Monthly Archives: January 2012
January 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In our early, scruffier days we liked to cover nude political protests of various kinds. There were quite a few of them at that time–mostly anti-war; a few anti-patriarchy; and, on one memorable occasion, pro-fox hunting. Naked protesting has mostly died out, but it has been brought back, over the last year or two, by a Ukrainian group called Femen. Femen is distinguished by the fact that its members are
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January 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We tried to back into an estimate of the income of Warren Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, in “Analyze this.” Ms. Bosanek was one of the stars of President Obanma’s State of the Union address. Buffett and Obama portray her as the victim of an unfair tax code. As I noted in an update to the post, it turns out that Ms. Bosanek reportedly makes about $60,000 a year. When they
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January 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Steve Hayward’s “Newt vs. Reagan, the sequel” is the definitive response to the prominent conservatives who have sought to portray Newt Gingrich as an opponent of President Reagan’s foreign policy in the 1980’s. To Steve’s account must be added Jeffrey Lord’s look at Gingrich’s March 1986 speech from which Elliott Abrams quoted in his NRO column attacking Gingrich [UPDATE: as well as Rich Lowry’s corrective comment on Lord’s column]. Abrams
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January 28, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Some time back in the 1990s, with middle age on the horizon and retirement planning suddenly on my mind, I began like most people to study the stock market, screening mutual funds for IRAs, etc. Somewhere along the way I stumbled across the Steadman Funds, hands down the worst mutual funds in the history of the universe. The record of the Steadman Funds was so bad that it had to
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January 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Well, scotch is an option, sure. But lately I’ve taken to shooting. The local Gander Mountain has an excellent firing range, and there are other good ranges nearby, too. Tonight I went shooting with my pal Mitch Berg; my wife and oldest daughter swung by and fired off some rounds, too. Here you see my daughter and me; she is shooting and I am supervising: Oddly, the guy in the
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January 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Not too many months ago, likely voters trusted Republicans over Democrats on all ten top issues. It was probably too much to expect those heady days to continue, and I suspect that the GOP presidential primary season has damaged the party’s standing. That is unfortunate: if the Republican candidates had devoted their energies to non-stop attacks on President Obama, the result would have been positive. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and
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January 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Both Elliott Abrams, at National Review Online, and, as John Hinderaker noted yesterday, Pete Wehner (quoting from my book) have brought up Newt Gingrich’s pungent criticisms of Reagan back in the 1980s, supposedly giving the lie to Newt’s claim to have been solidly aligned with Reagan in those glory days of conservative nostalgia. It is perfectly fair of Elliott and Pete to call Newt on his revisionist history, but what
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January 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I watched the GOP presidential candidates’ debate in Jacksonville. The debate was broadcast on CNN — CNN has posted the full transcript of the debate — and moderated by Wolf Blitzer, who proved to be a formidable antagonist for Newt. When Newt came at Blitzer on a question that put Newt on the defensive, Blitzer held his ground and shot back. It may have been the defining moment of the
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January 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
A long-time reader writes to look back at last week’s GOP debate in Charleston: To date, the most decisive moment of the lengthy Republican presidential debating season occurred when Newt Gingrich launched his tirade against CNN’s John King for raising the subject of Gingrich’s second marriage. But in my view, that moment was theatre, and revealed little. For me, the most revealing moment occurred in the same debate when Rick
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January 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Over the years, we have gone after the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and other liberal news sources countless times. We probably haven’t paid enough attention to the news outlets that many more people actually read, like Yahoo News. I haven’t seen any hard numbers, but I suspect that many more people see Yahoo News headlines than New York Times headlines. On Yahoo News, interspersed with
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January 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
This Reuters hit piece on Marco Rubio–nowadays, when I talk about Rubio, I have to stop and think whether it’s Marco or Ricky–is an early contender for the title. Reuters’ theme is that Rubio criticizes extravagant federal spending and deficits, but has had financial problems himself. The article is basically one false statement after another, leavened with quotes from Democratic strategists. At the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis deconstructs it: By
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January 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Matt Drudge and others have been digging up instances over the years when Newt Gingrich has criticized Ronald Reagan. (Nowadays, of course, Newt takes credit for pretty much everything the Reagan administration accomplished.) Pete Wehner has unearthed another one, that was recorded by our own Steven Hayward. I wonder whether Steve forgot about it: One Gingrich quote is particularly revealing and hasn’t, to my knowledge, yet been highlighted. But in
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January 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
. . . between 13 and 16, which yields the result that “you don’t even have a bubble.” No, not a housing bubble, higher education bubble, or any of the other fashionable speculative bubbles of the moment. What the heck am I talking about? I’m talking about my score on the 20-question “How Thick Is Your Bubble?” quiz. (Try it: it only takes about 60 seconds.) Still puzzled? The quiz
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January 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Going through this week’s issue of Nature magazine, which arrived in my in-box yesterday, the following short squib in their “research highlights” section appears: Warming, but not as much The climate system may be less sensitive to greenhouse-gas warming than many models have predicted. Nathan Gillett and his co-workers at Environment Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, analysed how well the latest Canadian Earth System Model tracked temperature changes attributable to
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January 26, 2012 — Scott Johnson
President Obama’s use of Warren Buffett’s secretary — Debbie Bosanek — during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night raised interesting questions that deserve to be followed up. Obama used Ms. Bosanek as a prop to argue for higher taxes on the rich or, as they have lately come to be known, the 1 percent. In liberal mythology, “the rich” are never paying “their fair share,” whatever that
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January 25, 2012 — John Hinderaker
There are signs that the Newt Gingrich bubble may be bursting. Let’s hope so: the walk down the memory lane of the 1980s and 1990s, not to mention Newt’s current transgressions, is getting hard to take. Let’s just survey today’s news: * R. Emmett Tyrell, who was there and remembers, labeled Gingrich “conservatism’s Bill Clinton, but without the charm.” * Marco Rubio denounced a Gingrich Spanish-language ad in Florida that
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January 25, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Before Barack Obama, have we ever had a president who divided the country for political gain; who pitted some Americans against others; and who tried to scapegoat unpopular groups of Americans for his own failures? Yes. It was Franklin Roosevelt. But that doesn’t excuse Obama’s reprehensible practice of the politics of division. Michael Ramirez editorializes:
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