GSA “Scandal”

Worth noting that the “scandal” eating up several days worth of Congressional hearings cost American taxpayers $823,000. That’s Thousand, with a “t.” Particular interest seems to focus on a single party that cost $1960 dollars. Two thousand dollars.

Bonuses paid post-bailout in AIG’s godforsaken Financial Products Division? $168 million.
Total USG investment in AIG alone: $180 billion. With a B.

That’s just for AIG and really just for one division of AIG. The whole shooting match there on Wall Street was measured in trillions of dollars.

These and other gross mismatches in outrage brought to you by Feckless, the official messaging arm of The Democrat. Well played, boys. Should government money be wasted? Of course not. But let’s keep a sense of scale and focus the outrage on the truly outrageous.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
without the roar of its many waters.

Frederick Douglass

Every year we get a slightly different version of the same old [Paul Ryan budget proposal], and every year we have to waste entire man-years of analysis in order to make the same exact points about it. And the biggest point is that his budget would force enormous, swinging cuts in virtually every domestic program, especially those for the poor. If this bothers Ryan, he’s had plenty of time to revise his budget roadmap to address it.

But he hasn’t. He knows perfectly well that his budget concentrates its cuts on the poorest Americans. It’s been pointed out hundreds of times, after all. If he found that troublesome he’d change it. Since he hasn’t, the only reasonable conclusion is that this is exactly what he intends. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

Kevin Drum and I are in agreement. Stop making excuses for Ryan. Stop calling him “serious” or “wonky.” He’s neither. He simply puts an unachievable yet comfortingly numerical face on the GOP broader policy goal. Namely, reduce taxes on rich to as close to zero as can be achieved in a single go-round. Then make a show of balancing this huge deficit driver by a) failing to name any substantive tax reforms and but also specify that you’re going to be relying on extensive, substantive tax reform –and– b) cutting all programs for the poor to the bone or entirely. Can’t have a safety “hammock” after all.
When this still fails to balance the budget, you are free to go after Medicare, which was the plan all along. While there, may as well functionally end Social Security; even though it’s not a deficit driver, you’ve got huge constituencies and the MSM convinced that it is so why the Hell not? Then you call it a day and can efficiently sand the gears against putting any of it back in place even if you find your party in the legislative minority for decades. Huzzah for democracy.
Source: Mother Jones

in the 1960s, [there was certainty] that Americans would never consent to give up their big-government perks. And yet, somehow, alongside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That’s because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it’s because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they’ve been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).

Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it’s not going away, either. It’s just getting more powerful. That’s a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.

Rick Perlstein, bringing the old optimism, and but also exactly right.

He gazed out at the Pacific again, as if daring it to rave and gibber at him, but it lay there calmly and played with the sandpipers.

Douglas Noel Adams
Happy 60th birthday; wish you were here for it.

Get Thee Behind Me

What’s the superlative form of yep? Ed Kilgore earns it here:

By […] simply mocking Santorum as someone too unsophisticated to understand the supernatural as a fairy tale for rubes, his MSM tormenters are not only letting him off the hook for his sinister interpretation of politics as holy war, but are doing him the signal service of reinforcing his manichean vision of America torn between humble believers and derisive, self-satisfied elites.

I couldn’t put it any more clearly than that. So I excerpted it; you really should read the whole thing.
Anywho: the issue here is not that Santorum believes in Satan or the Tooth Fairy, it’s that the broader outcome of those views is such that he declares all of Protestantism as a “phony theology.” That’s where and what to attack and attack legitimately, MSM, not his belief in all or part of the Roman Catholic catechism.

Get Thee Behind Me

Annals of the (Completely) Free Market

May God bless Our completely Free, Uninhibited, and Unbiased market economy that, for some reason likely tied to his un-Americanism, noted socialist Obama hates so very much:

By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.

Freedom! If we can just keep on keeping Big Guvmint off the backs of these little Mom and Pop operators, just think of all the jobs that will be created when, again, their “financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.” Going to be a big day for us all.

Annals of the (Completely) Free Market

A lot of people when they criticize Ron Paul have to preface their criticism by saying, ‘you know, he’s good guy, he brings a lot to the debate.’ I actually don’t buy that. I do not think he’s a particular good guy … I think it would be better for the Republican party, if he left the Republican party.

Bill Kristol extols the immense value he feels that Ron Paul brings to the debates.
Source: c-spanvideo.org