Archive for 2010

MICKEY KAUS: “When the parties are competing domestically mainly on the issue of who can rev up the economy, will the relatively small differences between them (neither party’s socialist, neither is for killing Social Security or Medicare or–soon–Obamacare) yield more vicious campaigning, faculty politics style?”

PRICING ANNOUNCED FOR THE NISSAN LEAF: $32, 780. There’s a lease option, too.

UPDATE: Yeah, a lot of people are quoting the price as $25,780 after the tax credits. But that’s not the price.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Obama And America’s 20-Year Bust. “America faced a similar turning point a generation ago. During the Jimmy Carter years, the Malthusian, Limits to Growth crowd argued that natural-resource constraints meant Americans would have to lower their economic expectations and accept economic stagnation — or worse. Carter more or less accepted an end to American Exceptionalism, but the 1980 presidential election showed few of his countrymen did. They chose growth economics and the economy grew. Now they face another choice.”

Related: The United States of Argentina?

ARE TEA PARTIERS ungrateful?

WILLIAM JACOBSON: Daily Caller a failure. Nah, they got Treacher. You gotta consider that a success.

TOM SMITH ON ISRAELIS AND OBAMA: Plus this advice from the comments: “Israel should treat Obama in the same [way] the federal workforce treats Republican Presidents… as someone who be gone in just a few short years.”

Plus, bad reviews from Lawrence Eagleburger.

IN CALIFORNIA? Majority of D.A.s in state oppose Obama nominee. “Forty-two of California’s 58 county district attorneys are opposing President Obama’s nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal appeals court in San Francisco, saying they believe the UC Berkeley law professor is hostile to the death penalty.”

OH, GOOD GRIEF.

“Mein Fuhrer, set the wayback machine for 1905!”

UPDATE: I see that Charles did eventually figure out that it was a Tennessee flag, not some sort of “neo-Nazi” emblem. But, you know, seeing neo-Nazis behind every bush deserves a bit of mockery. The Tea Party movement is not a neo-Nazi front, however much some might wish to make it so.

Meanwhile, reader George Kinney thinks the Tennessee flag is a crypto-confederate emblem — I guess because it has stars, and is red white and blue, and stuff. Nobody tell these folks!

GREG GUTFELD: “Look, this debate is basic: it’s small government vs. big government. So how cowardly do folks like Blood and Frank Rich have to be that they can’t man up and defend their love for collectivism? The only reason they scream race, is because that debate scares them. They know a racial accusation prevents dialogue, because such a harmful charge far outweighs any benefits of winning an argument.”

UPDATE: Reader Paul Strasser writes that the answer to bogus racism charges is a question: “Do you honestly think any of us would be FOR Obamacare if he was white?”

FROM HANS BADER, A WARNING: Republicans will lose many seats in Congress due to right-wing paranoia about the census. “The number of Congressional districts a state gets is based on how many of its citizens return completed census forms. Because voters in conservative states are completing and returning census forms at lower rates than voters in liberal states, conservative states will lose many seats in the House of Representatives that they would otherwise gain due to increases in their population.”

UPDATE: Just use sampling.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “This works both ways. Don’t discount conservatives in blue districts and states like mine also neglecting to return their census forms. Not that this conservative would do something so devious!” That’s just wrong.