the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. Newt Gingrich; Ames, Iowa; and Rick Perry. What It All Means.
2. How The GOP Sabotages Obama’s Brilliant Economy.
3. Ezra Klein & The Megamind: Lower Your Economic Expectations
4. The Perils of Complexity
5. Barack Obama – the American Idol President
6. Unapologetic Public School Officials Turning Children Into Good Little Comrades
7. Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.
1. Newt Gingrich; Ames, Iowa; and Rick Perry. What It All Means.
Had you tuned in to my radio show two nights ago, you would have heard me tell the world that Newt Gingrich’s campaign was disintegrating. Had you jumped over to RedState yesterday at noon for my Presidential horserace post, you’d have seen again that sources were telling me Newt’s campaign was in complete meltdown and I did not expect him to survive.Well, you’d have heard it here first, but whether you heard it here or elsewhere, by now you know Newt Gingrich’s campaign is dead. The national staff left en masse and the Iowa staff is gone. They all quit.Newt Gingrich wrote on Facebook that he is still in the race and will relaunch in Los Angeles on Monday. My only theory is that he is relying on a team of Hollywood special effects guys to build him a team of animatronic campaign staffers.Many of us admire Newt Gingrich’s intellect, but even while Speaker of the House, Newt had a reputation as uncontrollable and undisciplined. While the press may say the implosion of his campaign has to do with his staff’s loyalty to Rick Perry, I believe the real answer is that Newt too frequently went off message, did not engage, and most likely has not taken the steps necessary to build a campaign war chest of both money and critical allies. And no staffer seeing this would want to wait around for a later more obvious candidate led implosion that makes the innocent staff look culpable.I’m sure the Mediterranean cruise was one of the last straws.With Newt in, but his national staff fleeing, there is massive speculation tonight that Texas Governor Rick Perry is going to get into the race.In other news, Governor Mitt Romney, who won the Ames Straw Poll in 2008, has decided not to participate in the Ames, Iowa straw poll this year. That weekend just so happens to be the weekend of the RedState Gathering in Charleston, S.C. Coincidence? Well, yeah, but . . . .Anyway, what do these three events mean? Well, I’ll tell you.Please click here for the rest of the post.
2. How The GOP Sabotages Obama’s Brilliant Economy.
So Harry Blodget of Business Insider asks what the Democratic Party hopes will be a helpful question. Are Republicans Intentionally Sabotaging The Economy For Political Gain? It’s an interesting theory and perhaps the makings of an excuse for the profoundly inexcusable. You see according to Harry Blodget’s friend and colleague Dan Gross, the GOP is on an economic sapping mission in the run-up to the 2012 Elections.Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. Ezra Klein & The Megamind: Lower Your Economic Expectations
Left wing journolister, Ezra Klein, posted an article yesterday wherein he argues that the economy will continue to suck, we should all prepare for tax hikes, and Pawlenty is lying. He comes to his authoritative conclusion by consulting an economic megamind consisting of people made famous for being wrong, and/or being tied to Think Progress, but I repeat myself.Ezra begins his article by having Jared Bernstein define the economic speed limit as, “the growth rate of productivity plus the growth rate of the labor force”, no problems here really. I am sure Ezra would have liked more from Bernstein, but then he’s the other name on the infamous Romer-Bernstein graph on the effects of stimulus on unemployment…Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. The Perils of Complexity
As a practicing lawyer, I naturally have a professional interest in vague and/or complex legal rules that require lots of expensive legal research, training and experience to understand and explain. But complexity isn’t just costly to consumers of legal services, and thus a burden on business as well as on citizen access to the courts. It’s also a drag on the economy and on personal liberty, as businesses and ordinary citizens must choose between paying lots of compliance lawyers or steering too wide of increasingly large gray areas. It risks in particular the unfair, arbitrary and sometimes corrupt or discriminatory abuse of the criminal justice system to prosecute things that were hard to foresee as violations of the law. And it demeans democracy, as the actual making of law is done by judges and bureaucrats rather than citizen-elected legislators.One of the greatest virtues of Justice Scalia in his quarter-century on the Supreme Court (he celebrates 25 years on the High Court in September) has been his structural critique of, and systemic assault on, unnecessary legal complexity. In three opinions this morning, he focused attention on three different aspects of that same problem – one of which was graphically illustrated by yesterday’s news regarding the widespread practice of waivers under Obamacare. And last week’s news regarding the indictment of John Edwards illustrates how the failure to heed Scalia’s wise observations has made a hash of efforts by campaign finance “reformers” to regulate political speech in the United States.Please click here for the rest of the post.
5. Barack Obama – the American Idol President
Another day, another poll. On Wednesday, the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll was released, and to no one’s surprise, President Barack Obama’s approval numbers have declined. His post-Osama bounce has become a dead terrorist bounce…and the POTUS is back where he was back in April.But the thing that struck me in this poll, and in CNN’s summary story, was the coverage of Obama’s so-called “personal appeal”Please click here for the rest of the post.
6. Unapologetic Public School Officials Turning Children Into Good Little Comrades
For decades, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, stories of collectivist indoctrination of children to be “good” members of Soviet society had been reported. Vladimir Lenin, who stated, “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever,” knew that indoctrination was the key to having a uniformly obedient collectivist society. His successor, Josef Stalin, was even more blunt (and brutal) in his imposition of state obedience replacing family loyalty. It is, perhaps with that in mind, that we Americans become particularly suspect of state intervention with our children.Kyle Olsen, writing at BigGovernment.com caught this disturbing story of public school officials in Lee County, North Carolina using children to lobby parents for education spending. It may have gone largely unnoticed had one of those parents not been State Representative Mike Stone [R] who received a letter from his own daughter.Please click here for the rest of the post.
7. Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.
Ed Morrissey and Fausta are both not getting why the President is taking the side of Argentina (thus sharing a podium with that noted beacon of freedom, tolerance, and capitalism known as Venezuela) in its perennial attempts to get the United Kingdom to give up the Falkland Islands. It’s not just that we’re signed on to the OAS declaration demanding that the British negotiate on the question of giving up territory that doesn’t want to be given up; we’re even endorsing Argentina’s blustering insistence on calling the islands by the prior name. All in all, this is a fairly significant change: the question is, why?Please click here for the rest of the post.
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