Scott Brown’s victory spoils the fable of a death struggle pitting tea party populists and angry conservatives against moderates and the Republican hierarchy. That myth foresaw conservatives refusing to support candidates with even the slightest of moderate tendencies, dividing the party, and ruining its chances in the 2010 elections.
In Massachusetts, conservatives preferred victory to purity. Brown is not a social conservative. He’s pro-choice and, while supporting traditional marriage, believes “states should be free to make their own laws in this area.”
Yet conservatives and tea partiers joined moderates and independents in the Brown coalition. This was actually one of the smaller manifestations of the Brown Effect. Continue reading →
Posted in: elections, party politics.
Some expect Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, about eight times more violent than Haiti’s, and cost 3,000 lives.
As tragic as the Haitian calamity is, it is merely symptomatic of a far deeper tragedy that’s completely ignored; namely self-inflicted poverty. The reason why natural disasters take fewer lives in our country is because we have greater wealth. It’s our wealth that permits us to build stronger homes and office buildings. When a natural disaster hits us, our wealth provides the emergency personnel, heavy machinery and medical services to reduce the death toll and suffering. Haitians cannot afford the life-saving tools that we Americans take for granted. President Barack Obama called the quake “especially cruel and incomprehensible.” He would be closer to the truth if he had said that the Haitian political and economic climate that make Haitians helpless in the face of natural disasters are “especially cruel and incomprehensible.” Continue reading →
Posted in: economics, foreign affairs.
Tagged: haiti
I’ve been out of the country for a couple of days, so let me see if I’ve got this right:
America’s preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of Good King Barack the Hopeychanger’s reign by electing a Republican?
In Massachusetts?
In what the tin-eared plonkers of the Democrat machine still insist on calling “Ted Kennedy’s seat”? Continue reading →
Posted in: elections, party politics.
Tagged: mark steyn · martha coakley · scott brown
Jan 18th, 2010
by Fox News.
An obscure 2008 academic article gained traction with bloggers over the weekend. The article was written by the head of Obama’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. He’s a good friend of the president and the promoter the contradictory idea: “libertarian paternalism”. In the article, he muses about what government can do to combat “conspiracy” theories:
…we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies … will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. Continue reading →
Posted in: media, party politics.
Tagged: censorship · obama · propaganda
This past Friday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for the federal government to bail out the taxpayers of his state to the tune of some $6.9 billion. The request comes amid efforts to close a $19.9 billion gap in his proposed $82.9 billion 2010-2011 fiscal budget. We hear daily news stories of governors all over the United States struggling to close similar gaping holes in their states’ budgets. By what rationale is California more deserving than others? Schwarzenegger argues his case on two fronts. First, he points out that Californians pay far more in federal taxes than they ever receive in federal disbursements. Second, he suggests that the burden of complying with unfunded federal mandates is one of the chief culprits bankrupting his state. Let’s take each of these arguments in turn. Continue reading →
Posted in: current events, economics, law.
Tagged: constitution · tenth amendment
Jan 12th, 2010
by World Net Daily.
“Sarah Palin, do you guys really like her?”
My dad’s doctor asked me this a couple of weeks ago. His smile seemed to shout, “Are you guys crazy?” I had taken my 94-year-old Republican father to see him several times, but politics never came up. Did the doc really want to go there? It went something like this:
“What’s the problem with her?” I said.
“Well, she’s, she’s –”
“Stupid?”
“All right.”
“Really? Why, because she isn’t as glib or articulate as you elites like? She didn’t answer Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson the way President Obama would have?”
“Yes – I’m one of those elites.”
“How stupid do you have to be to take on the establishment in Alaska and win? How stupid do you have to be to have – at the time Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked her – an 84 percent popularity rating in Alaska? She had more executive experience than Obama.”
“Well, she doesn’t come across as prepared.” Continue reading →
Posted in: current events.
Dec 29th, 2009
by Chicago Tribune.
Culturally, this has been the decade of the reality show. And what do we have to show for it? Not much more than the contestants themselves.
Survey the wreckage. Richard Hatch, the first “Survivor”champion, was just released from prison (he didn’t pay taxes on his winnings). The marriage of the Octoparents, Jon and Kate, is in shambles. Richard and Mayumi Heene were so desperate to land a reality series, they concocted an enormous hoax, convincing the country that their child had been carried away in a balloon. Michaele and Tareq Salahi tried to claw their way onto the sure-to-be-hideous series “Real Housewives of D.C.” by brazening their way into a White House state dinner. And alleged wife-killer Ryan Jenkins, a contestant on two VH1 shows, is a stark reminder that fame is not a reflection of good character. Continue reading →
Posted in: film & television.
Dec 7th, 2009
by Chicago Tribune.
We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills — for 18 months. Then we start packing for home.
We shall never surrender — unless the war gets too expensive, in which case, we shall quote Dwight Eisenhower on “the need to maintain balance in and among national programs” and then insist that “we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”
The quotes are from President Barack Obama’s West Point speech announcing the Afghanistan troop surge. What a strange speech it was — a call to arms so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive.
Which made his last-minute assertion of “resolve unwavering” so hollow. It was meant to be stirring. It fell flat. Continue reading →
Posted in: foreign affairs.
Nov 11th, 2009
by Fox News.
How much longer will we tolerate fighting this war as if it were a minor crime wave? Our enemies are fighting to win and they are fighting everywhere, including within our borders.
By now, the script should be disturbingly familiar. Whether in the Middle East, or increasingly in America, a fanatical Muslim blows up or goes on a shooting spree, killing many. This is quickly followed by “condemnations” from “Muslim civil rights groups,” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). We are then warned by the president and some newspaper editorials not to jump to conclusions, or to stereotype. Yasser Arafat wrote this script, which he used with great success throughout his bloody career as a terrorist.
Suddenly, the issue of gays in the military doesn’t seem as important as jihadists in the military. Continue reading →
Posted in: current events.
Tagged: cal thomas · ft. hood · Nidal Malik Hasan · terrorism
Bill Buckley used to tell a funny story about a heroic attempt to survive a faux pas. A young lieutenant is obliged to attend a social event in a prominent hotel with a general. In the lobby, in an attempt to make conversation, the lieutenant says, “Look there, that’s the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen,” nodding toward two women in conversation on the other side of the lobby.
“That’s my wife,” the general said. In an attempt to recover, the lieutenant says, “Oh, I meant the young woman with her.” The general says, “That’s my daughter.”
The lieutenant, who knows he’s in deep yogurt now, thinks desperately for a second, finally smiles, looks directly at the general and says, “I never said it.”
Charlie Crist, Florida’s RINO governor who badly wants to be a RINO U.S. Senator from Florida, is trying to run this same revisionist scam. Continue reading →
Posted in: party politics.
Tagged: crist · florida · RINO · rubio
