Los Angeles Times’ uberliberal Tim Rutten demurs from saying the US has fully entered its Weimar phase, while saying we’re nearing it.

When people's mistrust of their elected officials and the parties reaches these levels, there is little for political leaders to do but take counsel from their own anger and anxieties -- and, these days, the popular mood fairly seethes with both those things. Discontent with the present and apprehension about the future have become the background noise of our politics, yet both sides of the congressional aisle seem deaf to the din.

In one of his magisterial explorations of German politics between the wars, the historian Ian Kershaw mused that "there are times -- they mark the danger point for a political system -- when politicians can no longer communicate, when they stop understanding the language of the people they are supposed to be representing."

It would be reckless not to insist that this country and its politics remain, in crucial ways, far distant from Weimar. It would be rash, though, to pretend that the distance remains as great as it once was.

On the other hand, traditional puckish liberal Mickey Kaus is more on point, our politicians weren’t hamstrung by procedures, they listened and rejected ObamaNonsense.

Needless to remind, but we do not have proportional representation; our Democrats control the White House, have an overwhelming grip on the Congress, and froze out Republicans.  Needless to remind, we don’t have large, violent Nazi or Communist parties, nor are our corporate interests pre-WWI royalists.  Needless to remind, we’re in recession but hardly bankrupt, paying impoverishing WWI reparations, or suffering the Great Depression.

We do have, instead, defenders of Constitutional protections, economic sense, centrist opposition to transparent corruption, and preference for improvements in individual choice over statist schemes. As Krauthammer notes:

[Democrats, instead,] understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid, and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Hardly Weimar, except for those liberals who, themselves, are exposed as opposed to our Republic’s democracy.

Oh, there is this reminder, burning money then and now:

The TRN piece is really about the mystery of the Trinity and other topics, not just about Sullivan's disorder - whatever it is. I used to admire, but not usually agree with, Sullivan, back in the day before he ran off the road.

The Trinity? It is no more a mystery to me than the math of the 90 degree angle. It just is. Reality just is.

...or if we cannot put up new posts, it will be due to the approaching blizzard. I was amused to read that the opening of the NOAA Climate Change Dept had to be delayed due to snow. Here's their BS:

NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, is going to be providing information to individuals and decision-makers through a new NOAA Climate Service office. “More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives,” the release says.

More and more, it seems, we are having weather. There never used to be weather before Capitalism. 

Who are these people? Didn't they get the memo?

The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Is it a tragedy for languages to be lost?

Re the Trapp family, here's a good chronology

Pajamas: Hard truths about the immigration debate

At Volokh: What is the EU all about? I think it's about a bureaucratic empire and unelected mandarins who know what is best for the little people

Please, no! Coming together on a climate bill

Pam Geller destroys Reagan Jr

Thinking about John Jay of Rye and Katonah, NY

Day 386 of Chicago-style politics. Related, even Newsweek is worried (h/t, Dino)

George Will: Charting our way to solvency

The majority in Citizens United believe that the U.S. Constitution establishes a government of limited and defined powers. They asked: “Does the Constitution give government the power to prohibit speech by corporations (and others)?” The First Amendment indicated the government did not have that power.

The critics of the Citizens United decision assume the Constitution created a government of  plenary powers with limited exceptions. They recognize that free speech for individuals is one such exception.

The short post is Two Conceptions of Government Power. 

Of course, we tend to think that the Constitution already resolved these issues. Furthermore, we view government as an interest group itself - or assemblage of interest groups (the political classes, those dependent on government for jobs or money, etc etc) with unique powers (such as police powers) rather than as a purely benign and altruistic expression of "the will of the people."

Mrs. BD preferred to watch The Sound of Music during the Superbowl. As is well-known, at least in New England, the Austrian von Trapp family (they dropped the von in the US) settled in Stowe, VT, where they opened the Trapp Family Lodge in 1950. The family still owns and operates the Lodge.

There was a recent cast reunion in Stowe.

Here's the Trapp Family Lodge website. My family enjoyed this place very much in the winter when I was young.

What would my ancestors from the 15th century, probably one day away from starvation each day, have thought about their descendant living in a home with palm trees and a swimming pool and another with a view of the Pacific Ocean? What would they have thought of me being able to appear on a little lighted box so millions of people could see me at once?

What would they have thought of the fact that my father, also their descendant, closely advised presidents of a land they never knew of but that would become the most powerful, most glorious place in the history of man?

I even think of my grandfather, my father’s father, who came here as a fatherless boy and served for many years as a U.S. Army cavalryman. Not in a plane or on a tank, but on a horse . . . What would he think of the fact that his little boy, my father, who helped out with the bills by delivering newspapers in Detroit and Schenectady, would have the ear of world leaders?

What would he, who was unemployed during most of the Great Depression, think of me swimming endlessly in my pool under starry skies as my dogs slumber on the lounges?

I think of the specific luck of Ben Stein to be in America, but I also think of the luck of every American just to be in America.

The solution the country ultimately settled on had five important features: checks and balances so that the branches would police one another; a large republic so that majority sentiment was fleeting and not intensely felt; a Senate where the states would be equal; enumerated congressional powers to limit the scope of governmental authority; and the Bill of Rights to offer extra protection against the government.

The end result was a government that is powerful, but not infinitely so. Additionally, it is schizophrenic. It can do great things when it is of a single mind - but quite often it is not of one mind. So, to govern, our leaders need to build a broad consensus. When there is no such consensus, the most likely outcome is that the government will do nothing.

The President's two major initiatives - cap-and-trade and health care - have failed because there was not a broad consensus to enact them. Our system is heavily biased against such proposals. That's a good thing.

Yes, it is a good thing. And, in general, government doing nothing is a good thing.

Palestinians insist on destroying Israel, regardless of concessions, declining steps that improve relations, repeating bromides that fail to meet facts.  President Obama, likewise, insists on a total upheaval of modern health care, regardless of compromises, declining widely supported incremental steps, repeating support for the various Democrat health care bills whose details are overwhelmingly rejected by Americans.

Instead of cooperating for widely supported steps to improve health care, President Obama called for a televised half-day “summit” in which Republicans are supposed to take as their starting point the Democrats’ health care bills, instead of starting from scratch with Republican proposals. The New York Times labels it a “gambit” in the first paragraph of its report. Then,

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement that he welcomed the bipartisan meeting on health care and called on the president to begin the dialogue “by shelving the current health spending bill.”

“The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for,” Mr. McConnell said. “And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”

When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.

Obama insists on 1967 or 1947 lines despite “facts on the ground” a la Palestinians, instead of working together.  Indeed, as Senators Grassley and Snowe found when trying to work together, the Democrats my-way-or-the-highway forced them to take the high way, the Democrats taking the low way.

I outlined last Friday, in a 711 word op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune, ten separable, incremental steps to health care improvements.  They don’t require thousands of tiny type pages of imposed, centralized, statist regulations like the Democrats’ schemes.  They don’t require throwing out the baby with the bath water.  They build on what successfully exists, which most Americans are satisfied with.  Most Americans agree with these steps.  They are not partisan.  Indeed, they contain many elements of Democrat preferences. There are other such steps that a true summit could address.

Instead, Obama wants a campaign-mode, one-sided event, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Jules Crittendon adds an "ouch" and then some to Obama's "reality TV."

There are few human beings on planet earth more annoying than Deepak Chopra, the touchy-feely, New Age Guru whose fetid, gooey, and completely banal nostrums regarding health and healing have reached a new low in the history of civilized thought.

But, Rick, remember that he has gotten fabulously rich from his banal nostrums. So maybe he's not a complete idiot. Maybe he is our P.T. Barnum.

And even more! Now we have Alaska Glaciergate as a companion piece to Himalayan Glaciergate. Related at Driscoll: The global warming guerillas. A quote:

Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.

Where is Big Oil? Not in the US

How about Mitch Daniels?

The t-shirt story at Powerline: But Enough About Me. What Do You Think About Me? (By the way, the lady did have medicalinsurance.)

A joke: Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island. (h/t, Jules). Legal Insurrection (of RI) has a new mission.

Am Thinker: Desperate Times and Left-Wing Psy-Ops

$ and politics:

The House Democrats' campaign operation has a significant cash advantage over its Republican counterpart: $16.6 million to $2.7 million. And incumbents are fund-raising in anticipation of competitive contests. Florida's Mr. Grayson said Wednesday that his $861,000 fourth-quarter haul was more than any other Democratic candidate's.

From Fracking the Academic Left:

 I've spent decades trying to teach college students, and I think I can say after all these years that I've never succeeded in educating anyone. Not even one. Occasionally education has been seen to happen in my classes, or at least I would like to believe so. But education always comes from within. Students bring their eagerness to learn with them; you can't make them educated any more than a parent can "grow" a child. People aren't carrots. You can't "grow" them.

Sex Week at Yale

h/t, Theo -