The Casey belt
They’re turning out to be the key to the US presidential election, which Clinton understands (not that she’s one of them) or why Obama will be ‘ceremonially trounced’ tomorrow

Don’t call them conservatives

The idea that Bush or any major Republican leader has acted as if “government is useless, if not inherently evil” is silly. Ours has been the era of bleeding-heart conservatism, epitomised by Gerson’s weepy manifestoes of world revolution speeches, and Republican do-gooding, which, like pretty much all government do-gooding, has brought about very, very bad results. Mr. Bush and his enablers (including Gerson!) have argued for the virtue of government activism more than any one of his predecessors since perhaps LBJ. It is also silly to suggest that the last eight years have seen the apotheosis of anything that could reasonably be called free-market policies.

Sober pessimism
More via Joshua Snyder

From Daniel Larison.