Hat tip to William Teach at Pirate’s Cove.

Fox News, reporting from Ohio:

Robert T. Jenkins, 21, of Canton, Ohio, was arrested at 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday morning, Lt. Linda Brown of the Canton Police Department told Fox8.com. Jenkins was charged with felony vandalism and disorderly conduct.

Jenkins was arrested after police responded to a call from an employee at the Wal-Mart store telling authorities that a man walked up to the meat counter and began urinating on the steaks, police told Fox8.com. The disorderly conduct destroyed more than $600 dollars in meat.

This calls for an update to the list of rules that would/will be handed down When I Start Running This Place. Although I must confess, I am unusually speechless about what exactly the punishment would be. Whatever I decide to do in response to this kind of crime, I’m pretty sure Red Cross International wouldn’t like it much.

Pissing in beer would be worse, of course. But only just barely. Crapping onto Hooters’ hot wings…hmm, not sure. Vomiting on fish? Uh, the sentence for salmon would be about twice as much as for Tilapia I think.

…really likes to write lots of letters to the editor. Of this paper, that paper, that other one over there.

Obama is wonderful!

We’re going from one to the other today. AM…PM…coffee…beer. Because we can. Just had some Mister Fixit stuff to do around the house, and it’s mostly done.

As for the mug, yes, I did order it (click to embiggen). Stole some of Mr. Adams’ intellectual property I did, but he stole some of mine first.

That’s probably a good headline to repeat a few times with some roman numerals after it, if ever there was one. After all, the old tried-and-not-quite-true “What the hell is the matter with you people, why do you hate America and manhood so fucking much?” hasn’t yielded much by way of results, nor is it likely to.

Here’s an argument that’s proven quite effective though:

Think back on the behavior of our democrat leaders these last few months, particularly the ones that want to nationalize our health care system. Obviously, they don’t just kinda-sorta want to nationalize our health care system; they want to do this really extra bad. If they could piss rusty nickels and that would get the job done, well, what are we waiting for and hand over that can of rusty nickels.

Now, why do they want to do this? Is it to get health care services and other resources to “the thirty million uninsured”? Or is it 37 million? Forty-to-forty-five million? Well, this is a little bit of a problem, that the number keeps changing, because last I heard they were estimating after all the dust has hit the ground this wonderful health care plan would only cover about half of those who are uncovered right now. So we’d still have tens of millions of “uninsured.” We can’t even nail down how many we have before the bill, so how do we look backward after the bill, and declare the effort a success?

Is it going to be like the Stimulus Bill, in which nobody can really nail down how many jobs were “created or saved”? But when nine pairs of shoes get sold that must represent nine jobs? Creative accounting like that?

But that’s not the point, really.

The point is that this stuff hasn’t been discussed in a very long time. I mean, like since about Labor Day. Yeah, I just got a letter from one of my hippie liberal aged wrinkly female senators, telling me what to think about health care, in response to me telling her how she should vote on health care (which is the way I think it should work). She made some vague, unenthusiastic rhetoric about providing health care to millions who don’t have it…but it was all passionless boilerplate. Probably written a year ago.

I see one of these new-age blowhards on the teevee, I don’t hear a single word about providing coverage to people. Haven’t you noticed this? I’ve mentioned it many times since Thanksgiving. It’s all about winning; beating those “other guys.”

Making sick people well hasn’t had anything to do with anything for a very long time.

And I see this right now. Scott Brown just got elected to the Senate and this scuttles, or at least body-slams, the prospect of passing anything that has been churning around under the capitol dome with regard to health care. So what do we — “we” meaning democrats — do about this?

Well, let’s see. The democrats still have 59 seats in the Senate. Here on Planet Earth, if you want to provide coverage to uninsured people and you think yet one more leviathan of a federal program is the way to get it done, you start over. And your goal will be to produce something appealing to a majority of the House, all of the democrats in the Senate, and maybe one or two Republicans in the upper chamber. Maybe three or four to be extra safe about it.

That is what you’d do if it was about health care and not about grabbing power, making the citizenry of the USA more dependent on the few anointed luminaries who happen to be sitting in elected and appointed seats. If it was really about the first of those rather than the second, that is what you’d do.

That is not what they’re doing.

Struggling to salvage health reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun considering a list of changes to the Senate bill in hopes of making it acceptable to liberal House members, according to sources familiar with the situation.

The changes could be included in separate legislation that, if passed, would pave the way for House approval of the Senate bill – a move that would preserve President Barack Obama’s vision of a sweeping health reform plan.

But the move comes with political risk, because it would open Democrats up to charges that they pressed ahead with roughly the same health care bill that voters appeared to reject in the Massachusetts Senate race Tuesday. Republican Scott Brown won on a pledge to try to block Obama-style health reform.

The effort also puts Reid and Pelosi on the side of giving a sweeping reform bill one more try, instead of adopting a course being floated by some Democrats in Congress and at the White House of adopting a scaled-back bill including popular reform provisions.

This is not about getting people the medicine they need, or the services they need, or “providing” any kind of a “public option.” It is about changing the tenor and tone of a country. It is about breaking the spirit of that country, as if it was a horse.

It is about quitting your day job as a representative in a constitutional republic, and taking out a sinister new job as a creepy feudal overlord. Just like an apparatchik of the old Soviet Union, or a thuggish dictator like Hugo Chavez. A master who presumes to tell his “subjects” how to eat, how to walk, when to go to the bathroom, what they like, who they hate, what their favorite color is.

It may not be an effective argument to point out that this country was started precisely to put an end to that kind of slavish dependency.

But it certainly does work, to point out the evidence that clearly indicates: This is not about providing you affordable health care.

Mr. A lives by Aristotle’s code, as do we all, that reality is reality and A is A. Dial B For Blog looks into his secret origins.

Pretty fascinating read. And Spider Man, the compulsive whiner, actually fits into it. Who’d a-thought that? The web-head must have changed his character between his first appearance, and the mid-seventies when he came to my attention.

Can’t stand that guy. A thought bubble out of Superman, on average, has something to do with whether he can stop the meteor in time…whether the rocket will strike the building…whether the train has fallen off the cliff…

…Spider Man typically does a lot of worrying about whether he’s still popular. Outcome versus public-reaction. Whines like a freakin’ Skywalker. So which one is a step-cousin to Atlas Shrugged? Surprise.

Anyway, that’s what I got out of it. See what you can make out.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Peggy Noonan makes some sense, more than she’s made for quite awhile now:

President Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points on Nov. 4, 2008. Fifteen months later, on Jan. 19, 2010, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, his party’s candidate lost Massachusetts by five points. That’s a 31-point shift. Mr. Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008. A year later, on Nov. 2, 2009, his party’s candidate for governor lost by 18 points—a 25 point shift. Mr. Obama won New Jersey in 2008 by 16 points. In 2009 his party’s incumbent governor lost re-election by four points—a 20-point shift.

In each race, the president’s party lost independent voters, who in 2008 voted like Democrats and in 2010 voted like Republicans.

Is it a backlash? It seems cooler than that, a considered and considerable rejection that appears to be signaling a conservative resurgence based on issues and policies, most obviously opposition to increased government spending, fear of higher taxes, and rejection of the idea that expansion of government can or will solve our economic challenges.

Yes, The People are upset, The People are grumpy. Peggy reads a lot into emotion: “It seems cooler than that.” Perhaps it seems cooler than that because there’s no evidence of actual anger, at least no more than there always is. Certainly no more than there was two years ago. After emotions — or perhaps before — there is evidence. The evidence says, the people of Massachusetts were asked if the current policies were working, and it was like asking a competent eighth-grader if two and two add up to nine. In other words, it is what it is; getting mad at someone doesn’t have to enter into the process.

Harold Ford says moderation is the answer:

“The lesson from last night is to reset the priorities in Washington,” said Mr. Ford…”The next elections are in November, so the president and the Democrats have a few months to get this right. But we will forfeit our majorities in Congress in November if the American people don’t feel more economically secure six months from now than they do today. And Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts is just the latest indicator.”
:
To address the anxiety Americans are feeling, Mr. Ford thinks that the White House needs to focus squarely on the economy. “First we need to cut taxes for businesses in the country, small and large,” he says. “We ought to provide a six-month exemption from the payroll tax for all firms less than five years old. We ought to extend the current capital gains and dividend tax rates through 2012. We ought to make permanent all the research and development tax credits for businesses making those investments. And we ought to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.”

It all echoes a recurrent tone in the online-front-pages this weekend: Half a loaf is better than none, moderation this, moderation that, blah blah blah.

Prediction: That which the public most loathes — now that the public has been forced to pull its head out of its ass — will be the last to be pitched overboard. You know what I mean. The anti-American, anti-capitalist bullshit.

How did I describe it in my letter to my two oh-so-full-of-themselves wrinkled-up hippie liberal female senators? Ah, yes: “Our approach to any problem that comes up, is to make sure no one can make a profit from solving it.”

Sorry, Harold. The good ship Liberal doesn’t see that as ballast, it sees that as the hull of the boat. It won’t be pitched. It’ll go down, and the crew along with it, from Captain to deckhand’s-apprentice’s-apprentice.

Victor Davis Hanson says the bloodletting will continue, and I agree.

Says It All

1) A new poll revealing a vast majority of investors see Obama as anti-business.

2) Obama declaiming on what he has done and what he will do to create jobs.

3) After a year Obama still has not yet figured out that his promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, health care, and inheritance taxes, serial demonization of finance and business, and all sorts of new regulations, create a psychological climate in which the employer pulls in his horns and decides to ride things out — and this individual reaction is being repeated millions of times over, energized by the pique at everything trivial from Van Jones to apologies abroad to “Bush did it.”

Harold Ford says take the corporate tax rate down from 35% to 25%. Won’t happen. It shows far too much promise of actually solving something.

The election slogan for the midterms is going to be “Well then, how would you like a teaspoon of the stuff you and we know damn well isn’t going to fix anything?” And the voters will say “but it doesn’t fix anything.” The democrats will say “but it’s a teaspoon.” The voters will say “we’ve tried it, it’s actually toxic.” The democrats will say “but it’s a teaspoon.” The voters will vote, and then the late night comedians and so-called “news” anchors will villify, denigrate, ridicule and excoriate the voters because, hey, that was only a teaspoon, what was the big deal? You must all be afraid of a black man. Guess racism is still with us after all.

What the country really needs is an honest, open debate about the petulant, festering, bubbling, anti-business bile. It will be a very long time before we debate that honestly. Those who embrace it and continue to vent it, will see to it the debate always shifts to something else, so that the bile can continue to bubble away without being discussed too much.

You knew all along, somewhere there was a simple explanation, just waiting for someone to come along, measure and document it.

(Click the pic to view the story.)

Newsbusters:

Amidst the innumerable excuses we’re bound to hear for Martha Coakley’s defeat, credit Keith Olbermann with likely the most loathsome. The Countdown host would explain away the Scott Brown victory by accusing his supporters of . . . racism.

Olbermann floated his despicable theory to Howard Fineman: “the Republicans and the Tea Partiers will tell you what happens with Scott Brown tonight whether he wins or comes close is a repudiation of Obama policies. And surely one of Obama’s policies from the viewpoint of his opponents is it’s OK to have this sea-change in American history—to have an African-American president. Is this vote to any degree just another euphemism the way ‘states rights’ was in the ’60s?”

HuffPo:

It took more than half a decade, countless American and Iraqi deaths in a war based on lies, a sinking economy and the drowning of an American city to finally kill Bush-Cheney-Rove’s dream of a conservative realignment.

Democrats, controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, have managed to kill their own dream of dominance in 12 months.

How did it happen?

Theories abound, but two diametrically opposed narratives have taken hold:

The first, promulgated by conservatives, is that the new administration has moved too far to the left and alienated a large swath of independent and moderate voters.

The second, pushed by progressive activists and bloggers, is that the administration hasn’t been true enough to fundamental Democratic principles, has embraced some of Bush’s worst excesses on civil liberties, and has ditched popular ideas (like the public option) in favor of watered down centrist policies, thus looking weak and ineffectual.

Five Thirty-Eight:

When a Democrat loses a federal race in Massachusetts, the default assumption ought to be that several factors are to blame.

Clearly the national environment has gotten worse for the Democrats since Barack Obama’s inauguration one year ago. This has been obvious from Congressional generic ballot polling, Presidential approval polling, early polling of 2010 senate races, the number of Democratic retirements, the outcomes of New Jersey and Virginia, the tenor of the political discourse in the country, and so forth. But perhaps it is somewhat more bad than we had previously realized.

Clearly also, the quality of the candidates and the campaign matters a lot, especially in open seat races. Although it might seem strange to have a Republican Senator from Massachusetts, it is not dramatically more strange than having a Democratic Senator from Alaska or Nebraska, or a Republican Representative from New Orleans, all of which our Congress already had before tonight. Martha Coakley, needless to say, was not a good candidate and did not run a good campaign.

Finally, there is a third category: contingencies specific to Massachusetts, but not specific to Coakley. This was a state in which Democrats had twice changed the rules governing Senate succession, first in 2004 to prevent then-governor Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican to take John Kerry’s seat (should he have been elected President), and then again last year to allow Deval Patrick to appoint an interim appointee. Moreover, because it was a special election, the time frame of the campaign was dramatically compressed, making it harder to define the Republican opponent or to recover from any initial missteps in the campaign. Lastly, Massachusetts is unusual in that it already has universal health care and the Democratic health care plan would not do it much good, which allowed the Republican to promise to oppose it without looking like a typical partisan hack.

TPM:

Message of the day to all Dems, Coakley, Rahm, Celinda Lake, national Dem committees, Axelrod, whoever, whatever: Shut the *$%& Up! I don’t know how else to say it. I’m watching MSNBC and hearing all the key players dumping on each other. As I’ve said, the Coakley campaign seems to have been run just terribly. And that’s just the beginning of it. But really, with all that’s at stake, the White House political office left this to Coakley, unsupervised? Really? I just have very little patience hearing all the people who are by definition all to blame have an argument about who’s most to blame.

What I’m seeing — and this isn’t just based on public comments but our reporting behind the scenes — is that there’s a lot more energy going into dodging blame for this unforced error of galactic proportions than there is going into the real issue: closing the loop on the health care bill. Which is the only issue in policy terms and political terms. That’s it. Everything else is water under the bridge.

I’m loving that last one: “The American People detest our plan. Let’s stop trying to figure out who’s at fault, and get it passed.”

Their vision of humanity is not fundamentally incompatible with the human race, but it damn sure is fundamentally incompatible with America. And they’ll never, ever see it. Ever. The idea that The American People figured it out for themselves, and showed sufficient independence to make up their own minds…it’s just inconceivable. Must be Coakley. She must have screwed up. Or maybe it’s Axelrod, or Emmanuel, or the Massachusetts democrat Party, or…or…or. Couldn’t be the riff-raff out there, they obviously can’t think for themselves.

“4. Speaking of Palin, she will stump for five GOP candidates, four of them will win, everyone will talk about the one who didn’t.”

— from Morgan’s predictions for 2010.

Behold, it is coming to pass:

Former Gov. Sarah Palin will announce today that she’s hitting the campaign trail for Republicans — including her former running mate John McCain.

Palin, who did not campaign in last year’s governor’s races or in yesterday’s Senate race in Massachusetts, has committed to contests in three states, including two Republican primaries, an aide said.

She’ll campaign in Texas for Gov. Rick Perry, who faces a primary challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison; she’ll appear in Arizona for Senator John McCain, who faces a challenge from the right; and she’ll appear in Minnesota for Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a conservative firebrand who has emerged as a national figure.

In a statement set to appear on her Facebook page, Palin promises to campaign “FOR the people and AGAINST politics as usual.”

Everyone tremble in fear and awe at the amazing prescience of The Blog That Nobody Reads. (Insert Dr. Evil laugh here.)