Wednesday, April 30. 2008
 What's going wrong in Basra? Civilization is happening.
How localism (as in Italy) could save Europe. Yes, save them from the EU Empire. How the Dems are screwing you at the gas pump. Important post. Global warming on vacation, say scientists. Do the models predict 30-year vacations? NYT proposes regulation of textbook prices. Mankiw notes the irony. 50% of LA job-holders were born in other countries It still could happen, and likely will - but we don't have a recession yet. Spank those kids or they could end up in jail Bet you didn't know that global warming causes AIDS. Silly you. More BBC censorship. The very notion of government media should be anathema in free societies. Need somebody to hate today? This low-life scum deserves yours. If I were a better person, I would say he needs our prayers...but I'm not that good yet. Right Wing Prof says that this NYT piece on Bio-bigotry makes him want somebody to shoot him. The NYT should have made it a companion piece to their Rev. Wright article, who is a genuine bio-bigot. I hate rats and Starlings. Sue me. Imus, who refers to Hillary Clinton as Satan, referred to Obama this morning as a pencil-neck wimp, or pansy, or something like that. Dean Barnett wonders the same thing. Pixie dust on solar, from Tom Friedman We'll all miss Red Ken, who is going down, tomorrow, with any luck. He was good for humor, though:
As if to reinforce the post below, today AOL news creates a Depression-era scare story: People selling their belongings to survive. You would think things were terrible because of tag sales. Meanwhile, economic data say no recession yet, but if people are fearful enough, the media will provoke one in time for the election. So what's the big issue, other than everybody's normal everyday challenge to build the life that suits their desires and their conscience?
Here are some clues, in the WSJ. He is not a metrosexual.
 Save the NYT! RWNH. Related, quoted from Auster:
The editors and reporters of the Times are not just “biased.” They are conscious, stone-cold, Soviet-style liars. And somehow they get away with it.
Wrigley sold to Mars Hillary's $3 billion in earmarks Dartmouth prof wants to sue her students. It's the victim/grievance culture run amok. Governments make problems worse, then demand more money to fix their unintended consequences Soak the rich isn't working this time around. Powerline "You have been had," at Am Thinker. A quote: It comes as a blow to the solar plexus to confront the fact that in urban African American communities all across America a frank racist hate-filled rhetoric is not merely condoned but actually celebrated. We white conservatives have been taught for the last generation to button our lips and never to give utterance to a racist thought. We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism. Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had. While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile. On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up!
Photo from Bits and Pieces
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
Awful but lawful. Steep declines at the NYT. Related: Where have the smart media moguls gone? Buy your own Taser The science of doom and gloom The oil panic. Don't worry From Boundless (read whole thing): "It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of antipathy towards the ROTC on the Left in America." Koreans heading for the Ivy League Wright's poison. Sullivan
Monday, April 28. 2008
Kimball shows how they do it.
You know, people often ask me why I write for Maggie's Farm. That's a poser, as we say on the Farm. Truth be told, the proprietor of this sorry place, Bird Dog, promised me hookers and blow if I joined the Maggie's team. So I attended the Christmas party expecting great things. It didn't work out exactly as I had planned. 
At this point, it's just plain stubbornness keeping me around. On a farm, sometimes being stubborn is all you got.
From Manly. It begins: Dear Barack Obama: I grew to like you over the last year. I've always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best. I couldn't vote for you -- but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn't vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I'm convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I'm convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don't respect the Second Amendment (which I'm convinced should disqualify any politician from any office). Still, I've liked your message of unity and your ability to inspire. And, since your rise I've hunted, quite frantically, for young conservative leaders with your talent. (To my relief, I found Bobby Jindal.) And I've long said if you beat Hillary Clinton, you will have done your country a tremendous service. But anymore I'm having a harder and harder time rooting for you.
Read the whole thing.
The surrender of free speech in the face of Jihad: Bawer at City Journal And it looks as if Rev. Al has learned from them. Isn't this terrorism, of a sort? Rev. Al is another Rage Boy. "Operatic" displays of guilt and grief on the Left. Thompson Obama's character: Is it a distraction? Krauthammer The deep swimmers of the Left: Why Bill Ayers is more dangerous now Terming Obama "too extreme" is racist? The NYT says so, so it must be true. Some atheists want their own churches and ministers. Quote from NY Magazine: Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing. But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is gone.
Sunday, April 27. 2008
Bush at the Correspondent's Dinner last night: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire, and Senator Obama's at church."
 Marines deploying in Afghanistan
Attitudes of disdain. VDH McCain triangulates. Powerline. Also, McCain never saw the ad he criticized. No wonder he sounded out of touch. Greenpeace founder wants nuke power. So do I. Reverse racism in the Dem primaries. Jules Rev. Wright, in context (if you want to hear more) Duck hunting on Long island: Dec 26, 1920 Willow Creek changes direction. Interesting. (h/t, Smart Christian) A good rant about the govt and oil prices. Wizbang Not a warrior, and other thoughts about war. Comfortably dumb.
Saturday, April 26. 2008
Quoted from our old friend Marvin: Obama is also emerging as a more eloquent version of four recent Democratic presidential candidates—Mondale (1984), Dukakis (1988), Gore (2000), and Kerry (2004)—all of whom polled well early in their campaigns but faltered as they failed to understand and convey the truth that the United States is a country founded on ideals rather than tribal ethnicity or simple economic interests. That idealism moves some millionaires to vote Democratic for environmental reasons and some poor folks to vote Republican for pro-life reasons. And those voters who do put economics first often think long-term. William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900 because many workers cared more about opportunity for their children than maximization of current income. George McGovern in 1972 was surprised to find the working poor opposing his guaranteed income proposal because they saw themselves as upwardly mobile and wanted others to compete as well. Many academic liberals see themselves as eminently rational and others as warped or dumb. Some conservatives readily grasp the importance of worldviews because, surrounded as they are by generally hostile big media, they come to see how people look at the same facts and come to different conclusions. Many liberals aren't forced daily to think presuppositionally, so it's easy for them to view dissenters as psychologically or intellectually inferior.
Politics sucks, but Socialism doesn't quite make it in the Land of Opportunity. Almost, I am sorry to say, but not quite. You can go to other countries if that is what you want. Sweden or England. Not China. Vive la difference. Except for the slackers who want freebies, people who come here to the USA want the opportunity, not the hand-outs. If America doesn't stand for individual freedom and the opportunity to pursue your own goals and values and to stand on your own two legs, it stands for nothing at all. It works pretty well, too, if you are willing to take your lumps along with your chances. American ideals, perhaps, are not for everybody, and yet we take darn good care of those who stumble, run into bad luck, or cannot handle it. Charity, via government and via private charities. We are generous as heck here, thanks to our Christian values. Love to help folks, but do not enjoy doing so at gunpoint. That doesn't count as virtue - and taking care of our own families comes first. As it should, for adult humans. Figuring out your own path through life is the blessing of freedom.
 Darwin's garden, at the NY Botanical Garden
How McCain is dodging McCain-Feingold Oxblog's David Adesnik's life is too interesting for him to find computer time Beyond Discrimination: African American Inequality in the 21st Century TNR: Cheer up, Democrats The biofuel backlash England removed from the European map. My brave ancestors, castrated and played for suckers. Very sad to watch cultural suicide unfolding before ones' eyes. Repubs are racist? Not the ones I know. Let's start with Lincoln, and work forward towards Eisenhower. We will vote for a Conservative guy or gal - brown, black, yellow, Jewish, or Mormon - in a New York minute. A quote from Norm: Argue about when wars are necessary and when they aren't, when they are justified and when they aren't, and whether a particular war should be fought or not. But to pontificate about the meaning of war being bad, as if you really hate it and are therefore with the angels - unlike the rest of us - is a feeble ruse. War has been tested to destruction? Yes, I also wish. Unfortunately, if others decide to wage it against you, it does put you in something of a quandary.
Friday, April 25. 2008
Simon at Classical Values asks whether the demonstrations/"direct action" planned for the Denver (and Minneapolis) conventions might be a Rovian plot. This Clinton site says that the umbrella group Recreate 68 is hoping to provoke violence. Oh, man, that is so 60s. They used to say that the tactic was to provoke the cops to "expose the covert brutality of the Capitalist system." What a bunch of grandiose immature jerks: they self-satirize without realizing it. Plus they do not know that '68 was a terrible year. They should get a life. 
Thursday, April 24. 2008
 The Patton of counterinsurgency. Wkly Standard
Big-city pundits turn bitter. Will they now turn to God and guns? Banking woes are easing. CSM The coming revolution in Africa. Let's hope so The war between Murdoch and the NYT heats up Finally, scientists begin to talk about the coming Ice Age
Wednesday, April 23. 2008
Above stolen from an IowaHawk entry. State Dept. eliminates Jihad. Problem solved! The dangers of second-hand drinking. It's about power. Dr. Sanity Economic crisis? The sky is not falling Who is really to blame for New Orleans' flooding problems? Unintended consequences of government policies. Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome. Thompson My Weather Underground, and Obama. Five great cigars and why (and when) I smoke them. Mike Adams Please come to Denver. It'll be groovy, dude. The Second Coming of George McGovern. VDH Black and Progressive Sociologists for Obama. Blair. Hey, that is one compelling endorsement. Global Warming update. The list of consequences, to date. (h/t, Englishman) Why I quit Greenpeace The friends of Barack Obama. Powerline
Tuesday, April 22. 2008
Bitterness oozing out of them, in photo above: small-town Americans on April 19 The songs of past Earth Days Bill Cosby: This is how we lost to the white man St. George gets the ax News should neither be fair nor balanced Obama's plan for NASA A moron speaks: "No-one told us" that we bought at the top. Tiger The new Willy Horton ad
An intercepted Al Qaida strategy letter, in Iraq (h/t, Belmont) We have Pallywood - now Lhasawood Watch how this NYT writer slips global warming into the article - with no evidence Adidas vs. Puma: A story of two brothers (h/t, Wall St. Fighter) Deck of Weasels playing cards Chicago: Ban guns once again? The rich and their taxes. (h/t, Flares) Yo ho ho. Pirates as a victim class Mookie mocked by a girl Obama is the media's man. John Fund Al Gore: The wealthy don't need to save the planet. Just the "little people," I guess. Poll presented as if it were data. Idiotic. Not a soul on earth can say how much oil we have. I always liked Michael Pollan, but this morally-agonized piece in the NYT just fills me with pity for him. He's a putz. The Ayers story gathers steam. As it should. Help! I'm a snob like Obama. Micky Kaus
Monday, April 21. 2008
 Has Al Gore failed? Tiger
Coyote loves his Squeezebox Mankiw on income inequality Why plants are green Borneo Pigmy Elephant update The "Why bother?" societies, via Blue Crab: A British think tank has issued a report that shows that high taxes, an entitlement mentality and poor education are sapping the British populace and turning the nation into a "why bother" culture.
In memoriam: Tibet Is this for real? Why am I skeptical? Driscoll begins: Mark Steyn notes that, pace Obama, guns and God, and proper respect for both, are what make Red State America a much healthier--and sustainable--place than the Biggest Blue State of 'em all: Europe. Steyn writes, "In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God’n’guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion":
WSJ: Gun owners are happier people Brussels commands Scots to pipe down Straight talk about casual sex. Am Thinker Virtue by default. David Thompson Woman turns 115 Carnival of the Insanities at Dr. Sanity
Sunday, April 20. 2008
(Thanks, Buddy)
Saturday, April 19. 2008
Barone: The rules change for Obama "The descent of civilization into the fluffy totalitarianism of PC tyranny is accelerating." Privacy and Property Rights
If Obama were a white Republican, and... Powerline To John McCain: Embrace your inner Teddy Roosevelt Noted theologian Pelosi reinvents meaning of Communion Sorry, Portuguese. You aren't Hispanic enough. Huh? David Brooks as quoted at Betsy, re the debate: Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible. As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues.
Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Returning the rich to their Clinton-era tax rates will yield, at best, $40 billion a year in revenue. It’s impossible to fund a health care plan, let alone anything else, with that kind of money. The consequences are clear: if elected they will have to break their pledge, and thus destroy their credibility, or run a minimalist administration.
Friday, April 18. 2008
Vets rip Time magazine cover Dangerous expansion of the Fed's power. Boudreaux That sick Yale story was fiction. Still sick. Dissent is good, right? Kenneth Green on the global warming dissident scientists Dean Barnett on A Dash of Harvard Disease. A quote: Although hardly identical, Obama's and Frank's sentiments do share critical commonalities. Both evidence an unbecoming condescension to the American people. And both share modern liberalism's assumption that Americans are a bunch of dullards. Perhaps no other trait has so thoroughly harmed the left at the ballot box. Anyone who has ever walked by Harvard Yard has heard the kind of condescending comments that Obama offered in San Francisco. Heck, anyone who has listened to a Michelle Obama speech has heard the same kind of contempt for the American people expressed in unequivocal terms. If you want to find this kind of smug superiority on the left, you don't have to look very hard. If you're of a mind to do some field research, I recommend you tune into Bill Maher's show on HBO next Friday night. I predict you won't have to wait more than ten minutes before Maher and his panel of Hollywood philosophes agree on what a stupid and ignorant place America is.
Related, via Just One Minute (h/t, Insty) Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.
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