RASMUSSEN: “Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters nationwide now disagree with President Barack Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted after the President’s speech on Guantanamo last week, shows that 38% agree with his decision. Just 25% share the President’s view that the Guantanamo camp weakened national security. Fifty-one percent (51%) disagree with that perspective. And, by a 57% to 28% margin, voters oppose moving any of the suspected terrorists to prisons in the United States.”
Archive for May, 2009
May 26, 2009
MEGAN MCARDLE: “People tend to underestimate the cultural infrastructure of capitalism. At a moment when we’re looking for villains and victims, this is worth remembering.” In this, as in many things, we are living off the moral capital laid down by others. And, often, dissipating it.
ILYA SOMIN ON THE SOTOMAYOR PICK: “My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that ‘a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.’ Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part based on their ethnic or racial origins. . . . On the plus side, Sotomayor does meet the minimal professional qualifications for nomination to the Supreme Court. Her ten years of service on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ensures that. At the same time, her record is far less impressive than that of most other recent nominees, such as Roberts, Alito, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Each of these was a far more prominent and better-respected jurist than Sotomayor, and Breyer and Ginsburg were leaders in the development of their respective fields of law. Sotomayor also seems far less impressive than Diane Wood and Elena Kagan, reputedly her top rivals for this nomination.”
Plus, thoughts from Roger Kimball.
WELL, THEY USE IT TO SELL EVERYTHING ELSE: Using Sex To Sell the Loss of Freedom.
CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Rank-and-file Falling Away From Dodd. “During his long Senate career, Dodd has happily and legally taken millions of dollars from the big businesses he and his banking committee are responsible for regulating. He insists and may even believe that their dollars have not influenced his votes, but no opponent, especially a Rob Simmons or one equally experienced, will ignore those appearances.”
WHO IS JOHN GALT? In Maryland, millionaires go missing.
GREG MANKIW: The Healthcare-Competitiveness Fallacy. “A common argument, often made by ostensibly sophisticated commentators, is that the United States needs to reform its health care system to maintain its international competitiveness. Regardless of your views of health care reform, this particular argument is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. Long ago, Paul Krugman wrote a nice piece demolishing the whole concept of international competitiveness as a motive for national economic policy. More recently, the Congressional Budget Office has done a nice job explaining why the idea of international competitiveness as a reason for health care reform is fallacious.”
R.S. MCCAIN: “What did I tell you about bonds?”
Related: Beijing is caught in ‘trap’ over dollar. “Chinese and western officials in Beijing say China is caught in a ‘dollar trap’ and has little choice but to keep pouring the bulk of its growing reserves into the US Treasury, which remains the only market big enough and liquid enough to support its huge purchases.” How long will that last, I wonder?
ANOTHER “TEA PARTY” PROTEST scheduled for Raleigh, NC next week. Mary Katharine Ham will speak! And here’s a look at what’s coming up for the Tea Party movement.
POST-HELLER, gun crime in D.C. has dropped.
OBAMA WILL NOMINATE Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: Jim Lindgren: “Compared to recent nominees, Sotomayor is a far more distinguished choice than was Harriet Miers (whom I opposed), but a less distinguished choice than John Roberts — and probably Samuel Alito as well. I expect Sotomayor to be confirmed, but without too much enthusiasm, except in a few pockets of the Democratic coalition.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Ann Althouse.
NOTHING SAYS DIGITAL FREEDOM LIKE an Internet “Czar!” Based on recent experience, it’ll probably be a lawyer from the RIAA.
UPDATE: Several readers point out that, once again, Obama is putting power into the hands of an appointed official who is not subject to Senate confirmation.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, here’s a candidate! Sony CEO Proposes “Guardrails For the Internet”.
THE CAYMAN ISLANDS will get a new constitution.
FUNNY THAT THEY KEPT HIM SO QUIET FOR EIGHT YEARS, THEN: Poll: The more Dick Cheney talks, the more Americans seem to like him.
PREDICTING AN ELENA KAGAN PICK: “Obama has adopted, or at least implicitly relied on, aggressive theories of presidential power both for his national security policies and his economic program. The Senate’s repudiation of his plan to move Guantanamo detainees to the mainland elicits the nightmare vision of a president ground between the gears of a Congress that blocks his moderate tactics and a Court that blocks his aggressive tactics. The administration’s actions in the financial crisis rest almost entirely on executive decree. Legal challenges that have begun as a trickle will soon flood the courts, and threaten, some time down the line, enormous costs for the government. From the perspective of the White House, other considerations must pale.”
HEH: “I wonder if, after all of the sturm und drang, the actual substantive differences between President Obama’s detainee practices and those of his predecessor might be summarized by this TV ad that ran about a year ago.”
HEH: “Yes, God forbid anyone run an exclusive club expressly designed to keep the riff-raff out, right Ezra?” Just remember, the revolution you’re aching for may not turn out quite as you expect . . . .
PELOSI AND THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT: “They’re at each other’s throats as the narrative used for the last eight years falls apart.”
HOPE AND CHANGE! Crisis spurs spike in ‘suburban survivalists’.
Actually, this trend has been in place for a few years.
Ezra Klein warns that if nothing is done to control the cost of health care, in 20 years we’ll be spending 26.7% of our GDP on it. Is that all? I was thinking the figure would be much higher. … P.S.: I suppose it depends on what we get for 26.7% of GDP. But if expensive medical advances added a year or two to my life, I’d be happy to fork over a quarter of my income. Wouldn’t you? … P.P.S.: The Obamist Party Line on universal health care–that we have to scare everyone into thinking we need it to control costs–has always seemed ill-advised, given that we’ve never been able to control health care costs before. And it plays into conservative arguments that liberals really want to meddle in medical decisions and ultimately deny treatment. Now it turns out the O.P.L. health cost scare stats aren’t really even that scary.
As I’ve mentioned before, my biggest worry is that Obamacare will kill health care innovation just as it’s becoming really, really promising. Well, that and the part about denying chemotherapy for people Obama doesn’t like. [Rattner was just joking about doing that. — ed. Ha ha.]
May 25, 2009
In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: “We are out of money.”
C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we’re out of money because we don’t have national health care? Bogus. I think, instead, that it has something to do with the fact that Obama has been pouring money down a crony-statist rathole at absolutely astronomical and unprecedented rates. Yep, here’s that graphic again. Note that it doesn’t support Obama’s claim at all — but it does support mine.
“I’ve bankrupted the nation, so now your only hope is to pass my healthcare plan.” That goes beyond chutzpah to the edge of pathological dishonesty. Except, I guess, that it’s not pathological if you get away with it. And so far, he has.
UPDATE: Related: US bonds sale faces market resistance. “The US Treasury is facing an ordeal by fire this week as it tries to sell $100bn (£62bn) of bonds to a deeply sceptical market amid growing fears of a sovereign bond crisis in the Anglo-Saxon world. . . . The Obama administration needs to raise $2 trillion this year to cover the fiscal stimulus plan and the bank bail-outs. It has to fund $900bn by September.” And, in the Chrysler and GM cases, it’s already shown a deep disrespect for the rights of bondholders. That’s not likely to breed enthusiasm among investors.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” British banks revolt against Obama tax plan. “British banks and stockbrokers may refuse to take on American clients if new international tax proposals outlined by President Obama are passed.”
OBVIOUSLY, THE PLACE IS A HOTBED OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM: Canadian TV rapped for Obama assassination joke. “Canada’s public broadcaster was wrong to show a skit that joked about the possible assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama and suggested he could be a thief, an industry panel ruled on Monday.”