Smile of the Day

The Big Man Rocks!

No, not that Big Man.  This Big Man:

Best (and fattest) Governor in America, Chris Christie of New Jersey.  Saving the world, one rhetorical beat-down of a teacher's union member at a time.

Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan - An Unfair Comparison

Two key leaders for Republican House members moving forward are representatives Eric Cantor of Virginia and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.   Here is Cantor in the introduction to his manifesto, "Delivering on Our Commitment":

In thinking about and preparing this plan, I found myself guided by one simple proposition which I believe will be instructive for our efforts over the next two years: "Are my efforts addressing job creation and the economy; are they reducing spending; and are they shrinking the size of the Federal Government while increasing and protecting liberty? If not, why am I doing it? Why are WE doing it?"

I think this is just about right.   But Cantor's manifesto is strikingly vague on the most important task for American governance going forward -- entitlement reform:

As a Conference, I believe that we should immediately start a conversation with the nation about the kind of entitlement changes necessary for us to keep the promises made to seniors while meeting the obligations made to young workers and our children. We must outline our proposals, encourage the minority party (and the President) to offer their own, and have a serious discussion about the impact of each alternative. Our efforts will set the stage for concrete action.

That seems like Cantor's trying real hard not to use any proper nouns -- he's trying not to say the obvious tangible things that any responsible actuary would tell you about Social Security like, for instance, you have to (a) means test, at least at the very high income levels, Social Security and Medicare for current recipients with a sliding scale of means testing going forward for future recipients at lower income levels; (b) increase the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare eligibility; (c) reduce benefits across the board; and (d) provide a way for younger workers to finance their own retirements outside of Social Security using some of what they pay in Social Security taxes now.  It's too political -- it's like he's so afraid of saying the wrong thing that would come back to bite him in some future political ad, that he says nothing at all.

Barack Obama... We're Just Too Boring for His Brilliance

"He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”   That's what Valerie Jarrett, longtime advisor to Barack Obama says about her boss, as quoted in an article in today's Politico entitled, "The ego factor: Can Obama change?"

The comment is very revealing.  It's a mantra every middle-school principal has heard hundreds of times by parents of supposedly "brilliant" children who just can't seem to get their work done or get it done neatly or get it done on time.   "He's just so bored."   Then, when the same child does poorly in high school, or college, or in their first jobs, it's always the same.   "It's just not challenging enough for someone like him," their parents will say, excusing their failures.  

Barack Obama has been told -- largely by the women in his life -- that he was brilliant, probably since he was a child.  So when things got hard, instead of doing the difficult work necessary for real achievement, he became "bored," and moved on.   Writing a law review article too difficult?  "Bored" Obama becomes the first Harvard Law Review editor not to write and publish.   Actual legal practice too difficult?  "Bored" Obama becomes a community organizer and part-time lecturer at a law school.  Writing and publishing legal research as a professor too difficult?   "Bored" Obama manages to be probably the only professor in the history of the University of Chicago law school to maintain his position without doing any serious legal scholarship.   Taking positions on difficult political issues as a state legislator?  "Bored" Obama votes "present."

It explains a lot, methinks.

Noonan on Obama's Press Conference

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal today, describing her reaction to Obama's post-election press conference: 

"This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas."

Exactly.  The problem with Obama's presidency is simple:  he doesn't appear to be happy in the job, because he doesn't appear to like America very much.  Americans crave a cheerful Chief Executive, a "happy warrior" in their Presidents.   Obama seems like he's all too often angry, and all too often at us.

As I used to say teaching English, compare and contrast, this:

With this:

A Remarkably Red America

Here is the House geography after Tuesday's election, with the familiar colors, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats:

Wow.   Just... wow.  

P.S. You also have to believe that those blue House districts in Utah, Oklahoma, Texas and across the deep South are extra-blue Blue Dog Democrats, who might end up voting more often than not for conservative legislation.   

Birthdays Today

The great comic actor, Joel McCrea, was born today in 1905.  McCrea was the star of the great, Sullivan's Travels, written and directed by Preston Sturges, about a Hollywood director of light comedies who pines to do serious drama, only to find that what Americans in the Depression really need is a good laugh.   Here's a scene where he explains his dream of a "serious" social commentary movie to a skeptical producer..... hilarious stuff.   Too bad Sturges isn't around to poke fun at the current crop of Hollywood leftists.  

***

Today is also the birthday of Andrea McCardle, the original Annie, who it is remarkable to learn is now 47 years old. My eldest daughter loves Annie, so here's the original:

Girl Friday - Faye Dunaway

Hard to beat a young Faye Dunaway in the great Bonnie and Clyde.   It was probably the first movie that I wanted to see that I was too young to see.

Smile of the Day

El Rushbo must have a smile on his face.   A kid from Cape Girardeau, he is arguably the biggest reason why Republicans won this week.   When most of the GOP establishment was ready to roll over for the Obamamessiah, Rush kept the faith, kept his sense of humor, and kept fighting.  

Credit where credit is due.   That's a Victory Cigar he's holding. 

The Regular Guy Believes... the Republican Victory in the 2010 Election Still Isn't Quite as Cool As Watching Your Kid's Football Team

It's a measure of our civilization, perhaps so obvious that it goes unremarked, that Americans love watching their children play sports.   Do we care too much about them?   Well, maybe.   But the fact that we can care so much about kids' sports just shows how lucky we are to be Americans ca. 2010.  

This fall my son's eighth grade football team went 7-0.  Many of the kids probably won't end up playing in high school, and very few, if any, have any chance of even sniffing playing in college.   But, for this "one shining moment," they were perfect.  

Does the Market Love the Republican Victory? It Depends...

Well, it looks like it, if you look at today's 2% rise in the Dow:

And, the market being forward-looking, it would appear that a Republican victory started getting priced in around Labor Day:

On the other hand, in the long-term the market can only reflect the real strength of the economy.  Which makes me worried that we haven't found the bottom of the bubble quite yet:

Yikes!  We are either living in a historic time of remarkable growth and exploding affluence, or else we are living through a Grand Illusion.  

Birthdays Today

Today is the birthday of the Cowboy philosopher-comedian, Will Rogers, born in 1879.

Rogers once cautioned: "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." Sound advice.

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It's also the birthday of Dick Groat, Cardinals shortstop in 1964, when they won the World Series over the Yankees. I was five. I've been waiting for a Cardinals-Yankees World Series ever since.

Groat was also a great Duke basketball player -- his number is one of the Duke numbers that has been retired.   This is him after he scored a Duke record 48 points.

Girl Thursday - Grace Kelly

Just so hard to imagine a more beautiful girl than Grace Kelly:

Do think they might have had her in mind when they were casting Mad Men?

Smile(s) of the Day

Kristi Noem, Republican, won the only House seat in South Dakota.

Nikki Haley, Republican, is the new Governor of South Carolina, becoming the first Indian-American woman governor in American history.   The first Indian-American governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, is also a Republican. 

Susana Martinez, Republican, is the new Governor of New Mexico, the first Latina governor in American history.   (Think anyone will call her a "wise Latina"?)

Finally, Lt. Col.Allan West (ret.) is a new Congressman from Florida. 

OK, so that's three women, three minorities, two children of immigrants, right?   All elected by those sexist, racist, xenophobic Republicans, right?  Right?  

Wrong... it's four Americans, period.  That's what Republicans believe; that's what Democrats used to believe, or so they said.   The content of one's character, not the color of one's skin. 

Man, do these folks make me smile.

Now the Work Starts -- Five Things Republicans Need to Do Immediately

Republicans won the House handily last night.   The reports I've seen have them picking up as many as 65 seats, not quite massive earth-shattering tsunami territory (my prediction was +77), but pretty darn close.  They also picked up a number of state houses and governor's mansions, which means that when reapportionment after the 2010 census happens, Republicans can make sure that their majority in the House remains secure.  So, for the time being, here's your new Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio:

Not the most telegenic guy, and a bit too much of a professional pol for my taste, but hopefullly he has read the tea leaves and knows that voters who voted Republicans in this time actually expect them to do something. 

We didn't do quite as well in the Senate as many had hoped, but given the number of seats we had up, picking up six seats (and maybe seven, since Colorado is still too close to call and will inevitably go to a recount) is very very good.  In 2012 there are something like 2/3rds of the seats that are up that are held by Democrats, many of whom will be very vulnerable.  In other words, it's very likely that Republicans will win the Senate in two years time.  Having 47 or 48 seats now, however, does two things:  (1) it means that we can filibuster any new legislation, including the cap-and-trade legislation that has already passed the House, and any new appointments to the Supreme Court or, in egregious cases of nominations of radical jurists, to the federal Courts of Appeals; (2) it also means that we are close enough to 50 that, on some issues -- perhaps on repealing Obamacare -- we can pull moderate and vulnerable Democrats like Nebraska's Ben Nelson over to our side.   

All in all, a great night.  Think about it: if you had said in January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated that, less than two years later we'd be talking about Republicans picking up 65 seats in the House and 7 seats in the Senate -- a pretty historic midterm rout -- people would have said you were crazy.  Obama the Messiah had come; the tides were receding; the sun was cooling; it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarias.  Well, not so fast.

OK, that was last night.   Now what?   Here is the work that needs to get done starting now:

Birthdays Today

Only one birthday today that matters to the Right Curmudgeon, and that's the 80th birthday of Grandma Curmudgeon, shown here with my two big sisters.   It's December 1958, six months before I was born, so I'm in there somewhere too!  :)

Happy birthday, Mom!  See you soon!

Girl Wednesday - January Jones

From our favorite TV show, Mad Men:

Smile of the Day... The Day After That Is

The new Republican majority in the House should be taking its policy cues going forward from this man, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.  

I met Paul once on a plane.  He was reading Mark Steyn's book, America Alone.   We ended up talking about how hard it is to be away from your kids when you're traveling for work.  A good guy or, dare I say it, a regular guy.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame About Up

The one false step the Tea Party took this year was helping to nominate Christine O'Donnell for Senator from Delaware.  Sure, Mike Castle would have been squishy on some issues as a fairly "moderate" East Coast Republican, but he would have voted with us on most things.  Now, we're going to have Chris Coons, a certified socialist, as a U.S. Senator for the next six years.  It's unfortunate.  It could have been avoided.   The stakes are too high to have symbolic victories.

That all being said, Christine O'Donnell is a pleasant woman, right on the issues, and easy on the eyes.  She was treated with ridiculous, over-the-top harshness by the mainstream media.   If a woman -- any woman -- was treated that way by Republicans, it would be a national scandal.  Where are the feminists?  They're on the left, where they've always been. 

So, farewell, Christine!   We hardly knew ye!

I Voted for Ron Johnson and It Didn't Feel Like I Was a Racist Teabagger! It Felt Like... Victory!

Need more reasons to vote this year?  How about this:

And you thought Halloween was over!

Still More Reasons to GOTV!

Worth staying up late for:  Sharron Angle over Harry Reid in the Nevada U.S. Senate race.  

More Reasons to GOTV

Can't airbrush everyone out of this picture today, but we can get the guy on the right, Russ Feingold, former Senator from Wisconsin, as of 8:00 pm CST tonight.  

If You Need a Reason to GOTV

This from the left-wing website, The Daily Kos:

But this "Republican wave" - how scary, brrrrrr - is not about that. It's not about the "deficit", it's not about "government spending" - they couldn't care less about all this when they were in power. It's not about health care reform or Wall Street reform either. This is about the black man in the White House.  Hitler signs, Stalin signs - always amuses me how those ignorants can't tell the difference - Fox News lies, smears and nastiness, racists emails, "Magic Negro", all that started a long time before President Obama made even one move. Way before health care reform, and even before the stimulus - which not even one economist will argue that it didn't prevent second depression and if anything was too small - it was all a growing reaction to the election of the first black president.

This is what they think of us on the Left.  There are tens of millions of conservatives who were against nationalizing healthcare, against the federal government spending money it didn't have, against the idea of higher taxes, against abortion, concerned about our schools and our culture, and worried about threats from our enemies abroad long before they had ever heard of a State Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  But, now, because our opinions didn't change when an African-American was elected President, we're racists.   African-Americans are our co-workers, our partners, our neighbors, our fellow parishioners, our friends, and, more and more often, our family.  But because we disagree politically with policies of the President, we're racists. 

It's a sickening, infantile, undemocratic (because it shuts down debate) position.  GOTV!  But, when you do GOTV, be kind, be polite, be careful. 

UPDATE:

I thought it was just The Daily Kos.  But here's Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post today:

I ask myself what's so different about Obama, and the answer is pretty obvious: He's black. For whatever reason, I think this makes some people unsettled, anxious, even suspicious - witness the willingness of so many to believe absurd conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace, his religion and even his absent father's supposed Svengali-like influence from the grave.

Please.  President Obama has acted against the will of the majority of Americans to enact a nationalized healthcare plan that is already turning a huge portion of our economy upside-down.  He's adopted federal budgets with trillion-dollar deficients to hand down to our children and grandchildren.  He's blithely planning to allow a huge tax increase to take place in less than 60 days when the Bush tax cuts expire.   He has bowed to foreign dictators and apologized for America abroad.  And, all the while, he's condescended to those of us who disagree, just as Robinson does here.  "Unsettled, anxious, even suspicious"?   It's the Left's new mantra, straight out of the Stalinist playbook -- if you disagree with us politically, you must be insane.   It's despicable and pathetic to take this position in a democracy. 

And, oh, by the way, some on the Right might have less time for "absurd conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace, his religion and even his absent father's supposed Svengali-like influence from the grave" if (a) Obama simply produced his birth certificate, which is a very ordinary thing that many Americans do every day, for instance, when applying for a new passport; (b) if he hadn't spent 20 years in the church of a raving lunatic like Jeremiah Wright, who Obama himself disowned in the midst of his Presidential campaign; and (c) if Obama hadn't first come to fame by writing a freaking book about how much his father had influenced him!  I'm pretty sure Eugene Robinson has a copy of this little-known best-freaking-seller called Dreams of My Father.

Sheesh! 

Birthdays Today

Today is the birthday of Burt Lancaster, born in 1913, a great actor who now is perhaps best known for his supporting role as Dr. Moonlight Graham in the baseball movie, Field of Dreams.   Lancaster won the Academy Award for Elmer Gantry in 1960, but to me his best role was also his most sinister, as the evil gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).  Here's a classic scene in which Hunsecker dresses down a U.S. Senator:

Today is also the birthday of the great historian, Paul Johnson, born in 1928.  His book Modern Times is the best single-volume history of the 20th Century.   I have also read and liked several of his other books, particularly Intellectuals, which exposes the supposed great "liberal" political theorists of the past (Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoy, Sartre) as, for the most part, creeps in their personal lives.   Coincidence?  
































Finally, today is the birthday of the great St. Louis Cardinal centerfielder, Willie McGee, one of the most beloved of all Cardinals, born in 1958.   It never occurred to me that he could be 52; I'd bet he could still shag down just about anything that anyone could hit.

Girl Tuesday - Irene Dunne

Great movie star of the 1930s, Irene Dunne was also a well-known Republican and conservative Catholic.  So, on this day of a Republican resurgence that, in my view, will be led in no small measure by conservative suburban Catholics, who better to be our Girl of the Day:

A classy gal.  Here she is in one of her greatest roles, opposite Cary Grant in the great screwball comedy, The Awful Truth:

Smile(s) of the Day

Miss these guys?   I know I do.

So what are you waiting for?  GOTV!

Predictions Are Merging... and the SuperWave is Coming!

Yesterday I predicted a Republican pickup in the House of 77 seats.   Today Jim Geraghty of National Review predicts a pickup of 70 seats.   Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard says the pickup will be 76 seats.  And the Real Clear Politics average pickup is now 67 seats.    In gambling parlance they would say that the line is now being set for an over/under bet at 70-75 seats.  I want to bet the under, because I think wisdom says that at least a few Democratic seats will pull through at the end through Dem GOTV efforts (read:  busing union flunkies to the polls).   If I were wise, I'd say the pickup ends up around 60 seats, with the GOP gaining solid control at 240-195.   But to hell with it... I'm betting on the over.   Eighty seats would really send a message.... Here comes the tsunami!

 

Birthdays Today

Today is the great Lyle Lovett's 53rd birthday.  I'd have thought he'd be older than that, but perhaps it's me that's gotten old.  I've always liked his music, although he's never had what could be called a "hit" record.  Lovett sings every song with complete sincerity and commitment, as in this lovely ballad called "Nobody Knows Me":

Girl Monday - Jacqueline Bisset

Best girlfriend of a cop in the history of cop movies?  I'd vote for Jacqueline Bisset, Steve McQueen's girlfriend in the great Bullitt.  

Ron Johnson and the Citizen-Legislator

Speaking before a Chamber of Commerce group in Wisconsin, Republican Senate candidate, Ron Johnson, said this:

“Maybe what we really need in this country are citizen-legislators. People who have led a normal life, an ordinary life, a full life. Who had a full career, raised a family, drove their kids to school, attended their events.”

Here's hoping Johnson wins on Tuesday -- unseating Russ Feingold, the sham "maverick" Democrat -- and that he truly will be a citizen-legislator, a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington reprise.   The problem, of course, is that, once citizen-legislators get to Washington, they get surrounded by staffers (whose careers are in Washington), lobbyists (ditto), media-types (ditto), government bureaucrats (ditto), etc.   We sometimes forget that there are only 535 Congressmen and Senators, but there are millions of people who are either employed directly by or indirectly connected to the federal government.  Those are the people you'll see in Washington when you go to your kids' school for an "event."  

Hard to stay ordinary.  But, for now, Godspeed to Ron Johnson.  

***

Rich Lowry has a good article on National Review Online about Johnson that quotes James Harris, a local Milwaukee talk show host whose kids play in our Little League.   Here's a link to James' website.   A really good guy who, much like me, married way over his head.  :)

Smile of the Day

The big winner tomorrow?  America.  The second big winner?  Arguably, Sarah Palin.  Don't take her seriously?  She doesn't care.  I think she likes her chances against a Columbia-Harvard-U. of Chicago elitist leftist just fine.  I'll bet she throws a first pitch out better than BO too.