Exceptionalism

I...I honestly don't understand the point of this story, which appeared on the front page of today's NY Times: US Owes Medal Haul To Athletes Who Did It Their Way

After winning two medals Saturday, the United States is assured of breaking the record for the most medals ever won at a Winter Games, with 36 and one more ensured in men’s hockey. But in proclaiming the accomplishment, the American officials made no mention of the fact that many of the athletes who have contributed to the medal haul are those who have gone their own way, sometimes barely linked to United States Olympic team programs.

In speedskating, Shani Davis, winner of a gold and a silver, has such a strained relationship with U.S. Speedskating, the sport’s national governing body, that he does not allow his biography to be posted on its Web site. Lindsey Vonn, who won a gold and a bronze in Alpine skiing, was cultivated in the U.S. Ski Team system but now receives intensive independent training.

The snowboarder Shaun White, who won a gold, prepared for the winter season by training privately on a halfpipe that was financed by Red Bull, his sponsor.

“Nobody’s really telling Shaun White what to do,” said Jake Burton, the founder of Burton Snowboards, whose company also sponsors White.

Now, wait a minute, I've just spent the last 2 weeks (not to mention the previous 30 years) watching Sentimental Puff Pieces (SPP's) about the lengths some American athletes go to in order to pursue their dreams: the bake sales, the 5 AM skates, the second mortgages, the divorces, etc. I was under the impression we were supposed to admire this, in contrast to athletes from other countries who are often made wards of the state and attend various national sports academies. And, as the Times admits, this has long been the case for the US:

The United States is one of the few nations that do not publicly finance its Olympic athletes. That state of affairs has given rise to a fluid, entrepreneurial system that is alternately blamed for athletes’ shortcomings and praised as their greatest advantage. Competitors with enough star power can pursue independent careers while promising athletes are nurtured in more traditional development programs.

This hybrid system has dismayed officials in some sports, like track and field, whose leaders have accused athletes of allowing agents and shoe company representatives to make many of their career decisions. But it seems to work well in the Winter Games, in which American athletes have more than held their own this year against traditional powerhouses like Germany and Norway. Entering Sunday’s final day of competition, the United States leads Germany by seven medals. .

You mean US athletes are allowed to follow their own instincts and passions in furthering their careers, rather than depending on their ability to kiss the ass of some mid-level functionary at the Ministry of Sports? The Times makes this out to be a bad thing.

Eurofinger

Wow, there really is a secretive cabal of hedge fund managers who rule the world - or at least determine the economic fate of nations - if this article's tone is to be believed: Is The Man Who Broke the Bank of England at the Center of Hedge Funds Betting Against the Euro?

A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.

Representatives of George Soros's investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an 'ideas dinner' at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece's debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency's decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds.

No word on whether the caterers who served the assembled Titans of Short Selling were later sealed in an underground vault to preserve their silence.

It is, of course, easier to blame George Soros and David Einhorn for all the problems in Europe, but really they are just taking advantage of the appalling fiscal position that Europe has boxed itself into. Does the antelope blame the jackals? Does the corpse rage against the vultures? Europe's elites have simply run up a tab that can no longer be paid off, either in the short or long term. And there doesn't appear to be a political solution that can arise from normally functioning institutions. Even if Greece, Spain, etc wanted to cut themselves to the bone, the rioting entitlement classes in Athens are a warning that there are millions who will continue to demand a seat at the buffet, even as the waiters are sweeping away the remains of the day. The spectre of (shudder) "hedge funds" attacking the Euro is simply the deus ex machina for this particular farce.

Soros, for his part is not the one to look to for a way out. He thinks the EU needs MORE centralized control, which is what he is seeking through chaos:

He said: 'Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.

'Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.'

He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.

'If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the euro may fall apart,' he added.

Modesty Blaze

The worst lawsuit of the day comes courtesy of a South Bay Muslim teenager who claims that her employer violated her civil rights by ordering her to remove her Hijab. The employer? Abercrombie & Fitch: Muslim Goes To Feds Over Head-Scarf Firing

Hani Khan, 19, of Foster City said she was fired Monday at the Hollister clothing store at the Hillsdale Shopping Center. She was dismissed a week after a district manager visited the store, called her into a meeting and said she was not supposed to wear the scarf while at work, said Khan, who is of Indian and Pakistani descent.

A representative from human resources joined the meeting by phone, and Khan said she had been told that she was in violation of the store's "look policy."

"I thought it was quite unfair," Khan said in an interview. "It was really surprising, especially in the Bay Area, because everybody's so open-minded and accepting of everybody. It's really surprising to see blatant discrimination against someone who is of an Islamic state who is wearing a hijab."

Khan contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. On Tuesday, the organization filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Abercrombie & Fitch, which operates Hollister stores.

Let's see. This girl is modest and devout enough to insist on wearing a headscarf, so she got a job at Abercrombie & Fitch, a retailer that is ... not known for its modesty or sympathy for the religiously devout. Makes sense! The linked article helpfully notes that Khan is a poli-sci major at the College of San Mateo, so there can't possibly a political motive behind this. The only thing more annoying than this lawsuit is knowing that her attorneys can obtain a large statutory fee award if their complaint succeeds.

The girl says that the store manager who hired her said that wearing the scarf was OK, so long as she wore the company colors. It was only when the dreaded "district manager" got involved that it turned out A&F may have had a problem. It's one of the basic employer-employee conflicts in retail: how do you make sure your employees are dressed appropriately. In A&F's case, you would think the answer would be: by making sure everyone is wearing A&F clothes. I wasn't aware that A&F sold Hijabs, so it seems appropriate to me that they would ask Khan to dress properly or get out. She wouldn't be the first kid to learn the valuable life lesson that your boss gets to tell you what to wear (within reason).

Then again, you have to wonder what A&F was thinking hiring this girl in the first place. What, there weren't other South Bay teenagers looking for a job at the mall? Maybe the Little Depression really is over.

Chattering Classes

Louise Slaughter (D-NY) won the Health Summit's Ludicrous Anecdote Award for her tale of a constituent wearing her dead sister's dentures (via Gateway Pundit) : Horror: Lib Dem Claims Her Constituent Wore Dead Sister's Teeth

“You will not believe this and I know you won’t, but it’s true. Her sister died. This poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister’s teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit.”

As a matter of fact, I don't believe this. Progressives love to use this sort of legislation-by-anecdote because (1) they are designed to guilt trip wavering moderates and (2) they are impossible to verify. Slaughter knows she can make this crazy claim because no one in the media is going to make an effort to find out if there really is a woman out there wearing her dead sister's dentures. And, if the media did learn the story was bogus, who cares? The point isn't to tell the truth; it's to get a sob-story on the national news. As far as Slaughter is concerned, it's Mission Accomplished. Dems are always beating conservatives over the head for failing to be as intelligent and compassionate as they are. But something like this makes you realize how low-grade so much of leftist political discourse really is.

Pitiful, just pitiful.

UPDATE: Slaughter is also responsible for attempting to insert anti-torture language into an intelligence (guffaw!) bill. The bill has since been pulled

reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

Lovely Rita

There's an uproar in Oakland over parking tickets. The city has been aggressively enforcing parking violations, some for the first time in decades, all in the hope of replenishing the city's coffers. No one likes to admit it, but parking tickets are a regressive tax that disproportionately hits the poor. Tickets are also a valuable revenue source for urban politicos. The same Al Sharpton types who think drug busts are a sign of White Oppression don't think twice about draonian parking laws that make commerce and car ownership unnecessarily difficult. But the sometimes random nature of enforcement leaves some room for mischief:

Oakland parking officers were ordered to avoid enforcing neighborhood parking violations in two of the city's wealthier neighborhoods but told to continue enforcing the same violations in the rest of the city, according to a city memo obtained by The Chronicle
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The July order is corroborated by interviews with three parking officers, who said they and their colleagues had complained about what they deemed a discriminatory practice since it began last summer - to no avail.

"It's not fair," said Shirnell Smith, 44, a parking officer for 22 years who has lived in Oakland for 24 years. Smith and the union representing parking officers said the policy has resulted in tickets being issued disproportionately to poor, black and Latino people.

...

the parking department had deemed certain tony neighborhoods - Montclair and Broadway Terrace - off-limits from those two parking infractions. Parking violators in those neighborhoods were to receive "courtesy notices," according to a July 24 memo by Ronald Abernathy, a senior parking enforcement supervisor, sent to four parking supervisors and copied to parking Director Noel Pinto. The letter did not explain why the two neighborhoods were being spared from the tickets, which carry fines ranging from $40 to $100.

Reached on his personal cell phone Wednesday, Abernathy would only say, "I don't answer any media questions."

That's almost too good to be true. How many of us have griped about selective enforcement for different neighborhoods? It turns out that, at least in Oakland, it's true. Not only that there is an official city policy to favor wealthy neighborhoods over poorer ones, even though Oakland, is much more noisy than San Francisco in its egalitarian "progressive" attitudes.

Of course, the people complaining about this might want to consider what sort of unfairness is going on here. Maybe people in Broadway Terrace are paying less for parking violations, but they generally pay a lot more in property taxes than the rest of Oakland, and those taxes are paying for a lot of dysfunctional, not to mention, expensive government. In its own dim way, Oakland is trying to placate some of its more important revenue sources who could very easily move to Berkeley or Alameda if the city of Oakland made life in the Special City even more of a hassle than it already is. It's not like they are sending their kids to Oakland's crappy public schools or anything.

And, of course, it would never occur to anyone that you wouldn't need to use parking tickets as a revenue source (rather than a method of punishment) if the size of Oakland's government had so outstripped its tax base.

Master of the Senate

Red State describes a crucial, yet hidden, roadblock to Obamacare, which has led to the present impasse where each house of Congress has passed legislation, yet a final bill cannot go forward. The hero in this story should not be surprising to conservatives: The House Goes First, Or Obamacare Dies: Thank You Senator DeMint

The Speaker and the White House find themselves in this position because of Senator DeMint (R-SC). He insisted that Senator McConnell object to the appointment of the House-Senate Conferees, thus preventing a Conference on the bill.

The inability of the Dems to have a House-Senate Conference then forced the Speaker to have a House floor vote on the Senate bill, which she can’t pass. And there the process has been stuck. Has not moved an inch since Sen. DeMint’s objection. It can’t, she does not have the votes.

The Speaker could fix the Senate bill on the House floor by amendment, then pass the Senate bill amended and fixed, but then it would have to go back to the Senate, where it would have to get 60 yes votes, or die. Since it will not get 60 votes ever again in the Senate, it will die — if the Speaker tries the amend the Senate bill on the House floor and send it back to the Senate route.

When Senator DeMint (R-SC) denied the Speaker the ability to fix the bill in Conference, he put the Speaker and the White House in their current box. If there had been a House-Senate Conference, then the House could have fixed the bill without a floor vote and the bill could have changed, without having to send it back to the Senate to face 60 vote margins.

But now, they can’t have a conference, and the Speaker and the White House must pass the unpassable Senate bill, in order to even try reconciliation.

DeMint is really one of the GOP's best weapons in the Senate: a principled conservative who also has an intuitive grasp of the parliamentary options available to a Senator. Plus, he wrote a pretty good book as a conservative manifesto for the Obama era. Naturally, the GOP largely ignores him, as do the Democrats and the MSM.

In The Doldrums

Armed and Dangerous takes an up close and personal look at unemployment as seen through the lens of two of his gaming buddies, one of whom has taken to living in a homeless shelter: Marginal Devolution

What these guys have in common is that they’re only marginally employable. What borderline mental illness has done to one, mediocre skills and the unintended consequences of anti-discrimination laws have done to the other. As long as I’ve known both (and that would actually be most of my years, for both of them), they’ve worked dead-end jobs and put their passion into science fiction and wargaming. They’re decent, honest, unambitious men who have never wanted anything but steady work, a normal life, and a hobby or two. They’re not stupid and they have respectable work habits; in fact they’re probably more conscientious and safe than average. Now they don’t quite fit; too old, too geeky, too male, too quiet. The job market has discarded one and the other is hanging by a thread.

When I look at these guys, though, I can’t buy the explanation most people would jump for, which is that they simply fell behind in an increasingly skill-intensive job market. Thing is, they’re not uneducated; they’re not the stranded fruit-picker or construction worker that narrative would fit. Nor does offshoring explain what’s happened to these guys, because their jobs were the relatively hard-to-export kind.

No. What I think is: These are the people who go to the wall when the cost of employing someone gets too high. We’ve spent the last seventy years increasing the hidden overhead and downside risks associated with hiring a worker — which meant the minimum revenue-per-employee threshold below which hiring doesn’t make sense has crept up and up and up, gradually. This effect was partly masked by credit and asset bubbles, but those have now popped. Increasingly it’s not just the classic hard-core unemployables (alcoholics, criminal deviants, crazies) that can’t pull enough weight to justify a paycheck; it’s the marginal ones, the mediocre, and the mildly dysfunctional.

A&D's personal solution is to call together his social circle and try to find jobs for these guys, which is certainly more useful and compassionate than simply passing the hat and giving them a few bucks (or petitioning the gov't to do so). A&D's broader point is even more important: gov't efforts to "solve" unemployment, and to deliver on grandiose chicken-in-every-pot campaign promises, often can have the opposite effect; yet we cannot conceive of a gov't that would not react quickly to demands that it stimulate growth and job creation.

For better or for worse, the New Deal provided a convincing template for voters to demand economic growth and for the gov't to deliver. Of course, that growth was dependent on piling increased regulatory and tax burdens upon employers until we reached the present point where jobs are devilishly hard to create, but, hey, at least there was a method at work that people could readily understand. The GOP can talk all they want about deregulation and the coming "conservative backlash," but there can be no revolution without a politically palatable method for creating jobs and nurturing growth. Otherwise, the "revolution" will do little more than reform the welfare state, leaving it ripe for rebirth.

Living In A Political World

You can always count on the Olympics to come around every four years. And, trailing in its wake, you can always count on smug media elitists to tell us all that we are all Very Bad People for celebrating American achievements at the Games. Susan Jacoby, who writes some sort of Atheism Column for the Washington Post (as God is my witness, I am not making this up), provides this year's model (h/t Newsbusters): Olympic Boosterism: When American Superiority Means Inferiority

If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care about getting it right, and NBC doesn't. Not if the athlete isn't one of us, contributing to the mounting total of "American" medals announced breathlessly every day. Why, anyone would think that these medals were more important than the performance of American students on international comparison tests of achievement in school. In case you're interested, Finland was No. 1 and Canada No. 2 in the most recent international assessment of reading comprehension. The United States was No. 15. U.S.A., U.S.A....

Boy, for an atheist, this lady sure is judgmental, not to mention puritanical. No sports for you until your reading comprehension "beats" Finland's!

Jacoby's attempts at international sophistication are probably the funniest bits of her screed. She claims that foreign media outlets "pronounce everyone's name correctly." No they don't. If you watch TV in France, American names are rendered in an elaborate (and dashingly romantic) French accent. Go to Japan and American names receive the same treatment (in 7 years living in Japan, not one person pronounced my name correctly, although they were very nice about it). And so on. Also, I don't know what countries Jacoby has visited, but I can guarantee the citizens of those countries care about the performance of their teams first and foremost. Shocking, I know. I think I can already hear the guns of August.

Worse, according to Jacoby, we give athletes from other countries short shrift

This Olympic coverage matters because it offers a window into a deeply provincial, reflexively nationalistic mindset that hampers our understanding of the rest of the world and prevents any realistic assessment of American weaknesses and strengths in comparison to other countries. In a truly emblematic moment in the "We're No. 1" extravaganza, NBC showed a recap of the medals ceremony for theMen's Super-G, an Alpine skiing event. Americans Bode Miller and Andrew Weibrecht won silver and bronze, respectively, but the network simply blanked out the gold medal podium, which was occupied by Norwegian Aksel Svindal. Well, who cares about a Norwegian? He's just an athlete from one of those unhappy countries cursed by secularism and universal health care.

That is simply wrong. Svindal, for one, was the subject of a Sentimental Puff Piece (SPP), and NBC has been talking up his historic performance. And if there has been a men's alpine event that did not feature numerous shots of Svindal's emotional father (who bears an alarming resemblance to Psota's Norwegian grandfather), I'd like to know its name. Curling coverage has given short shrift to the US team because, frankly, they suck. Bobsledding, ski jumping, nordic combined, biathalon, even women's figure skating have been dominated by Dread Furriners, and NBC's coverage has reflected that.

Then, Jacoby gets around to what really gets her goat. Universal health care has not gotten enough attention in these Olympics:

A twin of this delusion about superior American morality is the conviction that we have nothing to learn from the way any other country does things. The dire warnings that "Obamacare" was going to turn the U.S. into Europe or Canada--as if the inferiority of European and Canadian medical care were self-evident--has been very much a part of the non-debate over health care this year. And here is why the NBC coverage means more than the jingoistic flag-waving that always surrounds international sporting competitions. This has been a lost opportunity for a little bit of education that could have been sandwiched in between the medal counts. Since the Olympics are being held in Canada, would this not have been a perfect opportunity to do a feature on the Canadian health care system to go along with the endless time-filling blurbs on what the American athletes are listening to on their iPods? There were certainly ample news pegs, since injured athletes were being carried off the slopes to Vancouver hospitals every day.

Moreover, the first Canadian ever to win an Olympic gold medal on his home soil, Alexandre Bilodeau, has a medical and human backstory that would have been made for TV--had he been an American.

Actually, that last bit is evidence that Jacoby has not watched one second of NBC's coverage. Bilodeau was the subject of another SPP, which went heavy on the sentiment regarding his brother, Frederic, who suffers from cerebral palsey. And NBC did broadcast Bilodeau's medal ceremony which included a rousing crowd sing-along of "Oh, Canada!" along with so much flag waving that you would have thought the massed Canadians were ready to march on Baghdad. There's an inconvenient truth for you: even Canadians like to indulge in "jingoistic flag waving" of the sort Jacoby disapproves.

Jacoby also manages to throw in Brit Hume, Tiger Woods, Justice Scalia, 9/11, and a lot more. Wake me up when there's some atheism in there.

Such is life under our "hip" progressive masters. We can't even enjoy something as simple as a downhill ski run without someone smugly lecturing us about reading comprehension and universal health care. A question for Jacoby: if we do as you wish and mix sports with discussions of public policy regarding health care (or whatever) isn't that the sort of rank "bread & circuses" propaganda that sophisticates like you are always so quick to deplore?

Sanctuary Silly

I've written before about San Francisco's deadly sanctuary city policies. Short version: the City Probation Department had was hiding juvenile illegal aliens who had been arrested and charged with crimes. The idea was to keep the little dears away from the deportation-happy feds. The probation office went as far as to fly some of these kids (all of whom were criminals) back to their home countries - at taxpayer expense! The inevitable happened and one of these poor victims of the Bush-era Oppression hauled off and shot (massacred, really) a father and two of his sons. The bereaved widow sued the City, and yesterday got her day in court along with its sad, yet inevitable, result: Judge Tosses Sanctuary Suit In SF Killings

The family of a father and two sons who were shot dead on a San Francisco street in 2008 can't hold the city responsible for failing to turn their alleged killer over to immigration authorities after earlier arrests, a judge has ruled
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The city isn't legally to blame for any crimes Edwin Ramos, a suspected illegal immigrant from El Salvador, committed after his release for the offenses he committed as a juvenile, Judge Charlotte Woolard of San Francisco Superior Court said Monday.

Cities "generally are not liable for failing to protect individuals against crime," Woolard said.

She dismissed a damage suit by the widow and daughter of Tony Bologna, 48, who was shot to death in his car near the family's home in the Excelsior district in June 2008. His sons Michael Bologna, 20, and Matthew Bologna, 16, were also killed.

Their brother, who survived the attack, identified Ramos, then 21, as the man who fired the fatal shots from a passing car. Police said the gunman may have mistaken the younger Bolognas for gang members.

People don't like to hear this, but you can't sue a municipality for, say failing to save your house from burning down, or from failing to protect you from crime*. Not only is it hard to hold an individual liable for not doing something, but governments are in the position to pass laws granting them virtual indemnity from such claims. Such laws are, in fact, some of the oldest ones in the book and date back to the Middle Ages. So, this lawsuit had only a snowball's chance in hell of success.

That's not to say that this should be a satisfying result. The "hide the illegal" program was a classic bit ofprogressive policy making: the inevitable result of misplaced sentiment for criminals, racialist concerns about the "community" (I suspect an Irish illegal immigrant would benefit from the City's subterfuge), and the simple smug certainty that the progressive way is the compassionate way. But, as we have learned time and again, the inevitable result of the left's reluctance to punish crime is that crime will increase. The deaths of innocents can only follow.

You would think the deaths in the Bologna family would cause some soul searching among the City's enlightened, but you would be wrong. The mayor canceled the program, but the Board of Supervisors reinstated it over the mayor's veto. As far as I can tell, no one has lost their job, over even expressed regret, over this fiasco. That's an amazing accomplishment when you consider that the prime victims of this are the City's voters, while the prime beneficiaries are not. The Bologna family was betrayed by the City and now that they have suffered the consequences of a failed - not to mention reckless - liberal policy, they are left with no recourse. Certainly, there is no recourse at the ballot box. A sad result all around.

*actually, one of the classic cases of this sort dates back to 1850 when a San Francisco homeowner unsuccessfully sued SF for dynamiting his house to create a firebreak after an earthquake.

Simple Minds

Here's Peter Boettke's plea for simplicity in economics as the key to reforming our troubled economy. Yes, I'm sure our technocratic overlords will get on that right away: Simple Economics Is Not Necessarily Simple Minded

In Extraordinary times, what we need most is ordinary economics. Crises such as the collapse of communism, the failure of development planning, the rise of tensions over globalization, the consequences of a major natural disaster, and financial collapse need to be met not by extraordinary theories designed to provide emergency room economics, but by a return to cool-headed and basic economic principles. Incentives matter even in the economic emergency room, and in fact, since we are dealing with an emergency to forget that basic point is perhaps even more costly than in normal time, perhaps so costly as to be deadly for the economy. Losing our heads as economists and violating the basic principles of the discipline is how we turn a market correction in to an economy wide crisis --- which in my view is what we have done over the last year and a half.

I can't disagree with any of that. But, when virtually everyone who is presently in a position to reform the system is a PhD with an Ivy League background, it is a faint hope indeed that they will enthusiastically embrace simplicity as a panacea. In fact, complexity is the only thing they will respect, and Americans who object to bizarrely convoluted "comprehensive" reform will be chided for their ignorance and childishness.

Come Together

Keith Hennessey notes six areas where he approves of the president's economic policies. All are larded with caveats, but they do show areas in which the GOP can work towards blessed bi-partisanship: Six Good Obama Policies

1. Make [some of] the Bush tax cuts permanent - I approve.

2.Index the Alternative Minimum Tax - this really is something they should get done. The original legislation is not working as intended and the annual "patches" are a waste of time.

3. Slow out-of-control health care cost growth - as Hennessey notes, Obama has identified a problem (good), but has not set out a reasonable solution (bad); quite the opposite, in fact.

4. Slow the growth of Medicare spending - I can't improve on Hennessey here: "He proposed to spend those savings on a new health care entitlement, undoing all the fiscal policy good of slowing spending health care growth. "

5. Approve Free Trade Agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia - the GOP should be moving mountains to help get this done. It's a valuable opportunity to cement allies and trade partners, to lower barriers to trade, and to screw over protectionist unions. Win Win Win.

6. Expand nuclear power - another mountain moving opportunity and one the GOP should grab. Fun Free Will Fact: the one true-blue communist I've known well was very big on nukes because "the Soviets were very good on nuclear technology." Not that I am suggesting the president is a closet Marxist or anything.

And for those of you who believe Nothing Can Be Done due to "partisanship," Hennessey provides this handy list of bi-partisan legislation enacted during the Dread Bush Administration: Bipartisan Successes

Each of the following major laws was enacted on a bipartisan vote:

• The 2001 The 2001 tax cuts;
• the the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001-2 in 2001-2;
• the 2002 the 2002 extension of Trade Promotion Authority;
• the 2003 the 2003 medicare law;
• the 2005 the 2005 energy law focused on electricity focused on electricity;
• the 2006 the 2006 pension reform law;
• the 2007 the 2007 energy law focused on fuel focused on fuel;
• the 2008 the 2008 stimulus law;
• the 2008 the 2008 housing reform law; and
• the 2008 the 2008 TARP law.

President Bush also reached across party lines to reform immigration law. His bipartisan outreach on this issue was successful, but the legislation failed due to opposition from both wings. In that effort President Bush’s team negotiated with a broad group in the Senate, led by Senator Kennedy on the left and Senator Kyl on the right.

Obviously, there are some things on that list that conservatives hate (actually the activity in 2008 is painful to read), but Hennessey's point is that, if it is possible for even the Dumb Constitution Shredder From Texas to pass major legislation with help from the other side, it shouldn't be too much for Jesus Delano Lincoln to do the same.