Anxieties over the the high-speed "train to nowhere" in California.

Reported in the NYT.

"Does that not just sound like an NPR report, to do an in-depth report on the word of the year, 'no.'"

Says Rush Limbaugh, about this NPR segment, which I tried to listen to. Man, NPR is slow. Unless you're driving in traffic trying to create the illusion that you are going quickly, I don't see how you can listen to that. But there's a transcript at the link, and you can read it so much faster than the 5 minutes it takes for Geoffrey Nunberg to perform the text on the audio. When he finally gets to the point that the word of the year is "no," he says:

That word usually gets a bad rap in public life; it's never a compliment to call somebody a naysayer. So Democrats obviously meant to put Republicans on the defensive when they began to call them "the party of no" for opposing the stimulus bill in early 2009. As The New York Times' Ben Zimmer pointed out, that phrase has often been used by the party in power to label the opposition as obstructionist. Ronald Reagan branded Democrats as the "party of no" in 1988, Bill Clinton did the same thing to Republicans in 1994, and Tom Delay turned the phrase back on Democrats in 2005.

Here's the part Rush played:

What was different this time is that after some early defensiveness, a lot of Republicans embraced the label and even ratcheted it up a notch. "We're not just the party of no," Rush Limbaugh said, "We're the party of hell, no!" — and Republican leaders quickly adopted the line. That extra word shifted the meaning of the phrase — it no longer suggested just opposition to particular bills and programs but unapologetic and resolute defiance.

That stance clearly resonated with a lot of voters.

Rush stopped his playing of the clip there, but it continued like this:

"No" has a great power to bring people together, precisely because it doesn't have to be pinned down. A child has a much harder time mastering "yes," which is always the response to a specific prospect — "Do you need to go potty?" Whereas the child's first "no" comes earlier, as a pure eruption of willful refusal. And the word retains that capacity, even as we learn to intone it to convey despair, anger, defiance, fear, astonishment, disappointment or resignation.

And that's how NPR sees you voters: You're children. You're resisting potty training. Your Tea Potty Party is mindless emotionalism. You're — as Andrew Sullivan would put it — intellectually inert brats.

That's what makes these choruses of negativity so hard to read, whether they're coming from unhappy voters or tired preschoolers in full shutdown. Everybody is sounding the same plaintive note, but it isn't as if there's any single juice flavor that will make them all happy again.

Hard to read?! Is conservatism a foreign language to Nunberg and the NPR slow-listeners stuck in traffic? Juice flavor? It would be a punch line for me to call that a punch line — juice ≈ punch — but why is that a punch line? Maybe Nunberg plied his intellectually inert brats with juice — I'll get grape, because grape is a little more favorite — but what does that mean about what he (and NPR) think government is supposed to do? It's supposed to give us yummy things to make us feel good (and compliant). No wonder he can't read these choruses of negativity.

"High-Speed Rail Goes Off the Tracks in Wisconsin."

We cheered out loud over that headline.

Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor, has denounced the train as a Big Government boondoggle, and has vowed to send the money [$810 million] back to Washington if he's elected. He has even launched a website, www.notrain.com, attacking Obama and his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, for supporting the new line. Walker and Barrett don't agree on much, but they agree that high-speed rail is a defining issue in their campaign.

Scott Walker on the high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee: "I will put a stop to this boondoggle the day I take office."

Ed Morrissey says:

Only fifty-five permanent jobs? [For $810 million. $14.5 million per job.] Wisconsin shouldn’t be the only state demanding an explanation of this boondoggle. And we thought that spending $300K or more for every claimed job “saved or created” was bad. Porkulus looks like bargain basement in comparison.

"New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step."

How do economists reach consensus? Do they confer and corroborate like climate scientists? Or is the consensus achieved through a newspaper editorial process of strategically collecting quotes and designating the speakers as "dispassionate"? Or is it more a matter of slapping a headline on an article that doesn't make a convincing case for consensus at all?

Or are my questions — they're only questions! — too cynical? Consider the sublime hedge phrase "worthy step." If Barack Obama were the captain of the Titanic, would the New York Times call rearranging the deck chairs a "worthy step"?

The GDP drops 6.1 percent.

"Economists had predicted a drop of 4.7 percent, and the steep dip could dampen expectations that the pace of economic declines had begun to ebb. The decline was almost as sharp as in the previous quarter, when the economy shrank at a pace of 6.3 percent, its worst drop in a generation."

But it was stimulated!

Why did Obama's people buzz lower Manhattan with a jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter?

"The planes appeared on the horizon around 10 a.m. and sent a chill through the city. Flying in as low as 1,000 feet to 1,500 feet above New York City, they circled the Statue of Liberty before flying over Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey. Before they vanished, hundreds of frightened people had jammed emergency phone lines, and thousands of terrified people evacuated from buildings in the city and across the river in New Jersey. 'I was crying and praying to God to forgive me my sins because I thought I was going to get killed,' said Kathleen Filandro, who fled from 1New York Plaza when she spotted the planes."

Quiz:

Why'd did they do it?
	To get pics for propaganda, like they said.
	To distract you from the flu.
	To distract you from the economy.
	Because the torture memos weren't exciting you enough.
	So Obama could just eat his waffle, in a golf cart, and wear shorts.
pollcode.com free polls

"GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness."

The Democrats begin the week with an absolutely perfect issue.

Why not put people to work by paying them to water their own lawns?

The government could do that. And how different from that is the stimulus?

Watch this clip. Megan McArdle is on a rampage in this one. The other head is Dean Baker of Beat the Press.

"It became clear to me to me that it would be very difficult day in and day out to serve in this Cabinet," says Judd Gregg, withdrawing.

The GOP Senator will not be Secretary of Commerce. I wonder what the whole story is.

[I]n the days since he was nominated he realized that to be "part of a team but not 100 percent with the team" was an untenable position.

In his written statement, Gregg cited recent developments regarding the economic stimulus package and the decision to have the next census director report directly to senior White House officials as evidence that he and President Obama were too different ideologically for the pairing to work. "This was simply a bridge too far for me," Gregg said of his decision....

"This is not a time for partisanship. This is not a time when we should stand in our ideological corners and shout at each other," Gregg said on Feb. 3. "This is a time to govern and govern well. And therefore, when the President asked me to join his administration and participate in trying to address the issues of this time, I believed it was my obligation to say yes, and I look forward to it with enthusiasm."

So who decided to go partisan: Obama or Gregg or both? Doesn't the stimulus package have to be seen as partisan at this point? The Republicans must define themselves in contrast to it, and the Democrats need to defend it boldly as their own work. We have a 2-party system. That's a good thing.

Schumer on "those little tiny, yes, porky amendments": "The American people really don't care."

Yikes. The contempt.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Synova said:

Just for my curiosity...

Who is "the chattering class"?

Joe said:

Anyone who disagrees with Schumer.

More generally, anyone who attempts to actually debate the contents of any bill in Congress.

reader_iam said:

Schumer--Schumer!--dissin' chattering?!?

Now, THAT'S what I call high comedy. Next thing you know, he'll be dissin' TV cameras! Can't wait, myself.

LMAO.

MEANWHILE: Barack Obama says:

We’ve had a good debate, but the time for talking is over.

You hear that? Shut up!

Live-blogging Obama's first press conference.

6:38: Starting soon. Think he'll get the hard questions? Think he'll use his boring professorial mode or his testy exasperated mode or might he attain true presidentiality?

7:02: He begins. If you don't believe we're in a crisis, you should talk to one person who's lost his job. Why would that be convincing? Only government can solve this problem. Money should go to the people most likely to spend it — not the wealthiest people, supposedly.

7:08: Failure to act "will only deepen" the crisis. That's less inflammatory that some of his recent statements.

7:10: Jennifer Loven asks him about his stronger earlier statement, that without action we may never recover. Do you think you risk losing credibility? No no no no no no. "You potentially create a negative spiral."

7:14: "That wasn't just some random number that I plucked out of.... uh" — he's thinking: can't say my ass — "out of a hat."

7:17: Iran. He's looking into it. "In the coming months, we will be looking for... openings...."

7:20: He's filibustering — using the boring professor mode.

7:23: "Everyone needs to be possessed with a sense of urgency." Let's be bipartisan: You must agree with me.

7:25: This isn't pork. There are no earmarks.

7:28: Is it so terrible to have a schoolhouse built in the 1850s? Let's see the school! You have to stop teaching when a train goes by. You get to hear a train go by. [ADDED: Don't liberals care about historical architecture?]

7:37: Jake Tapper asks how people are supposed to know if this economic plan is working — considering that earlier efforts haven't seemed to work. Obama talks about "creating or saving" 4 million jobs — huge difference between those 2 things! He talks a lot, but I don't feel that we got an answer (or that we could).

7:41: Will Obama let the press come photograph soldiers' coffins? He's looking into it. He'll get back to you later.

7:44: He's not going to let al Qaeda "act with impunity," but he has no details right now.

7:45: A reporter totally repeats Jake's question and Obama points it out. Embarrassing!

7:46: "I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to." Laughter. "Not surprisingly."

7:47: "I have no idea" what Biden was talking about. "I really don't."

7:51: Helen Thomas gets her first shot at him. Does he know of anyone in the Middle East who's got nuclear weapons?

7:52: Huffington Post gets a question. What about Patrick Leahy's "truth and reconciliation commission" to investigate the "crimes" of the Bush administration? Will you rule out prosecutions? Come on, Barack. Just give us a nice upstanding "yes." [Sorry, I had "no" before, based on misreading the phrasing of the question.] Instead, we get the usual bullshit about how he hasn't "seen the proposals" and can't really "express an opinion" and he's got to look into it. Ugh! But his administration will do everything right. Fine. Good. Perfect. But the question is whether you will go in for this retribution against the prior administration? He does end with: "But my general orientation is let's get it right moving forward." Now, that is the right answer, and I think he knows it. It would have been presidential to take a stand against the Leahy effort. But that was not to be. A sadly missed opportunity.

7:58: "There's some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up." That's the characterization of the opposition to the stimulus. Makes those of us who are hesitant sound like some kind of disease. "But I am the eternal optimist... People respond to civility and rational argument... and that's the kind of leadership that I'm going to provide. Thank you guys!" Well, I respond to civility and rational argument, but I believe you just talked about me like I was some kind of disease!

8:00: He ends exactly on the button. We hear a stomp as he steps off the podium, and his walk back into the White House is noticeably different from Bush's. How can I describe the different feeling I get from that walk? You can object to this if you want. It's just my feeling. I think Bush would walk away in a ritual fashion that said: I am the President and I have accomplished what the President must do. Obama's walk said: I'm a man who has this job and now I've done it and I'm out of here.

The Fordification of Barack Obama.

Given this, will "SNL" need an Obama impersonator who — like Chevy Chase — can do pratfalls?

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

It would be funny if, after he bonked his big noggin, he said "Wait a minute... we're about to sign some bill spending a trillion dollars of unnecessary pork during a recession? What?! Not on my watch, we're not!" and promptly ran back to the White House and fired everyone.

"But I'm not an economist, so I don't know."

(Via Jac.)

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling very queasy about the whole routine of: Trust us, hurry up, your instincts are irrelevant because you're not an expert, stand aside, shut up, obey.

"Barack Obama's temperament is famously unflappable."

Remember that meme? "No drama Obama"? It help get him elected. I believed it. Now, look at him here:



"We're not moving quickly because we are trying to jam something down people's throats." Ugh! That makes me feel like he's trying to jam something down my throat!

AFTERTHOUGHT: Oh, but maybe the reason Obama seemed — last fall — to have such a measured, even temperament is that these things are relative.

"Attacking Iran is a shovel-ready project."

An economist joke.

(From an excellent interview with Robert Barrow — which Instapundit linked to — on why the stimulus bill is so terrible.)

ADDED: This post got linked by Instapundit. Isn't that going to cause feedback?

"But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."

Bob Dylan sang that long before anybody thought about where they would rank in a Google search.

Now, here comes Forbes.com with an item titled "Obama's 'Naked' Moment." When have we got a clever title and when is it a cheap traffic grab?

So which of Obama's many moments counts as his "naked" moment? If naked is the metaphor, it seems to me that we've had nothing but naked. It's a veritable nudist presidency.

"If they think... Barack Obama is going to walk away from what he is trying to do for the American people, they’ve got another thought coming."

Another thought coming? Uh, duh, Harry Reid coins a phrase.

And Chuck Schumer says: "Despite the efforts of the president, Senator Reid, and all of us to reach out, we’re getting rebuffed. Has bipartisanship been a failure? Well, so far it’s not working. But it takes two to tango and the Republicans aren’t dancing."

Not dancing? You could try that thing where you shoot a gun at their feet and yell "Dance!"