Patterico's Pontifications

3/19/2013

Another “What Should the GOP Do Now?” Post

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:52 am



The RNC has set out to figure out why Republicans lost, and as National Review explains, the ideas are not encouraging:

The Republican National Committee’s “Growth and Opportunity Project,” the widely commented-upon 100-page autopsy of GOP defeat released on Monday, is quite the technical feat, as the report itself is wont to boast: “52,000 contacts made,” “800+ conference calls,” “50+ focus groups,” “3,000+ group listening sessions” with project co-chairs, extensive polls of women and Hispanics, and so on. But for all the analytic exertion, has the document lighted on the source of the GOP’s recent electoral woes, or plausibly plotted a course correction? Unfortunately, the answer on both counts is, not really.

The report opens with a précis of the agglomerated conventional wisdom of the last several months: The Republican party is out of touch; people think it “doesn’t care”; it preaches to the choir instead of appealing to potential converts; it needs to reach out to minorities, women, and young people. There is truth in each of these, which is how they got to be platitudes. But the action items recommended to address these issues are heavy on committee formation (e.g., a “Growth and Opportunity Inclusion Council” with representatives from the African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic, Native American, and “other” communities) and tokenism (the report’s No. 1 recommendation for reaching out to minorities is to put minorities in charge of outreach). To implement this aspect of the document, RNC chairman Reince Priebus has promised to establish dialogues with groups such as LULAC, La Raza, and the NAACP, which strikes us as unhelpful and willfully blind to the fact that such groups are ideologically opposed to Republican principles. A truly conservative minority-outreach strategy would severely weaken these groups by challenging their claims to represent their respective ethnicities.

I don’t claim any expertise in how to win over voters, so I open the topic more with an eye to starting a discussion than to preach to the masses. It seems to me there are several fertile areas for discussion:

Immigration reform — If “immigration reform” were not a code phrase for amnesty for illegal immigrants, I would be all for it, because our immigration system truly does need reform. On economic grounds, we typically allow immigrants in based on whether they have family here, rather than whether our economy could benefit from their presence. On moral grounds, it’s galling to think of illegals “jumping the line” — yet it is basically impossible to legally move here from Mexico. On electoral grounds, legalizing a bunch of Democrat voters is not going to help the GOP, in my view — but that should be beside the point. I think we must do what is right regardless of politics.

Race — I think appealing to minorities should not be accomplished by further dialogue with leftist groups claiming to represent minority groups. All that does is to confer authority on those groups as legitimate representatives of their race or ethnicity, which they will then use to attack us. Less of the Michael Steele approach, and more Larry Elder:

Do you know that inner-city parents want vouchers — the right to determine where their children go to school? Do you know most Democrats, including Barack Obama, oppose this? Republicans, for the most part, support vouchers. Where vouchers have been tried, kids appear to perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. You tell me, how many things are more important than a child’s education?

Do you know that 36 percent of babies aborted are black, while blacks make up 17 percent of live births? Do you know that polls show blacks are more pro-life than are whites? Yet the Democratic Party — to which over 90 percent of blacks belong — is the party of Roe v. Wade, requiring states to legalize abortion on demand. Do you know that Margaret Sanger, the founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, believed that poor blacks were inferior and that aborting their babies made our society better? Look it up.

Do you know that blacks stand to benefit more than whites through Social Security privatization, a position opposed by Obama but supported by McCain? Are you even familiar with the issue and what a powerful income-generating vehicle it would be for blacks? If not, take a look at the research done by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

Less reaching out to the NAACP, and more Ben Carson. You get the idea.

Personality — A correspondent writes with the following theory:

The GOP is hurting because it keeps nominating unappealing candidates — McCain the maverick who comes across as an angry reformer (emphasis on angry), and Romney-Ryan the technocratic robots without hearts. Unlike prior Presidents Bush, Obama and Clinton, no one wants to hang out for a beer with McCain and Romney.

A story today says GOP ideas poll well but people don’t like Republicans. Is it possible the problem is something as simple as Republicans need to nominate candidates who are easy to like?

I think there is much to this. Think about the Presidential elections from the last 40 years or so. Take any given race, put aside your political prejudices (which is difficult) and think about which candidate the average non-ideological voter would rather have a beer with.

Reagan or Mondale? John Kerry or George W. Bush? Mitt Romney (assuming he could drink) or Obama? I understand Mitt Romney is a charitable and moral guy who was portrayed differently than he is. If you’re a regular reader, you probably can’t stand Obama, and I agree. Still, if you can’t see that an average voter sees Obama as more likable than Romney in the “would I have a beer with him?” sense, then your ideology is getting in the way of seeing how average voters look at things.

There are times when events trump everything else. Jimmy Carter was a zero personality, but coming off Ford’s pardon of Nixon, he seemed like a moral guy. Nixon was going to end Vietnam. No Republican on Earth could have won in 2008 after the way the economy tanked.

But in general, the personality test is important.

I can hear some of you objecting that we just need someone who stands on principle. I very badly want someone likable who will do that. I really wish winning the presidency were as easy as nominating Barry Goldwater and dusting off one’s hands after a job well done. But primary voters are still squishy — that’s how we ended up with McCain and Romney. Finding that combination of principle and likability won’t be easy — but we need to remember (if we care about winning) that likability matters.

Food for thought.

405 Responses to “Another “What Should the GOP Do Now?” Post”

  1. Race: The Democratic Party has ruled almost every city in America for the last 50 years, and has transformed them into hellholes so dysfunctional they verge on 3rd world status.

    The majority of blacks live in cities. The majority of black vote Democrat.

    I don’t know if it’s possible to drive a wedge between black voters and the Democrats, but the Republicans ought to try. If not out of cynical political calculation, than out of basic human decency.

    JohnW (35068a)

  2. After 2012 I developed two related beliefs: 1) A presidential nominee’s biography matters as much as, and probably more than, his credentials; and 2) If the Republican presidential nominee is a white man, he’ll lose. Luckily we have Rubio and Jindal, both impressive, charismatic candidates. I think Rubio has the better shot at winning the general in 2016, so I’m rooting for him, but I’d be almost as happy to see Jindal get the nod.

    Michael Greenspan (ecf283)

  3. I’m not one to give advice either, but here goes.

    This goes under the “personality” category, but it’s impact on “race” and “immigration” should be obvious.

    I’ve always thought that the GOP would do better by ending what I’m calling the “us/them schism”. No matter what the issue, it just seems that hard and entrenched battle lines and anyone/anything not towing the party line is lambasted to an exaggerated hyperbolic degree.

    Chris Christie isn’t the “devil” for working with Obama in the aftermath of Sandy. You might not like Obamacare, but it isn’t “tyranny”. Not everything your political opponents do is “fascism” and “socialism”. Gay people exist, and most people know one (or more) — so pounding on them doesn’t win votes.

    And for God’s sakes, don’t demonize 47% of the country as “takers”, and if you believe that, don’t run for office.

    You don’t win converts by shooting at them and the GOP would be better off explaining its policies and political philosophies without snark or insult. Make cogent arguments based on facts. Consider opposing arguments and explain, cogently, why you think their wrong. Be statesmen-like, not warrior-like, in your approach to politics.

    Kman (5576bf)

  4. Team R is engaging the identity politics constituencies of the opposition as a way to avoid dealing with its own entrenched identity politics mafias

    they really should clean their own stanky house first

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  5. Reince Priebus is a flailing douche

    I can look at him and tell he’s a flailing douche

    you can look at him and tell he’s a flailing douche

    ruling class Rs, however, are wholly unable to look at Reince Priebus and discern he’s flailing douche

    these are the same ones what think roobs is an authentic hispanic with charisma

    it’s depressing, how hopelessly clueless they are

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  6. I’m not one to give advice either, but here goes.

    LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
    Here is a hint, Kmart. We do not really care what you think, and are not inclined to take advice from someone as dishonest as you.

    JD (b63a52)

  7. 100% of the 36 percent of black babies what are aborted are aborted by black women who had their own reasons for doing so and who probably don’t appreciate being judged by pasty white boys named Reince Priebus I think

    hey stupid negro lady you’re just a genocidal margaret sanger pawn and you don’t even know it (google it!) how does it feel to be so stupid?

    REALLY???

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  8. he’s *a* flailing douche I mean (#5)

    (Reince Priebus)

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  9. Doom.

    SarahW (b0e533)

  10. Regarding primaries, the GOP needs to stop nominating the guy who came in second place last time. It also needs to tell Jeb Bush that he could be the incarnation of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, but trying to sell him to independents is not a task that we are up to.

    A lot of Democrat/liberal policies make really good one-line, bumper-sticker slogans – help the homeless, don’t give tax breaks to the rich so people can starve, we need federal intervention because states have failed, etc. Conservative policies make sense when you examine what actually works, not what you think works. (Conservatism is predicated on dynamic interactions between the state and the people – the state does something, people change what they are doing, sometimes in undesirable or unpredictable ways. Liberalism tends to assume a very static ‘people’, who will do exactly the same thing regardless of policies.)

    Explaining that stuff is tough. It also makes us seem heartless; liberals can point to a mom who is struggling to make ends meet and ‘needs’ a pay raise, but we can’t determine in advance which workers will be laid off and/or replaced with robots and/or outsourced if we raise the minimum wage.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  11. Okay, fine, I also have some concrete suggestions for the RNC.

    I subscribe to Obama’s email list. (Don’t ask.) Immediately after the election, I got a nice email asking me to take a survey about what issues mattered the most (broken down into about ten categories), did I volunteer, would I volunteer, what issues I wanted to see highlighted in the next cycle, etc. This was an online survey.

    Reince sent around a plea for money, because as we all know, people with money are always happy to give it to lost, unsuccessful causes.

    THREE MONTHS after the Republicans lost the most winnable election in decades, Reince finally sent around a snail mail survey. Snail mail – expensive! And the survey – so limited. Do we want to focus on fiscal issues or social issues more? (Gee, where do you start if you think that they are related? How does that relate to energy development, higher education problems, immigration concerns, etc? What of droid strikes? Defense spending? Bureaucratic bloat in DC? ObamaCare?) And three freakin months!

    Reince looks at us – the grassroots activists – as cash cows or drone soldiers. At least that is the impression I am getting.

    After getting shellacked by the Democrats, in part because their data gathering is so amazing, you would THINK that we would try to replicate the same thing. But no, Reince puts his hand out and sends surveys that are not going to gather any useful information.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  12. I’m not one to give advice either
    Comment by Kman (5576bf) — 3/19/2013 @ 8:23 am

    — Uh, excuse me, but exactly HOW MANY TIMES have you ‘suggested’ to Patterico that he stop poking Brett Kimberlin with a pointed stick?

    Icy (09fb49)

  13. (I hate it when my wife’s computer and over sensitive touch pad messes things up on me. She hates it to.)

    I don’t think the fundamental issues change, the communication and focus does in many ways.

    First, one has to find good decent people who are willing to put their family through hell for when little jimmy threw the cat into the pool when he was 8 to see if it liked to swim like the tigers at the zoo.

    Then they have to make the points in short ways that are bold but not too offensive.

    For example, perhaps the surgeon who has been in the news could say something like, “You can call me an ‘Uncle Tom’ if you want, but I grew up in Detroit (when there was a Detroit before the Dem mayors destroyed it) in a single parent household. I got mixed up with the wrong people and almost blew it, but I got back into church, behaved myself, worked hard, overcame racism, and got where I am today.”
    “You may want to depend on Affirmative Action, let me tell you, no one wants a surgeon who got there through Affirmative Action, you have to prove yourself”.
    “Am I saying anyone can become a neurosurgeon? No, just like I couldn’t have become a pro football player, but if you want to get ahead in life start out by graduating high school and not getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant before you are old enough to handle the responsibility.”

    We need to do that kind of thing on many, many topics, and short clips showing the dems own hypocrisy.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  14. Rushbo beat this drum at the end of last week, again, for the umpteenth time:

    In Battleground States Romany beat Succubus, Lord of the Flies, with party switching independents by double digits.

    And he lost those battleground states big.

    And here we are with the GOP contemplating its navel, promising to reach out to the enemy in an attempt to become relevant.

    Party of Schtoopid.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  15. Like this on gun control laws.
    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/meet-the-nras-new-spokesman.php
    God Bless this guy for being honest and up front about something.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  16. We thrive more as a nation when we have two major political parties working together to work out solutions of the people, by the people and for the people. That’s basic Americana.

    That’s also in essence the same message of Patterico here, Kman in #3, bridget in #10, Reince Preibus in his 100 page election obituary report, Karl Rove on how to get elected, Rand Paul on excessive militarism, and Jeb Bush on being “anti-everything.

    In response we have happyfeet in #5 and #7, and JD in #6. This all too prevalent attitude will not be winning elections by Republicans any time soon!

    Perry (e84894)

  17. BS, Perry. And if that were the case, now that you have got the revenue portion of your “balanced approach”, you would join us in attempting to reign in the deficits and the crushing debt. Your building bridges bridging gaps meme is profoundly dishonest, as you have no intention of compromising, as the idea of compromise involves Republicans supporting Dem ideas, never the other way around

    JD (b63a52)

  18. Well, if the Repubs are serious about working on problems the nation faces, that makes one party.

    The dems are more concerned with posturing about the sequester and everything else.

    When the poison gas flies in Syria, will we hear, “Obama lied and Syrians died?”

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  19. We had this same discussion about changes and re-branding after the 2008 elections. What we did — not that the Republican leadership was involved — was to actually stand for something, and just two years later, we recaptured the House of Representatives and picked up seven seats in the Senate.

    But, we listened to the same national voices, the ones who said that the TEA Party faction was too radical, too irresponsible, and we muted the TEA Party message; we tried to sell Mitt Romney as a nice guy, and tell the voters that cutting spending wouldn’t really hurt all that much. We shied away from the very message that won for us in 2010!

    How’d that work out for us?

    The Dana who remembers (3e4784)

  20. We were told that we would lose if we nominated Sarah Palin; she’s a wild-eyed TEA Partier who can’t win. We were told we’d lose if we nominated Rick Santorum; he’s a social conservative extremist. We were told we’d lose if we nominated Newt Gingrich; he’s just the wrong man. We needed to nominate Mitt Romney, who was the most electable candidate we had running, and we did.

    Did we win that way?

    The Republican Dana (3e4784)

  21. This last election was ‘the most important in our lifetimes’.

    Why, why, why oh why are we still worried about elections? This is the GOP following Spokesmodel Down Low’s lead.

    Gridlock is government at work getting themselves re-elected. Doing nothing is the new ‘working together’.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  22. 19. The Dana who remembers:

    We shied away from the very message that won for us in 2010!

    What exactly was that message, Dana?

    2010 was a typical off-year election in which the incumbent is yanked back a bit. Add that to the uncertainty at that time regarding recovery from the Great Recession, and you have the outcome we got.

    Why did that momentum not carry forward to the 2012 general election, you might ask yourself, Dana?

    Again, you have the likes of Reince Priebus, Rand Paul, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush asking that very question and seeking answers.

    Until you and the likes of JD and happyfeet on here start to get serious, you will face years ahead of the same electoral outcomes.

    Perry (e84894)

  23. And by getting serious, Perry the Platypus means raising taxes, spending irresponsibly, granting amnesty, banning guns, etc.

    JD (b63a52)

  24. Forgive me for not taking advice from someone that does not offer the advice in good faith.

    JD (b63a52)

  25. we thrived more as a nation before we elected a fascist food stamp slut

    I have links

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  26. What of droid strikes?
    Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 8:59 am

    — Answer: Sometimes they are funny . . .

    Luke: Wait a minute, where’d she go? Bring her back! Play back the entire message!
    [R2 beeps a question]
    C-3PO: What message? [bangs R2] The one you’ve just been playing; the one you’re carrying inside your rusty innards!

    … After Luke is called away …
    C-3PO: Just you reconsider playing that message for him!
    [R2 beeps a question]
    C-3PO: No, I don’t think he likes you at all.
    [R2 beeps again]
    C-3PO: No, I don’t like you either.
    [R2 beeps sadly]

    — Hang on a second. Both physical AND verbal abuse; and that’s supposed to be ‘funny’?
    Oh … My … GOD!!!
    Quick, to the Senate! We must immediately pass the VATA — the Violence Against Trashcans Act!
    Be brave, little R2-D2! And if any Jawas try to take advantage of you, just piss yourself and tell them it’s your time of the month.

    Icy (09fb49)

  27. 2010 was an election when the Democrats ignored the unpopularity of their “signature” legislation. And got beat badly when they were predicting regaining the House.

    2014 will be a worse beating, when the Senate is in play, the Dems have no chance of regaining the House and will probably lose more seats.

    SPQR (768505)

  28. The commenter formerly known as Another Drew wrote:

    Your building bridges bridging gaps meme is profoundly dishonest, as you have no intention of compromising, as the idea of compromise involves Republicans supporting Dem ideas, never the other way around.

    Oh, Perry likes Republicans, no doubt about that. But he likes the go-along-to-get-along Republicans of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hugh Scott/ Everett Dirksen/ Gerald Ford Republicans who might manage to win a presidential election or two along the way, but who were locked into a seemingly permanent minority status in Congress. We got Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford in the White House, but all that led to was wage-and-price controls, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the continued liberalization of our government, a touch slower than under a Democratic president, perhaps, but the direction was still the same.

    But Republicans who actually stand for something? Never!

    The Republican Dana (3e4784)

  29. we thrived more as a nation before we elected a fascist food stamp slut
    I have links
    Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/19/2013 @ 9:58 am

    — Prior to the FFSS we all could afford both links AND patties.

    Icy (09fb49)

  30. Another thing:

    The right needs to stop having conversations with itself about which person/candidate/philosophy is the pinnacle of ideological purity. And in doing so, it should purge itself of ideologues like Limbaugh, Beck, and Breitbart.

    Why? Because on the one side you have the stubborn and determined “Tea Party”; on the other side you have the stubborn and determined “DC Establishment Republicans”; and other various stubborn and determined factions in between. Rename them respectively, “The People’s Front of Judea” and “The Judean People’s Front” and so on, and you’ll get a sense of the current dysfunction of the GOP.

    Unfortunately, for some people, the “lesson” of 2012 is to become more entrenched, not less. Sounds like it may be a long time in the wilderness.

    Kman (5576bf)

  31. No, JD, getting serious means creating jobs, becoming more competitive, and reducing our debt, all simultaneously, which is probably somewhere between the Paul Ryan Plan and the Congressional Progressive Caucus Plan.

    For an interesting discussion of these two, and other plans which have been proffered, go here.

    Perry (e84894)

  32. First the Republicans need to stop helping the Democrats permanently alter the demographics to create wave upon wave of big-government clients.

    Which is why the GOP needs to reject the “autopsy” that Priebus commissioned. It was as Mark Levin points out essentially written by Bushies. Who are like Democrats fans of big government. The problem of course is that big government is unsustainable.

    I suppose we’re fortunate in a way. This is a big country with a big population and a big economy which nonetheless isn’t big enough to support leviathan so the collapse should come a lot faster then in Cyprus which has the land mass of Hawaii and represents .2% of the EU economy.

    Two issues the Bushies are stupidly pushing in that report are immigration reform and gay marriage.

    I’ll take the latter first. The issue isn’t gay marriage, it’s marriage. Marriage is historically given respect by the law and the courts as the foundational social institution; it’s how society reproduces itself. The circumstances into which children are born and raised to a great extent determines how well they will do.

    The socialists know this. Which is why gay marriage (other than the fundraising opportunities) is such an important issue. Severing the link between responsible procreation and marriage has long been a goal for them. It’s no accident that “The Life of Julia” showed a single woman dependent on government here entire life. Because unmarried single moms are dependent upon government. Moreover their children raised in these unstable environments repeat the cycle.

    Most people would look at that as a problem to be fixed. The liberals look at that and see a permanent underclass (traditionally not something we’ve had as economic mobility was the rule not the exception) who are perpetual clients. And they can scare the Julias of the world, and their children, whenever anyone threatens their benefits. And consequently the bureaucracies that grow fat distributing them (another permanent liberal client). As we are seeing with the sequester and the Democratic media strategy for attempting to demonize Republicans over it.

    The New Unmarried Moms We’ve reduced teen pregnancy, but now childbearing outside wedlock is exploding among 20-somethings

    Among college grads today, only 12% of first births are outside marriage. For high-school dropouts, who tend to be the poorest population, 83% of first births are outside marriage, the CDC data show.

    …These parents often go on to have another child (or children) with another partner (or partners), creating a family maze of step parents, siblings, grandparents and homes. As a great deal of research has shown, such instability is one of the greatest risks to children’s well-being. It greatly increases the likelihood that they will experience academic, social and emotional problems like poor grades, drug abuse and (perpetuating the cycle) unmarried childbearing.

    Second, why the Bushies keep insisting Latinos are really Republicans at heart completely escapes me. The vast majority come from cultures and social backgrounds that are heavily leftist. The want bigger government and more social services and they want the rich to pay for it.

    With the new Pope being an Argentine, liberation theology and his approach to social justice issues has been very much a topic of conversation. There’s a reason liberation theology is popular in Latin American and if it didn’t originate there a great deal of its development took place there.

    Really, just look at Venezuela. Whatever else he was, Hugo Chavez was popular with the majority of Venezuelans. Because of course the majority are poor. They also have a deep resentment against the wealthy, as well as anti-White racism (we see leftists of all stripes share that brand of racism) which Chavez could tap into as he was in fact screwing over the poor while he and his family and cronies grew rich.

    These are not fiscal conservatives; otherwise the Democrats wouldn’t be so eager to import vast numbers and amnesty them. Again and again. The Democrats at least aren’t stupid; if Americans will not vote for them then they’ll replace them with a population that will.

    I have no idea why the GOP lets the Democrats set this country’s immigration policy that only serves left-wing partisan purposes. Sane countries don’t favor unskilled and uneducated workers who are a drain on resources (and therefore government clients) over the skilled and educated that actually contribute to the economy. We do things exactly backward.

    US turning away talent needed for innovation: report

    A new study reports that 76% of patents from America’s top 10 patent-generating universities in 2011 had a foreign-born inventor. However, many of the innovators are restricted from staying within the US to build new enterprises.

    That’s the gist of a new report, “Patent Pending: How Immigrants Are Reinventing The American Economy,” issued by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan advocacy group, is intended to highlight the value foreign-born graduates bring to the US economy.

    “Foreign-born scholars compose a disproportionate share of the creators and innovators that help America to remain competitive in an increasingly global, knowledge-driven economy,” the report states. In addition, 99% of the patents by these foreign-born inventors were in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), an area where the US is projected to face a shortfall of 230,000 qualified advanced-degree workers by 2018, the report states. The following observations are also made:

    …This is a message not lost on nations such as China and Chile, who are “actively trying to bolster their economies by convincing talented entrepreneurs and innovators to move there.”

    It isn’t just those two countries; EU countries actively recruit graduates from our best universities. The Swiss have a permanent recruiting office in this country.

    The GOP won’t have much of a future as long as its the party of insanely stupid. But then, neither will this country have much of a future as long as the Democrats are the party of suicidally insane.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  33. I think all this fear and loathing and gnashing of teeth is missing a rather obvious weakness of the Dark Side.

    As in CA, the SEIU and CalPers breakdown, the Detroit receivership, the Harrisburg extinction,…

    The Enemy of Life Itself is in disarray and prospects are dim. Yes, today US Bond yields are declining because of imminent civil war in the EU but bonds are being defaulted all over, note the first ever corporate bond failure in China.

    Worrying about elections, like Nov. 2014, is insane.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  34. Perry asked:

    We shied away from the very message that won for us in 2010!

    What exactly was that message, Dana?

    That government should be smaller, not larger, that government should be less intrusive, not more, that taxes should be lower, not higher, and that we should balance budgets by cutting spending.

    Instead, we let President Obama control the conversation, and it became about the Life of Julia, about contraception, and about free cell phones for welfare careerists. We managed to re-elect the President with the worst economic record in three generations, and now we are stuck with a health care plan that’s going to fail miserably — but take several years of business-destroying in the process — and a government that makes the “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” addition of $4.9 trillion to the national debt in eight years look like the height of fiscal discipline.

    Come 2016, if you haven’t been death-paneled out of here, you’ll be telling us how we must elect another Democrat as our President, so that we can escape the dreadful policies of the evil George Bush, who hurt our economy so badly that eight years under President Obama still wasn’t enough to undo the damage.

    The realistic Dana (3e4784)

  35. The absolute bottom line on immigration for Republicans should be this:

    No person who entered the country illegally as an adult may become a citizen. I’d make it a Constitutional Amendment if possible.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  36. 2010 was a typical off-year election in which the incumbent is yanked back a bit.

    How was a historical result that happens once in a century “typical”? How was Obama yanked back “a bit”?

    I think that some of the problem in 2012 was that we won in 2010 and created some good gridlock. Had Obama been able to continue ramming his agenda through, I doubt he would have won reelection. (This does not say that one result or another would be better.) Some of the “messaging” issue that did not get through in 2012 – hell, it wasn’t even tried – was to “remember Obama before the 2010 elections”. No one liked that Obama and no one wanted him back. We failed to make the point that the kinder, gentler Obama of 2011-2012 was the result of being hamstrung by a Republican super-majority in the House, not his own abilities or a change from his radical policies.

    The Republicans were also ineffective on countering Obama lies and ineffective at reaching low-information voters. For the latter, there should have been TV ads running non-stop with Obama telling people to cut back on their vacations, then clips of the Obamas on the Vineyard or with Beyonce, then a clip of how Mitt Romney refused to take a salary as Governor of MA.

    There is no reason that there should not have been non-stop coverage of “I will balance the budget by the end of my four years” and the current budget deficits (and lack of a budget from the Democrat-controlled Senate, a Senate that has been in their power since January of 2007).

    Republicans were also far too late in diving into deep-blue territory. Obama started running ads in Portland, Oregon, in August of 2012. Rather than continue to saturate FL/NH/PA/OH, Republicans should have started fighting for Oregon, Michigan, and Minnesota – and done so sooner than a week before the general election. You can bet that Obama’s machine was doing polling and knew that those were potential battleground areas; why not fight him where he thinks he can lose?

    And for heaven’s sake, you need to get people to the polls. The ORCA debacle was amazing.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  37. [We were told] we needed to nominate Mitt Romney, who was the most electable candidate we had running, and we did.
    Did we win that way?
    Comment by The Republican Dana (3e4784) — 3/19/2013 @ 9:44 am

    — He WAS the most electable candidate in that field. That’s how he was able to win 24 states and 47.2% of the popular vote. In order to have a MORE electable nominee you have to have more electable candidates in the primaries. THAT is where your party fails, and is one of the main reasons why some of us conservatives choose not to join it.

    Icy (09fb49)

  38. Perry laughably wrote:

    getting serious means creating jobs, becoming more competitive, and reducing our debt,

    Yet you supported a President whose economic policies had fewer jobs created (1,393,000) than the growth of our working age population (10,089,000), policies which will add burdens to our corporations vis a vis our foreign competitors, and who added $6 trillion to the national debt in just four years and two months.

    But hey, his policies did manage to set records in food stamp participation!

    The amazed Dana (3e4784)

  39. “If you’re a regular reader, you probably can’t stand Obama, and I agree. Still, if you can’t see that an average voter sees Obama as more likable than Romney in the “would I have a beer with him?” sense, then your ideology is getting in the way of seeing how average voters look at things.

    But in general, the personality test is important.

    I can hear some of you objecting that we just need someone who stands on principle. I very badly want someone likable who will do that. I really wish winning the presidency were as easy as nominating Barry Goldwater and dusting off one’s hands after a job well done. But primary voters are still squishy — that’s how we ended up with McCain and Romney. Finding that combination of principle and likability won’t be easy — but we need to remember (if we care about winning) that likability matters.”

    I submit to you, Patterico, that principle trumps “personality” and your constant whining about having to figure out a way to “[find] that combination of principle and likability” is evidence that you don’t grasp what is truly at issue here.

    What is necessary to defeat socialism is someone who is, you know, actually against socialism in principle. This notion that Obama is a supreme orator, a man of the people, or a guy that you’d like to have a beer with it ridiculous. The fact is that this schmuck has never faced a principled Republican in his life because Republicans can’t tell you what principles they actually do stand for. They screech “term limits!”; “limited government!”; “free trade!”. Yet when they get in control of the government, what do they do? Roll back government? Even freeze government? Stop deficit spending? No, they increase the size and scope governement — Sarbanes-Oxley, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind. The same pork-filled gigantic deficits.

    No apologies, no excuses; not even a feeble attempt at anything close to a defense of individual liberty. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. And the fact that there isn’t a massive political uprising on the Republican side of the aisle in loud opposition to this disconnect between the message of their elected officials and their actions tells me that the Republican majority, more or less, is okay with what their representatives are doing.

    So I ask you: what does this tell you about principle and the Republicans shameful inability to defend anything that they allegedly believe in on principle Do you even consider Romney — who Republicans universally consider a nice, moral guy — as someone who is against the concept of socialism? Really? The father of Obamacare is against socialized medicine, i.e., de facto socialism? This fact alone should’ve disqualified him as someone whom the Republicans should even have considered running against another socialist. What, he’s better because he’s not as socialist as Obama? Really? Once you accept the notion that we are morally our brother’s keeper — which, ethically, is the principle that Obamacare is based upon — then the only thing left to argue about is what it’s going to cover and, thus, what it’s going to cost. But the argument as to whether it is moral to do so — that is, whether socialized medicine is immoral and therefore should be eliminated — is over with.

    The definition of a “fact” is: the “truth or reality of something: the truth or actual existence of something, as opposed to the supposition of something or a belief about something.” The cold facts of the matter is this: we cannot afford to continue the welfare state. That means that it must be dismantled or it will be the end of us as a nation and as a civilization. Period. Do you really need a Powerpoint presentation in order to prove it?

    Now, is anyone going to like these facts? No. So what is it that you want, Pat? Do you think that if a “likeable” candidate delivers the truth — that is, the really bad news that is our immediate reality — that such a quality will “somehow” change people’s minds into voting Republican (as if the Republicans will be able to manage the crisis)? Sure, people would respond much better to Reagan, or even Obama, delivering the same speech as Ayn Rand — but not if their speeches were diametrically opposed on principle. Is the “ideal” politician that you’re searching for someone that will, well, lie (little white ones) to the people in order to get them to vote against socialism? After all, it’s for their own good, isn’t it?

    What you’re scared to death of is that you’re coming to believe that you cannot reason with people. I’ve got to admit that the idea is scary — but do you think that you would appeal to their reason any better by avoiding principles? I hate to have to tell you this but appealing to their reason is the only way to change things and you do that by telling the truth.

    First off, politicians on your own side are agreeing with the socialists and are lying to their constituents about that fact, ergo, they are de facto socialists, too. So how ’bout let’s identify the enemy on our own side and make them pay? But to do that, you have to have a standard by which to identify both your friends and your enemies. You (and the rest of us) have to decide just what kind of a government do you want. Limited government? Fine — but what exactly does that mean? Do you want a national government that is like something from the 1890s, i.e., minimalist? You do understand what that would entail in all its ramifications, right? Do you want to keep the welfare state — but balance the budget, a la 1999? Somewhere in the middle? Something completely different? Do you even want what the Founders wanted for themselves?

    Limited government is a concept that actually means something objective. So why don’t you — on principle — advocate for those principles? I don’t care what you take as your principles but think it through and research it as best you can then put them up for debate and dare to defend them. This ain’t a popularity contest. Indeed, the fact that it has devolved into a popularity contest about who’s best at taking from Peter to give to Paul is at the heart of the problem. You need to stop thinking of it as such and instead embrace the power of principle in politics. The Tea Party’s success in 2010 is testament to that. Appealing to our reason is the only way that you are ever going to change things, Pat.

    J.P. (bd0246)

  40. Icy wrote:

    He WAS the most electable candidate in that field. That’s how he was able to win 24 states and 47.2% of the popular vote. In order to have a MORE electable nominee you have to have more electable candidates in the primaries. THAT is where your party fails, and is one of the main reasons why some of us conservatives choose not to join it.

    He was, huh? Tom Skeritt, playing the Top Gun commander, said, “This school is about combat; there are no points for second place.” Mitt Romney turned out to be no more electable than any of the candidates.

    The coldly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  41. If the republicans become even more like the democrats in an attempt to win votes, I will just stay home. I’ve voted republican for over 50 years but, I’m not going to waste my time if my choice is democrat or democrat.

    Jim (ba6a58)

  42. Oh, immigration. Mitt Romney’s plan made great sense – “I’ll staple a green card to the diploma of every science PhD in America” is a rough paraphrase.

    Back in the early 1980s, migrant workers made approximately $40 per hour, adjusted for inflation. That’s a hard way to make a living, and that does not involve working fifty weeks per year with vacation, sick pay, and a pension, but it’s decent money that can enable strong but not smart, or unmotivated academically, people to build some sort of life for themselves. Now that we’ve imported a tenth of Mexico’s population (average education: eighth grade), low-skilled labour is very inexpensive – about a fourth or a fifth of what it used to cost.

    Republicans are not using basic things like this to wipe the floor with Democrats in the minimum-wage fight. “You want a higher salary for blacks, working moms, people who can’t get good jobs? Deport the underclass. With a functional unemployment rate of 17%, there is NO such thing as a job an American won’t do to feed his family.”

    In theory, we should also be using this to make headway in inner cities. “Hey, Jamal, do you want to compete with some guy in Mexico for your job at the supermarket? Do you want your kids to compete with an immigrant for a job?”

    Okay, back to work. Statutes to be read, opinions to be written, snow to look at….

    bridget (55e4a2)

  43. They’ve lost their nerve. They’ve lost the (culture) war. They’ve lost the (communication) war and they lost the Immigration (I.E. the Democrat Vote buying policy).

    the only thing left (swidt?) is to surrender.

    Become the Democrats that they so admire but with supposed fiscal restraints.

    Meanwhile we’ll start a conservative party and see how that works.

    If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

    The Republicans have become part of the problem.

    Jcw46 (0af03c)

  44. The barn is afire and the GOP is out front looking for new tenants:

    http://dailyrushbo.com/rush-republicans-are-being-suckered-into-participating-in-their-own-official-demise/

    They’re on the march for third party status. ‘We will not be denied!’

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  45. I note, Patterico, that you do not touch on the social issues that are an absolute generational wedge.

    Being gay is to Gen Y and Millenials as being black was to the Baby Boomers and Gen X.

    People born since 1970 have never known abortion to be illegal and women under 50 have always known it was an option they could use. We need to stop making noises about banning it again and instead work to make its misuse the issue: abortion for health reasons on one side, abortion as birth control on the other.

    Instead we need to fight the culture wars where we can win them: guns (turn back the clock), copyright (shorten terms and other reform), and keeping Big Gulps legal.

    We need to let go of issues we have lost and find issues we can win that further the cause of liberty and individual rights.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  46. THAT is where your party fails, and is one of the main reasons why some of us conservatives choose not to join it.

    And that is why your nose is lying on the floor; but you have spited the Republicans marvelously.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  47. Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/19/2013 @ 8:29 am

    feets, the section posted after the link to “Larry Elder” was a quote of Larry Elder.
    You do know that Larry is a Black Libertarian Lawyer Radio-personality, don’t you?
    You can listen to him M-F, 3-6pm in L.A. on KABC-790am.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  48. 32. Steve57

    Interesting discussion.

    On marriage, I agree. We should stick to gay unions for our gay folks.

    On new, unmarried moms, I like the welfare to work idea under Clinton and the Repubs, which is one more reason we need to focus on job creation as our number one problem, while continuing the welfare to work approach.

    On turning talent away, we need to make green cards more available. Moreover, this represents the contribution that our great educational and research institutions are making to the globe, of which we should be proud.

    But on this statement:

    The GOP won’t have much of a future as long as its the party of insanely stupid. But then, neither will this country have much of a future as long as the Democrats are the party of suicidally insane.

    This is exactly the kind of black and white thinking, instead of shades of grey thinking which involve compromising to solve problems, which is where we need to improve, politically, in my view.

    Perry (e84894)

  49. As Pat Caddell told CPAC, the GOP doesnot dole out money without the candidate hiring from the ‘approved consultant’ list.

    Approved mercenaries like Steve Schmidt, who suspended the campaign, who wouldn’t attack the Alien, Hussein, who undercut his candidates and ran from the base.

    The GOP doesn’t wonder why they lost, its the gameplan.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  50. Kmart and Periwinkle are prime examples that the only accomplishment on the Left is “Talking a Good Game”.
    When it comes to actually doing something:
    #EpicFail!
    If it wasn’t for Velcro, they wouldn’t be able to keep their shoes on.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  51. Hilarious, advice for GOP from trolls.

    SPQR (768505)

  52. Since WHEN does shortening the term of copyright ‘further’ the cause of individual rights?

    Icy (09fb49)

  53. Comment by The Republican Dana (3e4784) — 3/19/2013 @ 10:04 am
    “The commenter formerly known as Another Drew wrote:

    Your building bridges bridging gaps meme is profoundly dishonest, as you have no intention of compromising, as the idea of compromise involves Republicans supporting Dem ideas, never the other way around.”

    When, and where, was that posted?

    Another Drew (b8ab92)

  54. Icy, it puts works into the public domain sooner.

    SPQR (768505)

  55. which is one more reason we need to focus on job creation as our number one problem, while continuing the welfare to work approach.

    You just spent the last 4 years making this problem worse, and in the process, are implementing laws and regulations designed to make the problem even worse, yet again. Your bridging gaps oh let’s just compromise we will only stick it in just a little nonsense is so very transparent.

    JD (b63a52)

  56. AD – Dana of the UK attributed to you what I wrote. You should be honored 😉

    JD (b63a52)

  57. 20. Decoupling:

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/from-smoldering-ashes-comes-good-news.html

    There has been no growth to speak of with asset deflation, necessity inflation and worldwide depression.

    It’s just a mirage of debt monetization.

    Moreover, Too-Big-To-Fail is on the doorstep once again. “Electability” is mouthed by drooling imbeciles.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  58. Icy: the problem is that copyright has been extended to something like 90 years; it initially had a term that was something closer to two decades. It is more costly and time-consuming to create patentable new technology, but the patent term has not been extended; however, it is now arguably easier to create copyrightable work (with word processors, songwriting technology, etc.), but the term for such is longer than it used to be.

    I have no problem with people getting rich off their inventions and art, but this is much more about Disney keeping Tigger out of the public domain than it is about ensuring that starving artists don’t see people ripping off their work.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  59. i know who larry elder is

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  60. On new, unmarried moms, I like the welfare to work idea under Clinton and the Repubs, which is one more reason we need to focus on job creation as our number one problem, while continuing the welfare to work approach.

    There are fairly straightforward, constitutionally-acceptable approaches to this problem, such as garnishing the wages of men who sire children who are on welfare (under the theory that they should be paying for their kids before strangers have to pick up the tab). That will reduce incentives to have children out of wedlock.

    Likewise, enact “We pay for ‘oops’, but that’s it” policies. For example, if you are on welfare and have two children, you’ll get money for those two – if you have ten more while on welfare, then figure out how to pay for twelve kids with the money you’re given for two.

    The unconstitutional way to do things would be to give out more welfare to people who are married when their children are born. It would be brutal, but also very effective, in reducing unwed childbearing.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  61. 42. Oh, immigration. Mitt Romney’s plan made great sense – “I’ll staple a green card to the diploma of every science PhD in America” is a rough paraphrase.

    Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 10:28 am

    Unfortunately these are exactly the non-citizens facing the largest hurdles to getting a green card.

    Which didn’t just happen. It’s the result of deliberate policy decisions. And the GOP went along with those decisions because they lost sight of conservative social values. You can’t explain conservative social values if you don’t understand them.

    First liberals demanded conservatives not judge. Then after stopping the pendulum from swinging one way, liberals pushed it back the other way and demanded (or imposed via the courts) liberal social values.

    Make no mistake; values are important. There’s a reason why, for instance, Obama was seen as the nicer guy than Romney. The kind of guy who you could have a beer with (not like any Mormon is ever going to come across as the kind of guy you can have a beer with.

    It’s because Obama says the right things. People have been indoctrinated to believe liberal social values are more compassionate and therefore correct. While conservative social values are “mean-spirited” and therefore to be rejected.

    Our immigration policy doesn’t exist because anyone thought it out. It’s not wise or even rational. It’s appeal is entirely to emotions, and the reason it has that appeal is due to what people have been indoctrinated to believe are the correct social values.

    There is no way a Jeb Bush or a Chris Christie could ever come up with an argument against our current immigration policy. It would be portrayed as “mean-spiritedly” turning our backs on the poor illegal immigrants and their succeeding generations. Whereas actually giving preference to the science and technology graduate students as Mitt Romney suggests, and who are disproportionally responsible for patents developed by research institutions, would be portrayed as cold-heartedly focusing on the bottom line.

    So consequently not only couldn’t Jeb Bush or Chris Christie formulate an argument, it would never occur to them to try. When in fact liberal social values are anything but compassionate.

    With a real black unemployment rate that is realistically probably over 20% it shouldn’t be too hard to argue that it’s really more compassionate to give preference to these science and technology students who come from all over the world to learn. And who are innovators who have the capacity to create good jobs that pay well.

    bridget wrote:

    In theory, we should also be using this to make headway in inner cities. “Hey, Jamal, do you want to compete with some guy in Mexico for your job at the supermarket? Do you want your kids to compete with an immigrant for a job?”

    I’m sure Jamal would probably if given the choice not want to work in the supermarket at all. If his options also included working in some hight-tech industry thanks to some innovation thought up by an electrical engineering graduate student from Taiwan.

    Which immigration policy would Jamal find more “compassionate.” One that led to people coming to the US to found companies that offered jobs that could lead to high paying careers? For instance, if the US joined most of the rest of the world and offered start-up visas to entrepreneurs (many of those foreign born science, technology, engineering, and math grads who earn patents while still in school can’t stay in the US after they graduate no matter how much capital they can raise from US investors to do so).

    Or our current immigration policy which means the only jobs now being created are low-paying part time McJobs like the one he might get that supermarket?

    And that’s without the amnesty which would just increase the competition for even those dead-end jobs that are available.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  62. Just to give you the confidence to plan for all your tomorrows:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-19/us-deposits-perspective-25-billion-insurance-9283-billion-deposits-297514-billion-de

    You read that right, the FDIC has $25 Billion to cover Amerikkka’s loss.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  63. For Presidential elections: One thing: Create a primaryu system that let’s new, alternative candidates drop in late after the primaries have started. People shouldn’t be limited to only the candidates who decided to run early.

    That’s about the last thing Reince Priebus et al would be for.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  64. Contagion:

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1303/S00306/national-planning-cyprus-style-solution-for-new-zealand.htm

    Depositor insurance is just government flim-flam.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  65. Larry Elder probably doesn’t know who happyfeet is.

    Elephant Stone (dd9501)

  66. Who would I “rather have a beer with”? As a measure of a man?… A potential POTUS?!?!?!

    Call me crazy, but if that’s how the average voter thinks and votes, we are doomed. Jesus H. Christ!

    Colonel Haiku (eacb1f)

  67. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 10:28 am

    For the average, non-urban Mexican, education generally ends at the 8th-grade; the average immigrant that we’ve seen over the last two+ decades has less of an education than that, with a large number being illiterate in Spanish (or why else do fast-food joints with bi-lingual menu boards have to explain the menue?).

    Another Drew (b8ab92)

  68. Competence… Vision… Experience… Leadership… in all honesty, beer drinking falls about 278th on my list.

    Colonel Haiku (90595d)

  69. Comment by Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:31 am

    The Primary System is a creation of the State Parties, and any changes have to be made there.

    Another Drew (b8ab92)

  70. Comment by JD (b63a52) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:03 am

    Humph….Grumble….
    Well, at least he didn’t confuse me with Kmart….

    (now, I will resume my alternate-ID once more)

    Another Drew (b8ab92)

  71. Steve57: I think you are conflating two issues. Whether we allow super-brilliant people to immigrate here is different from enabling illiterate, unskilled people to immigrate here.

    Furthermore, while it would be nice to provide opportunities through high-tech growth, I will never stop pointing out that there’s not gonna be a world in which everyone works at interesting, intellectually challenging jobs. If people went to high schools like those in NYC, wherein 80% of graduates can’t really read, then the question for them is how far they are moving up at the supermarket, and how many illegals are going to take the few jobs open to them. Period.

    I think that the inner cities would tune you out if you started yammering about how we need to allow more Indians in so that everyone there could work as an engineer making the devices that will put the iPad out of business. I mean, only about 52% of American blacks graduate from high school, and you would go into the inner cities and twitter at them about awesome high-tech jobs? REALLY?

    There are people whose big goal in life, based on their abilities and educations, is to make shift manager. Most of those people vote Democrat, which is voting for the party that wants to import competition for their jobs.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  72. 64. Depositor insurance is just government flim-flam.

    Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:39 am

    Yes, and more and more people realize it. Besides, for many these days it’s dangerous to keep their money in banks for reasons apart from the fact their rulers have resorted to or praise these heists that in medieval times were known as tax farming. The barons reaping where they did not sow.

    US News: The New Underground Economy

    I hardly think there’s anything new about this. Victor David Hanson has long written with great insight on many aspects of the deliberate liberal destruction of Kali. And the underground economy has long been one of those aspects he’s written about.

    Five Days of Hope and Despair

    Day Five. Very Much Alive

    On the fifth day, I am pulling into Selma, after a brief stop in Fowler. Say what you wish about the 17% unemployment of the San Joaquin Valley, the 48th or 49th slot in the national ranking of the public schools, the ground zero of illegal immigration, the flat landscape between the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada, but one can feel alive here in a way not quite possible on University Avenue. California has lots of rules, but they mostly don’t apply out here. Who wants to pull over a smoky truck with tree limbs flying off the bed, outside of Kerman, when the easier $300 fine is found citing the cell-phoning soccer mom in her Yukon on the 99? Does the Carmel resident really care that there are 10 unlicensed, unvaccinated dogs down the street out here on Mountain View Avenue? I don’t think any more so than those of the Gilded Age on Fifth Avenue worried whether 1884 Dodge City followed habeas corpus.

    …I went into a stop-and-go in the local barrio, and an immigrant owner from the Punjab was discoursing on California gas taxes at a level a policy wonk might emulate. Yet on the way home, a pick-up and trailer coming in the opposite direction cut across the white line of Highway 43, and pulled into one of the many roadside taco canteens, waving and smiling as he heard me hit the brakes.

    Kali only attempts to put you out of business if you try to start a legal business. Does anyone think that taco canteen on the side of the road is collecting sales taxes or applied for any permits? Illegal immigrants have always participated in the illegal economy. And what’s more the authorities ignore it. VDH nails it when he points out the authorities would rather ticket the soccer mom than the guy with the unregistered truck that can’t pass an emissions inspection as his uncovered load spews out road hazards as he’s running a cash hauling business.

    Besides if that guy is an illegal immigrant then he’s got powerful allies who will make sure the rules aren’t applied to him. It isn’t just David Gregory whose friends make sure he’s above the law.

    You do see it all the time in Kali. You’ll see a CHP officer parked on a stretch of road with a radar gun trying to catch speeders. Doing nothing at all about the unlicensed roadside vendors selling everything from flowers to clothes. There’s no money in it, and besides it would be racist according to La Raza.

    So what did everyone think would happen to all those people who dropped out of the labor force when they stopped looking for work? They didn’t stop participating in the economy just because they’re no longer a factor in the labor participation rate. They’ve got to live somehow, and it’s making money under the table as part of the black market economy, oh well.

    From the US News article:

    Household spending has held up surprisingly well in recent months, even though new taxes have reduced paychecks and other problems are holding back the economy. Incomes haven’t risen by nearly enough to explain the entire boost in spending. Nor has the use of credit cards.

    When your teenager starts wearing expensive clothes and flashing bling he couldn’t possibly afford through his part-time job, you start to wonder where the money is coming from. Some economists are asking the same question about consumers who seem more flush than they ought to be. The answer may lie in the large “underground” economy that doesn’t show up in official statistics.

    …”Severe recessions have historically driven jobless Americans into the shadow economy,” writes Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group. “We suspect the destructive nature of the last downturn and the prolonged weak recovery pushed a record number of people into that murky world of cash transactions.”

    Baumohl cites several unusual trends to make the case for a booming underground economy. First, retail sales since 2009 have been rising at levels typically associated with an unemployment rate of 6 percent or lower. But unemployment has been above 8 percent for most of that time.

    “Many of those who have left the labor force since the last recession have managed to earn income in the shadow economy,” he believes. “Their spending still shows up in the official retail sales and personal consumption data.”

    …Another clue to the underground economy comes from government data on the percentage of Americans who forego banking services, finding other ways to handle their money. The percentage of Americans who are “unbanked” or “underbanked” rose from 25.8 percent in 2009 to 28.3 percent in 2011. Some of those people may be low-income customers getting hit with a slew of new banking fees, forcing them to reject traditional banking. But others may be choosing to keep their money out of the mainstream financial system so that nobody checks up on them.

    We really are becoming Greece. Why would a teacher at a public school actually teach kids to read at his day job? If they or their parents want to learn, then they can hire him after hours when he runs is lucrative, cash only, off the books tutoring business. Or for that matter we’re starting to resemble the Soviet economy. Where the workers at government stores would hoard the more desirable items so they could sell them on the black market and make money for themselves.

    This again has to do with values. The laws and regulations hobbling legitimate business were sold on the basis of promoting what “we as a society” are supposed to “value.” Then environment, a living wage, good working conditions, etc.

    When in fact it had more to do with cronyism. Once you’re in the John Corzine club, then you write the rules to keep others from getting big enough to join.

    The fact is for many people it’s simply more attractive to work off the books (and collect benefits at the same time) because in the aggregate they’ll do better. But there’s nothing compassionate about that because making money in the shadow economy is risky.

    At the same time the liberals talk about bringing illegal aliens “out of the shadows” with their immigration reforms they’re forcing more and more people into the shadow economy with their economic reforms.

    Really, trying to run a legal business while trying to do the impossible and comply with the regulations of Obamacare and the tax code actually exposes you to more risk then if you just set out to fly under the radar and not attempt to comply at all. For many of the long term unemployed the real “hope” in the Obama era is that they won’t be noticed by the authorities. Which is a good bet because it’s the people who try to operate in legal channels that are notifying the authorities of their existence and will be noticed first.

    But one of those legal channels is the banking system, so more and more people are avoiding that as well.

    I suppose it’s just an added advantage for them that they aren’t exposed to the scam of “deposit insurance.”

    Steve57 (60a887)

  73. Perry wrote:

    On new, unmarried moms, I like the welfare to work idea under Clinton and the Repubs, which is one more reason we need to focus on job creation as our number one problem, while continuing the welfare to work approach.

    OK, does that mean you would agree that if “new, unmarried moms” did not find a job in two years/ five years, that was it, they were cut off, period?

    That was the discipline intended under the 1996 welfare reform act: we’ll help you out temporarily, but after an extended period of generosity, you are on your own, and if you don’t take care of yourself, you starve. Are you on board with that?

    The coldly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  74. Icy, it puts works into the public domain sooner.
    Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/19/2013 @ 10:56 am

    — Yeah, I know. And my question stands.

    Icy (09fb49)

  75. Limited government is a concept that actually means something objective. So why don’t you — on principle — advocate for those principles?

    And here I thought I was doing just that. Do you read the site regularly??

    The problem is, not every voter wants the same thing you do, J.P. All I am saying is that principle is necessary (otherwise what’s the point?), but as for our fickle and crap electorate, not sufficient. Just ask President Goldwater.

    Patterico (89b580)

  76. Who would I “rather have a beer with”? As a measure of a man?… A potential POTUS?!?!?!

    Call me crazy, but if that’s how the average voter thinks and votes, we are doomed. Jesus H. Christ!

    I believe it is a big part of it, yes.

    Also I think we are doomed.

    Patterico (89b580)

  77. All that said, I’ll take Ted Cruz over any other politician out there. And I’m not sure how “likable” he is.

    Patterico (89b580)

  78. Icy, if you look at copyright law as the creation of a monopoly power in the hands of the author, then its a restriction on individual rights. Reduction of the term means that I have the right to make copies of the work sooner.

    SPQR (b12eb9)

  79. “All that said, I’ll take Ted Cruz over any other politician out there. And I’m not sure how “likable” he is.”

    – Patterico

    A few serious questions:

    Has Ted Cruz said anything that wasn’t said by one of the candidates for the Republican nomination during the primary battle?

    If the answer to the first question is no, do you still prefer Cruz to whoever he’s repeating?

    If the answer to the third question is yes, why?

    I genuinely don’t understand the excitement about Cruz, but I don’t pay close enough attention to the man to assume that there couldn’t be a good reason for it.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  80. No bridget, I’m not conflating two separate issues. There really is only one issue. It’s the fact that the GOP has been so thoroughly dumbed down it is now convinced it needs to avoid social issues altogether.

    When in fact that only leaves a vacuum for liberals to fill with their social values. Everything I’ve mentioned is connected to that. Everything you’ve mentioned is connected to that. The fact that only 52% of blacks graduate from high school (I’ll just accept your stats) is the creation of decades of value choice after value choice.

    The GOP will never out-liberal the liberals. The GOP needs people who can articulate why it’s exactly what the liberals have been promising the black community that have created urban disaster areas in our inner cities. Not that they didn’t get the “rich” to pay for more of it.

    As far as inner city people tuning me out if I talk (where the hell did you get the idea I would Twitter them?) to them about good paying jobs in high-tech, you do realize that even high tech manufacturers need people to work the loading docks and do a lot of tasks that don’t require degrees. Jobs that may not be great as a starting position but will lead to much more than shift manager at Taco Bell ever will.

    Jobs that will never exist within commuting range of the inner city because these urban wastelands are generally high tax hell-holes. That’s a liberal social value; making the “rich” pay their “fair share.” Which means high tech companies relocate from San Francisco because while they can afford to pay their software engineers enough to get them to commute in from the east bay you can’t pay janitors enough to do the same and keep your business going. So they move to places like Austin TX.

    The high tech industry may be high tech, but it’s also industry. You can’t operate it without the mix of workers needed to run it. And, yes, some of those jobs don’t even require a high school diploma to start. Just people who know how to work.

    And what’s so great about a HS diploma anyway, when 80% of those getting one in NYC are functionally illiterate? At least, those entering the cities community colleges 80% require remediation before they can perform at the community college level. After 13 years in K-12 you ought to be able to come out at that level of ability.

    I shouldn’t complain; I used to work in corporate training and the dismal state of our public schools provided me with plenty of career opportunities.

    The fact is as long as conservatives abandon the arena of social values entirely to liberals, the best the GOP can hope for is a second fiddle position as they attempt to graft fiscal conservatism to an increasing liberal society.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  81. He is the anti-GOP establishment, Leviticus.

    JD (4bb5d1)

  82. DOOMEDY DOOMEDY DOOMED

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  83. Immigration:

    Three times in the past and more, the American people were promised enforcement for amnesty. We got the amnesty, but we did not get the enforcement.

    Again and again and again. We cannot try to kick Lucy’s Football again.

    The next immigration law must be all enforcement, and make good on the promises of the past. We were lied to not once, but three times. We cannot be lied to again.

    luagha (5cbe06)

  84. what if we aim for Lucy’s head this time?

    would that be wrong?

    am I a bad person?

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  85. 79. Re: Cruz. “I don’t pay close enough attention to the man”

    So? What are you jawing about?

    Has Cruz uttered anything new that Michele or Good Hair or Neutered hasn’t?

    Well, he hasn’t agonized over Tardisil, forgotten one of his points or ‘effed up enough to be detested by everyone on his side of the aisle.

    That already is a bit of a deal.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  86. Good one @askeptic “feets, the section posted after the link to “Larry Elder” was a quote of Larry Elder.
    You do know that Larry is a Black Libertarian Lawyer Radio-personality, don’t you?
    You can listen to him M-F, 3-6pm in L.A. on KABC-790am.”

    But like the others said DOOM. It truly is. What can we do?

    Jenny@CT Limo Service (c8d5e0)

  87. Leviticus: Has Ted Cruz said anything that wasn’t said by one of the candidates for the Republican nomination during the primary battle?

    Yes. He hit Sen. Feinstein upside the head on the Constitution, something more Republicans should be doing.

    beer 'n pretzels (6ef50f)

  88. how does Larry being black make his argument not stupid?

    these are independent variables

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  89. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:05 am
    Icy: the problem is that copyright has been extended to something like 90 years; it initially had a term that was something closer to two decades.
    — It is 70 years for copyright, a period which MIGHT encompass the lifespan of someone that creates a copyright work when he or she is 21 years old. The term for a patent is 20 years.

    It is more costly and time-consuming to create patentable new technology, but the patent term has not been extended;
    — So, in your opinion, is the problem that the copyright term is too long or that the patent term is too short?

    however, it is now arguably easier to create copyrightable work (with word processors, songwriting technology, etc.), but the term for such is longer than it used to be.
    — These tools slightly ease the burden of preserving a creative work; they do next to NOTHING for the creative process of formulating the work in the first place.

    I have no problem with people getting rich off their inventions and art, but this is much more about Disney keeping Tigger out of the public domain than it is about ensuring that starving artists don’t see people ripping off their work.
    — Yeah, it’s just too gosh-darned bad that in order to protect the little guy we have to also provide cover for the evil rich, isn’t it?

    Icy (09fb49)

  90. Steve57,

    I think you are ignoring my point, which is that immigration ought to be an easy way for us to win in the inner cities. Amnesty is at odds with the good of many people in inner cities, plain and simple. We need to make that point to them, plainly and simply.

    You can muddle it all you want and talk about creating hypothetical jobs and how a HS diploma doesn’t really matter and all that, but that’s a really awesome way to LOSE. It’s much easier, as per my above post regarding the difficulty of explaining abstract economic theory, to point to an already-existing job and say, “Who do you want to have that job?” than to try to get people worked up about a hypothetical job that will hypothetically appear if we have tax cuts for the rich. In reality, by the time you’ve talked about the PhD engineers from Hong Kong, and how the immigration system hurts them, the people in the inner cities have correctly received the message that their needs are secondary and ancillary to your own agenda. But there’s not much to tune out about, “Who do you want to have that job at Krispy Kreme – your teenage kid or the illegal immigrant?”

    bridget (55e4a2)

  91. You do see it all the time in Kali. You’ll see a CHP officer parked on a stretch of road with a radar gun trying to catch speeders. Doing nothing at all about the unlicensed roadside vendors selling everything from flowers to clothes.

    CHP is charged with enforcing traffic laws.
    Zoning and Permit violations are the purview of County/City cops/code-enforcement.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  92. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 12:16 pm

    But, bridget, that illustrates what is truly wrong with our immigration policy.
    We bend over backwards to not punish the illegal who comes here and takes jobs away from those on the lowest rungs of the ladder, while throwing up roadblocks to keep out the educated who would be contributing to the advancement of the economy and the creation of jobs.
    We should be discouraging the former, and helping as much as we can the latter.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  93. The GOP will never out-liberal the liberals.

    Old rule of Republican Politics:

    If the voters have a choice between a Democrat, and a Democrat(aka a RINO), they’ll elect the Democrat!

    The Establishment overlooks/forgets this rule constantly, which explains quite a lot about our current predicament.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  94. Perhaps more important than whether or not you would like to have a beer with a candidate is whether or not you want a candidate to have your back in a brawl when too much beer has been consumed.

    Obama can talk all he wants about gun and knife fights, I bet he wouldn’t even try to rebound in the Big 10.

    such as garnishing the wages of men who sire children who are on welfare (under the theory that they should be paying for their kids before strangers have to pick up the tab). That will reduce incentives to have children out of wedlock.
    Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:09 am

    You’ve said it. That might be an issue that would get some folks to come out and vote who normally wouldn’t.
    At some point one needs to learn responsibility by being responsible. Safety nets are good, but if they encourage people to take dangerous leaps then something different needs to be tried.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  95. Icy,

    The term for a patent filed after 1998 is twenty years from the date of filing; for pre-1998 patents, it is 17 years from the date of issuance.

    Copyright protection is not seventy years; for works produced after 1978, it is life of the author plus seventy years.

    I am not arguing that we should eat the rich, or that creativity is created by word processor; rather, I am pointing out the absurdity in receiving copyright protection for roughly five times as long as patent protection.

    Copyright and patent are meant to provide a quid pro quo – those who put something novel in the public domain are given market exclusivity, so as to prevent reverse engineering, copying, or otherwise free-riding on the creative and inventive process. Retroactive increases in the copyright term, as per the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, are not connected to any constitutional nor public policy end.

    Likewise, granting copyright protection for over a century is not connected to any public policy ends – it is purely because corporations, which outlast people, want to continue to make money on stuff that was created prior to WWII. Actual, living breathing people tend to not give a rat’s patootie if their works stop making money fifty years or seventy years after their death – because their own grandchildren have passed on seventy years after their death.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  96. Leviticus: Has Ted Cruz said anything that wasn’t said by one of the candidates

    Credibility counts too. Whether one gives a politician credibility is up to them, but I believe this was a problem for some GOP candidates, and is the fatal problem for the GOP as a whole.

    If they truly are serious about spending, or constitutional rights, most of them have had a chance to demonstrate this. From deficits to Mccain-Feingold, I don’t think the GOP has been effective at living up to its own ideals on the constitution or sustainability.

    If they had, I do not think electability would be a problem. The MSM would demagogue, but we opened the door for those hits really connecting.

    Dustin (73fead)

  97. askeptic: I do not disagree with you. What I am saying is that tactically, we should be making mincemeat out of the Democrats on illegal immigration by driving a wedge in between two parts of their base.

    What the [expletive] is so hard to understand about that?

    bridget (55e4a2)

  98. Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/19/2013 @ 1:18 pm

    Larry, who loves to deal in “facts”, also is fond of saying:

    Truth to a Liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman!

    His argument is valid because it is truthful, and he is a Black speaking to Blacks; in the same way that the Mayor of Philly was making the point about job-seekers from the Minority Community need to pull up their pants, and clean up their act, if they expect to find a job.
    Unfortunately, many in the ‘Hood don’t want to be told that to succeed, they may have to adopt some of the trappings of The Man – they wish to stay true to whatever silly fad that may be currently in style.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  99. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 1:51 pm

    The Establishment-GOP is congenitally unsuited to saying anything to anyone that might take offense, or be uncomfortable, with what they are being told, no matter how applicable it is to them.
    They sold out to the Non-Judgmental Corps.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  100. 99- That was Chapter & Verse!
    To quote Dickie V: I love it, Baby!

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  101. Romney and co. relied too much (I think) on the message “The economy is lousy, make the economy better and everyone will be better off”.

    I think not only with the economy, but with a myriad of issues, we need to point out how “group X” will be better off.

    I don’t want to start doing identity politics like the dems pandering to people, but maybe we need to be more specific how the conservative message helps different groups specifically.

    Such as Bridget pointing out with immigration and the inner city.
    For example, there are a heck of a lot of immigrants and family members here of would-be immigrants who have put up trying to do it the legal way who are not happy with the idea of being jumped in line by someone doing it illegally.

    While we can’t expect whining about the media will accomplish anything, we can’t underestimate how pervasive the problem is.
    FOR EXAMPLE (yes, I meant that to be yelling) On the news updates even on radio stations carrying Hewitt or Bennett or beck or limbaugh, for example, their sound bites are no different than other places. For example, they mention obama’s nomination for labor secretary as former assistant in the DOJ, without noting the scathing report just handed out about his department.

    Too much of the “flavor” of the news just sort of permeates the atmosphere. It isn’t even so much what is said as what is ignored and the way it is ignored.

    Everything about Bush was his supposedly misleading about WMD’s. “Everyone” just assumes it was a documented fact bush should have been impeached. “Everyone” should know we still haven’t heard testimony from benghazi survivors, that the F+F investigation has been jammed (Correct?), etc., etc., but not even “conservative stations” point out the truth.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  102. 97, 99. I think we’ve found the answer to Leviticus’ “ewww”.

    I’m all for belligerence. Swing away.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  103. If the GOP in CA wants to be relevant again, they need to make hay of this:

    A federal grand jury has indicted former California Public Employees’ Retirement System Chief Executive Officer Federico Buenrostro on conspiracy charges in connection with a scheme to commit fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday.

    The grand jury also indicted Alfred Villalobos, a former member of the pension fund’s board, in connection with the scheme involving fraudulent documents related to a $3 billion investment of the retirement system in funds managed by Apollo Global Management.

    Guess which party they belong to?
    No peeking!

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  104. Yes, the station that carries Beck and Rush, still has those idiotic Minitrue AP bulletins, and they have brought back Rick Sanchez, for reasons passing understanding.

    narciso (3fec35)

  105. Icy, if you look at copyright law as the creation of a monopoly power in the hands of the author, then its a restriction on individual rights. Reduction of the term means that I have the right to make copies of the work sooner.
    Comment by SPQR (b12eb9) — 3/19/2013 @ 12:44 pm

    — A restriction on the ‘right’ of an individual to publish someone else’s creative work WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT?

    Sorry, but I’m gonna have to go with “we all have the right to hold ‘a monopoly power’ on the works we have created.”

    Icy (09fb49)

  106. I still say worrying about politics this late in the day is antithetic to basic survival instinct.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-19/nigel-farage-message-europeans-get-your-money-out-while-you-can

    Italy, Greece and Spain are looking fixedly at the exits and when one does it all comes apart in a few months.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  107. for example, the Holder DOJ wants to deport a family that came here from Germany because they wanted to homeschool their children rather than comply with a Nazi-era law requiring state-sponsored indoctrination (which it certainly was at the time the law was passed)

    http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343321/romeikes-fight-individual-liberty-jillian-kay-melchior

    now, once homeschoolers were widely thought to be wacko’s, but they are more widely recognized now, and even if someone wasn’t too sure, I don’t think most people think loving and nurturing parents should be deported and arrested and have their children taken away from them because they want them taught in a school where you can pray.

    This is just one of the multitude of battles as suggested by walsh at #99.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  108. Since WHEN does shortening the term of copyright ‘further’ the cause of individual rights?

    Um, where did you get “further”? Copyrights terms have been retroactively extended 3 times in my lifetime, from 56 years to a current minimum term of 95 years.

    As for individual rights, there is a Constitutional right to a robust public domain, consisting of works that have gone off copyright.

    Three times Congress has prospectively taken from the public domain and given to (be honest) corporations. Copyrights no exceed the human lifespan, which makes the constitutional idea of “limited terms” weak to non-existent.

    ANd, no I do not believe that intellectual property should be permanent — it cannot exist in any useful form without the state enforcing a monopoly. I say this as a patent holder; I would be against increasing patent terms as it would do more harm than good. Same for copyright. See Leia Organa re star systems and fingers.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  109. 97. askeptic: I do not disagree with you. What I am saying is that tactically, we should be making mincemeat out of the Democrats on illegal immigration by driving a wedge in between two parts of their base.

    What the [expletive] is so hard to understand about that?

    Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 1:51 pm

    bridget, we’re here because the GOP hasn’t been thinking strategically for decades while the left has been. Which is why I believe you’re missing the point I was making earlier.

    Every once in a while the GOP performs tactics competently. One could argue that was Rove’s strengths. In fact, Rove argues that in his book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, when he holds up Medicare part D an “no child left behind” as models of winning issues for “conservatives” since he has his usual fun-with-statistics (the kind that showed him Romney could still win in Ohio) to demonstrate those provided the margin of victory in Bush 43’s 2004 win.

    Perhaps he was right on the tactics. It’s very poor strategy to confirm that the liberal values that are the foundation for their policies and their vision for the role of the federal government are correct, don’t you think?

    Steve57 (60a887)

  110. I think you are conflating two issues. Whether we allow super-brilliant people to immigrate here is different from enabling illiterate, unskilled people to immigrate here.

    brigit: I think the choice should be to allow hard-working ambitious people to immigrate and keep out deadbeats. Hard-working and ambitious ditch-diggers will be far better citizens than the smartest community organizer.

    And this is why Republicans still have chances with Mexican immigrants — we have a powerful message for people trying to move up.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  111. – It is 70 years for copyright, a period which MIGHT encompass the lifespan of someone that creates a copyright work when he or she is 21 years old. The term for a patent is 20 years.

    Not so. I’ll wait while you go look it up. See the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998.

    It is AT LEAST 95 years and sometimes it is 120 years. If owned by an individual, it is life plus 70 years.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  112. “He is the anti-GOP establishment, Leviticus.”

    – JD

    I just don’t see what he’s done to earn that label, which is why I was asking those questions in the first place.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  113. Sorry, but I’m gonna have to go with “we all have the right to hold ‘a monopoly power’ on the works we have created.”

    Sure you do. I agree with that. Good luck enforcing it though.

    HOWEVER, you aren’t asking for that — you want the GOVERNMENT to make everyone else toe the line. The Constitution balances this power with a provision that the term cannot be unlimited. Further is says that the ONLY REASON for this copyright is to encourage the creation of works FOR THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

    And yet, not one piece of recorded music has ever gone into the public domain as a result of copyright expiration. Same for TV shows and nearly all movies. And lets not even start with software — MSDOS 1.0 still has 60 years to go.

    If the purpose of this federal power is to encourage the useful arts for the purpose of creating a robust public domain, it has UTTERLY FAILED. By the time works enter the public domain (assuming no further extensions) they will have no value at all except as curiosities.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  114. We really should stick to the law as written. To legally immigrate here you must be able to prove you will not be a burden on society. You must either have your own resources sufficient to prevent that, or a sponsor.

    The fact is the hard-working ditch digger isn’t entirely a myth, but less and less typical as time goes on. You can’t have massive numbers of impoverished immigrants, legal or illegal, and a welfare state and expect they won’t take advantage of the benefits on offer. Especially when an administration advertises those benefits via “outreach” with the Mexican government along with assurances that signing up for SNAP benefits won’t harm their chances for eventual legalization/citizenship. Or other public assistance.

    California Dream Act: 20,000 illegal immigrant students apply for state financial aid for the first time

    We can pretty much be guaranteed that when the Democrats get the immigration reform they’re demanding, the first act of the illegal immigrants once they come out of “the shadows” won’t be to get a job digging a ditch. It doesn’t happen.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  115. Leviticus – since, by your admission,you havent really been paying attention to him, you might search out his unapologetic conservative speeches, defense of the antiquated Constitution, and his absolute unwillingness to simply engage in comity at the expense of e pressing his principles.

    JD (b63a52)

  116. Steve,

    Most immigrants come here to better their lives. Most welfare is used by people who have been here for several generations. There are some things (schools, treatment of disease, public sanitation) that everyone gets because everyone benefits.

    Sure, we need to stop the do-gooders who cannot fail to meet a “need” from giving away the store, and we need to make it difficult for immigrants to get on long-term welfare (one particular problem has been parents of immigrants being pulled in and applying for SSI). One thing to do is limit the dependent pull-ins allowed under current law that get preference over young able-bodied working-age people.

    As I’ve said before, I’ve never seen a Mexican beggar.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  117. 114. If you think we’ve forgotten that Cruz is a freshman Senator, a member of the minority, in a chamber of inconsequence, with but a few months under his belt and no accomplishments to look forward to, probably thru 2016, we have not.

    Perhaps you’ve someone in mind from the Senate who’s earned your esteem you’d compare favorably.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  118. “He is the anti-GOP establishment, Leviticus.”

    – JD

    I just don’t see what he’s done to earn that label, which is why I was asking those questions in the first place.

    Well, he challenged the Texas party establishment and won. That’s one thing.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  119. “Perhaps you’ve someone in mind from the Senate who’s earned your esteem you’d compare favorably.”

    – gary galrud

    Um. No. Hard no.

    “since, by your admission,you havent really been paying attention to him, you might search out his unapologetic conservative speeches, defense of the antiquated Constitution, and his absolute unwillingness to simply engage in comity at the expense of e pressing his principles.”

    – JD

    I have seen some of his speeches, interviews he’s given on the tv circuit, etc. (some of it at Patterico’s behest). He has said nothing that wasn’t said a million times by the candidates for the nomination, which is why I’m wondering why you guys think he’s different.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  120. Well, he challenged the Texas party establishment and won. That’s one thing.

    Exactly. David Dewhurst was the go-along-get-along hand picked choice of the GOP establishment for TX Senate. Cruz came from behind in the primary and took the nomination away from him on a solid Tea Party platform. That’s why Cruz is so revered by the anti-establishment wing.

    beer 'n pretzels (6ef50f)

  121. Leviticus – the idea that he is like McCain, or Romney, or the rest is laughable. On some of the Constitutional issues he shares some common ground with the actual conservatives you referenced, but is not doing so in the context of running in aTeam R primary, where everyone tries to out-conservative each other.

    JD (b63a52)

  122. Icy–

    A lot of people view intellectual property as being the same as, say, real estate or other property. If you look at it that way, you’d favor infinite patents and copyrights.

    But there are fundamental differences. Even in a state of nature, I can defend real and personal property with enough guns. It is not necessary to have a vast legal system and a powerful state in order to keep and enjoy these things.

    Intellectual property is different, If I record myself singing a song, I could hold it just like personal property and never let anyone copy it. But if I want to sell this recording in the marketplace, I need some legal structure to prevent (or discourage) others from just making a copy rather than paying me a fee. So I go to the government and ask them to do this.

    At which point they say (as they said in Queen Anne’s day) “Why should we?” Government exists to provide for the common good, why is you making a profit for the common good? And so the deal is struck — protect it for a limited time to encourage this kind of creativity and in exchange the public gets to have it free later. And that’s the deal Queen Anne’s government struck in 1700 or so and the template for the US copyright and patent law.

    Why not forever? 1) it does the public no good so why should we vote for that? and 2) Too long a term has other harms — even at 20 years patents can stifle creativity as much as encourage it. Ideas need to roll over for innovation to work.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  123. And 3) laws need popular acceptance to work. Laws that are viewed as unjust or stupid (e.g. 55MPH speed limit) are roundly ignored. As it is with copyright today.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  124. I guess the most basic answer re: Cruz is that we’re gonna find out one way or the other.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  125. 115. The Constitution balances this power with a provision that the term cannot be unlimited. Further is says that the ONLY REASON for this copyright is to encourage the creation of works FOR THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

    And yet, not one piece of recorded music has ever gone into the public domain as a result of copyright expiration. Same for TV shows and nearly all movies. And lets not even start with software — MSDOS 1.0 still has 60 years to go.

    If the purpose of this federal power is to encourage the useful arts for the purpose of creating a robust public domain, it has UTTERLY FAILED. By the time works enter the public domain (assuming no further extensions) they will have no value at all except as curiosities.

    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/19/2013 @ 2:48 pm

    First of all the idea that copyright laws encourage creators to be creative is a theory that’s capable of being tested.

    And no, they never have served that purpose. There were no copyright laws prior to the statute of Queen Anne in 1709. And there were authors and books prior to that. Frankly authors were flattered when scribes (imagine all the monks transcribing books who might have been prosecuted during the “dark ages” if the recording industry lawyers had been around then) and later printers made copies of their works. It increased their fame. Their main concern was that whomever was copying it would produce inaccurate versions.

    And now we have creative people who are producing works for distribution via the internet. The RIAA website gives the game away when it discusses “piracy:”

    http://riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law

    Are there occasionally exceptions to these rules? Sure. A “garage” or unsigned band might want you to download its own music; but, bands that own their own music are free to make it available legally by licensing it.

    The key is that these bands “own their own music.”

    Copyright laws aren’t there to protect the creators. They exist to protect the distributors. Which is why it’s generally the Recording Industry Association of America that tries to prosecute people who download music. They are essentially defending an outdated business model; that’s it. Just like the book publishers were defending their business model when they lobbied Parliament for the statute of Queen Anne back in 1709.

    Neither the book publishers then nor the RIAA are defending artists or creators. Very, very few artists live off their royalties. As a matter of fact the few musical artists who do make significant amounts of money off royalties are those who are sufficiently famous to have the leverage to get a better deal from the record labels then the normal screwing they deliver to less famous artists.

    RIAA downplays bands that “own their own music” as “garage bands,” but actually its quite rational now that artists can reach a wider audience without a contract that they would. So they can, just like the authors prior to copyright law, increase their fame.

    There are more ways for creators to be compensated then the copyright royalties the distributors invented when lobbying for laws to protect their monopolies.

    As a matter of fact Open Source software is the fastest growing segment in software. This blog itself is “powered by WordPress:”

    http://wordpress.org/

    WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

    Apache server software is, I’m told, the most popular server software in existence. That too is open source.

    http://httpd.apache.org/

    The idea that copyright laws are necessary to encourage people to create works for the public domain is demonstrably false. That may not have been clear back in 1787 when the Constitutional Convention adopted the Constitution but it is now.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  126. But re: Cruz beating the Texas GOP establishment, I am fairly hesitant to treat success in politics as a sign of principle.

    Quite the opposite, in fact.

    Leviticus (17b7a5)

  127. “– A restriction on the ‘right’ of an individual to publish someone else’s creative work WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT?

    Sorry, but I’m gonna have to go with “we all have the right to hold ‘a monopoly power’ on the works we have created.”

    Comment by Icy (09fb49) — 3/19/2013 @ 2:08 pm

    Icy, seriously, did you not bother to read my comment?

    SPQR (768505)

  128. 123. I no longer regard myself the poster child of Melancholy. Nouriel Roubini, Marc Faber move over you’ve been supplanted.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  129. Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/19/2013 @ 2:33 pm

    A Problem with Mexican Immigrants:
    Unfortunately, a very large percentage of immigrants from Mexico have no desire to attain citizenship in El Norte, as they intend to return home after working here (this has been confirmed in polling of this community).
    I see no need to be granting visas and permits to people who do not intend to stay here and become citizens. This should be a rule across all economic levels.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  130. The idea that copyright laws are necessary to encourage people to create works for the public domain is demonstrably false. That may not have been clear back in 1787 when the Constitutional Convention adopted the Constitution but it is now.

    And that argument was used on Queen Anne’s people, too, I’m sure. I am willing to bet that Star Wars 7 would not be made were it not for copyright laws. I am also willing to bet that a term of 20 years would be sufficient to that endeavor.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  131. I see no need to be granting visas and permits to people who do not intend to stay here and become citizens. This should be a rule across all economic levels.

    I certainly would not given them any preference.

    I assume by visas you mean residential visas and not tourist visas or short-term work visas for technical support and such.

    Most countries want to see a commitment, either in family, property or money. 2 million pounds invested will get you a UK residential visa for example.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  132. By the way, why doesn’t this immigration thing go two ways? Why are our politicians not insisting that Americans be allowed to live anywhere in Mexico, own land and businesses and have equal justice before the law?

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  133. 124. Intellectual property is different, If I record myself singing a song, I could hold it just like personal property and never let anyone copy it. But if I want to sell this recording in the marketplace, I need some legal structure to prevent (or discourage) others from just making a copy rather than paying me a fee. So I go to the government and ask them to do this.

    At which point they say (as they said in Queen Anne’s day) “Why should we?” Government exists to provide for the common good, why is you making a profit for the common good? And so the deal is struck — protect it for a limited time to encourage this kind of creativity and in exchange the public gets to have it free later. And that’s the deal Queen Anne’s government struck in 1700 or so and the template for the US copyright and patent law.

    Why not forever? 1) it does the public no good so why should we vote for that? and 2) Too long a term has other harms — even at 20 years patents can stifle creativity as much as encourage it. Ideas need to roll over for innovation to work.

    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/19/2013 @ 3:22 pm

    Kevin, if you look at history you’ll find prior to copyright law authors made their living by attracting wealthy patrons. Which is why they didn’t care about “unauthorized” copies of their works. There was no such thing prior to copyright law. The more widespread their work became, the more famous they became. And then the better the odds they’d attract more patronage.

    It wasn’t a group of authors who went to Parliament and lobbied for Queen Anne’s statute. It was a guild of book publishers seeking to protect their capital investment and distribution networks from competition. Prior to the statute of Queen Anne the guild of stationers had a royal charter that gave them the exclusive right to print books. They had the authority to destroy unauthorized printing presses and burn illegally printed books. But there was a quid pro quo for this lucrative monopoly. The stationers had the responsibility to restrict what was printed. If an author wanted to get published in Britain then the author had sign a contract with a member of the guild, and the guild would not print anything the crown would find objectionable.

    Due to political changes eventually the royal charter was allowed to expire, and the stationers had to come up with a new justification to re-establish their monopoly. They used the plight of authors and their poor compensation as a pretext, but then the plight of authors was largely a creation of their prior monopoly. It isn’t like the stationers offered them generous terms considering there were no other alternatives to their guild.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  134. I heard Cruz declared neighboring state New Mexico “unfit for human habitation”…

    Colonel Haiku (cd8c27)

  135. Why are our politicians not insisting that Americans be allowed to live anywhere in Mexico, own land and businesses and have equal justice before the law?

    What, our Pillars of Jello?

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  136. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/19/2013 @ 1:50 pm
    Copyright protection is not seventy years; for works produced after 1978, it is life of the author plus seventy years.
    — Acknowledged. Is that level of protection okay with you?

    I am not arguing that we should eat the rich, or that creativity is created by word processor; rather, I am pointing out the absurdity in receiving copyright protection for roughly five times as long as patent protection.
    — So, your problem is not with the length of copyright protection, but with the ‘short term’ of patent protection; correct?

    Copyright and patent are meant to provide a quid pro quo – those who put something novel in the public domain are given market exclusivity, so as to prevent reverse engineering, copying, or otherwise free-riding on the creative and inventive process.
    — You’re mixing terms here. You’re talking about putting something up for commercial sale; the “public domain” is the opposite of “market exclusivity”. Either way, you’re incorrect about the quid pro quo; there is NO requirement that works of copyright or patented technologies be released on the free market.

    Retroactive increases in the copyright term, as per the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, are not connected to any constitutional nor public policy end.
    — Other than the ‘end’ of allowing citizens to retain personal ownership of what they create.

    Likewise, granting copyright protection for over a century is not connected to any public policy ends – it is purely because corporations, which outlast people, want to continue to make money on stuff that was created prior to WWII.
    — Wanna take a guess as to what percentage of copyrights are held by corporations as compared to the percentage held by individuals?
    Oh, and regardless of who holds it, how about we allow the market to decide whether or not a particular work is worth paying for?

    Actual, living breathing people tend to not give a rat’s patootie if their works stop making money fifty years or seventy years after their death – because their own grandchildren have passed on seventy years after their death.
    — Legacy shmegacy? Some of us actually do care about leaving something for our heirs. Remember the old days, when you would hear people to say with pride, “It’s been in my family for generations”?

    Icy (05982a)

  137. Icy, seriously, did you not bother to read my comment?
    Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/19/2013 @ 3:33 pm

    — What did I miss?

    Icy (05982a)

  138. And that argument was used on Queen Anne’s people, too, I’m sure.

    I sincerely doubt it. The stationer’s monopoly was simply part of a long history of the crown granting guild rights as a means of control. Later in the 18th century, even after the statute of Queen Ann was enacted, Parliament imposed various stamp acts on publishers to control printing.

    Parliament may have opposed the crown’s central monopoly on censorship. But that doesn’t mean Parliament wasn’t itself for some forms of censorship. Just that the crown shouldn’t be the censor.

    The British government was not big on encouraging authors to write more but rather ensuring that authors critical of the government couldn’t or at least would have a difficult time getting published. In any event the idea of protecting individual authors “property rights” in their works would not have appealed to the mercantilists running England so much as protecting the “property rights” of powerful interests.

    As an aside, the founders were well aware of this history. The evidence is clear; the patent and copyright clause was intended to limit the federal government’s powers:

    Making Sense of the Intellectual Property Clause: Promotion of Progress as a Limitation on Congress’s Intellectual Property Power Dotan Oliar University of Virginia School of Law Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 94, p. 1771, 2006

    I am willing to bet that Star Wars 7 would not be made were it not for copyright laws. I am also willing to bet that a term of 20 years would be sufficient to that endeavor.

    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/19/2013 @ 3:48 pm

    Perhaps, but that has nothing to do with encouraging creativity. The fact that Disney wouldn’t make Star Wars 7 without copyright law is entirely due to the $4 billion dollar investment it made when it bought Lucasfilm and preserving the business model it depends on to make their investors money on the acquisition.

    The movie industry is famous for using creative accounting methods to ensure the “talent;” script writers, actors and actresses, directors, etc.; never see a dime in royalties no matter how much the film grosses. Unless of course the producers are unsure if the movie will make any money at all; then the producers will only offer the talent a small salary but a larger cut of the royalties so if it flops they aren’t out as much money.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  139. Leviticus: But re: Cruz beating the Texas GOP establishment, I am fairly hesitant to treat success in politics as a sign of principle.

    Straw man.

    Nobody is arguing that. Tea Party candidates who win (Rand Paul is another example) are revered because they succeed while sticking to principle. They show it can be done.

    beer 'n pretzels (6ef50f)

  140. Rush Limbaugh thinks the electorate is rejecting the Republican image, not Republican ideas:

    I’ve got a story in the stack today, and it’s a fascinating headline. I’ll paraphrase the headline, but it illustrates the problem, illustrates the point. People are given a list of issues and solutions, and they love the conservative solution to every problem until they find out that they are Republican ideas. Then they reject them. And not because of the ideas. So why are they hating Republicans? It’s not because of who the Republicans are. It’s because of what’s being said about Republicans to them. The Republicans have an image problem and what they’re gonna have to do is change the way they are talked about. They don’t have to change who they are.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  141. Dear Patterico,

    The GOP establishment and their supporters in the conservative (I use that term loosely) punditocracy are doing anything and everything they can to deflect blame for yet another failed run at the White House by one of their own. They want us to think there is something wrong with us and not with them. Sadly, it seems to be working.

    The root of the problem is that although we Republicans often flatter ourselves by calling this the party of Reagan, it is not. It is the party of un-Reagans, beginning with George H.W.Bush and continuing all the way through Mitt Romney. What a bunch of uninspiring and generally unelectable milquetoasts. Next time around, why don’t we nominate a smart, confidant conservative with a bit of charisma? Then we’ll have a winning presidential candidate. At the moment, Sarah, Newt, Rand and Ted all seem to fit this bill; there must be others.

    Last fall, when seeing Romney on TV, it always made me think of the GM advertisement from the late-1980s: “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile.” My thought was that, metaphorically, Romney sure is my father’s Oldsmobile. It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

    I just Googled “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile” and found this wonderful bit on a site called “brandstories(dot)net,” which seems wonderfully applicable to the question “Wither the GOP?”:

    Some Tips on Brand Re-Invention

    Brand re-invention/re-branding is always tricky and should be avoided at all cost. If unavoidable, follow these three basic tips.

    1. Maintain the distinction of your brand
    2. Don’t betray your brand values
    3. Make sure your story is consistent – your customers are smarter than you think

    I particularly like that last one: “your customers are smarter than you think.”

    Thanks for the wonderful blog.

    Yours truly,

    ThOR

    ThOR (0d3941)

  142. Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/19/2013 @ 3:22 pm
    A lot of people view intellectual property as being the same as, say, real estate or other property. If you look at it that way, you’d favor infinite patents and copyrights.
    — “infinite” in the sense that one can assign copyright to a chosen descendent or executor, similar to the manner by which you can bequeath real estate to a designated heir; you betcha.

    But there are fundamental differences. Even in a state of nature, I can defend real and personal property with enough guns. It is not necessary to have a vast legal system and a powerful state in order to keep and enjoy these things.
    — The location and portability of a possession, as well as the ease with which a third party could reproduce it, determines the degree to which you actually own it? Uh-huh. Copyright protection has a deterrent effect, as do laws against the physical theft of objects. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t hold with the philosophy of “It ain’t really yours unless you can justifiably blow away anyone that tries to take it from you.”

    Intellectual property is different, If I record myself singing a song, I could hold it just like personal property and never let anyone copy it. But if I want to sell this recording in the marketplace, I need some legal structure to prevent (or discourage) others from just making a copy rather than paying me a fee. So I go to the government and ask them to do this.
    — I wonder if perhaps it would be a good idea for the buyers and sellers of real estate and other property to have some legal structure in place to help ensure a fair and equitable outcome for all parties concerned.

    At which point they say (as they said in Queen Anne’s day) “Why should we?”
    — Of, by and for the people; life, liberty and the pursuit; or sumthin’.

    Government exists to provide for the common good, why is you making a profit for the common good?
    — Stimulates economic activity; capitalism. If a restaurant owner buys my book I will then be able to afford buying a dinner at his restaurant.

    And so the deal is struck — protect it for a limited time to encourage this kind of creativity and in exchange the public gets to have it free later.
    — And subsequently the ‘deal’ was amended to allow the owner/creators of copyright property to retain ownership, seeing as how “the public” enjoys NO right to ‘have it free’.

    And that’s the deal Queen Anne’s government struck in 1700 or so and the template for the US copyright and patent law.
    — Template adjusted in deference to liberty. Yay!

    Icy (05982a)

  143. Icy, the Constitutional grant of the power to create copyright and patent law states: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; ”

    See the bold? An unlimited grant of copyright would eventually mean that all possible expression of an idea would be appropriated by someone.

    SPQR (768505)

  144. Dear Patterico,

    One more thought?

    Here’s a story about my son which seems the perfect allegory for the Romney defeat.

    My son recently asked a girl to a school dance who he felt was beneath him. He was between girlfriends and had already been turned down by his preferred date. He wanted to go to the dance and thought this girl would be an easy “yes.” She turned him down; he was flabbergasted and distraught. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked. “She was smarter than you thought,” I told him.

    Let’s not settle for another presidential candidate that is beneath us, even if we think he’s a sure “yes” from the electorate. The electorate is smarter than we think.

    Yours truly,

    ThOR

    ThOR (0d3941)

  145. Last fall, when seeing Romney on TV, it always made me think of the GM advertisement from the late-1980s: “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile.” My thought was that, metaphorically, Romney sure is my father’s Oldsmobile. It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

    Romney made some mistakes – some unforced – for sure. Having said that, if anyone seriously thinks that what we’ll have to endure over the remainder of 0bama’s 2nd term is not infinitely worse than a Romney-Ryan administration, you’ve got rocks in your head.

    And for those who didn’t assist in getting out the “R” vote or, worse yet, chose to sit on your hands and not vote, a pox on your casa.

    Colonel Haiku (3aced1)

  146. DRJ, that’s a valid point. The Republican leadership insists it has to “rebrand.”

    But the reality is the GOP doesn’t control its own brand. And the GOP hasn’t been thinking strategically about what to do about it for a long, long time. The “autopsy” report and the squish statements coming from the GOP establishment tells me that they first have to perceive the problem before they can think of something to do about it. It’s as if they think they can modify their positions on certain issues (i.e. immigration reform and gay marriage) and somehow they’ll be able to get their message out via the media.

    That’s insane. The media that hires Democratic operatives like Al Sharpton, Chris Wallace, George Stephanopoulos, David Axelrod, and Robert Gibbs and pretends they aren’t partisans? But never fails to point out the conservative is a conservative partisan.

    Obama’s 2008 campaign organization “Obama For America” morphed into his 2012 campaign organization “Organizing For America” within days of Obama’s 2009 inauguration and then into the permanent Obama campaign organization “Organizing For Action” within days of his 2013 inauguration.

    Except now it pretends to be a non-partisan non-profit social welfare organization. And the thing is, the media will pretend that too. Even though it’s expressed purpose is to promote Obama’s agenda the media will go along with the charade that Obama’s agenda is non-partisanship and partisanship means the GOP not cooperating with Obama’s “non-partisan” agenda. And instead doing what their constituents elected them to do and offer an alternative to Obama’s agenda.

    Here’s a classic example in an LAT article, the subject of which in itself is evidence we are doomed:

    Call for screening of healthcare enrollers meets resistance California needs 20,000 workers to sign people up in the new health insurance exchange. In the process, they would have access to sensitive consumer data.

    The idea that protecting people from identity theft and other forms of fraud by keeping their SSNs, tax information, DOBs, etc., away from felons meets resistance at all is mind boggling (but then the same bureaucrats who’d release “Joe the Plumber’s” confidential information in violation of the law as payback for questioning Obama means our data plus electronic health files aren’t going to be safe in any case).

    But here’s how it reports on those people arguing against background checks:

    Carla Saporta, health policy director at the Greenlining Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates for racial and economic justice, has urged the state insurance exchange to proceed carefully.

    “Background checks would create barriers for a lot of communities of color and disproportionately exclude African American and Latino men from participating,” she said. “We need a massive amount of people to help with outreach.”

    Hey, the Greenlining Institute is just another non-partisan non-profit social welfare organization. It just promotes (by it’s own description) racial and economic justice “that works to bring the American Dream within reach of all, regardless of race or income.”

    And who could be against such an obviously non-partisan organization with clearly non-partisan goals? Why, there’s no need to even look into things; their word on the matter is sufficient. Just like the media lets the former Obama campaign officials tell it that are running the new version of OFA it’s no longer a partisan political organization.

    There’s an interesting article on the Yid with Lid website. It’s mostly about Turkey, but the author Barry Rubin deliberately uses compares the Islamization of Turkey with what’s been going on for quite a while in the US:

    And what about the patronage enjoyed by Islamist leaders? For example, I’m told that men working for the government know now that they are more likely to be promoted if their wives wear “Islamic clothing.” Companies know they are more likely to get government contracts if they toe the line. Once Islamists are permanently in power—even if they have to face elections—the transformation of the country continues.

    When Islamists–like Communists, fascists, or Arab nationalists, reach a certain level of power their behavior becomes more authoritarian. Let me tell an anecdote. A friend of mine who fits the profile of a left-secularist Turk has energetically argued with me in conversation that the current Turkish regime is not really threatening to transform the country. But he told me that the nanny for his children, though secular, must wear “Islamic clothing” when she goes to work because otherwise she might be physically assaulted in her neighborhood. I have heard journalists talk in private about how scared they are to offend the regime, though some still do speak their conscience in very loud voices.

    Thus, the fact that there will still be a lot of secular people in Turkey doesn’t mean things will remain static. And having about one-third of the population on your side is cold comfort indeed in a democratic state when those people’s votes don’t really count in writing laws, choosing judges, and determining school curricula.

    This is where an interesting comparison to the United States comes in. Within Turkey, while under pressure and sometimes even intimidation, much of the mass media and universities are still in the hands of opposition forces. There are campaigns and themes leading to more Islamist attitudes. But by way of comparison, in the United States those two institutions are overwhelmingly in the hands of the pro-government left. This institutional control has gradually led to a remarkable change in popular attitudes that may end up enshrining the left in power for a long time to come. Other views will certainly not disappear in America. But, again, how important is that when the power to set law and customs resides in the hands of one side?

    Rebranding isn’t the problem at all. The problem is the GOP has an image problem and they’ve let their political enemies (to use Obama’s term when he lets the mask slip) have control of their image. The fact that they’re even talking about rebranding or messaging means they’re not willing or able to face up to the scope of the problem.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  147. Obviously I meant that while the GOP establishment insists it needs to rebrand it’s ignoring the real problem. As Rush cogently observed:

    So why are they hating Republicans? It’s not because of who the Republicans are. It’s because of what’s being said about Republicans to them.

    The people who are telling the electorate to hate the GOP will not stop no matter how many times the GOP “rebrands.” Have they learned nothing. Al Sharpton tells his “community” that the Klansmen of the Republican party have merely traded in their sheets and hoods for coats and ties.

    The Democratic operatives in the media (and not just the former Democratic candidates, administration officials, speech writers, and campaign managers) only let leftists “rebrand” without blowing their cover. OFA and rebrand into OFA then rebrand again into OFA and that’s fine. ACORN can rebrand. The GOP they will not allow to rebrand.

    The Republicans need to figure out how to deal with that problem. Not once more how to figure out how to get the MFM to like them enough so they’ll stop demonizing them and making sure their “messaging” never actually gets through the filters.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  148. Steve57,

    I’m not sure if you agree or disagree with Limbaugh. To me, he isn’t saying the GOP needs to rebrand. He’s saying the GOP is being portrayed by the media as something they aren’t. IMO, and I could be wrong, he’s saying Republicans have a messaging problem.

    I also think the GOP has a messenger problem, and recent GOP nominees don’t seem to be leaders that appeal to wide swaths of voters. Frankly, Americans like young, vibrant, energetic leaders and they have since JFK. The good news is I think the GOP is fielding more candidates who project those qualities and are principled, too.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  149. Not much can be done until we have more fairness in media.

    Dennis D (b481af)

  150. 146.Icy, the Constitutional grant of the power to create copyright and patent law states: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”
    See the bold? An unlimited grant of copyright would eventually mean that all possible expression of an idea would be appropriated by someone.
    Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/19/2013 @ 6:20 pm

    — 1) Define “useful Arts”.
    2) “70 years after the author’s death” IS a ‘limited time’.
    3) I did bother to read your comment, and understood what I read, and commented about what you wrote.
    4) A grant of copyright does NOT grant exclusivity to “all possible expression of an idea”; on the contrary, it only protects ONE specific work of expression.

    Icy (05982a)

  151. Ted Cruz articulates the premises behind the federal Constitution, and how it exists to limit the reach of intrusive government.

    No wonder the liberals hate him.

    Elephant Stone (6f443b)

  152. You can try to blame the brand problem on the opposition and the media, but the real culprits are Republicans. Who gave currency to the terms “voodoo economics” and “compassionate conservatism”? These frontal assaults on the economic and social values conservatives hold dear were given us by presidents Bush (I wonder what clever turn of anti-conservative phrase the Bush strategists are dreaming up for Jeb?). And then there came candidate Etch A Sketch. We’ve met the enemy and he is us.

    ThOR

    ThOR (0d3941)

  153. Look, I know this is tiresome, but there is no Santa Claus, Virginia:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-19/spain-preparing-its-own-deposit-levy

    Spain, its regions and its banks owe 500 Billion euros.

    The EU wants Greece to layoff 150K government workers for its next tranche, one quarter of its labor.

    Italy owes 3 Trillion euros. All three have seen their borrowing costs jump into unsustainable territory over Cyprus.

    When one decides to walk away the German citizenry is out 1 Trillion in unsecured debt.

    We are not going to dodge the bullet. Britain’s public and financial sector debt is 1000% of GDP. We are owed $1.2 Trillion by EU banks.

    Stuff your mattresses.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  154. Thor,

    I often wonder how history would be different had Reagan selected Jack Kemp as his VP running mate in 1980, rather than George Bush.

    Kemp was high on the short list of potential running mates, but I think Reagan opted for Bush since GB finished “second” in the primary, and Reagan was attempting to shore up the Jerry Ford wing of the party to come out and vote for him in the general election. (Ford was also on Reagan’s short list, but it appears Ford wanted to be sort of a co-President rather than VP.)

    Also, I think there was some concern by the GOP’s professional consultants that a ticket of two handsome guys who were a sports radio announcer & film actor AND a former pro football quarterback, might be portrayed by the hostile media as potentially too “pretty,” or too “lightweight,” such as “Hey, it’s the Hollywood actor/football player ticket !”…..despite the fact Reagan & Kemp were actually both very intelligent and articulate.

    Bush had a resume that included short stints as CIA Director, Ambassador to China, and UN Ambassador, and while he later on proved to be lacking in passion in ’92, he couldn’t be characterized as not ready to be Vice President in the 1980 election.
    Unfortunately, he just wasn’t the articulate conservative advocate like Kemp was…and that was the achilles heel reality that would come back to bite us in ’92, and therefore generate reverberations for years to come.

    Both of the Bushes are good men, but they each did harmful damage to the GOP brand in their own way. It is particularly disappointing since Reagan singlehandedly re-built the GOP brand just a handful of years following the Watergate scandal.

    Elephant Stone (6f443b)

  155. Like the old game of MAD.

    http://news.yahoo.com/freddie-mac-sues-more-dozen-
    banks-over-libor-002225674–sector.html

    narciso (3fec35)

  156. Has anyone in the public spotlight, particularly who’s a Republican, ever noted the basic, hard fact that some of the most corrupt, dysfunctional cities in America are predominantly liberal and have remain wedded to leftist ideas and politicians for decades and decades? If someone has made that observation in a prominent arena, I’m not aware of him or her.

    Also, has anyone in the public arena ever noted the irony of liberals and liberalism, certainly in the 21st century, fancying themselves or their belief system as so beautiful, generous, tolerant, humane and non-racist/bigoted, while actual studies and history indicate otherwise? For instance, has any notable public figure (Republican or otherwise) pointed out the history of Jim Crow and liberal Woodrow Wilson? Or that wonderful, beautiful Franklin D Roosevelt was a big flop in turning around the economy, and that his supposed meanie Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover — blamed for the Great Depression — actually was as nonsensically liberal as FDR was and initiated his successor’s policies?

    Instead we get folks like George W Bush talking about compassionate conservatism, or other folks like his dad praising the decisionmaking of his appointee to the Supreme Court, liberal David Souter.

    Or we get political whiz Karl Rove actually believing that much of the Latino community in America is somehow very liberal because of the controversy of illegal immigration, totally ignoring the mindless leftism that has plagued countries like Mexico for generations.

    Simply put, it seems that quite a few people out there don’t even understand the basics of human nature and the way it either influences or is reflected in the socio-political/ideological biases in most folks. Namely, that liberal sentiments — found in just about all of us — are pervasive, contradictory, insincere, and surprisingly very corrosive, very corrupting.

    Mark (b007c4)

  157. Well countries run in cyclical patterns, Mark, Argentina had Irigoyen then the Colonels, and Peron, and back again, Mexico alternated between the liberalism of Juarez and the reactionary nature of Porfirio Diaz, all of this is not set in stone,

    narciso (3fec35)

  158. 155. You can try to blame the brand problem on the opposition and the media, but the real culprits are Republicans. Who gave currency to the terms “voodoo economics” and “compassionate conservatism”? These frontal assaults on the economic and social values conservatives hold dear were given us by presidents Bush (I wonder what clever turn of anti-conservative phrase the Bush strategists are dreaming up for Jeb?). And then there came candidate Etch A Sketch. We’ve met the enemy and he is us.

    ThOR

    Comment by ThOR (0d3941) — 3/19/2013 @ 7:38 pm

    Sure one of the problems is the Bushies. Not just the Bush family themselves but the oxymoronic “big government conservatives” who think like them. It isn’t just that they launched a frontal assault on conservative values. They don’t even know what conservative values are. They certainly don’t know why they’re conservative values. They definitely can’t articulate a defense (as I’ve I mentioned previously when discussing Jeb Bush and Chris Christie) but more importantly it would never occur to them to try. Actually it’s very hard to see that the Bushies have any convictions at all other than agreeing with McCain that anyone who stands on principle is a wacko bird.

    They remind me of Eisenhower. When he had a summit with Khrushchev, the Soviet leader lectured him forcefully about the superiority of communism over capitalism. Under communism you had the “right” to work, to housing, to food, etc. And Eisenhower admitted he couldn’t make the opposite case. He said it was difficult to argue against Khrushchev’s assertions.

    Actually now it isn’t. Eisenhower just wasn’t the man to do it. Neither are the Bushies the people to argue against big government leftism since as we’ve clearly learned by now they don’t know there’s a counterargument to be made.

    It’s very difficult to believe that these “most electable” Republicans the party is foisting on us even know what a principle is.

    Dennis Prager has a good article on Rob Portman’s “change of heart” on the issue of gay marriage because his son came out to his wife and him and told them he was gay.

    “My son,” he said, “told us that he was gay, and that it was not a choice.”

    This raises an obvious question: Prior to his son’s telling him that he did not choose to find men sexually attractive, did Senator Portman believe that gay men did choose to find men rather than women sexually attractive? Unlikely.

    …Finally, the senator also said: “During my career in the House and also the last few years in the Senate, I’ve taken a position against gay marriage rooted in part in my faith and my faith tradition.” But he has been “rethinking my position, talking to my pastor and other religious leaders.”

    It would be interesting to find out what exactly his Christian pastor said to him. Did the pastor tell him that Christianity looks favorably on man-man marriage? Or that God made men and women essentially interchangeable? If so, why didn’t the pastor tell this to the senator the whole time the senator opposed same-sex marriage?

    Prager is spot on; this reeks of political opportunism. I can’t believe his stand on gay marriage before was principled. Certainly nothing in his explanation hints at a principle.

    I certainly know I couldn’t go to a Catholic priest and find out it’s OK for me to support gay marriage now since it involves my son. Any more than I could expect to hear it’s OK to support abortion now that I found out my daughter had one and she believes it was her best option.

    More to the point it strongly implies (indeed it almost states) that the only reasons to oppose the redefinition of marriage to include same sex couples is just animosity toward people who you don’t personally care about. I mean, if you flip because it now effects a family member, and now you say your “faith and faith tradition” never really supported your position anyway.

    As if the only argument to be made for keeping marriage in the only form in which it can serve as the foundational institution of our society is biblical anyway, which is not the case at all. But the Portman’s and Bushies of the GOP sure don’t know that.

    If I can’t believe this represents a sincere conversion, but merely an opportunistic pol attempting to broaden his appeal for a national run by staking out the poll-tested position his consultants tell him is to his advantage while using a bunch of BS rationalizations such as talking to his pastor (apparently he attends the church of moral relativism) so he can con the base into still voting for him, would I expect liberals to believe him? Or to vote for him when they could have someone really committed to the cause if this is what they really care about?

    This doesn’t mean the fact that the MFM and the education establishment are controlled by leftists isn’t a huge problem. Conservatives who speak on college campuses learn quickly that many if not most students have never heard a conservative argument for anything. They’re fed a constant diet of undiluted leftism in school from the time they start kindergarten. Nor is their indoctrination challenged by what they see in the MFM, and that lumps both entertainment together with what passes as news in he media (Amazon – Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV ). They’re told all their lives that conservatism is just rank bigotry and primitive religious superstition. They’re surprised to find out that conservative arguments even exist.

    That’s what the GOP’s problem is. Since the MFM and the education establishment is working against them, it’s up to the GOP to educate voters on what the conservative arguments are, why the principles they’re based on are valid, and why the conservative vision is better than the liberal vision for them.

    They don’t do it. They’re sure not going to get that message from the Bushies, or the Portmans, or the Grahamnesties, or the McCains, are they? Instead every election cycle they give more and more ground, demonstrating declared principles aren’t sincerely held principles or even principles at all. And the consultants they listen to are constantly declaring the fight over certain issues to “not be the hill to die on.”

    Steve57 (60a887)

  159. it’s much more fair game to take a hard look at how Rob Portman’s politics intersect with his family life than it is to take a hard look at how Rick “baby in a box” Santorum’s politics intersect with his family life cause of totally different thing

    totally

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  160. cause of the dissimilar is why

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  161. Well ‘unexpectedly’ it didn’t win him many friends, and ticked a fair number of people, but he has three years, to settle the matter.

    narciso (3fec35)

  162. This raises an obvious question: Prior to his son’s telling him that he did not choose to find men sexually attractive, did Senator Portman believe that gay men did choose to find men rather than women sexually attractive? Unlikely.

    I recall Patterico or at least someone else in this forum mentioning a few years ago that the reason homosexuality must be innate and unchangeable — and presumably therefore far more analogous to racial characteristics — is that straight guys have totally no interest in or curiosity about sex with other guys. I found that a somewhat good argument until I started to learn that a variety of famous male homosexuals through the generations have initiated and maintained traditional hetero relationships during their lifetime, and in many cases fathered kids—the old-fashioned way. IOW, this is apparently far more common than presumed:

    Gay actor Rupert Everett had an “on-off affair” with Sir Bob Geldof’s late wife Paula Yates over a six-year period. Everett [also] has had a string of relationships with famous women, including French actress Beatrice Dalle and Susan Sarandon, and struggles to understand why he isn’t a conventional homosexual.

    He says, “I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs – but then I am mystified by most of my relationships.”

    ^ This is another topic that almost no one in the public arena — Republican or otherwise — has ever raised and pointed out. Instead we get a variety of people (liberals in particular—and most ironically) often saying “gay” or “straight”, but rarely if ever using the word “bisexual”—even though that’s a part of the acronym “GLBT.” Why is that?

    Or people, for whatever reason, whispering about a celebrity being “gay” but rarely, if ever, about his or her being bisexual. Why is that? Is the complexity and irony of — and contradictions behind — human nature too difficult for many in the public to understand?

    The inability to call a spade a spade is a big reason I’m far more cynical and skeptical about — among other liberal matters — the GLBT agenda today (including same-sex marriage), much more than I was in the past.

    As for Rob Portman, I’d give him some slack for changing his tune if his son at least is a staunch conservative or is truly centrist. Which brings to mind another phenomenon that is rarely, if ever, raised by anyone in the public arena. Namely that a very high number of gays also happen to be liberal, or outright leftwing. Why is that?—in terms of that correlation not being pointed out in public, and, most crucially, no one trying to figure out the science behind that.

    Mark (b007c4)

  163. It is dissimilar. The fact the Santorums were against abortion before having their son, didn’t have an abortion when told their their son wasn’t going to live, and still are against abortion now means that Rick Santorum’s anti-abortion stance is based upon a principle.

    Not the same at all as Portman’s case who apparently never really thought about things because the issue in question never involved him personally before, but now that it has he’s changed his position. Which means Portman wasn’t taking a position based on any identifiable position.

    Seriously, Mr. Feets, can you tell me of any “faith or faith tradition” within any Christian denomination that would have supported both Portman’s pre-and-post gay-son conversion on gay marriage? You know, like Portman wants me to believe.

    There are a few liberal churches which aren’t in any identifiable way Christian that teach gay marriage is just great and that the Bible doesn’t really say what you think it says anyway. Then there are the vast majority of denominations who will tell you that a lot of scholars who could read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew have studied the matter for a couple of thousand years, and yes the Bible does actually say what you think it says and gay marriage is wrong.

    But I don’t know of one that preaches that the Bible says gay marriage can either be right or wrong depending on whether or not it’s your kid who wants to marry their same sex partner. If it’s just strangers the Bible says it’s wrong, but when it’s your kid you can change your mind say it’s right.

    They’re always pretty clear on the issue; it’s not a close call like Portman seems to be saying it is in his church.

    Oh, by the way:

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/rick-santorum-dead-baby-critics-lambasted-families-grieve/story?id=15306750&page=2

    But some mental health experts believe the Santorums may have been ahead of their time by ritualizing their son’s death in order to exorcize their grief, though they say taking a body home is unusual and not recommended.

    In the context of the times — the year was 1996 when the family buried Gabriel — their behavior was understandable, according to Dr. David Diamond, a psychologist and co-author of the 2005 book “Unsung Lullabies.”

    …Washington Post columnist Charles Lane described today his own experience nine years ago with his stillborn son, Jonathan, chastising critics who called the Santorum’s response to Gabriel’s death as “weird.”

    … “I am glad that my love for the dead overcame my fear of him,” he writes. “We, like the Santorums, took a photograph of the baby — lying, as if asleep, in Cati’s arms. We have a framed copy in our bedroom. It’s beautiful.”

    The body was then circumcised and buried after a Jewish service.

    “Jonathan’s death was probably the hardest moment of my life,” writes Lane. “But actually touching his body was a source of comfort and the first step in going on with life. Not weird.”

    … None of the health professionals ABCNews.com talked to could say if health regulations today would bar a family from taking a dead body from the hospital to their home.

    “We recommend taking into account the ages of the other children and their maturity if you are going to expose them [to a corpse],” he said. “Others in the family need to have their own choices also [on] how to handle it.”

    … Diamond said that 20 years ago, around the time that the Santorums suffered their loss, professionals encouraged their response.

    “It was getting to be more in fashion,” he said.

    “The trend was, rather than ignoring, to help people with their grieving and make it a real loss rather than something stuck in their minds and imagination for years,” he said. “Even before that, they allowed families to hold the dead infant or fetus and spend time with them — as much as they wanted.”

    A corpse was not often taken home, but might be kept in the refrigerator for “a couple of days,” so the family could have access, according to Diamond.

    There was nothing weird about what the Santorums did with their son.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  164. i thought it was weird

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  165. mom and dad would never have done that

    just never

    but we were all really bright kids what could grasp fairly complex concepts without show and tell props

    and my parents were really good at explaining stuff using their words

    mom was a teacher you know and dad was very very verbal

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  166. Elephant Stone,

    Lately, I’ve been going round and round about the good man/good at his job issue. In recent years I have become aware of a number of outstanding professional athletes who seem to be men of low character in one regard or another. Michael Vick, for example, is very good at his job, but his character seems less well developed. Should Vick’s moral poverty be an issue? He wasn’t hired to teach Sunday school. Who would watch the Eagles is they opted for morally upstanding, second-rate talents? I wouldn’t and nobody else would either.

    I, too, like the Bushes on a personal level, especially Geo. Jr. Similarly, the stories I read about Mitt Romney, the man, were deeply moving. But all three of these men seem incapable of moving the political principles I value down the field. Newt Gingrich, by contrast, is an accomplished politician and first rate conservative political thinker. His personal conduct, however, seems less praiseworthy. Amongst these three, I know who I would want leading our team and our nation.

    And to Steve57,

    I think you are 100 percent correct:

    “Since the MFM and the education establishment are working against them, it’s up to the GOP to educate voters on what the conservative arguments are, why the principles they’re based on are valid, and why the conservative vision is better than the liberal vision for them.

    That is the job at hand; I couldn’t have said it better myself.

    Yours truly,

    ThOR

    ThOR (0d3941)

  167. 167. i thought it was weird

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/19/2013 @ 10:27 pm

    Nobody who’s ever been through what they went through would think it was weird. No obstetrician, no OB/GYN nurse who’s dealt with the situation would think it was weird.

    but we were all really bright kids…

    Did your parents ever have to deal with any of you really bright kids being born dead?

    Steve57 (60a887)

  168. it’s definitely weirder than wanting your gay kid to get married to somebody and have that kind of support system in their lives

    everyone wants to know their kids are loved and cared for

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  169. another high-profile switch on the gay marriagings

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  170. everyone wants to know their kids are loved and cared for

    That’s not why marriage exists. If you’re at all conservative you’d be aware of the historical reasons, necessity actually, for marriage and if you’re a responsible person you don’t engage in destructive social engineering simply to show your kids you love them. No matter how much your teenaged or twenty something kid without life experience really, really wants you to.

    Kids do dumb things. All of them, gay or straight. A parent is supposed to know better.

    Your schtick that you’re going to call people who are going through a perfectly natural, normal grieving process names like “weird” unless they agree with you gay marriage should be legal because it’s the next “cool” thing is about as logical as the decision making process Portman used on the issue. And as effective.

    And your schtick is getting old.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  171. 172. another high-profile switch on the gay marriagings

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:27 pm

    She’s just demonstrating why she lost.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  172. As far as the who-you’d-rather-have-a-beer-with thing goes, more men voted for Romney than Obama–54% to 46%. Obama won because he got most women to vote for him. Do women vote for the person they’d rather drink with? I doubt it.

    BR (087e1f)

  173. Do women vote for the person they’d rather drink with?

    No, they vote for the person who pings their caring, loving, “mommy” instincts the most. I don’t say that sarcastically but descriptively. That’s because it fits the human nature of people (particularly women) who fall for the idea that big-hearted, caring, compassionate emotions are the emblem of a wonderful society, a beautiful politician. That’s why people who don’t really understand that liberals are not necessarily any of those traits, or will not ensure any of those qualities, certainly in the 21st century, feel they have to make rationalizations along the lines of, for example, Bush Jr’s “compassionate conservatism,” or his father’s “kinder and gentler.”

    New York magazine, May 1994: In one of Peggy Noonan’s closets, there is a framed page from the acceptance speech she helped write for George Bush at the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans. That was the “thousand points of light” speech, the one that defined George Bush for a time and helped make him president. Typewritten on the page is the phrase “We need a more inclusive nation,” and penciled above, in different handwriting (Noonan won’t say whose), are the words “kinder and gentler.”

    ^ I wouldn’t even mind it if someone like Peggy Noonan (or whoever coined “kinder, gentler”) actually had in mind the violent, dysfunctional, mostly leftwing, do-your-own-thang urban areas of America. But I bet even Noonan wasn’t thinking along those lines. That’s why I really bet that a flat-out, rock-ribbed liberal, therefore, most definitely wouldn’t be associating the antithesis of “kinder and gentler” with liberalism gone berserk, but instead with over 8 years of Ronald Reaganism. And unlike a leftwing nitwit, someone similar to Noonan (who leans right but also has plenty of squish) should have known better.

    Mark (b007c4)

  174. “Let’s not settle for another presidential candidate that is beneath us, even if we think he’s a sure “yes” from the electorate. The electorate is smarter than we think.”

    ThOR – I always get a kick out of comments like yours and those similar to it. Who is this mysterious “we” you speak of above? Many claimed there were more conservative candidates than Romney in the 2012 election yet voters rejected them when offered the choice. Are those Republican primary voters the “we” you are speaking of?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  175. Weird: Of a strikingly odd or unusual character.

    It is beyond question, at least to people with integrity, that what the Santorums did with the corpse was strikingly unusual. It’s rude to blast them for behaving strangely when suffering from the loss of a child, so kind people simply let this one go…

    but it won’t win elections, kind or not.

    what should the GOP do now? Short term, we should be cheerleaders for liars and oddballs, forgiving any and every odd thing in vain hope that it preserves a couple of votes. After all, whatever election we’re looking at is the most important election ever and we need to think short term. It’s not like this leads to a party of jackasses or anything.

    Dustin (88ba72)

  176. btw, I like Santorum and do not mean to suggest he lacks integrity. I was conflating two kinds of problematic politicians. Both are unelectable.

    Dustin (88ba72)

  177. Many claimed there were more conservative candidates than Romney in the 2012 election yet voters rejected them when offered the choice. Are those Republican primary voters the “we” you are speaking of?

    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/20/2013 @ 12:34 am

    One issue, in my opinion, is that there were so many conservative candidates running that the conservative voters were split. None of the conservative candidates were very good, for one reason or another, so none of them were able to compete with Romney. Even though I believe a majority of the party wanted any of the conservatives over the nominee we got, the last two primaries, that’s not how primaries work.

    Alas, voters rejected Romney even though he was clearly a better candidate than Obama. Same thing happened in the primary, from my point of view, which doesn’t find it debatable that there were more conservative candidates than a self described progressive.

    Dustin (88ba72)

  178. “Even though I believe a majority of the party wanted any of the conservatives over the nominee we got, the last two primaries, that’s not how primaries work.”

    Dustin – You can pick whatever reason(s) you want, vote splitting, poor candidates, etc., some reasons with more validity than others, but the point is that voters choose the candidate through our primary process. Second guessing and grousing about the GOP picking lousy nominees is BS finger pointing Obama-style. The voters picked McCain and Romney. The question that should be asked is why didn’t they pick more conservative nominees when they had the chance.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  179. 180. Also spineless squishe of blue boreholes were given a vote.

    What sense does that make?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  180. 181. “BS fingerpointing”

    Said without a smidgen of irony, from the jackhole that gave us the antiChrist.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  181. 181. By December 2012 Sean Trende had a column out on the OH debacle, the race Rove melted down over on Fox.

    While Romany carried party-switchers with double digits he lost by 400K, failing to get SE coal-country conservatives to the polls.

    Plainly the East Coast plan was a failure, in choosing the candidate, in destroying the competition(tho Perry was an own goal), in the strategy of appearing Presidential, in closeting Ryan, in ditching the base.

    Pursuing another big tent strategy, appealing to Hispanics via identity politics with all the other failed components will likewise result in failure. Rubio’s stature is shrinking as we speak.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  182. With apologies to Susanna Martinez, I don’t perceive NM to be the fast track to the Supreme Court chambers.

    http://moelane.com/2013/03/19/harry-reid-ted-cruz-dianne-feinstein-gun-control/

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  183. Gary Gulrud,

    I specifically remember you were about as certain in predicting a “Romany” Romney victory in November as anyone here.

    Elephant Stone (5e600c)

  184. Well this isn’t a good start;

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2998804/posts

    narciso (3fec35)

  185. 187. Yes and you will remember, Stones, I fought the selection all the way to Ryan’s selection tooth and nail.

    And by 10:30 EST humbly rent my garments and powdered dust on my head for a naive and unqualified faith in my countrymens.

    Mittwit exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds but Seamus proved indelible.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  186. – 1) Define “useful Arts”.

    Icy: What we typically think of as engineering and the sciences. The “sciences”, in Art. I Sec. 8 cl. 8, means arts, literature, and music.

    bridget (c6c38e)

  187. Gary Gulrud, yeah, faith in our fellow countrymen is totally out the window, now.
    The faith I have in my fellow countrymen is that they want bigger government. And “fairness” ! Or whatever.

    It may have been a staple to rely upon faith inour countrymen all the way up to say, the ’88 election (when I was a wee lad.)
    But since then, the demographics have changed enough that there just aren’t enough of us who are inclined to yell, “Stop !” in the famous William F. Buckley context.

    Perhaps if we can get the lower-income people back on the federal income tax rolls, we may be able to gain some votes back.
    Particularly since the lower income folks would then have skin the game and be impacted by a rise in federal income taxes. But our education system is so rotten that too many ignorant kids are graduating without any notion of the premises behind the federal Constitution.

    We’ve become Rome. And we may even become Cyprus or Greece, too.

    Elephant Stone (5e600c)

  188. Mr. 57 there seems to be an awful lot of anecdotal evidence accumulating that having a gay kid can cause someone who previously opposed the gay marriagings to rethink their position.

    Gay siblings seem to have the same curious effect, oftentimes.

    more study is needed

    Meg Whitman is a silly git and i never supported her my whole life but I think what we’re seeing there is that anti-gay prejudice is not acceptable in the boardrooms of american companies no mores.

    I don’t know how or when that happened. It’s getting to be where the only place that sort of thing is celebrated anymores is in the Team R platform and sundry tasty chicken sammich stands.

    Again I don’t know why come this is. Times change I guess.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  189. The Republican Party Elites are so inept they have managed to fail completely in even rising to the status of opposition. Quickly kick them to the curb and let’s move on!

    westie (ece8d5)

  190. I don’t know anything about game theory but it would seem that conservatives ought to run scenarios to achieve national victories by aiming at 270 Electoral votes.

    Begin by blacking out CA, IL, MA, NJ and NY and everyone therein from VDH to Jedediah Bila.

    Gleanings from the gulag adds no value.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  191. “Said without a smidgen of irony, from the jackhole that gave us the antiChrist.”

    gary – Presented with choices, who did the primary voters select? You are in denial and just want to point the finger elsewhere. You make me laugh. If you want a good conservative nominated for president, one has to be good enough to survive the primary process by getting enough votes to secure the nomination. No need to look elsewhere when the problem is right there.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  192. “Comment by Icy (05982a) — 3/19/2013 @ 7:34 pm”

    Your comments remain incoherent.

    If copyright is perpetual, eventually all forms of expression of an idea would be copyrighted by someone isn’t a statement that a single expression would so monopolize. Pay attention.

    Or don’t, since you’ve not bothered so far.

    You wrote “– It is 70 years for copyright, a period which MIGHT encompass the lifespan of someone that creates a copyright work when he or she is 21 years old. The term for a patent is 20 years.” which is a false statement of the law (life plus 70 for individual authors, publication plus 95 for works for hire/anon).

    Then you wrote “– Other than the ‘end’ of allowing citizens to retain personal ownership of what they create.” implying that you thought copyright should be perpetual.

    Its become boring to discuss this with you since you can’t be bothered to understand your own position much less anyone else’s.

    SPQR (768505)

  193. 196. “who did the primary voters select?”

    Indeed, Romany won the marathon. But who started with a $50 Million purse, gaining another $20 Million before the IA caucus in primarily big donor pledges.

    And when Newtered, with nothing before Adelson, made a push into FL, he was brutally assassinated, by Heritage insider Talent, Molinari(Paxson spouse) and Coburn, et alia.

    Your point does not make of him a good candidate with a chance of winning in an even contest.

    Yet, he ran against the worst incumbent in US history. I was as shocked at the loss as anyone.

    Christine O’Donnell was an early endorser, you had that going for you.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  194. 198. “You make me laugh”

    And lets not forget the shenanigans pulled by FL, etc., to close out the victory early. To say Romany had no advantage, he was the low-information favorite, is more than disingenuous.

    No unmerited offense, daley, but humor isn’t your strength either.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  195. And Abrams don’t forget that little factlet,

    narciso (3fec35)

  196. “Your point does not make of him a good candidate with a chance of winning in an even contest.”

    gary – Whine all you want. Where were all the good conservative candidates who could attract funds and votes? You are just making my point for me, thanks.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  197. 2) “70 years after the author’s death” IS a ‘limited time’.

    So is a trillion years.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  198. 201. “You are just making my point for me, thanks.”

    Say it all you want it doesn’t make it plausible.

    I don’t know that the GOP will survive, that it rise from the ashes, but the object of a nomination process is ostensibly to win, and in winning to put the best team in place to lead.

    It doesn’t matter what the rules are, people are going to test the boundaries of fair play. In this day, post-Clinton, post-Nixobama scruples are out the window. And as McLame proved fair play isn’t war.

    We are seeing, following leadership from McCain, Romany, Boehner, Kristol, Rove, et al., a parting of the ways. Not all at once, not at all levels, but conservatives know their future is probably not coincident with the GOP.

    Its not whining to state one’s intent to see other people, regardless how an ex might feel.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  199. – 1) Define “useful Arts”.
    Icy: What we typically think of as engineering and the sciences. The “sciences”, in Art. I Sec. 8 cl. 8, means arts, literature, and music.
    Comment by bridget (c6c38e) — 3/20/2013 @ 7:37 am

    — Fortunately, copyright law is more inclusive, as it covers:
    Literary
    Musical
    Dramatic
    Pantomimes and choreographic works
    Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
    Audiovisual works
    Sound recordings
    Derivative works
    Compilations
    Architectural works
    — I was questioning the choice of the qualifier “useful”, as it potentially opens up the door for government to determine what is and what is not ‘useful’ art.

    Icy (eb59d6)

  200. 2) “70 years after the author’s death” IS a ‘limited time’.
    So is a trillion years.
    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 10:30 am

    — Is that how long “unalienable” is?

    Icy (eb59d6)

  201. 200. Thanks for reminding us.

    In the internet age, setting aside censorship, what’s the upside for a candidate, of going from the outset, for the GOP nod?

    Not that he’s my guy, RnotRu Paul may as well shoot himself in the foot as take pot shots at Kristol, Podhertz, Rubin, et al.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  202. “Its not whining to state one’s intent to see other people, regardless how an ex might feel.”

    gary – The above is correct, but hovering over the wrong target and point the finger of blame, Obama-like, where it does not belong, helps nobody and smacks of pure sour grapes, cowardly, hindsight heroism.

    It’s perfectly fine if you didn’t like the Republican nominees for president, but the GOP didn’t select him, the primary voters did. The blame belongs on those more conservative candidates running not being strong enough to attract the funding and backing to mount effective enough campaigns to win enough primary votes to secure the nomination. Blaming the winner of the nomination is counter intuitive.

    The process of winning the general election starts the clock again and an earlier convention would help.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  203. Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:16 am

    Unfortunately these are exactly the non-citizens facing the largest hurdles to getting a green card.

    Which didn’t just happen. It’s the result of deliberate policy decisions.

    The basic wrong policy decision is…

    Quotas.

    Congress is not going to take away family reunification – if there is a fixed quota for immigrants, there’s no room for them.

    Any workable law has to abolish quotas.

    And the GOP went along with those decisions because they lost sight of conservative social values. You can’t explain conservative social values if you don’t understand them.

    First liberals demanded conservatives not judge. Then after stopping the pendulum from swinging one way, liberals pushed it back the other way and demanded (or imposed via the courts) liberal social values.

    Make no mistake; values are important. There’s a reason why, for instance, Obama was seen as the nicer guy than Romney. The kind of guy who you could have a beer with (not like any Mormon is ever going to come across as the kind of guy you can have a beer with.

    It’s because Obama says the right things. People have been indoctrinated to believe liberal social values are more compassionate and therefore correct. While conservative social values are “mean-spirited” and therefore to be rejected.

    Our immigration policy doesn’t exist because anyone thought it out. It’s not wise or even rational. It’s appeal is entirely to emotions, and the reason it has that appeal is due to what people have been indoctrinated to believe are the correct social values.

    There is no way a Jeb Bush or a Chris Christie could ever come up with an argument against our current immigration policy. It would be portrayed as “mean-spiritedly” turning our backs on the poor illegal immigrants and their succeeding generations. Whereas actually giving preference to the science and technology graduate students as Mitt Romney suggests, and who are disproportionally responsible for patents developed by research institutions, would be portrayed as cold-heartedly focusing on the bottom line.

    So consequently not only couldn’t Jeb Bush or Chris Christie formulate an argument, it would never occur to them to try. When in fact liberal social values are anything but compassionate.

    With a real black unemployment rate that is realistically probably over 20% it shouldn’t be too hard to argue that it’s really more compassionate to give preference to these science and technology students who come from all over the world to learn. And who are innovators who have the capacity to create good jobs that pay well.

    bridget wrote:

    In theory, we should also be using this to make headway in inner cities. “Hey, Jamal, do you want to compete with some guy in Mexico for your job at the supermarket? Do you want your kids to compete with an immigrant for a job?”

    I’m sure Jamal would probably if given the choice not want to work in the supermarket at all. If his options also included working in some hight-tech industry thanks to some innovation thought up by an electrical engineering graduate student from Taiwan.

    Which immigration policy would Jamal find more “compassionate.” One that led to people coming to the US to found companies that offered jobs that could lead to high paying careers? For instance, if the US joined most of the rest of the world and offered start-up visas to entrepreneurs (many of those foreign born science, technology, engineering, and math grads who earn patents while still in school can’t stay in the US after they graduate no matter how much capital they can raise from US investors to do so).

    Or our current immigration policy which means the only jobs now being created are low-paying part time McJobs like the one he might get that supermarket?

    And that’s without the amnesty which would just increase the competition for even those dead-end jobs that are available

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  204. I mistakenly quoted everything.

    Everything from “And the GOP went along with those decisions” is not mine.

    And the GOP went along with those decisions because they lost sight of conservative social values </i

    George W. Bush didn't. As he said "Family values don't stop at the Riop Grande.

    Now, question, if someone fathers a child, should he be allowed to stay here on acocunt of the child?

    The current policy is no.

    Next question, if yes, would that not encourage people to have children out of wedlock?

    The only way to avoid this problem is to make it erelatively easy for someone with ties to the United States who really wants to be here, to be here legally.

    Our immigration policy doesn’t exist because anyone thought it out. It’s not wise or even rational

    So why should the fiurst priority be enforcement?

    Whereas actually giving preference to the science and technology graduate students as Mitt Romney suggests, and who are disproportionally responsible for patents developed by research institutions, would be portrayed as cold-heartedly focusing on the bottom line.

    You cannot give preference. You can only admit them in addition to those admissible under current law.

    In theory, we should also be using this to make headway in inner cities. “Hey, Jamal, do you want to compete with some guy in Mexico for your job at the supermarket? Do you want your kids to compete with an immigrant for a job?” ?

    This, of course, is the “lump of labor fallacy.” You won’t fuind any economicts to agree with that. It’s false. Although some maybe will say, there’s no extra unemployment in practice, but it doesn’t work in theory.

    And that’s without the amnesty which would just increase the competition for even those dead-end jobs that are available

    There is no fixed number of jobs. That’s the “lump of labor” fallacy.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  205. 208 “People have been indoctrinated to believe liberal social values are more compassionate and therefore correct. While conservative social values are “mean-spirited” and therefore to be rejected.

    Our immigration policy doesn’t exist because anyone thought it out. It’s not wise or even rational. It’s appeal is entirely to emotions, and the reason it has that appeal is due to what people have been indoctrinated to believe are the correct social values.”

    Good writin’, and easyily extended to other current issues, e.g., gun control.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  206. On moral grounds, it’s galling to think of illegals “jumping the line” — yet it is basically impossible to legally move here from Mexico.

    If it weren’t virtually impossible, there wouldn’t be a line to jump.

    The only thing that enforces immigration law – at least to the extent that some people are clamoring for – is the death penalty. Right now Mexican drug gangs will kill people who try to cross on their own at certain points on the border. they charge I think about $2,500.

    Let the U.S. government undercut them, and the whole business is over.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  207. “Its become boring to discuss this with you since you can’t be bothered to understand your own position much less anyone else’s.”

    SPQR – I believe I understand Icy’s position perfectly well. You and Kevin M. want patents and copyrights to fall into the public domain after a relatively short period of time based upon your interpretation of the constitution and questioning of whether there is any value left to the owner of the patent or copyright after an extended time. Icy merely disagrees and says forcing such works into the public domain deprives the creator of his/her heirs of the fruits of his/her labors and creativity and that in a capitalistic society it should be the market which decides the value of such items not state action.

    The positions are simple.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  208. 175. As far as the who-you’d-rather-have-a-beer-with thing goes, more men voted for Romney than Obama–54% to 46%

    Romney won the over-30 vote (by a net of anout about 1.8 votes)

    Obama’s re-election victory can be attributed to the 18-30 year old vote, whom he carried by abouyt 5 million..

    Among the reasons would be:

    A) An ethnic difference between younger and older voters.

    B) Immigration and the Dream Act.

    C) Student loans – Obama sounded more sympathetic to forgiving them, although he actually didn’t offer much.

    D) Obama also let people stay longer on their parent’s health insurance.

    E) Voter ID laws and other claimed obstructions to voting. This helped increase Democrat turnout, as Democrats scared people about losing the ability too vote, and motivated them to turnout.

    It also as well reduced turnout somewhat among older voters, who lean Republican.

    F) Sabotage of Romney’s Ohio vote turnout operation.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  209. Also of course, ignorance, and younger peoiple are more ignorant than older people.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  210. “Blaming the winner of the nomination is counter intuitive.”

    – daleyrocks

    Actually, it’s completely intuitive – because another name for “the winner of the nomination” is “the loser of the general.” If Romney had been a stronger candidate, he would have won – that’s the most intuitive conclusion, and a lot of people on this site consistently raised the concern that Romney was too much of a milquetoast to beat Obama. So it’s not “sour grapes” or “hindsight heroism” – it’s “I told you so.” Both may be counterproductive, but the latter at least challenges the Romney folks to admit that they bet on the wrong horse.

    Leviticus (1aca67)

  211. Sammy Finkelman just said:

    Which immigration policy would Jamal find more “compassionate.” One that led to people coming to the US to found companies that offered jobs that could lead to high paying careers? For instance, if the US joined most of the rest of the world and offered start-up visas to entrepreneurs (many of those foreign born science, technology, engineering, and math grads who earn patents while still in school can’t stay in the US after they graduate no matter how much capital they can raise from US investors to do so).

    This is simply not true. You are forgetting about the green card, which grants permanent residency without citizenship. My two former employers obtained green cards for young promising scientists and innovators. For example, my brother-in-law, a pediatric surgeon who did his residency under the late Dr. C. Everett Koop, got his green card in the sixties, and has been an US resident to this very day. He is a citizen of India.

    In order to obtain one, it helps to married to a US Citizen, and/or be sponsored by a US Corporation.

    Perry (23796f)

  212. “Actually, it’s completely intuitive – because another name for “the winner of the nomination” is “the loser of the general.””

    Leviticus – Bulldookey. Saying the GOP nominated a loser when they should have nominated a conservative is crap. Voters had a chance to nominate a conservative and they didn’t. Complaining about it is pure sour grapes.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  213. Perry and Sammy should go off and create their own blog.

    JD (4bb5d1)

  214. Leviticus – Blaming Romney because the other Republican candidates could not deliver is pure Obama logic. Good luck with that.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  215. Comment by SPQR (768505) — 3/20/2013 @ 9:35 am
    Your comments remain incoherent.
    Pay attention.
    Or don’t, since you’ve not bothered so far.

    — What the HELL did I say that justifies you going off on me like an ad-hom spewing troll?!

    You wrote “– It is 70 years for copyright, a period which MIGHT encompass the lifespan of someone that creates a copyright work when he or she is 21 years old. The term for a patent is 20 years.” which is a false statement of the law (life plus 70 for individual authors, publication plus 95 for works for hire/anon).
    — Yeah well, I already acknowledged my misstatement after bridget pointed it out, so perhaps YOU need to pay attention.

    “If copyright is perpetual, eventually all forms of expression of an idea would be copyrighted by someone” isn’t a statement that a single expression would so monopolize.
    — Okay, I think I inserted the quotation marks at the correct points; now, please explain in real-world terms what “eventually all forms of expression of an idea would be copyrighted by someone” means.

    Then you wrote “– Other than the ‘end’ of allowing citizens to retain personal ownership of what they create.” implying that you thought copyright should be perpetual.
    — I admit it, I really AM in favor of personal ownership of private property, both physical and intellectual.

    Its become boring to discuss this with you since you can’t be bothered to understand your own position much less anyone else’s.
    — In all seriousness, did I catch you on a bad day or something? Because I’ve never known you to be this patronizing and dismissive. Then again, I’ll admit to skimming over a lot of your posts; the reason being that I usually agree with you.
    Here is my position:
    I think the life plus seventy years provision in current copyright law is entirely reasonable, as it allows the creator of an artistic work to control how and when and in what manner his or her’s work is displayed, distributed, sold or repackaged. It also allows for his/her immediate heirs or designated executors to honor his or her wishes in the continued use or sale of the work within a time-frame during which the work may likely still enjoy a level of popularity or cultural significance or commercial potential.

    As for the idea of copyright being “perpetual”, I look at creative works as similar to family heirlooms. If grandpa can leave me his gold watch, then why can’t he put it in his will that he is assigning me copyright on the book he wrote 40 years ago?

    Icy (eb59d6)

  216. Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/20/2013 @ 11:54 am

    — You stated my position a lot more eloquently and concisely than I did, myself. Thank you sir.
    [Perhaps this indicates why I have nothing copyrighted yet.]

    Icy (eb59d6)

  217. “Blaming the winner of the nomination is counter intuitive.”

    – daleyrocks

    On the one hand, I believe we would have lost with my preferred candidates. On the other hand Romney himself asks us to blame him for his mistakes in the general, and indeed there where some. But how sincere that was is up to the beholder.

    I think Romney did his best in the general, made some good calls, and was obviously the better of the general election candidates. Thus, the ‘blame’, such that democracy going the way I don’t want is blameworthy at all, resides with American voters. I don’t think Romney’s gaffes lost the race. Gaffes are inevitable in this media climate. I think this was a democratic decision to continue the mooching.

    I still hope that the most conservative candidate who can win the general will prevail in the primary (and general), but the battle isn’t here among conservatives.

    Dustin (73fead)

  218. Perry and Sammy should go off and create their own blog.
    Comment by JD (4bb5d1) — 3/20/2013 @ 12:26 pm

    — Bore & Snore
    — Half-a-Clue Between Us
    — Substitute Our Lies For Fact

    Icy (eb59d6)

  219. I think a GOP nominee who knows how to articulate the benefits of free markets and Constitutional government could have defeated President Zero. It is difficult to compete with a nominee who promises everyone utopia on earth without sounding like the babysitter who makes you eat your veggies and go to bed at the designated time—but it can be done, (see Reagan).

    The notion that people who were seduced by Obama’s big government re-election promises, would have actually voted for the Republican nominee if that nominee had simply been more conservative than Romney ??

    In other words, there’s a segment of the electorate who are hungry for a more conservative President—-so they voted for Obama because Romney wasn’t conservative enough !

    Good Allah.

    Elephant Stone (ed0087)

  220. I gave the candidates better advice here on this blog for free than they got from their own people.

    It should have been a competition for who was the better candidate against Obama. Which should have meant that all of the candidates should have spent most of their time showing why they should have been elected over Obama and let the repubs choose which one did the better job against Obama.

    There were far too many debates, and every debate that does get held should be primarily a panel discussion why the dem needs to be defeated and see which repub made the best case. That way, there has already been a lot of press about why the dem candidate should not be elected instead of only rumblings against the Repub by the dems and the repubs against each other.

    And something needs to be done about letting a few relatively isolated states make such a big influence by timing. Some important representative state like Ohio, Missouri, or Florida should be among the first, then a few smaller states that will go repub no matter or Dem no matter who the candidate is, then another important swing state, etc. that way if someone has momentum, it truly has reflected some of the swing state enthusiasm, not who has money left by the time they get to Ohio or who can look good in Fla after looking bad in NH.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  221. And I’m willing to take 1/100th of the usual consultant’s fee, thank you very much.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  222. “On the other hand Romney himself asks us to blame him for his mistakes in the general, and indeed there where some.”

    Dustin – I agree there were many mistakes in the general, but blaming the loss on not having a conservative enough nominee is an Obama straw man. Where was that more conservative candidate and why wasn’t he nominated.

    Oh. he/she didn’t get enough votes to survive the primaries and win the nomination? So blaming Romney is really a straw man argument or a set of false choices like Obama constantly makes him his speeches?

    Why yes, yes it is.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  223. Mr Stone wrote:

    I think a GOP nominee who knows how to articulate the benefits of free markets and Constitutional government could have defeated President Zero.

    Mitt Romney did, but the Obama campaign successfully transformed the campaign from where it should have been, on the President’s record, to everything else: contraception, immigration, who’s the nicer guy, and the horrors of budget cuts. Governor Romney was the ultimate, well-turned-out professional, the CEO, and, as has been mentioned before, the kind of guy a lot of people would feel comfortable drinking a beer with. And it’s hard to complain about that, because that was precisely the thing which kept us from having to suffer through a John Kerry administration.

    The Republican message was the right one, but it was not the popular one: that we have to cut spending (though the GOP shied away from saying how dramatically it needed to be cut) or spending will get cut for us when we go flat, fornicating broke. The President’s we can have it all message just plain sold better to an undisciplined, entitled electorate.

    We will eventually have austerity and conservatism in government, because they will be forced upon us. Conservatives want to go ahead and take the medicine now, and get the pain over with sooner rather than later, but that doesn’t seem to sell quite well enough, so we’ll eventually wind up with austerity and conservatism the way the Greeks got it, Greek-style.

    The sadly realistic Dana (3e4784)

  224. Team R, continues to operate under the delusion that their positions are buttressed by a kind of moral authority

    nominees like Meghan’s coward daddy and Mitt Mitt exuded a particularly smarmy self-righteousness

    this must explain why Roobs is so appealing

    but the problem is they don’t have any more moral authority than the rest of our risibly fascist joke of a government

    whores is whores

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  225. on. disregard that comma after Team R I got distracted by tasty chicken

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  226. I agree there were many mistakes in the general, but blaming the loss on not having a conservative enough nominee is an Obama straw man.

    I think you’re right that a more conservative candidate would have faced the same problems unless he was truly exceptional in some way (which none of the conservative options were).

    Where was that more conservative candidate and why wasn’t he nominated.

    Most of the other candidates were more conservative, in my opinion. They weren’t nominated for a variety of reasons. The first is that none of them were compelling enough. Conservative voters could not settle for any of them for any period of time, so they were easily toppled. The media would focus its sharpest attacks on the more conservative candidates until we were left with democrat lite, their least bad candidate. Also, the candidates I actually liked were too busy actually leading to build up campaigns for years and years. They were too conservative for the beltway that is desperate to continue most of the spending (at least this is my opinion).

    Oh. he/she didn’t get enough votes to survive the primaries and win the nomination? So blaming Romney is really a straw man argument or a set of false choices like Obama constantly makes him his speeches?

    It’s true that it’s not Romney’s fault that he showed up and played to win. Still, Romney’s loss was predictable. Moderate Republicans, to put it kindly, are less able to really convey the true folly of many of Obama’s policies, since there is too much overlap and many will see it as hypocrisy.

    but who cares? Blaming Romney is stupid. He’s been rejected repeatedly, and we should be more concerned about the next iteration of moderate republican. It’s clear that what we need is someone who is sincere about conservatism and also exceptional in his or her ability to explain it to the American people… both in word and in deed. This candidate will need to have a successful record before I will accept they are worthy, but no one should worry much about my preferences, as I think I see these things a lot differently from others.

    I respect that Romney gave this 100% and I’m not interested in blasting him after there’s no primary battle to worry about.

    Dustin (73fead)

  227. The Republican message was the right one, but it was not the popular one: that we have to cut spending (though the GOP shied away from saying how dramatically it needed to be cut) or spending will get cut for us when we go flat, fornicating broke.

    I think Dana is right, and there is no easy way to fix the problem. The truth is not popular right now. The moochers will not hear of it. They are entitled. They are the 99%. Bush tax cuts robbed them. Corporate jets and oil barons always have more than them, so there will never be a time when they accept any responsibility for the national finance, and never a time when they accept they should get less stuff they didn’t earn.

    There are only two ways out of this. Either someone amazing changes some hearts and minds brilliantly, or we suffer financial collapse and learn the hard way.

    Dustin (73fead)

  228. Is that how long “unalienable” is?

    Intellectual property is not a natural right — it cannot exist in a state of nature.

    Take patents for example: patents are granted not becuase you invent something, but because you disclose — in complete detail — everything about the invention. If you hold anything back and they catch you at it, the patent is invalid and you have no protection whatsoever.

    And, after 20 years from the disclosure, anyone can use it without so much as notifying you.

    Do you view patent expiration as theft?

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  229. 193. Mr. 57 there seems to be an awful lot of anecdotal evidence accumulating that having a gay kid can cause someone who previously opposed the gay marriagings to rethink their position.

    Gay siblings seem to have the same curious effect, oftentimes.

    more study is needed

    The anecdotal evidence comes from the press. So you don’t read about all the cases where people don’t change their mind. That doesn’t fit the meme.

    It’s all part of the propaganda effort. The media narrative is that it’s only due to religious bigotry and mindless superstition that people oppose gay marriage, but when they find out their kid is gay it brings home the “hurt” their unthinking idiocy is dealing out to people and they see the error of their ways.

    So naturally you only get the anecdotal evidence that advances the narrative.

    Meg Whitman is a silly git and i never supported her my whole life but I think what we’re seeing there is that anti-gay prejudice is not acceptable in the boardrooms of american companies no mores.

    I don’t know how or when that happened. It’s getting to be where the only place that sort of thing is celebrated anymores is in the Team R platform and sundry tasty chicken sammich stands.

    Again I don’t know why come this is. Times change I guess.

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/20/2013 @ 8:14 am

    Times don’t just change. People actively try to change them, often by rewriting history or airbrushing it out.

    Not even the “sundry tasty chicken sammich stands” celebrate discrimination in the boardroom, let alone team R. Again, the media narrative is to equate discrimination in the boardroom with their irrational push to redefine marriage.

    Also, they try to make it sound like the only reason to oppose the legalization of gay marriage is because of some reading of the Bible.

    This is where Judge Walker’s dishonest prop 8 ruling. He lied throughout, knowing the media would never actually look at the trial transcript and get away with it. Walker needed to be able to claim he wasn’t inventing a new right by imposing gay marriage (which never existed before the 21st century anywhere in western civilization) but that it always met the common understanding of marriage but was simply refused to gays out of irrational bigotry. Hence it violated the equal protection clause.

    So he had to rewrite history. And the trial transcript. In the trial when the attorney defending prop 8 pointed to the exhibits dating back to Lord Blackstone that the courts and the law have always treated marriage with deference precisely because it is about procreation and raising children, Walker demanded to know where Blackstone’s testimony was, among other judges and jurists over the past 3 centuries and entire Congresses? Since the prop 8 attorney couldn’t raise the dead, Walker refused to acknowledge that there was any basis to conclude that marriage only between a man and a woman was deeply rooted in American history and tradition.

    Then in his ruling Walker lied and changed testimony to “evidence.” And said the prop 8 attorney had presented no evidence of any such history. In fact, the prop 8 attorney had presented piles of evidence. Just not the live testimony from the dead the judge demanded according to the transcript. In fact the judge lied in his ruling and said the prop 8 attorney said the court didn’t need evidence on that point. When in fact if you look at the transcript the prop 8 attorney was clearly referring to testimony, and pointed out he didn’t need that when the evidence was right before the judge in writing in the court decisions, legal commentaries, and laws passed by Congress.

    So I ask you Mr. Feets, why should I go along with this redefinition of marriage when I know it’s based upon a pack of lies and the same totalitarian-style airbrushing of history they used to do in the Soviet Union? Like when a politburo member got on Stalin’s bad side and got executed and they airbrushed the guy out of official photos where he was standing right next to Stalin, and every good communist got a new article to cut and paste over where the guy’s name appeared in the New Soviet Encyclopedia that every good communist naturally owned.

    Sorry. I’m just not going to say things I know aren’t true. No matter how “compassionate” I’m told going along with the lies would make me.

    I realize I may be spending too much time on this. But it occurred to me that falling for this sort of crap makes us all kind of like the Bushies or McCain. They too couldn’t defend principle against the media onslaught of “how can you be so heartless.”

    That’s why Bush 43 (or Rove; doesn’t matter)came up with the “compassionate conservative” advertising campaign. Just like I’m told by the people who are denying and lying about the facts that only big meanies like me don’t want to redefine marriage to include same sex marriage, they also lied about the effects of big government liberalism and demanded to know how the big meanie conservatives could want to throw grandma off the cliff by cutting government.

    And they believed the propaganda and GWB and the bushies that surrounded him said “Oh were not with them; we’re compassionate conservatives. Let us prove it with a big new entitlement and more federal interference in schools.”

    It seems to me to be an exact parallel situation. The Bushies couldn’t defend conservative principles because they didn’t know what they were, and it wouldn’t occur to them to even try because they too fell into the trap of letting the left define the terms. The left’s position is always the “compassionate” position.

    If we’re all going to agree the left’s position is “compassionate” on every issue then what’s really the point of having a GOP?

    Now we have “conservative” arguments for gay marriage. When in fact conservatism really means following the evidence. There was never an argument for gay marriage until the last couple of decades of the 20th century, and really when you look at the argument it’s not based on anything except “you’re hurting gay people’s feelings” whereas the argument for keeping the definition of marriage as it’s been since the founding is based upon a sound rational basis. As Judge Walker’s decision shows, you have to ignore or deny or lie about the evidence to come to any other conclusion. The only reason to go along with the redefinition of marriage is because you got harangued into it.

    What’s next? A “conservative” argument for teaching “White Privilege” lessons in public schools? Because if you don’t go along with this complete farce of an unsupportable racial theory you’re hurting minority feelings?

    Steve57 (60a887)

  230. Icy: question: If Congress repealed all copyright laws, retroactively, what part of the Constitution, if any, would they be violating?

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  231. it should be the market which decides the value of such items not state action.

    But, daley, copyrights *are* state action to begin with. You cannot say “here, I have created this thing and I want the state to force everyone to give me money to copy it” and then turn around and say “the state should stay out of it.”

    Because, unlike, say food, you cannot physically limit access to intellectual property once you put it into the marketplace — it is infinitely copyable. Only an artificial arrangement gives it any practical worth once you disclose it. That arrangement suffers from the “Why should we?” test.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  232. And the underlying point which was lost long ago:

    Our political enemies in Hollywood have long absolute copyrights as a litmus test for politicians. People under 30 hate long absolute copyrights. Why are we pissing off voters to support people who hate us?

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  233. Comment by Perry (23796f) — 3/20/2013 @ 12:22 pm

    Sammy Finkelman just said:

    Which immigration policy would Jamal find more “compassionate.” One that led to people coming to the US to found companies that offered jobs that could lead to high paying careers? For instance, if the US joined most of the rest of the world and offered start-up visas to entrepreneurs (many of those foreign born science, technology, engineering, and math grads who earn patents while still in school can’t stay in the US after they graduate no matter how much capital they can raise from US investors to do so).

    That wasn’t me. I thought my blunder in quoting might cause somebody to think so. I quoted a little, and replied, and left the whole rest of that message there because I didn’t see it since it was below the bottom of the screen.

    That was comment number 60 by Steve57 (60a887) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:16 am

    I think the benefits are slight exaggerated, but there isn’t any harm, and you certainly can’t predict who is going to start something big or not. But this is a little bit similar to an anti-birth control argument – who knows what somebody born may do – which is actually also true.

    This is simply not true. You are forgetting about the green card, which grants permanent residency without citizenship. My two former employers obtained green cards for young promising scientists and innovators.

    Steve was talking about green cards!

    Some politicians, notably Lindsey Graham, now echoed by Rand Paul have started to talk as if the issue with amnesty was citizenship. It isn’t. It is the basic right to live and work here. That’s what the people opposed amnesty oppose, because that’s what the current law prohibits. And most people also – ordinary people – don’t have any idea what the law is right now anyway, so they’ll agree to the opposition sometimes..

    For example, my brother-in-law, a pediatric surgeon who did his residency under the late Dr. C. Everett Koop, got his green card in the sixties, and has been an US resident to this very day. He is a citizen of India.

    What’s the issue?

    In order to obtain one, it helps to married to a US Citizen, and/or be sponsored by a US Corporation.

    It not only helps, it is often practically the only way. Therefore we have the issue of fake marriages and detecting them. And now – should gay marriages count?

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  234. What the GOP should do right now is refuse to pass any more continuing resolutions.

    A full budget or nothing.

    SPQR (26706b)

  235. Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 3:10 pm

    If Congress repealed all copyright laws, retroactively, what part of the Constitution, if any, would they be violating?

    Somebody must have answered that somewhere in some law journal.

    I think people tend to think copyright extension is not repealable. This may be wrong.

    Here is a petition, but I don’t know if this is would be legal: (I am sure there are lawyers who would argue against it)

    http://www.change.org/petitions/congress-repeal-the-copyright-term-extension-act-of-1998

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  236. .228 Team R, continues to operate under the delusion that their positions are buttressed by a kind of moral authority

    nominees like Meghan’s coward daddy and Mitt Mitt exuded a particularly smarmy self-righteousness

    Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/20/2013 @ 1:26 pm

    They do. But then, they’ve been convinced by the MFM that it’s mean to follow the evidence instead of their hearts. Or rather, where their hearts would lead them if their hearts were in the right place.

    The Congressional Black Caucus sends out every single one of their hags to say it’s racist and mean for “old white men” to question Susan Rice about Benghazi. Naturally the investigation stalls after that.

    Team D’s moral authority is based on the “optics.” And making sure no facts ever come out. Even saying you ought to look for the facts is racist or sexist or homophobic or islamophobic.
    That’s better?

    Team D includes the media. Almost everyone on team R desperately wants to be liked by the media. McCain most of all, but Romney too.

    Which means they want to be liked by team D.

    That worked out well, didn’t it? Team D likes it when the nominee for team R is the guy in the primary who attacked the other nominees without mercy. Just like they do. They hate it in the general when the nominee for for team R says anything mean about the nominee for team D.

    So we get two guys who run campaigns for Preezy that are based on the notion Obama’s a really nice guy.

    But then, how can we criticize them when we’re supposed to also supposed to agree that everything team D wants is really, really nice?

    Steve57 (60a887)

  237. this must explain why Roobs is so appealing

    Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/20/2013 @ 1:26 pm

    Rubio hasn’t been around as long but the team D players in the MFM eventually hope to beat him down to the point where he’s afraid of making a rational, effective case for his own side, too.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  238. “Senator Rubio, why do you hate Mexican children,” asks Andrea Mitchell.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  239. Rand Paul seems to at least be taking a libertarian position.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  240. Mark Twain was kind of for long copyright and left things to be published later, I think. Also, of course, he knew few books live even 14 years.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  241. i think there’s ways to message differently

    for example Mitt Mitt made a big damn deal that he’s been married so long to the same bird so that made him a Great Guy

    that’s just gay

    nobody cares

    get over yourself and talk about jobs

    for example also Mitt Mitt made a big damn deal about giving to charity – they gave 90K to Sandy victims

    go eff yourself

    nobody cares

    get over yourself and talk about opportunity

    for example also Mitt Mitt made a big damn deal about his wife having an illness

    go eff yourself

    that has nothing to do with being president

    get over yourself and talk about energy

    Roobs also shows every sign of wanting America to adopt him as their new baby son who’s a Great Guy

    Food Stamp never grovels in this way have you noticed? He’s more like hey I’m kinda black and historical. I hate rich people and I want to cause them pain. Vote for me.

    The whole compelling life story thing is a trick the propaganda slut media uses to make Team R candidates look like self-regarding dorks a la McCain and Romney. And what’s key – the way Team R does it – their personal narratives are always set against their prissy socially backwards views on gay people and fetuses – and it always ends up boiling down into a smarmy stew of self-righteousness.

    The fascists don’t have that problem. Bloomberg might. But he’s special.

    Team R’s insistence on prying into people’s personal lives and judging voters in moral terms based on their sexual orientations and their own freely-made decisions makes it very very difficult for them to pull off the compelling life story I’m a great guy thing.

    It’s a thing.

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  242. I think people tend to think copyright extension is not repealable. This may be wrong.

    I can see a “takings” argument, but I’d argue that retroactively extending copyrights is a taking (from the public domain) as much as retroactively shortening them. In both cases similar expectations are abused.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  243. their personal narratives are always set against their prissy socially backwards views on gay people and fetuses

    Right, Mr. Feets.

    Mark Steyn notes that prissy socially backwards view toward fetuses in a post on NRO’s Corner today:

    And so it goes two years on, at “Doctor” Gosnell’s trial:

    Medical assistant Adrienne Moton admitted Tuesday that she had cut the necks of at least 10 babies after they were delivered, as Gosnell had instructed her. Gosnell and another employee regularly “snipped” the spines “to ensure fetal demise,” she said.

    Moton sobbed as she recalled taking a cellphone photograph of one baby because he was bigger than any she had seen aborted before. She measured the fetus at nearly 30 weeks, and thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said.

    Funny!

    Notwithstanding Dr. Gosnell’s jest, and the fact that newborns delivered alive are generally regarded as “babies,” the New York Times’ only story on the case is punctilious enough to refer to Gosnell’s victims as “viable fetuses,” and its early paragraphs emphasize the defense’s wearily predictable line that this is a “racist prosecution.” Instead of my Arizona comparison, what about Sandy Hook? One solitary act of mass infanticide by a mentally-ill loner calls into question the constitutional right to guns, but a sustained conveyor belt of infanticide by an entire cadre of cold-blooded killers apparently has no implications for the constitutional right to abortion. As one commentator wondered two years ago:

    Does 30 years of calling babies “blobs of tissue” have no effect on the culture?

    For the answer, consider the testimony of “Nurse” Moton — and the clarification by AP writer Maryclaire Dale:

    She once had to kill a baby delivered in a toilet, cutting its neck with scissors, she said. Asked if she knew that was wrong, she said, “At first I didn’t.”

    Abortions are typically performed in utero.

    “Typically.” So, finding oneself called on to “abort” a “viable fetus” in a toilet with a pair of scissors, who wouldn’t be confused as to whether it’s “wrong” or merely marginally atypical?

    Rick Santorum and his wife Karen are the weird ones, right Mr. Feets? They never got over that prissy socially backwards view toward fetuses and considered actually considered their son Gabrielle a baby to be mourned.

    And that’s just freakin’ the height of weirdness to everyone. Except those who had to deal with losing a kid at or shortly after birth. Who apparently also share the the same prissy socially backward attitude.

    But it’s just slightly atypical to perform an extra-uterine abortion on a “viable fetus.”

    That’s the socially advanced non-prissy attitude.

    “For the children,” as the oh-so-morally-superior team D would put it, eh Mr. Feets.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  244. A quick google search shows 3 NYT articles on the supreme weirdness of Rick Santorum and his prissy socially backward view toward his dead kid fetus.

    1 on the non-prissy socially progressive views of Dr. Gosnell who advanced the cause of women’s reproductive rights by forcibly giving at least one an abortion against her will (and nearly killed her with an OD because she made his life difficult by struggling even though he strapped her down at her grandmother’s request) and by not bowing to those durned Christofascists who are such unthinking neanderthals they actually believe just because the fetus has been delivered means you can’t still abort it.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  245. But I’m sure they have plenty of entries from Peter Singer, who agrees with this policy in principle.

    I don’t think they made much of Obama’s no vote of the ‘born Alive ‘legislation either.

    narciso (3fec35)

  246. “But, daley, copyrights *are* state action to begin with. You cannot say “here, I have created this thing and I want the state to force everyone to give me money to copy it” and then turn around and say “the state should stay out of it.””

    Kevin M. – But Kevin M., don’t you agree that the technology of mass communications, print, electronic and other has dramatically changed since the time of the founders, making copyrights potentially much more valuable to their holders but also much easier to violate. Isn’t extending their terms a recognition by Congress essentially of a change in technology without the need to amend the constitution? These concepts are not difficult to understand. If I create and own something valuable such as a patent or copyright, the state has a framework of laws which allows me to protect that value. You merely argue that the state should eliminate the value of my creation by fiat sooner rather than later for some arbitrary reason.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  247. 249. But I’m sure they have plenty of entries from Peter Singer, who agrees with this policy in principle.

    I don’t think they made much of Obama’s no vote of the ‘born Alive ‘legislation either.

    Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 3/20/2013 @ 5:35 pm

    Heck, no, narciso. There’s nothing weird about thinking fetuses who weren’t family-planned in-utero by the actual sacrament of abortion should be left to become finally non-viable in the extra-uterine environment of a hospital utility closet.

    Only a right wing extremist would have a problem with that.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  248. I’m afraid we’re in for a long stretch of big government… certainly through the next 4 years and – unless there’s a catastrophic change – maybe for several more after that. It’s hard to wean people off of free stuff, especially with this brain-dead culture that surrounds us.

    Colonel Haiku (cf000a)

  249. nobody is condoning the evil doctor and his evil snips snips

    but some people are trying to make political hay out of it

    kind of like how piers morgan pimps out the dead newtown babywazzles

    i don’t know why people gotta be like that

    aberrations are aberrations because they are aberrational

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  250. Rick Santorum and his wife Karen are the weird ones, right Mr. Feets?

    there’s others too I don’t mean to just pick on them

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  251. No, pikachu this butchery was condoned under Rendell and Ridge, that’s not accidental.

    narciso (3fec35)

  252. they should be ashamed of themselves I think

    but nobody but Ed and Tom are condoning the evil doctor and his evil snips snips

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  253. nobody is condoning the evil doctor and his evil snips snips

    If the mothers didn’t want their babies to live why exactly do you have a problem with what the doctor did? Aren’t you socially backward?

    Gerald A (c7c56a)

  254. Well Mr. Feets, if the RNC accepts the Bushies “autopsy” that the salvation of the GOP lies in embracing the Bushies ‘tudes toward abandoning prissy, socially backwards views, how can it fail?

    Prissy socially backwards views as defined by the NYT. And you.

    Times change, we must change with them. Here are the words of a guy who put himself of changing the times that we have to keep changing with:

    Prop 8 Judge Vaughn Walker: Judges must “move the strike zone.”

    Judge Vaughn Walker, most famous for his opinion finding Prop 8 unconstitutional, has written this article, based on an October 2011 lecture, in the Illinois Law Review, titled “Moving the Strike Zone: How Judges Sometimes Make Law.” Moving strike zones sounds a lot like moving the goal posts, to borrow another sports analogy.

    Here is the abstract:

    Many judges and politicians say that judges should act like umpires in the judicial arena and simply “call balls and strikes.” These judges and politicians have convinced a large portion of the U.S. public that judges should act this way and, therefore, should not make law but instead interpret the Constitution using so-called “originalism” or “strict constructionism.” But is it even possible for a judge to simply act as an umpire?

    This Article argues that there is no fixed “strike zone” for judges to use and that they must rule based on the facts and circumstances of the cases before them.

    From the conclusion:

    Case by case, what judges do and must do is take account of the pitcher and the batter in the legal arena, watch the windup, the throw, the curve, and the delivery and then, where they believe appropriate, move the strike zone.

    The secret to GOP success: let the liberals move the strike zone. Then chase it.

    Everybody keeps telling me that. The Bushies. Sen. Portman. MSNBC. They must be right.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  255. the GOP can’t really be salvaged I don’t think – it has no core principles

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  256. Searcy owned them.

    SPQR (aabf1e)

  257. Ed Whelan at NRO did a good job of tracking just how Judge Vaughn moved the strike zone during the prop 8 trial. Except Ed Whelan had the prissy, socially backward view that a judge misrepresenting what was actually said is dishonest and turns such proceedings into kangaroo courts.

    Silly reactionary!

    Judge Walker and Supposed Lack of “Evidence” of Marriage’s Procreative Purpose

    When Cooper stated that “the evidence shows overwhelmingly that … responsible procreation is really at the heart of society’s interest in regulating marriage” (3038:5-8), Walker asked, “What was the witness who offered the testimony? What was it and so forth?” (3038:14-15.) Cooper began his response:

    The evidence before you shows that sociologist Kingsley Davis, in his words, has described the universal societal interest in marriage and definition as social recognition and approval of a couple engaging in sexual intercourse and marrying and rearing offspring.

    Cooper then cited Blackstone’s statements—which were also in evidence submitted at the trial—that the relation of husband and wife and the “natural impulse” of man to “continue and multiply his species” are “confined and regulated” by “society’s interests”; that the “principal end and design” of marriage is the relationship of “parent and child”; and that it is “by virtue of this relation that infants are protected, maintained, and educated.” (3038-3039*.)

    As Cooper proceeded to work his way through “eminent authority after eminent authority”—all in evidence submitted at the trial—Walker interrupted him to ask the bizarre question, “I don’t mean to be flip, but Blackstone didn’t testify. Kingsley Davis didn’t testify. What testimony in this case supports the proposition?” (3039:16-18.)

    Cooper responded to Walker’s question:

    Your Honor, these materials are before you. They are evidence before you.… But, your Honor, you don’t have to have evidence for this from these authorities. This is in the cases themselves. The cases recognize this one after another. [3039:19-3040:1]

    Walker: “I don’t have to have evidence?” [3040:2]

    Cooper: “You don’t have to have evidence of this point if one court after another has recognized—let me turn to the California cases on this.” [3040:3-5]

    Note that only the underlined portion of the passage is what Walker quotes in his opinion.

    I bolded the part that Whelan underlined.

    Back when I had prissy, socially backwards views on things like facts and the truth, I would have considered that dishonest. Sorta like when NBC edits tapes to make it sound like people said things they didn’t actually say.

    Now I’ve seen the light!

    Walker’s question—“What testimony in this case supports the proposition?”—wasn’t just flip. It was downright stupid—amazingly so, from a judge who has been on the bench for more than two decades. … live witness testimony is merely one form of trial evidence. Exhibits submitted in evidence at trial are another form. And a judge is of course free to, and expected to, take judicial notice of certain facts.

    3. In context, it’s clear that Cooper cited extensive evidence in the record, as well as relevant legal authorities, in support of the proposition that “responsible procreation is really at the heart of society’s interest in regulating marriage.” Indeed, the evidence that Prop 8 proponents submitted (and cited in their proposed findings of fact) in support of this heretofore obvious and noncontroversial proposition was overwhelming.

    4. When Cooper stated “you don’t have to have evidence for this from these authorities”—Kingsley Davis and Blackstone and the other “eminent authorities” that Cooper was ready to discuss when Walker interrupted—and that the “cases themselves” “recognize this one after another,” it’s crystal-clear in context that he wasn’t contending that he hadn’t provided evidence or that he didn’t need to provide evidence or other authority. He was merely making the legally sound observation that the many cases recognizing the procreative purpose of marriage were an alternative and additional source of authority for the proposition.

    But you wouldn’t know any of this from Walker’s highly distorting clip of Cooper’s statement—or from Olson’s contemptible misrepresentation of it, or the media’s mindless parroting of it.

    Once I wouldn’t have posted links to the prop 8 decision as well as the transcript of the final arguments to show Whelan wasn’t mischaracterizing anything.

    Now I realize that getting hung up on facts is prissy and socially backwards. Really, when you think about it, putting that much effort into determining what the truth is means you hate gays.

    So to prove I don’t hate gays I will studiously avoid the truth.

    Thank you, Mr. Feets, for straightening me out. The MFM tells me only homophobic Bible-humping godbotherers can possibly make a case against gay marriage. Since I sure don’t want to have anyone call me a homophobic Bible-humping godbotherer, I’ll avoid reading anything that might prove differently.

    I’ll just keep chasing the strike zone as the left keeps calling balls and strikes.

    That’s the ticket to winning the youth vote.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  258. 260. the GOP can’t really be salvaged I don’t think – it has no core principles

    Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 3/20/2013 @ 7:06 pm

    Of course not. Core principles are so prissy and socially backwards.

    I mean, so you keep telling us…

    Steve57 (60a887)

  259. My vestigial prissy socially backwards views toward facts force me to point out the prop 8 attorney then did turn the Kali cases:

    “first purpose of matrimony by the laws of nature and society is procreation”

    the institution of marriage … channels biological drives … that might otherwise become socially destructive and … it ensures the care and education of children in a stable environment”

    “the sexual procreative and childrearing aspects of marriage go to the very essence of the marriage relation”

    I’m still trying to become comfortable with the fact that once the left moves the strike zone things like several centuries of legal precedent no longer matter.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  260. He will realize when Obamacare bans his favorite foozle, but then there will be no one left to defend him.

    narciso (3fec35)

  261. Looks like J.P. was a drive-by commenter. Insinuates I don’t stand for principle, and then motors off so fast we didn’t even get a partial plate.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  262. Did you see this yet? http://fb.me/I28DRRbj

    I always thought Romney was hooked up with some squicky people, but that thought was/ is so depressingly true i can’t stand it.

    SarahW (b0e533)

  263. Prop 8 would be easily repealed by a referendum any day going forward.

    That’s just how the goalie eats the midget pickle.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  264. narciso @265, stop me if I’m wrong but it seems sorta incongruous to complain the GOP has no core principles, then speak favorable of Republicans who change their minds on gay marriage.

    Especially Rob “I was cool with being against SSM until my kid came out of the closet and oh by the way started thinking of running for Preezy in 2016” Portman.

    Being against redefining marriage was a core principle. Until it wasn’t. When your core principles are what Mr. Feets would call silly backwards social views, the same silly backwards social views Obama and Hillary! had until recently, they need to go.

    171. it’s definitely weirder than wanting your gay kid to get married to somebody and have that kind of support system in their lives

    everyone wants to know their kids are loved and cared for

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:06 pm

    172. another high-profile switch on the gay marriagings

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/19/2013 @ 11:27 pm

    Personally I’d like to know why, if these silly backwards social views are what cost us these elections, how President Tiger Beat won with them in 2008.

    Are core values supposed to change every four years because of the results of the last election?

    Steve57 (60a887)

  265. Thank you, Mr. Feets, for straightening me out.

    “i was on this tip many many moons ago,” happyfeet said modestly, even winsomely. “Gay marriage is the future. It’s like google glasses and natural gas and Roobs’s ill-fated pursuit of the presidency.”

    happyfeet paused thoughtfully.

    “If I’m wrong I’ll be the first one, of course, to say omg Mr. 57 I was wrong gay marriage wasn’t the future after all! You were right and I was wrong, I will say.”

    But in his heart happyfeet knew. He just knew. In his heart is where he knew it. And he frowned to think of how it could be that others didn’t know it too.

    “They must have a blockage,” happy thought.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  266. As an aside, has anyone besides me noticed that when President Prom Queen held exactly the same silly backwards view I did on gay marriage (although he was far, far more evolved on the issue of aborting fetuses after they’ve been born than this knuckle dragging caveman still is) the MFM wing of team D conducting polls found that public opinion ran against gay marriage.

    Once King Putt evolved, the MFM found that public opinion soared in favor of gay marriage.

    Since the MFM would never use polls to try to drive public opinion in favor of the Dem’s position, I’m forced to conclude the ‘Bamster is a moral force greater than the Pope.

    I am totally sure nobody is manipulating the results of those polls.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  267. those aren’t core values Mr. 57 you’re confuzzling core values with bumper sticker slogans and Focus on the Family fundraising schemes

    a core value is “limited government”

    this perforce involves working diligently to minimize the reach of our whore government’s invasively-rapey ookily-phallic japanese anime tentacles

    which means government can eff the hell off when it tells somebody who they can or can’t marry

    and it needs to stop maundering on about fetuses

    and also it should stop forcing private employers to do the job of border police

    and also it shouldn’t means-test entitlement programs and turn them into coercive redistribution schemes

    and et cetera

    honor the core principal

    Mitt Romney knows nothing of such a thing. Meghan’s coward daddy knows nothing of such things.

    Because they are nasty unprincipled whores.

    It’s a real problem.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  268. “i was on this tip many many moons ago,” happyfeet said modestly, even winsomely. “Gay marriage is the future. It’s like google glasses and natural gas and Roobs’s ill-fated pursuit of the presidency.”

    I gotta admit you had your finger on the pulse of the people moving the strike zone.

    Like Judge Walker and possibly the pollsters.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  269. *principle*

    jeez I get dumber everyday

    i can has algernon’s flowers?

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  270. those aren’t core values Mr. 57 you’re confuzzling core values with bumper sticker slogans and Focus on the Family fundraising schemes

    a core value is “limited government”

    this perforce involves working diligently to minimize the reach of our whore government’s invasively-rapey ookily-phallic japanese anime tentacles

    which means government can eff the hell off when it tells somebody who they can or can’t marry

    I can’t imagine anything more likely to shrink the government more, Mr. Feets, than inventing a whole new field of “civil rights” law for the DoJ to jump into and enforce.

    Making sure no one disses the concept of “marriage equality” by not catering gay weddings, etc., etc., etc.

    Really, nothing streamlines the government more than the courts and the feds imposing a redefinition of a social institution that predates not only the founding of the republic but English common law.

    And what could scream “minimize the reach of our whore government’s invasively-rapey ookily-phallic japanese anime tentacles” more than to demand that 5 of 9 unelected justices should impose gay marriage on the rest of us?

    I can’t imagine striking a harder blow against our gub’mint’s fascist tendencies than to insist they ought to make sure the people don’t get to decide.

    Well, the people will get an input. I mean, the justices read the WaPo and the NYT so whatever the MFM tells them public opinion is no doubt they’ll factor that in.

    which means government can eff the hell off when it tells somebody who they can or can’t marry

    and it needs to stop maundering on about fetuses

    Totally. It needs instead to tell the Catholic Church and every other Catholic to shut up about the damned first amendment and buy Sandra Fluke her IUDs and abortifacients.

    Because of teh FREEDOM!

    Steve57 (60a887)

  271. and it needs to stop maundering on about fetuses

    Nancy Pelosi said the same thing. She said Catholics need to get over that whole “conscience thing” about abortion.

    See, that’s how I know you’re giving me and the GOP good advice, Mr. Feets. You agree with Nancy Pelosi.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  272. you don’t have to imagine just lookit the substantial swatch of america where gay marriage is already legal

    it ain’t no big thang

    I don’t think our fascist whore government should force anyone catholic or not-catholic to buy anything

    see?

    that is how you honor the core principle of limited government

    I’m super good at it but that’s cause I practice everyday

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  273. *every day* i mean

    god am i like *this* close to applying for a job at spencer gifts or what

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  274. Mitt Mitt Romney Romney owes walmart a big favor I guess

    cause of they bought him – you know – like a whore

    so over these people

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  275. “The blame belongs on thosethe more conservative candidates running not being strong enough to attract the funding and backing to mount [an] effective enough campaigns to win enough primary votes to secure the nominationelection. Blaming the winner of the nominationelection iswould be counter intuitive.”

    Funny how that works one way and not another.

    I guess Perry and the 50.2% are right, we should just shut up and row.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  276. 207. Fergot the comment number, like invalidating everything I thunk.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  277. the foundation is separate from the walmart what wants to tax the internet

    walmart is a vast enterprise

    but yes an increasingly fascist one as it rolls over on its back for the obamawhores

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  278. did you read SarahW’s link Mr. narciso?

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  279. gary – What did Governor Oops win last year?

    Funny how he can say the country will elect a conservative president when he fell on his butt.

    He’s got as much credibility on the subject as you and he’s not even the Mark Levin of Patterico’s Pontifications.

    Thank you.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  280. “you don’t have to imagine just lookit the substantial swatch of america where gay marriage is already legal”

    Mr. Feets – What swatch is that? I need a new watch. And are you talking bout sleazy back door judicial shenanigans or where people actually approved the gay marriagings?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  281. 260. Maybe two parties are incapable of being everything to all peoples. With the 17th amendment, financing laws and election rules a two party system has become crystalized in place.

    Granted parliamentary coalitions of parties can also be abominations, but clearly its not working here.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  282. Mr. Feets – If you are so supportive of the fetus flensings, why do you object to talking about it so much. You should be walking around with dead fetus pictures to support the movement and talking up its wonders.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  283. 285. Perry the trolltard, not Good Hair.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  284. I was counting on Team R to stop the fascisms Mr. daley

    you could build a whole party around the idea of stopping the fascisms

    and someone should

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  285. The CR keeps funding Obamacare, it’s possible the CFPB might be left vacant but that’s not assured,

    narciso (3fec35)

  286. On topic, The DC Matt Lewis:

    http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/20/social-conservatives-are-being-thrown-under-the-bus/

    Yeah, I know, but he gets paid for his stuff.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  287. “I was counting on Team R to stop the fascisms Mr. daley”

    Mr. Feets – As an American you should do your part. Go trample so pro-life exhibits at your local universities, pull up their nasty little flags in the dead of night and throw them away. Replaced them with giant pictures of hacked and slacked fetuses to show you are not afraid.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  288. Mr. Feets – I want to hear more about the swatches.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  289. “Perry the trolltard, not Good Hair.”

    gary Levin – My comment still works.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  290. trampled! by turtles!

    the swatches are like vast fields of rye mr. daley and you are there and Mr. 57 is there and Mr. Patterico and Mr. JD and SarahW and even Mr. SEK and you are running and playing and laughing – oh how you are laughing!

    but on the far side of the rye there is a cliff most treacherous

    and it is there I sit

    ever vigilant

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  291. On a rare bipartisan note, 35 racist, homophobic House Democrats who hate children and old people joined Republicans in defeating the Senate budget today.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  292. 295. “My comment still works.”

    daley Behar, if you say so doll.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  293. 277. you don’t have to imagine just lookit the substantial swatch of america where gay marriage is already legal

    it ain’t no big thang

    I don’t think our fascist whore government should force anyone catholic or not-catholic to buy anything

    see?

    They’re only doing it because they say enforcing “gender equality” is a compelling government interest.

    Just wait to see what they dream up once you empower them to enforce “marriage equality,” Mr. Feets.

    that is how you honor the core principle of limited government

    I’m super good at it but that’s cause I practice everyday

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/20/2013 @ 8:35 pm

    I’m really big on limited government, too. You know what you get when you have a limited government that minds its own business and keeps out of the marriage defining business?

    Marriage between a man and a woman.

    To get gay marriage you need a really big government to get people to quit thinking they can just decide on their own what marriage is.

    We know if people are left on their own to decide they’ll decide wrong. They’ll just keep thinking marriage is between a man and a woman and it’s really ok to buy a big gulp or a happy meal for their kids.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  294. the rate at which gay marriage support has skyrocketed is a phenomenon with few parallels Mr. 57

    it’s a paradigm shift!

    you should count yourself lucky to see one of these up close and in realtime

    plus it’s a lot cheaper than space tourism

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  295. GOP strategy for defeat: keep bullsh!ting around with issues like gay marriage, and replace the real cause of problems ($2.2 Trillion spent in Iraq & 4000+ American dead) with bogus distractions (gays, Benghazi, science denial, etc…).

    Dad (b17026)

  296. 300. the rate at which gay marriage support has skyrocketed is a phenomenon with few parallels Mr. 57

    it’s a paradigm shift!

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/20/2013 @ 10:14 pm

    Like I said, it’s amazing the paradigm shift occurred after the lightworker evolved on the issue. As measured by his leg-humping cheering section in the MFM.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  297. It’s also amazing that the paradigm shift occurred just in time for the Preezy and the MFM to begin a full court press on the SCOTUS to make sure gay marriage never needs to face the voters ever again, Mr. Feets.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  298. Cuz now the SCOTUS can be sure that all those people who actually said no to gay marriage when they had to say now really, really like the idea of gay marriage.

    Because the same MFM that called those voters a bunch of homophobes when they said no on the issue when it was on he ballot now say their polling results show public opinion has skyrocketed the other way. And now all them homophobes agree with the position the MFM told them to take on gay marriage the first time around.

    Really, it’s a remarkable coincidence.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  299. Getting back to what the GOP should do now. It must not take advice from Liz Peek of the Fiscal Times.

    Why Voters Trust the GOP with Their Tax Dollars… …but Not with Social Policy Issues

    Republicans are the leading the growth charge. InChief Executive magazine’s annual ranking of best business climates, all ten top-rated states, including Texas, Florida and North Carolina, have Republican governors. In January, eight of the ten states with the country’s lowest unemployment rates are led by GOP governors.

    The contrasts can be stark. Voters in Indiana can look across the line and see what a mess Democrats have made of Illinois. Citizens of Texas feel pretty good when they compare their taxes and unemployment numbers with those of California.

    Those contrasts could become sharper. There are today 38 states in which the governor’s mansion and the legislature are controlled by one party – the most since World War II. The GOP holds veto-proof majorities in sixteen states; 14 of those states also have a Republican governor.

    This could allow real fiscal progress in those states. It could also prove a disaster. Unfettered control opens the door to opposing abortion, immigration reform and same-sex marriage — positions that could weaken the party at the state level, as they have nationally. In Arkansas, the state legislature recently passed one of the most restrictive bills in the country, which would ban most abortions after twelve weeks. Similar measures are under consideration in Ohio, Kansas and North Dakota – all states controlled by the GOP. At the least, such measures will allow Democrats to continue to paint Republicans as anti-women.

    The whole article is like that.

    The GOP has to get the word out that you simply can’t put liberals setting the agenda on social issues and expect to have pro-growth fiscal policies.

    It’s a package deal; the spending follows the social agenda.

    For instance, marriage is the best anti-poverty program there is. If you want to lift women and children out of poverty, marriage is the way to do it. Marriage only exists to channel procreation and child rearing into a constructive direction. That’s why people when left to their own devices created the social institution called marriage. Because otherwise when unrestricted by social norms these biological urges can lead to destructive social effects.

    As we are seeing now in crime ridden low income inner cities like Chicago where the vast majority of babies are born to single moms. Because no one for three or four generations have ever been married so why should they understand marriage is important? (Maybe if the successful stable educated married folk preached what they practiced, that waiting to get married before having kids and then not getting divorced leads to successful financial and child rearing outcomes, they might get the message but that would be judgemental and besides I hear the next season of “Teen Mom” is starting soon).

    But then marriage can only have that effect if it’s really a social norm that responsible procreation takes place within marriage. This is by definition impossible if marriage is redefined to include SSM where procreation is only possible outside of marriage.

    SSM is only thinkable if you rewrite history to claim marriage has nothing to do with procreation.

    Break the link between marriage and procreation, hello welfare state expansion.

    Same if we let Liz Peek tell us what’s “anti-immigrant.” Again, if you’re talking about legalizing millions of unskilled or low-skilled individuals then hello welfare state expansion.

    People argue that illegal immigrants are really hard working laborers. Actually if you look at the percentage of illegal immigrants who work and compare it to the percentage of legal residents/citizens, illegal immigrants actually participate in the labor force at a slightly lower rate. The difference isn’t much. But they don’t work harder than anyone else.

    But people who argue that illegal immigrants are hard working miss the point entirely. Illegal immigrants don’t make enough to lift themselves out of poverty. People who are unskilled laborers don’t make enough to lift themselves out of poverty regardless of citizenship status. So a lot of our welfare spending is directed at people who are working poor.

    As far as anti-abortion equaling anti-woman that’s a tough row to hoe considering a lot of leading anti-abortion activists are women. That’s a red herring. Frankly the way it’s shaping up you get painted as anti-woman if you aren’t for the spending that goes with the whole pro-abortion mindset. Which includes massive new entitlements. Just try to stop public funding of Planned Parenthood. You can be totally supportive of a woman’s “right to choose” as the pro-abortion crowd defines it but if you also say that people who are against abortion shouldn’t be forced to fund organizations that perform them you’re anti-woman.

    That needs to be the GOP’s task. If the conservatives are in charge of deciding social issues, or at least you have enough of them to stop liberals from having their way, then you can have the kind of growth that conservative fiscal policies can lead to and have lead to in the past.

    If liberals are deciding social issues then there’s no way to control the taxing and spending that goes with it.

    I forget who said it, but someone once said conservatives can’t be the tax collectors for the welfare state. I think he meant that they can’t be seen as the tax collectors for the welfare state and expect to also be seen as an alternative. But it’s true on a deeper level. The tax collector for the welfare state can’t be conservative. You’ll have to collect liberal taxes.

    It’ll be an uphill battle but if this country isn’t to go the way of Greece and Cyprus then the GOP needs to get the word out that fiscal conservatism produces growth. But only under certain social conditions. Conservative ones.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  300. Just piling on at this point.

    Amnesty Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers at Least $2.6 Trillion

    By Robert Rector
    June 6, 2007

    The Senate is currently considering a massive immigration reform bill, the “Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and immigration Reform Act of 2007” (S. 1348). This bill would grant amnesty to nearly all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

    …benefits to these immigrants from Social Security, Medicare, and most means-tested welfare programs (such as Food Stamps, public housing, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) will be delayed for many years. In consequence, then, the increase in taxes and fines paid by amnesty recipients may initially exceed slightly the increase in government benefits received. In the long run, however, the opposite will be true. In particular, the cost of retirement benefits for amnesty recipients is likely to be very large. Overall, the net cost to taxpayers of retirement benefits for amnesty recipients is likely to be at least $2.6 trillion.

    This was McCain-Kennedy. Before the explosion of the entitlement state.

    Which illustrates the bizarro, nonsensical advice Liz Peek of the Fiscal Times thinks makes sense for the GOP.

    Just give in on amnesty. As long as we call it “comprehensive immigration reform” which it is guaranteed not to be. Bring tens of millions of illegal immigrants “out of the shadows” so they can qualify collectively for benefits that will now cost us far more than $2.6 trillion net over whatever they’ll pay in taxes and fines.

    Plust put them on the path to citizenship; illegal immigrants who overwhelming will vote for bigger government and more entitlement spending (on them) just as soon as they can.

    Thus guaranteeing the budget will explode and cement in place social conditions that will ensure we can’t ever have those pro-growth fiscal policies that she tells us the voters would like to trust us with if only we’d be willing to sabotage ourselves first.

    Oh, yeah, this makes all kinds of sense.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  301. *Before the explosion of the entitlement state that is Obamacare.*

    Steve57 (60a887)

  302. 300. I do admit in MN, on the Iron Range and Mpls/StP H8rs are at an all time low, down there with the KKK and Nazis.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  303. Do you view patent expiration as theft?
    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 3:05 pm

    — Since patent and copyright are two different things, No.

    Icy (c4aeff)

  304. you can’t build a viable party around opposition to the gay marriagings

    Team R tried and tried

    but they haven’t cracked the code, and now that window’s closing

    gay marriagings opposition, remember, was the New Hotness, and not that long ago

    Team R tried hard to get it on ballots everywhere cause they figured they could leverage anti-gay sentiment into solid political gains

    now they’re left with tired old fetuses

    and immigrant bashing

    guns are a bright spot though

    guns are a great kernel issue for to start building a party around limited government and constitutionalism and individual liberty

    CPAC blew an opportunity to foreground an opposition to the fascist assault on second amendment rights though

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  305. you can’t build a viable party around opposition to the gay marriagings

    Why not?

    Michael Ejercito (2e0217)

  306. GOP strategy for defeat: keep bullsh!ting around with issues like gay marriage, and replace the real cause of problems ($2.2 Trillion spent in Iraq & 4000+ American dead) with bogus distractions (gays, Benghazi, science denial, etc…).

    What sort of accounting was used to determine that 2.2 trillion was spent in Iraq?

    If that same accounting was used to measure the cost of WW1, how much would that war cost?

    Michael Ejercito (2e0217)

  307. Icy: question: If Congress repealed all copyright laws, retroactively, what part of the Constitution, if any, would they be violating?
    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 3:10 pm

    — None. Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the power to make such laws, but does not mandate that they do so. Luckily for us, in 1976 they finally passed a copyright law that provides fair protection.

    Icy (c4aeff)

  308. And the underlying point which was lost long ago:
    Our political enemies in Hollywood have long absolute copyrights as a litmus test for politicians. People under 30 hate long absolute copyrights. Why are we pissing off voters to support people who hate us?
    Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 3:20 pm

    — Is this REALLY your litmus test on this issue? Young people want to file-share everything, therefore we should just chillax in order to avoid pissing them off? How about we protect the rights of hard-working creative people that engage in commerce and do not give the slackers what amounts to yet another entitlement, instead?

    Icy (c4aeff)

  309. “which means government can eff the hell off when it tells somebody who they can or can’t marry”

    Mr. Feets – Confuzzlement reigns. I thot u were asking the government to jump in wif two jackbooted feets to tell everybody zactly who they can and can’t marry and shut they moufs.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  310. Icy – We have a system of laws which protect the rights of people in other types of property, such as real property, deeds and titles and such. Why don’t we apply Kevin M.’s logic to other types of property as well? Why does it only apply to certain types of property?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  311. gary – Here’s a link just for you.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  312. Comment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/20/2013 @ 3:16 pm
    daleyrocks: it should be the market which decides the value of such items not state action.
    Kevin M: But, daley, copyrights *are* state action to begin with. You cannot say “here, I have created this thing and I want the state to force everyone to give me money to copy it” and then turn around and say “the state should stay out of it.”

    — I think what daley was saying (and I agree with) is that it would be arbitrary for the state to not provide copyright protection for life. If I publish a book when I’m 20, and at 80 I find a publisher willing to pay me for reprinting it, WHY should I not still own the rights to the work at that point?

    Because, unlike, say food, you cannot physically limit access to intellectual property once you put it into the marketplace — it is infinitely copyable.
    — Yes, you’re correct; they are two different things. Food products are imitated, while creative works are subject to being duplicated.

    Only an artificial arrangement gives it any practical worth once you disclose it. That arrangement suffers from the “Why should we?” test.
    — Because a creative work with your name on it should be thought of the same as a trademarked food product; that’s why!

    Icy (c4aeff)

  313. “Food products are imitated, while creative works are subject to being duplicated.”

    Icy – I think I mentioned that technology has evolved since the time of the Founders to make it significantly easier to copy or duplicate creative works, which would argue they deserve greater, not lesser protection.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  314. Mr. Feets – Confuzzlement reigns. I thot u were asking the government to jump in wif two jackbooted feets to tell everybody zactly who they can and can’t marry and shut they moufs.

    nope the federal government just has to get rid of the possibly-unconstitutional DOMA thinger and then states can do what they want

    hick states can still just have hick marriage if they want who cares

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  315. Since the MFM would never use polls to try to drive public opinion in favor of the Dem’s position, I’m forced to conclude the ‘Bamster is a moral force greater than the Pope.
    I am totally sure nobody is manipulating the results of those polls.
    Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 3/20/2013 @ 8:19 pm

    — Do you agree with Barack Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage?
    YES.
    — Do you agree with Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage?
    YES.
    — Sycophants, and those that want to ‘be on the right side of history’ do not require manipulating. Witness those street interviews where low information voters are asked if they support Obama’s position on X (X being the opposite of Obama’s actual position) and they readily support it. These people are self-manipulating. Whatever their cult-of-personality hero does is okay with them.

    Icy (c4aeff)

  316. Show me a contrary example when a wishy washy moderate, won an election, no Presidents Wilkie and Dewey don’t count,

    narciso (3fec35)

  317. GOP strategy for defeat: keep bullsh!ting around with issues like gay marriage, and replace the real cause of problems ($2.2 Trillion spent in Iraq & 4000+ American dead) with bogus distractions (gays, Benghazi, science denial, etc…).
    Comment by Dad (b17026) — 3/20/2013 @ 11:09 pm

    — Dad, we can only hope that you will live long enough to experience a time when all of America’s problems are NOT Bush’s fault.

    Icy (c4aeff)

  318. Icy – We have a system of laws which protect the rights of people in other types of property, such as real property, deeds and titles and such. Why don’t we apply Kevin M.’s logic to other types of property as well? Why does it only apply to certain types of property?
    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/21/2013 @ 7:26 am

    — You didn’t write that!
    — You didn’t sing that!
    — You didn’t sculpt that!
    — You didn’t paint that!

    Icy (c4aeff)

  319. 318. Thanks nipper, another downer from the RINO echo chamber of a failed print screed.

    You lost the battleground states getting double digit spread with party-switchers.

    Objective achieved loser.

    Next time you’ll prolly get a 50% increase in Hispanic support and lose bigger still.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  320. “Food products are imitated, while creative works are subject to being duplicated.”
    Icy – I think I mentioned that technology has evolved since the time of the Founders to make it significantly easier to copy or duplicate creative works, which would argue they deserve greater, not lesser protection.
    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/21/2013 @ 8:17 am

    — Yeah, it kinda sounds like Kevin M is making a “corporations have more rights than individuals” argument, doesn’t it?

    Icy (c4aeff)

  321. well that settles that then

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  322. “318. Thanks nipper, another downer from the RINO echo chamber of a failed print screed.”

    gary – More excuses today?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  323. “Yeah, it kinda sounds like Kevin M is making a “corporations have more rights than individuals” argument, doesn’t it?”

    Icy – I thought it was the other way around a couple of days ago, but I don’t understand what the identity or nature of the copyright holder has to do with the argument.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  324. R.I.P. Harry Reems, star of the infamous “Deep Throat”

    Icy (c4aeff)

  325. GOP strategy for defeat: keep bullsh!ting around with issues like gay marriage, and replace the real cause of problems ($2.2 Trillion spent in Iraq & 4000+ American dead) with bogus distractions (gays, Benghazi, science denial, etc…).

    Comment by Dad (b17026) — 3/20/2013 @ 11:09 pm

    Benghazi isn’t a real issue? Four Americans were assassinated on the anniversary of 9/11 after seven hours of sustained assault on our embassy, and that’s not an issue?

    Science denial? How so? Last I heard, we were correct all along about global warming. That came out what, two days ago? (As a scientist, I could have told you that the whole thing was a crock – the problems in accurately measuring minute changes around the entire Earth, then making conclusions based on those, will mean that your signal:noise ratio is far too low for meaningful extrapolation.

    Also, one of the hallmarks of science is that you make a prediction, test that prediction, and rework your hypothesis if necessary. If AGW were actual science, the climatologists would have said something like, “In the next five years, assuming atmospheric CO2 is between X and Y, the average temperature of the earth will be Z, which is higher than the previous five years. Additionally, climate change will result in stronger and more frequent storms. Over the last decade, we’ve averaged W storms per year, U% of which were above a certain severity. The next five years will bring W+2 storms, on the average, with U%+5 being severe. This is within the 95% confidence interval for pure statistical chance, but is outside the 80% confidence interval.”

    We didn’t hear that, which is the first clue to any SCIENTIST that it was a cooking pot of bovine excrement.)

    bridget (55e4a2)

  326. you can’t build a viable party around opposition to the gay marriagings

    Team R tried and tried

    but they haven’t cracked the code, and now that window’s closing

    gay marriagings opposition, remember, was the New Hotness, and not that long ago

    You know what else is the new hotness, Mr. Feets.

    New Report: 48 Percent of First Children Born to Unwed Mothers

    Calling it “The Great Crossover,” a report by academics and social activists shows that for the first time in history the median age of American women having babies is lower than the median age of marriage – 25.7 and 26.5, respectively.

    And why not? Marriage we are told by the government that is getting out of the business of telling us who to marry has nothing to do with having babies.

    Lesson learned, Mr. Feets. Hope you like writing big tax checks to pay for the results.

    nope the federal government just has to get rid of the possibly-unconstitutional DOMA thinger and then states can do what they want

    hick states can still just have hick marriage if they want who cares

    Nope. Get rid of DOMA and the courts can create a constitutional right to SSM. That is what the feds “just has to get rid of.” The idea this is a state issue.

    Obama urges court to overturn California same-sex marriage ban

    “Use of a voter initiative to promote democratic self-governance cannot save a law like Proposition 8 that would otherwise violate equal protection,” said the brief. “Prejudice may not however be the basis for differential treatment under the law.”

    California’s 2008 Proposition 8 referendum revoked the right of same-sex couples to wed after lawmakers and the state courts previously allowed it.

    While the administration weighed in on the situation in California, it specifically refused to argue the constitutional right for same-sex couples to wed there should be extended to the 41 states that currently define marriage as between one man and one woman.

    The justices will hear the case in March.

    “The government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Throughout history, we have seen the unjust consequences of decisions and policies rooted in discrimination.”

    “The issues before the Supreme Court in this case and the Defense of Marriage Act case are not just important to the tens of thousands Americans who are being denied equal benefits and rights under our laws, but to our nation as a whole,” Holder added.

    Just curious, Mr. Feets. Do you think for a second that constitutional right for gay couples to marry won’t apply to all 50 states?

    I mean, the Obama admin crosses its heart and hopes to die when it promises that, sure, gays have a right to marry under the US Constitution’s equal protection clause. But only in Kali. Not in all those other states where people also have rights under the US Constitution’s equal protection clause.

    If you believe that, then you can also believe under Obamacare you can keep your insurance if you like it and your premiums will go down $2500 bucks. They promise, and cross their hearts and hope to die.

    Another question, Mr. Feets. If you libertarians don’t like our fascist government sticking its Japanese anime tentacles in every part of people’s lives why do you libertarians insist on policies that guarantees the fascists have an excuse to do just that?

    I’m beginning to believe you’re secretly a fan of fascist government and its tentacles.

    I know. Let’s legalize drugs. And create more dysfunctional people who can’t take care of themselves. I’m sure that’s shrink the government, too.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  327. why do you libertarians insist on policies

    hey no labels dude

    we can talk more later but I’m really hungry

    i wonder if fried zucchini counts as carbs

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  328. I don’t know, daleyrocks. I wish at least one of the commenters that disagree with me could present a cogent argument against copyright law as it now stands.

    Icy (c4aeff)

  329. 330. Excuses? Your argument is conservatives had every opportunity.

    You’ve provided no defense of the GOP strategy, ‘Nominate the most moneyed left-of-center triangulator the Beltway can stomach possible’.

    You spent $150 Million on consultants and came up with fewer votes than the guy who suspended his campaign.

    I’m not even a Republican. What am I excusing? That ‘Crazy Eyes’ came up fifth or sixth in her home state opener? She couldn’t control her mouth one time and it was over.

    That Perry sleep-walked thru his most important debate?

    Hardly. Your defense is offense. Make believe you’ve got something, like the primary voters have spoken. America has spoken, are you going to lie down in front of Chairman Lewis and fill a pothole in her path?

    Of course not, poseur. Twenty five percent of America re-elected Ogabe, deal with it. Why didn’t you get 24%?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  330. Why, Icy? You’ve shown no interest in bothering to understand even current law. Why bother to point out how many works were created under periods of shorter terms. Why bother pointing out to you how short the true economically valuable period of a work really is?

    SPQR (aabf1e)

  331. what happened to the long tail thing

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  332. I don’t know, daleyrocks. I wish at least one of the commenters that disagree with me could present a cogent argument against copyright law as it now stands.

    As I told you earlier, copyright law is about a quid pro quo, and retroactive increases in the copyright term, as per the 1998 Act, are not logical. Neither is it logical to allow people, their children, and their grandchildren to profit off of the work for a century and a half. (The Rule Against Perpetuties is “lives in being plus 21 years” – why can’t we do that for copyright? What was wrong with “life plus fifty years”?)

    That is cogent. It is not, however, persuasive to you, but those are fundamentally different things.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  333. Why, Icy? You’ve shown no interest in bothering to understand even current law. Why bother to point out how many works were created under periods of shorter terms. Why bother pointing out to you how short the true economically valuable period of a work really is?

    Is there any reason why you can’t make money off your work during your own lifetime and the half-century following your lifetime?

    Based on acturial tables, I will live for another fifty years. If I were to right a book, and live an average lifespan hereon forward, current copyright law would enable my heirs and their heirs to collect royalties on that book until 2132. That is objectively insane.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  334. “Write” a book, sorry. Mid-afternoon latte not kicking in.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  335. gary – Whine on, whine on, harvest moon.

    You’re doing it again.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  336. “Why bother pointing out to you how short the true economically valuable period of a work really is?”

    SPQR – How do you do that with any kind of certainty?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  337. “You’ve provided no defense of the GOP strategy”

    gary – Correct, because I’m addressing your misguided criticism. I’m not trying to defend anything, just show that you are using typical lefty strawmen in your analysis, which is not very becoming.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  338. Keep up the war on gays, women, science, the middle class, immigrants, minorities… and keep shilling for your puppet masters.

    See where it has gotten you recently? Just a harbinger of things to come. America is in flux and changing. The GOP is CLEARLY on the wrong side of history. Just look at yourselves… mostly old white men. A dying breed.

    Progressive = move forward. GOP = Regressive -> imminent extinction.

    Dad (b17026)

  339. Dad, your trolling got old long ago. Having the same position Obama did until 2012 is a ” war on gays”? You are a joke.

    SPQR (aabf1e)

  340. Sitting pretty:

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/good-news-for-gop-senate-hopes/article/2524937?custom_click=rss

    347. Dud, the Roman Empire is on the wrong side of history, Amerikkka be joining them real soon.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  341. See where it has gotten you recently? Just a harbinger of things to come. America is in flux and changing. The GOP is CLEARLY on the wrong side of history. Just look at yourselves… mostly old white men. A dying breed.

    I never knew that I was an old dude – I thought I was a woman in my early thirties. Also, it’s ironic when abortion supporters call pro-lifers a “dying breed”, when y’all are the ones lobbying for the right to kill your kids.

    Continue to lob insults – it will not change the fact that young people, women, and minorities are flocking to the GOP.

    One day, I expect that you’ll point out to me how Sandra Fluke’s super-sciency womyn’s studies classes trump my actual science degree.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  342. young people women and minorities are flocking to the GOP?

    do you have a link?

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  343. It is cute how “dad” whines about a bogus $2.2T figure for Iraq, when Teh One rang up that much in profligate deficit spending in any 2 year period of his presidency.

    JD (4bb5d1)

  344. Romney won 49% of white women between the ages of 18 and 29; Obama won 48% of that age group. While Obama still won blacks near-unanimously, the GOP has been producing a line-up of young, conservative, female and minority rock star politicians.

    The idea that the GOP is comprised of mostly old, white men, simply because old, white men tend to vote GOP, is a logical and statistical fallacy.

    bridget (55e4a2)

  345. “You spent $150 Million on consultants and came up with fewer votes than the guy who suspended his campaign.”

    gary – Who is “You” and can you please translate the above into english and explain why it should matter to anybody?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  346. Hey “Dad,” your brand of root beer is good, but your opinions are nothing more than piss water.

    Elephant Stone (d813d1)

  347. daleyrocks, the thing to remember about our friend Gary Gulrud, is that just about every day for months leading up to Election Day, he was assuring everyone that Romney was going to beat Obama. Of course, we all hoped Romney would win, but Gary was assuring us on a daily basis that it was already a done deal.

    Naturally, that doesn’t mean that Gary(or any of us, for that matter) wouldn’t have preferred a more passionate articulate spokesman for the conservative cause as the GOP nominee, but Gary believed that Romney’s campaign and strategy was strong enough to win at the time.

    Now Gary is lecturing us about how Romney’s strategy and tactics were lame, and how we were all so shortsighted for not seeing how lame Romney’s campaign was.
    It just doesn’t sound like the same Gary who was rather optimistic about Romney winning Wisconsin and perhaps even Minnesota.

    Elephant Stone (d813d1)

  348. A18-29 broke for Food Stamp 60/40 is what I see bridget

    Team R has a HUGE problem with the youth vote.

    Romney was an A65+ phenomenon.

    Team R is like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News anymore

    I’m beginning to repel people I’m trying to seduce.

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  349. Mr. Elephant I thought Romney was gonna win too

    I can’t believe he lost such an easy race

    in the end I chalked it up to him being a sucky candidate who never should’ve been nominated

    but man I really thought he had it in the bag

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  350. mister happy, i think we all thought romney would win. what i’m pointing out about our pal gary gulrud is that he’s monday morning quarterbacking romney’s strategies.
    last summer and fall, gary was here on a daily basis saying romney would win. he believed romney’s strategies were not only good enough to win, but good enough to win wisconsin and possibly minnesota.

    now gary’s poo-pooing romney’s strategies, and poo-pooing those of us who thought he was actually going to win.

    it’s kind of like a few weeks ago when obama went on the teevee and said that the pain of sequestration was not going to be as apocalyptic as some people have been saying. (well, those “some people” were actually HIM and his various cabinet secretaries.)

    Elephant Stone (d813d1)

  351. Dad @ 347,

    America is in flux and changing. The GOP is CLEARLY on the wrong side of history. Just look at yourselves… mostly old white men. A dying breed.

    As a minority female, I’m getting pretty sick and tired of people like you ignoring the likes of me (and others like me). Is it because of the color of my skin or that I own a uterus?

    Just keep perpetuating the stereotypical myth… if it’s all you’ve got.

    Dana (292dcf)

  352. Comment by bridget (55e4a2) — 3/21/2013 @ 11:29 am
    Is there any reason why you can’t make money off your work during your own lifetime and the half-century following your lifetime?
    — Nope. And there is no reason why you can’t do it for your lifetime plus 70 years either.
    [Congrats to “I Love Lucy”, now in its 62nd year on the air.]

    Based on acturial tables, I will live for another fifty years. If I were to [write] a book, and live an average lifespan hereon forward, current copyright law would enable my heirs and their heirs to collect royalties on that book until 2132. That is objectively insane.
    — WHY is it ‘insane’? WHY is the concept of retaining ownership (of something that you spent days, weeks, months or years of your life creating) counterintuitive to you? WHY is it okay that you can pass along your book collection to your heirs, but not the ownership rights to your own book? If someone in the year 2132 is willing to buy a newly-printed copy of your book, then WHY shouldn’t it be your designated heirs that receive the royalties from that sale?

    Icy (c4aeff)

  353. Dad @ 347,

    Keep up the war on gays, women, science, the middle class, immigrants, minorities… and keep shilling for your puppet masters.

    This aptly illustrates one of my biggest problems with the other side: massively uninformed and ignorant; yet arrogant enough to believe others will be equally as ignorant to buy your bottle of truth and tip it back without a second thought.

    Shilling, thy name is irony.

    Dana (292dcf)

  354. Mr. Stone it’s kinda like the 5 stages of grief, watching Team R die this ghastly death

    we’re all coping the best we can

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  355. happyfeet @ 358,

    Team R has a HUGE problem with the youth vote.

    I agree. Do you think this is more a problem with R’s basic principles being thwarted and misrepresented by a complicit media and the other side (see Dad) and less that youth actually agree with the principles and tenets of the D’s?

    Solution?

    Dana (292dcf)

  356. I think the youth dislike Team R far more than they are enamored with fascism.

    Solution: serious and boring is ok. When Team Rs try to be charismatic a la Palin and Roobs, or the try to force it like Romney, it turns off young people.

    I still think Mitch Daniels is the ideal model. All Team Rs should emulate his seriousness and his unassuming nature. Bobby Jindal is doing a good job. Michelle Bachmann is a good model not to follow. Ted Cruz is a good model not to follow.

    It’s not about you.

    They hate you, Rs, so it’s really to your advantage to make it about something other than you.

    Stay far away from stupid 700 club nonsense. Rand Paul is bibble babbling about fetuses today.

    Idiot.

    Nobody cares.

    Team R needs to develop a genuine culture of service. That means addressing the problems the customer has not the problems we’d like the customer to be concerned with.

    Most of them do not understand this concept at all.

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  357. Solution: serious and boring is ok. When Team Rs try to be charismatic a la Palin and Roobs, or the try to force it like Romney, it turns off young people.

    Rather than serious and boring, how about just being genuine. No bells and whistles, and no attempts to be the psuedo-intellectual. Just be honest, direct, and genuine – because your solid commitment and belief in conservative principles compels it. Youth smells a phony 100 miles away. They smell a hypocrite from an even farther distance.

    Stay far away from stupid 700 club nonsense. Rand Paul is bibble babbling about fetuses today.

    Idiot.

    Nobody cares.

    Not so. According to Gallup, 68% of male and female R’s care. That can’t be lifeydoodled away to suit you or the minority of other pro-choice R’s. What to do?

    Dana (292dcf)

  358. you just have to trust me Dana

    it’s like a team building exercise

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  359. i won’t let you guys fall

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  360. and “pro-life” doesn’t mean people think the government should criminalize abortions

    lifeydoodles conflate the concept of being generally fetus-positive with an enthusiasm for ham-fisted fetal justice

    don’t let them get away with it do NOT break them off a piece of your kitkat bar they can get their own

    happyfeet (4bf7c2)

  361. lifeydoodles conflate the concept of being generally fetus-positive with an enthusiasm for ham-fisted fetal justice

    You think it should be avoided, ignored, or protected…that ham fisted fetal justice?

    I don’t think the issue is the deal-breaker for the youth vote, anyway. I think it’s used as a convenient and effective scapegoat for the party though.

    Dana (292dcf)

  362. Romney got all the McCain voters. The contrary belief was based on early, incomplete numbers.

    SPQR (aabf1e)

  363. In California, you had the very unlifeydoodle Meg Whitman, burn 150 million, she also thinks gay marriage is the bomb, then again she thought Van Jones had a point, too.

    narciso (3fec35)

  364. 357. Stones your memory leaves something to the imagination.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  365. 360. I’ll admit PeeWee knew Mittwit was destined to lose after I jumped onto the jackwagon, but that was absolutely the day he picked Ryan and not a moment before.

    daley even wondered where I’d left my mind, I was suddenly so positive.

    August 10, 2012, three months of positivity. What do you want from me?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  366. 372. Comment by SPQR (aabf1e) — 3/21/2013 @ 2:58 pm

    Romney got all the McCain voters.

    Proportionately. Turnout was down. And of course there were probably some swicthes both ways.

    Obama did best among younger voters. The 18-30 age group is the only group he won, but he won them big.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  367. 373. Today Hilarity is polling ahead of Roobs and Jebbie in FL.

    Send in the clowns.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  368. 360. In the context of the post, Walker recall drew 77% of voters, somewhat more than his election.

    I believed Rassmussen that the GOP turnout would actually exceed Dhimmi’s. The Right was just that hyped.

    I was wrong, we were all wrong. But that had nothing to do with Romany but for the first debate and his choice of Ryan. It was all the Whore of Babylon.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  369. 366. I know some of them yout’ myself. No matter. A few years living in the basement, indentured for life to Sallie Mae, flipping burgers at 10 PM, pancakes at 7 AM, they will get their minds right.

    Squirt just turned 5, reading and printing, adding and subtracting a smidge,.. About the time she enters first grade she could graduate HS in Brooklyn.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  370. Elephant Stone, Blame Bush not Gary.

    mg (31009b)

  371. We have just returned home from a vacay which gave me the time, space and distance to get some perspecive on America and our right leaning poliics problems. Gawd. This thread is depressing.

    elissa (9e5529)

  372. [Congrats to “I Love Lucy”, now in its 62nd year on the air.]

    Icy – Aren’t The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick, written in 1850 and 1851, respectively, still read in a few high schools which have students literate enough to read them?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  373. A lot of the BS about being hipper and cooler will lead to prosperity has turned out to be false. Likewise, the nonsense about how the GOP can be “hipper” and “cooler” is BS.

    SPQR (768505)

  374. Roobs says today if we can’t come up with a solid guest worker program we’ll have 10 million illegals in a decade.

    Here to do what? Collect entitlements.

    I think some one has lost their way, sort of on purpose.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  375. 380. Maybe I should start doing my part and start tutoring Science and Math in Spanish. They’re not going to catch up to my kid anyway.

    Who knows they might learn something beside how to use a condom.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  376. You’d think outing a commie bastard gay prostitute in the WH might be job one for the GOP.

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/figures-obama-quotes-alinsky-in-speech-to-young-israelis-video/

    Why do equal access to probiotics in enemas get in the way?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  377. Gary Gulrud,

    Seriously, man, stand behind your posts.
    If I had the time to spare, I’d dig them up out of Patterico’s archives for you.

    You only wrote 5,000 times in various threads during 2012 that Romney was going to win, he had the election in the bag, the Obama’s moving vans were coming on January 20, et al.
    You wrote all that stuff because you believed in your heart that whatever Romney was doing in the campaign was enough to result in victory over Obama.

    Now that he lost, you’re inferring that Romney’s strategies were stupid, and that everyone should have seen that train coming down the tracks.

    What a Monday morning quarterback.

    You betcha.

    Elephant Stone (6ed390)

  378. HappyFeet, I said white women between 18 and 29, and I am absolutely correct in that. White women as a whole went for Romney by 14 points, more than for either McCain or Bush. Millions of people stayed home, and blacks voted in lockstep far more than did whites.

    bridget (84c06f)

  379. If we are to get back on the topic of “what should the GOP do now,” one thing it must not do is abandon core principles because of polls. A recent poll proves why.

    NYT: Path to Citizenship for Immigrants Draws Support Across Party Lines, Survey Finds

    Nearly two-thirds of Americans favor giving illegal immigrants in the country an opportunity for legal status with a path to citizenship, according to a poll published Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution. Support for an earned path to citizenship for those immigrants came from 71 percent of Democrats and also a majority, 53 percent, of Republicans, the poll found.

    But that’s more than a tad misleading. As this post at NRO illustrates.

    Adventures in Manipulative Polling

    But, before starting to look for a new job, just for giggles I decided to see what the actual question said. You have to get to p. 53 of the report to find it, and here are the only options offered to respondents:

    The best way to solve the country’s illegal immigration problem is to secure our borders and arrest and deport all those who are here illegally

    The best way to solve the country’s illegal immigration problem is to both secure our borders and provide an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

    You remember the presidential candidate proposing that we “arrest and deport all those who are here illegally,” don’t you? No? That’s because there wasn’t one. And yet almost every establishment poll asks the question this way, contrasting cattle cars full of weeping babies to the option of “earning” status by working hard, paying back taxes, and rescuing stranded kittens.

    We did a poll last month with more neutral and honest wording. (I’m afraid it wasn’t featured in the New York Times.) Here’s the wording of our comparable question: “Would you prefer to see illegal immigrants in the United States go back to their home countries or be given legal status?” The results were 52-33 for going back home.

    Polls can be used as much to form public opinion as they can be used to measure public opinion.

    If the GOP wants to be a party that’s worth a red p**s then it needs to think strategically. It needs to think about how to articulate its message so that it can reach voters.

    Because abandoning something one once called a core principle just because the breeze is blowing the other way doesn’t win you any friends.

    I’ve got to come back to Rob Portman on this. Have any of you read the comments on articles in which he changed his mind on gay marriage when he found out his son was gay?

    They despise the guy. “It’s OK to discriminate against other people’s kids” is the general view of Republicans and their attitudes. As far as people who weren’t going to vote for team R goes, this just proves Republicans are a bunch of hypocrites.

    And as far as people like me who actually are conservative and who have to hold their noses and vote for the “electable” Republican the party gives me, all it does is convince me that “electable” Republicans are people with no convictions whatsoever.

    Give the libs their due. They may change their labels. If “liberal” isn’t working they’ll call themselves “progressive.” But they know what it is they’re trying to do and they don’t change that. They just figure out the best way to sell it. They don’t just abandon a goal if it isn’t selling well, they’ll figure out another way to package it and then test it to see if it sells.

    Amazon – The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic

    The GOP doesn’t do anything like that. They just hire a pollster to see how things look on an issue, and if doesn’t look good they tell the party, “This isn’t the hill to die on; it’s not selling.”

    Steve57 (60a887)

  380. Icy, grants of market monopoly are the exception to the rule. But if you think that life plus seventy is fine, why not life plus two hundred years?

    I will remind you again that a longstanding legal principle forbids people from restraining their money beyond life plus twenty one years. Yet copyrights can go on for decades after a grandchild’s death.

    bridget (84c06f)

  381. Romney lost because he offered jobs to a country that doesn’t want to work.

    Colonel Haiku (ffd5f8)

  382. “I will remind you again that a longstanding legal principle forbids people from restraining their money beyond life plus twenty one years. Yet copyrights can go on for decades after a grandchild’s death.”

    bridget – Unless a bequest attempted to restrict the heir(s) ability to monetize or transfer the copyright, why are the two situations comparable?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  383. i gotcha I just

    I just worry bridget

    everything’s all wrong in america and team r is adrift like that indian kid with the tiger

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  384. 391. Romney lost because he offered jobs to a country that doesn’t want to work.

    Comment by Colonel Haiku (ffd5f8) — 3/21/2013 @ 8:41 pm

    Occupy Wall Street was fool of disgruntled kids who are PO’d their Medieval French Lit degree doesn’t guarantee them a six figure salary and a BMW.

    Meanwhile job openings for “certified welder” go begging.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  385. Certified welder???? That’s what CHINESE and JAPANESE and INDIANS do?? Occupoooopers, want to be writers, and lawyers and dead beats.

    Gus (694db4)

  386. “Occupy Wall Street was fool of disgruntled kids who are PO’d their Medieval French Lit degree doesn’t guarantee them a six figure salary and a BMW.”

    Steve57 – But those know nothings are the smartest people in the world, they’ll tell you so themselves and they support the magnificent gay marriagings and don’t relate to the image of Republicans but if we don’t call the ideas Republican they like them. Those are the people we need to rely on to tell us what to do to win the future because they are just so smart and awesome and not lifeydoodle. WTF!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  387. you have trust issues

    I get that

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  388. Republicans also need to sacrifice their principles and let people who broke our laws entering and staying in this country illegally earn a path to citizenship without necessarily securing the border not because anybody believes it is the right thing to do for the country but because it would make us look less mean or something. Cool people who want votes shouldn’t look mean.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  389. “you have trust issues”

    Mr. Feets – I have three kids between 18 and 30. I am familiar with the subject matter.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  390. the whole immigrant thing

    that just feels very reactionary to me

    I love immigrants more than midget pickles

    when I was little I saw moonstruck like 187 times

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  391. good job launching 3 kids into the A18-34 demo Mr. daley

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  392. Icy – Aren’t The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick, written in 1850 and 1851, respectively, still read in a few high schools which have students literate enough to read them?
    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/21/2013 @ 5:29 pm

    — Do such places still exist?

    Icy (45bb7f)

  393. 391. I’ll buy that.

    387. Stones, if you were worth the time I’d dig them up for you.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  394. The Druids return:

    http://www.volokh.com/2013/03/22/scotland-considers-law-recognizing-wedding-ceremonies-performed-by-jedi-knights/

    Spose Spokesmodel’s driver put the diesel in JEF’s ride or the station attendant?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  395. I cannot believe I’m saying this but am in essential agreement with Mirengoff:

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/republicans-live-in-interesting-times.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

    More to the point, conservatives need to get behind a couple of candidates early. Mebee explains Paul’s move.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)


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