Professor Longhair

I'm beginning to think that Jerry Brown believes he isn't going to win the California governor's race. You know why? Because he's already starting to complain that his opponents are not as smart as he is. "Republicans are dumb" has long been the mating call of the liberal loser, and Brown is making sure we know that he thinks both of his potential rivals are idiots: Brown Lashes Out at GOP Candidates for Governor

Months after clearing the Democratic race for governor of any serious opponents, Attorney General Jerry Brown held his first official public campaign event Monday - slamming Republican gubernatorial rivals Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner as "the apostles of darkness and ignorance" and calling their expensive barrage of mudslinging "intellectually embarrassing" to California voters.

"They are so banal," Brown told about 200 students and others at a rally at UC Santa Barbara, referring to the millions of dollars that Whitman, the former eBay CEO and Poizner, the state Insurance Commissioner, have spent on attack ads in a primary battle that some polls suggest is a dead heat with three weeks until the June 8 election.

"If you know how to write and think," Brown said, "look at those ads, and do the exact opposite." He added: "The apostles of darkness and ignorance are well-heeled and they have great political consultants."

Right, like Democratic races with their Che T-shirted college kids, ACORN volunteers, busloads of union rowdies, and appeals to "The People v The Powerful" from billionaire pols like Nancy Pelosi are studies in high flown debate. Still, give Brown credit: he's got the Adlai Stevenson act ("banal" "apostles of darkness and ignorance" "great political consultants") down cold.

What I don't hear is how Brown plans to respond to his GOP rivals. He has to know what's coming: neither Whitman nor Poizner are what you would call committed conservatives (although Poizner does a credible job ladeling out red meat). But, the focus of the campaign is going to be reining in California's out of control government. Whitman has already laid out some specific plans to get things moving again, while Poizner has made all the right "starve the beast" noises in his speeches. Is Brown planning to defend Big Government? Is he going to tell us how he plans to pull California out of its hole? Or is he just going to gripe that no one in the race is as smart and sophisticated as he is?

Brown has a hard race to run. While he has name recognition, and obvious public service experience, he is also someone who has been in the public eye for 40+ years. Not only that, the crisis of Big Government is a crisis of the government that he and his dad pretty much established and set in motion. I half expect Brown to go into his favorite pose of "Melancholy Truth-teller," informing the Democratic Party's various stakeholders that the party is over, but for now he's sticking with "Republicans are dumb and evil." How inspiring.

Hollywood Calling

After the Big Bands, Armstrong's next stop was Hollywood, where he appeared in movies that were usually little more than a series of musical events strung together by some flimsy dialog. They were the music videos of their day, and about as deep. But, they give you a sense of Armstrong as a performer. Here he is "debuting" the song Jeepers Creepers. Since it would never do for a black man to sing a love song in a movie watched by whites, he has to sing to a horse:

But, check out Public Melody Number One which shows a much more *adult* Armstrong than you might be used to. Warning: he shares screen-time with (ugh) Martha Raye:

Pops quotes critics who thought the above was too heated for polite company. Note also the lyrical references to J. Edgar Hoover and Al Capone. Armstrong had a lot of trouble with Chicago gangsters after his initial rush of fame, as they began fighting over the right to "manage" him. Incredibly, Armstrong had to flee Chicago and New York in order to get away from the gangsters.

The Jerk

I'm a few days late, but I didn't want to miss this chance at commenting on the dark heart that lies in many "moderate" members of the Establishment: Charlie Crist Heckled At HQ Opening

More than 100 people turned out to the opening of Charlie Crist's new campaign headquarters in downtown St Pete this morning. Among those publicly touted their support for Crist were Democratic state Rep. Darryl Rouson, Republican state Rep. Peter Nehr, Democratic Tampa city council member Charlie Miranda, Democratic former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, and Republican state Sen. Mike Fasano.

The standout moment came when a heckler started shouting at Crist (around 3:10 into clip), "What about the guys who gave you money when you were a Republican?!"

"I'm going to keep it!" Crist cheerfully responded, drawing roars of approval. Check out his wink right after.

Yeah, f*** you very much, Charlie. Never mind that the centrist Republicans who donated $$ to Crist through the Senate campaign committee funnel would have been happy to see Crist elected to the Senate. It was Republican voters who rejected Crist, not the Establishment. There's a difference, you know.

I guess I kinda sorta understand where Crist is coming from. If this were 2004, he could have strolled into that Senate seat. Maybe he would have had to issue an extra-nuanced position paper on abortion to satisfy the rubes in the base, but he would have happily posed for pictures with W and talked tough on the Iraq War long enough to count. Once in the Senate, he could have cheerfully joined every bi-partisan Gang of ____ that has enabled the growth of the state, even in an ostensibly center-right era. But, sorry Charlie, this year isn't that sort of year.

Crist's stubborn insistence on running a third party campaign is not about ideology, or even "electibility." It's a simple quest for power, and don't think that there aren't people out there for whom that will be enough.

Left Behind

I don't literally want to be a "man of the Left," but sometimes you have to envy how nothing liberals or socialists do is ever their fault. Case in point: Greece's socialist PM says he will be looking into bringing fraud claims against the US bankers he holds responsible for his nation's Euro-destabilizing economic crisis: Greece Considering Legal Action Against US Banks for Crisis

Greece is considering taking legal action against U.S. investment banks that might have contributed to the country’s debt crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said.

“I wouldn’t rule out that this may be a recourse,” Papandreou said, in response to questions about the role of U.S. banks in the crisis, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” The program, scheduled for broadcast today, was taped on May 13. Neither Papandreou nor Zakaria mentioned any banks by name.

...

Papandreou said the decision on whether to go after U.S. banks will be made after a Greek parliamentary investigation into the cause of the crisis.

“Greece will look into the past and see how things went,” Papandreou said. “There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I think, yes, the financial sector, I hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here.”

Come on! Even a corpse in the desert has enough dignity to not rail against the vultures circling above him! US banks didn't spend a decade cooking Greece's books to hide its unsustainable entitlements and back breaking debt. Greeks did that all by their little selves. The "speculators" causing trouble now are simply taking advantage of the hole that the Greeks dug for themselves.

Papandreou is welcome to demagogue "bankers" and "the US" all he wants. Hell, it might even work since the Greek people have shown a vigorous enthusiasm for being lied to. But, there is no avoiding the simple fact that we are not living through a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of Big Government and the welfare state.

The Third Wheel

Even in its government-owned, bailed out form, Chrysler is still the afterthought among the Big Three. While the government happily goes along with the Enron-accounting that allowed GM to claim implausibly that it had paid back its debt to the feds "in full," Chrysler is simply reported as a billion dollar loss: Treasury Takes $1.6 Billion Dollar Loss On Chrysler Loan

The Treasury Department said Monday it will lose $1.6 billion on a loan made to Chrysler in early 2009.

Taxpayer losses from bailing out Chrysler and General Motors are expected to rise as high as $34 billion, congressional auditors have said.

Treasury said Monday that Chrysler repaid $1.9 billion of a $4 billion loan, which was extended before the company filed for Chapter 11. The government hopes to get another $500 million from the company that emerged from bankruptcy, Chrysler Group LLC.

Treasury officials said that the government had no plans to boost its stake in the new Chrysler to cover those losses. It also acknowledged another $1.9 billion in potential losses from a separate loan that had been made to the company that went through bankruptcy proceedings. It indicated slim hopes of recouping much if anything from that separate $1.9 billion loan.

The original $4 loan was made in January 2009, when the Bush administration was scrambling to rescue Chrysler, GM and their auto financing arms.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in March that the government's $85 billion bailout of the automakers would cost taxpayers $34 billion.

FWIW, I saw someone driving a Fiat 500 past City Hall the other day. It looked ... cute. Not cute enough to buy, of course, but I'd like to think there are enough gay men and swinging single chicks in the United States to make it a profitable car whenever it is that Chrysler starts selling them out here.

I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas

After Louis Armstrong's first burst of fame, the obvious thing for his managers to do was to put him in front of a big band, which is where he stayed until 1947. Teachout comments that a lot of critics then and now were dismayed, believing that he was best served by working with small combos, rather than an orchestra. Plus, they didn't like that Armstrong's sidemen were always workman-like, rather than brilliant, with the result that his Thirties work has been denigrated as being not serious enough. Not sure why people were expecting seriousness from a guy who wanted to sing "Ding Dong Daddy," but there you have it.

Busted & Disgusted

The end of the JaMarcus Russell Era in Oakland has inspired Bay Area fans to make a list of the 50 biggest sports busts ever. This list might be a little too Bay Area-centric for some, but when your local teams include the Raiders, the Golden State Warriors, and the post-DeBartelo 49'ers, you will have a lot more busts on the shelf than championship trophies. Some of these are funny in a pitiful way: Readers' List of Biggest Sports Busts

6. Chris Washburn (NBA, Warriors): He lasted just four seasons and averaged 3.1 points a game after going third overall in 1986.

Golden State drafted Washburn despite that fact that he had an SAT score below 500, was caught stealing a stereo at North Carolina State and was the subject of published reports that he hadn't attended class.

Washburn was banned from the league in 1989 after failing three drug tests. After some minor-league stops, he currently works in the mortgage business near Dallas.

...

17. Matt Bush (MLB, Padres): Classic story of No. 1 overall pick in 2004 who can't hit in minors and gets moved from shortstop to pitcher. Bush lasted seven innings before tearing up his elbow.

Five years later, a drunken Bush got in a fight with high school kids, and a witness said he "picked up and threw a lacrosse player and yelled, 'I'm Matt F- Bush.' " He was immediately dumped by San Diego, and GM Kevin Towers said, "The Matt Bush era is probably over."

Just imagine that before these guys hit the pros, they had entire support systems built around them and their can't-miss fortune & fame: agents, parents, high school coaches, friends from the neighborhood, etc. They would have been better off playing the ponies. I'd also imagine that there's a lot of schaudenfreunde out there. Just imagine being the hapless high school nerd* who got picked on by Ryan Leaf! No need to skip the reunion!

*not a problem for Psota since the most prominent athlete to come out of his high school was a girls lacrosse player who got mixed up in a Confederate flag scandal at Harvard

Steamboat Stomp

I've started reading Pops, Terry Teachout's biography of Louis Armstrong. His first well-paying professional job was playing in a dance band that plied its trade on a steamboat on the Mississippi. This track by Jelly Roll Morton (one of the young Louis' influences) captures the ragged fun of those days.

Free Will

The paragraph of the day comes courtesy of George Will: Europe's Lack of Discipline

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction -- that "Europe" has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

Will has been absolutely on fire the last few months. The repeated crises in Big Government and concurrent reckless expansion of the welfare state are really the windmills that Will has been tilting against for most of his career, but it was a message no one wanted to hear in the preceding decade with its focus on social issues, terrorism, and foreign adventurism. Now, Will is back to the theme with which he made his career back in the Seventies: that the welfare state and the ambitious politicians who would administer it are dangerous to prosperity and inimical to individual freedom.

Supercuts

The Governator has submitted his "draconian" budget proposal. For once, spending cuts are directed at California's bloated welfare state. CA has approximately one-tenth of the US population, but fully one-third of the nation's welfare recipients live here.I've long called for CA to simply stop paying for everyone else's poverty program (that would Mexico's and the other western states), while also cutting out anything that duplicates something being funded by the feds, and this seems to be a step in that direction. Of course, the MSM reaction is all too predictable: Budget Proposal Deals Blow to California's Poor

State programs that help California's neediest residents would be significantly cut or outright eliminated under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's updated spending plan announced Friday.

Schwarzenegger proposed ending the entire state welfare program along with most state-subsidized child care, cutting mental health services by 60 percent and considerably slashing in-home care services for elderly, sick and disabled people. Those cuts, along with others, would save the state an estimated $12 billion in the year starting July 1.

"California no longer has low-hanging fruits, we don't have any medium-hanging fruits and we also don't have any high-hanging fruits," Schwarzenegger said. "We have to take the ladder from the tree and shake the whole tree."

First of all, if you come to California specifically to obtain the state's generous welfare benefits, and the numbers indicate that a lot of people do, I don't think you should be considered part of "California's poor." You are poor people from another state/country who came here for a better dependency culture. Second, America has developed an odd system where "poor" people own cars and major appliances, have been able to buy homes with subsidized mortgages, and suffer not from hunger pangs but from obesity. Of course, the joke is that these cruel cuts will reduce California's spending levels to those last seen in (dramatic pause) 2008! Oh the humanity!

The Governator's budget doesn't even go anywhere near as far as it could go, as some deficit hawks have noted: Schwarzenegger's Budget Addresses Few Structural Issues

For starters, Schwarzenegger's proposal would not balance the budget. He fell $3+ billion short by borrowing money from the future while calling the result "balanced". He arguably fell another $3 billion short, by counting on handouts from Obama.

Unfortunately, I see no specific pension reform mandates (Schwarzenegger is leaving that up to the legislature). The proposed payroll reductions of 5% primarily comes from not filling vacancies. Ho-hum where is the pain there?

Democrats are upset Schwarzenegger will not raise taxes, and sensible Republicans are unhappy Schwarzenegger did not stick it to the unions as did Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.

In regards to the prison system, I see no radical changes, only wimpy proposals to move inmates from one jail to another.

(Sssshhh. We're getting ready to do all that after Governor Whitman is sworn in).

The budget actually increases funding to the state's colleges and universities. It also improves funding to the state's many parks. I don't like the idea of paying for the livelihoods of the tenured radicals at UC any more than you do, but I think we can all agree that universities and parks are a public good that the government should be paying for. So, OK, the mean GOP is cutting "welfare." That's what we do, babe. But, the proposed budget also increases funding to the state's community colleges, which are still some of the best educational deals out there (is it still $13/credit hour for SF's City College?), and a surer way out of poverty than subsidizing someone's drug habit.

California, like much of the rest of the developed world, has been experiencing a crisis of Big Government, not just in over-spending, but also in the economic distortions created by an overweening state that insists on doing everything for everybody. A lazy sort of left-liberalism has been the state's default political setting for decades. We are now living with the accumulated results of that orientation. Progressives in Sacramento and in the media may decry "draconian cuts," but the fact is we have never tried to solve California's problems with the sort of cuts and reforms that would make a real difference. The Governator's new budget won't win any popularity contests, but it is certainly a hesitant step in the right direction.

UPDATE: here are some charts courtesy of Chuck DeVore, which graphically represent the outsized extent of California's welfare case load (h/t Book Worm).

MC-0

I'm guessing that the Detroit Tourist Bureau, or whatever they've got, has concluded that Mitt Romney will never be president. Detroit officials are planning to tear down his boyhood home, which will of course mean no future "historical" sight to commemorate the Man From Palmer Woods

Wrecking crews are preparing to tear down a landmark 5,000-square-foot house in the posh neighborhood of Palmer Woods in the coming weeks, a sign that Detroit is finally getting serious about razing thousands of vacant and abandoned structures across the city.

In leveling 1860 Balmoral Drive, the boyhood home of one-time presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Detroit is losing a small piece of its history. But the project is part of a demolition effort that is just now gaining momentum and could help define the city's future.

The house was owned by Mr. Romney's parents, George and Lenore Romney, from 1941 until 1953, when the family moved to the northern suburbs. The elder Mr. Romney would go on to become head of American Motors Corp., then governor of Michigan and U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

The tear down is part of an overall plan to knock down thousands of vacant buildings left over from Detroit's economic apocalypse.

Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term as part of a nascent plan to "right-size" Detroit, or reconfigure the city to reflect its shrinking population.

When it's all over, said Karla Henderson, director of the Detroit Building Department, "There's going to be a lot of empty space."

Mr. Bing hasn't yet fully articulated his ultimate vision for what comes after demolition, but he has said entire areas will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. For now, his plan calls for the tracts to be converted to other uses, such as parks or farms.

Even when the demolitions are complete, Detroit will still have a huge problem on its hands. The city has roughly 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots, according to Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that tracks demographic data for the city.

Romney, for one, was philosophical, but also willing to place some blame:

The younger Mr. Romney, who is considered a leading GOP presidential candidate for 2012, said "it's sad" that his childhood home is being razed, "but sadder still to consider what has happened to the city of Detroit, which has been left hollow by fleeing jobs and liberal social policies."

No kidding. Detroit has done everything that Democrats think is necessary for a "just" society. It embraced trade unionism (both in industry and in public sector jobs), industrial policy, generous welfare services, etc. The Kerner Commission Report, the definitive example of the liberal "root cause" approach to crime and urban poverty, was drafted specifically to respond to the Detroit Riots of 1967, those riots being the moment Detroit and the Left embraced racial separatism as a political goal. Detroit and national Democrats treated the area's major employers - that would be the Big Three - as little more than ATM's and playthings of social policy, especially in the environment and energy. And, now everyone's standing around, shocked that the Golden Geese have died. Can I hear a "Duh!" from the congregation?

Romney at least understands what happened. But, what about Detroit's (and Michigan's) many "progressive" potentates. Have they lost a single night's sleep over the ruin they have caused? Doubtful. Even now, the tattered Brezhnevian Levin brothers - Senator Carl and Congressman Sander - are planning new assaults on America's private sector. Detroit may have failed economically, but the root of that failure was political. And there is no sign that the politicians or the political philosophy that brought a city to the point where it is tearing down neighborhoods have been discredited.

Colorblind

The Wall Street Journal notes a small step forward in civil rights in the United States, although not the sort the civil rights lobby would approve of. It seems some Hispanic activists sued the city of Irving, TX, claiming that the city's system of "at-large" voting for city council was discriminatory because there had never been a Hispanic council member. Since no one considered that maybe the problem was the proposed candidates sucked, the city redrew its voting districts, creating six single-member seats along with two at-large ones. One of the single-member districts was one of those computer generated gerrymander jobs specifically designed to be a "Hispanic" seat. (I await the creation of a "conservative" seat for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We've been shut out of office too long!).

Last Saturday was the first election under the new court imposed system, and the results were surprising to anyone with a liberal's view of human nature: Texas, Gerrymandering and Segregation

The newly created "Hispanic district" was won by Mike Gallaway, a black candidate who easily beat Trini Gonzalez, an Hispanic. And Roy Santoscoy, another Hispanic, defeated a white incumbent for one of the open at-large seats that was supposedly out of reach to Hispanics due to Irving's allegedly racist voting system.

Yes, a black man is sitting in the "Hispanic" seat, and a Hispanic is sitting in one of the at-large seats that supposedly were reserved for white people. Incredible as it might seem, Americans - even the ones in Texas! - tend to pay attention to the content of people's character, rather than the color of their skin. Gallaway, for one, seems like a genuinely decent man ... for a Democrat (guffaw!). Trini Gonzalez, his opponent, was gracious in defeat, lamenting only at the low turn out. Only 449 people voted in the "Hispanic" district for which Dallas-area public interest lawyers had fought so valiantly to bring into being. I don't know. Maybe people figured the fix was in, since the district lines were drawn to achieve a particular result. (or maybe *gasp* many of the people in a "Hispanic" district are not technically allowed to vote).

Anyway, regardless of how the lines were drawn, the voters managed to elect the right guy in the end. They also managed to show, in a small way, that race continues to slowly recede as a negative factor in the minds of many Americans.

Don't Panic

Today's calm soothing sounds come courtesy of Paul Krugman, who has surveyed the wreckage of the European entitlement state, and wants Americans to know something very important: We Are Not Greece

That said, we do have a long-run budget problem. But what’s the root of that problem? “We demand more than we’re willing to pay for,” is the usual line. Yet that line is deeply misleading.

First of all, who is this “we” of whom people speak? Bear in mind that the drive to cut taxes largely benefited a small minority of Americans: 39 percent of the benefits of making the Bush tax cuts permanent would go to the richest 1 percent of the population.

And bear in mind, also, that taxes have lagged behind spending partly thanks to a deliberate political strategy, that of “starve the beast”: conservatives have deliberately deprived the government of revenue in an attempt to force the spending cuts they now insist are necessary.

Meanwhile, when you look under the hood of those troubling long-run budget projections, you discover that they’re not driven by some generalized problem of overspending. Instead, they largely reflect just one thing: the assumption that health care costs will rise in the future as they have in the past. This tells us that the key to our fiscal future is improving the efficiency of our health care system — which is, you may recall, something the Obama administration has been trying to do, even as many of the same people now warning about the evils of deficits cried “Death panels!”

So here’s the reality: America’s fiscal outlook over the next few years isn’t bad. We do have a serious long-run budget problem, which will have to be resolved with a combination of health care reform and other measures, probably including a moderate rise in taxes. But we should ignore those who pretend to be concerned with fiscal responsibility, but whose real goal is to dismantle the welfare state — and are trying to use crises elsewhere to frighten us into giving them what they want.

Reassuring! ... Especially the part where Krugman says we need "health care reform" to cut into the unsustainable deficits of the future! I wish I lived in Paul Krugman's house, where every day is the first day of Year Zero.

UPDATE: John Stossel takes a look at Krugman's charts and concludes: Krugman Misleads on Greece.

Leave Us Alone

Lord have mercy, California's race for the GOP Senate nomination is attracting an unusual amount of "help" from conservatives outside of the state. Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum have already endorsed Carly Fiorina, never mind that (1) Chuck DeVore is a viable conservative candidate and (2) the primary is still 4 weeks away. Now, Erick Erickson from Red State is issuing commands from his perch at CNN: Chuck DeVore Receives an Ultimatum From Erick Erickson

Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of RedState.com, backs Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the California Republican senate primary. DeVore is locked in a battle with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Rep. Tom Campbell for the right to face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November.

Speaking Tuesday with CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, Erickson – a CNN contributor – said he won’t support DeVore much longer if the candidate does not improve his political standing.

“Look, if Chuck DeVore hasn’t gone up in the polls within two weeks significantly, I’ll be with Carly Fiorina because Tom Campbell is that bad,” Erickson said.

OK, Adama, we'll get right on it!

I think we can all agree that we have our favorite candidates in the primaries, but in the general election, we are all Republicans. Does it really matter who endorses whom in the freakin' primary? I guess it does. I can understand Erickson's reasoning. A split in the conservative base in the CA GOP will hand the nomination to Tom Campbell, a guy who would be begin rebuilding the tax-collectors-for-the-welfare-state wing of the Senate should he manage to knock of La Box. But, Red State has been righteously pumping DeVore stock for months. Now, all of a sudden, DeVore has "two weeks" to show he can win. What is this, JV football?

DeVore's been hanging tough with - and out-debating - two better funded candidates with superior name recognition. He's still rising in the polls. The shocking upsets we've seen this year - Brown in MA, Bennett in UT - have come in the last few days before the vote. There's no reason why such a dynamic won't work in the GOP primary. But, it won't work if people drop DeVore because Fiorina is more "electable." Need I remind everyone that this is how we ended up with Governor Schwarzeneggar, rather than Governor McClintock (who we should have listened to when we had a chance)?

Erickson, for one, has taken to his blog to revise and extend his remarks, which admittedly came in a tossed off moment at the end of a segment: Chuck DeVore and Polling

What I said and what I meant is that the election is four weeks away in California. In two more weeks I’ll check again and see what the polling shows. I believe Tom Campbell would be a terrible nominee. His closeness with disreputable people who’d be happy to see us all dead is too much for me.

So if Chuck DeVore is not viable, then I’m with Carly Fiorina.

But unlike many, I think Chuck DeVore is viable and has a pulse, which is why I’m not abandoning Chuck. In fact, the only one in the race flatlining right now is Carly Fiorina.

Consider Marlin Stutzman — two weeks before his election he was at 8% in the polls. A week before the election he was at 18%. He actually got 30%. It can happen.

What I see in the California polling is Carly Fiorina sinking and Chuck DeVore rising. And what I’ve seen all along is that Chuck continues inching up and Carly continues dropping.

So here we arrive at the moment where we need some intellectual consistency: I’ve said all along conservatives cannot split their vote and see a bad candidate get elected. I’m practicing what I’m preaching in this reassessment.

Great, now just change that "two weeks" to "two days" and we'll call it a night.

This calls for a little music:

Someone, please take a hint.

Country Roads

Alan Mollohan is out in West Virginia. He voted exactly the way his party leaders wanted him to and that wasn't enough for him to win his party's primary: Mollohan Out

With votes counted in 342 of 670 precincts, Democratic state Senator Mike Oliverio leads 14-term Democratic Congressman Alan Mollohan 57% to 43% in a district that has been represented by a Mollohan for 48 of the last 56 years. The vote totals are Oliverio 20,601 to 15,788. Mollohan is losing all the population centers. I don’t see him picking up the votes in the remaining precincts.

The Associated Press has not called the race. I will. Oliverio beat him.

The media will surely say that this is another example of anti-incumbent fervor; pointing to Crist and Bennett (hey, they're Republicans! No one's safe!) with Spector and Murtha's old district coming up next week. And that's not to mention the Dodds, Obeys, Stupaks and Dorgans who retired in the face of terminal polling.

But, these DC lifers aren't leaving office because of an "anti-incumbent" mood. The voters have been consistent in voting out a certain type of incumbent: the appropriators and fake moderates who have been spending too much money, voting for trillion-dollar bills over the objections of a majority of the electorate, and betraying their principles (Mollohan, apparently was seen as a pro-life Democrat. Are people really that naive?). Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are both running for re-election this year. Have you heard of anyone mounting a credible challenge against them? Me neither. If you opposed TARP, the stimulus, and Obamacare, you've got nothing to worry about. If you supported any of these...you might have to sit down with your kids for a "Daddy might be home a lot more next year" chat.

No, liberals are in the cross-hairs this year, especially those moderate Republicans and "conservative" (hah!) Democrats who talk a good centrist game on the stump and then vote to the left in DC. The Left has always relied on moderates to pass their agenda, but these moderates usually end up taking the fall, whether in France, the Soviet Union, or the US in 2010. If you know your history, this is not a surprise, but we know how much attention most people give to history.

The MSM loves the idea of a general "anti-incumbent" mood because it allows them to side-step the anti-left agenda in most voters' minds. This also shouldn't be a surprise, as the MSM is little more than the PR arm for the Party of Appropriators, who have been the real third party in American politics, and whose ranks are being thinned this year. Don Surber has a revealing history of the level of media support that Mollohan - and his father before him! - received from West Virginia news outlets, even as the tales of corruption and double-dealing became too loud to ignore: Mollohan Did Not See It Coming

I recall a Charleston Gazette editorial from September 22, 1985, about his Dad: “At least one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are millionaires. Probably the number is substantially more than that How many millionaires sit in the House of Representatives isn’t known, but many lawmakers there are wealthy. Moreover some of the wealthy, like former Rep. Robert Mollohan of West Virginia, today a multimillionaire, have exploited their public trust to enrich themselves.”

And this from a Charleston Gazette on April 25, 1989: “All this sounds reminiscent of the way Rep. Mollohan’s father, former Rep. Robert Mollohan, D-W.Va., became a millionaire in Congress. He was notorious for self-enrichment deals with outside partners. “

That editorial called for Democrats to dump Jim Wright — another crook who did it legally — as Speaker of the House.

But Ned Chilton is long gone and the Charleston Gazette defended Alan Mollohan, brushing aside serious ethics lapses as the fantasies of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Sadly, as tough as the Charleston Gazette was on the old man, it defended the son.

We are not just watching an anti-incumbent wave. We are watching the political side of the DC Establishment - the Old Bulls and the Appropriators who have done so much to damage this country - taken apart piece by piece.

Hungry Hungry Kiddos

Some students over at UC Berkeley are on a hunger strike as part of that campus' seeming permanent protest culture. They are entering into their second week of refusing food and liquids, so I guess we can't knock them for their dedication. Their intelligence and life choices are another matter: Offer To Meet Does Not End Hunger Strike at UC

As a hunger strike at UC Berkeley entered its second week, university leaders who say they are concerned for the students' health offered an in-person meeting with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau on Wednesday in exchange for an immediate end to the protest.

"It appears to us that they will not end this hunger strike until they meet face-to-face with the chancellor," said campus spokeswoman Claire Holmes.

Despite the school's offer, some 200 protesters - including several hunger strikers - marched to Birgeneau's campus residence Monday evening to demand a meeting right away.

A spokeswoman for Birgeneau offered to set the meeting for today, but the students would not agree to an immediate end to the strike. They said, however, that four strikers who are declining liquids would begin to drink again.

Their demands are an odd grab bag. None are life or death matters, and yet these kids are starving themselves anyway. Maybe they are hoping UC will cave on just one of these so they can start eating again:

The hunger strike began in response to a new Arizona law requiring police in that state to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally.

Hunger strikers presented the administration with four main demands: that Birgeneau publicly oppose the Arizona law, make the campus a sanctuary for undocumented students and workers, rehire more than two dozen laid-off janitors, and drop disciplinary proceedings against dozens of students who occupied or vandalized buildings last fall to protest rising fees.

Additional demands have since included a commitment to preserve ethnic studies in light of challenges to such courses in Arizona and allowing students to help reform rules on student conduct.

For their part, UC administrators are acting as feckless and powerless as you would expect. Mostly, they have been engaging in fruitless dialog, rather than grabbing these kids and force feeding them. I know, I know. The "kids" are adults and no one wants to violate their rights to starve themselves for political gain.

The kids will not identify themselves, and the school apparently won't either. The linked article has a picture of three strikers, but no names. I assume the kids don't want to be identified for fear their parents will rush in and stop this madness. And, I assume UC hasn't informed the parents, too. This truly is el loco de parentis.

Pas de déjeuner sans prix

Your "Durrrrrr!" moment of the day, courtesy of Gideon Rachman at The Financial Times: Europe Is Unprepared For Austerity

I used to think Europe had got it right. Let the US be a military superpower; let China be an economic superpower – Europe would be the lifestyle superpower. The days when European empires dominated the globe had gone. But that was just fine. Europe could still be the place with the most beautiful cities, the best food and wine, the richest cultural history, the longest holidays, the best football teams. Life for most ordinary Europeans has never been more comfortable.

It was a great strategy. But there was one big flaw in it. Europe cannot afford its comfortable retirement.

To paraphrase Admiral Yamamoto: "We have awoken a sleeping idiot."