Archive for 2009

HEY, I THOUGHT EVERYBODY WAS GOING TO LOVE US ONCE OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT: “Demonstrators shout slogans against U.S. President Barack Obama during a protest in Istanbul April 5, 2009. The placards read ‘Go away Obama’.”

Related: Smoke on the water.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “The bungled trial of former GOP Sen. Ted Stevens tainted more than just the Justice Department. It probably tipped the balance of a close election, and the fallout from that is far from over.”

UNION OFFICIALS SLAM NEW YORK TIMES over Boston Globe mismanagement.

Plus, this: “One union official pointed out to the Globe brass that company managers received bonuses earlier this year.” Quick: Send busloads of protesters to their homes!

TIGERHAWK: “The rich countries so rapidly going into hock are going to need some more children in short order or the old folks will suck the life blood out of them.” Frightful charts at the link. Meanwhile, I have suggested one approach to ameliorating the problem.

RASMUSSEN: Number of Democrats in Nation Declines During March. “In March, the number of Democrats in the nation fell two percentage points while the number of Republicans fell by half-a-point. Democrats continue to have a sizable advantage in terms of partisan identification, but the advantage is smaller than it’s been since December 2007.”

WHITE HOUSE AIDES’ TARP ties.

Plus this: “As he prepared to take a job in the White House at the end of last year, David Axelrod sold the political consulting firm that helped elect President Barack Obama for $2 million to a group of consultants who helped steer Obama’s campaign.” Some background on that here.

Good thing the administration’s standing up to those greedy businessmen!

FROM NETBOOK COMPUTERS to inexpensive “Nettop computers.” The bottom line is that computers are getting better and cheaper faster than manufacturers can load them up with stuff to maintain a price-point.

FROM THE G-20, A TELLING OMISSION. I think we’ll see the word “free” dropped from a lot of things.

HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE HURTLES INTO ACTION!

The U.S. House of Representatives have finally gone into action after months of ducking investigating Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y) for questionable financial dealings, Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn) for alleged sweetheart mortgage deal, and Rep. John P. Murtha for taking illegal contributions.

The case that is taking their esteemed attention is for a speeding ticket that was given to Rep. Zach Space (D-Conn). The serious offense was that he drove 65 in a 50 mph traffic zone, and was given a warning for driving with an expired.

Nice to know they’ve got their priorities in order.

LIFE-PROLONGING: “If you look at the math on which the developed world is betting the future, government health systems will have huge incentives to develop ever greater institutional biases against ‘life-prolonging.'” There is, however, a better way.

TIGERHAWK notes that Atlas Shrugged is still moving up in the Amazon rankings.

BOB OWENS ON BLOOD LIBEL FROM THE LEFT: “The best minds progressive politics has to offer have apparently met on their little list and determined that—eureka!—it is the fault of the evil right wing neocon media that an unemployed sociopath ambushed and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh that were responding to a domestic violence call placed by his mother.” I’m sure the subject was analyzed with JournoList’s usual compassion and analytic objectivity.

I love the reference to “his Klannish (nearly progressive) hatred of Zionism.” Yeah, it fits.

UPDATE: Kos going “full-metal moonbat?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Standing up against hate speech.

MORE: “Don’t forget who Kos is.”

Plus, more echo-chamber hate speech from Media Matters shill Oliver Willis. Why not just paste the talking points directly from JournoList? Oh, wait . . .

STILL MORE: Ouch. Kos Finally Finds A Cop Killing Revolutionary He’ll Criticize.

FINALLY: Jim Treacher emails: “Oliver Willis is for banning violent video games, presumably. And I’m sure he thinks the Beatles should’ve been locked up along with Charles Manson. Just kidding, that would only be if he actually had principles and wasn’t just trying to score cheap political points from the murder of police officers.” I was an early booster of Oliver Willis’s blogging career, but the move to Media Matters seemed to undercut his promise. Or perhaps my judgment was simply wrong from the beginning.

BEST ALBUMS OF 2009 SO FAR. Not sure it’d be my list, but . . . .

POLITICIZING THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Jennifer Rubin investigates. “Under the Bush administration, Sens. Patrick Leahy and Chuck Schumer would be certain to drag the attorney general in front of the cameras and start hammering away at the first hint that he had given insufficient attention to career attorneys’ legal research or neglected legal restrictions on the government’s policy objectives. But now they have zero interest in quizzing the Democratic administration’s top lawyer. Some public pressure might be brought to bear on them, but they are unlikely to be swayed by pleas for them to fulfill their Constitutional obligations. So where are the Republicans?. . . . For now, we are left to ponder whether Holder is serving up just what the administration wants to hear (as was alleged in his role in controversial Clinton-era pardons) or whether he really is the man of integrity his supporters claimed him to be. Right now the available evidence suggests he is a compliant figure uninterested in providing objective legal advice and constitutional discipline for an administration badly in need of both.”