Mr. Ryan Goes to Washington

Life’s Little Blessings

“I said to the Captain, I said you want to watch out for those icebergs, because a lot of them are a lot bigger under the water than they look on top of the water, but no, he just had to plough on, showing off to all the women, so then, obviously, wallop. Big hole in the side, went down in under ten minutes. Egg on his face, I say.”

Hugh Laurie, A Bit of Fry and Laurie

As readers of this blog will know, I make mistakes (hence the title). Every blogger does, of course, at least if s/he is mouthing off about politics and news stories. If you’ve never found yourself with egg on your face, you obviously don’t take many chances in your blogging (or you’re Paul Krugman, apparently). But if your own mistakes annoy you, there’s always comfort in the more visible mistakes of other, more famous people. Let’s take this moment to savour some mistakes we didn’t make this week.

For instance, unlike Glenn Reynolds, we didn’t choose this week to write this (H/t Balloon Juice):

Meanwhile, on foreign policy – another Carter weak point – Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as “reformers”) took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.

We also didn’t choose this cover for the new edition of The Weekly Standard (H/t Jonathan Chait):

And we’re not the ambassador from Pakistan:

“If Whitey Bulger can live undetected by American police for so long, why can’t Osama bin Laden live undetected by Pakistani authorities?” Haqqani asked.

It’s cute of Haqqani to be reading the Most Wanted List for other examples of hard-to-apprehend fugitives. But Whitey Bulger probably isn’t the one he wants to discuss.

For the record, James “Whitey” Bulger was able to rule Boston’s criminal underworld in large part because he was an informant protected by the FBI—even as he allegedly murdered people. It also didn’t hurt that his brother, William Bulger, was the president of the Massachusetts State Senate. When the Justice Department finally moved to arrest Whitey Bulger anyway, he was tipped off by his corrupt contacts in the FBI and the Boston police.

So: enmeshed with the government and protected by the agency that was supposed to be capturing him. If Haqqani really believes bin Laden was the Whitey Bulger of Pakistan, then the ISI has a lot to answer for.

And we didn’t have the kind of week Donald Trump had:

Because everything is political to me, it is kind of awesome to think about how disastrous the last week has been for Trump. While he was spending the week launching racist attacks at President Obama, the WH is busy tracking down the man who attacked Trump’s city and finally bringing him to justice. Then, yet another birth certificate copy is released, and Trump is forced to claim victory while everyone outside the teatard base is laughing at him. He then gets demolished Saturday evening by Obama and Seth Meyers. On Sunday, his television show, Celebrity Apprentice, is knocked off the air for breaking news, and while Trump is last seen debating whether to fire lil John, Obama strides out to inform us that Osama is dead. The dagger through the heart, though, is that this Osama news is so momentous that no one, not even the Fox news hacks or the villagers at Morning Joe, want to have Trump on to whine about how mistreated he was on Saturday.

And we’re not Michele Bachmann:

At least not unless you actually are Glenn Reynolds, some guy at National Review, the Pakistani ambassador, Donald Trump or Michele Bachmann. In that case, you can always remind yourself that thankfully, you’re not George F. Will, who in 1989 wrote this:

Liberalization is a ploy…the Wall will remain.

And then turned on the TV and saw this:

See? It could be worse.

Well, not if you’re Donald Trump.

Update:

Andrew Malcolm also wants to play (H/t Sadly, No!):

Into the Fields with Ron Paul

When Norwegians want to point out that someone is dead wrong, we often use the expression “you are completely out in the field”. The metaphor indicated here is someone who has driven off the road and lost his way, mucking around out in the rough terrain of a muddy field. Sort of like this:

I wish I could say that Ron Paul has simply gone into the field. Unfortunately, it’s worse: He’s actually gone into the wrong field. This is what he had to say about the recent press conference of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke continues to ignore his culpability for the inflation all Americans suffer due to the Fed’s relentless monetary expansion.

Paul also went on Cenk Uygur’s show to warn you about the impending hyperinflation, food riots and plagues of locusts which are signalled by Bernanke’s speech.

Which is an interesting interpretation. Here is Matt Yglesias’ reaction to that same speech (my emphasis):

The key moment in Ben Bernanke’s press conference was when he explained that the Fed wasn’t doing more to ensure full employment because it’s worried that additional action might cause inflation expectations to come unmoored and ”if inflation expectations were to become unmoored the cost of that in terms of employment loss in the future would be quite signifiant.” In other words, he’ll make sure to err on the side of policy that’s too tight because if he tries to get policy right he might accidentally end up being too loose and then he’d need to tighten in response and that would be bad.

So Ron Paul hears Ben Bernanke say that the Fed is unwilling to do more to push inflation up to its 2% target (which would be a good thing, as it would help reduce unemployment). And Ron Paul concludes that this means the US is about to experience hyperinflation.

How bad is the current horrific, out-of-control “inflation all Americans suffer”, by the way? The one people like Ron Paul are so worried about that they are willing to accept 9% unemployment?

Oh, right.

I mean, left. LEFT!

The War on Terror Is Over!

At least that’s what Mitt Romney says, and who am I to doubt him?

Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggestpeacetime spending binges in American history. With its failed stimulus package, its grandiose new social programs, its fervor for more taxes and government regulations, and its hostility toward business, the administration has made the debt problem worse, hindered economic recovery and needlessly cost American workers countless jobs. [My emphasis]

Granted, there still seems to be some kinetic military activities going on in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. But what does that matter on this happy day? Go out there and kiss a pretty nurse!

Trump the Pre-Fabricated Self-Made Man

David Brooks explains the appeal of The Donald (H/t Balloon Juice):

 MR. BROOKS. I think he’s much deeper. The guy’s been around since the ‘80s, and he stands for something. He stands for success, the gospel of success, that you can start out small and make it big in this country. Not that he did, but, but, but he stands for that.

MR. ROBINSON: Well, with the money in there before. So.

MR. BROOKS: Right, right. But he stands for that. He’s been preaching this for, for 20 and 30 years.

So this is the American Dream: You start out small, with nothing but a vision and a very rich father, and just a few bankrupcies later, you too can be a very rich self-made man.