Game 25: Bedard, Finally

Erik Bedard garners his first win in about two years and looks efficient for the first time...well, ever.  7 innings, 89 pitches.  Not 5 innings, 101 pitches.  Amazing.

What's more, instead of the litany of fly balls that he has been getting so far (half of which seem to have flown over the fence), he had a 52.4 GB%.

Bedard threw strikes early and often.  Bedard got outs early and often.

How much of this was Bedard and how much was the Tigers' lineup being surprisingly aggressive towards Bedard is an open question.  After the 4th inning (up until which Tigers batters had swung and put the ball in play within the first two pitches in a majority of their at-bats) they seemed to notice that they weren't following the tried-true-strategy of allowing Bedard to slowly asphyxiate himself and they started taking more pitches.

By then it was too late.  Bedard had made it through Four with a stunningly low pitch count and was within the first groove we've seen from him in quite some time.

* Miguel Olivo is really stinging the ball.  His LD% is above his career average so far and at long last he is finding holes in the infield and gaps in the outfield.  There is hope yet that he will elevate the Mariners offensive standards at catcher back to mediocrity.

Swept in TEX

The M's were simply out-classed. In each of the three ballgames they managed to come back from early deficits (the first and third the fruits of poor fielding) only to come up short late.

The pattern was evident. When the M's would get a runner or two on base they would do just enough to get one of those runners home. When the Rangers were in the same situation they would put the ball in the gap and drive home two or three. They are an elite offense with ability to turn any base-runner or two into a big inning – a competency the Mariners simply do not have.

Couple that with elite fielding and most days the M's are not going to be able to do more than simply stay competitive with the Rangers.

Fortunately, we do not see them again for another month.

For his part, Felix was much the same today as he was in his first start. Lack of command in the first two innings (3 bases on balls) plus Wilson's foibles at second led to elevated pitch-counts early on. After that though, he was able to buckle down and make it through another five innings while giving up only one run.

Pineda Tonight & Going Forward

What we saw from Pineda tonight is what we can reasonably expect to see from him for the next few months.

Right-handed batters are not an issue. His plus fastball and slider coupled with the command he has of them are more than enough to keep them off balance. Texas right-handed batters managed just two hits in fifteen at bats (.133). Ian Kinsler's lead-off at bat in the first (fastball up and in followed by a slider away; weak groundball to short) and Adrian Beltre's swinging strikeout in the fourth (slider low and away) are microcosms of the hell Pineda is to righties.

Pineda's problem in the spring was lefties, allowing them to hit .292 as opposed to the .179 right-handers batted.

That problem manifested itself again tonight. The three lefties in Texas' lineup went 3-7 (.429), with the largely pedestrian Mitch Moreland managing two hits (including an RBI triple) and Josh Hamilton leading off a two-run sixth with a double.

The problem, as has been oft-discussed, is inconsistent command of his changeup. Its potential is obvious (the strikeout of Josh Hamilton in the first), but until he develops the command of it he now enjoys with his other two pitches, lefties will cause him fits.

Accordingly, Mariners fans should prepare themselves for periods of dominance checkered by the kind of struggles we witnessed tonight.

Opening Day 2011

Felix was not dominating tonight – not in the overwhelming, I'm-just-plain-better-than-you manner that we are used to at least. Instead he was remorselessly effective; getting contact early in the count (after the first two innings, before which he averaged 5.14 pitches per batter faced, 3.18 after), allowing his defense to get outs, walking no one, not relying on pitch count-busting strike outs.

In exhibition was the superlative pitcher Felix has become: in his first start of the season, following a spring where he was deliberately given a diminished workload, he economized his approach in a manner that allowed him to pitch a complete game without going much above a hundred pitches against a team built to get on base. A month from now, when he is stretched out, he can pitch against the A's again and strike out ten in the dominating, perennial Cy-Young contending manner we are accustomed to.

Felix has matured to the point that he can basically choose how he wants to beat you.

Offensively, the six runs look nice but are qualified by a hot-potato A's defense that committed five errors.

With that said, they did the best with what they have, which is not much. Ichiro and Figgins wracked up their hits at the top of the order and everyone after them took pitches.

That's all they did – they took pitches.

As a result, Mariner batters earned a lot of walks and a lot of strike outs, many of them backward K's. (M's batters walked seven times, struck-out looking eight.) Both results compelled Cahill to run his pitch count up and give the ball away before he could complete five innings (105 pitches in 4.2 innings, 4.38 pitches per batter faced). After that the Mariners were able to exploit porous defense and A's middle relief. They won, in other words, by not swinging, flailing, failing and losing. They did not make outs, they got on base (.349 team OBP), put pressure on the Athletics, and earned some runs.

This might be the only approach offensively that has any hope of success this year. They may not be able to punch much themselves, but at the very least M's hitters can make their opponent's pitching and defense work harder than they would like to and (hopefully) buckle against the extra leverage.

The high-strain innings force the starter out and the soft-belly of Major League middle relief in. The extra base-runners that come with the bases-on-balls enervate the pitching even more and place more pressure on the defense. Couple that with some timely hitting here and there and you have the seeds of a team that will exact a degree of attrition on their opponents and thus be able to compete most nights. A team that approaches the game this way is a very obnoxious opponent for the usually superior teams they play.

At the very least this approach worked for one night and hope for a competitive, entertaining, near-.500 season lives on.

Notes:

• Miguel Olivo will probably never walk this season. He might not ever see a ball.
  
• Other than being superlative defensively, Brendan Ryan might be the perfect bottom-of-the-order hitter. Picking his punches and wreaking havoc when he gets on base, he will at least provide a level of pugnacity to the bottom three that Jack Wilson, Josh Wilson, Rob Johnson and whoever else we had there last year never provided.
  
• There was a swagger about Figgins tonight I do not remember seeing at any point last year.
  
• Dave Niehaus had been visibly and, as he was a broadcaster, audibly aging the past few seasons. But by-God was it unnatural to watch an entire game and not hear his voice. You are missed, Dave. My, oh my, are you missed.

DOMA

Revulsion to the cynicism of President Obama's announcement that his administration will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the federal courts is entirely appropriate. He is trying to have it both ways: registering approval with his base – the preponderance of which supports gay marriage – without alienating the majority of Americans who still oppose it.

(A man whose self-regard is such that he fancies himself on par with the Wisdom of Solomon has nonetheless elected to split the baby.)

Politics aside, there are constitutional concerns with DOMA that bring its validity into question – not that these played any role at all in the president's decision. These concerns are found in the Full Faith & Credit Clause of the US Constitution (Article IV, Section 1), which mandates that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."

At first glance, the legal import of DOMA runs directly counter to this, immunizing the states from having to recognize a gay marriage – something that is a public act, record, and judicial proceeding – legally created and recognized in another.

This is a credible argument at least – one to which there are certainly credible rebuttals.

If, for example, a state does not recognize the institution itself – marriage between individuals of the same sex – can the relevant constitutional text be understood to compel it to recognize and make provision for it in the same way it would have to a driver's license issued in another state, an institution which every single state in the Union makes provision for?

Without question there are other arguments beyond this – arguments that will be fleshed out and deployed in the inevitable legal challenges to come.

The President & Libya

Republican leadership has universally criticized the president for tardiness in his decision to intervene in Libya and in his subsequent inability to define America's specific mission.

Both failures (they are certainly failures) go hand-in-hand and find their genesis in a single cause: the president does not want to do this.

To describe him as passive before his decision would be technically true (and characteristic of him as chief executive), but only thus.  He was active -- actively going out of his way to wrap his arms around American power and death-grip it from ever being used to influence the course of events.  It was only after lesser powers such as the French and British, followed by the Arab League, had called for intervention before America stood to be the only relevant actor refusing to act.

The president's continued distaste for American participation is manifesting itself still.  Ostentatiously unwilling to do what he has finally done, the president has done the bare minimum a commander-in-chief authorizing the use of force can do.  Orders were given, a statement was made to the American people -- and then nothing.  No subsequent declarations of the ultimate mission or, more specifically, whether coalition forces are simply trying to hem Qaddafi in or actually influence his ouster.

All anyone has really been given are assertions that America is going to "shape the battlefield" and then step back and let other components of the coalition take the lead.

President Obama did not want to be here in the first place and now that he is here he is leaving the impression that he is looking to get America out just as soon as it was in.

The Best of Styles, the Worst of Styles

Dickens' Tale of Two Cities is renowned most for its beginning dichotomy ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"). Fortuitously enough, a similar device can be used to evaluate Dickens' manner of prose.

Indeed, it is the best of forms; it is the worst of forms.

Beneficially, his sentences are layered dissections of his subject. Foreign to the present Twitter generation that demands its literary material (and everything else) condensed and microwaveable, the bard of the Victorian Age slow-roasts his prose, dedicating time and ink to every nuance of the matter at hand. Take for example his description of the French peasantry at the time of the Revolution's outbreak, ground into misery and want by the aristocracy. Dickens portrays these poor masses as a

people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill… The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off… (Two Cities, 64, NOOKbook)

Dickens goes for sentences, paragraphs and pages more on the same train. The peasants of France were poor and miserable and he does not move on from this point until he has described each and every detail that makes it so.

This advantageously illuminates his subject for the reader in its complete totality while also penetrating it with a microscopic lens, revealing to them every nook and nuance therein. He does everything for the reader. The flow and course of events of the plot are given a firm foundation because he takes the time to illuminate the salient details that cause them. In Two Cities nothing can explain the extremely arbitrary and wanton brutality of the Revolution as well as the meticulous portrait Dickens paints of the equally extreme hunger, oppression and misery that precursors it.

Indeed, Dickens portrays the victims of revolutionary-French society in terms equally as pathetic as he portrays those of pre-revolutionary society. Witness his tragic description of the prisoners of La Force and the contrast between their present (low) and past (high) state:

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! the ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there. (282)

The mill that had ground the French peasantry into squalor and death had been given new grist, achieving the same result. Extreme circumstances bred extreme circumstances; Dickens masterfully depicts both.

There is a Paris to this London though. In dedicating such copious amounts of prose to totality and dissection, Dickens commits the occasional folly of dedicating copious amounts of prose to minimal expanses of plot. For this I have in mind the third chapter of Book the First in which Dickens digresses into philosophical ruminations about the secrets and mystery that each human life represents to each other. After this he moves on to the Tellson's messenger and his journey after he delivers his message to Mr. Lorry – the relation between the two being that since each human life is a mystery to each other "the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London" (47).

This is all well and good but non- germane to the plot of Two Cities. To travel so deeply down this dead-end, and away from the central flow of Dickens' scintillating plot, is as frustrating as it would have been had Shakespeare followed the soothsayer after Caesar's boast that "The Ides of March are come" (Act 3, Scene 1) and not followed Caesar himself, directly documenting the fate that awaited him.

At the very least such lateral movement is ungenerous to all but the most patient, devoted reader who is willing to indulge Dickens' in his reflective flights of fancy.

If he is to be credited for doing everything for his reader, as he must be, Dickens must also then be debited for perhaps doing too much.

No ‘Unity’

In response to President Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power after losing elections in the Ivory Coast, the editors of the Economist warn against the African Union trying to foster a "unity" government to diffuse the crisis. "It is essential that Africa as a whole gets used to the idea that ruling parties bow out when they are rejected at the ballot box. So-called unity governments, installed with the apparently good intention of preventing further chaos after blood has already been shed, are as likely to lead to paralysis and patronage as to creative compromise."

Correct as far as this analysis goes, condoning such government "compromises" proliferates pernicious fruits. Praying on the naiveté and good-intentions of external influences, despots booted from power by the vox populii can cling to that power through the effusion of blood in the full expectation that it will make those influences so desperate to end the carnage that they will permit them to retain at least some semblance of the place in government they have lost any rightful claim to.

The upshot is bad precedent and the inception of a vicious cycle. Seeing that one entity booted from power by plebiscite was able to retain that power through this method, other entities are all the more likely to employ the same method – shedding the blood of their people – when placed in the same predicament.

Additionally, as the Economist begins to hint at, "unity" governments confound representative government in the sense that they terminate in utero the development of the norms and habits an organic society needs to internalize to ultimately become both ordered and free. Giving thugs like Gbagbo a free pass to disregard election results only makes the people of the Ivory Coast and Africa at large accustomed to government by those willing and able to utilize power in the bloody suppression of the masses.

The Wages of Self-Immolating Pretence

The atrocities transpiring in Libya have been permitted to do so through the Obama Administration's pretence that the United States is just another member of the society of nations; no more special or important than any other.

Quite contrary to this affectation, America is and has long been – if not the only, then certainly the major – bulwark of international security. In scores of examples since the end of World War II, America's global reach has been dispositive in influencing events away from economic, social and/or political catastrophe and towards human liberty.

Such a catastrophe is presently escalating in Libya, and despite the unique power to serve the role America has traditionally fulfilled, the administration has instead elected to do nothing. Libyans standing up to the despotism of an insane autocrat are thus subject to the airborne slaughter of his warplanes.

In moments such as these the notion that America is a destabilizing force in the world is demonstrated to be the utter nonsense it always has been.

The United States is the world's lone superpower. Not only is it almost exclusively responsible for underwriting the security of the free world, but it is (still) the last and only hope for mankind's eternal quest for freedom. People already free can rest secure in the preservation of that happy state only in the global involvement of the United States – people yearning for freedom must place their aspirations in the same thing.

As more of these oppressed multitudes fall beneath the sword of Muammar Gadaffi this truth becomes increasingly evident. When the United States shrinks from its role in the world not only does the world become less safe, but the shining flame of liberty becomes dimmer to every desperate life seeking to grasp it.

If the United States has the ability to preserve human life and further its quest for freedom it cannot stand down because of some pathetic and misplaced humility. It must act.

A Future of Growth or Government?

The Left snickers now that while the public favors spending restraint in the abstract it abhors (and will abhor Republican) reductions in the specific. President Obama is staking his re-election on this – that voters will recoil from the GOP and turn back towards him when Congress tries to do something it has not done in generations: pass a budget smaller than the previous one.

That may be. Existential spending cuts may very well cost Republicans (and the republic) another long term of Obama, possibly their House majority.

But that does not change the substantive reality that the ruinous course for us and especially the next generation of Americans is to do what President Obama and the Left propose: nothing. For decades we have indulged ourselves not with our own money but with that of our children and grandchildren. Now we face the upshot of that irresponsibility, that generational theft.

It presents us with a choice. One is to select a future of growth and prosperity, a choice that entails the shared sacrifice of spending cuts and entitlement reform that will permit tax levels to remain low, alter the incentives in the health-care industry to improve its pricing and provision, and free future Americans from what Jefferson once called "the dead hand of the past."

The other is to do nothing, to sullenly limp towards a future suffocated by a ubiquity of red. Debt levels approaching GDP will necessitate even more exponential growth in government as Uncle Sam has no other recourse but to completely grab onto the billfolds and checkbooks of Americans. The need for such an overweening state will choke out even the faintest hope of economic growth and bring us closer, if not in lockstep, with the stifled economies of Europe. Having stuck our children with the tab, we will have also ungraciously denied them the means to pick it up.

Hoping only for political gains in the next election, this is the option President Obama and his party of unions and special interest payouts have selected. For those who seek another course, "have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Stasis in Wisconsin

Those forces in Wisconsin opposing the governor's budget reducing proposals ought to answer a simple question: why is compensation greater than what those with comparable employment in the private sector receive sancrosanct when the state cannot afford that excessive compensation and it is paid on the backs of Wisconsin taxpayers?

This is simply an exercise in an entitled class of people fighting to preserve their preferential, market-immune sinecures.

Point, Counterpoint

Leadership having been abdicated by the president, House Republicans have indicated that they will include entitlement reforms in their forthcoming budget proposal. Whatever shape these reforms take, Democrats will scream that the GOP is gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and that unquantifiable suffering by the American people will ensue.

The counter to this is simple: the unquantifiable suffering will only occur should Republicans adopt the Democrats' position of cowardice and inaction. These programs cannot meet their long-term obligations. Left alone massive increases in taxes or austerity cuts will be inevitable. Comprehensive reform as Republicans propose is the only manner through which these entitlements can be made viable into the future. This is plain and simple – the conclusion of the president's own debt commission.

Through sheer inaction, Democrats simply plan to watch the entitlement car drive straight off of the cliff.

Obama, Condemned

Charles Krauthammer pens a devastating condemnation of President Obama's abdication on the debt crisis, managing, in a mere collection of paragraphs, to illuminate the manifold problems with his budget.

If accepted on its own terms, the budget fails to trim discretionary spending in any meaningful sense. The $1.1 trillion in savings it claims to instill would not be enough to balance the budget this year, let alone the federal government's long-term structural deficit.

The preponderance of spending "reduction" it does contain consists mostly in tax increases, abolishing many tax loopholes in the corporate tax-code while leaving the rate itself alone. The actual spending reductions it does contain barely set spending back to the baselines he inherited in 2009. "Classic Obama debt reduction: Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add another $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you've got $1 trillion of debt reduction."

All of this ignores the fact that the foundation upon which this budget plan is built are absurdly, shall we say optimistic economic-growth predictions coupled with cheap accounting gimmicks. When these are swept away, as they will be, the president's budgetary proposals would lead to additional federal outlays of nearly $1 trillion per annum.

President Obama's most egregious transgression is not one of commission but omission: he completely ignores the major debt-creating monster – the self-indulgent largesse of current and previous generations that is entitlements. For the federal fiscal house to be put back in order these unsustainable leviathans will need to be reformed or they will utterly fail to meet their obligations.

Cognizant of this, the president has nevertheless refused to do anything. On the single largest challenge that menaces his country at the time he is its president, he has shirked leadership in a cynical political ploy to force the opposition to fill the void – fully intending to attack as soon as they put one toe out on the branch. "A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans — for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault — and sets Obama up perfectly for re-election in 2012."

As a cruel mockery of his newest slogan, President Obama is forfeiting America's future for his own political advantage.

To Demure & Bequeath

Since his State of the Union address the president has been fond of talking about "winning the future" by revving the engine of government to invest in all facets of the country. Such rhetoric willfully ignores the reality that the combination of increased outlays from his first biennium coupled with desperately insolvent entitlements promise a future consumed by debt. Far from "winning the future," further government "investment" akin to what the president is calling for promises to steal the future from present and successive generations.

As our cumulative national debt approaches GDP levels, action – both drastic and immediate – is required.

The president pays some lip service to this but is derelict in deed. Before Congress last month, he refused to acknowledge the issue (and the reason that dozens of new members from the other party were sitting in his audience) and called for billions more in new spending on light-speed rail and other sundries.

His budget, released today, does not cut even half of what Republicans are proposing and does virtually nothing to ameliorate the red ink crisis. As Fred Barnes points out, the president's budget would cut $1.1 trillion over the next decade – a sum that does not even exceed the projected deficit for this year.

President Obama and his apologists came into office fancying him as the next FDR: the long-awaited heir who would create a social welfare system for the twenty-first century. This is clearly the presidency he and they still envision.

It is not the presidency that history, or what Machiavelli called fortuna, has designed for him.

The defining issue of this political generation is debt, the single matter that we cannot shirk without being entirely consumed in a sea of insolvency. For other generations it was slavery and civil war, Nazism or communism. Debt is ours.

The president refuses to either recognize or accept this, and so he demurs, creating a leadership void others will be compelled to fill. Only by that time the problem will be even greater than it is now. As Noemie Emery writes, "The mess he claims he inherited from President George W. Bush (which was made in large part by Obama's friends and his party) will be as nothing compared to the one he'll pass on to his heirs."

A long snake of debt – made of zero after zero – ready to squeeze and suffocate present and future generations: such is the bequest the president will leave for his successors.

Kidnapped Conservatives

It was another harmless day in 8^th grade U.S. History when my teacher dropped the bomb. "Yes Lincoln was the first Republican president, but it is pretty obvious that were he alive today he'd be a Democrat." Dumbfounded, this was my first experience with an odious phenomenon: when a conservative is dead and buried (and has been vindicated by the course of history) the Left engages in a concerted effort to claim him as one of their own and/or use that revision against living, breathing conservatives. As Jonah Goldberg writes, "The only good conservative is a dead conservative… It's just we-the-living who are hateful ogres, troglodytes, and mopers."

Lincoln is the first example of this. The man who declared that the chief "purpose of the Republican party is eminently conservative" and who sought nothing save the restoration of "this government to its original tones…and there to maintain it, looking for no further change" was no liberal (no modern liberal). A believer in free markets, individual liberty and the rule of law, Lincoln would have loathed the large administrative state and social welfare regime Democrats envision today. These initiatives create quasi-permanent subclasses of government dependents and instill a disincentive to labor, the surest means Lincoln envisioned to self-perfection and social advancement. His opposition to slavery was predicated not only in his belief in the natural rights of man but in the knowledge that, as Allen C. Guelzo writes, "allowing one man to own the fruits of another man's labor…discouraged hard work in both."

Lincoln never spoke of leveling down the playing field or "sharing the wealth." Instead "the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men" allowing "the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else."

Lincoln's top hat simply will not fit the head of today's Democratic donkey.

Now it is Ronald Reagan. The man who declared that "government is the problem" as he sought massive reductions in its size and scope was apparently a moderate pragmatist, in sharp contrast to the conservatives of today who are….well, saying and trying to do the exact same thing. Liberals from Andrea Mitchell to Eugene Robinson to TIME have alleged an affinity between Ronald Reagan and the center-left that the world somehow failed to notice since his days as a New Dealer in the Screen Actors' Guild.

Regrettably, liberals who try to pull this stunt ignore two items, one being that pretty much everything he stood for in his public life was (and still is) inimical to the Left's creed. Not only did he come to the White House pursuing aggressive spending cuts (and would leave it lamenting that he had not cut more), but the abolition of entire cabinet-level departments. He sought cuts to Social Security and Medicare (rebuffed by Congress). He exponentially increased defense spending. He cut taxes (and when he had to raise them as part of a compromise with Congressional Democrats he lamented that his heart "wasn't in it"). He was firmly and vocally pro-life. His Justice Department aggressively promoted originalism to counter decades of the judicial left amorphously interpreting the Constitution to mean whatever they wanted it to. In a deliberate departure from détente, he pursued a policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union that could lead to one thing and one thing only: "We win, they lose."

Today's liberals not only ignore all of this in alleging that Reagan was a moderate (or even a liberal), but they also disingenuously ignore the stubborn little reality that they opposed him in all of these things in forms every bit as passionate, ranging-on-hateful as they did George W. Bush. When alive the Left labeled him a "dunce," an "ideologue," a "right-wing extremist," and a "cowboy." At one point Tip O'Neill went so far as to say that there was "evil…in the White House…And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America." Praising his diplomacy in ending the Cold War now, liberals howled when he labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire." (To call Reagan himself "evil" was apparently kosher, but damn the man who dared label a regime responsible for the death and oppression of millions in such terms.)

Had there been blogs or cable news the Kos' and Olbermanns would have treated forty every bit as vituperatively as they treated forty-three.

Ronald Reagan was no squishy moderate or liberal, and as Steven F. Hayward writes, those on the Left who now contend otherwise "should be made to explain why they appreciate the virtues of conservatives [especially Reagan] only after they are gone from the scene."

One suspects that, placed on the wrong side of history, they are not so much trying to pull Reagan towards themselves but themselves towards Reagan and away from the fact that he was right and they were wrong. (They are not above scoring cheap political points over conservatives in the here-and-now either.)

If the metaphor above may be strained a little, Reagan's top hat does not fit the heads of liberals today any better than Lincoln's.

Mubarak's Address

Prior to Hosni Mubarak's national address today the masses gathered in Tahrir Square were in high spirits and absorbed in chants tinged with a sense of triumph. Buoyed by reports Mubarak would be announcing his resignation, they also had no other logical conclusion to come to. With what purpose would Mubarak come before his people again unless something in the plans he laid out in his last speech had changed?

No apparent one.

Instead of announcing what everyone planned to hear though, he simply reiterated that he would stay until September, that he was transferring some powers to his vice president, and that he would pursue some constitutional reforms.

Unsurprisingly Egyptians are furious and some sort of violence is expected tomorrow.

One has to wonder what exactly Mubarak was hoping to accomplish. He has long since lost credibility with his countrymen and so nothing he could say short of resignation would placate them. In fact, the only motive that would fit the import of his address today is a desire to see the country he pretends to be the champion of burn, which it quite possibly could now.

The Meaninglessness of ‘Judicial Activism’

Adjectives used pejoratively in the political lexicon tend to lose their original meaning the longer their currency is. After awhile they transform from something specific you disagree with to anything and anyone you disagree with or view negatively. Such became the case with "fascist", "neoconservative" and (liberals would argue) "socialist."

Such has now also become the case with "judicial activist." Used originally by conservatives to pejoratively describe the Warren Court and what they alleged to be its departures from the traditional (and constitutional) role of the judiciary, the moniker has now evolved into the designation both spectral sides employ on judicial acts they do not agree with.

To wit, the ink had barely dried on Judge Vinson's decision invalidating the entirety of last year's health-care reform as unconstitutional before the Obama Administration lashed out at it as a clear case of "judicial activism."

The term has now graduated into the pantheon of its aforementioned predecessors, which is to say it has floated into the realm of utter meaninglessness. No longer applied to a specific type of judicial behavior, and instead used to describe quite disparate ones by disparate sides, to say that an act of the third branch is an example of "judicial activism" is now to say no more than that you disagree with said act.

1099 Repeal

This week the Senate repealed the 1099 provision of the recent health-care law which would have required all businesses to file tax forms each and every time they spent $600 on a single vendor. The extra financial burden this would place on small-business (at a time when we are putatively trying to encourage job growth) is self-evident.

That such an odious example of the federal government's insatiable desire to regulate everything in American life made it into the health-care legislation serves as yet another condemnation of both the legislation itself and the manner in which it was enacted.

Woefully unpopular with the American people, the Democratic super-majorities in control of Congress had to ram through the legislation (through greasing the skids in a manner that defines "corruption") before further scrutiny exposed the bill even more. As a result, final legislation that exceeded a thousand pages in length was shoved through in a matter of days before anyone, including those voting on it, had a chance to actually read and adequately understand what they were voting on.

In consequence, provisions such as this – which no one could rationally vote for after mature deliberation – became the sovereign law of the land.

This state of affairs makes a mockery of President Obama's/Congressional Democrats' claim that the debate over the health-care act is over. The final legislation that was passed and signed was never discussed or debated in any meaningful sense prior to passage, begging the question how anything can be concluded that has never actually begun?

Besides, elected officials are not the ultimate arbiter of what is settled and what is not – the American people are. If you put it in the most charitable terms possible, Americans have deep-abiding reservations about this legislation, especially its most significant provisions. Distinct pluralities to clear majorities favor comprehensive repeal while even more simply 'oppose' the legislation. When you think about it, it is appalling that Democrats forced this 'reform' upon the American public in the dead of night and are now responding to their further objection with a blithe shrug and declaration that the debate is over.

Ultimately the moral of this specific story is that Democrats would have saved themselves time, anguish and embarrassment if they had allowed enough time to scrutinize the entirety of the bill prior to its passage. If you actually read something before acting on it you tend to have an understanding of exactly what it is your acting upon and you are saved from having to repeal something you were the author of a few months prior.

On Affairs in Egypt

The United States has called Hosni Mubarak a friend for thirty years under the postulate that his presidency was the lone bulwark preventing Islamist control of one of the strategically pivotal countries in the region.

Perhaps this was correct. Perhaps it was either Mubarak as he has always been or the Muslim Brotherhood. Perhaps we were never able to utilize Mubarak as a stopgap while simultaneously taking steps to encourage the development of Egyptian civil society – the precondition to a sustainable system of representative government. There are, after all, real limits to the influence of the most powerful superpower the world has ever known.

Regardless, Egypt, the Middle East and the United States are in the moment they are in now because of the choice we made to sustain Mubarak since the assassination of his predecessor. He has always ruled absolutely over his country and by the same means that he repressed violent Islamist elements he repressed any and every viable democratic element.

That combined with the eruption of popular disgust leads to a dynamic where he stands on the precipice of being driven from power, leaving a gaping void in his wake. Because he has spent his time in power quashing democratic development there is no such component that can step in and fill that vacuum when he is gone, leaving the very real and terrifying possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever name radical Islam calls itself will be able to assume control without challenge. (Mubarak repressed both Islamists and democrats, but as the sword of Mohammed has a head start of a few centuries and so better organization than democracy in the broader Middle East it is exponentially better prepared to seize the opportunity when it presents itself.)

The American decision to prop up Mubarak might have prevented an Islamist takeover of Egypt for thirty years – perhaps this was our only choice, the least-worst choice – but it has left us in a particular vexing bind now. Mubarak's tenure has been a bulwark heretofore but has conversely decimated the one societal element that can permanently prevent the Islamist takeover long feared. Now we are left, seemingly helplessly, watching the one entity (Mubarak) that we needed to prevent another entity (Islamists) from taking control lose power after he has spent decades decimating the only other entity (democracy) that can prevent the second entity (Islamists) from taking power now that his sclerotic regime is crumbling.

All our eggs have been put in one basket and that basket is about to be crushed.

Rewarding Syrian Malfeasance

The Obama Administration appointed Robert Ford to serve as American ambassador to Syria this week, the first time the United States has had such a representative in Damascus since 2005. Answering criticism that this will reward the country for bad behavior, the Washington Times reports that the Administration believes the move will "help persuade the country to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and its support for extremist groups."

This rationale is utter nonsense and it exhibits the same ass-backwards understanding of the nature of rogue regimes that led the Clinton and Bush administrations to make their respective nuclear agreements with North Korea.

To wit, sending an ambassador to Syria to cause that regime to change its behavior cannot fail to fail because we have already conceded to them prior to any change in behavior.

If anything the Administration's action will only encourage Damascus to persist in its perfidy. Having garnered a concession without having had to make one themselves, they will take away from this only the knowledge that only the hope of a change in their behavior is required to get carrots, no actual change necessary.

Washington can follow one line of conduct if it wants Syria to desist its antics in the Middle East: make it known to Assad that rewards will be given for positive changes in behavior when, and only when, those changes in behavior actually occur. Until that moment nothing will be forthcoming.