Five quotes stood out for me this week. Five public statements to which the only reasonable response could be, “Yeah, right.”
5. “I wish I’d been a better friend,” Casey Anthony. I guess being a “better human” is just a little too much to ask.
4. “You already give to Haitian relief — it’s called the income tax,” Rush Limbaugh. See number 5. [Read more →]
If you asked me what to do with Detroit, my suggestion would probably be to hide funny and/or surprising objects in the rubble, so that future archeologists will get a chuckle while they excavate. I would definitely not have thought of turning it into an enormous urban farm for the same reason I would not like to discover that my girlfriend is washing our dishes in the toilet.
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“The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was passing out a memo Tuesday advising Democratic campaign managers to define their opponents early and to highlight the differences between moderate voters and tea party-style conservatives.” Fox News
The two main Parties have each compiled a list of questions for the other, a sort of checklist for the people on their beliefs.
No need for silly questionnaires with Libertarian Party candidates. You know where they stand. It’s that kind of certainty I like to see when I’m voting for a candidate…
Steve Chapman — one of my favorite contributors over at reason — wrote a beautifully concise editorial a few weeks ago making the case that Obama’s first year in foreign policy has brought nothing new, despite any conspicuous honors asserting the contrary. One of the most important points Chapman makes is this:
The administration and its opponents both make much of its plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by this summer and to pull the rest out by 2012. What both prefer to forget is that the previous president agreed to the same timetable. Obama’s policy on the war he once opposed is not similar to Bush’s: It is identical.
It’s impossible to avoid the apocalypse these days. Whether we encounter the End in the form of news reports on Global Warming, or fears of Iran getting the bomb, or plague panics such as H1N1, we seem to be living in a high point of apocalyptic anxiety, with horrible Doomsdays lurking round every corner. And yet, the End has never been so much fun. Roland Emmerich released his latest apocalyptic blockbuster 2012 in November, and since then we have enjoyed Zombieland, The Road, The Book of Eli, Legion and even Al Gore’s dreadful poem read aloud on morning TV in the presence of a fawning sycophant. Much more is to come, and this is to say nothing of video games, books, comics, or half the output of the History Channel. [Read more →]
So Megan McArdle has a post up talking about the failure of a commercial real estate project in Stuy-Town. I read McArdle a lot, and whenever she talks about New York and D.C. I’m much like an ignorant savage with a bone through my nose being told about far-off Albion. I’m so Southern that I think anything north of the Red River is like one of those old Christopher Columbus maps (“Here there be dragons!”) and I’ve always read the comment threads of her posts about big city vs. suburban living with a bit of wonderment (walking home to your apartment with bags of groceries? WTF?).
The victory laps are adding up for everyone to the Right of Walter Mondale. If it were just any old Senate seat we would not be subjected to this spectacle but combining the drama of snatching the People’s Seat from the jaws of the Hyannisport Leviathan with a guy who was a Cosmo centerfold (who knew they had such things?) and has a serious American Idol connection made these events a media prairie fire that somewhat distorts their significance. [Read more →]
The last time I wrote about what I think the appropriate response in Haiti should be, I got drug through the wringer. But the events of the last week have done nothing to convince me that I was wrong and that America needs to be in Haiti.
The first tumultuous year of the McCain administration has finally concluded. The war hero Senator’s narrow victory over the Clinton/Obama ticket with its litigation and recriminations nearly the equal of Bush v Gore set a difficult tone from the beginning that the Arizona maverick pulled against mightily with America in the middle. [Read more →]
I don’t know how many of you have been following the case of Citizens United v. the FEC, but I’m willing to bet a goodly number of you have an opinion on it. Here’s mine, again, on the heels of today’s Supreme Court ruling.
Having lived many years in Massachusetts, I’ve taken special interest in Tuesday’s election to replace the recently-deceased Edward Kennedy. I even listened to a debate of the three candidates.
What I heard from the two major hopefuls was not surprising. Martha Coakley is an uninspiring run-of-the mill liberal; and her equally dull opponent, Scott Brown, is your standard-issue neocon. What was surprising — or, should I say, who was surprising — was the third candidate, libertarian Joe Kennedy (no relation to the late patriarch), who’s running as an independent. [Read more →]
As a former sailor who served on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, I was pleased to learn that the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson has arrived off the coast of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
The carrier is “on station” and has begun to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations for the victims of the devastating earthquake.
We are reliably informed that our dogs do not love or even admire us and in any event we should not get too fond of them as they have the carbon footprint of a daily grilled cheese sandwich so we will shortly have to steam them up in a solar cooker anyhow. But this counts the costs without examining the benefit. Beyond the sentimental value of these Furbearing Americans they also do many jobs other Americans refuse and immigrants lack the communication skills for such as sniffing out bombs or pulling the Palin family sleigh. But you don’t have to be a narco officer, a professional musher or blind to benefit from canine participation in our lives. That includes our suave and over-burdened President. [Read more →]
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution
In my recent column I argued that disillusioned conservatives and libertarians should focus on transforming the Republican Party and taking it back from its ineffectual leaders, its special interest groups, and its Pat Robertson types. In case you weren’t convinced, Mr. Robertson himself has just helped to prove my point.
In response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti that has claimed tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, Robertson casually opines that Haiti has been “cursed” because it “swore a pact to the devil” during the early 19th century. Yes, I’m serious. Watch for yourself.
Until recently my favorite piece of Obama kitsch was unquestionably the mind-blowing, bizarre paintings of the president naked, astride a unicorn, fighting a naked Sarah Palin or wrestling with a fat, naked Rush Limbaugh. If you have never seen them then I urge you to waste no more time and click on this link. the images will be seared onto your retinas forever. [Read more →]
Oh, SNAP!
But the final irony is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.
Falkoff notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo. At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a “supermax” security prison under near-lockdown conditions.
“As far as our clients are concerned, it’s probably preferable for them to remain at Guantánamo,” he says.
At the end of an excellent blog by Michael Isikoff, over at Newsweek.
Ronald Reagan, in a 1975 interview with Reason Magazine on the state of the Republican party, said that “the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
Today, despite the prescience of the Gipper, a rumble is growing in many free market, small government circles — a lurking sense that the two major parties in this country just aren’t cutting it. A new and fired up brand of conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, and tea partiers want something new. They feel that the Goldwater/Reagan revolutions have fizzled out. They want a legitimate third way. They want a banner to rally behind that sheds off the constraints of today’s GOP — a party left in philosophical tatters after eight years of “compassionate” government growth, adventurous militarism, moral hypocrisy, and skyrocketing deficits — all endorsed by Bush (and now gleefully exploded into the stratosphere by Obama).
The headline of the Reuters article “Countries re-think swine flu vaccine orders”, by Maggie Fox, doesn’t leave much to the imagination. As the much-hyped disease fades into memory, dropping out of the public’s awareness, people have finally been able to take stock, to put numbers to things, and they’re finding that the drug companies are sittin’ fat.
She’s stopped playing Peeping Tom with Russia, she’s sold millions of dollars worth of books, she has electrified a large segment of the population, but the GOP’s official cheerleader has decided it’s time to step her game up.
