Columnist.
WASHINGTON -- The big news this week is that in the Senate, the Democrats have joined with the Republicans to pass tax relief contained in an extension of the hated Bush tax cuts. Certainly by early next week, the House of Representatives will have done the same. Thus, the burden overhanging the economy of a huge tax increase is eliminated for two years. After that, it sounds as if our president, if he still is our president, threatens to raise taxes. Somehow he came around to accepting the argument that one does not raise taxes in a slow-growing economy. A few months back, it appeared that in the unlikely event that the senators and the representatives extended the hated Bush tax cuts, our president would veto the bill. Now he has accepted it. Has he learned anything?
WASHINGTON -- The Great Denial continues. The liberals continue to labor under the assumption that nothing very bad happened in early November. They are still supreme. The columnists go on as though nothing is amiss. This week, E.J. Dionne consulted with three defeated members of Congress and passed on to President Barack Obama their advice on how to succeed during the next two years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues as if she is speaker for life, though it probably will be a generation until another Democrat holds the post. Mental illness can be amusing.
WASHINGTON -- My campaign for mayor of Chicago against Rahm Emanuel is getting under way. I already announced on Sean Hannity's nationally televised program and have Sean's endorsement. After careful consideration, Rush Limbaugh undoubtedly will be aboard and Mark Levin and, of course, the tea partyers. Moreover, I already have two major newspapers endorsing me, The New York Sun, which was very kind in noting my talents and relative integrity compared with the opposition, and The Washington Times -- also very kind. Neither had a good word to say for Emanuel. Perhaps more endorsements are coming. Frankly, I would not be surprised if both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed my candidacy. I am as clean as a hound's tooth!
WASHINGTON -- "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" So said John Maynard Keynes when a dearly held belief of his was confronted by new facts. He changed his mind and was not ashamed. I am an extreme empiricist. Show me the facts, and I shall make up my mind. Show me the new facts, and I shall change my mind.
WASHINGTON -- I blame Drudge! Yes, I blame the Drudge Report for this insane controversy about the use of high-tech body scanners and "pat-downs" at airport security zones. A minor altercation can take place at Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, and it is headlines on the Drudge Report. The millions of American travelers who are utterly insouciant to a high-tech scan or even a pat-down are ignored. The other day, a CBS News poll found that 81 percent of Americans approve of the use of the high-tech machines at airports, but that means nothing to Drudge. How many more Americans would welcome a soothing pat-down midst the hurly-burly of travel at our nation's stress-filled airports I do not know, but count me in -- especially if the patter-downer is a cute little number on the order of, say, Sarah Palin.
WASHINGTON -- The other day, I sat down to breakfast. It was a normal day. Five daily newspapers were laid out before me. As I went over the front pages, I downed orange juice and a bowl of oatmeal powdered with brown sugar and flaxseed. Then I went off to my library with the newspapers and a cup of coffee. By then, incidentally, I was revolted.
Liberals are having a difficult time explaining what happened to them Election Day. Actually, it appears that many of them do not know what happened to them. They are in denial.
WASHINGTON -- There is an axiom that is adhered to by conservative journalists that explains at least some of what for liberals is this inexplicable election. It is the Taranto Principle. Coined by the inimitable James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, the Taranto Principle encourages the worst in liberals by reporting politics with a slavish bias. The conservatives can do nothing right. The liberals can do nothing wrong, and besides, they are always more winsome and more intelligent, and moreover they have an aesthetic and philosophical side. Even Vice President Joe Biden has an aesthetic and philosophical side. His malapropisms and goofball pronunciamentos are to be perceived from an artistic and philosophical perspective, as the artiste Chris Ofili's artful uses of elephant dung are to be perceived from an artistic and philosophical perspective.
WASHINGTON -- The Democrats are about to be beaten by something that they do not in their heart of hearts think exists, a huge national majority. At this late hour, with the storm clouds gathering and the livestock getting restless, they see only sunshine. Yes, there is "foreign money" out there. Yes, the media have bungled broadcasting the purity of the Democratic message. And naturally, angry voices can be heard. Yet surely there is no majority gathering to unseat the party of decency and good deeds. Well, there is, and it is nothing like how the Democrats describe it.
WASHINGTON -- OK, OK! It is only a satire. I am not really running for mayor of Chicago, but I do have something in common with someone who is running for mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. Neither I nor Rahm qualifies for residency in Chicago, though my family traces its roots in the city back to the 19th century, and I was at least born in Chicago. If Rahm bullies his way to residency, Chicago's big shoulders are not what they once were. He gave no thought to running until a few weeks back, when Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement, and now Rahm has no place to live.
WASHINGTON -- On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel declared his candidacy for mayor of Chicago. Instantaneously, he had problems with his campaign, not the least of which is that he is as much a resident of Chicago as I am. So on Monday, I declared my candidacy for mayor of Chicago. Why not? I did it on the national television show of the estimable Sean Hannity, who immediately threw his support behind me. I was born in Chicago, come from a long line of Chicagoans and, like Rahm, am occasionally in town. The place is a gastronomic paradise, a cultural delight with great museums and a fine orchestra, plus opera; surprisingly, Rahm and I never have crossed paths while in town. Supposedly, he attends rock concerts. He could attend the Chicago Symphony, but he opts for Bruce Springsteen.
WASHINGTON -- The race for the United States Senate in Delaware is a splendid example of what is called Kultursmog, and the smog spreads untreated. One candidate, the conservative, has been slandered repeatedly, and no one objects, not even most conservatives. The liberal opposing her has been given a metaphoric free pass, even by most conservatives. Yet he is a fruitcake. She "dabbled" in witchcraft in high school, she tells us. He may have studied it in grad school, along with other pseudo studies. Yet he is stonewalling, while the press pillories her. No one objects save talk radio.
WASHINGTON -- Christine O'Donnell, the tea party-supported Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware, has no secrets. The press even has gone back to her high-school years and found that she "dabbled" in witchcraft. But now, Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator has been scrutinizing her opponent, Democratic candidate Chris Coons. Lord did not have to go back to Coons' high-school days. He found quite a lot in Coons' infatuation with Marxism, starting in college. Coons found Marx about the time that large numbers of Marxist pols behind the Iron Curtain had given him up. By the 1990s, even jailers and torturers were forsaking old Karl, but not Coons.
WASHINGTON -- Did my ears deceive me? Did I hear House Minority Leader John Boehner say on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, "If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below, of course I'm going to do that"? He was referring to voting for extending the Bush tax cuts to those making less than $250,000 a year. And he was referring to the issue when there is a building momentum to keep the tax cuts for everyone in an era of fragile economic growth and 9.6 percent unemployment. Even some Democrats are willing to keep the tax cuts, but Boehner just made it difficult for them.
WASHINGTON -- I like Tony Blair. The left always is lecturing us conservatives on moderation. It would do us good, the left says. If only we were moderate, we might win the fall elections. Yet we are likely to go for people like Joe Miller in Alaska and the dreaded Sharron Angle in Nevada, and we are going to get clobbered -- or at least not win as thumpingly as expected. For some reason, this troubles sages E.J. Dionne and Sam Tanenhaus. I sense they cry crocodile tears, but maybe I have misperceived them. Maybe they really wish us the best. Is it another manifestation of the Liberal Death Wish? As the liberals approach the Islamofascists, they clearly have it, and as they approach the economy, a death wish is all I see. Maybe they have it with conservatism, too.
WASHINGTON -- What is your vision of a university? Is it the classic vision, with profs walking the ivy-clad pathways, their books under their arms? Perhaps they wear tweed coats and smoke pipes -- not the lady profs, but the men. The ladies dress accordingly, and maybe they smoke pipes. All pore over their books for hours and impart their knowledge to a select body of students. Not the mob that today is forced -- rather cruelly -- to attend classes in remedial education to make up for what they missed in high school, very elementary things, such as reading and the rudiments of writing.
WASHINGTON -- They are beginning to die out or, at least, to retire. So long, suckers. Surely the Clintons, Sen. Jean-Francois Kerry, Al Gore and dozens of others who presented themselves as reasonable alternatives to the radicals of the 1960s thought they were suckers. I thought about all of them this week as problems mounted for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks thief.
WASHINGTON -- It is becoming apparent for all to see that a man who has made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be president of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Barack Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I now think it is clear even to Official Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed.
WASHINGTON -- The other day, New York Times columnist (and Nobel laureate, though he has yet to be found guilty of plagiarism or fabrication) Paul Krugman indulged one of my favorite pastimes. He engaged in vituperation. He affected a superior pose and lamented that so many of the other superior types had been taken in by mere hucksters. Alas and goddamn!
WASHINGTON -- There is an awful lot of blowzy thought swirling around the proposed mosque to be raised two blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. Frankly, I doubt that at any other time in our history such a debate would be taking place. People would know that when thugs intoning "Allahu akbar" have slaughtered hundreds of innocent Americans on American soil, it is inappropriate to raise a mosque nearby. The majority of Americans alive today know this. Polling indicates that with them, it is a nonstarter. Now the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, has weighed in on the side of good sense. One hopes this debate is coming to an end.
