Internet Scofflaw

Latest Rassmussen poll.

(Via Hot Air.)

The Democrats and their allies in the legacy media may be succeeding in vilifying the Tea Party as a group, but on substance, they have the support of the majority of America. And, according to a recent poll, of the majority of economists as well.

I thought this remark, made off-hand by Glenn Reynolds in the context of vehicle confiscations being a major source of revenue to municipalities, was thought-provoking:

I don’t think law enforcement should turn a profit. When it does, it shades too easily into piracy.

Indeed. Putting down the police-as-pirate phenomenon was a great achievement of the rule of law. It would be a tragedy to lose it.

The Daily Mail reports:

The Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.

But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances. White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

POSTSCRIPT: Remember, just two months ago, when President Obama was blasting the fat cats and their private planes? Even among the fat cats, who takes two private planes to avoid a four-hour inconvenience?

POST-POSTSCRIPT: Glenn Reynolds thinks it’s interesting that the White House is starting to leak like this.

Since I can’t resist a good gotcha, this is Barack Obama in 2008:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up the national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added 4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have 9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

President Obama has added another $4.05 trillion to the debt in just two years and seven months.

UPDATE: Oh, any by the way, please note once again which party it is that questions its opponents’ patriotism.

UPDATE: Video:

If Rick Perry’s campaign continues to do well, we are going to hear a lot about how Perry called for Texas to secede from the union. It turns out it’s not true at all.

Perry was specifically asked about secession (that is, he didn’t bring the subject up), and he said that Texas should not secede:

There’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the Union in 1845, one of the issues was whether we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.

People are trying to make hay out of the “who knows what might come” part, but coming as it did right after he specifically said there was “no reason” to secede, it’s dishonest to suggest that he was somehow insinuating that there might actually be good reason to secede.

(Via Instapundit.)

If you don’t already hate GM (why are you reading this blog?), perhaps this will get you there:

The problem is said to be the price of the Volt, which is a massive understatement, because everyone buying a Volt is understating the price. No one purchasing a Volt has the faintest clue what it really costs, because of all the taxpayer subsidies plowed into production, and hefty rebates offered at the point of sale. $400 million in federal subsidies were extracted from the taxpayer to fund Volt production, and buyers have enjoyed a $7500 federal tax credit.

That means each of the 3200 Volts sold thus far has rolled out of the lot with $132,500 in taxpayer subsidies stuffed in the glove compartment. They sticker at $41,000, so that means each Volt sold thus far actually costs $173,500, with only $33,500 paid by the actual purchaser.

That figure averages in the fixed cost assuming that not a single additional Volt will be sold. But with a realistic estimate of future Volt sales, the cost only goes down to $104k. Under GM’s assumptions, the price before subsidy would be only $47.5k.

(Via Vokdapundit.)

UPDATE APPENDED.

After his remarks a few days ago endorsing government waste to drive economic growth, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when he takes the last step and endorses destruction to drive economic growth as well:

People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.

A clearer embrace of the broken windows fallacy could hardly be made. The only question is whether that is really Paul Krugman talking.

UPDATE: No, it was not really Krugman. So we can put a cap on Krugman’s foolishness: government waste he’s for, but natural disasters he’s not.

UPDATE POSTSCRIPT: Unfortunately, Krugman couldn’t just say it wasn’t him and leave it at that. No, rather than leave this at the feet of the hoaxer that perpetrated it (a person of no importance), he had to try to turn it back against National Review:

Well, this is interesting. I hear that the not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on my Google+ page. Except, I don’t have a Google+ page.

There was, as far as I can tell, one post at National Review about this, the one by Kevin Williamson I linked. It was titled “Somebody Please Tell Me This Is a Joke” and concluded:

I honestly cannot tell if I am being had here. I hope I am.

So Williamson did express the proper doubt over whether this was really Krugman. And he also promptly posted an update when he learned it wasn’t.  All of which people could learn by clicking through to Williamson’s post, if Krugman had linked to it. But he didn’t.

Joe Biden goes to China; attacks the Tea Party.

Andrew Klavan’s latest is great.

POSTSCRIPT: Like Klavan, I don’t know who Kim Kardashian is.

The runner-up in the Power Line Prize competition:

A European Court has ruled that having a satellite dish is a human right.

A reader at the Corner has this encouraging information about the NLRB:

If Senate Republicans just do nothing, the NRLB will lose its quorum and be unable to act beginning 1/1/12. Wilma Liebman’s term expires in a few weeks, and Craig Beckers recess appointment expires at end of the year. There was a Supreme Court ruling a few years ago that the NRLB could not act with only 2 members. And if Senate and House Republicans continue to work together forcing pro-forma sessions during recesses, the NRLB could be effectively defanged by the end of the year.

For background on why the NLRB desperately needs to be defanged, see this, and this, and this, and this.

POSTSCRIPT: In related news, Judicial Watch is filing an FOIA lawsuit to obtain the NLRB’s documents related to the Boeing travesty, and Rep. Darrell Issa has issued a subpoena for those same documents.

A lot of people are making fun of Paul Krugman for this interview, in which he says that a threat of alien invasion would be great for the economy:

I think much of the criticism misses the point. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the alien invasion illustration; it’s a perfectly sensible — if colorful — illustration of Krugman’s point. What I think is remarkable is the point itself: He is standing up for the principle of government waste. His point is that massive government spending to counter a non-existent threat would be a great thing!

There is one industry in which President Obama has been very successful in creating new jobs:

(Via Instapundit.)

When Virginia legalized the carrying of weapons in bars and restaurants, anti-gun activists promised it would result in a bloodbath. As always, the bloodbath failed to materialize. In fact, the opposite happened:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

Experience shows that liberalizing gun laws never has the negative result that anti-gun activists predict. Experience also shows that no amount of experience will stop them from continuing to make the same prediction.

(Via Instapundit.)

At a town hall in Illinois, the president was asked by a local farmer about new regulations he had heard about.

The president, on day three of his Midwest bus tour, replied: “. . . Don’t always believe what you hear.” . . .

Obama’s advice was simple: “Contact USDA.”

“Talk to them directly. Find out what it is that you’re concerned about,” Obama told the man. “My suspicion is, a lot of times, they’re going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded.”

Well, one enterprising reporter did just that. Hilarity ensues, as they say. (Well, if you think getting the run-around from government bureaucrats is hilarious, anyway.)

The point here is how astonishingly out of touch the president is. He actually believes (or perhaps he doesn’t, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt) that a citizen can simply call up the government and get a straight answer.

In the end, the USDA defended itself by saying that the regulations under discussion were not the purview of the USDA, so it really wasn’t a fair test. But that’s part of the point! We have literally hundreds of regulatory agencies. How is a citizen supposed to figure out which one is planning to ruin his life? Even the president didn’t know which was the relevant agency.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Yes, this too:

I love this because you can tell that Obama really believes that criticisms of the government stem from slack-jawed yokels listening to too much Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The idea that a farmer might understand the business-end of government-agriculture relations better than Barack Obama never occurs to him. The questioner must be ignorant or misinformed because the question is inconvenient. And the solution is just as obvious. Simply call the government and you’ll get all the information you need.

(Via Power Line.)

This comment by Bill Clinton is quite revealing about how he saw the office of the presidency:

[Rick Perry is] saying ‘Oh, I’m going to Washington to make sure that the federal government stays as far away from you as possible –while I ride on Air Force One and that Marine One helicopter and go to Camp David and travel around the world and have a good time.’ I mean, this is crazy.

Big government is supposed to protect us, right? If we’re going to have food safety agencies that insist on telling us what we can and cannot eat, even to the ridiculous extreme of launching SWAT raids on raw-milk producers, you would think that — at the very least — they would take bad meat off the shelves. Nope:

Federal officials said they turned up a dangerous form of salmonella at a Cargill Inc. turkey plant last year, and then four times this year at stores selling the Cargill turkey, but didn’t move for a recall until an outbreak killed one person and sickened 77 others.

So what, exactly, are the food-safety cops for?

The problem with big government isn’t just that it is intrusive, but also that it can’t even effectively carry out its official mandate.

(Via Instapundit.)

The EPA is fining oil refiners millions for their failure to purchase a product — cellulosic ethanol — that is not available for sale.

The White House released a photo of President Obama at a ceremony for troops killed in Afghanistan, against Pentagon policy and the wishes of the bereaved:

A White House photographer was allowed to take and widely distribute a photo from the ceremony Tuesday for the return of the remains of 30 American troops killed in a weekend helicopter crash in Afghanistan despite the Pentagon’s claim that any public depiction of the scene would violate the wishes of bereaved families. . .

Pentagon officials had said that because 19 of 30 of the American families of the dead had objected to media coverage of the remains coming off a plane at Dover Air Force Base, no images could be taken. In addition, the Pentagon rejected media requests to take photos that showed officials at the ceremony but did not depict caskets. . .

Doug Wilson, head of public affairs at the Pentagon, said the department did not know the White House photographer was present and had no idea a photo of the event was being released until it became public.

The White House even distinguished the photo as its “photo of the day”.

POSTSCRIPT: Remember in 2004 how Democrats tried to argue that it was disrespectful to the dead for President Bush to mention 9/11 in his re-election campaign? Even images of Bush speaking at Ground Zero were supposedly out of bounds.

Take a look at this graphic and see if you can figure out why our country is headed for insolvency:

Meanwhile, the Democrats are whistling past the graveyard:

“It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”

That’s from Nancy Pelosi, who called me from Wisconsin, where she’s holding events today defending Medicare in Paul Ryan’s back yard. On the call, Pelosi laid out a message on Medicare she hopes Dems will use for — well, forever.

(Via the Corner.)

The best public schools are in red states:

When it come to excellence in education, red states rule — at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek. Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all over the country to find the best public schools in the country.

The results make depressing reading for the teacher unions: the very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states.

Three of the nation’s ten best public high schools are in Texas — the no-income tax, right-to-work state that blue model defenders like to characterize as America at its worst. Florida, another no-income tax, right-to-work state long misgoverned by the evil and rapacious Bush dynasty, has two of the top ten schools.
Newsweek isn’t alone with these shocking results. Another top public school list, compiled by the Washington Post, was issued in May. Texas and Florida rank number one and number two on that list’s top ten as well.

There’s something else interesting about the two lists: on both lists only one of the top ten public schools was located in a blue state.

This finding is probably related.

Teachers’ unions like to drape themselves with the mantle of protectors of childrens’ interests, but quite the opposite is true. The unions seek to divert scarce education funding from the children themselves to unionized teachers and their unions’ administration.

The unions attempt to defend their actions by claiming that their interests and the interests of the children are one and the same, that better salary and benefits for teachers means better teachers and smaller class sizes. Again, quite the opposite is true. Better salaries, obtained by unions, do not attract better teachers. They might, but the unions’ primary role, other than collective bargaining, is gate-keeping. They keep new teachers out of the system to protect those who are already in the union. A talented, energetic young teacher has to work very hard and/or be very lucky (or well-connected) to get a position. And once in the system, that teacher has to resist the incentives to slack off in a system that does very little to encourage performance.

That’s theory. Now,  a study by the Associated Press reportedly confirms it:

The AP discovered school systems without teachers’ collective bargaining rights performed slightly better than those with negotiated contracts. Thirty-eight school districts don’t have collective bargaining rights, and the AP found those systems averaged a higher percentage of students who earned proficient or advanced scores.

Unfortunately, that’s all the article says. Hopefully we’ll hear more about this study in the future.

(Via Instapundit.)

For a third time, the labor movement has failed to derail Wisconsin’s Republican government. They failed to prevent the passage of Governor Walker’s budget repair bill by fleeing the state. They failed to win the open seat on the Wisconsin supreme court, which would have given an activist majority the ability to overturn any legislation they liked. And last night, after a stupendously expensive recall campaign, they failed to recall enough senators to win control of the Wisconsin state senate.

Democrats did succeed in unseating two Republican incumbents: one who represented a strongly Democratic district (I’m not sure how he was elected in the first place), and one weighted down by personal scandals. Next week two Democrats face a recall campaign.

I would be very interested to know how much the national labor unions spent to win (at most) two seats in a state senate for a quarter of a term.

UPDATE: Michael Barone crunches the numbers. And Christian Schneider summarizes:

For months, unions have told us that after their state-senate recall efforts in Wisconsin, lawmakers would learn not to scale back their collective-bargaining “rights.” The recalls would warn any state thinking about passing a law like Governor Walker’s to think again. Yet after Tuesday night’s recall elections, only one lesson is perfectly clear: It’s probably not a good idea to cheat on your wife.

(Via Chicago Boyz.)

UPDATE: The Democrats are trying to put a brave face on their loss, boasting at having gained two seats. In fact, if you take a longer view, they actually lost ground. District 32, in which Shilling unseated Kapanke, has a strong Democratic majority, so Democrats would have won that seat back next year anyway. So that’s a gain for Democrats of one seat for one year.

However, Hopper lost to King because he’s a scandal-tarred jerk. Absent a recall, Democrats would have unseated him next year, but now Republicans will probably win that seat back with a better candidate next year. That’s a gain for Democrats of one seat for one year, at the expense of one seat for a full four-year term, or a net loss of one seat for three years. In total, the Democrats gave up one seat for two years, and spent millions to do it.

Glenn Reynolds asks, why should Democrats be the only ones to enjoy the fun of taxing people they dislike?

Data from the Match.com dating site show that conservatives are more open to other points of view than are liberals, at least in a dating context.

The Hill has a very nice story on John Boehner and the debt-ceiling battle. The story talks about Boehner’s leadership style — based on persuasion rather than coercion. It also has some interesting bits on the negotiations with Democrats, particularly this one:

GOP aides and lawmakers, speaking on background, portrayed Boehner as the calm negotiator who repeatedly exasperated President Obama.

Boehner last month asked the networks to televise his response to Obama’s address to the nation, a request which infuriated the White House, Republican sources said.

On July 23, they claim, the White House called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), telling her not to participate on a call with Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Pelosi informed Reid, who declined to participate, and the call was canceled, the Republican sources said. (A Pelosi spokesman could not be reached for comment.)

Later that day, the four leaders met with Obama at the White House. At one point, GOP officials said, the Democratic and Republican leaders asked Obama and his aides to leave the room to let them negotiate.

A tentative deal was subsequently struck, but Obama privately threatened to veto it, the sources said.

President Obama’s people have been suggesting that Obama was the only adult in the room, but this story says the situation was quite the opposite. They had to send Obama away in order to make progress.

This is all according to Republican sources, of course, but I find it quite believable because Obama has behaved exactly that way in negotiations in the past.

Democrats are trying to make the FAA shutdown (now ended) part of their “hostage-taking” narrative, and just as with the debt-ceiling, it’s the polar opposite of the truth.  Andrew Stiles explains how it happened. Here’s the key part:

The Senate had ample opportunity to prevent [the shutdown] from happening, or at the very least to end the FAA shutdown by simply passing the House bill before adjourning on August 2. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) even urged his colleagues to do just that, saying “sometimes you have to step back and find out what’s best for the country and not be bound by some of your own personal issues.” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood concurred, imploring the Senate to act. But when Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered a unanimous consent request on Tuesday to proceed to consideration of the House bill, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) objected, effectively blocking the measure, after which Reid decided to throw in the towel and adjourn for the August recess, thus allowing the shutdown to continue.

The White House and Democratic leadership wanted to pass the House bill, but one Democratic senator blocked a vote from taking place.

The Democrats seem to have settled on their narrative for the debt-ceiling debate: Republicans are “hostage-takers”, threatening to destroy the economy if their demands are not met.  To those I documented earlier this week, you can add Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the liberal web site TPM,  and former White House green jobs czar Van Jones.

The thing is, that narrative is the precise polar opposite of the truth. In fact, the Republicans wanted to take default off the table and were rebuffed by Democrats. The Democrats, in fact, mocked the very idea that paying bond holders should be the federal government’s fiscal priority. This cannot be emphasized too much: Democrats insisted on preserving the possibility of default in order to give themselves more leverage at the negotiating table.

Think you have a right to know how the government spends your money? Not in California:

The California Assembly says the public has no right to see lawmakers’ current office budgets and spending projections, documents that could show whether punishment is doled out for key votes.

I have to say, the response does answer the question pretty clearly.

(Via Instapundit.)

Following the debt ceiling debate, Democrats called Tea Party Republicans terrorists, hostage-takers, kidnappers, and villains bent on destroying the world. (I’m not making any of those up, even the last.) Beyond the hyperventilation, there is a serious criticism there: Democrats accuse Republicans of extortion, threatening to destroy the economy if they didn’t get their way.

Setting aside the hyperbole, there is another way to describe what just happened; Democrats and Republicans were playing chicken. That description gets to the point best, because, after all, it takes two to play chicken.

It’s not true that the Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, the House passed two bills that would raise the debt ceiling (in addition to the ultimate compromise); both were rejected by the Democratic Senate. So both sides were on record as saying that they preferred no debt-ceiling increase — and a possible default — to an increase on the other side’s terms.

For many Republicans it’s not hard to understand why. They see the long-term debt crisis as an existential threat to our nation. They saw increasing our debt without cutting spending as worse, in the long run, than the possibility of a technical default. Moreover, they also saw that the government has the cash flow to continue paying the debt, so there’s needn’t be even a technical default. (In fact, the government has the cash flow to cover entitlement spending as well.)

For Democrats it’s harder to understand. If you accept their rhetoric, they did see this as a disaster, but they played chicken anyway. They said they would prefer to melt down the economy than see substantial cuts in spending. Half of the House Democrats wouldn’t even accept the final compromise, with small but meaningful cuts in spending.

Now, one might say that the grown-up thing to do would have been to take default off the table. They should have passed a bill that ensured that we would continue to serve the federal debt even if the debt ceiling were not raised. Then we could have debated the issue without endangering our nation’s credit rating.

In fact, that is exactly what some Republicans tried to do. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced the Full Faith and Credit Act, the substance of which read, in its entirety:

In the event that the debt of the United States Government, as defined in section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, reaches the statutory limit, the authority of the Department of the Treasury provided in section 3123 of title 31, United States Code, to pay with legal tender the principal and interest on debt held by the public shall take priority over all other obligations incurred by the Government of the United States.

Toomey’s proposal was voted down on party lines. Democrats derided it as the “pay China first” bill, even though they knew perfectly well that most of the federal debt is held by Americans.

We need to understand this. The Democrats wanted a risk of default. Without it, they were afraid that Republicans would be emboldened to hold the line on debt. They were probably right, but we need to understand who it was that was engaging in “extortion”.

Later, Toomey introduced a modified version of the bill that would also prioritize Social Security and military pay, but that wasn’t any more popular with Democrats. And that tells you what you need to know. The Democrats’ position wasn’t about preventing default and protecting Social Security payments. Quite the opposite: preserving the risk of default and Social Security interruption was their strategy for averting big spending cuts and entitlement reform.

In Paul Krugman’s latest, he wants to debunk the idea the Ronald Reagan ushered in a period of unprecedented growth. He uses this chart:

Now this is strange in two ways. First, he’s using productivity growth instead of growth. That’s misleading because most conservatives would claim that Reagan’s supply-side economics promotes labor and (especially) entrepreneurship, not productivity per se (that is: effort, not output per effort).

But more importantly, he lumps Reagan in with Carter, Ford, and some of Nixon and Bush 41! Throw all those guys together and sure, the numbers do look lousy.

Krugman tries to blame the Bureau of Labor Statistics for his poor choice of data:

Here’s one measure that the BLS happens to have put in a convenient chart, so that I’m not choosing the dates.

Ooo-kay. But Krugman did pick the dates by picking the chart. He could have picked a different chart. Or, he could have done what I did and go to the actual data. (Perhaps he did, and didn’t like those results as much.)

Here is Krugman’s contention:

We had an awesome performance in the generation following the war (despite very high tax rates on the rich and a very strong union movement); we had a long period of poor productivity performance that spanned the Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I administrations; we then had a revival during the Clinton administration, but even so not up to postwar standards. By the way, I don’t give Clinton credit for that revival; it was about learning to use technology. But in any case, there is no hint of a Reagan miracle in the data.

Here’s the data, by administration:

• Eisenhower: 1.30%
• Kennedy: 2.56%
• Johnson: 2.37%
• Nixon/Ford: 1.01%
• Carter: -0.01%
• Reagan: 0.65% (1.26% if 1982 is omitted)
• Bush 41: 0.44%
• Clinton: 0.97%
• Bush 43: 1.11%

The average growth throughout the period was 1.22%. So I think we can say that the idea that Reagan opened a period of unprecedented growth is indeed debunked, at least as far as productivity is concerned. But the data don’t support Krugman’s story either. Aside from a boom during the 1960s, productivity has grown fairly steadily at about a rate of 1% per year; a bit lower during Bush 41, and much worse during Carter.

If you delete 1982 (the worst number in the entire data), you get Reagan at a little better than average; a dramatic improvement over the Carter catastrophe. I think that’s mostly how people remember Reagan’s economic record; he got America back on track after the malaise of the Carter years.

ASIDE: I think deleting 1982 is reasonable because it is pretty well accepted (even by Krugman, I would think) that the 1982 recession was collateral damage from the fight to tame inflation. History has shown that inflation can be tamed quickly, once the public believes you are serious, but after Nixon, Ford and Carter, it took time to do so.

It is interesting, however, that by this measure (endorsed by Paul Krugman), George W Bush’s administration was the best since the 1960s.

POSTSCRIPT: I also looked to see what would happen if we shifted all the administrations by one year, on the theory that during the first year of an administration the economy is still operating under the policies of the previous administration. You find that Kennedy — whose economic policies were similar to Reagan’s — looks outstanding (3.31%), Johnson looks ordinary (1.46%), and Carter looks even more atrocious (-0.51%).

POST-POSTSCRIPT: I also found that the BLS chart is labeled incorrectly. The years are off by one, so the Krugman’s 1973-1990 period is actually 1974-1991. I wonder why they do that.

(Via the Corner.)

The Secret Service pays Joe Biden to protect him:

The Secret Service pays the vice president $2,200 per month to rent a cottage next to his waterfront home outside Wilmington, Del., FoxNews.com has confirmed.

Sigh.

When one branch of the legislature withholds its approval from legislation favored by the president, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz calls that “dictatorship”.

Remember the left’s calls for civility after the Loughner shooting? The left sure doesn’t.

Joe Biden calls Republicans terrorists, according to Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with the execrable Mike Doyle (D-PA):

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

ASIDE: Biden now kinda-sorta-not-really denies the quote:

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

Basically Biden claims Politico didn’t get the quote verbatim. If Biden isn’t lying outright, he probably said “acted like that” in response to Doyle’s “terrorists”.

ANOTHER ASIDE: How exactly authorizing the addition of trillions of spending to the national debt makes it “impossible to spend any money” is beyond me.

It’s not just Biden and Doyle, there’s also the New York Times:

The rest of [the deal] is a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.

Hostage-taking!

ASIDE: A complete capitulation? If only.

And there’s also Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL):

The Tea Partiers and the GOP have made their slash and burn lunacy clear, and while I do not love this compromise, my vote is a hose to stop the burning. The arsonists must be stopped.

One might even get the idea that when the left cried out for more civility in politics, they didn’t really mean it. . .

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg nails it. I looked up his examples of Democratic civility. Nancy Pelosi wants to save the world, from us:

What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. . . We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.

NYT columnist Tom Friedman calls us the Hezbollah faction:

If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission.

(Although, from Friedman that might not be intended as an insult. . .)

NYT columnist Joe Nocera gets excited:

Tea Party’s War on America

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.

Chris Matthews does the Chris Matthews thing:

Why did [Obama] let this develop for six months. . . this drum roll of the Republicans saying, ‘We’ve got the baby. You don’t get the baby back unless you pay us?’ Why do you let the other side have the baby, to use kidnapping terms?

You know, it seems just possible that the left didn’t actually mean any of that stuff about civility.

UPDATE: A political cartoon calls the Tea Party terrorists, and fantasizes about the president sending in the SEALs to kill them.

UPDATE: Robert Reich, NPR commentator and former Secretary of Labor, calls Republicans hostage-takers. Also, Chris Matthews does the Chris Matthews thing some more:

Let me finish tonight with this bad experience we’ve all just been through. What we saw — what I saw, at least, was one guy with a knife and the other trying to avoid being cut. It was a thug attacking a victim. It was a mugging.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof, compares the Tea Party to Iran and Al Qaeda:

So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.

And finally, Maureen Dowd manages to be the most temperate of the NYT columnists (and how sad is that?) with her entry:

The maniacal Tea Party freshmen are trying to burn down the House they were elected to serve in. It turns out they wanted to come inside to get a blueprint of the historic building to sabotage it.

Like gargoyles on the Capitol, the adamantine nihilists are determined to blow up the country’s prestige, their party and even their own re-election chances if that’s what it takes.

This outpouring of vitriol and, yes, demonization in the pages of the New York Times stands in stark contrast to their call for civility in politics:

This page and many others have identified those voices [whose “partisanship has been excessive” and who have sown “division and dread”] and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents.

What a strange turnaround! Unless, just perhaps, they never meant it in the first place.

UPDATE: What I said about Maureen Dowd being the most temperate in the New York Times?Er, never mind:

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.

UPDATE: Peter Wehner writes:

Why on earth would liberals do something like that? After all, they care– deeply care – about civility in public discourse. I know because they tell me that all the time.

When it serves their purposes of the moment.

(Via Instapundit.)