A Second Hand Conjecture

I was in no doubt that Rod Blagojevich was a troubled and exceedingly peculiar man. These past few days have seen a flood of revealing details from aides and Democratic Party insiders which cast even his sanity into question (potentially doing him a great legal service). But one of the oddest aspects of the governor that I’ve yet seen reported is his obsession with a plastic hair brush:

And yet, Mr. Blagojevich, 52, rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,” an allusion to the “nuclear football,” or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president.
(NYT)

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Interesting:

[W]e are on pace for the worst reaction to an election since Truman won in 1948.  Interestingly, the only times the DJIA has ever declined by more than 1% [are] the day after a presidential election when the Democratic Party won complete control.
(Bespoke)

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According to the Associated Press, a sequence of interviews with Democratic leaders has revealed this to be the political plan being recommended to the Obama campaign:

1. Tie the Republican to an unpopular President Bush.
2. Let no charge go unanswered.
3. Stress plans to fix the economy.

Well, I’m not sure any of these items is good advice, with a possible qualitative exception on #3.
(more…)

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Ken Davenport has a brutal piece in TWS this morning on the frankly rather embarrassing opposition of the National Organization of Women to Sarah Palin’s candidacy. It still astonishes me to no end that an organization which would be splendidly placed to speak as the pluralistic voice of the majority demographic group in the country (women=51.1% of US population), is so eager to consign itself to speaking only for a fantastically smaller band of Democratic Party partisans.

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Anti-Wal-Mart hysteria seems to have curiously abated somewhat since the corporation started giving more generously to the Democratic Party. Not an uncharacteristic phenomenon for the centralized extortion tactics –er, “grassroots activism” of such campaigns.

But there are still some people creatively fighting the not-so-good fight against your freedom to choose where to shop. This is a good example. A fascinating little animation showing the viral growth of Wal-Mart locations since 1962.

The poster describes the visualization as “worse than AIDS in Africa,” and thereby demonstrates only an incredible capacity for delusional inhumanity. But while some like he will recoil in horror at the vision of Wal-Mart’s geographic expansion from a humble rural backwater to national predominance, to me it’s entirely impressive and worthy of congratulation (for both Wal-Mart and the critical animator).

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One of the more entertaining howlers of contemporary liberalism, is the outraged caterwauling about “Crony Capitalism” and the Bush administration. Not because the charge isn’t true, it certainly is. No, the problem is when it comes to crony capitalism the Democratic party is where its at, and always has been. It is just that it is papered over with all kinds mushy feel good rhetoric.

Did any of these people pay attention to the the Clinton years? Not that Clinton was any kind of exception. Nowhere has that been more plain than in the case of Fannie and Freddie.

Want to know who has been enabling, profiting from, and carrying water for Freddie and Fannie? Paul Gigot gives us the whole story, including who really didn’t benefit, even before they became a budgetary anchor:

Yet as studies have shown, about half of the implicit taxpayer subsidy for Fan and Fred is pocketed by shareholders and management. According to the Federal Reserve, the half that goes to homeowners adds up to a mere seven basis points on mortgages. In return for this, Fannie was able to pay no fewer than 21 of its executives more than $1 million in 2002, and in 2003 Mr. Raines pocketed more than $20 million. Fannie’s left-wing defenders are underwriters of crony capitalism, not affordable housing.

Who is one of the most vicious and self righteous defenders of Fannie and Freddie?

Trying to defend the mortgage giants, Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote, “What you need to know here is that the right — the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. — hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don’t want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo.”

That’s a howler even by Mr. Krugman’s standards. Fannie Mae and Mr. Mozilo weren’t competitors; they were partners. Fannie helped to make Countrywide as profitable as it once was by buying its mortgages in bulk. Mr. Raines — following predecessor Jim Johnson — and Mr. Mozilo made each other rich. Which explains why Mr. Johnson could feel so comfortable asking Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) to discuss a sweetheart mortgage with Mr. Mozilo, and also explains the Mozilo-Raines tag team in 2003.

Read the whole thing. H/T: Coyote Blog

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Competition plays a large role in much of my life. As a tournament bridge player, competition is the name of the game. The better you do, the more you rate to win. The more you do to learn, improve your game and secure superior partners and teammates, the higher you climb.

As a Realtor, it’s much the same. If I deliver top-notch products and services to my clients, then I rate to prosper with my business. If I fail to improve, connect and listen to the needs of my clients, then I am unlikely to do as well as the next guy.

Competition is great. Most people enjoy doing well - but you cannot unless you work hard and try your best. Learning, improving, growing …. All of us should strive to include this in our lives.

Why, then, is it that so many Democrats seem to spurn competition?

The Democratic Party has become the anti-competition party.

It’s true in education where Democrats, with their slavish devotion to teachers unions, oppose vouchers even for constituencies they pretend to champion such as minorities and the disadvantaged. Vouchers would force public schools into competition.

It’s true with immigration, where many Democrats advance the phony argument that illegal immigrants displace U.S. workers by lowering wages. For low-skilled workers who refuse to get more skills or learn a new trade, illegal immigrants amount to competition.

And it’s certainly true in the area of trade, where Democrats do the bidding of organized labor by fighting trade agreements and advocating protectionism. Trade, by its very nature, encourages competition by opening up markets across borders and seas.

This rejection of competition I believe relates to the Democrats’ embracing of equality. Don’t get me wrong; I am someone who strongly believes in equality. But - equality should be a matter of equal opportunities, and equal justice before the law. What each of use chooses to do with those opportunities can vary widely among us - just as our abilities, talents, strengths and weaknesses vary dramatically.

Total equality is a fiction. It is impossible to make the human condition the same for everyone, irrespective of what steps are taken.

Nor, as explained above, should we really want to do so. It is competition and variance that causes us to improve and yearn for something better.

When President Clinton worked to get the passage of NAFTA, I applauded him. More free trade was a win-win situation for the world.

Why do the Democrats of today - and in particular, President Clinton’s wife - reject it today?

Why do they not wish to compete and search for new heights and achieve new goals?

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Obama the Confident:

Barack Obama’s campaign, riding a wave of 10 straight victories in the contest for the Democratic nomination after wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii, today urged Hillary Clinton to bow to the inevitable and accept defeat.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, dismissed her camp’s hopes of making a comeback when the power states of Texas and Ohio hold their primaries on March 4, and said Clinton would be unable to bridge a widening gap in delegates.

“This is a wide, wide lead right now,” Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters. “The Clinton campaign keeps saying the race is essentially tied. That’s just lunacy.”

The argument from the Obama camp appears designed to paint Clinton as a nuisance candidate — much like Mike Huckabee who has continued to fight for the Republican nomination even though it is mathematically impossible for him to catch up to John McCain’s lead in delegates.

Shaun Mullen writing at The Moderate Voice takes a look at the delegate race and agrees that Clinton is unlikely to prevail as eventual candidate, but finds Plouffe’s comments to be mere … Plouffery:

I’ve been killing a goodly number of brain cells lately trying to figure out how Hillary Clinton can keep from driving off the electoral cliff, but I keep shooting blanks.

For one thing, the mathematical deck is now stacked against her. She needs to win the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4 by huge margins, but that looks increasingly unlikely, while a big win in Pennsylvania on April 22, where she doesn’t even have a full delegate slate, would be too little too late.

With voting over in all but 14 states, Barack Obama leads Clinton 1,336-1,251 in delegates, according to The Associated Press’s count, with 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.

[...]

So what’s a cooked goose to do?

Certainly not concede, as Obama’s campaign manager suggested in an atypically silly remark. What Clinton is left with is stealing and attacking.

Stealing as in trying to manipulate the superdelegate count and get delegates seated who are pledged to her from Florida and Michigan. Because of the longtime connections that she and Bill Clinton have to the party establishment, she would seem to have the inside track on this.

Atypically silly or not, I think it’s indicative of how much Obamamentum the campaign has right now. I think Mullen’s right as rain about Hillary needing the superdelegates to pull this thing out, as well as at least some of Obama’s pledged delegates and/or getting the Michigan and Florida contingent seated. While the race isn’t anywhere near final, I do believe it’s Obama’s to lose.

Even so, advising your opponent to just quit at this stage is a bit much.

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Here’s a fascinating little article on Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and the new leading light of the Italian Left. Vetroni has worked to create a more moderate and flexible social democratic political culture in Italy. Modeling his new party in name and substance expressly on the US Democratic Party, he’s sought to create a very American kind of Left in a country so often fractured by the rancor of political extremism. His fierce criticism of Iran and his rejection of ossified socialist economic theory represent substantial breaks from the ideological status quo. While many of his positions and views aren’t entirely welcome, perhaps a Blairite “third way” is finally coming to the Italian Republic.

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