Maggie's Farm

The new taxes the Dems are contemplating

Blue Crab: "This is fairly shocking. The New York Times discovers that a lot of people who oppose ObamaCare are not raving lunatics - something the Times has not exactly been reporting before now." Related: Those darn violent right wing nuts.

Related: I thought it odd that we have heard very few ordinary people supporting government medicine. Of course not, since polls say 80% of people are happy with their medical care. Gateway found out who does support government medical care. Not exactly ordinary people.

Via RCP, from a Dem in Forbes:

Step back for a second, listen to what the non-screaming skeptics are saying, and it's clear the party severely overestimated its mandate and underestimated the public's growing unease with the government's massive growth over the last year. What would have been a hard sell in any environment has turned into an epic challenge. Yet the Democrats have been charging ahead as if it's still November 2008, oblivious to the dramatic change in the electorate's mood.

At Pajamas:

Now, as Matt Welch of Reason magazine points out, fear of big government is all the rage — and is cause for rage. He writes:

This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.

And increasingly, Obama administration policy does violence to European values, as well. The continent has for the last two decades been systematically disengaging national governments from domestic industries. Top officials from Sweden, of all places, complained about Washington’s auto bailout, tersely announcing that “the Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate, Welch correctly concludes, “Americans didn’t vote for big government last November. They voted for a guy who looked like he could keep his cool in the heat of battle. If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”

But that goes for Republicans as well.

1799, via Volokh (h/t, Insty):

 Let me place myself in the President’s chair, at the head of a party in this country, aiming to extend the influence of the governing powers at the expence of the governed; to increase the authority and prerogative of the Executive, and to reduce by degrees to a mere name, the influences of the people. How should I set about it? What system should I pursue?

1st. As the rights reserved by the State Governments and the bounds and limits set by the Constitution of the Union, are the declared barriers against the encroachments of entrusted power, my first business would be to undermine that Constitution, and render it useless, by claiming authority which, though not given by the express words of it, might be edged in under the cover of general expressions or implied powers — by stretching the meaning of the words used to their utmost latitude, — by taking advantage of every ambiguity — and by quibbling upon distinctions to explain away the plain and obvious meaning. It would be my business to extend the powers of the Federal Courts and of Federal Officers — to encroach upon the State jurisdictions — to throw obloquy on the State Governments as clogs upon the wheel of the General Government — for that purpose to promote a spirit of party among them, and subject to accusations of disaffection those who were opposed to the measures I would pursue. In addition to this I would now and then exercise trifling acts of authority not granted by the Constitution, under some undefined notion of prerogative. If by such means one encroachment should be made good, it would be a precedent for another, until the public by degrees would become accustomed and callous to them.

"Us right-wing nuts sure is scary!" Our hero PJ, Still 'Crazy' - And Proud of It. Conservatives induce a case of the vapors at the Washington Post.

They do not know how to write an English sentence. Stanley Fish on What Should Colleges Teach? I thought that writing, logically developed argument, and coherent essay writing was a job for high school, not college. h/t, Althouse

Via Bernard Goldberg:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots.  For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.”  Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

I am a Neanderthal. OK. That's what I always thought anyway. I eat red meat too. Yummy.

Can medical care be a Constitutional entitlement?

Castro comes out in defence of Obama. That will help a lot. An endorsement only Hollywood could appreciate.

Were the bailouts a good idea? Marginal Rev

Will Scotland learn from this? 

Our friend Jonah's final post on his Liberal Fascism blog.

The Admin joins the defence team for terrorists. Brilliant move. I am sure that will make them love us. Here comes the Grand Inquisitor from Connecticut.

More stimulating stimulus dollars. Why not just give Vouchers for Hookers? Like Cash for Clunkers?

No Pasaran:

Carle Zimmerman emphasized an inverse relationship between the strength of the family and the strength of the state. In other words, he argued that as the state increases in power, the family weakens; and as the state loses power — when the state becomes weak, for whatever reason — the family becomes stronger…

Russia's ongoing romance with Stalin. They like strong (paranoid) men.