Jennifer Rubin:

The irony is great here. A cadre of pundits cautioned the GOP after the 2008 wipeout to move to the center, to accommodate Obama’s agenda, and to recoil from the small-government philosophy that, the self-appointed gurus told us, had no sell with voters. With a big assist from Obama, the Tea Partiers have proved themselves much savvier than the punditocracy (damning with feint praise, I know). An entire populist movement built not on specific positions (e.g., anti-war) but on philosophical principles is a remarkable phenomenon; even more remarkable is the degree to which those principles have resonated with the public at large. [...]

As much, then, as the Republicans, the Democrats and their ideological soul mates have been rocked by the Tea Partiers. While the Tea Partiers energized the GOP they defeated and, one would argue, demoralized the left. What is the left’s response to political and intellectual defeat? How is it to maintain that its agenda is a reflection of popular will while its opponents are the pawns of nefarious forces? The right will be forced to “man up” (for this contribution alone, Sharron Angle deserves our appreciation) to the task of re-establishing the principles of limited government. The left will be forced to pick up the pieces and figure out how its statist agenda can mesh with a country that has rediscovered the virtues of modern conservatism.

“Conservative” pragmatism was merely a flash in the pan. 

Next: The impending death of multiculturalism:

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”, Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

Progressivism is so 2008.

VDH:

Americans do not like being lectured at, much less when those sermons are misdirected and lead to higher taxes, the creation of a preachy, Ivy-League overseeing class, and legions of federal employees whose prime directive is to vote in more politicians that give them more money with less accountability.

[...]

Are you disappointed with Barack Obama’s leadership so far, and worried about building an Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attacks? If so, you are, well, captive to your fears: “At a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then, you know, fears can surface — suspicions, divisions can surface in a society. And so I think that plays a role in it.” We have here a reincarnated Massachusetts churchman railing about the sins of those south of the Mason-Dixon line, but this time without either a god or a noble cause.

Perhaps you are worried about record annual deficits, federalized take-overs of everything from health care to the auto industry, or the specter of 10% unemployment, and therefore might question the present policies. No problem, you simply do not “always think clearly” when “scared.” Note the following: “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” (A confession: actually I am scared. The Obama deficits are unsustainable. I think health care will be ruined. The demonized job-hiring classes are in hiding. An entire generation of young people is relegated to second-class employment status. The world abroad is heating up in expectation that the U.S. is tired and through. And race relations under the divisive Obama have worsened.)

On the other hand, maybe you are a hard-core liberal. You voted for Obama because he promised an executive solution to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the closure of Guantanamo, no more rendition and tribunals, a public mandated socialized medical program akin to Europe’s, withdrawal from Iraq — and instead he’s triangulating on all those issues and you’re worried. No problem. Preacher Obama says that you weren’t serious leftists in the first place: “If people now want to take their ball and go home that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place. If you’re serious, now’s exactly the time that people have to step up.”

But does Parson Obama follow his own protocols?

1) Obama apparently was so fearful of losing the 2008 election that he “lashed” out at the public financing of campaigns, becoming the first president since the law was enacted to renounce it — after saying he would not. In other words, he took his ball and went home.

2) Since neither science nor argument could prove that ObamaCare would lower health care prices while extending coverage, Obama apparently thought he could push the bill through on the false argument that it would save money while expanding entitlements — all on the premise that the country was “scared.”

3) You would think that America would say “thank you” to President Obama for running up nearly $3 trillion in additional debt that will require a new health care surcharge, a return to the Clinton income tax rates, increases in capital gains taxes, and more talk about lifting caps off income subject to payroll taxes and a possible VAT tax. Or maybe we should praise him for taking the unemployment rate to nearly 10%? Surely we are grateful that he gave us Van Jones and tried to turn NASA into a Muslim outreach organization.

4) When “suspicions and divisions can surface” in America, it becomes possible to scapegoat a) George Bush, b) Rush Limbaugh, c) the police, d) surgeons, e) the Chrysler creditors, f) Justice Roberts, g) Fox News, h) the people of Arizona, i) John Boehner, j) the Chamber of Commerce, k) opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, and l) Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie — suggesting that they all engage in some sort of nefarious activity harmful to the state.

When Ronald Reagan descended to a 35% approval rating, he went out and told jokes, made fun of himself, smiled — and praised America. When Bill Clinton hit 37%, he charmed the public, bit his lip, felt our pain, and drawled that the era of big government was over and welfare as we knew it was gone. When Barack Obama arrived at 43%, he began telling us that we, the disenchanted with him, are scared, frustrated, and simply not able to fathom his arguments or even basic science — to the end an angry northern parson thundering at us from his pulpit.

To reinforce just how out of his depth Obama is — while, ironically, assuming an air of privileged authority and ideological confidence — one need only listen to his assessment of the coming tax increases, made before a hardly-hostile, hand-picked MTV audience. The problem, Obama told the crowd, was that the Bush administration had put in place a tax plan that they “didn’t pay for” — the idea being that your money, which the Bush tax cuts gave back to all those who paid federal taxes, actually belongs to the government, and that by letting you keep your money, what the Bushies were doing was in effect stealing from the government what is rightly theirs, to disburse as they see fit.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. And I suspect that even those kids at Obama’s “non-political” campaign event understand that, and are less interested these days in backing a politician simply because they dig the symbolism of his ascendancy.

So maybe there’s hope yet.

More than 3-weeks on, and I woke this morning with a temperature of 100.1. I’m sure some of it has to do with stress and lack of sleep, but still. Time to go to the doctor, I think.

Back later.

Al-Qaeda now has its own online slickzine. On his GPS show, Fareed Zakaria declared that this was a sign of weakness–how, I didn’t quite catch. Related: U.S. forces are in West Africa, trying to firm up those nations to resist Al-Qaeda there.

And it’s really nice of al-Qaeda’s funders to give us a little heads-up.

Unfortunate. Still, it’s probably better than eating tree bark.

Is liberalism’s grip on the soft sciences easing? Or are the experts, in hot pursuit of the obvious, simply the last ones to know?

Yeah, yeah, double standard, the man’s a stud, the woman’s a slut, got it. Yet still and all, it’s pseudo-intellectual bimbos like this who probably complain that there aren’t any real men left.

Not really related, but susceptible to cheap parallelism, for those inclined:

Japanese women might want to think twice before they choose American feminists as role models. They’re the ones who killed feminism as a serious socio-political movement in the U.S. in 1998 by consistently supporting then-President Bill Clinton even after it was revealed that as the Governor of Arkansas, he had a state policeman summon a female state employee to his hotel room, whereupon he dropped his trousers and ordered her to “kiss it”. And even after a very credible woman went public with a very credible rape charge. And even after he played games with cigars with a young White House intern in the Oval Office while keeping international VIPs waiting for meetings to begin.

But he was a progressive, and sexual harassment laws aren’t written for them. They’re really written for non-progressive business executives and military officers.

YOU ARE IN AN OVAL OFFICE. YOU ARE BEHIND A DESK. YOUR APPROVAL HEALTH IS 55%. YOUR CONGRESS HAS 31% HEALTH. UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE FOREST IS 8.9% YOUR FRIEND AT HARVARD IS ARRESTED BY POLICEMAN.

>CALL POLICEMAN STUPID, PLAY RACE CARD

I’M SORRY, THAT DID NOT WORK. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

>BEER SUMMIT, BLAME BUSH

YOU ARE IN AN OVAL OFFICE. YOU ARE BEHIND A DESK. ON THE DESK IS A TELEPHONE AND A TV. THE TELEPHONE RINGS. IT IS COPENHAGEN. YOU DO NOT GET THE OLYMPICS FOR CHICAGO. A PEASANT ON TV FROM CHICAGO CALLS FOR TEA PARTY REVOLT. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

>NATIONALIZE HEALTHCARE

I’M SORRY, THIS NAME WILL NOT WORK. DO YOU WANT TO CALL IT SOMETHING DIFFERENT?

>REFORM HEALTHCARE

German chancellor Merkel says that multiculturalism has failed.

Those wascally wabbits!

Coming off one of the worst pick weeks I’ve ever had (5/13), I hope to redeem myself this weekend. But I’m not counting on it.

Let’s see what sleep deprivation does to picking football games:

Chicago over Seattle (Seattle is on the road, and the Chicago defense is pretty good. I think the Bears are a lucky 4-1 team, but they shouldn’t need luck this week)
NE over Baltimore (Baltimore may be the best team in football, and NE will miss Moss, Deion Branch or no Deion Branch. Still, it’s tough to bet against the Pats at home. Toss up here).
NYG over Detroit (could be a trap game for the Giants; for the sake of the pick, let’s hope the Giants of the last 2 weeks show up, pass rush in tow — otherwise Detroit could pull the upset).
Philly over Atlanta (another toss up, but I’ll take the home team here. I’m not sold on Atlanta quite yet, and I’m not ready to write Philly off under Kolb, who looked good against SF last week)
Miami over GB (GB will miss Clay Mathews, and the Dolphins likely used the bye week to fix their run game and special teams. Upset special)
SD over STL
NO over Tampa (careful…)
Houston over KC (The Texans MUST find a way to win this game, or Gary Kubiak’s job could be in real jeopardy going forward.)
SF over Oakland (I know the “they have to win sometime” strategy didn’t serve me well in picking Buffalo last week, but the strategy still seems sound, so let’s play the odds that it works here)
Denver over the Jets (The Broncos lost 5 players to injury after last week’s game in Baltimore. And they still can’t run the ball. The Jets, on the other hand, are rushing for 165 yards per game. So the question is, which Denver run defense shows up: that one that held Chris Johnson in check, or the one that let Ray Rice go nuts?)
Minnesota over Dallas (The closer we get to game time, the more I think Dallas is poised to win this one. For now, though, I pick the Vikings on the strength of home field advantage)
Indy over Washington
Tennessee over Jacksonville

There you go. Your turn.

Over the years here longtime visitors have read me refer to the “institutionalization” of leftist epistemology as the social catalyst in an attack on the foundational tenets of classical liberalism (and so on our country itself) — beginning with certain kernel assumptions about how language functions to determine meaning in an interpretative exchange, and moving on to critiques of the lynchpins of leftist academic thought, from Said’s Orientalism (whose foundational assertions lead inexorably to the idea of truth as a function of power, identity, and authenticity), to Benjamin’s historiocity (as a tool in deconstructing Enlightenment epistemology), to the “diversity” movement (whose Orwellian upshot is to demonize true diversity and true tolerance, and replace them with an entirely superficial idea of diversity, and an idea of tolerance that promotes only that speech approved by the leftists who set the parameters for what comes to count as a socially allowable utterance).

But no amount of theoretical investigation can illuminate the insidious nature of the problem quite so well as a concrete instance of such leftist insinuation into the mechanisms of our epistemological transference.

So, then. Go.

For many, the number 1 issue in 2010 is jobs. What to do?

• Understand how jobs are created.
• Correctly diagnose why jobs are not being created.
• Correctly prescribe a solution.
• Develop a national consensus that the proposed solution will work.
• Start to execute the plan.
• Adapt to changing circumstances and sustain the commitment to and execution of the plan.

At each of these steps, confidence improves, leading to business expansion, leading to job creation. All of the other gimmicky BS that politicians of all stripes spout are 2nd or 3rd order effects relative to the fundamental driver of economic activity: the gestaltic sum of each individual’s perception of the economic future.

• Jobs are created by individuals who start or expand businesses. People start or expand businesses when they are confident in predicting that following some plan will be good for them, usually meaning make them more money while not putting them at too much risk.
• Jobs are not currently being created because of the FUD created by complete Progressive governance. Successful entrepeneurs and businesses are smart and predictive and they see that our current financial model is unsustainable, and that the intellectualoids runnning the government element of the economy are busy reading Keynesian entrails and prescribing more leeches, which is not going to work.
• The correct solution is to restore confidence in America’s financial future. That requires a re-ordering of our federal finances: A long-term commitment to pay off our national debt; a medium-term budget plan to go from deficit to surplus; budgets with actual dollar amount reductions in defense, entitlement, and discretionary spending; a less moronic tax system. Tax increases and more deficit spending are the exact opposite of the correct solution.
• To develop a national consensus that the plan will work, you need to articulate the plan, run on it, and win. This is not good enough.
• To start to execute the plan, on Nov 3 you need to gather your new caucus, write a budget, and get every swinging dick to sign off on that budget. Prepare and get out in front of the upcoming all-out assault from the MFM wing of the Progressive Front. If you don’t win (and to win, you have to actually fight) the upcoming budget battles, we’re all doomed, you first.
• If you stand up, fight, and win the early battles on the budget, the economy will have improved significantly. 2012 will then be about sustaining the recovery and jettisoning the Progressive roadblockers. If you lose, either the actual budget battles or the perception thereof, 2012 will be about old people eating cat food.

Posing as a reporter from a San Francisco newspaper, Deb Frisch — probably by going through the entirety of the Baltimore phone book, cold calling everyone with my last name [update: looks like she paid for the info]– located my mother this evening, and threatened her and the rest of my family over the phone. She mentioned me and my son by name, and spewed a stream of profanities that had my mother very upset. She’s also posted my mother’s phone number and address on the web, along with that of my brother and sister. I’ve contacted Blogspot and requested that they remove the offending post(s).

I’m tired of dicking around waiting for Eugene, OR to do anything about this vile and deranged sack of uglycrazy, so in the meantime, if you have any personal information on her you’d care to share with me, please email. For instance, I know that she lives at 86474 N Modesto DR in Eugene, but I don’t have a phone number for her. I’d very much like to contact her parents and her sister so that they can intervene and get her the help she so clearly needs.

My mother, who is in her 70s and in bad health, will be contacting the Lane County DA tomorrow and filing yet another complaint against Frisch. But as we all realize four + years into this — with countless complaints and arrests in the interim — the likelihood that the law or courts in Oregon will stop her from harassing and threatening anyone other than them is vanishingly small. Otherwise she’d be locked away by now.

It’s time to take other measures, I guess. Like, perhaps, convincing her family to have her evaluated before she hurts herself or someone else. I won’t have my family threatened again.

****
Here are Frisch’s family members. More to follow:

* Allen D. Frisch (age 69)
* Andrew M Frisch
* Lisa Beth Frisch (Age 43)
* Susan C Frisch (Age 67)

And so long as we’re in to posting family info:

858-350-1232 Allen and Susan Frisch, 319 Punta Baja, Del Mar, CA (Mom and Dad. Must be so proud!)
650-508-0829 Andrew Frisch 552 Alameda De Las Pulgas, San Carlos, CA (brother)
858-610-2952 Lisa Beth Frisch San Diego, CA (sister) Husband is Michael Mee. 4279 Corte Favor, San Diego, CA

****
more: on recent court documents, Frisch listed her cell number as 541-520-2929.

update: cell phone disconnected.

****
update 2: Police report in Baltimore being filed. Telephonic harassment.

****
update 3: Waste of time. Keep in mind I have a permanent restraining order against her — she made veiled threats against my son back when he was just 2-years old — and that she’s been convicted of stalking and harassment at least twice since then. Plus, she’s on probation for assault and stalking.

But none of that matters when the trade off is having to file some paper work, right officer?

****
update 4: Frisch is in one of her manic phases, putting up posts, taking them down, putting up new posts, etc.

For my part, I’ve put her entire family on speed-dial.

The court ordered her off the booze. She was also directed not to post about me or my family. Clearly, she’s not taking those mandates seriously. She hasn’t had a job in 4 years. Her family should stop enabling her (somebody continues to pay her bills) — particularly when the fallout is the misery of others who don’t deserve to be coated in their daughter’s/sibling’s filth. So long as she’s inviting people to call or visit my family, I’m determined to return the favor. After all, maybe they can help her if they know she’s acting out yet again — especially with a court date for numerous probation violations just a couple weeks away.

(more…)

…stupid.

“There would appear — all else being equal — to be a case for further action,” Bernanke said at a conference sponsored by the Boston Federal Reserve Bank.

I love the stink of faux understatement in the morning.

In a nation of severely divided and checked power, abrogating the most important power always ends well.

NUTTER!

More: A pesky radical conspiratorialist flat-earther from gold-bugger-nutter think tank CATO somehow finds it in himself to raise his hand in polite company and call for reform.  Our microphones catch the unbeliever in mid-remark:

As the years went by, Congress asked the Fed to perform more and more functions: maintaining high employment, economic growth, price stability, interest-rate stability, financial market stability and exchange-rate stability. Often policies intended to fulfill one objective conflicted with other objectives. Multiple objectives made the Fed’s policies more unpredictable, since private sector employers didn’t know which objective might be a top priority — and for how long.

It was especially difficult to anticipate what the Fed might do, because apparently officials couldn’t agree on rules to guide their policies. Meltzer reported that one Fed governor “received hundreds of pages of material, but none explained how the Federal Reserve made decisions. There was no written record and no agreement among the participants.”

The tape, it does not lie!

(h/t Monty)

Why am I not surprised?