Don't worry. He didn't mean you.

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.” 

― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Michele Bachmann, please pick up the white courtesy phone

Do you remember this?

Michele Bachmann is still defending her opposition to the vaccine that prevents HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer. At a campaign event in Sheldon, Iowa on Monday night, she sympathized with a mother who believes her daughter Jessica, now 16, has been debilitated by headaches, pains and seizures brought on by the vaccine three years ago and can no longer attend school.

"Michele, on behalf of myself and a lot of other mothers that have a child that’s sick from the Gardasil vaccine, I would like to thank you for the attention that you brought to it," Julie Wepple said, according to the Des Moines Register.

Bachmann thanked Wepple for bringing up the vaccine issue. "Parents have to make that decision for their kids because it isn't the schools that are going to follow up with Jessica," she said. "It isn’t the schools that live with Jessica every day. It’s Jessica who’s having to have her body live with the ravages of this vaccine."

Bachmann got hooted off the stage for her antics. I don't have a problem with her being out of public life, for a variety of reasons, but it's worth noting this development, four years on:

The American College of Pediatricians (The College) is committed to the health and well-being of children, including prevention of disease by vaccines. It has recently come to the attention of the College that one of the recommended vaccines could possibly be associated with the very rare but serious condition of premature ovarian failure (POF), also known as premature menopause. There have been two case report series (3 cases each) published since 2013 in which post-menarcheal adolescent girls developed laboratory documented POF within weeks to several years of receiving Gardasil, a four-strain human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV4).1,2 Adverse events that occur after vaccines are frequently not caused by the vaccine and there has not been a noticeable rise in POF cases in the last 9 years since HPV4 vaccine has been widely used.

Nevertheless there are legitimate concerns that should be addressed: (1) long-term ovarian function was not assessed in either the original rat safety studies3,4 or in the human vaccine trials, (2) most primary care physicians are probably unaware of a possible association between HPV4 and POF and may not consider reporting POF cases or prolonged amenorrhea (missing menstrual periods) to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), (3) potential mechanisms of action have been postulated based on autoimmune associations with the aluminum adjuvant used1 and previously documented ovarian toxicity in rats from another component, polysorbate 80,2 and (4) since licensure of Gardasil® in 2006, there have been about 213 VAERS reports (per the publicly available CDC WONDER VAERS database) involving amenorrhea, POF or premature menopause, 88% of which have been associated with Gardasil®.5 The two-strain HPV2, CervarixTM, was licensed late in 2009 and accounts for 4.7 % of VAERS amenorrhea reports since 2006, and 8.5% of those reports from February 2010 through May 2015. This compares to the pre-HPV vaccine period from 1990 to 2006 during which no cases of POF or premature menopause and 32 cases of amenorrhea were reported to VAERS.

Long and the short of it -- there will need to be more testing, especially more longitudinal testing, but this isn't looking good for those who have called for this vaccine to be mandatory.

Bachmann was trying to gain a political advantage over Rick Perry, who had ordered girls from Texas to get the vaccine. I thought she was playing a dangerous game then, but there's a reason why categorical judgments sometimes bite us in the butt years later.

Light posting

There are some bad bugs going around town these days and I seem to have one, so posting will likely remain shortish for the next few days.

il miglior fabbro -- Debate Edition

Our friend Brad Carlson has a good summation of last night's debate. I see it pretty much the way he does, so hit the link and read what he has to say.

Only other comment I'd make -- I do hope that some enterprising journalists follow up in a few months on how much money from Trump's self-congratulatory fundraiser actually gets to the veterans.

Trouble in River City

It's going to be an interesting experiment, that's for sure:

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump abruptly announced here Tuesday that he would not participate in Thursday’s scheduled debate, escalating his off-and-on feud with Fox News Channel and throwing the GOP campaign into turmoil.

Turmoil! Consternation! Trouble right here in River City!

I'm gonna be perfectly frank.
Would ya like to know what kinda conversation goes
On while they're loafin' around that Hall?

So the show is going on with The Donald. A few thoughts:

• Trump is assuming he's such a huge part of the show that no one will watch without him. Perhaps he's right, but I'm not so sure about that. The national polling suggests that, while he continues to have a plurality of votes on the Republican side, he hasn't closed the deal by any means. The highest numbers I've seen suggests that he gets 40%. That's not enough. And it's worth remembering that, once we get past Iowa and New Hampshire, many of the later primaries aren't open primaries, so rank and file Republicans will be doing the voting. I'm not convinced that these Republicans are inclined to support Trump. He still has to make that sale.
• The stated reason for Trump's decision is that Fox News will once again use Megyn Kelly as a debate moderator. Trump and Kelly had a nasty dustup following an earlier debate. Kelly does ask tough questions and she does have a pretty good sneer going on. Trump thinks Kelly is not fair to him. Well, hell -- if anyone understands that the world is not fair, it ought to be Donald Trump. Fox also understands that if it were to dump Kelly at this point, it would be a complete capitulation. The network had to stand behind Kelly. It was the right move.
• If Fox is smart, they'll borrow Clint Eastwood's empty chair and put it where Trump was supposed to be.
• Of course, the other candidates are happy, because they get a chance to address the country without having The Donald on the stage. Jeb Bush alone is likely to avoid half the flop sweat we've seen in earlier skirmishes.
• The candidate I want to see is Rand Paul, who is back on the main stage after missing the last debate. He should have more room to maneuver and he could be a big factor. 

For another take, check out Brad Carlson's piece this morning.

Too good

Ah, youth sports:

Jason Hanauska found out Friday his high school team with Rogers Area Youth Basketball Association (RAYBA) was kicked out of their own league.

“We found out on Friday they were not going to be allowed because according to the league our girls were too talented,” Hanauska said.

Their winning streak cut short ahead of this weekend's 3-on-3 tournament.

I don't find this scenario particularly surprising. A few years back, Fearless Maria was on a summer softball team that represented the Arden Hills Parks and Recreation Department. The team played a round-robin schedule with the parks departments for two other neighboring towns, Shoreview and Mounds View. Maria's team was, to put it mildly, loaded. Most of the Arden Hills girls were multi-sport athletes and have gone on to be varsity performers in various sports at both Irondale and Mounds View high schools. The other two teams had girls who were (a) younger and (b) didn't have nearly the same level of athleticism, so every game was an utter mismatch. Maria's team would win games 30-4, or 36-2, or 33-5. The other two teams, when they played each other, were competitive, but they had no shot against Maria's team. It had to be frustrating for the other teams to show up to the field and know they were going to get destroyed.

Our family has also been on the other side of the ledger. Benster played on some, ahem, challenged teams during his youth sports days. I wrote here about a game his team played in back in 2006 in which his basketball squad was edged 70-6. 

So why does this happen? As I wrote back in '06, sometimes the league is to blame:

For some reason, the grandees who run the program didn’t consider the wisdom of balancing the teams. Our inexperienced 5th graders were playing a team that was filled with experienced, talented 6th graders. The result was unsurprising. Ben is one of the more experienced kids on our team. He is not a big kid, though – about 4-8 and less than 80 pounds. He knew what was coming but he didn’t have the physical skills to deal with bigger, faster, more aggressive kids.

While Ben was playing on an Irondale Youth team, his team also played against kids from St. Anthony and Roseville and the IBA might have decided to put the good kids on the same team to ensure they would beat the St. Anthony and Roseville kids. I can't prove that was what happened, and 10 years on it doesn't matter, but it's a typical situation. Two years later, Benster played on a different Irondale Youth team with some of the kids who had kicked his butt in the past. By then, he was older and more ready to play and he was a contributor to a team that won most of its games.

It was the same dynamic in Maria's situation, but for different reasons; most of the Arden Hills kids knew one another growing up and had competed together in other sports; they decided to play in-house softball during the summer just to have fun. There wasn't anything particularly pernicious about it, but I'm sure the parents from the other teams didn't think so highly of our team.

You can learn from playing a superior team and you can improve. It's difficult to see that when you are in the middle of a whipping. The lessons you learn from youth sports often aren't understood until much, much later.

In which I agree with Bernie Sanders, kinda

The news that America's Nanny, Michael Bloomberg, is pondering an independent run for the White House, prompted this response from Bernie Sanders:

“If Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in you’re gonna have two multi-billionaires running for president,” Sanders said in an interview on Meet the Press. “The American people do not want to see our nation moved toward an oligarchy.”

Right. I don't want the country moved toward Venezuela, either.

World Where You Live

Let's start with a little music from the band Crowded House, circa 1986:

Here's someone now who's got the muscle
His steady hand could move a mountain
Expert in bed, but come on now
There must be something missing
That golden one leads a double life
You'll find out

The detail about being expert in bed is a tell. Just ask him.

Tell me, I don't know where you go
Do you climb into space
To the world where you live
The world where you live, oh-hoo

The world where you live matters. So if you ask an expert, what do you learn? Here's one right now:

Democrats' principal appeal isn't to philosophical coherence: They tell their coalition that they'll take care of their own - the gays, the blacks, the feminists, the transitioning, the environmentalists, the Hispanics, the educators... This time round, a big chunk of the Republican base has figured it'd like someone who's looking out for them, too.

If the present polls hold up through Iowa and New Hampshire, it'd be the reconfiguration of Mr and Mrs Main Street America as just another interest group. So a philosophical commitment to free trade means less to them than the degeneration of mill and factory towns into wastelands of fast-food service jobs and heroin addiction. An abstract respect for religious pluralism means less to them than reducing the number of crazies running around whose last words before opening fire are "Allahu akbar!" A theoretical belief in private-sector health care means less to them than not getting stiffed by crappy five-figure health "insurance" that can be yanked out from under you at any moment under Byzantine rules and regulations that change 30 times a day. And bipartisan myth-making about "a nation of immigrants" means a whole lot less than another decade of Press One For English, flatlined wages, sanctuary cities and remorseless cultural transformation...

That's Mark Steyn, surveying the scene. Everybody searching for something, and if it's true, a lot of people are landing on a blowhard with a combover. 

His steady hand could move a mountain

Meanwhile, out in exotic Wichita, our man Bud Norman and his "editorial we" aren't so sure:

We also note that except for the predictable schoolyard taunts that Trump prefers, and the frequent outright racist screeds from supporters won’t hold Trump responsible for, and there’s the strangely anachronistic argument that anyone who isn’t marching in lockstep with Trump must be supporting some evil creature called “Jeb!,” but the most common retort from Trump and his acolytes is that “at least he fights.”

But who is the fight against? Bud doesn't know, either.

By “establishment,” we no longer have no idea what Trump’s supporters mean to describe.

At the outset of Trump’s campaign we assumed he meant the likes of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who have so frequently angered such rebellious and old-fashioned conservatives as ourselves by signing off on big government crony-capitalist scams from ethanol subsidies to private property land-grabs to big-bank bail-outs and all those deficit-spending budgets, but now we’re told by Trump himself that Cruz was a loose cannon to have opposed all that as a Senator and that nobody in the establishment likes him as a result so the master deal-maker is best suited make the deals that will increase the ethanol subsidies that Iowa voters have a special interest in and uphold that “wonderful” Supreme Court decision that allowed him to tear down a widow’s home and build a parking lot for his casino and assure the next round of bail-outs that he didn’t think were big enough the last time around and pass a plan that cuts taxes and doesn’t decrease spending and will somehow end with a surplus. 

Do you climb into space
To the world where you live

It's all irreconcilable, isn't it? We make America great again by fighting what, exactly?

Here's someone now who's got the muscle

How will it be deployed? Don't expect any help from our normal tutors. Back to Steyn:

All the Chumpy McDonorpants had to do was sit on their hands and not give 100 million bucks to another hereditary-class rich-boy stiff with no flair for retail politics who thinks that illegal immigration is "an act of love". But they couldn't help themselves. The Donor Class decided it would take its contempt for the rubes to the next level ...and now they're surprised that the rubes have decided to take it to the next level, too. They don't care when the insiders say that Trump isn't a "real Republican". To them, that's not a bug, it's a feature. But Rush posits that disenchantment with the only electoral alternative to the Democrats is now so great that they don't even care that Trump isn't a "real conservative". My old colleague Jonah Goldberg is pointing out today, yet again, that Trump is "not a conservative".

That's true. But he's not campaigning like one, is he? Cruz is running proudly under the conservative banner. Trump is running like a guy who got Frank Luntz to do one of his "words that work" focus groups and "conservative" came back with net unfavorables.

It's an impasse. I'm not sure how to bridge the gap, especially when the operative notion seems to be to burn it all down.

We're looking for wide open spaces 
High above the kitchen
And we're strangers here
On our way to some other place

I don't know that we're going to like the destination very much.

Benster and D Pick Your Games----Conference Championship Edition

Old dude, it is time to see who wants to go to Santa Clara for the 50th Super Bowl

I want to, but I don't get to go.

You aren't in the NFL, Geritol Fan!

Oh, you mean the teams left in the tournament.

The thing is, this is a big year for the NFL, and they should have played Super Bowl 50 at the temporary home for the Rams, but I digress.

Oh, the Rams are back in L.A. That's right.

Don't worry, that will be a possible Very Special Comment in the future about why the NFL is making a huge mistake. But that detracts from the HYYYYYYYYYYYYYPPPEEE! Watch me work!


New England Patriots (-3) vs. Denver Broncos. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have played each other numerous times in big games, so it is fitting that two of the best quarterbacks of my generation will play to go to Santa Clara. Now, we all know that the Nationwide pitchman struggles in cold weather games, and has had an epic number of chokes in big games. He never beat Florida in college, lost a National Championship to Nebraska, lost numerous times to New England, lost two Super Bowls, lost to a huge underdog Steeler team, lost his Mastercard sponsorship. and so on. Brady, on the other hand is the Joe Montana of this generation. Brady is very much the champion quarterback, who is very good in big games, a great leader, can do it with less than elite wideouts, has the supermodel for a wife. You figure that the Hoodie will have a game plan, and that Manning will prove once again that no matter how good he is, he will never be as good as his brother. Yeah, I just went there. Patriots 17, Broncos 0.

You mean Cooper? Oh. I'm pulling for the old warrior in this one, but I wish he'd say "Council Bluffs" once in a while just to switch things up a bit. If Denver is going to win this game, it will have to be on defense. I think your instincts on a low-scoring game are correct, but I'm going to go the other way. Broncos 17, Patriots 14.

Arizona Cardinals (+3) vs. Carolina Panthers. Both teams got ambushed at home last weekend and were lucky to survive. The Cardinals had to rely on Larry Fitzgerald to play out of his mind to overcome my Packers, who had to play without the top 4 wideouts they had expected in training camp. The Panther nearly blew a 31 point lead against Seattle, which is even more concerning for me. Carolina is not as good as the record says they are, and I do not buy that they are legit. Good teams close out opponents. When the Packers almost come back from a 20 point deficit, when the Giants almost come back from 28 points down, when Seattle almost comes back from 31 points down, then you know that your team has not been coached well. Riverboat Ron needs to step up and win this game, or otherwise he and Scam Newton will have to face critics and will have to accept that this whole ride has been smoke and mirrors, and that real champions can actually close out a team when it matters. I expect Carolina to blow a 20+ point lead tomorrow night, and it won't be pretty. Cardinals 31, Panthers 27.

I agree with you on this one. I really wonder if the Panthers are as good as advertised. This Cardinals team has been impressive throughout the season and I imagine that, when the time comes to win the game, they will find the wherewithal to do it. The only concern is whether Carson Palmer will make a mistake. He was a little lucky against the Packers. I think he'll be better this week and that will be the difference. Cardinals 28, Panthers 20.

Those were some very powerful and strong hot takes there, but I do believe it is true. You have to be able to win big games, and I believe that Arizona and New England are better coached and better prepared. Ben out!

A very long time ago

Mark Steyn on the National Review anti-Trumpalooza:

Nevertheless, notwithstanding some contributors I admire, the whole feels like a rather obvious trolling exercise. As I explained yesterday, I don't think Trump supporters care that he's not a fully paid-up member in good standing of "the conservative movement" - in part because, as they see it, the conservative movement barely moves anything. If you want the gist of NR's argument, here it is:

I think we can say that this is a Republican campaign that would have appalled Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan...

A real conservative walks with us. Ronald Reagan read National Review and Human Events for intellectual sustenance...

My old boss, Ronald Reagan, once said...

Ronald Reagan was famous for...

When Reagan first ran for governor of California...

Reagan showed respect for...

Reagan kept the Eleventh Commandment...

Far cry from Ronald Reagan's "I am paying for this microphone" line...

Trump is Dan Quayle, and everyone and his auntie are Lloyd Bentsen: "I knew Ronald Reagan, I worked for Ronald Reagan, I filled in Ronald Reagan's subscription-renewal form for National Review. And you, sir, are no Ronald Reagan."

You have to be over 50 to have voted for Reagan, and a supposed "movement" can't dine out on one guy forever, can it? What else you got?

Emphasis in original. Let's think about that last line. You have to be over 50 to have voted for Reagan. That brought me up short, but it's true. I did vote in the 1984 election and I was 20 years old at the time. I wasn't sure what I believed, but I wasn't going to vote for Ronnie Raygun. To show you how confused I was, I voted for Gary Hart in the primary and David Bergland, the Libertarian Party candidate, in the general. How does one go from a Democrat to a Libertarian in less than a year? By continuing to reject Reagan, especially after he enthusiastically signed a law that nationalized the drinking age at 21, while simultaneously recognizing that Walter Mondale was a sanctimonious scold. I also had a good friend who was an LP member and he certainly had some influence on my thinking.

My dad was a rock-ribbed Republican and he always maintained a subscription to National Review, so I had an opportunity to read plenty of NR growing up. Bill Buckley and Bill Rusher were the high priests of the conservative movement and they were willing to cast apostates into the outer darkness. It was Buckley who sent the Birchers and the Randians away. Later on, he cast Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran into the abyss. Buckley has been gone for nearly a decade now and NR no longer holds the imprimatur it had then. Back to Steyn:

The movement conservatives at National Review make a pretty nice living out of "ideas, ideology, philosophy, policy, and so forth". The voters can't afford that luxury: They live in a world where, in large part due to the incompetence of the national Republican Party post-Reagan, Democrat ideas are in the ascendant. And they feel that this is maybe the last chance to change that.

Hope is a lapel pin

You used to see, from time to time, people wearing a lapel pin of the sort you see on the left. That pin identified the wearer as a speaker of Esperanto, the 19th century synthetic language that people hoped would become the lingua franca of a better world. Esperanto has elements of  both Slavic and Romance languages but also other elements, in an effort to be internationalist. The name itself is similar to the Spanish word esperanza, which means hope. Esperanto still has its adherents but it never really caught on while you can still learn it, I wouldn't be surprised if more people know how to speak Klingon these days. And in some crucial ways, I think movement conservatism is becoming too much like Esperanto, a language people could learn but never will. I haven't seen an Esperanto lapel pin in at least 20 years. Hell, it's increasingly rare to see lapels these days. 1984 is a very long time ago.

Donald Trump doesn't bother with political Esperanto. He talks directly to people and he's very good at it. The writers and thinkers at NR are, in the main, not known for direct expression. Trump is winning because he doesn't bother with caveats and cavils. As Steyn notes, the hour is short. No one gives a damn about fealty to an idea, or for hero worship. People want a plan. A couple dozen denunciations isn't a plan. What is the conservative movement for? Do you know? If you read  the current issue of National Review, you won't know.

22 pundits, no waiting

So National Review has brought out a boatload of pundits to inveigh against the Donald, including everyone from old Reagan hand Edwin Meese III (show of hands, how many people thought he died 20 years ago?) to Dana Loesch, who posed for her book cover with a cocktail dress and a big gun.

You can read what they all say at the link I've provided. It's all good and I agree with nearly every sentiment expressed. And you know what? It won't matter at all. From what I can see, people who support Trump aren't doing so because they see him as the redeemer of Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley. That's not the point. Trump supporters are instead, in the main, looking for a Man of Action rather than a Man of Words. So the pleadings of the Men (and Women) of Words aren't going to change anything.

In his 1963 work "The Ordeal of Change," Eric Hoffer explains the distinction:

In the modern Occident power was, and still is, the prerogative of men of action – landowners, soldiers, businessmen, industrialists, and their hangers-on. The intellectual is treated as a poor relation and has to pick up the crumbs. He usually ekes out a living by teaching, journalism, or some white-collar job. Even when his excellence as a writer, artist, scientist, or educator is generally recognized and rewarded, he does not feel himself one of the elite.

Trump is a Man of Action -- he builds skyscrapers and casinos with his name on them. He doesn't walk on the stage. He struts. And he doesn't really give a damn about intellectual consistency. Why would he?

So when pundit L. Brent Bozell III, who is the nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr. and has been on the ramparts for over 30 years, offers the following:

A real conservative walks with us. Ronald Reagan read National Review and Human Events for intellectual sustenance; spoke annually to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Young Americans for Freedom, and other organizations to rally the troops; supported Barry Goldwater when the GOP mainstream turned its back on him; raised money for countless conservative groups; wrote hundreds of op-eds; and delivered even more speeches, everywhere championing our cause. Until he decided to run for the GOP nomination a few months ago, Trump had done none of these things, perhaps because he was too distracted publicly raising money for liberals such as the Clintons; championing Planned Parenthood, tax increases, and single-payer health coverage; and demonstrating his allegiance to the Democratic party. We conservatives should support the one candidate who walks with us.

If you were to ask a Trump supporter about all that, the response would be, so what? This isn't about hoary principles and whether you have built your credibility in the conservative salt mines over the decades. This is about results. Does L. Brent Bozell III have a 98-story building in Chicago with his name on it? Yes, Ronald Reagan walked with us. Donald Trump struts.

Don't get me wrong -- I admire Brent Bozell and the work he has done for movement conservatism. No one has been more diligent in exposing the systemic rot of liberalism and the role its cheerleaders in the mainstream media play in propagating nonsense. It doesn't matter, though. If you put every word that Brent Bozell has offered on paper, Donald Trump would treat it as Charmin.

The torrent of words pouring forth from NR isn't about convincing anyone, really. It's about establishing parameters. That's worth doing, but we should not assume it will convince a single soul to abandon Trump.

A coveted demographic, or "pictures or it didn't happen"

Finally, a phenomenon explained:

A nation of Trump fans turns its lonely eyes to you

While explaining that he believes that Donald Trump's success in the Republican party does not mean that establishment conservatism is dying, GOP strategist Rick Wilson dismissed the "childless single men" who support Trump's presidential bid.

"The fact of the matter is, most of them are childless single men who masturbate to anime. They’re not real political players. These are not people who matter in the overall course of humanity," Wilson said of Trump supporters on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes."

Empahsis mine. Well, glad to see that they've moved on from Fritz the Cat, although the level of specificity involved in the insult suggests more knowledge of the matter than a person really ought to have.

Bob Dole would like you to know that Bob Dole doesn't like Ted Cruz

The retired senator from Archer Daniels Midland would like to share his views:

Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, has never been fond of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. But in an interview Wednesday, Mr. Dole said that the party would suffer “cataclysmic” and “wholesale losses” if Mr. Cruz were the nominee, and that Donald J. Trump would fare better.

“I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”

That's a tell. So is this:

But Mr. Dole, 92, said he thought Mr. Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”

Dealmaking isn't a big problem in Washington. They make deals all the time. Most of the time the citizenry isn't cut into the deals, but that's nothing we need to worry our pretty little heads over. So why is Bob Dole so mad? Perhaps this might be the reason:

The animosity between the two men began after Mr. Cruz invoked Mr. Dole’s name as an example of the missteps the party had made with past presidential nominees — as in, “Remember President Dole? Remember President McCain? Remember President Romney?”

“In other words, we weren’t right wing like he is, and I didn’t like that very much,” Mr. Dole said in the interview. “It kind of hurt, because we worked hard, we did the best we could. We are conservatives, we are traditional Republican conservatives. And then, of course, he doesn’t have any friends in Congress. He called the leader of the Republicans a liar on the Senate floor.”

Maybe we could give Bob Dole a participation trophy -- after all, Bob Dole did the best he could. If you want to know why Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar, click this link. I think this was the quote that got ol' Mitch upset:

We had a Senate Republican lunch where I stood up and I asked the majority leader very directly, what was the deal that was just cut on [trade legislation, and was there a deal for the Export-Import Bank? It was a direct question. I asked the majority leader in front of all the Republican senators. The majority leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the majority leader looked at me and said, "There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal."

"Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times," Cruz added.

The other message? Apparently Donald Trump is more acceptable to the dealmakers in Washington than Ted Cruz is. You can draw your own conclusions about what that means.

In re Sarah Palin's endorsement of the Donald

I don't think it matters that much. There's likely a pretty significant overlap between those who dislike Sarah Palin and those who dislike Donald Trump, just as there's significant overlap between the fans of both. Trump will pocket the endorsement and move on. And Palin will do whatever it is she's doing these days.

We are living in interesting times.

Hunka hunka Bern

Lord almighty, feel the temperature rise:

Three weeks before Granite Staters head to the polls to select their favorites to be their parties' presidential nominees, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has built a commanding lead over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters.

Sanders leads Clinton 60 percent to 33 percent in the latest WMUR/CNN New Hampshire Primary Poll, with former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at 1 percent and 6 percent undecided.

The University of New Hampshire Survey Center conducted the poll Jan. 13-18 among 420 likely Democratic primary voters. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent.

This result isn't particularly astonishing. Hillary Clinton is a human dumpster fire at this point in her career. My guess is that most people realize she's corrupt and while the MSM would prefer not to discuss the matter, the multiple scandals she's involved with have to be taking a toll on her popularity. And since those who propose to rob Peter to pay Paul invariably have Paul's support, Bernie Sanders is going to be a good bet for the Party of Envy.

Back in '08, Barack Obama promised Hope and Change. In this cycle, Bernie Sanders is proposing money and revenge. All Hillary Clinton has ever promised is careerism, but only her own. That's not a bandwagon most people will want to climb aboard.

What is Hip

RIP, Mick Gillette of Tower of Power:

You went an' found you a guru.
In an effort to find you a new you,
And maybe even manage to raise your conscious level.
While you're striving to find the right road,
There's one thing you should know,
"What's hip today, might become passe'."

A word to the wise.

The Golden Age of Rock 'n Roll

RIP, Dale Griffin of Mott the Hoople:

Everybody hazy, shell-shocked and crazy.
Screaming for the face at the window.
Jeans for the genies, dresses for the dreamies,
Fighting for a place in the front row.

It was a long time ago now.

Already Gone

RIP, Glenn Frey:

But let me tell you I got some news for you
And you'll soon find out it's true
And then you'll have to eat your lunch all by yourself

It won't taste quite the same.

Follow the money, yet again

So why is the water bad in Flint, Michigan? I know better than to trust Michael Moore's explanations, so I turned to a more reliable source, Walter Russell Mead:

Where there’s a crisis in a modern American city, blue model failures—in particular, bankrupt pension funds or intractable public unions—are probably lurking not far below the surface. That is certainly the case for the water contamination disaster in Flint, Michigan, which is traceable to the city’s desperate efforts to save money by switching its water source from the City of Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. 

The problem is, the water in the Flint River is corrosive and is eating away at the lead pipes:

Over the summer, researchers from Virginia Tech found that Flint River water is highly corrosive. That means when it comes into contact with lead from service lines, household pipes or solder, it eats away at the lead and sends it right to people's faucets.

Why did Flint change its water supply? Because it owes a lot of money to other people. Back to Mead:

Flint’s problem is fundamentally one of money. The city was the birthplace of General Motors and once had a thriving economy based on the auto industry, but those days are long gone and Flint is now known for its deep poverty (40 percent of the population is impoverished), urban blight, and high crime. As a result, Flint’s population has fallen sharply from about 200,000 in the 1960s to under 100,000 today. The economic downturn combined with a drop in population has unsurprisingly severely restricted Flint’s tax revenues.

What hasn’t been restricted much, though, are the pension demands of Flint’s former workers. Flint has about 1,900 government retirees, who outnumber actual city employees three to one. A glance at the city’s financial forecast from spring 2015 shows that, within the city’s general fund, pensions and retiree health care dominate 33 cents of ever dollar spent, with the figure expected to hit 37 percent by 2020.

So why not find a way to cut the pensions? Good luck with that. A story from 2013 tells why:

Another potential blow to Flint's finances was delivered last week when a federal judge denied a second attempt by the city to enact cuts to retiree benefits made by an emergency manager.

Detroit Federal District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow denied Flint’s request for a stay of the injunction on June 25 that means the city cannot make $3.5 million in cuts to retiree health care benefits.

Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz said the city plans an emergency appeal because the ruling “has placed the city’s long-term financial future in question.”

Have to pay the pensioners, even if it means poisoning the children. By the way, Judge Tarnow is a Clinton appointee, in case you're interested. Back to Mead:

The Democratic presidential candidates earned applause last night for denouncing Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s handling of the Flint situation. But have any of them offered a plan for addressing the underlying cost problems plaguing Flint and other Democratic-controlled urban areas? As we’ve written before, the federal government will likely need to get involved, at some point, with the deepening budgetary disasters plaguing these cities. But this involvement must be guided by the concept of relief-for-reform, in which the bankrupt cities get limited assistance in exchange for real changes to the policies that led to this mess. Those policies include, but aren’t limited to, high wages and pension promises (usually underfunded) for unionized public employees, zoning restrictions, enterprise-killing regulations, unrealistically high levels of tax combined with “exemptions” and carve-outs for crony capitalist special interests, and an overstuffed bureaucracy to give jobs to the politically well-connected. The Democrats are comfortable talking about more money for American cities, but not so much about that whole reform idea—at least, not yet.

Reform must come, but that's not the conversation that the Michael Moores of the world want.

What I hear

We did some running around over the weekend, but not much, as it's been bitterly cold here in the great frozen north. Watched a lot of football, including the amazing end of the season for the Packers, but the other three games weren't especially compelling. What I did not see much of was the news, so I don't have a lot to offer about the events of the weekend.

This is what I hear: apparently there was a debate between two addled seasoned citizens and some creepy guy from Baltimore. And some of my doomier friends are convinced that Armageddon is nigh in the financial markets. Could be. And apparently the governor of Michigan is personally responsible for the condition of 100-year old water pipes in Flint, along with the decisions made at the federal level (EPA), because he is the governor of Michigan and simply is responsible, and he should resign now, because he should take responsibility, because he simply is, and apparently Michael Moore's word on the matter is dispositive. Between leaching lead in Michigan, and the general depredations of Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner in the neighboring states, midwestern Republican governors are horrible, horrible people who ought to be brought to justice, or something.

If you were paying attention this weekend, let me know. Maybe I didn't get some of that correct.