Monthly Archives: September 2011

$1.5 Trillion In New Taxes? Ho Hum.

Featured image President Obama previewed a new plan to cut the deficit yesterday. The plan is to be unveiled this morning, but don’t expect it to amount to more than a handful of talking points. This is an opportune moment to repeat what we have said many times before: it would be helpful if the Democrats would fulfill their statutory obligation by proposing an actual budget, which they haven’t done for more »

More Green Confusion

Featured image It is not exactly news to people who follow Chinese affairs closely that there are frequent protests in China, often turning violent with cars and buildings burned, over environmental conditions.  Some years ago I noted the potential irony that rising environmental sentiment in China might become an engine for weakening state power and strengthening the rule of law, as opposed to here and in Europe, where environmentalism is about increasing state »

Imagination at work

Featured image Consider it another sign of the times when GE chief executive officer and Obama jobs czar Jeffrey Immelt lets it be known that he is not in full agreement with what the president “stands for.” When asked by Fareed Zakaria in an interview on CNN whether Obama is an opponent of capitalism, Immelt responded in part: “Do I believe everything the president stands for?…Definitely no.” That is not the answer »

Blinded By Ideology

Featured image Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), chairman of the Black Caucus, says that if Barack Obama were not the president, he and his colleagues would be marching on the White House: Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had »

I Didn’t Hear a “No”

Featured image Bill Clinton, in top form: Asked on CBS News “Face the Nation” this morning about Dick Cheney’s suggestion that Hillary should challenge Obama, Clinton bobs and weaves in his usual fashion, but read carefully through this story–or watch the embedded video–and see if you can tease out a clear denial–or any denial at all really–that Hillary won’t do it.  (Maybe it just depends on what the meaning of the word »

The Inexorable Causal Relationship Between CO2 and Temperature

Featured image Climate alarmists would have you believe that the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the sole determinant (if pressed, they will say the primary determinant) of changes in global temperatures. Actually, however, both the proportion of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and the Earth’s temperatures have varied widely over the planet’s history, with no apparent correlation between the two. The point is illustrated by this graph, based on »

Tax the Rich, Just Because!

Featured image President Obama has dropped a hint as to how he will pay for a tiny portion, at least, of the new spending he demands from Congress. The answer is–what else?–tax the rich! The New York Times reports: President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their »

The Perfect Story

Featured image Ever since the best-selling book and the feature film, “the perfect storm” has become perhaps the most overused cliché of our time.  So I try never to use it.  But every so often there comes along its close analogue—the perfect story—that is, a piece of news that perfectly conveys several aspects of the truth of something in a very short space. So today’s perfect story comes courtesy of the Huffington »

The fear factor

Featured image Michelle Malkin fits the Obama campaign’s AttackWatch into the larger pattern set by previous incarnations of “the Obama snitch police.” In her post Michelle recalls the 2008 Obama campaign’s FightTheSmears. In the good old days it was a smear to claim that Michelle Obama ordered room service when she hadn’t stayed at the hotel! Fortunately, FightTheSmears didn’t have to respond to Andrea Tantaros’s New York Daily News column on Michelle »

Hoist By His Own BS?

Featured image Events are moving toward a showdown in the United Nations next week, as Palestinian leaders will seek international sanction for a new state of Palestine. PA President Abbas warned the U.S. earlier today not to veto Palestinian statehood in the Security Council: The Palestinian Authority on Saturday warned the US against using its Security Council veto to thwart its plan to seek UN membership for a Palestinian state this week. »

Barack Obama, Flim-Flam Man

Featured image Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has an important column in which he argues that the Solyndra fiasco is not just a garden-variety scandal, but a criminal fraud that should land someone, inside and/or outside of the Obama administration, in the slammer. The facts are very bad. Solyndra was a money-loser from beginning to end. Its business model was untenable. The Bush administration turned it down for funding. Its owners wanted »

Built Ford tough

Featured image On yesterday’s show Rush highlighted an ad from Ford’s Drive One series (video below) in which buyers are thrust before cameras to explain why they picked Ford. The ad features Chris, a buyer of the Ford F-150 pickup truck. In a mock press conference setting, Chris is asked why buying American was important to him. Chris responds: “I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our »

Quotations From Chairman Jim, European edition

Featured image We resume our series on National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach for what appears to be a preview of coming attractions. Leach has posted comments for the November Humanities Symposium to be held under the auspices of NYU’s Brademas Center in Florence. These, ladies and gentlemen, are the highlights selected by Chairman Jim himself: “The irony is that one of the oldest queries in education – the role »

Obama’s Last Chance

Featured image Future historians are likely to look back on this week as the period Obama passed the point of no return for his presidency, and they may identify today, September 16, as the single most important day in his undoing.  I wonder if Obama has any clue that his presidency is collapsing in real time?  Dumb question: of course he doesn’t. Yes, I was obviously playing around with my post earlier »

Breaking: A Power Line DC Bureau Exclusive! “Operation Chaos” Exposed!!

Featured image Power Line’s Washington Bureau has obtained a secret recording of the latest double-secret central committee meeting of Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos.”  The thick cigar smoke in the room degraded the recording quality, and our voice-print analysis software can’t confirm that the Ouija board pronouncements really are the voice of the late Lee Atwater, but we can confirm the rest of the participants.  We pick up right from the opening puff: »

The Daily Hayek

Featured image Not to worry, I don’t propose actually to do daily posts on Hayek, but since I’m doing a close reading of Hayek with my Ashland students, and since there is so much in his work that is hard to get your head around all at once, it might be useful to digest small chunks from time to time—especially when their relevance to current issues is so clear. So in chapter »

The mission behind the Medal

Featured image Bing West’s Wall Street Journal column on the Medal of Honor awarded to then Marine Corporal (now Sergeant) Dakota Meyer provides context and detail lacking in most of the news accounts occasioned by yesterday’s White House ceremony. Sergeant Meyer was awarded the Medal for his day-long heroics during a September 2009 ambush in Afghanistan rescuing a group “abandoned by their chain of command,” according to West. West spoke with Sergeant »