How cool is it that a Ricochet contributor gets to ricochet all over the country!  At the moment, I'm getting a trailer full of hurricane supplies loaded on the beast and then making a run for the Brownsville, TX area later today.  I understand the forecast calls for continued breezes, and fair to partly hideous tomorrow. 

Did I mention that the facility where I am being loaded has a no idle policy for trucks?  Did I mention that the temperature is in the mid 90's right now?  Of course, this policy was conceived from the comfort of a climate controlled office, where heat stroke is not against company policy. 

The War Is Making You Poor Act, explains E.D. Kain at NRO, would carve "$159 billion of pork from the defense budget and give 90 percent of that money back to taxpayers. The remaining 10 percent would go toward trimming the national debt. For fiscal conservatives," Kain argues, "this should be a welcome piece of legislation."

In fact, judging by the many reactions around the Web, it might actually be a semi-popular, bipartisan bill that would at once cut back the national debt and put more tax dollars in Americans’ pockets. Republicans have a chance to lead this effort in the Senate. Indeed, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn is talking about scaling back the defense budget [...]. America already spends far more than the rest of the developed world on its national security. Trimming some pork from that figure would not leave Americans defenseless.

How's this for a catchphrase: Keep America in Fighting Trim!

Riding in an over-crowded and under-airconditioned subway this morning, I realized that state and city budget cuts, combined with persistent high unemployment are making for an American version of Britain's 1978 "Winter of Discontent," which produced this brilliant, game-changing poster by Saatchi and Saatchi.

This poster helped propel the Tories to power (Claire: back me up here). It's hard to beat "Labor isn't working," but let's try. How about pictures of unemployed workers with the caption "Congress Isn't Working, Either." Or maybe Obama on a golf course ("Obama Isn't Working.") Or pictures of idled oil rigs with the caption "Your Tax Dollars At Work."

I'm sure the rest of you can do better - bring it on!

So we've heard from congressional Democrats, and they say that the economy has recovered:

I guess I prefer this graphic, from the Financial Times, indicating that there's a long way to go:

And finally, what I really like to hear is Rick Santelli, the man who inspired the Tea Party movement, coming up with a simple solution:

The Supreme Court decision yesterday to strike down the Chicago ban on handguns was based on a 2007 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That 2007 decision, the first important jurisprudence on the right to bear arms in some seven decades, was written by Judge Laurence Silberman.

On Uncommon Knowledge not long ago, Judge Silberman explained himself.

Five minutes that will tell you what you need to know about the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, and the correct and honest way to read the Constitution.

I told you so. You guys just keep sleeping while I fiddle a bit more with the currency markets.

Early risers: If I were you I might go bargain hunting on copper, zinc and lead today.

Just saying.

Andrew Sullivan points out that the tan/muscle/visible boxer-briefs band vibe popularized by Jersey Shore is pretty much a wholesale adoption of "the steroid look perfected by gays in the early 2000s." It wouldn't be the first time that gay fashion had its delayed revenge on straight style. What strikes me most is how self-obsessed, how self-referential, and how self-objectifying it all is. Or really, self-alienating -- a guy's abs take on this semi-independent, alien character usually reserved only for that part of the male anatomy often accused of doing its thinking for itself.

When Andrew and others predict 'the end of gay culture' in a big sea of bourgeois normalcy, I look at something like this strange development and I think, hmm, perhaps that's not exactly it. We have this persistent desire to be able to oscillate back and forth between the comfortable, predictable, everyday world and the crazy planet or wild side. I doubt that's going away. And I do think that the looser our sexual mores get, the more dramatic that oscillation is likely to become.

So, Brian Blackstone of the Wall Street Journal was sent to Basel to cover the annual meeting of central bankers there last Sunday, and I'm guessing the event was a serious snoozer. How else to explain his writing a whole article about the remarks of one Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, a former (former!) ECB official, who apparently blamed Thatcher and Reagan for the world's financial ails. Mind you, if you read past the first paragraph, you'll see that he doesn't really blame them, he blames their successors, and that his criticism is mostly trivial, cliched or incoherent. More to the point, who cares what he thinks. I suppose Blackstone was just relieved to hear the words "Thatcher and Reagan" amid the droning. Those names, at least, always get people to click on the link.

Nil nisi bonum and all that, but when I read of the passing of Senator Robert Byrd all I could think was, "There goes one of the GREAT spenders of other people's money of all time." Possibly the greatest ever -- is there a Guinness record for this?

And this brought to mind another observation: One of the great gulfs in the modern developed world is that between people who have to make do on what they earn or accumulate themselves -- their own money -- and those who derive their power or wealth from making use of other people's money. The latter increasingly view themselves as the "elite;" the former, whether part-time fry-cooks or well-to-do neurosurgeons, are the "other people." Politicians accumulate power and influence by spending other people's money; i-bankers, hedge fund managers, and the like accumulate wealth by taking risks with other people's money. No wonder they're so cozy. I think you could take a good deal of what's happened over the past 12-18 months -- the Tea Party, the anger at Wall Street, the political upsets -- and call it the Revolt of the "Other People."

Can we win in Afghanistan?  I'm not asking whether Petraeus will be able to take over from McChrystal without disrupting our operations on the ground or whether the Obama administration will give Petraeus the troops and the time he needs.  Even if the transition from McChrystal to Petraeus goes flawlessly and the administration, by some miracle, decides to pursue an unambiguous victory, can we win?

As he insisted on our podcast last week, Victor Davis Hanson believes we can.  Yet as he told me on a recent episode of Uncommon Knowledge, and as he argues again in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Fouad Ajami believes we cannot.

[C]ounterinsurgency [Ajami writes in the Wall Street Journal] requires a native regime that would hold its own against insurgents and defend its own homeland.  No serious assessment holds out the promise of a capable Afghan regime and a devoted national army that would fight for the incumbent government.  Afghanistan is what it is, a land riven by corruption and sectarianism, a population weighed down by illiteracy and hardened by years of betrayal and abdication.  The "Afghanization" of the war is a utopian idea.

Victor and Fouad represent two of the most important--that is, two of the most articulate, determined, and knowledgeable--supporters of the war in Iraq.  They're friends.  They're patriots.  They possess a deep understanding of the history and mores of the Middle East and Central Asia.  As the debate on Afghanistan unfolds, we'll learn virtually everything we need to know to make up our own minds by watching these two men disagree. 

Via New York Times

U.S. Charges 11 With Acting as Agents for Russia

Today in the world of patent law, all eyes were on the Supreme Court's ruling in Bilski v. Kappos.

The issue in Bilski was whether certain hedging devices against price fluctuation, and their mathematical representations could be treated as “eligible” for  patent protection as a “process” under the law.  The Supreme Court held in this case that it could not be so, and on the outcome it affirmed the decision of the Federal Circuit.  But read in context, Bilski’s loss was on exceedingly narrow grounds that do not undercut the general view, long established that business method patents can be regarded as patent eligible processes in most situations.  Instead the key move in Justice Kennedy’s argument was that this particular patenting formula should be treated as an abstract idea or mathematical formula—both classes that have long been held outside the scope of IP protection. 

Justice Kennedy in Bilski went out of its way to reject the broader, and misguided, grounds on which the federal circuit had rejected the patent, most notably on the view that a patentable process had to be tied to some “machine-or-transformation test,” which would make physicality in some narrower sense the hallmark of patent protection.  The willingness of the Court to affirm the broad definitions of patentability embodied in such key cases as the 1980 decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty was most welcome.  I coauthored a brief on this case with Scott Kieff in which we were concerned solely with the larger question and not the fate of what should on any view be regarded as a very dicey patent.  

Bilski is a patent protective decision.  

Greg Gutfeld, who is always funny -- Red-Eye on Fox News is one of television's great pleasures -- has this to say about the nutrition nannies who want to sue McDonald's:

Last month I told you about The Center for Science in the Public Interest, the soulless scolds who believe all food should taste like pottery.

Today, they're threatening to sue McDonalds for enticing kids with toys. They call the restaurant's toy promotions creepy — as if nutrition activists aren't. Point of fact: They are. They're smelly, ugly and miserable.

Seriously, have you been to a health food store? Ask yourself: How can a place be so healthy, if the workers resemble bags of soggy lawn trimmings?

What's next? The McRib? (Well, actually, banning the McRib wouldn't be so bad.....)

I've been searching for ten minutes in which to respond to James P's thoughtful posts about happiness and children - and here they are. I've always thought that studies on whether children make you happy were bogus. Happiness and even contentment are things of the moment. Sex, steak, a check in the mail, a glass of malt - those things make you happy - just as stubbing your toe or getting fired make you unhappy. The goal of life, though, is to live - to live abundantly as our old friend Uncle Jesus liked to say - and if having children doesn't add to your abundance of life, you're not doing it right. Abundance of life exists through grief and joy and I doubt any study can measure it. Indeed I doubt the people who measure things even know it's there to be measured. My wife and I have an in-house expression used to welcome children, pets, friends, charities and other annoyances: "More love - more life." The reverse is also true: Mark Steyn sees societies dying through depopulation and he's right - but I would submit that a society that loses the urge to bring children into the world is already dead and just doesn't know it yet. More precisely, such a society is alive without living. Children may not be the only cure for that but they're a sure one.

Export-Import Bank -- a federal body that provides loan guarantees to American exporters -- has refused to provide guarantees to a Wisconsin company that manufactures mining equipment because the equipment might be used for ... mining. The company (Bucyrus) was set to sell up to $600 million in equipment to an Indian mining operation, but the Ex-Im Bank board voted it down because of the Administration's policy not to back projects with heavy carbon emissions.

For those following at home: Nobody suggests that the American exporter is a polluter. Rather, the Administration is afraid that the customer -- in India -- might be a polluter.

Isn't that a question for the Indian authorities?

And wasn't this the President who was going to double exports over five years?

Mary Anastasia O'Grady notes that this week Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson will try to persuade the House to lift the travel ban on Cuba.  What concessions does he expect the United States to extract from Fidel in return?  Exactly none.  What, O'Grady asks, does Peterson think he's doing?

[A] wave of European, Canadian and Latin American visitors since the mid-1990s hasn't changed a thing....[I]f Mr. Peterson wants to boost commerce why not push for passage of the Colombia free trade agreement?  Why is he so interested in doing business with a dictator?

There's still some great, great Euro pop-rock out there -- even electro-pop-rock (run, don't walk to pick up some Kent). But Ricochet member Kennedy Smith was not lying when he held Eurovision up for special scorn. Somehow, something has gone horribly wrong. Rod Dreher plumbs the depths of the puzzle: 

How is it that a continent with such a rich musical and cultural history is so drecktastic when it comes to creating modern pop? You might also ask why it is that a country as rich in culinary resources as the US produced for so long Budweiser, Wonder Bread, Folger's coffee and sliced American cheese as representatives of its mass culture. But look, we're changing. Our people are learning to love good beer, good bread, good coffee and good cheese, and it's getting easier to find all of that here. Within two blocks from where I sit now, in my Philadelphia home, I can walk out and buy beer, coffee, cheese and bread comparable to any I could buy on the Continent. We are discovering how to make great artisanal food. But can the Europeans ever learn how to make good pop music? If not, why not?

Every few months, the stars in the trucking universe align correctly, and I get to travel to the place of my birth down in south Louisiana.  Driving across the Atchafalaya River Basin, I tuned in to a local Cajun music station and soaked in the scenery.  Ours is truly a beautiful country from the pristine beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the calm landscapes in Maine, the majesty of the Grand Canyon, to the untamed wonders of Yellowstone.   But for me, there is nothing quite so soothing as the bayou.  Standing at the feet of ancient oak trees and gazing up at the magnificent spanish moss-draped limbs, I feel as though I am in nature's very own cathedral. 

In a giddy mood, I made my way to my favorite truck stop in Rayne, LA.  It's called Frog City, and it sits at exit 87 on Interstate 10.  You will not find better food, nor friendlier people at any truck stop anywhere else.  For those of us who live on the road and who constantly deal with truck stops where the food is under-cooked and over-priced, served by a staff who acts as if we've inconvenienced them by purchasing the stuff, Frog City is a welcomed change of pace. 

The accents are almost musical, the humor contagious.  You can even buy a CD of local Cajun musicians.  My favorite is Jamie Bergeron and the Kickin' Cajuns, and their hit single, "My Mama Is A Truck Drivin' Man." 

I was curious how these good and hardy people were handling the oil spill, so after consuming a large portion of red beans and rice, I made my way to the little bar that connects to the truck stop's casino.  Talking with the locals, I found a curious mixture of frustration and resignation, mixed with big picture optimism. 

One very polite lady who looked like the quintessential steel magnolia, told me that her son was offshore helping to drill one of the relief wells.  Time is a factor in the success of that effort, and she worries about his safety.  I asked if he volunteered to assist in the drilling.  "Oh no," she said.  "That's his job, and he's good at it."  Asked about frustration with the clean-up and containment, the ladies had stories to share.  "Some guy from Wisconsin came all the way down here with a machine that will clean the oil from the sand, but they wouldn't let him use it."  "What did he do?" I asked.  "What do you think he did," answered the other lady.  She shrugged and said, "He took his machine back home." 

When I asked if the oil might make its way into the Atchafalaya, the ladies looked at each other, and said that they didn't think it would, but it was more of a wish than a forecast.  "And now we got the hurricanes to worry about too," said the bartender, who handed me a ticket for a drawing they were about to have in the casino. 

I asked how long they thought it will take to clean it all up, and the ladies agreed it will take many years.  "But don't worry," said the lady whose son is working offshore right now.  "We'll take care of it alright." 

It's interesting that despite the bureaucratic sclerosis that puts a virtual choke hold on local efforts to solve problems, folks here believe in themselves and each other, knowing that they will not only survive, but that they will prevail, ...whether the bureaucrats like it or not.  These aren't the New Orleanians who begged for government assistance.  These people are a tough breed and hard working.  What they do expect from the government is that it will not impede their efforts. 

Meanwhile, this pair of delightful seniors took their leave of me, as there was a Cajun band playing across town and they wanted to get some two-stepping out of their systems.  Oh, and it turns out I had the winning ticket.  I left the truck stop 20 bucks richer, and much happier.

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Steve Forbes publishes a column that is brief, cheerful (as is his wont), and devastating (also his wont).  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he notes, remarked not long ago that "Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what--it's growing like crazy."  To which Forbes replies, part:

Take a look at Brazil's income tax rates--they are lower than ours.  The highest rate is a mere 27.5 percent, far below our top federal rate of 35 percent....Moreover that exaction [in the American tax code] will climb to almost 43 percent come January.

Isn't Brazil's success an example of what Ronald Reagan and other tax cutters have always claimed:  Lower rates generate more economic activity...?

Via Huffington Post:

A new Senate bill, sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman, proposes to give the president the authority "to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet," according to CNET.

The authority granted to the government in the bill, known as the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), has been likened to an Internet "kill switch."

Should the president really be able to effectively shut down the internet?  While I generally support the ideas behind the President's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the 'kill switch' legislation going before the Senate for a vote in the near future fills me with more than a measure of disquietude.

Today, among other decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “public” Hastings Law School in California can deny recognition to the student run Christian Legal Society because they deny membership to students who do not share their beliefs. Specifically, members are held to a “statement of faith” prohibiting “fornication, adultery, and homosexual conduct.”

My best advice for the group and others like it is to drop the words “homosexual conduct” from your “statement of faith.” You’ve got fornication and adultery in there. Arguably any kind of sexual conduct between any two people outside of marriage is included in that set of no-nos. Since you’re at a public school, why don’t you play it smart? If people at your meetings want to bend these rules, evangelize them. This is a public school. You’ve got to play by at least some rules. Although the rules the school wants is that all groups must admit "all-comers," the "comers" you don't want in your group are less likely to "come" if you leave out incendiary words in your by laws. Let the school go to the Supreme Court and ask you to let in "fornicators and adulterers." They wont.

If you want to go to a Catholic law school like I did, you’re allowed to do more with your religious goals, but you will also have my student loan bills, which you are welcome to.

The Court today struck down Chicago's ban on handguns as a violation of the Second Amendment, as incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.  Once the Court had decided in the Heller case two years ago that the federal government could not absolutely ban guns in the District of Columbia, McDonald's outcome was virtually inevitable.  There were still a few surprising things:

First, the four liberal justices (Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor) dissented from incorporating a key aspect of the bill of rights, even though I presume they would never question that other rights, such as the right against search and seizure or against self-incrimination in court, apply.  It remains stunning that the liberals would engage in this choosing and picking of rights that they favor for incorporation or not against the states (this is something the conservative justices haven't done). 

Second, Justice Thomas (for whom I clerked), agreed with the majority but wrote a lengthy, brilliant concurrence criticizing the Court's use of the Due Process Clause as the means to incorporate the bill of rights against the states.  I think he is utterly right -- the notion that a clause that speaks about fair process has become the vehicle for applying substantive rights, like the right to free speech or free exercise of religion, makes little sense.  The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did want all citizens, white and black, to enjoy the rights of the Bill of Rights against the states, but they expressed that through the Amendment's declaration: " No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." 

Third, the future fight will be not over the right to bear arms, but what reasonable restrictions that states and the federal government can place on gun ownership.  The Court, properly, does not answer this question in great detail, and this will be where the states and cities will try their best to undermine McDonald.

The Wall Street Journal's headline on the pow-wow in Toronto: "Rich Nations Back Halving Deficts by 2013, Signaling Intent to Ease Stimulus."

What this means, as best I can make it out, is that Angela Merkel won half her battle with Barack Obama. By getting him to give up any thought of enacting another vast, useless stimulus bill, she made sure he wouldn't make the American deficit even bigger. As far as it goes, that's good news.

The half of the battle that Merkel lost? She failed to get Obama to agree to deal sensibly with the vast deficit that already exists. Instead of agreeing to rein in goverment spending, as Merkel is doing, and as the new British government appears determined to do, Obama insisted instead on trying to close our deficit by raising taxes.

If he weren't so utterly determined to pursue policies that will smother investment and prolong high unemployment, I'd almost be willing to savor the irony. After insisting all his political life that the United States needed to become more like the nations of Western Europe, President Obama just devoted an entire summit meeting to dissing...the nations of Western Europe.

Fox News:

The show, called "Imam Muda" or "Young Leader" [...] is a natural fit for Malaysia, a Southeast Asian nation that has tried to defend its Islamic traditions while also welcoming high-tech industry and Western culture. It's these parallel strains in society that the program taps so successfully.

The producers say they want to find a leader for these times, a pious but progressive Muslim who can prove that religion remains relevant to Malaysian youths despite the influence of Western pop culture. Even the prizes combine both worlds: An all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca and a car.

I have to remind myself time and again that reality TV cannot be condemned simply because a lot of it is enervating dreck. Even some super-popular or apparently superficial reality TV shows -- Top Chef or Project Runway -- combine authentic personal idiosyncrasies with artificially programmed competition to produce inspiring entertainment. And the best reality TV shows remind us that no matter how much you might look or act like other people, there's still only one you. I hope this translates well enough into a Muslim context. There's no real reason why it shouldn't...aside from the worst of reality TV. Can you really have one without the other?

Every Monday, I post a culture column on my website, AndrewKlavan.com and then go on the Mike Gallagher show to chat about it. In all modesty, or in some modesty, I thought today's column - titled as above - was worth linking to:

Toy Story 3 centers around an apparently lovable and benign leader who is really a corrupt bully – so okay, it’s like the Obama Administration there. But in the movie, even the Barbie doll understands that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed...

The rest is here.

From the Happy Monday file, here's Paul Krugman in the NYTimes, predicting another depression:

But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.
In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

Those "future historians" are always right, aren't they? And then our president comes, to issue this warning:

"People should learn that lesson about me because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step-up because I'm calling their bluff. We'll see how much of that, how much of the political arguments that they're making right now are real and how much of it was just politics."

"Difficult choices" as we all know is code for "Hello, IRS!" Among the "difficult choices" are sure to be higher taxes, higher fees, more intake in general. Among the "difficult choices" are sure not to be lower spending, smaller government, fewer members of AFSCME.

Former drug lord Ricky Ross is suing rapper Rick Ross and Def Jam boss Jay-Z for trademark infringement, among other things. The suit is for $50 million, but this is small change to Ross (the former drug trafficker):

Ross was the premier distributor of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and beyond during the 1980s, thanks largely to his connection with CIA-linked supplier Oscar Blandon. Ross claims he often moved $2 million to $3 million of crack per day. "Our biggest problem had got to be counting the money," Ross told the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. "We got to the point where it was like, man, we don't want to count no more money."

So much is wrong with this story -- and our increasingly derelict society. Here are three that come to mind:

1) A rapper can make big commercial money by taking the name (and, by association, the “cool factor”) of an infamous drug kingpin.

2) Someone thinks this is a good use of our courts’ time.

3) It doesn’t appear that Ricky Ross learned another valuable trade – or a lesson, it seems – during his time in prison.

West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the longest serving member of Congress, is dead at 92.

My Iranian cousins—who now live in Sweden—are visiting my family and me this week and some of their reports about what’s happening in Iran are hard to believe.

Of course, all foreign media are banned in Iran, so news reports about what’s actually happening in the country are few and far between. But my cousins and I get information from our family that still lives there.

My family members in Iran tell me that as part of recent crackdowns, loud laughter has been banned on college campuses—as has nail polish and high heels. Earlier this month, the regime banned the teaching of music in private schools. And just last week, an Iranian cleric issued a fatwa against dogs. “Friendship with dogs is a blind imitation of the west,” he said. Need a friend—get an ayatollah!

How can a regime that hates all things joyous and beautiful last? It's sad that there needs to be a real-world experiment to find out.

Why is the GOP leadership so skittish about filibustering Kagan? Why not -- with all honesty -- denounce Kagan as "outside the mainstream" -- which will nicely reinforce Americans' growing suspicion that Obama is way, way outside the mainstream. Kagan can hardly complain since she's on the record as calling for a searching examination of the ideology of court nominees. She may still prevail, but I don't see the downside.