Karl Rove, Film Reviewer

Karl Rove has a good piece in the WSJ about Obama's 17-minute, Tom Hanks-narrated campaign film:

Almost as important as what the film says is what it doesn't. There's not a word about the failure of the president's stimulus to produce the jobs he pledged—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer Americans are working today (132.7 million) than when Mr. Obama was sworn in (133.6 million).

There's nothing about his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term—according to Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt, the administration has piled up more debt in three years and two months ($4.93 trillion) than his predecessor did in eight years ($4.8 trillion).

Nothing is said about the centerpieces of last year's State of the Union—green energy jobs (Solyndra anyone?) and high-speed rail (fizzled). Nada on the president's promises about how ObamaCare would lower premiums and lower the deficit while allowing people to keep their existing coverage (all untrue).

As they say, read the whole thing.   To me, the things that will hurt the President the most will not be his failures on the economy or the deficit.   Nor will they be increased danger abroad (read:  Iran).   Rather, I think the real problem with the President is simply the distance he has fallen from the promise of idealism, "hope and change," bi-partisanship, and civility.   This is a nasty, hardball, Chicago-style Presidency, and even the true believers can see that.   What must independents think?   People don't like being sold a bill of goods.   He made fools of us once.   Will we let him do it twice?

Does Santorum Still Have a Chance?

Yes, but it's a slim one after his thumping in Illinois last night.   The polls predicted a 15 point victory for Romney; the Regular Guy had predicted a single-digit result; but the 12 point victory by Romney was pretty impressive.    Here's the thread-the-needle road to victory for Santorum.   I'd give this about a 2% chance at this point:

1.  Win Louisiana on Saturday.
2.  Gingrich drops out.
3.  Win Wisconsin convincingly on April 3rd and do well enough in Maryland and DC to actually win the day in terms of delegates.
4.  Win Pennsylvania on April 24th convincingly and win at least one other state, preferably New York.   (The other states include Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware, all of which are probably too liberal for Santorum.   New York ironically might be the least liberal of those states.)
5.   Be at least semi-viable going into May, when the calendar is more favorable, including contests in the South (NC, Arkansas, Kentucky, WV, Texas) and Midwest (Indiana, Nebraska).
6.  Generate enough momentum to make a run at the big enchilada in early June.... California, a winner-take-all state.

I frankly expect the reverse to happen.    Santorum will win Louisiana, and Gingrich will get out, but Romney will start picking up endorsements, including, I expect, from three of the following four men:  Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Tommy Thompson and Ron Johnson.   And then Romney will win Wisconsin convincingly and the pressure will be on for Santorum to bow out.   He may limp along to Pennsylvania, win his home state on April 24th (and nothing else), and then get out with a ringing final speech that will set him up for a future in the party.  

Romney Not Bad

Having supported Santorum for the past few weeks, and still preferring him to Romney, it's important to recall that Romney would still be infinitely better than Obama.   Here's a clip that shows why:



Not bad by Romney. A pretty good aphorism in response: "If you want free stuff, vote for the other guy." But he might have done even better by making the point that the notion of the government giving you "free" anything is magical thinking. What the young lady who asked the question really wants is for someone else to work and pay taxes to pay for her stuff. So it's free to her, I suppose, but it's not "free" to the person who has to pay for it.

And then it really does become a moral question. Not the one Romney articulates, although I don't disagree -- that it's immoral to borrow $1 trillion a year to spend on government programs.

And not the question the MSM wants this issue to turn into -- whether sex itself is moral or immoral.

The real moral question always gets obfuscated because we have the middlemen of government insulating us from the reality of our own positions. The real moral question is... by what right do you confiscate someone else's earned income using force (police and the threat of imprisonment) so that you can use their money for your own purposes?

That's the moral question at the heart of the argument between conservatives and the liberals/radicals who support Obama.   It's an argument of free individuals versus the coercion of statists.

Girl of the Day - Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence got rave reviews for the indie film Winter's Bone a couple of years ago, for which she got an Academy Award nomination.   So she's a real actress.   Let's see how she likes being a enormous worldwide movie star.    Next week The Hunger Games opens, and if the Regular Daughter (No. 2) is any indication, it's going to be HUGE.

Birthdays Today - Ferris Bueller

It's this guy's birthday today:







He's fifty.   Feel old yet?

Two Stories, One Story IV

Two stories in yesterday's headlines were really part of the same story.   The first story was Paul Ryan issuing the House Republicans' proposed budget, a plan that reforms the tax code to simplify it (two rates at 10% and 25%, fewer deductions) and to spur growth (cutting capital gains and corporate tax rates), reforms Medicare (retaining the program for people over 55 while shifting it to a market-based approach for people younger than that), and putting the budget on pace to balance.   Over the 10 year budget window, it would cut $5.3 trillion from the Obama proposal.

***

The second story is something of a dubious achievement:  yesterday the deficits racked up by the Obama administration in 38 months exceeded the deficits of the Bush administration over eight years that included the aftermath of 9/11 and two wars.  

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.


The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.


The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.

Can Americans really re-elect a man who blithely will have presided over four straight years of trillion-dollar plus budget deficits?   Who has added more than $5 trillion to the deficit?  A man who proposes more of the same as far into the future as the eye can see?    I hope we are not that foolish.

***

So... two stories, one story:   this is a yarn about a responsible adult and a petulant child.   A story about the man who would fix things and the boy who breaks his toys in a fit.   A man who knows that money doesn't grow on trees and a baby who thinks golden unicorns will come from the sky to save him.  

So the election comes down to whether America is a responsible adult nation anymore, or whether we are spoiled children.  

Illinois Primary Update

Cognitive dissonance in polling.   ARG and PPP both have Romney up about 15 points in Illinois.   But both took those polls over the weekend, which happened to be (a) St. Patrick's Day; (b) the first weekend of the NCAA tournament; and (c) the most beautiful weekend in March I've ever seen in the upper Midwest.   So I tend to think that the demographic skew toward people who want to talk to pollsters on the phone over that particular weekend is large.    I don't trust them.

Meanwhile, something interesting is happening in the Gallup national tracking poll:

I get the impression that things are much closer than people think between Romney and Santorum in Illinois, and that the narrative after tonight will be another close Romney win, more talk about why he can't close the deal, and Santorum crowing about how he comes this close while being outspent.

By the way, from a GOP perspective, the more the narrative becomes Romney is buying the election by outspending his rivals, the worse it is for November.

Girls of the Day - 21 Jump Street Version

The Regular Son and I caught 21 Jump Street last weekend.   Short review:   very vulgar, very funny.   About on par with Superbad in terms of both.   Great stuff.  

Anyway, it's mostly a vehicle for the male-bonding leads, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, but each has a "love interest" of sorts, neither of which is age-appropriate for twenty-something cops pretending to be high school students (probably intentionally as part of the "edgy" humor).   For Hill it's a high-school girl, Molly, played by Brie Larson:

For Tatum, it's his chemistry teacher, played by Ellie Kemper:

Slow Joe Strikes Again

It would be hard to get a combination of sheer stupidity and arrogance crystallized and concentrated in anyone to a greater degree than it is in our Vice President, Joe Biden.   Here's his latest idiocy:

Vice President Joseph Biden on Monday night upped the ante around the already quite-dramatic assassination of Osama bin Laden.

From the pool report of Biden's comments during a fundraising event in New Jersey come these quotes.

You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.

President Bush ordered Special Forces into Afghanistan weeks after 9/11.   Read Horse Soldiers if you want audacious.    President Bush ordered the surge in Iraq at a time when the entire Democratic Party (and many Republicans) wanted to cut and run.   That was audacious.   Obama ordering the raid that got Osama... not so much.

Look, don't get me wrong.   It was great that the Seals got bin Laden.   But President Obama's role in that was literally a formality.   Any President, given good intelligence that the location of Osama bin Laden was known to a sufficient degree of probability, would have made the same call.   Bush.   Gore.   Kerry.   Clinton.   I would have made the same call.   You would have made the same call.   Part of this is based on the nature of the decision... by the time it even gets to the President's desk, the intelligence has been checked and re-checked and re-re-checked, and the plan has been checked and re-checked and re-re-checked at multiple levels by people with much greater familiarity (of necessity) with the facts, capabilities, and tactics than the President.  

As for Slow Joe... 500 years, really?   You mean Washington Crossing the Delaware wasn't more audacious?   Lee's invasion of the North culminating in Gettysburg?   Sherman's March?   The Doolittle Raid?   D-Day?   The decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki?   The Raid on Entebbe?  

And yet these people think they're so much smarter than the rest of us rubes.

Illinois Primary Today

This is an interesting primary in terms of how to spin it afterwards.   The latest polls suggest a huge Romney win, something on the order of 15%.   If Santorum could make it somewhat close, he could spin it as a moral victory, which would then carry him into the Louisiana primary on Saturday, where he would be expected to win.   If Romney has a blow-out win, on the other hand, that would solidify his narrative of inevitability.   Which is pretty strong anyway.   The scenario for Santorum remains:  make it close in Illinois; win Louisiana; win Wisconsin on April 3rd.   Then see where we are.   

Weirdly, the Wisconsin primary (where the Regular Family lives) may turn out to be the Last Stand for non-Romneys.   Buckle up.

Romney, Organization and Playing the Game

One of my faults in terms of my career and financial success my whole life has been an unwillingness/incapacity to "play the game."   The Regular Son, somewhat unfortunately, somewhat fortunately, shares this failing.   The compensating gains for me have been a great marriage, a great set of kids, more time with my family, less time doing bullshit, more time to do the things I want to do (such as they are), etc.   Life is tradeoffs.

I'm thinking about "playing the game" in the context of the Presidential election because I noticed something funny over the weekend.   Mitt Romney won the Puerto Rico primary.   Now Puerto Ricans are American citizens, just as American as you are or I am.   But, regardless of the fact of citizenship for individual Puerto Ricans, it remains a fact that Puerto Rico is not a state and has no electoral college votes.   Puerto Rico literally does not matter at all in terms of winning the Presidency.    Yet Romney's 22 delegates from Puerto Rico will have just as important a role in picking the Republican Presidential candidate as, say, delegates from Ohio, a must-win, swing state. 

So I went back and looked at the results to date.   Romney has won a total of 56 delegates in sweeping the following non-states:  American Samoa, Guam, the American Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Marianas.   That's over 10% of his total delegates and roughly 20% of his current lead over Rick Santorum. 

Romney's organization and intelligence in going after delegates in these non-states is admirable.   Santorum's unwillingness to play the game of amassing delegates is also admirable, though in a different way.    But it is very weird that, if the convention becomes close, delegates from Guam or Samoa or some other non-state could push Romney over the top. 

Girl of the Day - Ursula Andress

We tend to think of the 1950s and early 1960s as a more innocent time.   This is the kind of simplistic narrative that the mainstream media specializes in... we were innocent until the JFK assassination, and then we weren't.   I've always been suspicious of narratives of The Fall (and even more suspicious of narratives that we can recreate Eden, utopia, the Great Society, the Worker's Paradise, whatever you want to talk about).   People have always been the way people have always been.   There never was an Age of Innocence and there never will be.

Which is a pretentious way of discussing the Ur-Bond girl from the early 1960s, Ursula Andress.   Not much by way of innocence in this iconic photograph:

Ursula Andress turns 76 today.  

The Future of Education

I've lamented publicly on this blog about the anachronistic structure of college education, in which young people are forced to spend extortionate sums in tuition to get a college degree when the knowledge they are supposedly there to learn is available for free online.  

I've also lamented privately about the fact that the Regular Son leaves for college in a little over three years, and the revolution (inevitable... that which can't continue, won't) in college education won't have happened yet.

Well, maybe.   Here's an article from NRO that dissects the economic fallacies driving college tuition increases.   At the end they note these promising developments:

There have been a number of promising recent developments in higher education. The most impressive may be the rise of Western Governors University, a highly innovative institution built around entirely online delivery and a competency-based degree — i.e., WGU grants credits based on test performance, and does not require class attendance. A WGU student who is already very knowledgeable about software programming, having worked as a coder before starting work on her degree, might secure a credit in computer science by passing a final exam without actually taking a course. In essence, WGU offers the equivalent of a CPA exam for every subject.

Moreover, WGU charges its students based not on the number of credits they complete, but rather on an “all you can eat” basis over two semesters: If you can demonstrate competency in seven or eight semesters’ worth of credits in only two semesters, you pay the price for two. The beauty of the WGU model is that it allows students to seek instruction anywhere they can find it — they can read independently, study with a tutor, enroll in some other school, etc. — while turning to WGU to certify that they’ve mastered the relevant material.

In a somewhat similar vein, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has sponsored MITx, a program through which students who take free online courses offered by MIT can, for a modest fee, secure an MITx credential by demonstrating a thorough understanding of the material.

There is nothing magical about greenswards on college quads.   There are public parks where you can get your natural beauty for free.   There is nothing magical about spending four years on a college campus.   Most people can learn whatever they need from college in two years or less.   You can already "test out" of college courses by taking AP classes in high school.   Why couldn't you just "test out" of college altogether?  

And there is nothing magical anymore about college libraries.   It used to be that you went to a university because that's where the books were.   You had to go there to get access to knowledge, and they could charge a premium because there were "barriers to entry" as the economists would say.   Now access to knowledge involves precious little in terms of transaction costs -- it's a frictionless click of a mouse away.  

The Greatest Living American?

Probably not.   Not when there are decorated soldiers among us who fought heroically in our country's wars.   But I'd be hard-pressed to name a better elected public servant than Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan:

Girl of the Day - Summertime! Version (More Kate Upton)

It's pushing seventy degrees and sunny here in Milwaukee on a Friday afternoon.   Best early spring ever in Wisconsin, at least in the 23 years I've been here.   (Crap, has it been that long?)   So, in honor of the sunshine, let's indulge:

Horrifying or Hilarious?

We report.   You decide.

Too Young

Clarity v. Demagoguery

The Catholic bishops U.S. conference released a statement yesterday on the HHS mandate controversy that is remarkable in its moral clarity and most remarkable, in my view, for the following paragraph, which stands as an indictment of the demagoguery that the Democratic Party has engaged in ever since the Obama Administration chose to pick this fight:  

We wish to clarify what this debate is—and is not—about. This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive, even when it is not provided by the Church’s hand and with the Church’s funds. This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the Bishops’ somehow “banning contraception,” when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is instead about the federal government forcing the Church—consisting of its faithful and all but a few of its institutions—to act against Church teachings. This is not a matter of opposition to universal health care, which has been a concern of the Bishops’ Conference since 1919, virtually at its founding. This is not a fight we want or asked for, but one forced upon us by government on its own timing. Finally, this is not a Republican or Democratic, a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American issue.

The Regular Son Reviews.... Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball (Guest Post)

I've found that you can plot out almost any "classic" rock and roll artist's career with this formula: First they struggle to get their foot in the door, then they struggle to sit down in the living room and turn on the TV. Then something clicks, or a leviathan of a marketing campaign propels them to a breakthrough, and then comes three years in which they are, as The Regular Guy would say, "exploding with creativity"'. But then they lose the drive, the passion, the fire under their ass, they've got one too many "yes men" or just run out of inspiration, and you wind up with Bob Dylan's "Self-Portrait". (Or, in the Boss's case, 1992's infamous double release of "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town".) Then, once they've taken the bait and bitten the hook of success-induced complacency, they tend to flop around a little bit on the pier, someone says, "Oh, wait, this fish isn't dead," they make a "comeback" record (e.g. "Blood on the Tracks" or 2002's "The Rising"). And eventually they wind up in the filet of selectively reflective Michael Jackson-style posthumous albums.

So where does Bruce Springsteen's "Wrecking Ball" fit in?

OK, my problem with all of our beloved Brucie's 2000s albums--or, for that matter, just about anything since the last synth-soaked notes of "Dancing in the Dark"--was that it was all just so boring. Repetitive, complacent, punchless, boring. I can see it now--a gray-haired, spray-tanned Springsteen still wearing his schvanzola-compressing jeans from 1984, directing an E Street Band that has become less a band than a jobs program, saying, "OK boys, everybody come in on count 1, G-G-G-G. That's you, all seventeen acoustic guitars, the whole violin section--Max, make sure to use that annoying cymbal the whole time--and just sorta play noise till the end. And what the hell, throw in a C chord after the fifth chorus. Alright? Alright. I'm working on a dream..."

Whatever happened to the Springsteen who put a Gerschwinesque piano intro on the beginning of a 10-minute song just because he could? Who played "Kitty's Back" for 17 minutes at London in '75 and didn't repeat a single riff? Who avoided traditional song structure like the Plague? (See "Thundercrack".)

But the first thing you hear on "Wrecking Ball" is a freakin' disco-synth (followed by three minutes of scrambled metaphors and liberal pseudo-weltschmirtz) succeeded by penny-whistles, electronic drums, gospel choirs, horn sections, proletarianistic whistling numbers, a loop of the "I'm a soool-diiier" rant, not to mention a downright gangsta sixteen-bar rap on "Rocky Ground", and what's this? Is that a break with ONE INSTRUMENT PLAYING AT A TIME?!?!?!?

All I can say is, at least he's trying again.

But seriously, we need to be open to Springsteen's musical exploration just like he is. I mean, he's not going to write another BTR. Or Darkness. Or The River. Or WIESS. Those were young men's records, and the dude's sixty-three. And as objectively viewed pieces of music, all this new stuff--yes, even the rapper--tends to work. Yes, you'll have to wade through more libbie naivete than at the recall petition signings outside my local pool, but after listening to Prezidizzle Obizzle's SOTU, I think we can handle a pasty-faced old rich guy singing about the "plight of the workin' man".

"Wrecking Ball" and "Land of Hope and Dreams" are pretty traditional E Street powerhouses, and "We Take Care of Our Own" is kinda BITUSA-sounding, but the rest of them don't even utilize E Street band members, and--dare I?--maybe that's a good thing. Maybe this new producer is a good thing. Maybe even the rap influences. I think the ESB had turned from a tight, lean, muscular musical machine to a bloated, overarranged headache-inducer. From what I know, there weren't any set guidelines for what WB should sound like, and we wound up with a diverse, varied, ambitious, daring collection of songs.
But can we really say Bruce is resurgent? I've always said the Boss was a tried-and-true ballad singer, and "Jack of All Trades", "This Depression", and "You've Got It" are all snoozers. The stuff that hits home is the uptempo, folky, celtic, even hip-hoppy stuff that you've gotta view not as traditional E Street anthems, but as if you didn't know it was the same guy who wrote "Rosalita".

You'll notice that the title track and the penultimate song (which is graced with the last appearance of The Big Man) are the closest thing to "Badlands" and "The Promised Land" you'll see here. And they just don't measure up. He ain't got "It ain't no sin/to be glad you're alive" in him no more. But here, we see an old man finding his subject matter again--pondering mortality, age, death, what a good life is, what a bad life is, etc. He's gone from yearning to reflection, from the songs being a vehicle for the lyrics to the lyrics being a part of the songs. No, it's no "Jungleland", but it shows us that we may just have a live fish floppin' around on the grill.

Moral Cretins

Sometimes you think that the difference between liberals and conservatives is semantics.   Sometimes you think it's a difference in approach to solving problems or reaching common goals.   You think that there is, at the very least, a common vocabulary that would allow discussion, reasoning, debate.  

Other times, though, you realize that the difference is so fundamental that there really isn't much left to talk about.    Either they are monsters, or else the most fundamental beliefs we have are nonsense. 

Here, for instance, is an article from the Weekly Standard about the profession of "medical ethics" regarding a mother's right to "choose" to abort her child even after it's born:

.... a pair of medical ethicists took to their profession’s bible, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and published an essay with a misleadingly inconclusive title: “After-birth Abortion: Why should the baby live?” It was a misleading title because the authors believe the answer to the question is: “Beats me.” 

Right at the top, the ethicists summarized the point of their article. “What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” 

The argument made by the authors​—​Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, both of them affliliated with prestigious universities in Australia and ethicists of pristine reputation​—​runs as follows. Let’s suppose a woman gets pregnant. She decides to go ahead and have the baby on the assumption that her personal circumstances, and her views on such things as baby-raising, will remain the same through the day she gives birth and beyond.

Then she gives birth. Perhaps the baby is disabled or suffers a disease. Perhaps her boyfriend or (if she’s old-fashioned) her husband abandons her, leaving her in financial peril. Or perhaps she’s decided that she’s just not the mothering kind, for, as the authors write, “having a child can itself be an unbearable burden for the psychological health of the woman or for her already existing children, regardless of the condition of the fetus.”

The authors point out that each of these conditions​—​the baby is sick or suffering, the baby will be a financial hardship, the baby will be personally troublesome​​—​​is now “largely accepted” as a good reason for a mother to abort her baby before he’s born. So why not after?

That such an argument could be published and accepted as "scholarly" is extraordinarily damning, both to the authors, and to the "profession" they profess.   Medical ethics, apparently, is fundamentally unethical, fundamentally immoral, even inhumane.    Who could write such things?   What society would tolerate such writings by "scholars"?   Do they have no decency?   No shame at all? 

War on Women

The Democratic Party apparently thinks Republicans are waging a "war on women" because some of us think that a Catholic college ought not have to pay for free contraception for a privileged white adult law student.    Anyway, they're trying to raise money through these scare tactics:

The Sadra Fluke episode hasn't done much for Democrats in terms of public opinion -- Obama has slipped a bit with women since it occurred -- a little-appreciated truth about their social issue portfolio more broadly. But when it comes to fundraising, there's no better way of opening liberals' wallets for their campaigns.

The Dems clearly get this, and they've left no drop unmilked with the Fluke incident. I noted yesterday that I've received 23 fundraising emails on the topic from just the two Democratic congressional committees (the DCCC and the DSCC). You know that silly game Republicans play with flag-burning amendments? The Democrats' version is the "war on women."

Today I've received the 24th, and it is a hysterical wonder to behold. Supposedly penned by Rep. Diana Degette -- more likely by some nameless staffer at the DCCC, and that's giving Degette the benefit of the doubt -- this email manages to use the phrase "Republican war on women" or a close variant four times in just 254 words.

You want to talk about a real war on women?   Here are some facts:

1. The percentage of black mothers who are unmarried in 2009 was 72.8%
2.  Studies consistently show an almost direct correlation between unwed motherhood and poverty.
3.   In 1970, the percentage of black mothers who were unmarried was only 37%.
4.   In 1960 (extrapolating from the data for all mothers), a rough estimate would be that something like 15% of black mothers were unmarried.
5.   What intervened?   The massive intervention of liberalism in the black family through AFDC and the "Great Society" programs instituted in the 1960s.
6.   What else could have caused it?   Bad public school education systems in large cities (run by Democrats).   Bad and corrupt city governments in large cities (invariably run by Democrats, see, e.g., Detroit).   Loss of good manufacturing jobs due to bad economic policies (environmentalism, hyper-regulation, high taxation... all instituted  by Democrats).
7.   Anything else?   Well.... there also was this little thing called the Sexual Revolution with the Pill, abortion on demand, etc.   Again, pushed by Democrats.  

You get the picture.   There has been a war on women and, worse, a war on black women in particular.   But it isn't Republicans who've been waging that war.   It's Democratic hypocrites.

Santorum and Women

Much has been said by the MSM pundit class about how Rick Santorum's doctrinal Catholic position on birth control and abortion will hurt him with women.    The liberal chatterers have even taken to calling the fairly sensible position that Catholics ought to be permitted to practice their faith, including Catholic institutions, regarding matters of Life and sexual morality, a "War on Women."

Well, as I am wont to say, I know a few women myself, and many of them are Catholic and have positions on these issues identical to Santorum's.   It may simply be that the MSM pundits don't have a wide enough scope of friendships with people who think differently than they do.   Anyway, the exit polls in Mississippi suggest that women don't vote in a monolith, and that Santorum actually does pretty well with a particular segment of women... married women.

Specifically, Santorum carried married women over Gingrich by 41-25 in Mississippi, while losing unmarried women to Gingrich by 32-31.    He won women overall in the state by 35-29 over Gingrich, and carried the state despite losing men to Gingrich by 34-31.   The results from Alabama were similar:  Santorum carried married women over Gingrich by 38-20.  

What conclusions do I draw?   Married women (who presumably are also more mature) admire Santorum's obvious faithfulness (in both meanings of the term); they like the fact that he seems to enjoy having a lot of children; they like his traditional morality.   They don't like Gingrich's serial marriages and philanderings.

The point of this is that pundits are fools who don't really understand women very well.   Grown-up women (for instance, women with daughters) are likely to find Santorum's fidelity and traditional morality appealing.  

And, something that the chattering classes probably can't see, because they hate Santorum's politics so much.... he's also a big, tall (6'4"), handsome, strapping guy.  

In other words, he probably plays a lot better to the suburban mommies than the pundits think.  

Double Standard Alert

I told my son yesterday that the double standards in the mainstream media are so numerous that it almost gets tedious to keep pointing them out.   You can spend all day playing the "what if a Republican had said that?"   Or:  "what if so-and-so had said that about Muslims?"

This story falls into the second category and highlights one of my big pet peeves, namely, the way in which anti-Catholic bigotry has become acceptable in a way that bigotry of nearly any other variety is not.   Just read the whole thing... it's both hilarious and shocking.

The Cost of Obamacare

The CBO released a new estimate of the cost of Obamacare that Philip Klein helpfully explains:

Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years." When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.

Of course, the real answer is.... we have no idea what the cost is going to be.   We have no idea how people are going to react when the law goes into effect in 2014, how businesses are going to react.   The unintended consequences of this monstrosity -- the Catholic institutions' birth control flap was only the tip of the iceberg -- are, tautologically, unpredictable.

The cost in terms of Americans' freedom is, sadly, all too predictable.   To mix metaphors, Leviathan slouches toward Bethlehem. 

Girl of the Day - Judy Garland

Since I had Liza Minnelli, her daughter, I thought I might as well have Judy Garland as a girl of the day.   Finally.   A funny looking woman (like her daughter), Garland was probably the most extravagantly talented girl ever to come up in Hollywood.   Movies are fake, of course, and Garland had a painful life in many ways in the real world, but film does capture something magical about personalities -- the spark, the bigness of heart, the light behind the eyes.   Whatever "it" is, if you've got "it," film will capture it.   Garland had "it":

Primary Prediction Recap

My predictions for the Alabama and Mississippi primaries were close again, but underestimated Santorum's strength.    Here's what I said:

If I had to bet, I'd say that Santorum manages to pull out Alabama in a close one over Gingrich, with Romney a close third.   And Romney, largely because of endorsements and support from the MS party apparatus (a very corrupt state, by the way), pulls out a close win in Mississippi over Santorum, with Gingrich a close third...

Maybe I was trying to avoid wishful thinking.   I've been a fan of Santorum for awhile now, but I never quite thought he could make it.   I thought he'd pull out Alabama, but it wasn't as close as I thought.   And I thought he'd make it close in Mississippi, but he managed to pull out the victory, with Romney fading to third.   Apparently inevitability and the backing of the party apparatchiks doesn't matter so much, particularly to Evangelical "values" voters.  

Can Santorum make it all the way?   I'm still not too sure.   Romney has the delegate math going for him.  But what I said still holds:

This is one of my new theories of politics.... because we live in an affluent, somewhat decadent culture where people's attention span is limited, and where people are taught to think of politics in sports terms, i.e., through the prism of winning and losing, tactics and strategies, rather than policies that have real-world consequences.... because of that, too many people will simply try to vote for who they think will be the winner.   If Romney looks like the winner, people will jump on board.   If momentum shifts to Santorum, people will jump from Romney to Santorum.  

So how will that work going forward?   My road-map for Santorum is on track:

1. Win Kansas' caucus.   CHECK
2.  Win the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.   CHECK.  
3.  Gingrich under pressure to drop out.  CHECK.

Next steps:  Win the Missouri caucus on Saturday, March 17th.   Do well in the Illinois primary on March 20.   Win the Louisiana primary on March 24.    Win Wisconsin on April 3.

Mo.   Mentum.    

Hmmmmmmmm.....

Mickey Kaus notices something interesting that you won't hear in the mainstream media in analyzing the results of a New York Times poll :

Here’s what the NYT‘s story on its latest poll told readers:

How's That Working Out?

Not sure this is what Obama had envisioned when he shifted U.S. attention in the War on Terror to Afghanistan from Iraq:

Girl of the Day - Dana Delany

It's Dana Delany's birthday.   One of my favorites, ever since China Beach, her 1980s TV show about nurses in Vietnam.  

One thing:  you always have to separate celebrity and entertainment from reality.   I like actress X or athlete Y.   But I don't really know actress X or athlete Y as a person, and they might very well have views or have done things I would find to be silly or abhorrent.   Delany, for instance, is apparently a supporter of Planned Parenthood, reportedly having said at the organization's 90th anniversary party in 2006 that "It's hard to imagine where we'd be in this country had Margaret Sanger not founded that first clinic here in New York, 90 years ago."   Now, she may not have considered this, because liberals generally don't think these things through too much, but Sanger started Planned Parenthood explicitly for the purpose of eugenics, with openly racist aims.   For instance, here's some quotes from Sanger:

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock."
Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review.

"Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.
  
As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.... On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

"The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics."
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

"The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.

"Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization."
Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.


Liberal fascism in a nutshell.   

Mississippi and Alabama Today

The Mississippi and Alabama primaries are today.   If I had to bet, I'd say that Santorum manages to pull out Alabama in a close one over Gingrich, with Romney a close third.   And Romney, largely because of endorsements and support from the MS party apparatus (a very corrupt state, by the way), pulls out a close win in Mississippi over Santorum, with Gingrich a close third..   Both will claim victories of sorts:  Romney because he won a Southern state and stopped Santorum's momentum (and because he will also win the Hawaii primary, which has received less attention); Santorum because he won a state in the deep South and beat Gingrich in both, claiming the mantle of the last "true conservative" left standing.   Then it will get interesting.    Gingrich will have run well in both states, and will probably still have nearly as many delegates to date as Santorum.    But there will then be pressure on Gingrich to drop out to allow Santorum to run against Romney mano-a-mano.   I don't know what will happen then.   Gingrich is mercurial enough that he could stay in just to spite Santorum, or could get out just to spite Romney.   That mercurial nature is just one reason he'd make a bad President.   

The latest RealClearPolitics poll of polls shows a tightening race between Santorum and Romney nationally.  

But as the sine wave-like data over time shows, these polls can change week-to-week as the casual voter shifts allegiances from candidate to candidate, depending on who appears to be likeliest to win.   This is one of my new theories of politics.... because we live in an affluent, somewhat decadent culture where people's attention span is limited, and where people are taught to think of politics in sports terms, i.e., through the prism of winning and losing, tactics and strategies, rather than policies that have real-world consequences.... because of that, too many people will simply try to vote for who they think will be the winner.   If Romney looks like the winner, people will jump on board.   If momentum shifts to Santorum, people will jump from Romney to Santorum.   They won't be able to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or the likely oil price-spike to follow from an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear reactors, or the media manipulation by protesters in Afghanistan, or the economic effect of killing the Keystone pipeline, or the relationship between seasonally-adjusted and not seasonally-adjusted unemployment numbers.... but they want to vote for a winner.