Sadly, No!

It’s sad when Ramesh Ponnuru is providing the most sensible take on Evan Bayh over at the Post’s op-ed page:

Commentators are being much too gullible about Senator Evan Bayh’s reasons for not running for re-election. Eugene Robinson writes, “He probably could have kept his seat if he wanted it, but he decided, basically, that serving in the United States Senate was a waste of his time. . . . It is incredible that a U.S. senator believes he can be of more service to his state and his nation in some other role — running a business, leading a university. Wow.”

I’m shocked, too–that Robinson believes this piffle. Bayh’s announcement came days after former senator Dan Coats, a Republican, said he would challenge Bayh’s re-election. Which is more plausible: that Bayh suddenly noticed that Congress has a lot of partisanship, or that he decided he didn’t want to go through a tougher Senate campaign than he has ever had before?

Ruth Marcus, meanwhile, quotes Bayh pining for the days when Republican and Democratic incumbents helped each other get re-elected. That sounds awfully cozy. But what’s in it for the public? The chance to have the service of Senator Bayh forever?

Bayh may be a nice man who has sincerely sought to serve the public interest, but he is not some great legislator the like of which we will never see again. He has changed the outcome of no debate. He has taken none of the risks of leadership on any issue. His decision to leave the Senate is not a tragedy.

One of the few things I admire about right wingers is that they simply do not give a shit what the Village thinks of them and they are all too happy to ignore advice dispensed by the Wise Old Men of Washington.

But Ponnuru is correct — the public doesn’t give a shit about bipartisanship. They care about results. And the Democrats, despite having historic congressional majorities and the White House, haven’t delivered them.

Agnolo Bronzino (prob. Jacopo Pontormo): “Portrait of a
Shitmoat Builder with Her Litter“(c. 1530)(soil on wood)

Oh goodness me. You let Amy Arnold Alkon out of your sight for just a few minutes and the next thing you know she’s up to her usual shit-moat antics again, this time obsessively trolling the Amazon comments thread for her new book Fuck You, You C–t, You’re Rude, a soon-to-be-remaindered how-to paperback currently busting the top of the Amazon charts at #65,682.¹ For those who haven’t yet had the time to read Amy’s Arnold’s book, it retells various anecdotes in which Amy Arnold sought revenge on “rude” people, rude being defined as anyone who annoys Amy Arnold and includes just about anyone who isn’t Amy Arnold.

One of Amy’s favored revenge tactics is the Internet outing of anyone who suggests on the Internet that Amy Arnold might not be someone they’d “friend” on Facebook or even want to stand near in a checkout line. Her latest victim was an Amazon commenter nymed BookWorm222 who called Amy’s Arnold’s book “irritating” and “drivel.” Amy justified her own boorish and rude behavior thusly:

Unmasking people who behave badly, like this woman trying to hurt the sales of a book she clearly has not read, is precisely what I’m all about.

Leaving aside how one negative comment could hurt the Amazon sales of a book ranked #65,682, which according to some means a sales volume of around 5 entire books per month, Amy’s clear goal here is to try to intimidate anyone from posting negative reviews of her chef-d’oeuvre. And I think I’m safe in saying that this intimidation shouldn’t succeed. So, folks, if you’ve read the book, not liked it, and want to stand up for freedom of speech, tell Amy Arnold what you think of the book. Comedy points will be awarded (but only to people who’ve actually read the book) for 3, 4, and 5 star reviews (harder to get removed than 1 star reviews) with what my grandmother used to call “back-handed” compliments — for example, a statement that for a book written by someone whose mother tongue is Serbian, the book has a surprisingly small number of grammatical errors. Or a statement that even though Amy’s advice got you banned from Safeway, it was worth having to do your shopping in another store just to be able to scream your head off at the woman with a crying baby in the Safeway. Etc., etc., etc.

UPDATE: This, from Amy’s Arnold’s blog, may explain a good deal of the erratic behavior on display in her book and her Amazon comment trolling:

I deal with some of the anti-drug paranoia surrounding my own ingestion of Ritalin. Sure, some people abuse it, but it helps me focus so I can write. And I’ve been taking the same 10 mg. dose for about 10 years. Better living through chemistry. It’s simply fantastic that I can take a pill, with almost no side-effects for me, apparently (according to an epidemiologist friend) and be better at what I do.

No side effects? Nuh-uh.

¹To put this sales ranking in context, Amy’s Arnold’s book ranks somewhere in between Hitler’s Mein Kampf (in English) currently at #31,151 and Hitler’s Mein Kampf (in German) currently at #136,114.

Above: The Fart of Darkness

Shorter Daniel Pipes
“In Mideast, Bet on a Strong Horse'”

• The creatures known as “Arabs” are not like you and me; they are brutal and savage and only understand force, which we who are so unlike them should be only too eager to apply expertly and ruthlessly.

Shorter Daniel Pipes
“Keith Ellison, Where Are You?'”

• I am understood. A co-religionist of these creatures, a certain Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota who refuses to acknowledge his glaring subhumanity, is afraid of debating me. Hahaha, I win.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

[W]hy did stocks collapse the moment the vote was tallied in Massachusetts?

It’s because the immediate reaction to the Brown election—in both parties—has been a dangerous lurch toward antibusiness populism. The Obama administration’s strategy has been to latch onto something that both parties can agree on: lynching Wall Street.

[…]

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that Americans with college degrees, and with more than $50,000 invested, supported Mr. Bernanke’s confirmation. But those with only a high-school education, and with no money invested—the classic populist audience—opposed his confirmation.

These developments have been profoundly destabilizing for stocks not because some version of the “Volcker rule” would necessarily destroy America’s financial system, or because Ben Bernanke is utterly irreplaceable at the Fed. The crux of it is that it reveals a political process so dangerously narcissistic that it would use core institutions of the nation’s economy as pawns in its own power struggles.

It’s so dangerous because it potentially involves both parties, just when the Brown victory in Massachusetts holds out the hope of benign gridlock.

Don’t think that Republicans can’t be sucked in when an anti-Wall Street lynch mob gets its blood up. Recall that Sarbanes-Oxley, the devastating antigrowth response in 2002 to the Enron and Worldcom scandals, was passed with virtually unanimous support by Republicans in Congress, and signed by a Republican president. Recall that last year 85 House Republicans voted for a 90% tax on bonuses for any employee of any bank that took more than $5 billion in TARP money.

Investors got some good news last Friday. Stocks resisted following through on Thursday’s sharp plunge after it was announced that the Senate Banking Committee’s Democratic Chairman Chris Dodd and Republican ranking member Richard Shelby have reached an impasse on bank re-regulation. That’s a nice down payment on what investors need a lot more of now: proof that the GOP won’t join Democrats in a populist rush to seek revenge against Wall Street.

–Donald L. So Not A Stalker Luskin
The Wealthy Criminal Class Journal

As if Luskin and the rest of those scumbags have anything to worry about! But they are worried. Why? It’s not guilt — one must have a soul to feel guilt. So whazzit?

[From] one of Sir Robert Peel’s correspondents, a class-conscious clerical magistrate from Farningham….: “If this state of things should continue” (he wrote–and he underlined the final words of the sentence), “the Peasantry will learn the secret of their own physical strength.” Armed bands were to be expected “in the dark nights of winter” and “an organisation for far more desperate measures of plunder & revenge”; and, to avert these dangers, he begged the government to “sanction” the arming of the Bourgeois classes” by re-establishing the Yeomanry Corps or by other similar methods.

–“Captain Swing: A Social History of the Great English Agricultural Uprising of 1830”
Eric Hobsbawm & George Rude’

Read the rest of this entry »

David Barstow, The New York Times:
Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right

• Hi, David Barstow calling, 2009 Pulitzer winner in Investigative Journalism² for rooting out the Pentagon Pundits scandal. Uh-huh, from The Times, sure. Um, so I understand these Tea Parties represent a grass-roots uprising, but who organized and financed the original…? Oh, a spontaneous grass-roots uprising. [keys clacking] [keys clacking] [coughs, blows nose] [keys clacking] No, I’m still here. “Spontaneous grass-roots uprising,” sure. [keys clacking] [hums theme from Lion King] Hello? Yeah, I’m here. In The New York Times, sure. [repetitive keystrokes, sound effects of character screen in Street Fighter IV] [whistles ‘I Gotta Feeling’] Huh? No, I’m still here. Okay, you too, ‘bye. [repetitive keystrokes, sound effect of Zangief doing focus strike]

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)

Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post
Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda

• There is still a scientific agenda to insist that humans are causing climate change, but errors¹ in the 2007 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel report are helping conservatives to make climate change not be happening.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Dan Riehl, c. 1785, Oil on canvas
by Joseph Siffred Duplessis

Not Much Shorter (If At All) Dan Riehl, Poor Dan Riehl’s Almanack
Bryant Gumbel: No Blacks Makes Winter Olympics A Joke “Like A GOP Convention”

• It’s not my frigging fault Negroes can’t ski. They should fire Bryant Gumbel for being all black dis and all black dat all da time. But they won’t because he’s like one of the five Negroes alive who doesn’t speak Ebonics. UPDATE: Yeah, I know that this quote from Gumbel is old.* So what?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

*Speaking of old, this is the perfect opportunity to remind everyone of one of Dan Riehl’s more notable instances of assholery.

Doug Fieger, guitarist and lead singer of The Knack, died yesterday of cancer at age 57.

In this, as well as with the band’s 1979 number-one single, “My Sharona,” George Harrison got in way ahead of him, and no one in America will notice when Paul Weller does it.

Still, The Knack’s success inspired numerous imitations, not only of The Jam by young British groups hungry for American hits, but also in the way that the idea men at Motown reacted to the unexpected success of the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” by rushing out the same old song. “Baby Talks Dirty”, the third Knack single, created an oversupply of songs that were “My Sharona,” but it failed even in series with “Good Girls Don’t,” the second single, to prevent a Sharona Wave of powerpop-informed UK records like “Back of My Hand” by The Jags and “Turning Into Paul Weller Japanese” by The Jam Vapors from slipping briefly onto radio playlists before control (i.e. Supertramp) was reimposed. Domestic launchings included The Romantics, for better or worse — ‘worse’ being Utta Likea buh-CHOO and the make-it-stopness of the goddamn playing of that, already.

Et in Arcadia Fieger! And there are videos right down there. The Jags also had an Elvis Costello thing going on, which ought to have put them in a critical niche with the early Joe Jackson and Graham Parker, except they seem now to be the young kind of early-20s rather than the pre-30s kind necessary for Costello/Attractions epigones, and they might not have a lyricist worthy of the task — I dunno; I haven’t looked into it. The Vapors are a genuinely great band, unfairly dismissed (as Modern English also is) because no one in the US ever hears the rest of their single A-sides, let alone the album tracks. The Chords and The Circles are straight 1979 mod-revivalists, but so awesome I can’t avoid taking out the Romantics track that used to be there and knocking the premise of the post all to Hell — and so close to the end, too.

Above: The Jags — “Evening Standard” (3:57)

Above: The Vapors — “News at Ten” (3:24)

Above: The Chords — “Dreamdolls” (2:26)

Above: The Circles — “Opening Up” (3:13)

Dan “Desert Of The” Riehl,¹ Riehl World View
Never Marry A Cambridge, MA Shrink And Go To A Tea Party Event
Friday, February 12, 2010

TPM uses a low form of journalism by reporting that an obviously disturbed individual also ran across the Tea Party movement. Draw your own conclusions (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

The Massachusetts man charged this week with stockpiling weapons after saying he feared an imminent “Armageddon” appears to have been active in the Tea Party movement, and saw Sarah Palin, who he said is on a “righteous ‘Mission from God,'” as the only figure capable of averting the destruction of society.

I don’t know, maybe his being married to a Cambridge, MA shrink was to blame. That’s probably enough to drive anyone nuts. Seriously, if you want to use that type of foolish linkage in an attempt to drive people to conclusions, then who the individual spent more of his time with should be even more responsible for his behavior.

Well, you know, adulthood means an end to childish excuses. That is, when called to account for yourself, you can just go NO, BLAME IS ON YOU. HA! HA! HA! and they can say wait a second, how can you just stand there and AHA! SO THE BLAME VICTIM IS ME! you can say, making them jump around and shout reasonings at you, and wave their hands in HAR! HAR! THAT MAN OVER THERE IS MAKING ME FIX YOUR BACKWARD TALK! the, uh, air, and finally GO AWAY BEFORE YOU ATTACK YOU WITH MY FISTS, UNFAIRLY TO ME! walk away, um, purse-lipped and squinting.

See, they’re not allowed to stoop to your level. That’s called the First Amendment. The Second says you can shoot a gun anywhere you want, and if someone tries to stop you, it’s their fault if you shoot anyone.

Dan “Blooper” Riehl, Riehl World View
Update: Alabama Prof Fired 3 Times at Brother, Was Taken At Gunpoint
Saturday, February 13, 2010

Whoa! Just when you thought it couldn’t be more weird. She fired at her brother 3 times, was taken at gunpoint and it was accidental? Hellooo.

She shot her brother, an 18-year-old accomplished violinist, in the chest in 1986, said Paul Frazier, the police chief in Braintree, Mass., where the shooting occurred. Bishop fired at least three shots, hitting her brother once and hitting her bedroom wall before police took her into custody at gunpoint, he said. Frazier said the police chief at the time told officers to release Bishop to her mother before she could be booked. It was logged as an accident.

But Frazier’s account was disputed by former police Chief John Polio, who told The Associated Press he didn’t call officers to tell them to release Bishop. “There’s no cover-up, no missing records,” he said.

Update: More at Gateway Pundit, including a report that it was Bill Delahunt who made the call to release Amy Bishop back in 1986.

Now that it’s confirmed Alabama Prof Amy Bishop was involved in the death of her brother back in 1986, I followed up on a RedState post inquiring about Rep. Bill Delahunt’s (D,MA) role in handling the 1986 shooting death of her brother. Delahunt was the DA who opted to not pursue charges at the time.

In an interview at his home this afternoon, Polio, 87, said, “There was no coverup.” He said he followed all department procedures and then-District Attorney William Delahunt’s office conducted an inquiry and the decision was made not to file charges.

It seems Delahunt was accused of being soft on crime during a run for Congress back in 1996. This new issue could prove even more troubling for Delahunt, assuming he intends to run for…

Heh. Um. Wow.

ABOVE: Professor Reynolds prepares for class.

Gun nut Perfesser Glenn “InstaCracker” Reynolds was certain to “Hey Indeedy” sooner or later on the UAH professor who shot some of her colleagues when she was denied tenure. Surprisingly, Perfesser Reynolds didn’t trot out the tried and true response that if the other professors had been allowed to pack heat on campus, this never would have happened. Instead Perfesser decides that the best thing to do is to point out that the shooter was a “socialist” and that if she were instead a conservative the MSM yadda yadda yadda Olbermann would yadda yadda slurp snort 24/7 honk honk hey indeedy.

True to the high standards of the Perfesser’s blog, he sourced the shooter’s political leanings from an impeccable and unimpeachable source: one comment on ratemyprofessor.com. Given the unquestionable authority of anonymous student comments on a rating website, it has now been irrefutably demonstrated that the InstaHayseed is a horrible, nightmare-inducing professor. Heh.