I think of my friends in the UK.

Many Americans feel their country is crumbling too. There have been demonstrations in the US against the current government for 2 years now. They are known as the tea party. They protest for economic improvement like people are demanding in your country.

The official storyline in the US is that the tea party protesters are: “racist, uncompromising, potentially violent, and stupid”. The movement is mentioned regularly in the US news, and on comedy shows, and it is almost exclusively in a negative light. (Here is one example.) This is in spite of the fact that they have not flipped over even one car yet. This is done mostly to slow the growth of the movement, and it has had great success. Almost everyone who has not seen or been to a tea party rally are fully convinced they are diabolical.

The good news is that the solution to economic stagnation in our countries is simple: we need to unwind the bankrupt welfare state.

Maybe you could create a tea party in the UK? We’ll combine efforts! We can send you Sarah Palin and you send us Daniel Hannan.

Another huge problem is single motherhood. Incidence of this in the UK is the highest in Europe. Single-motherhood is a consequence of the welfare state. The social and economic are thoroughly mixed!

Here is a tutorial (not the easiest thing to read) of her views.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/kagan-argued-government-redistribution-speech

Does anything in it stand out as possibly scary?

• Focusing on government motives. She argues that campaign finance laws are good because she divines that their motives were good. “They were just trying to stem the ‘excess’ flow of money into politics!” The problem was the unintended consequences. But as long as she thinks she finds people with good motives, even total idiots, what they are doing is fine.

• Inciting others to commit harm is not allowed, but legislation banning flag-burning is legal because she is sure it will never incite others to commit harm.

• If there is an overabundance of an idea, “action disfavoring that idea [would] un-skew public discourse.” “As there are too many right wingers on Talk Radio, so we should un-skew the number of them.”

• Restrictions should focus on whether the person’s ideas are causing “public harm”. Harm is surely very narrowly defined.

• Government should treat all people creating public harm equally. “If we are going to round up one-right winger, we should be fair and round up them all.”

Using this sample of her writings, are you convinced yet that she is worthy of being on the Supreme Court?

I’m going to convert this into a longer entry over time, but I will start with a bunch of quotes from the National Review, which endorsed Mitt Romney, but has said many negative things about him; in fact if you read all of these negative things, you really wonder how they came to endorse him. It is actually illogical.

Jonah Goldberg:

I’m sorry but Romney still comes across like a well-cast actor in a movie of the week about a guy running for president.

Peter Robinson:

Romney’s Catastrophic Answer: “I’ve always been personally pro-life.” That sure isn’t what he tried to convey in his debate with Ted Kennedy, citing his mother’s pro-choice activities and the death of a family friend as the result of a botched abortion. Courtesy of YouTube, hundreds of thousands have now seen that debate with Kennedy, watching with their own eyes as Romney asserted a personally pro-choice position. But he still can’t admit it? A highly intelligent, immensely accomplished, and hugely likeable candidate. But this? Appalling.

Rich Lowry:

Romney sounds like a game show host. (Rich is quoting someone here, but presumably he wouldn’t have posted this if he didn’t agree with it.)

Rich Lowry:

Romney the Salesman: That’s what he seemed like on that English question. First, he didn’t answer it. Then, he joked “I hope they vote for me”—which is what everyone suspects, that he’s pandering to everyone possible. Finally, he ended with a riff that fell flat about selling things.

Rich Lowry:

Romney has got to avoid seeming to dodge these flip-flop questions—just contributes to the problem.

Andy McCarthy:

Mitt — Doesn’t Answer the Question About Why He’s Running Spanish Ads: Not his best moment tonight … and since he hasn’t seemed to get called on much, that’s making it a bad night.

Rich Lowry:

The Romney Speech: Here’s my take: Put aside how rambling and unfocused it was. Maybe that can be chalked up to a bad night or fatigue. But to speak for 50 minutes or so and not to talk about the Iraq war before a conservative audience at a crucial moment in that war is bizarre and just wrong and almost offensive in my view. This doesn’t seem like an oversight. He went out of his way to check off every conservative box—except the one that is politically risky at the moment. The rest of his foreign policy stuff—when he talked about Iran and the broader war—felt very shaky and about an inch deep. His account of how he came to change his view on abortion—through the issue of stem-cell research—isn’t very compelling and he would probably be better off not talking about it at all. Fairly or not, people aren’t going to believe it. It was his misfortune to boast about signing Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge, after Jeb Bush gave a very mature and persuasive explanation earlier in the day for why he hadn’t ever signed the pledge, but still cut taxes each year he was in office. I’m a fan of the pledge myself and I’m glad Romney signed it, but his boast on this night after following Jeb played into what will be the chief vulnerability to his candidacy—the sense that he is simply pandering to the right. Believe me, I prefer politicians pandering to the right than to something or someone else. But it won’t be enough to sustain a serious presidential campaign, which has to have a deeper rationale than occupying a niche in the marketplace. It was just one night, and Romney is impressive in many ways, but Saturday night was a missed opportunity.