If You Can Make It There...

Smells like justice is for sale in New York.
The Times reports that the rich man's investigators did exactly what we all expected. They investigated the poor immigrant, found she had "lied" to them about other issues (things she spoke of were not recorded in her written asylum application -- how dare she not mention an earlier rape back home when trying to get in here...), and therefore, she is uncredible about the whole rape-in-the-hotel story.

Sorry, I don't buy it.
Too incredible.

Prosecutors are notorious for not wanting to try and do their jobs, if it's not an easy case. Guess what? You don't get to pick your victims. You take 'em as they are.

If the semen was present; the rape allegations were immediate, and consistent in the immediate accounts of co-workers; and the man jumped on a plane, without taking his personal belongings, and looked shifty in denying the whole thing... I don't care how many thousands were allegedly being laundered through her bank accounts. Go after her for financial misbehavior when the rape trial is over.

I don't think prosecutors have been "bought off" so much, now that the lovely Ms. Lagarde has been installed as the First Woman IMF leader. I do think they are lazy though, probably identifying more with the rich man now, and not wanting to make things uncomfortable for him.

Too late to turn back though. If the semen is there, in the underwear, you must care. Because just like a criminal hotel maid can surely be raped, surely an entitled rich man can take what he's not properly paid for either.

These white boys and their hookers.
Will they never learn??


ADDED: Doesn't it seem logical that after -- key in on the timeline, after, not before* -- a rape, you're going to discuss what exactly the consequences might be in going forward with accusations, all the way into the courtroom? And if somebody you're talking to is in jail, and you're pretty ignorant of the way the system works except to know that information is traded, deals are cut, and one can use what they have to work the system, that the raped immigrant with the criminal friends might indeed discuss what this might mean to them in their limited little worlds?

Sorry, but I trust the immediate-after-the-fact cops and nurses who initially dealt with this woman much more than a white-collar attorney team suddenly realizing their prime witness against the rich guy is no Snow White and might even have a criminal past of her own.

Bring the rape charges first, THEN go after her and her friends on the money laundering/drug crimes, if indeed there is substance there too.

Imagine what -- if they don't bother to prosecute in New York -- it's going to say about our (America's) Bomb-first-ask-questions later new sense of democratic justice in this 21 st century.

Say what you will about money benefits, this whole country is almost irretrievably corrupt at the most elite levels now.

* Heck, even if you like her, the whole Kennedy family too: tell me, do you really believe Maria Shriver having laid eyes on her maid's son, never even suspected the Ah-nold fathered the young man? Incredible.

Not a hooker-relationship maybe, but he was paying her, just like Maria was being paid for her role too... the luxuries of being California's first wife kept her mum until the role was played out, and suddenly she realized her husband was a cheating son-of-a-gun, juslike they all were saying all along, after all. (Oh, and Hilary and Huma never realized what dogs their men were either, until after it was publicly revealed to all of us.) Uh huh. Right.

And over at Volokh...

Georgetown Law Professor Randy Barnett is doing some heavy-duty legal lifting:

Eight Things to Know About Yesterday’s Sixth Circuit Decision
Volokh readers will remember when two widely-respected conservative Court of Appeals judges, Judge Easterbrook and Judge Posner were on a unanimous Seventh Circuit panel denying both the Due Process and Privileges or Immunities challenge to Chicago’s hand-gun ban. One year later, the Due Process challenge was upheld 5–4 in McDonald v. Chicago. My friend and current adversary, Walter Delliger said yesterday that the opinion by Judge Jeff Sutton to uphold the individual mandate “is a complete vindication of the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.” Not so fast.
...
4. The Court rejected the objections to standing 3–0. Some of the same folks who are so confidently opining on the scope of the commerce and tax powers – including the government – were also questioning the claimants’ standing to challenge the ACA. The court unanimously rejected their view and reached the merits.

5. Judge Martin accepted the requirement the Congress must regulate activity. Unlike the passage from Judge Sutton quoted by Orin, Judge Martin did not question the activity-inactivity distinction. “In applying this jurisprudence, our first duty is to determine the class of activities that the minimum coverage provision regulates.” And “[t]he minimum coverage provision regulates activity that is decidedly economic.” Later he writes, “far from regulating inactivity, the provision regulates active participation in the health care market.” For his Commerce Clause Analysis, he accepted the government’s characterization of the activity reached by the statute:

By regulating the practice of self-insuring for the cost of health care delivery, the minimum coverage provision is facially constitutional under the Commerce Clause for two independent reasons. First, the provision regulates economic activity that Congress had a rational basis to believe has substantial effects on interstate commerce. In addition, Congress had a rational basis to believe that the provision was essential to its larger economic scheme reforming the interstate markets in health care and health insurance.

In short, the majority accepts the “class of activities” framework that I have advanced since December of 2009, and found the “practice of self-insurance” to be the relevant activity. Having been advanced by the government, this theory of the relevant “class of activities” was neither new or surprising. The first step in any Commerce Clause analysis is to define the relevant “class of activities” and the litigants disagree about this definition.

6. The use of “self-insurance” by the majority was problematic. Neither Judge Martin or Sutton spend much time explaining the concept of “self-insurance” upon which their opinions vitally depend. Wikipedia summarizes the conventional technical meaning of this activity: “Self insurance is a risk management method in which a calculated amount of money is set aside to compensate for the potential future loss.” In other words, companies “self-insure,” when instead of entering a risk pool provided by an “insurance” company, they create their own pool of funds from which to handle future losses. This is a genuine activity. Doing nothing and waiting to pay for something later – perhaps best called “self-financing” – is simply not the same thing. The key about “self-financing” is that it happens when you receive services and are called upon to pay. But this is not the class of activities defined by the statute. In this way, by misusing the term “self-insurance,” both judges convert inactivity into a “class of activities.” But that is merely semantic not substantive. It would only convince someone who really did not care whether Congress has the power to mandate activity or not. It would not convince anyone concerned about granting this new power to Congress. Judge Martin gives up considerable ground in a footnote, where he concedes: “We use the term self-insurance for ease of discussion. We note, however, that it is actually a misnomer because no insurance is involved, and might be better described as risk retention.” “Risk retention” is a somewhat more transparent way to describe doing nothing, but it is still seeking to use semantics to create a “class of activities” from nonactivity.

7. The swing vote depended on a “Roach Motel” theory of facial challenges. According to Judge Sutton’s view of facial challenges, the mandate is constitutional as applied to anyone who already has insurance. Having once voluntarily chosen to get insurance, they can be mandated never to stop. Like the Roach Motel, once citizens check into the health insurance market, they can never check out. This implication of Judge Sutton’s analysis is a sign of its weakness, and why it won’t be adopted the Supreme Court. Ilya and Jonathan have already ably explained some of the substantive difficulties with this approach. But the key is that his view of facial challenges was crucial to his decision, because it allowed him to avoid the hardest issues posed by the mandate: compelling citizens into a market – here the insurance market – who are not currently in that market. (I realize that the government claims the “relevant market” is the health care market, but this rewriting of the statute has other problems.) If Judge Sutton is right about “facial challenges,” and Judge Martin and others are right about the unavailability of “as applied challenges” after Raich (as I think they are), then there is really no justiciable way to adjudicate whether Congress has exceeded its Commerce Clause powers. Here is the basic logic:

“Facial” challenges will be denied so long as there are any constitutional applications of the law.

But, so long Congress can reach a “class of activities,” the courts will not carve out subclasses in an “as applied” challenge to see if they may beyond Congress’s power.

This would be a radical conclusion I doubt the Supreme Court will adopt. By the time it reaches the Supreme Court, Judge Sutton’s analysis of facial challenges will have been thoroughly vetted. In the end, the choices for the justices will be between something like Judge Martin’s opinion or Judge Graham’s. The “center” will not hold.
...
Judge Sutton issues his own poignant challenge to the Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court can decide that the legend of Wickard has outstripped the facts of Wickard — that a farmer’s production only of more than 200 bushels of wheat a year substantially affected interstate commerce. . . . A court of appeals cannot. The Supreme Court can decide that Raich was a case only about the fungibility of marijuana, . . . not a decision that makes broader and more extravagant assertions of legislative power more impervious to challenge. A court of appeals cannot.

Whether or not an inferior court may, the Supreme Court not only can, but must decide these questions. And so it will. About a year from now.

A-ha!

So that's what I'm doing wrong over here...

This is actually a fairly familiar thing from my years as a pundit: the surest way to get branded as not Serious is to figure things out too soon. To be considered credible on politics you have to have considered Bush a great leader, and not realized until Katrina that he was a disaster; to be considered credible on national security you have to have supported the Iraq War, and not realized until 2005 that it was a terrible mistake; to be credible on economics you have to have regarded Greenspan as a great mind, and not become disillusioned until 2007 or maybe 2008.

My whole life... being ahead of the game and seeing things others couldn't yet discern, and here I thought it was just me.

Cut and Run.

And yet another of the Obama administration's economic gurus is choosing to exit, and not stick around to face the consequences of his contributing "work"...

Geithner, like Orswag, Goolsbee and Summers before him, will probly end up in a cushy secure job of no consequence, where the end result matters less than the lofty reputation of having "served in the Obama administration."

It's like, do we still have to pretend we're losing something big when these people finally drop out of the game? *Looking down at my scorecard.* "Um... why?"

Perhaps in the future,
the country would be better served by randomly selecting 10 names from the D.C. phonebook to serve as economic wonks and advisers. Plus, what are the odds that any of those 10 would have written off their kids' summer camp as a legitimate "daycare" expense?

Don't let the door hit yer skinny ass on the way out, Mr. Geithner.

Meanwhile... down in Madison.

Remember I said I missed yesterday's presidential press conference? I missed the most recent kerfluffle in Madison too, but let me recount what I know, from the facts I've heard...

The justice who recently survived an onslaught of union and entitlement activists who tried to take his seat by running a non-judicial Madison liberal attorney for the position was allegedly assaulted by another one of the liberal attorney women on the court. He raised his hands to protect himself, when... (and this is where is seems to get a bit confusing):


UW Madison law professor Ann Althouse inserted herself into the fray -- positioning herself between these two judicial players -- and somehow she got "slimed" akin to that old "You Can't Do That On Television" kiddie show.

Now, nevermind the two justices, the story focuses on how the professor's reputation, and that of the law school, was either debased or brought up a few notches, depending on your political preference.

Either way,
by inserting herself into the story between the two justices, she's getting more and more publicity, and thereby ripping up the liberal Madison cocoon, which sheltered her for so long. Emerging as a chrystalized colorful butterfly, spouting Biblical quotes! (OT only though...)

(see, I told you it was a happy ending.*)


Full Disclosure:
Via law school, I was assigned a summer internship working as one of many for Justice Walsh Bradley. A few weeks in though, I realized that spending the summer in a windowless room writing and researching legal briefs for her law clerk was not my thing. No pay, just academic credit. When I learned the cost of summer classes for my internship was not covered by my academic scholarship, I found another job that summer. (2006)

For the record, I met Justice Walsh Bradley my first day there, and at no time did I see any violence from any of the Supreme Court justices. Not saying nothing happened, but it was in a quieter and more gentler time in Madison. Right now though, it's like they opened the loony bins and are putting on a show for all those who would remain in town to watch it. I moved out of Madison back up to northwestern Wisconsin in 2008 (actually out of Madison to Monona in 2005, then on up...) Never looked back, since entitled hippies -- and the folk who love them, or need them, in some odd way I haven't yet figured out... doppelganger? -- are not my thing.

Voting with your feet, and all that.

------------------

* In fulfilling a pattern,
I predict commenters will take the thoughtful analytic discussion of Ann's role in the kerfluffle into a full discussion of the appearance and various physical traits of the young woman who did the alleged "sliming" of the professor.

Funny how it always seems to come down to that over there, eh?

Poor Ez.

He asks, "Can the president be bipartisan?"

Skip questioning whether the Pope is Catholic or asking about a bear defacating in the woods... I ask: Can a former Journolist ever again be trusted to offer up neutral, even-handed analysis or economic advice?

Nevermind sounding "defeated". He sounds outright ... irrelevant now, unable to make a convincing argument, reduced by the facts on the ground into realizing -- finally -- that he's not so much a superpolicy wonk influencing discussion as he is an academic counting the angels dancing on the heads of pins**...

It’s possible that none of this would work, of course.* Perhaps coal-state Democrats would join with denialist Republicans and fight cap-and-trade. But at least you’d get points for being bipartisan, right?

Wrong. What I’ve described is, of course, the Obama White House’s agenda, which borrows many ideas from the Republican Party of the mid-1990s and early-Aughts, and has not been treated as particularly bipartisan. In my column this week, I wrote that this was, in part, because bipartisanship doesn’t mean what Democrats think it means. A “bipartisan bill” isn’t a bill that includes ideas from both parties. It’s a bill that includes votes from both parties. That’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell means when he says “President Obama needs to decide between his goal of higher taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit.” A bill that includes ideas from both parties won’t be bipartisan, because Republicans won’t vote for it. A bill that only includes Republican ideas can be bipartisan, because Republicans will vote for it.

But after writing this morning’s post on the Republican report that recommended the exact deficit-reduction package that the Republican leadership ultimately walked out on, I realized that even that definition of “bipartisan” doesn’t quite get it right. Rather, a “bipartisan” bill is a bill that the opposing party treats as bipartisan, while a partisan bill is a bill that the opposing party treats as partisan. That puts the agency where it belongs: on the minority party. The idea that the president can “be bipartisan” is dead wrong. He can be partisan, designing bills that the opposing party would never want to vote for, but he can’t be bipartisan unless the opposing party lets him. And knowing that any reputation he gets for bipartisanship will be used in his reelection campaign, why would they do that?

Defining partisanship that way is a bit like pretending to be a neutral journalist impassionately analyzing facts, instead of a paid organizing shill (via Journolist) for the administration's liberal agenda...

Can't be trusted as an impartial economic analyst now, if ever he was.


---------------------------

* Would that he had only had this relevation before trumpeting the unconstitutional, middle-of-the-night Christmas Eve passage of the healthcare law as the administration's defining success.

** But a well-paid one, at that. Surely that will be some consolation to his career in the long run?

Fact Checking Obama's Presser.

Was busy doing other things yesterday, so I missed it first-hand. Something about the president having a Jimmy Carter moment and consulting with his two daughters, ages 10 and 13, on how he should respond to this gay marriage issue? And they told him to get with the program, Dad, and don't be afraid to call for equal rights -- in all states -- for equal citizens? And did they bring up their late white grandmother too, reminding him that it seems silly in retrospect, to require a state-by-state vote to see if the population agreed that his two parents had a right to legally be together?

Anyway, here's the WaPo wondering, same as me, why all of a sudden Gaddafi is Public Enemy number two (behind the dead Osama), even after his administration had been playing nice with the dictator in the very recent past...

“Moammar Gaddafi, who prior to Osama bin Laden was responsible for more American deaths than just about anybody on the planet, was threatening to massacre his people. . . . As a consequence, a guy who was a state sponsor of terrorist operations against the United States of America is pinned down, and the noose is tightening around him.”

Yes, Gaddafi is a bad guy, but Obama conveniently ignores the fact that until the uprising, the administration was rushing to do business with him. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with one of Gaddafi’s sons, Mutassim Gaddafi, in 2009, declaring, “I’m very much looking forward to building on this relationship.”

It is especially strange for Obama to rhetorically place Libya back on the list of the state sponsors of terrorism when, in fact, it was removed four years ago — after Gaddafi gave up his illicit weapons programs, renounced terrorism and paid billions of dollars to settle claims with terror victims.

But We Climb the Steps Every Day.

It's real. I keep it alive...

Wednesday...

It's the new Saturday.
:-)
Make it good one.

It's the No-Fault Divorce, Stupid.

Nevermind blaming the Johnny-come-lately gays because the social fabric of the country fails to cover such widespread family instability that costs taxpayers soooo much in government-sponsored family raising programs.

Instead, it's the No Fault Divorce Rate, Stupid:

Social conservatives insist that the states need to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage for a few reasons — to encourage procreation, for societal stability, and others. However, this is a rather odd argument, given the fact that childbirth outside of marriage has been an epidemic for decades, and societal instability followed along with it. We don’t need help encouraging procreation; we need help in encouraging better parenting. That certainly relies on stable relationships between parents and children, but enforcement of the one-man-one-woman model didn’t keep the societal instability from rapidly expanding, especially in the cities.

American marriage got devalued when we began treating marriages as less important and less binding than business partnerships.Part of the decline of families that began in the 1960s can be blamed on cultural changes and rebellion against older social paradigms, and some on government interventions, such as welfare regulations that undermined marriage specifically. It also resulted from liberalized divorce laws, especially so-called no-fault divorce. While divorce was never illegal, until the latter half of the twentieth century, government treated marriage as an actual contract whose abrogation carried substantial civil liabilities. To obtain a divorce, a spouse needed actual grounds for termination of the marital contract, and courts, at least theoretically, issued property and custody settlements on the basis of fault. At the least, this approach made divorce costly and potentially ruinous, which may have left unhappy marriages in effect, but also solidified the stability that social conservatives seek.

After no-fault divorce and its equivalents prevailed, there were no substantial penalties for abrogating the marital contract. The original intent of no-fault divorce was to make the process easier and get courts less involved, and on those counts, it succeeded beyond anyone’s imagination. One spouse can end a marriage and end up with half the property and custody merely by walking out on the other. It’s the only kind of legal partnership in which one party can opt out with little consequence just because he might find another potential partner a little more attractive, or has unilaterally tired of the other partner.

American marriage didn’t get devalued because New York’s legislature followed that of New Hampshire and Vermont in legalizing same-gender marriage. It got devalued when we began treating marriages as less important and less binding than business partnerships.

Take away the penalties, and social shame, for breaking that most important of essential partnerships, and what do we get?

One man-one woman (fail); same man, new woman (fail); same man, third woman (rinse and repeat, you get the idea...)

Mal's middle-class "financial advisor" nephew, for example, is currently courting his third woman. Born out of wedlock, he too had his son out of wedlock (they cover insurance, food and birth costs for unmarried, comparatively poor -- when you don't add his income -- "single" women ) and only married the second wife when their son was about 4 or 5. Cute enough to participate in the big wedding show -- Daddy's best man, or was it ringbearer? -- he's now moved on to his third woman, herself divorced with two sons...

Funny thing is, nobody seem to blink an eyelash at this man's character, even at 40, or consider how the patterns he's making continue to cost we the taxpayers, in terms of social programs. Personally, I don't care much what you do, or who you do it with, or what kind of morals you adopt... except when you ask me to foot the bill for your growing family. And ask the country as a whole to pay the costs for your family failings. And then blame teh gays for bringing down the institution. This is the new normal??

It got devalued when we began treating marriages as less important and less binding than business partnerships.

Amen.

Play-ah.

Mark McKinnon:

The world is flat. We know it is. It’s what we were taught—in the Dark Ages. Michele Bachmann is a “delusional, paranoid zealot,” a “flake.” We know she is. That’s what we’ve been told—by a mainlining media.

Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not. The public is force-fed only their gaffes in 10-second fixes, while similar misstatements by the current president are forgiven as momentary lapses.

Bachmann is not crazy, but the media are if they continue to view her as such.

Ranked the top fundraiser in the House during the 2010 election cycle, Rep. Bachmann was also the first Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota, in 2006. Prior to serving in Congress, in 2000 she was elected to the Minnesota state Senate, where she championed a taxpayers' bill of rights, drawing from her professional experience as a federal tax-litigation attorney. But her first introduction to politics came out of her frustration as a foster parent with inadequate curriculum standards set by state government, standards she was later successful in repealing in the state legislature.
...
She will be challenged, as every candidate ought to be: Is her vision of America inclusive enough? Is her experience in the House deep enough? Will her ideas lead the nation out of the economic morass we are experiencing? And the all-important question: as she competes with Herman Cain and possibly Gov. Rick Perry for the same social and economic conservative voters in the GOP primary, can she also win against Barack Obama in the general election?

She’s not my kind of candidate. And no one I know supports her. But I know enough to know I shouldn’t judge American voters and candidates by my own distorted circle. She is a rock star with the Tea Party set and social conservatives. And I also know enough to know that Michele Bachmann has been underestimated and treated unfairly by the mainstream press.

She is now a frontrunner in Iowa. And will likely do well in South Carolina.

She’s gonna be a playah.

ADDED:
Liberal political strategist Susan Estrich, who plays a journalist on Fox tv, thinks the "flake" question asked of Bachmann actually proves something, so twisted is Estrich's logic. (Remember, this is the Estrich who early on in her legal career was noted as being "the first woman to head the Harvard Law Review." She then became a law professor and an unsuccessful political advisor to such liberal candidates as Ted Kennedy and Michael Dukakis in their failed presidential bids.)

For a Democrat, it's too good to be true. Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney running neck and neck in Iowa. Romney having to worry about the one in five who won't vote for a Mormon, and Bachmann hiring a cadre of top Republican consultants, starting with Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas.

Is the sun shining on Barack Obama or what? This is better than Donald Trump. At least he could lay some claim to business expertise, even if many of his projects were too big — not too successful — to fail. As for Bachmann, she is better known as a cable television staple than as someone who has accomplished anything at all in Congress, apart from the Congressional Tea Party Caucus. No legislative experience, no executive experience, no business experience. Perfect — for the Iowa caucuses anyway. [Ed. note: Her tax-attorney experience counts for nada, eh Susan? And "family organizer" is just not the same as short-time "Community Organizer", eh? Why not just compare results.]

I know there's someone out there saying: But what about Obama? So let's get that out of the way at the outset. Obama had serious credentials from his years in the Senate and, before that, in the Illinois Senate. He was known as a man of ideas. Agree or not with those ideas, no one was asking if he was a "flake." It's just not a word that you connect with Obama. [Ed. note: Take a minute, people, and just consider that logic. Breathtaking really.] I was a Hillary supporter, but not for a minute did I doubt that Obama was extraordinary.

Eh, still no doubts, eh? She must be in that minority demographic: not-unemployed; not-at-all affected by the negative economy and high gas prices; happy with the ongoing, always-girded, warrior foreign policy that Obama inherited from his predecessor that is working so well, he is continuing in the same stream...

Bachmann? The Christine O'Donnell of campaign 2012. Remember how that caused Republicans to lose a Senate seat they were counting on. That's what happens when it's all ideology and no competence.

Sounds like you can count on the Estrich vote anyway, President Obama, come what may. In fact, I think she's volunteering to run a witch-hunt for you, if you're interested in pursuing that line of political campaigning. Still, look at the track record* and evaluate rationally...

And be careful of overreaching: pretty soon, it's going to seem like the liberal ladies think ALL the conservative women candidates are weirdos, witches, or otherwise unelectable. Despite the real-world experience and competence that proves otherwise to all those out here in the real world, with our eyes open to the actual facts on the ground.

-----------------------
* Is Susan Estrich the one responsible for putting Dukakis in the tank?, I always wondered when I read her career highlights, after that ground-breaking Harvard Law Review editorship and all that...

On Mitt Romney.

Recently, I read an essay comparing old- and new-social media to the Classic Rock of the 70s when confronted by Disco. The latter being the new, hip, flash-in-the-pan, while the former was pretty much considered ... for old white guys only.

Now you and I both know: Zeppelin, RUSH, Skynyrd -- say what you will, but they've withstood the test of time. And 'tis not true that only white males can appreciate those hard-driving guitar rhythms, anymore than you might believe rap is for black people only.

But the essay missed something important. Well, two things musically important in those days really. 1) The alternative two forms of music still appreciated by many in rural areas, and working-class regions alike: Country and Western. (remember the great trucker rock? like Red Sovine's "Come on back truckers, and talk to Teddy Bear" or C.W. McCall's Convoy -- "I said, Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck and we just ain't gonna pay no toll/So we crashed the gate doing 98, I said, "Let them truckers roll, 10-4!")

But nevermind that. (I just mention it, because anybody who would tell you it was solely a Rock v. Disco genre fight in those days leaves out a good chunk of those of us in the middle. Still do.)

The other thing left forgotten? The other surprise! musical success of those days? That brings me around to number 2) Donny Osmond.

Well, the whole family really. Donny and Marie, the Osmond brothers, (with appealing little Jimmy like little Nicholas in the Bradford family on Eight is Enough).

To me, Mitt Romney is the odd Osmond of the 1970s musical scene. Cutting their teeth as a barbershop quartet (the brothers) on Andy Williams, and Jerry Lewis' shows before getting their big break with their own "Donny and Marie" variety show.

Now who could have imagined, in those hipper-than-thou days of disco and rock, that a clean-cut, egregiously ... odd, toothy, happy family singing-and-dancing-and-joking could make a name for themselves?

It's the same as what the essay writer, and liberal media propagandists, would have you believe about Mitt Romney's presidential campaign: there's no room, in the coastally defined world of cool, for people like that who aren't even trying to compete in the cool kids popularity olympics.

To me though, that's what separates Romney from Al Gore, say. I think Mitt Romney is very comfortable in his own skin. In his own underwear, if you will. Like many people of faith, you yourself can take it or leave it, but I don't think you'll see Romney -- like Gore -- looking to change his essential image anytime soon.

We've already elected the hippest, coolest, most fun president you ever could imagine, afterall anyway. Whether that's the toothy smiling man currently in office (when he flashes that grin, you know there's nobody cooler), or the man who presided over such economic boom times in the late 1990s that had us all celebrating our successes never expecting the end times to come or the bubble to burst, is up to your own personal preference.

Point is: just as the country was indeed "ready" for those non-cool siblings who gave us a little bit of country/a little bit of rock and roll... during the formative period of what can only be considered the coolest generation in the World of Cool, I'm betting there is indeed a place for the Romney wholesomeness and political calculating that led him to bi-partisan success in Massachusetts, and business success in resurrecting the Olympics.

Those who would tell you: polls show X percentage of people will never ever vote for a member of the LDS (Latter Day Saints) must never have bought an Osmond album. But somebody out there did.

And if there's one thing that our current ... leader (?) has collectively taught us, it's that you don't count anybody out based on identity politics. America is often more ready than you might think, especially those passive/cautious souls "leading from behind" as the current meme seems to be.


I foresee: Romney / Bachmann 2012. (who said conservative women are flakes or jokes, or incapable of advancing nationally; let's show 'em, eh?) Winning America's Future for a change...

A Fanboy Looks at Politics...

Superficially.

(Bad enough when the sportswriters are "homers". This is what passes for professional analysis on a national spectrum? No joke? No wonder we're in such trouble, with the 4th estate essentially as ... lapdogs. Taking whatever crusts they're tossed and licking the hand afterwards.)

This is a column about management styles. What sort of leader can get things done in an age of austerity?

Our first case study is what you might call the Straight Up the Middle Approach. When Chris Christie ran for governor of New Jersey, he campaigned bluntly on the need to reduce the state’s debt. After he was elected, he held 30 contentious town meetings with charts to explain how the debt would crush homeowners in each municipality.

Christie makes himself the center of the action and is always in the room. He sat down with Democratic leaders at meeting after meeting and hammered out compromises, detail after detail. The bipartisan pension reform bill Christie signed this month is controversial, but it is a huge step toward avoiding fiscal catastrophe. Christie, needless to say, quotes Springsteen to describe his approach: “No retreat. No surrender.”

Our second case study exemplifies the Insurgent Approach. While campaigning to be mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel also spoke bluntly about the tough steps he would take to reduce the city’s $650 million deficit.
...
The key for Emanuel is to know which fights to pick (making it harder for teachers to strike, for example), and sequencing those fights within broader narratives about city growth.

It’s almost physical. Christie relies on power and mass. Emanuel relies on dexterity and speed. Both have begun their administrations in spectacular fashion.

The third case study is the most unexpected: President Obama’s Convening Approach. First, some context: In 1961, John F. Kennedy gave an Inaugural Address that did enormous damage to the country. It defined the modern president as an elevated, heroic leader who issues clarion calls in the manner of Henry V at Agincourt. Ever since that speech, presidents have felt compelled to live up to that grandiose image, and they have done enormous damage to themselves and the nation. That speech gave a generation an unrealistic, immature vision of the power of the presidency.
...
The Obama style has advantages, but it has served his party poorly in the current budget fight. He has not educated the country about the debt challenge. He has not laid out a plan, aside from one vague, hyperpoliticized speech. He has ceded the initiative to the Republicans, who have dominated the debate by establishing facts on the ground.

Now Obama is compelled to engage. If ever there was an issue that called for his complex, balancing approach, this is it. But, to reach an agreement, he will have to resolve the contradiction in his management style. He values negotiation but radiates disdain for large swathes of official Washington. If he can overcome his aloofness and work intimately with Republicans, he may be able to avert a catastrophe and establish a model for a more realistic, collegial presidency.

The former messiah will have to become a manager.

Summer Saturday, and Sunday Too...

ADDED: Funny Sunday column.

Our president likes to be on both sides at once.

In Afghanistan, he wants to go but he wants to stay. He’s surging and withdrawing simultaneously. He’s leaving fewer troops than are needed for a counterinsurgency strategy and more troops than are needed for a counterterrorism strategy — and he seems to want both strategies at the same time. Our work is done but we have to still be there. Our work isn’t done but we can go.

On Libya, President Obama wants to lead from behind. He’s engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi while telling Congress he’s not engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi.

On the budget, he wants to cut spending and increase spending. On the environment, he wants to increase energy production but is reluctant to drill. On health care, he wants to get everybody covered but will not press for a universal system. On Wall Street, he assails fat cats, but at cocktail parties, he wants to collect some of their fat for his campaign.

On politics, he likes to be friends with the other side but bash ’em at the same time. For others, bipartisanship means transcending their own prior political identities. For President Obama, it means that he participates in all political identities. He does not seem deeply affiliated with any side except his own.

An antidote to Susan Estrich's piece last week...

There he goes again, fulfilling another promise. Imagine that. When he announced the surge in Afghanistan, he said it was temporary. Democrats, especially liberals, screamed bloody murder. How dare he do what he said he would do during the campaign: focus on Afghanistan, on the threat posed by al-Qaida, on capturing Osama bin Laden, dead or alive?

He went ahead and did all those things, and now he's beginning the troop withdrawal. Osama is dead. Al-Qaida has been drastically weakened.

Imagine. A president who does what he says he'll do: universal access to health insurance, gays in the military, diversity on the courts, even an improving economy.

Who does this guy think he is?

Some of what Susan's smoking...

please. (or is it prescription med? Either way, this column must be coming from la-la land California, because what she paints here seems to be just the opposite of what most people see in his job performance. Hey, what do we voters in flyover know, eh?)

ADDED: And tell me why exactly Rep. Bachmann's "feet are planted firmly on the shore"? Because she's a Christian woman, and the country's just not ready for that? Because she's a "joke", akin to what Brooks called Palin?

Honest competition.
Game on.
Go...

I Wake Up to a ... Sunny Day.

Community Garden.
My plot runs from the tree to the water cart, front.

Cabbage and chard.

Spinach, lettuce, peas.

Spinach, lettuce, sugar peas.












Celery. (and tomatoes, left)











---------------------

Church plot neighbor. (Soybeans, I think. We'll see...)

My church plots:

Church plots.




























Eggplant,
peas and onions.
















Coriander and Dill.















Thai basil. Newly planted. (and dill)




Pumpkin.













Broccoli and peas.














Peas, chard, tomatoes, lettuce.














Backside.

Better Late Than Sooner. (Not.)

Timing Matters:

The House on Friday resoundingly rejected a measure that would have authorized the United States’ mission in Libya, with 70 Democrats deserting President Obama on an issue that has divided their party and became a major Constitutional flash point between Congress and the White House.
...
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with scores of House Democrats and urged them to vote against the defunding resolution, insisting the collective effort in Libya was close to ousting the nation’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In emphatic language, Mrs. Clinton warned them that a resolution to bar money for Libya would be disastrous to American interests in that war-torn nation, said some of the 60 or so Democrats who attended.

“The secretary was there to make the case on behalf of the administration on why they want to continue the war,” said Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, one of the attendees. He added: “It would appear inside the caucus that there is a split on this, and I think the fact that the secretary came over tells you a couple things. One, that the White House is very concerned about the vote, and second, that there is a sudden awareness that the fact that the administration has ignored Congress may carry with it a price.”

Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, said that while Mrs. Clinton “did a really good job of making the administration’s case,” Ms. Woolsey was ultimately not swayed to support the activities in Libya. “She did what the White House should have been doing all along, which is come to us, talk about the situation, tell us what their perspective is, and have a conversation,” Ms. Woolsey said.

What I'm wondering now?
How the heck would this administration "announce" the death or capture of the Libyan leader now? Do they expect American cheers -- or indifference? -- when they finally do have the man's head on stake, to be paraded through the streets of Tripoli?

Remember how some were surprised at the quiet relief in certain quarters, but no call for loud celebration, after bin Laden was brought to justice?

How the heck will this one be spun? "This man wasn't really our enemy, and we really weren't "at war" with him, but he's out nonetheless, so 3 cheers America!" ?

Somehow, when you don't define these fights, and don't have the backing of the American people, it's not the same as vanquishing an agreed-upon enemy whose very existence has the rest of us trembling in peril...

But How Will They Win a Pulitzer?

Related:

About 100 illegal immigrants took advantage of a law allowing them to pay in-state tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools in the 2010-11 academic year, according to a State Journal analysis, under a short-lived program that will likely expire July 1.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker is expected to sign a two-year budget that will ban resident tuition for illegal immigrants, ending a program that former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, signed into law just two years ago.
...
UW-Milwaukee made up the bulk of the program, with 33 students qualifying for resident tuition in 2009-10 and 55 students in 2010-11. UW-Whitewater had 7 such students last year and 19 this year. UW-Madison had between 10 and 20 students over the course of two years. Most other campuses in the UW System had no students apply for the program, or only a handful.

The gap between resident and non-resident tuition is large. At UW-Madison, it's the difference between paying roughly $8,987 and $24,237 per year. The state pays about 40 percent of the cost of resident undergraduate education, while the student pays the other 60 percent, according to UW System data.

In a statement, Gov. Scott Walker's spokesman said: "Individuals who do not reside in our state legally should not be getting taxpayer subsidized tuition."
...
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for state or federal financial aid.
...
As of May, Wisconsin was one of 12 states that allowed illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

Why Not Just Cheat Our Way Out?

Sure enough. All these government-sponsored guarantees are going to break us in the long run. We've bred an entitlement class, and the suckers paying for it just aren't reproducing fast enough for it to remain sustainable.

Over the long term, the CBO said, a projected explosion in government spending outside interest on the debt is “attributable entirely” to the ballooning cost of “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and (to a lesser extent) insurance subsidies” intended to help finance coverage for the uninsured under President Obama’s new health-care law.

“The health care programs are the main drivers of that growth,” the CBO said, responsible for 80 percent of the projected rise in spending on those programs over the next 25 years.

I suspect, that's what happens when you freely encourage those who can't support their own to continue breeding on the public dollar. Plus, instead of practicing tough love and financially encouraging behavior that might prove healthy in the end, you reward poor health choices. Afterall, it's easier to just cut off a diabetic's leg, or prescribe a pill, than to deny medical care for self-induced illnesses based on personal choice.

But who's really helping the unhealthy? Those who would willingly subsidize someone's bad health (via mandates that the healthy must pay), or those who would use basic common sense on health, encourage better breeding (can't afford 'em, don't have 'em), and a no-nonsense approach to who gets in the ER for "emergency" care, and who is sent home empty-handed. (and empty stomached? Hunger is an awful good motivator, and one of these days, somebody's going to discover the big link between nutritional choices and personal health. Tough love.)

Intentional or not, these policies up the numbers of those who need government help, and discourage those willing to work and play by the rules to get there, not when they look around, and see lesser, unhealthier others just stepping right over them, entitled as they are now with government guarantees.

Fat Baby Mommas With Entitlement Mentalities and Limited Educations. That's my pet peeve. Especially when, as a woman, I'm seen as a lesser myself, just because I haven't popped out a few puppies myself for the government taxpayers to support. Afterall, nothing empowers a woman in dire financial straits with limited opportunities based on a lack of education, than having a brood of her own to control. Especially with the guv'min playing Daddy Provider and taking responsibility for the family's care via guaranteed social programs...

Deport Jose Vargas. Fine the WaPo...

and all the employers who illegally had this man on their payrolls. Absolutely he has a right to tell his story. But he doesn't get out of the consequences of his ... civil disobedience (to put it lightly).

What a slap in the face to every immigrant who worked hard, sacrificed, studied and LEGALLY immigrated to the United States. Who did it the right way, and whose children enjoy the benefits of legal immigration.

If we continue to look the other way toward such confessed continual wrongful behavior, we reward those who would continue to cheat the system. Look where that's gotten the country...

These "mentors"* who "helped" the young man continue to lie and deceive to advance his career? Fine, fine, fine them. Shame them to the high heavens; they're exactly the same in their failure to check documents as those fruit plantations in Florida that would pack dozens of illegal workers into the back of pickups at dawn to head out to the fields, and if the truck crashes into a drainage culvert and all the workers die? Non citizens, the OSHA laws don't apply to them.

Laws with no teeth do little to cause someone to respect the system. (And please, don't give me that Mr. Vargas is so valuable in his journalism work that no Americans would take the jobs his "mentors" illegally inveigled for him to advance**, in position even to win a team Pulitzer. The examples of deliberately active evasion -- cherrypicking states for their drivers licensing rules, for one, show that this was an ongoing pattern of deception, and I don't see once where he worked toward HONEST citizenship, or tried to play by the same rules that all other newcomers to America must in order to gain LEGAL immigrant status....)

He said he didn't know about his citizenship status until four years after he arrived in the US, when he applied for a driver's permit and handed a clerk his green card.

"This is fake," a Department of Motor Vehicles clerk said, according to Vargas' account. "Don't come back here again."

Vargas confronted his grandfather, who acknowledged he purchased the green card and other fake documents.

"I remember the very first instinct was, OK, that's it, get rid of the accent," Vargas told ABC. "Because I just thought to myself, you know, I couldn't give anybody any reason to ever doubt that I'm an American."

He convinced himself that if he worked hard enough and achieved enough, he would be rewarded with citizenship.

His grandfather imagined the fake documents would help Vargas get low-wage jobs. College seemed out of reach, until Vargas told Mountain View High School Principal Pat Hyland and school district Superintendent Rich Fisher about his problem. They became mentors and surrogate parents, eventually finding a scholarship fund for high-achieving students that allowed him to attend San Francisco State University.

Vargas was hired for internships at The San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News. He was denied an internship at The Seattle Times because he didn't have all the documents they required. But he kept applying and got an offer from The Washington Post.

The newspaper required a driver's license, so Vargas said his network of mentors helped him get one from Oregon, which has less stringent requirements than some other states.

Once hired full-time at the Post, he used the fake license to cover Washington events, including a state dinner at the White House, Vargas recalled.

He wrote that he was nearly paralysed with anxiety that his secret would be found out at the Post. He tried to avoid reporting on immigration policy, but at times, it was impossible. At one point, he wrote about then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.

Vargas eventually told his mentor, Peter Perl, now the newspaper's training director. Perl told him that once he had accomplished more, they would tell then-Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Post Chairman Don Graham together. They kept the secret until Vargas left the paper.

Washington Post spokesman Kris Coratti has condemned their actions.

"What Jose did was wrong. What Peter did was wrong," he said. "We are also reviewing our internal procedures, and we believe this was an isolated incident of deception."

-----------------------
* Their motivation? I'm sure it went something like this: "What a nice young Hispanic man who doesn't have all the privileges we do. Let's (unethically) help the poor brown-skinned youngster to get a job in our ranks, and at the same time, we get to feel good at helping out the less fortunate and giving minority Hispanic voices a place in our newly diversified profession. What good guys we are!"

** You know what part of the Clinton sexx scandal really got my goat? When it was revealed he had Vernon Jordan shopping Monica around for journalism jobs, as part of the hush-hush-and-goodbye package he was trying to set up when their trysts were over. That doesn't harm others who worked hard and played by the rules? (without wearing the kneepads to advance as Monica apparently did.)


ADDED: Naturally, WaPo writer and Journolist founder Mr. Ezra Klein feels sorry for the poor fella. Says in his view, Vargas has special skills so that he should be treated, well, special. As a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, he’s an extraordinarily high-achieving, driven individual. He’s sufficiently unusual that we should be leery of drawing overly broad conclusions from his experiences. What worked for him might not work for someone else.

Here's what the first commenter thinks, though:

The thing is, Ezra, he may have talent, but he broke the law, repeatedly. You may say he had no choice. He had a choice. He could have returned to his country, or hired a lawyer and sought relief in the courts somehow. Everytime he got a job, including with the Post, he forged papers which the Federal Government relied upon.

And more to the point, he stole jobs from US citizens. I don't care about the Pulitzer, he was one of a group of reporters and I don't think that makes him uniquely qualified somehow. The Post keeps telling us that illegal aliens take jobs US citizens won't do. How many 2011 graduates of journalism schools are unemployed right here right now?

And here's my reply to that one (as of yet, unworthy of being put up on the WaPo site, it seems...):

Spot on!
As the daughter of a legal immigrant, who graduated with a journalism degree and who has also paid my dues (teenage jobs, working my way up -- legally -- in the field), it is utter liberal nonsense to say this man has skills that no American can match.

He is also gay. Makes me wonder, what exactly was the impulse that led his "network" of conspirators to continue encouraging him to try and deceive the system. They actually changed the high school field trip, denying other students the chance to travel abroad, because the illegal immigrant kid didn't have the right papers.

Let's be honest: were this an illegal Eastern European immigrant, he NEVER would have had so many doors illegally held open for him at newspapers. Only because they were so desperate to recruit brown-skinned diversity were the American immigration laws routinely overlooked. Except not "overlooked" so much but many, many times ACTIVELY broken -- in gaining the false documents needed.

This young man might have once upon a time been a victim in being brought here illegally. But clearly, according to his words, he made the active CHOICE not to follow legal advice and return to the Phillipines for 10 years (the advice given in 2002 -- 9 full years ago.)

He is a slap in the face to every LEGAL immigrant who played by the rules and worked hard to advance themselves and their families. No amount of teenage jobs, good writing, or active deception in breaking the laws can make up for the fact that by continuing to play his games, he stole from others. From the students denied the chance in high school to travel abroad, from the journalism students who missed out on the chance to compete -- LEGALLY -- for the internships and jobs he took under false pretenses... and on and on.

I really hope they make an example of this man. Plus, for all those who favor the DREAM Act, this man will not help the cause. Plenty of those children, upon learning they were brought here illegally, do NOT cheat, lie and falsify their way up.

This man -- as an adult -- chose to continue, again and again, breaking the laws. He should be deported, and get in line, behind all those who have/are playing within the immigration rules.

Yes, you can immigrate legally. Yes, it takes a lot of perseverance and hard work. A true shame that this aspiring young man put his energies into building a network of deception, instead of concentrating on what he could do -- within the rules -- to make his situation legal.

Going away for 10 years, (plenty of immigrants have waited/worked on it for longer) would mean that in one more year, he would have been eligible to come here and compete legally for journalism jobs and immigration status. LEGAL immigration status.

The only people crying tears for this man are liberals who would help some at the expense of others. And of course, they get to define what makes one worthy. (brown skin. gay. ambitious. ?)

Nope, the law is the law is the law. You don't like the rules liberals, work to change them. Don't think you have some special rights to pick and choose who gets in, and gets to work, according to your own personal preferences.

One question, Ez: Was this man a card-carrying preferential member of that exclusive Journolist you used to host, before you too got caught and had to shut it down?

When It Lights Up the Sky.

Such a beautiful site...

You Don't Have to Be a Genius...

to have what's called "FOREthought".

(Of course, with all the media -- new and old -- focused more on forePLAY these days, you can see where we advance thinkers are a rarity...)

Eugene Robinson, in the Washington Post, asks a question I asked 3 months ago*, at the start of these "hostilities":

Is there a point at which the death and destruction of a drawn-out civil war surpass anything Gaddafi’s forces might have done had they rolled unopposed into rebel-held Benghazi?

Lots of people have good intentions, you see. Wanting to "save" innocent civilians and prevent slaughter. Except, sometimes in real life, you bet the wrong horse, and all well-meaning people should take time, and then some, to ask:

"Is what I'm doing really helping people, or might they be better off without my outside 'help' that might actually end up making the situation on the ground worse?"

It's why you don't intervene publicly, short of possible death, in another person's parenting styles. Best to leave the child and parent alone, or offer up some comforting words in an uncomfortable situation, rather than verbally "taking on" the abusive parent directly. Can you imagine what it's like back at home, after you've gone and escalated the situation with your help? Is that child really better off now, or do you just feel better having "done something" before returning to your own comfort zone?

Truth be told,
those Libyans likely would have fared better had the United States minded their own business and stayed out. Yes, I know that's hard for the "heros" out there to hear, let alone comprehend how life works out funny like that.

This bull-oney about Flight 103 in Scotland back in 1988, (if it was so vital to seek revenge, why didn't we act sooner?) and acting against Gaddafy after he played along with US and gave up his nuclear ambitions... Didn't the president meet and shake his hand even? FLight 103 in 2009 seemingly forgotten... what changed?

Nope, there's something more behind this current action than "he's a madman promising to go door to door killing his enemies!" (Besides, who trusts what madmen say, anyway?)

Once more, we've broken another country, another people who are not like us, created in our own image. We'll not be there to lift them back to the civilized living they knew. So let's stop pretending that all this "help" has really benefitted simple civilians.

Oil company pockets, though... and politicians eager to keep our current energy policies of buying foreign oil as easily as possible, sure that might be in America's interests. But we long-term thinkers don't see the price paid in this militaristic way to be beneficial at all in preserving a peacefully function market, needed to maximize free trade and perhaps get us to explore independently tapping our own country's reserves.

Funny thing,
I thought that for such a smart and intellectual president we were promised -- the anti-GWBush -- military force would be a LAST resort, only after the hailed diplomacy, finding compromises, and creative solutioning had failed. Instead, with the technology we've got today, it seems like even President Obama has signed on with the "Might equals Right" crowd, and the "He Who Has the Gold, Makes the Rules" part of the secular Golden Rule.

Doesn't anybody wonder what's going to happen when we finally up and admit that there's a lot more wealthier, and therefore more powerful players than U.S. in the world? (Ta-Nehisi does: I assure you if I were in Libya and my baby sister was killed by a NATO bombing, I would conclude, whatever my hatred of Gaddafi, that America was at war with me, that it had, indeed, commenced hostilities. I don't think I'd be wrong in that.)

What goes around, comes around. It's why being a good neighbor -- not cheating your neighbors and allies -- makes for a long and prosperous life. Short-timing the thing just to game the system ... where does it end?, you tell me...

------------------

* Would Quaddafi really have killed so many civilians, had his back not been to the wall from the airstrikes, originally said to cripple and create a no-fly zone only? Would he have killed less innocents, had he been able to put down the revolution, and voluntary revolutionaries, more quickly? Can we admit that the most noble actions of the US and NATO -- well intentioned -- might indeed be causing more civilian (wm+children+elderly) to be killed, than would have had we not intervened? Dead=dead

See my other posts and predictions on Libya, back in the day, compiled here.

Consistency, thy name is Mary.
Track record, babe.
Forethought...
Just sayin.

It's not isolationism, it's winning America's future. Just like when Ronald Reagan came to town, the country could use a little good old-fashioned honest winning and justified pride in America right about now...

Put down the weapons, and start fighting back, Americans. It's our tax money financing these deaths and needless destruction -- escalating the abuse, if you will -- even if it is borrowed from China.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

At work, yesterday and today...

And the rains continue. Thunder claps at 5 a.m. And torrential downpours soon after...

I sure guessed right with this season's early plantings anyway.

Tea for the Tillerman.

No, not Father and Son. (It's not time to make a change, just relax, take it easy. You're still young; that's your fault. There's so much you have to go through...)

This one goes out to all those who have fathered, and lived with/stuck by, a hard-headed woman...

Thanks, Dad.
You're the best.

Post 2200.

Two full rows, two half rows sown of Oregon sugar snap peas, II. It really is looking like a garden out there now, two plots adjacent at the church garden.

Mal brought his tiller to town; I'd been hoeing, but he took care of the grass in the walkways and wide rows. The eggplant and tomatoes are taking off, in addition to the peas, that if peforming as promised, won't need any staking or support. We'll see...

It's Aquafest in town, and the rains have mostly been overnight and early in the day. One of those wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night storms, where you run around shutting windows and watching the rain pour over the gutters, if you have a somewhat lazy landlord.

Still, the plants love it.

ADDED: Happy Saturday night.

Rainy Day Saturday.

You have a different perspective on rain though, when you've two growing garden sites. (And two plots at one site.)

I'm barely keeping up with (eating) all the lettuce, spinach and chard that's coming in -- no complaints, it needs to be picked and then you get back even more as it spreads on the ground...

Today, I was set to sow another few rows of sugar snap peas, but last night's rain continues today, and it's just a bit too heavy to be out enjoying the planting. So a brief detour to the local coffeeshop, where I've haven't been since working in Barron.

A beautiful baby girl, 8 months say 10 months (I asked), is sitting on her mother's lap on the couch, cooing as she plays her own plastic pop-up game. (You hit the right button: the panel pops up.) Her father is part of the fantasy board game crowd that gathers here on Saturday mornings.

Saturdays are the best. Rainy ones too.

There's no Feminism in the Marine Corps.

Something tells me, this woman earrned her stripes.

Congratulations to the Marines on Parris Island, who've gained a real role model.

Pelosian Wisdom. (or what passes for it)

On Libyan intervention and Congressional authority to declare war:

In a letter to Obama this week. Boehner said the commander in chief will clearly be in violation of the War Powers Resolution on Sunday, and he pressed the administration to state the legal grounds for Obama's actions. The House speaker said Thursday that the White House report failed to answer his questions and that he expects a response by his Friday deadline.

Previous presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have largely ignored the Vietnam-era law, which was created as a check on their power to authorize military force.

Countering the criticism, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Obama did not need congressional authorization, but she acknowledged the congressional frustration.

"It's like a marriage," Pelosi said. "You may think you're communicating, but if the other party doesn't think you're communicating, you're not communicating enough."

Oh with that Weiner mess,
everybody's got marraige on the brain this week! (or marital frustrations*, rather.)

The White House sent Congress the 32-page report in response to a nonbinding House resolution passed this month that chastised Obama for failing to provide a "compelling rationale" for U.S. involvement in Libya.

The administration report estimated the cost of U.S. military operations at about $715 million as of June 3, with the total increasing to $1.1 billion by early September.

* Added:
... which, when they're not about sexx, are often about ... money! Hint, hint.

Eyes on the real balls in play, people. Don't be distracted by the hysterical Puritans hiding behind the New Media cloaks...

Betting the Wrong Horse.

Syrians doing it for themselves...

No NATO needed?
Neat-o.

(I suspect, like garden plants with better root systems, the more these revolutions are homegrown, the more they'll produce in the end...)

Protests were reported across the country Friday, with thousands pouring into the streets of the central cities of Homs and Hama, the southern villages of Dael and Otman, coastal cities of Latakia and Banias, the Damascus suburbs of Qudsaya and Douma as well as the capital, Damascus.

In the northeast, about 2,000 protesters marched in the towns of Amouda and Qamishli, chanting for the regime's downfall, the Local Coordination Committees said. In the southern village of Dael, activists said cracks of gunfire could be heard at the center where a protest was held.

Some of the protesters shouted against Assad's cousin, Rami Makhlouf, the country's most influential businessman who is widely reviled by Syrians for alleged corruption. On Thursday, apparently as an overture to the protesters, he announced that he will now concentrate on charity work.

"Go play another game Makhlouf," protesters shouted in Daraa, a city near the Jordanian border where the uprising began in mid-March.

Friday has become the main day for protests in the Arab world, and Syrians have turned out every week in large numbers nationwide, inspired by democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The opposition has attached a name to each Friday's campaign, naming this one "The Day of Saleh al-Ali," an Alawite leader who led an uprising against French colonial rule in the 20th century.

Using an Alawite figure's name was meant to show that Assad's opponents were not rising up over sectarian concerns. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

Drop those pants and show me your real qualifications**, ladies...

Some women, wrongly, smell victory in the manufactured "scandal" :

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Torie Clarke said that with the prominence of such scandals, being a female leader can be an advantage in politics and the public sector.

"Often women are seen as more honest, more sincere, as harder working," Clarke said. "This may be an opportunity for more women to step into* those positions."

Yay! Mediocrity wins -- and women, by accomplishment of being born with lady private parts, will advance their careers!

(And they wonder why so many people say women are non-competitive and need special help attaining positions of power...)

* "step into" -- interesting choice of words. No slogging their way to the top for these benificiaries of someone else's troubles. Just strap on the heels, freshen the face, and "step into" that position of power, 'specially reserved for you, lady leader, who won't be sending dirty pee-pee pictures, and if that isn't a major accomplishment in-and-of-itself deserving of promotion and positions of power, I don't know what is!

** Funny, but I thought this is what the women's movement back in the day was working against in permitting equal opportunities to naturally competitive women (yep, freaks of nature that we are, we're out here, not willing to "collaborate and compromise" our way to the top, as some say is inherent in our nature. Say, do they ever have Irish women in those "non-competitive" studies, anyway? Different breed of women, maybe...)

Instead, the talk nowadays seems to be: women are special, cut apart. "We" (they speak for all of us, dontchaknow?) need to be understood in terms of our gender.

Instead of admitting that perhaps over 80% of women truly are better off championing the man in their life, putting their energies into advancing his career and their shared family together... that they advance further in society together through her support of him, rather than going it alone... now these women want it all.

Nevermind that those women who are natural competitors, and willing to sacrifice what it takes to build skills and advance on their own merits, are the ones being denied here when you automatically advance those supporting sisters who can "step in" when somebody else's woman hasn't properly civilized her man and therefore we need a set-aside to let women play a "safer" game in leadership politics.

Some women want to get there honestly.* On our merits, skills, and the content of our ideas that can be widely disseminated once our competitive voices are heard.

Not based (like Althouse) on looks, and flirting, and silly-me-silly-me-oh-but-you're-looking-at-silly-silly-me! thought processing. Alone, these type of non-thinking women add precious little to the national conversation. Girl you know it's true...

* Funny thing is, I would have put Christiane Amanpour's career in this category. Sadly, she seems to be using her national platform to argue for women's lib inequality positions, instead of focusing on reporting international news, which plays particularly to her skill strengths.

Perhaps it's something personal, some guilt at being an upper-class woman from those cultural traditions who's "made it out" and been freed from such shackles herself, so that instead of keeping the process competitive for all women who can and would up their own games and follow that path, she believe artificial promotions and reserving positions for women to "step into" somehow makes the playing ground a bit more level.

It doesn't.

Helping out Hiaasen.

The distinction he misses here, in comparing mandatory purchase of automobile insurance with mandatory health care insurance, is the opt-out provision.

If I don't want to buy the mandatory auto insurance that accompanies the privilege of driving a car I own, I can opt out and do neither. It's the economy activity of owning and driving that car -- a definite "activity" -- that makes the one mandatory purchase of a private insurance product permissable.

It's not like we've got people knocking on doors (yet!) and forcing folks to pay for something they don't participate in. You don't want to buy it? Fine. Just no driving legally on government roads, streets and interstates.

You don't participate in the high-priced medical games? Prefer to practice preventative maintenance in maintaining your health, and pay out of pocket for the minimal medical treatments you do incur?

Sorry, the gov't. says. We need you to carry the costs of all those who overconsume, taking more from the system than their own insurance premiums can pay for. And... get this, there's no way of opting out!

No being able to prove that it's not you who's run up medical bills and foisted them off on others. No doctor's note to show that indeed, you've been a model "patient", being careful not to incur medical risks and instead fostering the genetics that allow you a family history of minimal medical treatment.

Nope, if you breathe, you're on the hook for the medical needs of others.

That's unconstitutional. Forcing those who don't consume to buy a product they don't need, don't want, and cannot opt out of.

Spare me the "you might get hit by a bus!" scenarios. Stacked auto insurance policies would help pay for that, as even as a pedestrian, coverage from a motor vehicle accident would draw from there first. Plus, there's going to be plenty of subrogation back to the bus company's insurance, if they're liable for hitting me.

(Funny thing is: it's a pretty decent personal insurance policy to keep you in good health -- not walking around busy streets with your headphones on, or skiing recklessly off trail down mountainsides -- knowing that you alone bear the costs of your ill health and personal risk choices, and not that "you won't feel a thing" in terms of the final bill, because your insurance company has you "covered"...)

What really gets my goat, if we want to improve our national health, is we ought to be looking to the people in the best health who AREN't running up big medical bills and who are able to take care of their health without the latests tests, pills and procedures as role models.

Instead, we look to what is often our sickliest, though most well insured, to decide what the rest of us need to pay to pick up their slack.

No thanks. The Constitution is clear. You can't regulate "non-activity" -- or punish someone because they don't purchase a private product they don't use or need.

The sooner the Courts rule that this mandate is a no go, the sooner the wise policymakers can get back to the drawing board in tackling the skyrocketing rates of medical consumption that will not be fixed by forcing healthy non-participants into a sick system. It's no solution if it's ultimately found to be illegal, afterall.

(And before you ask? Massachusetts also has an opt-out for their mandatory insurance policies: you can move out of state. But federally forcing everyone in? That won't fly.)

ps. Before you ask me what to do about all the uninsured's who DO treat medically, under government guaranteed Medicaid for poor and disabled people? Above my pay grade. Perhaps, some of those "guarantees" ought to be altered, now that they system shows we can't afford such generous impulses without illegally trying to pick the pockets of others -- non-insured non-consumers -- or perhaps some of our most affluent will set up private charity programs, akin to the Catholic hospitals of the last century, where those who choose to can privately step up to pay for the medical needs of others.

That's permitted under the Constitution, and the Commerce Clause still. And surely folks like Mr. Hiaasen would voluntarily divest of a bit of their personal wealth if poor people were dropping dead outside the emergency room doors? If there's not enough charity to cover them, perhaps the problem isn't as big as we're pretending, and there's a reason we continue to liberally maintain extravagant lifestyles -- see the Obama administration -- while crying for the poor and pressing hard to push medical bills onto non-participating others.

(HT: Law Professor Randy Barnett.)

First they came for the Weiners...

and I remained silent, because I was weinerless...


Seriously though,
I hope all the Puritans and attention-seekers and Dem "leaders" looking for a scapegoat are happy today.

Congress isn't any better. Those ratings won't be going up any time soon. Women aren't any more "protected".

Surely there's a class of upper- and middle-class women who will somehow benefit off this. (Just like Ms. Lagarde's career is advancing, presumably benefitting off the immigrant maid who was allegedly assaulted by DSK.)

If Pelosi and Reid were able to tolerate Sen. Kennedy after Chappaquidick, and even pretend him a hero at that funeral, and they think that tossing a loudmouth liberal Jew overboard will help their cause, so be it.

I stand by what I originally wrote though: in 20 years (or sooner!) the kids in this country will think we ALL had a screw loose. Persecuting a man and chasing him out of a job based on ... sexxy pictures and text. That nobody complained about until Andrew Breitbart dragged his extra money through the trailer park (as the phrasing from the Clinton scandal went...).

Funny thing is, I really thought Weiner would hold out longer than Moamar Ghaddafy. (Yep, I'm rooting for him to hang in there too. Principle of the thang.)

Here we're at war, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia... all with tales of innocent brown-skinned people being killed from above by our misguided missles and drones and miltary hardware... and all the "mature" adults in our present dysfunctional society want to talk about is a man with a funny name privately sending his pics around to stir up some action.

Shame. Shame. Shame.
I'm embarrassed for the Boomers, for the media, and for the non-victims who have sufferered in this manufactured scandal:

We have seen the enemy,
and he is us.

Your children who will live with the consequences of your actions (or non actions) will be laughing at the true immaturity shown by out national political and media leaders today.

Kennedy in, even with his crimes.
Weiner out, because he had a funny name and it was easy enough to turn our heads to the true national troubles that need confronting, to fully concentrate on his harmless, personal failings...

Yep, them's some intelligent priorities. But what do you expect from a spoiled generation of Boomers who were blessed, and never really grew up? They're still children, and like all little children, they get turned on by poopy cocky dirtytalk and people who step out of their narrowly prescribed bounds.

Go Moamar. Hang in there, and let NATO blow their loads (and budgets!) trying to take you out. Somebody's gotta stand up to this abuse of power and overstepping of boundaries. Better we learn now, than later -- when we're out of money, and our enemies decide that a few drones targeting the White House on behalf of regime change, say, that also take out the wife and kiddies (whoopsie doopsie!) are perfectly ethical and exactly what a 21st Century democracy demands. No other choice, you know.

I really hope the country wises up and elects Mitt Romney this time around. Say what you will, but the man does have a functioning conscience -- I think his religious background has instilled that in him -- and hey, if we're all going to play at being saint morley moralistic here, he really is the best Daddy Do Right candidate we've got.

No dick pics, that's what we should be looking for in a man. Clean cut. Loves his wife and kids. Gets the job done. Reinforces our preferences for monogamy, wholesomeness, and proper role of the politician-as-role-model.

Remember this day then when we look back: you asked for it, Democrats. You got it.

Altsnout M.O.

What is it with this lady posting pictures of younger women, and then expressing shock when her comments threads goes after them on their looks?

Yup, that's professional.
I'm embarrassed for her.

(Or maybe the insecurity of an aging, painted lady -- love the new hair color, hun! -- who knows that her talents and writing skills aren't much, so going for the snark and looky-looks of others who, truth be told, simply work the language better: longer, stronger, a more versatile style ...)

* I tried to head that discussion thread off at the pass. (You're welcome.) Well before this, uttered in vain, "This is a really annoying thread! It began with Shouting Thomas making a remark that distorted people's perception of the post title, and that distortion got attributed to me. I almost feel like undisplaying the whole thread. Please watch the clip before commenting and get relevant."


Honestly,
when is somebody going to see through this lady -- Serious Person though she is tenured to be -- and say, "Enough already." Go back to your cats and your catty ways, and leave the looks posts out of it already.

Isn't it unbecoming to aim so low for page hits? And haven't we seen enough of these type of attack posts on women there, before? I think we have...

Mirror, mirror
On the wall...

;-)

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Make it great Wednesday, readers. Rain here, so we're messing around in the gardens and thinking of putting the boats in later. Northern Wisconsin. You can't beat it in the summer. Honestly.