Dave Budge .com
“Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance.” — H.L. Mencken

I’ve been toying with the idea, for several years now, of selling delicious Italian Beef sandwiches from a vending cart during the summer. The problem is that the cost associated with complying with health codes are staggering for such a modest enterprise. Unlike, say, a hot dog cart, the city (and state) require that all food must be prepared in a commercial kitchen - and I’ve had difficulty finding one the will lease me the small amount of time I would need to bake the roasts and slice the meat. And, of course, they likely wouldn;t let me do it in my home even if I brought my kitchen up to commercial standards due to zoning restrictions.

Well, at least I know now that the rest of the world is nuts too. And if I’m willing to eat emulsified meat wrapped in bacon who has the right to stop me? It’s a world gone mad.

Thanks to all of you who gave us mentions and links. The response has been terrific and we’ve had several people contact us offing various kinds of help. There’s still much to do with the site but here are a few things that will be done this week:

• A PayPal “Donate” button.
• A list of things we need volunteers to do on the “Get Involved” page.
• Finish the “About Us” page to help business understand what role they can play.

Jeff Mangan of MOTTO and Montana Business has been kind enough to create a “link to” banner badge complete with code.

You can get the code here and we would love all of you to give us the space if you have room.

Thanks again for all of your help. We need lots of volunteers for the picnic on June 15 and I’ll have the list up in a few days. Keep checking back.

Oh, BTW, the site now has a list subscribe link on the sidebar. We would love for all of you to give us your email addresses so we can keep you up to date. Go. Do.

I’ve been involved with a Missoula group, Welcome Home Montana, that is engaged in developing an extended support system for Vets returning home from active duty.   It’s a worthwhile endeavor and it would be nice if  the MTBlogspucha would give this organization some linkage.

The website is still pretty sparse but we’re hoping to recruit a significant number of businesses that will join the cause. If you know anyone who could help make these folks’ life a bit easier for the sacrifices they’ve made, give ‘em a shout.

Yes… yes, I’m still alive but have been in such a state of funk that blogging - especially about woefully pathetic field of national contestants - seems like a diversion that I haven’t had much use for. I’ll give credit to those that have been stalwart in keeping people honest but that doesn’t alleviate the ignorance that is so pervasive when it comes to the direction of the country. I simply at a loss for words.

But taxes were due last Tuesday and I have decided that many people would rather die than continue to feed the monster for things that have so little relevance to their lives. Combine that with the fact that we’ve entered into an era where new bogymen are divined simply to keep everyone scared and misinformed and one has to realize that the founders had it right that the government in general and politicians in particular are indeed to be feared.

I was listening to my two least favorite senators, Durbin and Schumer, on FNS this morning and damn near swallowed my snuff when I heard Durbin respond to Chris Wallace’s question about Obama not rasing taxes on the middle class. Wallace pointed out that 50% of households with income under $50,000 reported capital gains income in 2007 and wondered how, exactly, an increase in capital gains tax rates wouldn’t be a middle-class tax increase. Durbin, on que, prattled on about the Bush administration’s poor economic performance while avoiding the question all together. The fact is that almost no one in congress has a friggin’ clue about tax policy or, if they do, they think keeping the populous worked up in a froth about greedy SOBs putting the screws to working stiffs consciously developed at some clandestine meeting of heads of a capitalists forum quite like the Trilateralist Commission has profit.

Of course the discussion about NAFTA is equally insane. The two Dem contenders want us to believe that NAFTA is just evil. But the fact is the combined U.S. trade deficit with our NAFTA partners was just under $72 billion which, for anyone who knows bupkis about the economy, equals less than 1/2 of 1% of the U.S. GDP ($14.6 Trillion for those of you who don’t know.) Add that to the fact that in 2007 we imported about $90 billion in oil alone (not even including natural gas) from Mexico and Canada out of total imports of $160 Billion we, excluding energy, are a net exporter to the two countries. And for the life of me I can’t figure out where the “jobs” went if what we’re getting from them what we refuse to increase in our domestic production. It’s all crap and it’s all either demonstrable ignorance or an outright lie.

These candidates are indeed echoing Herbert Hoover - well at least as far as the demagogy re: NAFTA is concerned - and the striking thing is, if Americans are wont to have less illegal immigration from from Mexico we need to develop a system where their primary exports aren’t either humans or oil. So, just like the the run-up to the depression, we’re looking at increased taxes on capital and a modern inclination to the Smoot-Hawley Act. It gives me heartburn.

But that’s why I’m in a funk over all of this. It’s just an attempt to keep us all, as Don Luskin would say, poor and stupid.

The current political air seems to make the country inclined to return to New Deal policies. Just a reminder of what some of these policies it seems appropriate to point to Jim Powel author of FDR’s Follies.

 

• FDR tripled federal taxes from 1933 to 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, holding company taxes, everything went up.
• FDR discouraged private investment with his frequent tax hikes (1933, 1934, 1935, 1936) and with his denunciations of investors and employers (”economic royalists”).
• FDR channeled government spending and loan programs AWAY from the poorest people (who lived in the South), thereby undermining claims that the New Deal was compassionate. The bulk of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political “swing” states in the west and east, where previous election returns had been close. From FDR’s standpoint as an incumbent, there wasn’t any point giving a lot of money to the South, even though it was the poorest region, since voters there were already solidly Democratic.
• FDR forced food prices, as well as the prices of manufactured goods and services, above market levels and outlawed discounting. People were fined and even jailed for cutting prices during the New Deal. Such policies penalized over 100 million American consumers and discouraged buying.
• FDR promoted the large-scale destruction of food when millions were hungry, by paying farmers to plow under some 10 million acres of crops and slaughter and discard some 6 million farm animals. This program enriched big farmers who had more food to destroy than small farmers. Black tenant farmers, who depended on work, were devastated.
• FDR broke up the strongest banks, with the lowest failure rate, namely big city banks like J.P. Morgan that diversified by engaging in both investment banking and commercial banking. FDR didn’t do anything about unit banking laws that accounted for 90% of bank failures by preventing small banks from diversifying with branches. Federal deposit insurance failed to stop bank failures – it transferred the cost of bank failures from bank shareholders and depositors to taxpayers.
• FDR promoted government monopolies, the biggest of which was the Tennessee Valley Authority, subsidized by the 98% of American taxpayers who didn’t live in the Tennessee Valley and exempt from state and federal taxes and regulations. Despite such monopoly power, income in the TVA southern states lagged income in the non-TVA southern states (like Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia) by widening margins, and the TVA flooded more land than it saved!
• Touted as a champion of democracy, FDR amassed vast arbitrary power, and even though the Democratic party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, FDR issued 3,728 executive orders – more than all his successors combined.
• From the beginning to the end, the New Deal was an attack on economic liberty, telling businesses how much they could produce, how much they had to pay people, how much they could charge, making it illegal to sell certain products (like milk) across state lines, suspending the rights of creditors, breaking up lawful businesses, dispossessing thousands of people to make way for government TVA dams and other projects, denying workers the right to choose whether to join a union, seizing the gold of peaceful citizens, using the tax code to punish some people and favor others, on and on.

The upshot? The Great Depression lasted roughly seven years longer than it should have.

One of the problems I have in arguing any point is that I’ve come to the conclusion that any answer can be, and likely is, wrong to some degree. My father has long said that anyone who speaks in terms of certainty obviously hasn’t studied the problem well enough. More importantly, I suppose, is that in the age where everyone can express one’s opinion in cyber-published prose, there is added a certain amount of credibility to opinions simply because they have been written rather than barked off in a liquor soaked debate at the bar. As in so many accusations about me, it is true that simply because one has the temperament to write doesn’t mean the writer actually knows what he is talking about.

But as we further ourselves down this road of hyper-communication we have struck on to a new shorthand in language (as in SIWMSTIHMBKMOA - so impressed with myself that I’ve hurt my back kissing my own ass - or other obnoxious abbreviations like ROTFLMAO.) Never underestimate American’s ability to promote the banal. The concept has, too, been taken to the extreme in promoting “the conventional wisdom.” For example, I heard Sean Hannity say - with no doubt in his voice - that a reduction in income tax rates always results in higher revenues. Umm, what if we make the tax rate zero, dumbass? Or the current prattling about “change” as in “change is desirable. Well, most change is rather unavoidable and not all of it is desirable.

So, I was (as usual) impressed with Hitch today when he wrote about the current political themes:

Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together.

Not that I have the intellectual chops to critique Hitch but I think he left out “children.”

But he gets better:

Fishing exclusively from this tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions, it ought to be possible to drive all thinking people away from the arena and leave matters in the gnarled but capable hands of the professional wordsmiths and manipulators. In the new jargon, certain intelligible ideas would become inexpressible. (How could one state, for example, the famous Burkean principle that many sorts of change ought to be regarded with skepticism?) In a rather poor trade-off for this veto on complexity, many views that are expressible (and “We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America” would be really quite a long sentence in the latest junk language) will, in turn, be entirely and indeed almost beautifully unintelligible.

Indeed. But what I found most noteworthy was this:

It’s more that the prevailing drivel assumes that every adult in the country is a completely illiterate jerk who would rather feel than think and who must furthermore be assumed, for a special season every four years, to imagine that everyone else “in America” or in “this country” is unemployed or starving or sleeping under a bridge. The next assumption made by the drivel is that only a new president (or perhaps a sitting president who is somehow eager to run against Washington and everything else in his home town) can possibly cure all these ills. The non sequitur is breathtaking.

I hear the pitter-patter of Hitch’s libertarian within.

I recommend you read it. He has more to say and better than I ever will.

I recall that my first introduction to existentialism was in reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea at the age of 19. I was on a 9 month tour of Europe at the time (my first and last trip there) and I found a wonderful little book store in Dublin where I spotted the strangely seductive title peering out at me in the philosophy section that begged to be purchased. As a young impressionable socialist I was indeed in search of meaning in life. The foreign sights, smells and lifestyles of Europeans had caused me to further question the existence I understood having grown up in the hyper-consumerism of American life. Sartre was a good place to continue that interrogatory. But like most atheistic existentialist lessons it left me with more questions than answers.

Now that I’m set firmly in middle age, I dismiss most of what Sartre wrote on existence and meaning. That, however, doesn’t mean I understand how others should find meaning in life but only that I have found meaning within the boundaries of the penumbras of my experience. I can only explain my own passions - to those who care - and how love for my family is my primary motivation for living and other passions are simply ephemerally masturbatory. Obviously the former is more important but the latter is not without necessity in my definition of meaning in life.

Three weeks ago I had the final experience of visiting with a friend who suffered a long bout with alcoholism. We had grown up together in the late 60’s and early 70’s - imbibed in an unusual level of hedonism together while we endeavored to understand the universe and our respective stations in it. We were conformists to the Hippie generation and studied all that was counter-cultural at the time and, of course, we studied the chemistry of mind altering drugs.

Over the years he had lost most of his friends due to the obnoxiousness that consumed him after a few drinks - and he always had at least a few. But I made sure I kept in touch with him over the years. I’m not sure why exactly except, perhaps, that we had traveled some serious intellectual terrain together and the bond that was forged was immutable. Eventually we had only our past in common but we always made each other laugh. A few of our children are roughly the same age as his and, over time, we developed a dear friendship with his wife. In recent years she often sought advice from me in dealing with living with a drunk. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help but I’m sure that I did, in some minor way, assuage her guilt about being so angry at him.

When I last saw him he was looking so poorly that it was difficult for me to stay with him; severely jaundiced, bone skinny from not eating and on the cusp of getting the DTs. I spent only about 5 minutes with him and he confided in me that he needed to go the the hospital to detox. I asked him what his plans were if, indeed, he did detox. He remained noncommittal and said simply “I’ll decide that after I detox.” He had been through detox about 4 times in three years. I said to him “Well, if you’re not going into rehab would you leave me your Harley? Better a friend gets it after you’re gone, don’t you think?” I wasn’t serious about the Harley. I was serious about him being gone.

It was apparent to me that my keeping him awake was only an act of torture on my part and he would much rather sleep until he could get the energy to go to the hospital. I told him then that he should know that I’m his friend and if there was anything he needed from me all he had to do was ask. Apparently he hadn’t lost his sense of humor altogether and responded “Can you get me some cocaine?” I said “Anything but that.”

He went to the hospital the next day and in five short days he was dead. I will eulogize him this spring at a memorial service where his family plans to scatter his ashes over the family farm just outside Moscow, Idaho. Inasmuch as he was a Hunter Thompson fan to the core, his wife is thinking about having him spread by a crop duster if it’s possible. It would be fitting. I will miss him. I think he lost his life due to lack of passion. It is sad.

In the interim time the engine blew in the family van and needed to be replaced. The day after he passed away my wife was scheduled for an outpatient procedure for “a women thing.” Things went much differently than planned and she spent several days in the hospital and several more recovering at home. So between being a nurse, taxi driver, cook, housekeeper, etc. I haven’t had much time for those self-gratifying activities that I mentioned previously. That, however, is over and life seems as if it can now return to normal.

I did finish Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, however, and I will pound out my thoughts on it soon. I enjoyed it very much but it is not without its problems. Long story short; it reaffirmed my libertarianism more than anything.

But during the past three weeks I have suffered something like Antoine Roquentin’s “nausea.” It’s times like these that one must count what one has rather than what one hasn’t. After all, the former is finite and the latter isn’t.

William F. Buckley, Jr. died this morning while working in his study. A fitting exit. He played a major role in my political evolution and I will miss his wit and wisdom.

[Update:] New York Times piece on him here.  My favorite bit:

Young William absorbed his family’s conservatism along with its deep Catholicism. At 6, he wrote the King of England demanding he repay his country’s war debt.

I agree with that sentiment, indexed to inflation with compound interest.

Yes, we’re all pussies now. It seems to me, although I’m no linguist, that there is a pretty big leap between sexism and misogyny. By proper definitions one is in thinking that the opposite sex is inferior while the other is a hate for women. The two words are neither mutually exclusive or inclusive and one can be a sexist without being a misogynist. I’ve been referred to as a misogynist because I use the word “pussy” (but I’m sure I could get away with using “wussy” without much retribution.) But political correctness requires some people to make sure that every churlish word uttered should be associated with identity politics and any mention of masculinity needs a quick political castration. For those of you interested the etymology of my use of the word “pussy” it is derived from the now antiquated English word (from Norman French) “pursy.” Go ahead, look it up.

That’s not to say that there’s no gender identity in my use of the word and I make no apologies for my admiration of men who lead, as T.R. would say, a vigorous life. In some sense I’m jealous - especially as I age with extra pounds and a distinct sloth-like lifestyle. Then again, vigor can come in things not merely physical. Well, I’m neither a sexist nor a misogynist but I am a man who both celebrates the differences of the sexes and has some negative attitudes about whining pampered men. So, call me what you will.

Political correctness has a way of making distasteful language some form of “hate.” Again, there is a good distance between some forms of disrespect and what might qualify as “hate”. David Schuster had the temerity to say the Clinton campaign was “pimping out” Chelsea. I do think that was disrespectful. It took only a day for the good women at Emily’s List to make this qualify as hate:

Today, the Clinton camp threatened to boycott the cable network, even though it is scheduled to host a debate with Barack Obama she wants. And this afternoon, EMILY’s List, which raises money for female candidates, weighed in.

“I’m sending this letter today to let you know that the misogynistic pattern in the reporting by your network must come to an end,” Ellen Malcolm, the group’s president, wrote to MSNBC News Senior Vice President Phil Griffin. “I know I speak for millions across this country when I demand that you take immediate steps and publicly tell us what you will do to eliminate this sexist and demeaning culture that has become so pervasive in your network.

Well, I’m in no mood to defend MSNBC per se, but I think this reaction is a bit much and a dumbing down of the language that the PC crowd seems to enjoy to vilify anyone who even uses a colloquial phrase that has any relationship to whatever “ism” is the cause du jour.. I’m also sure that a big time reporter should be careful about the words he or she uses (notice how I make that comment gender neutral lest I be called out for sexism.)

But, is the verb “pimping” really sexist? After all there are pimps who trade in homosexual sex (and for the record, I think the prostitution trade shouldn’t be criminal - if it wasn’t there would be a lot less pimps in the world.) And even using the word to imply that someone or some group is putting someone out for some kind of gain seems to me to be more flip than inaccurate. Of course I’m convinced that the government is chock-a-block full of both pimps and whores. Anyone care to argue?

So I’m both amused and confused about Bill Clinton’s reaction:

Said Clinton, slowly, “I think it was inappropriate for him… to refer …to my daughter ….in the way he did.”

He went on, “it was representative of the kind of blatant, careless, crass, cruel remarks that are altogether too common. And I wouldn’t use disrespectful language referring to General Petraeus or anybody else. But I think that it is remarkable how many sexist things have been said in this campaign that have not been reprimanded.

“Hillary never complains when people say things about her or me. But when he involved my daughter, she complained, and I think it was the right thing to do.

Well, in the world of victimology , Chelsea is the victim here and Billery are the pimps. It seems to me that Schuster was referring to Billery more than he was Chelsea. After all, Chelsea isn’t much allowed to talk to the press in making the case for Billery but she sure serves to offer up Clinton charm one on one with super delegates.

Of course I’m talking without the requisite experience of actually knowing pimps and my guess is that Bill Clinton could school me on the entire industry. He’s just so damn smart.

And for the record, I don’t think he’s a pussy.

Jay Stevens writes a little diatribe today in which he alludes to the fact that somehow ATV users and snowmobilers are really just part of the hypocritical right.

He first points out that the Forest Service has decided not to hold another public hearing on the Public Travel Plan for the Bitterroot National Forest because the last meeting was very contentious - and one asshole even said he would like to put a bullet in the head of one of the conservationists. Pretty over the top (but I got the same threat from that “right-wing fascist” Tony Lewis a few years ago.) OK, I get his point.

Then he links an article in the Missoulian informing us that the U.S.F.S has issued a whopping 17 citations to snowmobilers for riding their sleds in wilderness areas.

So now comes the tar and feathering part. Jay says:

You hear a lot from certain quarters about this country being a “nanny state.” I think that’s an egregious mischaracterization, a sort of whining complaint you expect from spoiled children who chafe at the rules they inspire.

WTF is that? First, the “nanny state” is about the state keeping us from hurting ourselves or providing  safety net programs - not about people scoffing at laws. Secondly, the assumption that the same people who have broken the law in this case are the same as those who “whine” about the nanny state is an assumption of facts not in evidence.

The point, it appears, is to paint anyone who is, perhaps, simply an asshole as somehow conservative. Well, experience informs me that there are assholes all across the political spectrum - I’ve surely known some lefty and righty assholes in my years. But recognizing that fact doesn’t serve Jay’s cause now does it?

So I’m waiting for Wulfgar to take Jay to task for these egregious assumptions by giving him a post tagged to “the deeply stupid.” But that probably won’t happen either. Jay’s on the wrong team for that.

But if Jay is concerned about pointing out assholes in the world maybe he’d be interested in this little exchange:

BILL MAHER, HOST: Why is it, I was asking Amy this, why is it that the Republican establishment, I guess it is, have so much disdain, not just for McCain, but for the other guy who’s still in it…Huckabee? They don’t like either one of them.

P.J. O’ROURKE, WRITER: Well, I think a couple of things are going on. It’s the it’s the twilight of the radio loud-mouth, you know? I knew it from the moment the fat guy…

MAHER: …You mean Rush Limbaugh and Sean..?

O’ROURKE: …from the moment the fat guy refused to share his drugs (audience laughter). I was, you know…he never called, he never wrote. I’m ready to party, you know, come on! No, I think it’s kind of over for those people. So…

MAHER: Right, you mean the OxyContin that he was on?

O’ROURKE: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that stuff’s good!

MAHER: Why couldn’t, uh, why couldn’t have he croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger? (small audience groans)

O’ROURKE: Yeah, yeah.

Imagine the flap that would have occurred if someone on the right would have made a comment like that about, say, Patrick Kennedy. But you know, conservatives are assholes. We have the evidence.

An email from a friend:

OLD MEN AND THEIR SEX LIVES

Three old men are discussing their sex lives.

The Italian man says, ” Last week, my wife and I had great sex. I rubbed her body all over with olive oil, we made passionate love, and she screamed for 5 minutes at the end.”

The Frenchman boasts, “Last week when my wife and I had sex, I rubbed her body all over with butter. We then made passionate love and she screamed for 15 minutes.

The old Jewish Man says, “Well, last week my wife and I had sex too. I rubbed her body all over with chicken schmaltz (kosher chicken fat), we made love, and she screamed for 6 hours.

The Italian and Frenchman were stunned. They replied, “What could you have possibly done to make your wife scream for 6 hours?”

“I wiped my hands on the drapes.”

Sherrod Brown gave an interview to The Nation where he sexes up the proposed Patriot Corporation Of America Act:

But, basically it says that if you play by the rules, if you pay decent wages, health benefits, pension; do your production here; don’t resist unionization on neutral card check, then you will be designated a “Patriot Corporation” and you will get tax advantages and some [preference] on government contracts.

It’s nice to know that a corporation has to endorse the elimination of secret ballots by unions.  There’s a democratic thought for you.  And what is a “decent wage?”

I can hear the stampede of pigs to the trough as I sit here.  Are we going to bail out GM and Ford?  How about all the companies who already comply because it simply fits their business model - should we give them an arbitrary government subsidy so they don’t don’t have to compete?

The only thing substantive I see coming out of a bill like this is a pass for U.S. companies to strive for efficiency gains compared to their global competitors.

At least if I’m hearing him right.

But Tester speaking at Heritage is an eyepopper in and of itself. I wonder if he’ll get cooties.

I’ll be off line this weekend.  Spiritual Adviser #1 has an audition in Spokane for the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s summer program.  Wish her the best.

And he makes a point too:

Love of country must always be qualified these days, lest anyone think you are unaware of slavery, insufficiently regulated railroad stock offerings, Lester Maddox or the attempt by Philip Morris to conceal the addictive nature of cigarettes. Say “I love this country” at a dinner table with strangers, and it’s like shave and a haircut without the two bits. But? But? We are an exceptional nation, to be sure, but you can’t leave it at that. We are exceptionally misguided, exceptionally lazy and xenophobic, shot through to the pith with bilious perfidy, and our sole redeeming quality is our ability to constantly remake ourselves. We’ll either perfect society so we can perfect human nature, or do it the other way around. Either’s fine. Whatever works.

And what, you might wonder, caused me to prop that straw man up and jerk his jaw up and down?  The Freakonomics blog on the NYT site has a contest: a six-word motto for the US.  It was no doubt tendered in good faith, but reading the suggestions is like licking a corroded battery.  The latter-day sub-Menckens will always get off the sharpest lines, of course; you can’t draw a laugh with something Grandma might knit on a pillow, and drawing a laugh – or a mirthless snort of appreciation, which counts as a laugh nowadays – is the prime objective. Go on: read. It’s not just a lefty thing; the hard-core Ron Paulites are there as well, luxuriously immersed in simon-pure certainties.

[…]

ANYWAY. Bottom line: we will never be a great nation until we all realize how much we suck, and then we will also realize it is wrong to be a great nation. For that matter, nationhood are overrated. (The only nation that gets to be a nation is France.)
Nations are bad enough, but we’re something else:the only nation that has ever fought a war, acted in self-interest, had a good opinion of itself, permitted slavery, elected leaders who lacked a certain Olympian quality, had a popular culture that included simple catchy melodies and bright pictures, harbored racist attitudes, had a strong religious element, and contained a sizable amount of stupid people.

Read the whole thing.

From Mark Hemingway.

Just finished watching Romney’s terrific speech, and I bet a lot of people are wishing that he displayed more of that inspirational quality and verve in the campaign.

I’ve always wondered why pols get such rave reviews of exit speeches with words like, “we wish he’d shown more of that before he quit”  just after the door hits them on the ass.

Here’s the video.

Much has been made out of the Montana GOP’s refusal to let Lt. Gov get involved in Republican politics. After all, he puts an “R” by his name even though he officially registered on the Democratic application for his Lt. Gov. run and, I’m assuming he’ll do it again.

Jay Stevens made a post of how exclusive the state GOP is and appears critical (although you never know what Stevens might really mean inasmuch as he sandbags his opinion as much as any I’ve seen when he’s called out.)

But today he applauds the fact that Leiberman is losing his superdelgate status in the DNC. He writes:

We’re all happy about the news, ha ha, Lieberman isn’t a delegate any more, etc. & co… Except…why in h*ll was Lieberman ever superdelegate to begin with? He’s not a Democrat!

Well, he says he’s a Democrat and he even caucuses with them.

Jay, meet your Democratic Party.

[Update:]

MtSentinal called Stevens out in the comments over there and this is Jay’s response:

uh…

Actually, Lieberman is not a Democrat. Bohlinger is a Republican. Just check the little letters behind their names. Lieberman always gets an “i.”Besides, we’re talking superdelegates here, not the right to participate in a primary or caucus. I find the whole superdelegate thing to be odious — and that good Democrats are out-representated by these machine votes is bad enough, but that they’re given to people who aren’t in the party? Ugh.

But thanks for stopping by and, as usual, obfuscating.

Well, seems to me that Bohlinger is only a “Republican” because he says he is since we have no party registration in the state. I mean, you can call a turd a rose but that won’t make it smell any differently.  I’ll give Jay consistency cred for taking the DNC to task for even having such animals but if Jay thinks that the “i” behind Joe’s name makes him an independent (he’s a registered Democrat in Connecticut) I think he fell off the reality based planet. And if Bohlinger’s dishonest use of the “r” behind is name is some kind of proof that he is a Republican, well, we have real documentation that says he’s not.

Give it up, Jay. You’re wrong.

Mitt’s out.

Sun Stays Sluggish as Weathermen Fight for Anti-Ice Age Funding

Go. Read.

[Update:] Link is now fixed.

According to Mark Perry:

Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).

Paying taxes is a dirty job but someone has to it.

[Note to Mark T.  Yeah, I know this doesn’t include payroll taxes.  Save you breath.]

I was there. I met with the Chicago Chapter of ACORN when I was employed as part of First Chicago’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) team as they threatened us with public protests if we didn’t change our ways. In 1993, when we had our CRA audit by the Comptroller of the Currency we were roundly criticized for our lack of lending in minority neighborhoods. We had actively been advertising and trying to find more credit worthy borrowers in those neighborhoods at the time and we had several “partnerships” going with various community groups. We even set up a special fund to keep sub-standard credit risks in the portfolio - since we couldn’t, at the time, sell the risk to the secondary market.

In 1995 my unit, Small Business Banking, was one of the first four lenders in the country to use automated credit scoring for small business loans. It was a highly contentious practice in the industry, not because it was discriminatory, but because old school lenders were certain that we couldn’t use predictive models that didn’t have a human element of discretion. I was interviewed by the New York Times that year to defend the practice, but not against the old credit curmudgeons of banking, but because ACORN was calling it discriminatory. So much pressure was put on the practice that I was forced to set up another special risk pool to make loans to minority borrowers that didn’t show the empirical history to be credit worthy.

W ell, finally, someone is telling the story the way it was.

Yet a “landmark” 1992 study from the Boston Fed concluded that mortgage-lending discrimination was systemic.

That study was tremendously flawed - a colleague and I later showed that the data it had used contained thousands of egregious typos, such as loans with negative interest rates. Our study found no evidence of discrimination.

Yet the political agenda triumphed - with the president of the Boston Fed saying no new studies were needed, and the US comptroller of the currency seconding the motion.

No sooner had the ink dried on its discrimination study than the Boston Fed, clearly speaking for the entire Fed, produced a manual for mortgage lenders stating that: “discrimination may be observed when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants.”

Some of these “outdated” criteria included the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification. Instead, the Boston Fed ruled that participation in a credit-counseling program should be taken as evidence of an applicant’s ability to manage debt.

Sound crazy? You bet. Those “outdated” standards existed to limit defaults. But bank regulators required the loosened underwriting standards, with approval by politicians and the chattering class. A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with “100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.” Credit counseling is required, of course.

Then, in order for banks not to be charged with reverse discrimination the flood gates had to continue to open.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted.” That lender’s $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

Who was that virtuous lender? Why - Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

Read the whole thing. From my experience it is dead-on true. So, as we’re floundering through this mess let’s keep this in mind as pandering politicians look for a “cure”. It was a cure for a false problem that set it off but now we’re told that it’s the “greedy” bankers who sent us down this road to perdition. Don’t believe it for a minute.

I used to read Balloon Juice on a regular basis but, over time, the guy just has gotten too clever to pay attention to.  He got trapped in the popularity of being the “conservative” that the lefties loved because he was so anti-Bush.  Over time he got so much love from the left that he started to revel in the light they provided him.  It wasn’t enough for Cole to jump ship and leave the GOP - which I applaud - but when it was time for him to officially change his party registration he had an epiphany and put a D by his name.  Now he’s part of the popular clique’ of those who defend liberalism by pointing to converts.  What I really think is that the guy is a phony approval seeking idiot who has left his convictions at the door of cyber-fame.

For a guy who prattled on endlessly about smaller government and how the GOP vacated its conservative roots - with which I agreed with him without hesitation - he used to be a coherant voice of dissent.  Now he’s just become, as he says about the GOP, “Bat Shit Crazy”.

Listen, I don’t think W is a liberty loving conservative but I sure don’t think that liberals are either for the most part in their disdain for private property rights and their nanny-state compunction to tell all of us how we should live.  But to go the Democratic party because the GOP has lost its way seems to me a leap so big that it’s like Saul’s hallucinations on the road to Damascus.   If the GOP is your conservative problem the Democratic Party ain’t your conservative answer.

So why the rant after all these months.  Today Cole makes this dimwitted comment:

Conservative. It means absolutely nothing- it really is code for “in the cool club.” I just spent the last hour and some on the exercise bike watching Morning Joe, where Scarborough had an endless stream of guests and snide comments claiming that Romney was the “real conservative choice” and the “true conservative.”

The last guest was Mary Matalin, a Bush/Cheney advisor, and I am now completely convinced that there is no such thing as “conservative” principles. It is a joke, an empty suit- it means whatever you want it to mean, and right now it means double Gitmo, permanent war, hating on liberals, and tax cuts forever. I guess, in that light, Mitt is the true “conservative,” as he has shown himself willing to do whatever and pay whatever it takes to win the nomination. I simply can not believe that the folks who cheerleaded the Bush administration and who are not even flinching about the new 700 billion dollar military budget have the balls to pretend to be conservative, but, hey, it is their party. I hope they keep wrecking it.

But when folks say “conservative,” and they will say it seriously as if it means something, no doubt also invoking the “mantle of Reagan,” just laugh at them. They might as well be talking about flogiston. Whatever conservative used to mean, if anything, it no longer does. Some video of the “true conservative choice,” taking a break from donating to Planned Parenthood…

I don’t mind his argument about the GOP in any sense, but it’s intellectual bullshit, and pandering to his audience, when he says that the word itself is meaningless.  Sure, it may mean different things to different people, but it still has some meaning.  But more importantly the guy spent several years schooling all of us on what was conservative and how we should embrace his brand of it.  And if he’s complaining about “big government conservatives now” is he implying that his new home will be less so because they’re not “Bat Shit Crazy?”

Either the guy needs to spend some time looking at the Dem contenders spending proposals or he needs an intervention.  What a putz.

I can’t wait for parts II and III.