"The Government-Shrinkage Folks"

Yay! That's us! From self-identified "numbers nerd" Chris Cillizza's WaPo article:

54. A majority of Americans who went to the polls Nov. 4 believe that the “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” while just 41 percent think “the government should do more to solve problems.” Those numbers suggest that the long-running battle over what government can and should do (and how much it should do) is tilting back toward the smaller-is-better crowd that dominated in the mid- and late 1990s. The early years of Obama’s presidency were defined by a belief that government might need to do more than it had during the latter days of the George W. Bush administration. (Think Hurricane Katrina.) But the pendulum is in the process of swinging back to the government-shrinkage folks.

Some of the other numbers on which Cillizza reports are somewhat interesting. Like the 4% edge the dems have among women actually being higher than the 1% edge in the 2010 mid-terms. Maybe the war on women drumbeat brought out some more liberal women than in 2010? I really hope the dems keep up the war on women mantra. Among most on the right and center it just sounds so stupid, yet it epitomizes the way they think.

Also the 36% of Hispanics is a slightly interesting number to me. But not terribly. I think the term "Hispanic" or "Latino" is simply too amorphous a group to make much of. The vote of Cuban-Americans has been closer to 50% than that of Puerto Rican-Americans which the dems have a solid lock on.

"That's that hard part again!"

This cartoon reminds me of Obamacare.



Jerry's Uncle Paco has a high opinion of his own performance and just has to stop now and again to explain why he's having trouble with the hard parts. Jerry is smiling delightedly the entire time because he loves Paco and patiently supports him even though his friend, well, sucks.

Go on over to Dailykos or other places where they love big government and you can read all kinds of love pieces about how fabulous Obamacare is. Like this one. Even though a majority of Americans think it's a train wreck and now have hard evidence to support their belief.

This will be a fun day for Sebelius in Washington DC. My advice to her is to start crying at a strategic point so she appears to be human. My advice to Republicans is to throw water on her like Dorothy does to the witch in Wizard of Oz.

But seriously, doesn't it seem like Sebelius and company are whistling past the graveyard here? From another article:

A component of the online system that has been working relatively well experienced an outage Sunday. The federal data services hub, a conduit for verifying the personal information of people applying for benefits under the law, went down in a failure that was blamed on an outside contractor, Terremark.

"Today, Terremark had a network failure that is impacting a number of their clients, including healthcare.gov," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said. "Secretary Sebelius spoke with the CEO of Verizon this afternoon to discuss the situation and they committed to fixing the problem as soon as possible."

Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, of which Terremark is a part, said: "Our engineers have been working with HHS and other technology companies to identify and address the root cause of the issue. It will fixed as quickly as possible."

There's the new line. "We've identified the problem and it will be fixed as soon as possible." Sounds an awful lot like Paco's "That's that hard part again." Someone from CGI is going to write a book about this debacle, and none of it will be a surprise any more than this little factoid revealing the affirmative action/cronyism behind the website development.

Healthcare Site is still DOWN

Yay, Obamacare!! Let's keep hammering it, click here.

New book by Samuel Gregg: Tea Party Catholic

This will probably irritate all the right people. Here's the pitch on the Amazon page.

Over the past fifty years, increasing numbers of American Catholics have abandoned the economic positions associated with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and chosen to embrace the principles of economic freedom and limited government: ideals upheld by Ronald Reagan and the Tea Party movement but also deeply rooted in the American Founding. This shift, alongside America’s growing polarization around economic questions, has generated fierce debates among Catholic Americans in recent years. Can a believing Catholic support free markets? Does the Catholic social justice commitment translate directly into big government? Do limited government Catholic Americans have something unique to contribute to the Church’s thinking about the economic challenges confronting all Catholics around the globe?

In Tea Party Catholic, Samuel Gregg draws upon Catholic teaching, natural law theory, and the thought of the only Catholic Signer of America’s Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton—the first “Tea Party Catholic”—to develop a Catholic case for the values and institutions associated with the free economy, limited government, and America’s experiment in ordered liberty. Beginning with the nature of freedom and human flourishing, Gregg underscores the moral and economic benefits of business and markets as well as the welfare state’s problems. Gregg then addresses several related issues that divide Catholics in America. These include the demands of social justice, the role of unions, immigration, poverty, and the relationship between secularism and big government.

Above all, Gregg underlines how economic freedom’s corrosion in America is undermining the United States’ robust commitment to religious liberty—a principle integral not only to the American Founding and the life of Charles Carroll but also the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. As a creative minority, Gregg argues, limited government Catholics can help transform the wider movement to reground the United States upon the best insights of the American Experiment—and thereby save that Experiment itself.

Should be interesting.

The Answer Is No

The answer is "no"; that word works in English or Spanish. Bill Kristol's summary echoes my own opinion of what the house should do with the awful immigration reform bill passed in the Senate.

Sean Trende asks, in a thoughtful and data-heavy piece, whether the GOP has to pass immigration reform to be competitive in the future at the presidential level. The answer is no.

Meanwhile, with respect to the 2014 congressional elections, it's increasingly clear that allowing any form or permutation of the Senate bill to become law would divide and demoralize potential Republican voters. So if Republicans want to win House and Senate seats in 2014, John Boehner should kill the Senate bill—first refusing to take it up in the House, and also by making clear the House will refuse to go to conference with it. The House can still pass specific bills to address particular immigration issues this session (which presumably the Senate won't take up—but let Harry Reid explain his refusal to do so). But the key is for Boehner to kill "comprehensive" immigration "reform" in this session of Congress.

The primary and indeed sufficient reason to do this is of course because the Senate legislation is such bad public policy. But it may be reassuring to elected officials that doing the right thing won't hurt politically in 2014 or most likely 2016. And it's also the case that Republican presidential candidates can set forth whatever proposals they think right in 2015 and 2016, so they're not just saying no. But the House GOP, for the sake of party and country, should say no: No Capitulation, No "Comprehensive" Bill, No Conference.

I think the most offensive thing about the bill is the comprehensiveness. That's a big word which means bigness. The thing is as obese as Obamacare. Public policy would be served better by smaller "reforms", if you must call them that; Kristol calls them "specific bills to address particular immigration issues".

Kevin O'Brien scores in "The sequester soap opera script"

Kevin O'Brien narrates it perfectly in the Plain Dealer today. Congrats on hitting the RCP Front Page, Kevin! This Clevelander wouldn't be reading it otherwise. Excerpt:

President: "If you make me do what I said I would do, which I now say is The Worst Thing Ever, I'm going to blame you."

House Republicans: "For what?"

President: "When airliners start falling out of the sky, you're going to be held responsible. When something happens in Whateveristan and the American people find out the Navy didn't build the ship we needed to send there, it's going to be all your fault. When all the teachers lose their jobs and undocumented immigrants come streaming across the border and firehouses and police stations go dark, it's all on you."

House Republicans: "Right, right. You forgot, 'When thousands of lawbreaking illegals are released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding cells.' "

President:"We already did that, just to show that we're serious about making sure these cuts hurt."

House Republicans: "Hold on. Did you really just say that? Rather than adjust what gets cut, you would knowingly and intentionally inflict pain on Americans?"

President: "No. Of course I didn't just say that. Did I, guys?"

Associated Press: "If you did, I must have missed it."

Tons of links. The guy is a great blogger as well as a creative writer.

They know Obama effed up with "you didn't build that"

Context, schmontext. "You didn't build that" continues to haunt the Preezee of the United Steezee. Yes, we noticed this too.

Nevertheless, there are signs that they see a vulnerability. Obama has not repeated the words that sparked the controversy, and he has toned down the broader argument — that government help is essential to business success — in the six weeks since he ad-libbed the line near the end of a long campaign swing. His speeches have been shorter, with fewer references to wealthy Americans. He is more cautious about portraying the choice that he quite forcefully described that night between Romney’s worldview and his own.

Shorter Obama speeches is an immediate positive effect.

It doesn't matter what Plouffe and Axelrod say in the attempt to spin this mistake. It was a major one, it slipped out when Obama was tired and unguarded at the end of a long day, as the article points out. The "We built this" response is short, pithy, and it resonates with likely voters. We're not stupid.

What is this shit?

Hat tip Mike Shedlock. Please sit down to prepare yourself for this one from the EU bastards.

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”

NHS health guidelines state clearly that drinking water helps avoid dehydration, and that Britons should drink at least 1.2 litres per day.

The Department for Health disputed the wisdom of the new law. A spokesman said: “Of course water hydrates. While we support the EU in preventing false claims about products, we need to exercise common sense as far as possible."

Good grief.

David Warren: "Insofar as we are adults, we have never required comprehensive daycare"

Now here's a Tea Party-friendly man north of the border with a great prescription, eh. Excerpt:

The closest thing I can see to hope is currently invested in the tea party movement of the U.S. Notwithstanding the slanders heaped upon it, this movement is good-willed, riot-free, indeed situationally non-urban, and under the leadership of basically sane people. Of course, there is no guarantee that any movement devoted to genuine political change can remain so, under the inevitable provocations.

But something must be done, and here is the closest thing, anywhere in the West, to a political movement committed to the only measure that can possibly save us from riding over that cliff. Merely slowing down won't do it.

That measure is, quite frankly, the complete dismantlement of the Nanny State, and the restoration of the status quo ante -- governments focused on the provision of national defence, and domestically on the machinery of law and order. Full stop.