I Really Can't Stay

(but baby it's cold outside):

  • Sarah Palin supports the Ryan Roadmap. Good for her. I'd prefer a faster return to fiscal sanity than the Roadmap specifies, but any support for a concrete plan that starts us in that direction is very welcome.

    (Geraghty's Morning Jolt newsletter suggests an alternate headline: "Millions of angry liberals who never thought much about Paul Ryan now hate him with a fiery passion.")

  • blazing_criterion The Criterion Collection issues very deluxe versions of classic movies films. They do a fine job, although maybe they take themselves a little too seriously. Something Awful presents the results of their latest Photoshop contest to "help" Criterion design DVD cases for some unlikely candidates. One of my favorites is over at the right.

  • Timothy P. Carney's recent Washington Examiner column discussed the amusing liberal outrage over Obama's tax deal. One of the groups involved is the "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" (PCCC), and this caused my bullshit detector to start beeping:
    But it's exactly on the score of Obama's bargaining tactics that Adam Green, co-founder of the PCCC, chides the president. "He could have won the public option, he could have won this [tax] fight, if he was simply willing to step on Republican toes, hold them accountable to their constituents, and actually have the fight." Green thinks Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown could have been picked off on taxes had Obama fought harder. "He didn't fly to Maine. He didn't fly to Massachusetts." He charges Obama with political "malpractice."
    But of course, Obama did fly to Maine to stump for Obamacare. As far as getting Senators Snowe and Collins to budge, it was a no-workie.

    And of course, Obama did fly to Massachusetts to plead with its voters to not elect Scott Brown in the first place, an equally ineffective trip.

    So what makes Adam Green think a few more trips on Air Force One will suddenly make Republicans go wobbly? Theory: Progressives haven't yet given up the "Lightworker" image of Obama yet:

    Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
    If Obama doesn't deign to work his magic to bring about the "new way of being" (which, just by coincidence, involves income tax rate hikes on high-earners) it makes Progressives extra pissed.


Last Modified 2012-09-29 6:56 AM EDT