Maybe it's not so great...

David Kahane:

Call it buyer’s remorse, or fear of the unknown, or simply Pinch Sulzbergeritis, but doesn’t it feel like our nice secure liberal world just left its orbit this week? As Hillary waddled off the stage in defeat Thursday night after the debate, with Barack Obama grinning from ear to ear to ear to ear, I could the sense the Old Guard passing, the end of an era, the moment when old First Ladies never die, they just — aw, let’s just cut to the chase: We’re gonna lose. And we’re gonna lose bad.

...But the whole cool thing about being a far-Left liberal is that we’re like undercover secret agents, who have to shield our real goals and motives from you, the suckers. How far would we get if we actually came out and said that we want to nationalize health care, raise taxes to confiscatory levels on the filthy rich who make more than $75,000 a year, preemptively surrender in Iraq, and flood the country with illegal aliens and then turn them into citizens in a transparent attempt to get votes and keep the Ponzi Scheme solvent?"

Read it all...

Stupid is as Stupid does...

McCain's problems of his own making

MCCAIN WANTS OUT OF THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE SYSTEM he's responsible for and finds it's not so easy. Amusingly, McCain is arguing that he has a constitutional right to get out.

MORE: "'We never claimed that the matching funds were collateral for the loan,' says McCain lawyer Trevor Potter. 'This was all a hypothetical future transaction.' (We wish we could get bank loans like that.)" The WSJ is aptly smirky: "We suppose we can't blame Mr. McCain for trying to make the finance rules work for him, but it'd be nice if he finally admitted their embarrassing folly."

Can you imagine the outrage?

Investor Group Ready For New York Times Proxy Fight

The Times has fended off activist investors in the past, including an attempt last year by Morgan Stanley Investment Management to eliminate the dual-tiered share structure and separate the roles of Times Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

If the New York Times were just some other publicly owned company, can you imagine what their editorial policy would be regarding a company that had this type of two-tiered share structure that kept shareholders from exercising control of the company?

You don't say....

The Perils of Socialized Healthcare

The British and Massachusetts healthcare systems are failing, argues Tom Blumer. “If we ever see a nationwide state-run healthcare system in the U.S., the mainstream media will have played a large role in its arrival by ignoring its myriad failures, both overseas and at home.”

More here...

She should just say "He's a wind bag..."

"Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing.":

"The man has attained the greatest heights through speechmaking, but to the speechwriter, what he really needs is a speechwriter."

Read it!

Broken Borders and Dover Sole: My Lunch With Lou Dobbs

So I was having lunch at the Four Seasons with Lou Dobbs the other day, locked in disagreement over who cared more about working people, him or me.

Him: CNN host, biggest and loudest gun in the battle for tougher immigration policies, leader of a nightly crusade to expose the misdeeds of those he views as elitist fools and scoundrels.

Pretty much says it all...

The Belmont Club:

"Thus the question of whether John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago comes to two things: is the NYT telling the truth today? And if so, would I care?"

The pencilnecks take over

Paying Patients Test British Health Care System

Created 60 years ago as a cornerstone of the British welfare state, the National Health Service is devoted to the principle of free medical care for everyone. But recently it has been wrestling with a problem its founders never anticipated: how to handle patients with complex illnesses who want to pay for parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free from the health service.

Although the government is reluctant to discuss the issue, hopscotching back and forth between private and public care has long been standard here for those who can afford it. But a few recent cases have exposed fundamental contradictions between policy and practice in the system, and tested its founding philosophy to its very limits.

Get ready for the battle. It's just beginning here....

Throw those clubs in the lake...

More Americans Are Giving Up Golf :

"Jim Kass, the research director of the National Golf Foundation, an industry group, said the gradual but prolonged slump in golf has defied the adage, “Once a golfer, always a golfer.” About three million golfers quit playing each year, and slightly fewer than that have been picking it up. A two-year campaign by the foundation to bring new players into the game, he said, “hasn’t shown much in the way of results.”

“The man in the street will tell you that golf is booming because he sees Tiger Woods on TV,” Mr. Kass said. “But we track the reality. The reality is, while we haven’t exactly tanked, the numbers have been disappointing for some time.”"

Ouch...

John Kerry Finally Sees Battlefield Action:

"Helicopters carrying three senior U.S. senators made emergency landings Thursday in the mountains of Afghanistan because of a snowstorm.

Sens. John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel were aboard the aircraft. No one was injured, according a statement from Kerry’s office. The senators and their delegation returned to Bagram Air Base in a motor convoy, and have left for Turkey.

“After several hours, the senators were evacuated by American troops and returned overland to Bagram Air Base, and left for their next scheduled stop in Ankara, Turkey,” the Kerry statement said. “Sen. Kerry thanks the American troops, who were terrific as always and who continue to do an incredible job in Afghanistan.”

There’s no immediate word from Kerry if he plans to ask Defense Secretary Gates for another Purple Heart for himself."

Much more to follow...

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Today’s murky New York Times front page McCain hit piece comes at an interesting time, to say the least. Hot on the heels of the first visible chink in the Obama campaign (a mother of a faux pas, mostly ignored by the MSM, but merely exacerbated by the “apologies” of the offender and newly revealed Achilles heel of the candidate, his wife Michelle), the McCain story has ignited the press, public and blogosphere like almost nothing since this interminable race began. Almost nothing, I say, except for the obvious — Obama-mania. For the first time in recent history, we are facing an election where both political parties’ frontrunners are actually liked by the media. Watching how this plays itself out is truly bizarre.

The Politics of Fear...

Alex Gourevitch:

Thus, even if the declining fortunes of the war on terror give the appearance that the politics of fear itself is on the wane, another campaign may be reviving it. While Democrats have become increasingly uncomfortable with the anti-democratic consequences of the hard power of the war on terror, they seem more comfortable with a “soft power” politics of fear: environmentalism.

Environmentalism is one of the few movements on the left that presents itself in the same totalizing political terms that the war on terror does on the right, and its influence only seems to grow as the war on terror’s influence declines. The New York Times’ bellwether of elite opinion, Thomas Friedman, recently swung around to the new framework. His solution for overcoming the “trauma and divisiveness of the Bush years” is “a new green ideology, [which] properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals, and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward.

A worthwhile insight...

Information wants to be free, but medical care doesn't

"YIKES". Marginal Revolution points to a problem in Britain's National Health service. Patients have been paying extra for treatments not covered by the NHS, while still getting the majority of their treatment on the government's dime.

This is just the beginning....

Let's talk to them...

Ahmadinejad: Israel filthy bacteria

Yet even more...

GayPatriot » Would The Last Person Leaving Hope, Arkansas…Please Turn Out The Lights?:

"Stick a fork in Billary…. they are done. And with it goes the last chance the Baby Boomers have of screwing up America from the Oval Office! Obama or McCain might still screw up royally, but we have successfully gotten past the “power years” of the Boomers.

Let us all sing Hallelujah and raise our arms to the Heavens. God has answered our prayers."

Glenn has such a way with words...

Instapundit

"CNN is reporting that Obama just secured the endorsement of the Teamsters. I am unfortunately seized by a mental vision of Hillary Clinton pounding on the lid of her coffin as the final nails are driven in."

Not good news for the Clintons

That Giant Sucking Sound You're Hearing . . . . .

is the Clinton campaign. How else to interpret delegatehub.com--the new website the Clintonites have set up to make the case that the rules of the Democratic nomination process should be changed?

Larry Kudlow adds to the noise...

Michelle Obama's Pride

James Kirchick on Michelle Obama's silly remark:

The level of narcisissm inherent in this remark -- that it is only now, with the windfall victories currently propelling her husband to the Democratic presidential nomination, that she feels "really proud of her country" -- is absolutely breathtaking. Should Barack Obama capture his party's nomination, expect John McCain -- who oozes patriotism -- to make more than a little hay out of this all-too revealing statement, and for it to matter.

Take that, Bitch.....

East coast fantasy....

"I feel like you're describing, you know, it could be Green Bay in Wisconsin."

As a Long Island boy who went to school in the Midwest, married a Chicago girl, and both of my boys went to school in the Midwest, I am always amazed at how utterly stupid both-coasters are about the majority of their country. The media is a perfect reflection of that....read the post.

E-Sleuthing the E-Jihad

"Ordinary 'Joe's' are tracking down U.S. Web sites used by al Qaeda and jihadi sympathizers and then using the Internet (Newspaper Reporters) to persuade the service providers (Hosting companies) to snuff out the sites and it is working."