Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble
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- IDIOCY SQUARED: I mentioned in last night’s Ramble [2] that the Democrats are busy avoiding the real issue… and used that blithering moron Krugman as the example target. :
But even Krugman can’t bring himself to admit the real problem is not the person but the policy.
Krugman himself confirms his absolute cluelessness [3]on the point today:
A message to House Democrats: This is your moment of truth. You can do the right thing and pass the Senate health care bill. Or you can look for an easy way out, make excuses and fail the test of history.
Tuesday’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts special election means that Democrats can’t send a modified health care bill back to the Senate. That’s a shame because the bill that would have emerged from House-Senate negotiations would have been better than the bill the Senate has already passed. But the Senate bill is much, much better than nothing. And all that has to happen to make it law is for the House to pass the same bill, and send it to President Obama’s desk.Krugman once again demonstrates to the world that he hasn’t a half a clue, or perhaps half a care, about the will of the people. Voters. Those little speed bumps to the neo-socialist agenda. You remember, voters, right Paul? Gallup: [4]
PRINCETON, NJ — In the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, the majority of Americans (55%) favor Congress’ putting the brakes on its current healthcare reform efforts and considering alternatives that can obtain more Republican support. Four in 10 Americans (39%) would rather have House and Senate Democrats continue to try to pass the bill currently being negotiated in conference committee.
The public has been sending this message right along… stop the healthcare bill. Despite the will of the people, Krugman, like the good little progressive he is, continues to march under the red flag.Don’t it figure?
- SPEAKING OF HEALTHCARE: Mickey Kaus writes: [5]
[6]Kaus
Congressman Raul Grijalva–co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus–must be a great source for the liberal healthbloggers in the TPM/TNR/Whippersnapper axis. He’s now dramatically announced that he can’t vote for the Senate’s health care bill [7]–“It does not add up to an improvement in our health care system”–and proposed a complicated two-step alternative that would require the Senate to pass a bill he prefers via the “reconciliation” process, to be followed by a “handful of popular regulatory measures.” Yet liberal health reform proponents–who routinely [8] point out [9]that a) the Senate bill is a huge improvement and b) the reconciliation and piecemeal alternatives are unworkable–somehow seem to spare Grijalva the scorn he deserves.Under the Ezra Klein Standard, shouldn’t Grijalva be condemned for being “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people”? [10] I think yes!
So do I, Mickey, so do I. .Clearly, there is a double standard in play here. Not that that’s anything new for the Neo-socialist Progressives.
[11]'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This healthcare takeover is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX HEALTHCARE BILL!
Kaus goes on to express the belief that the statement is exactly the kind of CYA you expect from politicians who recognize that their stated goals are going to happen and who still want to be seen as the agendas greatest proponents. It’s a thought that the merits serious consideration. If it’s true, it appears even the progressives in Congress understand in a way that Paul Krugman does not that what he and the rest of the ultra far left is beating on is now an ex- horse.
- HEY, HOLDER: ABOUT THIS FRUIT OF THE BOOM GUY… Do you REALLY mean to tell me you consider (note I didn’t say ‘think’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is an everyday criminal? Most people don’t. Says Byron York today: [12]
After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term “war on terror,” the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with a government-paid lawyer — giving him the right to remain silent and denying the United States potentially valuable intelligence that might have been gained by a military-style interrogation?
Look, gang, this goes directly to what I said in my most recent Pajamas Media article: [13]
The bottom line is that, like the Clinton administration, the Obama administration has approached al-Qaeda’s war on us thinking that it could be contained and dealt with in the civilian criminal justice system. We don’t, in other words, need to treat this as a war. We may or may not have returned officially to the Gorelick policy, but we returned to the attitude which gave us the policy when we put Democrats back in charge of the executive branch.
Granted that two data points may not prove a trend, but there’s one more puzzle piece on this line: 9/11 wasn’t the first attack on the World Trade Center. The first one occurred under Bill Clinton in 1993. Starting a war was exactly al-Qaeda’s purpose then. Despite this, Bill Clinton decided to not treat it as a war. Instead, the perpetrators of that attack were considered to be a band of outlaws to be dealt with by our criminal justice system and diplomacy.
The Gorelick wall is directly consistent with that attitude. Clinton hailed the arrest and conviction of the masterminds involved with that 1993 plot and apparently considered it a closed case, ignoring the larger network of thugs still poised and equipped to attack us. The overall feeling projected by the White House was that we didn’t need worry about terrorism anymore, because we’d made an example of the criminals we managed to catch. Certainly this made Clinton’s leftist base feel good and made him popular enough among his base to win a second term. But I daresay that the second World Trade Center attack on 9/11 was the direct result of that mistaken approach and that, obviously, terrorism had not been contained by Clinton’s approach.
The Democrats didn’t learn from that mistake. That point was driven home soundly when President Obama tried to mimic Bill Clinton’s strategy on terrorism, and the results were predictable. The only reason that they didn’t have to pick pieces of plane and people out of the tarmac in Detroit is because the detonator failed.
But the lack of proper treatment for this prisoner, the lack of correct interrogation, is also directly consistent with the Gorelick wall. This incredibly stupid maneuver was caused by the underlying attitude that I spoke of in that article. This is not a matter of a lack of leadership. It’s simply the democrats are leading us in the wrong direction… and to our destruction.
- THE DATE IS SET: (GOING FROM IT to TT) For those who don’t know, I have spent the last (nearly) 20 years in IT. I did well, too. The most recent economic downturn, however, (thank you, Democrats!) forced me to seek a more stable career than what IT has turned into of late. I’ve decided to try my hand at long-haul trucking. Money ends up being about the same. I went to a school to get my CDL and I have as of this week passed all my driving tests, and I will be in Wisconsin on Groundhog day (2/2) for orientation at my new job.
[14]My new career
I will probably be leaving at least 24 hours before that. That’s because all of the paperwork has been signed, the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed to get me working in the new job. I most likely will not be writing this Nightly Ramble for at least a month following the end of January. That’s because all I will have in the way of network access to use whatever I happen to stumble across in the offices, and what little network connectivity my smart phone gives me. Following that, I will obtain my own laptop with an air card and we’ll be posting rather a lot, I should think. It has been suggested that I should seriously consider changing the name of this blog to something more reflective of my new career, since it was originally named for my old one. I’m giving that serious consideration, but no ideas come to mind immediately. Besides, I like the reputation that this blog has established with this name. We have within the last several months started getting some very good traffic and I don’t want to spoil that.