Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Huffington Post — attacking Israel for fun and profit

Even at its best, the Huffington Post is a leftist organ. And when it comes to covering Israel, the Huffington Post is not at its best. The Huff Watch blog does a terrific job of calling out the Huffington Post for its extreme anti-Israel bias. As Huff Watch has shown, that bias manifests itself in: * The incitement of hatred against Israel, by prominently posting inflammatory allegations* against the Jewish »

Yawn

Ken Mehlman was Chairman of the Republican National Committee and manager of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. I only dealt with him once or twice, but he seemed a cordial and capable guy. At the time, rumors that he was gay were widespread. Now he says that gradually, over a number of years, he has come to realize that he is indeed a homosexual. Some commentators find significance in this. »

The Tea Party movement and 2012

In view of the success the Tea Party Express has enjoyed in the Republican candidate selection process this year, it’s worth asking how that movement might influence the selection of a Republican nominee for president in 2012. Here are some preliminary thoughts: 1. The Republican presidential field is likely to be crowded in 2012, with at least as many plausible-to-strong contenders as it contained in 2008. If nothing else, the »

Who’s Stupid?

Lately there has been a rash of news stories and columns decrying the stupidity of Americans, mostly based on a finding by the Pew Research Center that 18 percent of Americans think that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Predictably, the New York Times joined the pile-on with this column by Timothy Egan: “Building a Nation of Know-Nothings.” Egan focuses, however, not on Americans in general, but on Republicans: That ill-informed »

Morgan Stanley: Government Defaults Inevitable

The bills for decades of profligate spending and borrowing are finally coming due, and governments can’t pay them. Morgan Stanley warns that defaults are inevitable: “Governments will impose a loss on some of their stakeholders,” Arnaud Mares in the firm’s London office wrote in a research report today. “The question is not whether they will renege on their promises, but rather upon which of their promises they will renege, and »

Whom Do You Trust?

Consistent with the tide that we see flowing toward Republican and conservative candidates across the country, likely voters now trust Republicans over Democrats on all ten key issues: Consistent with that trend, Marco Rubio now leads Charlie Crist by ten among likely voters. Rubio will win, I think, not just because there is a Republican tide, but because he is a great candidate. He should be one of the leaders »

Watch Out For Those Drunken Art Students

We noted last night the strange story of the attack on a Muslim cab driver by a drunken would-be filmmaker who works for a “global initiative dedicated to promoting justice, reconciliation and peace across lines of faith, culture, ideology, race, class, national borders and other boundaries that divide humanity.” Predictably, the attack prompted an outpouring of venom from the left, like this: Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio may as well »

A great communicator

We have hailed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a series of posts titled “What price Christie?” The video below demonstrates that one element of his leadership is exemplary rhetorical skills. The guy is a great communicator. Is there anybody else like him on the Republican side? I don’t think anyone else comes close. In the video below he is asked the question whether he is going to fire anyone »

Trillions in debt (and nothin’ to show for it)

Bruce Springsteen has a song about cable television in which he laments that there are “57 channels and nothin’ on.” The name of the song, logically enough, is “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).” I thought of Springsteen’s song in connection with incumbent Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet’s admission that trillions of dollars of federal debt has been incurred through spending since he was appointed to the Senate in January 2009, »

The Tide Continues to Flow

After a brief time when it seemed that Democrats might be rebounding a bit in the eyes of voters, the rightward trend has resumed with a vengeance. As manifested this morning in Scott Rasmussen finding Meg Whitman up by eight among likely voters in her race against Jerry Brown for Governor of California. That follows on the heels of similar good news, including dead heats in Barbara Boxer’s and Russ »

The killing fields of Caracas

We missed an important moment at the Miss Universe pageant on Saturday night. The outgoing Miss Universe made a little political statement on her final catwalk that was visible to Venezuelans but probably no one else, holding up an obsolete seven star pre-Chavez era flag. She did it to signal distress in her country, and nowhere is that move evident than in Venezuela’s violent crime. This week the news came »

My phobia problem — and Mark Steyn’s

It was the thugs running the Soviet Union who pioneered the use of psychiatry for totalitarian purposes. Vladimir Bukovsky was one of the most prominent victims of the practice. To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter tells the story in painful detail. Dissent from the party line was treated as a form of mental illness. The homosexual left picked up the theme, stigmatizing opposition to its political agenda »

American “Islamophobia” — the MSM/left-liberal contribution

Both Time Magazine and the Washington Post have made much of a poll in which 25 percent of those surveyed said that most Muslim-Americans are not patriotic. Time and Post assume that this view is incorrect and consider the poll result evidence of America’s Islamophobia. But what might cause 25 percent of Americans to believe that most Muslim-Americans aren’t patriots? It seems unlikely that they base this conclusion on the »

A Strange Story

Last night, a drunken 21-year-old man hailed a taxi in New York City and, after a few moments of conversation, attacked the cab driver, a Muslim, with a knife. The attack was not fatal, thankfully, and the perpetrator was immediately arrested. The New York Daily News, among many other outlets, hailed the incident as a hate crime: A boozed-up bigot who just returned from filming U.S. Marines in Afghanistan used »

A force to be reckoned with

So far in in this election cycle, two U.S. Senators — Arlen Specter and Robert Bennett — have fallen short in their effort at being nominated and a third — Lisa Murkowski — may be on life-support. Murkowski would be the first Republican Senator to lose a primary this year. Bennett lost by a vote at a convention and Specter, of course, is an ex-Republican. Murkowski would also be the »

A big night for the top of the 2008 ticket

John McCain and Sarah Palin must be loving life a whole more today than they did in November 2008. McCain crushed J.D. Hayworth in yesterday’s Arizona Senate primary. The margin was 56-32. At one time, Hayworth was thought to have a shot at defeating McCain. However, it has been clear for a long while that McCain would win handily. Alaska, though, is a very different story. According to Politco, not »

After last night

Perhaps the most surprising result is the closeness of the result in the Alaska Republican Senate primary. Joe Miller holds a 3,000 vote lead over incumbent Lisa Murkowski. According to Politico, 16,000 7,600 absentee ballots have yet to be counted. Miller was substantially outspent by Murkowski; he had the endorsement of Sarah Palin and the support of Alaska tea party activists going for him. Exit questions on this race: Who »