Monthly Archives: March 2012
March 18, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this evening I noted that today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune reminded us why that paper is regarded as one of the most left-wing in the United States. The second article I want to highlight from today’s Strib is by the paper’s Editor, Nancy Barnes. Ms. Barnes explained why the paper killed a series of Doonesbury comic strips last week. Doonesbury was once, many years ago, a hot cultural phenomenon. In
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March 18, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is one of the nation’s most liberal newspapers. Today it reminded us why it has achieved that dubious distinction. First, the paper headlined: Women slip behind as economy picks up. Given that pretty much everyone knows that the economic slump of the past four years has hit men particularly hard, that will strike most readers as a weird interpretation of events. The Strib explains: For women
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March 18, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Chuckles is Chuck Schumer; the audience is America’s voters. The Democrats can’t run on their record; they can’t even talk about it. So they have only one desperate strategy: try to change the subject. Politico is a Democrat-leaning publication, but it nevertheless documents the extraordinary cynicism of Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Party: New York Sen. Chuck Schumer believes he has found a political weapon in the unlikeliest of places: the Violence
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March 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Peter Wallsten is a first-rate political reporter who has worked for newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and now the Washington Post. In today’s Post he is the lead contributor to the long behind-the-scenes story reconstructing Obama’s negotiations with Republican leaders this past summer over a “grand bargain” on tax and budget issues. Reader Steve Walser writes: Please closely read Sunday’s front-page article on the breakdown
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March 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Of the many things liberals hated about Ronald Reagan, few excited more spasms of outrage than Reagan’s use of the image of the “welfare queen.” Reagan gave an example of a person in Chicago who illegally collected welfare benefits under multiple names: “She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her
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March 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In his exclusive report on the bin Laden plot to kill Obama — the Obama administration must really like him — David Ignatius buries this gem in his conclusion: Bin Laden and his aides hoped for big terrorist operations to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. They also had elaborate media plans. Adam Gadahn, a U.S.-born media adviser, even discussed in a message to his boss what would
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March 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
You have to wonder where President Obama got the research for his recent speech including the disparagement of Rutheford B. Hayes. Have he and his speechwriters been catching up on Mystery Science Theater 3000? In the clip below, from episode 510 (“The Painted Hills”), Crow T. Robot recites his essay on Hayes: “In 1876, Hayes beat Bill Tilden in a three-set quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows, which caused the Electrical College
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March 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Reader Don Wise draws our attention to the video below, depicting Barack Obama paying tribute to several of our strongest and closest allies. These allies may be small, but they also punch above their weight, according to the president. You may wonder: Where the hell is that reset button when you really need it? According to the note accompanying the video on YouTube, this clip comes from Danish Broadcasting Corporation
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March 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Our former colleague Paul Mirengoff writes: I agree with John’s view that Rutherford B. Hayes is a better man than Barack Obama. However, I’m not a fan of the Hayes presidency. Hayes is remembered mostly for two things: (1) winning a hugely controversial presidential election with fewer popular votes than his opponent and (2) ending Reconstruction. The two events are related — it can be argued that Hayes’s victory in
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March 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
More on the theme of my posts over the last two days on the death spiral of environmentalism, this time from my old graduate school landlord, Peter Drucker. In 1972 Drucker wrote an article for Harper’s entitled “The High Cost of Our Environmental Future” (sorry, no link—I only have hard copy): Everybody today is “for the environment. . .” Yet the crusade is in real danger of running off the
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March 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about my first experience firing a handgun–last October!–and here about buying my first gun, a Sig Sauer Mosquito Sport. And I wrote here about shooting on a Friday evening with my oldest daughter at the local Gander Mountain. I’m not sure what it is about firing handguns at targets that is so satisfying, but I have found that I really enjoy it. I have only owned my
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March 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Of the many witty tweets posted at Top 20 tweets of #BarackObamasPresidentialFacts, this is one that stays on the Rutherford Hayes theme and also deserves your close attention: “Purple Hayes” was the first Jim Hendrix song about a president. #BarackObamasPresidentialFacts Steve Hayward is the guy who wrote the book on Jimmy Carter. Steve, could this be BHO’s killer rabbit moment?
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March 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Over at NRO, Grace-Marie Turner translates and comments on the Obama administration’s “advance notice of proposed rule making” (or ANPRM, in the acronym used in the notice). The ANPRM is a document that requires translation; whatever it is saying is not-self-evident. It is opaque, in the style best suited to our bureaucratic masters. Turner elaborates: It is clear that the Obama administration is not backing down from its anti-conscience mandate
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March 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I was flipping through some of my digital photos on my old laptop, and had completely forgotten about this one of Andrew and his son, which I snapped on a visit together to the Reagan Ranch north of Santa Barbara back in the summer of 2007. I especially recall coveting his t-shirt, and being disappointed to find out that Duke Lacrosse shirts were in such high demand that they were
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March 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Whatever happened to baby pain? I mean, has the the Obama administration’s ludicrous “accommodation” of the Church’s opposition to the compelled provision of free contraception, sterilization and abortifacients resolved the serious constitutional affront involved? Or has it thrown one more into the mix? Somehow the Democrat Media Axis has transformed the discussion into something else entirely. I’ve been looking for a copy of the regulation enacting the “accommodation” and requiring
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March 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama’s thoughtless denigration of Rutherford B. Hayes–a better man than Obama could ever dream of being–has sparked something of an internet craze, which Steve noted yesterday. At QuickMeme, you can see pages of captioned Hayes portraits, and create your own if you want. This is one of many favorites: Obama’s gaffe might have the salutary effect of focusing public attention on worthy figures from American’s past like Rutherford Hayes.
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March 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
More to the point of yesterday’s post about the slow and agonizing death spiral of the environmental movement: could anyone have predicted this? In fact, some one did, at the very beginning of modern environmentalism around the time of the first Earth Day. The political scientist Anthony Downs offered up his theory of the “issue-attention cycle” in a classic 1972 article in The Public Interest, explaining the five stages that
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