No Oil for Pacifists

From David Hitch in December 8th Worcester Telegram and Gazette (Mass):



(via Don Surber via reader Warren)

From a 2011 retrospective in the December 25th New York Times:


caption: Firefighters of Ladder Company 4, which lost seven men in the Sept. 11 attacks, perched together on their aerial ladder, watching a news bulletin in Times Square declaring that Osama bin Laden was dead.

In comments last week, KitWistar wrote:

Several of the recent postings and comments have made me think: Is the US actually too large, too diverse--both within its peoples and beliefs--perhaps too litigious & antagonistic, perhaps even too petty, within itself to actually continue to have one leader who can be successful both here at home and within the global community?

Is it even possible for the US government, as we now know it, to responsibly deal with issues that truly benefit most of its people, most of the time? (I don’t believe our government currently really does and perhaps hasn’t in quite a while. . .) Can the US successfully remain one nation? Should it?

Yet, whenever I read the Constitution I am in awe, that any nation could be built on such an extraordinary & beautifully written document, and then I feel a bit of a traitor for asking such questions.

Some background for all of you out in NOfP-land: I am not a politician, I’m not a lawyer, economist or educator. I do not call myself a liberal OR a conservative. I am liberal on some issues, conservative on others. Some current issues, I believe, do not even belong in politics at all. What I DO do, is think (one of the reasons I like NOfP so much. Thank you, Carl.)

I have become reluctant, particularly here in DC, to openly discuss my political views, which may make it appear that I don’t have any.

There are several points in Kit's cris de coeur, and I doubt I can respond adequately to all, but here goes:

1) America is large and diverse, both in its people and beliefs--and thankfully so. But size isn't the problem--America's founding fathers (and certain of today's paleoconservatives) worried excessively that the democracy of Athens or Rome was only reproducible in small city-states. That's one reason why they emphasized state sovereignty--and in any event, mass communications appears to have changed that equation. Nor is it immigration, which "historically has fueled American strength and growth." Illegal immigration, of course, is a different issue altogether.

2) America certainly has become too litigious--reform of tort law (though not its elimination) is long overdue, and would cut healthcare spending by about 10 percent. (Compare to Obamacare's intended "bending of the cost curve" from 9.9 percent to 12 percent of GDP--sounds like an increase to me!)

But I can't agree that we're more antagonistic today. I haven't heard recent news-flashes about Senators beaten unconscious within the chamber itself. Newspapers formerly were propaganda house-organs for political parties (now, having switched to Democrat mouthpieces, at least one knows what not to believe). And talk of unheard of incivility forgets the comparatively recent riots during the Vietnam war and the near-endless and unnerving Watergate crisis.

3) With the fall of the Soviet Empire, the global community has changed. And, perhaps more importantly, America's policy changed in response, when President Bush in 2005 rejected "the false stability of dictatorship and stagnation [that] can only lead to deeper resentment in a troubled region, and further tragedy in free nations." In other words, no more propping up dictators merely because they were our dictators.

The disappearance of a bi-polar world and the increased emphasis in U.S. foreign policy on the spread of democracy can be deeply unsettling. For example, if the promise of the "Arab Spring" turns into a bleak mid-Winter. But I'm not ready to give up on authentic efforts of people to topple despots. And that's in part because of what the absence of genuine democracy has done to Europe--cooked its goose. Which neatly transitions to the next issue.

4) Although I don't think our government is irretrievably broken, it's hard to dispute that the economic status quo has reached its sell-by date. I warned before the election that we were heading toward a real-world test of the Meltzer-Richard hypothesis "when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes." Well, we've arrived--in 2009, only 49 percent of filers had any Federal income tax liability. So, America soon must choose a path to "benefit most of its people."

In Monday's Washington Post, economics correspondent Robert Samuelson says "We're in denial":

[W]hile the economics of giveaway policies have changed, the politics haven’t. Liberals still want more spending, conservatives more tax cuts. (Although the tax burden has stayed steady, various "cuts" have offset projected increases and shifted the burden.) With a few exceptions, Democrats and Republicans haven’t embraced detailed takeaway policies to reconcile Americans’ appetite for government benefits with their distaste for taxes. President Obama has provided no leadership. Aside from Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, few Republicans have.

No one wants to take away; it’s more fun to give. All of 2011’s budget feuds -- over the debt ceiling, the supercommittee, the payroll tax cut -- skirted the central issues. There’s a legitimate debate about how fast deficits should be reduced to avoid jeopardizing the economic recovery, notes Charles Blahous, a White House official in George W. Bush’s administration. But the long-term budget problem, as he says, stems from Social Security, Medicare and other health programs.

Any resolution of the budget impasse must repudiate, at least partially, the past half-century’s politics. Conservatives look at the required tax increases and say, "No way." Liberals look at the required benefit cuts and say, "No way."

Each reverts to scripted evasions. Liberals imply (wrongly) that taxing the rich will solve the long-term budget problem. It won’t. For example, the Forbes 400 richest Americans have a collective wealth of $1.5 trillion. If the government simply confiscated everything they own, and turned them into paupers, it would barely cover the one-time 2011 deficit of $1.3 trillion. Conservatives deplore "spending" in the abstract, ignoring the popularity of much spending, especially Social Security and Medicare.

So the political system is failing. It’s stuck in the past. It can’t make desirable choices about the future. It can’t resolve deep conflicts.

An alternative theory is that we’re muddling our way to a messy consensus. All the studies and failed negotiations lay the groundwork for ultimate accommodation. Perhaps. But it’s just as likely that this year’s partisan scapegoating implies more partisan scapegoating.

I agree with most of this--entitlements are the core problem; Obama's ducked the issue; the commitment of Democrats to run a Mediscare platform "to scare grandma should not be underestimated."

But I also think that the fiscal crisis brings political opportunity. The next President -- whether Democrat or Republican -- must begin to tame the entitlement beast. That person must have the courage of Prime Minister Thatcher: she severed the link between state pensions and average private sector earnings. We must both decrease or eliminate cost of living hikes in Social Security benefits and means-test Social Security and Medicare. Ultimately, we must modernize all entitlement programs: Social Security privatized, and Medicare disciplined by market forces.

Oh, yeah, did I mention repealing Obamacare? That too--whether by Supreme Court decision or a Republican President and Congress or a triangulating second-term Obama.

BTW, history demonstrates that pro-growth policies and free trade are the most effective anti-poverty program, a fact that this Administration apparently never learned. Commerce and capitalism creates wealth; redistribution only impoverishes one to support another. (I'm going to skip the over-hyped and occasionably laughable claim of increasing income inequality--I've addressed it before, it's ever more controversial, and an update demands its own post.)

I do not pretend this will be an easy sell. Which neatly transitions to the next issue.

5) I share Kit's reverence for our Constitution. Its beauty lies in its brevity -- a scant 34 pages in 20-point type. But its especial brilliance is the Framers' assessment of human nature and the solution they devised:

Thus expert omniscience could not be trusted to check the excesses of popular passion, and public omniscience could not be trusted to check the excesses of expert arrogance. In the view of the framers, there is no omniscience; there is only imperfect humanity. We therefore need checks on all of our various excesses, and a system that forces us to think through important decisions as best we can. This may well be the essential insight of our constitutional system: Since there is no perfection in human affairs, any system of government has to account for the permanent imperfections of the people who are both governing and governed, and this is best achieved through constitutional forms that compel self-restraint and enable self-correction.

In other words, process is the answer; ideas not in the Constitutional text are neither enshrined or prohibited, but instead "are the provenance of politics, to be settled numerically":

the founding fathers didn't expect voter unanimity on controversial issues. Instead, they created a process to address disagreement--a relatively immutable Constitution, a Congress with limited Federal powers, separation of powers, a list of untouchable rights, and an expectation that state legislatures would reflect the will of their own citizens.

One of those relatively immutable rights is, of course, the 10th Amendment, designed as a limitation on Federal power

that devolve[s] decisionmaking to the lowest possible unit of government, such as states or municipalities. This tends to ensure that citizens have the maximum possible ability to monitor and participate in policy determinations, making law and regulation the responsibility of legislative and executive bodies most closely connected to those directly affected.

America's founders didn't presume they possessed all truth. So they created a process whereby each state and its citizens could ponder and pick the policy they preferred. Even if others disagree; no one state's policy is compulsory for any other. Even if misguided; a democracy is flexible, and can always change its mind.

That's a long-winded way of answering "yes": we can remain a single nation, within a Federalist system of representative democracy, with a leader and legislature in Washington and 50 leaders and legislatures in each state. Sooner or later, more voters and elected officials will awake to the dangers (e.g., public sector union abuses and pension burdens). That's assuming, of course, that we "Occupy the 10th Amendment."

Conclusion: Don't give up on this country. Unlike the Norwegian Blue, American Exceptionalism isn't dead--just resting. It's your call whether or not to share your opinion -- though I think polite objection wise.

However vocal you chose to be, don't retreat into despair. Selling doom is the sole capitalism progressives understand--and have cornered the market. American politics isn't broken, and don't count our people or potential out. Sooner rather than later, once again, it will be "Morning in America."

Greece isn't Germany, and if the Wehrmacht couldn't turn Greeks into Germans, than Brussels bureaucrats are less likely to succeed. So, everything you need to know about why the Euro was a mistake, and the gravity of Europe's current sovereign debt crisis, is captured in this chart of the perils of lending to Eurozone countries as if they all were supervised by the Bundesbank:


source: Der Spiegel

The same chart also appeared in Atlantic magazine's "most important charts of the year" with this comment:

"Despite repeated European Summits over the past eighteen months that were supposed to provide definitive resolutions to the European debt crisis and despite enormous IMF-EU bailout packages, government borrowing costs for the European periphery rose to unsustainable levels. More disconcerting yet, by mid-2011, a crisis that had embroiled the smaller countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, started knocking on the door of Italy and Spain, which is now calling the very survival of the Euro into question" -- Desmond Lachman, AEI

See also MaxedOutMama.

By comparison, see this chart, from George Mason University's Anthony Sanders:


source: December 15th testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts

(via the Tax Policy Center's Donald Marron via Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, ZeroHedge)

On December 2, 2005, the Washington Post published a page one story headlined "Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal". The kernel of the article was "a previously undisclosed memo" written by career staff members of the Voting Rights section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division recommending disapproval of a Texas redistricting plan--but were overruled by more senior DOJ officials, including the principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General. In a follow-up the next month, the Post repeated claims by DOJ staffers that "Politics Alleged In Voting Cases," pointing fingers at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Administration in general. About the same time, the WoPo wrote of complaints by current and former staffers that Bush Administration politics were ruining morale at the Voting Rights section.

Obviously, the Post had an inside source, particularly for the leaked memo, which "dominated the news for days." This NRO article by Edward Blum, Abigail Thernstrom and Roger Clegg explains:

The memo wasn't accurate. In fact, it was filled with erroneous assumptions and irrelevant statistics, it misrepresented the testimony of expert witnesses, and it omitted key data for the proper analysis of voting-rights law. The career bureaucrats who wrote it--one of whom now works for a left-leaning advocacy group--seemed to be intent on saving Texas Democratic incumbents any way they could. Thus they, rather than their Justice Department supervisors, were the ones brazen in their political motivation.

Abigail Thernstrom later wrote a book, Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, addressing these and other flaws.

But that's not what this post is about. Rather, it's about former DoJ attorney Hans von Spakovsky's stunning revelation last week of who leaked the memo, and the fact she's still a DoJ employee:

A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. . .

Ms. Gyamfi made no secret of her hatred of conservatives and Republicans when I worked in the Voting Section from 2001 to 2002. Later, when I moved to the Civil Rights Division’s front office, she had a difficult time hiding her contempt any time she was forced to meet with the political leadership. In revelations now known throughout the Voting Section, she apparently went beyond hatred and resorted to flagrantly violating Justice Department confidentiality requirements and ethical obligations. It is now common knowledge in the Section that she lied about her actions to Inspector General investigators and was caught in the lie with e-mail documentation. Ahh, it’s always the cover-up.

According to numerous sources within the Section, Ms. Gyamfi had been asked in two separate interviews whether she was involved in the leaking of confidential and privileged information out of the Voting Section. Each time, she flatly denied any knowledge as to who was responsible for the leaks. In a third interview, she was once again questioned about her role in the leaks. At first, she adamantly denied involvement. Then, however, she was confronted with e-mail documents rebutting her testimony.

At that point, she immediately broke down and confessed that she had lied to the investigators three separate times. Since IG interviewees are all required to take an oath to tell the truth upon penalty of perjury, and investigators record all interviews, an audio recording of these admissions must exist in the IG files. Mind you, Ms. Gyamfi did not say she misunderstood the questions. She did not claim to have forgotten something and later remembered it. Instead, she plainly admitted her deceit and ascribed her motive to attempting to protect the "other people" involved, i.e., the other career staff (mostly attorneys) who also violated their oaths of office and their professional obligations by publicizing confidential legal opinions and analyses.

After the admission, Ms. Gyamfi returned to the Voting Section distraught, crying and sobbing. She was consoled by another career employee to whom she confessed what had happened. This was witnessed and heard by other Voting Section staff, and the story of what occurred during the IG interview was soon known all over the Section.

Amazingly, despite Ms. Gyamfi’s admission of committing perjury not once, but three times, she so far has been neither terminated nor disciplined by the Justice Department. In fact, her boss, Voting Section Chief Chris Herren, continues to assign her to the most politically sensitive of matters, including the Department’s review of Texas’s congressional redistricting plan.

More disturbing, according to my sources, is that Ms. Gyamfi is now being treated as a hero by some of her Voting Section colleagues. Many of them are gratified at her efforts -- illegitimate or not -- to make the Bush administration look bad in its preclearance of Texas’s earlier redistricting submission.

If true, this is perjury, or obstruction of justice at a minimum. Which, given Attorney General Holder's "misleading" and "inaccurate" statements about Operation Fast & Furious -- why hasn't he resigned? -- probably will fly under the radar. Meanwhile, Ms. Gyamfi still draws a tax-funded paycheck.

So much for the rule of law. Somehow, I doubt Oliver Stone will be making a movie about this leak.

(via reader Warren)

Merry Christmas! Hope you're listening to some of these.

For twenty years, a non-profit organization called Wreaths Across America has delivered wreaths to Arlington cemetery, where volunteers place them on rows of white tombstones. I previously covered the 2008 funeral of 1st Lt. Chester Jordan; here's his wreath-laid marker:



Taking tomorrow off.

From the December 20, 2011, BBC:

'Tell loved ones they are overweight this Christmas'

Christmas may be a time of indulging for many, but health experts believe it is the perfect time to tell a loved one they are overweight.

The National Obesity Forum and International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk said it was important to be upfront because of the health risks.

Ho, Ho Ho.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has collected the 50 best political quotes of the year, including:

48) Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone "soft"? Really? -- Jonah Goldberg

45) There used to be no income inequality in China because everyone was poor. This is a tradeoff you accept for growth and freedom. -- Michele Caruso-Cabrera

38) [The Tea Party] has to be the first "Totalitarian" movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants. . . will leave you the hell alone. -- Ed Driscoll

31) I give the president credit for at least one thing. He’s proven that someone can deserve a Nobel prize less than Al Gore. -- Tim Pawlenty

16) Let’s pass a bill to cover the moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. And then let’s pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion. -- Paul Ryan

8) Those who can do. Those who can’t form a supercommittee. -- Mark Steyn

Read the whole thing.

On PJ Media, Victor Davis Hanson discusses the emptiness of various Obama mythologies. Here's the first: "Brilliant":

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, on no evidence, once proclaimed Obama "probably the smartest guy ever to become president." When he thus summed up liberal consensus, was he perhaps referring to academic achievement? Soaring SAT scores? Seminal publications? IQ scores known only to a small Ivy League cloister? Political wizardry?

Who was this Churchillian president so much smarter than the Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, more astute than a John Adams or James Madison, with more insight than a Lincoln, brighter still than the polymath Teddy Roosevelt, more studious than the bookish Woodrow Wilson, better read than the autodidact Harry Truman?

Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?

I ask not because I particularly care about the GPAs or certificates of the president, but only because I am searching for a shred of evidence to substantiate this image of singular intellectual power and known erudition. For now, I don’t see any difference between Bush’s Yale/Harvard MBA record and Obama’s Columbia/Harvard Law record -- except Bush, in self-deprecation, laughed at his quite public C+/B- accomplishments that he implied were in line with his occasional gaffes, while Obama has quarantined his transcripts and relied on the media to assert that his own versions of "nucular" moments were not moments of embarrassment at all.

At Chicago, did lecturer Obama write a path-breaking legal article or a book on jurisprudence that warranted the rare tenure offer to a part-time lecturer? (Has that offer ever been extended to others of like stature?) In the Illinois legislature or U.S. Senate, was Obama known as a deeply learned man of the Patrick Moynihan variety? Whether as an undergraduate, law student, lawyer, professor, legislator or senator, Obama was given numerous opportunities to reveal his intellectual weight. Did he ever really? On what basis did Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan regret that Obama could not be lured to a top billet at Harvard?

That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.

In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well. Read Plato’s Ion on the difference between gifted rhapsody and wisdom -- and Socrates’ warning about easily conflating the two. It need not have been so. At any point in a long career, Obama the rhapsode could have shunned the easy way, stuck his head in a book, and earned rather than charmed those (for whom he had contempt) for his rewards. Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed. Obama seems never to have done that. He liked the vague idea of Obamacare, outsourced the details to the Democratic Congress, applied his Chicago protocols to getting it passed, and worried little what was actually in the bill. We were to think that the obsessions with the NBA, the NCAA final four, the golfing tics, etc., were all respites from exhausting labors of the mind rather than in fact the presidency respites from all the former.

There's much more; read the whole thing.

Columnist and blogger Don Surber says President Obama started his term:

living the life of Riley. Then reality set in. Now he is living the life of Jimmy Carter. How did he wind up here?

So Surber lists the "Top 10 things Obama got wrong." I don't agree with all of them, but here's numbers 2-5, plus 8:

2. He got Obamacare wrong. Along those lines, President Obama saw how Hillarycare went and decided to do the opposite. Or likely more accurately, the president heard that Hillary lost on health care because it was written in the White House. He decided he would do it differently and have it written by Congress. This was a formula for failure because he lost control of the bill. This meant he was putting his name and reputation on the line for something he never wrote. And what was written was a mess.

3. He got the economy wrong. He overestimated its strength and went full-speed ahead with spending. Budgets for agencies were doubled as liberals wanted to have a field day regulating everything. But tax revenues tanked. That $400 billion deficit he campaigned against tripled. Guess what? The public noticed. So did S&P. He is now President Downgrade.

4. He got the stimulus wrong. The $787 billion stimulus was a grab bag of political kickbacks papered over with an unnecessary, ineffective and ill-advised tax cut. The unemployment rate would have gone to 9% if we do nothing, he said. We did something and it hit 10%. Again, people noticed.

5. He got the Tea Party wrong. This is where a sycophantic press corps really hurts a president. By blowing off the Tea Party as a pack of angry klansmen who cannot handle having a black president, President Obama lost the House of Representatives in 2010. . .

8. He got Simpson-Bowles wrong. Blowing off the entire package of recommendations to rein in spending and balance the budget took away any protection from the charge that he has no plan to balance the budget other than to raise taxes. He did not have to adopt the whole thing, just enough to announce that he has a serious plan to balance the budget beginning in 2017 -- when a second term of Obama would end.

Read the whole thing.

Fouad Ajami about America's exit from Iraq in the Wall Street Journal:

This wasn't something the people of that region pined for. These are lands that crave the protection of a dominant foreign power as they feign outrage at its exercise. Nor was it decreed by the objective facts of American power, for this country still possesses all the ingredients of influence and prestige. It was, rather, a decision made in the course of the Obama presidency--the ebb of our power has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

America was never meant to stay in Iraq indefinitely. In all fairness to President Obama, he had ridden the disappointment with Iraq from the state legislature in Illinois to the White House. He was not a pacifist, he let it be known. He did not oppose all wars. It was only "dumb" wars he was against. In every way he could, he kept Iraq at arm's length. He never partook of the view that we had secured strategic gains in that country worth preserving. It was thus awkward to watch the president on Monday, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by his side, explaining as we exit that "We think a successful, democratic Iraq can be a model for the entire region." The words rang hollow.

A president who understood the stakes would have had no difficulty justifying a residual American presence in Iraq. But not this president. At the core of Mr. Obama's worldview lies a pessimism about America and the power of its ideals and reach in the world.

When I heard Hitch was dead, I sketched out a post. Or started to--because then read a dozen tributes and obits, and decided I didn't have much to add. This is what I wrote before quitting, with some links to better writers following:

He was one of the best writers I ever read (and certainly the best I ever met--once, at Mickey Kaus's "moving back to California" party). Hitch was smart as hell, and loyal to those who deserved loyalty. But he could be just plain mean. And he also retained all the instincts of 20 years of Marxism, in his reflexive distrust of tradition and hatred of religion.

I probably despise Henry Kissinger as much as he did, but Hitch saw him as a war criminal, where I saw cowardice. Kissinger's détente was a morally bankrupt side-step that prolonged the Soviet empire for two decades, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. (Realpolitik is always a consideration, but Kissinger couldn't tell when it was wrong.) Hitch, I think, got Kissinger exactly backwards--because of his instinctive opposition to anyone he would have classed, at age 17, as right-wing.

"Hitch-22" was the most self-centered autobiography I ever read. Yet, it also displayed his most praiseworthy trait: the man knew history and literature, revered Western Civ., and thought our most important task was to defend it (except for Judeo-Christianity). I only wish the book had devoted more than one sentence to his admirable willingness to tell the truth to the grand jury--that his one-time friend Sid Blumenthal was a liar. Fortunately, Hitch did that elsewhere.

But even more brave than that was Hitchens's support for the Iraq invasion--a position he never abandoned. This cost him friends -- which took more courage than voluntarily being waterboarded -- and gained him (wrongly in my view) comparisons with Whittaker Chambers.

All that doesn't make Hitch a conservative. But, as commenter KitWistar said:

I agreed with him, I violently disagreed with him, but he always made me think & re-think. Thank you, Hitch.

So, if history calls Hitch a liberal, he was among the best in my lifetime.
__________

See Peter Hitchens, Christopher Buckley, John Podhoretz, Graydon Carter, David Corn, and Hitch himself about Iraq in the 2004 Wall Street Journal.

(via reader Warren, reader Doug)

Taking the weekend off.

I used a recent post to pile on links critical of Republican Newt Gingrich. Each focused on his scatter-brain insistence in a "Toffler-ite future" where everything can be quantified and understood--via government planning. Mark Steyn was particularly good listing Newt's "Brainstorms-of-the-Week":

"The Triangle of American Progress," "The Four Great Truths," "The Four Pillars of American Civilization," "The Five Pillars of the 21st Century," "The Nine Zones of Creativity," "The Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilization," The Thirty-Nine Steps to the Five Year Plan of the Six Flags of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers of the Nine-Inch Nails of Renewing Civilizational Progress for 21st Century America, etc.

I'm pretty sure the last one's a joke, but plausible.

I've devoted many electrons recently to the perils, and unlawfulness, of technocratic government. Newt's not alone in this, of course: Mitt Romney strays into the same territory, albeit minus the head-turning rapid-fire inconsistencies of Gingrich. And, of course, the left has been there for years.

But not before Marian Evans, better known under the pen name George Elliot. Her 1874 novel "Middlemarch" is among my favorites. One reason is her setting forth what has become known as the Casaubon delusion: an excessive and pathological search for all-inclusive answers. Such as -- I have argued -- global warming and scientific determinism. (To give a dying man his due, Christopher Hitchens sees religion the same way.)

Whether practiced by liberals or conservatives, we ought not to "impose our wishes on the world so as to make it conform to how we would like it to be." As Yuval Levin said (quoted here last week):

The framers were disdainful of the potential of technocratic know-it-alls whose abstract expertise was often of value only in what Hamilton calls, in Federalist 28, "the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction." And even men with expertise in administration should not be given too much power. In Federalist 68, Hamilton argues that, while good administration is very important, the idea that the best-administered regime is the best regime is a "political heresy." There is much more to government than administration.

Rely on the legal forms and popular sovereignty in a representative democracy--not judges nor scientists. And markets, not five year plans. In other words, the Constitutional process, not the Casaubon delusion.

Anyone know a Presidential candidate with that platform?

Terry Kilgore is a rocket man. Well, actually, he's an attorney and Virgina State Delegate (R-Gate City). But he wants the public to buy a ticket to space, and to prime the pump with a tax break--for the dead.

The state already hosts the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), designed to promote commercial dual use of the existing Federal Wallops Flight Facility. Wallops, located on Virgina's Atlantic coast, provides launch and support for "suborbital research programs." But with the end of the Space Shuttle, there's necessarily greater emphasis on commercial space opportunities (page 28).

One of those opportunities is space burial of the ashes of human remains, also called "Memorial Spaceflights". So, in preparation for the January session, Delegate Kilgore proposed a tax-break for those who pre-pay to be as far away from their loved-ones once they've departed corporeal existence. Specifically, House Bill 19 provides:

For taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2013, but before January 1, 2021, a deduction shall be allowed to the purchaser for the amount paid during the taxable year for a prepaid contract entered into with a commercial space flight entity, as defined in § 8.01-227.8, to place the taxpayer’s human cremated remains into earth or lunar orbit from a spaceport facility operated by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority established pursuant to Article 2 (§ 2.2-2201 et seq.) of Chapter 22 of Title 2.2. The total amount deducted by any individual shall be limited to $8,000 per person. The amount deducted on any individual income tax return in any taxable year shall be limited to $2,500 per person. If the purchase price of a prepaid contract exceeds $2,500 per person, any amount in excess of $2,500 may be carried forward and subtracted in future taxable years until the lesser of the purchase price or $8,000 per person has been fully deducted.

Supporters claim "the bill will raise the profile of and boost revenue at the spaceport," and "attract family and friends of the deceased, who in turn will visit nearby restaurants, hotels and other attractions," thereby benefiting state businesses and increasing tax receipts. Sounds suspiciously like Obama's stimulus plan--without (since it's cremation only) being "shovel ready."

The Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority Executive Director, Dr Billie Reed, called the burial plan a "giant step." (If not for mankind, then for the newly dead.) Yet, NASA can't even keep track of moon rocks. Perhaps a state could do better with ashes--though I thought "Virginia was for Lovers," not corpses.

Benny Peiser in the City AM (London):

After two weeks of talks and partying, delegates at the UN climate summit in Durban agreed to meet again for further talks and partying around the dream of a global climate treaty.

As expected, an informal coalition of major emitters such as the USA, China, India and Russia won the battle at the climate talks early on Sunday when they succeeded in delaying any binding decisions on CO2 emissions caps for years to come.

That postponed the danger of a legally binding climate treaty that would force major nations to impose extremely costly restrictions on cheap energy and thus their economic growth. "Business as usual" is now the unofficial motto of international climate policy.

With the enduring standoff in international climate diplomacy almost certain to continue, even environmentalists agree that the Kyoto Protocol will continue only as an empty shell. Europe’s political isolation on CO2 emissions has deepened, with Canada yesterday dropping out of the Kyoto Protocol and Japan and Russia too considering abandoning the sinking ship.

Even before the start of the Durban talks, the Basic countries -- China, India, South Africa and Brazil -- had announced that any future agreement must be based on the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will not be published until 2014, and a review of the UN climate convention -- not due to happen before 2015.

In truth, a global agreement on binding emissions caps is unlikely to ever materialise. By demanding an annual climate fund of $100bn (£64.2bn), together with billions worth of technology transfers, the Basic nations and their allies have kicked the ball into the West’s court, knowing full well that their key condition is not going to be met.

Shawn Lawrence Otto in the (liberal) Minnesota Post blames, well, groups and people like NOfP:

Perhaps most concerning for future negotiations is the apparent erosion of the status of science as an arbiter of the reality of climate change and the basis for public policy decisions. Future agreements will no longer be based on the scientific advice of the IPCC but instead decisions will only be informed by the science.

What this means is unclear but the motives are not. Science is the only even-handed basis for public policy decisions in a non-authoritarian government. The only alternative basis to the knowledge created by science, which is based on measurements of the real world, is the assertion of authority based on either belief or opinion, but neither of them are knowledge-based.

This new language appears to be carving out a further erosion of science's status as the fairest basis for public policy and leaving more room for authoritarian and denialist arguments to gain a foothold in future treaty negotiations.

Uh, Shawn, might that be because the science has been errenously alarmist, unsettled, and flat-out wrong. At the same time, science has been tainted by scandals, especially the apparently paid-for conclusions of climate alarmists. Simply put, "science" eroded itself.

And anointing science as "the only even-handed basis for public policy decisions in a non-authoritarian government" is in fact a plea for government by authoritarian scientists, not elected officials and their advisers. That's another word for that: fascism--albeit in the service of wealth redistribution. Consideration of economics -- adaptation and abatement -- might be a better way.

Thankfully, Durban did nothing, delaying alarmist dictatorial ambitions probably for ever:

[T]he Durban talks were saved from total collapse after India and China agreed to language that accomplishes the remarkable double feat of ensuring that the world will never do anything to avert climate "catastrophe"--while keeping alive the illusion that it will.

And the agreement contains a "vital get-out clause" that Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo says makes Durban a "voluntary deal that has been put off for a decade."

It's hard to imagine a better result. Well, maybe two decades.

The true-blue U.S. Navy is going green. And last week, the Navy agreed "to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels -- arguably the biggest purchase of its kind in U.S. government history." The $12 million purchase "works out to about $26 a gallon -- about five times more than traditional fuel." The biofuel then is combined with more traditional fossil fuels for a total price of around $16 a gallon.

Worse yet, the Navy is teaming with the Department of Agriculture for the project. That led to some of the biofuel being supplied by Solazyme, whose management includes:

TJ Glauthier is an advisor and corporate board member in the energy and "clean tech" sector. He advises companies dealing with the complex competitive and regulatory challenges in the energy sector today. He also served on President Obama’s White House Transition Team, where he focused primarily on the energy portion of the economic stimulus bill.

Questions:

With automatic sequestration about to slash the Navy's budget, why raise the price of fuel?

When Obama's green energy plainly has failed, why resurrect it?

When the price of food is being forced ever higher by diverting food to fuel, why make it worse?

With ample fossil fuel energy resources available in North America, why waste time on biofuel?

Answer:

The unholy marriage of crony capitalism, political correct defense and green do-gooders.

Conclusion: Is there a Navy code meaning the opposite of "Bravo Zulu"?

(via reader Warren via Hot Air)

Last Friday, the National Labor Relations Board dropped its complaint against Boeing. As you will recall, the NLRB's controversial complaint was prompted by the aircraft manufacturer's establishment of a second assembly line in a right-to-work state (South Carolina), meaning employees there could not be compelled to join a union.

Contrary to appearances, the NLRB didn't bow to political pressure or try to defuse a potential issue for President Obama's re-election. Rather, the settlement was a quid-pro-quo for Boeing's agreeing to a collective bargaining agreement with the International Association of Machinists so union workers will build the 737 Max jet in Washington state. The Wall Street Journal wonders:

Has there ever been a more blatant case of a supposedly independent agency siding with a union over management in collective bargaining?

Boeing says the new contract wasn't tied directly to a settlement of the NLRB complaint, and that it always made sense to build the 737 Max in Renton, Washington because its work force has experience on the current 737 and offers natural efficiencies.

But it's hard to resist the conclusion that Boeing felt obliged to make the agreement to save its more than $1 billion investment in South Carolina, where it is building 787s. Boeing might have won a legal battle in the end, but first it would have to run through an administrative law judge, then the politicized and Obama-stacked NLRB, and only then would it get to an appellate court. Meanwhile, its investment was in jeopardy and its legal bill was rising.

As for the NLRB, its decision to drop the case so quickly after the machinists cut their deal exposes how politically motivated the Boeing suit was. The NLRB is supposed to be a fair-minded referee in labor disputes, making sure neither side breaks the law. But the board put its fist squarely on the union side to make Boeing pay a price for moving one of its 787 assembly lines to a right-to-work state, to make sure Boeing never did that again, and to demonstrate to any other unionized company that its investment is at risk if it makes the same decision.

By dropping the case, the Obama team at the NLRB can claim it delivered those lessons without ever having to contest them in court. Oh, and Democrats running for Senate in right-to-work states, like Tim Kaine in Virginia, are spared from having to endorse a union position that is unpopular because it costs their states jobs.

Talk about a "rogue" agency (in the words of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)). Although the NLRB formerly said it found no evidence "that Boeing failed to bargain in good faith" with its Washington state unions, the agency managed to force a new deal, puting a thumb on the scales of management-union relations and discouraging expansion in right-to-work jurisdictions. Plus, because it was a "voluntary" settlement, the agency worked its will while avoiding judicial review.

You can't really fault Boeing for capitulating to get a gun holstered after being pointed at its head. But bullying American manufacturers for Big Labor votes can only result in more outsourcing. Plus, it remains an alarming example of this Administration's willingness to play politics at the expense of the rule of law.

(via RedState)

PJ Media's Belladonna Rogers advises how to respond when a woman finds herself the lone conservative at the table:

Before you attend another party, practice saying calmly, "I don’t accept the premises underlying your assumption." Say it as many times as necessary to feel comfortable uttering that sentence whenever you encounter a liberal.

In the context of your dinner conversation, here’s how it would go:

"What do you mean?" the shocked liberal will ask.

"First, I wouldn’t assume that anyone to whom you put that question would vote for Obama under any circumstances.

"A second premise of your question is that I vote as a woman. That’s a classic Democrat assumption."

Again, you’ll be facing a flummoxed liberal.

A word of warning: the more you say, the more the liberal’s response will turn to enraged apoplexy. By the time you’ve finished lucidly expressing your views, the liberal will react like a shrieking, psychopathic hyena being laced into a straitjacket. . .

In your calmest, most unemotional manner, point out to him that "the Democrat Party is based on identity politics. It has been for the last 40 years. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, Democrats were the working people’s party, as well as that of so-called ethnic voters.

"With the rise of affirmative action, feminism and newly-minted ‘minorities,’ the Democrat Party began tailoring its strategies to pigeon-hole voters into discrete categories, assuming each would vote as members of beleaguered groups that required exceptional government intervention. To me, this is a pernicious public policy for all affected -- except, of course, the Democrats scrounging for votes.

"I’m a professional woman in my early seventies and I’ve never felt like part of a beleaguered minority. I received a fine education, then went to work and had a successful career that continues to this day. I worked in a meritocratic system and it rewarded me. It would be absurd for me to think of myself as a minority when women are, numerically, a majority. Although many companies didn’t welcome women when I was younger, they do now, and even then, I made my way and did well through hard work.

"I resent the Democrat Party’s assumption that I vote as a vagino-American when in fact I vote on the basis of my reasoning capacity and my skill at sizing up people. I vote as a national security-minded, free market-appreciating, patriotic American -- not based on my gender.

"I only wish more women and genuine minorities understood that their permanent victim status may serve the Democrat Party by providing it with votes, but it utterly fails to serve the ‘victims’ in the long run. In fact, nothing could be more detrimental to them."

Agreed.

Ok, I'm serious this time: light to little blogging next week. That's because I wrote only one post after Wednesday when I went off anti-nausea medications in advance of Friday's ENG test. During that period, I wasn't able to look at a computer screen, so I've got nothing prepared.

Last month, I critiqued Republican Mitt Romney's assertion that China's currency manipulation violated trade norms or hurt US consumers. Carpe Diem blogger and econ prof Mark Perry agrees, in the December 2nd American:

When you hear discussion of China’s currency manipulation, keep the following in mind:

1. China's currency manipulation is a form of foreign aid, and to the direct advantage of millions of U.S. consumers, especially low-income groups, and to the direct advantage of thousands of American companies buying inputs from China.

2. Forcing China to revalue its currency would benefit some American manufacturers competing with China, but would significantly harm those American consumers and businesses currently buying undervalued imports. On net, there would be more harm to American consumers than benefits to American manufacturers, which would reduce our overall standard of living.

3. Like other forms of mercantilism and protectionism, forcing or pressuring China to appreciate its currency would favor certain domestic producers over millions of consumers and import-buying companies, but would make the United States worse off, not better off.

4. Finally, instead of complaining, we should be thankful for China's foreign aid to Americans through an undervalued yuan, overvalued dollar, and undervalued goods that collectively save American consumers and companies billions of dollars every year.

Bottom Line: If you wouldn't object to China sending products to the United States for free, then on what basis would you object to currency "manipulation" that allows you to purchase undervalued Chinese imports at a huge discount and great bargain?

Of course, Chinese citizens are governed by an authoritarian police state. But China's currency policies benefit America.

(via Cafe Hayek)

Inspired by reader KitWistar, here's a short list of must-have Christmas music:

1) George Frideric Handel/Messiah/Christopher Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music. Yes, only a third of the best known oratorio is about the birth of Christ; so what? This recording employs instruments and a version of the work that may be unfamiliar. But it's better.

2) Robert Shaw/Songs of Angels - Christmas Hymns and Carols: Justly famous for years worth of Christmas choral albums, this is one of Shaw's last Xmas recordings--so is digital.

3) J.S. Bach/Christmas Oratorio/Academy of St. Martins in the Fields/Kings College Cambridge/Elly Ameling/Janet Baker/Robert Tear/Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Here I depart from KitWistar's recommendation as to the orchestra--though keeping the bass soloist. And a second, overlapping suggestion: the remastered set of Bach "Sacred Masterpieces" Karl Richter/Munich Bach Orchestra, which includes his Christmas Oratorio, the St. Matthew Passion, the Mass in B Minor, the Magnificat and the St. John Passion.

4) Gregorio Allegri/Miserere mei Deus/Tallis Scholars. Yes, this setting of Psalm 51 nominally is an Easter work. But the four- and five-part a Capella choral harmony is astoundingly lush. And its history arguably is better--for at least a century, the Pope limited performances to the Sistine Chapel; copying the score was punishable by excommunication, effectively hiding Allegri from humanity. Until, the story goes, a 12 year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- touring Rome in the Spring of 1770 -- heard a performance, and promptly transcribed it from memory. I must have five recordings of this piece (which originally called for castrato, and now substitutes a boy soprano)--including an instrumental version by The Canadian Brass.

5) John Rutter/City of London Sinfonia/Cambridge Singers/Christmas Night: Carols of the Nativity. Rutter is the best living Christmas carol composer and conductor, with more than a dozen great Christmas albums. But this is the pick of the litter.

6) The Roches/We Three Kings. Is it folk or a joke? One either loves this album or hates it--I'm in the first category.

7) Aaron Neville/Soulful Christmas. One of the great R&B voices does Christmas perfectly.

8) George Winston/December: Piano Solos. Christmas "new age" style.

Look Ma, no "Nutcracker." Compare to Kit's recommendations.

Item: The Federal government uses the Healthcare Common procedure Coding System (HCPCS) to classify the medical services (Level I) and medical equipment and supplies (Level II) that may be covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Item: The 2011 list of HCPCS codes includes (page 34) code L7900--"vacuum erection system."

Item: A "vacuum erection system" is more commonly known as a "penis pump" and is used to treat erectile dysfunction.

Item: The American Urology Association (at 1-18) calls penis pumps "effective, low-cost treatment options for select patients with ED. These devices are available without a prescription." (Even stocked by Amazon.)

Item: In 2010, "vacuum erection systems" ranked 117th in "allowed charges" among medical equipment and supplies, with compensation totaling over $47 million for the year (page 3).

Item: According to Ben Domenech at the Heartland Institute, Medicare has spent over $240 million of taxpayer money for "vacuum erection systems" in the past decade. (I didn't check the math--data for the past three years are here.)

Item: As Daily Caller's Jim Treacher says, "Your tax dollars are still, um, hard at work."

Yuval Levin in the National Review:

This fall, liberals from the president on down have begun to grasp the scope of the political and intellectual disaster that the past three years have been for the Left. Their various responses to the calamity have tended to have one thing in common: immense frustration. But the different expressions of that frustration have been deeply revealing. They should help Americans better understand this complicated moment in our politics, and, in particular, help conservatives frame their responses.

Liberal frustration has fallen into two general categories that seem at first to flatly contradict each other: denunciations of democracy and appeals to populism. In September, Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former budget director, wrote an essay in The New Republic arguing that "we need less democracy." To address our country’s daunting problems, Orszag suggested, we need to take some power away from Congress and give it to "automatic policies and depoliticized commissions" that will be shielded from public pressure. "Radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic." Two weeks later, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Beverly Perdue, made a less sophisticated stab at the same general point, proposing to suspend congressional elections for a few years so members of Congress could make the difficult decisions necessary to get our country out of its deep problems.

Orszag and Perdue both seemed to channel a long and deeply held view of the Left -- that the complexity of modern life and the intensity of modern politics should lead us to put more power in the hands of technical experts who have the knowledge to make objective, rational choices on our behalf. Leaving things to the political process will result only in delay and disorder. President Obama has frequently expressed this view himself -- wistfully complaining to his aides earlier this year, for instance, that things would sure be easier if he were president of China.

At the same time, the Left has been rediscovering the joys of populism. Populism can mean many things, of course, but in America it has often meant not only a faith in the wisdom of the masses but also a channeling of resentments into a case that the majority is being oppressed by an elite few. And that is just what the president has sought this fall. On the stump, he has been railing against wealthy corporate-jet owners and their Republican henchmen, who care not for the struggling working man and want only "dirtier air, dirtier water, fewer people on health care, [and] less accountability on Wall Street." Meanwhile, a small but opulently publicized populist protest movement has arisen to "occupy" parts of New York’s financial district as well as parks and public spaces elsewhere around the country. Although it seems at times to be all fringe and no center, the movement does appear to be held together by resentment against corporate greed and crony capitalism, and a sense that the large mass of the public shares that resentment.

So should we be guided by expert commissions or a popular movement? Does the public have too much of a voice in our politics or not enough of one? It is tempting to see the Left’s simultaneous calls for populism and technocracy as a profound incoherence, because we are inclined to see the two as opposite ends of an argument about who should govern. . .

The simultaneous populist and technocratic appeals of the progressives’ successors in today’s politics seem to echo this premise. They at least implicitly suggest that technocracy and populism are two sides of the same coin.

And the framers of our Constitution seemed to think so too. But whereas the progressives championed both technocratic government and direct democracy, the Constitution stands opposed to both. As the framers saw it, both populist and technocratic politics were expressions of a modern hubris about the capacity of human beings -- be it of the experts or of the people as a whole -- to make just the right governing decisions. The Constitution is built upon a profound skepticism about the ability of any political arrangement to overcome the limitations of human reason and human nature, and so establishes a system of checks to prevent sudden large mistakes while enabling gradual changes supported by a broad and longstanding consensus. Experts should not govern, nor should the people do so directly, but rather the people’s representatives should govern in a system filled with mediating institutions and opposing interests -- a system designed to force us to see problems and proposed solutions from a variety of angles simultaneously and, as Alexander Hamilton puts it in Federalist 73, "to increase the chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws through haste, inadvertence, or design."

That such a system is far from populist should be obvious. In Federalist 63, James Madison says plainly that the constitutional architecture involves "the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity" from directly governing. The democratic elements of the Constitution are intended to be checks on the power of government, not expressions of trust in the wisdom of the public as a whole. And even as checks, these elements are imperfect. As Madison argues in Federalist 51, "A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

But those precautions do not amount to the rule of experts. The framers were disdainful of the potential of technocratic know-it-alls whose abstract expertise was often of value only in what Hamilton calls, in Federalist 28, "the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction." And even men with expertise in administration should not be given too much power. In Federalist 68, Hamilton argues that, while good administration is very important, the idea that the best-administered regime is the best regime is a "political heresy." There is much more to government than administration.

Thus expert omniscience could not be trusted to check the excesses of popular passion, and public omniscience could not be trusted to check the excesses of expert arrogance. In the view of the framers, there is no omniscience; there is only imperfect humanity. We therefore need checks on all of our various excesses, and a system that forces us to think through important decisions as best we can. This may well be the essential insight of our constitutional system: Since there is no perfection in human affairs, any system of government has to account for the permanent imperfections of the people who are both governing and governed, and this is best achieved through constitutional forms that compel self-restraint and enable self-correction.

This emphasis on moderating forms -- that is, the focus on arrangements that impose structure and restraint on political life -- is crucial, and it has always been controversial. Indeed, it is what troubled the progressives most of all about our system, and what troubled many other technocrats and populists before them. But as Alexis de Tocqueville noted a century before the New Deal, "this objection which the men of democracies make to forms is the very thing which renders forms so useful to freedom; for their chief merit is to serve as a barrier between the strong and the weak." And he added, with his usual prescience, "Forms become more necessary in proportion as the government becomes more active and more powerful." In other words, we need them now more than ever.

The framers’ formalism, with its humility about our knowledge and its limits on our power, is at work not only in our political institutions but in our economic system too. American free enterprise, like our constitutional system, establishes rules of the game that restrain the powerful and create competition that helps balance freedom and progress. And in economic policy, just as in politics more generally, that framework is undermined by a populism that wants to take from the wealthy and by a technocratic mindset according to which Washington should pick winners and losers. In economics and in politics, our defense against these dangers has to start with an adherence to procedural rules and forms that restrain the hubris of the powerful -- defending markets, not coddling big business or soaking the rich; defending the Constitution, not advancing technocracy or populism. . .

Because the Left has been so much more technocratic than populist these past few years, the Right’s response has naturally drifted into populist tones. That is appropriate, and it has been effective, but the tone must not overwhelm the substance of the Right’s critique. In this time of grave challenges, conservatives must work to protect the fundamentally constitutionalist character of the Tea Party, and of the conservative movement -- avoiding the excesses of both populism and technocracy as we work to undo the damage done by both, and to recover the American project.

Agreed--especially as to the shortcomings and illegality of technocratic government, and preference for the constitutional process.

See also Will Wilkinson's "The Occupy Movement's Enthusiasm and Contempt for Democracy", and MaxedOutMama's demonstration that liberal populists and papers can't do math.

The title's no typo. Unless Newt bests Romney in the primaries -- Gingrich now leads some national polls -- the mainstream media will run this on page one every day 'till November 6th:


source: Boston Globe

caption: Despite the pressures at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney kept the atmosphere loose. One year, after posing for a photo for a firm brochure, the partners did another take, the second time holding $10 and $20 bills. From left, Fraser Bullock, Eric A. Kriss, Joshua Bekenstein, Mitt Romney, Coleman Andrews, Geoffrey S. Rehnert, and Robert F. White.

To be honest, you can't blame the media for this one.

UPDATE: below


John Hawkins of Right Wing News polled right-of-center bloggers on 2012 Presidential nominees. The results (78 bloggers participating) are here. Newt Gingrich received the most support, while Rick Perry was second. Ron Paul was listed as least preferred to win the nomination. Btw, this week, Hawkins endorsed Gingrich. Complete questions and results here.

I was one of the bloggers polled. For comparison and comment, my answers were:

1) Mitt Romney
2) Ron Paul
3) Rick Santorum
4) Yes
5) No
6) Yes
7) Mitt Romney
8) Mitt Romney

See also Hot Air's survey, the WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, Ann Coulter, and don't miss Mark Steyn's analysis of Gingrich 13 years ago:

The Democrats demonised Newt as an extreme right-wing crazy. They were right -- apart from the ‘extreme’ and ‘right-wing’, that is. Most of the above seem more like the burblings of a frustrated self-help guru than blueprints for conservative government. For example, Pillar No. 5 of the ‘Five Pillars of American Civilisation’ is: ‘Total quality management’. Unfortunately for Newt, the person who most needed a self-help manual was him -- How to Win Friends and Influence People for a start. After last week’s election, Republicans have now embarked on the time-honoured ritual, well known to British Tories and Labour before them, of bickering over whether they did badly because they were too extreme or because they were too moderate. In Newt’s case, the answer is both. He spent the last year pre-emptively surrendering on anything of legislative consequence, but then, feeling bad at having abandoned another two or three of his ‘Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilisation’, he’d go on television and snarl at everybody in sight. . . For Republicans it was the worst of all worlds: a lily-livered ninny whom everyone thinks is a ferocious right-wing bastard.

MORE:

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: "Gingrich Is Inspiring--and Disturbing"