Boehner and the Asses

I have no more respect for John Boehner than for any other institutional  politician. Nevertheless, he was one of the better tacticians of the breed. A stern dedication to ideology is admirable, but Boehner fully understood politics as the art of the possible.

The instant issue is giving the left wing a massive political talking point: "The Republicans shut down the government, making you miserable, just because they hate women who want to talk to Planned Parenthood and maybe undo the result of a few moments of passion."

Boehner is as "pro-life" as anyone, if that's a criterion for "good" conservatives. He just saw the results of a shutdown drama as a huge political  loss for conservative (and, to some degree, libertarian) Americans.

It took the stage-surprise of his resignation to reveal the idiotic contempt in which deliberative politics is held by some of his reluctant stable mates. For instance:

...and Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky said the speaker "subverted our Republic.I think it was inevitable," Massie said. This is a condition of his own making right here.

Ass: Noun describing persons of mean disposition, prone to seek the limelight via personal slurs on better men than themselves. Hello, Tom.

---

This Planned Parenthood crisis, acted out in the Center Ring, is probably the  most valuable thing that has happened to that organization in decades. It couldn't buy such attention for any sum of money. A massive slice of America now believes the issue is shutting PP down.  Not a chance.  All the pro-lifers are demanding at this point is that their abortion program should not be paid for, directly or indirectly, by taxpayers who hold a strong moral position that abortion is sinful.

The sin of the matter can be worked out among the factions -- those who long for a return to the back-alley coat hanger, those who chirp that abortion is just one more means of benign birth control,  and the more rational thinkers somewhere in between. Just leave the IRS out of it.

Yogi Berra, free-market economist

Awwww. Yogi died yesterday. We'll miss his wisdom, particularly on Janet Yellin and the free-money Fed.

"A nickel ain't worth a dime any more."

RIP, Yogi.

Fed Wanks

If you like semi-artificial excitement, this has been an excellent week to read the financial press carefully. The American central bank will pop off a quarter-point interest rate increase this afternoon, or it won't.

More expert words than we can count with a Cray have been expended on predicting one result or the other. Closer to the real world -- but in fact not very close at all -- more money than you and I could possibly imagine has been gambled.

As a public service I offer my own conclusion, to wit, I don't know how Janet Yellin will massage the Federal Funds Rate at 2 p.m. today, and I have arranged my investments accordingly by doing nothing.  The inaction is based partly on fear of being wrong and losing  capital, probably enough of my hard-won savings to pay for  a day or two of Janet's fresh-squeezed orange juice served by a smiling civil servant in a starched white jacket.

And also partly by general disgust that our official medium of exchange still has no objective value beyond the promises of politicians and the guesses of tea-leaf readers  who happen to work at the Federal Reserve building rather than on the carnival  midway.

A rose by any other name...

...but do you think Obama would have changed the name of a mountain named for a liberal Democrat? My inuitition says "no."