The name comes from Right-Thinking. It applies to the starched, vacuum-packed Governor of Massachusetts.

Karl Rove is out. But the surgery is too late to save the patient. Like most mediocre writers, I’ll let a better one speak for me:

The man’s legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power – which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government’s reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America’s 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war – and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president’s eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

Lets put him and Bob Shrum in a box and throw it into the Atlantic.

Looks like the man responsible for the lead-based toys has accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the chest while shaving. It’s supposedly common for disgraced Chinese officials to kill themselves. But I know I’m not the only one wondering if he had some help.

Thomas Sowell on the subprime loan implosion:

Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans.

The Community Reinvestment Act lets politicians pressure lenders to make loans to people they might not lend to otherwise – and the same politicians are quick to cry “exploitation” when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk.

The huge losses of subprime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micro-manage the economy.

Yet with all the finger-pointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them.

While financial markets are painfully adjusting, and lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky “creative” financing, politicians show no sign of changing.

Why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered?

I don’t quite agree with Sowell here. He’s right in some aspects but we must remember that markets get stupid sometimes. The subprime lending market has been compared to the dot-com bubble and the comparison is very apt. A lot of banks knew they were acting stupidly and are paying the price.

Of course, where there’s dumb ideas, there are even dumber ones and a truly idiotic idea floating around right now is that the government should bail out the subprime mortgage lenders or, even worse, the borrowers themselves. Democrats in particular have been promulgating this piece of pander.

It’s a terrible idea. The market has to correct. If it doesn’t, we will get even worse loans made and the industry will completely explode in about 2012. Right now, it’s just taking the Dow Jones with it. We subsidize this nonsense and it might take down the entire banking industry.

Let the forest fire burn. We need to clear out the dead wood of bad loans.

NYT has a great article on infrastructure problems. This isn’t just a Republican thing and it’s not a spending thing:

Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where much of the money goes. That has often meant construction of new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones.

Further, transportation and engineering experts said, lawmakers have financed a boom in rail construction that, while politically popular, has resulted in expensive transit systems that are not used by a vast majority of American commuters.

….

Of the $12 million secured for the state, $10 million is slated for a new 40-mile commuter rail line to Minneapolis, called the Northstar. The remaining $2 million is divided among a new bike and walking path and a few other projects, including highway work and interchange reconstruction.

The $286 billion federal transportation legislation passed by Congress in 2005 included more than 6,000 earmarks, which amounted to blatant gifts to chosen districts, including the so-called Bridge to Nowhere in rural Alaska (that earmark was later removed after a political uproar).

I would also point out that if the government weren’t spending its time running (and ruining) health care. managing charities, engaging in corporate welfare and bossing us around about what’s on TV, they might have more time and money to focus on infrastructure.

It’s not just road either.

Paul Jacob has the lowdown on the landmark earmark reform bill.

Do the media ever call the politicians on their lies? Could they just once question what they’re told instead of parroting it?