Talk Me Down Off This Ledge

It's been a week of Republicans In Disarray news, what with their little witch hunt turning into an 11-hour Clinton campaign infomercial and Paul Ryan holding out about 24 hours before caving to the demands of the Freedom caucus. Meanwhile, Trump and Carson continue to lead in the polls, while the Establishment candidates are all in single-digits. Can't anybody here play this game?

So with all this delicious Schadenfreude, why am I so gloomy?

Because as Steve points out repeatedly, Republicans are almost never punished for anything. Because perversely, Republicans' failure to govern often winds up working to their political advantage. Because there is a non-trivial probability that within the next year this will be demonstrated in apocalyptic fashion.

Less than two weeks before we hit the debt ceiling, there's no clear path to raising it. And as hilarious as Paul Ryan's fail may be, it just makes things that much more difficult, since he'll be as much a hostage to the Freedom Caucus as Boehner was. Maybe someone can see how this plays out without a default, but I can't.

And if there is a default, it won't be the Republicans who get punished. Sure, they'll get some bad press for a while. There'll be scolding editorials, maybe even calls from constituents. And...not much more.

But the longer-term economic consequences--we know who'll pay for that. If default throws us into a recession, if we're in a recession a year from now, the weakest Republican will beat the strongest Democrat. The GOP will strengthen their hold on Congress, and finally take the White House. At which point it's game over. All Dark. Forever.

And the Republicans incompetence or deliberate sabotage (likely both) will end up achieving what a billion dollars of Koch money couldn't.

That's my recurring nightmare. Someone, anyone, tell me I'm wrong about this. Please.

The Pope, the clerk, the neurosurgeon, and the Congressmen

I’m not Catholic and I usually feel uncomfortable commenting on the Vatican. It somehow feels like spying on next door neighbors and then gratuitously denouncing(or praising) their family behavior.

But underhanded events at the Vatican have spun so far into the realm of the Borgias that it’s a wonder if there isn't somebody tasting the Pope’s food before each meal.

First there was the visit, evidently arranged by some malevolent Vatican politician, to embarrass the Pope by throwing him together with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Now it’s even more sinister than that. Somebody in the Vatican is putting out a rumor — already refuted but still persistent — that the Pope has a brain tumor.

The reports have all the earmarks of a bile-fueled fantasy of some conspirator or conspirators, people who have lots of time on their hands and not much of a life. The stories involve a mysterious yellow-bannered helicopter, a doctored photograph purporting to show a private handshake between the Pope and a Japanese neurosurgeon, and even a “description” of the fantasy tumor. All refuted.

What it boils down to is, the hardest of hard line conservatives don’t like change. The present Pope is spearheading change, however mild, of what kind of morality the church chooses to emphasize.

Like conservative everywhere, the Vatican conspirators seem more anxious to intrude into other peoples’ bedrooms than they are to alleviate human misery. The Pope chooses to overlook or downplay same sex marriages? Out come the stilettos. The Pope talks about the poor, the malnourished, the miserable? Who cares?

You’re not alone if you notice a parallel between the Vatican’s conservatives and the Congressional conservatives — say those who keep holding and re-holding the same Benghazi hearings to smear Hillary Clinton while governmental services go down the toilet.

I don’t know what else to say about it — except that perhaps the Conservative wing of Congress ought to start dressing in long robes and red hats.

Cross-posted at The New York Crank

Speaker Squeaker

Preparation for working with Ted Yoho. From Ryan's Twitter feed via Huffington Post, July 2013.

I've been so consistently wrong in everything I've suggested about the Speakership—in spite of a remarkable, even bewildering range and variety of ideas—that I haven't even been able to catch up with it. Even as the news began to arrive that young Paul Ryan was negotiating his acceptance of a draft, and my wrong began to coalesce with everyone else's, and the word was that the Freedomists had caved to all of his most tyrannical demands ("And you all have to say I took it on so I could spend more time with my family!"), I had an analysis half written in my head explaining how the Freedomists had definitively lost their game and their only interest henceforth was to hold on to a little face.

I still think they accepted Ryan in particular, as opposed to some normal candidate in the form of an older person with a proper patronage network*, strictly because he was the only person in the House that seemed adequately famous in the TV sense, I mean other than Pelosi, who wouldn't have suited. But it is clear that he was the one to concede on the most important issues, the rule change to make firing the Speaker more difficult, and the everlastingly stupid Hastert Rule (the legacy of one of the worst Speakers before Boehner took the title, overfriendly wrestling coach and blackmail victim Dennis Hastert), requiring that no bill be submitted to the House unless a majority of Republicans support it, giving the Freedominators an effective veto over any and all legislation.

In other words, the F-Caucus appears to have engineered the reconstruction of the same system they just destroyed when they drove out Boehner, in which legislation is nearly impossible to pass. The only difference will be, on the plus side, that Ryan will be spending his weekends making pancakes and noodling catfish instead of playing golf and getting soused, and on the minus side, that he will lack Boehner's wiliness. They must have chased out Boehner merely to demonstrate that they were serious. "No more government, and we mean it!"

Although their victory will be hard to ascertain for sure, since they will continue whining and telling everybody they've been stabbed in the back.

Long ago, yesterday or so, I thought Ryan was showing some actual grit in insisting he wouldn't take the job unless he had the means of doing it, but alas, he's given in to the temptation of getting addressed as Mister Speaker, and that extra $50 K, and so that's that. I hope they've given him permission to raise the debt ceiling.

*Ryan has a traditional jumping-off leadership position, as chairman of the Ways and Means committee for the past 10 months, and a serious patronage network though his PAC,  Prosperity Action, distributing just shy of $188,000 to candidates so for in the 2016 election cycle, but of the 35 House candidates he has been feeding, only one, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, is included in Wikipedia's list of 38 members of the Freedom Caucus—no idea what that means, actually, but it seems the Freedomaniacs as a group are not accustomed as of yet to feeling the warmth of Ryan's eager love.

Ted Yoho (R-FL), via Dangduteroke, apparently dodging an angry eagle.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Bye Bye Biden

Image via The Daily Bash.

I found myself really conflicted about Biden, for reasons I could hardly even explain to myself, because they were pretty compound, if not really complex.

There was the on-the-one-hand human angle of why should a 73-year-old-man who's just lost his son have to put up with this kind of life, of campaigning and begging for money and telling lies up and down the country, and the on-the-other-hand human angle of remembering the awful story told by George Packer of Biden and his staffer Jeff Connaughton, in which it turns out that that Sweet Joey personality is something that can be turned off pretty easily, in favor of an alternative personality that's honestly not necessarily very nice.

Then there's the foreign affairs question where it seems to me clear that Biden knows more and understands better than anybody in the way of being a candidate, which seems bizarre on its face, given that the leading candidate actually served as Secretary of State for four years not long ago. But there's a reason why Biden got the Iraq portfolio. Is Hillary a hawk and Biden a person of peace? I don't think one can trust them by their utterances, but I have been very disturbed in this last week or two by a couple of things. First by the thing Clinton said in the debate:

Cooper said to the debaters, "You've all made a few people upset over your political careers. Which enemy are you most proud of?"

Hillary Clinton: Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. Probably the Republicans.

She hasn't noticed that President Obama has been working to put together some kind of different relationship with Iran, possibly the most important foreign-policy accomplishment of the presidency, for which being proud to be an enemy might not be the best way of expressing how we feel? or that there's more than one Iranian point of view, in Iran?

And then this no-fly zone idiocy, making Clinton look as stupid as her friend Senator McCain? Because there isn't enough murderous stupidity in Syria yet? Do they feel there's some kind of quota that isn't being met? Or a Guinness Book record to set? Times notes:

Luke Coffey, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said: “It makes for a nice tweet, it sounds good, it sounds like a policy idea. But when you get down into the details, you see why it’s not really going to work.”

Karl P. Mueller, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said that the Russian air campaign “changes things significantly,” and that “initiating armed combat with the Russian Air Force is a very big thing.”

“In the past, when there’s been talk about no-fly zones, usually what people have meant is we’re going to force the Syrian Air Force to stay on the ground,” [which might have been a good idea had it had any hope of working, which it didn't,] he said. “With the Russians in the country, that gets significantly more complicated, because now you’re talking about grounding or shooting down Russian aircraft, or intimidating them into not flying, or not attacking certain targets in certain areas.”

My only thought is that Clinton knows it's idiotic and is suggesting it only with the understanding that she has no power to make it so. That, like suspicions over her sudden adoption of a hostility to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in which I can't believe she really believes, makes her seem less stupid, but at the same more dishonest than I wanted to think of her as being. I'm really a little disheartened. I've been fighting the dishonest-Hillary meme for months, and she's not helping. I'm sure I'll be back on board by nomination time, but it may not be easy.

Meanwhile, it's just a terrible idea for the US to be messing around in the Syria situation in any way more aggressive than what the Obama administration is already doing (doing more to improve the lot of the refugees is another matter), but none of the presidential candidates is saying this in an effective way: Paul for the Republicans is featherheaded, O'Malley and Chafee are weak-voiced, and the most important opponent of over-militarizing, Sanders, sounds as if he's responding more or less automatically: it's not clear how he understands the situation, or even how much he knows about it. The most valuable thing Biden could have done as a candidate would have been to come out and explain it, in a way the public could understand.

Update: Last paragraph rewritten in the morning. Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names (where you can see the original text in Comments).

Yo Canada

I don't think Canada was meant to have a Thatcherite revolution; it took them an awfully long time to try one out, getting around to it only in 2006, and it was only scandal that got the "natural governing party of Canada", the Liberals, out in the first place—though a scandal that seems by US standards ludicrously mild-mannered, like Dr. Evil's extortion demand; the government was found to have improperly awarded $3.75 million in contracts to some Montréal ad agencies, almost half of which involved no actual work, or what Pentagon insiders commonly refer to as "a typical Tuesday". And in the end none of the party's leaders were implicated.

But in the meantime, Canadian voters just don't like criminality even of such a modest sort, and while the country as a whole is normally of the left, the left is always divided, among liberal Liberals, progressive New Democrats, and the ethnicist Bloc Québécois, and so the vile Stephen Harper slipped into office with 36% of the vote, and 124 of the parliament's 308 seats, which is allowed in Canada's parliamentary system as long as enough people in the opposition put up with it (because, say, they don't want another election).

Two elections later, in 2011, the Liberals pulled the kind of idiocy a David Brooks might have recommended, and named the mediocre US-based ideology-free No Labels journalist-professor Michael Ignatieff (aka Count Mikhail Georg'evič Ignat'ev) to lead the party, and the Tories finally assembled a majority (with a big 39.2% of the vote), leaving the NDP to form the official opposition, as the Liberals had been nearly annihilated under Ignatieff's management.

And the Harper government went on its merry way, not so much governing (except in the interests of the oil industry) as consolidating power, as The Guardian summarized it:

Some of these allegations have been proved. In the 11 years since he became leader of the country’s Conservatives, the party has been fined for breaking electoral rules, and various members of Team Harper have been caught misleading parliament, gagging civil servants, subverting parliamentary committees, gagging scientists, harassing the supreme court, gagging diplomats, lying to the public, concealing evidence of potential crime, spying on opponents, bullying and smearing. Harper personally has earned himself the rare rebuke of being found to be in contempt of his parliament....

The Polaris Institute thinktank reported in December 2012 that 45 oil lobbyists had been allowed to work inside Harper’s government and that during the previous four and a half years, officials and ministers had held some 2,700 meetings with the oil lobby. By contrast, the Climate Action Network had managed just six.

Having changed the flow of information into government, [Harper] then dramatically changed the direction outwards to his electorate. A new protocol required all government scientists to ask for clearance from the PMO before speaking publicly. As a result, important research has been buried, stalled or misrepresented, including an analysis of changes in snowfall, an inquiry into the loss of ozone over the Arctic, and research on the impact of a 2C rise in global temperature. Meanwhile, the government department that oversees the oil and gas industries increased its advertising budget from less than $250,000 in 2010 to a massive $40m only two years later.

The victory of the new Liberal party under the leadership of Justin Trudeau is a really good thing from that standpoint, in that the party at least accepts the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the possibility of doing something about it, though they take a pretty "moderate" (i.e. vague and cautious) approach and sort-of favor the nasty Keystone XL pipeline:

Although incoming Prime Minister Trudeau has often said he is supportive of Canadian resource extraction, his party’s platform contrasts sharply with that of outgoing Conservative premier Stephen Harper. A Liberal government in Canada is likely to result in greater engagement with the international community when it comes to talks aimed at curbing global warming, a sharp departure from the stance of Harper, who dismissed the Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme” and pulled Canada out of the global climate accord. (Al-Jazeera)

Unlike the NDP, the Liberal Party favors the concept of a Trans-Pacific Partnership, but aren't willing to make an endorsement of the agreement that was finalized a couple of weeks ago until they see what's in it: Trudeau went on the record with a statement then:

The Harper Conservatives have failed to be transparent through the entirety of the negotiations – especially in regards to what Canada is conceding in order to be accepted into this partnership.... If the Liberal Party of Canada earns the honour of forming a government after October 19^th, we will hold a full and open public debate in Parliament to ensure Canadians are consulted on this historic trade agreement.

I imagine that he will end up signing on, though; the Canadian left, such as it is, has a bit of a history of looking very uncertain at trade deals (such as NAFTA) but going along with them in the end.

The most exciting thing is the point where the Liberals were to the left of the NDP, in campaigning openly on a promise to unbalance the budget toward an economic stimulus, while the New Democrats refused to contemplate such a thing, which may have been their downfall:

The loonie fell initially against the U.S. dollar, a knee-jerk response to Trudeau’s pledge to run small deficits in order to spend extra on infrastructure. Those doubters only created a buying opportunity for anyone with a less jaundiced view of government’s role in the economy. By the start of the trading day in Toronto, the Canadian currency had rallied. The Liberal Party’s platform included some of the best contemporary thinking on how best to confront an era of economic stagnation. The majority Trudeau won on Oct. 19 will ensure those ideas become policy without delay. (Canadian Business)

It's Krugmanomics, coming to an economy near you!

By the way, did anybody notice that Krugman ("Something Not Rotten in Denmark", October 19) stole the topic of the Sanders-Clinton debate over Denmark and a headline from me? Just saying.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Trump to CNBC: Negotiate THIS!

Was it the art of the deal? Or the artlessness of CNBC? I dunno, but it appears to me that the CNBC folks have all the spine of a gummy bear on their latest televised debate arrangements.

It started out with CNBC offering to host a 3-hour debate among the Republican candidates.

No dice, said Trump. That would be too long. He blamed CNBC’s offer on capitalism. They were just asking for a three-hour debate to bring in commercials and make money, claimed Trump. Not that a guy who claims he's so rich it would amaze you — how many billion dollars does he say he’s worth these days? — not that has a right to complain about somebody else making money.

Ben Carson joined in the fracas. He wasn’t participating in any debate longer than two hours, either.

What’s the real reason? The only one that occurs to me is that the longer the debate, the longer Carson and Trump have to get both feet wedged firmly into their mouths. 

Keep it short, with a softball question at the beginning and a canned answer at the end and commercials in-between, allowing the candidates to get off little more than a few sound bites, and little time for followup questions.

CNBC could have said, “Sorry but this isn't just the Donny and Ben Show. It’s our TV station and we’re holding a three hour debate. We can do it with you. Or we can do it without you. In fact, we’ll have chairs for you, but they’ll look mighty empty if you don’t show up. 

“Oh, and betcha your rivals make some comments about why your chairs are empty. You know. ‘Afraid of the truth.’ ‘Couldn’t stand the heat and so he didn’t come to the kitchen.’ ‘If Donald Trump can’t stand up for a three hour debate, how’s he gonna stand up to Putin?’ That kind of stuff.”

Instead, CNBC caved. Why? I suspect a bunch of sweaty-palmed suits calculated the audience draw of The Donald and were afraid that if their audience numbers were potentially lower, their ad sales would be, too.

I think that if they had calculated further, they would have concluded that The Donald abhors no audience more than nature abhors a vacuum. And he would have come. After which, Carson would have followed.

Instead, there was this, as reported in the trade paper Adweek. (Hey, New York Times, Washington Post, etcetera. Wake the hell up! Why are the trades like Hollywood Reporter and Adweek beating you to the punch?)

The two candidates signed a letter to CNBC Washington bureau chief Matthew Cuddy, agreeing only to participate in a debate that runs two hours and includes opening and closing statements from all candidates.
In a statement Thursday, CNBC said “Our goal is to host the most substantive debate possible. Our practice in the past has been to forego opening statements to allow more time to address the critical issues that matter most to the American people. We started a dialogue yesterday with all of the campaigns involved and we will certainly take the candidates’ views on the format into consideration as we finalize the debate structure.”

Oh well. I guess that they don’t make most network officials any smarter than they make most Republicans.

Cross-posted at The New York Crank

Faith works miracles: Time travel edition

Or is he just another secret Muslim? (Via)

I was startled to hear on the radio this morning the story, from the Republican candidates' forum at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas this weekend, of how JEB! found the Lord, which was new to me, and somewhat surprising, given the well-known history of how he got married to a Catholic woman in 1974 and went to Mass with her for the next 21 years before finally being received into the Roman communion in 1995 (as he wrote in a piece for CNN on the eve of the Pope's visit to the US in September), because it sounds as if he was having a secret and, um, rather Baptist life the whole time:

Like the other candidates, Bush focused on his anti-abortion rights record and painted himself as a defender of religious liberty. He opened up about a born-again moment he experienced in the '80s, when he decided to read the Bible from end to end.

I got about halfway through Romans when I realized that Jesus was my savior," he said. (CNN via)

(love how the defense of religious liberty is directly associated with the liberty to interfere with other people's possibly irreligious liberty), or,

Former Governor Jeb Bush give a personal account of how reading the bible from cover to cover as an adult, changed his life. “I realized that Jesus Christ is my savior,” said Bush. “I can’t wait to get home for Sunday Funday and to pray with my wife.” (Leslie Chapman, Pop Goes the City)

Halfway through Romans is around page 2127 of 2355 in my cover-to-cover Harper Collins Study Bible edition—

5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (KJV)

So it wasn't a casual project. Nevertheless, even though he was nine tenths of the way through, he doesn't seem to have finished reading it, because last spring he was trying again:

Looking for a good summer read? Jeb Bush has some suggestions.

Visiting a bioscience company here  Thursday, the presumed presidential candidate was asked if he could recommend any good books. He named a few.

"I’m actually reading Paul’s letters right now, which I haven’t read in awhile," he said, referencing biblical passages.

"I’m not sure that fits your spiritual views, but it’s pretty good reading," he added. "The Bible, I read it when I go to church but I haven’t read it from cover to cover and I’m starting to do that. I recommend it. Particularly if you want to get your architecture straight, your life kind of centered, that would probably be the best book ever written." (WAPO, May 28)

He was reading the Good Book cover to cover as he had not done before and had arrived at the Epistles, but still felt he was starting.

Unless perhaps he was reading it backwards, back cover to front cover?

And the other question is, is it possible that, in some bizarre retroactionary phenomenon, even as Governor Bush has moved forward through the summer, his Bible experience has somehow migrated backwards in time, 30 years, and settled into an entirely different phase of his life?

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Bleaker Speaker

Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027). Michinaga was so powerful that he never even needed to assume the highest positions in the government hierarchy. As the head of the Fujiwara clan, it was simply understood that he was the most powerful person in the government. Michinaga first came to power in 995, thanks to the efforts of his sister, the retired empress Akiko, who was perhaps the most powerful women in the Heian era, able to force the emperor to appoint her brother to a position of power. (Via Pennsylvania State University)

So the Congresscritters are trooping back into Washington, no doubt refreshed by their Indigenous Peoples Day holiday and the delightful crispness of the autumn weather and Senator Ted Cruz appearing on the Mr. Chuck Todd Show to inform the public that he declines to say whether Representative Ryan is a True Scotsman Conservative or not:

CHUCK TODD:

Alright. I wanna do two more things about this Washington. Is Paul Ryan a true conservative?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Oh, listen. I-- I-- I like Paul Ryan. He's a friend of mine. This is obviously a question that is wrapped up in the Speaker of the House-- deliberations. I have said consistently I'm gonna stay outta that....

So at a rally in Iowa last week (flanked by Charles Grassley and Steve King) Senator Cruz consistently demonstrated his intention of staying out of that by naming his own preferred candidate:

“I think the next speaker should be Mark Levin,” Cruz said, naming the conservative talk radio host who worked in the Reagan’s administration and was the chief of staff for former Attorney General Edwin Meese. (Sioux City Journal)

The National Review doesn't think this was a joke—

Don’t look for Cruz to devote significant time to drafting Levin — “it was just an off-the-cuff remark at a campaign event,” one campaign aide tells National Review — but the comment follows the logic of Cruz’s campaign through the summer, especially as he has worked to ensure a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses. For one thing, Levin has a lot of fans among the kind of highly-motivated conservatives most likely to turn out on a January day and spend hours caucusing

—but Chucky does.

CHUCK TODD:

[Radio fascist] Mark Levin who you joked should be-- you said, "I want Mark Levin as speaker. He"--

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Mark Levin is definitely a true conservative.

But you can say that because Levin isn't really running for Speaker? Whereas Ryan, in contrast, isn't running for Speaker either? Or um what exactly?

Levin (a genuine nut who calls for the abolition of Social Security, the FDA, the FAA, and Medicare) has consistently demonstrated that he is not gonna stay out of that, by personally ordering Republican House members not to vote for Kevin McCarthy and denouncing Ryan as an "amnesty advocate along with his buddy" [Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.]. I don't know how much power Levin has to control the 40 lunatics of the House Freedom Caucus, as opposed to Senator Cruz, who actually has regular meetings with the chamber's most conservative members, planning strategy, and is sometimes thought to run the Freedom Caucus altogether. But the plot is thickening, or sickening, depending on your point of view.

What exactly is going to happen with the Speakership?

My own favorite outcome, which I have sort of been advocating in a semi-snarky way for almost three years, starts out from the premise that the Democrats have to nominate a Speaker candidate as well as the Republicans, so they'll have somebody to vote for as a caucus: Pelosi should designate a Republican for the job this year, some good old boy with some real seniority who's "conservative" in the traditional sense but understands politics well enough to recognize that it runs on pork and pandering for downhome votes instead of international energy and banking campaign contributions. My candidate, for instance, has been Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a corrupt old skunk no doubt but known for being willing to defy the Tea Party, but I am sure there are other possibilities. Such a character might actually win the Speakership with a combination of votes from Republican members sick of being terrorized by the Freedom Caucus and Democrats holding their noses under Pelosi's orders, and might be able to run the House as the leader of a coalition, the kind of Caucus of Government that BooMan has been suggesting recently, for the rest of the Congress's term to 2017, getting the damn appropriations passed and the minimum work done without shutdowns or tantrums.

Another possibility, proposed by BooMan commenter Curtadams a couple of weeks ago, is that Boehner could stay speaker for the rest of the term. The basic threat used by the Freedom Caucus to paralyze him was that they would get him fired, and now that he's resigned and they can't agree on anybody to replace him...

"You can't fire me, I already quit!"

"But you're still on the job!"

"That's not my fault!"

Indeed, he might well have done it on purpose. Worthy of some 12th-century Japanese emperor, getting a grip on absolute power by retiring, but very Boehner-like (if he was one of the mutant X-Men his superpower would be hyperpassive aggression). Not as good an outcome as the Caucus of Government, but at least the government would limp along.

But I'm starting to wonder if the possibility of a Speaker Ted Cruz, which was floating around long before the present emergency, if mostly as snark, is starting to turn real, and signaled in some way by today's peculiar Meet the Press exercise, in which Cruz spent a lot more time talking about the House (and to a lesser extent Senate) leadership issue than he did about his own presidential campaign.

It's possible that Cruz could win the Republican nomination to the presidency, but never the office itself, if only because of his repellent personality, like that of an overheated lizard, and perhaps the old joke about making him non-member Speaker of the House appeals to him, as a way to real, prime ministerial, power. God I hope not. Stay tuned.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

We Don't Have a Gun Problem; We Have a Toddler Problem

As Even The Liberal Washington Post recognizes:

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.

But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I've found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself....

The stories go on and on like this: Roughly once a week this year, on average, a small child has found a gun, pointed it at himself or someone else, and pulled the trigger....

These numbers are probably an undercount. There are likely instances of toddlers shooting people that result in minor injuries and no media coverage. And there are probably many more cases where a little kid inadvertently shoots a gun and doesn't hit anyone, resulting in little more than a scared kid and (hopefully) chastened parents.

While liberals use these incidents as an excuse to grab our guns, clearly the real culprit is a failure to detect and treat toddlers. Instead of demonizing guns in these incidents, we need a greater focus on toddlers.

Sadly, after this promising start, the WaPo ignores the logical conclusion and reverts to its liberal gun-grabbing ways:

But as Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, argues, many incidents like this are preventable. In a study of accidental shootings by children of all ages (not just toddlers), they estimate that "more than two-thirds of these tragedies could be avoided if gun owners stored their guns responsibly and prevented children from accessing them."

There are policy and technical responses to preventable childhood gun deaths as well. States and localities could require guns to be locked up at home, a policy supported by 67 percent of Americans. Various types of smart gun technology, which prevent anyone other than their owners from firing a given gun, exist as well. But gun lock requirements and smart guns have been vehemently opposed by the National Rifle Association and its allies.

Typical.

Liberals like the WaPo deliberately ignore the obvious solution to this problem. Instead of exposing our toddlers to the hellish peril of gun-free zones, we need to make sure every kid in daycare is packing heat. Because after all, the only thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.

I know a dead parrot when I see one

Hi, folks! Once again here we are to change the kitty litter and water the philodendron while Steve is out of town.

Jennifer Rubin wants you not to count out JEB! yet, at least in New Hampshire:

His main challengers in New Hampshire — Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have $2.6 million and $1.4 million cash on hand respectively, and as of now in the national RealClearPolitics average are below the 2.5 percent threshold for the next debate.

That's his main challengers for fifth place? I believe he has that just about sewn up.

I think it should be clear by now that JEB!'s challenge in New Hampshire is fourth place, for the loyalty of the 30% or so of Republican voters who are, as David Brooks would say, "interested in governing". (I don't count Cruz and Paul supporters in that group, though I suppose they are interested in exercising power, not the same thing.) More like 20% for the national party. And basically one rival, Marco Rubio, who has roughly the same amount of cash on hand as Bush does (a bit more if you count money reserved for the general election, a bit less if you don't).

In many ways, Bush right now is where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was in 2008 — but with $100 million in a super PAC. In 2008, McCain’s campaign blew its money, and McCain, with lowered expectations, survived Iowa and went to New Hampshire to win over voters with his ubiquitous town hall appearances.

At no point in 2007-08, though, was anybody like Trump, Carson, or Fiorina even in contention; McCain was running against conventional Republicans like Rodolfo Giuliani, Fred Thomson, and Willard Mitt Romney, rarely below third place and never below 10%. And McCain had some kind of insurgent momentum, as somebody who clearly thought the Republican incumbent (George W) was an idiot and a dick. And the press adored him.

This year supporters of Trump, Carson, and Fiorina, people whose thinking seems totally disconnected from government as we know it, the Beavis and Butt-Head caucus, are in the majority of the party voters, Bush has been under 10% for two solid months (and in fifth place for three weeks) at this point, and the only things anybody knows about him are that he doesn't seem to hate immigrants or the Common Core and he's George W's brother. (And if Bush has the $100-million superPAC, Rubio is quietly gathering billionaires with his plan to eliminate taxes on investment income because the current system isn't regressive enough.)

McCain Gallup favorability 2000–early 2008 hit a brief low point in July 2007, but by this point in the cycle was well on his way to recovery, and always in unambiguously positive territory.

JEB! aggregate favorability since February 2013, always underwater and getting worse. Where Rubio has consistently had the highest favorability ratings of any Republican throughout (can't find a chart).

Ms. Rubin, your candidate has kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. He is an ex-candidate.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names. Update: While I wasn't looking, Gary Legum at Salon came up with the dead parrot theme ahead of me, and BooMan disagrees, with some solid reasons. But they haven't got Jennifer!

BACK IN A WEEK

I'm out of here for a while -- I'll be traveling for the next week. (Oh, drat, I'll miss Hillary's Benghazi testimony!) But there'll be guest bloggers, so stop by. I'll return to posting on Sunday, October 25.

DONALD TRUMP ACKNOWLEDGES OBJECTIVE REALITY, INFURIATES FREEPERS

We live in a society where this is headline news:

Donald Trump: 9/11 happened on George W. Bush's watch

Really -- a simple statement of objective fact, and it gets a feature story at CNN:

Donald Trump implied Friday that former President George W. Bush could share some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, since he was in office at the time.

"When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time," Trump said Friday morning on Bloomberg TV.

Bloomberg anchor Stephanie Ruhle interjected, "Hold on, you can't blame George Bush for that," before Trump stood by his comments.

"He was president, OK? ... Blame him, or don't blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his rein," Trump said.

At Free Republic, where there's a large amount of Trump support (though probably more support for Ted Cruz, and little if any support for W's brother Jeb), most commenters regard these as fighting words:

Oh, Mr. Trunp - don’t go there!

****

911 happened after 8 years of Clinton ignoring cues that a Republican president would not ignore.
Bush had to do clean-up detail.

****

"The World Trade Center came down during his reign..."
This is not the mark of a Constitutional Conservative.

(Yes, that's right -- state the indisputable fact that a terrible event happened during the presidency of a Republican, and you're not only a bad conservative, you're acting contrary to the Constitution.)

Misleading headline?

****

More gotcha politics by the MSM. Don’t fall for it.

****

On 9/11, GWB had barely been able to finish his Cabinet appointments, what with Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords defecting and giving the Dems 50% of the control of the Senate. Trump shoots from the lip and sometimes makes a real mess of it.

(All the top members of Bush's national security team were already in place by 9/11, and all had previous executive-branch experience, but never mind.)

That’s a cheap shot. The planning for that attack took place during the watch of Trumps friend Bill Clinton.

****

It wasn’t a reign. It was Clinton’s fault.

****

yes ,Bill Clinton made it possible

****

Trump seems to refuse to acknowledge his friend Bill Clinton had chances to have bin Laden handed over to him and he refused.

****

The 9-11 plot began before Bush was in office. The Clinton administration issued most or or all of the entry visas used by the Muslim terrorists.

****

Let’s not forget Trump’s friend Bill Clinton refused to interact with the Bush transition team for more than a month because Al Gore contested the election until mid-December 2000.

****

More gotcha politics by the MSM. Don’t fall for it.

****

He could be smart enough not to respond when asked gotcha questions. It’s not like he’s a newbie when it comes to the media.

As the discussion continues, there's somewhat more blame aimed at Bush -- for being too cozy with the Saudis, for mismanaging the war.

Oh, and for not being a hard-liner on immigration, because everything, for the Freepers, comes back to immigration:

With George W Bush’s refusal to enforce immigration laws, what else can you call it (when a “ruler” chooses laws he wants to enforce)?

****

I would add that also in the wake of 9/11, W did nothing to secure our southern border despite evidence that Muslims were entering via Texas, AZ, and NM. Also, no drilling in ANWAR kept us dependent on the Muslim cabal for energy, thereby indirectly funding their terrorist activities.

***

By the way, I don’t blame W at all for 9/11. I do blame him heavily for being a reconquista supporter....

****

911 occurred on Bush's watch. Tens of millions entered our country illegally during Bush's watch, during war time while he aided and abetted them, just like his brother is doing now. He does not get a pass on his past.

****

We figured by 9/12 the borders would be secured. Nope! We got zip, nothing.

And what happened in the years following? George Bush aided and abetted tens of millions to enter the U.S. while he celebrated Cinco De Mayo up in the White House.

Be very aware of anyone attempting to give this guy a pass.

So there you have it -- Trump violates the Constitution because he says 9/11 happened after George W. Bush's presidential inauguration, but Bush deserves criticism on 9/11 because his White House celebrated a holiday associated with Mexico.

******

UPDATE:

How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us safe.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 16, 2015

I can't even....

PEGGY NOONAN: YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS OBAMA'S FAULT? THE RISE OF DONALD TRUMP.

Peggy Noonan looks at Donald Trump's continued dominance of the Republican presidential race and finds a culprit: Barack Obama.

The only thing I feel certain of is how we got here. There are many reasons we’re at this moment, but the essential political one is this: Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He was a literal unknown, an obscure former state legislator who hadn’t completed his single term as U.S. senator, but he was charismatic, canny, compelling. He came from nowhere and won it all twice. All previously prevailing standards, all usual expectations, were thrown out the window.

Oh, right -- prior to Obama, we never elected a president who was unknown and obscure (Carter), or inexperienced (Lincoln), or youthfully charismatic (Kennedy, Clinton), did we?

But, of course, Trump wasn't unknown or obscure before he entered this race. He didn't come from nowhere. He's decades older than Obama was when he first ran, he's white rather than black, he hasn't mastered the issues in the way Obama had by 2008 (nor has he shown any interest in mastering them) -- and, where Obama was dignified and mostly soft-spoken, Trump is a trash-talking loudmouth and a buffoon. But other than that they're two peas in a pod, right, Peggy?

Who really lowered the bar? I'd say it was the party that not only reveres an ex-actor and insult comic named Ronald Reagan but seriously considered him as a possible presidential candidate when he'd been in elective office less than two years. I'd say it's the party that put George W. Bush and Dan Quayle on two tickets each. I'd say it's the party that gave respectful consideration to presidential aspirants such as Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain. And I say it's the party that made Sarah Palin its vice presidential candidate, then made her a superstar.

If the bar's low, Peggy, your party's voters are the reason.

YOU CAN GRIFT AND RUN FOR PRESIDENT AT THE SAME TIME

This seems to have a lot of people puzzled:

Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson has put his public campaign events on hold for two more weeks to go on book tour for his new tome “A More Perfect Union” and catch up on fundraising events....

The campaign says the next time they will appear publicly with Carson will be the day of the next GOP debate on Oct. 28. His last public campaign event was Oct. 2.

Carson's campaign staff will not travel with him while on tour, noting that it’s better to stay off the trail for fear of being accused of using campaign assets to sell books.

“It’s a question of co-mingling from the corporate standpoint to the Federal Election Commission standpoint so it’s just better to avoid any bad appearance,” spokesman Doug Watts told ABC News.

At RedState, Leon Wolf writes:

Now it becomes much clearer -- the reason Carson hasn’t even cared to study the issues is because he’s not even seriously running for President. He’s merely using his Presidential campaign as a vehicle to sell more books.

On the left, Ed Kilgore writes:

If New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina were on the book tour itinerary, you might figure the “book tour” is just a campaign swing under another name, with the twist that Carson’s book profits are going into his own pocket rather than the campaign’s. It’s also possible Carson’s handlers think he’s a bit too “hot” in his public utterances of late, and want to get him out of the spotlight....

However you slice it, this development is going to remind the chattering classes of 2012 candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, who were frequently accused of using their campaigns to sell books and videos and so forth.

Well, one of the sites promoting Carson's book tells us he made six appearances last weekend -- in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Check the GOP primary schedule and you see that South Carolina votes early, at the end of February, and Georgia and Tennessee are among the large number of mostly Southern states voting a few days later, on March 1. Go here and you see that Carson has a couple dozen events lined up between October 18 and November 5 -- several in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (all of which vote the first week in March), followed by four events in Iowa and thirteen in the critical state of Florida.

So, yeah, Carson is campaigning by not campaigning.

Kilgore adds:

Indeed, most candidates release their “campaign books” either before or early in their candidacies, as appetizers, not ends in themselves.

Yes, but most books by presidential candidates don't actually sell. Carson's books do. Publishers Weekly says his book One Nation was the 12th-biggest adult nonfiction book of last year, outselling the likes of Amy Poehler's Yes, Please and Cheryl Strayed's Wild. The one he's flogging now is at #10 on USA Today's bestseller list, ahead of current books by Lee Child and John Grisham, and just behind the new George R.R. Martin book.

I assume that Carson thinks these events (rather than traditional campaigning) will make him money and build his buzz. As Hot Air's Allahpundit notes,

He’s already been off the trail for the past 13 days. And since then, he’s had two of his best national polls to date. CBS had him above 20 percent, within single digits of Trump, in a survey conducted last week and Fox News had him just a point behind the frontrunner in their new one a few days ago, a poll brimming with data favorable to Carson. How’s he managing that without pressing the flesh in the early states?

Well, maybe this is part of how he's doing it. He is pressing the flesh -- just not at formally designated campaign events. He drew more than a thousand people to a Knoxville book signing on Sunday. And hey, this is something he can do, unlike talking intelligently about the issues. So why not?

THE PRESS IS ALL TOO WILLING TO HELP TRUMP FLUSH HIS OWN NASTINESS DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE

So you're a candidate who's gotten in a bit of hot water because of offensive statements you've made about women. You need to soften your image -- and your wife shuns the spotlight. But your daughter is willing to sugar-coat the story of your dealings with women. But will the press cooperate? If you spoon-feed a soft story to the media about your daughter's support for you (and prominent place in your corporate empire), will the press run it pretty much the way you want it run?

Of course. The press is happy to oblige.

On the campaign, Ivanka Trump, who grew up playing in her father’s office, is his most influential adviser, his de facto first lady in waiting and his character foil: the cautious, measured power behind the striving, showy candidate. She was the first person Trump mentioned by name when Sean Hannity asked in August, “Is there anyone close to you that you count on most?” and the member of his inner circle whom he consulted during the Megyn Kelly imbroglio. And when Trump announced his candidacy in June, it was Ivanka who introduced her father, while his wife, the former Melania Knauss -- a less public person save for her sometimes racy work as a fashion model -- stood in the background. As the crowd cheered, the candidate’s daughter flashed a telegenic style that is more polished than her father’s blend of Archie Bunker and Jay Gatsby and far more self-assured. She is the softer, more refined side of the Trump brand and an antidote to the candidate’s abrasiveness.

This article may not read exactly as if it were dictated by minions in Trump's own offices -- to a large extent, Ivanka comes off as far more mature than her father. But if Trump is trying to soften his image as a sexist, a story depicting Ivanka as strong, capable, and trusted by her father is very likely to undercut the sexism narrative for a lot of wary female voters.

And this is the second Ivanka story at Politico in two days. (The first is here.) There's also an story at CNN in which Ivanka gets out all the talking points:

Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, dismissed the criticism that her father has faced over controversial comments he's made about women and their looks on Wednesday.

The executive vice president at the Trump Organization said she believes those controversies were driven by "sensationalism" and "orchestrated largely by the media."

"Look, my father is very blunt. He's very direct. He is not gender specific in his criticism of people, and people that he doesn't particularly like or people that he does like but thinks they're wrong on a particular issue," she said in an interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow. "So I don't think that he's gender-targeted at all. Like I said, I wouldn't be the person I am today, I wouldn't be a high-level executive within his organization if he felt that way."

... His daughter added that her dad will be "amazing" and "incredible for women in this country."

Meanwhile, over at Yahoo News, Lisa Belkin gives us this bit of spoon-fed Trump propaganda:

What’s up with Donald Trump and ‘the women’? Not what you might think.

Donald Trump grinned out from the cover of Savvy Woman magazine in November of 1989 flanked by three women wearing big shoulder pads, high collars and plenty of kohl eyeliner.

“Trump’s Top Women,” the headline read. And the subhead: “Surprise! Mr. Macho’s Inner Circle Isn’t An All-Boys’ Club.”

Surprise indeed.

... While he’s spent his whole career saying things that are arguably sexist, like “You wouldn’t have your job if you weren’t beautiful,” and things that are seemingly patronizing, like “I cherish women,” and “I will be phenomenal to the women,” Trump has consistently hired women for positions of real power in his organization and been darned proud of doing so.

As he told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week”: “I’ve had such an amazing relationship with women in business. They are amazing executives. They are killers.”

And on the subject of Trump's boorishness in general, check out the introduction to this NBC Nightly News segment, and also the chat between interviewer Katy Tur and anchorman Lester Holt at the end of the segment:



In his introduction to the piece, Holt says:

HOLT: ... what might get the most attention is the noticeably different tone from Trump today that could signal a shift in strategy for his campaign going forward.

And at the end:

TUR: ... gosh, what a different Donald Trump! Calmer, less combative -- dare I say it, almost like a politician.

HOLT: Well, certainly more reflective.

In the interview, Trump is more soft-spoken, but he's basically Trump -- criticizing Hillary Clinton's Cabinet tenure and calling Bernie Sanders a loser without using the word "loser." But he clearly wants to reposition himself as a mellow, reflective guy -- and NBC is right there to help him do that. Yes, Holt says it's strategic, and Tur says it's what an ordinary politician does -- but Tur's "gosh" says it all: She didn't think he had this in him. She's impressed.

Trump is trying to hold his angry base while expanding his reach -- and the press is right there with him, making sure he has every opportunity to execute his new strategy. Because that's what our political press does.

MAYBE IF WE HAD SINGLE PAYER THERE'D HAVE BEEN NO "AUNTIE CHRIST"

This follow-up story didn't get nearly the attention that the original story received:

The aunt who sued her nephew for damages said that she was forced to do so by Connecticut law when the insurance company only wanted to pay her one dollar.

Jennifer Connell sued her nephew after the excited 8-year-old's hug allegedly caused her to fall and break her wrist, lost her case on Tuesday....

The law firm of Jainchill and Beckert released a statement on behalf of Jennifer Connell:

From the start, this was a case was about one thing: getting medical bills paid by homeowner’s insurance. Our client was never looking for money from her nephew or his family. It was about the insurance industry and being forced to sue to get medical bills paid. She suffered a horrific injury. She had two surgeries and is potentially facing a third. Prior to the trial, the insurance company offered her one dollar. Unfortunately, due to Connecticut law, the homeowner’s insurance company could not be identified as the defendant.

When the story broke, Connell was called the #AuntFromHell and "the Auntie Christ." But she was suing the boy just because she was prevented by law from suing the boy's father's insurance company -- and it's quite possible that she was suing the father's insurance company because whatever insurance she may have wouldn't cover necessary medical treatment, as The Guardian notes:

Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specialises in insurance law ... told the Guardian this kind of suit is a common occurrence when someone finds themselves with medical bills not covered by medical insurance, who might be able to be covered under homeowners insurance if liability could be proved....

Legal experts told the Guardian that there may be more to the story than a simple act of material vindictiveness if in fact Connell’s insurance didn’t cover her medical bills, and there was a chance that they might be covered under her nephew’s family’s homeowners insurance.

So you're saying that maybe in a different system this wouldn't turn into a duel between huge for-profit insurance ompanies fighting not to pay for necessary medical care? Maybe, as Bernie Sanders might say, this would have been handled better in Denmark?

Even before Connell's lawyers issued their statement, a personal injury attorney named Eric Turkewitz argued, convincingly, that Connell
was being unfairly maligned:

... suing relatives (or close friends) happens all the time, particularly in auto collisions. Who, after all, are you most likely to be with at the time of a collision? A close friend or relative. Unless you drive a taxi, you don’t often have strangers in your car.

And it’s the same with your home, in that the most likely visitors inside are family and friends.

When I first saw the aunt-nephew story, my first thought was that homeowner’s insurance would cover the incident if there was liability, and that this was similar to suing a relative over a car crash.

And on the subject of Connell's much-mocked complaints, blogger Mark Draughn is right:

Jack Marshall, who should know better, has been particularly scathing about some parts of this:

The horrific actions of the 8-year-old has turned her life into a living hell, she told the jury. “I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate,” she said. Believe me, I know what a social handicap that can be.

Yeah, when you see “hors d’oeuvre” written out, it’s easy to make fun of, but here’s the thing: I can hold an hors d’oeuvre plate. Holding a plate with small bits of food isn’t a difficult feat of strength. But the point of her testimony is that she still can’t hold a plate steady even though the injury has had four years to heal. This isn’t just a temporary problem. It’s a permanent debilitating injury.

The extent of the injury is further indicated by another point that people are making fun of:

She changed her mind, she says, because her life was “turned upside down as a result of the injury.” “I live in Manhattan in a third-floor walk-up so it has been very difficult,” she said. “And we all know how crowded it is in Manhattan.”

It certainly is hard to walk up three flights of stairs on one’s hands.

As a 51-year-old guy with bad knees, I say fuck that ableist bullshit. Did you ever notice there are railings in most stairwells? Did you ever wonder why they’re there? It’s because some of us need to hold on with our hands to steady ourselves on the stairs, especially when carrying something that throws us off balance. That’s got to be a lot harder when your wrist is weakened by injury.

As a 56-year-old guy with bad knees, I'll second that. And as someone who lived in a succession of fifth-floor walk-ups for eight years in my twenties (my knees weren't so great then, either), I'll add that when you live in a walk-up, you carry your own weighty items up and down the stairs -- groceries, garbage, luggage, and so on. Carry, as in with your hands. And wrists.

I'm not an absolute opponent of Internet shaming, but this was uncalled for. And if we had a different, less greedy system -- one that actually was socialist as right-wingers think the current system is -- maybe the whole thing would have been unnecessary.

(Links via Allahpundit and Popehat, who almost certainly wouldn't agree with my conclusions.)