Some bad news for the Democrats from the Senate parliamentarian. Reconciliation is a no-go in the Senate unless the house first passes the Reid bill and gets it to the President for his signature. The problem is that there is little trust by House members in the Senate’s dependability to address their concerns through a reconciliation bill if they accept the current Reid bill passed by the Senate in December. Of course, the parliamentarian can be overruled by unanimous consent (won’t happen) or by a Joe Biden power-play (definitely could happen, but will destroy Senate collegiality for years to come).
The problem? The dumbing down of higher education. The solution, according to this article? “Ill-prepared and unmotivated as many applicants are, colleges are eager to have them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to stay afloat financially. Admitting throngs of weak students, however, leads to an array of problems for non-selective schools….Instead of just trying to maximize “access” to college, we ought to limit government loans to those who seem to have the ability to benefit from higher education.”
On a not entirely unrelated topic to the above: The inflation in the number of law professors over the last decade. Up by 40%, far more than the number of students. Number of classes taught per professor has dropped to allow more research into, mainly, esoterica that feeds the perception of quality necessary to raise scores in the U.S. News rankings that law students crave and which they obviously are willing to pay higher tuition for. At least for now. No specific figures on the increase in the number of school bureaucrats, though it is agreed that the number has risen. Quite a bit, from my observations.
One of the reasons for the administration’s inability to get their health care plan through the House of Representatives is the dislike that many House Democrats have for the entrenched leadership, many of whom come from gerrymandered California districts that produce ultra-liberal representatives far to the left of the swing district Democrats.
A Kafkaesque result from the political correctness rampant in California. The political correctness is the hamfisted intrusion into family life under California law that overreacts to mere accusations of “child abuse,” yet too often seems not to prevent the real cases of abuse. “A California couple wrongly accused of abusing their teenager was arrested and had their other children removed from their home. They’ve since been cleared of the charges, but no one seems to know how to take them off the state’s list of child abusers. Under California law, local authorities are required to add to the list anyone even accused of abusing children, even if they’ve yet to be charged. The problem is that the law apparently offers no guidance on who has the authority to remove people once they’ve been cleared.” Meanwhile, as the author notes, California proposes to add a similar registry for animal abuse. The totalitarianism of the law becomes more stultifying every day. One of Instapundit’s commenters offers a solution: “Let’s all go accuse our assemblymen, see if that fixes the problem.”
“Irreconcilable Differences”: The political minefield of forcing health care changes through the Senate. By the way, those problems are why I think that those who believe that the administration and the Democratic leadership will not use reconciliation are correct. The success or failure of the vote on Obama/Reid/PelosiCare will depend on their ability to bamboozle or frighten enough House Democrats into voting for the monstrosity that the Senate already has passed, with the promise of changes to come through the reconciliation process, a process that, after the House then votes to adopt the current Senate bill, never happens.
Health care, like any good that is at least to some extent “scarce,” if for no reason than that there are constant innovations available to only a few initially, must be rationed. In a private market, the rationing device is price. Under government, rationing occurs through other means (bureaucratic rules and sclerotic administration, nepotism and other corruption, political influence peddling and bribes, and, yes, sub rosa pricing through gifts, favors, and bribes) as well as more traditional price rationing through emerging black markets and other ways to escape more rigid government programs. Eventually, as always, to save government health care, privatization is needed.
From the archives, musings from Stratfor.com about the reasons for the Western European infatuation with Barack Obama that resulted in him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an infatuation not shared by all Europeans and doomed to disappointment by the intervention of the realities of national interests.
Supporters of Obama/Reid/PelosiCare dredge up tales of people who have somehow suffered some economic injury because their insurance company would not pay for a procedure Some of those tales at least might contain kernels of truth about the incompetence of insurance company bureaucracies. Of course, given the long and ample track record of government bureaucracies, there is no reason to believe that they will perform better, and plenty of reasons to fear the opposite. In the meantime, there are many documented instances to show that government health care kills. Often brutally. And with, at best, perfunctory remorse by the bureaucrats in charge. Why would one expect any different from people for whom patients are merely intrusions into their lives of bureaucratic apathy and somnolence.
Governor Mitch Daniels (IN), former Representative John Kasich (OH), ex-Ebay CEO Meg Whitman (CA), Governor Bobby Jindal (LA), Governor Haley Barbour (MS), Governor Tim Pawlenty (MN), Governor Rick Perry (TX), and Senator Jim DeMint (SC). All names that are still unfamiliar to many Americans. Plus Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul. And, of course, Sarah Palin. The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes muses about potential Republican presidential candidates for 2012.
A more thorough analysis than what the media will give of Senator Jim Bunning’s obstacle in the move to extend unemployment benefits last week. Portrayed as a villain, Bunning was merely trying to force compliance with the “Paygo” law that the President had so ostentatiously trumpeted as a yardstick of the Democrats’ fiscal responsibility during the State of the Union speech. Being held to the promises made during their political posturing infuriated the Democrats. Bunning just wanted them to find $10 billion in their multi-trillion dollar budget, including in the hundreds of billions of still-unexpended “stimulus” funds.
This is a bit of a dog-bites-man story, but worth reading, nevertheless. From pollster and analyst Michael Barone, a comparison of the two most populous states. Texas, a low-tax, low-regulation state, is an economic success even during the recession. California, a high-tax, high-regulation state, is an economic basket case. Texans must beware, though, that their success does not lead to Californication. After all, for many years, California was what Texas is. The culprits of California’s demise? Affluent coastal liberals in San Francisco and on L.A.’s Westside and public employee unions, both of them important constituencies of the Democratic Party, who have been able (until now) to persuade enough voters of the desirability of their cultural and economic Big Government values. That, and the Texas legislature meets only 90 days every two years, whereas the California legislature hones its dysfunctional politics all year long.
California and Greece present similar tales of political and economic dysfunction. Common thread: The destruction of state budgets caused by public sector unions. Conditions coming soon to Canada and all other welfare states with their bloated and inefficient government bureaucracies. Via Instapundit.
The Left and the media had a great deal of fun and opportunity for self-righteousness when the Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at President Bush. That event, as they saw it, was due to the negative way that foreigners viewed the United States because of Bush, an image that was sure to undergo a 180 degree turn for the better once Barack Obama was elected. It will be interesting to see how those same folks will react to this.
This is an unbelievable story. The son of one of the founders of the Hamas terrorist gang found peace in an Israeli prison. He converted to Christianity and also became an agent for the Shin Bet Israeli internal security service. When asked whether he considers his father to be a fanatic, his response is telling, if very controversial. Sounding like Mark Steyn in what can be seen as a call for an internal Islamic “Reformation,” he explains, “It doesn’t matter if he’s a terrorist or a traditional Muslim. At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don’t want to admit this is an ideological war.” “The problem is not in Muslims,” he continues. “The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to.” These are not sentiments to endear him to people for whom apostasy is a capital offense.
Wall Street donations support Democrats over Republicans—by a lot. Recently, the same firms have given somewhat less to the Democrats, though they still give more to the Democrats than to the Republicans. Which the media reports as “Wall Street Shifting Political Contributions to Republicans.”
An interesting immigration case. Judge grants asylum to German family. Germany criminalizes home schooling. The German authorities have threatened to take away the family’s children, so the family has sought the help of an American home schooling network in Tennessee.
Non-comprehending jurors are not just an American problem. Yet we expect them to rule based on their interpretation of expert testimony about difficult forensic issues in criminal cases and complex economic matters in antitrust cases, to name a couple. Interesting side note: White juries do not discriminate against Blacks.
Solving the University of California’s budget problems: A lifetime of indentured servitude? As expected from the leftists who dominate the academy, those graduates who end up more successful or with more stressful, but also more highly-compensated jobs will subsidize the loan repayments of the slackers and those who take less stressful and well-paid but more ideological “public interest” jobs.
George Will on immaturity as a lifestyle for young boy-men (into their 30s), a phenomenon about which there is increasing concern. “If you wonder what has become of manliness…note the differences between Cary Grant and Hugh Grant, the former, dapper and debonair, the latter, a perpetually befuddled boy.”
Via Professor Robert Chesney. Senators McCain and Lieberman have introduced a Senate Bill, the “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.” The bill would require at least some period of military detention and non-Mirandized interrogation by a group of interrogation specialists for persons who are suspected of engaging in hostilities against the U.S. or coalition partners through unlawful means, or who support such hostilities. Such interrogators would perhaps be from the HIG (High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group of FBI, CIA, and military interrogators established by President Obama, but not yet staffed seven months later). The bill also provides for the availability of non-criminal detention for such persons for the duration of hostilities and prohibits spending Department of Justice funds for civilian trials of them.
The return of the military commissions. An Obama/Holder promise with an expiration date. How unusual! Though there is precedent for it, I think that an attempt to try these guys before a military commission on the sovereign territory of the U.S. (after closing the Guantanamo detention center) is fraught with constitutional difficulties.
This supports my post a few days ago that there will be a health care vote. The Congressional leadership is ideologically blinkered and ready to lead their lemmings off the political cliff. Even if it costs them heavily in November, it’s a price they’re willing to pay to set the United States on a dysfunctional course of socialized economics and regulatory nannyism.
Excellent piece on what it means to have the right to keep and bear arms: “The notion that citizens have no good reason to be armed, because the State can protect them from violent crime, is one of the most dangerous lies Big Government has fed its subjects. The government reduces crime through the police and court systems, but no matter how tirelessly the police work, there is very little chance they can actively defend you from assault. There aren’t enough of them, and there never could be.”
“The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child. The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children….Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements. “
Grab some popcorn or ice cream and a comfortable chair and let the follies begin: Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas opens the Democrats-against-Democrats election year spectacle. In other election news, Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt (D) is retiring. Though this is a Democratic-leaning district (as probably every street in Massachusetts is), Republican Scott Brown easily won the district in his successful Senate run.
Via Mark Steyn, a John Stossel post on why he hates bureaucrats. A complaint (anonymous, of course) leads to a health department order to a hardware store to stop providing free donuts and coffee to customers, unless they hire a professional service or install kitchen facilities. This occurred in a town not far from where I live. I am not a fan of the hardware store in the story, but the government paper shuffler’s reaction is absurd. Another case of the run-away nanny state and the anonymous fussbucket (or competitor) whose neuroses ruin life’s little conveniences for the rest of us. I see the same attitudes among students at my school; the administration is the health department bureaucrat.
Guy dies in police custody after interrogation. It turns out that his nipples are ripped off, he has multiple injuries to his penis, and his skull has a hole in it. The police admit that he was perfectly healthy before the interrogation. Explanation for his death? Drinking water mixed with a cold medicine. Only in China. Where are our human rights lawyers? Oh yes, making sure that would-be terrorists are given Miranda warnings and that intelligence-gathering interrogations do not result in temporary sleep deprivation and water boarding.
Harold Ford, Jr., is a centrist Democrat. A former Congressman from Tennessee (as was his father), who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate from Tennessee in 2006, Ford moved to New York and was contemplating a run for Hillary Clinton’s former seat now occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand. Ford eventually dropped that idea. One explanation, whether or not that was his real reason, is that the Democrats are scared about the 2010 election. Maybe the nightmare is in the person of Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the New York Daily News.
Disgraced “green jobs” czar and self-proclaimed communist Van Jones receives award from NAACP? Organization’s head claims he is an “American treasure.” In addition to the information in the previous link, Jones called George W. Bush a crack pipe-licking crackhead, before calling for more civility in political discourse, now that Mr. Obama is President. The NAACP can’t find any more deserving person for its award? Or are they so marginalized they have to try to make themselves relevant by honoring a fringe conspiracy monger?
A powerful indictment of the IPCC climate change hysteria: “All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC’s 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves. Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate.”
More polls for predictions for November, 2010, if the election were held under current trends: Professor Larry Sabato of the Univ. of Virginia, a nationally-known political forecaster: House—Republicans +27; Senate Republicans +7; Governors Republicans +6. Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University uses a prediction model that Sabato says has been shown to be the most accurate for predicting mid-term elections. Focusing only on the House, Abramowitz predicts a best-case loss of 20 for the Democrats, a worst-case loss of 54, and a likely loss of 37. Democratic pollster Stu Rothenberg predicts Democratic House losses between 24 and 28, and Senate losses between 5 and 7, with higher gains possible. Much-in-demand political analyst Charlie Cook says it is “very hard” to see how the Democrats can keep the House, meaning a loss of at least 40 seats. I still say that the Republicans will gain around 30 House seats and now think they will get 3 to 5 more Senate seats.
Drill, baby, drill—in North Dakota. A potentially tremendous source of oil, if combined with drilling in other locales, on- and off-shore. It’s a matter of political will, not technology.
A number of people, including Token Conservative, have chimed in on this: Why Obama/Reid/PelosiCare may be unconstitutional. (I did not realize that there was an affirmative action component to this. Perhaps this does not apply to the newest model, though.)
The President is introducing a “smaller” health care bill on Thursday that isn’t really smaller. It’s the Senate bill with a couple of Republican ideas thrown in. Good cosmetics, as it puts the GOP in the position of having to oppose something that contains some of their own ideas. However, ultimately this will still be seen for the scam it is. Indeed, Pelosi has already made it an object of public ridicule by telling reporters that a bill can be bipartisan if it contains “Republican ideas,” although it gets no Republican support.
The House votes to extend the Patriot Act, you know, that terrible Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld law that destroyed the Republic by allowing the government to listen in on the conversations of suspected terrorists (as well as doing some really dumb things), and which all the Democrats supposedly opposed. They also killed an amendment to an intelligence bill that would have criminalized cruel, inhumane and degrading interrogations.
While we fiddled: Iran’s continuing march to nuclear armament. The problem isn’t that Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons; it’s that the deranged fascist regime currently holding sway there shouldn’t have any weapons, much less nuclear ones.
James Delingpole on the new world order that is the real goal of global environmentalists. It’s not science, but power. That’s why they treat skepticism as heresy, rather than a scientific challenge.
From Daniel Hannan, a British conservative member of the European Parliament (and a far truer conservative than David Cameron and the other Tory posers) on the paradox of the conservative intellectual and with an invitation to a British Tea Party. Not sure that I agree with him about the ancestry of today’s British (or American) left being Fox, Wilkes, and Paine. They were democrats or democratic republicans, not socialist progressives.
Justice Ginsburg supported Roe v. Wade when it was decided because she thought it would lead to government-funded abortions for poorer people. She believed that the reason was a concern about too much population growth, especially among “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Ginsburg was strongly pro-abortion choice, and Planned Parenthood has its roots in the eugenics movement, an outgrowth of the Progressive Era.
When the welfare state turns out to be an economic turkey, is there a Greece in our future? Economist Robert Samuelson believes so: “All welfare states face similar problems: burgeoning costs as populations age; an over-reliance on debt financing; and pressures to reduce borrowing that create pressures to cut welfare spending. High debt and the welfare state are at odds. It’s an open question whether the collision will cause social and economic turmoil.”
After months of increasing tension and frustration, Nancy Pelosi and the leadership may be losing control of the fractious Democratic caucus.
Not mincing words about Obama’s horrible health care bill: “The Obama plan contains fiscal gimmicks and gamesmanship which will lead to crushing deficits and debt; sanctions government intrusion into our lives unlike anything we have seen before; will lead to the destruction of a private insurance system which, while not perfect, delivers coverage to the overwhelming majority of Americans in a satisfactory manner; will result in the demoralization of our most honored profession, reducing medical care to the lowest common denominator in the cause of a false sense of fairness; and reflects the ultimate hubris of ideological, power drunk people who have proven themselves unworthy of our trust and who express, time and again, their disdain for the people they claim to serve.”
If the Olympics can have synchronized ribbon-twirling, why not this? That’s a gymnastics event even men could watch.
Is Obamanomics the current version of Nixonian wage-price controls and similarly guaranteed not just to fail, but to choke the economy? From insurance companies to credit cards, the guarantee of shortages and higher prices: “A law he signed last year regulating credit card companies, which took effect this week, was supposed to save consumers huge sums. But it has suffered a bruising collision with the real world. The Associated Press reports that in recent months, ‘credit card companies jacked up interest rates, created new fees and cut credit lines,’ while shutting down many accounts entirely. The law, says AP, ‘has helped make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get credit, and made that credit more expensive.’”
Liberals insist that the American Bar Association, in general, and its evaluation of judicial nominees, in particular, are not biased. (Liu is a liberal, Easterbrook a conservative.)
From the Mark Steyn archives, a classic from 2001. Substitute the name “Barack Obama” for many of the “Bill Clintons,” and the piece has a timelessness about the fecklessness of the Europeans and the need for a strong U.S.
Prodded by the controversial party at UCSD about which I have posted, Professor Victor Davis Hanson examines the virulent strain of racialism that runs through the American liberal elite. I especially enjoyed his description of racial hypocrisy in academia.
Portions of the $826 Billion stimulus that the President called “targeted, timely, and temporary” are about to become permanent, as a part of the baseline budget. So much for blaming George Bush for the deficits. As expected, it’s all about the Left’s reflexive and insatiable statist intrusion into people’s lives.
Senator James Imhofe calls for investigations into the climate scammers. That includes Al Gore, whom the New York Times has described as possibly the first carbon billionaire for the money he has made off his carbon trading schemes and his books and films, whose premises and conclusions have been almost entirely debunked.
They may not be hiring associates, and they may be laying off those they have, but one BigLaw characteristic never changes. As always, the partners make money.
Ann Coulter on the trap awaiting Republicans at the “health care summit”: “It’s as if the patient has a minor fever and the Democrats (as doctor in this example) want to cut off his arms and legs. The Republicans want to give the patient two aspirin. ‘Compromise’ means the Republicans agree to amputate only one arm and one leg….So Obama’s sole objective at the ’summit’ is to hoodwink Republicans into agreeing with some of his wildly unpopular ideas on national TV….This shouldn’t be hard, inasmuch as he will be talking to elected Republicans.”
More of the same concerns about the dollar. One needs to be careful not to overestimate China’s power over the dollar. By buying so many dollars, China has limited its own discretion. Dump dollars, see your holdings lose value, see the yuan appreciate, see your exports drop, see your unemployment rise.
One reason why China will not become the superpower some expect, or fear, is the lack of future families caused by the exaggerated male-female ratio, which will lead to fewer children to care for an already-aging population. In the meantime, an excessive ratio of men to women can promote social instability and military adventurism (as well as trafficking in foreign females), which can make China a threat to others over the next two decades or so.
In light of recent announcements from Iran that it has jumped the uranium enrichment queue and is well on the way to weaponizing uranium and from the IAEA that Iran never really stopped working on that enrichment for weapons, despite the claims of the ridiculously faulty NIE in 2007 that undercut the Bush administration, this post from Professor Victor Davis Hanson from five months ago remains remarkably timely.
Response by Matthew Franck of National Review Online a few months ago to an op-ed piece by the lawyers seeking to get the unelected federal judges to amend the Constitution and concoct a right to same-sex marriage.
Nanny state? What nanny state? The lobby of the perpetually fearful.
“It’s my health; it’s my choice.” So sayeth the premier of Newfoundland, Canada, to explain his decision to go to Florida for a heart procedure not available to him soon enough under the Canadian public system. Mark Steyn and Scaramouche propose this as the slogan against Obama/Reid/PelosiCare. I like the sound of it.
There are a number of messages in this. Lead-in: Female sexual cannibals do not find their male partners particularly tasty. I think they are only referring to spiders.
Are the Democratic votes there for Obama/Reid/PelosiCare? Not yet, and there is much doubt that enough Democrats will fall on their swords, given the tremendous unpopularity of the proposal. Read the links, epscially the strategy analysis by Bush economist Keith Hennessey. His alternatives sound about right, though I think that, if this proposal fails, Obama will propose some very minimal piecemeal changes to the current system that attract some Republican support (the Rahm Emanuel approach). He can then call that a victory for “health care reform” and blunt the Republican message in the fall. But we are about a month or two away from that.
Wall Street Journal article about how lawfare affects the American military’s tactical decisions. Does this endanger our troops? Certainly it should put to rest once and for all the leftist canard that these terrorists using children as human shields are just yearning to play by accepted rules of civilized warfare if there weren’t the evil Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld denying them the full rights of American civilians.
The federal court lawsuit that challenges the democratic decision of California voters to overturn the state supreme court’s 4-3 decision that concocted a right for same sex couples to marry despite the express command of a previous democratically-adopted statutory initiative, is brought by two attorneys of opposite political views. One of them is the former Bush 43 administration Solicitor General, Theodore Olson. Some months back, the two of them co-wrote an opinion piece defending their suit. Professor Nelson Lund replies. Since then, Olson has written that same-sex marriage is really “conservative,” a truly preposterous piece of sophistry that deserves a separate response.
Mark Steyn on the the West’s propensity to fiddle while the mullahocracy in Iran is gathering lots of kindling and matches: “It is certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s.” For an eye-rolling example of idiotic nannyism by the federal government to protect someone from non-existent danger, read the comment by USAF44 in Steyn’s comment thread.
Continuing with Steyn’s theme, LTC Ralph Peters describes the subterfuges by Iran that will result in its inevitably becoming a nuclear power. That, in turn, will have a grossly distorting effect on the balance of power in the neighborhood. And not just Iran’s neighborhood.
China’s economy rests precariously on the willingness of the American consumer to buy its product. The Chinese have grabbed a tiger by lending to the U.S. and is trying to hold on while it figures out how to let go without suffering a disaster. Though the article is a few months old, its point is still valid.
The next time your favorite Obama supporter is outraged about how nasty those Tea Partiers are to the President and complains about (false) stories of conservatives comparing Mr. Obama to Hitler or some other unsavory character, refer the outraged O-bot to this site.
For the first time, Harry Reid is signalling support for a public option health care bill to be approved by “reconciliation,” a process normally reserved for only a few types of budget-related bills. For reconciliation, debate would be severely constrained and adoption could be by majority vote without filibusters. Procedural and tactical obstacles remain. It is possible that Reid is doing this to get the bill adopted while allowing various electorally-endangered Democratic Senators to vote against it for political cover. In theory, that might work. But the bill is immensely unpopular, and if this is seen as being done to shove an overwhelmingly unpopular proposal through the Senate, voting against the bill at this late stage will not save them. With partisan hostility as high as it is, and having voted in favor of earlier versions, they will be tarred as being part of the party that voted for the bill.
What are the economic, social, and cultural costs to be paid from a shrinking population? Historically, such trends were accompanied by deflation, stagnation, friction, and collapse. Unfortunately, this is no longer an academic question for Japan and many parts of Europe. There are now human laboratories where these trends are working themselves out. The article does not address other, perhaps less obvious problems, such as the decline of productivity due to the loss of capital as creditors will not lend on collapsing asset values and to ageing and shrinking populations.
Mark Steyn on the show trial in the Netherlands of Dutch politician and Islam critic Geert Wilders. While Wilders seems a jerk (something not unknown with politicians), this trial is a bad joke. Similar abuses of power happen with the Candaian “Human Rights Commissions” and criminal and administrative proceedings in England. Meanwhile Elton John can claim that Jesus is a homosexual with impunity (which is the right result, nevermind the astounding display of theological ignorance “Sir” Elton emitted). The Dutch government is, as Steyn points out, essentially criminalizing the platform of the main opposition party. With truth no defense, this is akin to sedition prosecutions, but with fewer rights than the infamous American Sedition Act of 1798.
Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online commends President Obama on his support of targeted killings and other assertive tactics against terrorists in Pakistan. I agree. But he is also left wondering whether Obama is ordering the killings (with their potential attendant loss of intelligence) as tactics in a military strategy, or just as a way to avoid judicial interference with detention and interrogation of detainees. I have wondered about that previously, as well. But I also wonder about Pakistani duplicity in all this.
An enlightening 2004 review of Samuel Huntington’s book Who Are We? that explores some troubling issues about immigration (primarily from Mexico) and lack of assimilation, with the potentially explosive effect on the historic American Creed. What makes this particularly relevant today is Huntington’s indictment of the “denationalized” American elites’ efforts to undermine the traditional American Creed and culture through multiculturalism, transnationalism, and racial preference entitlements.
Solving the looming retirement funding crisis and the welfare state’s Ponzi scheme. Intergenerational conflict and novelist Martin Amis’s “voluntary” euthanasia booths.
For those who need to see Mr. Tiger Woods’s passably-scripted, but poorly-voiced “apology,” here it is.
Mark Steyn asks, “They need drugs to do this in Santa Cruz?” Well, actually, Mark, yes; the usual tree of choice for hugging is the California Redwood. This guy obviously was hallucinating when he hugged a common palm tree.
Washington State Supreme Court holds that the Second Amendment applies to the states by incorporation into the Fourteenth. Is this a portent of things to come from the “real” Supreme Court in the McDonald case to be argued early next month? I doubt that this Washington decision would have come out this way even two years ago before the U.S. Supreme Court gave a green light to constitutional protection of a right to own handguns by confirming that the Second Amendment right was a personal, not a collective, right.
The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Brookhiser on the historical counterparts to the Tea Party. I think that his use of the opposition to the FDR Court-packing plan is mistaken. As he points out, that was heavily infused with various liberal elites, such as the elite elements of the lawyer class. The Populist Party of the late 19th century might be a better comparison. I also disagree with his dismissal of various broad middle-class based movements during the founding era, such as the original Tea Party participants and the other Sons of Liberty.
Emerging briefly from the witness protection program or wherever she has been hid, Hillary Clinton expresses concern that Iran may be heading towards military dictatorship. Welcome to the club, Hillary, however belatedly. I wrote about this last June in “The Iranian coup d’etat,” based on the analysis by various Iran experts and observers.
Regarding the recent claim that Iran was now a nuclear state (presumably referring to its enrichment capacity that puts it qualitatively closer to the high level enrichment needed for weaponized uranium), Ann Coulter recalls the ridiculous NIE report from 2007 that proclaimed, in the face of contrary reports from numerous foreign intelligence services, as well as the judgment of the Bush administration and common sense, that Iran had ceased enriching uranium in 2003.
Driving under the influence—of work. The dangers of the mobile office, an unsettlingly frequent sight on L.A. roads.
Senator Evan Bayh claimed that the lack of bipartisanship in Congress caused him to decline to run for re-election. Since there wasa a definite lack of bipartisanship in Congress as Democrats vilified George W. Bush and his policies (Social Security reform, the Iraq War, national security policies) when Bayh ran for re-election in 2004, this sounds specious. This blog has evidence that suggests a different reason, namely, some ethical difficulties involving the Senator and his wife that might resurface and damage him in an anti-incumbent year and a sour electorate. HT: Instapundit.
I do like Senator Bayh’s carefully-nuanced statement with its correct main point: The Democrats’ Stimulus boondoggle has failed to create private jobs.
While a $555,000 student loan debt is clearly an unusual case, six-figure debts, particularly when graduate/professional school education is included, are not unusual. As I have posted many times before, this is not a sustainable business model.
Why are the Smithsonian’s presidential portraits of Democrats much bigger than those of Republicans? Is it the institution’s ideological bias, the greater need of Democrats for personal validation through bigger monuments, or some other size issue?
In the aftermath of the subtly pro-life, but still controversial Focus on the Family Super Bowl commercial featuring University of Florida’s Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother, the National Organization for Women is demanding the airing next year of a pro-abortion commercial, according to Carbolic Smokeball.
From a few months ago, a preview of what would happen if terrorists were to be brought from Gitmo to the U.S.? Shoebomber Richard Reid sues for greater free speech and free exercise of religion protections. Not that it will do any good. The “human rights lobby is complaining about the Supermax prison as being another form of torture worse than Gitmo. So much for the administration’s assertion that closing Gitmo will remove a source of recruitment for jihadists.
For you Joseph Conrad (or Iowahawk) connoisseurs, Iowahawk channels his inner E. J. Dionne to chronicle an East Coast liberal’s journey into the wild and unfathomable American heartland in Heart of Redness.
Mark Steyn laments the creeping conformism spurred by the nanny state and the groupthink among the putative elite induced by liberal indoctrination.
And now for a somewhat different take on romantic relationships than what one usually hears in the West. The reaction in the article from outraged British women is predictable. Notwithstanding that reported reaction, and not coincidentally, Islam has been getting a goodly number of converts in Europe, with surveys of female converts showing the more robustly traditional sex roles in Islam as a point of attraction.
Rather astounding designs for long-range bombers. By the Germans from World War II. The technology was well ahead of what the allies had. Fortunately for history, while the Germans had the skill, they didn’t have the time or the resources.
Scott Ott at Scrappleface feeds rumor that he is leaving his post writing satire and joining the Obama administration as speech writer. Says Ott:
“What I loved about covering the president as a satirical journalist is that the stories wrote themselves. My fans, in their countless dozens, marvel that I came up with so much side-splitting satire. But frankly, it’s hard to take credit for what I have done. I’m just a stenographer sitting in the shadow of the masters. There’s not time or space to properly thank all of the Obama administration officials who have made my job so easy.”
Muslim groups in the U.S. challenge the proposed use of full-body scanners at airport security checkpoints. Mark Steyn has a tongue-in-cheek ”solution”: Objecting Muslims get an exemption, while the rest of us, children included, get the full scan. Count on the TSA not to see the satire.
The National Petrochemical Refiners Association and other groups (e.g., truckers) have filed a challenge to California’s “anti-global warming” carbon emissions regulation law. A former student of mine, an expert in chemical engineering and fossil fuels, Roger Sowell, has an excellent post about the suit on his blog. Here is a link to the complaint, which argues that the state law is pre-empted by federal law on fuel content (weak) and by the Commerce Clause (better).
Can we start calling them socialists yet? And will liberals finally stop complaining when someone calls Obama, who is on the Democrats’ left wing, a “socialist”? A majority of Democrats and liberals, and only they, like socialism.
Regarding Obama/Reid/PelosiCare, most Americans are opposed, most want current plans scrapped, most want to wait until after the election for a new attempt; of course, the political class overwhelmingly favors it, while productive Americans overwhelmingly oppose it.
From Instapundit: THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, we’d see a new Orwellian era of surveillance. And they were right. Obama administration argues that cell phone owners have no expectation of privacy in the phones’ whereabouts.
Iran’s leaders have promised something huge for today to “punch the West.” Lots of speculation about what they have planned. Iran expert Michael Ledeen believes that the regime plans massive and violent repression.
Quoting the historian Arnold Toynbee, “Civilizations die from suicide, not from murder,” Mark Steyn contemplates the danger for and from American timidity and decline.
According to liberals, the latest racist codeword was to describe Obama as “articulate.” But that has been supplanted by “professor,” a term by which Sarah Palin referred to Obama. Never mind that Obama was, in fact, a professor (or at least an adjunct associate professor).
Free speech problems at UC Irvine. A repetitive occurrence from the same quarters. Compared to more restrained Muslim student associations at other schools, this one has a history of bullying and trying to silence critical speech. Also repetitive is the UCI administration’s cowardice in dealing with these people. But UCI is not alone in its cravenness.
The administration’s counter-terrorism director actually wrote in an op-ed piece that people who criticize the decision to Mirandize the would-be crotchbomber are helping al Qaeda.
Interesting. The Obama birth-certificate movement started among Democrats on the Left. There’s some overlap with the 9/11 Truthers and the CBS research into the George W. Bush National Guard records. It’s interesting to recall, too, that the Willie Horton ads against 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis were started in the primaries by Democrat Al Gore.
One more reaction to the Tebow Superbowl ad, via Carbolic Smokeball. I have to point out that this is a parody, because NOW and similar groups often make arguments and take positions that seem parodic, but turn out to be the real thing.
Sarah Palin treated as Obama’s political equal? That is not a good sign for the President. He has appeared to often on the TV screens, making grand, formal speeches to the populace or to Congress. That creates overexposure and eventual boredom with the Obama brand. The press then goes for the newest thing, here, someone with less recent saturation of the airwaves.
In an article titled Cheney’s Revenge, a summary of the Obama administration’s reversals of its earlier pretentious posing of moral superiority over the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policies.
The curiously-named Yid with Lid takes a look at Obama’s collapsing poll numbers and concludes that a significant contributor is the budget. Those numbers, especially the 17% rate of strong disapproval over strong approval does not bode well for Mr. Obama or the Democrats to whose necks this millstone will be tied.
Instapundit (law professor Glenn Reynolds) declares that the recent Tea Party convention confirms that the movement is the U.S.’s third Great Awakening. Unlike the first two, which were religious-based revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries, this one is secular.
Some feminists react against Tim and Mom Tebow’s pro-life, Focus-on-the-Family sponsored Superbowl commercial by claiming it approves violence against women. That’s quite different from the way feminists reacted in 2008 when an ad was produced that showed and advocated violence against Sarah Palin.
Vaccines do not cause autism. The British medical journal Lancet published a study in 1998 that purported, on the basis of a mere 12 cases, to show such a connection. Since then, many studies have shown there is no connection, while none have supported the 1998 study. Investigative reporters have since uncovered that the author of the study was working on a rival vaccine and was paid off by trial lawyers to find the connection he “found.” Lancet has known this for several years, but only recently retracted its earlier study. What is it with British “scientists” and scare-mongering based on fraud? Vaccines can cause bad reactions in a few people, and there are some good reasons to weigh decisions about a few of them carefully. But, overall, failure to have children get vaccinated is hugely irresponsible. As someone who had a lot of the childhood diseases for which there are now vaccines, I can vouch for the fact that whooping cough, mumps, and measles are no walks in the park. Oh, and don’t get medical advice from morons.
While the people of North Korea try to survive the starvation produced by their criminal government and perverted socialist economic system, Australians are dealing with their own version of a problem, one indicative of the cultural condition of the West. Censors require that only women with substantial bosoms be depicted in porn, presumably to avoid simulated child pornography.
What? The Democrats as weak on defense and strong on collectivism? What a concept. Old stereotypes revived? More likely, leopards don’t change their spots, if one only cares to look.
I well remember the grief George W. Bush got if he mispronounced a word, such as “nuclear.” Slate magazine had a column about Bushisms that ran well after Bush left office. Although Obama has released more than a reasonable number of gaffes and verbal bombs, predictably he has not received the same degree of scorn from the enraptured press. Here is the latest: Obama and the “corpseman.”
First the crotchbomber, now this. The al Qaeda version of this. If one of them succeeds in blowing herself up, Homeland Security will respond by subjecting all women larger than 32A to special searches.
The United States as a conservative, center-right country, according to yet another poll.
About those melting Himalayan glaciers…. If someone did a 6th grade science fair project the way “climate scientists” treat their “facts” and prove their theories, he or she would fail.
Feminists love to complain about sexism in the criminal law system. If four guys had lured a woman into a motel room, blindfolded her, tied her to the bed, punched her in the face and Krazy-glued her female anatomy, would they have got probation?
In light of the false appeals to bipartisanship and the expressions of shock at supposed conservative anger that emanate from the Obama administration and their media supporters, a history of liberals smearing conservatives. Most of these examples are from quite recent times.
Is this the end of the Reign of Error? With cratering audience ratings, will MSNBC pull the plug on Keith Olbermann? Or at least on his show?
What is this world coming to? The Netherlands is being taken over by sexual puritans. In the U.S., wouldn’t this be a constitutional right?
“I’ve never heard leadership admit publicly to being so lost.” Obama/Reid/PelosiCare’s swan song? Incidentally, Intrade has the likelihood of “health care reform” passing by the end of June at about 1 chance out of 3.
The proposed Obama tax increases. History shows repeatedly that tax increases never produce the revenue projected for them. People seek to avoid them by altering their behavior if they can, especially the truly rich. Moreover, the increases stifle growth of wealth, so less tax revenue is produced from economic activity.
This is what a trillion dollars looks like—in $100 bills. If you only carry $1 bills, the graphic would be 100 times as large. Consider, too, that the deficit would be more than 1.5 times this graphic, and the federal budget nearly four times. Also check out the link for the $11 trillion and rising fast national debt. So when the federal government says that it needs more revenue, consider the huge amount it is getting and spending.
In an effort to clear out the backlog of items on my “to blog list,” I am going to start a feature called the Daily Briefing. The hope is that each weekday (more or less) I will link to three stories (more or less) that I have found informative about important current issues or that are particularly well-written in analyzing a more fundamental issue. I will do so without much commentary, which I will leave to my other postings. We’ll see how it goes. A little like Instapundit, but with less time and money to spend on the effort.
A quick summary of campaign finance law history about restrictions on corporate spending on ads versus giving to candidates. Only the former was addressed in the recent case; the latter prohibitions are still in place.
