Saturday, April 25. 2009
Starting to write about the US debate over torture, I first turned to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. The word derives from the Latin, to twist. Three current definitions are offered: 1. to cause anguish of body or mind; or more drastically, 2. to inflict intense pain to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure; and 3. “straining” as in distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument.
That definition allows greater clarity about the positions being argued about torture.
The Geneva Conventions apply to restricting the first definition unduly against enemy state soldiers and civilians. The applicability to nonstate terrorists is not addressed. Thus, the Bush administration labeled them “enemy combatants” and tried mightily – in the midst of great uncertainty, confusion, danger, and rapidly changing events -- to blend civilized restraints with practical considerations of gaining intelligence.
The Associated Press report of the speech by the very liberal President of the Israeli Supreme Court at Princeton a few days ago highlighted the problem facing Western governments, “that one of the main challenges the court faces is that international law has yet to fully adapt to modern terrorist threats.” This learned lesson is important from someone widely hailed by the Left for her other positions. Israel, like other parliamentary governments, does not have a Constitution like does the US, so its supreme court ranges more widely – and liberally -- in deciding right and wrong, legal and illegal. Israel, uniquely, sits on the frontline, within and without, facing existential terrorist attacks.
Israel has taken extensive measures to restrict its armed forces from breaching this elusive line between proper actions and excessively avoidable harm to civilians and to enemy combatants. In the US, the bipartisan Congressional remedy, led by John McCain, was to restrict our military. The argument is that our military does not have the necessary professional experience to apply extensive interrogation techniques, undue use undermines the order necessary to our military, and that leads to undermining both discipline and self-respect in energetically fighting for what is right.
The Bush administration went further in, pardon the pun, agonizing or torturing itself in defining restrictive conditions for the use of extensive interrogation techniques by CIA professionals upon leading captured terrorists.
None of this has satisfied those who take a more restrictive posture. There’s the camp, including some with dedication to fighting terrorists, who believe that a purist conception of Americans requires that we don’t use extensive interrogation techniques regardless of the possible benefits or risks. Then, there’s the camp that outright opposes US battles against terrorists, sometimes trying to mask their position with support conditional on impossible and impractical crippling hamstringing, borrowing from the self-righteousness of the first camp to distract from their own true priority. This camp is allied with a third camp, politicians whose primary motivation is to exploit the arguments for their own benefit. Democrats who, in the wake of 9/11’s awakening, supported or argued for extensive use of interrogation techniques in recognition of Americans’ expectations of firm resolve then denied and flip-flopped in their pursuit of power in unseating the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress. These Democrat politicians “strain”, the third definition of torture, in distortion or overrefinement of their argument, relying upon the idealistic or contorted arguments from the first two camps.
So, now, the Obama administration is hoisted by its own petard of its own most ardent supporters in confronting the practical needs to govern and to be held responsible for America’s security.
Those within the Obama administration who argued from experience and proper caution for moderation were overruled and selective release of documents and photos launched that seek to discredit the Bush administration’s efforts, and even criminalize policy. Opponents decry this as reckless self-endangerment and self-denigration of America, and call for fuller release of the record to demonstrate both the care taken and the needed survival results. Even the New York Times recognizes the danger but, true to its Obama-lean, couches it in the politician Obama’s self-interest: “Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in C.I.A. interrogators.”
So, there we are, tortured for the past six years by tendentious and selfish attacks from within upon our ability to withstand and overcome tenacious, brutal and serious attacks from without. Now, due to the Obama administration’s irresponsibility, we face at least three more years of torture, of undue agony, that fruitlessly weakens our unity and resolve and exposes us all to potentially greater physical threats to our well-being and very lives. Our troops on the frontline are not bemused by this Obama administration recklessness with their safety and missions, nor should be the rest of us placed closer to frontline dangers as our intelligence professionals seek cover by retreating from their duties.
 Some animals are more responsible than other animals.
The 10 worst things to say on the job
The O less popular than Bush after 100 days. Whatever that means. The press and the moonbats seem to still get a tingle.
Ford runs from the gummint "We're here to help you." Smart. The F 150 is still good.
Latest spin: Polar ice increasing because of global warming.
The secret plan to turn Soc Sec into a welfare program. I think it always should have been.
Would somebody please give Henrietta Hughes a job?
Al Gore: Keep Lord Monckton away from me. As Drudge juxtaposes them:
Gore pleads for unity on climate, despite divide...
Dems Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify...
That's "unity" for ya. Related: Dingell says cap and trade is just a giant tax
An extreme Lefty moves into the Pentagon. She'll be popular, no doubt, with the old soldiers.
But the kids never heard the word "lesbian" til you taught it to them in Kindergarten. Don't you want curious kids? Lesbian pron is fun to watch, isn't it?
Dem sleazebag du jour: Rattner
What's with the President's wanderlust?
...to hear this president run down America, you would think it was a failed state until he was transformed from junior senator of Illinois to president of the United States. He has surpassed Jimmy Carter's precedent of being the first ex-president to criticize while on foreign soil a sitting president. President Obama has become the first sitting American president to criticize America while on foreign soil, and he does it with the practiced zeal of a person who has been feeding on anti-American myths for years.
Friday, April 24. 2009
Krauthammer: The Grand Strategy. A quote:
Taken as a whole, Obama's social democratic agenda is breathtaking. And the rollout has thus far been brilliant. It follows Kaus' advice to "give pandering a chance" and adheres to the Democratic tradition of being the party that gives things away, while leaving the green-eyeshade stinginess to those heartless Republicans.
It will work for a while, but there is no escaping rationing. In the end, the spinach must be served.
h/t, S,C&A:
How else to get truth out of them? This from Jules:
As the vengeful handwringing angels of the America-bashing left have always said about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, you can’t just go for the foot soldiers. The fish rots at the head. In this sorry business of abusive interrogations, let’s start with that body that serves as the conscience of the nation … Congress. You remember, the concerned American deliberative body that was apprised at the highest levels of the CIA’s practices and asked if there weren’t tougher methods that could be used against the enemies of our nation. Verdict in the dark days of 2002? Waterboarding OK!
Thursday, April 23. 2009
 "LOL OMG Talibanz!" Soldiers return home to fight the war on jerks. It makes me want to enlist today.
How does appeasing the Taliban work out?
How are things working out with Chrysler? Note re the possibly pending bankruptcy: union benefits will be protected by the taxpayers.
Also related, Kudlow on TARP
People who think they are good, are less good. They seem to think they get a pass, because they're good.
Review of Horowitz' new book, One Party Classroom, at City Journal
New models for higher ed
60% say govt has too much power and money. Yet many seem to love the O. What's the deal? Related: The Christian Left has tears of joy re O's budget. Tears of joy about a budget?
Does the fact that waterboarding saved LA make a difference to you? Hmm, let me think...
A Federalism Amendment? Count me in.
Dick Morris gets heated up in Obama's Leap to Socialism
...whoever controls the banks controls the credit and, therefore, the economy. That’s called socialism.
From SISU on the tea parties, quoting Steyn:
That’s why these are Tea Parties — because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining “your interests” and then announcing that he’s giving you a “tax credit” as your pocket money.
As we wrote a couple of years back in another context, "It's naive to believe [citizens] should be content to have physical comforts handed to them on a welfare platter. No man — no creature worth its salt — can bear the shame. Come to think of it, that's exactly what's wrong with the liberal project. Talk about intellectual bankruptcy.
Related, from The Map is not the Terrain at NE Repub:
You can’t believe in or be loyal to, low taxes and small government, but you can believe in freedom because you can imagine what it means to be a slave, and you can be loyal to the principle of personal sovereignty. And so can a lot of other people who aren’t conservatives.
Quicker than most expected, even those most critical of him, President Obama has unleashed his and his political party’s dénouement as grossly irresponsible and corrupt, to the unacceptable danger to the country’s survival.
His partial and skewed release of formerly secret documents about the interrogation of captured terrorists raises the prominence of the issue, and consequently of other major issues, in ways that very well may, and should, relegate the Democrat Party to the political hinterland for a generation.
1. The weight of informed and involved expertise on the interrogations is that they served to avoid additional terrorist attacks. The MSM’s trumpeting of the Obama partial releases makes it unavoidable for the MSM to provide the consumers of its media with the fuller story that will emerge.
2. Polls have consistently demonstrated the public is more in tune with better safe than sorry, and with little sympathy for applying Americans’ civil rights to foreign terrorists. The risks that Obama is taking with our security, and that of our allies, is not acceptable.
3. The Congressional Democrats, who have harped at every move taken by the Bush administration, own leadership were not only fully informed of those measures at the time but -- before seeking political advantage by unscrupulously reversing course – were advocates of even sterner measures. Continuing exposure of the formerly secret documents will further reveal their crass perfidy.
4. The increased exposure further highlights to the public the recidivism of many released from Guantanamo and the demurral to accept releasees by European countries critical of Guantanamo. This reinforces the conclusion that benign treatment of sworn enemies is suicidal.
5. Members of our intelligence community, and of formerly cooperating foreign intelligence agencies, will pull back from full exertion due to increased restrictions imposed and from reticence to be pilloried by leftists in power.
6. G-d forbid another significant terrorist attack occurs, particularly traceable to the denuding of vigilance among our intelligence agencies, the backlash will be harsh against those who crippled our security.
7. The cumulative impact of 1-5 above, and hopefully not even the 6th, sits on top of the unfolding and recognized debacle of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats’ handling of the economic downturn to slip by intrusions -- into the economy, into health care, into taxation, into almost any facet of society it can -- that are destructive of our and future generations’ solvency and freedoms. The unease already claims a majority of citizens, and will become overwhelming.
8. The corruption endemic within the Washington and Chicago way of doing things, already evident to any observer, will be increasingly exposed as Democrats and their media allies lose their impunity to stifle full airings.
9. The willingness and arrogance of members of the Obama administration to invent ludicrous and extra-legal rationalizations for power grabs leads to more, as lies beget lies. The cover-ups and the overstepping of clearer legal red lines will create scandal after scandal.
10. In 2010, Republicans will increase their depleted power within Congress. The uniqueness of 2008 will be a memory, there won’t be a tail from a campaigning Obama, and centrists who regret straying into Democrat votes will be reduced. The hue against Obama and Democrat excesses and dangers will lead to more exposures.
The only reason that Obama and Congressional Democrats would avoid this dénouement is if one believes there are too few Americans with the intelligence to know up from down. The Democrats are counting on that poor bet.
This New Haven firefighter affirmative action case highlights the insanity which ensues when affirmative action hits the courts.
Justice should be blind.
Remarkable photos of China today (h/t, Tiger). It shows what happens to an energetic people when they are set free from their socialist straightjackets. Wealth suddenly and magically appears.
 Got MILFs? This from Iowa via Blair.
If the NYT dies, would that be a bad thing? (h/t, Small Dead Porcupines)
Disgraced sociopathic prof sues Columbia for $200 mill. Talk about truth and honor.
Liberal icon Izzie Stone was a Soviet agent. h/t, Viking
Is Janet Napolitano a retard? It seems like it. More: How the heck did she get that job?
UK Death Watch: Taxes up, economy down
Obama blaming America first. It might be fashionable in certain quarters, but it's not funny. Related: Why does O smile at dictators?
Cap and trade would cost you $3600/year. And accomplish nothing. Slightly related: Rick Moran thinks about greening the Repubs. We at Maggie's are passionate conservationists, but think that the Greenies are wacko pagans.
From Sowell on medical care:
Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care.
The bottom line is medical care. But the rhetoric and the talking points are about insurance. Many people who could afford health insurance do not choose to have it because they know that medical care will be available at the nearest emergency room, whether they have insurance or not.
This is especially true for young people, who do not anticipate long-term medical problems and who can always get a broken leg or an allergy attack taken care of at an emergency room -- and spend their money on a more upscale lifestyle.
This may not be a wise decision but it is their decision, and there is no reason why other people should lose the right to make decisions for themselves because some people make questionable decisions.
If you don't think government bureaucrats can make questionable decisions, then you haven't dealt with many government bureaucrats.
Wednesday, April 22. 2009
I had lunch yesterday with a friend who runs a fund at Fidelity in Boston. She mentioned how many friends and acquaintances she has who had been - or had felt - wealthy but are now in desperate straits.
They had overpaid for grand houses in Cambridge and Chestnut Hill, and then did million-dollar renovations and extensions. They overpaid and leveraged themselves further by buying weekend houses in Maine, Nantucket, Westport or Marion. They bought expensive cars, and paid $300,000 on interior decorating. Wherever they travelled, they stayed at the Four Seasons unless they were golfing in Ireland or Scotland. They had had the sort of blind optimism that led them to believe that $1.5 million bonuses would continue forever. They saved next to nothing. And these are not stupid people: these are bright folks, Ivy League MBAs who know math - but unwise.
She told me about somebody like that in their late 30s whose family has had to move into her parents' house in Natick, and who has their two homes on the market.
We spoke of the time-honored and traditionally-admired Yankee virtue of not living within your means, but below your means. We spoke about the Yankee virtues of "making do," "going without," and giving to others. We spoke about ostentatiousness and conspicuous consumption. We pontificated about whether getting and spending represented an emotional or spiritual emptiness, or a hollowness in a part of American culture. We reflected on whether the childish "I want..." had replaced more durable and mature motives and life guidelines. We touched on what God wants from us, as we always do when we are together. We remembered the old-time Yankee pride in driving old, beat-up station wagons to the tattered old WASPy yacht club in Marblehead. We remembered the old-time Yankee pride in owing nothing, and the pride and freedom that confers: owning your life.
Then, after an excellent no-carb lunch and with a couple of chardonnays under our belts, we went shopping.
Photo: Simple but charming living quarters from Sipp's snarky piece on homes: I'm going to say somethng rude now.
It's Earth Day! via Am Thinker:
...it was not just Leftist conspiracy theorists who a few short were years ago accusing the government of lying to us about global cooling. Even books for schoolchildren like The New Ice Age by Henry Gilford, cautioned thirty years ago that the temperature of the earth had been steadily cooling and that a new ice age was certain. What investigative reporters and schoolbook publishers were insisting during the Carter and Reagan presidencies was being endorsed by some great scientists as well.
Sir Fred Hoyle is one of the leading cosmologists in human history. No scientist today can claim greater intellectual stature than Hoyle, particularly about our planet in the universe. In 1981, Hoyle published a book, Ice: How the New Ice Age will Come and How We Can Prevent It, in which this brilliant giant of natural sciences warned of the next ice age. The consequences, Hoyle warned, would be disastrous. It would:
"...hopelessly compromise the future...This is why our modern generation must take action to avoid catastrophe, an ultimate catastrophe besides which the problems that concern people, media, and government from day to day are quite trivial."
Hoyle, writing only a decade before the whole global warming jihad became chic science, had studied the climatic trends, the astronomical effects, the impact of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere -- everything, really, that the druids of global warming cite today -- and he had come to exactly the opposite conclusion as today's politically correct science of official global warming.
There is no doubt that there will be a surge in ice. Question is when. Technically, we remain in an ice age, defined as periods in which there are polar ice caps. During most of earth time, there weren't.
Related: Since fat people are now the cause of global warming, Jules suggests that Al Gore preach more about that.
Bloggers for hire?
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.
Difficult for me to believe.
Juan Williams:
...over the last week I find myself in a fury.
The cause of my upset is watching the key civil rights issue of this generation — improving big city public school education — get tossed overboard by political gamesmanship. If there is one goal that deserves to be held above day-to-day partisanship and pettiness of ordinary politics it is the effort to end the scandalous poor level of academic achievement and abysmally high drop-out rates for America’s black and Hispanic students.
How well did waterboarding work?
Why trying to control carbon emissions will make no difference at all. But what do facts matter? Power grabs always find excuses for it.
In a time of victory, why is the Left still so angry?
Tuesday, April 21. 2009
From Black Sphere (h/t, SDA):
As a black man, I love it when ignorant white women like Janeane Garofalo speak for all blacks. It's thrilling to me that Janeane would take time out of her busy Hollyweird life to protect me and my peeps -- the downtrodden, the oppressed...the lowly Negro.
For her efforts, I thank Garofalo, and anoint her Janeane Garofalo: White Chick Protector of the Lowly Negro.
Read the whole thing.
 The Sting, from Krauthammer, hits that nail on the head. One quote:
Notes The Washington Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.
If you do not love and admire Charles Krauthammer, raise your hand. (I am sure our readers know that Charles is a paraplegic retired Harvard Psychiatrist, with a second career as Brainy Guy.)
It's been cold, rain and stormy, noisy wind here. "Feels like 34," weatherman said yesterday. We are eager for some global warming - solar, anthropogenic, cow farted, or otherwise.
 A new book of Mark Twain's unpublished work. One quote:
Twain describes his dentist: "He was gray and venerable, and humane of aspect; but he had the calm, possessed, surgical look of a man who could endure pain in another person."
Bummer: Online shopping taxes are on the way. Government = Greed.
Dems promise that gummint medical care will deny you treatment. Duh.
Kinky gerontophiliacs? Is it legal?
Piracy: There's been lots of it since the Barbary pirates.
Sin City on the Tigris: Baghdad getting back to normal.
Ban Ki Moon annoyed with Ahmadinejad. Delegates walked out.
The truth behind the Maersk Alabama story.
Spengler outs himself to be...David P. Goldman, of First Things
 Miss California (on left) is a gay marriage skeptic. Will Wikinson defends gay marriage on libertarian grounds.
It's about time we added The Other McCain to our blogroll
Cuts of $100 million? A joke. Who is he kidding? (Probably lots of people who can't add.)
What's the state of manufacturing in the US? Not too bad.
I'm with Jules: this is the sort of reporting I want from the NYT
Politics and public pension shakedowns
DHS Threat map (h/t, Moonbattery)
Monday, April 20. 2009
 The little known killing fields of Jews (h/t, Jungleman)
Gummint may try to convert TARP funds to equity. No wonder they don't want to let the banks return the money.
It is scientific misconduct. No doubt about it. It's politicized "science."
Drowning the low-lying Caribbean islands? Who cares? The people can go to the People's Paradise of Cuba and be happy. Come to think of it, though, doesn't coral grow?
The ethanol scam.
Is Hollywood "progressive"? Quite the opposite. But knowing no history - or anything else - they think they're cool.
Are Tea Parties a sickness? You put 10 demented ladies going menopausal in pink t-shirts, and it's a front-page protest. Yet half a million good citizens defending American values is a sickness? I think the O would rather chat with Chavez than with me.
Not in my backyard: Uirghur terrorists. How about one-way tickets to Paris? My intuition tells me that they might not appreciate the blessings of America.
Shriver in Am Thinker:
In all my years of watching news coverage in America, I don't believe I have ever witnessed more condescending, amateurish, purely politicized reporting than what just transpired among the liberal MSM covering America's Tax Day Tea Parties. The Tea Parties represented a very significant news event.
Finally, something that cheered me: Cow farts
More on the govt's opposition to solar power. But that's fine with me. I think oil is great stuff, and a gift to humankind.
Fred Barnes: Defeat Obamacare. Related: Socialism and cancer
Michelle O and her no-show paycheck. It's the Dem ideal: money for nothin'
Who said this?
"Edicts of nondiscrimination are not enough. Justice demands that every citizen consciously adopts a personal commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality."
Close the service academies? Jules
Re Elaine Showalter's new book on women authors:
"I believe that women writers no longer need specially constituted juries, softened judgment, unspoken agreements, or suppression of evidence in order to stand alongside the greatest artists in our literary heritage." That, she acknowledges, may not sit well with some literary critics, men and women. The Chronicle Review talked with her about why she thinks the time is right for the kind of broad survey she's undertaken and why it's taken so long to get it.
A blast from the past on Fascism (Parts 1,2, and 3): Volokh
Hate-spewing sanctimony: Garofolo. People use ad hominem when they run out of arguments, but this is ridiculous. Who is this person, anyway?
The O's tax plans running into resistance. Hmmm
Sunday, April 19. 2009
 More links later tonite - probably.
Good news: people increasingly AGW skeptics. As John says, The public is catching on. Follow the money...
Related: Lefty Court disallows Alaska offshore drilling. Insane.
Alice Waters: Let them eat organic grapes. I cannot stand people like that. Alice needs to check out a Big Mac.
I never heard of "teabagging" before. Maybe I'm innocent. I still don't know what it means.
Justice Stevens renders an opinion on who wrote Shakespeare's stuff. Whoever it was, I will continue to refer to him as Shakespeare.
If you tax the rich at 100%, it's still not enough for the O's budget
Conservative college speakers need bodyguards.
Is waterboarding worse than killing?
The Left and Islam. Why are they friends?
"We Chinese need to be controlled." Why? Because otherwise "we would do what we want." God forbid!
2nd Amendment, Montana-style
Excellent Afghanistan battle report at Villainous
Faculty scared by veterans. I guess gratitude never entered their mind.
Alarmed by Obama, at Am Thinker. A quote:
Obama's most transparent strategy, about which much has been written, is to cement American citizens' economic dependence on the government, and therefore on him. In order to achieve this, Obama has deepened and prolonged an otherwise fixable economic crisis, creating menacing conditions for social disintegration and chaos. His tax policies and private sector takeovers ensure jobless rates that will rival those of the Depression era, greatly increasing the number of individuals who will look to government for their survival.
But Obama's strategies go far beyond mere economic control.
Saturday, April 18. 2009
Despite the current global cooling, the Dem congress is determined to tax the heck out of your energy use and the EPA wants to regulate the heck out of it. Via Breitbart:
The court case, brought by Massachusetts, focused only on emissions from automobiles. But it is widely assumed that if the EPA must regulate emissions from cars and trucks, it will have no choice but to control similar pollution from power plants and industrial sources.
The EPA wants to unleash a "regulatory barrage that will destroy jobs, raise energy prices for consumers, and undermine America's global competitiveness," complained Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of Congress' most vocal skeptics of global warming.
In addition to carbon dioxide, a product of burning fossil fuels, the EPA finding covers five other emissions that scientists believe are warming the earth when they concentrate in the atmosphere: Methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
Bloomberg: Waxman won't compromise
As readers know, we don't think this is about science: we think it is about taxation and control, with the science as a convenient untruth. I guess we could be wrong, but we do read the info.
Friday, April 17. 2009
 I know it's a cheap shot which is beneath Maggie's dignity, but that photo (Caption This) from Wizbang isn't a person walking a dog: it's a dog walking a person. I just use the photo to make the point that, in general, it only takes about 3 hours (9 20-minute lessons at 2-3/day) to train a pup to heel (his nose at your left knee), and it will never forget with regular reinforcement of the lesson. Nobody wants to be seen in public with a dog that will not heel because it's a reflection on you, like a kid that throws food. Pinch collar and dog yummies. An untrained dog means you don't really care about the animal, same as an uncivilized kid. In the Obama's defence, that is a darn good-looking PWD (if a bit older than the ideal 6-9 weeks), but any dog can be easily trained. Obedience is what they are bred for. It just takes a few minutes and a little firmness. The training is the real bonding. Train that dog the way you train the Dems in Congress. Sit! Heel! Vote!
Government should bail out dying media. Brilliant! Just like Chavez. Or Pravda. Put 'em on the gummint payroll and they will play nice, like the BBC and the CBC.
Treasury "allows" bank to return TARP funds; bank complains about changing the rules. Duh. Take their money and you're on their plantation.
Does Georgetown hate its Jesuit heritage?
Dem crook du jour: The Car Czar. So many Dem sleazes that it seems normal now. Not news.
From Tiger:
An old pro like Barack Obama has to be more amused by these protests than worried about them. The left is laughing for a reason.
If the right wants to succeed in civil resistance, it needs to study the tactics of the left and adopt the methods that are not incompatible with its own morality.
Related: Thousands protest: the Left sneers
Finally, a war the Left would embrace with enthusiasm
Journalists have journalist arrested. That's the spirit! (h/t Insty)
LaShawn outs herself as a right-wing extremist
Why many with 6-figure incomes do not feel rich
Obama apologizes to innocent asteroids
How the CIA extracted info from Jihadists.
Krauthammer shreds Obama's BS. Amazing to me how the O gets away with it.
NYT: Tea Parties dismissed as group therapy. Dem leaders have a different view: Tea Parties are Neo-Nazi racists and militias. I guess they are referring to people like the Neo-Nazi skinhead neoneo.
And another Dem Rep calls them despicable. Huh? I thought dissent was patriotic...never mind.
And via Driscoll:
Related: “Never before in history have so few been able to accuse so many so often and so pervasively of so much they didn’t say and don’t mean”, Roger L. Simon writes, in his look at “Tea Party Derangement Syndrome.”
Social pathology and structural poverty. A quote:
The biggest question to ask liberals is: Why don't you support those solutions that have worked so well in your own life?
It is hard to avoid the feeling that the Left is endemically racist and classist: That they have simply decided that what works in their own lives will never work to raise poor blacks, Hispanics and whites out of poverty.
If that's not true, I would like to hear from liberals: Why don't you just encourage all the people you feel sorry for to adopt those work and life habits that made your own friends and families successful?
Dick Morris on the anti-success President. A quote:
Obama’s perverse view of fairness threatens to create reverse incentives, militating against growth, jobs, expansion, and upward mobility.
For decades, astute observers of national welfare policy warned of the perversity of the incentives which kept the poor on welfare and discouraged them from taking jobs. Employment meant that their slightly higher income would be more than offset by the loss of other benefits like food stamps, day care, rent supplements, and Medicaid. Work didn’t pay.
Now Obama is applying the same crazy policies to the upper end of the economic spectrum.
Upward mobility is alive and well in the United States, at least until Obama took over. A study conducted in the late 1990s examined the economic fate of those consigned to the bottom 20% of incomes in 1980. The analysis concluded that more than four out of five had left the bottom quintile and one in five was now in the top 20%! It is true that the top quintile is getting richer while the bottom is getting poorer, but the bottom is not the same people. There is, fortunately, a constant churning at the bottom as new immigrants move in and those who used to be on the bottom begin their long, thrilling, upward climb to the American dream.
But Obama does not believe in individual upward mobility. He would penalize it, tax it, regulate it, inveigh against it, and disincentivize it.
Thursday, April 16. 2009
 Buffett tends to drive cars until the wheels fall off. His new one is a Chinese E-6. Good story.
Photo from the Fortune article.
Cincinnati photo via Moonbattery:
Also, the 101 freedoms the Left doesn't want you to have.
Sarkozy: Obama is unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated.
It must be Spring. Campus moron infants must have their fun. Learning physical chemistry is apparently not on their agenda.
Beware of the geeks. The health and climate experts are usually wrong.
The Englishman says this guy in photo needs Courage to "give him enough confidence to tell the woman the dress was not flattering":
Mourning Michigan. Dr. Clouthier
Very sensitive: Georgetown hides Jesus at Obama's request. But I thought Georgetown...never mind. Jesus is old hat: Mohammed is cool, dude, and he was big into underage chicks. Can you dig it?
Want Cadillac health care?
You can have Cadillac health care. You want lots of doctors, no waiting lists and coverage for virtually all your medical and psychological needs? Sure. But there's a price to pay. I know, you're already pinching pennies because your nest eggs have been decimated and you're wondering how you're going to put the kids through college. Still, if you want unlimited health care, hand over half your paycheque to the government.
Photo below from Michelle's Tea party update:
One more dangerous right-wing fanatic, and another reason to attend your local tea parties, via Ace:
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