I appreciate the kind words about my attempting to cover our (almost) daily links post while the News Junkie is away. It takes too much time and care, but I am doing my best. However, I will be away part of this week through Labor Day for my undeserved trip. And I need to pack. While I usually travel light, this trip requires suits, sports jackets, ties, etc., along with the usual hideous but comfortable American tourist uniform - including my straw Stetson which was a fashion hit in Turkey a few years ago. When I travel with Mrs. BD, I think I look like an American dork who has had the luck or money to pick up a lovely Italian lady.
Wind farms kill bats by the thousands. Oil does not.
First we had MADD (I agree that drunk driving is a bad thing, but that a couple of beers does not qualify.) Now we have Moms Aginst Ice Cream. What next bunch of controlling cranks will we have to deal with? Summer without ice cream is un-American. Also, Moms, there is always the little word "No."
Imagine if Bush had said it: We are God's partners. Government is God's partner? Give me a break.
Shelby Steele on why minorites are alienated from Conservatives.
It goes unpreported, but the Repubs have some medical care reforms that people might be interested in - and to be able to understand, too.
Theory: Obama thinks you're stupid. Zogby: the O hits new low in polling. Byrd at Wiz: When will Libs figure it out?
Noonan on Pull the Plug:
Right now Mr. Obama's gift is his curse, a Congress dominated by his party. While the country worries about the economy and two wars, the Democrats of Congress are preoccupied with the idea that this is their moment, now is their time, health care now, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," the only blazingly memorable phrase to be uttered in the new era.
It's not especially pleasurable to see history held hostage to ideological vanity, but it's not the first time. And if they keep it up, they'll help solve the president's problem. He'll have a Republican congress soon enough.
Priests, ministers and rabbis: beware -
Priests, beware. OFA’s health-care efforts are only the first of many community organizing projects to come. “Next is energy and then education, all before the new year,” says Kelley.
Related: Why do the Dems seem willing to drop insurance coverage of illegals? Cuz they plan to make them legal. The Dems are full of plans, and this is their only chance. Knowing this, immigrants bring mariachi bands and Mexican flags to hopey-changey free medical care rally.
Related: Democrats are right that uncompensated emergency care for the uninsured is driving up costs. What they don't say is it's illegal immigrants who are bankrupting ERs, and the federal government is encouraging them. Should I be paying for their kids' ear aches?
Having gotten the deficit to 9 trillion, the Prez takes a vacation. The plan is obviously to increase debt to the point that dramatic tax increases on everybody become required by the coming "federal debt crisis." Inflation won't solve it.
A fawning MSM asks Gibbs: What more can we do to help? I do not recall such solicitude towards Bush's people. At Insty:
JAMES TARANTO: Q: What’s the difference between the Associated Press and the Obama campaign? A: The AP admits the public is against it. “There’s one more difference between Obama and the AP: He is a politician trying to get a piece of legislation passed. One expects him to shade the truth, to downplay inconvenient facts. Politicians have even been forgiven for outright lies. By contrast, of what use is a news service that is not rigorously impartial and factual?” Oh, the Administration has found ‘em fairly useful.
Leavitt says:
Leavitt says that the Democrats are worried that their Trojan Horse has been spotted, so they are just looking for a new disguise to get the contraption through the gates.
Like that hasn’t been tried before.
Dressing it up in a bunny suit doesn’t make it into something else. Man the catapults.
The inept Gov. Paterson calls Media Racist. Must be that famously racist New York media.
From Politico:
By doing so much, so fast, Obama never sufficiently educated the public on the logic behind his policies. He spent little time explaining the biggest bailouts in U.S. history, which he inherited but supported and expanded. And then he lost crucial support on the left by not following up quickly with new and stricter rules for Wall Street. On Friday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman echoed a concern widely shared among leading liberals. “I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing.”
By doing so much so fast, Obama jammed the circuits on Capitol Hill. Congress has a hard time doing even one big thing well at a time. Congress is good at passing giveaways and tax cuts, but has not enacted a transformative piece of social legislation since President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996. “There’s a reason things up here were built to go slowly,” said another Democratic aide.
By doing so doing so much, so fast, he has left voters — especially independents — worried that he got an overblown sense of his mandates and is doing, well, too much too fast. A Washington Post-ABC News poll published Friday found that independents’ confidence in Obama’s ability to make the right decisions had dropped 20 points since the Inauguration, from 61 percent to 41 percent.
Image via Opie, who says that she hasn't had much to say lately, but that the image captures most of it.
