Oct
4
2025

Should Have Told You That I Can't Linger

There's a Wedding Ring On My Finger

Powers Boothe responds:

(Classic headline reference.)

But on a slightly more serious note, Nick Catoggio analogizes a different movie: Fight Club. He points to this polling result:

Yes, they want Democrat pols to be "fighting fighters who fight." Nick:

Talking Points Memo editor and fellow pleonast Josh Marshall elaborated on the rationale for a shutdown in a piece titled “Let It Happen.” Democrats “need to show there is an opposition out there willing to fight the imposition of a presidential autocracy,” he wrote. “If they’re not, who else will have the courage or inclination to take any risks and fight? An opposition requires morale to remain in the fight and endure while its opponents are holding most of the power.”

Three sentences, three uses of the word “fight,” zero mentions of a realistic policy goal. To repeat what I said in March, the last time Democrats considered doing something like this: I’ve seen this movie before. And it sucked.

I watched the latest Superman movie last night (report below). Wasn't great, but didn't suck.

Also of note:

  • It doesn't help that there are a lot of spineless Republicans. David Harsanyi, I hope, will encourage any remaining vertebrates: Obamacare Is a Massive Failure. The GOP Shouldn't Bail It Out.

    Since Democrats have shut down the federal government because they want another $1.5 trillion bailout of Obamacare, it's a good time to remind everyone that the law has been a wide-ranging and expensive fiasco.

    Virtually every promise made by Democrats regarding the Affordable Care Act has failed to come true.

    Sure, Barack Obama infamously promised that Americans could keep their preferred insurance if they desired. By the end of his second term, around 7 million people had been booted from their insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Who knows how many have been dropped since.

    But let's also not forget that Obama pledged that the law would reduce family health insurance premiums by "up to" $2,500 annually by the end of his first term. Premiums not only continued to rise during his presidency, but since 2010, they have spiked from $13,000 to nearly $24,000.

    And let's not forget that much of that $1.5 trillion will be coming from the same people Uncle Stupid wants to give it back to. And pretend he's doing them a favor.

  • Shameless plug. George Will recommends a recent book which should disabuse Kindred spirits on the left and right [who] believe in a New Deal fable. (WaPo gifted link)

    Progressives’ retrospective aspiration for a new New Deal is shared by “national conservatives.” They, enthusiastic about the current administration, also believe government should comprehensively intervene in the economy, politically allocating capital (and therefore opportunity) to improve on the rationality of free markets.

    But economist George Selgin’s latest book refutes progressives’ triumphalist nostalgia for the New Deal. It thereby demonstrates that “national conservatives” are oblivious regarding the cautionary lessons of Franklin Roosevelt’s experience. These kindred spirits on the left and right should read “False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933-1947.”

    Selgin mines a mountain of scholarship to prove this: New Deal measures failed to achieve, and often impeded, recovery from the Depression. Roosevelt’s most constructive achievement, executed on his second day in office, was the national bank holiday, a measure incubated by his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. This week-long banking shutdown in 1933 largely arrested the economy’s contraction. Recovery, however, required a decade, and World War II.

    That's one I want to get, somehow. Not sure how the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library would react to a purchase request.

  • Way past time, I'd say. Another entry in my "Abolish the FCC" collection, from Mark Jamison: It’s Time to Disband the Federal Communications Commission.

    America has a short but distinguished list of deregulatory heroes. Alfred Kahn, who led airline deregulation in the late 1970s, is one. As is President Jimmy Carter, who broke down barriers in transportation and natural gas. President Ronald Reagan rolled back rules in energy, broadcasting, cable television, and banking. President Donald Trump, in his first term, makes the list. Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC) Brendan Carr now has the chance to join them—by dismantling the agency he leads.

    Why disband the FCC? Because it has become a convenient political tool, it too often abandons its independence, and the very reasons for its creation in 1934 have disappeared. As others and I have noted, the FCC was designed to regulate the old Bell telephone monopoly and to oversee the public airwaves. Independence mattered because regulated businesses needed stability across administrations to make the massive infrastructure investments needed for expanding our networks.

    As Mel Brooks observed in Blazing Saddles: "We've gotta keep our phony baloney jobs, here, gentlemen!"

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