Tuesday, September 21. 2010
At Reason, Cuba and the Death of Communism: Fidel Castro finally admits the obvious. One quote:
This week, the regime said it will dismiss 500,000 people from government jobs, which account for 84 percent of the work force. Reflecting ruefully on the perils of sheltered bureaucracy, Raul Castro declared recently, "We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working."
As a blanket indictment, that statement is grossly unfair. Many Cuban government employees put in long hours—working in the black market.
Even with guns and secret police and informers on every block and state terror in general, it's tough to keep a population oppressed. The only way to do it is to kill them, in which case those who imagine that they can control people and their economic activities become kings of giant cemeteries.
This is the most clearly stated, sensible, and historically accurate statement that I’ve read on this issue:
Statement on the Proposed “Cordoba House” Mosque near Ground Zero
Newt Gingrich, July 21, 2010
There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to "symbolize interfaith cooperation" when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way. Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for "religious toleration" are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca. And they lecture us about tolerance. If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign.
We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million mega mosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history.
Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources. America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.
- No mosque.
- No self-deception.
- No surrender.
- The time to take a stand is now - at this site on this issue.
Discuss and debate -
 I have already posted a plug for Dan Debicella's run against a Pelosi Dem in CT's 4th District.
Now I'd like to support Martha Dean for AG in CT. Impressive lady. I have met her (and Dan, too).
Monday, September 20. 2010
The Globe's Jeff Jacoby gets it.
When it becomes profitable to mine landfills, they will be mined. Possibly in 1000 years.
Add: The comments on Jacoby's piece are entertaining.
 Bog hockey. Ever play it? I did.
Columbia wins again: Few Schools Have a Solid Core Curriculum
Creepy vid: Al Gore's Baleful Brood
Villainous:
We have had government declare war on poverty and a war on drugs, but this is the first time our government has declared war on free enterprise.
Given the resounding success of the first two wars, I'd say that's the best news I've heard in ages.
New addition to ye olde blogroll: the profblog. See his Sarah Palin urges WHITES to vote for change
Teachers win, students lose, in DC.
However, Unions Struggling to Get Members to Rally Behind Dems. They'll figure it out: they plan on spending $100 million on these elections. That can buy something.
Is your money the government's money?
Tea Parties. It's how people organize themselves.
People migrate towards freedom. Vigorous folks want to be left alone.
The Republican Answer to George Soros's Money - Steven Law admires how the left organized itself during its wilderness years. Now he's got $50 million to help elect candidates on the right.
The Admin is bad for business. No kidding.
More Christie vs greedy unions. NY Post
Palin as the Leftwing Anti-Christ. So was Nixon, Reagan, Bush, etc. etc. Same old, same old.
Bailing out General Motors 20 months ago may have been a political payback. Duh.
It's a wonder to me that politicians and bozos like Michelle O know what foods are "good for us," while doctors have no idea. The notion of "healthy food" is religion, not science.
Thomas Sowell: The “Achievements” of the American Intelligentsia“- Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.”
Are American Universities Going the Way of General Motors?
Driscoll on 60s mythology: , “Jack Webb reached more people than Jimi Hendrix every week”
Barnes: GOP Nor’easter - Republicans storm Pennsylvania and beyond.
We have said this too. Clinton: Losing House Would Help Obama in 2012
Saturday, September 18. 2010
10 Job Search Mistakes You're Probably Making
LA: $111 million for 55 jobs. It should be a scandal.
The Tea Party has already won
Who loves ya, small business?
The limits of science. A quote:
Physicists, in particular, have long believed themselves to be on the verge of explaining almost everything. In 1894 Albert Michelson, the first American to get a Nobel prize in science, said that all the main laws and facts of physics had already been discovered. In 1928 Max Born, another Nobel prize-winner, said that physics would be completed in about six months’ time. In 1988, in his bestselling “A Brief History of Time”, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking wrote that “we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.” Now, in the newly published “The Grand Design”, Hawking paints a picture of the universe that is “different…from the picture we might have painted just a decade or two ago”. In the long run, physicists are, no doubt, getting closer and closer to the truth. But you can never be sure when the long run has arrived. And in the short run—to adapt Keynes’s proverb—we are often all wrong.
City Journal on charter school lotteries
AVI thinks about poverty. Before I even get to his considerations, I need to know who is in those stats, and how poverty is currently defined (for example, does it include the value of government benefits? I know it excludes assets, and only looks at income.). Does it include grad students with stipends and free housing? People with two cars? Women's Studies grads living at home who can't find a job? 19 year-old single moms with four kids? People who are temporarily out of work? People who work off the books? - (Who hasn't heard "I'll do it for $500, or $200 in cash"?). Maine potato or blueberry farmers with 200 acres? Chronic schizophrenics and the mentally disabled who can only work in sheltered situations? The creepy Goth gals with the tats and body-piercings who work part-time in the truck stops in St. Johnsbury and Lebanon NH and live with their boyfriends? Unemployed actors and dancers? Waiters in Colorado Springs who do not declare their tips? Drug dealers who declare no income? The elderly living on Social Security? I mean, I know there is some poverty (and tons of programs to assist them), but who are they? And how much of it is elective in some sense, like my hippie Maine Guide who wants to follow his heart and doesn't give a damn about income? Or people who won't leave Michigan when there are jobs for them in Texas and Alabama? Money is not everybody's primary motivator, but I know there are tons of ambitious Americans looking hard for work right now in this crappy Obama economy. I just want to know who is in those stats.
Powerline on the politics of the stupid and obnoxious lightbulb ban
Castle seems to have felt entitled. Here's another sore loser. Grow up, people. Take your lumps, and go get a $1 million/yr lobbying job in DC if you don't like living in your home state. Or is it about a twisted desire for power?
What does Take Back America mean to you? For years, a common yard and barn sign in nothern Vermont has been "Take Back Vermont." (I don't think they took it back yet, and soon the posters of those signs will be dead. Dead and buried, ayup.)
Nice Magazine You’ve Got There, Mr. Forbes… Be a shame if something were to happen to it…
Friday, September 17. 2010
White House wants to change the alarm to "climate disruption."
When people keep changing the name of something, you have to wonder What's up? Like, maybe there is no global warming now. But there is still weather of all sorts to get all excited about - especially in New England where the climate is "disrupted" constantly: See this charming 1876 speech by Mr. Samuel Clemems.
As for me, I hate boring weather. I enjoy disruptive weather.
BTW, I think Holdren is insane.
Well, I've been busy. 27,000 words, 55 pages and counting.
A couple of months ago I hooked up online with a very sharp lady named Wendy Calloway. We had both mentioned in blog comments what a dismal failure the right-wing blogs turned out to be after the '06 (historic Democratic sweep) and '08 (Obama) elections, so I contacted her and asked her if she'd like to dissect the entire mess, piece by piece, and reevaluate everything; what worked, what didn't, and what to do about the latter. Therein followed about a thousand emails, a bunch of phone calls, and a big 'master file' of the future web site that we passed back and forth.
As for the '06 and '08 elections:
We immediately came to a few conclusions:
— That the pundits are correct. From Ace of Spades to James Taranto, everyone agrees that it's the independents who win or lose elections. Occasionally, as in 2008, national fervor will sweep someone into office, but for normal, average elections it's the independents, centrists and moderate Democrats who make the real difference in the voting booth.
— That the blogs on both sides of the fence weren't very effective. Just ask Ned Lamont. It was simply more 'preaching to the choir' and obviously didn't make any difference with the aforementioned independents, centrists and moderate Dems. For every few we picked off, DailyKos and MyDD got theirs.
— Most money used in campaigns is ill-spent. Bluntly put, lawn signs haven't won an election yet. There, in the privacy of the voting booth, it's almost always something deeper than that. While we heartily endorse getting our candidates' names into the public eye, we leave that to the large organizations.
So we decided to focus on that "something deeper", which usually translates to matters of the heart (patriotism), the mind (common sense), and matters of the wallet, such as "Will I be able to pay the rent next month?"
The reference to Ned Lamont is quite apt. He was the Connecticut senatorial candidate that DailyKos, MyDD, et al, got behind. His election was supposed to be their 'crowning moment' as they showed the world what blogpower was all about.
The point the above quote makes is that he got crushed in the election. Fat lot of good all that blogpower did.
Continue reading "ProCon: Back to the (grass) roots"
Blast From the Past: Could Facebook Destroy Your Marriage?
Quantum computers on the way
Prager: Why the Right Fears Transforming America -- and the Left Seeks It
Gov. Christie does it again (with the vid). He's a mensch. Not a metrosexual. Too real for politics...or maybe not.
Related: Ryan and Christie - the GOP's Dynamic Duo
Poverty rate at highest level in half-century, data show. They do not tell you how they define poverty, or whether their figures include government benefits.
NYT sees Tea Partiers as "furious" and "snarling." I'd term that pure projection.
From George Will's Trifle with the government? Just ask Jacob Maged:
The crime scene at 138 Griffith St. has changed in 76 years. Today it is a barber shop. In 1934, it was a tailoring and cleaning establishment owned and run by Jacob Maged, 49.
With his responsibilities as a father of four, Maged should have shunned a life of crime. Instead, he advertised his criminal activity with a placard in his shop window, promising to press men's suits for 35 cents. This he did, even though President Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers, who knew an amazing number of things -- his economic aides were not called a "Brains Trust" for nothing -- knew that the proper price for pressing a man's suit was 40 cents...
OMG. Christine O'Donnell has had sex!
Bail out Studebaker!
Ace: Democrats To Run On Record of Genuine Accomplishment and Gaywad Logo But Mostly Gaywad Logo
Thursday, September 16. 2010
In the run-up to the 2006 elections, I posted a widely followed debate among some prominent bloggers about – in light of discouragement or disagreement with President Bush’s second term immigration, Supreme Court choice, profligate budget policies -- whether to sit out the 2006 election, or start a third-party, or – in my opinion – to bite the bullet and get active against current and coming Democrat excesses. I called the first two positions "conservative battle fatigue." At other forums, like National Review, others joined in.
I’m not from Delaware, moreso from Missouri (“show me”), so looking back over the past four years I’d say we were all correct and all wrong.
Divisiveness and dispiritness among Republicans, coupled with energy and major media hawking among Democrats, led to the 2006 Congressional majority and 2008 Presidency for Democrats. We’ve all paid the prices. The establishment Republicans for the most part continued in their path of feebleness, until the Tea Parties released the energy and eagerness for reform among rank-and-file Republicans and Independents. Then, the Republican establishment was bestirred, kicked in the butt, to jump on board.
The 2010 elections and primaries demonstrated the synthesis of the three views from 2006: Don’t sit out an election but, instead, change their course by active participation, including overthrowing the more feckless members of the Republican establishment when able.
Now, we have a new debate which essentially pits those either clinging to the Republican establishment, or at best arguing for possibly greater electability in some left-leaning states of a weaker principled Party, against those who are more determined to stem and reverse the Democrat excesses of the past four years and launch a political party rebirth.
Some among the Republican Party establishment, however, go beyond the debate to defection. Florida’s Crist is the prime example, to his rue after being given a hearty attaboy by liberals and his liberal reposturing being rejected in the polls.
Continue reading "Politics: Don’t Get Fatigued, Get Even"
At TigerHawk. One quote:
He does not, at the moment, have a great deal of public support to draw on, and the level of vituperation from the extremes has reached the level it was with George W. Bush. Where Bush was accused by the extreme left of going into Iraq to increase profits for Halliburton and the oil companies, Obama is being accused by the extreme right of trying to create a socialist state. Add to this other assorted nonsense, such as the notion that Bush engineered 9/11 or that Obama is a secret Muslim, and you get the first whiff of a failed presidency. This is not because of the prospect of midterm reversals — that has happened any number of times. It is because Obama, like Bush, was off balance from the beginning.
Stories from 97 Orchard St.
VDH: When Socialism Creeps In . . .
Andres: A misaligned presidency.
Stossel: Money Is Not What Schools Need. No, but it's what they want. A quote:
"Over the past 40 years," Coulson writes, "public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment. There are 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees."
Lies told to kids
WSJ: Union power and the Christie effect
Wednesday, September 15. 2010
Tuesday, September 14. 2010
Dan Debicella is moving up against the one-termer Dem in Ct's District 4. It's a race between a Conservative Repub and a Pelosi Dem.
Also in CT, McMahon moving up on Blumenthal.
Long shots in Blue CT? We'll see. It depends on who shows up to vote.
MARXISM A BUST… Cuba Lays Off Half a Million – Allows Private Enterprise.
If the government would just leave the people alone, they could be like the Dominican Republic in 10-20 years. Maybe they will even begin to make cigars as good as today's Dominicans, too.
The fatal flaw of the Left is the assumption - or wish - that some power-hungry elite could be possessed of more virtue or wisdom or omniscience than ordinary people. All of history shows that not to be true. There are no "betters" to rule or to run us.
We regular folks just have to grow up and run our own lives. If they let us.
 PDS: Is it "status anxiety" or simple politics? Tiger
Dr. Helen: How rich people think
Dalrymple: On the perils of postmodern moral reasoning
"If others want to defer adulthood until after a big portion of it has passed away, that’s their business."
Thad McCotter: Leftist Dogma’s 3 Core Conceits
The Anti-American President?
Senate Could Vote on Partial ObamaCare Repeal This Week
Insty: COLLEGE RANKINGS BASED ON A SURVEY OF EMPLOYERS. Very different from U.S. News.
EU Ref: Who governs Britain?
Venezuela on the brink
Lieberman Comes Out against Tax Hike
Race and the modern Republican Party
Obama's America: Record Increase of People in Poverty, Blacks and Latinos Hardest Hit
Surber: “Political Correctness is silencing an important debate”
Obama and sex: The world is not a sexual allegory. It is not a fiction where copulation is the meaning of life.
From a commenter here: 'I've got about an hour to feel your pain, then I've got a tee time and a party at the White House with my pals. We're having lobster.'
What are the Dems running on this fall? And what are they running away from? Well, they are running away from Obama, climate change, healthcare, tax increases, and the economy. It's a tough year to be a Dem, unless you happen to be very popular locally.
Monday, September 13. 2010
A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant.
Why more wolves = more beaver, and other complications of the growing northern Rockies wolf population. I think the cattle-predator wolves should be trapped and re-established in southern New England. That would solve the excess deer population - and the coyote problem. Wolves kill coyotes (and coyotes kill fox -Peaceable Kingdom, indeed).
Time for the Europeans to grow up. Europe has no choice but to put the pensioners to work
Bruce's Brooklyn College posts here are still making news: Students At Public College Must Read Pro-Islam, Anti-America Book
Trailer for the new movie Runaway Slave
Dinkins: Vote by skin color. I do not think he is talking to me.
Euros view the EU as undemocratic. Duh.
Colleges: Where the money goes
The Telegraph tries to explain America to Euroland
Boehner is the target du jour. Problem is, he just doesn't seem very demonic - nor do most folks even know who the heck he is.
From Sipp:
It's not often you find anything unironic in popular culture now. I can be as snarky as the next guy, but sometimes you yearn for something genuine - some sentiment that doesn't resemble Lucy holding the football. It takes a kind of courage I admire to say things that are not equivocal.
Friday, September 10. 2010
That's Mead, on America in autumn, 2010. A quote:
Fall has always struck me as the most American of seasons. This isn’t just about football and the world series. Fall is the Puritan time: we are less interested in gathering rosebuds than in storing up nuts; winter is coming and we need to prepare. Enough of the lazy consumerism of summer; it is almost with relief that Americans roll up their sleeves for the start of a new working year.
This particular rentrée does not, however, find the country in good spirits. According to the Real Clear Politics average, more than 61% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. With unemployment at 9.6% and underemployment double that, almost one out of five Americans who want full-time jobs can’t get them. Trillions of dollars in home equity and stock market value has disappeared since 2007, while the federal debt has skyrocketed. China and India are growing blazingly fast; even Germany is growing faster than the United States these days.
Thursday, September 9. 2010
 - Jacobson says:
...when I think of Obama's pathological obsession with the top 2% of the population, I think of someone in an ideological death grip. And he is dragging the rest of us down with him.
The O admin hates people like me, professionals and small businessmen. They want to rape us to pay for crap we do not want and yet guys like Obama and other limo Libs have far more money in the bank than I have. I spend most of what I make, after paying my taxes and feeding my pension. (Not happy about that, but that's the way my otherwise wonderful life is right now.)
- Via TigerHawk's storm tab dump:
Ross Douthat pens another excellent column in yesterday’s New York Times. He observes that “obsessing about the paranoia of the masses is often a way for American elites to gloss over their own, entirely nonsymbolic failures.” For example, “Today, establishment liberals would much rather fret about the insanity of the Republican base than reckon with the unpopularity of Barack Obama’s domestic program.”
Yup. Douthat's column is well-worth reading for a number of the points that it makes about paranoia in American politics.
Sorry about the above link - the greedy capitalist pigs at the NYT want you to pay for reading Douthat's piece. Pay for Douthat? Gimme a break.
- A fine Krugman bash at American Thinker: Public Nuisance at the New York Times. Does anybody take Krugman seriously anymore?
- Cooley in Forbes: Why framing the wrong problem killed the summer of recovery.
- How is insulting your readers a good business plan? The dead tree press has killed itself by condescending to their readers, as if journalists were some sacred font of wisdom and virtue.
- Obama Underwrites Irresponsibility — Again. It's about housing prices. I oppose the mortgage interest deduction, myself. Get rid of that and all the other government distortions of the housing market, and find out what houses are really worth. What's wrong with renting, anyway? Everybody with a mortgage is essentially renting from a bank, albeit usually in a heavily-leveraged and risky manner arranged such that you take the risk, and the bank gets paid (normally).
Politicians of all stripes hate free markets, because free markets aren't political. Free markets are just the expression of the free choices of free people. In daily life, free markets are more of an expression of a free people than is voting. Government interference with markets distorts values and pricing, mainly to buy votes so politicians can keep their easy jobs and perks and egos. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Kudlow: The business of America is business
James K. Glassman in the Wall Street Journal: “Subsidy as a Way of Life”
Victor Hanson on Multiculturalism
Health Insurers Plan Hikes Rate Increases Are Blamed on Health-Care Overhaul; White House Questions Logic
Golly gee, there's weather outside. Revkin discovers weather, feels worried. I know how he feels: There never used to be weather, and now there is. Take a Valium, and it will be fine.
Stossel: Entrepreneurs Under Attack
Obama vs. Boehner . America yawns.
“Party of Limbaugh is Polling Great”
I agree that rules are often confusing: Letters Show Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) Steered CBC Scholarship Money Directly to Her Grandsons
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us” says Castro. And Roger Simon wonders whether Fidel is Jewish.
The textbook bubble.
The Obama economy
AVI: A new way of thinking about Liberalism
Ace: Are You Ready For The Chris Christie Fall Tour? I am.
Vanderleun: An Open Letter to Democrats Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Not Enuf
NYPD Top Cop: Planned Koran Burning Is "Dangerous" Rude, foolish, and provocative as heck to ignorant, grievance-seeking people who have no clue about American freedoms. As with the mosque, being legal doesn't make it right.
Speaking of our constabulary, Chaos After Cop Dares Shoot Drunken Knife-Wielding Reconquistador. Yes, the guy needed a hug instead.
Obama Writes His Thesis Statement. Same old...
Gotta love the nerve of these jerks: Harry Reid: "I had nothing to do with" bad economy. In my view, there is little government can do to help a free-market economy, but much it can do to damage it. Its efforts to "help" are usually efforts to undo their damage by adding new layers of damage.
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At Pajamas: 
