Toyota Halts Sales on 8 Models as Recall Fallout Threatens Brand

At the Los Angeles Times, "Toyota Temporarily Stops Selling Eight Models Covered by Recall":

Toyota Motor Corp. has taken the unprecedented stop of halting sales and production of eight models, including the top-selling Camry and Corolla, because their accelerator pedals can stick and cause runaway acceleration.

Toyota sent an email to its roughly 1,200 U.S. dealers late Tuesday, asking them to immediately cease selling the vehicles. In addition, it told them to refrain from selling certain used versions of the same models.

At the same time, Toyota said it is halting production of the models in five assembly lines in the U.S. and Canada, effective Monday.

The news is the latest blow to Toyota's once-ironclad reputation for quality and safety, which has come under increasing fire in recent months amid rising complaints about of unintended acceleration and other defects.

The eight models affected by the news represented 57% of Toyota's sales in the U.S. last year, including the automaker's Lexus and Scion brands.

"This could be an extended issue. It is very serious," said Aaron Bragman, auto industry analyst at IHS Global Insight. He called the sales freeze, known in the industry as a stop sale, a "disaster," and pointed out that it came as Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Hyundai Motor Co. all were improving their quality and mounting aggressive sales and marketing campaigns.

I've been following this case through the Times' coverage. See December's investigative report, "Toyota Found to Keep Tight Lid on Potential Safety Problems: A Times Investigation Shows the World's Largest Automaker Has Delayed Recalls and Attempted to Blame Human Error in Cases Where Owners Claimed Vehicle Defects."

And especiall, from October, "Toyota's Runaway-Car Worries May Not Stop at Floor Mats."

Whoo Hoo! CBO Projects Only $1.35 Trillion Budget Shortfall!!

Hey, give it up for "Mr. Freeze"!

From Politico, "More Red Ink: CBO Projects $1.35 Trillion Deficit":

New deficit estimates Tuesday project a $1.35 trillion shortfall for the coming year even as Congress debates creation of a bipartisan commission to propose long-range steps to relieve the mounting debt facing the nation.

The 2010 deficit projection is only modestly less than the $1.4 trillion wave of red ink that the government experienced in 2009, as revenues continue to lag with the slow economic recovery forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.

Even in 2011, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a nearly $1 trillion shortfall, and that picture could well be worse depending on the costs of the war in Afghanistan and what Congress decides on long-term tax policy.

CBO projects that unemployment will average slightly above 10 percent in the first half of 2010 and then turn downward in the second half. But the building debt carries with an added burden. Once the economy improves, CBO says, higher interest rates will come back and bite the Treasury trying to finance the accumulated deficits.

“Interest payments on the debt are poised to skyrocket,” CBO says. From 2010 through 2020, it projects the annual costs will triple in nominal terms from $207 billion to $723 billion and more than double as a share of GDP.

Release of the numbers came as the Senate was poised to vote before noon Tuesday on a proposal creating an 18-member fiscal commission empowered to force House and Senate action on deficit reduction steps after the November elections.

And Obambi's trying so hard!

RELATED: At the Director's Blog, "CBO Releases the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010-2020" (via Michelle, "Fill in the blank: Obama proposing spending freeze is like…").

Leftists Allege Breitbart Behind Landrieu Office Arrests

Andrew Breitbart has issued a statement on the James O'Keefe arrest at Senator Mary Landrieu's office, "James O’Keefe Arrested in New Orleans" (via):

Statement from Andrew Breitbart:

“We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office. We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press. Accordingly, we simply are not in a position to make any further comment.”

But the radical leftists are wasting no time concocting theories of Big Government's direct involvement:

Nothing like the presumption of innocence!

Davie Weigel's report is here, "Andrew Breitbart: ‘No Knowledge About or Connection to’ O’Keefe Scandal."

Nice Deb has a roundup of conservative reaction, "ACORN Sting Videographer, James O’Keefe Arrested!"

ACORN Thrilled at O'Keefe Bust

The full story is at the New York Times, "4 Arrested in Phone Tampering at Landrieu Office." And Michelle Malkin expresses the surprise on the conservative right, "Ugh: ACORN-Buster Busted at Sen. Landrieu’s Office in Alleged Bugging Plot; Affidavit Link Added":

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that James O’Keefe, half of the ACORN-busting duo that conducted undercover stings across the country last summer, was arrested today in an alleged wiretapping plot at the New Orleans office of Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu. O’Keefe and three other young men were arrested by the FBI. One of the men is the son of the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.

The Times-Picayune has not posted the full FBI affidavit, but the details they have are damning. This is neither a time to joke nor a time to recklessly accuse Democrats/liberals of setting this up — nor a time to whine about media coverage double standards. Deal with what’s on the table ....

Obviously, the ACORN thugs are thrilled at the news:

And be sure to read the rest of Michelle's post on "knowing your limits."

How Your Leftist 'Friends' Think About You...

Are you concerned about threats to limited government, not unlike the very founders of our nation? Are you sympathetic to the concerns of tea party activists, even if perhaps you've never attended one? Well, then, this is how the lefties describe you (and vilify you), "Intra-Tea Party Bitchiness Threatens Tea Party Slumber Party!":

Everyone watch as the Tea Party’s national Tea Party Party next month slowly implodes as distrust, paranoia and insanity finally get the best of these distrustful, paranoid insane people. Everyone involved in the big Nashville summit (plateau?) suspects everyone else of trying to cheat someone else out of something, most of all Sarah Palin, whose $100,000 keynote speaking fee is a logical scapegoat in all this. And oh my god and one of the non-Erick Erickson ones learned the word “profiteering,” apparently.

Paranoid? Insane?

Remember: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, if you're a leftist.

See also, the New York Times, "Tea Party Disputes Take Toll on Convention" (via Memeorandum).

Dennis Prager: 'An Open Letter to Charles Johnson'

I did finally read the New York Times piece on Charles Johnson, but I haven't updated for want of something additionally useful to say. But via Glenn Reynolds, I got a kick out of Andrew Sullivan's extreme defense of political flexibility (which is mostly just an attack on those anchored souls with firm convictions). See Glenn for the link, or Google, "How The Internet Enforces Rigidity‎."

And for something serious, from someone of highly respectable ideological thinking, see Dennis Prager's, "An Open Letter to Charles Johnson": (via Memeorandum):

Dear Charles:

As you know, over the years, I was so impressed with your near-daily documentation of developments in the Islamist world that I twice had you on my national radio show — both times face to face in my studio. And you, in turn, periodically cited my radio show and would tell your many readers when they could hear you on my show.

So it came as somewhat of a shock to see your 180-degree turn from waging war on Islamist evil to waging war on your erstwhile allies and supporters on the right. You attempted to explain this reversal on Nov. 30, 2009, when you published “Why I Parted Ways With The Right.”

You offered 10 reasons, and I would like to respond to them.

First, as disappointed as I am with your metamorphosis, I still have gratitude for all the good you did and I respect your change as a sincere act of conscience. But neither this gratitude nor this respect elevates my regard for your 10 points. They are well beneath the intellectual and moral level of your prior work. They sound like something Keith Olbermann would write if he were given 10 minutes to come up with an attack on conservatives.

The rest of the letter is at the link.

Obama's Budget Freeze Symbolism

Jakie Calmes notes that Obama's budget freeze is mostly political symbolism. See, "Obama Seeks Freeze on Many Domestic Programs."

Also, until I have a chance to read over the whole proposal, see the Wall Street Journal, "Budget Freeze Is Proposed: White House Plan Applies to Only 17% of Spending; Small Impact on Deficit":

President Barack Obama intends to propose a three-year freeze in spending that accounts for one-sixth of the federal budget—a move meant to quell rising concern over the deficit but whose practical impact will be muted.

To attack the $1.4 trillion deficit, the White House will propose limits on discretionary spending unrelated to the military, veterans, homeland security and international affairs, according to senior administration officials. Also untouched are big entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

The freeze would affect $447 billion in spending, or 17% of the total federal budget, and would likely be overtaken by growth in the untouched areas of discretionary spending. It's designed to save $250 billion over the coming decade, compared with what would have been spent had this area been allowed to rise along with inflation.

The administration officials said the cap won't be imposed across the board. Some areas would see cuts while others, including education and investments related to job creation, would realize increases.

Among the areas that may be potentially subject to cuts: the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services.

"We're not here to tell you we've solved the deficit, but you have to take steps to put spending under control," a senior administration official said.

The spending freeze, which is expected to be included in Wednesday's State of the Union address and the president's Feb. 1 budget proposal, is one of a series of small-scale initiatives the White House is unrolling as the president adjusts to a more hostile political terrain in his second year. On Monday, the president unveiled a set of proposals aimed at making child care, college and elder care more affordable.

"Given Washington Democrats' unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R., Ohio). "Will the budget still double the debt over five years and triple it over 10? That's the bottom line."

Responding to criticism, administration officials acknowledged the freeze is directed at only a small part of overall spending, but that fiscal discipline has to start somewhere. President Obama had requested a 7.3% increase last year in the areas he now seeks to freeze. White House officials said they had achieved 60% of the $11.5 billion in cuts outlined in the budget for the current fiscal year.

Mr. Obama will also propose the creation of a deficit commission to look for potential solutions for the medium- and long-term deficit—a move to garner bipartisan support for what may be unpopular tax increases and spending cuts. A bipartisan group of senators has been trying to get such a commission passed into law in a way that would give teeth to its recommendations. The recommendations of any presidential panel would require congressional approval.

I can't take this talk seriously until I see some serious discussion of downsizing federal entitlements. Mostly, this is politics. More later ...

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

The 'One-Term' Smokescreen

I watched "World News Tonight." He's lying, obviously. No president wants to be a one-term president, whether good, bad, or every other which way to Sunday. It's a lie -- an Obamunist smokescreen -- for public consumption in the days ahead of his SOTU address. The model to keep in mind is Lyndon Johnson, who rejected a second term when he was repudiated at the New Hampshire primary in 1968. If Obama's serious about being a really good one-term pres, let him announce that he's not running for the Democratic nomination in 2012. I'll believe it when I see it:

The full ABC report is here.

'The Myth of Right-Wing Hate'

In my in-box, from Kathleen Stewart:

Taking Apart the Stimulus Package

There's a lot of discussion of the Obama administration's "porkulus-maximus" faux economic recovery initiative at Memeorandum. Especially interesting is CNN's poll, "Majority of Americans Say Much of Stimulus Wasted." Also good are the responses to Joe Klein's smearing of Americans as a bunch of "dodos." See Left Coast Rebel and Right Wing Nut House, for a start.

But readers also might take advantage of this cool chart from the Washington Post, "Taking Apart the $819 billion Stimulus Package":

Hat Tip: Dana Loesch, "Majority of Americans Say Much of Stimulus Wasted."

Tea Parties Resist National Unity

An interesting piece at the Los Angeles Times, "Still a Disorganized 'Tea Party'":

When Matt Clemente went to a December meeting of "tea party" activists in Worcester, Mass., he was shocked to find the hall packed.

"They were all talking about Scott Brown," he said.

That was when Clemente, a student at College of the Holy Cross, realized Brown wasn't just another Republican running a long-shot campaign for the seat held by liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy since 1962. He actually had a chance to win, and the conservative activists who had been organizing around the country against the healthcare overhaul, bank bailouts and increased government regulation could put him over the top if they could get organized in time.

Clemente is also a state coordinator for the Washington-based advocacy group FreedomWorks. After the Worcester meeting, he called the group and reported what he had seen.

The Senate race became a big moment for the sometimes fractured and ragtag group of right-wing activists.

"The movement rallied around the idea of defying the establishment," said Eric Odom, founder of another tea party network, American Liberty Alliance, which ushered volunteers to Massachusetts in the final days of Brown's winning campaign. "This had far less to do with Scott Brown and far more to do with proving we could coordinate and act in a mass way, showing we could move political mountains. We don't view this as support of a candidate; we view it as opposition to a candidate."

But as much as the various groups contributed -- with e-mails, volunteers, money, TV ads -- the victory still had the feel of a crowd running to the sound of the guns.

The movement is far from a well-disciplined army. Its pivot from protesting to politics has been fraught with internal disputes, turf wars and lawsuits. It has continued to struggle with its relationship to the Republican Party, which would very much like to harness the movement's energy without being subsumed by it.

Recent weeks have seen activists tangled in infighting over an attempt to organize a national convention. In Florida, tea party leaders have filed a lawsuit accusing a lawyer of hijacking their movement. Separately, two high-profile national groups are at odds amid accusations of coziness with the Republican establishment.

Underlying each dispute is a debate about how a movement born of an anti-incumbent fervor and homemade revolution ethos can cooperate with the political party it sees as tied to Wall Street.

"People certainly feel betrayed and ripped off by the Republican Party. But I think people are getting out of revenge mode," Odom said. "The primary goal is to defeat people who are not looking out for our interests, in defeating healthcare, cap-and-trade. That goal is to win politically."

There's evidence of success on that front beyond the Massachusetts vote. Tea party activists helped topple a Republican Party chairman in Florida who endorsed moderate GOP Gov. Charlie Crist in the Senate primary over the more conservative Marco Rubio. In California, Republican Senate candidate Chuck DeVore credits tea party activists with helping raise more than $1 million in small donations.

But DeVore said the financial effect of the tea party movement was hard to measure. "It's so decentralized I wouldn't even know how to do that," he said.

The rest is here. I have no problems with the discussion at the piece. In fact, the article provides a good overview of today's "crossroads" moment for the tea parties. And there's a good section on the movement's ties to the GOP. The piece suggests, correctly, I think, that many activists lean to the Republicans, although there's lots of anti-establishment sentiment on the ground. This passage is key for me:

Although many groups say they want to stay separate from the Republican establishment, only a few are pushing to create a third party. Many activists believe such a move would only split the conservative vote and put more Democrats in office.

I'd only remind folks of the old adage of Tip O'Neill, the former Democratic Speaker of the House: "all politics is local." 2010 is a massive year for conservatives and my sense is that movement infighting could well blow the moment. The article discusses the rifts surrounding the National Tea Party Convention that's scheduled for February. Once I heard that the event was going to be closed to the press -- and that includes bloggers like Glenn Reynolds -- I got a bad taste in my mouth (last I heard organizers have opened it up). Folks can turn to the Obama White House for secret meetings and lies about "transparency." I can't see how an event like that helps regular folks on the ground. It's not like a party convention, or anything, selecting candidates for office. So a national tea party event should be open and inclusive, reflecting the spirit of activists at the base.

Other than that, people need to just get out and get organized with their local tea parties. I was heartened yesterday to read Mark Meckler's interview at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he noted that California tea party movement is "incredibly strong." And no doubt there are strong tea parties with local leadership around the country. I've repeatedly noted the phenomenal St. Louis tea party activists, espeically my friends Jim Hoft and Dana Loesch.

Basically, folks need to keep plugging, and to resist most of all the establishment of a third party -- which'll be a sure-fire way to kill the momentum that's been building, and that continues to build.

'Bear Flag Revolt' May Help Chuck DeVore in California

Notice the irony at the screencap. My latest article, the lead story at the moment, is up at Pajamas Media, "Brown Victory Alters the Playing Field in California GOP Senate Primary." Funny how a Carly Fiorina campaign advertisment is plastered in the middle of an essay explaining how she's headed to the defeat at the hands of tea party activists:

California is expected to again face a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, and unemployment remains at 12.4 percent, the fifth-highest rate in the nation. And from San Diego to San Francisco, the Golden State’s grassroots tea party movement has been protesting vociferously against the Democratic-socialist takeover in Washington. There’s going to be zero tolerance for RINOs among conservative activists. Carly Fiorina’s already been hammered as “the next Dede Scozzafava,” and DeVore’s long been identified as the only “mainstream conservative” in the race. As Dan Riehl wrote last November:

DeVore is sharp. He combines a solid conservative record and set of ideas with the polish from having worked in D.C. before going on to the Aerospace industry. His returning to electoral politics and being retired military has given DeVore the type of polish and discipline that wins political campaigns.

And I can attest, from a year’s worth of activism in the local tea party movement, that DeVore is going to have a lock on the conservative base of the GOP’s primary electorate. Even local party officials are talking about a “second American Revolution.” Somehow I doubt that Tom Campbell and Carly Fiorina will generate much enthusiasm among the state’s movement activists. Based on this analysis, I expect that Chuck DeVore will emerge as the Marco Rubio of the GOP Senate primary in California (with a similar set of political assets).

RTWT at the link.

Join the revolt: Chuck DeVore's campaign page is here.

Game Change: Obama to Preview Next Steps at State of the Union

From ABC News, "President Obama Changes Tone Ahead of State of the Union Address: But GOP Leader Mitch McConnell Calls for a Change of Course":

On the eve of President Obama's State of the Union address and the end of his first year in office, Republican Scott Brown's astonishing win in the Massachusetts special Senate race not only reset politics in that state, but reset politics for the entire nation.

"The entire political community was caught a little bit unawares on that one," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said today on ABC's "This Week" of Brown's win.

After Brown's upset win ended the 60-seat majority in the Senate that Democrats needed in order to push through health care reform without a Republican vote, the White House is adjusting its political operation by bringing in Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager David Plouffe. The move comes ahead of mid-term elections in the House and Senate this November, where Republicans hope to capitalize on the momentum of Brown's win and pick up more seats, which could further endanger the president's agenda.

White House advisers played down Plouffe's hire, denying an association with Brown's win.

"David Plouffe has been a regular adviser to the president throughout the year," White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"We have a very strong political operation. What it's a reflection of is that David was working on his book for the last year. He's done with that now. He's enormously talented, as everyone knows, and he brings value added to our operation as we look forward, in terms of strategy and tactics, and he'll be consulting with us on that, and we'll be stronger for it," Axelrod said.

Also back were themes from Obama's presidential campaign.

"This president's never going to stop fighting to create jobs, to raise incomes, and to push back on the special interests' dominance in Washington and this withering partisanship that keeps us from solving problems," Axelrod said.

Axelrod said those same themes propelled Brown to victory.

"This is the Obama who ran for president," he said. "And the themes that he talked about in that campaign were very much echoed by Senator Brown in his campaign, which tells you that the hunger for that kind of leadership is still very strong."

RTWT at the link.

We'll hear all about it on Wednesday during President Obama's first official State of the Union address. See USA Today, "Obama to Reintroduce Himself During State of the Union Address."

Penélope Cruz at Interview

I read this a couple of weeks ago, when I was on my lunch break in Newport Beach during the R.S. McCain freelance blogging. From Penélope Cruz's interview at Interview:

The last year and a half has been a transformative time for Penélope Cruz. Her comically unhinged performance in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) netted her an Academy Award. She completed her fourth film with Pedro Almodóvar, Broken Embraces, and joined the star--studded ensemble cast of Rob -Marshall’s new screen version of the Broadway musical Nine. But perhaps most -significantly, the 35-year-old Cruz has both reestablished and reinvented herself as an actress. It’s safe to say that, not too long ago, Cruz’s appearances at the multiplex—though plentiful and numerous—were largely overshadowed by her appearances in the tabloids. This was due to a variety of factors, chief among them a string of not-so-good -movies—did anyone see Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001)? Waking Up in Reno (2002)? Head in the Clouds (2004)?—which, however unfairly, fueled the perception that she could only act in her native Spanish, but also a succession of relationships that Cruz was reported to have had with her leading men, including Matt Damon (All the Pretty Horses, 2000), Matthew McConaughey (Sahara, 2005), and of course, Tom Cruise (Vanilla Sky, 2001). (Which, just as unfairly, fueled another perception about her that needs no further fueling).

This passage, toward the end of the interview, is my favorite:

COTILLARD: You said about your character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Maria Elena, that she thinks she will not be creative if she’s not torturing herself. Do you think we as actors need to keep the connection with our failures to be able to do our jobs with depth and authenticity—you know, the dark side?

CRUZ: Yeah, I mean, maybe. It’s actually a similar thing to the ego, because you don’t want to let that go. You have to look deeply inside of yourself to find something to use in your work. But the older I am, the more I refuse to treat my work as therapy and the more I think it’s less honest to do that, less about acting. When I was younger, I sometimes used personal things in creating characters, to the point where I thought maybe it was a little bit dangerous—at least for me. But I don’t feel that somebody can only be good in a character if they are really becoming that person or really suffering. I have played with that before, especially with emotional scenes, and there have been times when I have been close to throwing up because it was hard to get out of that place. It’s always a bigger challenge when it’s a dark character or something very emotionally difficult, but I think my purpose is to find a way where you can have a dance with that, where you go and you come back, instead of maybe being in that state for weeks.

More Than 150,000 Buried in Haiti

The initial reports that Haiti's death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands seemed fantastic, but here's this from the New York Times, "More Than 150,000 Have Been Buried, Haiti Says."

Actually, I've been waiting to read a little more of a big-picture scholarly take on Haiti (even from a leftist bent), and we have a little of that with Charles Simic's piece at the New York Review, "Witness to Horror":

Beginning with the 1987 election that was supposed to bring democracy to Haiti after the bloody reign of the Duvaliers, and which resulted in another bloodbath, Mark Danner chronicles the even more violent conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia in the early 1990s, the post-invasion violence in Iraq, the torture in our secret prisons around the world, and the various policy decisions in Washington that had either a dire or beneficial impact on the people of those countries. These lengthy, well-researched, and well-written pieces, many of which appeared in these pages, combine political analysis, historical background, and Danner's eyewitness reporting to convey the vast human suffering behind events that can often seem remote.

The title of the book comes from the former Haitian president Leslie Manigat, who took power from Duvalierist officers after they brutally aborted the 1987 election. He told Danner that political violence "strips bare the social body," allowing us to see beneath the surface to the real workings of a society. That is what makes this collection so fascinating to read. At the same time as we are being educated about these countries beset by violence, we are witnessing Danner's own education, his deepening understanding of the limits and unintended consequences of our military interventions.

Haiti was Danner's initiation. He arrived to cover the country's "transition to democracy" for The New Yorker in 1986, just after François "Papa Doc" Duvalier's son was flown to luxurious exile in France in an American military jet, courtesy of the Reagan administration. Danner naively expected, as he himself admits, that a freely held election and the popular government it would produce could break the cycle of military coups and dictators, in which a shy country doctor becomes a homicidal monster, a general with a stutter a drunken Caligula. He came to realize that

Violence is the motor of Haiti's politics, the means of regime change, the method of succession. The struggle for power is ongoing and endless, permeating all aspects of life and implicating any Haitian of wealth and reputation. "If a man does not go into politics," says the former president who gave me this book's title, "then politics itself comes to him." A professor, intellectual, and writer from an illustrious political family, he attained power thanks to the military after a bloody, aborted election, and lost it a few months later in a tumultuous coup d'etat.

History repeats itself in unhappy countries. The absence of respected institutions and well-established laws that a person can count on to protect him condemns these societies to reenact the same conflicts, make the same mistakes more than once, and bear the same horrific consequences of these acts. In Haiti, as a former finance minister told Danner, "The whole bloody business of repression, torture, and killing was developed to stay in office, in order to make money."

There are plenty of other places where this has been true and continues to be true, but such corruption is usually better concealed behind the veneer of law and order. In impoverished Haiti, with its sharp split between a small, educated ruling class that speaks French and the rest of the population who are illiterate and speak Creole (so they often do not understand what their president says to them), these harsh realities are, indeed, laid bare. The elder Duvalier, who ruled between 1957 and his death in 1971, believed there should be no boundaries in administering terror. One ought to kill not only one's enemies but also their friends, and in as spectacular and brutal a fashion as possible ...

RTWT at the link.

RELATED: GSGF, "Benign Intervention."

Added: From Glenn Reynolds, "MORE HAITI EARTHQUAKE RELIEF BLOGGING."

Killer Candidates: Looks and Electability in Politics

Of course good looks matter. It's more than innate intuition. Even social-psychology tells physical attraction is biologically-driven. But I'll tell you, I haven't thought about looks and politics quite the way Neo-Neocon has. See, "Politics and Good Looks: Scott Brown and His Predecessors":

Scott Brown is not just good-looking; he may just be the best-looking male politician ever to come down the pike on the national level. I would say the same for Sarah Palin on the distaff side.

In Palin’s case, I believe her beauty both helped and hurt her, since it attracted some but gave special ammunition to those inclined to call her a bimbo. As for Scott Brown, although a few on the left tried to use the fact that he had once posed revealingly (although not nude, as some tried to say) for Cosmo against him, that charge gained no traction. On the whole, I think Brown’s looks were a tremendous asset, if only to get people’s attention long enough for them to listen to him speak and display his other stellar attributes.

It’s interesting that in the last two years we’ve seen two of the most physically attractive people ever to come onto the political scene on the national level, and that both are straight-shooting Republicans of a populist nature. Before that, Romney was considered handsome, but too perfect and almost Ken-doll-like. As Joy Behar notes in the above video, John Edwards (who never rang my chimes) was considered too pretty-boy, a category into which Dan Quayle also fell so long ago, a fact that caused people to treat him as much dumber than he was.

When I think back on the presidents in my lifetime, it strikes me that a great many of them were relatively good-looking. JFK certainly was, although he was hardly in the Scott Brown class in that respect (but then, who is? Brown is one of those people for whom Hollywood would be challenged to find an actor handsome enough to play him in the biopic). LBJ, who followed JFK, was a strange hybrid, because people considered him an impressively good-looking man in person but he came across as a big-eared bumpkin on TV.

There's more at the link (plus the video cited at Neo's post).

Also, a decent background piece at the Los Angeles Times, "What Makes Scott Brown Run?"

RELATED: "Brown's Win Shows GOP How to Seize Obama's Old Senate Seat" (via Memeorandum).

Mainstreaming 'Teabagger'

At my Cindy McCain post last week, new commenter Carolyn Ann somehow conveyed the message that it's okay to be attacked as a "teabagger," especially if you're a conservative and you criticize hardline leftists as "neo-Stalinist" (which is, by the way, what they are). That's fine, though, since I'm trying to have an argument according to deep principles and political theory, and Carolyn Ann's arguing off emotion and hysteria. Still, it seems to me that when it comes to expectations of decency and fundamental rights, leftists -- and that includes folks all the way at the top of the media industrial complex -- have some really dreadful double-standards.

Awesome St. Louis blogger Dana Loesch reports on the utter cluelessness or (more likely) the despicable dishonesty of Missouri Representative Jeff Roorda, who smeared conservative activists on the floor of the Missouri legislature last week as "teabaggers." When called out by activists, who demanded an apology, Roorda claimed ignorance:

I did indeed use the term “teabagger” on the House Floor during the debate on HCR 18. I know nothing about any sexual connotation attached to the term but I do know that the term is widely associated with the anti-healthcare movement. I used the term because everybody knows who I’m talking about when I use it. There was no intention to derogate members of the so-called “teabagger” movement. My intention was only to satire the fact that the Missouri House spent an entire legislative day debating a non-binding resolution telling Congress that we are against a bill that is still in the process of being written. I make no apologies for pointing out that the Missouri House could have spent it’s time talking about more important issues overwhich the State Legislature has some control.

Thank you for writing,

State Rep. Jeff Roorda

Interestingly, while claiming ignorance on the grotesque meaning of the sexualized gay-slur, Representative Roorda still refused to apologize.

And that's to be expected, considering how mainstream "teabagging" has become to those shocked by the political power of the tea party movement. As Meryl Yourish points out, the Associated Press put the term in quotation marks in an article citing "tea-bagging" activists:

The fact that they put the epithet in quotes indicates that they know full well that “teabagger” is a vulgar term. I never knew it existed before the so-called objective media types (we mean you, Anderson Cooper) were calling Tea Party activists “teabaggers.” It is a deliberate insult. It is not the way an objective news organization should describe the millions of Americans from all walks of life who attended rallies and town halls to protest the expansion of government by this administration and congress.

But leftists somehow continue to dodge the vulgar meaning of the slur, pointing to MSNBC's lying hatemaster Rachel Maddow as "evidence." But no one's fooled by such rank hypocrisy. Last year, when Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi attacked Michelle Malkin in his essay, "Teabagging Michelle Malkin," he left no doubt the meaning leftists assign to the term:

I have to say, I’m really enjoying this whole teabag thing. It’s really inspiring some excellent daydreaming. For one thing, it’s brought together the words teabag and Michelle Malkin for me in a very powerful, thrilling sort of way. Not that I haven’t ever put those two concepts together before, but this is the first time it’s happened while in the process of reading her actual columns.

Previously Michelle Malkin’s writing was on the edge of unreadable; she’s sort of like Ann Coulter, only without that tiny fraction of P.T. Barnum/Mick Jagger-esque self-promotional flair that makes Coulter at least vaguely interesting ....

Now when I read her stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose. See for yourself ...

So, there's really no doubt. But if conservatives were to attack Obama backers with similarly derogatory sexual slurs, you'd be hearing yowls of "raaaaacism" faster than you could say Jeremiah Wright!

California Voters Oppose Higher Taxes

From Rasmussen, "Most California Voters Don’t See Higher Taxes as a Budget Solution":

An overwhelming 94% of California voters regard the state’s budget crisis as very serious, but most oppose raising taxes as a solution to the problem.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in California finds that just 28% of voters prefer raising taxes to cutting back on services or having the state file for bankruptcy.

Forty-three percent (43%) think cutting back on state services is the better way to go, and another 15% favor state bankruptcy. Fourteen percent (14%) aren’t sure.

Well, in that case, my guess is that you can pretty much just forget about whatever Phil Nugent is trying to say here (via The Monkey Cage).

Astroturfing for Obama

Well, the Ellie Light story's breakin' across the 'sphere, so this gives me a chance to throw some traffic to Another Black Conservativae and Left Coast Rebel (who provided the photoshop):

The main story's at Hot Air, "Ellie Light: Obama Astroturfer?" And Jawa Report's got the summary:

Patterico, The Cleavland Plain Dealer and some other intrepid souls have uncovered what appears to be a genuine astroturfing campaign by Obamacrats who are writing boilerplate pro-Obama letters to newspaper editorial sections across the nation.

They use different handles like "Ellie Light," "Mark Spivey," and a host of made up names, made up info about their residences and cut-and-pasted replications of Obama Administration propaganda. Newspapers across the country, of course, found these letters very compelling and printed them without knowledge that they were being used as willing dupes in this political astroturf operation.

Thanks to Google, we're finding out that this was a political spamming operation possible links to Obama groups like Organizing for America and is not "grassroots" operation in any sense.

But see Dan Riehl as well, "Linking Ellie Light To The White House." And, at Classical Values, "Going Light?" (via Memeorandum). And Reaganite Republican, "Ellie Light and Other Obot Trolls."

Added: Patterico has lots more on this, "Still More Astroturfing: Gloria Elle and Jan Chen Write the Same Anti-Republican, Pro-Obama Letter; UPDATED: Two More Pairings Found; UPDATED AGAIN: Four Pairings Total, and One Is a Triplet!"

It's REALLY Hard Out There...

One thing cool about this HillBuzz battle is that I get to keep throwin' down "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp":

Man it seems like I'm duckin dodgin bullets everyday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when shit got harder ...

And I ain't messin' wit' you - no brotha!

It turns out this be one hella flamewar goin' down, yo! Check it out, fool! (link):

Someone told us to be very careful with digging too deep into this, because if our hunch is right and this does lead back to the DNC and Organizing for America themselves, there are many people who will do us physical harm to keep us from exposing them ....

Listen, we grew up gay in the Midwest, where we were abused, threatened, maligned, harassed, and blackmailed before…by people much more creative than the Hope and Change Gang…people who covered their tracks better. What these Obama-supporting thugs don’t realize is that when you launch Alinsky attacks against people who have been subjected to Alinksy attacks their whole lives, like us, we aren’t going to just turn tail and run.

If they think just because we’re gay that we’re going to wilt into puddles on the floor and let ourselves be bullied, then these homophobes have another thing coming.

Instead of being silenced and bullied, we’re going to do everything we can to not only identify the people who are attacking us, publish THEIR real names, and publish THEIR photos, the way they’ve done to the people they’ve victimized…but we are going to take things a step further, and identify who they are working for in the DNC, Organizing for America, or even the White House itself. And we will prosecute the lot of them to the fullest extent of the law.

We hope that whenever the Left uses these tactics, against any of this administration’s opponents, that people band together and provide the detective work to drag these goblins and orcs out into the sun.

We plan on using everything we’ve got to help anyone else in the future who is victimized like this. In service of that, we’re happy to use this attack on us as a case study of how to respond to the Obama camp when it lashes out at its opponents. Systematically, we can, together, figure out where these attacks are coming from and who is driving them. We can figure out who’s writing the talking points to deliver this garbage.

Actually, I was mostly looking at this in terms of libel and online harassment, but this HillBuzz thing's got larger stakes obviously. If it really does go high up like this, to some folks at the Obama White House, things could get extremely interesting!

As for blogger liability and libel, Glenn Reynolds picked up on the HillBuzz thing, "As I've noted in the past, it's almost always a mistake to threaten bloggers." And that link leads to Glenn's scholarly article, "LIBEL IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: SOME PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS." Knowing the basics of libel law, I found the piece most interesting as an excursion in online culture and the assumed hierarchy of free speech in the traditional media industrial complex. That said, the point still applies: The answer to speech, no matter how combative, is more speech. (Of course, folks like the OFA goons attacking HillBuzz, or the Ordinary Gentlemen-type goons attacking me, are pure authoritarians who definitely need to be dealt with some homeboy justice, yo!)

And by the way, I've found some of the left's dirty smears on HillBuzz, whose publisher, Kevin DuJan, was apparently outed by Daily Kos, and attacked -- wait for it!! -- as a racist!! See, "Scott Brown and a Hate site - The Making of a Republican Campaign."

Recall that Markos Moulisas claimed direct ties to the Obama camaign in June 2008 (when he secured and published Barack Obama's purported "certification of live birth"), so it's certainly plausible that all or part of these smears have their marching orders in the Big Mama's house! (Death threats follow shortly thereafter...)

Democratic Underground's doing some dirty work as well. See, "Kevin Dujan owns HillBuzz."

RELATED: "Daily Kos Documents Official Coordination with Obama Campaign."