?

Here's video of DeMint on the Daily Show:



LBJ's Great Society and "War on Poverty" are anything but over 40 years later. Always be eternally weary of politicians preaching a "war" on anything; as a rule anything the government declares war against -- the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Poverty" being the two biggest examples -- actually exacerbate, accelerate and increase the problem they were created to solve. Government is not eloquence; it is forcing of unintended consequences.

For anyone that doubts this assertion, please read this report at the Cato Institute: "Nine Trillion Didn't End Poverty, What to do?"

Pass this along, too, from Dan Mitchell at Cato:



"My argument is simple: in the real world, social welfare programs create a perverse incentive structure and leave out the most important aspect of getting out of poverty which is economic freedom and opportunity."

More at Cato on the failure that is Head Start here and here.

Figures that lib Jon Stewart didn't get the memo that his example of Head Start as the crown jewel of the effectiveness of the Leviathan federal government -- the same government that federal supremacy folks like Stewart think that we (but not them) must all swear allegiance and eternal subservience to -- is an out-and-out failure.

Updated: Even that loathsome Joel Klein agrees with me. I guess even a busted clock is right twice a day:

According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years, according to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who said, "I guess they were trying to rerun the data to see if they could come up with anything positive. They couldn't."

I wish we as tax-paying Americans could rerun the data (and turn back the clock) with our mulit-generational, multi-trillion experiment with the welfare state. If the entitlement-welfare state had never been created, we wouldn't be facing this down and we wouldn't have enslaved and broken the spirit of millions across this nation.

Aside from the mountains of debt created, the human toll is the most tragic unintended consequence of the welfare state.

*Related thought (via RK): The perversion of the implicit marginal tax rate is a cruel trap for lower-income Americans.

Update x2 (via LCR): Just found this gem at Liberty Unbound, "Hurting the Poor, Helping the Rich."

Excerpt:

Statism helps wealthy corporations in many ways — not by giving them tax breaks as the modern liberals complain, but by giving them rent-seeking handouts such as farm subsidies and defense contracts. Ending all subsidies and all pork barrel spending would be a huge loss for rich people with political connections, yet the modern liberals have bamboozled the poor into thinking that statism actually helps the poor and hurts the rich. On Wall Street, the SEC’s maze of rules makes legal compliance so difficult that it is virtually impossible for newcomers to compete with the old established investment banks. Established businessmen use taxes and regulations to stifle competition from start-up entrepreneurs and up-and-coming small businessmen who can’t afford to hire compliance lawyers and tax consultants, as their old money rivals can. Yet small business is precisely the engine of opportunity for hard-working ambitious people from poor backgrounds.

Read the rest.

Romney's Kinsley Gaffe

Wikipedia:

In U.S. politics, a Kinsley gaffe is an occurrence of someone telling the truth by accident... The term comes from journalist Michael Kinsley, who said, "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

Mitt Romney's Kinsley gaffe comes in his defense of his work at Bain Capital:

“In the general election I’ll be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler – closed factories, closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers – he did it to try to save the business,” Romney said Wednesday on CBS.

President Obama has publicly touted his plan to “retool and restructure” the auto companies as “an investment in American workers.” Romney was strongly opposed to the auto bailouts, but on Wednesday likened the president’s strategy to his own.

“We also had the occasion to do things that are tough to try and save a business,” he said.

Watch the video.

It's an awfully awful comparison, but I suspect there's more truth in Romney's statement than he would care to admit.

With all of the cronyism and government bailouts at Bain, I fear that Romney’s accomplishments there exemplify the beauty of capitalism in the same way that Romneycare exemplifies the beauty of free markets.

UPDATE: OMG, this is worse than I thought...

Revealed: Bain & Company advised Obama on auto bailout, recommended cutting dealerships...

Does it matter that Romney hasn’t worked for Bain & Company in nearly 20 years or are the optics of this one bad enough to make it newsworthy regardless?

...The NYT reported recently that to this day, as part of the deal he negotiated when he left, Romney still gets a share of Bain Capital’s profits.

Uhm, let's see... Romney's buddies at Bain (a company Romney co-founded) worked with Obama on the fiat-market, counter-capitalist, jobs-killing auto bailout. Does that look bad? Yes it does.

Call it the Obamney Bailout.

Obama States Choose Romney

More good news for Mitt Romney. After a tie with Rick Santorum in Iowa, Romney wins big in his own back yard, New Hampshire.

Note that both Iowa and New Hampshire are Obama states: New Hampshire went for Obama by 10 percentage points in November '08, and Iowa went for Obama by almost the same margin.

Reflecting a bit further back in recent history, you probably remember that the winner of Iowa's caucuses failed to win the GOP nomination in 2008. New Hampshire, however, was successful in launching McCain's ill-fated bid for the White House.

I hope the folks in New Hampshire and Iowa have experienced some kind of enlightenment in the last four years.

More (potential) good news for bonny Prince Mitt: Five of the next six GOP contests will be in Obama territory. The next six elections will be in South Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota. Of those states, only South Carolina rejected Obama in the general election in 2008.

Even more good news for Romney: Three of the next six contests will be held in Romney states. Nevada, Maine and Minnesota all went for Mitt over McCain in 2008.

Yes, following in John McCain's footsteps, Mitt Romney appears to be the man whose turn it is.

Who can blame the Republican party for choosing Mitt? With the technocratic warmth of Mike Dukakis, the home field advantage of Al Gore, the aristocratic appeal of John Kerry — and the progressive instincts of all of the above — Mitt Romney is a no-brainer.

Yay, GOP!

Update: Insanity

SpiceGirl-in-Chief

This is the punk who takes credit for killing Osama bin Laden and saving our economy form a Great Depression.


(A photoshop job, but it might as well be real.)

A Metaphor

Crown Prince Wins by 8... Update: Santorum Certified Winner

The crown prince of the GOP establishment insiders club won in Iowa by 8 votes. But after spending the better part of a decade wooing Iowa voters with millions of bushels of corn cash, he failed to win as many votes in 2012 as won in 2008, missing the mark by 6 votes:

Romney 2008: 30,021

Romney 2012: 30,015

Santorum 2012: 30,007

UPDATE:

Rick Santorum -- who trailed by a mere 8 votes in the initial tally -- actually beat Romney by 34 votes, according to the certified vote totals.

Iowa: Can Romney Match His 2008 Performance? UPDATE: No

In 2008, Romney got 25.2% of the vote in the Iowa Republican caucuses. Four years later, as I write this, Romney is stuck at 23.6%, just behind Rick Santorum. If Romney can't muster 25% of the vote after all these years of campaigning and spending massive amounts of money, what does that say about this crown prince of  GOP establishment insiders?

Update:

Popular vote for Romney 2008: 30,021
Popular vote for Romney 2012: 29,657 (99% reporting)

Update II:

Romney's blogger groupie doesn't get it (via Jacobson).

Update III:

Photo finish...

Conservative Dad: Pretty vs Hot

For a long time, I've been planning to start a category of posts dedicated to topics of interest to conservative dads. Tina Korbe has a post packed with good points that have inspired me to launch my "conservative dad" series. The whole post is worth your time, so go check it out. With my two-year-old daughter's future in mind, I've selected a few key points:

"Why what women wear actually matters..."

Truthfully, I didn’t plan to write about this. We’re not a fashion blog — and, by and large, I don’t think what folks wear does matter. But, this morning, I read a brief blog post headlined “The Death of Pretty” — and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. This is a rather long excerpt, but it’s too good to not be shared (the whole piece is worth your time, too!):

"...pretty is dying.

"People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

"Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue...

"By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

"Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.

"As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.

"Nowhere is this pretty deficit more obvious than in our 'stars,' the people we elevate as the 'ideal.' The stars of the fifties surely suffered from the same sin as do stars of today. Stars of the fifties weren’t ideal but they pursued a public ideal different from today."

It’s so true — and it’s so sad...

...somewhere between childhood and adulthood — or, sadly, sometimes in the midst of childhood — girls begin to think it’s an embarrassment to be innocent, to be naive.

It’s not an insult to be called naive, though — not really. The first definition of the word is “having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality.” What’s wrong with that? To encounter the natural and artless — to escape cynicism and ugliness — is to be refreshed. Yes, it’s foolish to ignore ugliness — for it’s real and revealing. But we have such a limited amount of time in a day: Why not look to the beautiful, the good, the true at least as often as we look to anything else?

Here's the rest.

I would add that on another part of this spectrum (or perhaps on an entirely different plane) is a group of girls and women who may be neither pretty nor "hot," but who strive like rough men to be crass, brash and crude.

Pretty, hot... or crude?

I hope my daughter makes the right choice.