"Congress's special deficit-cutting committee bowed to reality Monday and called it quits..."

"... with both sides having concluded it was easier to swallow failure than any of the possible compromise deals offered...."

Members of both parties are worried about the impact of the automatic cuts, but it would be even more difficult for them to come to a comprehensive budget agreement to supplant them in an election year than it was for the special deficit committee.

"[A]mnesiacs can lose all memory of their past lives, and yet remember music."

"When British conductor and musician Clive Wearing contracted a brain infection in 1985 he was left with a memory span of only 10 seconds...."

But despite being acknowledged by doctors as having one of the most severe cases of amnesia ever, his musical ability and much of his musical memory was intact....

"If you give Clive a new piece of music he sight reads it and plays it on the piano, but you can't say he's learnt it," [said his wife].... "Clive has no knowledge of ever having played the piano or whether he still can."...

"Even though he's had a piano in his own room for 26 years he doesn't know it until it's pointed out to him."

When did articles all start to begin "When did...?"?

"When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?"

"When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?"

The pepper-spray meme goes viral.

More where that came from: here.

Mountain bike dog.

Lily Shreds trailside. on pinkbike.com

Via Metafilter.

Should Obama not run for re-election in 2012?

That's the meme of the day over at Memeorandum. Patrick Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen have this piece in the Wall Street Journal: "The Hillary Moment: President Obama can't win by running a constructive campaign, and he won't be able to govern if he does win a second term." Investor's Business Daily has picked it up: "The 'Dump Obama' movement has begun; Guess who'd replace him?"

I think it's ridiculous to pressure the incumbent candidate to step down, especially to cede the floor to the person he beat to get the job in the first place. The fact is, he's President, and that has a powerful effect on our minds. We can certainly see him as President. Everyone else is a puny upstart (until they prove otherwise). Now, perhaps I'm more of a sucker for incumbents than most people. Only twice in my life — and I've voted since 1972 — have I declined to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, and both times, it was for an incumbent Republican. I'm referring to the 1976 and the 2004 elections. In both cases, I could visualize the President as President, but not the challenger.

Now, let me be clear. I have argued that Obama shouldn't want to run for a second term. Back on April 3d of this year, I indulged in some imaginative mind-reading, but that wasn't about how the Democratic Party could increase its chances of winning in 2012. It was a flight of fancy into Obama's psyche:

If he is reelected, then that will be the end of running for President. He'll be 54 years old, and what will he do? Move to Hawaii and play golf? But he could move to Hawaii and play golf in January 2013, if that's an enticing prospect. And, if he does, he won't have maxed out his eligibility for being President. He can tantalize us, year after year, with the possibility that he would run for another term — a fascinatingly out-of-sequence term. The thing he's best at is running for President. Why let that game expire? He could toy with it in 2016, when he's 58, and in 2020, when he's a clear-visioned 62, and in 2024, when he's a well-seasoned 66, and in 2028, when he's a beneficent elder, offering his services once again, because his country longs for the golden days of 2011. It will never end, as long as the icon of hope and change — oh, my lord, I typo'd "hope and chains"! — walks the face of the earth... unless he serves that second term.

So, I can see Obama choosing to withdraw, with some magnificent long-term life plan. But pressure him out? Ridiculous! Whatever his poll numbers now, whatever the pain and suffering, he's got a long campaign ahead of him. The campaigning Obama is the one we know best. Sure, he'll have a lot to answer for, but it's not a question of whether we're happy about what's been going on these last few years. It will be a choice between him and that other guy (or gal). And I'm betting he'll win.

ADDED: Here's a May 1st post talking about Mickey Kaus saying Obama shouldn't run:

I'm not saying Mickey stole my idea. In fact, our ideas are completely different (except for picturing Obama not running). Mickey portrays Obama as a big old failure who ought to get out gracefully and give another Democrat a clean shot. Meade and I were fantasizing from Obama's perspective — what his life really feels like to him and how to milk the pleasure of being Obama for all it's worth.

Prediction: Russ Feingold will run against Scott Walker in the recall election...

... if there is a recall election. I'm not predicting that the governor's antagonists will succeed in getting 540,208 signatures in 60 days, which is what they need to force an election. Once they've snapped up the easy signatures in Madison they've got to venture out to chillier places. For example, at yesterday's Packer game:


(Ha ha. The last guy in that video is great)

I'm only saying that if they get the signatures, Russ Feingold — despite repeated statements to the contrary — will step forward and run to take the governorship away from Scott Walker.

The fact that the signature effort may fail is just one of the reasons why Russ Feingold has taken the official position that he will not run. Yes, some people might be more willing to sign the recall petition if they knew the strongest-polling Democrat was ready to go, but the signature-gathering-effort would turn into a discussion about whether Feingold is preferable to Walker, and — as I read Feingold's mind — Feingold would prefer for people to leave him out of it and concentrate on how bad Scott Walker is.

By disclaiming the desire to take power, Feingold is able to present himself as a statesman, appearing at numerous anti-Walker events to bolster the morale of the protesters and, seemingly selflessly,  to criticize Walker. Here he was at Saturday's recall rally. Here he was at the Walkerville protest in June. And here he was embodying the Wisconsin protests for Netroots Nation people. That was back in March, before he'd done much at Wisconsin protests (oddly enough!), but when folks outside of Wisconsin, like FireDogLake, were straining to connect Feingold to the protests. FireDogLake noted that "practically every rally in Madison has included some variant of a 'Feingold for Governor' sign."

Back then, Feingold had only appeared at — I think — one anti-Walker protest: On February 18th, he marched with some firefighters. That was 2 days after he announced that he was starting a new organization called "Progressives United" (which hasn't made much... progress), about a month after he signed on to teach "Current Legal Issues: The U.S. Senate" at Marquette Law School, and 3 months after he was humiliated by the loss of his Senate seat to a political newby, the tea partier Ron Johnson.

As the protest season unrolled, and Walker-haters chanted "Recall Walker" and carried signs picturing Feingold with the slogan "This is what a Governor looks like," Feingold had to be careful not to look too eager to grab the governorship. Under Wisconsin law, there could not be a recall election until early 2012, and the time-line had to be managed. Feingold figured out — I'm guessing — that he needed to stay in the background, act as though he wanted nothing for himself, and let the demand build. People would have to beg to run.

If and when the recall Walker campaign come to fruition, there will be a painful, embarrassing dearth of willing Democratic candidates. The cry will reach a crescendo: Help us, Russ Feingold, you're our only hope!

And then, not for himself, not because he lost the Senate seat, not because he'd like to set himself up for a run at the presidency in 2016, but humbly, out of a pressing sense of duty, for the sake of the People of Wisconsin, Reluctant Russ will step forward. Oh, the liberal love that will gush forth that day!

Will he win? I don't know. He could be rehumiliated. First, that tea partier Ron Johnson, and next, that weasel Walker!

But what else can Feingold do with himself? Teach more courses about law and politics at Marquette? No, he has big ambitions, and the most ambitious path leads to the presidency. Russ wanted the presidency in 2008, (and his campaign collapsed early). What is the one thing that would — by far — help launch Feingold to the presidency if anything is going to launch him? Executive experience — successful executive experience — running a state.

He can't wait until 2014 — when Walker's term runs out — to run for governor. He must have realized that when he lost his Senate seat. This recall is exactly what he needs to restore his political career. Note that he declined to run for the Senate seat Herb Kohl is vacating. Why? I think it's that he already had fixed his ambition on the governor position. Why? It would be too small an accomplishment to crawl back to the Senate, where Ron Johnson is sitting in his seat. And the Senate is not a good path to the presidency. Feingold learned that the last time around, in the 2008 campaign. You need executive experience (or you need to be Barack Obama). Senator doesn't cut it. Especially for 2016, after Barack Obama.

So you take over as Governor of Wisconsin. You bring peace to our state after all of this discord. The liberals lapse into a snooze of bliss. Realistically, they know you can't do anything, because the Republicans hold the legislature. All you need to be is our dear Russ, the liberal, who ended the pain that was Scott Walker. While the liberals are sated and sleeping it off, Russ will build his new reputation. He'll demonstrate bipartisanship, working with the Republican legislature, gathering in a few symbolic accomplishments. The economic outlook will probably brighten — with Walker's reforms remaining in place — and Governor Feingold will glow over every tick upward. Feingold will seem so mature and moderate, so responsible and effective, so intelligent... so excellent!

Blah blah blah...  

President Feingold!!!

"Pepper Spray Outrage."

UC—Davis feels the pain, after a viral video shows a campus police officer spraying students with pepper spray as they were seated on the sidewalk, as if they were some pesky weeds growing between the cracks and he was wielding the Roundup.

Penn State University Professor John McCarthy, "who has written extensively about campus protest and about police response to protest... said that campus police should first err on the side of permitting protest."

But if there is a need to clear a space, the standard response in a situation such as that at Davis, in which students are threatening no one, is to issue a warning and then to remove students one by one. Pepper spray would never be used in such a situation, he said.

Was there some idea that physically manhandling the students would have looked worse? I think we've learned that it doesn't!

Scott Turow advocates amending the Constitution to restrict free speech.

It's never been done, but he thinks it's time now, and he recommends this push for a constitutional amendment as the next step for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It's intermission.

You can talk about anything you want.

"I have to wonder about the perspective of anyone who considers Althouse 'a crazed right-wing blog'..."

"... what with her voting for Obama in 2008 and all. Clearly, she’s extreme!"

From a discussion based on a blog post by a lefty lawprof who just can't understand why "right-wing" lawprof blogs get so many more readers than lefty lawprof blogs. The answers are so obvious and his whining is so unattractive that I can't be bothered spelling it out, but I'm sure said lefty lawprof won't really mind, since he's got so many other lefty lawprofs to look to for succour. With all that in-house comfort, are you surprised he's so flabby?

"Paying Students To Quit Law School."

A proposal from 2 Yale lawprofs Akhil Reed Amar and Ian Ayres.

"The deficit-reduction supercommittee, stuck in a partisan deadlock, faces an almost certain collapse..."

"... raising the threat of disruptive military spending cuts and a resurgent public anger at Congress as it struggles with the basic tasks of governance."

That expected failure injects a greater uncertainty into the nation's political and economic landscape heading into a volatile election year....

Some critics, mostly Republicans, have faulted President Barack Obama for keeping his distance from the committee for months after submitting his own deficit plan. But the outcome could create a political opening for Mr. Obama, bolstering a presidential campaign strategy of running against an ostensibly incompetent Congress.

Remontant foxglove.

That's the first thing we notice upon leaving the house today. We drive over to the east side of town to check out the signs...


... and get some coffee....



Waiting for my small cappuccino, I have plenty of time to read the parody lyrics taped to the espresso machine.

“I love Madison. It’s a ‘real’ place. It has a sense of itself... It is what it is, and it’s fun to watch.”

That's a quote from me in an article about me at WPRI—Wisconsin's Free Market Think Tank, written by Sunny Schubert, whom I talked to over coffee for about an hour.

But [Althouse] gets irked by the insistence of so many residents that “this is a town for the left and if you don’t think like us, you don’t belong here.”

Ironically, she says, “These are people who like to think of themselves as so kind and gentle.” She is amused by the “self-love involved when you think your policies are so right, nobody could possibly disagree with you.”

Russ Feingold: "The big lie is beginning. The big lie is that this is an out-of-state movement...."

He was speaking about the movement to recall Scott Walker at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday.



"The big lie"? The "big lie" is a lie that has "a certain force of credibility" precisely because it is so big:

[T]he broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Those aren't Feingold's words. Those are the words of Adolf Hitler, which Feingold evoked when he used the historically resonant expression "the big lie." In accusing his opponents of employing "the big lie," Feingold is likening them to Hitler.

Let me remind you that the Wisconsin protesters have been equating Scott Walker with Hitler since last winter.  From last March, here's a protester explaining why Scott Walker is like Hitler. Here's another explanation, from a woman with a sign portraying Scott Walker as Hitler. Here's a photo I took last February. I vividly remember this woman:



I asked her if she thought Scott Walker was like Hitler...

... and she said "Yes." So I said, "Are you saying that you think fascism could come to America," and she said, "It's what's happening."

Russ Feingold is a very intelligent and informed man. His allusion to Hitler is subtle, not — I think — accidental. He's sounding the deep chord. His speech continues:

"How can they even say it with a straight face? This movement is so grass-roots, so red-and-white Wisconsin, that it is absolutely ridiculous to say that."

Can you look at this picture of a truck parked on the Capitol Square during yesterday's rally and maintain a straight face?



It says: "Kentucky/West Virginia/Indiana." (And here's a golden oldie from last March: "Chicago is up in the house... Everyone left is from Chicago.")

Feingold continues:

Now, we've got a great football team. They may not be #1, except for a couple little problems there, but they're darned close, but when it comes to grass-roots activism that is all Badger, we are #1.

All right. Quite aside from the truth of the assertion that the recall movement is totally in-state and grass-roots, how can he say "Now, we've got a great football team. They may not be #1"? We've got a great football team that is most certainly #1, but it's not in Madison, Wisconsin. It's in Green Bay. You can even hear an audience member yell out "Two!" in a prompt that Feingold could have heard. But it's a Madison, Wisconsin crowd, and Feingold is Madison-focused. He used the expression "red-and-white Wisconsin" as if the colors of the University of Wisconsin—Madison were the state colors. Red-and-white Wisconsin? What about green-gold-and-white Wisconsin? Feingold is unwittingly displaying that he is out of touch with the rest of the state — which voted him out of the U.S. Senate in 2010, despite his vast popularity in Madison.

And this is the state that voted in Scott Walker. The people of Madison never supported him, but they weren't in synch with the majority of the state in 2010. Now, it's a year later, and the people of Madison want to force another election, using the recall mechanism from the Wisconsin constitution, which doesn't limit the reasons why we might recall a governor. Russ Feingold addressed the question of when recalls are justified:

Our law says you can be recalled if you simply attack the people of the State of Wisconsin, and that is what this is all about. 

The state constitution says no such thing. "Attack the people"? It is for us, the people of Wisconsin, to decide when and why we want to use the recall device. There's no attack-the-people standard, whatever that's supposed to mean. Feingold attempts to infuse meaning into his made-up standard:

Now, I'm going to be the first to say I don't believe you should do recalls just any old time. I don't think that's a good idea. I think it could be damaging. 

I agree!

For example, I don't think it would be a valid basis to recall Walker because he ruined our chances to have a railroad system. I mean that was totally dumb. It was $800 million from the federal government that he just threw away. 

He just threw it away. Isn't it shocking to think of federal money like that? The federal government is deeply in debt. There is no money to throw away. Once the federal government offers money for some specific purpose it may seem to acquire reality, and if you are completely fixated on what you want for yourself, you may think, I'd better snap that up now or I'm going to lose it, but that's a delusion. There is no money. And if we'd taken the money for the railroad line (to connect Madison to Milwaukee), we would have been on the hook — as a state — for endless additional expenses over the years.

But according to Feingold, the railroad "was our future." It's not right to recall Scott Walker over that, however, Feingold says, because "he said he was going to do that." (That is true. It's why I voted for Walker.) What Walker didn't say, and what is therefore the reason to recall him, Feingold says, "was that he was going to go at the basic collective bargaining rights and voting rights of every citizen in this state. That's a big deal. That goes to the foundation of who we are."

Now, Walker didn't go after "the basic collective bargaining rights... of every citizen in this state." He only went after some of the collective bargaining rights of some public employees. And he didn't go after the "voting rights of every citizen in this state" — only the "rights" of citizens who haven't yet acquired a state-issued photo ID.

But Feingold is stirring up the crowd. And the fact is, he's a great speaker. He ends: "Where do I sign?" and signs a recall petition.

Our recall procedure requires an election with an opposition candidate, and what's the point of going through the collection of all these signatures unless the governor can be ousted? Who will oppose Scott Walker? The only candidate with a real chance, it seems, is Russ Feingold, but Russ says he's not running. That's what he's saying now, before the signatures are collected. I happen to believe that if there is a recall election, Feingold will run. But that is a subject for another post.