ROGER SIMON: “The continued nostalgia for racism on the part of the Democratic Party never ceases to amaze me.”
Archive for 2010
April 7, 2010
THE WEAK HORSE: Iran mocks Obama.
BOB MCCARTY INTERVIEWS SOME TEA PARTIERS.
ICONIC PHOTOS is a blog about, well, iconic photos.
YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE: Harry Reid Won’t Announce Stops On Bus Tour Out of Fear of Protesters. Plus, from the comments: “I have never heard of a double secret campaign tour.”
JEFF FOUST on commercial launch supply and demand.
TEST-FLYING the airliner of the future.
SOME THOUGHTS ON security and the Apple iPad.
YES WE CAN: . . . Walk away from bad mortgages.
A TURBODIESEL Ford Mustang?
IN THE MAIL: My author’s copy of New Threats To Freedom, edited by Adam Bellow. I’ve got a chapter, along with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Epstein, Anne Applebaum, and Christina Hoff Sommers, among many others.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Independents Rally To The Tea Party.
HAM RADIO: A technology that’s still growing in the age of Twitter. “Nearly 700,000 Americans have ham radio licenses — up 60 percent from 1981, a generation ago. And the number is growing.” Well, good.
DAVID BOAZ: There’s no such thing as a golden age of lost liberty.
For many libertarians, “the road to serfdom” is not just the title of a great book but also the window through which they see the world. We’re losing our freedom, year after year, they think. They (we) quote Thomas Jefferson: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” We read books with titles like Freedom in Chains, Lost Rights, The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans, and yes, The Road to Serfdom. . . . We should focus on what is actually important—the exercise of arbitrary power over others.
Read the whole thing. I’ve had this argument, too. And I think this sort of despairing, reverse-Whig view of history also discourages people from fighting for liberty. But we’ve recovered before, and we’ll recover again — if we want to.
BYRON YORK: Fear And Loathing In The RNC. “We have raised a ton more money than we’ve raised before and we have less money in the bank at the end of the month. Where did all the money go?” Not setting the right example. Fortunately, the RNC is much less relevant than it used to be. My advice to GOP donors: Ignore ’em, and send your money directly to candidates you like. The Internet can disintermediate unsatisfactory middlemen, and that seems like the right thing here. . . .
ABU MUQAWAMA: Just Admit It: The Surge Worked.
COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR BANK, get hit with a restraining order.
KID-PACIFIER CENTRAL? A dual-screen DVD player for 89 bucks. I don’t know how good they are, but I paid over a grand for dual-DVD players in my Toyota, and this is making me feel pretty stupid. (Actually, I didn’t want ’em — that was the Insta-wife and -daughter. They’ve been used, but not enough for the price. Now for 89 bucks. . . . )
UPDATE: A reader emails: “I got the Axion dual screen DVD player for my grandsons for Christmas and they love. And so does my son who enjoys the peace while traveling.” Indeed. There are people who say it’s wrong to amuse your kids in the car with electronic gewgaws. Those people are called “childless” . . .
FOOD STAMP USAGE hits record high.
THE KEY BIT ON A VALUE ADDED TAX: “But politicians love the hidden aspect of a VAT as way of duping voters. To them opaqueness is a feature, not a bug.” And my chief objection.
CAN THIS BLOGGER UNSEAT BARBARA BOXER? Lloyd Grove on the Mickey Kaus candidacy. Kaus: “I’m running to speak unpleasant truths to the Democratic Party and to talk about the elephant in the room that they don’t want to talk about. I don’t expect them to embrace me with unanimous instant applause, but I do think there’s a huge chunk of Democrats out there who agree with me.”