Wednesday roundup

Tell us how you really feel, Michelle. Michelle Malkin on Orrin Hatch's retirement announcement:

He began his occupancy in 1976, when all phones were dumb, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was cutting-edge, the very first Apple computer went on sale for $666.66, the Concorde was flying high, O.J. Simpson was a hero, Blake Shelton was a newborn, the first MRI was still a blueprint, and I was a gap-toothed first-grader wearing corduroy bell-bottoms crushing on Davy Jones.

She takes note of all the media outlets speaking of Hatch's "statesmanship" and then enumerates the reasons she's not having any of it:

Hatch joined with his old pal Teddy Kennedy to create the $6 billion national service boondoggle and the $8 billion-a-year CHIP health insurance entitlement.

He preached about the "rule of law," but was an original sponsor of the open-borders DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout, and, despite claiming to oppose it, he voted to fully fund the unconstitutional Obama amnesty during the lame-duck session.

He crusaded for "fiscal conservatism," yet voted for massive Wall Street bailouts, 16 debt ceiling increases totaling $7.5 trillion, and scores of earmarks totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for porky projects. He ends his four-decade reign as the Senate's top recipient of lobbyist cash.

And for the past two years, Team Hatch allies have spearheaded a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign, squeezing donations from corporate donors and pharma and tech lobbyists to subsidize a "Hatch Foundation" and "Hatch Center" to commemorate the Hatch legacy.

"Statesman" isn't a titled earned by mere length of service. It's not a cheap status conferred like an AARP card or IHOP senior discount. A politician who notches decades of frequent flyer miles back and forth between Washington and his "home" state, enjoying the endless perks of incumbency, does not acquire statesmanship by perpetual re-election and political self-aggrandizement.

Between and among the several Congressional committees looking into how the FBI handled the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, they've concluded, based on solid evidence, that it was badly botched.

William Murchison at The American Spectator points out that "animal spirits" (a term coined by John Maynard Keynes) are by definition not quantifiable.

The Times quotes economists who say you can’t prove X rollbacks cause Y growth. The trouble here is that computerized calculations cannot account for human emotions: excitement, say; the hunch in the darkness; the lightbulb that goes on unexpectedly.

Capitalism is the human brain and human heart, in all their compartments and facets: seeing, trying, hoping, hanging on. A certain type of human mentality, with too little anchorage in the imagination, doesn’t get this whole free-market business. It believes in control, direction, supervision — serviceable enough commodities, given the human bent for recklessness and malice. Zero regulation savors of driving on ice and without speed limits. Needless scolding by regulators suppress the growth of jobs and wages. Somewhere there’s a fruitful middle way toward which we may be moving — eight years later than we should and could have been.

On the subject of the post immediately below this one, Michael Ledeen at PJ Media provides some details that can enhance our understanding of what the protestors are up against:

The regime is trying to undermine the legitimacy of the protests, and they are using a particularly ugly stratagem. They have released 3,000 of the most violent prisoners, and ordered them to infiltrate the protest; 1,500 of them are supposed to be in the front lines, and to assault the protestors head-on, helping the Basij and RGs. The other half are supposed to identify protesters, spread chaos in the crowds, and provoke violent action to justify a major clampdown.

And, of course, there is the DJT tweet about the size of the button on his desk compared to the one on Kim's desk. Those of us who continue to harbor grave reservations about Trump have so far been able to discuss two separate realms: the good policy-level moves on the one hand, and the bluster fromDJT we see in his tweets and hear at his rallies. There now appears to be a confluence. Sad!