TigerHawk

Moments from now, I'll be live-blogging the President's Iraq speech at this post. Each number indicates a separate republishing. Refresh as necessary, and add your deep thoughts below.

1. The introduction is quite neutral. Non-ironic mention of "our unity at home" being tested. He should know, as one of the big testers of that unity. Deep bow to the troops, which completed "every mission they were given."

2. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. Long list of accomplishments. "This completes a transition to Iraqi responsibility for their own security."

3. "Tonight, I encourage Iraq's leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency" and establish a representative government. Sounds a lot like George W. Bush, essentially an ex ante endorsement of his policy. Reiterates our commitment to Iraq over the long term. All military will leave by the end of next year, and our civilians will step up as the soldiers step down. "This approach reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq." Ultimately, the terrorists will fail to achieve their goals. Iraq will remain united. Also sounds like Bush, and not at all like the Joe Biden of 2007, who wanted to bust the country in to three parts (yes, the same Biden has been dispatched to tell the Iraqis what to do next).

4. "Here too, it is time to turn the page." Spoke to Bush. "It is well known he and I disagree about the war from its outset, yet no one can doubt President Bush's support for our troops nor his love of our country or commitment to our security." A nice gesture, however inconsistent with much of what Barack Obama has said in the past.

5. Turns to Afghanistan. "As we speak, Al Qaeda continues to plot against us, and its leadership remains anchored in the border region..." The "drawdown in Iraq" allows us to deploy the resources we need to go on offense in Afghanistan. This is, at least, consistent with his campaign theme. (And who doesn't love the way he says "Tah-lee-bahn"?)

6. As was the case in Iraq, we can't do for Afghans what they must ultimately do for themselves. "Next August, we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility. The pace will be determined by conditions on the ground. But make no mistake, this transition will begin. Because open ended war serves nobody's purpose." I support this policy, although I am not sure that I support the enunciation of it, which might well give our enemies new resolve.

7. Closing positivity about our leadership in the world, linking that to domestic policy and "a growing middle class." "We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas." A domestic policy surge. Calls for an industrial policy (says we have "put off tough decisions" about the manufacturing base -- what decisions?). Not sure which of his long litany of tasks are even the province of government -- I do know this, businesses have not put off tough decisions. This is incoherent nonsense.

8. "As long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force the world has ever known." Good. Write that down. OH!: "Just as the GI bill helped those who fought World War II, including my grandfather, become the backbone of our middle class..." Nice deft counterstroke to the birthers and Muslim-rumorers.

I think he threaded the needle fairly well, putting the argument over the strategic value of OIF in to the history books. Indeed, he has pretty much adopted the Bush doctrine, skating close to the edge of acknowledging that with his tip of the hat to Dubya. Yet, the speech was as Charles Krauthammer suggests "flat," and I agree that it was odd, very much so, that he tacked on the domestic policy business at the end. Very weird for a speech about the end of a war, and reflecting that his real interest is in changing America at home.

Stephen Green is drunkblogging here.

The latest news out of Gallup (which puts the Republican lead on the November "generic ballot" at an unprecedented 10 points, well ahead of the Rasmussen tracking poll) inspired me to check out the current pricing on the Iowa Electronic Markets for "Democrats Hold" contracts. (For those few of you who do not know, the Iowa Electronic Markets are actual futures markets on which people may buy contracts that predict the results of elections.) Based on trading that occurred, I believe, before the publication of the Gallup poll, the IEM have swung dramatically in favor of the Democrats losing the House in November:

The Senate, however, is an entirely different matter.

A little divided government would do us all some good. Perhaps even Barack Obama.

The WSJ has a nifty map for tracking pending hurricanes, including a tab for Earl, which threatens to douse a few Labor Day weekend cookouts along the eastern seaboard.

This, it seems, is news you can use (emphasis added):

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers...

[E]ven after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

My favorite song from "Mary Poppins" is, perhaps not surprisingly, "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank." I had, however, forgotten how tremendously apropos and, well, instructive it is.

I'm a complete dork. I love it when Banks sings "plantations of ripening tea," but so many of the other lines really do apply today.

And, yes, that is Dick Van Dyke.

...I'm going to link to Clive Crook's little write-up on Glenn Beck's rally on Saturday. (Actually, many of you who beat me up for this post will like Crook's, I think.)

Is Citigroup untrustworthy?

The spat between Citigroup (C) and CLSA analyst Mike Mayo continues. This time the veteran bank equity analyst is calling foul on the issue of "trust" when it comes to the bank's management team.

"While Citigroup has positives, such as better capital markets, improving credit and emerging market positions, our concern around trust reflects a long-term consideration," Mayo told clients in a research note Monday.

You might have been able to hear Matt Drudge cackling when he juxtaposed these pictures...

Funny and cruel!

UPDATE: The reaction to Barack Obama in his helmet brings this post to mind. Obama may actually be hurting the public health by wearing a helmet!

CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.

...is more dangerous than you might think.

I call this one "Spaniel in flowers."

Original post here. I no longer see the Spaniels regularly, and I miss them.

My opinion of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy just went up. A lot.

...does that mean it is time to buy?

For the first time since at least 1997, fewer than 29 percent of ratings for stocks covered by brokerages worldwide are “buys,” according to 159,919 recommendations compiled by Bloomberg. Analysts are turning more pessimistic even as they push up estimates for profit growth among Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies to 36 percent, the highest since 1988. . .

As we have noted so many times previously, following the Wall Street crowd of analysts is rarely the way to make money.

If I lived in California I would vote for Carly Fiorina this fall, although more to achieve the partisan result in the Senate and the end of Barbara Boxer -- who is both liberal and stupid -- than out of any particular wish to see Fiorina's political career advance. I am not at all clear on her accomplishments, other than her having been the female CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a top economic adviser to the McCain campaign [**cough**]. But then, that is a gilded resume compared to many of these clowns.

This, though, is as sad a commentary on the state of American politics as any of seen in a while (and perhaps any that you've seen since my post on Glenn Beck yesterday...):

Carly Fiorina, the Republican Senate candidate from California, will travel to the Middle East over the Labor Day weekend to shore up her foreign policy credentials.

Marty Wilson, her campaign manager, said the candidate wants to be updated on the region, according to the Associated Press.

From a lefty environmentalist Facebook friend, a dilemma:

Found out today they'll pay my way--plus my son's--to go give a talk on carbon offsets in Thailand. Now the ethical dilemma: How to justify flying around the globe in order to bash carbon offsets as a false solution to climate change?

Delivering the THT to Landmark College in Putney, just north of Brattleboro, which means at least ten hours of driving through the boring parts of New England for me, perhaps trapped in returning shore traffic on the way down. Many of you, no doubt, are hoping for that.

I'll try not to get any more liberal while I'm there.

Meanwhile, whether true or not, this is fairly amusing. (Theo, if you enjoy that sort of thing, which I do. Unofficially, of course.)

I have never seen Glenn Beck's show, and I have seen him on television under five times, so I have no direct opinion on whether he is an idiot, a genius, or an evil genius. I respectfully suggest, however, that when you have offended a huge proportion of African-Americans by scheduling a rally in the same spot and on the same date as Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, you might not want to promote it as "[leading] America out of darkness." Unless, of course, you are trying to piss people off.

Well put:

Few Californians in the private sector have $1 million in savings, but that's effectively the retirement account they guarantee to public employees who opt to retire at age 55 and are entitled to a monthly, inflation-protected check of $3,000 for the rest of their lives.

Back when Steven Van Zandt had his own act, the Disciples of Soul, he did a couple of great albums that were not nearly as successful as they ought to have been. Tonight somebody reminded me of "I Am A Patriot," which I listened to a lot 25 years ago.

Two years ago this evening Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for president, and formally kicked off his campaign with an astonishing rally at Denver's Invesco Field. The TigerHawk Teenager was there, and snapped a few pictures from the cheap seats.

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.

Awww...

There is a disturbing side to this story, mega-cuteness notwithstanding:

A two-month-old tiger cub has been discovered hidden with a stuffed tiger toy in the baggage of a woman heading to Iran from Thailand, wildlife protection officials have said.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has just fired his education chief and two-time conservative gubernatorial aspirant, Bret Schundler, for lying. Assuming the facts are as described in the linked article, I would have fired Schundler were I in Christie's position, so good. More importantly, Christie has established his credibility as a boss not to be trifled with, always useful cred in the Soprano State.

Onward and upward, guvna.

The Obama administration has, again, backed away from trying a detained suspected terrorist. It is almost as if the White House is realizing -- egads -- that the criminal justice system is not a useful means for dealing with unlawful enemy combatants. Not that Barack Obama will ever admit that.

This seems like a movie many of our readers would enjoy...

The United States Postal Service is losing $1 billion per month. This is not surprising, because nothing important must by needs come in the mail any more. With all due respect to the post office's place in the national psyche (such as it is) and the imperatives of catalog merchants, we need a long term plan to wind down this now obsolete agency with an adequate transition for its employees and few remaining customers. By 2015, 2020 at the latest, the USPS will have no purpose more important than the manufacture of buggy whips.

CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.

As a know-it-all teenager growing up in Iowa, I once declared with great certainty that the federal government should not do anything that it was possible for the states to do. My father looked at me over his glasses and suggested that I might not hold to that opinion if I lived in Massachusetts, New York, or New Jersey. He might have added California, which took time out from not dealing with its catastrophic fiscal crisis to erect a truly asinine non-tariff trade barrier:

A bill authored by Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield (D – San Fernando Valley) requiring companies seeking contracts to build California’s High Speed Rail system to disclose their involvement in deportations to concentration camps during World War II gained final approval from the state legislature today. AB 619, the Holocaust Survivor Responsibility Act, passed the Assembly on a vote of 50 – 7 and was sent to the governor, who will have until September 30 to act on it. AB 619 would require companies seeking to be awarded high speed rail contracts to publicly disclose whether they had a direct role in transporting persons to concentration camps, and provide a description of any remedial action or restitution they have made to survivors, or families of victims. The bill requires the High Speed Rail Authority to include a company’s disclosure as part of the contract award process.

Just curious; how were the Japanese-Americans transported inland in 1942?

At O'Hare, in my seat with the door still open. Here's what I have this morning.

Have archeologists discovered the house of Odysseus? Maybe the Homer was writing history.

Obamacare may end health care benefits for college students. It seems that collegiate policies, which are relatively cheap to provide, do not meet the new law's "one size fits all" requirements. This is not a surprise, since a central feature of the new law is to bring the young in to the system (that is, to tax them) to pay for the benefits of the old or enfeebled.

Another reason to throw the Republican lever in November.

Door closing, more later.

Digital photography is not the same as traditional photography -- it is more a means of communication than a tool for provoking memory or a visual art. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I snap a lot of pictures and upload them to Facebook or zap them to friends. All part of the running gag that is my workaday life. So, anyway, a few pics from the day stashed in the Blackberry...

The view from my window this morning early...

Scenes from the morning run along the lake...

Dinner at "16" in the new Trump tower (Nano-review: Quite good food, beautiful views, a bit over-priced, and much too intrusive service)...

Walking back from dinner, up North Michigan Avenue...

Forty years have passed since James Dickey wrote Deliverance, an important novel I have never read but will now that I have thought of it. Anywho, the New York Times has a nice story marking the anniversary of the book, including some trenchant observations about the state of men in literature today and the history of the famous "squeal like a pig" line from the movie. A lunch time enrichment opportunity, perhaps.

I read about a third of David Finkel's The Good Soldiers, a platoon-level account of fighting in Baghdad during the first year of the "surge," on my flight to Chicago this evening. It is the most evocative description of infantry combat I've read in a long time, perhaps the Dispatches of the Iraq war. Light night beer and burger finished, I'm running up to my room to keep reading.

Our "public servants" prefer to hide taxes so that they can spend our money without paying a political price. Everything from paycheck withholding to the absurd corporate income tax to undisclosed business-to-business taxes hide the true extent of taxation from the average voter. It is therefore a good and wonderful thing that this business, at least, is deflecting the irritation over a new tax (in the guise of an interpretation of existing law) toward the guilty parties responsible officials. More businesses should do the same.

It seems to me that this presages another leg down in housing values:

Sales of previously occupied homes fell to the lowest level in 15 years last month as the economy weakened.

The National Association of Realtors says July's sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968. June's sales pace was revised downward to 5.26 million.

Home sales picked up in the spring when the government was offering tax credits. But the market has struggled since the tax credits expired on April 30.

The Democrats in Michigan must know they have a problem. An editorial in this morning's Detroit Free Press:

There are campaign dirty tricks, and then there are perversions of the electoral process that cry out for some authoritative response and criminal consequences.

The flap over an allegedly fake slate of Tea Party candidates, intended to siphon votes from Republicans this fall, is looking more and more like the latter. It's time for the Oakland County prosecutor and the state attorney general to get involved, and get to the bottom of this affair.

What we know so far casts real doubt on the sincerity of this Tea Party exercise. The principals behind it have been exposed as Democrats with union ties. They were all put on the ballot in very competitive districts where votes for them would hurt Republican hopefuls. And last week, a Democratic operative in OaklandCounty was accused of fraudulently notarizing affidavits for a dozen of the candidates on the ballot. That in itself is a crime worth prosecuting.

We feel ignored. We get more traffic than a lot of these dudes, and are available to be corrupted at comparable rates.

I like a book store as much as anybody, but was this really necessary?

Vineyard Haven - President Barack Obama had a simple task for his first morning on vacation: shoot over to a Martha's Vineyard book store to fill out his daughters' summer reading list and grab himself a novel.

Easier said than done.

His sports utility vehicle, part of a 20-vehicle motorcade, passed through a cordon of Massachusetts State Police motorcycle officers, in a protective cocoon of Secret Service agents.

Tagging along for the quick trip on Friday were White House communications trucks, an ambulance and two vans full of reporters and photographers.

My views on the Park51 project (the "Ground Zero mosque" to us righties) are well-documented. That said, the more sanctimonious and culturally-outreachy defenders of the project really ought to address this thought experiment:

A friend poses the following: Imagine that there really were these fundamentalist Christian terror cells all over the United States, as the Department of Homeland Security imagines. Let’s say a group of five of these terrorists hijacked a plane, flew it to Mecca, and plowed it into the Kaaba.

Now let’s say a group of well-meaning, well-funded Christians — Christians whose full-time job was missionary work — decided that the best way to promote healing would be to pressure the Saudi government to drop its prohibition against permitting non-Muslims into Mecca so that these well-meaning, well-funded Christian missionaries could build a $100 million dollar church and community center a stone’s throw from where the Kaaba used to be — you know, as a bridge-building gesture of interfaith understanding.

What do you suppose President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Times, and other Ground Zero mosque proponents would say about the insensitive, provocative nature of the proposal?

I'm off to Atlantic City to see Ann Coulter debate James Carville tonight at 8 pm. There are still tickets available if you are in the New York - Philly - Wilmington corridor and haven't come up with a better alternative. Otherwise, check back here tomorrow for bloggy coverage.

If you show up, I'm wearing jeans, a red shirt, and a khaki jacket.

Who out there remembers Gordon Sinclair's "The Americans" from 1973? I do. It was a shot in the arm when the country was really in the doldrums, all the more so because Sinclair, a famous Canadian broadcaster, was not known to have been particularly pro-American. Indeed, quite the contrary.

It is interesting how changing circumstances can affect one's sense of the "necessary." Via Ezra Klein, a graph of American attitudes about luxuries and necessities over time.

Ezra laments the "centrality" of cars -- the widespread and inelastic idea that they are "necessities" -- which will make it difficult to reduce carbon emissions. One need not be a climate alarmist to regret that we have organized our living environment virtually to require an automobile in most circumstances. One can simply resent sending money to evil people who are trying to do us harm. Either way, that number is unlikely to change much until the great swath of American suburbia starts to regulate and plan the use of land quite differently.

The White House Facebook feed has its moments. The original caption for the picture below:

Barack Obama helps spell out "Ohio" with the Weithman family, Rachel, 9, Josh, 11, and mom Rhonda, in their home in Columbus, Ohio Aug. 18, 2010.

Ruh-roh:

Oh, my. There is a new and important study on temperature proxy reconstructions (McShane and Wyner 2010) submitted into the Annals of Applied Statistics and is listed to be published in the next issue. According to Steve McIntyre, this is one of the “top statistical journals”. This paper is a direct and serious rebuttal to the proxy reconstructions of Mann. It seems watertight on the surface, because instead of trying to attack the proxy data quality issues, they assumed the proxy data was accurate for their purpose, then created a bayesian backcast method. Then, using the proxy data, they demonstrate it fails to reproduce the sharp 20th century uptick.

Now, there’s a new look to the familiar “hockey stick”.

Gay rights are gaining traction even within the ranks of social conservatives. WorldNetDaily has kicked my friend Ann Coulter off the agenda at their "Taking America Back National Conference" because she is speaking at "HOMOCON," a gathering of gay conservatives. Ann took the occasion to wonder why "all gays aren't Republican," and to tell WorldNetDaily (which distributes her column) that they are "nuts on the birther thing."

Yup. When you're to the right of Ann, you need to ask yourself whether you are a nut. No. Really. You do.

And Republicans should capitalize on Ann's advice and take it further. (Ann is not, as far as I know, a supporter of gay marriage. Yet.) While the social conservatives (with whom I only occasionally agree on the substance) do not generally offend me because I usually see merit in their arguments even when I disagree with their conclusions, their opposition to gay rights bothers me because it strikes me as simply cruel. To me, equal rights for homosexuals is a much simpler issue than, for example, abortion, about which any thoughtful person should at least be ambivalent.

I woke up this morning to this status update from a Facebook friend (and actual friend) with more than the usual, er, capacity:

It took six rounds of Lagavulin, but finally got the guy sitting next to me at the Petroleum Club to shut up after a spirited but vacuous discussion. Turns out he's the top trial lawyer in Oklahoma, a Marxist, and can't hold his liquor. After he passed out, the entire team at the bar gave me a standing ovation, which I feel is an undeserved accolade.

Beware numismatists aroused.

What are the differences between tequila and mezcal (which, by the way, I had for the first time this weekend)?

I took this picture recently. Betcha can't guess what this is, where it is, or what it does. Valuable TigerHawk kudos to the commenter who figures it out.

With all the sturm und drang over the "Ground Zero mosque," you'd think people would be up in arms over this outrage. Is nothing sacred?

CWCID: Regular TH comment troll Christopher Chambers.

From "4 Things We Hate About the Obama Oil Spill Review" we get this cranky and yet awesome little rant:

Let's just start with this: it's time to ban the word "robust" from usage as a term of action by both business and government. We can't even read the word "robust" anymore in a corporate press release or government statement without a language lie detector in our brain igniting neuron fireworks -- and we had to read the word many times in the Obama oil spill review document.

Senate Majority Leader ("aspiring Minority Leader") Harry Reid has come out in opposition to the "Ground Zero" mosque, the Islamic center proposed to be built in lower Manhattan. My own views on the subject are essentially libertarian. I am certainly not a passionate opponent of the mosque, although I bridle at the seemingly inconsistent treatment given St. Nicholas, which was actually destroyed on 9/11. I am also sympathetic with the argument that the lack of meaningful domestic Islamist terrorism since September 11, 2001 has more to do with the moderation of the American Muslim community than any particular measure taken by our government, and that we -- including especially Republican partisans trying to stir up trouble -- ought to be very careful about alienating it.

On the question of Harry Reid's intervention, I both understand the pressure he is under and think that he handled it poorly. The pressure: I was in Las Vegas airport yesterday morning delighting in the shining of my shoes by a very chatty African-American man, originally from Detroit. At no prompting from me, he launched in to a measured but pointed denunciation of the Ground Zero mosque and Barack Obama's wishy-washiness on the subject. He declared "nothing against Muslims," but regarded the mosque as a slap in the face. Point is, if that guy is a hawk on the GZ Mosque then it is obviously a hotter potato in Nevada politics than I would have dared imagine. So I understand why Reid spoke out in opposition. But I am not sure why he could not have parried the taunting from Sharron Angle by saying simply that "this really is a local land-use issue in New York -- just as we would not want New Yorkers telling us what we can build here in Nevada, we should stay out of their business." I would think that would have made the issue go away for most Nevada voters. And, by the way, it is the right answer.

Among the many new burdens on businesses large and small, this is among the most offensive. Companies that operate with different systems and dispersed accounts payable cannot know whether they exceed the $600 limit by looking inside one system. Mere compliance with this provision is going to cost every business in America a lot of money, all dead weight cost that will further lower rates of return, increase costs of capital, and suppress economic growth. If we had a competent press, it would immediately ask any politician who professes to support "small business" whether he or she will vote to repeal the new 1099 rules. Sadly, we do not.

It sure looks as though Harvard University is boycotting Israel. One is forced to wonder what investments Harvard has in Arab countries that deny basic civil rights that Westerners take for granted. The United Arab Emirates, for example.

UPDATE: Maybe it ain't so.

Right Wing News has polled conservative bloggers -- not including me, probably because of my squishy positions on social matters -- and come up with a list of the "25 Worst Figures in American History." Uh, I have a question: Al Gore makes the list but Jefferson Davis doesn't? I mean, we used to want to hang that traitor from a sour apple tree, and now he does not even make the farookin' top 25? Do "conservative bloggers" in fact read less history than, er, conservatives?

Good point.

I do think that high stress jobs, be they in the White House or in some other demanding setting, burn people out. The phenomenon is real. But VDH makes an excellent point -- neither do I recall that the press detected similar fatigue among the Bushies. Maybe they were tougher, they having been tempered in the fires of private sector competition, or the press just was not looking. It is hard to imagine that they were under less pressure.

The lefty blogs are in high dudgeon over Laura Schlessinger's repeated use of the "N" word in an exchange with an African-American woman who called in with a genuine issue, her frustration -- which sounds legitimate to me -- that her white husband would not stand up for her when his friends and family make "racist" or at least race-based comments. Conservatives should object just as loudly. Dr. Laura's rant is brain dead stuff from beginning to end. Forget the N-word baiting. Where's the sense or compassion in advising people to avoid "marrying out of their race" if they do not want suffer the indignity of dumbshit generalizations? Huh? You do not have to be a politically-correct academic liberal to think that is both idiotic and mean. And, by the way, it is bad for America, which could use a little more interracial marriage.

Makes me embarrassed to be a conservative.

Professor Althouse more along the same lines.

Richard Posner written a crisp post on the impact of labor unions, and the Obama administration's pro-union policies, on the economic recovery (or lack thereof). As is often true with Posner's writing, the piece challenges shibboleths on both the right and the left. Read the whole thing.

CWCID: "Bomber Girl."

Whatever else you might think of her, it is hard not to admire Sarah Palin's capacity for causing Democrats to spontaneously detonate their own political careers.

A New Hampshire state legislator resigned his office Thursday after becoming the second Democrat in as many days to speculate about Sarah Palin's death on Facebook.

State Rep. Timothy Horrigan made the remarks Wednesday night in a thread discussing the Alaska plane crash that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens.

"Well a dead Palin wd be even more dangerous than a live one...she is all about her myth & if she was dead she cldn't commit any more gaffes," Horrigan wrote.

The tabs are piling up like grapes drying in to raisins in the hot California sun (of which more below).

Hardening the "cultural confidence" of those of us who subscribe to traditional American values. The linked post addresses an issue that has been rattling around in my own noggin for some time. Teaser:

Why does the Ruling Class, using Codevilla’s term, have such strong cultural confidence?

And what can we do to undermine it?

If I had to pick an ultimate target for activism and action by Conservatives, Libertarians, Tea Partiers, and common-sense Conservatives, it would be strengthening to diamond-hardness the cultural confidence of those who believe in the American way of life –free enterprise, limited government, personal freedom — and nuking out the foundations of the cultural confidence of our opponents. That is, long term, the most important thing. Many things in the short and medium term have to come first, but that is the long term goal.

Jon Stewart and company definitely have their moments. This is very good, although probably NSFW in our modern high liability workplace, where all the various "cards" remain in full force and effect.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Race Card Is Maxed Out
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.

If I were an ex-President, I would do this sort of thing all the time.

Amazon has alerted me, and now I am alerting you, that it has some big deals on laptop computers. Seems like a good time to pick up a couple for the kinder before they go back to school.

Not quite a tab dump. Mere items.

Are "stay-at-home-dads" a status symbol for a certain sort of wife? On the one hand, just about everybody featured in the linked story seems quite, er, unlikeable. On the other hand, is a status house husband really any more cringeworthy than a trophy wife?

And this: A coming boom in M&A? That sure would be fun, but I'mnot holding my breath.

I like the beers down the emergency slide move (I have always wanted to leave a plane down one of those things, so I can identify), but this is even better. On the one hand, you have to worry about an employee who quits a job this spectacularly. Something tells me, though, that she will have a much easier time finding another one than Steven Slater.

Mitt Romney, the youthful once and future Republican presidential candidate, just welcomed his fifteenth grandchild in to the world. I say that is wonderful stuff, but your results may vary. Does knowing that Romney has so many progeny make him more appealing to you at an emotional level, less appealing, or is it irrelevant (perhaps because you never respond emotionally to facts about the families of politicians)?

From the deepest recesses of my Blackberry, what is this thing?

Yes, we have accumulated a delicious glop of gritsy tabs while on vacation here in Carolina. Eat them with bacon and eggs this morning.

The coming battle royal between tax payers and retired public employee pensioners. Much of the political question will come down to this: Do you think public employees generally "serve" in some way that is more meritorious than private sector workers, or do you think they chose the life of "soft America" because it is, well, softer?

More on New Jersey's Governor Awesome. Highlight reel:

It was supposed to have been the biggest fight of Chris Christie’s young administration: a May showdown over what Democrats in Trenton were calling the “millionaires’ tax,” designed, like each of the 115 statewide tax increases of the last decade, to paper over a small part of a yawning structural deficit by soaking the rich, one last time. Never mind that half the filings and a third of the revenue from the tax were to come from New Jersey’s business community, already battered by a perfect storm of overtaxation, capital flight, and recession. The Democrats were loaded for bear, and had the legislative majorities in place to pass the measure, having spent all winter threatening a government shutdown should Christie use his veto pen.

Democratic senate president Stephen Sweeney had even admonished, in a turn of phrase eminently Trentonian in its sheer backwardness, that “to give up $1 billion to the wealthy during this crisis is just wrong.” He promised that the millionaires’ tax was where the Democrats would “make our stand.”

The tax passed on party-line votes in the assembly and senate on May 20. Sweeney then certified the bill and walked it across the statehouse to Christie’s office, where the governor — who had vowed to balance the budget without raising taxes, and who’d developed a bewildering habit of keeping his promises — vetoed it. The whole thing took about two minutes.

“We’ll be back, governor,” Sweeney told Christie on being dispatched with the dead letter.

“All right, we’ll see,” came the reply.

And just like that, the biggest obstacle standing between Christie and the realization of his sea-changing, fiscally conservative first-year agenda was gone.

“We have not found our footing,” Democratic state senator Loretta Weinberg later said, still reeling from the decisive defeat. “I think a lot of people underestimated Chris Christie.”

Cold War enemies the United States and Vietnam demonstrated their blossoming military relations Sunday as a U.S. nuclear supercarrier cruised in waters off the Southeast Asian nation's coast — sending a message that China is not the region's only big player.

I have not weighed in the "Ground Zero Mosque" -- the planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan -- because I am not sure I have much to add to the sturm und drang surging through the blogosphere and talk radio. My own view is, well, libertarian: If the founders of the center own the land they ought to be able to build on it, and opponents should be perfectly free to demonstrate against it. Blocking the center by legal or political means troubles me more than letting it proceed with the understanding that many people will be offended by it, even if they are the families of the victims of 9/11 (friendly reminder).

I admit, my reaction to this controversy turns partly on my increasing irritation with people who take offense at the dropping of a hat. People who want to do things or build things or are a little rough around the edges are increasingly hemmed in by people whose sensitivities are so delicate that they cannot handle change or candor or swinging elbows. In the case of the Ground Zero mosque, the opponents ought to be strong enough to accept its existence and the people who build it and worship there ought to accept that it will forever be known in certain circles as the "Ground Zero mosque."

So, as you might imagine, Iowahawk's "future history" hits the center of my target.

Last night at McCrady's, a very nice restaurant in old Charleston (George Washington dined in the place during his "Southern tour" in 1791), a friend ordered "The Sorbet" for dessert. This is what he got:

I had the excellent "trio of lamb," a nice red zin, and a delightful chocolatey thingy as the sweetness at the end. Tasty to be sure, but not nearly so photogenic.

I don't know about you guys, but I had a very nice day. I rode an almost unbelievable bike about 15 miles, then ran a bit more than three miles on the beach at Isle of Palms. Lunch at Melvyn's Bar-B-Q, followed by boating, tubing and beers on the inland waterway. Sadly, I did not use sunscreen. Doh!

More later, if dinner is as impressive tonight. Or if the spirit otherwise moves me.

Back home tomorrow, where I will see the TH Teenager, he having returned from his month in Vermont. Awesome!

Once again, Lady Gaga pushes the boundaries of, well, something.

Oh, and don't click the link if you are offended by almost naked breasts.

Yet another long weekend for Your Blogger, this time cycling in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Yes, my buddy and I have matching signature jerseys from Mellow Johnnys, Austin, Texas. (The usual ban on mocking the host of this blog is lifted for this post only.)