IRAQ: “A Rough Version of Mr. Bush’s Dream May Yet Come True.” Plus this:
There is no need here to rehearse the names of the few who did not buckle at the moment when the war seemed lost. They know who they are. In the words of Milton, they were “faithful found among the faithless.” Their faithfulness, and in many cases their courage, is being vindicated.
I disagree, and want to single out Joe Lieberman for praise here.
THERE WAS A WHOLE LOT OF CAVEMAN INTERBREEDING GOING ON. Well, good. Otherwise those genes would be lost. Plus, I assume it was fun for the cavemen and cavewomen involved. I mean, they didn’t have the Internet, so they had to amuse each other somehow.
STEPHEN HUNTER reviews the new True Grit.
WITHOUT GOVERNMENT MANDATES: Report: Americans using 8% less gasoline than 2006 peak, will never go up again. “Before environmentalists get too excited, though, the falling trend of gasoline usage only applies to the United States. This is good, because the U.S. is still, by far, the world’s largest consumer of oil. The trouble is that demand from emerging countries, especially China and India, will more than make up for the declining usage in the U.S., leading to an expected record of 88.3 million barrels of oil produced in 2011.”
MORE FLAK FOR POLITIFACT over its big lie of the year. “Somehow when picking their lie of the year, Politifact settled on a minority party exaggeration with elements of truth—and managed to ignore the near-continuous stream of full-blooded whoppers coming from the folks actually running things.”
A WORLD MAP of lightning strikes.
WHY ARE ANTIGUN ACTIVISTS SO VIOLENT? Antigun Leader Charged With Harassment.
JIM TREACHER MIKE RIGGS ON MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION: Is Pat Robertson More Progressive Than Barack Obama? “Totally serious question.”
IN THE MAIL: From Timothy Zahn, Cobra Alliance: Cobra War: Book I.
TAX ANGER: Miami Mayor Faces Recall. “Recalls are also being sought in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Omaha after proposed tax increases.”
UPDATE: Chattanooga reader Bill Johnson writes: “Once again the fact-checkers at NYT and Bloomberg are AWOL. The recall effort in Chattanooga began last summer and failed to carry at the polls Nov. 2. No understanding of present vs past tense? Written several weeks ago and pulled off the shelf to fill a small hole in the layout?” Oops.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Re Omaha, reader Nick Gustafson emails:
I saw you posted a NYT story on mayoral recalls. The Omaha situation is somewhat unique. I’m not buying it as a Tea Party phenomenon. The old mayor (who we thoughtfully named a street after 6 months after he left office) signed a series of disastrous union contracts and did everything he could to trash the city’s bond rating. The new guy is dealing with a bad hand of cards. I’m not sure if it’s unfortunate or not, but he’s an engineer by trade and doesn’t seem to understand the value of good communications. In any case, Suttle – the current mayor – hasn’t done anything wrong, he’s just somewhat unpopular and is basically getting recalled for the sins of Fahey – the old mayor. There is a tax element here, but realistically the city’s spending has been cut to the bone over the last few years and Suttle’s doing the right thing to keep our bond rating intact.
That said, when you have local restaurants adding a line item to receipts labeled “Mayor’s Tax” you’re clearly doing something wrong.
Sigh.
POLITICO: Barack Obama’s plan to close Gitmo ‘in shambles.’
UPDATE: Psst, there’s no Obama comeback. “Would Republicans have traded wins on DADT and START for their wins on the DREAM act, the tax deal and the omnibus spending bill? Not in a million years. . . . Obama may yet stage a comeback. But to do that, he’ll have to do what the left loathes — cut domestic programs, rework entitlement programs, stand up to foreign adversaries (Obama’s legacy is irretrievably ruined if Iran gets the bomb on his watch), cut back on growth-restricting regulations and keep tax rates low. And so long as unemployment remains at historic highs, Obama’s chances of re-election remain poor.”
CATHY YOUNG ON Julian Assange, Feminism, and Rape. “Once, feminist reformers rightly fought against laws that required a rape victim to fight her attacker ‘to the utmost.’ But removing any element of actual or threatened force from the crime of rape makes it too easy to criminalize miscommunications and morning-after regrets.” If morning-after regrets are a ground for rape charges, many, many women can expect to be targeted in the future. . . .
Plus this:
Earlier generations of feminists argued that rape should be treated the same as any other violent crime: The victim should not be subjected to special standards of resistance or chastity. These days, the demand for special treatment is so blatant that some activists openly support abolishing the presumption of innocence for rape cases and requiring the accused to prove consent (a proposal Valenti cites with obvious approval). In an ironic twist, these activists actually seem to hold women in very little esteem: in their world, women are too timid to push a man away if he won’t take no for an answer and too addled to know that they have been raped.
It’s as if the whole thing is some sort of political shell game with no concern for justice or equality at all.
ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH: Iran Just Shipped Missiles to Venezuela. Hello? Is This Thing On? “A massive security threat just blossomed, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an MSM or administration official who cares.”
MAKING THE CASE against college?
THE JIG IS ALMOST UP: But you can still get overnight shipping until some time this afternoon. Meanwhile, they’re still rolling out last minute Christmas deals and, of course, you can always send a gift-card by email. Even on Christmas morning!
RASMUSSEN: The Tea Party at Year’s End:
The Tea Party movement was one of the biggest political stories during the 2010 election season. From an electoral standpoint, the grassroots movement had it first impact by forcing long-time Senator Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party (and eventually out of the U.S. Senate). By the end of the season, several Tea Party candidates such as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Kentucky’s Rand Paul were elected to the U.S. Senate.
A plurality of voters nationwide expect these Tea Party candidates to sell out and become just like other politicians. However, Tea Party activists are much more confident that these candidates will remain true to their beliefs. Pressure from the Tea Party clearly played a role in the lame duck session of Congress and may be largely responsible for the tax cut deal that was signed by President Obama.
Forty-one percent (41%) believe the Tea Party movement will be stronger in 2012 than it was in 2010.
Count me among those people.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: PolitiFact peddling “PolitiFiction.” “PolitiFact wants to define for everyone else what qualifies as a ‘fact,’ though in political debates the facts are often legitimately in dispute.”
ED MORRISSEY: Time To Abolish The FCC?
Why do we need the FCC in the 21st century? Most television channels are narrowcasters, using satellites and cable channels that don’t eat up limited broadcast space in local markets. The phone system in the US is no longer monopolized, and the issues of access and competition in those areas could be handled by state public-utility commissions, as they are now. The licensing of broadcast stations could be handled by the Commerce Department, or by a greatly-reduced FCC with binding limitations on jurisdiction.
We have managed to free ourselves from the encumbrances of monopolization over the last thirty years. This country doesn’t need a bloated bureaucracy getting in the way of innovation and commerce. It needs government to acknowledge that its communications-regulation apparatus is archaic and in need of downsizing, rather than attempting to nationalize the media.
Indeed.
CHANGE: Hawaii-bound, Obama signals his opposition to gay marriage ‘evolving.’ Of course it is. He’ll be needing to start the 2012 fundraisers soon. . . .
PIGFORD UPDATE: Lee Stranahan: Pigford Breeds Internal USDA Corruption. “Pigford researcher, author, and Hoover Institute fellow Peter Schweizer has spoken to multiple sources who claim that not only has at least one individual inside the USDA been responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud, but that person is actually still working at the USDA. This is just one more reason USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack needs to consider a career change. It seems like it’s going to take Congressional hearings to allow the whistleblowers to speak openly.”
SO I GUESS THE END-TIMES ARE PRETTY MUCH HERE: Pat Robertson: Time To Legalize Marijuana.
UPDATE: Ilya Somin: “I rarely have anything good to say about Pat Robertson. But the devil-monger deserves his due: I have to commend his call for the legalization of marijuana. Moreover, he cites several good reasons for this stance, including the high cost of prohibition, and the fact that imprisonment of small-time drug dealers and users is ‘ruining young people.’ I suspect that Robertson has begun to realize that the War on Drugs is bad for family values. It will take a lot of good works to make up for all the ridiculous and offensive things that Robertson has said over the years. But helping to end the War on Drugs would be a good start.”
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