How bad our country’s balance sheet must be that we are sending our Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary to China…to beg…to promise…we’ll behave?

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Beijing with a pledge that the Obama administration will control its borrowing, seeking to reassure China that its Treasury holdings are safe.

“No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are,” Geithner told reporters en route to two days of meetings that start tomorrow in China’s capital.

Interesting word choice: “No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are.” In the mean time, being liberals, the only thing this administration knows how to do is spend more and tax more – under the guise of economic “rescue” this time.

The Chinese however, who hold more of our debt than anyone else, can do math, and they too have noticed that every time Brack O. Bomba opens his mouth, another trillion dollars is stolen from our children.

A Chinese state media report today said that 17 out of 23 Chinese economists polled in connection with Geithner’s visit said that holdings of Treasuries are a “great risk” for the nation’s economy.

Let me pause to underscore the notion that the Chinese feel our economy poses a great risk to theirs.

Geithner needs to show how the U.S. can prevent the value of China’s debt holdings being eroded by a weaker dollar or by inflation driven by the stimulus money being pumped into the U.S. economy, according to Yu.

“It will be helpful if Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” he said.

Uh oh. That’s trouble. Math is no friend of the Obama administration.

There aren’t arithmetic or historic data depicting successful outcomes of huge government borrowing to fund huge government spending to counter a crisis caused by huge government, corporate and consumer borrowing. Rather, the arithmetic will show catastrophic devaluation of the dollar – the very inflation the Chinese are fearful of.

How do you say “Oops” in Chinese?

CAFE standards and the UAW hobbled the US auto industry…Barack Obama is here to finish the job.

Ed landed a great “get” on the Northern Alliance Volume II show today; Patrick “Patterico” Frey, of Patterico’s Pontifications, talking about the run-in with Bill O’Reilly.

A brief run-down of the flap:

1. Thursday, O’Reilly slagged on Hot Air – Michelle Malkin’s blog, for which my radio colleague Ed Morrissey writes – for making a scabrous posting.
2. Michelle, Ed and Allahpundit noted that the “posting” in question was actually a comment; something that Hot Air doen’t regulate or supervise a whole lot more strictly than I do.
3. O’Reilly went on “The Factor” and issued a wussy non-apology, saying in essence “OK, I reported it wrong, but Hot Air should police their comments as rigously as I police mine.
4. Patterico signed up for a membershp ($5 a month – yes, you have to pay to leave a comment at O’Reilly’s website), and published a slew of scabrous, “unpoliced” comments.
5. Patterico’s membership was terminated.

Patterico’s conclusion, via Ed?

Did Patterico get a high-five from the Factor for his intrepid work in pointing out hateful comments?  Not exactly:

I wish I could share today’s “BillOReilly.com blog posting” . . . but my membership has been terminated …

Oh, wait. I just reviewed the Terms and Conditions again, and I believe I have found the relevant language: “4. Do not expose Bill O’Reilly as a rank hypocrite.”

Note to O’Reilly; take your “No Integrity Zone” and go over to the other guys once and for all.  You’re not a conservative; you’re a populist gasbag who would throw the Reagan Legacy and the Rights of Man under the bus to give you an extra point in the PPMs.
Go.  Please.

By the way, feel free to check in on Monday at Townhall.com for the podcast of today’s show.  Patterico is at the end of Hour 2, but it was a good show from beginning to end, and you could do a lot worse than add it to your weekly podcast diet.

A select few Conservatives and even fewer media pundits have labeled the takeover and bailouts of several American corporate icons as Socialism manifest.

The first months of the Obama Administration have given rise to abundant talk about a U.S. drift into socialism. “We Are All Socialists Now,” a Newsweek cover declared in February. On May 20 the Republican National Committee approved a resolution calling on Democrats to “stop pushing our country toward socialism.”

Socialists in America say however that it isn’t so.

They say if the Obama Administration were establishing a true socialist state, we’d have at least a $15-an-hour minimum wage (instead of the current $6.55 federal minimum) and 30-hour workweeks. Every American would be guaranteed employment and health-care coverage. Oh, and homeless people would be occupying vacant office buildings in cities and vacant McMansions in the suburbs.

…as if Socialism exists on one side of a hash line but not on the other.

So apparently we’re not there yet.

Guaranteed employment, health-care and housing will come in Obama’s reelection campaign.

But that’s not really the point, is it?

Conservative Americans concerned for our future as a nation, as an economic power, fear the direction our country is headed and even more the lack of concern among our citizenry for what is quickly happening right under their noses. You can’t unbake a cake and so it is with big government and entitlements.

As our esteemed governor knows, reductions in either are historically very hard to come by. As the saying goes, a luxury becomes a necessity twenty four hours later not unlike new layers of government spending and regulation. Once in place, they tend to stay in place.

Socialists say the policies Obama has pursued are hallmarks of “democratic capitalist” states, not socialist ones. “None of the societies of Western Europe are socialist, but the political influence of their strong Labor, Social Democratic, and Socialist parties make their form of capitalism much more humane than our own,” says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the New York-based Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest U.S. Socialist party.

I don’t know how “humane” delaying the inevitable was to UAW workers at GM; thousands of which are soon to lose their jobs as GM declares bankruptcy under the weight of years of artificially-high labor costs and government over-regulation, despite an infusion of billions of taxpayer dollars and an inept CEO being fired by an even more inept President.

In the end, auto workers will discover their rightful economic value hard and fast. Taxpayers will own 70% of a corporation that should have been absorbed by the system. Capitalism should have been allowed to do what capitalism does – efficiently redistribute capital and talent to it’s highest and best use.

Something quite opposite capitalism has instead been deliberately and opportunistically brought to bear. Call it Socialism or Obamunism – labels don’t matter – the point is our government is violating domain it has historically been denied (and in many cases by law is prohibited) to venture.

Socialists say…the Obama team is…scrambling to rescue and preserve capitalism.

Deflection. Nice try. Capitalism can take care of itself, thank you very much.

If Socialism were to come to America, would it come quick like a thief in the night…or real…slow…like…so as to stay under the radar; take capitalism by surprise?

How do you cook a frog? In a pot of cool water; turn up the heat real slow.

By the time he realizes he’s cooked, it’s too late to jump out.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM. 

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is back!  We’ll no doubt be discussing Sotomayor, the rebounding conservative ID numbers, and much much more.  Join us from 1-3!
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is on next, dishing his own personal brand of conservative hurt from 3-5.  Check it out.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

(All times Central)
So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream)
• Podcast at Townhall (usually uploaded by Monday morning).
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

(Title: Tenant’s Union)

A commentator at Pravda says that Marxism has finally triumphed – right here in the USA:

The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

The irony – a Russian chattering about people giving up their freedom, practically a Great Russian genetic trait – only partly counterbalances the fact that he’s got a point.

If someone were to develop an education system to create a generations-deep supply of ignorant, impotent sheeple, how would they actually change our system?

Eric Ostermeier at Smart Pollitics (a Humphrey Institute joint) notes that more voters are identifying themselves as “conservatives”:

While the last two election cycles have seen Upper Midwestern Republicans lose seats in state legislatures, lose seats to the U.S. House, and lose statewide elections for the U.S. Senate and the presidency, the conservative brand seems to be catching fire once again.A Smart Politics analysis of more than 160 polls conducted in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin finds that the percentage of residents identifying themselves as having a conservative political ideology has been on the rise in each state since 2007.

The story – which you should read in its entirety – notes that conservative identification dropped starting in about 2005, and of course helped lead to last year’s debacle:

In 2005, one-third (33.4 percent) of Minnesota residents identified themselves as conservative, in a yearly aggregation of SurveyUSA polling data. That number was slightly higher for conservatives in Wisconsin (36.0 percent) and Iowa (36.6 percent).

In 2006, the percentage of Minnesotans identifying as conservatives plunged 5.3 points (15.9 percent) to just 28.1 percent of Gopher State residents. Self-identified conservatives in Iowa also declined by 5.1 points (13.9 percent) to 31.5 percent that year, with the largest drop occurring in Wisconsin, with a 6.1-point decline (16.9 percent) to 29.9 percent. In that November’s election cycle, Republicans lost control of the Minnesota House, the Iowa House, the Wisconsin Senate, as well as three U.S. House seats (MN-01, IA-01, WI-08).

It dropped again in 2007 and 2008 – and we know how that turned out.

But having Democrats in the driver’s seat is usually a good thing for creating conservatives:

In Minnesota, those Gopher State residents identifying as conservative increased by 1.3 points in 2008 (to 27.8 percent) and by another 1.2 points to 29.0 percent in an aggregation of polling data through the first five months of 2009. This marks the largest percentage of Minnesotans viewing themselves as conservative since 2005…In all three states, conservatism is at its highest peak over the last four years.

Ostermeier notes that “moderates” outnumber both liberals and conservatives.  Which is both good and bad news; “Moderate” isn’t a philosophy, it’s the absence of one; it’s a vacuum.  The real  trick is to fill more of those vacuums with something that’ll make ’em want to come to the polls and vote conservatives. Indeed, that’s been the trick in the last several Minnesota elections:

1. In 1990, Arne Carlson filled the moderates with fatigue with the antics of Rudy Perpich.
2. In 1998, Jesse Ventura filled enough of them with the desire to prank everyone else.
3. In 2002, Pawlenty convinced a majority of Minnesotans that stupidity was a bad thing.

Here’s the one part that I bet hardly anyone expected:

Still, conservatives outnumber liberals by a large margin in all three states. In 2009, there are 1.6 conservatives for every liberal in Minnesota, 2.0 conservatives for every liberal in Wisconsin, and 2.1 conservatives for every liberal in Iowa.

So there’s the job…

Summer was about to start.  My sophomore year of high school was grinding to a miserable, hormone-addled, C-minus-average halt.  The lowlights of the year: I’d gotten a strong-“F+” average in Geometry, I’d gotten straight “D”s in the grammar semester (after aceing the literature and writing half of the year), and I’d finally given up the ghost on whatever passed for an athletic career – a tough choice, since I did love playing basketball; I just hated coaches. 

The highlights: I’d gotten straight “A”s in the various social studies classes (Modern Africa, Western Civ, Modern Asia, offered in quick ten-week hit-and-runs), which was the norm for me.  And after my performance in Geo, I’d snuck out a “B” in the final, which salvaged a “D” for the year.  I’d played the “villain”, “Mortimer Frothingham”, in the fall play, a melodrama, and had managed to parlay my meager skills on the guitar into a spot in the stage band.

Lower-lights?  My hair was greasy enough to wring out in liquid form.  And while I was finally getting toward the end of my acne-ridden phase, my face still looked like Bryan Adams after a bad run-in with a wolverine.

Mid-lights? I was taking biology in summer school.  Summer School at Jamestown High School back then was an odd combination; half the kids were the ones that’d flunked the classes, and needed to pass to graduate.  The other half were the highly-motivated kids – and, my grades notwithstanding, I was, if only because getting three years of summer-school credits out of the way would allow me to graduate at least half a year early.  And I really, really wanted to do that.

But summer was coming.  And more than anything, I wanted a job.

Dad had mentioned, whilst over at Grandma Bea’s house the day before for our usual weekly Sunday dinner, that I ought to give Bob Richardson at KEYJ a call.  KEYJ was one of two radio stations in Jamestown; more importantly, it was the one that made a point of hiring local kids, especially kids from the high school and college, and teaching them how to do radio.

And today was Monday.  Go-time.

If you know me today, it may not be readily apparent, but I was pretty cripplingly shy at personal contact back then, and that was talking with regular people – classmates, teachers, anyone who wasn’t a close life-long friend (and I didn’t have a whole lot of them).  And Bob Richardson was not a “regular person”.  Richardson, who’d worked at KEYJ since the early fifties and had owned it for ten years (i.e., forever, to me, at that age) was the voice of authority in Jamestown.  His was the big, booming voice behind the noon news, a million football broadcasts, “Live Line” (Richardson’s half-hour daily call-in show that was the closest I came to talk radio until I moved to the Twin Cities)…everywhere.  If radio – the entire medium – had a sound to me back then, it was Richardson.

So I waited in my parents’ living room until everyone – Mom, Dad, my sister and brother – were all out of the house.  I calmed my jangling nerves enough to dial the number – 252-1400 – and waited.

The receptionist picked up.  If that wasn’t bad enough, when I asked “Is Mr. Richardson there?”, she said “yes” and put me on hold.

I started taking three deep breaths.  I’d read somewhere that that was a good way to calm your nerves. 

I was halfway into Breath Three when the phone picked up.  “THIS IS BOB“.

Bo-weep.

“Hi.  I’m Mitch Berg – Bruce Berg’s son”.  It never hurt to drop Dad’s name around Jamestown; everyone in town had either had dad in school, or their kids, or parents had.  Indeed, all of Richardson’s kids had been in one of Dad’s classes or another.  Also, he ran the Jamestown High School Radio Club, which did its annual project over at KEYJ.  I took a breath.  “I’m interested in radio, and I thought I’d call and see if there were any part-time jobs available at the station, and if there were if you’d keep me in mind for one?”

Silence.

And more silence.

“Hmmm”, Richardson growled.  “You do have a decent voice, and fairly good diction”. 

More silence.  I could feel the sweat.

“Tell you what.  There’s nothing right now, but there might be something coming up soon.  I’ll keep you in mind…”

And that was about it.

I hung up, relieved to have survived.

Onward with Summer!

Occasionally, when discussing biking, one or another putatively “conservative” critic will sound off with one or another of the following:

• “Hah!  You are rilly a librul looser!  Because other biker riders are also teh librul!”.  Disposing of this one is fairly trivial; a real conservative doesn’t define people by the group their part of; that’s the road that leads you to endless affirmative action, quotas and “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”. Conservatives are’t supposed to support this sort of thing, preferring instead to tie individuals to their individual records; in my case, as a thoroughgoing pro-free-enterprise, free-market, strict-constructionist, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-traditional marriage, low-tax, high-growth, high-fence/wide gate, parental school choice libertarian conservative.
• “I haven’t seen you explicitly attack the funding that goes toward bike transportation”.  So if we’re defined by what we haven’t written, then I’ll take the liberty of pointing out that by the same logic, my critics all support building concentration camps for dwarves.  I mean, they didn’t say they don’t  support it, and nothing in their record shows their eliminationist hatred of little people, but they never really ruled it out, now, did they?
• “Most Minnesotans drive!”  So?  Most Minnesotans voted for Obama, too.  Numbers don’t make you right.

No, I bike because I enjoy it.I always have.  It’s great exercise and, unlike most exercise, the scenery is never the same twice.  For over 30 years, I’ve enjoyed the feeling you get from finding ones’ limit (which, at 46, is a lot easier than it used to be) and pushing it back.  I just plain feel better when I’m biking, which is nothing to sneeze at. How many of you car drivers look forward to your morning and afternoon commutes?

As I noted last year when interviewed in the Utne Reader, there are those that have politicized biking.  I respond to that politicization to wit: “Not me”.  Of course, there are impeccably conservative reasons to bike: it saves money; you pay less taxes (and what conservative doesn’t relish that thought?); you are happy not to pay for someone else’s vision of Minnesota.
That should take care of that, right?

Well, hopefully.  With some of the (let’s just say) less-creatively-dogmatic people on my side of the aisle, you have to get mighty specific, lest they take the word “bike” like a bull takes an inadvertently-exposed bit of red underwear.

With that established, though, there are some bikers that deserve rhetorical wedgies.

One of them – Matthew Modine, former famous actor – gives one all the ammo one needs in the biograf of a HuffPo post, “Cars Are Like Cigarettes; The New Pariah“:

Matthew Modine is a Causecast leader, a dedicated and passionate individual who is an enigmatic voice for change.

And it’s a good thing he’s got that, since he hasn’t had a decent movie since Full Metal Jacket.

Causecast leaders are a prestigious collection of athletes, artists, students, actors, musicians, politicians, teachers and more. These individuals have set themselves apart from their contemporaries with a spirited dedication to their ideals…

…which are then expressed on…a blog.

Modine:

I am often asked, “Why do you love bicycles?” For a few reasons, but mostly because I am in love with self-propulsion and self-motivation.

So far so good; most of us like “self-propulsion” for some reason or another.

I love finding solutions to problems and I want to leave the world in better condition than when I arrived. For too long we’ve behaved as if the resources of our world are infinite.

On the one hand – nothing is infinite.  But lots of people “want to leave the world a better place”; fortunately, many of them are more concerned with finding ways past our limitations than being held prisoner by them.

Sometimes I feel like I am flying when I ride my bike. It’s exciting to turn a corner and suddenly find myself in a sea of other bicyclists.

[CLOSED CIRCUIT TO MR. MODINE AND BIKERS ONLY:  Ugh.  No.  I mean, different strokes and all, but biking for me is always a solo thing.  Hell, as this article shows us, is other bikers].
Modine is now going to shift into 10th gear, settle his feet into the clips, and pedal like hell into the Smug Zone:

The statistical truth is that 90% of trips made in cars are less than five miles from our homes. A very comfortable journey made on a bicycle.

Mr. Modlne, I’ll give you your due: you’ve certainly put your money where your mouth is on quite a few issues.  You turned down Tom Cruise’s role in Top Gun because you didn’t like the politics; I disagree, but I can respect someone who lives his beliefs.  Unlike most of Hollywood, you’ve also been married to the same person for almost thirty years.  You have two grown children.  Good on ya.

Now – in all those years of raising kids in New York or LA, how many of those “90% of comfortable trips” to the UrgentCare, to the pediatrician,  or to the MiniMart for midnight diaper runs did you make by bike?  How often did you do a week’s worth – even a days’ worth – of shopping for a family of four on your ride?  Or even by subway, bus, taxi or any other “environmentally responsible” form of transportation?

And if you want to say “most of them”, that’s great. Now – if you weren’t a famous, well-paid actor, how might that have worked out?

Behind every transit-uber-alles advocate is someone who’s never had to haul two kids to the urgent-care after work.

Perhaps the best part of choosing a bike instead of a car is what you are saying by pedaling. You are saying to yourself, your friends, your family, and the cars that clog our roads and highways, that you care about the air we breathe and that you care about the environment. You’re saying you want to do something to reduce carbon emissions and that you want to improve your health. This personal and environmental awareness is the legacy that you want to share with your friends and family.

Well, no. I mean, believe what you will, but the only legacy I’m going to leave my kids is a father who hopefully doesn’t drop dead of a heart attack at 50.

Next: Proof that Modine really is from Planet Manhattan:

Our country has had a long love affair with the automobile. Since its invention, the automobile has provided us with the freedom and liberty we yearned for since we took those first baby steps. The automobile took us further and faster than we could have ever done by self-propulsion. But that speed and distance has brought the world to the edge of extinction. We must now look at the automobile with an understanding of what it really is…as a cigarette–a cancer stick–a nail in our collective coffin. The sexy lifestyle that the tobacco industry sold to us contains the same advertising lies and poison which the automobile industry sold and continues to sell to the world.

Let’s ignore for a moment the extent to which Modine’s transit-friendly world – New York – was built to a great extent with profits from slave-grown tobacco; does Modine realize how many millions of Americans were dragged out of poverty by the changes to society that the car brought?  How many good, family-supporting, transit-friendly-city-building jobs came from building, supporting and repairing cars?   How many places like Modine’s native Loma Linda, California were opened up to the rest of the world. enabling wide-eyed Mormon kids like Matthew Modine to think of futures that didn’t involve farming? Indeed, how they paid for Modine’s childhood itself (his father ran…a drive-in theater!).

But Modine’s right.  Like cigarettes, cars have their problems; they are also the butt (heh) of a wave of ill-informed PC lunacy, dished up in the service of people who want to re-engineer society in their image, and damn the unintended consequences; damn the jobs lost, cities swept into ruins, lives altered.  Damn the waitress thrown out of work by the smoking ban, along with the assembly-line worker, and the city in which they both live.

Modine’s right.  Gasoline is literally finite.  But the market will find an alternative long before government will.

Look at the ads for automobiles and you’ll begin to recognize the lies. You’ll see open roads with happy smiling drivers. Ask yourself, When was the last time I was NOT stuck in traffic? When was the last time I was not pissed off and stressed out after just a few hours spent driving behind the wheel of a car? The automobile ads always present cars in a setting that is free of traffic and the drivers appear powerful, happy and liberated behind the wheel. Yeah, like that ever happens in the modern world.

Dunno if Matthew Modine’s ever tried driving in the vast majority of this country between the Sierras and the Hudson.

Hey, he should try biking it!
Yeah.  Like that ever happens in Matthew Modine’s world.

Apparently, it involves writing endless spurious “ethics” complaints against Republicans – especially uppity women and minorities.

They’re running 0 and 13 against Sarah Palin, but then they were only meant to have shelf-life until the first Tuesday of last November, now, weren’t they?

Michael Geraghty, investigator for the State Personnel Board, concluded that there is no need for a hearing on the complaint filed in March by Andree McLeod, who has been a vocal critic of the governor since being denied employment with the state last year.This is the 13th ethics complaint against the governor or her staff that has been resolved with no finding of a violation of the executive ethics act. A few more are pending.

“While the complaint process under the ethics act can be a useful tool for holding state officials accountable, it’s obvious that political opponents of the governor have been abusing the system, attempting to turn their resentments into legal issues,” said Bill McAllister, the governor’s communications director. “We’re grateful that the personnel board and its investigators have taken a rational approach to these matters, finding that the vast majority of the complaints did not even warrant the collection of evidence because they failed to assert any violation of the law.”

But it gave them a shrieking point – “Governor Palin is under investigation!” – to sway the ill-informed and gullible during the campaign.

And that’s all the really matters, isn’t it?

I’m happy to see that longtime NARN friend Jeff Johnson, the guy who should be the Attorney General of Minnesota in a just world, is finally doing a blog:

I am a member of the 7-member Hennepin County Board of Commissioners myself. I was first elected to the Board last November and sworn in this January. In my first few months, I’ve been amazed at the reach of the $1.7 billion annual county budget (larger than several state budgets) and the sometimes curious (and sometimes outrageous) ways this money is spent. As Hennepin County government actions largely fly under the media radar screen – despite our tremendous impact on your individual and business property taxes – I felt it time to provide an insider perspective.

The inner workings of county government – especially in Hennco – have needed some illuminating for quite some time now.

…that a wise White man with the richness of his  experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latino who hasn’t lived that life.

Jay Reding notes that Sotomayor’s main qualifications seem to be political:

It would be hard to find a less qualified nominee than Harriet Miers, but Sotomayor does not strike me as a strong candidate. She is, to be sure, qualified for the position, but a seat on the Supreme Court is the pinnacle of the American legal profession. The Supreme Court has housed some of the greatest minds in the practice: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, and even the current Court has incredibly talented judges such as Stephen Breyer (on the “left”) and Antonin Scalia (on the “right”). Does Sotomayor match up with those legal minds? Her record, at least on a cursory glance seems to suggest not.Judge Sotomayor is not widely considered to be an expert or leading light on a particular field of law, as Stephen Breyer was in administrative law.

(Digression from a non-lawyer: Isn’t “expert in administrative law” the very definition of “damnation by faint praise?”  I know – law is complicated stuff, and Admin law is all the moreso, since it lives at the intersection of Too Many Laws Street and Too Many People Who Get Their Jollies Making Rules For Other People Boulevard, and so I’m probably shorting Admin Law’s importance to our society.  But admit it; you do, too, don’t you?  Especailly since if you’re a non-lawyer, Admin Law has most likely caused you vastly more harm or at least irritation than good.  Am I right?)

She has not shown the intellectual caliber of someone like Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Instead, she seems to have been picked because she is a female Hispanic with an interesting life story that meets the basic qualifications.

Sotomayor’s main benefit seems to be as an intellectual and social cudgel; “Not supporting Sotomayor?  Why? Whaddya have against Latinas,huh?”

But as others are saying – she might not be the one to burn off all our ammo against.  As Reding and many others have noted, she’s a liberal replacing a liberal, Souter.  It’s not like the court’s decisions are going to get any more off-the-charts-left with Sotomayor on the bench.

Obama’s Campaign That Never Ends is finding that peoples’ enthusiasm for endless campaigning has limits:

It’s not so surprising that activity [on the campaign list-servers that served so many of the campaign’s communications needs last year] is way down from the election. In one Gmail inbox I used to track groups in swing states, MyBO group emails went from 4,200 messages in October to just under 300 in the last 30 days — a decline of 93%. However, the content too is considerably less upbeat. Here’s part of a message I got to my local group summing up recent election results and looking forward to the June Virginia primary:

Let’s prove that 2008 wasn’t a fluke because of the cult of Obama….the long term demographic trends are in our favor but WE CAN’T BRING CENSUS AND POLLING DATA TO THE BALLOT BOX and declare victory.

So far this year there have been several special elections in Virginia and the results haven’t been good….WE RECENTLY LOST TWO CITY COUNCIL SEATS IN ALEXANDRIA (voted 72% for Obama) and came close to losing Brian Moran’s Delegate seat and Rep. Gerry Connolly’s Chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (home of 1 million people).  Because of EXTREMELY LOW TURNOUT these races came down to a handful of votes as the ELECTORATE OF THE “PAST” DECIDED THE WINNER.

On a similar note, PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS US to get involved in the upcoming HEALTH CARE REFORM BATTLE.  So, keep in mind that elections might require the most work for the “community organizer” in us, but WE NEED TO STAY ENGAGED IN OUR COMMUNITY TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT after our candidates get elected.

The all-caps exhortations seem kind of…. forced, no? Like it isn’t as easy anymore without Obama on the ballot. As the e-mail accurately notes, there is a partisan realignment of sorts going on in Northern Virginia local elections, with Republicans coming within one percent of capturing the chairmanship of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, a Republican picking up the supervisor seat of the newly elected chair in a quite Democratic, close-in district, a pickup of two seats on the Alexandria City Council, and the almost inexplicable near-win of Brian Moran’s old House of Delegates seat.

I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of talk about Obama swinging formerly “red” States in 2012, at this rate.

I would hope that a wise White descendant of north-woods white trash with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a New York Times reporter who hasn’t lived that life.

Oh, hell – it’s like potato chips.  Once you start, you can’t stop.

Sotomayor’s comment (“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”) promted me to wonder – is the nominee being taken out of context?

The NYTimes, America’s official gatekeeper of record, says no, not really:

In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, were not the only instance in which she has publicly described her view of judging in terms that could provoke sharp questioning in a confirmation hearing.

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” She then immediately adds: “And I know — I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m — you know.”

I would hope that a wise conservative guy with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who takes anything said at  Berkeley seriously, who hasn’t lived that life

…this may be just as ominous.

If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson could visit America in 2009 they would call the Chinese attacks Acts Of War.

Russia, the Peoples Republic of China, Iran and others will soon have a cold dose of reality that in awaking the American sleeping giant Cyber attacks can run two ways.

Update Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate

I know, I know.  Barney’s irritating.

My apolitical friends hate Barney because of his relentless, up-beat cheeriness and, of course, the voice.

My “conservative” friends – or at least some of the ones that look too hard to find political significance in life’s pettiest minutuae – detest him because of his cushy, relentlessly PC world.

And truth be told, there’s much about Barney, the long-running PBS show for toddlers and pre-toddlers, that’ll drive you nuts. The music is relentlessly simple.  The supporting cast – Baby Bop’s voice and sing-song delivery will drive you to cheap liquor, and the kids at the fictional daycare are, let’s just say, not gifted actors.

But my various friends and I all have one thing in common.  We’re not two years old.

Too obvious?  OK.  Most of my Barney-hating friends and acquaintances had never spent a day at home with a pre-toddler.

It’s hard to explain to them; I owe that purple dinosaur my sanity.

Let me explain.

Years ago, when Bun was a baby, I was working nights.  Her mother worked days.  So during the day, I watched the baby.  Indeed, Bun was a pretty active baby – so I didn’t do a whole lot but watch the baby.  Bottles, diapers, doing stuff – there wasn’t a whole lot of time for luxuries and dissipations like going to the bathroom.

But every day, I could count on two half-hour breaks in the action, where baby Bun would be glued so firmly to the screen (also strapped so firmly into the Snugli) that I could go grab a glass of water and a quick (quick!) trip to the bathroom without fear of getting jolted to reality by a squall of screaming. Bun was mesmerized, which was thirty minutes of being tethered to the baby by 25 foot cable, rather than a three foot leash.  Barney was on twice a day back then, and those two showings were my little rewards to myself that kept me going through the day.

So yep.  I owe that dinosaur.  Bigtime.

And whatever you want to say about the tone of the show (as an adult, and not the show’s audience), the theme song was the first song Bun ever learned.  And there’s nothing in the world more cute than a toddler singing her or his first song – it wouldn’t matter if it were a Throbbing Gristle song.  Although thankfully it wasn’t.

So anyway.  Step off the dinosaur.

I’m not sure why I hate Seinfeld.

I know; it’s funny; hilarious, even.  I watch it, and I laugh.  Sometimes really, really hard.  Even at Kramer.  The show is well-written, no doubt about it.

And yet I find myself gritting my teeth and getting antsy when I watch it, just like I do when I’m behind some yapping, whiny, self-centered dolt in the line at the grocery store – the kind that argues over the price they thought they saw on the shelf.  When I’m not laughing, the show irritates the bejeebers out of me.

Part of it is, yuks aside, watching Michael Richards has, for me, always been like listening to fingers scratching on chalkboards.  I’ve had an almost-visceral distaste for Richards ever since Fridays, the abortive ABC whack at Saturday Night Live’s market back in 1980. Richards/Kramer is funny, occasionally? Sure.  Irritating?  Always, always, always.

But the biggest problem I’ve always had with Seinfeld is the overall attitude of the show.  If Seinfeld were a person, it’d be fussy, uptight, nit-picky, whiny, infantile and grating.

Watching too much Seinfeld for me would be like being snowbound in a hotel room with Mike Gelfand.

So I laugh.  And I grit my teeth.  And, usually, just don’t tune in.

If it’s the notion that I could build my own combat drone…:

Peter Singer, author of the new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, says ‘You can build your own version of the Raven drone, which is a widely used military drone, for about $1,000.’

…or the way the various commenters in the threat completely eviscerate the book’s hystericial concept (which, inevitably, involves “militias” getting drones to do their mischief).

And Sotomayor on the bench explains a big, nasty consequence – the SCOTUS equivalent of the “consequences” of hitting a bicyclist in your car while driving recklessly and being introduced to your new roommate in jail, big, lonely Otis…

…oh, my.  That took an ugly turn.  Let’s refocus, shall we?

Sotomayor’s take on judicial activism:

“Court of appeals is where policy is made…and I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that, courts don’t [makes scare quotes in the air] make law, I know [growd giggles as she regroups].  I know, I know, I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it, I know…

Not really [Mitch makes scare quotes in the air] condemning it, either, are [more scare quotes] we?

Rove breaks Sotomayor down [video].

UPDATE:  Rumor has it that Sotomayor is so far to the left on the Second Amendment, Amnesty and other issues that the Administration knows she can’t get confirmed, even with the libs’ headlock on the Senate.  Sotomayor is, so the theory goes, a campaign sop to Latinos.

A newlywed groom in Taiwan dies after drinking too much at his wedding:

The man, 35, an insurance company worker surnamed Wu passed out at home after drinking too much Saturday at a high-end restaurant in Taipei among more than 100 wedding guests, the Liberty Times reported.

So many snarky punch lines present themselves:

• “Who does he think he is?  Atomizer?”
• “Great idea for the next time I get married…”
• “Who does he think he is?  Brian Ward?”
• “He musta watched Mad Men  the night before…”

But I’ll leave it to the expertise of my assembled commentariat.

School choice in all its various forms – charter schools, open enrollment, vouchers in their various forms (scholarships, tax deductions and vouchers themselves) and easy access to homeschooling – have been a boon to millions of kids, not only improving the education the vast majority of them get, but doing it at inevitably less cost to the taxpayer.

So of course, the Dem majority in Congress (like that in Saint Paul) needs to destroy it, for the benefit of the Educational-Industrial Complex that so many of them serve.

Kathryn Jean Lopez on the Obama Administratin’s push to scupper the DC Opportunity program.

The program’s a success, increasing achievement scores.  More importantly, it’s improvements are persistent:

Unlike other programs under which students backslide when they switch schools, some children enrolled in D.C. Opportunity have improved, according to the Department of Education’s own evaluation, which reports that “achievement trends are moving in the right direction.”

Most importantly, it gives parents an option – a way out of DC’s school system, which is both the most expensive in the nation per-capita, and the most blighted; I was amazed to read that one in eight DC school students report having been attacked or threatened with a weapon in the previous year.

Yeah – gotta get rid of all that and get the kids back in the public system!

New York banishes cars from Times Square.

As part of a plan to make the Big Apple nicer to live in, the Department of Transportation has banned cars from stretches of Broadway at Times Square and at Herald Square – near Macy’s flagship department store.

Times Square without cars?  Sounds like the Mall of America without Japanese tourists…

No real blogging today.  I’ll be doing Memorial Day stuff.

Of course, the day exists to pay homage to the million-odd American servicemen who’ve died protecting this nation over the past two centuries and change.

It’ll be a while before I write a Memorial Day tribute I’m as happy with as the one I did two years ago, the tribute to 100-odd years of veterans from the various units of the North Dakota National Guard – the 164th Infantry Regiment from the Spanish-American War and both World Wars through Korea, the 957th Field Artillery, 188th Field Artillery and 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion in World War II, and, most recently the 141st Combat Engineers, and Jamestown’s 817th Engineer (Sapper) Company in Iraq.

Anyway, whoever your veterans are, it’s a great day to remember the sacrifices that kept this nation – and a good chunk of the rest of the world – free.