Jersey politics

In an interesting piece in the WS Journal about New jersey politics, there is fascinating paragraph:

Union City received an extra $13 million in extra funding to help with this year’s $103 million budget, along with special authorization to use some of that money to offset local property taxes. Stack denies political deals were in place and said he’s only spoken with the governor twice since the 2009 election.

Union City receives extra money while the state is retrenching, and no special favors? C'mon, Mayor. And he and the Governor do not have to speak for deals to be made: does the phrase plausible deniability ring a chime?

Democrats pessimistic about avoiding shutdown

Let the Republicans force a shutdown. If they haven't read the history of what their party did, and suffered for doing, 17 years ago, go ahead, shut 'er down.


“Right now, they look a bit dismal,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said when asked about the prospects of keeping the government running beyond the April 8 deadline. Across Capitol Hill, expectations grew Tuesday that — given the procedural and political obstacles ahead — the parties will fail to reach an agreement, which would prompt a massive government disruption in just a matter of days. And while both sides are already engaged in a sort of blame game in advance of a potential shutdown, they are also bracing for the political blowback.

Who, besides the right wing zealots, are gonna like this?

America is going ...

This item from New York magazine caught my eye; how could it not?

Here is something Newt Gingrich said recently, out loud, in public:

"I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

We're absolutely certain that Gingrich will come up with a convoluted explanation for why this all makes perfect sense to anyone with the intellectual capacity of Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich Reductio Ad Absurdum [New Republic]

Oy vay. Secular, atheist and Islamist. We'd better  get to temple, or church, and get working on ... what, exactly?

It's a tricky dick

Stop Taking Bachmann Seriously!

Argh, he wants to spoil all the fun.

Michele Bachmann is “reportedly” ready to form a presidential exploratory committee in early June. Shame on me (and this website) for paying the slightest bit of attention to this foolish and ridiculous spectacle, but here we are. It’s a challenge to decide what, exactly, is silliest about this story. First is the generic issue, independent of Bachmann. “Ready to form a presidential exploratory committee?” What the hell does that amount to? Imagine, sitting down at a restaurant, calling the waiter over, and explaining that you may be ready, at some future point, to form an “exploratory committee” to discuss what you might like to order for dinner.   My guess is you might get a bottle of Perrier poured on your head.

But the media falls all over her exploits. And she bashes the liberal media. Round and round they go, and if they'll ever stop, who the hell knows?


Bachmann has about as much chance of actually getting the nomination as Lindsay Lohan. Does anyone in the world, even Bachmann herself, sincerely believe that this would be anything other than an exercise in vanity and self-delusion?

Influence peddling?

Lest you think Bachmann is just having a bad month or so, the last time my Daily Beast editors embarrassed me into examining her record, I discovered that she had blamed the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff," allegedly passed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for causing the Depression, ignoring the fact that a) it was passed under Republican Herbert Hoover; and b) the Depression was already in full swing when FDR was elected years later.

Well, she's not the brightest light bulb in the bunch, for sure. But, her son is reported as being one of her main advisers.

Run, Michelle, run

Brian Snyder/Reuters Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota spoke in New Hampshire, an early voting state, earlier this month.

That a teabag makes a statement, and that the media covers a woman holding a teabag to make a statement, tells much about American politics and American media.


Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota seized the media spotlight on Thursday by merely leaking out the possibility that she might — someday, maybe months from now — form an exploratory committee to consider running for president.

She has learned to listen to media advisers who are teaching her all about spin.


The flurry of headlines was a testament to her ability to heighten interest by being dramatic, and even provocative, in her statements. Just a day earlier, for example, she warned against the “black-robed masters” in Iowa. In other words: judges. (The comment came in a speech in which she applauded voters for turning out three members of the Iowa Supreme Court who had voted to legalize same-sex marriage.)

Would that include the black-robed masters who handed the 2000 election to one George Walker Bush?


In appearances in Iowa this week, Ms. Bachman made no attempt to tamp down the speculation, repeatedly uttering two words: “I’m in!” But in a brief interview, when asked to expound on her remarks, she said: “I’m in to make sure that Barack Obama is a one-term president. I am in, in terms of 2012, to make sure that we do have a rock-solid conservative.”

What she fails to understand is that if they make sure they have a rock -solid conservative as the party candidate just about guarantees Barack Obama becomes a two-term president. One can only hope she continue to think so, to agitate so, and to help make it so.

Go get 'em, Congresswoman

Bachmann to form exploratory committee in June, possibly earlier. I'd vote for earlier, meself. CNN's headline calls it an exclusive story, but I've already seen it in other places. Anyways, the woman who identified the Battle of Lexington and Concord as having been in New Hampshire (and then excoriated the liberal media for picking on conservative women more than on men, and certainly on liberals) might run for President. Run, Michelle, run, I say.

Bachmann bid could shake up GOP field Shake it, stir it, the GOP needs something, and Bachmann is one that can provide something, that's for sure. A history lesson, for one.