Saturday, June 13, 2009

About as well said as it could be...

Mark Steyn:
"Big government depends, in large part, on going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them."

Friday, June 12, 2009

What Would Gore Do?

Megan McArdle:
"The budget is just a side show--because it has hard numbers, it seems to lend some sort of 'provability' to peoples' prior policy preferences. But the actual provable harm from the Bush budget deficits is small. As I pointed out earlier, net debt has risen very little as a percentage of GDP, net interest has actually fallen in real terms and as a percentage of GDP, and it is demonstrably false that Bush deficits diverted investment capital from the private sector--or at least, if they did, they did us a favor, by keeping the mortgage bubble from getting even bigger than it did."

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Facts are for Fools... read it all.

Our Historically Challenged President:
"In his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a “student of history.” But despite Barack Obama’s image as an Ivy League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation.

This first became apparent during the presidential campaign. Candidate Obama proclaimed then that during World War II his great-uncle had helped liberate Auschwitz, and that his grandfather knew fellow American troops that had entered Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Both are impossible. The Americans didn’t free either Nazi death camp. (Regarding Obama’s








Reed: Blame the Unions

Franc: An Independent Streak

Black: The Grandest Strategy

Alexiev: Obama’s Fantasy Islam

Symposium: Long Live the Duke

Nordlinger: FAQs

May: Addressing Genocide

Hanson: Our Historically Challenged President

Geraghty: Southern Half of the Comeback Trail

Hemingway: Red-Diaper Royalty

Goldblatt: Against Judicial Empathy

Kerpen: Sotomayor Is Bad for Business

Goldberg: Plan to Combat Global Warming? Pie in the Sky

Sowell: The Character of Nations

Spruiell: Killing the C"

Certain things cannot be undone...

How to Stop Socialized Health Care:
"We can fix a lot of bad stuff President Barack Obama might do, he told me. But if Mr. Obama signs into law a 'public option,' government-run insurance program as part of health-care reform we won't be able to undo the damage.

...In other words, the public option is just phony. It's a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president's goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama's real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system."

Lucky us...

U.S. college grads shun Wall Street for Washington

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

How dare they?

New York Post:
"I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting -- half the American people."

Read it!

America: closing her door to freedom:
"So many laws have eroded our Second Amendment gun rights that, as P.J. O'Rourke notes, if Massachusetts had the same gun laws in 1775 that it has now, we would all be Canadians."

Quote of the Day:

Jonah Goldberg:
"Whenever you hear a politician start a sentence with, “If we can put a man on the moon . . . ,” grab your wallet."

I'm SHOCKED, I tell you!

U.S. House restricts ethics probes

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Channelling his inner Steve Martin...

The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention:
"In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria.

When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government — not to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of Egyptian Jews.

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort “to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II."

Monday, June 8, 2009

Know thy enemy: This is not your mother's Democratic Party - Washington Times

BREITBART:
"When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest - with taxpayer money, mind you - in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the 'education system' have done the rest, making 'D' the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions - think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants - not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it."

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Maybe you shouldn't ask the question....

Obamanomics:
"If that weren't enough to make your head spin, Goolsbee also blamed Obama's handling (i.e., nationalizing) of the auto industry on ... President Bush. Obama, you see, was saddled with this mess because Bush — over the objections of his own party — decided back in December to raid billions in public money intended for bailing out the financial sector in order to bail out the automakers.

Again, how stupid does he think we are?"

Mark Steyn hits the nail again...

Obama's message of weakness:
"It's interesting how easily the words 'the Muslim world' roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who'd choke on any equivalent reference to 'the Christian world.' When such hyperalert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they're implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an 'Organization of the Islamic Conference,' which is already the largest single voting bloc at the United Nations and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an 'Organization of the Christian Conference' that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and Presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no 'Christian world': Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Barack Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is 'one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.' Perhaps we're eligible for membership in the OIC.

That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower."

Get used to it.....

More Questions About Dealergate:
"In a related development, Rep. Barney Frank convinced the GM CEO to keep the plant in his district open for at least 14 months."

Hard to believe...

Patterico:

Sure, Barack Obama may have spent thousands on a frivolous date night in the midst of an economic crisis. But oh please! What are you going to do, criticize him?

After all, this isn’t a guy who tolerates a schlock affair. He will have his waygu steak. And he will set his thermostat high enough to grow orchids.

And if a car exec dares to fly in a private jet, he’ll have his head!

You got a problem with that? Faye Fiore says: oh, please!

Then again, Faye Fiore is the same person who gushed over Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer: The editors knew exactly what they were doing when they assigned this “story” to her.

Tee hee! Date night is the greatest!!

Bail me outta' here....

Kausfiles:
Chrysler can learn from its new partner: Chrysler scored second to last in customer satisfaction in this 2009 survey of "vehicle ownership satisfaction" in the U.K. Only one company did worse! ... That company? FIAT. ...

Hanson:

The Reckoning:
"I wish the President well, but he is butting up against human nature. And that is a fight one cannot win. If one runs up nearly a $2 trillion annual deficit, and then persists in such red-ink to the point of adding another $9 trillion, all to reach an aggregate $20 trillion national debt, there are not too many options. If there were, everyone-both states and individuals-would simply spend, call it stimuli, and then find academics to offer contorted explanations why it was OK and the money need not really have to be paid back. Does Obama think his debt is like buying a house in a down market with an up market inevitable?–that is, we borrow to the max and then count on our equity to come to bail us out? But houses do not always go up, and we can’t quite sell off the US to capture our speculative profit."