Monthly Archives: November 2010

Grandma, Put A Lid On It!

President Obama is NOT a Muslim, whatever else he may be. But he needs this kind of story like a hole in the head: The Kenyan grandmother of US President Barack Obama who was on Haj pilgrimage to Makkah has said that she prayed for the American leader to convert to Islam, a newspaper said on Thursday. “I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam,” said Haja Sarah »

“Just who the hell do you think you are?”

The pseudonymous Tyler Durden directs our attention to Euroskeptic MEP Nigel Farage, who “tells more truth about the entire European experiment [in under four mintues] than all European bankers, commissioners, and politicians have done in the past decade.” Durden provides the transcript of Farage’s remarks yesterday in the European Parliament, which I have slightly edited; I have also added the paragraphing: Good morning, [EU Council president] Mr. [Herman] Van Rompuy. »

The Original Hammering Hank

New Year’s day 2011 will be the centenary anniversary of the birth of Hank Greenberg. The pending milestone provides the occasion of David Dalin’s essay/tribute to Greenberg in the Weekly Standard. The entire essay is worth reading. Greenberg proved himself to be an exemplary American several times over in the course of his remarkable career. I was particulary struck by Dalin’s account of Greenberg’s military service at the height of »

Giving thanks for “the lone defender of freedom”

John Yoo, writing at Ricochet, gives thanks for the United States’ lonely defense of the West during the Cold War. Yoo, an immigrant from South Korea, states: Wars in both Korea and Vietnam sent important signals to the Soviet Union and China that the United States would continue to resist communist expansion forcefully. While Korea was a stalemate, and Vietnam a defeat, communism did not spread in Asia and America’s »

Canada puts the U.S. to shame

The Canadian government has announced that Canada will not attend Durban III, the United Nations conference that purports to be about racism, because the event has negatively targeted Israel. In announcing the decision, immigration minister Jason Kenney explained that Canada has lost faith in the Durban process. “Canada is clearly committed to the fight against racism, but the Durban process commemorates an agenda that actually promotes racism rather than combats »

Observations on Korea

Sarah Palin referred to “our North Korean allies” on the Glenn Beck show, a slip of the tongue that was deemed newsworthy by CBS News, the Washington Post, and many other outlets. Did those same sources publish gleeful headlines when Barack Obama talked about campaigning in all 57 states? Of course not; Obama is so, you know, brilliant. Everyone who talks in public will occasionally mis-speak; whether slips of the »

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers and friends! Instead of the usual holiday graphic, here is a photo of a wild turkey that my wife nearly ran over yesterday morning while driving in our neighborhood: Wild turkeys are one of many previously rare species that now are popping up everywhere. »

Paul Rahe: America’s first socialist republic

We are proud to have provided the platform launching Professor Paul Rahe into the blogosphere. He is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars, but he has also proved to be a natural blogger as well. He now posts regularly at Big Government, which has collected Professor Rahe’s Big Government posts in one convenient spot. In view of his classic study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is the »

Let’s You and Her Fight

The extent to which Sarah Palin–a non-office holder, the veteran of less than a single term as Governor of Alaska, an unsuccessful Vice-Presidential candidate who, polls tell us, incurs the disapproval of most voters–dominates the news these days is remarkable. If you run your eyes down the headlines of any on-line newspaper, you will most likely see multiple Palin stories. Take today’s Washington Post, for example: An Excerpt from Sarah »

Democrats “arm” themselves for Thanksgiving

One of the distinctive features of Thanksgiving is that we tend to share it with extended family, not just immediate members. To my knowledge, this is almost universally considered a good thing — indeed, I think it helps explain the holiday’s enormous popularity. Unless you’re a certain kind of liberal Democrat. Consider the nightmarish vision of Thanksgiving presented in this email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee via its executive »

TSA Does Something Right

The Transportation Security Administration, under fire from travelers, has quietly let it be known that it intends to do something sensible: ditch the color-coded system of alert levels that has existed since 2002: The 8-year-old alert system, with its rainbow of colors–from green, signifying a low threat, to red, meaning severe–has become a fixture in airports, government buildings and on newscasts. Over the past four years, millions of travelers have »

Deficit reduction — must tax increases be on the table?

A few days ago, In a post about deficit reduction, I wrote: “If tax increases and reductions in the defense budget are on the table — as I believe they will have to be — then so too should [Obamacare] the enormously expensive new entitlement the Democrats created against the will of the American people.” In response, a reader pointed me to an analysis by the Cato Institute’s Center for »

A gloomy economic forecast and its likely consequences

The Federal Reserve is forecasting that the unemployment rate, now 9.6 percent, will fall only to about 9 percent at the end of 2011 and about 8 percent at the time of the 2012 presidential election. I don’t take this forecast very seriously because I doubt the Fed has any clear idea what the unemployment rate will be in two years. Indeed, only a few months ago,the Fed’s forecasts regarding »

“Every word she writes…”

In “Sarah Palin, riot grrrl,” linked by Glenn Reynolds, Elizabeth Wurtzel mangles a great moment in American cultural history. Wurtzel leads her post with this: To paraphrase Lillian Hellman, I don’t agree with a word that Sarah Palin says, including “and” and “the.” But the quote paraphrased by Wurtzel comes from the author Mary McCarthy, who was commenting about Hellman. Appearing on Dick Cavett’s late night television show in 1980, »

Bush & Blair: A special relationship

Tonight’s edition of Hannity on Fox News at 9:00 p.m. (Eastern) is devoted to an inside look at “the special relationship” as it manifested itself between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair in the aftermath of 9/11. It features interviews with both men and their closest advisers and is highly recommended. »

This land is your land

Michael Barone provides his patented take on the Wave manifested in the elections of 2010 with a Woody Guthrie kind of twist (if you can forget that Guthrie wrote his Woody Sez column for the Daily Worker). Barone says the Wave (he calls it a tsunami) benefiting Republicans washed over the United States “from the Washington Bridge to the Donner Pass.” Yet he pauses to note this scandal: Republican gains »

First, let’s nail down the fighter planes

The U.S. apparently has finalized the language of a letter to Israel that the Obama administration hopes will seal the deal on an extension of Israel’s settlement freeze. Some members of the Israeli security cabinet reportedly demanded that the U.S. put its promises in writing before they would provide the support Netanyahu needs to have the extension approved. One suspects, though, that Netanyahu will be more comfortable with something in »