Saturday, July 4, 2009

Behind the Times

Mark Steyn:
"A week ago, the House of Representatives passed some gargantuan “cap-and-trade” bill designed to “save” “the environment.” Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist, accused those Neanderthals who voted against the bill of committing “treason against the planet.” By that standard, most of the planet is guilty of treason against the planet. I don’t mean just in the sense that China, already the world’s Number One CO2 emitter, and India and other rising economic powers have absolutely no intention of doing what the Democrats have done, no way, no how — because they don’t see why they should stay poor just because New York Times columnists think it’s good for them.

No, I mean that most of the developed world has already gone down the paved road of good intentions and is now frantically trying to pedal up out of it. New Zealand was one of the few western nations to sign on to Kyoto and then attempt to abide by it — until they realized they could only do so by destroying their economy. They introduced a Dem-style cap-and-trade regime — and last year they suspended it. In Australia, the Labor government postponed implementation of its emissions-reduction program until 2011, and the Aussie Senate may scuttle it entirely. The Obama administration has gotten to the climate-change hop just as the glitterball’s stopped whirling and the band’s packing up its instruments.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Something to remember...

Popehat:
"Let’s be clear — the right to free speech is the right to express oneself without state retaliation. It is not a right to speak without social retaliation. Speech has consequences. Among those consequences are condemnation, vituperation, scorn, ridicule, and pariah status. Those consequences represent other people exercising their free speech rights. That’s a feature of the marketplace of ideas, not a bug."

You mean they havn'y been charmed to death yet?

Bowyer:
"Jobs aren't languishing despite the government's best efforts. They're languishing because of them."

Quote of the Day...

Power Line:
"There may be a limit to the cynicism of the Obama White House, but I don't think we've reached it yet."

Just another Chicago poitical machine casualty...

Who railroaded the Amtrak inspector general?:
"Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak inspector general Fred Weiderhold. The longtime veteran employee was abruptly “retired” last month –just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes."

I guess he figured that if you're stupid enough to let the Democrats run the country, you deserve this kind of duplicity...

Quick, Spend the Money Before the Taxpayers Find Out!:
"Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the 'TARP for Main Street Act of 2009,' a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats. ..."

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Quote of the Day...

Supreme Court Finds Bias Against White Firefighters:
"“ ‘Sympathy’ is not what petitioners have a right to demand,” Justice Alito wrote. “What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law — of Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.”"

Popehat:

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass describes voters who complain to her Republican colleagues as terrorists:
"What Bass, a Democrat, calls “terrorist threats” against her Republican colleagues is what most Americans call the exercise of First Amendment rights. It’s one of those outdated traditions in American politics that any drooling troglodyte can communicate his displeasure to elected representatives."

I'm just amazed that so many people think he's doing such a great job....

Barack Obama Is a Big Fat Liar:
"Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least in part: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages — nor will we.” Even “I will never lie to you.”

Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on taxing employer-provided health insurance deserves to rank among these classics. Not because it’s as laughable as Bill Clinton’s, or as emphatic as George H. W. Bush’s, but because it takes a certain moral venality to casually adopt, as president, a position that was a dominant theme of your argument for why your opponent should not be president."

Via The Agitator...

Length of original U.S. Constitution: 11 pages. Length of most recent energy/cap-and-trade/global warming bill: 1,200 pages.

Has Paul Krugman Unmasked the Republican-Martian Conspiracy?

GayPatriot:
But, maybe Paul Krugman knows something I don’t know. Why else would he accuse Republican opponents of the Waxman-Markey bill of committing treason against the planet?

Old Ellsworth Toohey doesn't need any evidence to accuse anyone of anything. Anything he wants just HAS to be the "right thing" because he won a medal, and he won't hear of anything different.....

Very much worth reading...

Belmont Club:
"“In Obama’s imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition - empowered by Washington’s turn against Israel - would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi’ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama’s face.” Put that way, it does seem unlikely."

Good thing they're watching out for us....

MSM eating out of Obama's hand:
"Every president tries to manage the press, some have had limited success, but no one has been quite as proficient as Barack Obama, who in his first months has done a masterful job of keeping the Fourth Estate, if it even exists these days, off balance and frustrated.

Not since the earliest days of John F. Kennedy's administration has a chief executive been so successful in manipulating those who report on every machinations of the West Wing. Actually, Barack Obama's keen understanding of how to maneuver through the minefield of 24-hour journalism compares with that of Franklin Roosevelt who so charmed a much smaller White House press corps that it never revealed he was crippled, either photographically or in print."