"10,000 years. . .10,000 years. . ."
Bai hua qi fang, bai jia zheng ming: A hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend
Comments on History, Politics, Society, and Culture
Friday, December 31, 2010
POPE'S 2010 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Thursday, December 30, 2010
THE WARS OF 2011
WOMEN ISLAMIC TERRORISTS
Pakistani Taliban have established an all-women wing of suicide bombers to carry out terror missions across the country, dramatically revealed a 12-year-old girl who managed to escape from the clutches of the rebels from near the Afghanistan border.
Meena Gul's brother, a Taliban commander, told her: 'You will go to heaven before any of us, if you blow up yourself the way I tell you.'
OBAMA'S BIPARTISANSHIP
CONSTITUTION NOT UNDERSTANDABLE
CHINESE MISSILE
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
CALIFORNIA, A THIRD WORLD STATE
It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?
Friday, December 10, 2010
CHINA vs. AMERICA IN EDUCATION
Friday, December 03, 2010
HEALTH CARE IN THE US
RUSSIAN MOLE IN NSA
Monday, November 29, 2010
OBAMA'S FAITH
WIKILEAKS
Der Spiegel's analysis. Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information -- data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which US foreign policy is built. Never before has the trust America's partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public -- as have America's true views of them.
Jimmy Carter, deja vu.
Friday, November 19, 2010
DEMOCRATS, THE PARTY OF THE FUTURE???
Declining to pinpoint a Republican favorite, Carville said any GOP presidential candidate would be forced to “double-down on older whites” — a strategy that becomes less reliable each cycle.
“When you get into a presidential electorate, it decidedly favors Democrats, and every year it’s going to decidedly favor them more and more,” Carville said. “Demographics don’t do anything but get better for Democrats. Every election becomes less white.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45353.html#ixzz15kCXcG5H
STATE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
THE ROLE OF POLITICAL PARTIES
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
CHEATING SCANDAL
"This is college. Everyone cheats, everyone cheats in life in general," Ravvin said. "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in this testing lab who hasn't cheated on an exam."
Friday, November 05, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
AMERICAN CORRUPTION GROWING
Monday, October 25, 2010
BRANDS & POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
Google is the top brand for Democrats, according to an index incorporating consumer impressions of its quality, its value, their satisfaction with it, its reputation, their willingness to recommend it and their general impression of it. Google doesn't appear in Republicans' top 10.
Republicans, on the other hand, rank Fox News tops; Fox News, perhaps not surprisingly, doesn't appear on the list of Democrats' favorite 10 brands.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
ISLAM IN FRANCE
Sunday, October 03, 2010
ISLAM TO RULE THE WORLD
“We do believe as Muslims the East and the West will be governed by the Sharia,” Choudray. “Indeed we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House. Indeed, there's even an oration of the Prophet where he said, ‘The day of judgment will not come until a group of my...’”
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
PICTURES OF THE RUSSIAN PAST
Sunday, September 26, 2010
UN CONTACT FOR ALIENS
Saturday, September 25, 2010
COMPUTER ATTACK
Mahmoud Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran's industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled bythemalicious Stuxnet virus.
The experts say it is beyond the capabilities of private or individual hackers and could have been produced by a high-tech state like America or Israel, or its military cyber specialists.
Monday, September 20, 2010
PARENTING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
I was reminded how we got this generation of students -- many of whom are not prepared to deal with setbacks and whose egos need to be stroked all the time -- when I was at a friend's home for dinner. The parents beamed as their 11-year-old son showed off a ribbon he got for coming in second in a race.
After he went to bed, I found out that in that particular meet, only two kids participated. Better yet, the school makes sure that every child gets at least one ribbon, so that his or her tender self-esteem will not suffer.
Friday, September 17, 2010
RANKING COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD
HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION
Saturday, September 11, 2010
AMERICAN CULTURE. . .IN DECLINE AGAIN???
Farmville is a corporate conspiracy sucking in dumb Facebookers.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE
Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.
Some think this would be a good thing. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray has called for the abolition of college for almost all students. Save it for genuine scholars, he says, and let others qualify for jobs by standardized national tests, as accountants already do.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
DARWIN'S THEORY QUESTIONED
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
CAUCAUS EMIRATE
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
HUNTINGTON'S THESIS REVIVED
The greatest advantage of Huntington's civilizational model of international relations is that it reflects the world as it is—not as we wish it to be. It allows us to distinguish friends from enemies. And it helps us to identify the internal conflicts within civilizations, particularly the historic rivalries between Arabs, Turks and Persians for leadership of the Islamic world.
But divide and rule cannot be our only policy. We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.
Our civilization is not indestructible: It needs to be actively defended. This was perhaps Huntington's most important insight. The first step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is waging it—and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
MORE PROBLEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
"Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent," wrote Greene, who also heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. They blame government for these trends, but somebody is making the decision to curtail faculty or student services.
From U.S. News & World Report, "Is a College Education Worth the Price?" Numerous studies show that tuition, which has far outpaced the cost of living, has been spent on things other than classroom teaching. Administrative staffs and lavish facilities top the list. After years of building palatial campuses, states faced with budget cuts now find that they are stuck with the fancy athletic center and have to slash faculty, resulting in packed classrooms detrimental to the learning experience. Doesn't seem like classroom teaching is much of a priority.
And in the Christian Science Monitor more indication of misplace focus of the use of money: We hope this will be a wake-up call that colleges are asking for lots of money and a major sacrifice by families, but in too many places they have really abdicated their responsibility to direct students to what they need to learn for success after graduation. It is not about learning for life.
The problem in Maryland. One might think that as enrollments increase, universities would need relatively fewer administrators per student since they could spread those fixed costs over a larger base. Instead, the opposite is occurring. As universities increase their enrollment and receive more money, they expand the ranks of administrators even more rapidly.
Monday, August 16, 2010
THE FAILURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
Also a good article by William Deresiewicz on "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education."
And here is a comment by by Neal McClusky from the Cato Institute: The majority of people who are going to college today are really just getting a piece of paper," he said. "The bottom line is we always insist that everybody has to go to college without in any way discriminating or determining whether actually going to college is giving you the skills that makes you more employable. All that matters, especially to the politicians, is that everybody is getting a piece of paper -- a college degree.
LEADERSHIP
Monday, August 09, 2010
GROUND ZERO MOSQUE A PROVOCATION
Saturday, August 07, 2010
CHINESE MISSILE
Saturday, July 24, 2010
RUSSIA AND ISRAEL
CHRISTIANS ARRESTED
ISLAMIC HATRED OF JEWS
Thursday, July 22, 2010
THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS
SHERROD ON OBAMA
Saturday, July 17, 2010
TRAVEL PROGRAM RIP OFFS
AMERICA'S ARISTOCRACY
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class." And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
RUSSIAN SPY SWAP
STALIN BUST
Friday, July 16, 2010
A CARL ROVE CONFESSION
Thursday, July 15, 2010
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Monday, July 12, 2010
OBAMA VOTER FRAUD
CLIMATEGATE SUMMARY
From the Atlantic Monthly--another criticism of how the investigation was mishandled. By way of preamble, let me remind you where I stand on climate change. I think climate science points to a risk that the world needs to take seriously. I think energy policy should be intelligently directed towards mitigating this risk. I am for a carbon tax. I also believe that the Climategate emails revealed, to an extent that surprised even me (and I am difficult to surprise), an ethos of suffocating groupthink and intellectual corruption. The scandal attracted enormous attention in the US, and support for a new energy policy has fallen. In sum, the scientists concerned brought their own discipline into disrepute, and set back the prospects for a better energy policy.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
TOP 10 US PRODUCTS
Saturday, July 10, 2010
AFGHANISTAN IS OBAMA'S WAR
Friday, July 09, 2010
NEW TALIBAN WEAPON
Saturday, July 03, 2010
KNOWLEDGE OF AMERICAN HISTORY
Saturday, June 26, 2010
CONVERSIONS QUESTIONED
RADICAL ISLAM
Anti-Jewish Muslim protest in Vienna.
Juden raus. Jewish dance troop attacked in Hanover, Germany. These slogans sound like Nazi Germany all over again.
MUSLIM TURKEY
Just as Western European leaders of the 19th and early 20th centuries often chose to ignore Ottoman Turkey’s brutal imposition of dhimmitude in their misguided, when not morally cretinous “understanding” of the “Eastern Question,” present era US and European leaders ignore both the overt Jew hatred, and ongoing relegation of the vestigial remnant non-Muslim Christian populations in Turkey to de facto dhimmi status, under Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Turkish government.
OBAMA'S ECONOMIC GROWTH POLICY
We need growth that doesn’t rely on debt but is based on real grounds.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
STALIN STATUTE
Saturday, June 05, 2010
RUSSIAN WHEAT EXPORTS THREATEN AMERICAN FARMERS
Ever since Stalin enacted the collectivization of Soviet farms in 1928, agricultural production has been a disaster for the Soviet Union. In the 1970s and 1980s the USSR was forced to import US wheat to feed its people. Now that communism is gone, maybe agricultural capitalism will put Russia and the Ukraine on a sounder economic footing. But it sure will curtail the bragging rights of American farmers if Russia now becomes a competitor.
Friday, June 04, 2010
GAZA SITUATION
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
REPORTER PERSONA NON GRATA IN AFGHANISTAN
Yon has openly stated the problems in Afghanistan right now and how we could lose this war, unless changes are made. He has been critical of the current rules of engagement that have put our troops in danger and could actually make this war like the Vietnam that the leftist media claimed it was early and often when Bush was president (it’s strange you don’t hear those comparisons from them anymore).
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
ILLINOIS CORRUPTION
But somebody should do a count of all the other politicians in Illinois convicted or charged with crimes. I wonder if Illinois would be the most politically corrupt state in America?
Barone on "The Chicago Way." One prime assumption of the Chicago Way is that there will always be a bounteous private sector that politicians can plunder endlessly. Barone argues that Obama has brought the Chicago way to Washington.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
PELOSI ON THE "WORD"
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
PALESTINIAN COLLABORATOR
"The Israeli agent didn't believe me at first but then I infiltrated the militants with a tape recorder on my body and recorded their plans to attack Jewish settlers. I didn't do it for money, I did it because we are all Israelis and it is wrong to kill."
AMERICA, A CHRISTIAN NATION
OBAMA & GULF OIL SPILL
The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him. When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way.
"If Bush had said it. . ."
Obama desire to downsize the Coast Guard crisis center before oil spill.
McCain: "Out of his depth?"
A liberal states that failure to lead has doubled the crisis.
RAHM EMANUEL & ISRAEL
Friday, May 28, 2010
CHURCH WARS
The figures underlie a striking change in the characteristics of American churches of all denominations: in the '60s, those showing up in church on Sunday might have represented a cross-section of American viewpoints; today, they are more likely to reflect traditionalist views, further driving modernists away from religion altogether - and intensifying what some have called the “devotional divide” in American politics.
Studies of group psychology show that when people with similar views talk to one another, they end up at even more extreme positions. The very ability to choose - neighborhoods, cable TV stations, websites, churches - increases the risk that we will hear only those with whom we already agree.
What's happening in Europe: A 2009 Gallup poll asked, "Is religion an important part of your life?" In Britain only 27 percent said yes, in France 30 percent and in Germany 40 percent. In the U.S., it was 65 percent. Young Americans have morals; they just often feel that religious institutions don't reflect their beliefs. That needs to change to keep religion in America from becoming stale like it has in Europe.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
GOVERNMENT SPENDING RETARDS BUSINESS GROWTH
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
LIBERAL FASCISM
Woody Allen told Spain’s La Vanguardia that it would be a good idea if Barack Obama could be dictator for a “few years” to overcome obstructionist Republicans. Just a few days later, Friedman fantasized, on Meet the Press yet, that the solution to America’s problems might be to be more like China.
Monday, May 24, 2010
OBAMA ON TERRORISM
Saturday, May 22, 2010
AMERICAN JEWS & ISRAEL
The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”
Friday, May 21, 2010
THE CULT OF PERSONALITY
SPAIN'S GREEN DISASTER
Thursday, May 20, 2010
ILLEGAL ALIENS
Monday, May 17, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
POLITICAL COMEDY
HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE USSR
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
THE FEMINIZATION OF THE ACADEMY
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
MUHAMMAD CARTOONIST ATTACKED
Monday, May 10, 2010
GREECE ECONOMY
If these statistics are accurate the economic future of Greece, Europe, and the West looks problematic.
Friday, May 07, 2010
DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
DARWIN FAMILY INBREEDING
WHITE HOUSE LANGUAGE
Friday, April 30, 2010
REDRAWING THE MAP OF EUROPE
PEOPLE who find their neighbours tiresome can move to another neighbourhood, whereas countries can’t. But suppose they could. Rejigging the map of Europe would make life more logical and friendlier.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
DEATH IN THE CLASSROOM
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
2010 HEALTH CARE BILL
The view from the WSJ.
Rationing? Obama's budget director speaks.
Small businesses have not incentives to grow and create jobs under the Obama health care plan.
Monday, April 26, 2010
STUDENT PAPER
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR GIVES ANTI-SEMITIC JOKE AT BRIEFING
A CALL FOR "C" STUDENTS?
America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students—A students teach.”
Thursday, April 22, 2010
NEW IRANIAN WEAPON
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
2009 OBAMA TAX RETURN
GLENN BECK
Friday, April 16, 2010
TEA PARTY VIOLENCE
From Politico: New Orleans Assault
Frank Rich apology.
"Double-Standard on Rhetoric" from Commentary.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
SCANDALS IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?”
But I am afraid much the same could be said of many Protestant churches.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Why wasn't the Bush administration citing Gen. James Clapper, the Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said that satellite imagery proved conclusively that shortly before the war's outbreak, Iraq had transferred its weapons of mass destruction to Syria? Why wasn't it quoting Gen. Georges Sada, deputy chief of Saddam's air force, or Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's chief-of-staff, both of whom also claimed that Saddam's weapons had been transferred to Syria? Why was it so tongue-tied, so unsure of itself, so unwilling to answer its critics? Didn't anybody in the White House realize that if the Democrats' charges went unanswered, they would fatally undermine the entire case for the war?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
VEGETARIANISM AND HITLER
I thought this was an interesting piece of work by dadaist John Heartfield. Its title is "Have no fear. . .he is a vegetarian." I wonder how this would be spun today in all of the political correctness wars. If Bush was a Nazi (see previous post), does this mean vegetarians are Nazis?
THE EVIL BUSH
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
COMING BUDGET CRISIS
On March 15, Moody's Investors Service -- the bond rating agency -- published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook.
Should the United States someday suffer a budget crisis, it will be hard not to conclude that Obama and his allies sowed the seeds, because they ignored conspicuous warnings. A further irony will not escape historians. For two years, Obama and members of Congress have angrily blamed the shortsightedness and selfishness of bankers and rating agencies for causing the recent financial crisis. The president and his supporters, historians will note, were equally shortsighted and self-centered -- though their quest was for political glory, not financial gain.
Monday, March 29, 2010
LOSS OF CONFIDENCE IN AMERICA
Sunday, March 28, 2010
AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAEL
Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media writes about how liberal Jews in the Obama administration are reacting to Netanyahu's policies. Joining those who want Obama to primarily keep up the pressure on Israel is the mainstream of American liberal journalists, most of them Jewish, who evidently see a need to reinforce Obama (not that he needs it) in his decision to get tough on America’s most loyal ally in the Middle East.
Mark Davis wonders why he, as a Christian, is more loyal to Israel than most American Jews are. There is something fundamentally wrong when I care more about Israel than the American Jewish community.
Jacob Weisberg writes on why Israel and liberal American Jews are drifiting apart. If you want numbers, various polls document the disenchantment. The partisan gap in support for Israel has jumped dramatically of late, with 80 percent of Republicans expressing favorable view of Israel, according to Gallup, as compared with only 53 percent of Democrats. One recent study found that only 54 percent of Jews under 35 who aren't Orthodox are "comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state" (as compared to more than 80 percent of those over 65). Among younger Jews, only 20 percent rated as "highly attached" to Israel in another poll.
If you want examples of the shift in sentiment, read just about any Jewish columnist for a major newspaper. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times argued that Biden under-reacted to Israel's housing announcement. Richard Cohen of The Washington Post is writing a book arguing that the founding of Israel was a well-intentioned mistake.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
FINDING JESUS AT UNIVERSITIES
OBAMA AT BAT
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY
Monday, March 01, 2010
HIZBALLAH THREATS TO ISRAEL
"Israeli cannot accept the artificial differentiations between the Hizballah terrorists, the state of
He responded to the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's prediction of
Friday, February 26, 2010
THE PRESIDENCY
It's not easy to criticize a president face to face. During my White House years, congressmen and senators would sit in my office, pound the table, and vow to tell the president he mishandled an issue. Then we'd walk the 15 steps to the Oval Office, and they would instantly turn soft. The presidency commands respect. Americans expect the president to be treated with dignity and deference, making criticizing him to his face politically risky.
And this is another good inside look at how the White House operates. While it focuses on the departure of Desiree Rogers, I liked this comment by Andrew Card from the Bush White House. One other thing Card warned those new White House workers way back in 2001: "Remember, please remember, ladies and gentlemen, that when you leave the White House, your letter of resignation will go into the National Archives forever." After a long pause, he added: "Be careful what you say."
AMERICAN ECONOMY
But if the debt level is a problem now, where will the Obama administration's future debt load lead the nation? Hopefully the US will be stronger than Mali.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
OBAMA'S RELIGIOUS LIFE
Monday, February 22, 2010
NEW JOBLESS AMERICA
LEADERSHIP & INTUITION
No president enters office knowing everything he needs to know. His experience is limited to some greater or lesser extent; his knowledge of the people from whom he will choose appointees is incomplete; his mastery of the substance of public policy, after years on the campaign trail, is likely to be out of date. And like all of us, he does not know what the future will bring.
So presidents must rely on something else, something intangible and unquantifiable, in determining what is within the realm of possibility and what is a bridge too far: intuition.
Friday, February 19, 2010
AMY BISHOP
"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
The Boston political culture: Instead, the political culture of Massachusetts taught her something very different: It’s not what you do, but who you are.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
BAYH'S DECISION NOT TO RUN
Five Ways to Lose the Senate Majority. Either way, the two-term senator’s departure now places 10 Democratic-held Senate seats at risk—if all are swept under by a November GOP wave, Republicans are back in control of the Senate.
Monday, February 15, 2010
CLIMATE CHANGE SATIRE
Something with a country & western theme.
Friday, February 12, 2010
TEA PARTY COMMERCIAL
Thursday, February 11, 2010
CLIMATEGATE AGAIN
Sea levels are not rising--report retracted.
Left-wing Europeans attack IPCC. The German left wing press, one of the world’s strongest supporters of the ‘climate change movement’ is turning against the scientists and UN bureaucrats responsible for leading the movement. A round-up of German press coverage over the unexpected resignation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boer offers a perspective on the failures of the climate change movement that is both more scathing and more frank than anything the mainstream US press has yet brought itself to utter.
VICTORY HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS: Robert Gibbs Tells White House Press Corps That Obama Saved Iraq (Video).
But Obama’s about as much the father of this victory as Andrew Young was of Rielle Hunter’s baby . . . .
REDUCING THE DEFICIT
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
BEARDED WIFE
OBAMA, THE PARTISAN
What is disappointing about President Obama is that he has governed in a manner so at odds with his core campaign commitments. Mr. Obama has become the most polarizing first-year president in the history of Gallup.
He has allowed Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in particular to promote a deeply partisan agenda, shutting out Republicans at almost every conceivable point. Depending on your politics, you may think that is a wise thing or a disastrous thing. But it is not a unifying thing. And declaring war on Fox News and intentionally targeting and elevating Rush Limbaugh, in an effort to make him the "face" of the GOP, are hardly the actions of a man who has reconciliation on his mind. Neither is selecting Rahm Emanuel -- one of the most relentlessly partisan figures in Washington -- as your chief of staff.
And CBS news comments that what Obama wants is surrender.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
DOOMSDAY, FEBRUARY 11th
Thursday, February 04, 2010
BROWN AD IN MASSACHUSETTS
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
CLIMATEGATE, FEBRUARY 2010
Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".
The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.
It also emerges that documents which Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones did not exist.Monday, February 01, 2010
NEW DISCRIMINATION?
For blacks, like all victims of homicide, guns — usually handguns — are far and away the number one murder tool. Successful efforts to reduce America’s black homicide toll must put a focus on reducing access to firearms.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
GEITHNER & AIG BAILOUT
The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.
It goes on to describe how Geithner and the New York Fed basically operated outside of any oversight or controls in its efforts to help AIG.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
HATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Those lucky few who are fortunate enough to be able to live their political lives free of the fear of violence are largely concentrated in the capitals of contemporary Western Europe and along the east and west coasts of the United States, who not coincidentally happen to make up the primary audience I was writing for, so I wanted to explain that the inhabitants of the Arabic-speaking Middle East are not as fortunate as we are. To say that Lebanon is held at gunpoint by an armed gang, or that Lebanese journalists are assassinated for their work, Syrian intellectuals and Egyptian rights activists are typically thrown in prison and tortured, and regional minorities like the Shia, Druze, Alawi, Christians, Kurds and Jews have often been the target of purges and political violence all in the name of Arab nationalism, a corporatist ideology that seeks to erase communal as well as individual difference, is not to say that Arabs only understand force, but that violence is a central factor in Arab political life and it is impossible to understand the region without taking this into account.
Monday, January 25, 2010
MEDIA COVERAGE OF OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
Thursday, January 21, 2010
DEMOCRAT HUBRIS
The love of power got to the Democrats: the love of big-shotting it before the cameras, as if senators were resident royalty rather than servants. Come to think of it, Scott Brown put the matter with great precision in his now-famous answer to David Gergen's question about responsibility for the maintenance of "Ted Kennedy's seat." Not Kennedy's seat, "the people's seat," Brown replied in setting Gergen straight.
TSARS
CLIMATEGATE, JANUARY 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
HITLER DEALS WITH DEMOCRAT LOSS IN MASSACHUSETTS
DEMOCRAT TACTICS AFTER LOSS IN MASSACHUSETTS
Monday, January 18, 2010
Saturday, January 09, 2010
US MEDICAL CARE
Thursday, January 07, 2010
TEXAS v. CALIFORNIA
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
VOLCKER ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
The American political process is about as broken as the financial system. Therefore, one has to be a bit skeptical. Just to give you one little example, one unrelated to the financial crisis. Here we are on Dec. 29, almost a year after the Inauguration, and there is no Under Secretary of the Treasury. That should be an important position. How can we run a government in the middle of a financial crisis without doing the ordinary, garden-variety administrative work of filling the relevant agencies? The Treasury is an outstanding example of a broken system, but it's not the only one.
Slow is too fast a word to describe what's going on. The Administration is one quarter over, and it hasn't manned the ramparts of government yet.
I wish the Administration would pay more attention to what's needed to improve the ordinary functioning of government. We can't even fight a war with our own people any more. We've got to hire Blackwater. I think people have lost confidence in government, they've lost trust in government, and it shows. This isn't a question just of this Administration. It's been kind of a steady, downhill path.
Charlie Rose: . . .but this Administration came in and said it would change. That was the mantra of the campaign. So what happened? Volcker: It shows you it's not that easy to change [emphasis added].
Friday, January 01, 2010
A REVIEW OF 2009
February:
Despite this heroic effort, the economy continues to stumble. General Motors, which has sold only one car in the past year -- a Buick LaCrosse mistakenly purchased by an 87-year-old man who thought he was buying a power scooter -- announces a new four-part business plan, consisting of (1) dealership closings; (2) factory shutdowns;(3) worker layoffs; and (4) traveling backward through time to 1955.
March:
. . . an angry nation learns that the giant insurance company AIG, which received $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts and posted a $61 billion loss, is paying executive bonuses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. This news shocks and outrages President Obama and members of Congress, who happen to be the very people who passed the legislation that authorized both the bailouts and the bonuses, but of course they did that during a crisis and thus had no time to find out what the hell they were voting for.
August:
California, in a move apparently intended to evade creditors, has its name legally changed to ``South Oregon.''