Maggie's Farm

Photos of Chai Wallahs (h/t, Grow a Brain)

Everything about speech balloons. Cool. (h/t, David Thompson's Friday Ephemera)

$100 billion to New Orleans. What's to show for it?

What am I doing with my gifts?

Obama dimishes himself to serve Pelosi

Dicks of New York? This is about as mature as a whoopee cushion. The audience should ask themselves what they have done to protect NYC from terrorists.

Why PA is slipping away from the GOP

What causes personal bankruptcies in the US? (h/t, Tiger)

Incentives matter: betting on weight loss

He wants Obama to force people to listen to his radio show

Europe's war on free speech. Brussels Journal. Europe, like most of the world, has never really been a freedom-loving place.

Viking:

Including debt service, the cost of the Generational Theft Act is estimated at $1.175 trillion, all of which will be borrowed to be paid by America's children.

Think of it this way: we're going to borrow and spend almost one Russia, or one India. We could buy South Korea or Mexico. We could have our own continent by purchasing Australia and all their handsome actors and actresses. We could have Belgium, Sweden, and still have some pocket change left over for Greece. We could have five Hong Kongs.

Job loss: Women and minorities Men hardest hit!

The stimulus tragedy. WSJ

Via Gateway:

MICHAEL GREENSPAN ON THE STIMULUS: “This monstrosity of a bill, and the assumptions underlying it (e.g., ‘Politicians are wiser than non-politicians,’ ‘Citizens don’t own what they earn,’ etc.), are making me consider joining the Republican Party.”

Plus, from Harvard economist Robert Barro, interviewed in The Atlantic: “This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”

This was the Dems' moment to strike. From Jonah Goldberg (h/t Anchoress):

The economic crisis was almost too good to be true. Like FDR and Lyndon Johnson, Obama was poised to act on Rahm’s Rule of Crisis Exploitation in a way that would not only guarantee a newer New Deal and an even greater Great Society, but would also receive bipartisan approval. That’s why Obama wanted so much GOP support—so as to ratify the left turn to European-style social democracy, particularly when voters cottoned on to the con.

But that didn’t happen. Obama and his party were undone by their hubris. There was just too much muchness in the bill. The once impressive support from conservative economists evaporated. Right-wing radio has been having one long tailgate party celebrating Obama’s overreach. According to the polls, voters are souring on the whole thing. Republicans finally discovered testicular fortitude—and they seem to like it.

There is still probably bipartisan support for a stimulus bill, but only for a measure intended to stimulate our market-based economy rather than one that hastens its Swedenization.

Again, Obama’s presidency has many victories ahead of it, and Democrats still run the show. But the perfect storm of liberalism has dissipated to mere scattered showers.

From Here Comes the State in Weekly Standard:

Voters, then, have every reason to expect from Washington a stimulus bill that will help restore growth. But they aren't getting one. The stimulus plan is flawed. It marries a few measures that count as stimulus with tons of spending on a domestic agenda that the Democrats have waited years to push through Congress. Why? Because Obama and the Democrats who run Congress are more interested in an idea than they are in economic recovery.