LinkSwarm for April 20, 2018

April 20th, 2018

Finished my taxes! Now I need to go back and do all the stuff I let slide while I was doing my taxes…

  • The Syrian strike and Russia’s crummy air defense systems:

    The attack on April 13th went up against a 21st-century Russian superweapon–the S-400 Triumf air-defense system, a mobile state-of-the-art anti-aircraft and missile network featuring four distinct missile types targeting aircraft in any performance envelope from treetop level to high altitude – including stealth aircraft (at a range of 150 miles, yet). For a decade we have been assured by military analysts that the S-400 is a game-changer – a system that could rend the heavens in twain and call into question the very concept of air power under battlefield conditions.

    And yet, last Friday, the epoch-making Triumf failed to let out so much as a peep as 105 cruise missiles trashed Bashar Assad’s chemical warfare plants. Not a single SAM left the rack while the attack was proceeding. (The Syrians did fire over 40 missiles at nothing, but only after the attack was completed. This is standard behavior among Arab armed forces – the Libyans and Iraqis did the same thing.) The Russians claim to have shot down over 70 of the attacking cruise missiles. How do we know this isn’t true? First, because the targets were utterly destroyed, and second, because the French were involved. If the Russians had shot down any U.S. missiles at all we would be hearing from Paris that American “missiles de croisière” are useless, and that’s why we had to turn to the French, who invented the cruise missile in 1689. (This is scarcely an exaggeration – Emmanuel Macron has gone on record to state that it was he, le président de la France, who persuaded Donald Trump to carry out the strike.)

    Some might argue that the new AGM-158 JASSM stealth missile foxed the S-400, but half the missiles launched were actually thirty-year-old BGM-109 Tomahawks, the equivalent of Colt Peacemakers as far as the world of missile development is concerned. If the mighty S-400 can’t shoot down a thirty-year-old missile, what can it do?

    Also this: “Russia today is what it always was – a Potemkin village hiding a nation in a state of suspended collapse.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hit 51%.
  • Republicans: “Hey, how about you vote on these Trump nominees?” Democrats: “Ha ha! Slow walking! Filibuster!” Mitch McConnell: “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to keep the senate open on weekends during campaign season.” Democrats: “Uh…”
  • “Democrats: Give Us the House so We Can Raise Your Taxes.” You would think they would have learned from Walter Mondale’s example…
  • “Trump overrules Sessions: DOJ won’t target marijuana in states like Colorado where the drug is legal.” Good. The federal government should stay out of the marijuana prohibition business on Tenth Amendment grounds.
  • Rush Limbaugh enumerates some of the many conflicts of interest among mainstream media members with ties to the Democratic Party.
  • In the UK, a machete attack every 90 minutes.
  • How gentry liberals really hate the poor. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Mark Steyn remembers Enoch Powell, who got more right than wrong.
  • UK Prime Minister Theresa May is concentrating on: A.) Brexit, B.) Muslim rape gangs, or C.) Plastic drinking straws?
  • “Deleted Facebook Cybercrime Groups Had 300,000 Members.”

    Hours after being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, Facebook last week deleted almost 120 private discussion groups totaling more than 300,000 members who flagrantly promoted a host of illicit activities on the social media network’s platform. The scam groups facilitated a broad spectrum of shady activities, including spamming, wire fraud, account takeovers, phony tax refunds, 419 scams, denial-of-service attack-for-hire services and botnet creation tools. The average age of these groups on Facebook’s platform was two years.

  • Everything is hackable.
  • “Pasta Is Good For You, Say Scientists Funded By Big Pasta.”
  • Egg McMuffin’s vaunted honesty and integrity evidently doesn’t extend to his campaign filing timely FEC reports. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More on the same theme:

    Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.

    McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.

    The staffer also claims the campaign never paid him somewhere between 12-15 thousand dollars on top of a few thousand dollars in reimbursements. While he has since recovered, he expressed concern about former staffers with “families and children.”

  • “911 operator who hung up on emergency calls is sentenced to jail.”
  • The Littlest Weasel accomplished one thing: he raised Laura Ingraham’s ratings by 20%.
  • “Three New Plaintiffs Join James Damore’s Discrimination Lawsuit Against Google.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Here’s a cool piece by Houston Rockets center Clint Capela talking about what it was like to move from Europe to Texas:

    I’ll never forget the first time I went to a steakhouse here. I thought I’d eaten steak before. I was expecting this small, flat circle of meat, maybe a couple of fries on the side. Fine. C’est bon.

    So in Texas, steak is a different thing. I’m at this restaurant and they put this plate in front of me, and, well, there was barely any plate visible — all I saw was this was this big, big piece of meat. I look around, maybe I had been mistaken in what I ordered. Maybe this waiter was playing a prank on me. It looked like a whole farm animal in front of me. But everyone with me laughed and nodded and told me that in Texas, this is a steak.

    Then I was introduced to these other foods I’d never seen before but were totally amazing. Mac and cheese, man. Guys, you are blessed for having mac and cheese here. It’s a work of art. Bravo, guys.

    And that was the first time I thought, O.K. O.K., I think I can get used to this place.

    But if he really wants to be “King of Books,” he should know that road runs through me…

  • Pro-tip: If you’re trying to smuggle hundreds of pounds of cocaine, it is best not to document your expensive vacation travels on Instagram. (Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool’s twitter feed.)
  • First they came for the buxom barmaids…
  • The next horror movie monster: Tumbleweeds:

  • A tweet:

    Seems an overreaction. Let he who has never taken a sacred oath using a dinosaur handpuppet cast the first stone…

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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Hurst, Texas House Explodes on Dashcam

    April 19th, 2018

    And sometimes blogging is just “Whoa! I’ve got to post that!”

    Story here. Thankfully, no one was killed, though one woman remains in the hospital.

    Also this: “The driver was not hurt, but was taken into custody for not having a license, then transferred to federal custody on an immigration hold.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Texas, video | 1 Comment »

    Barbara Bush, RIP

    April 18th, 2018

    Former First Lady Barbara Bush, wife of one President and mother of another, has died at age 92.

    She was a class act as First Lady, pretty much universally loved and respected, and she will be missed.

    A few quick reactions:

    Even the overwhelming majority of Democrats on Twitter were polite and respectful.

    A few were not:

    Most people would avoid making the death of a First Lady an occasion to score political points.

    Most people.

    Note: I’ve limited the Bush Derangement Idiocy to the Blue Checkmark Brigade…

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    Posted in Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    UN: Hey, Let’s Inspect This Entirely Peaceful Site Hit By Missiles. Syria: Die In A Fire

    April 17th, 2018

    Syria has sworn up and down that missiles from the United States, the UK and France only hit peaceful sites of toys for crippled orphans a baby milk factory a cancer research center (no really, that’s their story this time) rather than a chemical weapons facility.

    So naturally, they would have no problem with UN inspector’s visiting the site, right?

    We all know exactly how that movie turned out:

    The international chemical weapons watchdog that sent a fact-finding team to Syria said Monday that Syrian and Russian officials blocked efforts to reach the site where rebels claim government forces unleashed chemical weapons against civilians.

    The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the team arrived in Damascus on Saturday and met with government officials to work out a plan for deployment to Douma.

    The Syrian and the Russian officials informed the team that “pending security issues” needed to be worked out before the group went to Douma, the organization’s director general, Ahmet Üzümcü, told an emergency meeting of the group’s executive council in The Hague, Netherlands.

    Of.

    Course.

    Some other Syria strike news:

  • Hezbollah says that “Syrian air defenses had intercepted three missiles aimed at Dumair military airport north east of Damascus.”
  • ZeroHedge is reporting that Israel just hit Syrian sites near Homs. Not seeing any confirmation right now.
  • Speaking of ZeroHedge reports on Israel strikes against Syria, they also reported another Israeli airstrike two days ago I haven’t seen other confirming reports of. “I know what you’re thinking, punk. Did I hit Syria six times, or only five? In all this excitement, I sort of lost track myself…”
  • In fact, this New Yorker piece asserts that Israel has launched more than a hundred trikes in Syria since the civil war began.

    Israel has hit a wide range of sites, including convoys of Hezbollah or Iranian fighters near the Golan, trucks ferrying missiles and rockets destined for Hezbollah en route to Lebanon, bases for Iranian drones, and an Iranian command-and-control center.

    “We are facing now a determined decision by Iran to take advantage of the vacuum in Syria, the coming victory of Assad, and the defeat of ISIS to extend Hezbollah’s stand in Lebanon at the expense of Syrian territory, especially in the Golan Heights,” Amos Gilead, a retired Israeli major general who now heads the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya, told me. “This is a strategic threat. It’s an intolerable plan. We are trying to preëmpt them and protect Israel.”

  • Israel confirmed it hit Syria on April 9, as previously reported.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron says he convinced President Donald Trump to join in on strikes against Syria. France wants to initiate military action in the Middle East about as often as Henry Youngman’s wife wants to have sex. (She died in 1987, so: Not often!) But France has a continuing relationship with both Syria and Lebanon, having administered the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon between 1923 and 1946. France still has extremely close relations with Lebanon, and has been royally pissed with Assad’s consistent meddling there, especially the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

    New York Times is Shocked, SHOCKED To Find Out There’s a Public Pension Crisis

    April 16th, 2018

    The New York Times was kind enough to notice that public employee pensions are bankrupting many portions of the country:

    A public university president in Oregon gives new meaning to the idea of a pensioner.

    Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension.

    It is $76,111.

    Per month.

    That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.

    Oregon — like many other states and cities, including New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut — is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making. Its economy is growing, but the cost of its state-run pension system is growing faster. More government workers are retiring, including more than 2,000, like Dr. Robertson, who get pensions exceeding $100,000 a year.

    Left out of that list: California, New York and Illinois.

    The bill is borne by taxpayers. Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System has told cities, counties, school districts and other local entities to contribute more to keep the system afloat. They can neither negotiate nor raise local taxes fast enough to keep up. As a result, pensions are crowding out other spending. Essential services are slashed.
    Continue reading the main story

    “You get to the point where you can no longer do more with less — you just have to do less with less,” said Nathan Cherpeski, the manager of Klamath Falls, a city of about 21,000 in south-central Oregon.

    Klamath Falls’s most recent biennial bill from the pension system, known as PERS, was $600,000 more than the one before. PERS has warned that the bills will keep rising. Mr. Cherpeski has had to cut back on repairing streets and bridges.

    Even as the American economy is humming, many states and cities are still hurting from the 2008 financial meltdown. The crash hammered their pension funds and tax revenues, but didn’t reduce the amounts they owe retirees.

    It wasn’t until 2016 that average state tax collections returned to pre-2008 levels. In the meantime, states and cities have had to rebuild pension funds to cover the rising numbers of retirees drawing benefits. That has left less money for the police, school sports programs and everything else. Local residents might not know why, but they are paying more taxes and getting scantier services in return.

    Golly, if only the New York Times had been reading conservative and libertarian new source like BattleSwarm and Pension Tsunami, they could have found out this starting information years or even decade ago.

    In related news, Illinois courts are already imposing mandated tax hikes on various municipalities to shore up underfunded public pension programs.

    However, I bet that the next links in the logic chain (that all these locals seem to be controlled by the Democratic Party, and that fat pensions are a naked political payoff for the support of public employee unions who donate to and vote for Democrats, at the expense of the poor and middle class who see public services cut to pay for those fat pensions) will somehow continue to elude the New York Times…

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats, Media Watch, unions | 4 Comments »

    Trump Voter Feels Betrayed By President After Reading 800 Pages Of Queer Feminist Theory

    April 15th, 2018

    The Onion comes through again…

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Uncategorized, video | No Comments »

    Texas Pregnancy Mortality Rates Double Due to Bad UI Design

    April 14th, 2018

    Here’s a cautionary tale.

    Two years ago, you may have heard that Texas’ maternal mortality rate had just doubled. No one was quite sure why—some blamed a recent shuttering of family-planning services, others a lack of concern for women’s health generally—but it seemed most were confident Texas was a cautionary tale. The U.S. maternal mortality rate overall had been rising for years, even as nearly every other developed country saw declines. Surely, the new numbers out of Texas portended what could happen across the country if we didn’t change soon.

    It turns out that the numbers in Texas were wrong. The extent to which they were incorrect was just published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, as investigated by several researchers who went back and double-checked the cause-of-death for 147 total deaths in Texas in 2012.

    Though we only now realize how flawed the data were, this isn’t entirely a recent revelation. Experts suspected that something was wrong with the data, they just weren’t sure what. The authors of that original study noted that “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a 2-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely.” Their suspicions turned out to be right. Instead of roughly 36 deaths per 100,000 births, the mortality rate was more like 14.6 deaths per 100,000 births.

    Texas is, in fact, a cautionary tale, just not in the way we all thought. It’s been collecting data poorly for years now, and they’re not alone—maternal mortality rates could be wrong all over the U.S. Ever since some states introduced a checkbox to their death certificates asking about pregnancy back in 2003, the stats on maternal mortality have been skewed. A 2017 study concluded that this addition “appears to be the main driver of the increases in [maternal mortality rates] during the last decade.” States with and without the checkbox differ so much in reported data that we haven’t published an official national maternal mortality rate since 2007. The data just haven’t been good enough.

    But they have to be better. Maternal mortality rates are still high nationally by many estimates, and understanding the extent of the problem is crucial if America is going to save mothers’ lives.

    When researchers found that twofold increase in maternal mortality in Texas two years ago, they suspected it was so extreme as to be an error. Texas was one of the states that implemented a new checkbox on death certificates that asked about the pregnancy status of the deceased, and as mentioned before it was already known that states with that checkbox tend to report higher maternal death rates. This is in part because asking about whether the deceased was pregnant increases the rate at which it’s reported—when you start looking for pregnancy-related deaths, you’ll tend to find more. But it’s also because people make mistakes.

    The recent paper notes that it may be a simple design problem that’s contributed significantly to the apparent rise in maternal mortality: “Texas’ current electronic death registration system displays pregnancy status options as a dropdown list. The “pregnant at the time of death” option is directly below the “not pregnant within the past year” option; this could have led to erroneous selection and could explain why pregnancy at the time of death was reported for nearly 76% of the 74 obstetric-coded deaths with no evidence of pregnancy on review.”

    The authors also note that the number of death certificates being submitted electronically in Texas jumped from 63 to 91 percent from 2010 to 2012. Having a bunch of new users entering information into death certificate software may have exacerbated the misreporting.

    They suggest two main solutions: better training for workers who report death information, and instead of a drop-down menu, try buttons. Separate buttons for “pregnant” and “not pregnant” force the user to move the mouse to totally different areas to make a selection, rather than clicking in a small drop-down menu where it’s easy to make a mistake and not realize it before moving on to the next question.

    Texas may have had a double-whammy situation, but the problems they ran into are true of all checkbox states.

    Those states that chose to implement a pregnancy checkbox on their death certificates have seen a 149.8 percent in maternal mortality (as of 2012 data). But a study from last year estimated that a whopping 90.3 percent of that change was likely due to the checkbox issues alone.

    “Because pregnancy-related deaths are so uncommon, the frequency of the box being checked in error can significantly impact the maternal mortality rate reported,” Elliott Main, medical director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, told the Washington Post.

    If we assumed that the non-checkbox-adopting states showed the true rate, the study authors reasoned, the true rate would be 14.4 percent.

    Lesson: Bad UI design kills! Or at least fools you into thinking someone’s been killed…

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

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    Posted in Texas | No Comments »

    U.S., France, UK Hit Syrian Chemical Sites

    April 13th, 2018

    President Donald Trump orders U.S. military to attack Syrian chemical weapons sites, in coordination with France and the UK.

    Here’s President Trump’s announcement:

    I’m on record as stating that the United States has no compelling national interest at stake in Syria after the destruction of the Islamic State. that said, anyone predicting that Russia is willing to risk World War III over Syria is having a case of the vapors.

    It’s ironic that President Trump is the one actually enforcing Obama’s foolish “red lines”…

    Edited to add: Tweet showing airstrikes in Damascus:

    In the video it appears to have taken out the power grid.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for April 13. 2018

    April 13th, 2018

    Enjoy your Friday the 13th LinkSwarm! And don’t forget to finish your taxes this weekend!

  • Kurt Schlichter is not at all impressed by liberal plans to win the culture war by the rest of America magically giving up and becoming California:

    California is a bankrupt failed state that is essentially Illinois with palm trees and better weather. Outside the coastal urban enclaves where Jack and his pals mingle, drinking kombucha and apologizing for their white privilege to their baffled servants, it’s a crowded, decaying disaster. Bums wander the streets, littering the sidewalks with human waste. Crime is rising. Illegal aliens abound, more welcome in the Golden State than actual Americans. California is an example all right, but a cautionary one.

    So how did California go from conservative in the 80s to the blue hellhole it is today? The leftist zillionaires and the Democrat government unions bought the elections. It also got so expensive and so crowded here that a lot of the kind of people who made California red and not terrible moved away. Now you have a relatively small elite of really rich liberal jerks, and a large class of serfs to the Democrat welfare state – many imported for their delightful obedience and complacency – but no more huge middle class of Normals. Those Normals went east, toward opportunity.

    The liberal plan for civil war does not take into account how prosperous states like Texas went hard right in the 90s and show no sign of changing colors, and there is no mention of how Republicans hold more elected offices today than at any time in history.

    Snip.

    “If the liberals ever get their wish for a new civil war, my money is on the side with all the guns.”

  • President Donald Trump lifts Obama-era waiver for welfare work requirements.

    What happened when states no longer required able-bodied adults to work to receive benefits? Predictably, the number of able-bodied adults on food stamps skyrocketed, more than tripling since 2000, while the cost to taxpayers went up fivefold.

    Even though unemployment has since rebounded to near-record lows and more than 6 million jobs are open nationwide, these Obama-era waivers are still in place and many states continue to operate expanded welfare rolls under them.

    They only complaint I have is that President Trump didn’t restore those rules sooner…

  • “Science proves communism makes nations poorer and less healthy.” Duh. That is, when it’s not murdering people outright. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions freezes aid program for illegal aliens.
  • Cynthia Nixon is attacking Andrew Cuomo from the left. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Hyperinflation hits Iran in the wake of President Trump threatening to suspend the ill-conceived nuclear deal.
  • More on the same theme: The solution to Syria runs through regime change in Tehran:

    Khamenei has sent tens of thousands of Iranians and Iranian mercenaries to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. His failed and murderous regime, with Russia’s help, is responsible for the astonishing casualty, refugee, and death totals in Syria. Without the manpower Khamenei’s regime provides, there would be no debate over “what to do about Assad” because Assad would be gone.

    That should have produced a winning strategy for the United States and our friends and allies: support regime change in Tehran, thereby pulling the plug on the Assad regime, depriving the Russians of cheap cannon fodder, and ending the Iranian funding of Hezbollah.

    It has long been possible to subvert the failed mullahcracy. Most Iranians detest the regime. Keen-eyed mullahs and ayatollahs know this, and know that they will cease to matter to the majority of Iranians the minute the Islamic Republic falls. They all know, because they have heard the words from Washington, that Trump has no sympathy with the regime. Unlike Obama, he does not want a strategic alliance with Tehran. He prefers Jerusalem and Jedda. As do most Iranians.

    So we should be supporting the internal opposition. Perhaps we are, but our leaders and pundits, even now, keep talking as if we must choose between a bigger war and the survival of the regime. I find that unfortunate and deplorable. Why are our leaders not openly calling for democratic revolution in Iran?

    I am all for sanctions, but too many of the sanctions advocates seem to think that the sanctions are necessary to bring about the manifest failure of Khamenei and his cohorts, when that failure is evident to anyone who looks at the country. All the banks are rupt, including the central bank. The rial is worth one one-thousandth of its value at the end of the shah’s rule. Like the Soviet Union before it, the Iranian tyranny has destroyed the whole national ecosystem, starting with the water supply.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instaopundit.)

  • Why does the left hate Israel?

    Left-leaning politicians, including leaders of the UK Labour Party, tweet stern condemnations of Israel’s shootings on the Gaza border where they were silent, or at least more restrained, in relation to Turkey and the Kurds. Academic and cultural institutions boycott Israel where they do not boycott Turkey, or China, or Russia, or America and Britain for that matter, which have done their fair share of bad things – ‘bloodletting’? – in the Middle East in recent years. That only Israel is boycotted by the self-styled guardians of the West’s moral conscience, by our cultural and academic elites, constantly communicates the idea that Israel is different. It is worse. It stands above every other state in terms of wickedness and hatred and war. BDS institutionalises the idea that Israel is alien among the nations, a pock among countries, the lowest, foulest state. It is a bleak irony that BDS activists holler ‘apartheid!’ or ‘racist!’ at Israel while subjecting Israel to a kind of cultural apartheid and contributing to the ugly view of this state, this Jewish state, as the maddest state, the state most deserving of your anger and even your hatred.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Lovely: Thieves are intercepting new debit cards and replacing the chip on them with old chips. People activate the card, unaware those thieves are using the new chip on another card to drain the cardholder’s account…
  • All the factors working against preserving the Second Amendment.
  • Remember: New York City’s strict gun laws don’t apply to members of Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio’s staff.
  • MCAT medical exam demands fealty to “social justice.”
  • Funny how liberals were silent when the Obama campaign did the same data scrapping as Cambridge Analytics did in 2016.
  • Former Texas Republican congressman Steve Stockman convicted of bilking charities and lining his own pockets. When last we checked in on Stockman, he was running a very poor senate race against John Cornyn.
  • Another day, another hate crime hoax.
  • “Movement That Demands Forceful Silencing Of All Opposing Viewpoints Unsure Why Nation So Divided.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “This court rules that Constantin Reliu is dead.” “No I’m not! I’m right here!” “No, you’re dead. Now shut up and get back on the cart.”
  • Man goes to hospital for severe headaches after eating Carolina Reaper pepper. (Confession: If I could get at least $10,000 for eating a Carolina Reaper pepper on camera, I would totally go for it. After all, I put Ghost Peppers in my last batch of salsa…)

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Paul Ryan Retires

    April 12th, 2018

    Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced he’s retiring at the end of his term.

    Being Speaker of the House of Representatives is a thankless job in the modern era, akin to herding 435 cats, about half of which hate you. It’s a difficult job, which is why I’m going to refrain from throwing the “Swamp Creature! RINO!” labels hurled at Ryan for not getting enough conservative legislature through the house. But there is this undeniable fact: In 1995, Newt Gingrich had 230 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Democrat in the White House, and got far more conservative legislature passed as Speaker than Paul Ryan has with 241 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Republican in the White House.

    The unwillingness of the modern Republican Party to play hardball (like refusing to pass a debt limit hike unless linked with a complete repeal of ObamaCare) has crippled the ability of the party to make legislative gains commensurate with their majority status. It is hard to tell at this remove whether Ryan’s speakership is a cause, or a symptom, of that failure of nerve.

    If I had to bet, I would guess that Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise would be the most likely choice to replace Ryan as Speaker of the House (assuming Republicans retain control in November), based less on my deep understanding of House interpersonal dynamics than the fact that he literally took a bullet for the team.

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    Posted in Republicans | No Comments »

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