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Anti-Palin tempest in a teapot? "Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell"

"This has been a long tease with Sarah Palin, and at some point that tease has just got to go away. What's going to happen next," snickered Laura Ingraham (above left) to guest Ann Coulter last night as the two blonde bombshells shared what struck us as a covenly caterwaul over the Mama Grizzly's disintermediating GOP primary tactics. Twitter buddy Charles @repub9989 thinks it's a jealous-woman thing, but then there's Red State's Erick Erickson's complaint. See below for more, and click here for The Right Scoop's video.

"Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell," twittered Moe Lane this afternoon in response to our attempt to defuse a friendly-fire incident over our blogfriend's preference for announced Lone-Star candidate Scott Rick Perry (thanks to chickelit in the comments for the correction) vs our own first love, unannounced shoot-to-where-it's-going Sarah Palin:

Oh. Didn't realize you were a Perry supporter. Just retweeting a tweet that made sense to me. Reminds me of the fog of war.

We were but two hand-to-hand combatants in an army of cyberwarriors locked in a fiery internecine battle that erupted this morning between Palinistas and everyone else on our side of the aisle in the wake of a dishy catfest last night between mischief-maker Ann Coulter and host Laura Ingraham, subbing for O'Reilly:

Coulter: Most Americans don't want Sarah Palin for President, but she's become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party. She's just "The One" to a certain segment of right wingers, and the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this — no conservative on TV will criticize Palin because they don't want to deal with the hate mail.

Ingraham: People like Palin to show up at these events and whip up the crowd. There's a place for that, and I think we need that. but people, when I talk to them, they seem to be desperate and hungry more than ever for real substance, beyond kind of the sloganeering and the bumper sticker stuff.

Bring on the smelling salts. Then there was Red State's Erick Erickson, "all wee weed up over Palin," as Dan Riehl so memorably puts it. We particularly liked Rants for Reasonable People's PolitiJim's open letter to Erickson:

Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who comment how many ended up as 'the tea party?'  When the 'big government' republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain - Palin was a sign of hope.

Update: Memeorandum links Erick Erickson's "Enough."

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Palin Undefeated: It's the crony capitalism, stupid!

This weekend Steve Bannon's Palin documentary ‘The Undefeated’ will be available On Demand and Pay-Per-View from a major cable or satellite company near you. We wrote about the movie — sight unseen — last June in "Palin Undefeated: 'A story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters.'" Now we can put our money where our mouth was, in the comfort of our own home. Above, sugar-and-spice Sarah (center) with her siblings.

Funny how incurious the "intellectually curious" hive mind of the left can be when it comes to all things Sarah Palin. The latest is a classic blinders-on, Journolist-talking-points-in-hand "review" of Steve Bannon's Palin Documentery "The Undefeated." (h/t Tim Graham of News Busters). Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday is the mouthpiece of this particular outpouring of Palin envy. A few excerpts and then our take:

Based on her modest demeanor and record of budget, energy and ethics reform in Alaska, it’s easy to see her appeal to McCain, who called Palin while she was at the Alaska State Fair to ask her to run for veep. What "The Undefeated" doesn’t explain — in addition to the title "Undefeated" when Palin was, actually, defeated in 2008 — is how a woman whose early career had been dedicated to transcending partisan politics became such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump. Instead, Bannon sets Palin up as a victim — of liberals, of establishment conservatives and of the "lamestream media" that his subject has become so skilled at manipulating (a talent the filmmaker strangely neglects to mention).

About that title, "The Undefeated." Ever heard of wordplay, Ms. Hornaday? Sarah Palin may have lost an election, but she fights like a girl! Disintermediating the powers that be, she picked herself up and got back in the race. The words of Sun Tzu come to mind:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Then there's Hornaday's fixation with "trascending partisan politics." You see a lot of that from the left, presumably hoping to catch the eye — and poll-tested votes — of the mushy middle. How could a "non-partisan" Palin who rooted out corruption in her OWN PARTY become "such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump"? It's the crony capitalism, stupid. Real Clear Politics has the scoop:

In her speech at the bucolic National Balloon Classic field in Indianola [tomorrow], Palin will lean on loaded phrases like “crony capitalism” and “permanent political class” in laying out her view of the U.S. political system’s deep-rooted ills, according to a source close to Palin and familiar with the content of the speech.

And this from National Review:

“She will also talk, more broadly, about how she is not enamored of the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who do not deserve to be elected if they only continue the status quo,” the source continues. “She will discuss corporate lobbyists, White House operatives, and others who enable the vested interests.” Many of the themes from her recent Facebook post, “Conquering the Storm,” will be mentioned.

Will she or won't she? Dan Riehl says "yes" on Twitter:

Overseas trip had to be Palin's last check box. She's getting in.

Disintermediate at will:

The former Alaska Governor is scheduled to attend the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, where she will speak alongside global economic leaders like Larry Summers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The conference begins Oct. 11, the same day as the GOP primary debate hosted by Bloomberg in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Update: Doug Ross Larwyn's Lynx link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Like Andrew Breitbart only more so

"She just paints whoever inspires her," twitters Mandy Nagy — aka Liberty Chick — whose mother's deep, dark and delicious portrait of Andrew Breitbart (detail above) caught our eye in the thrust and parry of the social media matrix yesterday. Breitbart's using the image as his new Twitter avatar. "Your face was a good one to paint (while listening to "Burning Down the House)," quipped artist Nagy. "Like Andrew Breitbart only more so," we chimed in. (View Nagy Gallery here)

"Why bother to remember when you can just use Google?" runs the ars technica headline teasing the latest scientific findings of where our social-networking heads are at:

The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.

Like any set of entrails, these have got some of our fellow opinionators tearing their hair out over the end of civilization as we know it, but we're kinda thrilled. It's totally Darwinian, our homo sapient survival instincts kicking in to adapt us to a changing environment. As a brand manager might put it, It's the "transactive memory," stupid.

"Transactive memory suggests an analysis not only of how couples and families in close relationships coordinate memory and tasks in the home, but how larger groups and organizations come to develop 'group minds,' memory systems that are more complex and potentially more effective than those of any of the individuals that comprise them," explains Daniel M. Wegner, John Lindsley Professor in Memory of William James (a co-author of the paper described above) of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Can you say Adam Smith's Invisible Hand? Above, flocks of birds "wheel and swoop in unison," not unlike twitterers and other social network denizens," as we blogged a couple of years back. Totally awesome must-watch video here.

"Researchers found that people are more likely to remember information if they believe they won't be able to access it in the future, and that they are more likely to remember how they found the information than the information itself." Works for us. Choose your battles. Keep your ammo close to the chest. Go for the jugular. "Shoot to where it's going, not to where it's been." "Don't retreat, reload." "Fight like a girl!"  As Ben Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." 

Clicking over to the Nagy online studio, we were smitten with the artist's wild and whacky portrait of take-no-prisoners Red Eye force of nature Greg Gutfeld (detail above). We agree with Chris Barnhart that Red Eye has "the potential to be the 'gateway drug' of a whole new generation of conservatives and independents."

"The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves," write the authors in their abstract of the study. Enter, stage right, Google+. Again the social network is aflutter over what it all might mean for the future of our species, and again, it's Darwinian, in the Thomas Sowell/Geerat Vermeij sense:

It's starting to appear that Google actually does have the chops, and obviously the financial backing, to put out a social product sweet enough to lure people, who tend to be creatures of habit, to spend less time with their traditional network and cultivate a new one.

Andrew Breitbart. Greg Gutfeld. Looks like NagyArt is on a roll. Could Jonah Goldberg's Twitter avi (above) be next on her palette of immortals who will keep the (incandescent) lights burning in the Shining City?

It's the market forces, stupid.

Update from the Liberty Chick herself:

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post! Creative :)

Update II: The conversation continues.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Rep. Weiner: "You and I have different values"

"I hate that stupid picture of me in the blue. I'm standing in the mirror making a weird face, why would anyone use that?" twittered a sadder-but-wiser Gennette Cordova this morning in a series of 140-or-fewer-character expressions of disgust with media distortions of her image, both physical and psychological, since last Friday, when Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism broke the Big Story that came to be known as Weinergate. Above, Photoshopped "mirror" images of Cordova based upon her Twitter avatar.

"If calling out publications for their inaccurate/shoddy journalism is stirring the pot, so be it," twittered justifiably miffed Seattle journalism student Gennette Cordova this morning, attempting to regain her balance in the aftermath of being mugged by the reality of business-as-usual journalistic spin. It was the left-leaning Politico and the right-leaning New York Post who, she said, had spun her own and her mother's words to sensationalize and distort the facts as she knows them in the Weinergate scandal. Salaciousness sells! In the case of Politico, for example, compare the political journal's headline with Cordova's follow-up tweet:

Politico: "Seattle student: Weiner photo meant for porn star."

Cordova on Twitter: "It wasn't an interview. I spoke candidly with someone posing as a photog assistant. And I never said the picture was meant for a porn star. He [Politico reporter] suggested it and I said maybe. I don't know and don't care."

Update Cordova to Reuven Fenton at New York Post: I clearly remember you suggesting the idea about the porn star, as well as me [sic] being "collateral damage."

Sadder but wiser, indeed. A cautionary tale for young lovelies who "just want to have fun" to be wary of the skeevy allure of little big men like "The Ick-arus of Capitol Hill" prowling the internet. A self-described "progressive," Cordova describes the moment "When Gen met Tony":

Actually I became a fan after I saw him demolish Bachmann on Hannity about 2 months ago. It was great.

"You and I have different values. That's what this fight is about," said Congressman Weiner in a rare moment of truthtelling during a March 16 shouting match debate with Rep Michele Bachmann (MN-6) on Hannity. Oh, the irony.

Can you say eye of the beholder? Here on the Tea Party side of the aisle, of course, we saw Bachmann demolish Weiner.

Note: Hats off to Michelle Malkin for turning us on to SnapBird, an invaluable aid in following Twitter conversations:

As an avid Twitter user myself, I use the SnapBird archive to search old tweets You can search anyone’s public tweets through the service.

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

"Palin uses Twitter to communicate. Romney uses PowerPoint"

"I can see the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown from my front porch!" we twittered early afternoon. Sarah Palin stopped off there this morning on her "One Nation" bus tour of the nation's historical sites to retrace the footsteps of our Founding Fathers along Boston's Freedom Trail (above with daughter Piper and mother Sally Heath at the Old North Church. Steven Senne/AP photo), before heading north to a clambake with "some key NH Republicans" in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Meanwhile in other headline-grabbing news an upstaged Mitt Romney announced his 2012 candidacy at Doug and Stella Scamman's Bittersweet Farm in Stratham, NH, and the Weinergate plot thickened (pardon our pun). See below for more.

"If you recede from the public, you're accused of hiding something. If you face down your accusers, you're accused of being an attention whore," Sarah Palin told the New York Post earlier. Whoops. It wasn't Palin — though it surely could have been, given the lamestream media's relentlessly damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't narrative spin on all things Palin. No. These were the words of Genette Cordova, the comely 21-year-old from Seattle who'd struck up a dreamy twitter relationship with a famous man — NY Rep. Anthony Weiner of "Mr. Skeevy's* skivvies" fame — and was now being ever so gingerly slipped under the bus by her fantasy lover in a craven attempt to save the great man's arse:

Cordova is one of 198 people, many of them pretty young women, that Weiner follows on Twitter.

She has said she is a fan of Weiner's but has never personally met the pol.

"It's a terrible thing that this poor woman got dragged into it," Weiner said yesterday on MSNBC.

But Weiner hardly oozed sympathy for Cordova, and almost seemed to cast doubt on her role in the drama while clearly concerned with his own damage control.

"She says she knows nothing about it," Weiner said of Cordova.

"And I obviously don't know anything about it."

Obviously. It seems no one but a few diehard postmodern feminists like Slate.com editor Joan Walsh are buying it. Twitterbuddy Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., aka Film Ladd, has the inside dope. As a twitter-savvy reporter just told Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

When a tweet goes bad, it's heard around the world.

More importantly, it's heard around the town, in this case NY's 9th congressional district, including parts of Brooklyn and Queens. The New York Post's editors take no prisoners:

So the man who would be mayor "can't say with certitude" whether or not the world's most famous Twitter crotch shot is of him?

Could Tony Weiner's contempt for the people of New York City be any more, well, certain?

Actually, it looks like this wiener is fully cooked.

Which is fine, because it's now clear that Rep. Anthony Weiner isn't remotely up to the ethical demands of the office he now holds — let alone those of the New York City mayoralty.

Great local political prose. Speaking of which, our own Boston Herald political reporter Joe Battenfeld got the scoop in spades re Palin vs Romney and the Northeast Corridor fuddy duddies:

Palin seems to understand what other candidates don’t right now. The 2012 campaign is going to be driven mostly by Internet buzz and social media, not scripted speeches and the network news.

Palin uses Twitter to communicate. Romney uses PowerPoint. I’m pretty sure Newt Gingrich still uses a slide projector.

The former Alaska governor also isn’t afraid to mix it up with her rivals, and the dreaded mainstream media. This strategy also ensures she will dominate the race, until or unless she gets out

(and I don’t think she will).

*Word Wealth: Skeevy. adj. Sleazy, disgusting, distasteful, shady, gross, creepy, icky. This slang word was popular in Brooklyn, NY, USA in the 1950's and 1960's. It comes from the Italian word Schifo, meaning 'disgust'. Bonus points for local lore from Twitterfriend Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters: "Not just Brooklyn. Skeevy was very popular expression on Long Island in 60s and 70s."

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Instalanche! Paired with one of our favorite columnists, Byron York:

Amid media circus, Palin lays out policy positions.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Sarah Palin loves New York!

Sarah Palin shone the spotlight on the American Dream in a visit to the Statue of Liberty this morning, the latest stop on her "One Nation" bus tour of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Disintermediating the powers that be, she left "Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust," as Michelle Malkin writes with wit and wisdom in "Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus." American exceptionalism resonates under culture warrior Palin's tutelage: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus," engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty). Image above of "Immigrants Arriving at Ellis Island (1892-1954). 

"We'll highlight the beauty of legal [!] immigrants' work ethic and love of freedom while visiting Ellis Island & Statue of Liberty today," Sarah Palin twittered her 538,522 followers this morning, shooting "to where it's going, not to where it's been" as she tossed a word bouquet in the direction of the historic port of entry for generations of "huddled masses yearning to breath free":

Thanks for beautiful flowers, NYs Bouquets & Baskets! Man, people are nice around here! Glad immigrants who built USA got to come here first.

"Good morning! It's Fleet Week here in NYC and I've had the honor of meeting many Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. Thanks to all for their service. Had a great time in the City. Enjoyed some great NY pizza with Donald Trump and his wife last night in a nice quiet setting, Times Square," quips Palin at her dazzling new website, SarahPac. At Liberty Island this morning, above.

Too bad Ruling Class opinionator Charles Krauthammer isn't following Palin's tweets, let alone the disintermediating logic of her "One Nation" bus tour of "historical sites that were key to the formation, survival, and growth of the United States of America." Brilliant as he may be in his areas of expertise, when it comes to Sarah Palin, Dr. Krauthammer has always been stuck on stupid, from that day back in late August of 2008 when he declared John McCain should have chosen someone "safe," up to last night on The O'Reilly Factor [h/t The Right Scoop], when he once again revealed his contempt for Sarah Palin and people like us who are energized by her fierce determination and authentic American voice: 

The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don't mean she didn't go to the right schools. I mean when you get into policy, beyond instinct. I like her political instincts, I like her overall view of the world, but when it comes to policy, she's had two and a half years to school herself, and she hasn't.

How would he know what she has or hasn't been doing in the last two and a half years? He needs to get out more. As we say, stuck on stupid, and while the good doctor and leading member of the Northeast Corridor fuddy-duddy community will never see it, we twitterred him and his fellow Beltway tribesmen a little advice this morning:

Honest and truly, @Krauthammer & fellow #RulingClass fuddy duddies, if you want to know what's up, must follow #Palin in both old & new media.

Update: Making friends and influencing people: New York Daily News reports "Sarah Palin Takes Manhattan (and Jersey City)" (h/t twitter buddy Charles @repub9989):

When she emerged from the statue an hour later, a high school band visiting from Illinois broke into a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, as Palin covered her heart and the waiting news photographers snapped away. “She looks better in person [and] she’s definitely got my vote if she tries to run for President,” said Clayton Tarpley, 19, who snapped a picture with Palin and declared: “It’s going on Facebook.”

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Marco Rubio, "a man in a field of mice"

"I have been in the Senate just long enough to be disgusted by the reality that Washington has too many people who think their personal political careers are more important than our country’s future," says GOP rising star Marco Rubio, upstaging the Democrats and their media fellow travelers in the "MediScare" drama with a virtuoso solo performance that's bringing the twitterspere to their feet in a virtual standing ovation. Listen here.

"THIS is how it's done … a man in a field of mice … take the fight to the Dems," twittered ecstatic Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin this morning, joining the throng of us narrative chasers out here in cyberspace retweeting and blogging about newly-minted Florida Senator Marco Rubio's response to the Democrats' "Mediscare" spin. In "Looking for Medicare Solutions, Not Politics As Usual" the first-generation Cuban American hottie uses the example of his immigrant parents to disarm opponents:

For me, Medicare is not a political talking point. My parents immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s. They worked hard for over 40 years to provide their children the chance to do all the things they themselves could not. But they never made much money.

As a result, they retired with precious little in savings. Medicare was and is the only way they could access healthcare.

Having lured his listeners with emotionally charged personal evocations of the American Dream, he reels us in:

Rep. Paul Ryan has offered a plan that would make no changes whatsoever for anyone age 55 and older. I support it because, right now, it is the only plan out there that helps save Medicare. Democrats oppose it. Fine. But, if they have a better way to save Medicare, what are they waiting for to show us? What is their plan to save Medicare?

Either show us how Medicare survives without any changes or show us what changes you propose we make. Anyone who supports doing nothing is a supporter of bankrupting Medicare.

Paul Ryan noticed and twittered a link to Rubio's speech, with editorial content:

Strong message from strong leader.

"I'm telling you, these two would make an unbeatable ticket," twittered diggrbiii aka RB of The Right Sphere and Big Journalism, linking to Ryan's tweet:

Rubio and Ryan should announce they're running on the same ticket. Today. And then go on a year-long speech tour.

Politico's Ben Smith reports that “American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said in an interview today that he thinks the eventual Republican nominee would be well advised to offer Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio a slot on the ticket — and that Rubio, if asked, would likely assent.” According to a new Gallup poll, Romney and Palin are leading the field. Palin/Rubio. Rolls right off the tongue.

Related: The Right Sphere's Brandon Kiser has a dream:

This is probably all a pipe dream, but you have to agree with Jonah Goldberg when he says ”politics is about moments, and this one is calling [Ryan]. Unless someone suddenly rises to the challenge, the cries of ‘Help us, Paul Ryan, you’re our only hope!’ will only get louder.”

Looks like someone named Marco just did.

Update: Fun banter with Brendan Loy on twitter, referencing the "man in a field of mice" of our title:

Brendan: He should do something about that. Maybe get a cat.

We: Or maybe a mama grizzly.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Doug Ross aka Director Blue links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Dreaming of a "nice moment for the country," Howard Kurtz misses the scoop

 

Rush caller former Navy Seal Greg says "I believe that President Obama's hand was forced in [assaulting Osama's compound], and this is just a crass, political decision. When I hear people say that this took courage, I just believe he was absolutely forced into doing this … I assure you the information would have been leaked prior to the election cycle, and he would have had to have dealt with that, and frankly, if that came to knowledge late in the election cycle, our next president would be either Hillary Clinton or whoever the Republicans run." Everybody on both sides of the aisle has an opinion about it. Update: "Did Wikileaks Force Obama's Hand?"

"Bush declines Obama invitation to visit Ground Zero with him," twittered Howard Kurtz this evening, more in sorrow than in anger:

I wish he'd accepted. Would have been a nice moment for the country

"Wow," we twittered back. A "nice moment for the country"? Gak. We ourselves had been on alert for the JournoList spin machine to go into high gear crediting the President and discrediting his predecessor the moment news broke that our guys had bagged Osama bin Laden over there on Sunday:

Hadn't realized how naive a sophisticated journalist could be. It's all about spinning the narrative, Howard. #JournoList #Soros #JohnPodesta #CenterForAmericanProgress

Mr. Kurtz seems like a well-intentioned fellow, quick on his feet, amusing to read at The Daily Beast and listen to as host of "Reliable Sources" on CNN, but what kind of navel-gazing kumbaya bubble does the nation's "most influential media reporter" inhabit to have missed the story of the century? As we twittered this morning, citing Andrew Breitbart's appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

It's the narrative, stupid.

Hewitt quotes from Andrew's book — the one we just read in the Kindle app on our desktop — Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! currently Number 1 best seller on Amazon:

The left does not win its battles in debate. It doesn't have to. In the twenty-first century, media is everything. The left wins because it controls the narrative. The narrative is controlled by the media. The left is the media. The narrative is everything.

"You're saying you've seen through it," says Hugh. "Does the rest of the country see through it?" Here's Andrew:

We can't let them weigh the narrative down. If you just sit back and say oh, it's just twitter, oh it's just Think Progress … Twitter and Think Progress certainly feed the MSNBC beast so we can't play by Marquess of Queensbury Rules, we can't expect that George Will, Charles Krauthammer columns are going to win the day. Those are afterthoughts. We have to fight at the moment that these people start to lay their vile narrative.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: Michelle and others are making the argument that GW should have accepted President Obama's invitation to join him tomorrow at Ground Zero, but we're inclined to agree with Pat Dollard's argument on twitter:

Every time you try to appease a liberal with your speech you live a lie and you betray Conservatism.

What would Andrew Breitbart do?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

"Government employees are the new elite"

"Thnx. Keep on him," Michelle Malkin twittered yesterday re our own District 8 MA Rep. Michael Capuano's unfortunate slip of the tongue at a union rally in Boston Tuesday, when this me-too signer of the President's fatuous "New Civility" temperance pledge a few weeks back was caught in the national spotlight urging public-employee union members to "get a little bloody." As we twittered back to Michelle: "I'm newly awakened. Focussed energy on Sean Bielat last cycle. Heard Mike Capuano's eying Scott Brown's seat. Let's roll!" Bret Baier, above, delivers the awful news.

"Government employees are the new elite," said Fox News Digital Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt on Special Report last night, putting his finger on exactly how this post-November-election moment of clarity stood Angelo Codevilla's Ruling Class vs Country class revelation on its head. As we wrote a couple of months back:

Then came Angelo Codevilla's palate-cleansing revelation that neither statist democrats nor nominally limited-government republicans gave a darn about the electorate. It was the Ruling Class vs the Country Class. Enter stage right the Tea Party and Barbara Bush's unmasking when she revealed her contempt for you and me. And now the cascade of outrageous intrusions on our Bill of Rights.

Even as our friends on the left side of the aisle have been muddying the waters of the national debate with iterations of the tired Greedy-Republicans-vs-poor-but-honest-workers narrative, those same workers have been eating high off the hog at the expense of the "forgotten man." Now lucid luminaries on the right side of the aisle are shining a bright light on the decades-long collusion between Democrat powers that be and big labor that has festered in the murkiness of Beltway politics while We the people slept. Byron York, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute and Charles Krauthammer clear the air. First York, on "Why the GOP shouldn't fear a government shutdown": 

Even if the '95 shutdown hurt the GOP — and there's no doubt the party suffered wounds inflicted not only by Clinton but also by themselves — today's voters are in a different mood. "We have fiscal crises at the federal, state, and local level, and voters understand that," says Bill Paxon, a former Republican lawmaker and veteran of the shutdown. "Back in '95, we were whistling into the wind — we were trying to preach fiscal discipline when voters were saying, 'Hey, there's not a problem'"…

Today's media environment is substantially different. "In '95 there was no Internet, no bloggers, no Facebook, no Fox News," says Dick Armey, who was House majority leader during the shutdown. "The discourse of politics today is carried out in a media world that didn't exist in 1995." That doesn't mean there wouldn't be negative coverage of Republicans if a shutdown occurs, just that the overall media picture would be more balanced.

"Why has public-sector unionism thrived while private-sector unionism has shriveled? asks Chris Edwards in a revelatory analysis of "Public-Sector Unions" from last March:

One reason is that public agencies tend to be static — once a union has organized a group of workers they tend to stay organized. By contrast, the private sector is dynamic, with businesses going bankrupt and new businesses arising all the time. Since all new businesses start out nonunion, greater organizing efforts are needed to sustain private-sector unions.

Another factor is that many government services are legal monopolies, such as police and fire. The result is that consumers don’t have the option of abandoning unionized public services if they become too inefficient, as they can with unionized services in the private sector.

The bottom line is that competition fosters excellence, and when you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Incentives are all, and perverse incentives lead to bankruptcy. Charles Krauthammer has the last word:

The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity.

A choice, not an echo: Democrats desperately defending the status quo; Republicans charging the barricades.

Wisconsin is the epicenter. It began with economic issues. When Gov. Scott Walker proposed that state workers contribute more to their pension and health-care benefits, he started a revolution. Teachers called in sick. Schools closed. Demonstrators massed at the capitol. Democratic senators fled the state to paralyze the Legislature.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: Off to Worcester to join DaTechGuyblog's talk radio show with special guest Jazz Shaw on the phone and Sissy in the studio, 10 a.m. to noon, WCRN 830 AM. Listen here. Update III: Archived recording now available.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Speaker Boehner: The revolution will be livestreamed

"In addition to Facebook, Boehner (above) often 'tweets' out comments or announcements, but the Speaker-designate will change his Twitter name to reflect his new position. That change is not expected to happen until later Tuesday night and Boehner's staff is not releasing what his new Twitter handle will be yet," reports CNN's politicalticker.

"Seems like John Boehner's been studying Sarah Palin's embrace of the full panoply of media, old & new," we just twittered: "Opening gavel tomorrow to livestream on Facebook":

According to a blog post that will be posted on Boehner's website this afternoon, the incoming speaker will direct people to visit the "Pledge to America" Facebook page to view the transition to the GOP-controlled House.

Nick Schaper, Boehner's director of digital media, tells CNN, "This kind of streaming and real-time interaction is not only unprecedented for the House, it's helping to set the tone for a new majority that will continue to find new ways to listen to and better represent the American people." Those watching on Facebook will be able to offer feedback and comment on the proceedings as they happen live.

We assume they'll be livestreaming the controversial reading of the Constitution on Friday, blogged here. Rube that we are, we have to admit we get goosebumps at the thought of this obvious "stunt," the "showy equivalent of wearing a flag pin" — We're still sporting our post-9/11 flag pin to this day! — as bitter dustbin-of-history opinionator David Corn scoffs. Sorry, David. Disintermediating the powers that be via the internet is where we're at. Been there since our first tea party/town hall in March of 2009 and never looked back. Republican vs Democrat are no longer the relevant categories. It's "them vs us," Angelo Codevilla's the Ruling Class vs the Country Class, the vested powers that be vs the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Check out the cynical conventional "wisdom" of this item from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 

But the question being debated in legal and political circles is whether the constitutional rules are simply symbolic flourishes to satisfy an emboldened and watchful tea party base. "I think it's entirely cosmetic," said Western Connecticut State University history professor Kevin Gutzman, who said he is a conservative libertarian and sympathizes with the tea party.

 "This is the way the establishment handles grass-roots movements," he said. "They humor people who are not expert, or not fully cognizant. And then once they've humored them, and those people go away, it's right back to business as usual. It looks like this will be business as usual — except for the half-hour, or however long it takes, to read the Constitution out loud."

"Not fully cognizant"? Harrumph! Thanks to the internet-facilitated freedom of assembly — both virtual and on the ground — we're not going away any time soon.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: "Boehner to livestream" trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.