"Rep. Holt beats Watson the super-computer at 'Jeopardy!'"

He's a Democrat — even though his first name is Rush — but he's not your run-of-the-mill Democrat: "He's a five-time "Jeopardy!" champion and a nuclear physicist..."

Congrats to Rush Holt! Or do you think the MSM is in the tank for the Dems and rigged this somehow?

Weary Wisconsin Democrats surprised by late-night vote, rush at the Republicans "pumping their fists and shouting 'Shame!' and 'Cowards!'"

AP reports:

With the Senate immobilized, Assembly Republicans decided to act and convened the chamber Tuesday morning.

Democrats launched a filibuster, throwing out dozens of amendments and delivering rambling speeches. Each time Republicans tried to speed up the proceedings, Democrats rose from their seats and wailed that the GOP was stifling them.

Debate had gone on for 60 hours and 15 Democrats were still waiting to speak when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, opened the roll and closed it within seconds.

Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time.
Republicans immediately marched out of the chamber in single file. The Democrats rushed at them, pumping their fists and shouting "Shame!" and "Cowards!"

The Republicans walked past them without responding.

The Democrats were playing games and the Republicans decided to play one of their own. It's not pretty. I'd like to see video of that rushing, shouting, and fist-pumping action. That seems to cross over into something approaching a physical threat.

IN THE COMMENTS: 2 commenters — Liz and Jana — come up with the video right away:

"It's quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters."

James Taranto explains it all.

"Who'll get in more trouble -- the guy who wasn't spreading salt, for his egregious waste of the city's time and gas, or the guy who was spreading salt, for double-salting and dangerous multitasking?"

Roy Edroso asks some good questions. I have one for him: What would he say if he were looking at 8 minutes of raw footage showing 2 large municipal vehicles cruising around the square blaring horns in apparent support of a big Tea Party rally?

There's a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin today — pro-Scott Walker — and I'm a bit wary.

Red State says:

Calling all tea party and grassroots conservatives in Wisconsin! This is your moment. Your state is ground zero in the fight against the unions. We win there, we win everywhere.

The fight against the unions... Well, there's an open declaration that it's not about solving the budget crisis, fairness, and shared sacrifice. I'm sure the people who've been protesting for the last 4 days will appreciate your frankness. That's what they accuse the Wisconsin GOP of doing. Is that the Tea Party way? You're coming in to serve us some iced tea, here in the Wisconsin winter — ice tea with a wedge of divisiveness, for that refreshing gulp of pure partisan flavor.

Why else do you think President Obama, Organizing for America and just about every element of the Left is focused on the fight in Wisconsin? Heck, even the godfather of the union movement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, is flying into Madison today [to] address the union protestors.

Yes, the anti-Scott Walker side has its outside agitators. I don't think that necessarily helps the protesters win over the people of Wisconsin. (As I've said.) By contrast, Scott Walker and the GOP legislators have looked like they are focused on the public good, doing what needs to be done for the people of Wisconsin, which I think is a persuasive political message in Wisconsin. You want to switch that to Republicans versus Democrats in a hardcore political standoff? By bringing in your own outside agitators? Is that good Tea Party style? I don't think so!

As the union thugs and clueless students run around the capitol shouting, “Tax the rich, fix the deficit!” and holding up signs with crosshairs on Scott Walker’s head, the taxpayers of Wisconsin have been organizing.

Tomorrow, (Saturday, February 19) from noon to 3pm, the local tea party leaders from across Wisconsin and American Majority are joining in a counter protest to the unions (I Stand with Scott Walker!) on the state capitol grounds in Madison.

Okay, fine. Fine to have a protest supporting our governor. But it should be about Wisconsin and the public good — not party politics.

Confirmed speakers are Andrew Breitbart, Herman Cain, Jim Hoff of Gateway Pundit and my brother Ned with more to come.

Something tells me these people are not Wisconsinites.

Fox News, CNN and ABC News will be covering the event.

Time to flex some conservative muscle.

Flex some muscle... I know it's a metaphor, but you're sending out propaganda calling the protesters "thugs" — and that's just too belligerent. The point is for people to show up, be there, physically. That means something. And it works a whole lot better when there is nothing explicitly or implicitly violent about your speeches, signs, and caricatures. Keep it idealistic and kind-spirited, pro-Walker protesters.

And if you come in from out of state, I don't particularly want you here, but you need to know — whatever you've read about "thugs" and signs with cross-hairs and Hitler — Wisconsin people are really polite. If you don't understand that and behave extra-well, you will look like a lout — and that's even before the Democratic-friendly media do their usual work of trying to make you look bad.

I hope Wisconsinites do show up today — on all sides of the debate. Be there. I will. Let's be good citizens, interact with each other, try to understand what's going on and who thinks what, who cares about Wisconsin and who's there to take advantage of the spotlight for nonWisconsin purposes. May the greater good prevail.

Did Scott Walker create Wisconsin's budget crisis as a means to the end of cutting the public unions' collective bargaining rights?

That's what the NYT thinks:

Just last month, [Gov. Walker] and the [Wisconsin] Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That was a choice lawmakers made, and had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus.

Wisconsin is certainly not as bad off as California, Illinois, and several northeastern states that are making tough budgetary decisions without trying to eliminate union rights. Nonetheless, the union-busting movement is picking up steam, with lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana, and several other states. 

It really is odd that Wisconsin became ground zero, because we didn't have the budget disaster that was going on conspicuously in some of the other states. I'm really trying to understand this. Why Wisconsin? A distinctive thing about us is how good our public employees' benefits are. The cut we — I'm one of them — are being asked to take is severe. (I'm looking at a loss of more than $10,000 a year, myself.) But it's hard to complain and appear sympathetic, because we're only being asked to go from paying 0.2% of the payments our salary into our pension fund to 5.8%, which probably looks astoundingly low to outsiders. We're being asked to pay more for our health insurance, but the coverage is extremely good, and the annual hit will be about $2,500.

So maybe we public employees in Wisconsin are a great target — a great starting place for what is a national movement by the Republicans. I'm trying to understand the party politics. Tell me if this is correct: There are vast numbers of public employees, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Once elected, the Democrats create more and more public jobs with greater and greater benefits, and, consequently, more voters who are even more locked into voting for Democrats. This is a cycle that approaches political graft, and the Republicans, to win, must overcome all those passionate, self-interested Democratic voters. Why wouldn't the Republicans embrace a strategy hostile to the public employees? Why wouldn't they drive a wedge between the public employees and all the other citizens in the state?

So I see 3 questions: 1. Is this what the Republicans are really doing? 2. How good a political strategy is it? and 3. Is it a good idea to reduce the political and economic power of public employees?

The 3 questions are interrelated, but they should contemplated separately... but who is capable of doing that? I'm trying to be fair, and it's possible that I'm in as good a position as anybody. I voted for Walker and support many of the things the Republicans are trying to do, but this budget plan — as I said — will cost me more than $10,000 a year.

Cokie Roberts and Renee Montagne talking about Republicans on NPR.

The tone and inflection as they hit key words like "Gingrich" couldn't be more sarcastic and contemptuous. I mean, if they amped it up any more, the regular NPR listeners might start to find it inappropriate.

"But yeah, smart administrators understand that intellectual diversity on the faculty is a good thing, for purely self-interested reasons alone."

"Back in the 1990s when I was writing a lot of second amendment stuff, somebody tried to get my dean to fire me, saying that I was fomenting domestic terrorism. But my dean told me that he was glad to have me writing that stuff, because when alumni or legislators talked about ivory-tower liberal faculties, he could just send 'em a copy of my 'Critical Guide To The Second Amendment.'"

Heh. Yeah. Think about it. Let's say you have a state law school the legislators and alums imagine must be about 95% left-wing. Get one conservative lawprof out there in the public eye — maybe with a blog that's supposedly right-wing — and that vague mental percentage might readjust to 80% or so. That's value! Treasure your house conservative, oh lefty law school!

What's so bad about shuffling Republicans and Democrats together for the State of the Union Address?

The Washington Times hates the idea:

A letter to congressional leaders signed by proponents of this exercise in musical chairs claims...

Musical chairs? Clearly, the Washington Times has never played musical chairs. Musical chairs would be quite funny: Make the Congresspeople scramble for what are too few chairs, and kick out everyone who can't find a seat. Where's your kinder, gentler more civil politics then?

... "the choreographed standing and clapping of one side of the room - while the other side sits - is unbecoming of a serious institution. And the message that it sends is that even on a night when the president is addressing the entire nation, we in Congress cannot sit as one, but must be divided as two." [Senator Mark] Udall is clearly focused on the wrong problem. Presumably orgiastic clapping, not sitting stonefaced, is what offends the seriousness of the august institution.

I don't know much about the Washington Times's sex life, but I think it's got orgasms wrong too. I'll bet, if you did a scientific study, you'd find that, during orgasm, remaining stonefaced is much more common than applause. But I do agree that it would offend the seriousness of the august institution if the President's admirers really acted like they were having orgasms.

Shifting the seats around will not alter the president's applause lines. Democrats, wherever placed in the chamber, will still faithfully rise and clap at the appointed times. If such demonstrations are what Mr. Udall believes are "unbecoming" to the Congress, then Democrats should instruct their members to refrain from such demonstrations, similar to how the NFL has tried to promote civility by cracking down on post-touchdown celebrations.

I think the Democrats should instruct their members to show a little more NFL-style enthusiasm:

If clapping isn't banned, the primary effect of the seating change would be to distribute standing ovations across the chamber, making it appear that the president enjoys more congressional support than he does in fact.

That's the theory that's going around, but I'd like to see how it really would look. When the cameras can't zero in on a clump of idolators and must show the President's friends next to his enemies skeptics, we will see exactly what is going on: We've got a partisan Congress. There are a lot more Republicans than Democrats these days: The disproportion may be more likely to look obvious if they are all mixed up. And the juxtaposition of fans and sourpusses will be more amusing in close-up shots.

I say mix it up!

"The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade."

Notes Don Surber, whose response is: "Bite me."

When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I don’t want to hear it.

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.... 

So screw you.

What Obama said — after the Tucson massacre — about "human understanding" and the "old assumptions" we ought to challenge.

Following the advice in the Shaker hymn that followed the President's speech last night, I kept it simple. I highlighted the passage in the speech about how we should take "a good dose of humility" and not "use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another." But I'm not a Shaker, and I'm a little wary when the most powerful man in the world advises the masses to be humble and come together as one. So I want to look at what he said just before that:

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

But "there is evil in the world" is a simple explanation!

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. 

How about: Jared Loughner is a lunatic? Okay, Obama said "exactly." Yes, I agree with his very minor point that we cannot know the precise content and etiology of Loughner's madness. But as we try to understand the political landscape of the real world where non-insane people live, those details don't matter. We have a simple explanation and it's a damned good one. Yet the President tells me I ought to "guard against" thinking in such simple terms. Why? Sometimes it is simple! Jared Loughner is a lone crazy guy. There is evil in the world and it burst forth last Saturday. It's not like labeling al Qaeda "evil" and moving on, because Loughner wasn't part of a web of activity. I think what we need to "guard against" is using Loughner as an example of some larger problem that we need to solve.

Obama continued:

None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

True. We can't know with certainty what his mental processes were, but we are justified in taking it as our working theory that the man was crazy in a way that doesn't relate to the real-world political issues that are worth putting our energy into trying to figure out — other than the real-world issue of identifying and restraining dangerously psychotic persons.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

That's what Obama said just before the passage I highlighted in last night. He goes on to push back those who've used the massacre as an occasion to make partisan political arguments — something he's strongly correct about. All right, then. What are we supposed to examine? We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future. Does he mean old assumptions about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill? Does he mean gun control? Does he mean limits on free speech? Now, there are some details we need to hear about and debate. If freedom of speech is the "old assumption" we should be "willing to challenge," I'm going to fight.

"Here's a partial list of some of the incidents the left has tried to pin on conservatives."

"The Columbine shooters. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing... The DC sniper. The New York City Times Square car bomb attempt. They tried to blame that on some Tea Partier angry at the health law, then we find out that was radical Islamists. The February 2010 IRS plane attack in San Antonio. Remember that? It had to be an anti-government clown that flew that plane into the IRS office, had to be. The Pentagon subway shooter. The Fort Hood attack. The Discovery Channel hostage taker. And this guy [John Patrick] Bedell who went into the Pentagon and wanted to shoot these people up. This guy, by the way, is a dead ringer for Loughner. Amy Bishop who shot her colleagues at that Alabama college."

"Sarah Palin is not to blame for shooting of Gabrielle Giffords; left-wing rhetoric just as vicious."

Ah, now you see why the accusations backfire (if I may dare to use that word): the occasion has been created for conservatives to list every violent-sounding thing any liberals or lefties have ever said about anything.

Knock yourselves out.

If I may use the expression.

AND: Michelle Malkin is rising to the occasion, compiling the list.  I'll just contribute this poster I photographed in the window of a shop here in 2004:

Should we succumb to the temptation to engage in political rhetoric, making generalizations from the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords?

Yesterday, some folks leapt into scoring political points even before the surgeons got to Gabrielle Giffords's brain, before the body of the 9-year-old Christina Green had arrived at the funeral home. They couldn't wait to tell us what's wrong with America — as if there weren't something wrong with them for failing to hold off for a day, while other people were manifesting basic human decency.

These louts took advantage of the silence in the Theater of Respect and soliloquized about how the shooting resulted from and exemplified the terrible things about their political opponents. This either offended or annoyed the other players in the Theater of Respect, depending on whether they were genuinely decent people who mourn suffering or whether they simply felt constrained to behave as if they were.

That was yesterday. Today, it seems that everyone's ready to jump into the big generalizations game. But let's stop and think about this first. From everything we've seen so far, the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, is deranged. Like many insane people, he connected up ideas that don't really connect:

A series of short videos posted on the Internet, apparently by Mr. Loughner, consist of changing blocs of text that are largely rambling and incoherent. Many take the form of stating a premise and then a logical conclusion that would follow from it.

They speak of being a “conscience dreamer”; becoming a treasurer of a new currency; controlling “English grammar structure”; mentioned brainwashing and suggested that he believed he had powers of mind control.

“In conclusion, my ambition — is for informing literate dreamers about a new currency; in a few days, you know I’m conscience dreaming!”

Ironically, writers purporting to be horrified by what happened yesterday will take the shooting as their  premise and work — with what they think looks like sound reasoning — toward their conclusions.

Now, my question is: Should we resist? The event is vivid. We've got to keep talking and writing. Everyone else is doing it now....

First, you might want to resist because it's the right thing to do not only out of respect for the dead and wounded but also because Jared Loughner is probably just a crazy guy whose acts say nothing about anybody else.

But let's assume you're not that pure. You're a political animal, and you're not too fastidious about using the raw material that comes your way. I'd say you ought to think very hard about whether you want to use this shooting in your political rhetoric. You might want to adhere to the respect for the victims/crazy gunman position because it serves your political interests.

But whose interests are served by chewing up the wounded flesh in the meat grinder of political rhetoric and whose interests are served by pretending to be above all that? Liberals have an interest in creating a big distraction that might undercut the prevailing conservative momentum. To conservatives, I would say: Don't help them.

"I think it is good news for NPR if they can get someone who I think has been the keeper of a flame of liberal orthodox out of NPR."

"I think she represented a very ingrown, incestuous culture in that institution that's not open to not only different ways of thinking but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on FOX."

Juan Williams reacts to NPR's ousting of Ellen Weiss, the woman who fired him. I'm linking to NPR's own story, and you have to click on the video that's posted there to hear the words I'm quoting. It's worth listening to the whole interview Williams does with Meghan Kelly (on FoxNews). He lashes into NPR.

"Now Might Be A Really Great Time (For Republicans) To Weaken The Filibuster."

Hmmm.

"She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes."

If a conservative columnist had come up with that image to describe a liberal politician, liberals would gasp and scold about the violence seething in the conservative brain.

But this is the liberal NYT columnist Charles Blow, complaining about how attacks on Sarah Palin aren't doing what they're supposed to do. His idea is lefties need to stop talking about her:

People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.

So the reason for calling off the attacks is that they're not working. Whatever happened to the "restore sanity" movement that briefly bubbled up — the idea that civility was a free-standing value? I assume the idea that moderate discourse is an end in itself was always only a pose. That is, the idea that civility was an end was a means to an end. When that end wasn't achieved — liberals lost the elections — the means was abandoned. Attacks flared. But attacks failed. At least Blow isn't pretending to believe in civility as an end in itself.

"There are many dimensions of opinion, such as people who think opinion is 2-sided and people who do not."

"People who think the previous sentence is a fascinating paradox and people who find it annoying."

Is it surprising that 31% of self-identified gay/bisexual voters voted Republican?

This doesn't surprise me. I think the split between the parties should be about the same as it is in the heterosexual population. I'd expect it to be somewhat skewed because the Democrats give the impression that they will do some things to advance gay rights.

But that shouldn't have too great an effect because: 1. Gay people are interested in all the issues, not just who purports to care about specific gay-related issues, 2. There isn't much reason to trust the Democrats to do more than pretend to care, and 3. If the GOP seems libertarian, it may appeal to those who mainly want the government to leave them alone to live their lives according to their own values.

The 31% figure is probably also skewed by who is willing to tell pollsters that they are gay. It may be that more conservative respondents are less likely to convey the information and, especially in the case of religious conservatives, less likely to admit to themselves that they have a homosexual orientation.

A dubious theme: "Independents Turn on One of Their Own: Feingold."

This — by Katharine Q. Seelye of the NYT — seems a bit off:

The irony was lost on no one. Senator Russ Feingold, a liberal with a fierce streak of independence who crusaded against the influence of money in politics, was toppled Tuesday in a campaign awash in the kind of unregulated cash he had struggled to keep out of the system.

And in a poignant twist, the loss came, in part, because independents flocked to his opponent, despite Mr. Feingold’s record of one maverick vote after another.

It's not the same kind of independence. Feingold's independence was to the left of the Democrats in Congress. The independents who determined the outcome were voters — including me — whose politics lie in between Republicans and Democrats. Feingold made no effort to get in that zone. 

He was the sole senator to oppose the Patriot Act after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He also broke with President Obama on several occasions, opposing the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, the bailing out of financial institutions in 2008 and the regulation of Wall Street this year, saying the restrictions did not go far enough.

See? That's my point.

Most prominently, he battled his colleagues to overhaul the campaign finance system...

A few paragraphs separate that from this:

...Mr. Feingold raised and spent more money than Mr. Johnson...

Mr. Feingold had raised $18.2 million and spent $16.2 million by the middle of last month, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Johnson raised $12.8 million, and spent $10.5 million, pumping in more than $8.2 million of his own money.

Feingold's campaign finance law wasn't a limit on a candidate spending his own money. In any case, Feingold spent much more money than Johnson.

It is not clear what he will do next. In a brief speech Tuesday night, he told the 300 supporters gathered in a hotel here in his hometown, “It’s on to the next fight, it’s on to the next battle, it’s on to 2012 and it is on to our next adventure, forward.”

He then raised his fist in the air and left the stage.

"Forward" is the state motto and the informal name of the 15-foot sculpture on top of the state Capitol building and the official name of another statue at the east entrance to the Capitol. I've watched the video of Feingold's concession speech, and his hand is a little off-screen at this point, but I bet that's not a fist but an outreaching hand meant to invoke the "Forward" statues.

ADDED: Here's a photo of the "Forward" gesture:



AND: Ron Johnson ran a pretty effective ad saying that Feingold is not the "maverick" he claims to be.