Who is John Galt?

question of the day: shirley sherrod

Well, two questions, really.

Irrespective of any "editing," or "context" -- even if Shirley Sherrod was completely right -- would a white person get away with giving the same speech?

However, we still have to consider whether Sherrod was wrong.  It's not enough to observe that the left will not hold themselves to the same standard they'll apply to the right.  There's still the matter of whether Sherrod's behavior is acceptable.  And that's more complicated.

So here's the bottom line:  The government has a job to do.  It's not a charity or a jobs program.  And what Shirley Sherrod said creates an unnecessary distraction.  Not everyone agrees that the NAACP operates in good faith -- I certainly don't.  Basically, with that speech, Sherrod has disqualified herself from her position.  If we can find a similarly-qualified individual untarnished by controversy, then that person is arguably the better candidate for the job.  Keeping Shirley Sherrod now is an unnecessary compromise; yet another bow to political correctness.

And therefore Sherrod should be gone.  Right or wrong.  Throw her up on the wagon next to Trent Lott, and haul her away.

praise the Lord!

Props to Limbaugh.

Update: The press is exercising its intellectual property rights over this embarrassing video.  There's continuous turnover on YouTube as users repost it and the Star Ledger has it removed.  Nice, unbiased reporting, huh? 

mccotter: boycott the summit

Found via BigGovernment.com, on RedState.  Thaddeus McCotter explains the "trap" of Obama's healthcare summit:

The summit’s goal is to persuade the public that the Republican minority is “forcing” the Democrats’ heavy-handed tactics to foist this abominable bill upon Americans.

"seasonally adjusted unemployment"

"Real" (U6) unemployment is at a record 18%.  Today's supposedly lower figure, 16.5%, relies on a seasonal adjustment.

Accepting the "seasonal adjustment" is another way of saying record 18% unemployment is less bad than it seems because unemployment's always higher in January.

But if unemployment was always this high at this time of year, then 18% wouldn't be a record, would it?

matthews forgets

I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.
                           --Chris Matthews

Which begs the question: Do you notice it the rest of the time, Chris?  Is it something that's always in the corner of your mind?

I have to admit, the matter of Obama's race does come up when I try to understand the motives of a radical socialist.  But it's the socialism I see when I look at him, because it's the socialism that threatens us.

Still, it's always interesting to hear the little clues that sometimes slip out when liberals talk -- clues that tell us how they really think.  And obviously that applies to Obama as well as Matthews.

stossell: serious about crony capitalism

theater

I'm going to speak the language of unemployment in this post, but I want you pro-healthcare-reformers to pay close attention.  Because this post is really directed at you.

Almost miraculously, "only" 85,000 more workers became unemployed in December.  This was considered bad news by many analysts who had actually expected things to improve some, but that's not even the half of it.

You see, economists measure unemployment in several ways.  Perhaps you remember the Seinfeld episode in which character George Costanza invents "Vandelay Industries," where he hopes to convince the lady at the unemployment office that he's trying to get a job as a latex salesman.  To collect a check, Costanza needs to establish that he's looking for employment.  The government's most public unemployment figure counts people who are looking for work.  By that measurement, if you're not actively trying to find work, you're not "unemployed."

So, when we're told that only 85,000 more workers became unemployed in December, what they're really saying is that the number of out-of-work people looking for jobs has gone up by 85,000.  What they're not telling you is that there are now 661,000 -- over half a million -- more people out of work than there were in November, but that in the meantime some 576,000 of the people who were already unemployed stopped looking for work.  They became "discouraged."

If the economy's still losing over half a million jobs per month we're not anywhere near the bottom.  I'd like to say this reflects a flaw in the way we measure unemployment, but I'm sure that method works during ordinary recessions.  What's flawed here is economic policy, and a glitch in our metrics is being used to gloss over it.

Real unemployment -- working age people who would be working, but aren't -- is 17.3%.  I'm not just counting up the retirees and the sick and the kids at home watching TV on their parents' couch -- I'm talking about people who'd like a job.  These are depression-era unemployment levels, and what's changed is the way we measure.

In addition to the glitch in our unemployment reporting, there are other, more deliberate deceptions.  Remember all that "jobs saved" crap?  Or how about all the jobs created in zip codes and electoral districts that don't exist?  Well, now they're looking at a whole new way of counting the jobs impacted by "stimulus."  Basically, if you have a job and someone near you gets stimulus money, then your job now counts as a stimulus success story.  Congratulations.

"jobs saved" branches out

Yesterday, North Dakota Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan announced that he will not be seeking re-election.  Chris Dodd, who faces the fight of his life for his Connecticut Senate seat, is expected to announce his "retirement" today.  If Dodd were to seek another term, the odds are much higher that a Republican would win the seat.  These jobs, it would appear, could not be saved.

This would be a good time to stop and consider what a Democrat-run government has accomplished in the last year.  So far, Dems' own best description of their achievements comes down to, "Thanks to us, it wasn't worse."  It's the same reasoning behind "jobs saved," only extended to include everything else that didn't get better, too -- which is to say everything.

And it looks like that's going to be the Dems' principal 2010 campaign strategy, as well.  Fox reported that they plan to campaign against George W. Bush again.  This tells me that the Dems don't expect any demonstrable improvements that they can take credit for.  Instead, we're gonna have to take their word for how much better the existing misery is, this coming November, compared to what we would have had with four more hypothetical years of Bush.

Now, it's one thing to have grand plans and high hopes, and then later point back at your good intentions in retrospect, and claim that at least you minimized the damage.  But it's really something else to look forward to the 10 months remaining before the election, and know in advance that you're going to run on mitigating your failures. 

With 10 months to go, Dems have time to actually alter their strategy; time to make improvements.  Instead, they're digging in to defend something -- something that they already know is going to create a lot of very unhappy voters.

The Dems are already planning for how unhappy you're going to be about the loss of so much liberty.  But then, your happiness is not what they want -- it's the liberty they're after.  And what Dems are saying, about freedom and happiness, is that it's easier to take your freedom and then just tell you that you're happy.

The truth is, I don't know whether it's more amazing to marvel at how stupid liberals think we all are, or to marvel at how often they're proven right.

This has to be stopped.

obama hanged in effigy

Over the weekend, somebody in Plains, GA, hanged Obama in effigy from above a Main Street storefront.

The Secret Service is investigating.  Not in effigy, mind you, but really investigating.  For hanging an effigy.  First Amendment, anyone...?

When Bush was President, didn't somebody make a feature film about assassinating him?  I remember thinking that was incredibly tacky, but I don't remember wanting the Secret Service to investigate it.

after healthcare, ezra klein needs to learn about the senate

Writing in the Washington Post's Sunday magazine, Ezra Klein complained (free registration required) that the Senate is fundamentally flawed by the three-fifths majority requirement of the filibuster.

To understand why the modern legislative process is so bad, why every Senator seems able to demand a king's ransom in return for his or her vote and no bill ever seems to be truly bipartisan, you need to understand one basic fact: The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.

Klein is working with a couple of very flawed premises here.  For one thing, he looks at the bribes that had to be paid to get all the Democrats onboard.  Since cloture takes 60 votes and the initial bill only had 50-something supporters, Klein reasons that the Democrats shouldn't have had to buy the balance of 60.

But the reality is that if cloture had taken only 50 votes, then we would have arguably had a much more liberal bill, with perhaps only 40-something supporters, and Harry Reid still would have had to issue bribes to get the balance of 50 needed for passage.  And this works both ways, meaning that the filibuster doesn't just affect the vote count, it affects the ideology of the legislation itself.

This is a profound difference.  Harry Reid isn't cloistered away in his office carving out legislation for an up-or-down vote, wondering how many he'll get.  He's communicating with his caucus, crafting legislation with an eye toward a critical number of votes.  Klein wants you to think the bill would have passed the Senate more easily with a simple majority, but the truth is that a smaller majority requirement would have simply meant a more liberal bill with provisions that Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman would have rejected outright, while more liberal moderates like Evan Bayh and Jim Webb would have had to be bought instead.