The House Of Representatives Has Just Seceded From The Union

I think the rest of us are going to need to follow their lead.

You Know It's True

Instapundit:

FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF THE WORD “WE,” ANYWAY: Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood.

Plus this: “You’ll know it’s okay to start speculating about Hasan’s motives when cops find a Glenn Beck book on his bookshelf. In fact, if the same ‘PTSD by proxy’ elements had been present in Hasan’s bio but it turned out he’d attended a tea party or two, we’d already be well into hour 30 of a full-on media speculation orgy.”

"Divisive Unanimity"

Spectator piece highlights that an issue that has had 31 wins at the ballot box and zero losses is not an example of "divisive".

The piece ends:

But can a measure that has passed in every state in which it has been put before the voters be called divisive? Not with a straight face. Thirty-one for thirty-one isn't division. It's unanimity.

With This Post I'd Like To Give A Shout Out To Dr. Joe Medicine Crow

Link. Who, BTW, did not receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, but why should the C-in-C worry himself about unimportant military-related details?

Make It Stop!!

Amusing Anchoress rant.

When You Claim You're Not Going To Come After Churches, This Is Why We Don't Believe You

GayPatriot:

Why do Gay Leaders Have this Compulsion to Out their Adversaries?

It seems gay leaders exist to make my point about their incompetence to appeal to those whose minds they most need to change. Now, we learn that the leader of the No on 1 campaign in Maine, instead of learning from the campaign’s mistakes, intends to target those voters in the Pine Tree State:

No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.””

Yeah, that kind of rhetoric will really help you change minds. How about saying something like this

We came up short this time, but who’d have thought that five years ago, we could have got 47% of Maine citizens to vote for gay marriage. We need to look closely at our campaign, figure out where we went wrong and make a stronger case next time, telling voters why marriage is good and why it’s good for gay people.

Let me give Mr. Connolly a piece of advice, angry rhetoric is not going to change minds. You need to make the case for gay marriage not against those who voted against it. ’Cause if you want to win next time, you’re going to need some of their votes.

They aren't seeking to change minds. They are seeking to impose their will. Period. End of story. How they handle these elections is just a foretaste of what they intend should they ever win.

This'll Brighten Your Day. Not.

The wounded animal can still kill us.

Serious Noir

Found by Lileks.

Boo

Cartoon:

Deluded Ghoul

Great Comment

Here:

“If Republicans want to win, they should nominate Republicans in the first place, not RINOs who will be challenged by Conservatives and end up splitting the vote.”

The Dems are driving the Car of State toward a sheer cliff at 90 miles per hour. The “moderate” Republicans are yelling, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, there! Let’s keep it under the speed limit!”

And when we actual conservatives ask, “Why not simply stop and go the other direction?” the “moderate” Republicans reply, “You *have* to vote for us, you have nowhere else to go. What are you going to do, vote for the Democrats?”

Well, that dog don’t hunt no more — it’s a distinction with no difference whether the Car of State goes over the cliff at 90 miles per hour or at 55.

Sounds Like A Plan

Some real world education for the young'uns:

How to turn your kids into lifelong tax cutters

My former White House colleague Tevi Troy suggested the following method for turning children into lifelong tax cutters.

1. Make each of your kids spread his or her Halloween candy out on the kitchen table.
2. Take one-third of it.
3. Say, “That’s called TAXES.”
4. Repeat each Halloween.

I figure it will take maybe two years of this to turn them into lifelong tax cutters.

For most kids, this is probably the first income they have earned through their own labor. Maybe it’s better they learn about taxes now, rather than 10-15 years from now when they first ask “Who the h*** is FICA?”

They're Watching. Closely.

Hewitt:

A Mob With Walkers, Headed for the Voting Booth

Some televised reports of exit poll data last night suggested that seniors had supplied Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell with large margins in their winning campaigns. Glenn Reynolds writes this morning that the president's magic has faded, but it may actually be much worse than a fade. The president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid may have succeeded in solidifying seniors and those who care for them into a massive anti-Democrat block, one that was first startled and is now deeply angry over the proposed massive cuts to Medicare and the inevitable rationing of health care embedded in all versions of Obamcare.

...

The Congressional Democrats should know that seniors especially are watching every vote and that seniors know every single Democratic senator has the power to block the bill and stop the cuts to Medicare.

The Virginia and New Jersey elections were about policy, specifically the failed year-long effort to create jobs by printing money and the still on-going attempt to have the federal government seize control of American medicine while raising taxes to sky-high rates.

American voters suspended their suspicion of liberals and the left a year ago to give the young, attractive, new post-partisan candidate a try at bat in the middle of incredibly stressful times. Turns out that President Obama is a Chicago pol with not a lick of "new" when it comes to economics, but a great deal of "old" and "failed" economic theory and an incredible lust for centralization of power in D.C. The large lurch to the left that he has led has cost him the enthusiasm of all but his hard left base. Continuing to push the radical agenda will cost elected Democrats their jobs.

The first real referenda on the Obama Administration came in last night, and state wide votes in two big, diverse and important states sent a message to the Hill, one that the White House won't want heard, but which every instinct of political survival will oblige Democrats to study carefully.

It will be very uncomfortable for Senate Democrats and Blue Dogs in the House to vote no on Obamacare and to actually use their power to block the bill, but uncomfortable beats unemployed, and if Obamacare passes, that's exactly what is waiting for many, many Democrats.

The Bell Tolls For Thee

Dick Morris:

Obviously, Christie's victory is a body blow to Obama after Corzine outspent the Republican by five-to-one and the president put on a serious push for the incumbent. Corzine's defeat sends a message that the nation is moving sharply against Obama.

But Virginia results are the most important. More than 80 Democratic congressmen and 20 senators come from states that John McCain carried in 2008. For them, the sudden switch in Virginia, a swing state that Obama actually carried, heralds tough political times ahead.

New Jersey is the quintessential blue state. If it goes Republican, blue state congressmen needn't worry. Their districts are likely still safe. But when a Republican in Virginia wins by 20 points, it sends a message to red-state Democratic congressmen to take cover.

Polls indicate a declining level of popular approval of the Obama policies (Rasmussen shows his job approval at 46 percent), but to see actual Democrats losing or barely squeaking out victories in solidly blue states sends a far clearer message to the Democrats in Congress.

Until last night, Democratic moderates, the so-called blue dogs, could bask in the light of their candidate's success in 2008. But now they must hear hoof beats behind them. The party discipline on which Obama depends to pass a health-care program that Americans reject by 42 percent for, 55 percent against (Rasmussen again) will only work if beleaguered Democratic incumbents can wrap themselves in Obama's cloak and tough out the popular criticism. But the limits of Obama's drawing power are readily apparent in the Republicans' 20-point victory in Virginia and the race in New Jersey.

In the coming weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be asking their troops to cast potentially career-ending votes for health-care changes, Medicare cuts, higher taxes and fines on the uninsured. Whether they take that risk depends on their faith in Obama's drawing power.

But the votes in Virginia, in particular, show the limits of Obama's appeal. The winner, Bob McDonnell, won the attorney general's race in the last election by a few tenths of a percent over the same opponent. That he coasted to so huge a victory in the swing state of Virginia now has to send a message to red-state Democratic congressmen: Obama may be able to survive in the deep water into which he is leading his party, but you can't.

Haunting Numbers For The New Members Of The Congressional Democrat Majority

You guys are on notice. Michael Barone:

Finally, third, what will be the impact of these elections on forthcoming votes in Congress on the Democratic leaddership’s controversial and unpopular health legislation. The Virginia Board of Elections give us some hints when it aggregates the results by congressional district. In the 2008 elections three Democrats captured three previously Republican congressional districts in Virginia, giving Democrats six of the eleven-member delegation.

The results of the gubernatorial election show that at least some of these Democrats are imperiled.

In the 2nd congressional district, where Democrat Glenn Nye beat Republican incumbent Thelma Drake 52%-47%, McDonnell beat Deeds 62%-38%. In the 5th congressional district, where Democrat Tom Perriello beat Republican incumbent Virgil Goode 50.01%-49.85%, or a margin of 727 popular votes, the lowest in the country, McDonnell beat Deeds 61%-39%. In the 11th congressional district, where Democrat Gerry Connally won 55%-43% a district vacated by Republican incumbent Tom Davis, McDonnell beat Deeds 55%-45%. And the southwest, coal-producing “Fighting Ninth,” represented since 1982 by Democrat Rick Boucher, voted 67%-33% for McDonnell.

I cannot imagine that Congressmen Nye, Perriello, Connally and Boucher have not already accessed the websites which have shown the position of their constituents in a contest which, while like all governorship contests has its own specific features, was also in its contrast on issue positions reasonably congruent with those prevailing on national issues. And I can certainly respond with sympathy if any or all of these incumbents responded to these numbers with a two-word comment of which I will relay only the first word which is, “Oh.”

The 2009 election results are certainly not going to make it easy for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to round up the needed 218 votes for Democrats’ health care bills.

The Democrats in general, if they have any sense of self-preservation, really need to get busy stripping Pelosi and Reid of their positions. The bottom line is simple. America is not a nation of commies. If rank-and-file Congressional Democrats (most of whom I would imagine are not commies themselves) manage to kick the commies out of power in their own party, they stand a vastly increased chance of keeping their own jobs.

Now, That's Spin

The equivalent of "Mineola Man Survives N.J. Nuclear Holocaust!" as the first headline about an attack.

Link

Good Questions

VDH:

What has the liberal leadership become? It garners more Wall Street money than the Republicans. The high-income brackets favored Obama. The shriller the populist or nihilist—think everyone from Arianna Huffington to Michael Moore to Noam Chomsky to Gore Vidal—the nicer the home. Think of the vast diversity of such celebrity hypocrisy: John Edward’s “two nations” is defined by his own vast estate—and those outside it. Michael Moore profits in the millions from, of course, damning profit-driven capitalism.

A Sean Penn or Oliver Stone praises the egalitarianism of Latin American thugs whose socialist utopias would jail both in short order if they ever moved in pursuance of their egalitarian rhetoric. The Obama populist team hires Wall Street insiders to bail out friends, whose firms they will shortly join when out of office.

Rev. Wright is back in the news. In Animal Farm, pigs-on-two-legs fashion he is sermonizing on the joys of socialism as he is ensconced in a three-story, 10,000 sq. ft. mansion, paid for by his relatively modest flock in thanks to his virulent race-baiting (the real story of his Fox-news-aired clips was not his racism or anti-Americanism, but the standing ovations he received from his congregation for his unadulterated hate.). A Nancy Pelosi shouts slogans from the barricades, while her husband subsidizes her aristocratic liberalism through a network of arcane deal-making. Chris Dodd worries about the roguery of credit card companies while he finagles an Irish getaway “cottage” through influence peddling. The list could go on.

More than hypocrisy

But everyone is a hypocrite, you object? Again, the mystery is not liberal hypocrisy—as I have written, after all, pompadour-haired, leisure-suited evangelical preachers are regularly caught in flagrante delicto or up-from-the-bootstraps corporate farmers garner vast federal ag. subsidies—but rather the apparent unconcern that revolutionary populism and the desire for great wealth and the elitism it bestows don’t mix.

What are we to make of the George Soroses and Warren Buffetts and the club of the mega wealthy preferring the populist rhetoric of Barack Obama? Why did a “redistributive change”, “spread the wealth” Barack Obama move into a million-dollar mansion, or a “truth to power” Valerie Jarrett make out like a bandit from questionable insider Chicago real estate deals, or Rahm Emanuel cash grab as a director of a scandal-plagued Freddie Mac, or raise-our-taxes Timothy Geithner’s in the most tawdry fashion avoid taxes? In short, why the liberal fascination with money and privilege—and populism?

He goes on to look at some possible answers.

Piling Insanity On Insanity

Who in their right mind would lend this government money for ten years at 3.5%? But wait, if that's not crazy enough, Denninger has some good news:

From The Wall Street Examiner comes this:

Another anomaly of note is the fact that 10 year Fannie paper is now yielding less than 10 year Treasuries. This is another sign of mass psychosis. Unfortunately, the source of the infection has been Bernanke’s insane policy of piling up risky MBS paper on the Fed’s balance sheet. Wave after weekly wave of Fed buying has created one of the most ridiculous market distortions in history. Unfortunately, the problem it was designed to solve, the housing market collapse, isn’t responding.

This is more than ridiculous. It is in fact outrageous.

The GSEs are in fact bankrupt. This is why they were taken into "conservatorship" and have required roughly $100 billion in direct taxpayer subsidy to remain "breathing", much like a brain-stem-only human requires thousands of dollars a day in direct input in the form of a ventilator and mechanical feeding (not to mention diaper changes and similar) to remain "alive."

This distortion allegedly is supposed to "help" the housing market.

It has done no such thing.

It has led Barney Frank to pronounce that intentionally making bad loans is a "policy", and the market laughs, knowing that The Fed is directly monetizing the very same debt - after saying it wouldn't.

If you hand out hundreds of billions of dollars for what are worthless securities (or at least those against which any rational person would demand a HUGE haircut) you are in fact doing nothing other than debasing the currency and printing money.

The worst part of The Fed's action isn't that they're printing money. It is that the outrageous actions of these "lenders" are being rewarded - that is, do a bad thing, make an unsupportable loan, distort the market on purpose and The Fed (and government) comes along and rewards you.

This is in fact no different than what government did during the entire housing bubble. Make bad loans, loot the economy, it's ok - you can make millions in bonuses, even if you ripped off both home buyers AND investors.

Now we're doing the same thing "writ large" and right under the public's nose, and yet we "justify" it by claiming it is being done to "stabilize" the housing market.

If this "printed money" went to consumers instead and Fannie and Freddie were allowed to crumble into dust, at least the average American would get some of the benefit, even if he or she subsequently got crushed by the currency devaluation.

But no! Instead the oligarchs make off with their outsize salaries, those who put together questionable (if not outright fraudulent) accounting continue to get paid, the government continues to run it's revolving door with Wall Street and the "GSE"s, and we the people continue to get screwed.

Dawkins Finds It Plausible, And, Hey, Isn't That Enough?

A very solid takedown.

Like An Argument Overheard

A hammer and tongs ID/Darwinist dialog, interesting to me, anyway.

After Yet Another Electoral Defeat Of That Thing Known To Its Proponents As "Gay Marriage"

A good discussion at GayPatriot.

More Children Of The Corn

Not North Korea.

A Crucial Point, Well Expressed

Link:

The rest of the chapter is devoted to retracing Darwin’s steps over the issue of variation under domestication, and again adds some detail but no new ideas. It is remarkable for what it leaves out. Crucially, Dawkins restates unequivocal terms Darwin’s key belief that we can safely and reasonably extrapolate direct and repeatable observations about variation and selection by skilled human hands (he gives plenty of uncontentious examples of this, just as Darwin did) to believe that there are NO limits to variation. The latter proposition would have to be true if Darwin were right, but it isn’t true, as we can observe.

Dawkins says a great deal about dog breeding, but ignores the programme about ‘pedigree dogs and mutant monsters' which I blogged about last year. This showed clearly that variation was strictly limited, and that while you could (as Dawkins reminds us) breed all kinds of dog from a wolf, you sooner or later come up against a rigid envelope. To approach the limit of the dog species envelope is to court disaster, as sterility and sickness appear due to inbreeding.

The 'evidence man' is very selective about what evidence he considers fit to print. Several times he insists that variation canot be limited, but he fails to consider the results from dog breeding which show that dogs are always dogs, and when you breed them too far from the created original, sick and sterile dogs.

WARNING-Species envelope ahead-no through road.

The species envelope, for dogs, sheep, cats, men, apples and all other living creatures, appears to be rigid and impassable. All sorts of varieties of dogs have been bred, but never anything that wasn’t a dog. Time doesn’t help, because the species envelope is reached quite soon (under selective breeding, which works far faster than natural selection)and natural selection would not even have progressed thus far, for reasons which Dawkins inadvertently acknowledged (as did Darwin). Left to themselves, pedigree dogs will interbreed and go back to the tougher, more ‘survivable’ mongrel. This means that they won’t even come near the boundaries of the species envelope, let alone pass through it. Unlike his imaginary walk through evolutionary deep time, this is a repeatable observation, a real experiment, not a ‘thought’ experiment. And the facts of the species envelope, which cannot be passed however hard breeders have tried, consigns Darwin’s dream of the unbroken tree of life to the dustbin of failed hypotheses [at least a tree caused by his purported mechanism, rather than a programmed unfolding --ed], and does so long before we get on to the subjects of genetic entropy and irreducible complexity.

Not All Outspoken Atheists Are Jerks

Which is quite upsetting to the ones who are.

Michael Ruse has a few things of note to say to his more-atheist-than-thou critics.

Amusing Slogan

LYDSEXICS UNTIE!

Lifted from comments here.

What Is True Is Not Relevant, What Is Relevant Is Avoided

Excellent blog post re:the latest book-length chicanery published by Dawkins.

The Stupid Party

Doctor Zero post contains this gem:

While Newt Gingrich was droning through the third hour of his Power Point presentation, explaining why running the Card Check-supporting wife of a union thug was a brilliant political maneuver, Sarah Palin roared up in her 4×4 and shouted the obvious truth: voting for actual conservatives is the only way to clear away the Obama malaise.

Welcome To The Future

Celebrate Diversity. Did you hear me?!? I said CELEBRATE DIVERSITY!!!

I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!

Okay, that's it, I'm calling the cops.

Very Well Put

As quoted in this Powerline post:

In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

Good Comments

From a couple of Gay Patriot posts:

Nationaljournal.com reports:

Assemb. Dede Scozzafava (R) may be crossing party lines to support atty Bill Owens (D), but her now ex-mgr Matt Burns isn’t going along with that decision. “Dede is entitled to her own opinion, as is everyone, but I obviously disagree with her decision,” Burns told us today, a day after leaving the campaign. “I am supporting Doug Hoffman, because denying Nancy Pelosi another foot soldier is vital to restoring fiscal responsibility and common sense in Washington.”

You can’t run away from stink any faster than that. I think brother Burns finds himself taking a Clorox shower and getting plenty out on the record that Dede is doing dumbdumb all by her lonesome.

---

heliotrope, I believe the cleansing procedure you’re referring to is called “The Full Silkwood.”
Lather.
Scrape Off Every Living Epidermal Cell From Head To Toe.
Sink Slowly To Shower Floor, Sobbing Bitterly For 5-10 Minutes.
Rinse.
Repeat.

----

Obama campaigned with the repeated assertion that “the economy grows from the bottom up.” Dumb, dumb me: I thought he meant from the working stiff up. Now I realize that he meant that first he makes the economy crash to the bottom and then it will grow from the wreckage.

In that light, health care for the elderly improves with death.

I thought his concentration on the war in Afghanistan was something about “getting it back on track” for victory. Now I understand that he meant he was talking about changing a quagmire into a ditherfest.

He appointed a general to go to Afghanistan to get the job done. I thought that meant reorganize and knock down the Taliban. Now I realize he needed his own appointed general to fail so he could cry “hopeless, hopeless, hopeless” and blame Bush for ever starting the thing.

I thought “hope and change” was a series of calculated moves that would dazzle. Now I discover that Obama “hopes” that “changing” the faces on the business as usual bureaucracy will allow him to strut and preen and stay unengaged.

Little did I understand that the Styrofoam columns at the convention were as much substance as there would ever be. Nor did I realize that all those people crying were way ahead of me and that they knew then the nation was in for one huge [&%$#*@].

The Madness Will Only End With The Vaporization Of All The Major Players

The same damned foolishness again, and again, and again, and again...

Nouriel Roubini:

Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust

Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets – equities, oil, energy and commodity prices – a narrowing of high-yield and high-grade credit spreads, and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply , while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable.

...

So what is behind this massive rally? Certainly it has been helped by a wave of liquidity from near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. But a more important factor fuelling this asset bubble is the weakness of the US dollar, driven by the mother of all carry trades. The US dollar has become the major funding currency of carry trades as the Fed has kept interest rates on hold and is expected to do so for a long time. Investors who are shorting the US dollar to buy on a highly leveraged basis higher-yielding assets and other global assets are not just borrowing at zero interest rates in dollar terms; they are borrowing at very negative interest rates – as low as negative 10 or 20 per cent annualised – as the fall in the US dollar leads to massive capital gains on short dollar positions.

Let us sum up: traders are borrowing at negative 20 per cent rates to invest on a highly leveraged basis on a mass of risky global assets that are rising in price due to excess liquidity and a massive carry trade. Every investor who plays this risky game looks like a genius – even if they are just riding a huge bubble financed by a large negative cost of borrowing – as the total returns have been in the 50-70 per cent range since March.

People’s sense of the value at risk (VAR) of their aggregate portfolios ought, instead, to have been increasing due to a rising correlation of the risks between different asset classes, all of which are driven by this common monetary policy and the carry trade. In effect, it has become one big common trade – you short the dollar to buy any global risky assets.

Yet, at the same time, the perceived riskiness of individual asset classes is declining as volatility is diminished due to the Fed’s policy of buying everything in sight – witness its proposed $1,800bn (£1,000bn, €1,200bn) purchase of Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities (bonds guaranteed by a government-sponsored enterprise such as Fannie Mae) and agency debt. By effectively reducing the volatility of individual asset classes, making them behave the same way, there is now little diversification across markets – the VAR again looks low.

So the combined effect of the Fed policy of a zero Fed funds rate, quantitative easing and massive purchase of long-term debt instruments is seemingly making the world safe – for now – for the mother of all carry trades and mother of all highly leveraged global asset bubbles.

While this policy feeds the global asset bubble it is also feeding a new US asset bubble. Easy money, quantitative easing, credit easing and massive inflows of capital into the US via an accumulation of forex reserves by foreign central banks makes US fiscal deficits easier to fund and feeds the US equity and credit bubble. Finally, a weak dollar is good for US equities as it may lead to higher growth and makes the foreign currency profits of US corporations abroad greater in dollar terms.

...

But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and credit instruments.

Why will these carry trades unravel? First, the dollar cannot fall to zero and at some point it will stabilise; when that happens the cost of borrowing in dollars will suddenly become zero, rather than highly negative, and the riskiness of a reversal of dollar movements would induce many to cover their shorts. Second, the Fed cannot suppress volatility forever – its $1,800bn purchase plan will be over by next spring. Third, if US growth surprises on the upside in the third and fourth quarters, markets may start to expect a Fed tightening to come sooner, not later. Fourth, there could be a flight from risk prompted by fear of a double dip recession or geopolitical risks, such as a military confrontation between the US/Israel and Iran. As in 2008, when such a rise in risk aversion was associated with a sharp appreciation of the dollar, as investors sought the safety of US Treasuries, this renewed risk aversion would trigger a dollar rally at a time when huge short dollar positions will have to be closed.

This unraveling may not occur for a while, as easy money and excessive global liquidity can push asset prices higher for a while. But the longer and bigger the carry trades and the larger the asset bubble, the bigger will be the ensuing asset bubble crash. The Fed and other policymakers seem unaware of the monster bubble they are creating. The longer they remain blind, the harder the markets will fall.

My prediction is that the collapse will appear like a bolt out of the blue, and very much sooner than the players expect. They think they have plenty of time to enjoy their looting operation. In reality, they are like the folks who run out to look at the fascinating new tidepools just before the tsunami arrives.

Belmont Club

Has this to add to Noonan's recent article (which I linked to here):

“They don’t even notice.” But in the end, they must. The one thing no generation of parents can protect their children from is reality. No inheritance can withstand the foolishness of heirs. The harsh arithmetic on the frontier, the terrible outflow of dollars and cents, the gradual and then sudden loss of credibility as people see they are dealing not with serious people but with gilded fools cumulate their irresistible effects. In the end the gay parade of capering children enters a dark cavern and the entrance shuts behind them. Those who don’t want to join in this cavalcade have two duties.

The first is to survive; to have the wit to realize that if something can’t go on, then it won’t. The administration is touting “green shoots”. Others might use the phrase “pushing up daisies”. People who can tell the difference have got to rig for depth charges and evade worst; but be ready to take aggressive productive action where they can.

But the second duty is more important. Those unentranced by the magic flute have an obligation to remember what happened; to keep the history books free of revisionism so that by shame and memory those pied pipers who led a generation astray can never return unchallenged to sound their witching tune again. But for the children already lost to the dark we can only wish that wherever they have gone, they’ve found what they were looking for.

Who Would Have Guessed?

Instapundit:

PROVING HER CRITICS RIGHT: Scozzafava Endorses Democrat.

UPDATE: Reader Erik Fortune writes: “Scozzafava hasn’t just proven her critics right, she’s also made fools of the GOP establishment that backed her. The establishment argument for supporting Scozzafava boiled down to an appeal to party loyalty, and Scozzafava just demonstrated that she has none. Gingrich et al asked voters to compromise their values on behalf of a candidate who turned on them the first chance she got. The voters won’t forget that.” Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A question: “Now that she’s withdrawn and endorsed the Democratic candidate, can the Republican Party ask for their $900,000 back? Can individuals who contributed to her under the impression that she was a Republican ask for their money back?” They can ask, but unlike with businesses there’s no implied warranty of good faith in politics . . . .