Nobody Could Have Seen This Coming

From the New York Times article on taxing the banks:

The most likely alternatives would be a tax based on the size and riskiness of an institution’s loans and other financial holdings, or a tax on profits.

Lobbyists for bankers, taken by surprise, immediately objected to any new tax.

Suggested follow-up questions:

- Taken by surprise meaning that you've seen it coming for ages and have been desperately spinning to try to forestall the inevitable ("the housing bubble took us by surprise!")?

- Taken by surprise meaning you totally knew it would happen and you're just trying to act as though it's so inconceivably crass that you never saw it coming ("the furor over bonuses took us by surprise!")?

- Or taken by surprise like you're all bunch of know-nothing, backwards idiots getting high on your own supply ("financial deregulation leading to complete collapse took us by surprise!")?

Then again, when a lobbyist for bankers tells you he's shocked -- shocked! -- by something, I'm sure it's totally genuine.

Looks Like We'll Have To Go With "Nothing Else"

Oh, Anne Applebaum. Several months late to the "fiscal conservatism doesn't fail, it is only failed" party, she trots out Europe (?!?) as a glimmer of hope for laissez faire capitalists everywhere. What's not to love about this article?

- Sarkozy, last seen pushing for a stimulus package, being counted as the sort of fiscal conservative who hates stimulus packages ("a policy more colloquially known as 'massive government spending'")?

- The EP elections, which nobody in Europe cares about and tend to produce extreme results, being used as rock-solid evidence of Europe turning en masse to Joe the Plumber?

- Status quo types in European states with massive welfare-state governments and public expenditures larger than the US by basically any metric being hailed as "fiscal conservatives"?

- Or perhaps this:

But if nothing else, the success of the European center-right during the current crisis proves that there is something to their political formula. They are fiscally conservative. They are, if not socially liberal, then at least socially centrist. They haven't been swayed by the fashion for big spending. They are trying to keep some semblance of budget sanity. And, at least at the moment, they win elections.

Except, uh, you know, in the actual elections that actually occur places other than in Anne Applebaum's head:

Europe's Greens were the only major bloc whose parliamentary proportion increased — from 5.5 percent to 7.1 percent in this election. Far-right groups and anti-EU parties, including the UK Independence Party, also saw big increases in the independent group.

Oh, so the trend isn't so much towards the center-right, as out toward the fringes. Uh, well ... other than that, she nailed it!

Is Will Saletan Just Using Auto-Text Now?

I mean, really?

"I know you've had your differences, with you being the World's Fattest Man and you being a Boeing 757, but listen to me. Talk to each other. You'll figure out that my plan is right."

Hmm ... where have I seen crack negotiation skills like these before?