More on Madoff

A very painful experience:

Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker.
So in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests -- not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Mr. Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind
Jewish communities.

Perhaps a feeling akin to the embarassment we Southerners felt about the presidencies of Carter and Clinton, two Democrats who did more to drive decent Southerners into the GOP than anything conceived by GOP strategists.

In related news, a French hedge fund manager has committed suicide after reportedly losing $1 billion to Madoff's swindle.

A mystery indeed

Let's see: Greek socialite immigrates to America, marries gay Republican heir to oil fortune, convinces him to blow $25 million on a doomed Senate campaign, scores sweet divorce settlement, becomes a Democrat, pours millions into developing the world's largest liberal blog . . . And we are surprised that Ariana Huffington doesn't understand capitalism?

Unions vs. reality

New slogan: "California, the Absurd State":

Two public employee unions on Monday sued Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to block his effort to furlough state workers in a cost-cutting measure as California's treasury runs out of money.
Last week, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order to require that all state employees take two unpaid days off each month starting in February. The governor said the measure is needed to conserve cash, with the state budget gap estimated to reach $42 billion a year and a half from now.

First, unions organized against capitalism. Next, they organized against taxpayers. Now? They're organizing against reality!

Really, what part of "we're running out of money" is so hard to understand? Where do these parasitical bureaucrats get the idea that they're entitled to employment at taxpayer expense?

Real hope

One of the ironies of Obama's invocation of "Hope" is that the soi-dissant "progressive" agenda is actually based on a pessimistic view of humanity: Everything is getting worse, individuals are either greedy exploiters or helpless victims, and therefore massive government intervention is necessary to save mankind from itself.

If you want real hope, you need to look to the optimistic free-market vision of the late Julian Simon. John Tierney has doubled down on real hope:

In 2005, I found a more adventurous prophet willing to bet on resource scarcity. Matthew Simmons, an expert on the oil industry and the author of "Twilight in the Desert," bet $5,000 against me and Rita Simon, Julian’s widow, that the average price of oil, in 2005 dollars, would exceed $200 per barrel in 2010. . . .
Last week, the price of oil hit a four-year low, dropping below $35 per barrel, but Mr. Simmons remained optimistic of winning our bet. He told Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun that 2010 is "an eternity" away and predicted the price of oil would shoot back up. Well, anything’s possible. But I’m glad I followed Julian Simon’s advice to bet low. (Emphasis added.)

(Via Instapundit.) Obama has picked gloom-and-doom prophet John Holdren as his science adviser, yet another omen of the new administration's inevitable failure: It won't work.

Those darned 'militants'!

Pesky little devils, aren't they?

Palestinian militants from Gaza increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel on Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet met here and weighed options including broader military action or efforts for a renewed truce.
About 40 rockets and mortars had slammed into southern Israel by midday, the Israeli military said. The rockets hit the courtyard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon, a factory in an Israeli industrial zone at Nir Oz, near the Gaza border, and a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot. The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents, but no serious injury.
The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, said in a statement that the rocket fire was "a response to Zionist aggression" and to the economic embargo Israel has imposed on Gaza.

Ah, the ever-popular "Zionist agression" excuse! If only O.J. Simpson had thought of blaming "Zionist aggression" by the Goldman family . . .

UAW: No concessions

Michelle Malkin is not surprised to discover that, after shaking down the Bush administration for $17 billion, the union goons who control Detroit now expect the Obama administration to bail them out without concessions:

Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, said earlier this week that he would seek to remove the wage-reduction provision of the loan, calling it "an undue tax on the workers" who have already made "major" sacrifices for the benefit of the auto industry.
Gettelfinger said that what is being asked of the autoworkers -- who agreed to concessions in 2003, 2005 and 2007 -- is "unrealistic." He has said he wants to work with President-elect Barack Obama to remove the wage provision.

Some "negotiation": The unions negotiating with the president who is their wholly-owned tool.

Khartoum still aiding Kony?

The end may be near for Joseph Kony, the African terrorist who has wrought horrible carnage in Uganda and Sudan. Ten days ago, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo united in a military raid that destroyed the Congo hideout camp of Kony's "Lord's Resistance Army," which has terrorized the region for 20 years.

Experts on the LRA have long suspected that the Sudan government in Kharthoum had armed and supported Kony's killers in order to destabilize Uganda and undermine the efforts of South Sudan (predominantly Christian) to gain autonomy from the Muslim govenrment in Kharthoum.

In an interview with Uganda's New Vision newspaper, Ugandan Gen. Aronda Nyakairima discussed the LRA raid and suggested that Khartoum may still be aiding Kony:

Of course, it was Khartoum that continued supporting LRA, otherwise we would have defeated them long ago.
When they stopped because of Juba being under the South Sudan government, they were no more.

In other words, once South Sudan (with their capital in the key transportation center of Juba) gained autonomy in 2005, this cut off Kony's supply line to Khartoum. But when asked who is now arming Kony, Nyakairma says:

We don't have intelligence to point at a country X or Y. But one wonders whether the old friends washed their hands clean. I can't prove that. But studying what we captured will tell it all. It is also possible he was disarming people in the CAR. He also raided South Sudanese soldiers and there are hunters in Garamba. He could have picked guns here and there. But we can't rule out supplies from his old friends.

"His old friends" = Khartoum. Fortunately, after two years of fruitless peace negotiations with the LRA, the United Nations Security Council is now fully supporting the military effort to hunt down Kony, who is charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Texas release El Dorado report

What a day to dump the news: Texas Child Protect Services officials release a report justifying the raid on the El Dorado FLDS compound -- which resulted in the forcible seizure of more than 400 children -- because 12 girls in the cult had been "spiritually married" before age 16:

As a result of this investigation, CPS found that 12 girls who ranged in age from 12 to 15 were victims of sexual abuse at the YFZ Ranch with the knowledge of their parents. Sexual abuse occurred in the case of the 12 girls, who now range in age from 14 to 18, because they were "spiritually" married under age. The earliest marriage was in 2004 and the most recent known marriage took place in July 2006. Two girls were 12 when married; three were 13; two were 14; and five girls were 15 when married. Seven of these girls have had one or more children after marriage.

Now, as I said months ago, if Texas officials are going to launch a paramilitary raid every time a 15-year-old girl gets pregnant, they're going to need to hire some more SWAT police. In point of fact, Texas leads the nation in teenage pregnancy. The crime that justified this raid in the minds of CPS officials obviously wasn't that teenage girls were having sex or having babies -- that happens every day in Texas -- but that they were "married."

The cost to taxpayers of the raid and investigation was more than $12 million -- a million per underage marriage. Twenty-six mothers originally suspected of being underage were eventually determined to be adults. Note well that, although the officials have apparently done DNA testing to determine the paternity of every child in the cult compound, they are still "investigating" the hoax call that led to the raid:

All the children from the ranch were placed in foster care in April after authorities raided it in response to calls to a domestic abuse hot line. Those calls are being investigated as a hoax, though a dozen FLDS men now face charges including sexual abuse and bigamy based on documents and evidence seized at the ranch.
The children were returned to their parents in June after the Texas Supreme Court ruled the state had overstepped in removing all the children when it only had evidence of abuse or neglect involving about a half-dozen girls. Many of the children were boys or younger than 5.

As weird as this FLDS cult is, and as serious as the actual charges are, a $12-million SWAT raid that put more than 400 children into foster care was not the right solution.

UPDATE: In case you are one of the Mahablog readers who has been misdirected here by a link intended to send you to Dennis Prager, I apologize. As to my own argument -- that Texas child-welfare officials overreacted by seizing all 432 children at the El Dorado compound -- this gets twisted by Mahablog into "an apology for sexual exploitation and forced marriage of girls as young as 12." Of course, there is no such apology intended, and only a willful misreading could lead to such a conclusion.

Mahablog then goes on to argue that "movement conservatism is, at base, a kind of psychological-sexual dysfunction" -- the old Adorno/Marcuse/Frankfurt School theory. It is as wrong today as when it was first promulgated in 1950. To disagree with liberals about the proper scope of government power is not evidence of a mental disorder, and repetition of the libel does not make it so.

Bad stimulus

Welcome to Pork City:

Amid a drumbeat of grim economic reports, President-elect Barack Obama's top economic advisors met Tuesday to refine plans for a massive stimulus proposal, promising the money would not go toward dubious pork-barrel projects.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden met with seven advisors for an hour [in Washington] as Obama vacationed in Hawaii. With the incoming administration acknowledging the stimulus plan could cost as much as $775 billion over two years, Biden seemed intent on reassuring Americans the money would not be wasted. . . .
"It's important for the American taxpayer to know that . . . this is not going to be politics as usual," Biden told reporters. "And we will not tolerate business as usual in Washington."
Biden singled out special-interest projects. "There will be -- I will say it again -- there will be no earmarks in this economic recovery plan," he said. "I know it's Christmas. I know it's the Christmas season. But President-elect Obama and I are absolutely determined that this economic recovery package will not become a Christmas tree."

Right. Can we get a show of hands of everyone who believes that the federal government is going to spend $775 billion on "stimulus" without a dime of pork? Anybody?

Pork as usual, however, is not nearly as worrisome as the evident delusion that the government can, by neo-Keynesian methods, create jobs arbitrarily:

Biden reiterated that the incoming administration had revised its early goal of creating or saving 2.5 million jobs in the next two years. With economists projecting a grim year ahead, Obama recently raised the number to 3 million.

Hey -- 2.5 million, 3 million -- why stop there? Why not 200 million jobs? Jobs for everyone!

"Economists rarely agree, but on this score, there is overwhelming agreement that we need a robust and sustained economic recovery package," Biden said. "There's virtually no disagreement on that point with economists from left to right. The greater threat to the economy lies with doing too little."

So, whatever they do, the Obama administration will not be "doing too little." Massive interventions in the economy will be the order of the day. And there is one thing we know about such a plan: It won't work.

'A discontented lazy rabble'

Liz Gunnison figures that old man Potter was the real hero of "It's a Wonderful Life."

Team Obama: 'We're clean!'

The Obama transition team's absurd self-investigation of BlagoGate has concluded they did nothing wrong. I'm shocked into astonished silence. Allow me to recover my composure, and I'll update.

UPDATE: Allahpundit summarizes:

Obama talked to Emanuel and Axelrod about his preferences for the seat, then Emanuel talked to Blago once or twice and to Blago’s chief of staff (who’s also been indicted) four times to relay those preferences.

Mary Katharine Ham suggests Obama is "approaching a fight with the hubris of Apollo Creed," which is just such a damned fine metaphor I had to quote it, even if it might be condemned as racist. (You can compare Obama to any famous personality in history -- Lincoln, JFK or Jesus -- but if you compare him to a black man, that's "racism.")

Racist or not, MK's metaphor suggests Obama's greatest liability at this point: He's enjoyed such a free ride from the media as a candidate that he might imagine he's automatically entitled to fawning coverage as president. Two words: Jimmy Carter.

UPDATE II: If we're going to do "racist" metaphors, however, this is like O.J. Simpson's lawyers releasing a report about their own internal investigation "proving" that, the last time O.J. saw Nichole, her head was still attached to her body.

John Hinderaker at Powerline says, "Bernie Madoff can only envy the press relations that allow Obama's self-exoneration to be reported straight."

The Smoking Gun reports that the feds have already interviewed Obama. Ace has questions about the role of SEIU, particular union goon Patrick Gaspard, who's been appointed to a key role in the Obama administration.

Team Obama may think themselves very clever for this little self-absolution stunt, but they've just kicked the can down the road. Not many Washington reporters are even in Washington this week, and the White House press corps won't just quietly accept this flimsy explanation. Expect to see a lot more scratching around on this story next week, and especially after New Year's.

The real danger, BTW, is not really to Obama himself. It's Emanuel who's in trouble, because he's got to start his job as White House chief of staff with this dirty Chicago business hanging around his neck. Not good image-wise for the"Hope 'n' Change" franchise, and a serious distraction to somebody trying to do the hardest job in Washington. WHCOS is big, big, big responhsibility, and the last thing you need is a COS who's distracted by his own corruption scandal.

UPDATE III: Headline of the Day:

Obama team probe of Obama team
finds no Obama team impropriety

Amazing how that works, isn't it?

Hotties? Si se puede!

Jules Crittenden reports that Mexican beauty queen Laura Elena Zuñiga Huizar has been arrested near Guadalajara. There's only one thing for Mexico to do: Deport her to us!

This is my one disagreement with the hardliners on immigration. My policy would be to admit all hotties. Sorry, Tom Tancredo, but this is a loophole worth fighting for.

UPDATE: Jules suggests that this loophole should be called the "1HB" (One Hot Babe) visa program. Let's pass it along to our friends in the Obama administration. This is the kind of "stimulus" we need.

Reuters misquotes the Pope!

So much for those layers and layers of fact-checkers, eh? (H/T: Kathy Shaidle.)

Merry Christmas, Marty Beckerman

My favorite Jew has a holiday column entitled "WHY CHRISTMAS KICKS THE LIVING S--- OUT OF HANUKKAH":

Not to sound like arch-conservative television host Bill O’Reilly . . . but when hysterical Jewish parents (are there any other kind?) protest secular mentions of Christmas in the public square, I want to shove mistletoe down their Grinchy throats. For example, earlier this month a Jewish mother temporarily convinced a North Carolina elementary school to ban "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" from its kindergarten concert . . . .
By the way, this hysterical Jewish mother is probably unaware that a Jew wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." In fact, Jews are behind such secular holiday classics as "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)," "Holly Jolly Christmas," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," "Silver Bells," "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "Sleigh Ride," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Let It Snow! Let it Snow! Let It Snow!" and "White Christmas," the perennial favorite of neo-Nazis around the world.

Marty's got a point: Jews trying to ban Christmas music are self-haters trying to cheat their fellow MOTs out of ASCAP royalties. (BTW, a friend just informed me that Kohl's -- one of the few department-store chains to use "Christmas" in their sales ads -- was started by a family of Russian Jewish immigrants.)

Marty's also got a larger point, namely that Jewish attacks on public expressions of Christian faith are ultimately self-defeating. This is especially true because evangelical Christians are some of the most enthusiastic Zionists on the planet. Your typical Southern Baptist views the Middle East from a perspective that makes the Likkudniks look like pacifist sellouts.

The myth that Christian fundamentalists are anti-Semitic is absurd. Christians love Jews so much that genocide-by-assimilation is the only threat (ask Marty's goy girlfriend!) and if it weren't for the high birth rates of ultra-Orthodox Jews (who are more pro-life than some Catholics I know) we'd probably have already run out of Jews to intermarry with.

UPDATE: Wait a minute. By calling Marty "my favorite Jew," I didn't mean to insult my Jewish cousins in Alabama. Yes, I said, "Jewish cousins in Alabama." Everybody makes fun of Southerners and their cousins, but . . . hey, you ought to see my cousins! Here's Mandy:

And here's Elizabeth:

Zaftig, y'all!

Ross Douthat on film

It's good when he writes about things he actually knows something about. His point is that you're more likely to get across a political point in a movie if the point is somewhat ambiguous, if the audience leaves the theater arguing over exactly what the story implies.

Douthat cites the examples of The Dark Knight (either an endorsement or an indictment of the Bush administration's anti-terror policies) and WALL-E (a sweet love story with an anti-consumerist message tucked into the conclusion). I would cite The Terminator (the original, not the crappy sequels) which at one level is an ultra-violent apocalypse, but at another level is one of the most effective pieces of pro-life propaganda ever produced, since the whole point of the movie is that John Connor must be born, if he is to save mankind.

And Douthat is exactly right about the failure of most political movies: They hammer you over the head with their point, attempting to substitute ideological certainty for dramatic interest. Frost/Nixon is a sermon, not a movie, and even most liberals aren't so stupid as to pay $10 to sit through a two-hour sermon about the evils of Richard Nixon.

Nuke Fiji!

A couple of days ago, I joked about prejudice against Fijians. Today, the morons at AOSHQ demand "nuking the place into a glazed parking lot" to eradicate the "Fiji Menace." It's hard work, staying ahead of the hate curve.

UPDATE: Smitty asks, what about San Marino? Face it, Smitty. If the San Marinese can't get past the Italian army, they don't pose much of a threat to us. And if they do get past the Italian army, they only way they could threaten us is by hijacking the Italian navy, which would never make it across the ocean. I'd make a joke about the Italian air force, but it's already a joke.

Palin confirmed for CPAC?

The Anchorage Daily News reports that a spokesman for Gov. Sarah Palin isn't sure she will be at CPAC:

Bill McAllister said Palin has merely been invited and that she has not confirmed. "It's not scheduled, she's not told them yes."

Solution? Fire your spokesman, governor! You absolutely don't want to miss CPAC this year. (H/T: SarahPalinBlog.)

Who's afraid of the C-word?

Washington Times columnist Pete Parisi examines The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

Beginning with Black Friday, so named because it's supposedly the day on which retailers finally make it into the black for the year, retailers' sales brochures have been bedecked with Christmas iconography - red ribbons and bows, tree ornaments, strings of lights, mistletoe and holly, Santas and the like - but with few exceptions (given due credit below), none have had banner headlines proclaiming Christmas as the reason for the buying season they were so desperately encouraging.
At J.C. Penney, it was an "After Thanksgiving furniture and mattress sale," Sears touted a catchall "Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving sale," and at Lowe's, the home-repair and hardware chain, it was "Let's Holiday" - as if holiday were a verb. Office Depot similarly turned "gift" into a verb: "Gift smarter. The holiday gifts they really want." Not to be outdone, Old Navy proclaimed an "Extravaganza humongous honkin' 3-day BIG weekend sale."

It's not totally Grinchy out there. Pete finds that two chains -- Kohl's and Rite-Aid -- consistently use "Christmas" in their ads. Read the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

Blaming Sarah

A HuffPoster's screed blaming Sarah Palin for an alleged "brewing cauldron of racist anger" inspired my latest American Spectator column:

The tactic of blaming Palin for "racist anger" toward Obama developed as a theme during the fall campaign, evidently based on post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking within Team Obama. Threats against Obama increased as the campaign heated up after Labor Day, and since this followed the Aug. 29 announcement of the Alaska governor as Republican running mate, Palin herself was scapegoated.
That claim was distilled in a November article in the London Daily Telegraph with the misleading headline, "Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama."
The Secret Service never said any such thing . . .

Please read the whole thing. I actually spoke to a Secret Service spokesman about this yesterday (after I'd already filed the column) and he said there's no way they would have ever made any claim like that.

Babysit my kids, Matthew!

Listen, Matthew Yglesias, since you're so committed to child care, would you mind if I dropped my six kids at your place this evening? My wife and I have some Christmas shopping to do.

MRC's Notable Quotables

The Media Research Center has announced its 2008 Notable Quotable Awards, with Quote of the Year going to -- who else? -- Chris Matthews:

The competition was probably toughest for the Obamagasm Award, won by Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine for this foray into disinterested objectivity:

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope....

Gibbs beat out David Gergen -- CNN's idea of a Republican -- who said of Obama's Denver convention speech that "it was less a speech than a symphony. . . . a masterpiece."

There's much, much more, including:

• The reporter who admitted that his "knees quaked" when he was assigned to cover Obama, because he "wondered if I could do the campaign justice."
• The reporter who called T. Boone Pickens' sponsorship of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "an ugly chapter in American political history."
• The Pummeling Palin Award, where Chris Matthews had to be inventive to beat out Joy Behar's assertion that Sarah Palin is "very mean to animals, this woman."

. . . and don't miss this hard-hitting interview by Brian Williams, which rated only runner-up for the "Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award":

Brian should demand a recount!

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

The Yglesias shuffle

If Matthew Yglesias were any part of a man, he'd quit ThinkProgress immediately, after Jennifer Palmieri embarrassed him on his own blog.

Yglesias had criticized a liberal group, Third Way, as offering "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit," and then Palmieri (of ThinkProgress's parent organization) puts up a post at Yglesias' blog saying they have"partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects" and calling them "key leaders in the progressive movement."

I've quit better jobs than a non-profit think-tank gig over less provocation than that, and the fact that Yglesia accepts such a rebuke without protest -- well, it's kind of "hyper-timid," if not indeed "incrementalist bullshit."

Pope Homophobe XVI

If the gay left is having conniptions over Rick Warren -- and, indeed, they are -- maybe Obama can soothe their anger by inviting this other religious dude to speak at the inauguration:

Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.
"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."
The pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work."
He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected."

OK, try this: Joe Biden is a Catholic, right? Caroline Kennedy, Catholic, too. So, how about some reporter ask these two Democratic Catholics what they think about the Pope's statements about homosexuality and "the language of creation"?

Never gonna happen. Nobody in the press corps ever thinks to ask these questions of Democrats, so Biden and Kennedy get to parade around as if they're pious Catholics without ever having to discuss the church's actual doctrine or theology. But let a Republican evangelical like Sarah Palin speak of "God's will" and it's "ooged-boogedy" time!

Ace, on media arrogance

He has a point:

I think this is 90% of the press corps' problem -- they're overly taken with themselves for, um, having a job.
Mechanics don't assume they're all-purpose experts without portfolio on every subject in the universe simply because they're fixing cars.
Reporters shouldn't assume that merely because they are capable of asking questions, writing down the answers, and cranking out pedestrian copy they've somehow become Einstein.

As a journalist with more than two decades in the business, I am familiar with and resentful of the attitude described -- despite my own pride in being a journalist.

Here's the problem: Ace is talking about TV news people. He's particularly talking about Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. TV news people are an entirely different (and fantastically overpaid) breed from us ink-stained wretches of the press corps, and a lot of what drives public resentment of "the media" is the attitudes and behavior of TV news people. I will not argue that there are no arrogant print journalists -- I'm pretty damned arrogant myself -- but a lot of what makes you hate "the media"isn't our fault.

This is why, for example, I get mad at Republicans who blame all their problems on "media bias." Look, I was out there on the campaign trail with all those people. Do you suppose if Sarah Palin had popped over to the press section for a few minutes of questions after a rally Pennsylvania, that reporters would have been playing "gotcha" like Katie Couric? Here's the headline on the Harrisburg Patriot-News story: Palin wows crowd at Shippensburg rally. Wow, that liberal bias hurts, huh?

So why, oh, why, couldn't the McCain campaign allow Palin to do a press conference? And why, oh, why, do the GOP assholes who run these campaigns -- and yes, I mean you, Tucker Bounds -- go out of their way to treat the working press like crap? You can blame the media for their bias all you want, but as long as the Republican Party considers clueless assholes like Tucker Bounds fit to be "media strategists," you're missing the point. Focus on what it is within your power to change.

Holiday traffic slump

It's hard out here for a blogger at Christmas. Hot Air's traffic over the past three Mondays has averaged about 420,000 hits. Today, as of 6 p.m., they were at 250,000. So it ain't just me who's hurting for traffic this time of year.

Comparing monthly totals also confirms that Hot Air's had the same pattern I've had here -- an amazing traffic spike in September and October, trailing off in November. Ah, well. Anybody up for some more Christina Hendricks?

Video: Palin speaks

From Anchorage Daily News:

She's having a staff potluck! There must be some scandal to that, right? Surely Andrew Sullivan or the folks at HuffPo can detect something evil about a gubernatorial staff potluck.

Santa begs for a bailout

Iowahawk, of course:

WASHINGTON - Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery.
"These are grim economic times for everyone, but even more so for non-profit toy manufacturers in the Snow Belt," said Kringle. "Our accountants have indicated that we are on track to exhaust our reserves of cash and magical pixie fairydust by December 23. Oh deary me."
Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Sarah Palin agrees with me

Throughout the fall, I repeatedly criticized the John McCain campaign for sequestering Sarah Palin from reporters. Palin -- named "Conservative of the Year" by Human Events -- agrees in an interview with John Gizzi:

'The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts?
But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message out to the electorate. (Emphasis added.)

If Palin had been allowed to hold press conferences with the reporters covering her on the campaign trail, rather than thrown into high-stakes one-on-one interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, it might have made a world of difference in how she was perceived. Palin, a former journalist, knows more about media than most of the Republican "media experts."

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Allah admits he's traffic baiting with his post on this subject, so I'll play along. Allah points out Palin's initial support for the TARP bailout as a stumbling block. But remember, she was McCain's running mate and he was all about the bailout, so naturally she would have thought it was a good idea "originally," as she now says. And as for Allah's "wait until 2016" suggestion -- nope. That won't work. If it comes to late 2010 (which will be fish-or-cut-bait time for 2012) and it looks like Palin's got a shot, she takes the shot. Don't want to miss that "open door," as she's said.

UPDATE II: Linked at The Week.

Team Obama discovers a loophole

The Audacity of Opacity:

Barack Obama is promising . . . he’ll disclose contacts between his staff and disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office, but he's stopped short of pledging to release e-mails or other records that could be key to understanding those contacts.
Whatever such records exist may never see the light of day, thanks to a gap in government records disclosure laws that allows presidential transition teams to keep their documents — even those prepared using taxpayer dollars — out of the public record.
The exemption from disclosure rules surprised some records law experts, and may prompt legislation from a leading Republican transparency advocate to apply the laws to presidential transition teams, which could compel Team Obama to preserve Blagojevich-related records for inspection, if only in the distant future.
But for now, a spokeswoman for President-elect Barack Obama said the transition team was not covered by a public information law that Politico cited in requesting copies of Obama staffers’ emails and notes about Blagojevich’s efforts to fill the Senate seat Obama vacated after winning the presidency.

Of course, attempting to hide information about the Blago case from a federal prosecutor would still be obstruction of justice. But unless Fitzpatrick brings such charges, those records will never see the light of day.

Gays still grumpy

Democrat Lanny Davis:

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has views on gays and gay marriage that are the extreme opposite from mine. Even more uncomfortable for me, Pastor Warren would impose his views on others - for example, by supporting Proposition 8 in California, passed by a small majority of Californians last November, which would ban gay marriage in California.
Recently, he seemed to go further - in the same sentence, he mentioned his opposition to gay marriage as well as "having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage ... [and] an older guy marrying a child."
That sentence was insensitive, hurtful and unfortunate.

I've hitherto refrained from commenting on the uproar over Obama choosing Warren to give his inaugural invocation, simply because everyone else was already saying so much. What is interesting in the uproar is what it reveals about the gay rights movement -- and especially the push for gay marriage -- namely that it is about acceptance.

Some progressive said about the choice of Warren, "It's a prayer, not a policy." All of Obama's appointments to policy positions indicate that he is enthusiastically sympathetic to the gay-rights cause. The symbolic pick of one of the nation's most popular pastors to give the invocation does not in the least disguise the fact that this will be the most pro-gay administration in history. And yet we have this continual uproar: The usual suspects are screaming "bigot," and Barney Frank is boycotting the inaugural.

None of this involves policy. What the gay community is saying is that Warren's mere disapproval of homosexual behavior puts him outside polite society. Disagreement with the gay agenda is not permissible -- the same attitude expressed by the protests at El Coyote. Is it any wonder, then, that this agenda cannot gain majority assent even in liberal California?

The California "enemies list" and other expressions of intolerance by the gay rights movement bespeak a totalitarian ambition, one that extends to punishing dissent, so that disagreement -- even by a minister of the gospel -- becomes a sort of thoughtcrime.

Gay heartbreak over Obama's evident refusal to play along with this totalitarianism ought to lead to a reassessment. Is social approval of your lifestyle so important that you must gain it by coercion? And if so, why?

Sully don't pay?

My old friend Michael Petrelis exposes Andrew Sullivan as having failed to contribute to the campaign to preserve gay marriage in California. (H/T: Insty.) Perhaps Sully was too busy exposing the truth about Trig Palin.

Thoughts on music and silence

Ann Althouse:

Meanwhile, just yesterday, I was going on and on about how there's way too much music. It's playing everywhere, people are listening on iPods everywhere, and that I hardly ever want to listen to music. There is a lot of music that I acknowledge is good and that I even know I like, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to it. I specifically enjoy the absence of music, and I seek it out. If silence were a track I could have on my iPod, it would be on my most-played list.

It is perhaps underappreciated the extent to which recorded music now permeates our lives. The convenience store where I fill up my car now pipes music outdoors, at the pumps. Many popular TV shows now seems to have a rock soundtrack like an '80s teen movie. (I notice this because my kids watch TV more than I do.)

About 15 years ago, I encountered a young journalist who actually wrote while listening to music on headphones. That struck me as impossible. I have written in many noisy and chaotic environments, but who could enjoy listening to music during the writing process?

That's me, though. When I listen to music, I really want to listen. I don't like "background" music. And I don't enjoy listening to just any music, either. If I'm driving in my car and a crappy song comes on (e.g., anything by Supertramp, or "Suzy Q," the worst thing ever recorded by CCR), I change the channel or turn the radio off. If music doesn't actually add pleasure to the driving experience, I'd rather listen to a talk show or just have the silence for thinking.

Reason magazine hosts monthly happy hours in DC, but they have a bad habit of choosing bars that play that crappy Euro/techno-disco. You know the stuff I'm talking about? It's like dance music for people who don't dance. It's not like some kind of kick-out-the-jams funk that makes you want to jump out on the floor and bust a move, just a bunch of thump-and-bump repetition. Maybe there is some drug you have to take to enjoy that kind of crap. Silence is eminently preferable.

Passengers survive Denver crash

Always pray during takeoff. Always:

Thirty-eight passengers were injured when a Boeing 737 airliner went off a runway and caught fire at Denver International Airport on Saturday night, Denver Aviation Manager Kim Day said.
None of the injuries were life-threatening. . . .
There were 112 passengers and crew members on the Boeing 737, Continental Airlines flight 1404, which was taking off en route to Houston, Day said. . . .
The fire chief said he did not believe the plane had become fully airborne because if it had, "you would have seen a lot more damage."

And if you were praying for a miracle, you got it.

Blagojevich & Kipling

At his press conference, Rod Blagojevich invoked Rudyard Kipling's poem "If." This has resulted in one very wicked f---ing satire.

UPDATE: Another satire, without f-bombs.

Neocon 'purge' at AEI?

This is probably a misinterpretation of events, so take it with a grain of salt:

Numerous neocons told me that a vicious purge is being carried out at [the American Enterprise Institute], spearheaded by vice-president for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka.
There can be no doubting that change is afoot at AEI. Recently, Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht have departed AEI. Joshua Muravchik is on the way out as well. . . .
Gerecht is currently at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which, along with the Hudson Institute, where Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby and Douglas J. Feith are fellows, seems to functioning as something of a safe haven for neocons. . . .
Pletka has been closely identified with neocon positions on Iraq and Iran. But now there is tremendous hostility toward her among neocons, who allege that, as a former staffer for Jesse Helms, who embodied more traditional Republican foreign-policy precepts, she is out to extirpate neocon influence at AEI.

(Via American Power.) Like I said, probably a misinterpretation. The economic meltdown has hurt many non-profits, and everybody seems to be cutting back. (Just Friday, for example, I learned that the Media Research Center has slashed its staff.) Furthermore, given the current political landscape, I can understand why AEI might want to reduce its foreign-policy staff.

On the other hand, I would entertain the possibility that some deep-pocket conservative donors might have told AEI, "Hey, before I sign you another fat check, how about you get rid of some of the hawks who've been cheerleading this disaster?" So it may be more a function of fund-raising realities than of any vengeance on the part of Pletka.

Yet, given the history of the conservative movement, if there really is a "purge" of neocons, it's not like they haven't done their own share of purging over the years. Some of my friends were among the "Unpatriotic Conservatives" whom David Frum tried to read out of the movement in 2003.

Just as an aside, it would be very bad if Muravchik has fallen victim to any such purge. His 2002 book, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, is excellent. As an erstwhile socialist, Muravchik certainly could be called a neocon, but I'm not aware that he was particularly culpable in the misadventures of the Bush administration.

HOLIDAY BOOKS: ORDER NOW!

(Bumped and updated because this is the last day of guaranteed 2-day Christmas shipping at Amazon.com.) Less than 10 days One week FIVE DAYS FOUR DAYS until Christmas! What to do? Run out to the mall, fight the crowds, and buy some them some crappy socks or a sausage-and-cheese package?

Instead, why not save yourself the hassle and order from our 2008 Holiday Book Sale? It's easy, and Amazon will deliver your gifts nationwide.

PREVIOUSLY:

• 12/4: Regnery on conservatism
• 11/29: Family values
• 11/28: Black Friday Special
• 11/27: Civil War
• 11/26: Immigration
• 11/25: Thomas Sowell
• 11/24: The Great Depression
• 11/23: Blacklisted by History
• 11/22: Mises & Hayek
• 11/21: White Guilt by Shelby Steele

Death by cleavage

Research reveals the risk:

One carefully conducted study did find an increase in the risk of breast cancer among lean women with larger breasts. In this study, two thousand women were grouped according to their bra size before childbirth. Women who were lean (chest size less than 34 inches) and had larger breasts (size B or C cups) were at significantly higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer relative to women of the same chest size with an A or smaller cup size.

Do you know what this means? It means we owe a debt of gratitude to Christina Hendricks, who is courageously risking her life for our viewing pleasure.

Team Obama's self-absolution

The Lightworker's disciples can do no wrong:

[T]he Obama team's review of contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will show that Rahm Emanuel had only one phone conversation with Blagojevich. The contact, described as a "pro-forma" courtesy call, came as Emanuel was named Chief of Staff for Obama. Most of the discussion concerned Emanuel's Congressional seat (which had previously been held by Blagojevich), with only a "passing reference" to the Senate vacancy, according to these sources. No deal for the Senate vacancy was discussed.

"Pro-forma" is Latin for quid pro quo. Ed Morrissey notes that this "one courtesy call" explanation doesn't include the multiple contacts between Emanuel and Blago's chief of staff.

UPDATE: Paul Jacob has some Blago-related thoughts.

Attention, Palin haters

One of my problems with the "Blame Sarah First" crowd that has scapegoated Sarah Palin for John McCain's defeat is that they are targeting the only Republican who's generated a strong grassroots following in recent memory. Name any other potential GOP presidential candidate for 2012 -- Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal -- who has anything like Team Sarah:

Now, more than a month since the political spotlight has turned away from the failed GOP ticket and the running mate who rallied so many conservatives, some of those whom Palin drew to the political arena are seeking to keep a conversation going. This includes TeamSarah.org, a social networking site launched in September. . . .
TeamSarah.org -- boasting more than 60,000 members and hoping to top 100,000 by Inauguration Day -- was started in part by a mother of five, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group that promotes the involvement of women in politics. She and Jane Abraham, chairwoman of the group's board, started the site as a place for followers to network and promote Palin.

Team Sarah is the sort of spontaneous Tocquevillean activism that the conservative movement has been woefully lacking lately, and there is no other candidate for 2012 who has anything like it. Any Republican opponent of Palin would have to defeat this rapidly-growing grassroots army in order to take the nomination. And what, pray tell, is the political benefit to the GOP of extinguishing the only genuine enthusiasm in the party?

Sneer at "populism" all you want, David Brooks, but your argument is not with me, it's with those thousands who stood in the cold Pennyslvania wind to see Sarah Palin.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Don Surber describes Palin supporters as women "who identify more with a working mom like Sarah Palin than a bored socialite like Caroline Kennedy."

UPDATE II: Naturally, a HuffPo blogger finds a reason to scream "racism" at Team Sarah.

UPDATE III: Team Sarah responds, but not before another liberal blogger compares their activism to "cross burning." Note well the method, and consider the double standard. A few off-topic anti-Obama comments are sufficient to elicit outraged Klan references from liberals. But an Obama supporter suggesting the gang-rape of Sarah Palin? Crickets chirping.

'Professional Obama-haters'?

That's Joe Gandelman's label, although he doesn't actually name any of these professionals. I guess I'm just semi-pro at this point, but if there are any anti-Obama institutions with full-time career openings -- with a 401(k) and health benefits, please -- I'd be happy to give it a try.

Feminist mythology

Kathy Shaidle levels her aim at the myth that the "women's movement" was necessary because discrimination prevented women from pursuing careers. This myth allows feminists to take credit for all achievement by women, suggesting that if you are a woman today who isn't barefoot, pregnant and doing some guy's laundry, you owe a debt of gratitude to Ti-Grace Atkinson, Mary Daly, et al.

Some people really need to read Domestic Tranquility by Carolyn Graglia, who was a lawyer before anybody outside the world of Communist fellow-travelers ever heard of Betty Friedan. A gendered world -- where certain careers are viewed as "men's jobs" -- does not necessarily equate to discrimination. Consider the career field of long-haul trucking. Very nearly all semi-truck drivers are male. Does this mean trucking companies discriminate again women? No, it just means that very few women are interested in driving trucks for a living.

To the egalitarian mind, inequality can only be explained in terms of injustice. If immigrants from Fiji and their descendants are 0.01% of the U.S. population, and there is some career field -- say, for example, biomedical technology -- in which Fiji-Americans are less than 0.01% of the workforce, the egalitarian mind deduces that the biomedical technology industry is animated by anti-Fijian bias. And don't you dare deny it, buddy!

The "diversity" rationale embodies this kind of mental rigidity. When I lived in Georgia, some student columnist at Berry College wrote a hand-wringing column bemoaning the lack of "diversity" at the school. Now, Berry is a private liberal arts school where tuition, room and board amount to $30,000 a year. And Georgia not only has a very robust state university system, but it also has a number of famed historically black colleges like Morehouse, Morris Brown and Clark-Atlanta. So the fact that 89% of Berry students are white doesn't suggest any discrimination on the part of Berry, it merely reflects the reality of the situation. A minority student with a 1,200 SAT has many other options, and there is only so much a small liberal arts school can offer in the way of inducements.

Why, then, was that Berry student wringing his hands? Because, to the egalitarian mind, it is not sufficient that minority students have opportunities for education, or that 11% of Berry's students are "diverse." No, all institutions must be equally diverse, and if Berry is less diverse than other institutions, something has gone horribly wrong.

And so, back to feminism's absurd mythology. It's the Kara Hultgreen syndrome. Kara Hultgreen died in 1994 because the Navy was trying to push her into becoming America's first female combat fighter pilot. She was allowed to continue training after repeatedly committing errors that would have caused any male trainee to be washed out of the program. And then she committed the error that killed her, and the Navy engaged in a cover-up to hide the reality.

Why? Because the egalitarian mind assumed there was some kind of injustice involved in the previously all-male status of the Navy's fighter-pilot cadre, and therefore having a female fighter pilot would represent "progress" toward equality. It's the same mentality that got Larry Summers purged at Harvard. I'm not against female pilots or female research scientists, I just can't understand why institutions tie themselves in knots trying to eliminate statistical disparities that don't actually involve unjust discrimination.

This is especially true because there is no substantial evidence that radical egalitarianism actually improves the quality of life for the "victims" it professes to help, while forcing society into artificial patterns that don't work as well as traditional, voluntary ways of life:

Believe me sir, those who attempt to level, never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.

Truth is a most durable commodity.

UPDATE: Little Miss Attila is mad at me. But it's OK. What kind of feminist goes for Mary Kay?

Palin snubs Bush 41?

Bush Sr. has twice called to congratulate Sarah Palin, but hasn't gotten a return phone call. Why?

A Palin aide says the guv didn't get the message, as odd as that sounds. "At this time, we are not aware of any attempts by President Bush to get in touch with the governor, but again, she would be honored to receive a call." So if you are reading, 41, try again.

Incompetent staffers cause so much trouble in politics, and the news that Palin's staff doesn't even know that the former president called suggests that she needs to kick some butt in her office. Fire somebody, governor. Even if you can't identify the specific idiot who goofed this up, just pick someone on your staff who's given you less than 110% effectiveness and fire that person, as an example.

But seriously, folks . . .

My earlier suggestion that RNC Chairman Mike Duncan has slipped a cog and needs to be shipped to an asylum got linked by my old NoVaTownhall buddy Joe Budzinski. That suggestion was occasioned by Duncan's letter proposing the creation of an in-house RNC think tank (I've cribbed the text of the letter from TPM and pasted it below).

Jocularity aside -- although, really, Duncan probably could use some stress-free relaxation --your chairman's idea of creating a DC-based RNC policy shop is 180 degrees out of phase with what really needs to be done to fix the Republican Party. The party's problems have nothing to do with a shortage of "new ideas," but rather have to do with systemic and structural problems that prevent the party from acting effectively on the good ideas it already has (which are not really "new ideas").

• First and foremost, the GOP needs to abandon the top-down methods that have prevailed during the Bush years. The national party leadership and committees must stop interfering in GOP primaries. Go back to 2006, when the NRSC spent money defending Lincoln Chafee against Steve Laffey's primary challenge. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Republican incumbents must be told bluntly that NRSC and NRCC won't defend them against primary challengers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The national leadership has also interfered in open-primary situations, showing favoritism toward certain "approved" candidates, for example, favoring Johnny Isakson over Herman Cain in the 2004 Georgia Senate primary.
• Second, the GOP needs to update its fund-raising mechanism, especially in terms of online contributions and small-donor development. Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke and Soren Dayton have been pushing on the online front at Next Right, and the party needs to pay attention to those guys. In that regard, I'd also like to mention my own "Old School in the New Media" philosophy, namely that online activism works best when it is combined with old-fashioned face-to-face contact. The rise of the Internet has actually put a premium on "face time," and the GOP could enhance its fundraising by creating opportunities for online donors to have direct face-to-face interactions with elected officials and party leaders.
• Third, the party needs to improve its programs for targeting key races, both offensively and defensively. The GOP needs to study the role of the "compete everywhere" strategy in the Democrats' recent comeback. And RNC HQ needs to get some people who can see the importance of supporting a candidate like Allen West, whose entirely viable campaign was neglected by the national leadership until after Labor Day. In terms of candidate recruitment, rather than the national party bigfooting into contested primaries, they need to work with state and local officials to organize more grassroots-level recruitment efforts.
• Fourth, the party needs to rethink its media strategy. There is no reason in the world why the party of Ronald Reagan should allow its media operations to be run by people who don't know anything about the media. As I've said before, the GOP spent something like $900 million in the 2008 cycle and can't buy a fucking clue about media. People outside the news industry don't realize the extent to which "media bias" against Republicans is caused by the assholes who run the GOP. The Tucker Bounds Syndrome -- putting campaign hacks who've never worked a day in a newsroom in charge of media operations -- must end. Media relations is about relationships, and the standard GOP campaign playbook of treating reporters like crap is a big part of why the party enjoys such a horrible image.
• Finally, don't overthink it. The Republican Party (a) nominated a 72-year-old bald guy for president and (b) lost. You don't need a policy wonk to tell you that (a) might have something to do with (b). The current woeful state of the GOP has many sources, but most of them involve routine political incompetence. Just one example: Mark Foley. Do you realize that Foley had wanted to retire in 2006, but that Karl Rove pressured him to run for re-election anyway? When a reputed "genius" like Rove is making bonehead moves like that, Republicans deserve to lose.

Political incompetence can't be solved by hiring a bunch of wonks, which is why Duncan's "Center for Republican Renewal" is such a lousy idea. The problems of the GOP are not policy problems.

The Duncan Memo

Republican National Committee
To: RNC National Committee Members
Fr: Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan
Re: The Center for Republican Renewal
Date: Friday, December 19
I am pleased today to announce the creation of the Center for Republican Renewal, a new office of the Republican National Committee that will identify, generate, and promote public policies that advance Republican principles of sound governance. I began exploring this idea in the days immediately following the November election. I would like to take this opportunity to explain the concept and how you as a Committee Member can participate in this exciting new endeavor.
Background and Context: Pre-Reagan and Pre-1994
The Center for Republican Renewal is a natural development given the political landscape and follows on previous efforts in this vein after the elections of 1976 and 1992. In each of those years, a Democrat was elected president with vague promises of change and came to power with strong Congressional majorities and a majority of governorships. Moreover, the Republican "brand" was in trouble due, in large part, to self-inflicted wounds.
As we all know, circumstances quickly shifted in our favor. In 1980, the party rebounded and we had Ronald Reagan in the White House, a Republican Senate, and several new Republican governors. In the historic 1994 election, we gained control of both houses of Congress and a majority of governorships - after earning only 36 percent of the presidential vote just two years prior.
Those quick comebacks in 1980 and 1994 did not just happen. They took hard work and smart thinking - not only from the standpoint of candidate recruitment, fundraising, and political strategy, but also from the standpoint of ideas. Put simply, Republicans gave voters a reason to elect them, and that reason was better policy. Each time, the driving force behind the resurgence of our Party was the Republican National Committee.
In 1977, RNC Chairman Bill Brock pushed the party into the work of ideas with twin endeavors: first, the creation of a quarterly public policy magazine, Commonsense, which embraced serious policy discussion as a vehicle for innovative policies and breakthrough ideas; and second, the formation of "Policy Councils," groups of public policy experts from across the nation who advised the party and its leaders on the best approaches to the nation's problems. These efforts were central to backing up
the claim that Republicans were the "party of ideas," and were a precursor to the Reagan Revolution in 1980.
In 1993, RNC Chairman Haley Barbour responded to the previous year's defeats by committing the party to intellectual engagement, reviving the Commonsense magazine and going so far as to create a separate entity to develop policy alternatives. He explained this decision through "three premises: that fundamentally, ideas make a difference in politics; that, traditionally, ideas which make a difference have been associated with political parties; and, that currently, such ideas are less
likely to be found inside the Washington beltway - and its thinking - than outside." The RNC's enthusiasm for debate and intellectual engagement fed directly into the development of the Contract with America and the Republican Revolution of 1994.
The common thread of these two periods - pre-1980 and pre-1994 - was that the Republican Party showed it was confident enough with its principles and core values that it could embrace debate and even disagreement in the pursuit of superior public policy solutions.
The Decision to Create the Center for Republican Renewal
It was in light of this history that I decided in early November to commit the RNC to a similar, policy-focused effort. Republicans have grown accustomed to having our party recognized as the "Party of Ideas," but we must acknowledge that many Americans today believe the party is stale and does not deserve that label. This is not a critique of our principles of a strong national defense, growth-focused economics, constitutionally-limited government, and a defense of traditional values. Rather, it is a reflection that we have not used our principles to provide solutions to the kitchen table concerns of middle-class America.
We must recognize that being the "Party of Ideas" requires daily effort to apply principles to the particular public policy questions of the day. All Republicans have an obligation to develop principled solutions rather than falling back on ideology alone; we must show how our ideology can be applied to solve problems.
When we have a Republican President, that challenge falls to the White House and Congress. However, when the table is set as it is today, the RNC must play an enhanced role.
I believe we have an opportunity - and an obligation - to regain the American people's trust by showing them that it is the Republican Party that will provide the principled policies that will better improve the lives of all Americans. To do that, we must:
* Always bear in mind that good policy is good politics and that the Party should play a fruitful role in identifying and generating innovative ideas.
* Seek solutions outside of Washington, D.C. - listening directly to the American people and learning from those who are grappling with real problems.
* Remember that the laboratories for Republican policymaking are in the states, counties, cities, and towns of our nation, not in the halls of a Democrat-dominated Congress.
* Help coordinate policy approaches and alternatives between Congress, the Governors, and state and local officials.
* Be open to principled solutions no matter where they originate.
* Use new technologies to better create communities of support and innovation, and build those communities around shared ideas.

The Republican Party must not cede the policy field to the Democrats, and it must use the tools at its disposal to expand the portfolio of ideas that our candidates will have in the next cycle. As former Chairman Brock wrote in 1977, "the contest for votes must also be a contest for ideas." The Center for Republican Renewal will be dedicated to that proposition.
Structure and Leadership of the Center for Republican Renewal
The Center will be a division within the RNC and will operate from our national headquarters. Its budget has been approved by the RNC Budget Committee. At the outset, we anticipate a staff of approximately ten dedicated employees.
The executive director of the Center will be Steven J. Duffield. Many of you know Steven as the executive director of the 2008 Platform Committee, which produced a platform that was praised widely as being concise, principled, and forward-looking. Steven came to the Platform Committee after serving as a leadership policy advisor and chief counsel to Senator Jon Kyl (AZ) at the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
We will also be recruiting RNC Members and other conservative leaders to assist the Center with strategic planning and guidance as a Board of Advisors to the Center. In addition to RNC Members, this Board will include former Cabinet Secretaries, current and former Governors and Members of Congress, leaders of conservative Policy groups, and other Republican leaders.
Overview of Projected Activities
The Center will be aggressive and very active in the policy community. In general terms, we can group its projected activities into three areas: 1) increased policy focus through RNC activities; 2) nationwide policy outreach; and, 3) extensive policy debate and discussion.
First, the Center will be a resource to you as a Member of the Republican National Committee and to other Republicans because we will now have in-house experts on current policy issues and debates. The Center's analysts will create detailed policy products, from fact sheets and backgrounders to critiques of proposed legislation, which will be fact-intensive and professionally crafted to ensure
accuracy. These products will be useful to RNC members, to our new Speaker's Bureau, to our Communications team, and to Republicans across the nation. This written product will be developed in cooperation with Republican elected officials both in Washington and in the states.
Second, the Center will engage in aggressive policy outreach throughout the nation. This will be one of many opportunities for your direct involvement with the Center. This outreach will include the reestablishment of the Policy Councils so that we can draw on the substantive expertise of policy experts who work with Republican Governors and legislators, Congressional leaders, and think tanks nationwide. The goal is to learn constantly and ensure that potential applications of our Republican
principles are fully understood, shared, and promoted.
Third, the Center will be committed to the debate and discussion of ideas. We believe that it is best to have policy discussions within the party and that we should not fear disagreement. To that end, the Center will build on the 1977 and 1993 efforts with Commonsense by developing a new website devoted to public policy. We will invite original content from experts and then encourage debate. This will be another opportunity for Member involvement with the Center. The website also will host policy blogs that will provide forums for substantive analysis of the key issues facing the nation, and input from the public will be gathered on a systematic basis. Our goal is to grow a community founded on common goals and aspirations.
As the months pass, we anticipate the Center branching into other areas and finding other tools and tactics that will advance our ideas. It will be a nimble operation that is quick to shift when circumstances demand it.
Conclusion
I am very excited about the Center for Republican Renewal because I believe it is an integral part of our rebuilding process. I look forward to your suggestions on how to make the most of this new endeavor.

Senator Oprah?

While rambling through Dustbury -- where C.G. Hill was mostly musing about 4-holer Buicks and V-12 BMWs driven by chicks who look like Helen Mirren -- I came across a link to E.M. Zanotti's brilliant idea: Blago should appoint Oprah to fill Obama's Senate seat.

Celebrity politics

Reflecting on Al Franken's evident election in Minnesota and Caroline Kennedy's possible appointment to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, Dan Riehl writes:

With little focus on traditional civics education in our schools producing a growing population less interested in substantive issues and more focused on the next new American idol, perhaps it shouldn't be a big surprise.

Fame is a funny thing. Forty-five years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, his daughter yet retains that aura, while more recent presidential children (e.g., Amy Carter) have slipped into oblivion. It's easier for the Kennedy clan to maintain that aura because (a) Ted has kept the political franchise in operation, and (b) Joe Kennedy was smart enough to evade the estate tax by stashing cash in an offshore tax shelter in Fiji.

The Yglesias agenda

Matthew Yglesias, by way of defending New York Gov. David Paterson's 18% soft-drink tax proposal, describes his own priorities:

As liberals tend to do, I would like to see the government spend more money on infrastructure and social services. I think it’s important that we pay teachers enough to recruit an adequate number of people into the profession. And beyond teaching, we probably need to spend more on a range of civil service salaries. We need to upgrade our infrastructure and we need to make sure children aren’t going hungry. We need to do a whole lot of stuff, and it would cost a whole lot of money to do everything I’d like to see us do. A lot of money can be found for that stuff, over the long run, by reducing the amount of money we spend on non-productive things like defense and medical waste. But ultimately there’s some need for taxes.

Very interesting priorities there. Defense is one of the few things the federal government does that it is actually authorized to do under the Constitution, and Yglesias wants to cut defense as "non-productive" -- like "medical waste"! On the other hand, he worries that "civil service salaries" (i.e., government bureaucrats) need to be increased, along with money "to make sure children aren't going hungry" (despite the childhood obesity epidemic among the poor).

UPDATE: Cold Fury: "We ought to find some funds to mount the Founders' remains on rotisseries so they can spin in their graves with less effort, too." Heh.

HuffPo scamming?

This might be nothing, or nothing much, but it is interesting:

Whet Moser, an editor at alternataive weekly Chicago Reader wants to know why The Huffington Post's newly formed Chicago-focused venture is stealing their copyrighted concert reviews and reprinting them in whole in order to get search engine traffic. And he found other examples taken wholesale from The Onion and Time Out Chicago. . . . .
[Moser says] "If the future of journalism--which everyone keeps telling me The Huffington Post represents -- is a bunch of search-engine optimization scams, we have bigger problems than Sam Zell's bad investment strategies."

(Via Memeorandum.) Warner Todd Huston writes:

[T]his wholesale stealing of others' work seems strange when the latest news about Huff Post is that it was graced with a $25 million capital infusion by investors. With that kind of cash flow, you'd think they could hire a few out of work MSMers and give them a job, wouldn't you?

That's right -- hire professional plagiarists!