After listening to Ed Driscoll's interview with the movie's screenwriter and director, Whit Stillman, I took the missus out to see Damsels in Distress this evening.  The film is a low-budget indie, and it shows--sometimes the sound isn't quite right, and there are scenes that could have been better lit.  But the movie, about a group of girls attempting to do good in college--they spend time running a suicide prevention center, where, they have found, tap-dancing represents wonderful therapy--is charming and funny.  And in the lead character, Violet, played by Greta Gerwig, it presents one of the sweetest, most effective, and intelligent--Gerwig always underplays just underplays her lines--portrayals I've seen in months.

Since Rob and I have been kicking around the idea of member reviews--of films, books, television programs, and even (why not?) museum exhibitions--here's a Sunday evening experiment.  Below, an email from my friend Joe Malchow, who enjoyed Damsels in Distress as much as did my wife and I.  If you haven't seen the movie, Joe's comments might mean nothing at all to you.  But if you have--well, why not read what Joe says, then add a comment of your own?  A movie as skillful, evocative and enjoyable as Damsels in Distress represents a lovely topic for a Ricochet discussion, don't you suppose?

Dear Peter,

Wasn't Damsels in Distress clever? Strange but clever.

I do not know what your theory of the film was, but the two or three hours after viewing rewarded some thought.

I think the entire film is -- and its bright, waxy colors suggest as much -- the world as viewed by Violet. At first blush the film is about the beauty of a forceful personality. Violet's cohort are all flowers; they follow her; when she changes dress, they do. When Violet disappears for Motel 4, it is literally the entire college that goes searching for her. The rest of the girls hardly exist: one is picked up at the bar with a conversation of "hey," "hey," "hey." Another has been inventing her voice -- she isn't English, she is a blank slate which has attracted stronger content from the environment. Of course, the strongest is Violet -- always Violet. Her constant brightness, her deeply held theories which can change at a moment (when Lilly threatens to peel off from the group, and accuses Violet of being harsh, Violet accepts the charge immediately and vows to change) but which, whatever they are, are decisively and convincingly lived. But the story isn't really about the force of personality, as lovely as Violet's is. It is about whypersonalities like Violet's are infectious and good. It's about grace. Violet has grace. The soap is the manifestation of grace. Violet finds the soap at a dingy hotel. She loves that the hotel thought so much to provide good soap. But it isn't really great soap: just soap. But it's grace. She refers to the soap as a gift. It is freely given: the only gift in the film. Everyone, even the crusty construction workers, react to the soap. The suicide prevention house reorients its operation: now it's about packaging the soap and dispensing it to the school. At first the soap makes no difference, because it is wrapped up -- they toss it around. But eventually it has an effect. Violent sees a graceful world, and it is because she is graceful herself that she has such an effect upon the rest of the students.Best,Joe

Damsels in Distress, a movie about grace.  That's what Joe Malchow makes of it.You?

Maureen Dowd writing in the New York Times this past weekend about the Vatican-appointed commission to ensure doctrinal soundness among American nuns:

Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns....While continuing to heal and educate, the community of sisters is aging and dying out because few younger women are willing to make such sacrifices for a church determined to bring women to heel.

Aging?  Dying out?  Consider the Sisters of Life, founded in 1991 with just eight women.  The order, in which nuns spend four hours a day in prayer, devoting the rest of their waking hours to helping women with troubled pregnancies, has grown dramatically--as best I can tell from Googling around, they now number at least 100. And then there are the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, an order that has grown from four nuns upon its foundation in 1997 to more than 100 today--and in which the average age is just 28.

From the website of the Dominican Sisters of Mary (where I also found the photos):

At the dawn of the third millennium, Pope John Paul II called the Church to “take up her evangelizing mission with fresh enthusiasm,” to “put out into the deep” and to “open wide the doors to Christ!”  This call was repeated by Pope Benedict XVI as he closed his Inaugural Homily....

The Sisters...look to expand their community’s presence geographically, since their Motherhouse, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is now filled to capacity. In order to provide housing and adequate formation to the young women seeking to give their lives to Christ, the Sisters hope to establish priories in California and Texas.

Yes, Maureen, certain orders of American nuns are indeed dying out--but not the ones that forthrightly insist upon lives of sacrifice, sanctity, fidelity to the teachings of the Church, and devotion to the successor of Peter.

That's how the President will want the question framed.  Perhaps we can explore other options.

It is an oft cited talking point of former members of the Bush administration that after 9/11, we were kept safe from terrorist attacks.  I’ve agreed.  While I have my criticisms of President Bush in other areas, on this I have always given him praise for what I understood to be a monumental job of constant diligence.

It was said of President Obama during his 2008 campaign that there existed a fear of his not keeping us safe, most memorably in Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” commercial.

Since we have not been attacked on the scale of 9/11, President Obama will in all likelihood claim our continued safety as his own job well done.  What is good for Dick Cheney, he will argue, is good for Barack Obama.

At the center of his talking point on keeping us safe will be his killing of Osama bin Laden.  It has already started.  Today he contrasted himself and Mitt Romney, suggesting his likely opponent would not have killed bin Laden, based upon past statements.

The Romney campaign will face a challenge between now and November on how to respond to the President’s claim of success in keeping us safe.

I’m curious as to what suggestions we might have for the Romney campaign.  There are a number of choices that come to mind, some already being tried by Romney.  Here are a few:

1. Call it shameful to use our safety as a political talking point.
2. Pivot the conversation to foreign policy criticisms of the President.
3. Embarrass the President with his renaming the war on terror to variations like “war on Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and adherents” or the even more clerkish sounding (if that’s even possible) “overseas contingency operations.”

 I stand fearful, however, of this simple rebuttal:  “The people complaining the loudest are doing so blanketed by the safety afforded them by my administration.”  This will be an attempt by the President to make Mitt Romney seem ungrateful toward our military and police.

There is another option for Romney that is often used in courtrooms and I’m wondering if it is similarly used in political campaigns:  Concede the issue.  There are two ways of doing this.

 One way I've done it is to bring up the issue that is least helpful to me before the other guy does.  The goal is to show honesty by not hiding it and to have the jury (voters) hear it said in the best possible light for my client (law of primacy:  studies show people tend toward believing what they hear first).

The other method is to concede by ignoring.  The last thing I want to do is highlight my weakness or my adversary’s strength.  If my client’s case is filled with many other issues, I’ll let one tough issue pass without comment to let it get lost or have the jury conclude that my lack of concern about it means it’s not an issue at all.  I’ll admit that particular brand of subtlety is to be used with caution (but it does work).

The polar opposite of conceding the issue is to punch it out in the center of the ring, perhaps like this: When the President claims success at keeping us safe from terrorists,  Mitt Romney could bring up the Ft.Hood killings as proof of the President’s failure in keeping America safe.  

Will Romney open himself up to the criticism of politicizing the Ft. Hood killings or insensitivity to the victim's families? The Democrats will certainly say that, but how will the American people view it when they do?  What must linger in the campaign strategist’s mind is this: Perhaps that strategy will work because it is true, and it may neutralize the claim of success of the President.

 Are there any other options you can offer the Romney campaign on how to deal with this issue when the President claim's strength (as he did today)?

 Which option do you think is best?

If you’re reading this, you probably know that the Internet is the perfect place to entertain yourself when you’re bored, procrastinate when you have a term paper due, and waste time alone in your room. There’s a lot to see and do online, but one of the most mindless ways to pass the time on the world wide web is to troll around for internet memes–bits and pieces of content that go viral for one reason or another.

Most memes are harmless, entertaining, silly, and funny. Like this one, this one, or (one of my favorites) this one. Going viral can change lives–it can turn people into celebrities; get them record deals; and make them household names. Just consider the stories of Antoine Dodson and Rebecca Black.

But some memes are not only distasteful, they are mean and cruel. Just last week, one sixteen-year-old girl who has Down Syndrome discovered she was, as a child, the subject of a terrible internet meme–and that she and her family are now helpless to do anything about it.

According to Mashable:

When does an Internet joke go too far?

Years ago, a photo of a baby with down syndrome was taken from a support group website and turned into a controversial Internet meme. That child — now 16 years old — is Heidi Crowter, and Heidi just discovered what the entire Internet has been saying about her photo, according to The Sun.

Here you'll find a picture of a grown Heidi holding a laptop displaying the original meme that trolls posted to Facebook years ago. The meme is a picture of her as a child along with the caption “Lose your virginity to a retard.” Given how helpless and vulnerable a child with Down Syndrome is, the meme’s punchline–which is morally reprehensible for a litany of reasons–is especially disturbing because it has a hint of sexual violence in it.

Heidi’s parents have been trying to take the photos off the Internet, but that’s proven to be a very difficult task. Just last week, another website devoted to insulting people with Down Syndrome put the picture of Heidi up. You have to wonder who these sick people are–how could they derive pleasure out of bullying disabled children?

Heidi’s story highlights a central problem and tension in Internet culture: that the right to distribute content freely (which is arguably protected under the First Amendment) can clash against moral, decent, and civil behavior. The proliferation of the most lewd and disgusting forms of Internet pornography presents the same problem.

Why does Internet culture breed such uncivil behavior? The main problem, I think, is anonymity. When people can hide behind the veil of anonymity guaranteed by the Internet, they are more likely to abandon their inhibitions and flout societal norms in order to express and indulge their basest desires. After all, they don’t have to worry about their reputation. They are also removed from the real flesh-and-blood person that they are insulting (in the case of Heidi) or deriving pleasure from (in the case of online porn), which makes it much easier to be hurtful or perverse since compassion and empathy–emotions that thrive on the immediacy of human interaction–won’t kick in as a check on immoral behavior.

While most people are capable of cruel acts and depraved thoughts–it’s human nature–in society, those desires are checked. But in the online world, which is by and large unencumbered by social restraints, we see the scales of civility fall away. The golden rule is all but forgotten. In his essay for the book New Threats to Freedom (Templeton), Ron Rosenbaum explained this tendency perfectly:

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a  mask and he will tell you truth.” So said Oscar Wilde. The problem with applying this insight to the culture of the Internet is not that the mask reveals the truth, but that the truth revealed by the anonymous “screen name” is a deeply disturbing vision of the face beneath the mask: a face frequently twisted with self-righteous hatred, fear, and paranoia. . . .

The blogosphere has certainly changed the character of political conversation, but in problematic ways. First, it has put the neighborly conversation that once took place over a picket fence or at the VFW dance on a vast and impersonal stage, before an audience that eggs on the most extreme ranters—those who seemingly have the leisure to spend their entire day haranguing the ether and harassing anyone who disagrees. Second, it provides a mask of anonymity that may have initially been intended to free blog commenters from the threat of exposure, but that now effectively immunizes them not just from exposure but from accountability, responsibility, and shame.

In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright noted that moral norms are meant to protect society’s weakest. When those norms (“accountability, responsibility, and shame”) are absent, it comes at the expense of the most helpless and vulnerable among us–people like Heidi.

Rob Long doesn't like goat cheese. In fact, he dislikes it so much, he compares eating it to getting script notes from network executives. That's bad. 

Late last week, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' David B. Rivkin, Jr. and the Heritage Foundation's Charles D. Stimson published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling attention to a new law in Virginia that "forbids state employees, including police and members of the National Guard, from participating in the investigation, surveillance, detention or arrest of any suspected member of al-Qaeda or its affiliates, if that suspect is a U.S. citizen. "

It is disappointing that governors, particularly Republicans, have joined forces with the ACLU in a campaign against the war on terror. It is similar to the foolish and ineffective efforts of cities to oppose the Patriot Act in the years after its passage. But rather than repeat the excellent policy arguments against the actions of Virginia and other states, I want to point out that the law is also unconstitutional.  

The Constitution gives the federal government exclusive control over the nation's military; when enlistees join the state National Guard, they simultaneously join the federal National Guard. When the state guard is called into federal service, they become part of the federal army and are no longer in state service. The Constitution allows Congress to decide how to structure that military, and it gives the President as Commander-in-Chief the authority over their deployment. State governors have no right to decide how the National Guard is to be deployed when in federal service.

This is not just idle speculation about the Constitution's text.  In 1990, the Supreme Court decided this issue unanimously in Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334. In the 1980s, several state governors objected to National Guard training missions in Central America.  The Court, however, ruled that state governors could not oppose the federal government's decision on how to train and deploy the National Guard when in federal service.  That principle indicates that these new wave of laws, also taken to oppose federal policies, violate the Constitution. As such, we should expect them to meet the fate they ultimately deserve.

In what the White House billed as a major address on foreign policy last week, Vice President Joe Biden questioned the foreign policy credentials of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. He mocked Romney for once saying that the American people don't choose their  president based on foreign policy experience -- a point that candidate Barack Obama proved beyond doubt in 2008.

Since Biden raised the topic, however, it's worth asking how the man who came up with the idea of dividing Iraq into three autonomous states (remember that idea?) got his own foreign policy experience. To Biden's credit, he answered the question, as only he could, in the beginning of his speech.

I want to just state parenthetically that you know I ran -- not you know, but I ran for the United States Senate when I was 28 years old, and no one in my family on my dad’s side had ever been involved in public life.  And as one of my colleagues said, I’m the first United States Senator I ever knew.

And I ran at the time because I thought the policy we had in Vietnam, I didn't argue it as immoral, but I thought it just didn't make sense, the notion of dominoes and so on and so forth.

And I came to Washington as a 29-year-old kid.  I got elected.  Before I was eligible to serve, I had to literally wait to be sworn in because I wasn’t eligible under the Constitution.  You must be 30 years old.  And my image of the military commanders at the time was, if you ever saw that old movie, if you ever rented it, where Slim Pickens is on the back of an atom bomb, dropping out of an aircraft, yelling, Yippe, Kiyay.  (Laughter.)  And “Dr. Strangelove” was the movie.

In the wake of this weekend's annual White House Correspondents' Dinner (ably chronicled here by Mollie), President Obama is getting media props for his deft touch with humor behind the podium. I'm not sure what the big deal is; we know the president doesn't need a packed house to get off a zinger. After all, here he is, as reported in Jodi Kantor's book, The Obamas (h/t to Jim Geraghty at NRO):

The president had been taking questions for almost an hour. He had apologetically told the mostly liberal crowd that he had been forced to take a centrist point of view in his presidency because of divided government. (Never mind that Obama had told conservative Democrats in Congress that he was one of them, too: “I’m a Blue Dog at heart,” he had said in more than one meeting.)

Ah yes, our president: the centrist misunderstood by liberals, and the liberal misunderstood by centrists. The guy who cites Ronald Reagan to push for tax increases and channels his inner Teddy Roosevelt on the stump in Kansas. Who can fathom the mysteries of his post-partisan ideology, the man himself being a riddle wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside a press release?

Well, I can. I took up this topic recently in my weekly column for the Center for Individual Freedom. In "Barack Obama, America's Most Radical Moderate," I wrote:

So who is this man now attempting to convince us that he’s a judicious centrist unmoored from ideology? Well, he’s the fellow whose first major legislative accomplishment was a $787 billion spending bill, the largest in American history. He’s the guy who said that under his preferred energy policies, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” He’s the man who racked up more federal debt in three years than George W. Bush did in eight. And he’s the only president in American history to ram through a major, bank-busting entitlement (ObamaCare) over widespread public opposition.

How about his thoughtful generosity towards those who disagree with him? In an interview on Univision, Obama encouraged Latino voters to head to the polls with the attitude that, “We’re gonna punish our enemies.”  He compared Republican opponents of his alternative energy policies (which included the infamous $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, the California solar power firm that eventually went bankrupt) to “founding members of the Flat Earth Society.” And he accused the GOP of practicing “thinly veiled Social Darwinism” for proposing a budget that actually had the temerity to propose taming the federal government’s spendthrift fiscal habits.

Sorry, but there's nothing here to unify those who occupy the country's ideological poles. Except perhaps for this: that Barack Obama sure can tell a joke.

I write this with some hesitation, because it might merely confirm the notion that I am fast becoming a crotchety old man, but here goes: it’s time to get rid of the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In the old days—pre-YouTube and Twitter—the dinner was a more-or-less private affair. There would be some quotes in the papers afterwards, but that was about it. Now it’s streamed live and can be watched on tape by millions, and it’s begun to have the feel of one of those interminable Hollywood awards shows. The jokes are dissected not only for humor content, but for balance and hidden meanings. Presidents are criticized for being insensitive to real problems, while emcees are damned or praised, usually depending on the political leanings of the listener. The targets of the barbs are expected to smile good-naturedly while everyone else is squirming in their seats, trying to pretend the whole evening isn’t more than a bit unseemly. I’ve been to a few of these events, and my squirming became so severe that I stopped attending.

The dinner was a good idea at its inception back in 1920. After all, we Americans rather like the idea that our presidents aren’t royalty, and we take pride in the fact that we are allowed to poke fun at them (I don’t recall many Castro roasts). But maybe it’s the growing mean-spiritedness of contemporary humor, or maybe it’s the nature of the problems facing the country and the world, but the whole thing comes off as sort of—if you’ll pardon a technical term—icky. Besides which, we don’t need these dinners to see the “lighter side” of our presidents. Between the tweeting and the talk shows, there’s no shortage of opportunities for our leaders to show us just how funny they are. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind having more chances to see how serious they are. 

Over at Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hanson provides incomparably the best summary I've seen anywhere of the troubles we now face out here in California. A very brief excerpt:

[W]e [Californians] count on two things to save us. One, California is a beautiful natural paradise. Yesterday I drove from the high Sierra amid a blanket of alpine snow to the 70s in Palo Alto in a little over four hours, across one of the most productive and beautiful agrarian landscapes in the world. In sum, we think there will always be some of you who will fall in love with the aesthetics that we had nothing to do with, and thus might, like the proverbial fly landing on sticky paper, arrive and become enticed enough to let us tax you for a while in our P.T. Barnum-like con. Two, someone in our past did not think like us, and so we inherited an infrastructure, universities, airports, and roads that we continue to milk but not refurbish or invest in. We, the less talented and industrious, but the far more critical and sarcastic, drive along I-5, and swim in beautiful Sierra manmade lakes, with the apparent belief that we are glad some anonymous fools did.

Non-Californians, read it and gloat.

Californians? Well, Victor's news is so bad you're going to want to make sure you have something on hand to get your mind off it immediately after you read the piece. A "Beach Boys" CD, perhaps, to remind you of the good old days?

As our own James Poulos noted yesterday, Marco Rubio's major address on international affairs at the Brookings Institution earlier this week planted a flag firmly on one side of a growing chasm within the GOP on foreign policy. Here's a representative passage from the remarks:

... While there are few global problems we can solve by ourselves, there are virtually no global problems that can be solved without us. In confronting the challenges of our time, there are more nations than ever capable of contributing, but there is still only one nation capable of leading.

Now, by contrast, here's Rand Paul in a 2011 speech at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies:

I believe we are much closer to being everywhere all the time than nowhere any of the time. And I think this needs to change. Note I didn’t say it “should change,” rather it needs to change, and there are two simple reasons for that: (1) Intervention everywhere, all the time leads to unintended consequences ... (2) We can no longer afford our current foreign policy.

Well, have at it, Ricoteers. Which senator from the class of 2010 is more representative of the direction the GOP's foreign policy should be headed in the years ahead?

I am open to the argument that "lunatic" is a word worth retiring. Still, I am not sure that the United States Senate is the best body to advance the case against it:

Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would remove all references to the word "lunatic" from federal law, a step they said is needed to reflect the country's modern understanding of mental-health conditions....

The word "lunatic" appears in at least one spot in the U.S. Code — in Title 1, Chapter 1, which covers rules of construction. Chapter 1 holds that when determining the meaning of any law, "the words 'insane' and 'insane person' and 'lunatic' shall include every idiot, lunatic, insane person, and person non compos mentis."

Okay, so I may have been more or less the last person on the planet to have learned the derivation of "jumping the shark," but this time I've got one for all of you, I promise.

It comes from The Fortune of War, the sixth in Patrick O'Brian's magnificent series of novels about life in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars.  In this scene, Irishman Stephen Maturin, a prisoner about the U.S.S. Constitution, discusses varieties of English with the Constitution's surgeon, a Mr. Evans:

‘Why, sure,’ said Evans, in his harsh nasal metallic bray, ‘the right American English is spoke in Boston, and even as far as Watertown. You will find no corruption there, I believe, no colonial expressions, other than those that arise naturally from our intercourse with the Indians. Boston, sir, is a well of English, pure and undefiled.’

‘I am fully persuaded of it,’ said Stephen. ‘Yet at breakfast this morning Mr Adams, who was also riz in Boston, stated that hominy grits cut no ice with him. I have been puzzling over his words ever since. I am acquainted with the grits, a grateful pap that might with advantage be exhibited in cases of duodenal debility, and I at once perceived that the expression was figurative. But in what does the figure consist? Is it desirable that ice should be cut? And if so, why? And what is the force of with?’

After barely a moment’s pause, Mr Evans said, ‘Ah, there now, you have an Indian expression. It is a variant upon the Iroquois katno aiss’ vizmi – I am unmoved, unimpressed. Yes, sir.’

"Cuts no ice with me" comes from the Iroquois.

Can anyone here at Ricochet claim, with a straight and sinless face, to have known that already?  Oh, I doubt that.  I doubt that very much.

I will now await a flood of comments, thanking me for the educational service I have just performed.

"Is Slow Growth Actually Good for the Economy?"  That, I'm not joking, was an actual headline at NPR.  

The headline not only exposes  the Obama-water-carrying attitudes at NPR, it also exposes the fact that NPR is filled with what I call "insular progressives."  The latter are people with extremely liberal views, who have surrounded themselves with like-minded people.  As a consequence, they are apt to say things that moderates and conservatives find ridiculous.  But they never or rarely learn that because they have so little interaction with moderates and conservatives.  Probably most professors and most mainstream journalists, I believe, could reasonably be called "insular progressives." 

This time, however, the NPR progressives seem to have realized their insular nature, and it seems they became embarrassed by the headline.  They changed it to "Is Moderate [my emphasis] Growth Actually Good for the Economy?"

What brought on the embarrassment?  How'd the progressives at NPR come to realize how ridiculous their headline was?

It appears that two people, Gabriel Malor and Michelle Malkin, and one institution, Twitter, are most responsible.  Malor wrote a link to the headline along with the the following tweet: "Unbelievable.  Actual NPR headline."  He wrote another tweet making fun of NPR's headline:  "Is high blood pressure actually good for your health?"

Malkin retweeted Malor's tweet, and she urged her twitter followers to "let the NPR headlines games begin."  Here are some of the faux NPR headlines.  They include "Is cancer actually good for the body?" and  "Was Seal Team Six good for bin Laden?".

I suspect that this story will gain some traction--at least among blogs and talk radio.  I also suspect it will catch the attention of some members of Congress.  NPR executives concerned about their taxpayer subsidies can't be too happy with this.

Think Obama is invincible?  Think again.  This is, after all, a president who argues that today’s tax and regulatory policies will materially affect sea level and global average temperature a century hence but not next year’s economic output. 

President Obama expected to run for reelection in a reprise of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign.  Like Reagan, Obama took office at the start of a deep recession.  Like Reagan, Obama took bold legislative action and donned the mantle of “Great Communicator,” hitting the hustings to deliver speech after speech linking his policies to economic recovery.   And, according to leftist orthodoxy, a strong recovery was inevitable:  the deeper the recession the stronger the subsequent rebound.

Think of it as the astronomical model of economics.  Like planetary motion, economic growth waxes and wanes in predictable fashion.  From this perspective, Presidents Reagan and Clinton each exploited a natural oscillation, cruising to reelection on the back of a business cycle on the upswing.  The same phenomenon that, on its downstroke, crushed an unlucky George H.W. Bush in 1992.  Policy?  Pshaw.  Reagan cut taxes while Clinton raised 'em, but both were charismatic speakers and therefore effective in earning political credit for fortunate timing.

That was the plan, anyway.  But it isn't exactly Morning in America right now, is it?  Fortunately, Mitt Romney seems intent on reminding the electorate of this fact early and often. 

We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions.

Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.

This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He’s asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.

We’ve already seen where this path leads. It erodes freedom. It deadens the entrepreneurial spirit. And it hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. Those who promise to spread the wealth around only ever succeed in spreading poverty. Other nations have chosen that path. It leads to chronic high unemployment, crushing debt, and stagnant wages.

President Obama is off his game plan and scrambling for his political life as Romney begins his blitz.  Who do you think will win the game?  My money is on Romney.

In the Washington Post, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have just published a comprehensive attack on the Republican Party.  A sample:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition....

On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.

For decades, Mann (pictured on the left) and Ornstein (to the right), both attached to Washington think tanks, have passed themselves off as above-the-fray, utterly impartial, interested not in ideology but in getting things done.  Which is to say, of course, that they reflect, without the smallest flaw or distortion, the conventional wisdom of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, both of which believe that ever-expanding government is simply the result of responsible governance.

Now here's what's interesting.  During the very period Mann and Ornstein deride, the supposed crackpot and marginal GOP has captured the House of Representatives in one of the biggest electoral swings in congressional history, picked up seven seats in the Senate, and chosen to nominate Mitt Romney, who, even though in many ways a remarkably weak candidate, nevertheless is already virtually even with the Democratic incumbent in national polls.

Mann and Ornstein don't have a problem with the GOP, in other words, they have a problem with the American people.  "Shut up, sit down, and let people like us run the country."  That's what Mann and Ornstein--and, again, the media and Democratic Party--have convinced themselves is the message, the responsible message, to carry into this election year.

Beautiful.  Just beautiful. 

Romney may yet win in a landslide.

Having humiliated myself below, I hereby attempt to prove that I am, sort of, mildly, hip--no matter how many posters EJ Hill may devise portraying me as hopeless (see comment #10).

To wit:

My pal, Ricochet member Ed Driscoll, just put up a fascinating interview with movie director Whit Stillman, a conservative, believe it or not, whose new film, Damsels in Distress, looks simply splendid.  Stillman, as I know, because I am, as I say, pretty hip, is the director of the superb indie hits of the Nineties, Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco.

For Ed Driscoll's interview with Whit Stillman, click here.

See?

In the matter of America's foreign policy going forward, what we wish to do, and what we are capable of doing are soon to become two different issues, given that we are adding $1 trillion-plus annually to an existing $16 trillion debt, and may have a rendezvouz with something like what Great Britain experienced in the late 1940s, when their vast WWII borrowing could not be sustained after 1945, given the country's decision to nationalize industry, socialize health care, and adopt a redistributive tax code and entitlement state, leaving America largely uncontested in  rebuilding the world. That choice was made in a world in which there was not yet a South Korea or Taiwanese exporting giant, Germany and Japan were flattened, Russia and China were ruined, and much of Western Europe was in disarray due to bombing and occupation. That the world would soon buy Hondas and Mercedes rather than Minis and Jaguars was not foreordained in 1946; and in our own case, there was no rule that said in 2012 Detroit had to look like Hiroshima in 1945 while contemporary Hiroshima resembled what Detroit used to be. 

Most of our interventions—Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Libya, Iraq—were optional wars (Afghanistan was aimed at ending bases from which to repeat 9/11 like attacks), and thus any more like them may well be framed in terms of 'fight abroad or cut back on food stamps, Medicare, Obamacare, etc. at home.' Statesmen realign aims and responsibilities with exiting resources, and eventually cut back  on the former if they cannot expand the latter while explaining to the public the dilemmas involved. This administration, however, has not talked about the effect of gargantuan debt upon military activism, and I think has conceded by our ongoing lead from behind strategy that while we are not going to lessen our borrowing, we at least accept that the defense budget will not be funded as in past years. Small annual deficits, 5% GDP growth, and 5% unemployment, if only politically, allow foreign policy options that chronic $1 trillion deficits, 2% GDP growth, 8% plus unemployment do not. U.S. foreign policy and military stature are rapidly under this president becoming a question of math. All this raises the gorge the beast question: did Obama see positive developments in vastly expanding government spending by $5 trillion in just 3 years (with another $6 trillion scheduled by 2016) that eventually will mean higher taxes on the wealthy and a more quietist U.S. abroad?

Tonight was the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. It's usually attended by the President, who gives brief remarks, and a famous comedian provides entertainment. Sometimes this goes over better than others. In 2006, the entertainment -- Stephen Colbert -- was so hostile that many George W. Bush aides walked out. Various liberal groups loved it, of course.

So Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live, had the honors tonight and he was absolutely ruthless. Against everyone. But because it was the first time I'd ever seen anyone go after Democrats, I'm still somewhat in shock. I followed the jokes on Twitter as opposed to watching him deliver them, but he was brutal. Here's how Mediaite wrote it up:

Kimmel thanked the President for his appearance tonight, saying “salaam.”

“Mr. President, I know you won’t be able to laugh at any of my jokes about the Secret Service so cover your ears if that’s physically possible,” said Kimmel. “If this had happened on President [Bill] Clinton’s watch, you can damn well bet those Secret Service agents would have been disciplined with a very serious high five.”

Kimmel joked about the General Services Administration’s scandal, the President’s ability to compromise with the Republican party by conceding to their demands and White House advisor Peter Orszag.

Kimmel also joked about the journey the country has taken with Obama from 2008 to today and how so much has changed. “Mr. President, remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow,” asked Kimmel. “That was hilarious.”

“There’s a term for President Obama. Probably not two,” said Kimmel. “Even some of your fellow Democrats think you’re a pushover Mr. President. They would like to see you stick to your guns. And if you don’t have any guns, they would like to see you ask [Attorney General] Eric Holder to get some for you. Jake Tapper wrote that.”

“They say diplomacy is a matter of carrots and sticks,” Kimmel said. “And since Mrs. Obama got to the White House, so is dinner.” Kimmel went on a tear about the President’s weight loss and how that reflects on the state of the nation. Targeting Michelle Obama, Kimmel said, “look, it’s [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie. Get him!”

Kimmel took aim at the Occupy Wall Street movement as well, saying “it took moths of hacky sack and patchouli oil but, finally, Wall Street isn’t greedy anymore.”

Kimmel mocked the recent scandal surrounding Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s response that he knew “three” Hilary Rosens. “Three Hilarys,” said Kimmel. “That sounds like Bill Clinton’s worst nightmare.”

He went after Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, the Republican Party in general and Allan West. This is all to be expected of a typical comedian. But it was the other people he went after that I found most interesting:

Democrats, too, were the target of Kimmel’s jokes. “[Rep.] Nancy Pelosi believes in lipstick like she believes in government,” said Kimmel. “Too much is never enough.” He said that Jake Tapper wrote that joke as well.

Kimmel took aim at Keith Olbermann, too, saying “the thing about Keith is he is so likeable.” Kimmel continued, “Al Gore launched Current TV in 2005 and it took off like a North Korean rocket.”

And yes, within moments, Keith Olbermann sent out an angry tweet complaining. (And you should have seen how angry the liberals I follow on Twitter were -- they are simply unaccustomed to being ripped on like this in a high-profile manner.)

On a silly night where D.C. journalists embarrass themselves with their odd invitations to Hollywood celebrities, I'm a bit impressed. It takes precisely no courage to go after Rush Limbaugh. You might recall that a previous host at this event literally wished him dead. But it does take some courage to go after Obama, his failed administration, the scandals that the rest of the media are pretending don't exist, and the Democratic Party in general.

My wife pointed me to this interesting to and fro between HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Congressman Trey Gowdy (R, SC). Mr. Gowdy is courteous but firm, and under his questioning Mrs. Sebelius discloses that she did not consult any Supreme Court ruling on religious liberty before handing down her mandate. 

All in all, it's an incredibly embarrassing performance for a woman who served as a governor and whose husband is a federal magistrate judge. The video captures her irritation as well as her helplessness before some basic questions.

“..an old, familiar image of this city as a den of racist white sports fans.”

That’s how The New York Times described Boston this morning. 

It’s just like them, isn’t it, to ask the question that no one is asking: What’s the most racist sports town? Because they love nothing more than to try to make a thing more than what it is. So the good people of greater Boston, painfully disappointed folks whose favorite hockey team just lost a heartbreaker, are called to answer for some crazy (probably anonymous) Tweeters who used racist language to describe the Washington Capitals' Joel Ward, the African-Canadian right winger (ahem) who scored the game-winning, series-winning goal in overtime the other night against the Bruins. The Capitals now advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, where they will face the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon. 

To the elite media, being angry or a little morose when your favorite team loses is too base to comprehend. I mean, what are we, Neanderthals? Interest rates on student loans are about to double, and you are angry about a stupid *game*? 

Unless, of course, Boston is a racist city. If Boston is a racist city, then it all makes sense.

Here’s what happened: The goalie for the Bruins is Tim Thomas, a self-identified Republican who opted out of the traditional White House visit last year after the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. This was not received well in Left world. When the black Ward beat the white Thomas with his goal, some Bruins fans in the Twitter-verse responded with vile language, including the use of a racial epithet. A sports blogger at The Nation instantly connected the dots and discovered that they revealed an ugly truth:

Tim Thomas is the player who created a sports media firestorm by refusing to join his team and meet with President Obama after the Bruins won the 2012 Stanley Cup. To be clear, I have zero problems with athletes refusing to be part of presidential photo ops, but his political reasons are not irrelevant to what caused last night’s spasm of hate. Thomas is a proud, financial supporter of the Tea Party. He counts Glenn Beck as a hero and once emblazoned the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his helmet. When asked by reporters why he wouldn't meet with Obama, Thomas didn’t comment and instead referred people to his Facebook page, which had a paragraph about “out of control Federal government.”

To see no connection between the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and the politics of racial resentment is to subscribe to either blind ignorance or political cowardice. (Even Beck, last December, inferred that racism in the Tea Party drives anti-Obama animus.)

And so this is how we arrive once again, via an unlikely route through the NHL, at the familiar charge that Tea Party and small government folks are motivated by racism against a black president. No point trying to twist your way out of this one, Boston.

Here’s the fun part. Watch for yourself the supposedly inferred racism of Beck’s comments. What you will find, in fact, is a distortion, peddled by Think Progress (way to link outside the bubble, Nation blogger) of what Beck is actually saying. He does NOT infer that Tea Party members are racist. What he does is actually pretty sophisticted (Nation blogger’s head explodes). Beck, in a flight of “what if” type questions, says that if the Tea Party supports Newt Gingrich (whom Beck thinks is a progressive, just like Obama) but opposes Obama, then the Tea Party needs to ask itself whether it is motivated by racism. That’s a far cry from what your friendly Nation sports blogger implies.

Anyway, back to Beantown. I was interested in learning about Boston sports’ tricky history with race. But what could that possibly have to do with the Capitals' victory over the Bruins? Did Tim Thomas himself use the “N” word after Joel Ward scored the goal against him? That would be news. Did someone on the Bruins, or representing the team, make a racist comment? Would also probably be a story. Did the fans chant racist things as they left the Garden? Front pager.

But, no. None of those things happened. To find the racism in this story, you need to begin looking for it in the tangled weeds of your own assumptions. This is where the liberal media is so good at what it does: Boston has a history of racism. A black guy scored a goal. The goalie is a white Tea Partier. The Tea Party is racist. Somebody on Twitter used the “N” word. Add it all up?

Boston is a racist town.

We got ourselves a story here fellas. Run it.  

For me, one of life’s enduring mysteries is how so many people seem to take Al Sharpton seriously.  He is a man who came to prominence in perpetration of a slanderous hoax, one for which he has yet to express remorse.  He is a charlatan of the first order, though he seems to make a handsome living at it.  It beats working, one supposes.

Mr. Sharpton was here in Los Angeles recently to mark the two-month anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death.  L.A. might seem an odd choice of venue to for the occasion until one remembers that Sunday is the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King riots.  Shaprton’s thinly veiled message is this: Consider the potential consequences if the criminal justice system fails to produce the result that the No Justice, No Peace crowd desires.  

I have more to say on this in my most recent column on PJ Media, which you can read here.  And for those interested in learning about the early moments of the riots, I described them two years ago in this piece, also at PJ Media.

Since the first April of the Civil War sesquicentennial belonged to the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, I can’t let the second April pass without a mention of the Battle of Fort Pulaski outside Savannah, Georgia.

Guarding the mouth of the Savannah River just east of the city by the same name, Pulaski sits alone on desolate Cockspur Island. Most Americans have never heard of Pulaski, but the Civil War reenactors who reoccupied the fort earlier this month hope to change that. I had the good fortune to join them for a couple hours and the even better fortune to have a loving and patient wife willing to join me for the adventure.

When Confederate troops occupied the fort at the outset of the Civil War, Pulaski represented military engineering at its finest. No less of an engineer than General Robert E. Lee believed the fort could withstand a bombardment. While not in charge of the fort’s defenses, Lee had a personal stake in their success. He had helped build the installation years earlier as a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But Lee and the other Confederates had not counted on the devastating accuracy of the Union’s newest weapon – rifled cannons. When Union guns opened fire from nearby Tybee Island in April 1862, they opened a hole in Pulaski’s brick walls that exposed the fort’s combustible magazine. Pulaski’s defenders could hold out no longer. Thirty hours after firing began, the cannons fell silent. Just as suddenly, an entire generation of state-of-the-art coastal defenses became hopelessly out of date.

One hundred fifty years later, men dressed in gray graciously lowered the drawbridge for my wife and me, so we could share a few hours in their company. With the sound of rifled cannons booming in the distance, the fort’s defenders made preparations for their final night inside the brick walls. What little time they had left, they were eager to share by answering questions left out of books and lectures. Where else could one learn how to recognize the rank of an officer in a defunct army or fire a 150-year-old cannon?

As my wife and I prepared to take our leave – we had dinner plans in Savannah – one soldier asked why we were departing so soon. The battle was not over, he reminded us.  We knew otherwise, of course. He was just playing his part. The ends of the past are no longer in doubt, but let’s be thankful for reenactors who remind us they once were. 

"Jumping the shark" is a term that never made any sense to me.  It's used to indicate the moment when someone has gone too far--when Newt Gingrich began attacking Romney's days at Bain, for example, arguing, in effect, that Romney was too much of a capitalist, Newt  was said to have "jumped the shark."  But why?  What did sharks have to do with anything?  And what could it possibly mean to jump over one?

As it happens, I learned this very moment, the phrase dates back to that great figure of American television, the Fonz.

From an interview in the New York Times Magazine with Garry Marshall, the producer of "Happy Days":

Fred Fox Jr., who was the writer credited with the famous episode where Fonzie jumped the shark on “Happy Days,” said that the idea came from you.

Yes, it was my idea.

Considering the phrase’s fame, any regrets?

Well, it wasn’t good....We were stuck in Malibu making believe we were in Hawaii, and we had to do something a little special for Fonzie. So I said: “Jumping’s worked well for us. Let’s jump something maybe on water skis.” At the time we put it on, viewers didn’t throw rocks at it or send letters, but later some very clever guys said that’s when the show turned. So if it’s used about a show going down, fine. I got a word into the American vernacular.

Am I the last person here at Ricochet to have learned this?

P.S. Back during the Eighties, by the way, I met Henry Winkler, the actor who played the Fonz, on a studio backlot.  (Considering a show based in the White House, a studio flew a couple of us speechwriters out to Los Angeles for a day.  Nothing came of this, my one and only brush with the precarious industry in which Rob Long has somehow managed to thrive, although, as the hit show "The West Wing" would prove a decade later, it wasn't a bad idea.) 

Winkler couldn't have been nicer--and went so far as to say he was honored to meet someone who worked for President Reagan.  I waited a moment, studying his face for some sign of sarcasm or irony--we were in Hollywood after all.  None appeared, leading me to conclude that he was just as good a guy as he seemed.

I once had an economics professor who had a plan for how to get Congress to stop passing all of those awful laws. When they took their oath of office, they'd be supplied with cash, drugs and prostitutes. This, he figured, would keep them too busy to muck up our country.

I thought of that when reading this New York Times column by Timothy Egan that worries about Mitt Romney's religious opposition to drinking. Now, it's probably true that what we have here is just the latest mainstream media attempt to remind voters that Romney is Mormon. What do you think of this argument?

Jimmy Carter was a teetotaler, and he earned his one-term status. Were the two connected? Can’t say. But his temperance (though he now drinks wine) was much harder on White House visitors than the White House occupant.

“You’d arrive at 6 or 6:30 p.m., and the first thing you would be reminded of, in case you needed reminding, was that he and Rosalynn had removed all the liquor from the White House,” Teddy Kennedy lamented in his memoir, “True Compass.”

Carter’s arid receptions give Romney something to consider. Would guests be more inclined to listen while he droned on about the European debt crisis, knowing that the presidential liquor cabinet held hope of a promising end to the evening?

Doctrinally, I disagree with Mormonism's ban on alcohol. But of all the things in the world to worry about with a given candidate, I can't get worked up much about whether their religion permits a glass of wine or a beer at the ballpark. But this does sort of damage Romney's chances on the whole presidential litmus test question of  "Who would you rather have a beer with?"

How should that question be rebranded for the coming months?