Monthly Archives: January 2009

January 20, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Twelve

Long-range political forecasting is mostly for fools, and only a true fool would predict the number of years the Democrats will hold the White House after today. So I’m going to resist the temptation to make such a prediction in a blog post. To comment on this post, go here. »
January 20, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Ally of Hamas Speaks at Obama’s inauguration prayer service

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of America was reportedly among the honored speakers at a Barack Obama’s inauguration prayer service at the National Cathedral here in Washington. Last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Islamic Society of America to Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. In addition to her duties as president of the Islamic Society of America, Mattson is a professor »
January 20, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Hamas at work

The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reports that Hamas is torturing Fatah members in Gaza: A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added. The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement’s Internal Security Force. »
January 20, 2009 — Scott Johnson

King — The Musical

Mark Steyn devotes a funny chapter of Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then & Now to “the flops.” He observes that “American musicals, even the flops, are by Kander and Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Neil Simon.” By contrast, “British flops are a series of creative blind dates kinkier than anything dreamt up by the most depraved backbench MP.” Mark lws off his chapter on the flops with “King — »
January 20, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Count every vote, Republican style

When the canvas of local tallies was completed by local election officials after election day, Al Franken trailed Norm Coleman by roughly the same number of votes that Coleman trails Franken following the recount (225). Some twelve thousand absentee ballots had been excluded for noncompliance with state law on election day; Franken immediately formulated a strategy to identify and include “improperly excluded” absentee ballots. Franken recount maestro Marc Elias sought »
January 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Are They Writing for Tiger Beat…

…or the New York Times? Oh, sorry–didn’t mean to insult the people at Tiger Beat! Click to enlarge: Wake me when it’s over. To comment on this post, go here. »
January 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

President Bush: An Assessment

President Bush leaves office mostly unloved, with some poll respondents saying that they consider him one of our worst presidents ever. This in itself is odd. Generally, our worst Presidents have been one-termers, for obvious reasons: James Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover (if you buy into the myth). But George W. Bush was re-elected rather easily in 2004. Thus, if he really was one of our worst Presidents, either the »
January 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Silver Lining

The Consumer Price Index declined for the third straight month in December, by 0.7 percent. This translates into a strong increase in real incomes, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out: Over the eight years of the Bush administration, the average real hourly wage increased by 7.1 percent, almost the exact same as the 7.3 percent increase over the eight years of the Clinton administration. To comment »
January 19, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Quote of the Day

Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan: CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. … Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so. The extent to which global warming alarmism is driven by the economic self-interest of alarmists is one of the great untold stories of this scientific scandal. To comment on this post, »
January 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Cahill stoops to “conquer”

Monday didn’t start well for me. It’s bad enough to work on a holiday (our office was closed in observation of MLK day), without having to hear a day-long leftist rally from my window overlooking Dupont Circle. Nor did I enjoy giving directions during lunch time to Obama supporters from out of town. But all that changed when Tim Cahill headed Everton level with Liverpool in the closing minutes of »
January 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Delay you can’t believe in

Tim Carney reports in the Examiner that Barack Obama’s plan to delay the long-scheduled transition of television broadcasting from analog signals to digital signals will assist a company with whom one of Obama’s advisors on telecommunications policy is associated. That advisor is R. Gerard Salemme, an executive vice president at a company called Clearwire and a substantial contributor to the Obama campaign. Salemme advised Obama’s telecom transition team, which recommended »
January 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Peace on the installment plan

The fighting in Gaza is over now. Israel declared a unilateral cease fire this weekend and, though Hamas vowed to keep fighting, it soon did an about-face after its demands for ceasing hostilities were ignored by Israel and Egypt. This humiliating reversal, coming on top of the one-sided pounding Israel administered, represents victory for Israel and defeat for Hamas. But the extent of the victory will be determined in the »
January 19, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

How churlish of the “Delta”

Today’s Washington Post features this front-page headline: “In Ailing Delta, High Hopes Add to Burden For Obama.” It’s difficult to blame the folks in the Delta for their high hopes, especially if they have been reading the Washington Post. To comment on this post, go here. »
January 19, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Bush’s farewell speech

I missed the broadcast of President Bush’s farewell address last week. The address reads like a retrospective State of the Union address. Indeed, it reads a bit like Bush’s last State of the Union address. By virtue of its relative brevity and limitation to self-proclaimed accomplishments, the farewell address achieved more focus than Bush’s last State of the Union. In the first half of the 2008 State of the Union, »
January 19, 2009 — Scott Johnson

The prophetic voice

When Martin Luther King, Jr. brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for »
January 18, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

He’s no Richie Ashburn

Last week, when Joe Biden proclaimed himself “the most experienced vice president since anybody,” it reminded me of something Richie Ashburn once said. Ashburn had a Hall of Fame career with the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1950s, and went on to broadcast Phillies game on the radio. While calling a game in the mid-1970s, Ashburn was heard to say: “Dave Cash will lead things off. He’s the best lead-off batter »
January 18, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Useful idiots to the rescue

Nancy Pelosi stated today that she is “open” to prosecutions of Bush administration officials. Pelosi seemed particularly open to prosecutions relating to “the politicizing of the Justice Department.” Presumably, she was referring to the sacking of a small group of U.S. attorneys and/or certain instances in which political affiliation apparently entered into hiring decisions for career positions. It’s difficult to see any criminal prosecutions stemming from decisions relating to U.S. »