Archive for 2011
April 27, 2011
SENATE REPUBLICANS call for budget accountability.
ALAN BOYLE: Electric Cars Meet The Real World. “When it comes to electric cars, that age-old saying — ‘Your mileage may vary’ — never rang truer.”
REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A POST-PARTISAN PRAGMATIST? The Hill: Obama’s campaign rhetoric could make compromise tough in Washington.
We have an election coming up. We also have $5/gallon gasoline and $5/loaf bread coming up. I do not expect the real unemployment rate to fall, although there will be frantic attempts to make it look lower, largely through statistical manipulations based on the definition of unemployment: if you’re not looking for work, you aren’t unemployed even if you have no job and never again expect to find one. As more give up looking, the unemployment rate goes down. And since the unions do not intend to lower their wages and perks, and the states are out of money, there will be “furloughs” among public employees including teachers. You can manipulate those numbers so the “furloughed” are not unemployed. It promises to be an interesting summer, but it will end with $5/gallon gasoline and $5/loaf bread. Look for the price of a can of beans to get higher. Look for the price of Top Ramen to rise…
This will continue so long as the current economic and foreign policies continue.
Indeed.
April 26, 2011
SOME GOOD NEWS: Rep. Bill Posey Introduces ‘Back To the Moon’ Bill.
LESSONS IN Advanced mis-Placement.
BILL MCGURN: Sex And The College Dean.
HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Report: Obama’s new Afghanistan ambassador is … Bush’s old Iraq ambassador. “Please don’t confuse him with David Petraeus, Obama’s top Afghanistan commander who used to be … Bush’s top Iraq commander. Or with Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense who used to be … Bush’s Secretary of Defense.”
Hey, maybe we can get Rumsfeld back as SecDef when Gates leaves!
JESSE WALKER: “I don’t hail from the Ayn Rand wing of the libertarian movement, so I’m not usually moved to defend her when she’s attacked. But Michael Gerson’s column on Rand today has a passage too unself-aware to ignore.”
ANOTHER VIDEO EXPOSE from the University of Missouri.
IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ABOUT HALEY BARBOUR, reader Blake Daniels writes:
From the article about Barbour and Obama heading to the trail 19 mos. prior to an election. All true. But, maybe even a deeper deeper problem is, who but a crazy person would sing up for what Haley Barbour accurately described as the commitment to win today’s presidency? Maybe not crazy but certainly some sort of personality disorder.
Yes, I was on this problem back in 2001:
But if Kaus is right, our system actually selects for people who love the job. And since, as most people (perhaps even Kaus) would agree, being President is a job no sane person could really love for eight years then what does that say about our Presidential selection system? Is it selecting for kooks?
Read the whole thing, which includes a slogan that I think would be perfect for the Trump campaign . . . .
THE DONALD CAN GIVE IT A REST: Rand Simberg has found the transcript.
AT AMAZON, 50% OR MORE OFF in Sports & Outdoors.
A HARVARD GRAD’S GUIDE to the real world.
ED DRISCOLL: CNN Neuters Obama.
THE DIGNITY OF THE MEDIA: Former Air America Host Arrested After Heckling Rep. Allen West at Town Hall.
PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Trump Is Doing Major Damage To Obama.
FORMER AND CURRENT ATTORNEYS GENERAL AGREE: King & Spalding Messed Up. When Eric Holder and Michael Mukasey agree that you’ve acted unprofessionally, well . . . . “The good news is that lawyers on both sides of the ideological divide agree on this principle. Now, someone needs to explain it to the Human Rights Campaign and King and Spalding.”
The lawyers who defended the Gitmo terrorists aren’t happy, either. “It seems that the controversy is not going away. In fact, the backlash from the firm’s decision to fire its client may, in the long run, prove to be more damaging to the firm’s reputation and financial standing than if it had showed loyalty to client under public attack.”
UPDATE: “Atticus Finch, they ain’t.”
SYRIAN TROOPS POUR INTO DAMASCUS SUBURB.
BILL WHITTLE IS just asking questions.
DEWAYNE WICKHAM IN USA TODAY: OBAMA BREAKS PROMISE TO JOBLESS BLACKS.
I liked Obama even more when an aide to his presidential campaign invited me to a July 2007 speech he gave laying out his commitment to improve life for people in urban America — which for most politicians is a euphemism for black America.
“Today’s economy has made it easier to fall into poverty. … Every American is vulnerable to the insecurities and anxieties of this new economy. And that’s why the single most important focus of my economic agenda as president will be to pursue policies that create jobs and make work pay,” Obama said that day to his mostly black audience.
At that time, the nation’s overall unemployment rate was 4.7%. Whites had a jobless rate of 4.2% while the black unemployment rate stood at 8.1%. Today, the black rate is 15.5%, nearly double that of white job-seekers.
I don’t blame Obama for the economic conditions that are responsible for so many blacks being out of work. The seeds of this problem were planted long before he moved into the Oval Office. But I do fault him for not doing more to fix this problem.
In fact, most of his actions have made it worse.