Do ya' think?

Michael Totten:

"It would be an astonishing lapse if a man who promised to roll back nuclear proliferation watched proliferation develop in one of the least stable parts of the world, a place where the United States has only been able to maintain even a modicum of stability by a massive projection of its own forces. The region is of prime interest to the entire world for its energy resources. If it becomes nuclearized, it will be the one thing for which Barack Obama would always be remembered by history, and he would be remembered by history as a failure."

Totten interviews Martin Kramer. Read it all if you have the time...

Whining instead of governing....

Money’s Not the Dems’ Problem:

"But money? That’s a dog-ate-my-homework excuse that is convincing no one but those doing the spinning (and maybe not even them).

...Indeed. And the real danger for the Democrats is that they will fall in love with their own explanation and avoid taking the steps necessary to align themselves with public opinion."

Moving into Thought Crime....

So What Is Insider Trading?:

"Joel M. Cohen, a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, recently wrote that there had been a “shift in insider-trading jurisprudence away from its roots in deterring and punishing those who abuse special relationships at the expense of shareholders and into a murkier area where the S.E.C. is policing general financial unfairness that has traditionally been considered beyond its authority to regulate.”

In other words, the S.E.C. is no longer just making sure that employees are not abusing their position and breaching their fiduciary duty; it is focused on making sure the markets “feel” fair.

The perfect analogy for what is taking place in the government's ever expanding mission creep to make the world safe from "everything:...

Does it make you wonder?

David Brooks:

"As Nancy Pelosi put it at a $50,000-a-couple fund-raiser, “Everything was going great and all of a sudden secret money from God knows where — because they won’t disclose it — is pouring in.”

It Starts with the Money....

Mark Steyn:

"And, without serious course correction, America is doomed. It starts with the money. For dominant powers, it always does – from the Roman Empire to the British Empire. “Declinism” is in the air these days, but for us full-time apocalyptics we’re already well past that stage. In the space of one generation, a nation of savers became the world’s largest debtors, and a nation of makers and doers became a cheap service economy. Everything that can be outsourced has been – manufacturing to by no means friendly nations overseas; and much of what’s left in agriculture and construction to the armies of the “undocumented”. At the lower end, Americans are educated at a higher cost per capita than any nation except Luxembourg in order to do minimal-skill checkout-line jobs about to be rendered obsolete by technology. At the upper end, America’s elite goes to school till early middle age in order to be credentialed for pseudo-employment as $350 grand-a-year diversity consultants (Michelle Obama) or in one of the many other phony-baloney makework schemes deriving from government micro-regulation of virtually every aspect of endeavor.

Read it ALL!!!!

The Nanny-in-Chief....

Julie Gunlock - National Review Online:

"Poor Michelle: She can’t even order a simple burger without being criticized.

For you nanny-state, "liberal" fascists....

Commentary:

"....what was unmasked during the last week was the extent to which modern liberalism (at least as embodied by NPR) is antithetical to classical liberalism, which celebrated open-mindedness, a diversity of thought and opinion, and the spirited exchange of ideas. The depth of intolerance at National Public Radio is so deep that even a liberal like Juan Williams was thrown to the curb. His sin is not only that he didn’t parrot the Party Line closely enough; it was also that he didn’t parrot the Party Line at the appropriate Party Outlets."

This what passes for "Liberal" nowadays.....

Media Matters Is The Symptom, Not The Disease:

"No conservatives are trying to prevent people from appearing on NPR, but liberal interest groups and their media outlets are trying to prevent people from appearing on Fox News."

Always pround that P.J. is a fellow Miami alum...

They Hate Our Guts:

"Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats."

NPR: Bringing Us Together

Commentary:

"I suspect that if he’d said the same thing to Charlie Rose, rather than on the O’Reilly Factor, he’d still have his radio job."

Yet another "Putney Swope" moment!

Celebrating Stalin in Georgia

Walter Russell Mead:

"Stalin was, without a doubt, one of the two or three greatest, most destructive figures of the twentieth century. Mao might have been responsible for more deaths, and Hitler is in his league, but Stalin did more than any other person to make the twentieth century the darkest, bloodiest and most tyrannical era in the blood-drenched annals of our race.

...Such a career must be studied, remembered, and can never be forgotten; equally, the monstrous social system that he brought to world power deserves a museum and an archival center where the whole ghastly story can be told. There’s no reason that Gori (a modest provincial town in central Georgia with few other claims to fame) shouldn’t host it. The Stalin Museum that currently exists, while it is a must-see for anybody visiting Georgia, isn’t up to the job. With one foot in the old-Soviet celebration of the great proletarian hero and another in a cautious, Khrushchevian reassessment, the museum doesn’t do justice to its real subject: the Great Darkness of the twentieth century and the man who did so much to shape it."

Read it all.....

Sounds about right....

Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground Sets the Record Straight:

Have you always had conservative views?
To be honest, I never paid attention to what the hell was going on. My always voting Democrat was the result of that.

What are your feelings about the online reactions? Many people seem upset or outraged.
I'm stunned that so many people who call themselves liberal yet are completely intolerant. I thought liberals loved everyone: the poor, the immigrant, the gays, the handicapped, the minorities, dogs, cats, all eye colors, all hair colors! Peace, love, bull! Curious they have no tolerance whatsoever for anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do. You disagree and you're immediately called a fool, a Nazi, a racist. That's pretty f'd up!! I would never judge someone based on their political views. Their honesty, integrity, kindness to others, generosity? Yes. Politics? No!

A bit of perspective, for those who need it....

Blogging Through Georgia - Walter Russell Mead:

"Communism is not the only force that haunts Georgia. Ethnic nationalism, religious conflict, resource wars: in a very small space Georgia is one of those unlucky countries that have it all.

JUst a glimpse of what an over-regulated economy can become....

Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened:

"Japan used to be so flashy and upbeat, but now everyone must live in a dark and subdued way,” said Masato, 49, who asked that his full name not be used because he still cannot repay the $110,000 that he owes on the mortgage.

Few nations in recent history have seen such a striking reversal of economic fortune as Japan. The original Asian success story, Japan rode one of the great speculative stock and property bubbles of all time in the 1980s to become the first Asian country to challenge the long dominance of the West."

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (Minus North Korea’s)

None So Blind (or stupid and dishonest)....

Belmont Club:

"It is a variation on that very old political theme: Bush made me do it. This despite the fact that in early 2003, Congress had been warned by the director of the federal office responsible for overseeing Fannie and Freddie, Armando Falcon, who said “in a 118-page report of the companies’ potential for a catastrophic failure that could jeopardize the economy.” This was followed by efforts by the Bush administration to rein in Fannie and Freddy somewhat via new Treasury rules.

But Frank and other Democrats still opposed tighter regulation, Frank most notably in his public statements saying there was nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie. He and other House Democrats also sent a letter to President George W. Bush in June 2004, saying the proposed crackdown could “weaken affordable housing performance . . . by emphasizing only safety and soundness.’’

Time to figure out who your real friends are....

Commentary:

"D.C. runs over black schoolkids. “Michelle Rhee—the tough broad who spent nearly four years as D.C. schools chancellor in a pitched battle against the corruption-plagued, incompetence-ridden Washington teachers union to reform a rotten public school system—was forced out today by mayor-elect Vincent Gray in what surely must be seen as a kind of triumph for the union and a potential tragedy for the city’s underprivileged, mostly-black schoolchildren.” Meanwhile, the Obamas are “tucking their own cute kids safely away in private schools.” Read the whole thing.

Officials from cities like New York should run, not walk, to grab her. “DC’s loss could be New York’s gain, and it behooves city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to scoop her up before she departs for another system.”

'The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah'

Rupert Murdoch:

"Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel. In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal. And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists.

...The world of 2010 is not the world of the 1930s. The threats Jews face today are different. But these threats are real. These threats are soaked in an ugly language familiar to anyone old enough to remember World War II. And these threats cannot be addressed until we see them for what they are: part of an ongoing war against the Jews."

Awesome: White House attacks on Rove’s group lead to massive influx of donations

Hot Air:

“Are we sure Obama’s not trying to help the GOP take back the House?”

Yes, but then you'll HAVE to vote for them to keep food on the table. It works out for everyone.....

Keeping the Poor in Poverty:

"Yet Obama and the Democrats, in thrall to the teachers’ unions, steadfastly resist proposals to give parents more control over their children’s education. Washington, D.C., has a public-school system that, despite spending more per child than almost any other system in the nation, still has a dropout rate of more than 50 percent. Yet one of the first actions of the president and congressional Democrats was to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which offered vouchers to permit poor children to opt out of the city’s rotten public schools."