Monthly Archives: October 2009

October 20, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Keeping an eye on J Street

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, will not attend next week’s J Street conference. Instead, a lower-level member of the embassy staff will be sent to watch and report on the event. This makes sense. One of the purposes of an embassy is to monitor the activities of a nation’s adversaries in the host country. And there will be much for the lucky embassy staffer to report about. »
October 20, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Time To Man Up, Barry

The Iranian mullahs continue their crackdown on those who demonstrated against their fraudulent election. Today they announced that Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar and an American citizen, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison: Iran ignored appeals by Hillary Rodham Clinton and even rock star Sting and sentenced an Iranian-American academic to 12 years in prison Tuesday for his alleged role in anti-government protests after the country’s disputed presidential »
October 20, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Obama Slips Further

It may be random noise, but it is interesting that, as the health care debate reaches a climax in Washington, both President Obama and Congressional Democrats appear to be losing ground with voters. Today’s Rasmussen survey finds that 28 percent of likely voters strongly approve of President Obama’s performance, while 40 percent–a plurality–strongly disapprove. This generates an “approval index” of -12. There have been only two days since January when »
October 20, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Dems Flee Countrywide Vote

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have been pressing for an investigation of Countrywide Mortgage’s “VIP Program,” under which powerful Democrats like Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd received sweetheart mortgages, apparently as bribes. On Thursday of last week, as the committee was about to meet, the Republicans said that they wanted a vote on whether to subpoena Countrywide’s records on the VIP program. The Democrats were between »
October 20, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

My apologies to all Angels fans

In my post about last night’s playoff game between the Yankees and Angels, I referred to the latter team as the California Angels. What a gaffe! As many readers have reminded me, this team became the Anaheim Angels years ago and now is officially known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It should be obvious that I’m not a true fan of modern baseball. I more or less tuned »
October 20, 2009 — Scott Johnson

What Anita Dunn done

Obama administration communications director Anita Dunn commended the wisdom of mass murdering Communist Chairman Mao in her address to high school students this past June. Dunn cited Mao and Mother Teresa as her two favorite political philosophers. I wrote about Dunn’s address here, John here; both posts include video of Dunn’s address. Dunn said to the assembled students: A lot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot »
October 20, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Startling Scozzafava

The special election in New York’s traditionally Republican 23rd congressional district presents the spectacle of an intolerable liberal Republican running against the viable Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack caught up with Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava at a campaign event in Lowville, New York, yesterday. McCormack scared the hell out of Scozzafava by asking her questions on card check, taxes and abortion coverage. McCormack scared Scozzafava »
October 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

If it’s not a bummer, he’d rather not trip

President Obama apparently will not travel to Germany to the attend the 20th-anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The German government is “going all out for the anniversary,” but Obama, it seems, can’t be arsed. Rick Richman offers a series of good reasons why Obama should reconsider. One of them is this: “it is an opportunity for Obama to give a speech in which he does not »
October 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Sometimes you just have to believe your own eyes

The California Angels have just defeated the New York Yankees 5-4 in 11 innings following some bizarre managing by Yankee skipper Joe Girardi. In the bottom of the 11th, the Yankee relief pitcher, David Robertson, set down the first two Angels he faced. The second of the two was Kendry Morales, a star slugger. Robertson retired Morales on a lazy fly ball after delivering pitch after pitch at his knees »
October 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Who’s Dumber, Mike Tyson or Anita Dunn?

White House communications director Anita Dunn, a Democratic Party attack dog, says that Mao Tse-Tung is one of her “favorite political philosophers” and one of the “two people that I turn to most:” Like so much that we’re seeing from the Obama administration, this reveals Dunn as a woman who simply isn’t very bright. Either she knows that Mao was the greatest mass murderer in history or she doesn’t: either »
October 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

“Green Jobs” In Germany

The “green jobs” hoax has been a fiasco wherever governments have tried to implement it. Most recently, the German think tank Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung has published a report titled Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience. The report is well worth reading in its entirety. It points out that the “green jobs” that have been created through government subsidies are more than offset by the »
October 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Iran Double-Crosses Obama

This morning, I noted that Iran’s government is telling the Iranian people that the Obama administration has consented to Iranian enrichment of uranium, thereby dismaying our European allies. I linked to, but did not discuss in detail, a Time article that appeared today. The Time article was based on interviews with Obama administration officials and was intended to put a positive spin on the administration’s effort to engage with Iran. »
October 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

“Global warming” at Yankee Stadium

My conservative cousin from New York filed this report from Yankee Stadium, where sports and left-liberalism intersected for the second time in a single week: Last night I was at Yankee Stadium watching the Yanks exciting extra-inning playoff win. Along with 50,000 other shivering fans we had to endure a scoreboard message from Robert Redford sponsored by the National Defense Resources Council demanding that we lower our standard of living »
October 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Voters Holding Firm on Government Health Care

My sense is that Democratic leaders think they have been making progress on the health care front, in the wake of the CBO’s relatively benign assessment of the Baucus version of their proposal (which is not, of course, the one that Congress will eventually vote on). But Scott Rasmussen finds a remarkable stability in voters’ opinions about health care reform. If anything, the anti-“reform” consensus seems to be hardening: Now »
October 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Mullahs to Iran: We’re Winning

At The Corner, Michael Rubin quotes from the Iranian mullahs’ official Friday night sermon. The topic is Iran’s meetings with U.S. diplomats earlier this month in Geneva: At these meetings there were some powers which tried to discuss Iran’s nuclear issue, but Jalili [Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council] who protected Iran’s honor during the meetings announced that he had not gone to Geneva to investigate our country’s nuclear »
October 19, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Whose Dreams? Tom Lipscomb wonders too

I’ve written too much here about whether Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father, most recently in “Flim and flam of the world” yesterday. I have pursued the subject because I find it interesting. I would also concede that It is more interesting than it is important. Jack Cashill has argued the thesis that Obama had a collaborator writing Dreams and has identified the unrepentant anti-American terrorist Bill Ayers as »
October 18, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Is Obama a fool? Yes, if one gives him the benefit of the doubt

Early last week, I wrote a post about President Obama called “He Cuts Quite a Figure, Part One.” The topic was Obama’s jaunts around the world “giving flowery speeches in which he apologizes for America while, in the interest of balance, he suggests that we’re not the only nation that has sinned.” I focused especially on Obama’s trip to Russia. I reported, based on sources in Russia, that the Russians »